THE Union has been little studied; its undoing on the other hand has been much debated. One reason for the contrast is of course that the Union was later seen by many as uncongenial; another was that the methods of securing it seemed on a universal telling clear cut: it was, or so it was said, achieved by corruption and was intensely unpopular. In Lecky's view, for instance, `The measure was an English one, carried without a dissolution and by gross corruption, in opposition to the majority of the free constituencies and to the great preponderance of the unbribed intellect of Ireland.'