Accession of George III—His Character—Boasts of 452 Being “a Briton”—Death of Dr. Lucas—Lord Townsend’s Novel Idea of Governing Ireland—Septennial Parliament Refused CHAPTER VII The Peace of Paris—Agrarian Warfare in 457 Ireland—Judicial Murder of Father Sheehy—All who Swore Against Him Die Violent Deaths—Secret Societies CHAPTER VIII Flood and Grattan—Sudden Rise of the Latter—Speaks 462 for a Free Commerce—The Volunteer Movement—England Yields to Irish Demand ------------------------------------------------------------------------ BOOK I DEALING WITH THE STORY OF THE IRISH PEOPLE FROM THE EARLIEST PERIOD TO THE ADVENT OF THE REFORMATION IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER I Prefatory—Territorial Divisions of Ireland—Physical Features of the Country—Peculiarities of Soil, Climate, and Scenery THAT famous English Republican, Thomas Paine—whose political pamphlets have been admired quite as much as his theological works have been censured—uttered in “Common Sense,” published in 1776, while he was serving under Washington in the Continental Army, this striking aphorism: “Europe, and not England, is the parent country of America.” His object was to stimulate the patriotic pride of such American colonists—and they were many—as were not of English birth or descent, and to proclaim that the other great branches of the human race, settled in America, must, of necessity, have a vital interest in the successful issue of the War for Independence. No other great country of the world has a population made up of so many divers “previous nationalities,” all combined into one gigantic political whole, as the United States of America. Most of the notable nations of the Old World are here represented not by hundreds or thousands, but by millions of citizens, “racy of the soil,” and proud to call themselves Americans. A French patriot once said, speaking in the Chamber of Deputies: “There is no French race. France is a grand political entity which all true Frenchmen, of whatever race, worship.” This fine sentiment can be even more logically applied to America and Americans, for both are still in the formative period. Several centuries hence, perhaps, a race of people distinctively American in all respects may occupy this country, but while the great stream of European immigration continues to flow toward the setting sun there can not exist such a racial condition in this Republic, except in those remote districts in which the immigrant rarely seeks a home.