IMMEDIATELY AFTER THE ACT OF UNION

Pitt did not try to bring his cabinet along in challenging the king's opposition to Catholic emancipation. Instead, he soon after resigned from office. Those of the old Patriots who had opposed the Act of Union in Ireland became reconciled to its seeming permanence and some even took executive office under it. The masses of the population, more taken up with local grievances, such as evictions, rents, and tithes, did not give much thought to the constitutional status of Ireland. Generally not politically enfranchised, they were likely to turn to very local secret societies that resorted to occasional violence to express grievances. The Catholic hierarchy and the older aristocratic and landed leaders remained confident that Union would ultimately bring redress of Catholic grievances, particularly in view of the long collaboration of the British government and the Papacy in combating the French Revolution and subsequently Napoleon. The Act of Union had not disturbed the Protestant Ascendancy, other than the loss of a local parliament, whose patrons and members had been adequately compensated. The executive branch of government in Ireland—an aristocratic lord lieutenant who now resided permanently in the country, the chief secretary who visited Ireland periodically while serving in the British cabinet and in the House of Commons, and the undersecretary who was the major day-to-day administrator—drew the remainder of officials from within the Ascendancy, and Ascendancy feelings, registered by the hierarchy of the established church, various judicial officials, the provost of Trinity College, and major landlords, were dutifully served.

A last gesture of United Irishmen defiance occurred in 1803 when Robert Emmet, the brother of exiled United Irishmen leader Thomas Addis Emmet, staged an abortive uprising in Dublin. He was tried, convicted, and executed. But after sentencing he gave a striking oration at the dock, asking that no one write his epitaph until "my country takes her place among the nations of the

Earth." Those remarks, much more than his revolutionary efforts, contributed to the persistence of a revolutionary nationalist heritage in Ireland.

The effect of the union on Ireland economically was scarcely benevolent. Ireland's portion of what would be called the imperial debt was only two-seventeenths. But the Napoleonic Wars had occasioned such a massive expenditure that the Irish portion greatly exceeded anything imagined when union was formulated. Ireland's financing of her portion meant an enormous drain on Irish resources. Furthermore, the free trade that had ensued with union put the fledgling Irish manufacturers at a disadvantage when competing with the more developed ones in England. The absence of coal and iron in Ireland was a further disadvantage. While Irish agriculture gained from the requirements occasioned by the wars, the fact that so many of the Irish landlords were absentees living in England meant a further draining of resources, as they invested much of their increasing rental income outside of Ireland.