certain that unless that offer had been made, and unless the Catholic
Party in Ireland had been informed that the Act of Union was the
inevitable price for Catholic emancipation, Lord Castlereagh would
never have succeeded in closing the Irish Parliament.[54]

That bargain was broken. It is unhappily the case that the British
Ministers must have given their pledge to the Catholic Party in Ireland
with the conscious knowledge of their inability to carry it out. For
over them all was their King, George III., still with the Royal
privilege of dismissal for his Ministers, and resolutely, fiercely
resolved not to grant Catholic emancipation. Pitt relieved his
conscience by a two-years' resignation, but he returned to Parliament
without achieving his pledge. For another thirty years the struggle
went on. It is the Duke of Wellington himself who has handed down to
history the testimony that Catholic emancipation was only finally
granted in 1829 in order to save Ireland from a second rebellion.

It is that record that has driven Ireland into the arms of Rome, and
who can wonder?

England has now only paid the price of that great betrayal of 1800--a
betrayal almost as great as the broken treaty of Limerick. Those who
read the story of 1800 to 1830, and especially the brilliant sketch of
O'Connell's life in Lecky's "Leaders of Irish Public Opinion," will
know that it was in the course of this prolonged struggle for Catholic
emancipation that the forces of religion and politics were first thrown
into close alliance in Ireland. It was not until after 1820 that the
Catholic priest took the place of the Irish landlord, and became what
he was throughout most of the nineteenth century, the political leader
of his district. It was O'Connell who first carried out that great
revolution in political strategy. It was he who first placed the flocks
of the Irish people under the guidance of shepherds who carried the
crook and not the rent-book. If the Home Rule movement has been
assisted by religious fervour, that has been the fault of British
statesmen. If the Irish have stood apart from the rest of Europe by a
steadily deepening loyalty to their faith, the reason is largely to be
found in the British policy of 1800.

ROME AND HOME RULE

What is the moral of all this? Some of the Unionists themselves give a
shrewd though cynical comment on the situation when they suggest, in
the intervals of crying "Home Rule means Rome Rule," that