[2] Grattan opposed the Act of Union 1800 that merged the Kingdoms of Ireland and Great Britain, but later sat as a member of the united Parliament in London.

[3] A member of the Anglo-Irish elite of Protestant background, Grattan was the son of James Grattan MP, of Belcamp Park, County Dublin and Mary, youngest daughter of Thomas Marlay, Attorney-General of Ireland, Chief Baron of the Irish Exchequer and finally Lord Chief Justice of the Court of King's Bench and his wife Anne de Laune.

Grattan attended Drogheda Grammar School and then went on to become a distinguished student at Trinity College Dublin, where he began a lifelong study of classical literature, and was especially interested in the great orators of antiquity.

[4] Catholics, who made up the majority of the Irish population, were completely excluded from public life at this time under the Penal Laws, in force in Ireland from 1691 until the early 1780s.

Power was held by the King's Viceroy and by a small element, the Anglo-Irish families loyal to the Anglican Church of Ireland who owned most of the land.

[4] Calls for the legislative independence of Ireland at the Irish Volunteer Convention at Dungannon, County Tyrone, greatly influenced the decision of the government in 1782 to make concessions.

[4] Grattan then asked for the British House of Commons to reconfirm the British Government's decision, and on 22 January 1783, the final Act was passed by parliament in London, including the text: Be it enacted that the right claimed by the people of Ireland to be bound only by laws enacted by his Majesty and the Parliament of that kingdom, in all cases whatever shall be, and is hereby declared to be established and ascertained for ever, and shall at no time be questioned or questionable.

The majority were excluded, who were either Roman Catholics or Presbyterians; two-thirds of the members of the House of Commons were returned by small boroughs at the disposal of individual patrons, whose support was bought by the distribution of peerages and pensions.

[4] Drawing the attention of the House to "the alarming measure of drilling the lowest classes of the populace", Grattan implied that reformers had a duty to protect the prerogatives of property even as they protested its abuses.

[7] Grattan also opposed the policy of protective duties in favour of Pitt's commercial propositions in 1785 for establishing Free Trade between Great Britain and Ireland.

[9] The defeat of Grattan's mild proposals helped to promote more extreme opinions, which, under growing influence from France, were now making inroads in Ireland.

[9] That cabinet, however, doubtless influenced by the wishes of the King, to whom Emancipation was anathema, was now determined to firmly resist the Catholic demands, with the result that Ireland rapidly drifted towards rebellion.

Thus the Presbyterians of the north, who were mainly republican in sentiment, combined with a section of the Roman Catholics to form the United Irishmen organisation, promoting revolutionary ideas imported from France; and a party prepared to welcome a French invasion soon came into existence.

Grattan was cruelly lampooned by James Gillray as a rebel leader for his liberal views and his stance against a political union with the Kingdom of Great Britain.

At a moment when Britain was engaged in a life-and-death struggle with France, it was impossible for the ministry to ignore the danger, recently emphasised by the fact that the independent constitution of 1782 offered no safeguard against armed revolt.

Sectarian violence during the rebellion put an end to the growing reconciliation between Roman Catholics and Presbyterians, and the island divided anew into two hostile factions.

His popularity had declined, and the fact that his proposals for parliamentary reform and Catholic emancipation had become the watchwords of the United Irishmen had brought him the bitter hostility of the governing classes.

He was dismissed from the Privy Council; his portrait was removed from the hall of Trinity College; the Merchant Guild of Dublin struck his name off their rolls.

When Fox and William Grenville came into power in 1806 Grattan, who sat at this time for Dublin City, was offered, but refused to accept, an office in the government.

In the following year, he showed the strength of his judgment and character by supporting, in spite of consequent unpopularity in Ireland, a measure for increasing the powers of the executive to deal with Irish disorder.

His last speech of all, in 1819, contained a passage referring to the Union he had so passionately resisted, which exhibits the statesmanship, and at the same time the equable quality, of Grattan's character.

His sentiments with regard to the policy of the Union remained, he said, unchanged; but "the marriage, having taken place, it is now the duty, as it ought to be the inclination, of every individual to render it as fruitful, as profitable and as advantageous as possible.

"[12] In the following summer, after crossing from Ireland to Britain when in poor health to bring forward the Irish question once more, he became seriously ill. On his deathbed he spoke generously of Castlereagh, and with a warm eulogy of his former rival, Flood.

He thought only of Ireland; lived for no other object; dedicated to her his beautiful fancy, his elegant wit, his manly courage, and all the splendour of his astonishing eloquence.

Grattan's in-laws' history gave him a sensitivity to former Irish political difficulties, as Henrietta's Cavalier great-grandfather John Fitzgerald was transplanted from Gorteens Castle in County Kilkenny to Mayo in 1653 under the Cromwellian Settlement, and his son Thomas felt it necessary to conform to the Church of Ireland in 1717.