I. Patriots and Volunteers
Ulster Volunteer Resolutions (Feb 1782)

Resolved unanimously, That a citizen, by learning the use of arms, does not abandon any of his civil rights.

Resolved unanimously, That a claim of any body of men, other than the king, lords, and commons of Ireland to make laws to bind this kingdom, is unconstitutional, illegal, and a grievance.

Resolved (with one dissenting voice only), That the power exercised by the privy council of both kingdoms, under, or under colour or pretence of the law of Poynings', are unconstitutional and a grievance.

Resolved unanimously, That the ports of this country are, by right, open to all foreign countries, not at war with the king, and that any burden, thereupon, or obstruction thereto, save only by the parliament of Ireland, are unconstitutional, illegal, and a grievance.

Resolved (with one dissenting voice only), That a mutiny bill, not limited in point of duration from session to session, is unconstitutional, and a grievance.

Resolved unanimously, That the independence of judges is equally essential to the impartial administration of justice in Ireland, as in England....

Resolved (with eleven dissenting voices only), That it is our decided and unalterable determination, to seek a redress of those grievances; and we pledge ourselves to each other and to our country, as freeholders, fellow-citizens, and men of honour, that we will at every ensuing election, support those only, who have supported, and will support us therein, and we will use all constitutional means to make such pursuit of redress speedy and effectual....

Resolved (with two differing voices only...), That we hold the right of private judgment in matters of religion, to be equally sacred in others as in ourselves.

Resolved therefore, That as men and as Irishmen, as christians and as protestants, we rejoice in the relaxation of the penal laws against our Roman catholic fellow-subjects, and that we conceive the measure to be fraught with the happiest consequences to the union and prosperity of the inhabitants of Ireland.

Repeal of Declaratory Act (British parliament, 1782)
Whereas an act was passed in the sixth year of his late majesty King George the first, entitled, An act for the better securing the dependency of the kingdom of Ireland upon the crown of Great Britain,...be it enacted...that from and after the passing of this act, the above mentioned act, and the several matters and things therein contained, shall be, and is, and are hereby repealed.

Henry Grattan, Speech in Irish Parliament (April 1782).  [The most famous orator in what was known as Grattan's Parliament.  This was celebrating the so-called Irish Revolution of 1782--actually the legislative autonomy of the Irish parliament.  As was common practice, the speech was edited for publication after delivery.]
Mr. Grattan rose, and spoke as follows:  

      I am now to address a free people:  ages have passed away, and this is the first moment in which you could be distinguished by that appellation.... Spirit of Swift! spirit of Molyneux! your genius has prevailed!  Ireland is now a nation! in that new character I hail her! and bowing to her august presence, I say, Esto perpetua! [May she last for ever.]

      She is no longer a wretched colony, returning thanks to her governor for his rapine, and to her king for his oppression.... Look to the rest of Europe, and contemplate yourself, and be satisfied.  Holland lives on in the memory of past achievements...; England has sullied her great name by an attempt to enslave her colonies.  You are the only people...who excite admiration.... I am not afraid to turn back and look antiquity in the face:  the revolution [1688]...was tarnished with bigotry:  the great deliverer [Wm III] was blemished with oppression; he assented to, he was forced to assent to, acts which deprived the Catholics of religious, and all the Irish of civil and commercial rights, though the Irish were the only subjects in these islands who had fought in his defence.  But you have sought liberty on her own principle:  see the Presbyterians of Bangor petition for the freedom of the Catholics of Munster.... You have moulded the jarring elements of your country into a nation....

      You want no trophy now; the records of Parliament are the evidence of your glory:  I beg to observe, that the deliverance of Ireland has proceeded from her own right hand.... Never did this country stand so high.  England and Ireland treat ex oequo [equal terms].  Ireland transmits to the King her claim of right, and requires of the Parliament of England the repeal of her claim of power, which repeal the English Parliament is to make under the force of a treaty which depends on the law of nations--a law which cannot be repealed by the Parliament of England. 

