h in the American civil war, but which existed
before in a nameless and smouldering state, is, as I believe, the want
of national institutions, of a national capital, of any objects of
national reverence and attachment, and consequently of anything
deserving to be called national life. The English Crown and Parliament
the Irish have never learnt, nor have they had any chance of learning,
to love, or to regard as national, notwithstanding the share which was
given them, too late, in the representation. The greatness of England is
nothing to them. Her history is nothing, or worse. The success of
Irishmen in London consoles the Irish in Ireland no more than the
success of Italian adventurers in foreign countries (which was very
remarkable) consoled the Italian people. The drawing off of Irish
talent, in fact, turns to an additional grievance in their minds. Dublin
is a modern Tara, a metropolis from which the glory has departed; and
the viceroyalty, though it pleases some of the tradesmen, fails
altogether to satisfy the people. 'In Ireland we can make no appeal to
patriotism, we can have no patriotic sentiments in our schoolbooks, no
patriotic emblems in our schools, because in Ireland everything
patriotic is rebellious.' These were the words uttered in my hearing,
not by a complaining demagogue, but by a desponding statesman. They
seemed to me pregnant with fatal truths.

"If the craving for national institutions, and the disaffection bred in
this void of the Irish people's heart, seem to us irrational and even
insane, in the absence of any more substantial grievance, we ought to
ask ourselves what would become of our own patriotism if we had no
national institutions, no objects of national loyalty and reverence,
even though we might be pretty well governed, at least in intention, by
a neighbouring people whom we regarded as aliens, and who, in fact,
regarded us pretty much in the same light. Let us first judge ourselves
fairly, and then judge the Irish, remembering always that they are more
imaginative and sentimental, and need some centre of national feeling
and affection more than ourselves."[50]

And all this was written sixty-seven years after the Union of 1800.

Mr. Goldwin Smith then deals with the subject of the Irish and Scotch
unions much in the same way as Mr. Lecky.

"The incorporation of the Scotch nation with the English, being
conducted on the right principles by the great Whig statesman of Anne,
has b