it
presented to this country; inasmuch as the Irish Parliament, for the
first time, I believe, declared itself dependent upon England,[76] and
either did not desire, or did not dare, to support its champion
Molyneux, when his work asserting Irish independence was burned in
London. It petitioned for representation in the English Parliament, not
in order to uplift the Irish people, but in order to keep them down. In
its sympathies and in its aims the overwhelming mass of the population
had no share. It was Swift who, by the _Drapier's Letters_, for the
first time called into existence a public opinion flowing from and
representing Ireland as a whole. He reasserted the doctrine of Molyneux,
and denounced Wood's halfpence not only as a foul robbery, but as a
constitutional and as a national insult. The patience of the Irish
Protestants was tried very hard, and they were forced, as Sir Charles
Duffy states in his vivid book, to purchase the power of oppressing
their Roman Catholic fellow-countrymen at a great price.[77] Their
pension list was made to provide the grants too degrading to be
tolerated in England. The Presbyterians had to sit down under the
Episcopal monopoly; but the enjoyment of that monopoly was not left to
the Irish Episcopalians. In the time of Henry VIII. it had been
necessary to import an English Archbishop Browne[78] and an English
Bishop Bale, or there might not have been a single Protestant in
Ireland. It was well to enrich the rolls of the Church of Ireland with
the piety and learning of Ussher, and to give her in Bedell one name, at
least, which carries the double crown of the hero and the saint. But,
after the Restoration, by degrees the practice degenerated, and
Englishmen were appointed in numbers to the Irish Episcopate in order to
fortify and develop by numerical force what came to be familiarly known
as the English interest. So that the Primate Boulter, during his
government of Ireland, complains[79] that Englishmen are still less than
one-half the whole body of Bishops, although the most important sees
were to a large extent in their hands. The same practice was followed in
the higher judicial offices. Fitzgibbon was the first Irishman who
became Lord Chancellor.[80] The Viceroy, commonly absent, was
represented by Lords Justices, who again were commonly English; and
Primate Boulter, a most acute and able man, jealous of an Irish Speaker
in that character, recommends that the commander of the