By changing the seat of government from Dublin to London, the Act of Union not alone killed the incipient Nationalism of the Garrison, but it, in time, totally alienated them from the Nation, by attaching them to English Parties, English ways, and making their centre London, and not Dublin. The landed proprietors and aristocracy followed the seat of government, and London became their capital also. So that, early in the nineteenth century, the Garrison classes, which towards the end of the eighteenth century had come dangerously near to making common cause with the Nation, had shifted their political and social centre to London, and became a strength to England and a weakness to Ireland. At the same tame the relaxation, and eventual abolition, of the Penal Laws manoeuvred the mass of the Irish People also Londonwards. English was the language of the courts, of the professions, of commerce, the language of preferment, and the newly-emancipated people embraced English with a rush, and with English there came a dimming of their national consciousness, a peaceful penetration of Irish culture by English culture in every particular. The middle and upper classes were the first to be caught by it, but every influence in the country favoured it, all the popular political movements being carried on in English, and having the London Parliament as their field of operations. O'Connell, who was a native speaker of Irish, but one without any reasoned consciousness of nationality, refused to speak anything but English, the newspapers printed nothing but English, the Repeal Movement and the Young Ireland Movement, both appealing to a people which was still seventy per cent. Irish speaking, used nothing but English, and the National Schools, also using nothing but English, imposed English culture from the first on the children and set the feet of the Nation more and more steadily Londonwards.