Although united by interest and sentiment, Ireland and America entered on the struggle under widely varying conditions.  The American Colonies were thirteen separate units, with only a rude organization for common action, and in each of these units there existed a cleavage of opinion, based neither on class nor creed, between rebels and loyalists.  In spite of this weakness, the revolt was thoroughly national in the sense that it was organized and maintained through the State Assemblies, resting on a broad popular franchise.  In Ireland, unbought and unofficial opinion was united against England.  On the other hand, there was no national Legislature; only an enslaved and unrepresentative Legislature, tempered by a band of exceptionally brilliant and upright men, and continually thrust forward in spite of itself into bold and independent action by unconstitutional pressure from the unrepresented elements outside.  Success so won, as we shall see, was delusive.

We may note two important additional circumstances:  first, the dense mist of ignorance in which, and largely in consequence of which, England began her quarrel both with America and Ireland.  The average Englishman was probably even more ignorant of Ireland, which was sixty miles away, than of America, which was three thousand miles away.  I am not at all sure that that fact is not true still.  At any rate, it was true then.  Yet knowledge of Ireland was more necessary, because her condition was bad in ways unknown in America.  In all the essentials of material well-being, America was supremely fortunate, while Ireland was in the depths of misery.  It is not that this misery went undescribed or unlamented, or that it was not realized by a small number of Englishmen.  Some of the most famous writings of the time, from the mordant satire of Swift to the learned and elaborate diagnosis of Arthur Young, laid bare the hideous ravages wrought by misrule in Ireland; but they had little or no effect upon English statesmen, and were unread by the only classes from which, if they had had knowledge, proper practical sympathy might have come.  Until Townshend’s Viceroyalty (1767-1772) most of the Irish Viceroys were absentees for the greater part of their term of office, leaving the conduct of Irish affairs to English Bishops and Judges, the wisest and most humane of whom could make little or no impression on English official indifference.  American Governors were at any rate resident, or mainly resident, and a few were good and popular administrators, though the information which most of them supplied to the Home Government showed a blindness to what was going on under their very eyes which would be incomprehensible if we did not know by experience that it is the invariable result of irresponsible rule over white men, whether at home or abroad.  If, without the presence of race distinctions, it needed Parliamentary reform in England itself to force the ruling class to study with real sympathy the needs, character, and desires