The contest began on June 30 and lasted five days. All the gentry and electors of the higher class supported Fitzgerald, but all the poorer electors, headed by their priests, flocked to the poll and voted for O'Connell, who, on Fitzgerald's retirement, was triumphantly elected. The violence of O'Connell's language was unmeasured, and as was said by Sheil, "every altar became a tribune," but perfect order was maintained throughout. The terrorism which has since disgraced Irish elections and vitiated the whole representation of Ireland had no place in this startling victory, and the impression produced by it was thereby infinitely enhanced. Two conclusions were instantly drawn from it: the one, that electoral power in Ireland could not safely be left in the hands of the forty-shilling freeholders; the other, that, whether or not they were disfranchised, nothing short of political equality of the catholics of Ireland could avert the risk of civil war. It is seldom that momentous changes can be so clearly traced to a single cause as in the case of catholic emancipation. The whole interval between July, 1828, and April, 1829, was occupied by the discussion of this question, or circumstances arising out of it, and it may truly be said to have filled the whole horizon of domestic politics. The first and final recognition by a responsible government of emancipation as a political necessity dates immediately from the Clare election. The question of catholic emancipation had been the only reason for the resignation of Pitt in 1801, but we have seen that he resumed office in 1804 under a pledge not to re-open it. It is certain that he never contemplated a complete emancipation of the catholics without safeguards for the interests of the established church. Such a safeguard (though ineffective against a future attack through disestablishment) was provided by the act of union,[84] which inviolably united the Irish and English churches. The catholic leaders, on their part, were profuse in their disavowals of hostility to that establishment and to the protestant government in Ireland. In their first solemn memorial, presented by Grenville on March 25, 1805, they expressly declared that "they do not seek or wish, in the remotest degree, to injure or encroach upon the rights, privileges, immunities, possessions, and revenues appertaining to the bishops and clergy of the protestant religion, or to the churches committed to their charge". They further volunteered an expression of their belief that no evil act could be justified by the good of the Church, and that papal infallibility was no article of the catholic faith. Thenceforward, frequent motions in support of the "catholic claims" were made in both houses of parliament. In 1810 such a motion was proposed in a very eloquent speech by Grattan, but Castlereagh, though a staunch friend of the cause, deprecated it as inopportune, since the catholics had injured themselves by imprudent