Act of Union (pt. II)

I have come to realize that perhaps my previous linkage to the VictorianWeb website was perhaps not the most thorough choice. Though it is a nice summary of the Act of Union, it excludes a few things. Source 1, I believe, says it better. Given the outline that “The first four articles settled the political basis of the union; the fifth related to the church; the sixth to commerce; the seventh to finance; the eight to law and legal procedure,” I’ll try to put some bullet points down for you (280-281). Since I’m not as concerned with the political representation that Irishmen had under the Act of Union, I shall not include very much at this point. The prior summary did adequately.

-Church of England was joined with Church of Ireland. This was “deemed and taken to be an essential and fundamental part of the union.
-Subjects should have same privileges in commerce. Basically this meant “free trade”, as mentioned, but “while the excise duties on certain home products and the duties on certain foreign imports continued to be levied at different rates in GB and Ireland, there was to be a system of countervailing duties and drawbacks on such commodities passing from one country to the other” (281). Also, for 20 years, customs duties would remain on cotton and woolen goods, which I assume ties in with non-competition (Ibid.).
-Each country would be responsible for its own national debt.
-Eventually, each country would become responsible for equal parts of UK national debt, at which point the two individual debts would be united.
-Laws and courts would remain the same. All cases at the time of union would be finished in the house of lords of the United Kingdom.

It seems to me that the Act of Union was quite transitory, and rightly so. One cannot simply join together two groups of people and expect the union to “stick” right off the bat. Well, one can expect, but one will most certainly be wrong.

To read more on the Act of Union of 1800/1801, you can check out Britannica or Wikipedia.

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