Since the union, there has been much that was deplorable in the state of Ireland and in the relations of the two islands, the main source of which, however, as will presently appear, was not political. There has been a hateful series of coercion acts. But there have been no Tudor hostings; there has been no 1641; no 1689; no 1798. No fleet of an invader has anchored in Bantry Bay. Belfast, once the seed-plot of revolution, has prospered and been content. Two years afterwards revolution flamed up again for a moment in the abortive rising of Emmet. Then it died down, to break forth seriously, at least as civil war, no more. The union must be taken to have been a union in the full sense of the term, putting an end to separate identity, not merely a standing contract between two parties, each of which retained the right of enforcing the contract against the other. On this understanding Parliament has acted, and is likely again to act in the case of the representation, as well as in the disestablishment of the Irish Church. The United Kingdom cannot be hide-bound forever by the terms which, necessarily having reference to the circumstances of its formation, must, like those circumstances, have been deemed liable to change. It is unfortunate that no common name for the united nationality could be found. "British" excludes the Irish, "English" both the Irish and the Scotch, and separatist sentiment is fostered by the retention of the old national name. Victory over the French Revolution and Napoleon was accompanied by an ascendancy of Toryism, which kept Liverpool at the head of the government for fourteen years. In this both islands fared alike. But the Cabinet was divided on the subject of Catholic emancipation. Plunket, still a Liberal though now a Unionist, showed his power as a debater in the Catholic cause. Castlereagh and Canning were on the Liberal side. Emancipation was carried in the Commons, thrown out in the lords, while old Eldon drank to the thirty-nine peers who had saved the Thirty-nine Articles, little thinking how soon he was to be smitten in the house of his friends. On Liverpool's death there were a few months of Canning and a brief interlude of Goodrich. Then power reverted to the Tory and anti-Catholic section of the Liverpool combination, at the head of which were Wellington and Peel. Peel, in whom hereditary Toryism was combined with natural openness of mind and practical sagacity, as well as with supreme skill in administration, seemed specially sent to carry England safely by the bridge of Conservatism over the gulf between the old era and the new. He had been one of the anti-Catholic section of the Liverpool government, and in that character had been elected to Parliament by the clerical and then Protestant University of Oxford. But he had administered Ireland for six years; had seen the state of things there; had been impressed and shown symptoms of a change of sentiment. He dealt liberally with Catholics in