d not see that the more he wrestled for the
independence of a sham Parliament, while resisting its transformation
into a real Parliament, the more he strengthened those influences,
because he inevitably widened the gulf between Parliament and the Irish
people. The glamour his brilliant gifts had thrown over the Irish
Parliament only served to divert his own mind and the minds of other
talented and high-minded men from the seat of disease in Ireland. Time
and talent were wasted from the first over points of pride, trivialities
which seemed portentous to over-sensitive minds; metaphysical puzzles as
to the exact nature of the relations now existing between Ireland and
England; whether the repeal of the Poynings' Act and the Declaratory Act
were sufficient guarantees of freedom; whether Ireland herself should
nominate a Regent or accept the nomination from England. Meanwhile, the
sands were running out, and Ireland was a slave to a minute but powerful
minority of her sons and, only through them, to England.

Yet the heart of Ireland was sound. All the materials for regeneration
were there. The Catholics, whom by an old inherited instinct Grattan
professed to dread, were the most Conservative part of the population,
so Conservative as to be unaware of the source of their miseries,
without the smallest leaning towards a counter-ascendancy, and without a
notion of sedition or rebellion. Paradox as it seems, if they leaned in
any political direction, it was dimly towards the constituted authority
of the day, the Irish Parliament. But the truth is that they were
without political consciousness, behind the times, unappreciative of the
new forces operating round them. In sore need of courageous and
enlightened guidance from men of their own faith, they were almost
leaderless. The leeway to be made up after the destructive action of the
penal laws was so enormous that Catholic philanthropists had no time or
will for high politics, and devoted their whole energy to the further
relaxation of those laws, to the education of their backward
co-religionists, and to the mitigation of poverty. For relief they
instinctively looked towards the only legal source of relief, though the
source of secular oppression, Parliament. But this was habit. The
Catholics at this time were like clay in the hands of the potter, open
to any curative and ennobling impulse. That impulse came, as was right
and natural, from the Protestant side. The only healthy