Great Britain knowing this, and being determined to hold the
country at all risks, was continually in fear that some war or
complication with foreign powers would afford the Irish people an
opportunity of putting an end to English rule in Ireland, and of
declaring the country an independent nation. As progress in wealth and
prosperity would add to the probabilities of success in such an event,
it was the all but avowed--nay, truth compels me to say, the
_frequently avowed_ policy of England to keep Ireland poor, and
therefore feeble, that she might be held the more securely. For that
reason she was not treated as a portion of a united kingdom, but as an
enemy who had become England's slave by conquest, who was her rival in
manufactures of various kinds, who might undersell her in foreign
markets, and, in fact, who might grow rich and powerful enough to assert
her independence.
The descendants of the Norman adventurers who got a footing here in the
twelfth century; English and Scotch planters; officials and undertakers
who, from time to time, had been induced to settle in Ireland by grants
of land and sinecures, were, by a legal fiction, styled The Nation,
although they were never more than a small fraction of it.
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