the last century
Ireland suffered greatly from a scheme of government which did not allow
of administration such as Turgot's. In some respects the virtues of
Englishmen have been singularly unfavourable to their success in
conciliating the goodwill of Ireland. It will always remain a paradox
that the nation which has built up the British Empire (with vast help,
it may be added, from Ireland) has combined extraordinary talent for
legislation with a singular incapacity for consolidating subject races
or nations into one State. The explanation of the paradox lies in the
aristocratic sentiment which has moulded the institutions of England. An
aristocracy respects the rights of individuals, but an aristocracy
identifies right with privilege, and is based on the belief in the
inequality of men and of classes. Privilege is the keynote of English
constitutionalism; the respect for privileges has preserved English
freedom, but it has made England slower than any other civilized country
to adopt ideas of equality. This love of privilege has vitiated the
English administration in Ireland in more ways than one. The whole
administration of the country rested avowedly down to 1829, and
unavowedly to a later period, on the inequality of Catholics and
Protestants, and Protestant supremacy itself meant (except during the
short rule of Cromwell)[13] not Protestant equality, but Anglican
privilege. The spirit which divided Ireland into hostile factions
prevented Englishmen who dwelt in England from treating as equals
Englishmen who settled in Ulster. When the Volunteers claimed Irish
independence, and the American colonists renounced connection with the
mother country, similar effects were produced by the same cause. In each
case English colonists revolted against England's sovereignty, because
it meant the privilege of Englishmen who dwelt in Great Britain to
curtail the rights and hamper the trade of Englishmen who dwelt abroad.
For the iniquitous restrictions on the trade of Ireland, which are
morally by far the most blameworthy of the wrongs inflicted by England
upon Irishmen, were not precisely the acts of deliberate selfishness
which they seem to modern critics. The grievance under which Ireland
suffered was in character the same as the grievances in respect of trade
inflicted on the American colonies. Yet but for the insane attempt to
subject the colonists to direct taxation by the English Parliament the
War of Independence might ha