      I rejoice that the people are a party to this treaty, because they are bound to preserve it.... There are some who think...that the [Volunteer] associations...are illegal; come, then, let us try the charge, and state the grievance...:  an army imposed on us by another country...; our legislature deprived of its originating and propounding power; another country exercising over us supreme legislative authority; that country disposing of our property by its judgments, and prohibiting our trade by its statutes.... Let other nations imagine that subjects are made for the monarch; but we conceive that kings, and parliaments like kings, are made for the subjects.....

      Did you imagine that those little parties [of Volunteers] whom three years ago you beheld in awkward squads parading in the streets should now have arrived to such distinction and effect?... The upper orders, the property, and the abilities of the country, formed with the volunteer; and the volunteer had sense enough to obey them.  This united the Protestant with the Catholic, and the landed proprietor with the people.... I do not mean to say that there were not divers violent and unseemly resolutions; the immensity of the means was inseparable from the excess.  Such are the great works of nature...; and now, having given a parliament to the people, the volunteers will, I doubt not, leave the people to Parliament.... These associations, like other institutions, will perish:  they will perish with the occasion that gave them being.... Connected by freedom as well as by allegiance, the two nations, Great Britain and Ireland, form a constitutional confederacy as well as one empire; the crown is one link, the constitution another.... 

      You can get a king anywhere, but England is the only country with whom you can participate [in] a free constitution.  This makes England your natural connexion, and her king your legal sovereign.  This is a connexion, not as Lord Coke has idly said, not as Judge Blackstone has foolishly said..., by conquest; but, as Molyneux has said..., by compact; and that compact is a free constitution.....

Henry Flood, Renunciation Speech (1782).  [A speech demanding that the British Parliament renounce the Declaratory Act--which it did in January 1783.  Flood had originally denounced the Volunteers, and this was in part an attempt to recoup his position.]

      A voice from America shouted to liberty, the echo of it caught your people as it passed along the Atlantic, and they renewed the voice till it reverberated here..  What followed?... The case of Ireland originally stated by the great Molyneux, and burned at the revolution by the Parliament of England, is not afraid of the fire; it has risen from that phoenix urn, and with the flames of its cradle it illuminates our isle!... Nothing ever was more judicious than the conduct of Great Britain on this occasion.  She was so embarrassed abroad, and you were so strong at home, that she could not deny the repeal of the declaratory law....

      A short view of what we have done will be a guide to what we should do.  We had groaned for a century under an increasing usurpation; the American war broke out, and whilst we were called upon to shed our blood for Great Britain, we were insulted with the application of that principle to Ireland which had revolted America.... The merchants flew to a non-importation agreement, the people flew to arms.... Parliament assembled, and we amended our address by the demand of a free constitution.... [Ultimately, after footdragging, Britain agreed].

Renunciation Act (British  Parliament, 1783)  [This act was passed after Irish complaints that the1782 law was somewhat ambiguous.]

      Whereas, by an act of the last session of the present parliament...it was enacted that the last mentioned act, and all the matters and things therein contained, should be repealed:

      And whereas doubts have arisen whether the provisions of the said act are sufficient to secure to the people of Ireland the rights claimed by them to be bound only by the laws enacted by his majesty and the parliament of that kingdom, in all cases whatever, and to have all actions or suits at law or in equity, which may be instituted in that kingdom, decided in his majesty's courts there finally and without appeal from thence, therefore for removing all doubts respecting the same...be it declared and enacted, that the said right claimed by the people of Ireland to be bound only by laws enacted by his majesty and the parliament of that kingdom in all cases whatever...shall be and is hereby declared to be established and ascertained for ever, and shall be at no time hereafter be questioned or questionable.

