But what the rebellion proved was, that the Union would not admit of an instant's delay; and Pitt at once applied himself to the task of framing a measure which, while it should strengthen England, by the removal of the necessity for a constant watchfulness over every transaction and movement in Ireland, should at the same time confer on and secure to Ireland substantial advantages, such as, without a Union, the English Parliament could scarcely be induced to contemplate.
Mr.Hallam, in one of the last chapters of his work,[138] while showing by unanswerable arguments the advantages which Scotland has derived from her Union with England, has also enumerated some of the causes which impeded the minister of the day in his endeavors to render it acceptable to the Scotch members to whom it was proposed.

The most apparently substantial of these was the unprecedented character of the measure.

No past "experience of history was favorable to the absorption of a lesser state, at least where the government partook so much of the republican form, in one of superior power and ancient rivalry." But, in the case of the present measure, what had thus been a difficulty in the Scotch Union might have been expected to be regarded as an argument in its favor, since the keenest patriots among the Scotch had long been convinced that the Union had brought a vast increase of prosperity and importance to their country, and what was now confessed to have proved advantageous to Scotland might naturally be expected to be equally beneficial to Ireland.

Another obstacle had been the fear of the danger to which the Presbyterian Church might be "exposed, when brought thus within the power of a Legislature so frequently influenced by one which held her, not as a sister, but rather a bastard usurper to a sister's inheritance." But here again experience might give her testimony in favor of an Irish Union, since it was incontestable that those apprehensions--which, no doubt, many earnest Scotchmen had sincerely entertained--had not been realized, but that since the Union the Presbyterian Church had enjoyed as great security, as complete independence, and as absolute an authority over its members as in the preceding century; that the Parliament had never attempted the slightest interference with its exercise of its privileges, and that the Church of England had been equally free from the exhibition of any desire to stimulate the Parliament to such action; while the Roman Catholic Church, which had many more adherents in England than the Presbyterian Church had ever had, was quite powerful enough to exact for itself the maintenance of its rights, and the minister was quite willing to grant equal securities to those which, at the beginning of the century, had been thought sufficient for the Church of Scotland.

A third reason which our great historical critic puts forward for the disfavor with which the Union was at the time regarded by many high-minded Scotchmen, he finds in "the gross prostitution with which a majority sold themselves to the surrender of their own legislative existence." That similar means were to some extent employed to win over opponents of the government in Ireland cannot, it must be confessed, be denied, though the temptations held out to converts oftener took the shape of titles, promotions, appointments, and court favors than of actual money.