The Volunteers were, with few exceptions, Protestants, and their attitude of defiance made the English government willing to place the Catholics against them as a counterpoise; and it therefore offered no opposition to measures tending to relieve them of their disabilities. But, under Grattan’s influence, the Volunteers themselves pronounced in favor of the Catholics by passing the famous Dungannon resolution: “That we, [the Volunteers] hold the right of private judgment in matters of religion to be equally sacred in others as in ourselves; that we rejoice in the relaxation of the penal laws against our Roman Catholic fellow-subjects; and that we conceive these measures to be fraught with the happiest consequences to the union and prosperity of the inhabitants of Ireland.” In February, 1782, Grattan again brought forward a motion to declare the independence of the Irish Legislature, and again it was thrown out. The Dungannon resolution was then introduced, and it was proposed to abolish all distinctions between Protestants and Catholics. But to this the most serious objections were raised, and it was found necessary to make concessions to Protestant bigotry. The Catholics were permitted to acquire freehold property, to buy and sell, bequeath and inherit; but the penal laws which bore upon their religion, and their right to educate their children at home or abroad, as well as those which excluded them from political life, were left on the statute-book. Fanaticism was stronger than patriotism, and the enthusiastic love of liberty was again found to be compatible with the love of persecution and oppression. But this injustice in no way dampened the ardor of the Catholics for the national independence; and when, on the 16th of April, 1782, Grattan moved a Declaration of Rights, inspired probably by our own Declaration of Independence, he was greeted with as wild a tumult of applause by the Catholics as by his Protestant countrymen. “I found Ireland,” he said, “on her knees. I watched over her with an eternal solicitude. I have traced her progress from injuries to arms, and from arms to liberty. Spirit of Swift, spirit of Molyneux, your genius has prevailed. Ireland is now a nation. In that new character I hail her, and, bowing to her august presence, I say, _Esto Perpetua_!” The overwhelming popular enthusiasm bore everything with it, and opposition was useless. “It is no longer,” wrote the Duke of Portland, the viceroy, “the Parliament of Ireland that is to be managed or attended to; it is the whole of this country.”