recovering the lost ground and the opportunity of doing so were immediately recognised. The obstinacy with which the Irish Parliament opposed Parliamentary reform (an obstinacy directly fostered by the policy of the English Ministry) drove the United Irish movement into hostility at once to the English connection and to the existing constitution of Ireland. They could thus be represented as at once a menace to England and a menace to Ireland, and it was held to be the duty of both Governments to combine to crush them. They were crushed by English troops, but the Irish Parliament was crushed with them. Pitt decided that direct control by the English Ministry must take the place of indirect control through an Irish Executive, and the Legislative Union was enacted. There seemed to be no other permanent or ultimate alternative to the complete independence and separation of England and Ireland. Much impressive rhetoric has been expended upon the measures taken to secure that the members of the Irish Parliament should produce a majority in favour of the Act of Union. They were bribed and intimidated; they were offered posts and pensions: some of them were bought with hard cash. But even a Castlereagh must have been aware that if he should suborn a servant to betray his master the gravamen of the charge against him would not be that he had corrupted the morals of the servant by offering him a bribe. Ordinary morality may not apply to politics, but if it does, Pitt and Castlereagh were guilty of a far greater crime than that of bribing a few scores of venal Irishmen; and the members of the Irish Parliament who took their money were guilty not of corruption but of treason. For the Act of Union was intended to accomplish the destruction of the national existence. The members of Parliament who voted against it, knew this: the Irish people who petitioned against it, knew this: Pitt and Castlereagh knew it: the men they paid to vote for it, knew it too.