as good. Many without half his merits have succeeded. We shall find his
Canadian counterparts later in the figures of Mackenzie and Papineau.

The crisis came on November 29, 1783, when the Reform Bill reached
Parliament, and was introduced by Flood, wearing the Volunteer dress. It
was rejected on the first vote. No doubt the circumstances were
humiliating, and if there had been any serious inclination in Parliament
towards self-reform and the relinquishment of an odious and mischievous
monopoly, we should freely forgive rejection. But there was little or
none, as after-events proved, and the real humiliation lay, not in the
dictation of the Irish Volunteers, but in the fact that the Volunteers
themselves were overawed by a strong body of British regular troops,
mustered for the occasion under General Burgoyne. The vicious circle was
complete. Forced to choose between reform and dependence on England,
Parliament chose the latter. And only a year and a half before Grattan
had dazzled his hears with the words: "Ireland is now a nation ... _esto
perpetua_."

There are very few critical dates in Irish history, and of those few the
night of November 29, 1783, was the most critical of all. It marked the
climax of a brief and bright renaissance from the long stagnation of the
eighteenth, and heralded a decline into the long agony of the nineteenth
century, a decline concealed by the fictitious lustre which still hangs
over the first decade of Grattan's unreformed Parliament, but none the
less already present. The Volunteers, their grand opportunity lost,
slowly broke up. Should they have used force, even under the threat of
Burgoyne's guns? It would have been infinitely better both for England
and Ireland if they had. Nothing but force could avail. Never would
force have been better justified, for the very soul of a people "rang
zwischen Tod und Leben."