In fact, so rash does the attempt seem even to those who most desire to make it, that they are fain to find refuge and consolation in the supposed introduction of Protestantism into Ireland by St.Patrick, a thousand years and more before that modern phase of religious thought appeared to divide the Christian world.
But I deny that Ireland has ever been really conquered; and even should the most sanguinary suggestions proposed in a nineteenth-century serial be carried out, I am certain she could not be.

Ireland has never been permanently subdued by Dane or Norman, Dutchman or Saxon; nor has she ever been _really_ united to England.

A man is surely not united to a jailer because he is bound to him by an iron chain which his jailer has forged for his safe keeping.

This is not union; and the term "United Kingdom" is in fact a most miserable misnomer.

Unity requires something more than a mere material approximation.