As had previously happened after General Burgoyne's defeat at Saratoga, the instinctive reaction of leading patriots in the immediate aftermath of Lord Cornwallis's surrender at Yorktown was to rally around the throne. Barry Yelverton had intended to move a resolution calling for the amendment of Poynings' law on 4 December but instead proposed an address effusive in its expression of loyalty to the crown, the British connection and the empire. In his speech on the occasion he declared that:

The address was opposed by a minority of opposition members on the grounds that it might encourage government to persist with the American war, but was adopted by the overwhelming margin of 167 votes to 37.

The debate in the House of Commons on the loyal address proposed by Barry Yelverton testifies to the profoundly pro-British outlook of the Anglo-Irish political élite. The address was seconded by Samuel Bradstreet, one of the members for Dublin city and a regular opponent of government measures, who pledged that the Irish opposition would ‘act in a very different manner from what is called the opposition in England’ and called on his fellow patriots to ‘demonstrate by our unanimity in the hour of trial, that in our opposition we have only the good of the empire at heart’.