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.
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