lize the deep
poetic, pathetic love of the Celtic heart for the soil, the traditions,
and the ways of the Celtic island, could attempt with any success to
undertake the government of the country. We have now come to a period
in this history when the Irish question, as it is called, came up once
again, and in a new form, to try the statesmanship of English rulers.
We have told the story of '98, and how the rebellion ended in complete
defeat and disaster. Up to the {206} time at which we have now arrived
there was no more talk of rebellion in the field, but in the sullen
heart of Irish discontent there still lived all the emotions which had
animated Lord Edward Fitzgerald, Wolfe Tone, and Robert Emmet.

[Sidenote: 1832--The tithe question in Ireland]

When the rebellion was put down the Government of King George the Third
abolished the Irish Parliament, and then all loyal and sensible persons
in Westminster assumed, of course, that there was an end of the matter.
The rebellion had been put down, the principal rebels had been done to
death, Grattan's troublesome and tiresome Parliament had been
extinguished, Ireland had been merged into complete identification with
England, and surely nothing would be heard of the Irish question any
more. Yet the Irish question seemed to come up again and again, and to
press for answer just as if answer enough had not been given already.
There was a clamor about Catholic Emancipation, and at last the Irish
Catholics had to be emancipated from complete political
disqualification, and their spokesman O'Connell had been allowed to
take his place in the House of Commons. Sir Robert Peel had carried
Catholic Emancipation, for, although a Tory in many of his ways of
thinking, he was a statesman and a man of genius; and now Lord Grey,
the head of the Whig Government, had no sooner passed the Reform Bill
than he found himself confronted with the Irish question in a new
shape. We could hardly wonder that Sir Robert Peel or Lord Grey did
not try to inform their minds as to Irish national feeling through a
study of "Dark Rosaleen," for the good reason that no such poem had yet
been given to the world. But neither Peel nor Grey was a type of the
average Englishman of the times, and each had gradually borne in upon
him, by a study of realities if not of poetic fancies, that the
national sentiment of the Irishman was not to be eradicated by any Act
of Parliament for his denationalization. Lord G