ABSTRACT
Late in his lengthy political career, and long after the declaration of his mission to pacify Ireland, William Gladstone privately assailed the Union as an ill-considered British imposition which he would have resisted had he been an Irishman living at the turn of the nineteenth century Of course, this assertion was far from inconvenient at a time when he was anxious to elevate above the level of political expediency his own belated advocacy of a very modest portion of political autonomy for Ireland. But the commitment, in the fourth quarter of the century, of one of the two great political parties, or at least its greater part, to the cause of’home rule’ reflected the inability of the Union’s defenders since 1801 to render it impregnable. Not that they had failed for want of trying, persuaded as most of them had been that the connexion was vital for Ireland and essential for Britain’s security and the integrity of the Empire. 1
