It was not in Ireland as it was in England, where the regular party system prevailed and the minority changed with the majority in Parliament. The Castle called to the council whom it pleased, without regard to the existence of a political connection among them, though it was, of course, under the necessity of calling those who could bring it support at the time. The party tie was accordingly very loose and connections were shifting. Flood had no scruple in providing for himself, apart from his friends, by acceptance of a rich sinecure under the government. Hely Hutchinson, a free lance, could use his personal influence in forcing the government to make him provost of Trinity College. For a time the Castle put itself into the hands of a junto of great lords and owners of Parliamentary boroughs, who undertook to supply it with a majority at the price of patronage and power. To break this ring and restore the free action of government, an effort was made by the Lord Lieutenant Townshend. But Townshend's boisterous energy, successful for a time, in the end failed, and the Castle fell back into the routine of government by intrigue and corruption, aided by viceregal dinners and balls. Chatham's glory dazzled Ireland as well as England. But presently came the quarrel ending in war, with the American colonies, whose commercial grievances were the same in kind as those of Ireland, practically less severe. Ireland at once showed sympathy with American revolt. Presently the island was divested of troops by the demands of the war, and its coasts were left open to the attacks of privateers. There was no national militia. Under the leadership of Lord Charlemont a body of volunteers, almost entirely Protestant, was raised and reached at last the number of forty thousand. There was, no doubt, in the movement a good deal of claret and fanfaronade. But it included the leading gentry, and for its purpose was very strong. Formed ostensibly, at first really, for defence against the Americans, it presently fell politically into their track and demanded of the British government, now prostrated by misfortune in the war and by the combination of European powers against it, first freedom from the commercial restrictions, then legislative independence. North made commercial concessions; he would have made them on a much more liberal scale and possibly have satisfied the volunteers. But again monopolist greed, strong in the commercial cities of England, vetoed, and Burke lost his seat at Bristol for advocating the policy of free trade. The victories of Rodney and Eliot, had they come in time, might have strengthened the hands of the British government and saved it from an ignominious capitulation. As it was, the British government surrendered at discretion. First the commercial restrictions were swept away; then the legislative supremacy of England, embodied in the Poynings Act and the Act of the Sixth of George I., affirming the right of the British Parliament to