the brass mines of Palestine, having been condemned to labour there, for refusing to comply with an Imperial edict.

Such is the tale of The Epicurean.' We confess that we found great pleasure in reading it, and that it has, if possible, raised the author in our estimation. But at the same time, we are inclined to apprehend, that this will be one of the least popular of Mr. Moore's works. It will not do for the circulating libraries; it is any thing but a tale for the multitude.

ART. VII. The History of Ireland. By John O'Driscol. In 2 vols. 8vo. 24s. London: Longman & Co. 1827.

MR. O'DRISCOL's work is an attempt to supply a great wantnamely, an accurate and philosophical history of Ireland. The annals of that country, composed with a view to nothing but the only valuable subject of historical narrative-the influence of creeds and institutions and laws upon the happiness of men-would, especially at present, be a book of infinite importance. We cannot say that Mr. O'Driscol has quite attained the almost ideal model of history which we have just mentioned. He does not think sufficiently deeply; he often dwells at too great length on subjects of minor importance; and he is so far from assigning their due proportions to the several events and periods, as to cover one half of his whole work with little more than the military details of that short-though certainly important contest-which was ended by the treaty of Limerick. Yet Mr. O'Driscol has great accomplishments for an Irish historian, most rare;-unvarying fidelity, good sense, temper, moderation, and benevolence. It would be happy for Ireland, if she had more such spirits and well for England, if she could be induced to encourage and admire more such writers.

Mr. O'Driscol has the very peculiar merit of seeing, that while every century of the past history of his native land is a record of foreign oppression-it will yet be the most favourable destiny for Ireland, not to stir up and cherish her indignation, or to gnaw at the bonds which unite the islands; but to endeavour to seduce England into wisdom-and, by assisting to spread good feeling and good sense over the turbulent domain of politics, to hasten and mature that consummation, which will end at once the shame of the one country, and the sorrow of the other.

There are various specks in the minutiae of Mr. O'Driscol's work-such as his supremely absurd expression, that some of the Catholic priests, who had changed their religion in the reign of Edward VI., had unfortunately carried their convictions into the bosom of beauty, and had taken wives!'-and his mention, under the reign of Elizabeth, of Sir William Russell, son of the Duke of Bedford,' at a time when there certainly was no

duke of that name. Such matters as these, however, even if there were more of them, weigh as nothing in the balance, against his lucid and impressive view of the mode in which the whole system of Irish government tended, for centuries, to make the disaffection of the people an object of desire to the rulers, and to produce by universal discontent, a succession of pretexts for universal confiscation. The manner in which he has developed the operation, and traced into all its refinements, the complex influence exercised by the conflict, or the conspiracy, of different interests and factions at different times, is deserving of the most unqualified admiration.

It is unnecessary to deny, that when the first English adventurer set foot in Ireland, that country could lay claim to no high degree of civilization. It was certainly not then governed by lords of the bed-chamber-it probably contained no loquacious and well-paid secretaries-it did not enjoy a single tithe-proctor -it was not adorned by one clerical magistrate. It may be allowed, that instead of these glories-it at that time displayed exactly the amount of evils and of blessings, which necessarily attend upon a semi-barbarous state of society;-and it is impossible to doubt, that had it been left without the benefits and the honours of English connexion, the struggling atoms would, in the course of ages, have formed themselves into order and quiet-and that Ireland would have presented the spectacle, which has been exhibited in our own country, of a people gradually emerging into light, taming its exuberant energies, and building up the fabric of its knowledge till we can exult in the certain progress of science and of virtue, and behold in each succeeding age, but the womb of a brighter and more extensive prospect. But this was not destined for Ireland:-and the bands which transported thither the terror of more disciplined arms, and the shew of more mature civilization, carried with them the germs of as great and as lasting misery as nation ever inflicted upon nation. The success of a campaign has been fertile in the crimes of centuries-and the attempt of a reckless and profligate adventurer has given birth to the uninterrupted suffering of Ireland, and the eternal disgrace of England.

