That history, until the eighteenth century begins, has a dismal simplicity about it. Murder, persecution, confiscation too truly describe its general strain; and policy is on the whole subordinated to violence as the standing instrument of government. But after, say, the reign of William III., the element of representation begins to a.s.sert itself. Simplicity is by degrees exchanged for complexity; the play of human motives, singularly diversified, now becomes visible in the currents of a real public life. It has for a very long time been my habit, when consulted by young political students, to recommend them carefully to study the characters and events of the American Independence. Quite apart from the special and temporary reasons bearing upon the case, I would now add a twin recommendation to examine and ponder the lessons of Irish history during the eighteenth century. The task may not be easy, but the reward will be ample.

The mainspring of public life had, from a venerable antiquity, lain _de jure_ within Ireland herself. The heaviest fetter upon this life was the Law of Poynings; the most ingenious device upon record for hamstringing legislative independence, because it cut off the means of resumption inherent in the nature of Parliaments such as were those of the three countries. But the Law of Poynings was an Irish Law. Its operation effectually aided on the civil side those ruder causes, under the action of which Ireland had lain for four centuries usually pa.s.sive, and bleeding at every pore. The main factors of her destiny worked, in practice, from this side the water. But from the reign of Anne, or perhaps from the Revolution onwards,

"Novus saecorum nascitur ordo."

Of the three great nostrums so liberally applied by England, extirpation and persecution had entirely failed, but confiscation had done its work.

The great Protestant landlordism of Ireland[74] had been strongly and effectually built up. But, like other human contrivances, while it held Ireland fast, it had also undesigned results. The repressed principle of national life, the struggles of which had theretofore been extinguished in blood, slowly sprang up anew in a form which, though extremely narrow, and extravagantly imperfect, was armed with const.i.tutional guarantees; and, the regimen of violence once displaced, these guarantees were sure to operate. What had been transacted in England under Plantagenets and Stuarts was, to a large extent, transacted anew by the Parliament of Ireland in the eighteenth century. That Parliament, indeed, deserves almost every imaginable epithet of censure. It was corrupt, servile, selfish, cruel. But when we have said all this, and said it truly, there is more to tell. It was alive, and it was national.

Even absenteeism, that obstinately clinging curse, though it enfeebled and distracted, could not, and did not, annihilate nationality. The Irish Legislation was, moreover, compressed and thwarted by a foreign executive; but even to this tremendous agent the vital principle was too strong eventually to succ.u.mb.

Mr. Lecky well observes that the Irish case supplied "one of the most striking examples upon record"[75] of an unconquerable efficacy in even the most defective Parliament. I am, however, doubtful whether in this proposition we have before us the whole case. This efficacy is not invariably found even in tolerably constructed Parliaments. Why do we find it in a Parliament of which the const.i.tution and the environment were alike intolerable? My answer is, because that Parliament found itself faced by a British influence which was entirely anti-national, and was thus constrained to seek for strength in the principle of nationality.

Selfishness is a rooted principle of action in nations not less than in single persons. It seems to draw a certain perfume from the virtue of patriotism, which lies upon its borders. It stalks abroad with a semblance of decency, nay, even of excellence. And under this cover a paramount community readily embraces the notion, that a dependent community may be made to exist not for its own sake, but for the sake of an extraneous society of men. With this idea, the European nations, utterly benighted in comparison with the ancient Greeks, founded their transmarine dependencies. But a vast maritime distance, perhaps aided by some filtration of sound ideas, prevented the application of this theory in its nakedness and rigour to the American Colonies of England. In Ireland we had not even the t.i.tle of founders to allege. Nay, we were, in point of indigenous civilization, the junior people. But the maritime severance, sufficient to prevent accurate and familiar knowledge, was not enough to bar the effective exercise of overmastering power. And power was exercised, at first from without, to support the Pale, to enlarge it, to make it include Ireland. When this had been done, power began, in the seventeenth century, to be exercised from within Ireland, within the precinct of its government and its inst.i.tutions. These were carefully corrupted, from the multiplication of the Boroughs by James I.

