Liffey Works and Rightboys
In 1786, Ireland stood in the unsettled interval after the constitutional victories of the early 1780s and before the more dramatic crises of the 1790s. Its parliament at College Green enjoyed a new measure of legislative autonomy, secured in 1782–83, but this did not make it representative of the island’s people. Political power remained concentrated among Anglican landowners, office-holders and borough patrons; Catholics, though forming the great majority of the population, could neither vote nor sit in parliament. The year is therefore best understood not as one decisive national turning point, but as a revealing cross-section: public institutions in Dublin acquired durable new forms while agrarian resistance exposed the strain beneath rural society.