ABSTRACT
Lecturer, lawyer, and lawmaker, Arthur Browne was among the most gifted jurists of eighteenth-century Ireland. He told his colleagues that: The method of preventing union was not by rebellion, nor by Orange systems; not by looking for republics, nor by holding up every man as a rebel, who disapproved of particular measures. It would have been by regular obedience to the laws, and constitutional parliamentary opposition to any improper measures. As with his parliamentary comments, Browne displayed deep suspicion of both Catholic and dissenter motives in A Full Display. In any event, for Browne, Catholic and dissenting activities and their published critiques of the state threatened to undermine it and the established Protestant interest. The Irish bar did play an important role in the public debates on the union. Indeed, early half of the anti-union pamphlets produced up to February 1799 were ascertainably written by barristers.