onwards, for the purpose. The struggle became civil, instead of martial; and it was mainly waged by agencies on the spot, not from beyond the Channel. When the rule of England pa.s.sed over from the old violence into legal forms and doctrines, the Irish reaction against it followed the example. And the legal idea of Irish nationality took its rise in very humble surroundings; if the expression may be allowed, it was born in the slums of politics. Ireland reached the nadir of political depression when, at and after the Boyne, she had been conquered not merely by an English force, but by continental mercenaries. The ascendant Protestantism of the island had never stood so low in the aspect it presented to this country; inasmuch as the Irish Parliament, for the first time, I believe, declared itself dependent upon England,[76] and either did not desire, or did not dare, to support its champion Molyneux, when his work a.s.serting Irish independence was burned in London. It pet.i.tioned for representation in the English Parliament, not in order to uplift the Irish people, but in order to keep them down. In its sympathies and in its aims the overwhelming ma.s.s of the population had no share. It was Swift who, by the _Drapier's Letters_, for the first time called into existence a public opinion flowing from and representing Ireland as a whole. He rea.s.serted the doctrine of Molyneux, and denounced Wood's halfpence not only as a foul robbery, but as a const.i.tutional and as a national insult. The patience of the Irish Protestants was tried very hard, and they were forced, as Sir Charles Duffy states in his vivid book, to purchase the power of oppressing their Roman Catholic fellow-countrymen at a great price.[77] Their pension list was made to provide the grants too degrading to be tolerated in England. The Presbyterians had to sit down under the Episcopal monopoly; but the enjoyment of that monopoly was not left to the Irish Episcopalians. In the time of Henry VIII. it had been necessary to import an English Archbishop Browne[78] and an English Bishop Bale, or there might not have been a single Protestant in Ireland. It was well to enrich the rolls of the Church of Ireland with the piety and learning of Ussher, and to give her in Bedell one name, at least, which carries the double crown of the hero and the saint. But, after the Restoration, by degrees the practice degenerated, and Englishmen were appointed in numbers to the Irish Episcopate in order to fortify and develop by numerical force what came to be familiarly known as the English interest. So that the Primate Boulter, during his government of Ireland, complains[79] that Englishmen are still less than one-half the whole body of Bishops, although the most important sees were to a large extent in their hands. The same practice was followed in the higher judicial offices. Fitzgibbon was the first Irishman who became Lord Chancellor.[80] The Viceroy, commonly absent, was represented by Lords Justices, who again were commonly English; and Primate Boulter, a most acute and able man, jealous of an Irish Speaker in that character, recommends that the commander of the forces should take his place.[81] When, later on, the Viceroy resided, it was a rule that the Chief Secretary should be an Englishman. On the occasion when Lord Castlereagh was by way of exception admitted to that office, an apology was found for it in his entire devotion to English policy and purposes. "His appointment," says Lord Cornwallis, "gives me great satisfaction, as he is so very unlike an Irishman!"[82] Resources were also found in the military profession, and among the voters for the Union we find the names of eight[83] English generals.

The arrangements under Poynings's Law, and the commercial proscription, drove the iron ever deeper and deeper into the souls of Irishmen. It is but small merit in the Irish Parliament of George I. and George II., if under these circ.u.mstances a temper was gradually formed in, and transmitted by, them, which might one day achieve the honours of patriotism. It was in dread of this most healthful process, that the English Government set sedulously to work for its repression. The odious policy was maintained by a variety of agencies; by the misuse of Irish revenue, a large portion of which was unhappily under their control; by maintaining the duration of the Irish House of Commons for the life of the Sovereign; and, worst of all, by extending the range of corruption within the walls, through the constant multiplication of paid offices tenable by members of Parliament without even the check of re-election on acceptance.

