omitted from the records of Parliament and the proceedings of Clubs and
Associations founded in the Drapier's honour, has been embalmed in the
hearts of the people, whose love he won, and whose homage it was ever
his pride to accept.

The spirit of Swift which Grattan invoked had, even in Grattan's time,
power to stir hearts to patriotic enthusiasm. That spirit has not died
out yet, and the Irish people still find it seasonable and refreshing to
be awakened by it to a true sense of the dignity and majesty of
Ireland's place in the British Empire.

A dispassionate student of the condition of Ireland between the years
of Swift's birth and death--between, say, 1667 and 1745--could rise from
that study in no unprejudiced mood. It would be difficult for him to
avoid the conclusion that the government of Ireland by England had not
only degraded the people of the vassal nation, but had proved a disgrace
and a stigma on the ruling nation. It was a government of the masses by
the classes, for no other than selfish ends. It ended, as all such
governments must inevitably end, in impoverishing the people, in
wholesale emigration, in starvation and even death, in revolt, and in
fostering among those who remained, and among those whom circumstances
exiled, the dangerous spirit of resentment and rebellion which is the
outcome of the sense of injustice. It has also served, even to this day,
to give vitality to those associations that have from time to time
arisen in Ireland for the object of realizing that country's
self-government.

It may be argued that the people of Ireland of that time justified
Swift's petition when he prayed to be removed from "this land of slaves,
where all are fools and all are knaves"; but that is no justification