changed; her debt had risen to upwards of L28,000,000, her taxation to about L2,500,000. This great increase had been partly caused by the costly expenditure of her transformed Parliament, which had spent considerable sums on public works, and on economic experiments of different kinds; but five-sixths of it was probably caused by the enormous charge incurred by the Rebellion of 1798--one of the most woeful tragedies of Irish history--and by the suppression of that ill-starred movement.[151] The Rebellion led at once to the Union; it precipitated what had perhaps become a necessity of State. The great measure of Pitt was badly designed, and was, moreover, tainted by a grave breach of faith; it was only what was called a 'Protestant Union,' that is, it rested upon false and narrow foundations; it deceived Catholic Ireland, and did her gross wrong; above all, it did not effect its main object, and incorporate the lesser with the more powerful country. It left Ireland, hitherto completely distinct, still, to a very considerable extent, a distinct State; she retained a separate Government and Administration, separate Courts of Justice, a separate Exchequer for many years; this shadow of separation, as Foster, one of her ablest worthies, foretold, would give a demand for separation substance.[152] The financial arrangements between Great Britain and Ireland were practically altogether the work of Pitt. A disciple of Adam Smith, the minister's wish was to 'assimilate the two countries in finance;' to place both under the same fiscal system, to make taxation in both uniform. But in 1800, the National Debt of Great Britain was more than L446,000,000, and her taxation was about L3 a head; the National Debt of Ireland, we have seen, was some L28,000,000, and her taxation by the head not more than 10_s._; this immense inequality made 'assimilation in finance' impossible. Besides, Pitt, as a matter of course, knew that Great Britain was a very rich country, and Ireland perhaps the poorest in Europe; he was too great a financier to accept the false and shallow theory that, as between two communities wholly unequal in wealth, equal taxes were really equal burdens, and could be just; he had emphatically remarked in 1785, when his celebrated 'Commercial Propositions' were opposed by the selfish monopolies of British commerce, 'If one country exceeded another in wealth, population, and established commerce in a proportion of two to one, he was nearly convinced that that country would be able to bear near ten times the burden that the other would be equal to.'[153] It had become necessary, therefore, at the time of the Union, to place the financial relations between Great Britain and Ireland on a basis that had nothing in common with uniformity of taxation, and a common fiscal system; 'assimilation in finance' was for the present to be indefinitely postponed.