Thus by degrees those who sat in the Irish Houses came to feel both that they had a country, and that their country had claims upon them. The growth of a commercial interest in the Roman Catholic body must have accelerated the growth of this idea, as that interest naturally fell into line with the resistance to the English prescriptive laws. But the rate of progress was fearfully slow. It was hemmed in on every side by the obstinate unyielding pressure of selfish interests: the interest of the Established Church against the Presbyterians; the interest of the Protestant laity, or t.i.the-payers, against the clergy; the bold unscrupulous interest of a landlords' Parliament against the occupier of the soil; which, together with the grievance of the system of t.i.the-proctors, established in Ireland through the Whiteboys the fatal alliance between resistance to wrong and resistance to law, and supplied there the yet more disastrous facility of sustaining and enforcing wrong under the name of giving support to public tranquillity. Yet, forcing on its way amidst all these difficulties by a natural law, in a strange haphazard and disjointed method, and by a zigzag movement, there came into existence, and by degrees into steady operation, a sentiment native to Ireland and having Ireland for its vital basis, and yet not deserving the name of Irish patriotism, because its care was not for a nation, but for a sect. For a sect, in a stricter sense than may at first sight be supposed. The battle was not between Popery and a generalized Protestantism, though, even if it had been so, it would have been between a small minority and the vast majority of the Irish people. It was not a party of ascendency, but a party of monopoly, that ruled. It must always be borne in mind that the Roman Catholic aristocracy had been emasculated, and reduced to the lowest point of numerical and moral force by the odious action of the penal laws, and that the ma.s.s of the Roman Catholic population, clerical and lay, remained under the grinding force of many-sided oppression, and until long after the accession of George III. had scarcely a consciousness of political existence. As long as the great bulk of the nation could be equated to zero, the Episcopal monopolists had no motive for cultivating the good-will of the Presbyterians, who like the Roman Catholics maintained their religion, with the trivial exception of the _Regium Donum_, by their own resources, and who differed from them in being not persecuted, but only disabled. And this monopoly, which drew from the sacred name of religion its t.i.tle to exist, offered through centuries an example of religious sterility to which a parallel can hardly be found among the communions of the Christian world. The sentiment, then, which animated the earlier efforts of the Parliament might be _Iricism_, but did not become patriotism until it had outgrown, and had learned to forswear or to forget, the conditions of its infancy. Neither did it for a long time acquire the courage of its opinions; for, when Lucas, in the middle of the century, rea.s.serted the doctrine of Molyneux and of Swift, the Grand Jury of Dublin took part against him, and burned his book.[84] And the Parliament,[85] prompted by the Government, drove him into exile. And yet the smoke showed that there was fire. The infant, that confronted the British Government in the Parliament House, had something of the young Hercules about him. In the first exercises of strength he acquired more strength, and in acquiring more strength he burst the bonds that had confined him.

"Es machte mir zu eng, ich mussie fort."[86]

The reign of George IV. began with resolute efforts of the Parliament not to lengthen, as in England under his grandfather, but to shorten its own commission, and to become septennial. Surely this was a n.o.ble effort. It meant the greatness of their country, and it meant also personal self-sacrifice. The Parliament which then existed, elected under a youth of twenty-two, had every likelihood of giving to the bulk of its members a seat for life. This they asked to change for a _maximum_ term of seven years. This from session to session, in spite of rejection after rejection in England, they resolutely fought to obtain.

It was an English amendment which, on a doubtful pretext; changed seven years to eight. Without question some acted under the pressure of const.i.tuents; but only a minority of the members had const.i.tuents, and popular exigencies from such a quarter might have been bought off by an occasional vote, and could not have induced a war with the Executive and with England so steadily continued, unless a higher principle had been at work.

The triumph came at last; and from 1768 onwards the Commons never wholly relapsed into their former quiescence. True, this was for a Protestant House, const.i.tuency, and nation; but ere long they began to enlarge their definition of nationality. Flood and Lucas, the commanders in the real battle, did not dream of giving the Roman Catholics a political existence, but to their own const.i.tuents they performed an honourable service and gave a great boon. Those, who had insincerely supported the measure, became the dupes of their own insincerity. In the very year of this victory, a Bill for a slight relaxation of the penal laws was pa.s.sed, but met its death in England.[87] Other Bills followed, and one of them became an Act in 1771. A beginning had thus been made on behalf of religious liberty, as a corollary to political emanc.i.p.ation. It was like a little ray of light piercing its way through the rocks into a cavern and supplying the prisoner at once with guidance and with hope.

