Froude looked at the rebellion and the Union from an Orange Lodge, and his book is really an Orange manifesto.

Such works have their purpose, and Froude's is an unusually eloquent specimen of its class; but they are not history, any more than the speech of Lord Clare on the Union, or the Diary of Wolfe Tone.

Froude does not explain, nor seem to understand, what the supporters of the Irish Legislature meant.

Speaker Foster said that the whole unbribed intellect of Ireland was against the Union.
Foster was the last Speaker in the Irish House of Commons.

He had been elected in 1790 against the "patriot" Ponsonby, and was opposed to the Catholic franchise in 1793.