That Swift knew perfectly well that the actual value of the copper coinage was not a matter of profound importance may be taken for granted, and so far his conduct is certainly not justifiable on any very strict rule of ethics.  If the pennies were of small importance, however, there were other things that were of more.  Little of a patriot as he was, little as he was supposed, or supposed himself, to care for Ireland or Irishmen, his wrath burnt fiercely at what he saw around him.  He saw, too, his own wrongs, as others have done before and since, “writ large” in the wrongs of the country, and resented them as such.  With his keen, practical knowledge of men, he knew, moreover, how thick was that medium, born of prejudice and ignorance, through which he had to pierce—­a medium through which nothing less pointed than the forked lightnings of his own terrible wit could have found its way.  Whatever his motives were, his success at least is indisputable.  High Churchman as he was, vehement anti-papist as he was, he became from that moment, and remained to the hour of his death, beyond all question the most popular man in Ireland and his name was ever afterwards upon the lips of all who aspired to promote the best interests and prosperity of their country.

XLVIIL

HENRY FLOOD.

The forty years which follow maybe passed rapidly over.  They were years of absolute tranquillity in Ireland, but beyond that rather negative praise little of good can be reported of them.  Public opinion was to all practical purposes dead, and the functions of Parliament were little more than nominal.  Unlike the English one, the Irish Parliament had by the nature of its constitution, no natural termination, save by a dissolution, or by the death of the sovereign.  Thus George the Second’s Irish Parliament sat for no less than thirty-three years, from the beginning to the end of his reign.  The sessions, too, had gradually come to be, not annual as in England, but biennial, the Lord-Lieutenant spending as a rule only six months in every two years in Ireland.  In his absence all power was vested in the hands of the Lords Justices, of whom the most conspicuous during this period were the three successive archbishops of Armagh, namely, Swift’s opponent Boulter, Hoadly, and Stone, all three Englishmen, and devoted to what was known as the “English interest,” who governed the country by the aid of a certain number of great

     Delightful talk! to rear the tender thought,
     To teach the young idea how to shoot. 
     To pour the fresh instruction o’er the mind,
     To breathe th’ enlivening spirit and to fix
     The generous purpose in the glowing breast.

     Thomson

     LORD LIEUTENANT FROM 1745 TO 1754.