re ever been a moment when Protestant Ulstermen,
heirs of the noble Volunteer spirit, once represented in such a
Parliament, would have acted on the assumption that they had to meet a
policy of revenge. Nevertheless, Fitzgibbonism did succeed, as it was to
succeed in Canada, in making pessimism at least plausible and in
achieving an immense amount of direct ascertainable mischief.

The rift between the creeds and races, just beginning to heal three
generations after the era of confiscation, but reopened under the
operations of economic forces connected with race and religion, yet
perfectly capable of adjustment by a wise and instructed Government,
yawned wide from 1798 onwards, when Government had become a soulless
policeman, and scenes of frenzy and slaughter had occurred which could
not be forgotten. Swept asunder by a power outside their control,
Protestants and Catholics stood henceforth in opposite political camps,
and it became a fixed article of British policy to govern Ireland by
playing upon this antagonism. The flame of the Volunteer spirit never
perished, but it dwindled to a spark under the irresistible weight of a
manufactured reaction. Dissenters and Anglicans united, not to lead the
way in securing better conditions for their Catholic fellow-countrymen,
not for the interests of Ireland as a whole, but under the ignoble
colours of religious fanaticism. Hence that strangely artificial
alliance between the landlords of the South and West and the democratic
tenantry, artisans, and merchants of the North; an alliance formed to
meet an imaginary danger, and kept in being with the most mischievous
results to the social and economic development of Ireland. Since the
Protestant minority had made up its mind to depend once more on the
English power it had defied in 1782, the old machine of Ascendancy,
which had showed certain manifest signs of decrepitude under Grattan's
Parliament, was reconstructed on a firmer, less corrupt, and more
lasting basis.

The Legislative Union is not a landmark or a turning-point in Irish
history. It reproduced "under less assailable forms" the Government
which existed prior to 1782. The real crisis, as I have said, came at
the end of 1783, when the Volunteers tried, by reforming Parliament, to
give Irish Government an Irish character. It is essential to
remember--now as much as ever before--that Ireland has never had a
national Parliament. She has never been given a chance of
self-e