According to a Government return made in 1784, by Pitt’s direction, 116 nomination seats were divided between some 25 proprietors.  Lord Shannon returned no less than 16 members, and the great family of Ponsonby returned 14; Lord Hillsborough, 9, the Duke of Leinster, 7, and the Castle itself 12.  Eighty-six seats were let out by the owners, in consideration of titles, offices, and pensions.  No less than 44 seats were occupied by placemen, 32 by gentlemen who had promises of pensions, 12 by gentlemen who stood out for higher prices from Government.  The regular opposition appears to have been limited to 82 votes, of which 30 belonged to Whig nominees, and the rest to the popular party.

It is, then, easy to account for the state of public feeling which Mr. Plunket, with these facts and figures before him, so well describes.  He says truly that if it were possible to appeal to the country under these circumstances, the people would not have responded.  ’Gloomy and desperate, they had lost all confidence in their parliament, and looked to other quarters for deliverance from the intolerable tyranny under which they suffered.  There can be no doubt that this anarchy and disgrace were in a great degree the result of a misgovernment, ancient and recent, which seems to have been always adopted with a view to bring out strongly the worst elements of the Irish character; but it was at that time said, and no doubt believed by the Opposition, that the ministry of the day had deliberately planned and accomplished the disorganisation of the Irish people and their parliament, in order to enable them to carry out their favourite project of the Union.’

Mr. Plunket, after describing the classes of ‘representatives’ that his grandfather had to deal with in the Irish House of Commons, further says:  ’It is true that this corrupt assembly cannot fairly be looked upon as the mirror of national character and national honour.  The members of the majority who voted for the Union were not the representatives of the people, but the hired servants of the Minister, for the Parliament had been packed for the purpose.’

Towards the close of the century, however, the French Revolution, the American war, and the volunteer movement, had begun to cause some faint stirring of national life in the inert mass of the Roman Catholic population, which the penal code had ‘dis-boned.’  Up to this time they were not even thought of in the calculations of politicians.  According to Dean Swift, Papists counted no more in politics than the women and children.  Macaulay uses a still more contemptuous comparison to express the estimate in which they were held in those times, saying, that their lords and masters would as soon have consulted their poultry and swine on any political question.  Nevertheless, during the excitement of the volunteer movement, some of the poor Celts began to raise their heads, and presumed to put the question to the most