after the fighting were often of mediaeval atrocity, and the retaliation of the rebels cannot be justified, though it is amply explained by the character of the provocation. This fearful outbreak in the middle of the French War satisfied the English Government that only by a Union could Ireland be kept in peace. The good effects of the recent concessions had vanished in this whirlwind of savagery, and Protestant and Catholic were once more in the temper of the Middle Ages. Mutual goodwill could only be restored by a common tutelage. There was nothing bad in itself in the plan for a legislative Union. Had it been carried through with a just regard for Irish opinion, and had it been followed by a strict attention to the grievances of the common people, the Union might have been one of the brilliant successes of the English race. In fact it was itself effected by shameful means, and it was followed by misgovernment as fatally unsympathetic as that which had preceded it. English rule in Ireland was less ferocious in the {129} nineteenth century than in the eighteenth. But it was no less conspicuous a failure. No constitutional machinery can be better than the men who work it, and Englishmen after the Union showed themselves no less unimaginative and egoistic than their predecessors. The objects of the Union were stated by Pitt, with perfect good faith, to be the substitution of government by an impartial authority for government by a faction which was steeped in the memories of old oppression. "An impartial Legislature standing aloof from local party connection, sufficiently removed from the influence of contending factions to be advocate or champion of neither, being so placed as to have no superstitious reverence for the names and prejudices of ancient families, who have so long enjoyed the exclusive monopolies of certain public patronages and property ... this is the thing that is wanted for Ireland."[147] That was what was wanted for Ireland. What it obtained was a Legislature as partial, as inextricably involved in local party connection, and as closely wrapped about with superstitious reverence for ancient families and their patronages and property as could have been contrived. For half a century at least the government of Ireland remained what it has always been in the hands of England, government by armed force, in the interests of the landlords against the tenants, of the Protestants against the Catholics. A system which Pitt devised as a protection against the old abuses was converted into an effective engine for their maintenance. Pitt was himself partly to blame for this disastrous failure. He probably never saw the need for economic reorganization. But he saw clearly enough the need for the ending of religious strife, which poisoned the whole temper of the people and wasted on the jealousies of sects and the hatred of government energy which would otherwise be free to run in healthy and productive channels.