Resolute action, in withholding or shortening supply, convinced the Executive in Dublin, and the Ministry in London, that serious business was intended. And it appeared, even in this early stage, how necessary it was for a fruitful campaign on their own behalf to enlarge their basis, and enlist the sympathies of hitherto excluded fellow-subjects.

It may seem strange that the first beginnings of successful endeavour should have been made on behalf not of the "common Protestantism," but of Roman Catholics. But, as Mr. Lecky has shown, the Presbyterians had been greatly depressed and distracted, while the Roman Catholics had now a strong position in the commerce of the country, and in Dublin knocked, as it were, at the very doors of the Parliament. There may also have been an apprehension of republican sentiments among the Protestants of the north, from which the Roman Catholics were known to be free. Not many years, however, pa.s.sed before the softening and harmonizing effects, which naturally flow from a struggle for liberty, warmed the sentiment of the House in favour of the Presbyterians.

A Bill was pa.s.sed by the Irish Parliament in 1778, which greatly mitigated the stringency of the penal laws. Moreover, in its preamble was recited, as a ground for this legislation, that for "a long series of years" the Roman Catholics had exhibited an "uniform peaceable behaviour." In doing and saying so much, the Irish Parliament virtually bound itself to do more.[88] In this Bill was contained a clause which repealed the Sacramental Test, and thereby liberated the Presbyterians from disqualification. But the Bill had to pa.s.s the ordeal of a review in England, and there the clause was struck out. The Bill itself, though mutilated, was wisely pa.s.sed by a majority of 127 to 89. Even in this form it excited the enthusiastic admiration of Burke.[89] Nor were the Presbyterians forgotten at the epoch when, in 1779-80, England, under the pressure of her growing difficulties, made large commercial concessions to Ireland. The Dublin Parliament renewed the Bill for the removal of the Sacramental Test. And it was carried by the Irish Parliament in the very year which witnessed in London the disgraceful riots of Lord George Gordon, and forty-eight years before the Imperial Parliament conceded, on this side the Channel, any similar relief. Other contemporary signs bore witness to the growth of toleration; for the Volunteers, founded in 1778, and originally a Protestant body, after a time received Roman Catholics into their ranks. These impartial proceedings are all the more honourable to Irish sentiment in general, because Lord Charlemont, its champion out of doors, and Flood, long the leader of the Independent party in the Parliament, were neither of them prepared to surrender the system of Protestant ascendency.

In order to measure the s.p.a.ce which had at this period been covered by the forward movement of liberality and patriotism, it is necessary to look back to the early years of the Georgian period, when Whiggism had acquired a decisive ascendency, and the spirits of the great deep were let loose against Popery. But the temper of proscription in the two countries exhibited specific differences. Extravagant in both, it became in Ireland vulgar and indecent. In England, it was Tilburina,[90] gone mad in white satin; in Ireland it was Tilburina's maid, gone mad in white linen. The Lords Justices of Ireland, in 1715, recommended the Parliament to put an end to all other distinctions in Ireland "but that of Protestant and Papist."[91] And the years that followed seem to mark the lowest point of const.i.tutional depression for the Roman Catholic population in particular, as well as for Ireland at large. The Commons, in 1715, prayed for measures to discover any Papist enlisting in the King's service, in order that he might be expelled "and punished with the utmost severity of the law."[92] When an oath of abjuration had been imposed which prevented nearly all priests from registering, a Bill was pa.s.sed by the Commons in 1719 for branding the letter P on the cheek of all priests, who were unregistered, with a red-hot iron. The Privy Council "disliked" this punishment, and subst.i.tuted for it the loathsome measure by which safe guardians are secured for Eastern harems. The English Government could not stomach this beastly proposal; and, says Mr. Lecky,[93] unanimously restored the punishment of branding. The Bill was finally lost in Ireland, but only owing to a clause concerning leases. It had gone to England winged with a prayer from the Commons that it might be recommended "in the most effectual manner to his Majesty," and by the a.s.surance of the Viceroy in reply that they might depend on his due regard to what was desired.[94] In the same year pa.s.sed the Act which declared the t.i.tle of the British Parliament to make laws for the government of Ireland. On the accession of George II., a considerable body of Roman Catholics offered an address of congratulation. It was received by the Lords Justices with silent contempt, and no one knows whether it ever reached its destination.

