striking fable of Pallas and Arachne. It was in the Drapier Letters, and especially in the fourth letter, that Swift gave voice to his nationality-a colonial one, no doubt, though it widened and broadened as he went along. Such passages as the following, however carefully set in the rest of the text so as to render it extremely difficult to construe treason out of them, show how the seed sown by Molyneux was germinating: "It is true, indeed, that within the memory of man the Parliament of England have sometimes assumed the power of binding this kingdom by laws enacted there, wherein they were at first openly opposed (as far as truth, reason, and justice are capable of opposing) by the famous Mr. Molyneux; for in reason all government without the consent of the governed is the very definition of slavery; but, in fact, eleven men well armed will certainly subdue one single man in his shirt.

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 ought to be, as free a people as your brethren in England." In these and similar passages Swift gave form and substance to the idea of Irish nationality, which has never since been lost. Primate Boulter bears witness to the existence of the growing national feeling in a letter to the Duke of Newcastle: "Our pamphlets and the discourses of some people of weight run very much upon the independency of this kingdom, and in our present state that is a popular notion." 1

Hitherto political struggles were confined to Parliament, save in the case of the Drapier storm, and, as those belonging to the native race were rigidly excluded from hearing the debates, they had no means of knowing the course of events. Acts might be passed seriously affecting them without their knowing anything about them, until they were put in force, as was done in the case of the disreputable trick of Primate Boulter, disfranchising all the Catholic voters of the kingdom. A great change took

1 Letters, vol. ii. p. 207.

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place, however, at the beginning of Lord Harrington's viceroyalty, by the creation of an independent public opinion outside Parliament, which in time was destined to influence and guide the latter-this, as already stated, was effected through the establishment of the Citizens' Journal by Dr. Lucas.1 The effect of Lucas's writings was considerable; besides calling forth a number of pamphlets for and against his opinions, which were read, especially the former, with great avidity by the artisans and middle class, whose political faith had hitherto been a blind anti-Popery feeling, and to whom no ray of political light had hitherto penetrated, they created great demand for reprints of former pamphlets on the suppression of the woollen trade and other trade restrictions of the English. It is also worthy of note that in the pamphlet war carried on by the friends and foes of Lucas, many of them include in their purview old and pre-Norman Ireland—the foes to denounce its barbarism, and the friends to belaud its institutions; but, although on both sides there was abundant evidence of want of true knowledge-it could not have been otherwise at the time-these discussions indicate the birth of a common history in which all Irishmen would in time participate and interest themselves.

In the last year of Lord Harrington's viceroyalty there happened to be a considerable surplus, which the House of Commons determined to apply to the extinction of the public debt. The English Privy Council, to whom the heads of a Bill for the purpose had been sent in the usual way, comprised many strong partisans of prerogative, some of whom contended that the Commons of Ireland had no right to deal in any way with surplus revenue without the formal consent of the Crown previously obtained; others even asserted that the Crown had a right to dispose of any surplus without consulting Parliament. This was the view most favoured by the new viceroy, the Duke of Dorset, or rather by the virtual rulers of Ireland, Primate Stone and the secretary, Lord George Sackville, son of the viceroy. At the opening of Parliament, the viceroy informed both

1 Ante, p. 57.

Houses that the king would consent to the application of such part of the balance in the treasury as could be spared to the reduction of the public debt. In the Bill prepared to appropriate £120,000 for this purpose, all reference to the king's consent was omitted; but the English ministry altered the preamble so as to imply the king's consent, and the Irish House of Commons passed the Bill so altered, thus establishing a precedent that they could not spend their own money without the consent of the English Privy Council.