II. The Catholic question
Catholic Relief Act (Irish Parliament, 1778)
An act for the relief of his majesty's subjects professing the popish religion

      Whereas by an act made in this kingdom in the second year of her late majesty Queen Anne, entitled, An act to prevent the further growth of popery [and other acts] the Roman Catholics of Ireland are made subject to several disabilities and incapacities therein particularly mentioned; and whereas for their uniform peaceful behaviour for a long series of years it appears reasonable and expedient to relax the same, and it must tend not only to the cultivation and improvement of this kingdom, but to the prosperity and strength of all his majesty's dominions, that his subjects of all denominations should enjoy the blessings of our free constitution, and should be bound to each other by mutual interest and mutual affection, therefore be it enacted...that from and after the first day of August 1778 it shall and may be lawful to and for any papist, or person professing the popish religion, subject to the proviso hereinafter contained as to the taking and subscribing of the oath and declaration therein mentioned, to take, hold, and enjoy any lease or leases for any term of years, not exceeding nine hundred and ninety-nine years certain, or for any term of years determinable upon any number of lives, not exceeding five....

      VI.  And whereas [in Act of 1704] in case the eldest son and heir of a popish parent shall be a protestant...such popish parent shall become and be only tenant for life of all the real estate [etc.]..., and whereas it is found inexpedient to continue any longer that part of the said recited act, be in enacted...that...the conformity of the eldest son...shall not affect or alter the estate of any popish parent....

      X.  Provided also that no person shall take benefit by this act who having been converted from the popish to the protestant religion shall afterwards relapse to popery, nor any person who being a protestant shall at any time become a papist, or shall educate or suffer to be educated, any of his children under the age of fourteen years in the popish religion.

      V.  No popish ecclesiastic, who had heretofore taken and subscribed...the oath of allegiance and declaration...shall...be subject to any of the penalties, incapacities, or disabilities, mentioned in an act made in the ninth year of the reign of King William the third, entitled, An act for banishing all popish papists exercising any ecclesiastical jurisdiction, and regulars of the popish clergy out of this kingdom....

      VIII.  Provided always, that no benefits in this act...shall extend...to any popish ecclesiastic who shall officiate in any church or church-yard, or who shall exercise any of the rites or ceremonies of the popish religion, or wear the habits of their order, save within their usual places of worship, or in private houses, or who shall use any symbol or mark of title whatsoever....

      IX.  Provided also, that nothing in this act...shall be construed to extend to any person or persons who shall be perverted from the protestant to the popish religion, but that all the pains penalties and disabilities, which now subsist, according to the laws now in being, shall remain in full force....

      X.  Provided also that no benefits in this act...shall be construed to extend to any popish ecclesiastic, who shall procure, incite, or persuade any protestant to become a papist....

      XII.  And be it enacted...[that according to an act of 1694] any papist, who shall...have...any horse, gelding, or mare, which shall be of the value of five pounds or more, to the penalties therein mentioned...is...hereby repealed....

Theobald Wolfe Tone, An Argument on Behalf of the Catholics of Ireland (1791).  [Tone was a Protestant and one of the founders of the United Irishmen.  After 1795 he became increasingly revolutionary and went to France, where he negotiated with the French for an invasion to coincide with an Irish insurrection.  In 1798 he returned, was captured, and committed suicide in prison.]
      What is our Government?  It is a phenomenon in politics, contravening all received and established opinions:  It is a Government derived from another country, whose interest, so far from being the same with that of the people, directly crosses it at right angles.... Religious intolerance and political bigotry...bind the living Protestant to the dead and half corrupted Catholic, and beneath the putrid mass, even the embryo of effort is stifled....

      We have no National Government.  Before the year 1782, it was not pretended that we had.... [In fact, the much celebrated] Revolution of 1782 was the most bungling, imperfect business, that ever threw ridicule on a lofty epithet.... The Revolution of 1782, was a Revolution which enabled Irishmen to sell at a much higher price their honour, their integrity, and the interests of their country; it was a Revolution, which, while at one stroke it doubled the value of every borough monger in the kingdom, left three-fourths of our countrymen slaves as it found them....

      My argument is simply this:  That Ireland, as deriving her government from another country, requires a strength in the people which may enable them, if necessary, to counteract the influence of that government.... That this strength may be most constitutionally acquired, and safely and peaceably exerted through the medium of a Parliamentary Reform:  And finally, that no reform is honourable, practicable, efficacious, or just, which does not include as a fundamental principle, the extension of elective franchise to the Roman Catholics....

