(October, 1827.)

The History of ireland. By JOHN O'DRISCOL. In two vols. 8vo. pp. 815. London 1827.

be, often an offender: But even when the guilt may have been nearly balanced, the weight of suffering has always fallen on the weakest. This comparative weakness, indeed, was the first cause of Ireland's misery

A GOOD History of Ireland is still a deside-even a partial memorial of the truth. That ratum in our literature;-and would not only truth is, no doubt, for the most part, at once be interesting, we think, but invaluable. revolting and pitiable;-not easily at first to There are accessible materials in abundance be credited, and to the last difficult to be for such a history; and the task of arranging tol with calmness. Yet it is thus only that them really seems no less inviting than im- it can be told with advantage-and so told portant. It abounds with striking events, and it is pregnant with admonitions and sugges with strange revolutions and turns of fortrine tions, as precious in their tenor, as irresisti -brought on, sometimes by the agency of ble in their evidence, when once fairly re enterprising men,-but more frequently by ceived. the silent progress of time, unwatched and Unquestionably, in the main, England has unsuspected, alike by those who were to suf- been the oppressor, and Ireland the victim; fer, and those who were to gain by the result.-not always a guiltless victim,-and it may In this respect, as well as in many others, it is as full of instruction as of interest,-and to the people of this country especially, and of this age, it holds out lessons far more precious, far more forcible, and far more immediately applicable, than all that is elsewhere recorded in the annals of mankind. It is the very greatness of this interest, however, and the dread, an the encouragement of these applications, that have hitherto defaced and even falsified the record that have made impartiality almost hopeless, and led alternately to the suppression and the exaggeration of sufferings and atrocities too monstrous, it might appear, in themselves, to be either exaggerated or disguised. Party rancour and religious animosity have hitherto contrived to convert what should have been their antidote into their aliment,—and, by the simple expedient of giving only one side of the picture, have pretty generally succeeded in making the history of past enormities not a warning against, but an incitement to, their repetition. In telling the story of those lamentable dissensions, each party has enhanced the guilt of the adversary, and withheld all notice of their own; -and seems to have had it far more at heart to irritate and defy each other, than to leave

It may be thought that this should rather have been brought in under the title of History: But the truth is, that I have now omitted all that is properly historical, and retained only what relates to the necessity of maintaining the legislative and incorporating union of the two countries; a topic that is purely political and falls, I think, correctly enough under the title of General Politics, since it is at this day of still more absorbing interest than when these observations were first published in 1827. If at that time I thought a Separation, or a dissolution of the union, (for they are the same thing,) a measure not to be contemplated but with horror, it may be supposed that I should not look more charitably on the proposition, now that Catholic emancipation and Parliamentary reform have taken away some, at least, of the motives or apologies of those by whom it was then maintained. The example of Scotland, I still think, is well put for the argument: And among the many who must now consider this question, it may be gratifying to some to see upon what grounds, and how decidedly, an opinion was then formed upon it, by one certainly not too much disposed to think favourably of the conduct or the pretensions of England.

the second, her long separation. She had been too long a weak neighbour, to be easily admitted to the rights of an equal ally. Pretensions which the growing strength and intelligence of the one country began to feel intolerable, were sanctioned in the eyes of the other by long usage and prescription;-and injustice, which never could have been first inflicted when it was first complained of, was yet long persisted in, because it had been long submitted to with but little complaint. No misgovernment is ever so bad as provincial misgovernment-and no provincial misgov ernment, it would seem, as that which is exercised by a free people,-whether arising from a jealous reluctance to extend that proud distinction to a race of inferiors, or from that inherent love of absolute power, which gives all rulers a tendency to be despotic, and seeks, when restrained at home, for vent and indemnification abroad.

The actual outline of the story is as clear as it is painful. Its most remarkable and most disgusting feature is, that while Religion has been made the pretext of its most sangui nary and atrocious contentions, it has been, from first to last, little else than a cover for the basest cupidity, and the meanest and most unprincipled ambition. The history which concerns the present times, need not be traced farther back than to the days of Henry VIII. and Queen Mary. Up to that period, the petty and tyrannical Parliaments of the Pale had, indeed, pretty uniformly insulted and des pised the great native chiefs among whom the bulk of the island was divided-but they had also feared them, and mostly let them alone. At that era, however, the growing strength and population of England inspired it with a bolder ambition; and the rage of proselytism which followed the Reformation, gave it both occasion and excuse. The passions, which led naturally enough to hostilities in such cit cumstances, were industriously fostered by the cold-blooded selfishness of those whi

two separate countries, allied only, but not in corporated, the weaker should not be de graded, and the stronger unjust. The only remedy is to identify and amalgamate them throughout-to mix up the oppressors and the oppressed-to take away all privileges and distinctions, by fully communicating them,and to render abuses impossible, by confounding their victims with their authors.

