Surely they were all opposed to a Union which for a variety of reasons had grown odious in their sight; but, did they, could they, approve of the acts of their Legislature prior to the Union with England? Were they satisfied with those tokens of prosperity in favor of a class which had systematically oppressed them? Even granting that they were Christian enough not to feel envy at the success of their Protestant fellow- countrymen, did they not, and were they not right to, rue the day which, by an act of that same Legislature, shut them off as a body from all those advantages.
For it must be remembered that it was at the instigation of many of those volunteers who had been so ready to receive the muskets from their Catholic neighbors, for the purpose of striking a blow for liberty, that none of the penal statutes were repealed, and the Irish Catholics continued to groan, at least as far as the law went, under the fearful oppressions of which the last chapter furnished a feeble sketch. Hence, to speak in their presence of their commerce, of their manufactures, of their agriculture, of the increase of their wealth, and so on, was a bitter mockery, which they could not but resent in their inmost soul.
Was the cause of all their miseries removed by such a free and independent Parliament? Where could be the agricultural prosperity of a people which was not entitled, legally, to own an inch of their soil, or lease more than two acres of it? How could they engage in prosperous trade when, at the suit of a "discoverer," they were liable to be compelled to hand over to him the surplus of a paltry income? How could they even contemplate engaging in any manufactures, when the laws reduced them to the frightful state of pauperism which we have shudderingly glanced at? And those laws were preserved, and retained on the statute-book, by the very men who vaunted of the prosperity of Ireland!
It cannot, then, be too strongly reasserted that the social position of Ireland had experienced no change whatever, and that the separation of classes, spoken of with such well-merited rebuke by Edmund Burke, still stood unaltered:
"They divided the nation into two distinct parties, without common interest, sympathy, or connection. One of these bodies was to possess all the franchises, all the property, all the education; the other was to be composed of drawers of water and cutters of turf for them.
Every measure was pleasing and popular just in proportion as it tended to harass and ruin a set of people who were looked upon as enemies to God and man; and, indeed, as a race of bigoted savages, who were a disgrace to human nature itself.
"To render humanity fit to be insulted, it was fit that it should be degraded."
And, even supposing the prosperity of which so much talk was made to have been universal, so that all had a real share in it, how long would it have remained so, if the Irish Parliament had continued to exist, and not become merged in the English, or, as it was termed, Imperial Legislature? How long could the two separated bodies, sitting, the one in Dublin, the other in Westminster, have acted in concert, without breaking out into violent and mutual recrimination, with all its attendant evils?
The difficulty showed itself at the very outset, and when the first question of the relative status of both Legislatures arose.
Mr. Fox, the great Liberal minister of the king, endeavored to solve this difficulty by making a distinction between internal and external legislation: Ireland was never to be interfered with in her Parliament, with respect to her internal questions, while the English legislative body possessed the right to step in in all measures regarding external legislation. This seems very much like what is now proposed by home-rule.