      I Beg I may not be misunderstood.... When I talk of English influence being predominant in this country, I do not mean to derogate from the due exertion of his Majesty's prerogative:  I owe him allegiance.... We owe the English nation no allegiance; nor is it yet treason to assert, as I do, that she has acquired, and maintains an unjustifiable and dangerous weight and influence over the councils of Ireland.... The King of England is King also of Ireland; he is in theory, and I trust in practice, equally interested in the welfare of both countries....

      Of four millions of people, three are actually and confessedly unrepresented; of the remaining fourth, the electors do not exceed 60,000, and the members whom they return, supposing them all, what I wish with truth we could, men of integrity, must remain for ever a minority, for their number amounts to 82.[1]

III. Society of United Irishmen
Declaration of the Societies of United Irishmen, 1791
 "In the present great era of reform, when unjust governments are falling in every quarter of Europe; when religious persecution is compelled to abjure her tyranny over conscience; when the rights of man are ascertained in theory, and that theory substantiated by practice; when antiquity can no longer defend absurd and oppressive forms, against the common sense and common interests of mankind; when all government is acknowledged to originate from the people, and to be so far only obligatory as it protects their rights and promotes their welfare:  We think it our duty, as Irishmen, to come forward, and state what we feel to be our heavy grievance, and what we know to be its effectual remedy.  WE HAVE NO NATIONAL GOVERNMENT; are ruled by Englishmen, and the servants of Englishmen, whose object is the interest of another country, whose instrument is corruption, and whose strength is the weakness of Ireland; and these men have the whole of the power and patronage of the country, as means to seduce and to subdue the honesty and the spirit of her representatives in the legislature.  Such an extrinsic power, acting with uniform force in a direction too frequently opposite to the true line of our obvious interests, can be resisted with effect solely by unanimity, decision, and spirit in the people; qualities which may be exerted most legally, constitutionally, and efficaciously, by that great measure essential to the prosperity and freedom of Ireland.  AN EQUAL REPRESENTATION OF ALL THE PEOPLE IN PARLIAMENT.  We do not here mention as grievances, the rejection of a place-bill, of a pension-bill, of a responsibility-bill, the sale of Peerages in one House, the corruption publicly avowed in the other, nor the notorious infamy of borough traffic between both; not that we are insensible of their enormity, but that we consider them as but symptoms of that mortal disease which corrodes the vitals of our Constitution, and leaves to the people, in their own Government, but the shadow of a name.

      Impressed with these sentiments, we have agreed to form an association, to be called 'THE SOCIETY OF UNITED IRISHMEN:' And we do pledge ourselves to our country, and mutually to each other, that we will steadily support, and endeavor, by all due means, to carry into effect, the following resolutions:

      First, Resolved, That the weight of English influence in the Government of this country is so great, as to require a cordial union among ALL THE PEOPLE OF IRELAND, to maintain that balance which is essential to the preservation of our liberties, and the extension of our commerce.

      Second, That the sole constitutional mode by which this influence can be opposed, is by a complete and radical reform of the representation of the people in Parliament.

      Third, That no reform is practicable, efficacious, or just, which shall not include Irishmen of every religious persuasion.

      Satisfied, as we are, that the intestine divisions among Irishmen have too often given encouragement and impunity to profligate, audacious, and corrupt Administrations, in measures which, but for these divisions, they durst not have attempted; we submit our resolutions to the nation, as the basis of our political faith.

      We have now gone to what we conceive to be the remedy.  With a Parliament thus reformed, every thing is easy; without it, nothing can be done:  and we do call on and most earnestly exhort our countrymen in general to follow our example, and to form similar societies in every quarter of the kingdom, for the promotion of constitutional knowledge, the abolition of bigotry in religion and politics, and the equal distribution of the rights of man through all sects and denominations of Irishmen.  The people, when thus collected, will feel their own weight, and secure that power which theory has already admitted as their portion, and to which, if they be not aroused by their present provocations to vindicate it, they deserve to forfeit their pretensions FOR EVER."

