The act of union which combined the parliaments of Ireland and England had not united the peoples. To the Irish peasants, the economic, religious, and political system inflicted by an alien, protestant minority seemed to threaten their very existence. To many Englishmen, the Irish were clearly inferior beings and potential traitors, automatically suspect on grounds of religion and history. Lord Liverpool, tory prime minister from 1812 to 1827, described Ireland as ‘a political phenomenon – not influenced by the same feelings as appear to affect mankind in other countries’. The religious division of Ireland into protestant ‘conquerors’ and catholic ‘savages’ deepened and aggravated the bitterness stemming from the economic plight of the peasants, and accentuated the differences between the governing class and the governed. In fairness to the ministers, members of parliament, and administrators responsible for Irish affairs from 1812 to 1830, one must ask just what they could have done towards measurably improving the condition of Ireland.