implied complete emancipation.  Even if no leader of genius had arisen in the Roman Catholic ranks, and if no spirit of enthusiasm had animated their councils, the influence possessed by a body who formed three fourths of the population, who were rapidly rising in wealth, and who could send their representatives to Parliament, would have been sufficient to ensure their triumph.  If the Irish Legislature had continued, it would have been found impossible to resist the demand for reform; and every reform, by diminishing the overgrown power of a few Protestant landholders, would have increased that of the Roman Catholics.  The concession accorded in 1793 was, in fact, far greater and more important than that accorded in 1829, and it placed the Roman Catholics, in a great measure, above the mercy of Protestants.  But this was not all.  The sympathies of the Protestants were being rapidly enlisted in their behalf.  The generation to which Charlemont and Flood belonged had passed away, and all the leading intellects of the country, almost all the Opposition, and several conspicuous members of the Government, were warmly in favour of emancipation.  The rancour which at present exists between the members of the two creeds appears then to have been almost unknown, and the real obstacle to emancipation was not the feelings of the people, but the policy of the Government.  The Bar may be considered on most subjects a very fair exponent of the educated opinion of the nation; and Wolf Tone observed, in 1792, that it was almost unanimous in favour of the Catholics; and it is not without importance, as showing the tendencies of the rising generation, that a large body of the students of Dublin University in 1795 presented an address to Grattan, thanking him for his labours in the cause.  The Roman Catholics were rapidly gaining the public opinion of Ireland, when the Union arrayed against them another public opinion which was deeply prejudiced against their faith, and almost entirely removed from their influence.  Compare the twenty years before the Union with the twenty years that followed it, and the change is sufficiently manifest.  There can scarcely be a question that if Lord Fitzwilliam had remained in office the Irish Parliament would readily have given emancipation.  In the United Parliament for many years it was obstinately rejected, and if O’Connell had never arisen it would probably never have been granted unqualified by the veto.  In 1828 when the question was brought forward in Parliament, sixty-one out of ninety-three Irish members, forty-five out of sixty-one Irish county members, voted in its favour.  Year after year Grattan and Plunket brought forward the case of their fellow-countrymen with an eloquence and a perseverance worthy of their great cause; but year after year they were defeated.  It was not till the great tribune had arisen, till he had moulded his co-religionists into one compact and threatening mass, and had brought the country to the verge of revolution, that the tardy boon was conceded.  Eloquence and argument proved alike unavailing when unaccompanied by menace, and Catholic Emancipation was confessedly granted because to withhold it would be to produce a rebellion."[34]