expanded thought, utterly unconscious that man can be improved; exhibiting in their heartless measures that practical ferocity for which jailors or keepers would be selected, rather than those mild and sanative qualities that might have soothed the distempers of the times. "Hence it is," said Mr. Curran, speaking of this period, "that the administration of Ireland so often presents to the reader of her history, not the view of a legitimate government, but rather of an encampment in the country of a barbarous enemy, where the object of an invader is not government but conquest; where he is of course obliged to resort to the corrupting of clans, or of single individuals, pointed out to his notice by public abhorrence, and recommended to his confidence only by a treachery so rank and consummate as precludes all possibility of their return to private virtue or to public reliance, and therefore only put into authority over a wretched country, condemned to the torture of all that petulant unfeeling asperity with which a

narrow and malignant mind will bristle in unmerited elevation; condemned to be betrayed, and disgraced, and exhausted by the little traitors that have been suffered to nestle and grow within it; who make it at once the source of their grandeur and the victim of their vices; reducing it to the melancholy necessity of supporting their consequence and of sinking under their crimes, like the lion perishing by the poison of a reptile that finds shelter in the mane of the noble animal, while it is stinging him to death*."

Ireland was in those times in as strange and disastrous a situation as can well be imagined; her own legislature hating and trampling upon her people, and the English government suspecting and despising both. There may have been sufficient intricacy in the minor details of the policy of the time, but the leading maxims appear in all the clearness of despotic simplicity. They were to awe the real or imputed dis

* Mr. Curran's speech in Howison's case.

affection of the natives by means of a harsh domestic administration, and to check any more general exercise of power assumed by that administration as an intrusion upon the legislative supremacy of England. As far as respected internal concerns, the Irish lords and commons were a triumphant faction, despoiling and insulting the remains of a fallen enemy: in their relation with England they were' miserable instruments, without confidence or dignity; armed by their employers with the fullest authority to molest or to crush, but instantly and contemptuously reminded of their own degradation, if ever they evinced any presumptuous desire to redress.

Against so unnatural a system, it is no wonder that the discountenanced claims of freedom should have no avail. If a transient scream was heard among the people, it excited immediate alarm at home, as ominous of an approaching storm*; if her

* Upon the trial of the printer of Swift's celebrated Letters of a Drapier, the lord chief-justice, Whitshed,

voice issued, as it sometimes did, from the Irish commons, it was considered a daring invasion of the rights of a higher power*. If the spirit of that house became too unruly for provincial purposes, the patriotic murmur was quickly hushed by lengthening the pension list: a given number of oppressors was required, and while a venal heart was to be had in the market, no matter how high the price, the price was paid, and the nation called on (in addition to its other burdens) to defray the expenses of its own wrongs.

Thus it continued for many years; with all the miseries of despotism without its repose: commerce extinguished, the public spirit broken, public honour and private confidence banished, and bigotry and faction alone triumphant.

declared that the author's intention was to bring in the Pretender.-Plowden's History of Ireland, vol. ii. p. 81. Dr. Lucas, who ventured in his writings to vindicate the rights of the Irish commons, was declared by that house an enemy to his country, and obliged to seek for safety in exile, 1747.

* Vide question of the appropriation of the surplus, in 1753.

Sentiments of wisdom and pity at length occurred to the English cabinet: it began to doubt if the Irish people were so incurably furious as their tormentors had represented; it resolved to inquire, and if necessary, to redress. A very little investigation proved that never was some merciful interposition more opportune; it was like a visit to some secret cell to rescue the victims of imputed frenzy from their inhuman immurers, who had chained their persons and traduced their intellects, that they might prey upon their inheritance.

The subject of the first healing measure was the parliament. There was no representation of the people in Ireland: there was a house of commons, which, having no limits to its duration, had become a banditti of perpetual dictators*. The octennial bill was passed, and the hardened veterans disbanded. This was not for the purpose of making even a nominal

And four-fifths of the people were excluded from the elective franchise by the 1st Geo. II. c. 9.

+1767, under the administration of Lord Townshend.