Page:Home rule; Fenian home rule; Home rule all round; Devolution; what do they mean?.djvu/34

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The Constitutional dispute about the Regency, the great Irish Rebellion of 1798, the invasion by the French, and the divided strength of the British Isles grappling with the tremendous power of Napoleon forced upon the English people the conviction that safety was not possible for the British Empire save in a legislative Union between Great Britain and Ireland. The Union was carried, and from the 1st January, 1801, these two kingdoms were united into one kingdom under the title of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, and for this United Kingdom a single Parliament was constituted. In this single Parliament the separate Parliaments were fused together. Each lost its individuality. They combined in and for Imperial strength.

At the time of the Union, no third course, no intermediate scheme between the existing independence of the two Parliaments and their incorporation into one Parliament was proposed; no scheme of "Federation," of "Home Rule," of "Devolution" was adventured. The Irish people had too recent an experience of the inconvenience, and the English people too recent an experience of the dangers of a "Subordinate Parliament." Sheridan speaking, in 1779, in the English House of Commons against the Union, under the apprehension that some "Home Rule" scheme might be suggested as an intermediate system, uttered the opinion of Ireland at the time:—

"'Are we to be told that Union will not wholly dissolve the Legislature of Ireland: that independence will"