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 jealousy which had led them in William's reign
to require the suppression of the Irish woollen manufacture, now, in
Anne's, rose against the proposal of a legislative union.[133] In
blindness which was not only fatal but suicidal also, "they persuaded
themselves that the union would make Ireland rich, and that England's
interest was to keep her poor;" as if it had been possible for one
portion of the kingdom to increase in prosperity without every other
portion benefiting also by the improvement.
However, in the reign of Anne the union was a question only of
expediency or of wisdom. The wide divergence of the two Parliaments on
this question of the Regency transformed it into a question of
necessity. The King might have a relapse; the Irish Parliament, on a
recurrence of the crisis, might re-affirm its late resolutions; might
frame another address to the Prince of Wales; and there might be no
alternative between seeing two different persons Regents of England and
Ireland, or, what would be nearly the same thing, seeing the same person
Regent of the two countries on different grounds, and exercising a
different authority.
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