The mere existence of an Irish Parliament was not, therefore, fatal to England’s security or to the growth of its Empire. A Parliament sat at Dublin while England won the battles of Crecy and Agincourt, of Blenheim and the Nile, defied the menace of Rome, defeated the Spanish Armada, and laid the foundations of British dominion in India, in Canada, in the West Indies, and in South Africa. Spaniards, it is true, landed at Smerwick in 1579 and at Kinsale in 1601, and French troops landed at Carrickfergus in 1760 and at Kilala in 1798; but Spaniards also landed at Penzance in 1593, and Frenchmen landed on English soil countless times from the days of William the Conqueror to their descent at Fishguard in 1796. England has ever been saved by its navy and not by its parliamentary unions, and the attraction to foreign invaders has not been an Irish Parliament, but the existence of Irish discontent. No invasion of Ireland, in spite of the Irish Parliament, came so near to success as did the Jacobite risings after the Scottish Union. The recapitulation of these facts is, perhaps, otiose, except to allay fears which sane politicians do not entertain; and it is more to the point to show that the causes of Irish dissatisfaction are historical, and are identical with those which, under similar conditions, produced a similar discontent in England. The notion that the Irish are naturally turbulent and disloyal, while the English are by nature the reverse, is one which could only have grown up after England had rid itself of those irritants which cause the Irish friction. Between the Norman Conquest and the Revolution of 1688 England rebelled against more than half its sovereigns: some were imprisoned, some were expelled, some were assassinated, and some were done to death in more decorous fashion; and English treason and turbulence were once quite as much bywords in Europe as ever Irish disloyalty was in England. The conventional English pictures of Irish disorder could easily be capped as late as the seventeenth century by French descriptions of English lawlessness and barbarity. A French guide-book, published in 1654, declared that England was inhabited by demons and parricides, and a few years later another Frenchman averred that the English were a cruel and ferocious race of wolves. The truth of the matter is that English and Irish alike prefer to manage their own affairs in accord with their own ideas, and are only contented and loyal when this condition obtains. The Revolution of 1688 placed its realisation within the reach of the English people, and there has been no English rebellion since. But the sovereign remedy for disaffection was refused the Irish and the American colonists: the latter rebelled, and, being distant, achieved their independence. The Canadians followed suit in 1837, but found peace and prosperity under a parliament of their own. South Africa was converted to the cause of empire by the same expedient; only the