life-long quarrel, might be expected to entertain towards one another
those sentiments of regret, generosity, or gratitude which are proper to
men and women, but can only by the boldest of fictions be supposed to
enter into the relations between classes or nations. To this delusion of
personification is due the notion that Englishmen of to-day ought to
make compensation and feel personal shame for the cruelties of Cromwell,
or for Pitt's corruption of Irish patriots; that we are in some way
liable and should feel compunction for crimes committed by (possibly)
the ancestors of the very men to whom we are now supposed to owe
reparation. To the same cause is to be attributed the absurd demand that
the Irish Catholics should put on ashes and sackcloth for the massacres
of 1641, or that living Irishmen should be grateful for the well-meant
though most unsuccessful efforts made by the Parliament of the United
Kingdom to govern one-third of the United Kingdom on sound principles of
justice. A Sovereign's plainest duty is to rule his subjects for their
good according to the best of his power and of his knowledge, and the
mere discharge of duty does not entitle a ruler to gratitude from the
persons who are benefited by his justice. A Parliamentary Sovereign
being the representative and agent of its (so-called) subjects, is _à
fortiori_ if there can be degrees in such matters--bound to govern for
the benefit of the people whom it represents and ought to serve; and
there is something strictly preposterous in the idea that Irish
electors, who in common with the rest of the United Kingdom send
representatives to Westminster, should glow with gratitude when the
Parliament of the United Kingdom so far performs its duty as to enact
laws from which Ireland derives benefit No one suggests that Englishmen
or Scotchmen should feel grateful either to Parliament or to their Irish
fellow-citizens for the maintenance of good government throughout
England and Scotland. And it would puzzle the wit of man to show why
one-third of the United Kingdom should be expected to entertain feelings