the benefit of Mr. Wood, "a mean man,
a hardware dealer," every human being in Ireland was about to be
deliberately robbed and ruined. His logic sounded unanswerable to the
ignorant. His diatribes produced the most extraordinary effect. A
terrific panic set in, and so overwhelming was the sensation that the
Ministers in the end found it necessary to cancel the patent, and
suspend the issue of Wood's halfpence. For the first time in Irish
history public opinion, unsupported by arms, had carried its point: an
epoch of vast importance in the history of every country.

That Swift knew perfectly well that the actual value of the copper
coinage was not a matter of profound importance may be taken for
granted, and so far his conduct is certainly not justifiable on any very
strict rule of ethics. If the pennies were of small importance, however,
there were other things that were of more. Little of a patriot as he
was, little as he was supposed, or supposed himself, to care for Ireland
or Irishmen, his wrath burnt fiercely at what he saw around him. He saw,
too, his own wrongs, as others have done before and since, "writ large"
in the wrongs of the country, and resented them as such. With his keen,
practical knowledge of men, he knew, moreover, how thick was that
medium, born of prejudice and ignorance, through which he had to
pierce--a medium through which nothing less pointed than the forked
lightnings of his own terrible wit could have found its way. Whatever
his motives were, his success at least is indisputable. High Churchman
as he was, vehement anti-papist as he was, he became from that moment,
and remained to the hour of his death, beyond all question the most
popular man in Ireland and his name was ever afterwards upon the lips of
all who aspired to promote the best interests and prosperity of
their country.

XLVIIL

HENRY FLOOD.

The forty years which follow maybe passed rapidly over. They were years
of absolute tranquillity in Ireland, but beyond that rather negative
praise little of good can be reported of them. Public opinion was to all
practical purposes dead, and the functions of Parliament were little
more than nominal. Unlike the English one, the Irish Parliament had by
the nature of its constitution, no natural termination, save by a
dissolution, or by the death of the sovereign. Thus George the Second's
Irish Parliament sat for no less than thirty-three years, from the
beginning to the end of his reig