George IV., who had been regent since his father's illness in
1812, reigned in his own name from 1820 to 1830, though his voice
in the affairs of state was small indeed. His Ministers,
Liverpool, Canning, Goderich, and Wellington, were confronted by
serious problems of domestic policy which had sprung up during
the long period of foreign wars and partly in direct consequence
of those disturbing conditions. The one recurrent question which
found definite settlement in this reign was that of Catholic
emancipation. The penal laws against Roman Catholics had
disgraced the English statute-books for two centuries. On the
first of January, 1801, the Legislative Union of Great Britain
and Ireland had gone into effect under the name of the United
Kingdom. The Irish Parliament, which had met in Dublin since
1782, went out of existence, and in the place of "Home Rule"
Ireland was represented in both houses of the Imperial Parliament
at Westminster. Pitt had promised the numerous Catholics of
Ireland that the laws which made them ineligible to represent
their country in Parliament should be repealed, and had abandoned
office in disgust when George III. refused to sanction his
project of Catholic emancipation. In 1807 the Whig ministry
espoused the same cause, and in turn resigned because of the
opposition of the Crown. In Daniel O'Connell the cause at length
found a spokesman whose eloquence, wit, and talent for
"agitation" soon combined his Irish partisans into "The Catholic
Association." Working in conjunction with the Whigs of England,
O'Connell's followers formed a body which could not be neglected.
Soon after Canning's untimely death the Duke of Wellington had
taken office. He was a Tory, with all the prejudices of that
political faith deepened by his birth and training as an Irish
Protestant, but the agitation had reached such proportions that
he saw in it a menace of civil war, to avoid which he was willing
to abandon his most cherished opinions on the Catholic question.
Accordingly, in 1829, the Iron Duke faced about and brought in
the bill which, becoming a law by Whig and Canningite votes,
admitted Roman Catholics to Parliament, and to civil rights only
a little short of complete. But instead of removing the Irish
question from politics, it was only prepared for more strenuous
presentation in a new guise, for O'Connell was returned to
Parliament at the head of some fifty Catholic members to agitate
for Irish independence.