Irish History and the Irish QuestionSmith, Goldwin
History
Irish History and the Irish Question
Smith, Goldwin
Ireland -- Politics and government; Irish question
legislate for Ireland, was renounced. Flood, the patriot with a bend
sinister, insisted on pushing the humiliation of England still further and
compelling her by a declaratory act solemnly to bind her own hands for the
future, while Grattan, the patriot without reproach, took the more
generous line. Thus England underwent the deepest humiliation in her
history at the hands of an Irish party which owed its land, its
ascendancy, probably its very existence, to her protecting power. Such was
the condign punishment of a long course of ignorant, blundering, and
corrupt misgovernment, a punishment not the less calamitous and degrading
because it was deserved.
So Grattan in the Irish Parliament was able, in a transport of rhetorical
rapture, to worship "the newborn nation," a nation which comprised a
fraction of the people of the country, the rest being still political
helots. Had he adored an uncontrolled Ascendancy, his deity would have
been real.
The volunteers, having felt their strength, were inclined to vote
themselves permanent, overawe Parliament, and enforce Parliamentary
reform. Flood was so misguided as to take that line. But the incarnation
of violent counsels was the bishop of Derry, an English nobleman holding
an Irish bishopric, a most absurd figure, and probably half insane. His
Right Reverence avowed that he looked forward to blood. He paraded before
the door of Parliament in a coach and six, dressed in purple with long
white gloves and gold tassels depending from them, and with a guard of
horse, looking as if he meant to be king. But the Parliament was firm, and
Lord Charlemont and other sane leaders were able to control the body,
which was drawn, not from a Faubourg St. Antoine, but from the
property-owning class under aristocratic leading. Still revolutionary
excitement did not die.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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