y,
utterly failed. The ruling class found government too profitable to
share it with other possessors. It was only by hard bribery that the
English viceroys could secure their co-operation in the simplest
measures of administration. "If ever there was a country unfit to govern
itself," said Lord Hutchinson, "it is Ireland. A corrupt aristocracy, a
ferocious commonalty, a distracted Government, a divided people!"

[Sidenote: Irish Emancipation.]

The real character of this Parliamentary rule was seen in the rejection
of Pitt's offer of free trade. In Pitt's eyes the danger of Ireland lay
above all in the misery of its people. Although the Irish Catholics were
held down by the brute force of their Protestant rulers, he saw that
their discontent was growing fast into rebellion, and that one secret
at any rate of their discontent lay in Irish poverty, a poverty
increased if not originally brought about by the jealous exclusion of
Irish products from their natural markets in England itself. One of his
first commercial measures therefore, as we have seen, aimed at putting
an end to this exclusion by a bill which established freedom of trade
between the two islands. But though he met successfully the fears and
jealousies of the English farmers and manufacturers he was foiled by the
factious ignorance of the Irish landowners, and his bill was rejected by
the Irish Parliament. So utterly was he discouraged that for the moment
he ceased from all further attempts to improve the condition of Ireland.
But the efforts which the French revolutionists made to excite rebellion
amongst the Irish roused him to fresh measures of conciliation and good
government. The hopes of some reform of the Irish Parliament had been
fanned by the eloquence of Grattan and by the pressure of the United
Irishmen, an association which had sprung up in Ulster, where Protestant
dissenters, who were equally excluded with Catholics from any share in
political power, formed the strongest part of the population. These
hopes however were growing every day fainter. To the Irish aristocracy
parliamentary reform meant the close of a corrupt rule which had gone on
unchecked since the American war. But to the Irish Catholic it meant
far more; it meant his admission, not only to the electoral franchise,
but in the end to all the common privileges of citizenship from which he
was excluded, his "emancipation," to use the word which now became
common, from the yoke of sla