However, as the English in Ireland began to be domiciliated, they began
also to recollect that they had a country. The _English interest_, at
first by faint and almost insensible degrees, but at length openly and
avowedly, became an _independent Irish interest_,--full as independent
as it could ever have been if it had continued in the persons of the
native Irish; and it was maintained with more skill and more consistency
than probably it would have been in theirs. With their views, the
_Anglo-Irish_ changed their maxims: it was necessary to demonstrate to
the whole people that there was something, at least, of a common
interest, combined with the independency, which was to become the object
of common exertions. The mildness of government produced the first
relaxation towards the Irish; the necessities, and, in part, too, the
temper that predominated at this great change, produced the second and
the most important of these relaxations. English government and Irish
legislature felt jointly the propriety of this measure. The Irish
Parliament and nation became independent.
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