everywhere be loosened, and a narrow, insulated, local
feeling and policy would be proportionately increased.[12] Such was
Burke's Imperialism, as evoked by an Irish measure which struck at the
root of a frightful social evil and of a vicious political system. But
the idea expressed by Burke--the spirit of his whole argument--went far
beyond this particular absentee tax or any similar tax proposed, as
happened in one instance, by a Colony. It was the superbly grandiose
expression, and all the more insidiously seductive in that it was so
grandiose, of a principle which all thinking men now know, or ought to
know, is the negation of Empire, which lost us America, which came
within an ace of losing us Canada, which might well have lost us South
Africa, and which has in very fact lost us, though not yet irrevocably,
the "affection," to use Burke's word, of Ireland. We may call local
patriotism "narrow and insulated," if we please, but we recognize now,
in every case save that of Ireland, that it is the only foundation for,
and the only stimulant to, Imperial patriotism.

Chatham, an Englishman of the English, was nevertheless a better
Irishman than Burke, and therefore a better Imperialist. "The tax," he
wrote, "was founded on strong Irish policy. England, it is evident,
profits by draining Ireland of the vast incomes spent here from that
country. But I could not, as a Peer of England, advise the King, on
principles of indirect, accidental English policy, to reject a tax on
absentees sent over here as the genuine desire of the Commons of Ireland
acting in their proper and peculiar sphere, and exercising their
inherent exclusive right by raising supplies in the manner they judge
best." Chatham, in short, applied precisely the same argument to Ireland
as, in his memorable speeches of the next year (1774), he applied to
America, and in both cases he was right. The only mistake he made was in
his estimate of that travesty of a representative assembly, the Irish
House of Commons, which, at the secret instigation of the Viceroy,
though without actual coercion, eventually threw out a tax so
distasteful to its English patrons. But the argument for financial
independence remained unassailable, and eventually the Irish Parliament
itself summoned up the courage to adopt and act upon it.

It may seem almost impossible that in a body so corrupt and exclusive a
national sentiment should have arisen. But every elective assembly,
however