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.