Irish Protestants to
give full emancipation to their Roman Catholic countrymen is eminently
creditable to them, and stands in strong relief to the bitterness on
both sides, both in earlier and latter times. By 1792 there seems to
have been something almost like unanimity on the subject. What reads
strangest perhaps to our ears, 600 Belfast Protestant householders
warmly pressed the motion on the Government. In a work, published six
years earlier, Lord Sheffield, though himself opposed to emancipation,
puts this unanimity in unmistakable words. "It is curious," he says, "to
observe one-fifth or one-sixth of a nation in possession of all the
power and property of the country, eager to communicate that power to
the remaining four-fifths, which would, in effect, entirely transfer it
from themselves."

[Illustration: ("A man of importance.") THE EARL OF MOIRA. _By
Gillray_.]

The generation to which Flood, Lucas, and Lord Charlemont had belonged,
and who were almost to a man opposed to emancipation, was fast passing
away, and amongst the more independent men of the younger generation
there were few who had not been won over to Grattan's view of the
matter. In England, too, circumstances were beginning to push many, even
of those hitherto bitterly hostile to concession, in the same direction.
The growing terror of the French Revolution had loosened the bonds of
the party, and the hatred which existed between the Jacobins and the
Catholic clerical party, inclined the Government to extend the olive
branch to the latter in hopes of thereby securing their support. Pitt
was personally friendly to emancipation, and in December, 1792, a
deputation of five delegates from the Catholic convention in Dublin was
graciously received by the king himself, and returned under the
impression that all religious disabilities were forthwith to be
abolished. Next month, January, 1793, at the meeting of the Irish
Parliament, a Bill was brought in giving the right of voting to all
Catholic forty-shilling freeholders, and throwing open also to Catholics
the municipal franchise in the towns. Although vehemently opposed by the
Ascendency, this Bill, being supported by the Opposition, passed easily
and received the royal assent upon April 9th.

It was believed to be only an instalment of full and free emancipation
soon to follow. In 1794, several of the more moderate Whigs, including
Edmund Burke and Lord Fitzwilliam, left Fox, and joined Pitt. One