“The House of Commons now began to appropriate a considerable part of the additional duties to their own use.  This was done under pretence of encouraging public works such as inland navigation, collieries, and manufactories of different kinds; but the truth is that most of these public works were private jobs carried on under the direction and for the advantage of some considerable gentlemen in the House of Commons.”

Arthur Young, whose careful and impartial study of the state of affairs in Ireland under the Dublin Parliament has become a classic, speaks of the same class of transaction,[9]

“The members of the House of Commons at the conclusion of the sessions met for the purpose of voting the uses to which this money should be applied:  the greater part of it was amongst themselves, their friends or dependants, and though some work of apparent use to the public was always the plea, yet under the sanction there were a great number of very scandalous jobs.”

Young admits that some useful public work was done, but that most of the money was misappropriated was matter of common report.  After a reference to the construction of a certain canal he adds—­

“Some gentlemen I have talked with on this subject have replied, ’It is a job:  ’twas meant as a job:  you are not to consider it as a canal of trade, but as a canal for public money!’ ...  Sorry I am to say that a history of public works in Ireland would be a history of jobs.”

Money was voted, he says elsewhere, for—­

     “Collieries where there is no coal, for bridges where there are no
     rivers, navigable cuts where there is no water, harbours where
     there are no ships, and churches where there are no congregations.”

And when the Union was finally on its way, Hamilton Rowan, one of the founders of the United Irishmen, then in exile in America, wrote home to his father:  “I congratulate you on the report which spreads here that a Union is intended.  In that measure I see the downfall of one of the most corrupt assemblies, I believe, that ever existed."[10]

It is little wonder that men of good will in Ireland prayed to be delivered from such a Parliament.  Molyneux, the first of the Irish Parliamentary patriots, whose book, “The Case of Ireland’s being Governed by Laws made in England Stated,” was burnt by the common hangman, pleaded indeed for a reformed and independent Parliament, but only because fair representation in the English Parliament was at the time “a happiness they could hardly hope for.”  And a few years later the Irish House, in congratulating Queen Anne on the Union of England and Scotland, added, “May God put it into your royal heart to add greater strength and lustre to your Crown by a yet more comprehensive Union.”