Act of Union (pt. I)

I currently have three books checked out of the library, all having to do with Irish history. I was doing some reading on Friday, cleverly wrote down some page numbers on my hand, and then, even more cleverly, I got a manicure and washed my hands several times. Not my finest moment perhaps, but I digress.
The three books are this (we’ll call this source 1), this (source 2), and this (source 3).
In one of them I read the interesting point that The Act of Union (made in 1800, put into effect in 1801) changed the divisions within Ireland itself. To arrive at this conclusion though, we must know what the Act of Union is. As mentioned before, PM Pitt had promised complete emancipation for Catholics to be made within the Act of Union, but the question I left off before was if this actually happened (2). Unsurprisingly, the answer is no. Pitt surrendered his position when faced with strong opposition from the king and other ministers.
In fact, the Act of Union is nicely summarized by this website.

In 1800 the Act of Union was passed by both the Irish and British parliaments despite much opposition. It was signed by George III in August 1800 to become effective on 1 January 1801. Pitt intended to follow the Act of Union with other, more far reaching reforms, including Catholic Emancipation, but was thwarted by George III, who refused to break his Coronation Oath to uphold the Anglican Church. The 1801 Act of Union said that

* Ireland was to be joined to Great Britain into a single kingdom, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.
* the Dublin parliament was abolished. Ireland was to be represented at Westminster by 100 MPs, 4 Lords Spiritual and 28 Lords Temporal (all were Anglicans).
* the Anglican Church was to be recognised as the official Church of Ireland.
* there was to be free trade between Ireland and Britain.
* Ireland was to keep a separate Exchequer and was to be responsible for two-seventeenths of the general expense of the United Kingdom.
* Ireland kept its own Courts of Justice and civil service.
* no Catholics were to be allowed to hold public office.
* there was to be no Catholic Emancipation.

The “Coronation Oath” (wiki-link here) is an act of Parliament which is an equivalent to the Oath of Office in the United States, in which the monarch promises to maintain “the true Profession of the Gospel and the Protestant Reformed Religion Established by Law.”

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