Mercy House and Foyle Baseline
The central public question was the continuing exclusion of Roman Catholics from parliament and from a range of public offices. The Act of Union had joined Ireland to Great Britain in 1801, but it had not removed the oaths and tests that prevented Catholics from taking seats at Westminster. For a Catholic majority, this was not an abstract constitutional anomaly. It was bound up with access to authority, the position of the established Church of Ireland, local patronage and the security of Catholic voters and tenants.