But, as Foster indicated, the Irish members felt that they were coming to the end of their resources.

They were about to call a halt, and so the Union became a necessary ingredient of Pitt's foreign policy.

By it Ireland was swept into the vortex of his anti-French hysteria, and of what Mr Hartley Withers so properly styles his "reckless finance." In sixteen years she was brought to the edge of bankruptcy.

Between 1801 and 1817 her funded debt was increased from L28,541,157 to L112,684,773, an augmentation of nearly 300 per cent.

In the first fifteen years following the Union she paid in taxes L78,000,000 as against L31,000,000 in the last fifteen years preceding the Union.