United Irishmen's Plan of Parliamentary Reform, Pub. by Dublin Society of United Irishmen (March 1794).
A plan of an equal representation of the people of Ireland in the house of commons; Prepared for public consideration by the society of United Irishmen of Dublin:

      I.  That the nation, for the purposes of representation solely, should be divided into 300 electorates, formed by combination of parishes, and as nearly as possible equal in point of population.

      II.  That each electorate should return one representative to parliament....

      IX.  That every male of sound mind, who has attained the full age of 21 years...should be entitled to vote for the representative of the electorate....

      XIII.  That the votes of all electors should be given by voice and not by ballot....

      XIV.  That the full age of 25 years should be a necessary qualification to entitle any man to be a representative.

      XVI.  That no property qualification should be necessary to enable any man to be a representative.

Insurrection Act (Irish 1796)
Whereas traitorous insurrections have for some time past arisen in various parts of this kingdom, principally promoted and supported by persons associating under the pretended obligation of oaths unlawfully administered...be it enacted...that any person or persons who shall administer...upon a book, or otherwise any oath...importing to bind the person...to be of any association...for seditious purposes, or to disturb the public peace, or to obey the orders or rules, or commands of any committee, or the commands of any captain, leader, or commander (not appointed by his majesty...) or to assemble at the desire or command of any such captain...and being by due course of law thereof convicted, shall be adjudged guilty of felony and be transported for life....

      And be it further enacted, that all persons who shall have arms in their possession....[shall] deliver to the acting clerk of the peace...a written notification [including] the place...where the same are usually kept.... It shall...be lawful for any justice of the peace [or person authorized by a JP] to search for arms in the houses or grounds of any person not having made such notification...and whom he shall have reasonable ground to suspect of having arms....

      It shall...be lawful for any justice of the peace to arrest...any stranger sojourning or wandering, and to examine him on oath respecting his place of abode, the place from whence he came, his manner of livelihood....

      And in order to restore peace to such parts of the kingdom as are or may be disturbed by seditious persons...it shall...be lawful...for any two justices of the peace...to summon a special session of the peace...to consider the state of the county.... [The session can petition the lord lieutenant] that they consider their county...to be in a state of disturbance or in immediate danger of becoming so.... Within three days after such proclamation made...a notification [will be signed by the justices] commanding the inhabitants to keep within their dwellings at all unseasonable times between sun-set and sunrise....

      If any man or boy shall, in any district so proclaimed, hawk or disperse any seditious handbill, paper, or pamphlet, or paper by law required to be stamped and not duly stamped, such man or boy shall be deemed an idle and disorderly person...; and if any woman shall hawk or disperse any seditious handbill, paper, or paper not duly stamped, such woman being convicted thereof by the oath of one witness before two justices of the peace, one of whom to be of the quorum, such woman shall...be committed to the gaol of the county, there to remain for three months, unless she shall sooner discover the person or persons from whom she received...such papers....

