hird bluntly refused Catholic
Emancipation; and the Society of United Irishmen became a rebellious
organization. The rebellion of 1798 broke out and was crushed after
terrible bloodshed. Then, when Ireland was wholly at the mercy of
England, Pitt brought in his proposal for an Act of Union. After much
resistance from all that was patriotic in Ireland and all that was
sympathetic in England, the Act of Union was carried--by fraud and force
and bribery and purchase. It has to be remembered with satisfaction that
some of the noblest Englishmen of the time were as strenuously opposed
to such a measure as Grattan himself. Pitt had made liberal promises
about Catholic Emancipation while he was striving to carry the Act of
Union, but when the Act was passed he dropped all talk about Catholic
Emancipation, and pleaded as his excuse that the king would not listen
to any further proposals on the subject. O'Connell's first political
speech was made in January, 1800, at a meeting of Catholics held in
Dublin to protest against the Act of Union.

Something else had to be done, however, before it could be possible in
Ireland to encounter the Act of Union with anything like a successful
constitutional agitation. The right had to be obtained for a Catholic to
sit in Parliament. The Catholic Association had been formed for the
purpose, and O'Connell became its recognized leader, and, more than
that, the recognized leader of the Irish people. Meanwhile there were
constant efforts made in Parliament for the emancipation of the
Catholics. Sir Robert Peel, who had begun his career as Chief Secretary
to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, had become Secretary of State for the
Home Department--and it may be well to mention to American readers that
the Irish Secretaryship is really a subordinate part of the Home Office.
Peel, as Home Secretary, was necessarily kept in constant touch with
everything going on in Ireland. He was greatly impressed by some of the
debates in the House of Commons. He was especially impressed by an
observation which Lord Brougham, then Mr. Brougham, made in a speech
supporting Catholic Emancipation, to the effect that not one of those
who spoke against emancipation had ventured even to suggest that things
could remain as they then were. Something will have to be done, Peel
said to himself. What is the something to be? The new king, George the
Fourth, in whose succession to the throne O'Connell and Thomas Moore and
the Iris