and other public bodies; the English Government for some time refused to grant any concession; but at length, fearing an Irish Revolution, gave way on every point.  They granted, in fact, as an Irish statesman expressed it, “everything short of separation.”  First (in spite of the opposition of the English manufacturing classes) all restrictions on trade were swept away; then, in 1782, the Declaratory Act of George I, by virtue of which the English Parliament had claimed the right to legislate for Ireland, was repealed, and with it went the right of the English House of Lords to act as a court of final appeal for Ireland; the restrictions imposed by Poyning’s Act on the legislative powers of the Irish Parliament were abolished; and the Irish Executive was made practically dependent on the Irish Parliament by the Mutiny Act, which had previously been perpetual, being limited to two years.

Thus Ireland became a nation in a sense she had never been before.  The only tie to any power beyond sea was that the King of England was also King of Ireland; Ireland could legislate for itself, and enter into commercial treaties with foreign powers; but, on the other hand, it had to pay its own debts and provide its own army and navy.

As Grattan was not merely the most prominent politician of the period, but also the leader of the now triumphant “National” party, we may fairly take the views expressed by him as representative of those of the party that followed him.  A study of his speeches and letters will show how utterly different were the ideas and aims of the National party of 1782 from those of the Nationalists of to-day.  In the first place, Grattan was intensely loyal; that is to say, it never occurred to him that Ireland could ever wish to be independent in the sense of not being subject to the King of England, or could seek to be united to any other power.  Secondly, he was intensely aristocratic.  His idea was that Government should and would always be in the hands of the propertied and educated classes; that Parliament should consist of country gentlemen and professional men from the towns, elected on a narrow franchise. (It must be remembered that the country gentlemen had recently given evidence of their patriotic zeal by the inauguration of the Volunteer movement; and the ability and eloquence of the Irish Bar at that period is proverbial).  Thirdly, he regarded Protestant ascendancy as a fundamental necessity.  It is true that other politicians at the time saw that they were faced with a serious difficulty:  the very principles to which they had appealed and by virtue of which they had obtained their legislative independence made it illogical that three-fourths of the community should be unrepresented; whereas if votes were given to the Roman Catholic majority it was inevitable that they would soon become eligible for seats in the Legislature; and if so, the Protestant minority must be swamped, and the country ruled by a very different class and according to very