Acts of Union 1800

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Union with Ireland Act 1800

Act of Parliament
Commencement		31 December 1800 – 1 January 1801
Other legislation
Relates to	Government of Ireland Act 1920 Irish Free State Constitution Act 1922 Irish Free State (Consequential Provisions) Act 1922 Ireland Act 1949 Northern Ireland Constitution Act 1973 Northern Ireland Act 1998
Status
Republic of Ireland	Repealed by the Statute Law Revision Act 1983
Northern Ireland	Still in force with amendments
Revised text of statute as amended

Act of Union (Ireland) 1800

Act of Parliament
Republic of Ireland Act 1948
Status
Republic of Ireland	Repealed by the Statute Law Revision (Pre-Union Irish Statutes) Act 1962
Northern Ireland	Still in force with amendments
Revised text of statute as amended

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The Acts of Union 1800 were parallel acts of the

In 1707, the Kingdom of England and the Kingdom of Scotland were united into a single kingdom: the Kingdom of Great Britain. Upon that union, each House of the Parliament of Ireland passed a congratulatory address to Queen Anne, praying her: "May God put it in your royal heart to add greater strength and lustre to your crown, by a still more comprehensive Union".^[4] The Irish Parliament was both before then subject to certain restrictions that made it subordinate to the Parliament of England and after then, to the Parliament of Great Britain; however, Ireland gained effective legislative independence from Great Britain through the Constitution of 1782.

By this time access to institutional power in Ireland was restricted to a small minority: the

Furthermore, Catholic emancipation was being discussed in Great Britain, and fears that a newly enfranchised Catholic majority would drastically change the character of the Irish government and parliament also contributed to a desire from London to merge the Parliaments.^{[citation needed]}

According to historian James Stafford, an Enlightenment critique of Empire in Ireland laid the intellectual foundations for the Acts of Union. He writes that Enlightenment thinkers connected "the exclusion of the Irish Kingdom from free participation in imperial and European trade with the exclusion of its Catholic subjects, under the terms of the 'Penal Laws', from the benefits of property and political representation." These critiques were used to justify a parliamentary union between Britain and Ireland.^[5]

Name	Flag	Population	Population (%)	Area (km2)	Area (%)	Pop. density (per km2)
Kingdom of Great Britain		10,500,000	65%	230,977	73%	45.46
Kingdom of Ireland		5,500,000	35%	84,421	27%	65.15
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland		16,000,000	100%	315,093	100%	50.78

Passage

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Complementary acts were enacted by the Parliament of Great Britain and the Parliament of Ireland.

The Parliament of Ireland had recently gained a large measure of legislative independence under the

From the perspective of Great Britain's elites, the union was desirable because of the uncertainty that followed the French Revolution of 1789 and the Irish Rebellion of 1798. If Ireland adopted Catholic emancipation willingly or not, a Roman Catholic Parliament could break away from Britain and ally with the French, but the same measure within the United Kingdom would exclude that possibility. Also, in creating a regency during King George III's "madness", the Irish and British Parliaments gave the Prince Regent different powers. These considerations led Great Britain to decide to attempt the merger of both kingdoms and Parliaments.

The final passage of the Act in the Irish House of Commons turned on an about 16% relative majority, garnering 58% of the votes, and similar in the Irish House of Lords, in part per contemporary accounts through bribery with the awarding of peerages and honours to critics to get votes.^[6] The first attempt had been defeated in the Irish House of Commons by 109 votes to 104, but the second vote in 1800 passed by 158 to 115.^[6]

Provisions

The Acts of Union were two complementary Acts, namely:

• The Union with Ireland Act 1800 (39 & 40 Geo. 3 c. 67),^[7] an Act of the Parliament of Great Britain, and
• The Act of Union (Ireland) 1800 (40 Geo. 3 c. 38),^[8] an Act of the Parliament of Ireland.

They were passed on 2 July 1800 and 1 August 1800 respectively, and came into force on 1 January 1801. They ratified eight articles which had been previously agreed by the British and Irish parliaments:

• Articles I–IV dealt with the political aspects of the Union. It created a united parliament.
  • In the House of Lords, the existing members of the Parliament of Great Britain were joined by, as Lords Spiritual, four bishops of the Church of Ireland, rotating among the dioceses in each session and as Lords Temporal 28 Irish representative peer elected for life by the Peerage of Ireland.
  • The House of Commons was to include the pre-union representation from Great Britain and 100 members from Ireland.

See also: List of United Kingdom parliamentary constituencies in Ireland 1801–1885

• Article V united the established Church of England and Church of Ireland into "one Protestant Episcopal Church, to be called, The United Church of England and Ireland"; but also confirmed the independence of the Church of Scotland.
• Article VI created a customs union, with the exception that customs duties on certain British and Irish goods passing between the two countries would remain for 10 years (a consequence of having trade depressed by the ongoing war with revolutionary France). The High Court of Northern Ireland ruled that parts of this Article as it applied to the UK were "impliedly repealed" by the passage of the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2020.^[9] This decision was upheld on appeal by the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom.^[10][11]
• Article VII stated that Ireland would have to contribute two-seventeenths towards the expenditure of the United Kingdom. The figure was a ratio of Irish to British foreign trade.
• Article VIII formalised the legal and judicial aspects of the Union.

Part of the appeal of the Union for many Irish Catholics was the promise of

In the first Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, the members of the House of Commons were not elected afresh. By royal proclamation authorised by the Act, all the members of the last House of Commons from Great Britain took seats in the new House, and from Ireland

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