Catholic Church in the United Kingdom was not yet a reality, particularly in Ireland, where the Protestant Ascendancy was still in full force. The Treaty of Union of 1707, like the Act of Settlement, had stated that no "Papist" could succeed to the throne. Restrictions on the civil rights of Catholics only began to change with the passing of the Papists Act 1778, which allowed them to own property, inherit land and join the British Army, although even this measure resulted in the backlash of the Gordon Riots of 1780, showing the depth of continuing anti-Catholic feeling. After 1790, a new mood emerged as thousands of
Anti-Catholicism in the United States increasing waves of Catholic immigrants, particularly from Ireland, Italy, Poland, and Mexico. It often focused on the alleged intrigues of Catholic states or Catholic peoples against the majority Protestant United States. Historians have studied the motivations for anti-Catholicism. The historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Sr. characterized prejudice against the Catholics as "the deepest bias in the history of the American people." The conservative writer Peter Viereck once commented that (in 1960) "Catholic baiting is the anti-Semitism of the liberals." The historian John Higham described anti-Catholicism as "the most luxuriant, tenacious tradition of paranoiac agitation in American history". The historian Joseph G.