BOOK IV. 1747 from him; and Eyre politely returned them to Martin The eyes of the authorities remained unopened. Robert Martin, Esq., Pr. Stratford Eyre, Esq. Dt. By the Lords Jus- The defendant is hereby required L. Mears, Dublin MSS. 2 A party of Frenchmen came to Galway on an unknown errand, and lay for some time concealed in a convent. They had landed without passports or credentials. Eyre sent for them to come to him. They refused, and he arrested them. The mayor immediately took them out of his hands, and 'in the presence of the prisoners threatened to commit him if he interfered further.' -'Eyre to Secretary Wayte, August 19, 1755.' MSS. Dublin. This, too, was passed over by a Govern II. 1747 and indication that they might do what they pleased CHAP. without danger of interference, the Galway townsmen made haste to extinguish the small remains that were left of the Protestant colony. The Governor was obliged to look on passively while a Protestant grammar school, which he remembered as a boy flourishing and well attended, came to an end for want of pupils, and a gorgeous mass-house rose where the school had stood. Protestant families, which had been hitherto staunch, forsook a cause which had lost confidence in itself, and conformed to Popery. Eyre forwarded to the Secretary a letter which had reached him unsigned, but for the truth of every word of which he said that he could vouch himself, explaining how in a short time the Protestant interest of Galway, once thought of such importance as to be the subject of a special Act of Parliament, was passing into nothing.' met with discouragement. Our BOOK IV. 1747 SECTION V. THE Disarming Act partially neutralized the feebleness of the administration; bnt while wrong was established in the place of right, and while England was managing Ireland, not for Ireland's good but for her own imagined interest, no disarming act or other superficial remedy could stay the progress of social disease. The Irish Parliament had struggled long against the advancing tide; but, in the Irish Parliament itself, fatal influences were at work, and a new and poisonous element was beginning to show itself. The decay of religion left the gentry without the restraints which had held their fathers within bounds. The sense of injustice brought with it deserved resentment; but it was a resentment which, avoiding the wholesome roads. marked out for it by Swift and Berkeley, took the form of rhetorical declamation. The modern Irish patriot now appeared on the scene; the adventurer, whose trade was agitation, who, careless of Ireland's welfare, made his own way to wealth and distinction by constituting himself the champion of her wrongs. From the beginning of Anglo-Irish history there can be traced, in the leading spirits of the island, a particular notion of the meaning of the word liberty. True liberty means the being governed by just laws, laws which are in harmony with the will of the Maker and Master of the world. It is the worst curse of injustice that it leads men to look for redress, not to better government but to none, and to regard their own consent as the measure of the restraint to The consent of man was not asked when he was born into the world; his consent will not be asked when his time comes to die. As little has his consent to do with the laws which, while he lives, he is bound to obey. Let a nation be justly governed, and if it is wise it will not quarrel with the destiny which has provided for it the greatest of earthly blessings. English misrule in Ireland reached a point at last at which its grasp relaxed, and weakness compelled a surrender of a power which had been so scandalously misused; not, however, through any rising virtue on the part of the oppressed Irish, or through any divine aspiration after freedom and self-government, but because wrong had borne its necessary fruit in the feebleness of the oppressor. As late as Chesterfield's viceroyalty, though legitimate discontent had been often expressed in the CHAP. II. 1747 BOOK IV. 1747 SECTION V. THE Disarming Act partially neutralized the feebleness of the administration; bnt while wrong was established in the place of right, and while England was managing Ireland, not for Ireland's good but for her own imagined interest, no disarming act or other superficial remedy could stay the progress of social disease. The Irish Parliament had struggled long against the advancing tide; but, in the Irish Parliament itself, fatal influences were at work, and a new and poisonous element was beginning to show itself. The decay of religion left the gentry without the restraints which had held their fathers within bounds. The sense of injustice brought with it deserved resentment; but it was a resentment which, avoiding the wholesome roads marked out for it by Swift and Berkeley, took the form of rhetorical declamation. The modern Irish patriot now appeared on the scene; the adventurer, whose trade was agitation, who, careless of Ireland's welfare, made his own way to wealth and distinction by constituting himself the champion of her wrongs. From the beginning of Anglo-Irish history there can be traced, in the leading spirits of the island, a particular notion of the meaning of the word liberty. True liberty means the being governed by just laws, laws which are in harmony with the will of the Maker and Master of the world. It is the worst curse of injustice that it leads men to look for redress, not to better government but to none, and to regard |