rong
under the name of giving support to public tranquillity. Yet, forcing on
its way amidst all these difficulties by a natural law, in a strange
haphazard and disjointed method, and by a zigzag movement, there came
into existence, and by degrees into steady operation, a sentiment native
to Ireland and having Ireland for its vital basis, and yet not deserving
the name of Irish patriotism, because its care was not for a nation, but
for a sect. For a sect, in a stricter sense than may at first sight be
supposed. The battle was not between Popery and a generalized
Protestantism, though, even if it had been so, it would have been
between a small minority and the vast majority of the Irish people. It
was not a party of ascendency, but a party of monopoly, that ruled. It
must always be borne in mind that the Roman Catholic aristocracy had
been emasculated, and reduced to the lowest point of numerical and moral
force by the odious action of the penal laws, and that the mass of the
Roman Catholic population, clerical and lay, remained under the grinding
force of many-sided oppression, and until long after the accession of
George III. had scarcely a consciousness of political existence. As long
as the great bulk of the nation could be equated to zero, the Episcopal
monopolists had no motive for cultivating the good-will of the
Presbyterians, who like the Roman Catholics maintained their religion,
with the trivial exception of the _Regium Donum_, by their own
resources, and who differed from them in being not persecuted, but only
disabled. And this monopoly, which drew from the sacred name of religion
its title to exist, offered through centuries an example of religious
sterility to which a parallel can hardly be found among the communions
of the Christian world. The sentiment, then, which animated the earlier
efforts of the Parliament might be _Iricism_, but did not become
patriotism until it had outgrown, and had learned to forswear or to
forget, the conditions of its infancy. Neither did it for a long time
acquire the courage of its opinions; for, when Lucas, in the middle of
the century, reasserted the doctrine of Molyneux and of Swift, the Grand
Jury of Dublin took part against him, and burned his book.[84] And the
Parliament,[85] prompted by the Government, drove him into exile. And
yet the smoke showed that there was fire. The infant, that confronted
the British Government in the Parliament House, had something of the
youn