The latter decades of the eighteenth century were for Ireland an era of momentous political development. This book surveys the social, economic, and intellectual background; indicates the links between Ireland and Great Britain and the rest of the Empire; examines the machinery of central and local government; and describes the course of politics at a time when political activity greatly accelerated, and was strongly influenced by external forces. R. B. McDowell analyses the political agitation and agrarian discontent of the 1790s, and the threats which they posed both to national defence and to the maintenance of law and order. He concludes with an examination of the insurrection of 1798, and the British government's attempt to solve the Irish question by the union of Ireland with Great Britain.