tary government
had been abolished. Be this as it may, vituperation of Grattan's
Parliament is for our present purpose as irrelevant as it is unjust and
injudicious.

[Sidenote: True objection, restoration impossible.]

The true reason for declining to consider the demand for the
Constitution of 1782 is, that to concede it is in the strictest sense of
the word an impossibility. Grattan's Constitution not only is dead, but
can look for no resurrection. The social, the political, the religious,
we might almost say the physical conditions under which Grattan's
Parliament existed have vanished, never to return. "It cannot be too
clearly understood," writes Mr. Lecky, "that the real meaning of the
separate Irish Parliament of the eighteenth century was that the
efficient government of the country was placed in the hands of its
Protestant gentry, qualified by the fact that the English Government
possessed a sufficient number of nomination boroughs to exercise a
constant controlling influence over their proceedings. The existing
Grand Juries and the Synod of the disestablished Church are the bodies
which now represent most faithfully the independent elements in
Grattan's Parliament. That Parliament consisted exclusively of men who
were bound to the English connection by the closest ties of interest and
sentiment [and] who were pre-eminently the representatives of
property."[51] We may deplore that such a Parliament was doomed to
destruction when it might possibly have been saved by reform. But to any
one who has eyes to see it is as clear as day that with Protestant
ascendancy, with the prestige of the Established Church, with the
leading position of Irish landlords, with the submission of Irish
tenants, with the power of control exercised by the English Government,
with the necessary dependence of the English Colony upon the connection
with England, Grattan's Constitution with all its possibilities or
impossibilities has vanished for ever. You can no more restore the
Parliament of 1782 in Ireland than you can restore the unreformed
Parliament of 1832 in England. In either case to reproduce the form
would not renew the spirit, and the attempted revival of an anomaly
would turn out the creation of a monstrosity.

One consideration suggested by the memory of Grattan's Parliament is
well worth attention. With the curious laxity of thought about
constitutional changes which marks modern British statesmanship,
language is often