hough he became a minister of the
Protestant Church, and held considerable emoluments therein, he had the
honesty to see, and the courage to acknowledge, its many corruptions.
The great lesson which he preached to Irishmen was the lesson of
nationality; and, perhaps, they have yet to learn it in the sense in
which he intended to teach it. No doubt, Swift, in some way, prepared
the path of Burke; for, different as were their respective careers and
their respective talents, they had each the same end in view. The
"Drapier" was long the idol of his countrymen, and there can be little
doubt that the spirit of his writings did much to animate the patriots
who followed him--Lucas, Flood, and Grattan. Lucas was undoubtedly one
of the purest patriots of his time. His parents were poor farmers in the
county Clare, who settled in Dublin, where Lucas was born, in 1713; and
in truth patriotism seldom develops itself out of purple and fine linen.
Flood, however, may be taken in exception to this inference; his father
was a Chief Justice of the Irish King's Bench. When elected a member of
the Irish House, his first public effort was for the freedom of his
country from the atrocious imposition of Poyning's Law. Unfortunately,
he and Grattan quarrelled, and their country was deprived of the immense
benefits which might have accrued to it from the cordial political union
of two such men.

But a list of the great men of the eighteenth century, however brief,
would be certainly most imperfect if I omitted the name of the Earl of
Charlemont, who, had his courage been equal to his honesty of purpose,
might have been enrolled not merely as an ardent, but even as a
successful patriot. He was one of the _Hibernis ipsis Hiberniores_,--one
of those who came to plunder, and who learned to respect their victims,
and to repent their oppressions. It is probable that the nine years
which the young Earl spent in travelling on the Continent, contributed
not a little to his mental enlargement. On his return from countries
where freedom exists with boasting, to a country where boasting exists
without a corresponding amount of freedom, he was amazed and shocked at
the first exhibition of its detestable tyranny of class. A grand
procession of peers and peeresses was appointed to receive the
unfortunate Princess Caroline; but, before the Princess landed, the
Duchess of Bedford was commanded to inform the Irish peeresses that they
were not to walk, or to tak