al
regiments across Saint George's Channel to recruit the army of the Duke
of Cumberland. Nor was this submission the effect of content, but of
mere stupefaction and brokenness of heart. The iron had entered into the
soul. The memory of past defeats, the habit of daily enduring insult
and oppression, had cowed the spirit of the unhappy nation. There were
indeed Irish Roman Catholics of great ability, energy and ambition; but
they were to be found every where except in Ireland, at Versailles and
at Saint Ildefonso, in the armies of Frederic and in the armies of Maria
Theresa. One exile became a Marshal of France. Another became Prime
Minister of Spain. If he had staid in his native land he would have been
regarded as an inferior by all the ignorant and worthless squireens who
drank the glorious and immortal memory. In his palace at Madrid he had
the pleasure of being assiduously courted by the ambassador of George
the Second, and of bidding defiance in high terms to the ambassador of
George the Third. [140] Scattered over all Europe were to be found
brave Irish generals, dexterous Irish diplomatists, Irish Counts, Irish
Barons, Irish Knights of Saint Lewis and of Saint Leopold, of the White
Eagle and of the Golden Fleece, who, if they had remained in the house
of bondage, could not have been ensigns of marching regiments or freemen
of petty corporations. These men, the natural chiefs of their race,
having been withdrawn, what remained was utterly helpless and passive.
A rising of the Irishry against the Englishry was no more to be
apprehended than a rising of the women and children against the men.
[141]

There were indeed, in those days, fierce disputes between the mother
country and the colony; but in those disputes the aboriginal population
had no more interest than the Red Indians in the dispute between Old
England and New England about the Stamp Act. The ruling few, even when
in mutiny against the government, had no mercy for any thing that
looked like mutiny on the part of the subject many. None of those Roman
patriots, who poniarded Julius Caesar for aspiring to be a king,
would have had the smallest scruple about crucifying a whole school of
gladiators for attempting to escape from the most odious and degrading
of all kinds of servitude. None of those Virginian patriots, who
vindicated their separation from the British empire by proclaiming it to
be a selfevident truth that all men were endowed by the Creator wit