and it became a fixed article of British policy to govern Ireland by
playing upon this antagonism. The flame of the Volunteer spirit never
perished, but it dwindled to a spark under the irresistible weight of a
manufactured reaction. Dissenters and Anglicans united, not to lead the
way in securing better conditions for their Catholic fellow-countrymen,
not for the interests of Ireland as a whole, but under the ignoble
colours of religious fanaticism. Hence that strangely artificial
alliance between the landlords of the South and West and the democratic
tenantry, artisans, and merchants of the North; an alliance formed to
meet an imaginary danger, and kept in being with the most mischievous
results to the social and economic development of Ireland. Since the
Protestant minority had made up its mind to depend once more on the
English power it had defied in 1782, the old machine of Ascendancy,
which had showed certain manifest signs of decrepitude under Grattan's
Parliament, was reconstructed on a firmer, less corrupt, and more
lasting basis.

The Legislative Union is not a landmark or a turning-point in Irish
history. It reproduced "under less assailable forms" the Government
which existed prior to 1782. The real crisis, as I have said, came at
the end of 1783, when the Volunteers tried, by reforming Parliament, to
give Irish Government an Irish character. It is essential to
remember--now as much as ever before--that Ireland has never had a
national Parliament. She has never been given a chance of
self-expression and self-development. It is useless, though Home Rulers
frequently give way to the temptation, to advocate Home Rule by arguing
from Grattan's Parliament. O'Connell, in the Repeal debate of 1834,
devoted hours to praising that Parliament, and had his own argument
turned against him with crushing force by the Secretary to the Treasury,
who easily proved that it was the most corrupt and absurd body that ever