Untitled - 24grammata.com

268 POLITICAL CONSEQUENCESlies, as long as they adhered to their religion, were incapableof holding land either in freehold or lease, and were deniedthe means of publiceducation.In other countries where the subject was the bondsmanof his master, care at least was taken of him, and sustenancesupplied. Personal freedom was left to the Irish, that itmight become a burden and a curse to them. By an organized system of oppression, the people were reduced to ahorde of brutal paupers and the consequences were such;as might have been expected.The Irish revenged themselves whenever they coulcl, and their revenge was that ofbarbarians, because they had been made such. It was invain that under GeorgeIII. a less inhuman system of government began to improve whatever still admitted of improvement; in vain that the independence of Americareleased Ireland from her commercial fetters (1782) a;feeling of misery so long endured is not to be forgotten withina few years ;the traces of such deeply-impressed barbarismare not wont to disappear in a single generation.The revolution of our own day found Ireland in that convulsive state into which it had been thrown by those offormer times, and while still under this influence it was exposed to a new and bloody crisis, which was followed bythe Union, in 1800.By this measure the two countries were formed into onestate, and the Irish parliament incorporated with that ofGreat Britain. It does not appear, however, that its beneficialresults will be fully developedtill the political equality of theCatholics and Protestants of Ireland shall have been finallyestablished, by the admission of the former into parliament. 1THE UHITED NETHEKLAJSTDS.WHILE other states were either shaken or new-modelled bythe Reformation, there was one which was created by it.1It is now six years since the emancipation of the Catholics thus spokenof "by Prof. Heeren twenty-seven years before it took place was resorted toas a preferable alternative to civil war. Had it been the free gift of the legislature, instead of "being extorted by the threat of rebellion, the merits of themeasure might have been more fairly tried. As it is, however, the Catholicsof Ireland appear to have forgotten the measure itself in their triumph at themode in which it was obtained, and instead of developing, as our authorhoped, the beneficial eflfects of the Union, the passing of the Catholic Reliefbill is likely to prove the means of defeating it altogether. TR.