[Sidenote: The dogged temper of England.]
Nor was this wreck of his financial hopes Pitt's only ground for desiring a close of the war. From the first, as we have seen, he had been keenly sensitive to the European dangers which the contest involved; nor had he shown, even in his moment of social panic, the fanatical blindness of men like Burke to the evils which had produced the revolution, or to the good which it had wrought. But he could only listen in silence while the Marquis of Lansdowne, the Lord Shelburne of earlier days and the successor of Chatham as the advocate of a more liberal policy, met the rhetoric of Burke by a cool demonstration of the benefit which the recent change had brought to the mass of the French people, and by pointing to the profit which Russia was drawing from the struggle in the west. In their wide-reaching view of European affairs, in their justice to the revolution, Shelburne and Pitt stood alone. Around them men were hardened and blinded by passion. The old hatred between nation and nation, which Pitt had branded as irrational, woke up fiercer than ever at the clash of arms, for with it was blended a resentment that had smouldered in English breasts ever since the war with America at the blow which France had dealt England in that hour of her weakness, and a disgust which only slowly grew fainter at her overthrow of every social and political institution that Englishmen held dear. On the dogged temper of the nation at large the failure of the coalition produced little effect. It had no fear of fighting France single-handed, nor could it understand Pitt's suggestion that a time had come for opening negotiations with a view to peace. Public opinion indeed went hotly with Burke in his denunciation of all purpose of relaxing England's hostility against the revolution, a denunciation which was embodied in his "Letters on a Regicide Peace," the last outcry of that fanaticism which had done so much to plunge the world in blood.
But though Pitt stood all but alone, he was firm in his purpose to bring the war, if he could, to a close. What specially moved him was not the danger on the Continent, whether that danger sprang from French victories or from aggression in the east. It was a danger in the west. Vain as the expectations of the French revolutionists had proved in the case of England, they had better ground for their hopes elsewhere. Even before the outbreak of the war Pitt had shown how keen was his sense of a possible danger from Ireland. In that wretched country the terrible fruits of a century of oppression and wrong were still to reap. From the close of the American war, when her armed Volunteers had wrung legislative independence from the Rockingham ministry, Ireland had continued to be England's difficulty. She was now "independent"; but her independence was a mere name for the uncontrolled rule of a few noble families. The victory of the Volunteers had been won simply to the profit of "undertakers," who returned a majority of members in the Irish House of Commons, while they themselves formed the Irish House of Lords. The suspension of any effective control or interference from England left Ireland at these men's mercy, and they soon showed that they meant to keep it for themselves. When the Catholics claimed admission to the franchise or to equal civil rights as a reward for their aid in the late struggle, their claim was rejected. A similar demand of the Presbyterians, who had formed a good half of the Volunteers, for the removal of their disabilities was equally set aside. Even Grattan, when he pleaded for a reform which would make the Parliament at least a fair representative of the Protestant Englishry, utterly failed. The ruling class found government too profitable to share it with other possessors. It was only by hard bribery that the English viceroys could secure their co-operation in the simplest measures of administration. "If ever there was a country unfit to govern itself," said Lord Hutchinson, "it is Ireland. A corrupt aristocracy, a ferocious commonalty, a distracted Government, a divided people!"