cognized, he did not give the countersign, the sentry fired; but fortunately the bullet missed him. (6th Sept.) "The same wretched business of courts-martial, hanging, transporting, etc., attended by all the dismal scenes of wives, sisters, fathers, kneeling and crying, is going on as usual, and holds out a comfortable prospect to a man of any feeling." (16th Nov.) "The vilest informers are hunted out from the prisons to attack, by the most barefaced perjury, the lives of all who are suspected of being, or of having been, disaffected; and indeed every Roman Catholic of influence is in great danger." The plans of the Unionists had been laid so well, and the means in their hands for bribery were so exhaustless, that on the 16th January 1800, Government secured a majority of 138 to 96 on the (question, after a sitting of eighteen hours: and on the 24th Cornwallis was able to write that success was perfectly assured. Another division took place on the 6th February; the numbers being, for the Union, 158; against, 115—the largest division ever known in the Irish House of Commons; including vacant seats and pairs, only twenty-two were absent. On the 11th February, the division in the Lords was: 95 for, and 26 against the measure. As representing money interests. Lord Castlereagh calculated that taking the Peers and Commons together, there was property represented to the amount of £1,058,200 for the measure, and £358,500 against it. (18th April.) "I believe that one-half of our majority would be at least as much delighted as any of our opponents, if the measure could be defeated." (7th June.) "The country could not be saved without the Union, but you must not take it for granted that it will be saved by it." On 9th of June he sent over a list of the sixteen persons to whom he had promised peerages for their support of the measure. On 17th June we find by a letter to the Duke of Portland that he was overwhelmed with mortification at the non-fulfilment by the Government of some of his pledges, both to particular persons and to the Catholics: "I am so overcome… that I know not how to proceed in the mortifying detail; there was no sacrifice that I should not have been happy to make for the service of my king and country, except that of my honour." Lord Castlereagh thus closes a long and vehement expostulation at the same date: "If Lord Cornwallis has been the person to buy out and secure for ever the fee-simple of Irish corruption, which has so long enfeebled the powers of Government and endangered the connection, he is not to be the first sacrifice to his own exertions." Whole pages in his Correspondence are taken up with the arrangements for satisfying the various parties and interests who had helped to carry the measure. Some who had been promised peerages were put off with money payments in lieu thereof. On the 22nd August 1800 he was enabled to announce to the Duke of Portland that he had the previous day given the royal assent to the Union Bill, and he congratulated all parties upon "the auspicious event." (8th Oct.) "I cannot help entertaining considerable apprehensions that our cabinet will not have the firmness to adopt such measures as will render the Union an efficient advantage to the empire. Those things which, if now liberally granted, might make the Irish a loyal people will be of little avail when they are extorted on a future day." (18th Dec.) "My situation is altogether as unhappy as you can conceive, and I see no hope of relief; and yet I cannot in conscience and in duty to my country abandon the Catholic question, without which all we have done will be of no avail." His letters at this period abound with expressions of his deep conviction that Catholic Emancipation should be immediately granted, and that without it "we cannot long exist as a divided nation." Under date 30th December, a list of all the promotions and creations in the peerage consequent on the Union is given; they number 46. The sum paid for buying out the borough holders is put down at £1,260,000, exclusive of other bribery. Lord Cornwallis refused the offer of a dukedom, determined to show that he, at least, had been actuated by duty alone. Before leaving Ireland in May, he writes: "The joy that I should feel at being relieved from a situation which, with regard to every idea of enjoyment of life, has been most irksome to me, will be greatly alloyed by my apprehension that I am leaving a people who love me, and whose happiness I had so nearly secured, in a state of progressive misery." It is impossible to peruse his Correspondence without feeling convinced that he regarded religious equality as a necessary concomitant of the Union. Later on, in 1801, after his return to England, he was appointed plenipotentiary to the congress that concluded the treaty of Amiens. In 1805 he again went out to India as Governor-General and Commander-in-chief. He found the finances of British India in a most deplorable state, while several of the most powerful native princes were in arms, or
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