The first effects of English influence were ominous of what was to be its future character-and a people who, among the nations of those dark and violent ages, had been previously remarkable for their piety and their learning, were subjected to the payment of tithe by the mandate of a foreign invader. But this was a small and contemptible portion of the evil which was inflicted on Ireland by the usurpation of Henry, for then began that system, which divided the population into the hostile portions of an English and Irish interest, and doomed the one to be always the slave, while it destined the other to be invariably the oppressor; which made the perpetuity of English supremacy, rather than of Irish happiness, the sole object of the government; and which bound the one country

to the other, as the Titan was chained to his rock, only that it might be subjected to a hopeless eternity of suffering.

It would be vain to enter upon the task of enumerating all the particulars in the catalogue of that country's miseries :-every page is but a transcript of the preceding; and we find recorded in each alike, encroachments without a pretext, and butcheries without an object. We shudder at the spectacle of a whole kingdom made desolate by a band of adventurers, who when strong, were uniformly cruel, and when weak, were uniformly treacherous. Suffice it to say, that the outrages which then filled the island with horror, were not the casual excesses, and bloody quarrels of rude and barbarous neighboursbut they were the offspring and fulfilment of solemn laws, whereby the forms and sanctions of justice were profaned into the attributes of wrong. The enactments, which regulated the conduct of the English settlers towards the Irish, wore, during four centuries, the shape which has so often been assumed by the subsequent acts of the same legislature-the shape of legalised anarchy. So shameless were these iniquities, that the smallest fine, and that in many cases eluded, was the maximum of punishment which followed the murder of an Irishman:-and this, too, in a country to which England, weary of their atrocities, constantly drove away the offscourings of her population :-whither resorted for plunder and for license as to an outlet for their crimes, or a refuge for their infamy-the tyrannous baron-the reckless and hardened soldier of fortune-the exhausted spendthrift-the detected knave-the pardoned felon-whatever of most base and remorseless could be generated in a land, itself fertile in civil wars, and overrun by all the evils, the inevitable produce of bad government. To the conduct of these wretches, who could scarcely have been restrained by the strongest laws, there were not opposed the penalties of even the weakest. The only protection for the property of the Irishman, was the conscience of habitual robbers-the only check to the thirst for his blood, was the satiety which sometimes follows on unstinted enjoyment. The plunder of churches-the burning of houses-the slavery of those who could only yield—the massacre of all who resisted-and still more horrible outrages exercised, without fear or shame, on the timidity and modesty of womenwere the daily recreations of those, from whom alone Ireland could learn the national character of England.

It is singular to observe, over how small a portion of the whole surface of the country, the efficient dominion of England extended, down, at least, to the time of Henry VIII. During those ages, there was no regular jurisdiction exercised by the English authorities, except within twenty miles from Dublin, and in two or three towns upon the coast. The government was utterly impotent for enforcing order and security; but there were no bounds to its power of persecuting and plundering the whole people of Ireland, by its own direct interference, and still more, by the forays and

i

outrages of the adventurers whom it encouraged. The entire island was parcelled out, under the dominion of various forms of misgovernment-ignorant and barbarous septs, paying almost unlimited obedience to their chieftains, were perpetually at war with each other, and with the English marauders. Whenever the more vigorous tyranny of some new deputy, or the more daring brutality of an augmented army, made endurance no longer possible, they rushed headlong into war, without concert or discipline; and slaughter, famine and confiscation, were the only peace-makers interposed by the English ascendancy.

