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The parliamentary session opened on 22 January. In the ornate Parliament House at College Green, the lord lieutenant delivered the crown’s message to the Irish Lords and Commons. It did not set out a finished bill. Rather, it called on the two parliaments to consider measures that would make the connection between the kingdoms more secure and consolidate the strength and resources of the empire. Its meaning was unmistakable. The British government of William Pitt and the Dublin Castle administration wanted an incorporating union.
The United Irishmen had begun in Belfast and Dublin in 1791 as a movement for parliamentary reform and Catholic political rights. By 1798 it was a clandestine, oath-bound organisation seeking separation from Britain. Its programme was intellectually rooted in the Atlantic age of revolutions: American independence, French republicanism and arguments for religious equality all supplied its language. Its social base was diverse. Presbyterian radicals and artisans were important in Ulster; Catholic Defenders, rural labourers, small farmers, tradesmen and some liberal Protestant gentry were prominent elsewhere. This diversity was a strength in aspiration, but difficult to coordinate under pressure.
