and it must
not be forgotten in this connection that, if the Sovereign is neutral,
his representative in Ireland is a strong party man, and that the
tendency which his Majesty has so strongly deprecated in England on more
than one occasion, of employing emblems of royalty as symbols of party,
has been ineradicably established by the ascendancy faction in Ireland,
where the Union Jack is a party badge and God Save the King has been
monopolised as a party song.

CHAPTER VIII

IRELAND AND DEMOCRACY

"A majority of Irish members turned the balance in favour of
the great Reform Bill of 1832, and from that day there has
been scarcely a democratic measure which they have not
powerfully assisted. When, indeed, we consider the votes which
they have given, the principles they have been the means of
introducing into English legislation, and the influence they
have exercised upon the tone and character of the House of
Commons, it is probably not too much to say that their
presence in the British Parliament has proved the most
powerful of all agents in accelerating the democratic
transformation of English politics."

--W.E.H. LECKY, _History of England in the Eighteenth
Century_, Vol. VIII., p. 483.

In Ireland perhaps more than in most countries history repeats itself.
The lament of Lord Anglesea, the Lord Lieutenant, in 1831, who, finding
himself a _roi faineant_, declared that "Things are now come to that
pass that the question is whether O'Connell or I shall govern Ireland,"
found its echo just fifty years later when Parnell enjoyed so powerful a
position that writers were fain to draw a contrast between the coroneted
impotence of the head of the Executive and the uncrowned power of the
Irish leader.

The history of Irish representation at Westminster is one of the most
curious chapters in Parliamentary annals. It is only in the last thirty
years that it has reached the importance which it now possesses,
although of all Liberal Governments since the great Reform Bill, that of
1880 and that which is in power to-day are the only two which have had a
majority independently of the Irish vote, and it is worth remembering
that the Ministry of 1880 ended its career amid the pitfalls of an Irish
Coercion Bill. The maxim to beware when all men speak well of you,
there has been no need to impress on Irish members since the days of
Parnell, as there was at th