Country,
and with the wholesome check to undue coercion set by the broad
Atlantic, civic freedom grew and flourished to a degree unknown in any
other part of the civilized world.

In Ireland civic freedom was unknown. There was no popular Assembly. A
wealthy aristocracy of English extraction and of Anglican faith, partly
resident, partly absentee, and wholly subservient to the English
Government, constituted the Upper House of that strange institution
known as Parliament, and to a great extent nominated and controlled the
Lower House through means frankly corrupt. Representation was almost
nominal; close pocket-boroughs predominated, and seats were bought and
sold in the open market. In the year 1790 more than a third of the
Members of the House of Commons were placemen, 216 Members out of 300
were elected by boroughs and manors, and, of these, 176 were elected by
individual patrons. Fifty-three of these patrons, nominating 123
Members, sat as Peers in the Upper House. Cash, places, and peerages,
were the usual considerations paid for maintaining a Government
majority. The Catholics, from three-quarters to five-sixths of the
population, had neither votes nor members; the Dissenters scarcely any
members and an almost powerless vote. The Irish Legislature, by an Act
as old as 1495, the famous Poynings' Law, could neither initiate nor
pass a measure without the consent of the English Privy Council, and the
Declaratory Act of 1719 confirmed the power of making English Acts
applicable to Ireland. Government in England itself was, no doubt,
unrepresentative and corrupt at that period, and the people paid the
penalty in full; but it was a national government, under the aegis of
the national faith, and resting, however remotely, on the ultimate
sanction of the people, just as American opinion, more democratically
ascertained, continued to control the major part of American affairs. In
Ireland the Government was systematically anti-Irish. There was no
career for Irishmen in Ireland. Both Catholics and Dissenters were
excluded from all civil and military offices; the highest posts were
generally given to Englishmen born and bred, and the country,
Episcopalian only to a fractional extent, was ruled by a narrow
Episcopalian oligarchy of wealthy landowners and prelates, who bartered
Irish freedom for the place and power of their own families and
dependents. The conditions of this sordid exchange were the ground of
the first import