an in any other country in
Europe, is one of the most striking features in contemporary English
life. The loyalty of a nation is chiefly due to associations formed by
events in its history. The extreme unpopularity of Queen Victoria in
Great Britain in the earlier years of her reign, which arose from her
retirement as far as possible from public life on the death of the
Prince Consort, completely disappeared with the passage of years, when
her age, her sex, and her private virtues overcame the antipathy which a
very natural reticence on the part of a grief-stricken widow had
aroused throughout Great Britain. The associations connected with the
Crown in Ireland are not many. From the day on which Dutch William beat
English James at the Boyne in circumstances not calculated to arouse the
enthusiasm of Irish Catholics for either the lawful king or the usurper,
no Sovereign set foot in Ireland till George IV. visited the country in
1824. The main function of Ireland as regards the monarchs of that time
was that its pension list served to provide for the maintenance of Royal
favourites as to whose income they wished no questions to be asked.
Curran thundered against the Irish pension list as "containing every
variety of person, from the excellence of a Hawke or a Rodney to the
base situation of a lady who humbleth herself that she may be exalted."
In saying this he was understating rather than overstating the case,
since a very cursory inspection of the State papers will reveal the fact
that the mistresses and bastards of every English King, from Charles II.
to George II., drew their incomes from the Irish establishment free from
the inquisitive prying of the English House of Commons. Although George
III. had no need to conceal any palace scandals in this way, we have
seen how the bigotry of "an old, mad, blind, despised, and dying king"
postponed Emancipation for more than a generation, and one of the
"princes, the dregs of their dull race," of whom Shelley went on to
speak, the Duke of York, declared in the House of Lords in 1825--"I will
oppose the Catholic claims whatever may be my situation in life. So help
me God."

The respectful reception accorded to Queen Victoria--whose dislike of
Ireland was notorious--on the very rare occasions on which she visited
the country serves to show the absence of hostility to the Crown on the
part of the great mass of the people, but the small number of these
visits during the course of