Finally, the acute state-craft of Primate Boulter resisted habitually the creation of an "Irish interest," and above all any capacity of the Roman Catholics to contribute to its formation; and in the first year of George II. a clause was introduced in committee into a harmless Bill[95]

for the regulation of elections, which disfranchised at a single stroke all the Roman Catholic voters in Ireland who up to that period had always enjoyed the franchise.

It is painful to record the fact that the remarkable progress gradually achieved was in no way due to British influence. For nearly forty years from the arrival of Archbishop Boulter in Ireland, the government of Ireland was in the hands of the Primates. The harshness of administration was gradually tempered, especially in the brief viceroyalty of Lord Chesterfield; but the British policy was steadily opposed to the enlargement of Parliamentary privilege, or the creation of any Irish interest, however narrow its basis, while the political extinction of the ma.s.s of the people was complete. The pecuniary wants, however, of the Government, extending beyond the hereditary revenue, required a resort to the national purse. The demands which were accordingly made, and these alone, supplied the Parliament with a vantage-ground, and a principle of life. The action of this principle brought with it civilizing and humanizing influences, which had become clearly visible in the early years of George III., and which were cherished by the war of American Independence, as by a strong current of fresh air in a close and murky dungeon.

The force of principles, and the significance of political achievements, is to be estimated in no small degree by the slenderness of the means available to those who promote them. And the progress brought about in the Irish Parliament is among the most remarkable on record, because it was effected against the joint resistance of a hostile Executive and of an intolerable const.i.tution. Of the three hundred members, about two-thirds were nominated by individual patrons and by close corporations. What was still worse, the action of the Executive was increasingly directed, as the pulse of the national life came to beat more vigorously, to the systematic corruption of the Parliament borough pensions and paid offices. In the latter part of the century, more than one-third of the members of Parliament were dismissible at pleasure from public emoluments. If the base influence of the Executive allied itself with the patriotic party, everything might be hoped. For we must bear in mind not only the direct influence of this expenditure on those who were in possession, but the enormous power of expectancy on those who were not. Conversely, when the Government were determined to do wrong, there were no means commonly available of forcing it to do right, in any matter that touched either religious bigotry or selfish interest. With so miserable an apparatus, and in the face of the ever-wakeful Executive sustained by British power, it is rather wonderful how much than how little was effected. I am not aware of a single case in which a measure on behalf of freedom was proposed by British agency, and rejected by the Irish Parliament. On the other hand, we have a long list of the achievements of that Parliament due to a courage and perseverance which faced and overcame a persistent English opposition. Among other exploits, it established periodical elections, obtained the writ of Habeas Corpus, carried the independence of the judges, repealed the Test Act, limited the abominable expenditure on pensions, subjected the acceptance of office from the crown to the condition of re-election, and achieved, doubtless with the powerful aid of the volunteers, freedom of trade with England, and the repeal of Poynings's Act, and of the British Act of 1719.[96]

All this it did without the manifestation, either within the walls or among the Roman Catholic population, of any disposition to weaken the ties which bound Ireland to the empire. All this it did; and what had the British Parliament been about during the same period, with its vastly greater means both of self-defence and of action? It had been building up the atrocious criminal code, tampering in the case of Wilkes with liberty of election, and tampering with many other liberties; driving, too, the American Colonies into rebellion, while, as to good legislation, the century is almost absolutely blank, until between 1782 and 1793 we have the establishment of Irish freedom, the economical reform of Mr. Burke, the financial reforms of Mr. Pitt, the new libel law of Mr. Fox, and the legislative const.i.tution of Canada, in which both these great statesmen concurred.

