The million-peopled city
Garwood, John
1853
The Union.
This state of things existed for another century, when the American and French revolutions.created a democratic spirit among the Irish Protestants, in which they were soon joined by the Roman Catholic peasantry. On the suppression of this rebellion, the Act of Union was passed, in A.D. , by which England and became an United Kingdom. | |
For a long series of years had been regarded by England almost in the light of " an enemy." In the words of the late Thomas Moore, "The successive enactments against the 'mere Irish' exhibit almost every form of insult and injury that the combined bitterness of hatred and con- tempt, could, in their most venomous conjunction, be expected to engender." [1] | |
Great efforts have been made since to benefit and to retrieve old wrongs, and although beggary and rags meet the visitor there at every turn, at least, in the more Romish parts, the sums of money which have been expended on this " sweetest isle of the ocean" by the united Parliament, with the design of improving its social and moral condition, have been immense. Its harbours, the navigation of its rivers, its canals, its railways, its roads, its prisons, its penitentiaries, its asylums, its colleges, its public buildings, its constabulary force, the draining of its land, have cost the nation at large many millions of pounds, while the country has been favoured beyond the other parts of the United Kingdom in exemption from the assessed and income taxes. Large sums have also | |
255 | been spent in national education. The expenditure of the Parliament for this purpose in was 164,5771. These acts of favour to have had their influence; but the difference in creed, reviving old animosities, has frustrated, to a great extent, the success of the efforts,-an impediment which was not expected to have continued the dissension at the time of the Union. Nor, indeed, would this have been the case, in all human probability, if unprincipled men, well acquainted with the national character, had not exer- cised their power to mislead and estrange the people who, when separated from such dominion, have always proved themselves to be a loyal, a contented, and a thriving nation. |
Footnotes: [1] Thos. Moore's "History of Ireland," vol. ii., p. 288. |