h an
unalienable right to liberty, would have had the smallest scruple about
shooting any negro slave who had laid claim to that unalienable right.

And, in the same manner, the Protestant masters of Ireland, while
ostentatiously professing the political doctrines of Locke and Sidney,
held that a people who spoke the Celtic tongue and heard mass could have
no concern in those doctrines. Molyneux questioned the supremacy of
the English legislature. Swift assailed, with the keenest ridicule and
invective, every part of the system of government. Lucas disquieted the
administration of Lord Harrington. Boyle overthrew the administration
of the Duke of Dorset. But neither Molyneux nor Swift, neither Lucas nor
Boyle, ever thought of appealing to the native population. They would
as soon have thought of appealing to the swine. [142] At a later period
Henry Flood excited the dominant class to demand a Parliamentary reform,
and to use even revolutionary means for the purpose of obtaining that
reform. But neither he, nor those who looked up to him as their chief,
and who went close to the verge of treason at his bidding, would consent
to admit the subject class to the smallest share of political power. The
virtuous and accomplished Charlemont, a Whig of the Whigs, passed a long
life in contending for what he called the freedom of his country. But
he voted against the law which gave the elective franchise to Roman
Catholic freeholders; and he died fixed in the opinion that the
Parliament House ought to be kept pure from Roman Catholic members.
Indeed, during the century which followed the Revolution, the
inclination of an English Protestant to trample on the Irishry was
generally proportioned to the zeal which he professed for political
liberty in the abstract. If he uttered any expression of compassion for
the majority oppressed by the minority, he might be safely set down as a
bigoted Tory and High Churchman. [143]

All this time hatred, kept down by fear, festered in the hearts of the
children of the soil. They were still the same people that had sprung
to arms in 1641 at the call of O'Neill, and in 1689 at the call of
Tyrconnel. To them every festival instituted by the State was a day of
mourning, and every public trophy set up by the State was a memorial of
shame. We have never known, and can but faintly conceive, the feelings
of a nation doomed to see constantly in all its public places the
monuments of its subjugation. Such