led the emerald isle.
The Irish question arose once Irish nationalists began to question the legitimacy of British rule. In the late 18th century the Irish parliament with the support of allies in the House of Commons such as Edmund Burke declared that it alone was competent to legislate on Irish domestic matters, what became known as the Constitution of 1782. English toleration of such effrontery was short-lived. Under the leadership of the Younger William Pitt, Parliament in Westminster abolished the separate Irish Parliament under the Act of Union of 1800. It did so after a group called the United Irishmen, mostly upper class Protestants, including Theobald Tone, raised the flag of revolt with the ineffective assistance of Napoleonic France in 1798.
Daniel O'Connell (1775-1847) led the struggle in the House of Commons, ultimately successful in 1829, for Catholic emancipation, the right of Irish voters to elect Catholics to represent them in Parliament. O'Connell abjured violence, but Beckett says he "forced the government to yield by a demonstration of . . . the power of mass opinion organized under clerical influence" (304-305). He also led the fight for Repeal of Union, which after his death, and under the leadership in Parliament of Isaac Butt eventually turned into the campaign for home rule.
During the 1830s and 1840s, agitation and discontent
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