But we have not yet reached the climax of Irish advancement. When, in 1782 and 1783, the legislative relations of the two countries were fundamentally rectified by the formal acknowledgment of Irish nationality, the beginning of a great work was accomplished; but its final consummation, though rendered practicable and even easy, depended wholly on the continuing good intention of the British Cabinet. The Acts of 1782 and 1783 required a supplemental arrangement, to obviate those secondary difficulties in the working of the two Legislatures, which supplied Mr. Pitt with his main parliamentary plea for the Union.

What was yet more important was the completion of the scheme in Ireland itself. And this under three great heads: (1) The purification of Parliament by a large measure of reform; (2) the abolition of all Roman Catholic disabilities; (3) the establishment of a proper relation between the Legislative and the Executive powers. It is often urged, with cynical disregard to justice and reason, that with the Grattan Parliament we had corruption, coercion, discontent, and finally rebellion. But the political mischiefs, which disfigure the brief life of the Grattan Parliament, and the failure to obtain the two first of the three great purposes I have named, were all in the main due to the third grand flaw in the Irish case after 1782. I mean the false position, and usually mischievous character, of the Irish Executive, which, with its army of placemen and expectants in Parliament, was commonly absolute master of the situation. Well does Mr. Swift MacNeill,[97] in his very useful work, quote the words of Mr. Fox in 1797: "The advantages, which the form of a free Government seemed to promise, have been counteracted by the influence of the Executive Government, and of the British Cabinet."

There were five Viceroys between 1782 and 1790. Then came a sixth, Lord Westmoreland, the worst of them all, whose political judgment was on a par with his knowledge of the English language.[98] The great settlement of 1782-3 was in the main worked by men who were radically adverse to its spirit and intention. But they were omnipotent in their control of the unreformed. Parliament of Ireland, more and more drenched, under their unceasing and pestilent activity, with fresh doses of corruption.

Westmoreland and his myrmidons actually persuaded Pitt, in 1792, that Irish Protestantism and its Parliament were unconquerably adverse to the admission of Roman Catholics to the franchise; but when the proposal was made from the Throne in 1793, notwithstanding the latent hostility of the Castle, the Parliament pa.s.sed the Bill with little delay, and "without any serious opposition."[99] The votes against it were one and three on two divisions[100] respectively. A minority of sixty-nine supported, against the Government, a clause for extending the measure to seats in Parliament. That clause, lost by a majority of ninety-four, might apparently have been carried, but for "Dublin Castle," by an even larger majority.

I shall not here examine the interesting question, whether the mission of Lord Fitzwilliam was wholly due to the action of those Whig statesmen who were friendly to the war, but disinclined to a junction with Mr.

Pitt except on condition of a fundamental change in the administration of Ireland. Nor shall I dwell upon his sudden, swift, and disastrous recall. But I purpose here to invite attention to the most remarkable fact in the whole history of the Irish Parliament. When the Viceroy's doom was known, when the return to the policy and party of ascendency lay darkly lowering in the immediate future, this diminutive and tainted Irish Parliament, with a chivalry rare even in the n.o.blest histories, made what can hardly be called less than a bold attempt to arrest the policy of retrogression adopted by the Government in London. Lord Fitzwilliam was the declared friend of Roman Catholic Emanc.i.p.ation, which was certain to be followed by reform; and he had struck a death-blow at bigotry and monopoly in the person of their heads, Mr.

Beresford and Mr. Cooke. The Bill of Emanc.i.p.ation was introduced on the 12th of February,[101] with only three dissentient voices. On the 14th, when the London Cabinet had declared dissent from the proceedings of their Viceroy without recalling him, Sir L. Parsons at once moved an address, imploring him to continue among them, and only postponed it at the friendly request of Mr. Ponsonby.[102] On the 2nd of March, when the recall was a fact, the House voted that Lord Fitzwilliam merited "the thanks of that House, and the confidence of the people."[103] On the 5th the Duke of Leinster moved, and the House of Peers carried, a similar resolution.[104]

At this epoch I pause. Here there opens a new and disastrous drama of disgrace to England and misery to Ireland. This is the point at which we may best learn the second and the greatest lesson taught by the history of Ireland in the eighteenth century. It is this, that, awful as is the force of bigotry, hidden under the mask of religion, but fighting for plunder and for power with all the advantages of possession, of prescription, and of extraneous support, there is a David that can kill this Goliath. That conquering force lies in the principle of nationality.

