Pièce de résistance

The seventeen hundreds ushered a volatile era in the history of Catholic populated Ireland. wiki"Ireland had chiefly been controlled by a Protestant Ascendancy constituting members of the established Church loyal to the British Crown". It governed the majority Irish Catholic population by a form of institutionalised sectarianism codified in the Penal Laws.

Wolfe Tone was a leading voice in the movement for the Republic of Ireland. His wiki"principles were drawn from the French Convention. Grattan's political philosophy was allied to that of Edmund Burke; Tone was a disciple of Georges Danton and Thomas Paine. Paine was a roommate of Tone's compatriot, "Citizen Lord" Edward FitzGerald, in Paris; and Paine's famous themes of the "rights of man" and "common sense" can be seen in the opening paragraph of the Declaration of the United Irishmen."

The closing lines from James Clarence Mangan's "Lament For Banba" may shed some light on the sentiment of all men and women in the face of oppression...

"But, no more! This our doom,
While our hearts yet are warm,
Let us not over weakly deplore!
For the hour soon may loom
When the Lord’s mighty hand
Shall be raised for our rescue once more!
And all our grief shall be turned into joy
For the still proud people of Banba!"