Those executives now rested their power almost entirely on the members
returned by those very same rotten boroughs. For ever since 1782
bribery had been going on, and as early as 1790 England had been
rapidly buying back the hold she had lost in 1782. These being her
weapons, it was not likely that the Irish executive was going to yield
to the claims of the Irish Presbyterians. The Government resisted, and
the movement of the Irish Reformers became more and more formidable.
All these causes of unrest culminated in the Irish Rebellion of 1798--a
horrible event, beginning with the lawlessness of the revolutionary
Presbyterians in the north--lawlessness so feebly checked as to raise
grave suspicions in regard to the attitude of the Irish Government
itself towards a possible revolution. But the outrages of the Orangemen
on the Catholics in Ulster, and the Catholic feeling of desertion by
the Government, soon produced a far more terrible outbreak in the
south. That practically culminated in a religious war between Catholic
and Protestant. From that moment the Rebellion was marked by atrocities
on both sides almost as terrible as anything which occurred in the
French Revolution.
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