inarticulate, almost leaderless, and shamefully misgoverned, does not,
from the human standpoint, appear worthy of admiration, but it was a
fact. The few Catholic noblemen outdid the Protestants in expressions of
devotion; the Whiteboy risings were as little disloyal as religious. Not
a hand stirred for James or his heirs when Jacobite plots and risings
were causing grave public danger in England and Scotland. Catholic Lord
Trimleston offered exclusively Catholic regiments with Catholic officers
to George III. for foreign service in 1762, though they were vetoed by
what his Viceroy Halifax called the "ill-bred bigotry" of the Irish
Parliament. Nor was it till thirty years after that date that Protestant
discontent, under intolerable provocation, assumed an anti-dynastic and
Republican form. To compare the Imperial spirit displayed by America and
Ireland in their views and action is difficult, partly because the
various American Colonies differed widely, partly because there existed
in Ireland no organ of government which could express popular feeling.
Neither country, of course, paid any cash contribution to Imperial
expenses, though both could fairly claim that the English monopoly of
trade imposed an indirect tribute of indefinite size, while Ireland, in
pensions, rents to absentees, and sinecure appointments, was drained of
many millions more. American patronage was an element of substantial
value to England, but it was not on the Irish scale. America on the
whole, perhaps, showed less patriotic feeling than Ireland. With full
allowance for the lack of sympathy and understanding shown by the
British regulars to the American volunteers in their co-operation in the
French wars, it can scarcely be denied that the colonists, together with
much heroism and public spirit, showed occasional slackness and
parsimony in resisting the penetration of a foreign Power which
threatened to hem in their settlements from the St. Lawrence to the
mouth of the Mississippi. Ireland during the Seven Years' War, and until
the Peace of Paris in 1763, maintained a war establishment of 24,000