THE most striking features of the popular political response in Ireland to the attempts between mid-1798 and mid-1800 to bring about the legislative union of Britain and Ireland are its comparative uneventfulness and traditional character. On first encounter, this observation may appear provocative since it is still commonly perceived, the work of G.C. Bolton notwithstanding, that the Act of Union was imposed upon a reluctant parliament and an antipathetic people. Moreover, it does not sit easily with what we know of popular anti-unionism in eighteenth-century Ireland, the most celebrated manifestation of which was the anti-union riot of 3 December 1759 when the Dublin mob invaded both houses of parliament and assaulted a number of leading officeholders arising out of a rumour that a legislative union was intended. Arising out of such manifestations of popular attachment to a domestic Irish parliament, and the high level of political, social and criminal violence during the 1790s, it is hardly surprising that leading figures in the Irish administration anticipated that serious public disorder would be a feature of the opposition to a union in 1798–1800. In point of fact, the decisive defeat of the 1798 rebellion and the strenuous efforts of United Irish leaders to minimise the extent of their revolutionary involvement thereafter ensured that there was no overt popular resistance from a quarter which, during the 1790s, treated every reference to a union with disdain.