ary of State for War and
the Colonies, and he held that place till August 1812, when he
obtained the far more important post of Chief Secretary for Ireland,
and became for the next six years virtual governor of that country.

It was a post requiring not only great administrative skill, but also
great gifts of original statesmanship. During the last five years of
the eighteenth century, and especially during the rebellion of 1798,
religious passions in Ireland, which had for more than a generation
been steadily subsiding, had been kindled into a flame, and the urgent
necessity of settling the Catholic question had begun to press with
irresistible force on the minds of the more intelligent statesmen.
Pitt had intended to complete the Union by measures for admitting
Catholics into Parliament, for commuting tithes, and for paying the
Catholic clergy. Through the instrumentality of Lord Castlereagh
assurances of the disposition of the Cabinet had been conveyed to the
Catholic bishops and the leading Catholic laymen in 1799, which were
sufficient to secure their active support for the Union and to prevent
any serious opposition among the Catholic laity. The bishops met the
wishes of the English Government by drawing up a series of
resolutions, in which they declared their readiness to accept with
gratitude an endowment for the priesthood, to confer upon the English
Government a power of veto over the appointment of Catholic bishops
which would prevent the introduction into that body of any disloyal
men, and to certify to the Government the nomination of all Catholic
parish priests, as well as the fact that they had taken the oath of
allegiance. But the King had not been informed of the negotiations
that had taken place, and it is well known how his uncompromising
opposition produced the resignation of Pitt in 1801, how the agitation
caused by the question threw the King into a temporary fit of
insanity, and how Pitt at once promised that he would not move the
question again during the reign. In the spring of 1804 Pitt resumed
office, on the express understanding that he would not permit Catholic
Emancipation; when the question was introduced in 1805 by Lord
Grenville in the Lords, and by Fox in the Commons, it was defeated in
both Houses by immense majorities, and Pitt declared that though he
was still of opinion that there was no danger in the concession, yet,
as long as the circumstances which prevented him from bringing it