Down to the period of 1782, English acts of parliament were suffered to bind Ireland. Misgovernment and poverty, the neglect of agriculture, the prohibition of commerce, the abandonment of manufactures were, during that period, the portion of Ireland. But towards the end of the American war, the volunteers emancipated their country from this bondage, and gave it the means of being independent. The example of America was before both parties with all the omens; hence the demands of the volunteers were prudentially conceded, and the glorious revolution of 1782 was accompanied without the loss of a drop of blood. The happy consequence was the immediate liberation of the commerce of Ireland from English restrictions. Her ensuing prosperity seemed miraculous—so prompt, so general, so enriching; and her aptitude to prosper by a free trade became known at the same time, to her rival and herself. But the volunteers could not be always in arms, and Ireland had no representative assembly to foster her prosperity during peace. Hers was, alas! a borough-parliament, composed solely of the dominant faction, representing but a small portion of the inhabitants, and having few feelings or wishes in unison with the mass of the people. Every one soon perceived that all measures of relief would be insecure, nay, illusory, unless preceded or accompanied by a reform in the parliament. The volunteers saw it, and endeavoured to reform; but they excluded the Catholics from their plan, and did not see (unhappy effects of the ignorance of the time!) that this alone would defeat their aim; that they could not erect an edifice of freedom on a foundation of monopoly. Warned by these errors, the United Irishmen altered the system of reform fundamentally. They extended their base, and established their plan upon three simple principles, necessarily dependent upon each other, and containing the disease, the remedy, and the mode of its attainment. The excess of English influence was the disease, a reform in parliament the remedy, and the inclusion of the Catholics the mode of its attainment. Theobald Wolfe Tone had, of all others, the greatest part in effecting this change of sentiment among the Protestants, to whose communion he belonged. He wrote the original declaration for the Society of United Irishmen of Belfast, and his powerful writings brought the Presbyterians of the North very generally into the system. Emmet often heard him in strains of pure and forceful eloquence expand, inculcate and apply, for the benefit of his beloved country, the political principles of the United Irishmen.