The affairs of Ireland furnished another battle-ground for contending principles during this period. The complete subjugation of that country was ended in 1782, when demonstrations of armed force wrested legislative independence from an England surrounded by foreign enemies. The Irish Parliament was left free to make such laws as it pleased for Ireland, and the deliberate destruction of Irish industries in the interest of English ceased for ever. But this independence, though won by the united efforts of all creeds and classes, was the independence of a Protestant oligarchy. The great bulk of the Irish people escaped an external only to submit to an internal tyrant. The Irish Parliament, though patriotic in matters of commerce, was hardly any more indulgent than the English in its religious policy. Catholics were excluded from the Houses at Dublin as vigorously as from those at Westminster, and few important mitigations of their lot were obtained from their own countrymen. In 1792 Catholics were admitted to the Bar, mixed marriages were allowed, and it was made legal for a Catholic to educate his children abroad. In 1793 all public offices were thrown open to them, except seats in Parliament and the highest places in the Army, the Judicature, and the Civil Service. These changes removed the worst disabilities of the upper and middle classes, who had now fewer disabilities than their fellows in England and Scotland, and there was thus exhibited a considerable reduction of Protestant insolence. The supremacy of Pitt in England aroused great hopes that the last stones of the edifice would soon be removed. Catholic emancipation would not have cured all the ills of Ireland, any more than Parliamentary Reform would have cured all the ills of England. An excessive population, { 128} crowded into agriculture by the destruction of manufactures, demoralized by landowners who were too often thriftless or absentees, and deprived of education by the laws which prohibited teaching by Catholic priests or laymen, was in a condition which mere political reforms could do little to improve. What Catholic disabilities did was to poison economic discontent by the memories of racial and religious persecution. The conduct of the English Government of the day was dangerously uncertain. The hopes of the Catholics were roused in 1794 by the appointment of Lord Fitzwilliam as Lord-Lieutenant. Fitzwilliam was notoriously in favour of the Catholic claims, even though he was not authorized to make any promises on behalf of the Government. He was too open in his professions of sympathy, and when Protestant bigotry procured his recall, the apparent treachery only aggravated the bitterness of old subjection. Catholic resentment and Protestant arrogance soon brought matters to a crisis. Neither party gained credit from the rising of 1798. The excesses of the magistrates and the troops before, during, and after the fighting were often of mediæval atrocity, and the retaliation of the rebels cannot be justified, though it is amply explained by the character of the provocation. This fearful outbreak in the middle of the French War satisfied the English Government that only by a Union could Ireland be kept in peace. The good effects of the recent concessions had vanished in this whirlwind of savagery, and Protestant and Catholic were once more in the temper of the Middle Ages. Mutual goodwill could only be restored by a common tutelage.