'Events,' he said, 'have clearly shown how unstable is our nature. Only twenty years ago we showed a serried front, and were as one in the cause of freedom; but a little wedge was inserted--and see! To what an end we've come! For we have come to an end--there is no use discussing that. The one drop of satisfaction which is given to us in the goblet of gall is that an assembly will vanish into space which has reached the lowest depth of human degeneracy. Its members--as all Europe knows--consider the station they hold as a portion of private property, not as a public trust. The scorn of Lord Cornwallis is not undeserved.' To this Curran objected with vehemence: 'My good friend! is that a reason why your union should answer? You cannot glue two pieces of board together unless the joint be clean. You cannot unite two men indissolubly, unless the cement be virtue. How then two countries, between which rolls a sea of blood more wide than the Atlantic?' But Arthur Lord Kilwarden had followed events with a keen scrutiny, and none were more appalled than he at the way the senate had jigged to my Lord Clare's piping. 'Whichever way,' he affirmed sadly, 'you look at the proceedings of your parliament, the sight is equally distressing. If the English parliament could be convinced that our interests are really bound up with theirs, they would come to look on us in time as part and parcel of themselves, instead of treating us like savages. Indeed, the Irish Lords and Commons are showing clearly that the English estimate of them is the right one. Practically their birthright is disposed of. It is merely a matter of terms. Then Curran murmured doleful things about the extinction of the Irish name and the days of the Round Towers, and the parties, as usual, agreed to differ.