ajority of the supreme Legislature would
necessarily be Protestant; and the great ground of argument on
the part of the Catholics would be done away, as, compared with
the rest of the Empire, they would become a minority. You will
judge when and to whom this idea can be confided. It must
certainly require great delicacy and management; but I am
heartily glad that it is at least in your thoughts.[530]

These words show why Pitt allowed proposals so imperfect as the
Franchise Bill of 1793 to become law. It enfranchised most of the Irish
peasantry, the great majority of whom were Catholics, though men of
their creed were excluded from Parliament. But he hoped in the future to
supplement it by a far greater measure which would render the admission
of Catholics to Parliament innocuous, namely, by the formation of a
united Parliament in which they would command only a small minority of
votes. Pitt's words open up a vista which receded far away amidst the
smoke of war and the mirage of bigotry, and did not come into sight
until the second decade of the period of peace, when Canning, Pitt's
disciple, was the chief champion of the measure here first clearly
outlined. Pitt, then, desired a Union as the sole means of ending
commercial disputes, otherwise as insoluble as those between England and
Scotland previous to the year 1707; but also for an even weightier
reason, because only so could the religious discords of Irishmen be
ended; only so could the chafing of the majority against the rule of a
cramping caste cease. By the formation of an Imperial Parliament, the
Irish Protestants would have solid guarantees against the subversion of
all that they held most dear.

The full realization of these aims was impossible. Early in 1793 came
war with France, with its sequel, the heating of nationalist and
religious feeling in Ireland; and while the officials of Dublin Castle
embarked on a policy of repression, the United Irishmen looked for help
to Paris. The results appeared in the Rebellion of 1798. The
oft-repeated assertion that Pitt and Camden brought about the revolt in
order to force on the Union is at variance with all the available
evidence. They sought by all possible means to prevent a rising, which,
with a reasonable amount of help from France, must have shaken the
British Empire to its base. When the rebellion came and developed into a
bloody religious feud, they saw that the time for a Union had co