'independence,' the mass of the nation formed no part of the 'Commons
of Ireland.' It was still, as it always had been, a sham parliament--a
body representing the colonial aristocracy--acting as undertakers for
the Government of England, for whose interest exclusively this island
was to be ruled. Provided this result was secured, it did not matter
much, at the other side of the Channel, how the Irish people were
treated. Indeed, they were not recognised as the people of Ireland,
or any part thereof. Even philosophic liberals, like Lord Charlemont,
were shocked at the idea of a Papist getting into the Irish House
of Commons; and the volunteer system was shattered by this insane
animosity of the ruling race against the subject nation. The antipathy
was as strong as the antipathy between the whites and the negroes in
the West Indies and the United States. Hence the remorseless spirit in
which atrocities were perpetrated in 1798. Mr. Daunt has shown that a
large proportion of the Irish House of Lords consisted of men who were
English to all intents and purposes--many of them by birth, and many
by residence, and, no doubt, they always came over with reluctance to
what Lord Chancellor Clare called 'our damnable country.' It may be
that in some years after the abolition of the Establishment--after
some experience of the _régime_ of religious equality--the two races
in this island will learn to act together so harmoniously as to give a
fair promise that they could be safely trusted with self-legislation.
But the '_self_' must be one body animated by one spirit; not
two bodies, chained together, irritated by the contact, fiercely
struggling against one another, eternally reproaching one another
about the mutual wrongs of the past, and not unfrequently coming
to blows, like implacable duellists shut up in a small room, each
determined to kill or be killed. If England were to let go her hold
even now, something like this would be the Irish 'situation.' The
abiding force of this antipathy, in the full light of Christianity, is