Introduction

The chief benefit of the Catholic Emancipation Act was that it got Daniel O’Connell into Parliament, and it introduced populist Irish Catholicism as a factor in English politics but that is another story. In all these controversies it may be said that the Jesuits were the hard-liners, who advocated no concessions to the government. They aroused the envy of their opponents, chiefly the secular clergy, because they were a naturally elitist body. The chief failing of the Jesuits was that they could not understand that people could dislike the reader because the reader was successful and because the reader was right. Yet the recus-ants, grasping at straws, quarrelled amongst themselves as to the possible terms for toleration: William Leslie, a very influential figure at Propaganda Fide, had fatuous hopes of a national conversion.