IV. Union and emancipation
William Pitt in Br. H. of Commons debate on Act of Union (Jan 1799)
        ...This country is at this time engaged in the most important and momentous conflict that ever occurred in the history of the world; a conflict in which Great Britain is distinguished for having made the only manly and successful stand against the common enemies of civilized society.  We see the point in which that enemy thinks us the most assailable.  Are we not then bound in policy and prudence to strengthen that vulnerable point, involved as we are in a contest of liberty against despotism--of property against plunder and rapine--of religion and order against impiety and anarchy?...
        Among the great and known defects of Ireland, one of the most prominent features is, its want of industry and capital; how are those wants to be supplied, but by blending more closely with Ireland the industry and the capital of this country?  But, above all, in the great leading distinction between the people of Ireland (I mean their religious distinctions), what is their situation?... By many I know it will be contended, that the religion professed by the majority of the people would, at least, be entitled to an equality of privileges.... But those who apply it without qualification to the case of Ireland, forget surely the principles on which English interest and English connexion has been established in that country, and on which its present legislature is formed.  No man can say that, in the present state of things, and while Ireland remains a separate kingdom, full concessions could be made to the catholics, without endangering the state, and shaking the constitution of Ireland to its centre.
        On the other hand, without anticipating the discussion or the propriety of agitating the question, or saying how soon or how late it may be fit to discuss it..., when the conduct of the catholics shall be such as to make it safe for the government to add them to the participation of the privileges granted to those of the established religion, and when the temper of the times shall be favourable to such a measure--when these events take place, it is obvious that such a question may be agitated in an united, imperial parliament, with much greater safety than it could be in a separate legislature....
        I might enumerate the general advantages which Ireland would derive [from the Union]:  the protection which she will secure to herself in the hour of danger, the most effectual means of increasing her commerce and improving her agriculture, the command of English capital, the infusion of English manners and English industry, necessarily tending to ameliorate her condition, to accelerate the progress of internal civilization, and to terminate those feuds and dissensions which now distract the country, and which she does not possess, within herself, the power either to control or to extinguish.  She would see the avenue to honours, to distinctions, and exalted situations in the general seat of empire, opened to all those whose abilities and talents enable them to indulge an honourable and laudable ambition.
        But, independent of all these advantages, I might also answer that the question is not what Ireland has to gain, but what she is to preserve, not merely how she may best improve her situation, but how she is to avert a pressing and immediate danger.  In this view, what she gains is the preservation of all those blessings arising from the British constitution, and which are inseparable from her connexions with Great Britain....

Act of Union (Irish 1800)
An Act for the union of Great Britain and Ireland
        Whereas in pursuance of his majesty's most gracious recommendation to the two houses of parliament in Great Britain and Ireland respectively, to consider of such measures as might best tend to strengthen and consolidate the connexion between the two kingdoms, the two house of the parliament of Great Britain, and the two houses of the parliament of Ireland have severally agreed...to concur in such measures as may best tend to unite the two kingdoms...into one kingdom....

        The succession to the imperial crown of the said united kingdom, and of the dominions thereunto belonging, shall continue limited and settled in the same manner as the succession to the imperial crown of the said kingdoms of Great Britain and Ireland now stands limited and settled, according to the existing laws, and to the terms of union between England and Scotland....

        The said united kingdom be represented in one and the same parliament....  That four lords spiritual of Ireland...and twenty-eight lords temporal of Ireland, shall be the number to sit and vote on the part of Ireland in the house of lords of the parliament of the united kingdom, and one hundred commoners (two for each county of Ireland, two for the city of Dublin, two for the city of Cork, one for the university of Trinity college, and one for each of the thirty-one most considerable cities, towns, and boroughs) be the number to sit and vote on the part of Ireland in the house of commons of the parliament of the united kingdom....

        The churches of England and Ireland, as now by law established, be united into one protestant episcopal church, to be called 'The united church of England and Ireland,' and that the doctrine, worship, discipline and government of the said united church shall be, and shall remain in full force for ever, as the same are now by law established for the church of England; and that the continuance and preservation of the said united church, as the established church of England and Ireland, shall be deemed and taken to be an essential and fundamental part of the union; and that in like manner the doctrine, worship, discipline and government of the church of Scotland shall remain, and be preserved as the same are now established by law, and by the acts for the union of the two kingdoms of England and Scotland....

        His majesty's subjects of Great Britain and Ireland shall...be entitled to the same privileges, and be on the same footing as to encouragements and bounties on the like articles, being the growth, produce, or manufacture of either country respectively, and generally in respect of trade and navigation in all ports and places in the united kingdom and its dependencies.... All prohibitions and bounties on the export of articles the growth, produce, or manufacture of either country to the other shall cease....

        The charge arising from the payment of the interest and the sinking fund for the reduction of the principal of the debt incurred in either kingdom before the union shall continue to be separately defrayed by Great Britain and Ireland respectively, except as herein-after provided.... For the space of twenty years after the union...the contribution of Great Britain and Ireland respectively towards the expenditure of the united kingdom in each year shall be defrayed in the proportion of fifteen parts for Great Britain and two parts for Ireland [after which the proportions are to be fixed by the united parliament]....

