Conclusion: ‘The Anxious Hour’ — England in 1829

Abstract

The year 1829, in which the Catholic Emancipation Act was finally passed, marked a culmination, but not a cessation, of the political and cultural struggles over national history, religious difference and Britishness. The campaign for the measure had been protracted and tumultuous. In Ireland the ‘monster meetings’ of Daniel O’Connell’s Irish Association provided motivating pressure after 1823. In England divisions in the government over Catholic Emancipation in 1825 led Lord Liverpool to threaten to resign, which would have led to the Catholic Question bringing down another ministry. Catholic Emancipation dominated national politics in the General Election of 1826 and complicated the attempts of Eldon, Canning and Goderich to form ministries in 1827–8. When the Duke of Wellington, with Peel as his Prime Minister, finally came to power, he was greeted with an expansive campaign of petitioning for and against the Catholic Question, a popular mobilization unprecedented in scale (Colley 329–33; Machin 131–56). O’Connell’s 1828 election for a seat in County Clare finally forced the Tory leaders to either defy their anti-Catholic wing or risk civil war in Ireland. Catholic Emancipation’s passage, though without the type of rioting that accompanied the 1778 Relief Act, proved disruptive.KeywordsRomantic PeriodNational HistoryReligious DifferenceObsolete GroupIrish AssociationThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.