A long sleep had succeeded the final expulsion of James II. from Ireland. The penal code was perfected into a system accurately described by Burke as most perfectly fitted to degrade and brutalise the human spirit. Catholic Ireland was voiceless and wholly lacking in political consciousness; and the silence of Protestants was only broken by a rare protest from Molyneux, Swift, or Lucas. If any doubt remained under Poynings’ Laws as to the complete dependence on Great Britain, it was set at rest by the Declaratory Act passed at Westminster in 1719. The Viceroys before Townshend only spent a few weeks in Dublin every second year for the biennial sessions of Parliament. The Lords Justices governed the country for its English masters by influence and corruption, and the Irish pension list provided grants too degrading to be charged on English revenues. A new era opened when Flood took his seat in 1759 and organised an Opposition, the programme of which included the limitation of parliaments, the revision of the pension list, the creation of a militia and the independence of the Irish Legislature. The first object was secured in 1768 by the Octennial Act; but at the height of his power and popularity he was captured by the Government, which naturally desired to disarm its most formidable foe. After an interval of independent support, the great orator accepted a salaried office and a seat in the Privy Council in 1775. In the same year Grattan entered Parliament at the age of twenty-nine, and quickly asserted his title to the leadership of the national party which Flood, in an evil moment for himself and his country, had abdicated.