A Namierite survey of Protestant Ascendancy politics in the Irish Parliament during the 1780s-90s, well sourced of contemporary correspondence but sometimes forced and lacking fluid narrative. The Act of Union came because English hopes of rowing back political rights in exchange for economic concessions foundered on Anglo-Irish sense interdependence.

1691’s Treaty of Limerick established the basis of unstable 17th-centry politics. William of Orange had come to Ireland to defeat Jacobites not Catholics, but the Irish missed the distinction. Almost immediately Protestants saw London (i.e., Westminster) as working at contrary purposes. But the locals were willing to accept venality, and both the Irish and (less often) English privy councils altered or pocketed Parliamentary legislation sent for formal assent. In Anne’s reign the English Commons rescinded all Parliament land grants. Further grievances rose in limiting wool exports, coinage, Poynings Law (permitting legislative alterations), and 1719’s Declaratory Act (direct legislative authority, less often used than Poynings).

In 1770 Townshend sidelined Ireland’s ‘undertakers’ to concentrate power in the Castle, converting Anglo-Irish to opposition, thereby entrenching personal rivalries in the political process and also opening the route to 1782. This change surpassed the influence of the contemporary American rebellion, the author asserts; Irish protest literature was present out of doors but never played much role in Parliament (contra Bailyn’s Origins). Constitutional revisions commenced in 1779 with economic issues: more complete legislative freedom was seen to safeguard free trade. Charles Francis Sheridan was the ideological paladin, echoing Locke, essentially arguing the Anglo-Irish were a separate nation. Henry Grattan assumed Parliamentary leadership from Barry Yelverton, besting Henry Flood. There was no coordination among Irish and English Whigs. The opposition sought repeal of the Test Act, of Poynings, restoration of habeus corpus, independent judges (in the House of Lords), control of the exchequer, and domestic use of hereditary revenue (essentially land tax of absentee owners, tantamount to taxation without representation). These demands were supported by the paramilitary Volunteers.

(In correspondence, Burke described Grattan as a madman to be stopped?)

The Renunciation Act of 1783 shifted power to Ireland, but not through Parliamentary success or incipient rebellion. In making concessions, the Castle disregarded settled policy and the Cabinet, and Shelburne mismanaged the dysfunction. Upon taking office, Pitt sought to barter improved economic terms for reduced sovereignty. More broadly, he first sought to link national debts – the Irish were to pay for their administrative costs – and saw Irish trade demands as claims to sell colonial produce to the mother country: he did not see the claim to autonomy within the empire. His cabinet colleague Jenkinson saw Ireland as more equivalent to English towns, and helped re-turn Pitt from Adam Smith to mercantilism. These commercial propositions as well as the Regency affair were inconclusive.
Grattan refused the Castle in April 1782, as the nexus of power was then between the Irish parliament and British cabinet, the Castle being an executive agency. Yet there was no cohesion among the opposition. Country independents were regularly bought, the pensions list growing and growing in the 1780s. The Patriots were doomed to permanent opposition. Losing Corry to the Castle in 1788 handed the Parliamentary reigns to Grattan but he failed to capitalize on the febrile environment of February-March 1789; he too would later cross over.

In the 1790s the Lord Lieutenants transformed what had been ‘elitist insurrection’ into violent peasant uprisings by the Volunteers and Whiteboys. Pitt continued to see that commercial concessions would alleviate conditions. But his Irish reform policy was really an effort to reform the English legislature(?). Thus 1782 had not only separated the combatants but also increased the cost of patronage, and some in the cabinet immediately saw the failure to redress Irish concessions meant the Act of Union must follow: it was the product of exhaustion not evolution. 1800 having sidelined the Anglo-Irish, 1829’s Catholic Emancipation then removed the final barrier – the conflict became Catholics versus the Cabinet.

O’Brien’s choppy narrative itself undermines efforts to show political outcomes were pre-determined by class, as demonstrated by counting votes. Though he frequently (and admirably) cites correspondence, his Namierite approach seems likely to be masking problem and nuance.