But although more than three quarters of the Irish people were Catholics, no person of that faith was permitted to sit in the new Parliament or to vote for the election of a member.  This was not the only injustice, for many Protestants in Belfast and the north of Ireland had no right to be represented in it.  Such a state of things could not fail to excite angry protest, and Grattan, with other Protestants in Parliament, labored for reform.  The discontent finally led to the organization of an association called the “Society of United Irishmen.”  The leaders of that movement hoped to secure the cooperation of Catholics and Protestants, and to obtain fair and full representation for both in the Irish Parliament.  A measure of political reform was secured (1793), but it did not go far enough to give the relief desired.

Eventually the Society of United Irishmen became a revolutionary organization which sought, by the help of the French, to make Ireland an independent republic.  The sprigs of shamrock or shamrock-colored badges displayed by these men gave a new significance to “the wearing of the green."[1] By this time many Protestants had withdrawn from the organization, and many Catholics refused to ask help from the French revolutionary party, who were hostile to all churches and to all religion.

[1] See a quotation from the famous Irish song, “The Wearin’ o’ the Green,” in the “Shan Van Vocht,” in the “Heroic Ballads,” published by Ginn and Company.

Then a devoted band of Catholics in the south of Ireland resolved to rise and, trusting to their own right arms, to strike for independence.  A frightful rebellion broke out (1798), marked by all the intense hatred springing from rival races and rival creeds, and aggravated by the peasants’ hatred of oppressive landlords.  Both sides perpetuated horrible atrocities.  The government employed a large force of Orangemen,[2] or extreme Protestants, to help suppress the insurrection.  They did their work with remorseless cruelty.

[2] Orangemen:  the Protestants of the north of Ireland, who had taken the side of William of Orange in the Revolution of 1688-1689 (S499).  They wore an orange ribbon as their badge, to distinguish them from the Catholic party, who wore green badges.

562.  Union of Great Britain and Ireland, 1800; Emmet.

Matters now came to a crisis.  William Pitt, son of the late Earl of Chatham (S550), was Prime Minister.  He believed that the best interests of both Ireland and England demanded their political union.  He devoted all his energies to accomplishing the work.  The result was that in the last year of the eighteenth century the English Government succeeded, by the most unscrupulous use of money, in gaining the desired end.  Lord Cornwallis, acting as Pitt’s agent, confessed with shame that he bought up a sufficient number of members of the Irish Parliament to secure a vote in favor of union with Great Britain.  In 1800 the two countries were joined—­in name at least—­under the title of the “United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland."[3]