were to profit by the result. Insurrections is in vain to hope that a provincial govern were now regularly followed by Forfeitures; ment should not be oppressive-that a dele and there were by this time men and enter-gated power should not be abused-that of prise enough in England to meditate the occupancy of the vast domains from which the rebel chieftains were thus first to be driven. From this period, accordingly, to that of the Restoration, the bloodiest and most atrocious in her unhappy annals, the history of Ireland may be summarily described as that of a series of sanguinary wars, fomented for purposes of Confiscation. After the Restoration, and down till the Revolution, this was succeeded by a contest equally unprincipled and mercenary, between the settlers under Cromwell and the old or middle occupants whom they had displaced. By the final success of King William, a strong military government was once more imposed on this unhappy land; under which its spirit seemed at last to be broken, and even its turbulent activity repressed. As it slowly revived, the Protestant antipathies of the English government seem to have been reinforced, or replaced, by a more extended and still more unworthy National Jealousy-first on the subject of trade, and then on that of political rights: -and since a more enlightened view of her own interests, aided by the arms of the volunteers of 1780, have put down those causes of oppression,-the system of misgovernment has been maintained, for little other end, that we can discern, but to keep a small junto of arrogant individuals in power, and to preserve the supremacy of a faction, long after the actual cessation of the causes that lifted them into authority.

If any one doubts of the wretchedness of an unequal and unincorporating alliance, of the degradation of being subject to a provincial parliament and a distant king, and of the efficacy of a substantial union in curing all these evils, he is invited to look to the obvious example of Scotland. While the crowns only were united, and the governments continued separate, the weaker country was the scene of the most atrocious cruelties, the most violent injustice, the most degrading oppressions. The prevailing religion of the people was proscribed and persecuted with a ferocity greater than has ever been systematically exercised, even in Ireland; her industry was crippled and depressed by unjust and intolerable restrictions; her parliaments corrupted and overawed into the degraded instruments of a distant court, and her nobility and gentry, cut off from all hope of distinction by vindicating the rights or promoting the interests of their country at home, were led to look up to the favour of her oppressors as the only remaining avenue to power, and degenerated, for the most part, into a band of mercenary advenThis is "the abstract and brief chronicle "turers;-the more considerable aspiring to the of the political or external history of the sister island. But it has been complicated of late, and all its symptoms aggravated by the singularity of its economical relations. The marvellous multiplication of its people, and the growing difficulty of supplying them with food or employment, presenting, at the present moment, a new and most urgent cause of dissatisfaction and alarm. For this last class of evils, a mere change in the policy of the Government would indeed furnish no effectual remedy: and to find one in any degree available, might well task the ingenuity of the most enlightened and beneficent. But for the greater part of her past sufferings, as well as her actual degradation, disunion, and most dangerous discontent, it is impossible to deny that the successive Governments of England have been chiefly responsible. Without pretending to enumerate, or even to class, the several charges which might be brought against them, or to determine what weight should be allowed to the temptations or provocations by which they might be palliated, we think it easier and far more important to remark, that the only secure preventive would have been an early, an equal, and complete incorporating Union of the two countries:-and that the only effective cure for the misery occasioned by its having been so long delayed, is to labour, heartily and in earnest, el to render it equal and complete. It

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wretched honour of executing the tyrannical orders which were dictated from the South, and the rest acquiring gradually those habits of subserviency and selfish submission, the traces of which are by some supposed to be yet discernible in their descendants. Revolution, which rested almost entirely on the prevailing antipathy to Popery, required, of course, the co-operation of all classes of Protestants; and, by its success, the Scottish Presbyterians were relieved, for a time, from their Episcopalian persecutions. But it was not till after the Union that the nation was truly emancipated; or lifted up from the abject condition of a dependant, at once suspected and despised. The effects of that happy consolidation were not indeed immediately apparent; For the vices which had been generated by a century of provincial misgovernment, the meannesses that had become habitual, the animosities that had so long been fostered, could not be cured at once, by the mere removal of their cause. The generation they had degraded, must first be allowed to die out-and more, perhaps, than one generation: But the poison tree was cut down-the fountain of bitter waters was sealed up, and symptoms of returning vigour and happiness were perceived. Vestiges may still be traced. perhaps, of our long degradation; but for, at least, forty years back, the provinces of Scot land have been, on the whole, but the North

own comparative numbers and natural con sequence diminished, they clung still closer to their artificial holds on authority; and, exasperated by feeling their dignity menaced, and their monopolies endangered by the grow ing wealth, population, and intelligence of the country at large, they redoubled their efforts, by clamour and activity, intimidation and deceit, to preserve the unnatural advantages they had accidentally gained, and to keep down that springtide of general reason and substantial power which they felt rising and swelling all around them.

