to arrest the policy of retrogression adopted by the Government in London. Lord Fitzwilliam was the declared friend of Roman Catholic Emancipation, which was certain to be followed by reform; and he had struck a death-blow at bigotry and monopoly in the person of their heads, Mr. Beresford and Mr. Cooke. The Bill of Emancipation was introduced on the 12th of February,[101] with only three dissentient voices. On the 14th, when the London Cabinet had declared dissent from the proceedings of their Viceroy without recalling him, Sir L. Parsons at once moved an address, imploring him to continue among them, and only postponed it at the friendly request of Mr. Ponsonby.[102] On the 2nd of March, when the recall was a fact, the House voted that Lord Fitzwilliam merited "the thanks of that House, and the confidence of the people."[103] On the 5th the Duke of Leinster moved, and the House of Peers carried, a similar resolution.[104] At this epoch I pause. Here there opens a new and disastrous drama of disgrace to England and misery to Ireland. This is the point at which we may best learn the second and the greatest lesson taught by the history of Ireland in the eighteenth century. It is this, that, awful as is the force of bigotry, hidden under the mask of religion, but fighting for plunder and for power with all the advantages of possession, of prescription, and of extraneous support, there is a David that can kill this Goliath. That conquering force lies in the principle of nationality. It was the growing sense of nationality that prompted the Irish Parliament to develop its earlier struggles for privilege on the narrow ground into a genuine contest for freedom, civil and religious, on a ground as broad as Ireland, nay, as humanity at large. If there be such things as contradictions in the world of politics, they are to be found in nationality on the one side, and bigotry of all kinds on the other, but especially religious bigotry, which is of all the most baneful. Whatever is given to the first of these two is lost to the second. I speak of a reasonable and reasoning, not of a blind and headstrong nationality; of a nationality which has regard to circumstances and to traditions, and which only requires that all relations, of incorporation or of independence, shall be adjusted to them according to the laws of Nature's own enactment. Such a nationality was the growth of the last century in Ireland. As each Irishman began to feel that he had a country, to which he belonged, and which belonged to him, he was, by a true process of nature, drawn more and more into brotherhood, and into the sense of brotherhood, with those who shared the allegiance and the property, the obligation and the heritage. And this idea of country, once well conceived, presents itself as a very large idea, and as a framework for most other ideas, so as to supply the basis of a common life. Hence it was that, on the coming of Lord Fitzwilliam, the whole generous emotion of the country leapt up with one consent, and went forth to meet him. Hence it was that religious bigotry was no longer an appreciable factor in the public life of Ireland. Hence it was that on his recall, and in order to induce acquiescence in his recall, it became necessary to divide again the host that had, welcomed him--to put one part of it in array as Orangemen, who were to be pampered and inflamed; and to quicken the self-consciousness of another and larger mass by repulsion and proscription, by stripping Roman Catholics of arms in the face of licence and of cruelty, and, finally, by clothing the extreme of lawlessness with the forms of law. Within the last twelve months we have seen, in the streets of Belfast, the painful proof that the work of Beresford and of Castlereagh has been found capable for the moment of revival. To aggravate or sustain Irish disunion, religious bigotry has been again evoked in Ireland. If the curse be an old one, there is also an old cure, recorded in the grand pharmacopoeia of history; and if the abstract force of policy and prudence are insufficient for the work, we may yet find that the evil spirit will be effectually laid by the gentle influence of a living and working Irish nationality. _Quod faxit Deus._ FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 73: _2 Henry VI._, act iii. sc. 1.] [Footnote 74: Lecky's _History of England in the Eighteenth Century_, chap, vii. vol. ii, p. 205.] [Footnote 75: Lecky's _History of England in the Eighteenth Century_, vol. ii. p. 227.] [Footnote 76: Duffy's _Bird's-Eye View_, p. 164.] [Footnote 77: Duffy's _Bird's-Eye View_, p. 166.] [Footnote 78: See Ball's _History of the Church of Ireland_, a valuable work, deserving of more attention than it seems to have received.] [Footnote 79: Boulter's _Letters_, i. 138, _et alibi_.] [Footnote 80: Lecky's _History of England in the Eighteenth Century_, ii.] [Footnote 81: Boulter's _Letters_, vol. ii.] [Footnote 82: Cornwallis's _Correspondence_, ii. 441.] [Footnote 83: Grattan's _Life and Times_, v. 173.] [Footnote 84: Lecky, ii. 430.] [Footnote 85: Duffy, p. 177.] [Footnote 86: Schiller's _Wallenstein_.] [Footnote 87: Lecky, iv. 489.] [Footnote 88: Lecky, iv. 477-479; Brown, _Laws against Catholics_, pp. 329-332.] [Footnote 89: Lecky, pp. 499-501.] [Footnote 90: Sheridan's _Critic_, act iii. sc. I.] [Footnote 91: Plowden's _History_ (1809), ii. 70.] [Footnote 92: Brown, _Laws against Catholics_, p. 289.] [Footnote 93: Lecky, i. 297.] [Footnote 94: Plowden, i. 297.] [Footnote 95: 1 Geo. II. c. ix. sect 7.] [Footnote 96: See Lecky, vi. 521.] [Footnote 97: _The Irish Parliament_, p. 64. Cassell: 1885.] [Footnote 98: See Lecky, vi. 492, 493.] [Footnote 99: Lecky, vi. 567.] [Footnote 100: Plowden's _Historical Review_, ii. 335.] [Footnote 101: Ibid., ii. 353.] [Footnote 102: Plowden's _Historical Review_, ii. 498.] [Footnote 103: Ibid., ii. 357.] [Footnote 104: Ibid., ii. 505.] PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, LONDON AND BECCLES.