        All laws in force at the time of the union, and all the courts of civil and ecclesiastical jurisdiction within the respective kingdoms, shall remain as now by law established within the same, subject only to such alterations and regulations from time to time as circumstances may appear to the parliament of the united kingdom to require....

Catholic Emancipation [Pitt had hoped to link Union with emancipation--but it was not to be.]
Wm. Pitt to George III (31 Jan 1801)
        Mr. Pitt would have felt it, at all events, his duty, previous to the meeting of Parliament, to submit to your Majesty the result of the best consideration which your confidential servants could give to the important questions respecting the Catholics and Dissenters, which must naturally be agitated in consequence of the Union.  The knowledge of your Majesty's general indisposition to any change of the laws on this subject would have made it a painful task to him, and it is become much more so by learning from some of his colleagues, and from other quarters, within these few days, the extent to which your Majesty entertains, and has declared, his sentiment....
        For himself, he is on full consideration convinced that the measure would be attended with no danger to the Established Church or to the Protestant interest in Great Britain or Ireland--that now the Union has taken place, and with the new provisions which would make part of the plan, it could never give any such weight in office, or in Parliament, either to Catholics or Dissenters, as could give them any new means...of attacking the Establishment:  that the grounds on which the laws of exclusion now remaining were founded, have long been narrowed, and are since the Union removed:  that those principles, formerly held by the Catholics, which made them considered as politically dangerous, have been for a course of time gradually declining....
        It is with inexpressible regret, after all he now knows of your Majesty's sentiments, that Mr. Pitt troubles your Majesty thus at large with the general grounds of his opinion, and finds himself obliged to add that this opinion is unalterably fixed in his mind.... In the interval which your Majesty may wish for consideration, he will not, on his part, importune your Majesty with any unnecessary reference to the subject; and will feel it his duty to abstain himself from all agitation of this subject in Parliament, and to prevent it, as far as depends on him, on the part of others.  If, on the result of such consideration, your Majesty's objections to the measure proposed should not be removed or sufficiently diminished to admit of its being brought forward with your Majesty's full concurrence, and with the whole weight of Government, it must be personally Mr. Pitt's first wish to be released from a situation which he is conscious that, under such circumstances, he could not continue to fill but with the greatest disadvantage.

George III to Pitt, 1 Feb 1801
        I should not to justice to the warm impulse of my heart if I entered on the most unpleasant subject to [my] mind without first expressing that the cordial affection I have felt for Mr. Pitt, as well as his high opinion of his talents and integrity, greatly add to my uneasiness on this occasion; but a sense of religious as well as political duty has made me, from the moment I mounted the throne, consider that the oath that the wisdom of our forefathers has enjoined the King of this Kingdom to take at their coronation, and enforced by the obligation of instantly following it in the course of that ceremony with taking the holy sacrament, as so binding a religious obligation on me to maintain the fundamental maxims on which our Constitution is placed, namely, the Church of England being the established one, and that those who hold employments in the State must be members of it, and consequently obliged not only to take oaths against Popery, but to receive the holy communion agreeably to the rites of the Church of England.
        This principle of duty must therefore prevent me from discussing any proposition tending to destroy this groundwork of our happy Constitution, and much more so that now mentioned by Mr. Pitt which is no less than the complete overthrow of the whole fabric.
        ...My opinions are not those formed on the moment, but such as I have imbibed for forty years... Though I do not pretend to have the power of changing Mr. Pitt's opinion, when thus unfortunately fixed, yet I shall still hope his sense of duty will prevent his retiring from his present situation to the end of my life, for I can with great truth assert that I shall, from public as well as private considerations, feel great regret if I shall ever find myself obliged at any time, from a sense of religious and political duty, to yield to his entreaties of retiring from his seat at the Board of Treasury.

