It is remarkable that the transaction which, as has been said before, may be conceived to have first forced on Pitt's mind the conviction of the absolute necessity of the Union-namely, the course pursued by the Irish Parliament on the Regency Bill-bore a close resemblance to that which, above all other considerations, had made the Scotch Union indispensable, namely, the Act of Security passed by the Scottish Estates in 1703, which actually provided that, on the decease of Queen Anne without issue, the Estates "should name her successor, but should be debarred from choosing the admitted successor to the crown of England, unless such forms of government were settled as should fully secure the religion, freedom, and trade of the Scottish nation."[140] The Scotch Estates, therefore, had absolutely regarded the possible separation of the two kingdoms as a contingency which might become not undesirable; and, though it was too ticklish an argument to bring forward, it may very possibly have occurred to Pitt that a similar vote of the Irish Parliament was not impossible. The claim which Grattan, following Fox, had set up on behalf of the Prince of Wales, was one of an indefeasible right to the Regency; and, as far as right by inheritance went, his claim to the crown, if, or whenever, a vacancy should occur, was far less disputable. But, as has been mentioned in the last chapter, a question had already been raised whether his Royal Highness had not forfeited his right to the succession, and it was quite possible that that question might be renewed. The fact of the Prince's marriage to a Roman Catholic was by this time generally accepted as certain; the birth of the Princess Charlotte gave greater importance to the circumstance than it seemed to have while the Prince remained childless; and, if the performance of the marriage ceremony should be legally proved, and the English law courts should pronounce that the legal invalidity of the marriage did not protect the Prince from the penalty of forfeiture, it was highly probable that the Irish Parliament would take a different view-would refuse, in spite of the Bill of Rights, to regard marriage with a Roman Catholic as a disqualification, but would recognize the Prince of Wales as King of Ireland.
Several minor considerations, such as the desirableness of uniformity in the proceedings of the two countries with respect to Money Bills, the Mutiny Act, and other arrangements of parliamentary detail, all pointed the same way; and, on the whole, it may be said that scarcely any of the opponents of the government measure were found to deny its expediency, especially as regarded the interests of Great Britain. The objections which were made were urged on different grounds. In the Irish House of Commons, a member who, though a young man, had already established a very high reputation for professional skill as a barrister, for eloquence equally suited to the Bar and to the Senate, and for sincere and incorruptible patriotism, Mr. Plunkett, took upon himself to deny the competency of the Irish Parliament to pass a bill not only to extinguish its own existence, but to prevent the birth of any future Parliament, and to declare that the act, if it "should be passed," would be a mere nullity, and that no man in "Ireland would be bound to obey it." And, in the English House of Commons, Mr. Grey may be thought to have adopted something of the same view, when he proposed an amendment "to suspend all proceedings on the subject till the sentiments of the people of Ireland respecting that measure could be ascertained." He did not, of course, deny (he was speaking on the 21st of April, 1800) that the bill had been passed by both Houses of the Irish Parliament by considerable majorities.[141] But he contended that that Parliament did not speak the sentiments of the people; and, that being the case, that its voice was of no authority. It is evident that all arguments founded on a denial of the omnipotence of a Parliament, whether English or Irish, are invalid. The question of that omnipotence, as has been seen in a former chapter, had been fully discussed when Mr. Pitt's father denied the power of Parliament to tax the American Colonies; and that question may fairly be regarded as having been settled at that time. It is equally clear that the denial that, on any question whatever, the House of Commons must be taken to speak the sentiments of the constituencies, whether the proposal of such question had been contemplated at the time of their election or not, is the advancement of a doctrine wholly inconsistent with our parliamentary constitution, and one which would practically be the parent of endless agitation and mischief. To expect that the members could pronounce on no new question without a fresh reference to their constituents, would be to reduce them from the position of representatives to that of delegates; such as that of the members of the old States-general, in France, whose early decay is attributed by the ablest political writers in no small degree to the dependence of the members on their constituents for precise instructions. Another argument on which Mr. Grey insisted with great earnestness is worth preserving, though subsequent inventions have destroyed its force; he contended that the example of the Scotch Union did not, when properly considered, afford any argument in favor of an Irish Union, from the difference of situation of the two countries. Scotland was a part of the same island as England; "there was no physical impediment to rapid and constant communication; the relative situation of the two countries was such that the King himself could administer the executive government in both, and there was no occasion for a separate establishment being kept up in each." But the sea lay between England and Ireland, and the delays and sometimes difficulties which were thus interposed rendered it "necessary that Ireland should have a separate government;" and he affirmed that "this was an insuperable bar to a beneficial Union," quoting a saying of Lord Somers, that "if it were necessary to preserve a separate executive government at Edinburgh after the Union, he would abandon the measure." Mr. Grey even denied that the prosperity of Scotland since the Union was mainly attributable to that measure. "It was not the Union; it was the adoption of a liberal policy, the application of a proper remedy to the particular evils under which the country labored, that removed the causes which had impeded the prosperity of Scotland." But this argument was clearly open to the reply that the adoption of that liberal policy had been a direct effect of the Union, and would have been impracticable without it, and was, therefore, a strong inducement to the adoption of a similar Union with Ireland, where the existing evils were at least as great as those which, a century before, had kept down Scotland. Another of his arguments has been remarkably falsified by the event. With a boldness in putting forward what was manifestly, indeed avowedly, a party objection, and which, as such, must be looked upon as somewhat singular, he found a reason for resisting the addition of a hundred Irish members to the British House of Commons in the probability that they would, as a general rule, be subservient to the minister. He instanced "the uniform support which the members for Scotland had given to every act of ministers," and saw in that example "reason to apprehend that the Irish members would become a no less regular band of ministerial adherents." It would be superfluous to point out how entirely contrary the result has been to the prediction.