He says truly that if it were possible to appeal to the country under
these circumstances, the people would not have responded. 'Gloomy
and desperate, they had lost all confidence in their parliament,
and looked to other quarters for deliverance from the _intolerable
tyranny_ under which they suffered. There can be no doubt that
this anarchy and disgrace were in a great degree the result of a
misgovernment, ancient and recent, _which seems to have been always
adopted with a view to bring out strongly the worst elements of the
Irish character_; but it was at that time said, and no doubt believed
by the Opposition, that the ministry of the day had deliberately
planned and accomplished the disorganisation of the Irish people and
their parliament, in order to enable them to carry out their favourite
project of the Union.'

Mr. Plunket, after describing the classes of 'representatives' that
his grandfather had to deal with in the Irish House of Commons,
further says: 'It is true that this corrupt assembly cannot fairly be
looked upon as the mirror of national character and national honour.
The members of the majority who voted for the Union _were not_
the representatives of the people, _but the hired servants of the
Minister, for the Parliament had been packed for the purpose_.'

Towards the close of the century, however, the French Revolution,
the American war, and the volunteer movement, had begun to cause
some faint stirring of national life in the inert mass of the Roman
Catholic population, which the penal code had '_dis-boned_.' Up
to this time they were not even thought of in the calculations of
politicians. According to Dean Swift, Papists counted no more in
politics than the women and children. Macaulay uses a still more
contemptuous comparison to express the estimate in which they were