The politics of Ireland during the nineteenth century would have been tangled enough at the best, but the Act of Union introduced a confusion which has often seemed to make the situation inexplicable to a normal mind. But, to leave details aside, the main lines of the problem are clear enough. The Act of Union was designed to end the separate national existence of Ireland by incorporating its legislative and administrative machinery with that of England. To secure control to the "Predominant Partner" (as the incorporating body has since been called) the representation of Ireland in the Imperial Parliament was fixed at a total which at the time of the Act was less than half that to which it was entitled on the basis of the population. While the intention of the authors of the measure (as their published correspondence makes perfectly clear) was to subordinate Irish national interests to those of England, the measure was presented to Parliament as one designed to further the mutual interests of the two kingdoms. But to Protestant waverers it was commended in private as a necessary means of securing the Protestant interest, while to the Catholics hopes were held out that the removal of the Catholic disabilities maintained by the Protestant ascendancy in Ireland might be hoped for from the more liberal Parliament in England. There is no doubt that many Catholics, especially among the nobility and higher clergy, were induced at least to discourage resistance to the measure, partly for this reason, partly out of fear of the republican sympathies and aims of the reforming United Irishmen. The extreme Protestants, such as the Orangemen who helped to suppress the rebellion, viewed the measure with a certain suspicion, if not with definite hostility. They looked forward, now that the rebellion was crushed, to a prolonged tenure of unchallenged ascendancy. But the bulk of the more liberal Protestants were against it, and the wiser Catholics. They foretold the ruin of trade, the burden of increased taxation, the loss of all real independence and freedom that were bound to, and did, result. But they were neither consulted nor listened to and the measure was passed after free speech had been bought over in Parliament and suppressed by military force outside.