SOCIETY OF UNITED IRISHMEN


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Society of United Irishmen

In the present great area of era of reform, where unjust governments are falling in every quarter of Europe … when all government is acknowledged to originate from the people … we think it is our duty, as Irishmen, to come forward and state what we feel to be our heavy grievance, and what we know to be its effectual remedy. WE HAVE NO NATIONAL GOVERNMENT—We are ruled by Englishmen and the Servants of Englishmen …. [We seek] AN EQUAL REPRESENTATION OF ALL THE PEOPLE IN PARLIAMENT… No reform is practicable, efficacious, or just which does not include Irishman of every religious persuasion.
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The founders were all Irish Protestants. Yet in their initial charter, they called for proportional representation of Roman-Catholics. Not all the relations between Irish Catholic and Protestants were hostile. There was a commonality in their Irish nationality and many protestants—especially the educated and more sophisticated—were opposed to the restrictions imposed by England on the rights of the Roman Catholic to practice their religion or participate in government. See {639279} for another example.

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Society of United Irishmen
© Sociedade dos Irlandeses Unidos
Society of United Irishmen
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The Society of United Irishmen, also simply known as the United Irishmen, were a sworn society in the Kingdom of Ireland formed in the wake of the French Revolution to secure "an equal representation of all the people" in a "national government." Despairing of constitutional reform, in 1798 the Society instigated a republican insurrection in defiance of British Crown forces and of Irish sectarian division. Their suppression was a prelude to the abolition of the Protestant Ascendancy Parliament in Dublin and to Ireland's incorporation in a United Kingdom with Great Britain.