This chapter explores the intense debate over the proposed parliamentary union between Ireland and Britain in the aftermath of the 1798 rebellion. It examines competing visions of representative government, with unionists advocating for Ireland’s integration into a larger British polity to secure stability and prosperity, while anti-unionists defended the autonomy of the Irish Parliament as a symbol of national liberty. Key themes include the clash over sovereignty, the role of Catholic emancipation in the union debate, and the economic implications of integration. The chapter also analyses the pamphlet war that erupted, revealing how public opinion was mobilized through arguments about political equality, economic benefits and sovereignty. Ultimately, the Union’s passage in 1801, marked by political manipulation and broken promises, set the stage for Ireland’s turbulent relationship with Britain in the nineteenth century, framing subsequent struggles over governance and representation.

This chapter examines the early decades of the Union (1801–1829), focusing on the unresolved tensions surrounding Catholic emancipation and Ireland’s uneasy integration into the United Kingdom. Despite promises of equality, the persistence of penal laws excluding Catholics from political office fuelled discontent, with figures like Daniel O’Connell and Bishop James Warren Doyle arguing that such discrimination violated the principles of the British constitution. The chapter explores debates over Irish ‘character’, the rise of mass Catholic mobilisation through organisations like the Catholic Association, and the clash between reformers advocating gradual inclusion and conservatives defending Protestant supremacy. Key moments include the veto controversy, the influence of millenarian ‘Pastorini’ prophecies and the eventual passage of Catholic emancipation in 1829 - a victory tempered by the disenfranchisement of poorer voters. The chapter reveals how struggles over representation, religious identity and democratic participation shaped Ireland’s political landscape.

The Irish parliament was abolished in 1800 and those who supported its abolition were then and thereafter known as unionists. The 1798 rebellion, organized by Irish republicans led by Wolfe Tone, incorporating Catholic and Protestant and partly supported by the French, had alarmed the British. Most Penal legislation was gone by 1792 but Catholics were still not allowed to stand for parliament. Daniel O’Connell challenged this with a campaign culminating in Catholic Emancipation in 1829, and his subsequent campaign to repeal the union continued this constitutional nationalism. Various administrative, legal and educational reforms in the 1830s dismantled Protestant privilege some more. Meanwhile, the population of the poorest continued to grow, surviving precariously on the potato, until over a million died in the Great Famine of 1845–1849, and another 900,000 panic-emigrated. The small and unsuccessful Young Ireland rebellion of 1848 expressed a physical force nationalism that O’Connell had disavowed, and kept the focus on Irish grievances.

By 1850, the Irish language was in serious decline all over the country.

This chapter analyses the failure of numerous ‘popish mortgage bills’ in late eighteenth-century Ireland. It contextualizes these legislative efforts not only within the histories of the penal laws and Catholic emancipation, but also within the histories of mortgage law in Ireland, England, and other parts of the British Empire. The bills demonstrated Irish lawmakers’ interest in guaranteeing sources of credit for landowners, and indicated at least some confidence in the protections that would be afforded Protestant debtors by the core doctrine of the equity of redemption. The widespread testing of that doctrine, however, raised new questions about creditor power that informed fears about Catholic power, and these became central to legal and political debate. The failure of these bills reflected common concerns about predation and fraud in credit relations, and particular unease about the ways in which mortgage law might contribute to constitutional change, undermining Ireland’s Protestant ascendancy.

The legal and constitutional relationship between Ireland and England (and latterly Britain) was unclear for many centuries. Although Ireland enjoyed a good deal of legislative sovereignty under Grattan’s Parliament from 1782, the Acts of Union in 1801 set up direct rule from Westminster. During the nineteenth century, there was a campaign and draft legislation for Irish Home Rule (which Dicey, an ardent unionist, vehemently opposed). This campaign is worth reconsidering in the Brexit/Scottish independence context, given the varied legal and constitutional arrangements that were explored and vigorously debated. However, Home Rule never came about, rendered pointless by subsequent events. Since the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement and devolution in 1998, Northern Ireland has a had a variegated but pragmatic settlement of consociation and compromise quite different from the traditional British constitutional settlement. The EU has played its role in the peace process, providing structures for its continuation. Brexit now presents considerable challenges for Northern Ireland and the Republic.

This chapter examines the self-descriptions used by petitioners when addressing Parliament. Through these labels, petitioners forged and asserted their collective identities and made claims on the state and the wider political community. Petitions did not merely reflect existing identities, but actively constituted them. The chapter first examines the broadening of the petitioning public. There was a shift from the typical mode of self-styling used by eighteenth century petitioners, which reflected perceived economic interests and the hierarchical structuring of local communities, to demotic, ostensibly egalitarian labels such as ‘inhabitants’ in the nineteenth century. The second half of the chapter examines how Catholics, Protestant Dissenters, and women, came forward as petitioners to claim rights and assert their collective identities. Supporters, opponents, and parliamentary advocates interpreted petitions in favour of Catholic emancipation as representing Irish Catholics as a collective force. Dissenters asserted their collective identity as petitioners claiming civil rights, but also in presenting themselves as moral authorities. Finally, women became more forthright in claiming rights as ‘women’ rather than limiting their interventions to moral and religious issues permitted by the norms of Victorian gender ideology.

This chapter focuses on the fortunes of Burke’s party engagements and his views on party in the decades after the Present Discontents (1770). America, India, and especially the French Revolution are treated insofar as they are related to party. The American Crisis gave coherence to both government and opposition, and because they had repealed the Stamp Act, the Rockingham Whigs could pose as the real friends of America. Following the French Revolution, however, Burke split dramatically with Charles James Fox, who had emerged as party leader after the death of Burke’s master Rockingham in 1782. In his Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs (1791), Burke contended that he had not abandoned his party’s principles and that it was the Foxite Whigs who had morphed into a new party. The chapter demonstrates, however, that while Burke believed that the French Revolution rendered old party battles largely irrelevant, he had not lost his confidence in the idea of party as such.