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The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. / From the Accession of George III. to the Twenty-Third Year of the Reign of Queen Victoria cover

The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. / From the Accession of George III. to the Twenty-Third Year of the Reign of Queen Victoria

Chapter 1460: IRELAND.
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About This Book

The volume traces British political, parliamentary, and military developments from the accession of George III through the early nineteenth century, chronicling changes of ministry and cabinet, debates over colonial taxation and the American conflict, parliamentary controversies involving figures such as Wilkes and Warren Hastings, questions of Catholic relief and slave-trade abolition, and responses to the French Revolution and Napoleonic wars, including major naval and continental campaigns, the union with Ireland, and domestic legislation on finance, civil liberties, and parliamentary reform.

IRELAND.

The progress of Ireland in material prosperity was obvious, and a source of gratulation to the empire. The moral progress of the country did not keep pace with its temporal advancement; in this respect the predictions of its best friends in parliament and in Great Britain were not fulfilled. Agrarian outrage was as common as in previous years, and the murderous riband conspiracy still dealt out slaughter, and held the good and peaceable in terror without any proper attempts on the part of government to put it down. The following remarks of the editor of the Annual Register were as true and just as they were pertinent and expressive of the facts:—“Many of the homicidal crimes in Ireland arise from motives which must be found in every society, and which therefore are not to be accounted as a peculiar reproach upon the natural character. Many of these foul deeds would not deserve any especial record, were it not needful that they should be noticed simultaneously with those more horrible assassinations perpetrated under the influence of a secret tribunal which has for generations been the curse of that unhappy land. Although the national prosperity of Ireland for some years back has been such as to alter the aspect of the country, it will probably take many years of content and good government—perhaps the passing away of more than one generation—to purge the land of the monstrous organization which keeps all men in dread.”