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V.

constitution forbade an experiment which might have
been dangerous to our own liberties. Ireland was in
fact a foreign country; we preferred to assume that
she was an integral part of the empire. We imposed
upon her our own modes of self-government; we
gave her a parliament, we gave her our trial by jury
and our common law; we assimilated the Irish Church
to our own; and these magnificent institutions refused
to root themselves in an uncongenial soil. The Par-
liament was forbidden to legislate till its decisions
had been shaped for it beforehand. The rule of
feudal tenure inflicted forfeiture on rebellion; the
native owners were therefore dispossessed for assert-
ing the liberties of their country; and their estates
were bestowed upon aliens. The Irish preferred
their own laws to ours. They became in conse-
quence 'Irish enemies' and outlaws, and might
be wronged and killed with impunity. When we
forced them at last to submit to our laws, trial by
jury made the execution of them impossible; and with
equal impunity the colonists could then be murdered,
their cattle houghed, and their daughters ravished
by the natives. The Church being an estate of the
realm and a governing section of the constitution, the
Church in the two countries had to be shaped on the
same pattern. At the conquest we forced the Irish
Church into submission to the Papacy. At the Re-
formation we forced it to apostatise. As the Reforma-
tion pursued its course, the theory of our Church
Establishment split the garrison of Protestants, whom
we had planted in the island, into hostile camps.
free representative legislature which yet was not free
and was not representative-a gentry who could not
rule-a Church which could not teach-laws which

A

could not be enforced-these were the consequences which resulted from the preference of unreality to fact. They might all have been avoided had the truth been acknowledged and acted on; but England was unable to recognise that constitutional liberty in our country might be constitutional slavery in another.

If the object was to absorb and extinguish the spirit of Irish nationality, it singularly failed of attainment. Had the union been conceded for which the presentiments of the Irish Parliament led them to petition in 1704; had trade and manufactures been allowed to develop, and the stream of British Protestant emigration been directed continuously into all parts of the island, the native population might have been overborne or driven out, and the mother country might have retained the affections of a people with whom she would then have been identified in interest and sentiment. By a contemptible jealousy she flung them back upon themselves, a minority amidst a hostile population, and condemned them to idleness and impoverishment; she left them to add their own grievances to the accumulated wrongs of the entire country; while she left them at the same time their own Parliament, in which the national discontent could find a voice; and taught them to look for allies among her own enemies.

The Protestant revolt will form the subject of the present volume. It was an act of madness-madness in the colony which revolted-madness in the mother country which provoked the quarrel. The colonists were an army of occupation amidst a spoliated nation who were sullenly brooding over their wrongs. By England's help alone they could hope to retain their ascendency. It was England's highest interest to

CHAP.

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BOOK keep the garrison strong, if she was to escape a recur

V.

rence of the dangers which had already cost her so dear. The colonists in their own vanity and exasperation forgot or despised the peril from a race whom they regarded as slaves. England, half conscious of an injustice which she was too proud or too negligent to redress, attempted to hold the colony in check by patronising and elevating the Catholic Celts. Before the story can proceed, the events mentioned at the close of the last chapter require to be described more particularly.

Poisonous as were the laws in restraint of trade, unequal as was the executive government to the repression of the most vulgar crimes, the administration of Ireland possessed a single merit. If it did nothing, it cost little. The taxation was light, and the finances, notwithstanding the infamy of the Pension List, were economically managed. At the middle of the century the annual revenue averaged eight hundred thousand pounds. Of the entire sum, the fixed excise and customs duties, the quit rents, and the hearth money which had been settled upon the Crown, and were beyond control of Parliament, produced three quarters, which were supplemented by a biennial grant. A debt of a million incurred in the Spanish succession war was materially reduced on the re-establishment of peace. In 1749 the income exceeded the expenditure, and it was agreed on all hands that the surplus should be appropriated to the discharge of the little that remained. On the principle there was no difference. But whether the Irish House of Commons was to have the honour of suggesting the appropriation in compliance with their asserted privilege of originating their own money bills, or whether it was to be recom

I.

mended from England, according to the English CHAP. construction of Poynings' Act, which forbade the introduction of bills into the Irish Parliament that had not been first submitted to the English Council, became a burning question. The self-respect of Ireland was held to depend on the right solution of it, and the two countries flung themselves into the struggle with a passion of political desperation during three biennial sessions. In 1749, in 1751, and in 1753 the Viceroys informed the Commons in the speech from the throne that his majesty would recommend the application of the surplus to the payment of debt. The Commons took no notice of the recommendation, drew the heads of their bills on their own initiation, and forwarded them to England. In England the heads were altered by the Council, and the King's previous çonsent was re-introduced. Twice the Irish Parliament submitted with murmurs. In 1753, under the viceroyalty of the Duke of Dorset, they threw out the altered bill by a majority of five. The additional duties were refused and the business of the country was brought to a standstill.

A majority in the House of Commons was at this time returned by four great families. The Fitzgeralds of Kildare, the Boyles, the Ponsonbys, and the Beresfords, by their county influence and their private boroughs, were the political sovereigns of Ireland. The government was carried on by their assistance, and they received in return the patronage of the State. The Viceroy understood the meaning of the vote. The great houses were affecting patriotism for objects of their own, and he found it necessary to capitulate. The terms were privately arranged; Boyle, the Speaker of the House of Commons, was

1753.

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V.

made Earl of Shannon, with a pension of 2,000l. a year. John Ponsonby succeeded Boyle as Speaker. The patriot orators were silenced by promotions. Anthony Malone became Chancellor of the Exchequer; Stannard, Recorder of Dublin, another eloquent exponent of the wrongs of Ireland, was made Prime Sergeant. The opposition to England's initiation of money bills was suspended till the great families were again hungry, and fresh expectants of promotion were in a position to be troublesome.

The Parliament determined with the Sovereign. On the death of George the Second the House, which had been elected at his accession, came to its mature end, and in October, 1761, the first session was to open of the new representation.

Anticipating a demand for a fine on the renewal of the lease, and resolved to resist at the outset the patriotic affectations which were used as a pretext for agitation, the English Council inserted in the first bill, which was sent over to be laid before the new Parliament, a clause for the application of a sum of money. The Earl of Halifax, who was now viceroy, was deafened with the clamours of the Irish servants of the Crown, and doubted the wisdom of his chiefs. supporters of Government threatened apostacy. The ministers, Halifax thought, might be right in the abstract, but they were pressing an invidious claim in the face of a notorious prejudice. The supplies might be again challenged, and at the opening of a new reign it might be unwise to commence with a quarrel.' The Secretary of State2 gave the Viceroy to under

1 'Halifax to the Earl of Egremont, October 11, 1761.' S. P. O. 2 Wyndham, Earl of Egremont,

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who took office with Newcastle in 1761.