not
invariably found even in tolerably constructed Parliaments. Why do we
find it in a Parliament of which the constitution and the environment
were alike intolerable? My answer is, because that Parliament found
itself faced by a British influence which was entirely anti-national,
and was thus constrained to seek for strength in the principle of
nationality.

Selfishness is a rooted principle of action in nations not less than in
single persons. It seems to draw a certain perfume from the virtue of
patriotism, which lies upon its borders. It stalks abroad with a
semblance of decency, nay, even of excellence. And under this cover a
paramount community readily embraces the notion, that a dependent
community may be made to exist not for its own sake, but for the sake of
an extraneous society of men. With this idea, the European nations,
utterly benighted in comparison with the ancient Greeks, founded their
transmarine dependencies. But a vast maritime distance, perhaps aided by
some filtration of sound ideas, prevented the application of this theory
in its nakedness and rigour to the American Colonies of England. In
Ireland we had not even the title of founders to allege. Nay, we were,
in point of indigenous civilization, the junior people. But the maritime
severance, sufficient to prevent accurate and familiar knowledge, was
not enough to bar the effective exercise of overmastering power. And
power was exercised, at first from without, to support the Pale, to
enlarge it, to make it include Ireland. When this had been done, power
began, in the seventeenth century, to be exercised from within Ireland,
within the precinct of its government and its institutions. These were
carefully corrupted, from the multiplication of the Boroughs by James I.
onwards, for the purpose. The struggle became civil, instead of martial;
and it was mainly waged by agencies on the spot, not from beyond the
Channel. When the rule of England passed over from the old violence into
legal forms and doctrines, the Irish reaction against it followed the
example. And the legal idea of Irish nationality took its rise in very
humble surroundings; if the expression may be allowed, it was born in
the slums of politics. Ireland reached the nadir of political depression
when, at and after the Boyne, she had been conquered not merely by an
English force, but by continental mercenaries. The ascendant
Protestantism of the island had never stood so low in the aspect