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stitution in the Convention, were now its most earnest supporters. The parties in the large States opposing the Constitution were unable to combine with any effect, and the generous impulses and united exertions of its advocates carried it through in triumph. North Carolina and Rhode Island were the only two of the thirteen States that held aloof until after the organization of the new government; North Carolina ratifying the Constitution, November 21, 1789, and Rhode Island, May 29, 1790.

tion of

the Gov

Thus, after much opposition, the Constitution was finally ratified in Organiza1788 by the conventions in eleven States; whereupon it became the Supreme Law of the American Republic. On September 13, 1788, ernment. Congress appointed days for the requisite elections and for the organization of the new government; and on the 4th of March, 1789, the old Continental Congress expired and the new National Government went into full operation. Then the Republic of the United States of America commenced its glorious career.

of the Transac

tion.

Thus was completed one of the most extraordinary transactions in Character history. An infant Nation, enfeebled, dismembered, dispirited, broken by the losses of a war for existence, by the dissensions of peace, incapacitated for its duties to its own citizens or to foreign powers, suddenly bestirred itself and prepared a National Government. It chose its representatives without conflicts or even without emotions. These representatives assembled, at first only to disagree, to threaten and to fail; but the inspiration of a National cause proved potent against the spells of individual selfishness and sectional passion. The representatives of the Nation consented to the measures on which depended the common honor and the common safety. The Nation itself then broke out in clamors, but there was very little violence. No contentions arose between the States. Each had its own differences, but when each had decided for itself it united with the others in proclaiming the National Constitution.

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Said Washington: "I conceive under an energetic general govern- Sympament such regulations might be made and such measures taken as Mankind. thy for would render this country the asylum of pacific and industrious characters from all parts of Europe "-as he said in another place, “a kind of asylum for mankind." Thus he and other generous spirits looked beyond the limits of their country, and the work achieved was not only for the Nation that achieved it. It was not only for the United States of America that her sons labored, but for all mankind.

Thus, with the organization of the new National Government, the United States ceased to be a mere league, or loose confederation of States, and became a Nation in the true sense of the word, the word Nation to be spelled with a big N.

Ireland

Since William III.

Irish Disfranchisement.

Green's

Statement.

Small English and Scotch Ruling

Class.

Ireland's

Boroughs.

SECTION V.-GREAT BRITAIN AND HER EMPIRE (A. D. 1782-1789).

SAYS John Richard Green, the English historian: "The history of Ireland, from its conquest by William the Third up to this time, is one which no Englishman can recall without shame. Since the surrender of Limerick every Catholic Irishman, and there were five Catholics to every Protestant, had been treated as a stranger and a foreigner in his own country."

The Catholic, or native Irish were excluded from the Irish House of Lords and House of Commons, from the right to vote for members of this Parliament, from the magistracy, from all corporate offices in towns, from all ranks in the army, from the bench, from the bar, from the whole administration of government or justice in Ireland.

Says Green: "Few Catholic landowners had been left by the sweeping confiscations which had followed the successive revolts of the island; and oppressive laws forced even these few, with scant exceptions, to profess Protestantism. Necessity, indeed, had brought about a practical toleration of their religion and their worship; but in all social and political matters the native Catholics, in other words the immense majority of the people of Ireland, were simply hewers of wood and drawers of water to their Protestant masters, who still looked on themselves as mere settlers, who boasted of their Scotch or English extraction and who regarded the name of Irishman' as an insult."

6

Thus the Catholic population of Ireland was disfranchised and oppressed by the few English and Scotch colonists who had settled in the island during the reigns of the Stuarts. But one-half of this small Protestant population possessed but little more political power than the Catholics; as the Presbyterians, who constituted the great majority of the English and Scotch settlers of Ulster, were excluded by law from all civil, military and municipal offices. Thus the administration and justice in Ireland were kept rigidly in the hands of members of the State Church, which embraced about a twelfth of the population of the island; while the government of the Emerald Isle was virtually monopolized by a few great Protestant landowners.

By this time the rotten boroughs of Ireland, which had originally Rotten been created to render the Irish Parliament dependent on the English crown, had come under the influence of the neighboring landlords, who thus became masters of the Irish House of Commons, while they personally constituted the Irish House of Lords. This system had attained such proportions that at the time of the Parliamentary Union of Ireland with Great Britain in 1801 more than sixty seats in the

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Irish House of Commons were in the hands of three powerful familiesthose of Lord Downshire, the Ponsonbys and the Beresfords. Onehalf of the Irish House of Commons was actually chosen by a small body of nobles, who were styled "Parliamentary undertakers" and undertook to 66 manage "the Irish Parliament on their own terms. These men looked upon Irish politics as a means of public plunder. They were enriched with pensions, preferments, and bribes in hard cash, as a reward for their services. They were the counselors of every Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland and practically governed the country. Says Green: "The result was what might have been expected; and for more than a century Ireland was the worst governed country in Europe."

The government of Ireland would have been even worse than it was had it not been for the subordination of the Irish Parliament to the British Privy Council. The Irish Parliament was without the power to originate legislative or financial measures, and was empowered only to approve or reject the acts submitted to it by the Privy Council of Great Britain. The British Parliament also claimed the right to bind Ireland, as well as England and Scotland, by its enactments; and one of its statutes transferred the appellate jurisdiction of the Irish peerage to the British House of Lords. Though these restrictions were galling to the plundering aristocracy of Ireland, they were a wholesome check on its tyranny.

In the language of Green: "But as if to compensate for the benefits of this protection, England did her best to annihilate Irish commerce and to ruin Irish agriculture." The jealousy of English landowners caused the enactment of statute after statute forbidding the export of cattle or sheep from Ireland to England. The export of wool from Ireland was also forbidden lest it might curtail the profits of English wool-growers. Says Green: "Poverty was thus added to the curse of misgovernment, and poverty deepened with the rapid growth of the native population, till famine turned the country into a hell."

Subjection

of the Irish Parlia

ment.

Green's Statement.

Thraldom.

But the bitter lesson of the last English conquest of Ireland—that Ireland's by. William III.-long tended to check all designs of revolt among the native Catholic Irish, and the murders and riots which occurred at various times in consequence of the misery and discontent of the Irish population were sternly repressed by the English Protestant ruling class.

When Ireland threatened revolt against England at last, the threat proceeded from the tyrannical ruling class of Ireland itself. At the accession of George III. the British government made some efforts to control the tyranny of the selfish oligarchy of Ireland, whereupon the

Threatened Revolt

of the

Protestant

Ruling
Class.

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