It was vain to expect justice from the Irish parliament.  The people of Ireland never were governed exclusively, or at all, by her own Sovereign, her own Lords, and her own Commons.  Ireland was ’in the custody of England,’ just as much before the Union as during the last sixty-seven years.  Even during the few brief years of her spasmodic ‘independence,’ the mass of the nation formed no part of the ’Commons of Ireland.’  It was still, as it always had been, a sham parliament—­a body representing the colonial aristocracy—­acting as undertakers for the Government of England, for whose interest exclusively this island was to be ruled.  Provided this result was secured, it did not matter much, at the other side of the Channel, how the Irish people were treated.  Indeed, they were not recognised as the people of Ireland, or any part thereof.  Even philosophic liberals, like Lord Charlemont, were shocked at the idea of a Papist getting into the Irish House of Commons; and the volunteer system was shattered by this insane animosity of the ruling race against the subject nation.  The antipathy was as strong as the antipathy between the whites and the negroes in the West Indies and the United States.  Hence the remorseless spirit in which atrocities were perpetrated in 1798.  Mr. Daunt has shown that a large proportion of the Irish House of Lords consisted of men who were English to all intents and purposes—­many of them by birth, and many by residence, and, no doubt, they always came over with reluctance to what Lord Chancellor Clare called ‘our damnable country.’  It may be that in some years after the abolition of the Establishment—­after some experience of the regime of religious equality—­the two races in this island will learn to act together so harmoniously as to give a fair promise that they could be safely trusted with self-legislation.  But the ‘self’ must be one body animated by one spirit; not two bodies, chained together, irritated by the contact, fiercely struggling against one another, eternally reproaching one another about the mutual wrongs of the past, and not unfrequently coming to blows, like implacable duellists shut up in a small room, each determined to kill or be killed.  If England were to let go her hold even now, something like this would be the Irish ‘situation.’  The abiding force of this antipathy, in the full light of Christianity, is awful.

In his ‘Life, Letters, and Speeches of Lord Plunket,’ the Hon. David Plunket states that, when his grandfather entered the Irish parliament, ’the English Government had nearly abandoned the sham of treating the Irish parliament as an independent legislature; the treasury benches were filled with placemen and pensioners.  All efforts tending to reform of parliament or concession to the Catholics had been given up as useless.  Grattan and some of his immediate followers had seceded from an assembly too degraded to appreciate their motives, or to be influenced by their example; and whatever remained of independence in the House of Commons ministers still laboured to bring under their control.  Scarcely thirty votes appeared in opposition on the most important divisions, while Government could at any time readily whip a majority of 100.’