A Memoir on Ireland Native and Saxon (Electronic book text)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. Excerpt from book: Section 3CHAP. VII. The Year 1800. 1. This year would justify a volume to itself. It was the year that consummated the crimes which, during nearly seven centuries, the English Government perpetrated against Ireland. It was the year of the destruction of the Irish legislature. It was the fatal, ever to be accursed year of the enactment of the Union. 2. The Union was inflicted on Ireland by the combined operation of terror, torture, force, fraud, and corruption. 3. The contrivers of the Union kept on foot and fomented the embers of a lingering rebellion. They hallooed the Protestant against the Catholic, and the Catholic against the Protestant. They carefully kept alive domestic dissensions, for the purposes of subjugation. 4. Whilst the Union was in progress, the Habeas Corpus act was suspended all constitutional freedom was annihilated in IrelandMarTial Law Was Proclaimedthe use of torture was frequentliberty, life, or property, had no protectionpublic opinion was stifledtrials by court-martial were familiarmeetings legally convened by sheriffs and magistrates were dispersed by military violencethe voice of Ireland was suppressedthe Irish people had no protection. Once again, I repeat, Martial Law Was Proclaimedthus the Union was achieved in total despite of the Irish nation. 5. But this was not allthe most enormousand the basest corruption was resorted to. Lord John Russell is reported to have lately stated at a public dinner, that the Union was carried at an expense of j800,000. He was much mistaken, speaking as he did merely from a vague recollection. The parliamentary documents will show him that the one item of the purchase money of rotten and denomination boroughs, cost no less a sum than one million, two hundred and forty-five thousand pounds.The pecuniary corruption amoun...