The Duke of Newcastle, who became Prime Minister of England on the death of Mr. Pelham, was strongly in favour of maintaining the dependency of Ireland. Accordingly he commanded the Duke of Dorset, when opening the Irish Parliament in 1753, to repeat the expression of the king's consent. The Irish Parliament, however, took no notice of the gracious consent, but the English minister supplied the omission. It happened that, when the altered Bill came back, the Irish House of Commons was occupied in investigating the case of Arthur Jones Nevill, a member of the House, and surveyor-general. A sum of nearly £39,000 had been voted for the repair of barracks, so as to prepare them for the return of the troops after the peace. A committee appointed to inquire into the whole question laid bare a system of the grossest jobbery and corruption. It was shown that in the preceding thirty years a sum of nearly £200,000, exclusive of the £39,000, forming a considerable item of the public debt, had been spent on the building and repair of barracks, the greater part of which had been misappropriated by the surveyorgeneral. The House passed a Bill to indemnify the nation out of the estate of Nevill, but, the latter being protected by the Duke of Dorset and Primate Stone, the Bill was shelved in the Privy Council, and the surveyor-general was allowed to sell his office at its full value, and thus get rid of the responsibility imposed upon him by the House of Commons. Before the conclusion of the preceding session the House had passed some resolutions, calling on the surveyor-general to carry out the repairs of the barracks

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at his own expense; and at the beginning of the session of 1753, a committee was appointed to see how far he had complied with the resolutions of the House. The report was to the effect that he had not done so. It was at this crisis that the altered money Bill was returned, so the House was in no mood to make any concession, and accordingly it expelled Mr. Nevill by a majority of eight in a very full House, and threw out the money Bill by a majority of five. This was looked upon as a great victory, and there was general rejoicing, in which the native Irish joined. It was a Pyrrhic victory, however, for, the public service being unprovided for, there was a stagnation of trade; the circulation having almost ceased, the workingclasses suffered much, and were clamorous against both the Government and the patriots. Under the pretext of relieving the deadlock, the Lord-Lieutenant took the whole of the surplus revenue out of the treasury by means of a royal letter. After this coup d'état, the Government party became so unpopular that the Duke and his son were glad to get away to London, while Primate Stone durst not venture to leave his house through fear of the mob of Dublin, then completely under the influence of Dr. Lucas.

Next followed the sale of the "patriots" Boyle and Malone and their supporters. Boyle was created Earl of Shannon, with a pension of £2000 a year for thirty-one years, and Malone became Chancellor of the Exchequer. Boyle, the prime mover of the opposition, having gained his object, everything went smoothly for a short time. But there was much indignation felt by many at the sale of the patriots, and when Parliament met in 1756, the scandal of the increasing pension-list attracted attention. To prevent the purchase of members by means of pensions on the eve of a division, a Bill was introduced in March 1756, proposing that any member who accepted a pension or a civil office of profit under the Crown should thereby vacate his seat. The Bill was, however, rejected by a majority of twenty-six. On the day of the division a return of the names of the pensioners, which had been prepared by a committee appointed by the House, was

read. This return, although incomplete, revealed such a state of corruption, that the House in very shame passed a series of resolutions on the subject. The first of these stated that the several pensions and salaries placed upon the civil establishment of the kingdom since March 23, 1755, amounted to the annual sum of £28,103.1 This was the price of the Boyle "patriots."

When the speaker presented, in the usual form, the pension resolutions to the viceroy, the latter answered that they were of so grave a character that he could not suddenly determine whether it would be proper for him to transmit them to the king. An attempt to insert the viceroy's answer in the Journals of the House having failed, a motion was made practically to adjourn all orders until the resolutions were forwarded to the king. This motion was carried by a majority of twenty-one. In the division Anthony Malone, now Chancellor of the Exchequer and a Privy Councellor, and the pensioned Boyle "patriots" voted in the minority. Next day the secretary informed the House that the resolutions would be forwarded. This victory was the turning-point in the struggle for legislative independence. The correspondence, too, between the Duke of Bedford, the viceroy, and Mr. Pitt, which reveals, in all its brutal nakedness, the machinery of Irish government, proves that a new spirit was growing up in the nation, and it is only just to say that Dr. Lucas had largely contributed to this result.

Although there was no real justification for reinforcing the Popery laws after Chesterfield's period of connivance, yet this was done with harshness and spasmodic vigour. There was a renewed effort to mend the code by enacting a new and special law for putting an end to the episcopal organisation by which the hierarchical succession was clandestinely maintained in Ireland. But although the time had passed for such laws, the attempt to impose them, and the case of Mr. Saul, showed what a deep stratum of intolerance still existed among the colonists. These events

1 "A Letter from a Gentleman in the City to a Member of Parliament in the North of Ireland." Printed in the year 1757.