V. Robert Emmet Rising
Report of Lord Lieutenant to Home Office, Dublin Castle, 24 July 1803.  [The Emmet rising may be regarded as the last aftershock of 1798.]
        "It is with the greatest concern that I am under the necessity of informing your Lordship that an Insurrection of a very serious nature broke out yesterday evening in the city of Dublin and tho' it was fortunately suppressed by the exertion of the officers and troops composing the garrison, and by the zeal and alacrity with which every Yeomanry corps came forward in the course of the night, was attended with some circumstances of a very atrocious nature....
        In the course of yesterday morning a report reached me that an attack was intended on the city of Dublin in the course of the night.... In the afternoon a general alarm seemed to prevail, but no act of violence was committed till between 9 and 10 o'clock, when an attack was made upon Lord Kilwarden's carriage in Thomas Street, [which] was filled with people, most of whom were armed with pikes or firearms.  A part of them...forced Lord Kilwarden and his nephew...to get out, and stabbed them with pikes in presence of his daughter, who escaped to the Castle almost in a state of insensibility.  [There were also several other scattered murders.]
        A considerable number of pikes, several barrels of gunpowder and a quantity of ammunition were found...in a house in the neighbourhood of Thomas Street, with a great number of proclamations and handbills recently printed, and which, it was said, were to have been issued this day.... I have thought it my duty...to place upon permanent duty all the Yeomanry Corps of the city and council of Dublin; and notwithstanding their recent formation I can with great truth bear testimony to the spirit and alacrity with which they have undertaken the service which they may be required to perform.

Emmet speech from the dock (Sept 1803).
        Why the sentence of the law should not be passed upon me, I have nothing to say--why the sentence which in the public mind is usually attached to that of the law, ought to be reversed, I have much to say.--I stand here a conspirator--as one engaged in a conspiracy for the overthrow of the British Government in Ireland;--for the fact of which I am to suffer by the law;--for the motives of which I am to answer before God.--I am ready to do both.... I am charged with being an emissary of France, for the purpose of inciting insurrection in the country and then delivering it over to a foreign enemy.--It is false!--I did not wish to join this country with France.--I did join--I did not create the rebellion--not for France; but for its liberty.... Our object was to effect a separation from England--.
        (The Court here interrupted the Prisoner.)  Lord Norbury: At the moment when you are called upon to shew, why sentence of death should not be pronounced against you, according to law, you are making an avowal of dreadful treasons, and of a determined purpose to have persevered in them....
        Emmet:  My Lord--
        Lord Norbury:  If you have anything to urge in point of law, you will be heard; but what you have hitherto said, confirms and justifies the verdict of the Jury....
        Emmet:  Then I have nothing more to say.... Vindication rests upon abstract principle.... But if I go to my grave, with this imputation cast upon me this day, that I wished for personal aggrandizement and dominion, I would go with a heavy weight upon my mind....
        Lord Norbury:  I was in hopes that I might have been able to recall you to a more composed state of mind, suitable to the melancholy situation in which you are placed.  A different conduct would more become a man who had endeavoured to overthrow the laws and the liberties of his country, and who had vainly and wickedly substituted the bloody proscriptions of the Provisional Government, in the room of the most temperate, mild, and impartial justice with which a free country was ever blessed.  Had you been tried under the system of your own invention, you would not have been listened to for an instant; but your code would have crushed the inventor.  And such has been the fate of most of the leaders of modern republicanism, where such talents and dispositions as yours have been resorted to, that the prostituted pen of every revolutionary raver might be put in requisition to madden the multitude, and to give sovereignty to the mob....The history of your trial, and the circumstances relating to it, are fresh in every man's recollection.  Be assured that I have the most sincere affliction in performing the painful duty which devolved upon me, and let me, with the most anxious concern, exhort you, not to depart this life with such sentiments of rooted hostility to your country as those which you have expressed.  Be assured that far other sentiments will better contribute to give you comfort at your departure from this life, and to obtain forgiveness and mercy in that which is to come--as well as to give you fortitude to bear that dreadful sentence which at this awful moment I must pronounce.  [I.e. hanged and beheaded.]
        His Lordship then pronounced the sentence in the usual form, and the prisoner bowed, and retired.  The Prisoner was executed the next day in Thomas-street.