powers of the Irish Parliament, that finally
brought out the gravity of the other signal defect in the settlement of
1782. That defect was the failure to effect a complete settlement of
the Catholic question. For the Irish Parliament, even after 1782, was
still confined to Protestants. Could any reasonable man call that a
final solution of the problem of government in a country where
four-fifths of the people were Catholics? With a truer foresight than
Grattan, Flood desired that the Volunteers should refuse to lay down
their arms until the Catholic question had been settled. But Grattan,
still filled with that spirit of generous trust which has been the
undoing of so many noble Irishmen, refused to use the military power
for any further exaction of terms. He disbanded the Volunteers.

Grattan trusted that once the Irish Parliament was endowed with full
powers, the Catholic question would settle itself. He could rely with
certainty on his own Protestant followers. He persuaded them to repeal
the penal laws. He prevailed upon them to extend the franchise to the
Catholic peasant. Both those great reforms were passed through the
Irish Parliament in the fulness of its strength and power, and the
British Government were compelled to acquiesce. But there Grattan
reached the limit of his authority. There was one more great step which
had to be taken before the Catholic claims could be satisfied. It was
necessary to concede the right to a Catholic, as to a Protestant, to
sit in the Irish Parliament. When Grattan made that proposal, he found
himself faced with new forces. The British Government and the
Ascendancy Party in Ireland had already begun to regain their hold over
the Irish Parliament. The forces of patronage and corruption were
already at work.

If those had been the only powers Grattan might have defeated them.
Neither he nor his admirers were perhaps wholly aware of what we now
know to be the centre of this resistance--the dogged, almost insane,
obstinacy of George III. Pitt indeed had already lost his earlier
reforming zeal. The shadow of the French struggle had already fallen
across his path, and had already shaken his early faith in freedom and
progress. But if Pitt had been left alone he might still have done
justice. It was George III. that lost us the soul of Ireland, as he
lost us both the body and soul of North America.

There were, indeed, moments in those difficult days when the British
people seemed to