Above : Portrait Of Castlereagh With His Signature

In February there was a debate in both Houses, on a message received from the Lord Lieutenant, asking that the Lords and Commons should consider the question of a Legislative Union. In the Commons, Castlereagh rose to explain the Government scheme in more detail than had yet been done. It may be well, at this point, to briefly set forth the most important points in the chief clauses of the Act of Union, in the form in which they were ultimately passed :

1. The Kingdoms were to be united for ever by the name of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.
2. The United Kingdom was to be represented by one and the same Parliament.
3. Ireland was to be represented in the Upper House by four Spiritual Peers (Archbishops and Bishops of the Established Church), and by twenty-eight Temporal Peers. The former were to sit by rotation, session by session ; the latter to be elected for life by the votes of all the Irish peers.
4. The Established Churches of England and of Ireland were to be united ” into one Protestant Episcopal Church “ The continuance of this Church ” as the established Church of England and Ireland » should ” be deemed and taken to be an essential and fundamental part of the Union “
5. There should be no duty charged nor bounty given on the export of the products of Ireland to England, or vice versa.
6. All products of either country, except those on a list given, should be imported free to the other.
7. There should be the same charges on foreign imports in both countries.
8. For the present, Ireland should contribute to the common expenditure of both countries in the proportion of two parts in seventeen (that is to say, of every seventeen pounds spent, she should contribute two). This arrangement might afterwards be re-adjusted.
9. The part of the revenue of Ireland which would remain over after the two-in-seventeen charges had been paid, was to be used to pay the interest of the National Debt of Ireland, to reduce the debt itself, and for local needs.
10. No article was to be more highly taxed in Ireland than in England.
11. If the separate National Debt of each country should be liquidated,or if the value of the respective debts should become to each other of the same proportion as the separate contributions fixed for each country respectively—that is to say, two parts in seventeen, or as two to fifteen (at present the Irish Debt was to the English as one to sixteen and a half), it should be competent for Parliament to declare that all future expenses should be indiscriminate, or in other words, to order the amalgamation of the exchequers. When, or if, this happened, equal taxes should be imposed on both countries, ” subject only to such abatements for Ireland as circumstances may seem to require.”

As the representation of the Irish Commons in the Imperial Parliament was to be limited to 100, of whom sixty-four were to sit for the thirty-two counties, the majority of the 236 boroughs of the Dublin Parliament would be disfranchised. Of these, eighty-four were ” nomination boroughs “, and it was agreed that their patrons should be compensated. A regular Bill was passed for the purpose (after the passing of the Union Act), £15,000 being adjudged to be the value of each seat. Although the possession of this patronage at all was certainly an abuse, so that neither in law nor in strict justice could any claim be considered as existing for compensation for its loss, yet the practice of several generations had acknowledged it, and its workings had become a part of the regular Parliamentary system. At late the open payment for the seats cannot fairly be regarded as bribery especially as the money was to be given irrespective of whether the dispossessed patron voted for or against the Union