sbyterians showed scarcely any interest in the question.

Yet outside the ranks of the Catholic clergy the measure found few
active supporters, while the Protestants of the Established Church
were in general ardently and passionately hostile. The great majority
of the county members and the great preponderance of petitions were
against the Union, and the opposition to it, which was led by Foster,
Grattan, Parsons, and Plunket, comprised nearly all the independent
and unbribed talent in Parliament. The very eminent ability of that
small group of Protestant gentlemen never flashed more brightly than
in the closing scenes, and there was a moment when the attitude of the
Orangemen and the yeomanry was so menacing that the Government were
seriously alarmed. But a lavish distribution of peerages and places
purchased a majority, and the troops stationed in Ireland were too
numerous for armed opposition to be possible. In truth, however, no
opposition beyond the dimensions of a riot was to be feared. Outside
Dublin, Catholic, Presbyterian, and seditious Ireland remained almost
indifferent. Even before the measure had passed, opposition speakers
complained bitterly that they were deserted by popular support; and it
is a memorable fact that in the general election that followed the
Union not a single Irish member of Parliament was defeated because he
had voted for it.

Pitt intended the Union to be immediately followed by measures
admitting the Catholics into the Imperial Parliament, paying the
priests, and commuting the tithes. If these three measures, or even if
the last two (which were, in truth, the most important), had been
promptly carried, the Union might have become popular. The Catholic
question had, of late, been greatly mismanaged. The chief men who
directed the government in Ireland were bitterly opposed to any
concession of political power to the Catholics, but the views of the
English Ministers had been materially changed. They desired above all
things to separate the Catholics from the United Irishmen, and in 1793
they forced upon their reluctant advisers in Ireland an Act which
extended the suffrage to the vast ignorant Catholic masses, though it
left the Catholic gentry still excluded from Parliament. Two years
later Lord Fitzwilliam was sent over with instructions to postpone the
question if possible, but with authority, as he believed, to carry
emancipation if it could not be postponed, and he found the Irish