A wiser government than that of Lord North would have avoided giving occasion for the existence of a force which the utter absence of any other had made masters of the situation.

The Volunteers even boasted that they had been called into existence by English misgovernment.

In the words of one of their most eloquent advocates, "England had sown her laws like dragons' teeth, and they had sprung up as armed men." Ireland began to feel that she was strong, and, not unnaturally desired to avail herself of that strength, which England now could not question, to put forward demands for concessions which in common fairness could not well be denied.

In 1778, when Lord North, in the hope of recovering the allegiance of the North American Colonies, brought forward what he termed his conciliatory propositions, the Irish members began to press their demand that the advantages thus offered to the Americans should be extended to their own countrymen also; that the fact of the Irish not having rebelled should not be made a plea for treating them worse than those who had; and in the front of all their requests was one for the abolition of those unjust and vexatious duties which shackled their trade and manufactures.

But the jealousy of the English and Scotch manufacturers was still as bitter, and, unhappily, still as influential, as it had proved in the time of William III.