Colby’s Measuring Ireland
The central political event was the Unlawful Societies (Ireland) Act, which received royal assent on 9 March. It extended earlier restrictions on bodies claiming to represent the people or to seek redress of grievances in church or state. Its immediate political target was widely understood to be the Catholic Association, founded in 1823 by O’Connell, Richard Lalor Sheil and others to press for Catholic Emancipation. Its provisions also bore upon Orange organisation. The law did not grant Catholics the parliamentary and office-holding rights they sought; instead, it attempted to remove the national political machinery that had made those demands so powerful.