But the Stuarts appealed to Irish loyalty merely for the support of their dynasty, and William III. laid the laurels won on the banks of the Boyne upon the altar of English monopoly.  In the reigns of Anne and the three Georges, law was made to do the work of the sword, and the Catholics of Ireland, constituting the mass of the nation, knew their sovereign only as the head of an alien power, cruel and unrelenting in its oppression.  They were required to love a German prince whom they had never seen.  He called himself the father of his subjects; and he had millions of subjects on the other side of a narrow channel, whom he never knew, and never cared to know.  When at length the dominant nation relented, and wished to strike the penal chains from the hands of her sister, the king forbade the act of mercy, pleading his conscience and his oath as a bar to justice and to freedom, but yielding at last to English state necessity, and robbing concession of its grace, of all its power to conciliate.  From the battle of the Boyne to Catholic emancipation, the king of Ireland had never set foot on Irish soil, except in the case of George IV., whose visit was little better than a melodramatic exhibition, repaid by copious libations of flattery, which however failed to melt his bigotry, or to persuade him to redeem his solemn promises and pledges, until, nine years later, he was compelled to yield by the fear of impending civil war.

Ireland may get from her sister, England, everything but that for which the heart yearns—­affection—­that which alone ’can minister to a mind diseased, can pluck from the memory its rooted sorrow, and rase out the written troubles from the brain.’  That is just what Ireland needs above all things.  She wants to be kept from brooding morbidly over the dismal past, and to be induced to apply herself in a cheerful spirit to the business of life.  The prescriptions of state physicians cannot fully reach the root of the disease.  Say that it is a sentimental malady—­a delusion.  What is gained by saying that, if the sentiment or the delusion makes life wretched, unfits for business, produces suicidal propensities, and renders keepers necessary?

In theory, Ireland is one with England; in practice, she is hourly made to feel the reverse. The Times, and all the journals which express the instincts of the dominant nation, constantly speak of the Irish people as ’the subjects of England, whom Englishmen have a right to control.  They are the subjects of the Queen only in a secondary sense—­as the Queen of England, and reigning over them through England.  Every sovereign, from Queen Elizabeth to Queen Victoria, was sovereign of Ireland merely in this subordinate sense, even when there was an Irish parliament.  The King of Ireland could speak to his Irish parliament only as he was advised by his English ministers; and their advice was invariably prompted by English interests.  Her king was not hers in the true sense.  His heart and his company were wholly given to another, to whose pride, power, and splendour she was made to minister.  That state of things still continues in effect, and while it lasts Ireland can never be contented.  Her heart will always be disquieted within her.  Something bitter will ever be bubbling up from the bottom of that troubled fountain.