th desperate courage
and ferocity. The massacre of Protestants on Vinegar Hill, in
Scullabogue Barn, and on Wexford Bridge, and the general character
the rebellion in Leinster assumed, at once and for ever checked all
that tendency to rebellion which had so long existed among the
Protestants of Ulster. Some twenty thousand persons perished before
the flame was extinguished. The repression was as savage as the
rebellion, and it left Ireland torn by fiercer religious animosities
than at any period since the Restoration.

It will dispel many illusions if the reader will remember that the
great Irish rebellion was directed mainly against the Irish
Parliament, and that it received its death-blow from Irish loyalists
acting under that Parliament before any assistance arrived from
England. The conspiracy began among Protestants and Deists, who aimed
at a union of sects for the purpose of obtaining a democratic
republic. It turned into a war which was scarcely less essentially
religious than the wars of the Cevennes or of the Anabaptists. Yet two
great Catholic provinces remained quiet during the struggle, and a
great proportion of the loyalist force which crushed the rebellion
consisted of Catholic militia.

The English Government thought that the time had now come for carrying
a legislative Union, and, in the eyes of Lord Cornwallis at least, one
of its chief recommendations was that it would take the government of
Ireland out of the hands of the triumphant party, and would make
Catholic emancipation a possibility. The Catholic bishops were sounded
and found to be very favourable. They declared their full willingness
to accept an endowment for the priesthood and to give the English
Government a right of veto on episcopal appointments, and they warmly,
efficiently, and unanimously supported the Union. The great majority
of the Catholic landed gentry and probably of the lower priests were
on the same side; but in general the Catholic laity seem to have
shown little interest and to have taken little part in the contest. In
Dublin, Catholics as well as Protestants were generally hostile, but
Catholic Cork was decidedly favourable, and an assurance that the
Government desired to carry emancipation in an Imperial Parliament
proved sufficient to prevent any serious Catholic opposition. The
United Irishmen seem to have witnessed rather with pleasure than the
reverse the dethronement of the body which had defeated them, and the
Pre