when describing the arrangements which he had in view for the Church of Ireland, he indicated his intention with sufficient plainness by the statement, that “it might be proper to leave to Parliament an opportunity of considering what might be fit to be done for his Majesty’s Catholic subjects;” words which were generally understood to express his feeling, that both justice and policy required the removal of the restrictions which debarred the Roman Catholics from the complete enjoyment of political privileges.  But the history and different bearings of that question it will be more convenient to discuss in a subsequent chapter, when we shall have arrived at the time when it was partially dealt with by the ministry of the Duke of Wellington.

Notes: 

[Footnote 125:  Mr. Froude says four great families—­the Fitzgeralds of Kildare, the Boyles, the Ponsonbys, and the Beresfords—­returned a majority of the House of Commons ("English in Ireland,” ii., 5); and besides those peers, the arrangement for the Union proved that the influence of the Loftuses and the Hills fell little short of them.]

[Footnote 126:  Such a system actually had existed in France, where articles of ordinary trade could not be transported from one province to another without payment of a heavy duty; but Colbert had abolished that system in France above one hundred years before the time of which we are speaking.]

[Footnote 127:  “History of England,” vol. v., c. xxiii., p. 57.]

[Footnote 128:  “The English in Ireland,” ii., 39.]

[Footnote 129:  Fronde’s “English in Ireland,” ii., 345.  He does not name the author whom he quotes.]

[Footnote 130:  Ibid., ii, 42.]

[Footnote 131:  See p. 164.]

[Footnote 132:  Mr. Froude imputes to Grattan a singularly base object.  “Far from Grattan was a desire to heal the real sores of the country for which he was so zealous.  These wild, disordered elements suited better for the campaign in which he engaged of renovating an Irish nationality.”—­English in Ireland, ii., 448.  But, however on many points we may see reason to agree with Mr. Froude’s estimate of the superior wisdom of Fitzgibbon, we conceive that this opinion is quite consistent with our acquittal of the other of the meanness of deliberately aiming at a continuance of evils, in order to find in them food for a continuance of agitation.]

[Footnote 133:  Froude, “English in Ireland,” i., 304.]

[Footnote 134:  See especially a letter of Mr. Windham’s. quoted by Lord Stanhope ("Life of Pitt,” ii., 288).]

[Footnote 135:  Mr. Archdall, in his place in Parliament, denounced the term as utterly inapplicable.  “Emancipation meant that a slave was set free.  The Catholics were not slaves.  Nothing more absurd had ever been said since language was first abused for the delusion of mankind.”]

[Footnote 136:  The first beginning of the insurrection was at Prosperous, County Kildare, May 24.  General Lake dealt it the final blow on Vinegar Hill, June 21.]