ich lead to the conclusion that under no form
whatever can Irish Home Rule be accepted by England.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Objection to Constitution of 1782, not faults of Irish
Parliament.]

III. _Home Rule as the revival of Grattan's Constitution._--The cry for
Home Rule sometimes takes the form of a demand that Ireland should
reacquire the Constitution of 1782. The true answer to this demand is
not to be found where Englishmen often seek for it, in attacks on
Grattan's Parliament. That body exhibited some grave defects common to
the English Parliament of the day; it had also many faults of its own to
answer for; but it had with all its demerits virtues which still cast a
halo round its memory in the eyes of Irish patriotism, and which serve
to redeem many of its admitted faults in the judgment of impartial
history. It produced great men. Flood, Grattan, Curran, and Fitzgibbon
were none of them faultless statesmen, but they were leaders of whom any
people have a right to be proud. Grattan's Parliament, moreover, though
it represented a class, represented a class of Irishmen, and we may even
say the best class of Irishmen. It was lastly, with all its defects, a
Parliament of men who knew and belonged to Ireland, and after its
lights cared for the country. It was in a true sense a national
Parliament. When we consider further that the Parliament was abolished
against the wish of the best men in Ireland, that it was abolished by
arts which have brought lasting and just discredit on the men who
carried through the Act of Union, we can well understand why as calm and
as well-informed judges as Mr. Lecky hold to the belief--certainly in
nowise in itself unreasonable--that the Treaty of Union was, to say the
least, premature, and that England and Ireland would have gained much if
for a generation or two more the interest and repute of Ireland had been
guarded by an Irish Parliament. The argument that the Irish Parliament
because it was corrupt, or because it represented a class, was rightly
abolished, proves too much. The English Parliament under Walpole was at
least as open as the Irish Parliament in the time of Grattan to each of
these charges, yet long before legislation had removed the flagrant
anomalies of the unreformed House of Commons the English Parliament had
cast off its worst vices, and few persons will maintain that England
would have gained if during the time of Walpole Parliamen