It was the growing sense of nationality that prompted the Irish Parliament to develop its earlier struggles for privilege on the narrow ground into a genuine contest for freedom, civil and religious, on a ground as broad as Ireland, nay, as humanity at large. If there be such things as contradictions in the world of politics, they are to be found in nationality on the one side, and bigotry of all kinds on the other, but especially religious bigotry, which is of all the most baneful.

Whatever is given to the first of these two is lost to the second. I speak of a reasonable and reasoning, not of a blind and headstrong nationality; of a nationality which has regard to circ.u.mstances and to traditions, and which only requires that all relations, of incorporation or of independence, shall be adjusted to them according to the laws of Nature's own enactment. Such a nationality was the growth of the last century in Ireland. As each Irishman began to feel that he had a country, to which he belonged, and which belonged to him, he was, by a true process of nature, drawn more and more into brotherhood, and into the sense of brotherhood, with those who shared the allegiance and the property, the obligation and the heritage. And this idea of country, once well conceived, presents itself as a very large idea, and as a framework for most other ideas, so as to supply the basis of a common life. Hence it was that, on the coming of Lord Fitzwilliam, the whole generous emotion of the country leapt up with one consent, and went forth to meet him. Hence it was that religious bigotry was no longer an appreciable factor in the public life of Ireland. Hence it was that on his recall, and in order to induce acquiescence in his recall, it became necessary to divide again the host that had, welcomed him--to put one part of it in array as Orangemen, who were to be pampered and inflamed; and to quicken the self-consciousness of another and larger ma.s.s by repulsion and proscription, by stripping Roman Catholics of arms in the face of licence and of cruelty, and, finally, by clothing the extreme of lawlessness with the forms of law.

Within the last twelve months we have seen, in the streets of Belfast, the painful proof that the work of Beresford and of Castlereagh has been found capable for the moment of revival. To aggravate or sustain Irish disunion, religious bigotry has been again evoked in Ireland. If the curse be an old one, there is also an old cure, recorded in the grand pharmacopoeia of history; and if the abstract force of policy and prudence are insufficient for the work, we may yet find that the evil spirit will be effectually laid by the gentle influence of a living and working Irish nationality. _Quod faxit Deus._

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 73: _2 Henry VI._, act iii. sc. 1.]

[Footnote 74: Lecky's _History of England in the Eighteenth Century_, chap, vii. vol. ii, p. 205.]

[Footnote 75: Lecky's _History of England in the Eighteenth Century_, vol. ii. p. 227.]

[Footnote 76: Duffy's _Bird's-Eye View_, p. 164.]

[Footnote 77: Duffy's _Bird's-Eye View_, p. 166.]

[Footnote 78: See Ball's _History of the Church of Ireland_, a valuable work, deserving of more attention than it seems to have received.]

[Footnote 79: Boulter's _Letters_, i. 138, _et alibi_.]

[Footnote 80: Lecky's _History of England in the Eighteenth Century_, ii.]

[Footnote 81: Boulter's _Letters_, vol. ii.]

[Footnote 82: Cornwallis's _Correspondence_, ii. 441.]

[Footnote 83: Grattan's _Life and Times_, v. 173.]

[Footnote 84: Lecky, ii. 430.]

[Footnote 85: Duffy, p. 177.]

[Footnote 86: Schiller's _Wallenstein_.]

[Footnote 87: Lecky, iv. 489.]

[Footnote 88: Lecky, iv. 477-479; Brown, _Laws against Catholics_, pp.

329-332.]

[Footnote 89: Lecky, pp. 499-501.]

[Footnote 90: Sheridan's _Critic_, act iii. sc. I.]

[Footnote 91: Plowden's _History_ (1809), ii. 70.]