From end to end of Ireland new industries had
sprung up, and new life had been put into old industries. Ireland then
was prosperous. Her exports had doubled. Her wealth was increasing. Her
towns overflowed with life, and Dublin for the moment almost rivalled
London in its brilliancy and its wit.[67]
THE GREAT REBELLION
This prosperity might have saved Grattan's Parliament but for a new
movement which had crossed the two channels from France. It is doubtful
whether the Catholics alone could have wrecked Grattan's Parliament. It
was, curiously enough, the Irish Presbyterians of Ulster--our friends,
the Orangemen--who sowed the seeds of revolt against the Protestant
Parliament of 1782. It was they, in the combination known as the
"United Irishmen," who started the movement that culminated in the
Irish Rebellion in 1798. These Presbyterian Nonconformists had all been
deeply affected by the doctrines of the French Revolution. They had for
years past been agitating for a reform of the Irish Parliament on the
lines subsequently adopted in 1831--chiefly by the abolition of the
rotten boroughs. Grattan was with them, but again he was powerless. He
was opposed, both in Dublin and in London, by the existing executives.
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