ution to Imperial
expenses, though both could fairly claim that the English monopoly of
trade imposed an indirect tribute of indefinite size, while Ireland, in
pensions, rents to absentees, and sinecure appointments, was drained of
many millions more. American patronage was an element of substantial
value to England, but it was not on the Irish scale. America on the
whole, perhaps, showed less patriotic feeling than Ireland. With full
allowance for the lack of sympathy and understanding shown by the
British regulars to the American volunteers in their co-operation in the
French wars, it can scarcely be denied that the colonists, together with
much heroism and public spirit, showed occasional slackness and
parsimony in resisting the penetration of a foreign Power which
threatened to hem in their settlements from the St. Lawrence to the
mouth of the Mississippi. Ireland during the Seven Years' War, and until
the Peace of Paris in 1763, maintained a war establishment of 24,000
troops. She maintained a peace establishment of 12,000 troops, and from
1767 onwards of 15,000 troops. There never seems to have been a whisper
of protest from the Catholic population against these measures, nor,
except in the matter of the American War, to which we shall come
presently, from the Protestants. It may be added that, after 1767,
Catholics in considerable numbers were surreptitiously enlisted in the
ranks, in spite of the Penal Code, and from then until the present day
have fought for the Flag as staunchly as any other class of the King's
subjects.

It never occurred to responsible English statesmen that here was ground,
firm as a rock in America, and firm enough in Ireland, on which, if only
they obeyed the instincts and maxims upon which England herself had
risen to greatness, they might build a mighty and durable Imperial
structure. That loyalty, to be genuine and lasting, must spring from
liberty was a truth they did not appreciate, and to this truth,
strangely enough, in spite of the lessons of nearly a century and a
half, a numerous school of English statesmen is still blind. It was no
doubt a fatality that the smouldering discontent both of America and
Ireland burst into flame in the reign of a monarch who endeavoured, even
within the limits of Britain, to regain the arbitrary power which had
cost their throne to the Stuarts; it was an additional fatality that the
standard of public morals among the class through which he ruled du