Acts of Union 1800


Acts of Union 1800
Long titleAn Act for the Union of Great Britain and Ireland
Citation40 Geo. 3 c.38
Introduced byJohn Toler[1]
Royal assent1 August 1800
Commencement1 January 1801
Status: Amended
Revised text of statute as amended

Both acts remain in force, with amendments, in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland,[2] but have been repealed in the Republic of Ireland.[3]





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 that, "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 a 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 Anglo-Irish of the Protestant Ascendancy. Frustration at the lack of reform among the Catholic majority eventually led, along with other reasons, to a rebellion in 1798, involving a French invasion of Ireland and the seeking of complete independence from Great Britain. This rebellion was crushed with much bloodshed, and the motion for union was motivated at least in part by the belief that the rebellion was exacerbated as much by brutally reactionary loyalists as by United Irishmen (anti-unionists).[citation needed]


Name Flag Population
Pop. density
(per km²; 1801)
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 16,000,000 100% 315,093 100% 50.78


Complementary acts had to be passed in the Parliament of Great Britain and in the Parliament of Ireland.

The Parliament of Ireland had recently gained a large measure of legislative independence under the Constitution of 1782. Many members of the Irish Parliament jealously guarded that autonomy (notably Henry Grattan), and a motion for union was legally rejected in 1799. Only Anglicans were permitted to become members of the Parliament of Ireland though the great majority of the Irish population were Roman Catholic, with many Presbyterians in Ulster. In 1793 Roman Catholics regained the right to vote if they owned or rented property worth £2 annually. Wealthy Catholics were strongly in favour of union in the hope for rapid religious emancipation and the right to sit as MPs, which came to pass only well after the religiously divisive Napoleonic Wars, namely under the Roman Catholic Relief Act 1829.

From the perspective of Great Britain's elites, the union was desirable because of the uncertainty that followed the Irish Rebellion of 1798 and the French Revolution of 1789; 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 the Irish and British Parliaments in creating a regency during King George III's "madness", 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 Commons turned on an about 16% relative majority, garnering 58% of the votes, and similar in the Irish Lords, in part per contemporary accounts through bribery with the awarding of peerages and honours to critics to get votes.[5] 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.[5]


The Acts of Union were two complementary Acts, namely:





The first Parliament


Union Flag

Change in the Union Flag
Earlier Flag of Great Britain,
prior to the union with Ireland
The second Union Flag,
incorporating the Irish Saint Patrick's Saltire



  2. From
  3. From Irish Statute Book:
  4. Journals of the Irish Commons, vol. iii. p. 421
  5. Alan J. Ward, The Irish Constitutional Tradition p.28.



Further reading

  • McDowell, R. B. Ireland in the Age of Imperialism and Revolution, 1760-1801 (1991) pp 678–704.