ould have carried the King and the English
Parliament with him, he would, in spite of any opposition at Dublin by
the adherents of Ascendancy, have emancipated the Catholics, just as,
when backed by the King and the English Parliament, he did, in the face
of strenuous opposition in Ireland, pass the Act of Union. And even at
the present day the most plausible charge which can be brought against
the working of the Act of Union is that Ireland under it fails to obtain
the full benefit of the British constitution, and that in spite of her
hundred representatives she is not for practical purposes represented at
Westminster in the same sense as is Middlesex or Midlothian. A
Parliament again is less capable than a King of compensating for the
evils of tyranny by the benefit of good administration, and here we come
across a matter hardly to be understood by any one who has not with some
care compared the action and the spirit of English and of continental
administrative systems. It is hardly an exaggeration to assert that even
now we have in the United Kingdom nothing like what foreigners mean by
an administration. We know nothing of that official hierarchy which on
the Continent represents the authority of the State.[12] Englishmen are
accustomed to consider that institutions under which the business of the
country is carried on by unconnected local bodies, such as the
magistrates in quarter session, or the corporations of boroughs,
controlled in the last resort only by the law courts, ought to be the
subject of unqualified admiration. Foreign observers might, even as
regards England itself, have something to set off against the merits of
a system which is, if the apparent contradiction of terms may be
excused, no system at all, and might point out that in continental
countries the administration may often be the intelligent guide and
protector of the weak and needy. The system complimented by the name of
self-government, even if as beneficial for England as Englishmen are
inclined without absolute proof to believe, is absolutely unsuitable for
a country harassed by religious and social feuds, where the owners of
land are not and cannot be the trusted guides of the people. An
impartial official is a better ruler than a hostile or distrusted
landowner, and any one who bears in mind the benefits conferred by the
humanity and justice of Turgot on a single province of France may,
without being any friend of despotism, hold that in