That
Parliament, indeed, as we have noted, granted the franchise to the
Catholic peasant and abolished the penal laws. But it was part of the
policy of the British Government to show that Grattan's Parliament
could not grant Catholic emancipation in its full sense. The grant was
to be kept as a bribe by which to achieve the policy of the Union.
Anyone who reads the story in the pages of Lecky[53] must see how that
motive ran like a sinister thread throughout the whole working of
British policy from 1795 to 1800.
Well, that policy succeeded only too thoroughly for the time. Among the
various forms of bribery which induced the Irish Parliament to give a
vote for the Union at the second time of asking, the gift of money and
titles were, perhaps, less powerful than the offer of Catholic
emancipation. Recent researches have shown that that offer led to the
conversion of Bishops and their clergy throughout the whole of Ireland,
besides winning over the great body of Catholic Peers.
It is now known, indeed, to be the fact that the British Government
actually induced the Vatican to bring pressure upon the Irish leaders
and the Irish bishops in order to achieve their object.
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