not to
commend their adoption of so apt a term into the family of politics. It
may be truly said to enrich the language. Even if the Lord Mayor and
Speaker mean to insinuate that this influence is to be obtained and held
by flattering their people, by managing them, by skilfully adapting
themselves to the humors and passions of those whom they would govern,
he must be a very untoward critic who would cavil even at this use of
the word, though such cajoleries would perhaps be more prudently
practised than professed. These are all meanings laudable, or at least
tolerable. But when we look a little more narrowly, and compare it with
the plan to which it owes its present technical application, I find it
has strayed far from its original sense. It goes much further than the
privilege allowed by Horace. It is more than _parce detortum_. This
Protestant ascendency means nothing less than an influence obtained by
virtue, by love, or even by artifice and seduction,--full as little an
influence derived from the means by which ministers have obtained an
influence which might be called, without straining, an _ascendency_, in
public assemblies in England, that is, by a liberal distribution of
places and pensions, and other graces of government. This last is wide
indeed of the signification of the word. New _ascendency_ is the old
_mastership_. It is neither more nor less than the resolution of one set
of people in Ireland to consider themselves as the sole citizens in the
commonwealth, and to keep a dominion over the rest by reducing them to
absolute slavery under a military power, and, thus fortified in their
power, to divide the public estate, which is the result of general
contribution, as a military booty, solely amongst themselves.

The poor word _ascendency_, so soft and melodious in its sound, so
lenitive and emollient in its first usage, is now employed to cover to
the world the most rigid, and perhaps not the most wise, of all plans of
policy. The word is large enough in its comprehension. I cannot
conceive what mode of oppression in civil life, or what mode of
religious persecution, may not come within the methods of preserving an
_ascendency_. In plain old English, as they apply it, it signifies
_pride and dominion_ on the one part of the relation, and on the other
_subserviency and contempt_,--and it signifies nothing else. The old
words are as fit to be set to music as the new: but use has long since
affixed to them th