DAVE MANSELL constituency put the English parliament in a quandary for there was, at this time, a strong movement for extension of the franchise rather than its diminution. The parliament was also faced with massive, organized Irish Catholic disenchantment with the Union after the slump of 1825. The population of Ireland as a whole had increased from five million in 1800 to nearly seven million in 1821, and the Irish Catholics constituted almost 25% of the entire British population. Faced with these twin problems, the parliament swiftly came to a compromise with O'Connell: in return for a Catholic Emancipation Bill which became law in the spring of 1829, he agreed to a raising of the financial qualifications for voters in the counties. Previously freeholders whose property was rated at £ 2 or above could vote, but now the figure was raised to £ 10 depriving many of the small farmers of the vote given to them in 1793. . The aim of this policy was to prevent more than a few Catholics being elected to the English Parliament so that an effective Catholic party could not arise there. Although these measures were modified by the 1832 Reform Bill, the majority of Catholics were deprived of a vote until the second Reform Bill of 1867. Nevertheless, despite its limited success, this new Catholic agitation, with its democratic undertones, had frightened the Anglican Ascendancy landlords in Ulster, who had opposed the Union bitterly, into extreme conservatism in favour of the link with England. At this point, although the Orange Order was still in existence it had been made illegal and survived at grassroots level amongst the working class. Although the Emmet rebellion (a farcical failure to revive the United Irishmen movement) and the resumption of the Napoleonic wars in 1803 had saved the Orange dominated yeomanry and militia from being disarmed and disbanded, they had been displaced as a rural police force in 1814 by the introduction of a constabulary organized by Robert Peel, who, as Irish Secretary had rejected all collaboration between the state apparatus and the Orange Order. By the time of O'Connell's electoral campaign of 1826 the Ulster Orangemen were so weak and divided that they had nothing to oppose to it. In fact since O'Connell's movement directed no threat of physical force against Ulster, it would have been extremely difficult for the Ulster aristocracy to stir up the feelings of the Orange Order which had been, since its inception, an organization based on the defence of gains made in 1690 and deeply marked by a siege mentality. Nevertheless O'Connell's 76
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