Yet the natives, with a faith in the justice of the government, equally astonishing and pitiable, addressed to it a petition in the reign of Edward I., not, indeed, for the compensation of their injuries, or the punishment of their oppressors-this, they well knew, would be considered far too bold a pitch of insolence on the part of the Irish enemy; but they ventured humbly and submissively to implore, that they might be allowed to purchase from the sovereign, at a large price (8000 marks), the protection of the English laws. But, no; the English interest, which then served all the purpose of that other sounding jargon-the Protestant interest— the interest of the settlers of the pale, was opposed to this vast and dangerous concession. The petition of the Irish was rejected. A rebellion followed-and is there a human being who will dare to confess, that in the same circumstances he would not rebel? Again-in the reign of Edward III., a similar petition was offered: it was again rejected, and again a rebellion followed. More than this-in this very reign, during which the Irish summed up their desires by the one request for equal laws-a request, the fulfilment of which, five hundred years have failed to obtain-in this very reign, it was solemnly decreed, that intermarriage with the Irish should be punished as high treason; and in order to guard against the chance of any amity arising between the hostile races in after generations, the giving children to be fostered by the natives, was loaded with the same penalties. Religion also began, even then, to be turned into the means and food for hatred; and the receiving an Irishman into a monastery, was declared to be an act of the deepest criminality.

At the same time, the country was oppressed by all those evils, which the historian often disdains to record, which he often has no means of measuring, but which add enormously to the amount of human misery,-the silent but perpetual evils necessarily arising from irresponsible government-the obliquities of selfish power entering into all the details of life-the unheard complaints of the humble the purchased impunity of the wealthy-the fearless insolence of the strong-and the determination of each new satrap to gorge new hordes of minions. Such was the mode of government, in which all those materials of sorrow that the fierceness of worldly interests, and the unshackled dominion of corrupted pas

sions can supply, were accumulated into a regular system, and wielded against this unhappy people, with irresistible power and unflinching cruelty. There, as in all other countries during those ages, the monastic institutions are the only spots of verdure and tranquillity, in which the eye can find refreshment. In Ireland they were numerous, wealthy, and respected and while every man, to whom religion is a source of thought and feeling, will regard with a deeper sentiment than simple approbation, these retreats of untempted penitence and undisturbed repose, the mere politician must give his applause to establishments which, in

ages

of the wildest license, furnished safeguards for the lives of men, and security for their properties; and which were almost the only instruments of subduing to human convenience the wilderness, the morass, and the blasted stage of warfare. But these institutions were too tempting a prey for royal bigotry and aristocratical rapine, to be permitted to survive that revolution in the church, which was begun in the reign of Henry.

The Reformation brought into the armoury of politics, a principle of still greater power for good and for evil, than any which had previously operated in Ireland. That principle was religion. This, the subject of all others on which men feel the most strongly-the one through which opinion may most readily be aggravated into passion, and passion be kindled into strife ;-this, under the influence of which, the feelings that are at one moment the purest and the gentlest of our nature, may be changed at the next into all that is brutal, malignant, and remorseless ;-this was greedily adopted by the English ascendancy, as a pretext for the continuation of Irish misery.

No sooner had the triumph of the reformed religion been secured in England, than it was attempted to introduce it into Ireland; heralded by those teachers of peace and goodwill-soldiers and executioners, and polemical bishops; and adorned by those glorious attributes the sword, the altar, and the torch. The experiment did not succeed. The Irish preferred a faith, the only inheritance from their fathers, of which English oppression could not despoil them ;-a faith which had been the only consolation of their race, through ages of unvaried misery; they preferred this to a mode of religion, of which they only knew, that the mildness of its tenets was proved by the cruelties of the tyrants who enforced it-and the truth of its inspiration demonstrated, by the contempt of its preachers for the commands of its benevolent author. Religious persecution hurried the Irish into rebellion; but on the suppression of the revolt, its leaders, finding that success was hopeless, readily conformed themselves to the creed of their conquerors, and sold their ancient faith for favours and titles, for the privilege of fawning in an ante-chamber, or of asserting their servility at the council-board. The people still clung to their hereditary altars, with a proud and uncompromising fidelity; but at the same time that they