relations, of incorporation or of independence, shall be adjusted to them according to the laws of Nature’s own enactment.  Such a nationality was the growth of the last century in Ireland.  As each Irishman began to feel that he had a country, to which he belonged, and which belonged to him, he was, by a true process of nature, drawn more and more into brotherhood, and into the sense of brotherhood, with those who shared the allegiance and the property, the obligation and the heritage.  And this idea of country, once well conceived, presents itself as a very large idea, and as a framework for most other ideas, so as to supply the basis of a common life.  Hence it was that, on the coming of Lord Fitzwilliam, the whole generous emotion of the country leapt up with one consent, and went forth to meet him.  Hence it was that religious bigotry was no longer an appreciable factor in the public life of Ireland.  Hence it was that on his recall, and in order to induce acquiescence in his recall, it became necessary to divide again the host that had, welcomed him—­to put one part of it in array as Orangemen, who were to be pampered and inflamed; and to quicken the self-consciousness of another and larger mass by repulsion and proscription, by stripping Roman Catholics of arms in the face of licence and of cruelty, and, finally, by clothing the extreme of lawlessness with the forms of law.

Within the last twelve months we have seen, in the streets of Belfast, the painful proof that the work of Beresford and of Castlereagh has been found capable for the moment of revival.  To aggravate or sustain Irish disunion, religious bigotry has been again evoked in Ireland.  If the curse be an old one, there is also an old cure, recorded in the grand pharmacopoeia of history; and if the abstract force of policy and prudence are insufficient for the work, we may yet find that the evil spirit will be effectually laid by the gentle influence of a living and working Irish nationality. Quod faxit Deus.

FOOTNOTES: 

[Footnote 73:  2 Henry VI., act iii. sc. 1.]

[Footnote 74:  Lecky’s History of England in the Eighteenth Century, chap, vii. vol. ii, p. 205.]

[Footnote 75:  Lecky’s History of England in the Eighteenth Century, vol. ii. p. 227.]

[Footnote 76:  Duffy’s Bird’s-Eye View, p. 164.]

[Footnote 77:  Duffy’s Bird’s-Eye View, p. 166.]

[Footnote 78:  See Ball’s History of the Church of Ireland, a valuable work, deserving of more attention than it seems to have received.]

[Footnote 79:  Boulter’s Letters, i. 138, et alibi.]

[Footnote 80:  Lecky’s History of England in the Eighteenth Century, ii.]

[Footnote 81:  Boulter’s Letters, vol. ii.]

[Footnote 82:  Cornwallis’s Correspondence, ii. 441.]

[Footnote 83:  Grattan’s Life and Times, v. 173.]