Conservatives by religion, their devotion to authority annulled all instincts of revenge for the hideous wrongs of the past. The Government, now on the verge of a war with the two great Catholic Powers of Europe, began to realize this, and to feel the wisdom of some degree of conciliation. After all, only four years before they had not merely tolerated, but established, the Catholic Church in the conquered province of Quebec, with the result that the French Canadians remained loyal during the American War. But neither the Government nor the finest independent men in Parliament--not even Grattan--entertained the remotest idea of admitting Irish Catholics to any really effective share in the Government which their loyalty made stable. That noble but hopeless conception originated later, as the dynamic impulse for commercial freedom and legislative independence was originating now, outside the walls of Parliament. The rupture with France in 1778 denuded Ireland of troops, and called into being the Protestant Volunteers; a disciplined, armed body, headed by leaders as weighty and respectable as Lord Charlemont. This body, formed originally for home defence, by a natural and legitimate transition assumed a political aspect, and demanded from a dismayed and terrorized Government commercial freedom for Ireland. For once in her life Ireland was too strong to be coerced. Punishment like that applied to Massachusetts was physically impossible. The bitter protests of English merchants passed unheeded, and the fiscal claims of the Volunteers, with their cannon labelled "Free Trade or this," were granted in full early in 1780. The moral was to persist. From 40,000 the numbers of the Volunteers rose in the two succeeding years to 80,000, and they stood firm for further concessions. The national movement grew like a river in spate; it swept forward the lethargic Catholics and engulfed Parliament. In a tempest of enthusiasm Grattan's Declaration of Independence was carried unanimously in the Irish House of Commons on April 16, 1782, and a month later received legal confirmation in England at the hands of the same Whig Government and Parliament which broke off hostilities with America, and in the same session.