Don't be disingenuous, Jim. Ireland was never a "solid part of the British Empire", as many other countries were, hard as it may be to recall it now. I know there was a briefish Sepoy Revolt, Indian Mutiny, whevs, in the 1850s; but in Ireland it has been a long & unbroken history of simmering resentment with many actual outbreaks. Even in the patriotic wartime 1940s, I remember being taught as fact by Miss Holding at Northampton Town & County School that "We have always misgoverned Ireland" [her very words SFAIR], going into all the history of Cromwell, the Georges, the lot. "Solid part of the Empire" forsooth!.

~M~