But the House was too entirely under the influence of Grattan’s impassioned eloquence for Fitzgibbon’s more sober arguments to be listened to.  The address proposed by Grattan was carried by acclamation; and the peers were scarcely less unanimous in its favor, one of the archbishops even dilating on “the duty of availing themselves of the opportunity of asserting the total independence of Ireland.”  Even when, on a second discussion as to the mode in which the address was to be presented to the Prince, Fitzgibbon reported that he had consulted the Chancellor and all the judges, and that they were unanimously of opinion that, till the Regency Bill should be passed in England, the address was not only improper but treasonable, he found his warning equally disregarded.  And when the Lord-lieutenant refused to transmit the address to England, on the avowed ground of its illegality, Grattan proposed and carried three resolutions:  the first, that the address was not illegal, but that, in addressing the Prince to take on himself the Regency, the Parliament of Ireland had exercised an undoubted right; the second, that the Lord-lieutenant’s refusal to transmit the address to his Royal Highness was ill-advised and unconstitutional; the third, that a deputation from the two Houses should go to London, to present the address to the Prince.  Mr. Fronde affirms that the deputation, even when preparing to sail for England, was very irresolute and undecided whether to present the address or not, from a reasonable fear of incurring the penalties of treason, to which the lawyers pronounced those who should present it liable.  But their courage was not put to the test.  As has been already seen, before the end of the month the King’s recovery was announced, and the question of a Regency did not occur again till the Irish Parliament had been united to the English.

Since Lord Rockingham’s concessions, in 1782, the project of a legislative union between the two countries, resembling that which united Scotland to England, had more than once been broached.  We have seen it alluded to by Fitzgibbon in the course of these discussions, and it was no new idea.  It had been discussed even before the union with Scotland was completed, and had then been regarded in Ireland with feelings very different from those which prevailed at a later period.  Ten years after the time of which we are speaking, Grattan denounced the scheme with almost frantic violence.  Fitzgibbon (though after the Rebellion he recommended it as indispensable) as yet regarded it only as an alternative which, though he might eventually embrace it, he should not accept without extreme reluctance.  But at the beginning of the century all parties among the Protestant Irish had been eager for it, and even the leading Roman Catholics had been not unwilling to acquiesce in it.  Unluckily, the English ministers were unable to shake off the influence of the English manufacturers; and they, in another development of the selfish and wicked