Whether the policy of "levelling up" would have been a wise one
or not, it is useless now to conjecture; for once the policy of
"levelling down" had been decided upon, and the Irish Church had been
disestablished and disendowed, it became impracticable. The second
measure was Roman Catholic emancipation. This had been intended by
Pitt and other statesmen who helped to bring about the Union; but
unforeseen difficulties arose; and unfortunately nothing was done
until the agitation led by O'Connell brought matters to a crisis;
and the emancipation which might have been carried gracefully years
before, and in that case would have strengthened the Union, was
grudgingly yielded in 1829.

The third measure was a readjustment of tithes. All will now admit,
and very many politicians and thinkers at the time fully realized,
that the old law as to tithes was a cruel injustice; but no change
was made until the opposition to the payment of tithes amounted to
something like civil war, involving a series of murders and outrages.
Then the fatal precedent was set of a successful and violent revolt
against contracts and debts. In 1838 an Act was passed commuting
the tithes into a rent-charge payable not by the occupiers but the
landlords. Some modern writers have argued that the change was merely
a matter of form, as the landlords increased the rents in proportion;
and it seems such a natural thing to have happened that earlier
writers may well be excused for assuming that it actually occurred.
But there is no excuse for repeating the charge now; for in
consequence of recent legislation it has been necessary for the Land
Courts to investigate the history of rents from a period commencing
before 1838; and the result of their examination has elicited the
strange fact that in thousands of cases the rent remained exactly the
same that it had been before the Tithe Commutation Act was passed.