vented Ireland trading with the colonies, that put a duty on salt needed for the fisheries, and on coal, needed for everything?

The struggle of Irish trade to establish itself in the eighteenth century against the commercial restrictions of England is best to be understood by remembering the Boston Tea-Party. Ireland, or rather Anglo-Ireland, could have had a similar tea-party once a week.

6

But the Anglo-Irish parliament had not only no standing in the eyes of constitutional lawyers; it was hopelessly corrupt within. Of its 300 members, 172 were nominated. Of these 172, half were owned by the Government, half as private property with a cash price on them. The others were elected by something not remotely resembling a modern popular election.

Till the middle of the century this corrupt little body was run in the "English interest." "Burgundy, closeting, and palaver" were later employed, but the greatest victory scored was simply the transfer of the most powerful boss from England to a small inside group of Anglo-Irishmen.

The tail-light of history has not yet illuminated every crevice of these packed, non-representative as

semblies; but we know enough to say: foul. And yet Swift's voice was raised as early as 1720 to urge the Anglo-Irish to behave as freemen. He coined a famous phrase: "In reason all government without the consent of the governed is the very definition of slavery. . . . The remedy is wholly in your own hands, and therefore I have digressed a little in order to refresh and continue the spirit so reasonably raised among you, and to let you see that by the laws of God, of nature, of nations, and of your country, you are, and you ought to be, as free a people as your brethren in England."

Carpet-baggers, however, are not "of nature" free. The best men in Anglo-Ireland did not go so far as to call their associates carpet-baggers. They were, however, sincere in their desire for reform; they wanted a definite term put to the life of a parliament, control of the money-bills, an abolition of sinecures, a rescinding of Poyning's Law, control of the militia, a tax on absentees. It revolted them to be treated as inferiors, to be run from England, by England, for England, at the cost of so much per vote. They never learned to like the manner in which their Majesties unloaded on Ireland the more subtle and intimate obligations which the English parliament brutally cold-shouldered.

Lecky enumerates these items for which Ireland had to pay: "The Duke of St. Albans, the bastard son of Charles II, enjoyed an Irish pension of £800 a year; Catherine Sedley, the mistress of James II, had another of £5000 a year. William III bestowed confiscated lands, exceeding an English county in extent, on his Dutch favorites, Portland and Albemarle, and a considerable estate on his former mistress, Elizabeth Villiers. The Duchess of Kendal and the Countess of Darlington, the two mistresses of George I, had pensions of the united annual value of £5000. Lady Walsingham, the daughter of the Duchess of Kendal, had an Irish pension of £1500. Lady Howe, the daughter of Lady Darlington, had a pension of £500. Madame de Walmoden, one of the mistresses of George II, had an Irish pension of £3000. The queen dowager of Prussia, sister of George II, Count Bernsdorff, who was a prominent German politician under George I, and a number of less-noted German names may be found on the Irish pension list."

The Anglo-Irish parliament is an instructive spectacle. If topics arose to excite public opinion—the debasement of the currency if not the debasement of the Catholics, the suppression of the woolen industry if not the suppression of dissenters-there immediately

was revealed the morbid political condition of the country. On what moral principle could the AngloIrish rally their opposition to the English conqueror? Swift said, "the consent of the governed." But Swift was too keen a mind to attempt to limit this principle to the Ascendancy. In resenting the fact that England could prohibit Irish goods while Ireland was not free to retaliate, Swift and the honest men who reasoned with him were in the way of ceasing to be hyphenated and definitely becoming nationalist Irishmen.

It was thus, in fact, that Protestant nationalism started, as a natural outcome of humane conviction and philanthropy. But in the sturdy refusal of such men to call themselves Englishmen so long as they were treated as colonials, there was as yet only a negative nationalism. The Anglo-Irish had a long way to go before they became really Irish.

The history of the eighteenth century is, in great measure, the failure of this Anglo-Irish parliament to become national. Out of their local ascendancy the meaner of the Anglo-Irish were content with the plums of bribery. The nobler of the Anglo-Irish hated bribery and the bribed. They saw that Ireland must have

autonomy, and they risked a great deal to secure it. But it was only the few who perceived that no parliament could be free unless it were representative, and

no parliament could be representative unless it were popular-it was only these few who undertook the real task that confronted an Irish parliament. That task, of course, was to resurrect the Irish nation. It meant renouncing ascendancy and reversing the penal code.