In 1782 the Irish achieved legislative and judicial independence from Britain as well as commercial autonomy.  Yet the irish did not proclaim independence from the British Empire as the Americans did in 1776.  Why did the Irish achieve so much in 1782?  Why did they not severe their ties from the British Empire?  Why, if the Irish gained so much in 1782, did the United Irishmen actively solicit French support and a French invasion in the 1790s?  The public debate over British rule in Ireland in the late 1770s and early 1780s was quantitatively and qualitatively similar to the American debate.  In Ireland over 100,000 men took up arms in support of the Patriot cause. As in America, the Irish pursued non-importation and non-exportation agreements to persuade the British government to accede to their demands.  The Volunteers in arms were not averse to threatening force.  It turns out that they achieved their aims because the conservative government of Lord North fell in 1782, and the new British Patriot governments granted the Irish Volunteers and their Patriot allies much of what they demanded.  Surely had North's government fallen in 1774, and a British Patriot government agreed to American legislative, judicial, and commercial autonomy, it is hard to imagine that the Americans would have declared independence in July 1776.  Patriots across the Empire wanted to restructure the Empire as a confederation.  In fact the British Patriot government of Lord Shelburne and the Irish Patriot leaders were working on creating a confederal relationship between Ireland and Britain, when Shelburne's government fell from power in 1783.  The new Fox-North coalition government left Lord North in control of Irish Affairs.  North did everything he could to stoke confessional conflict in Ireland, setting Protestant Volunteers against Catholic Volunteers.  In particular he lent support to a group called the Peep of the Day Boys that soon morphed into the Orange Order.  With the resurgence of confessional conflict, later British governments gradually rescinded the concessions made in 1782, arguing that only an incorporating union could protect the rights of the Protestant Irish and the interests of the British Empire.