No Bas-Breton, nor even any Alsatian, has
the smallest wish at the present day to be separated from France. If
all Irishmen have not yet arrived at the same disposition towards
England, it is partly because they are sufficiently numerous to be
capable of constituting a respectable nationality by themselves; but
principally because, until of late years, they had been so atrociously
governed, that all their best feelings combined with their bad ones in
rousing bitter resentment against the Saxon rule. This disgrace to
England, and calamity to the whole empire, has, it may be truly
said, completely ceased for nearly a generation. No Irishman is now
less free than an Anglo-Saxon, nor has a less share of every benefit
either to his country or to his individual fortunes than if he were
sprung from any other portion of the British dominions. The only
remaining real grievance of Ireland, that of the State Church, is
one which half, or nearly half, the people of the larger island have
in common with them. There is now next to nothing, except the memory
of the past, and the difference in the predominant religion, to keep
apart two races, perhaps the most fitted of any two in the world to be
the completing counterpart of one another. The consciousness of
being at last treated not only with equal justice but with equal
consideration is making such rapid way in the Irish nation as to be
wearing off all feelings that could make them insensible to the
benefits which the less numerous and less wealthy people must
necessarily derive from being fellow-citizens instead of foreigners to
those who are not only their nearest neighbours, but the wealthiest,
and one of the freest, as well as most civilised and powerful, nations
of the earth.
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