ern provinces of Great Britain. There are liberty, they felt that they could only main no local oppressions, no national animosities. tain themselves in possession of it, by keepLife, and liberty, and property, are as secure in ing up that distrust and animosity, after its Caithness as they are in Middlesex-industry causes had expired. They contrived, thereas much encouraged, and wealth still more fore, by false representations and unjust laws, rapidly progressive; while not only different to foster those prejudices, which would other religious opinions, but different religious estab-wise have gradually disappeared-and, unlishments subsist in the two ends of the same luckily, succeeded but too well. As their island in unbroken harmony, and only excite each other, by a friendly emulation, to greater purity of life and greater zeal for Christianity. If this happy Union, however, had been delayed for another century-if Scotland had been doomed to submit for a hundred years more to the provincial tyranny of the Lauderdales, Rotheses, and Middletons, and to meet the cruel persecutions which gratified the ferocity of her Dalzells and Drummonds, and tarnished the glories of such men as Montrose and Dundee, with her armed conventicles and covenanted saints militant-to see her patriots exiled, or bleeding on the scaffold -her only trusted teachers silenced in her churches and schools, and her Courts of Justice degraded or overawed into the instruments of a cowardly oppression, can any man doubt, not only that she would have presented, at this day, a scene of even greater misery and discord than Ireland did in 1800; but that the corruptions and animosities by which she had been desolated would have been found to have struck so deep root as still to encumber the land, long after their seed had ceased to be scattered abroad on its surface, and only to hold out the hope of their eradication, after many years of patient and painful exertion?

Such, however, is truly the condition of Ireland; and such are the grounds, and such the aspect of our hopes for her regeneration. So far from tracing any substantive part of her miseries to the Union of 1800, we think they are to be ascribed mainly to its long delay, and its ultimate incompleteness. It is not by a dissolution of the Union with England then, that any good can be done, but by its improvement and consolidation. Some injury it may have produced to the shopkeepers of Dublin, and some inconsiderable increase in the number of the absentees. But it has shut up the main fountain of corruption and dishonor; and palsied the arm and broken the heart of local insolence and oppression. It has substituted, at least potentially and in prospect, the wisdom and honour of the British Government and the British people, to the passions and sordid interests of a junto of Irish boroughmongers, and not only enabled, but compelled, all parties to appeal directly to the great tribunal of the British public. While the countries remained apart, the actual depositaries of power were almost unavoidably relied on by the general government for information, and employed as the delegates of its authority-and, as unavoidably, abused the trust, and misled and imposed on their employers. Having come into power at the time when the Catholic party, by its support of the House of Stuart, had excited against it all the fears and antipathies of the friends of

Their pretence was, that they were the champions of the Protestant Ascendancy—and that whenever that was endangered, there was an end of the English connection. While the alliance of the two countries was indeed no more than a connection, there might be some truth in the assertion-or at least it was easy for an Irish Parliament to make it appear to be true. But the moment they came to be incorporated, its falsehood and absurdity should at once have become apparent. Unluckily, however, the incorporation was not so complete, or the union so entire, as it should have been. There still was need, or was thought to be need, of a provincial manage ment, a domestic government of Ireland — and the old wretched parliamentary machnery, though broken up and disabled for its original work, naturally supplied the materials for its construction. The men still survived who had long been the exclusive channels of communication with the supreme authority; and though other and wider channels were now opened, the habit of employing the former, aided by the eagerness with which they sought for continued employment, left with them an undue share of its support. Still more unluckily, the ancient practice of misgovern ment had left its usual traces on the character, not only of its authors, but its victims. Habil ual oppression had produced habitual disaffec tion; and a long course of wrong and con tumely, had ended in a desperate indignation, and an eager thirst for revenge.

The natural and necessary consequences of the Union did not, therefore, immediately follow its enactment and are likely indeed to be longer obstructed, and run greater haz ard of being fatally intercepted, than in the case of Scotland. Not only is the mutual exasperation greater, and the wounds more deeply rankled, but the Union itself is more incomplete, and leaves greater room for com. plaints of inequality and unfairness. The numerical strength, too, of the Irish people is far greater, and their causes of discontent more uniform, than they ever were in Scotland; and, above all, the temper of the race is infinitely more eager, sanguine, and reck

.ess of cor.sequences, than that of the sober and calculating tribes of the north. The greatest and most urgent hazard, therefore, is that which arises from their impatience;-and this unhappily is such, that unless some early measure of conciliation is adopted, it would no longer be matter of surprise to any one, if, upon the first occasion of a war with any of the great powers of Europe, or America, the great body of the nation should rise in final and implacable hostility, and endeavour to throw off all connection with, or dependence on Great Britain, and to erect itself into an independent state!

it might give in the outset. By the help of a French army and ar American fleet, we think it by no means improbable that the separation might be accomplished. The English armies might be defeated or driven from its shores-English capitalists might be butchered-the English religion extirpated-and an Irish Catholic republic installed with due cere mony in Dublin, and adopted with acclamation in most of the provinces of the land. Under the protection of their foreign deliverers this state of triumph might even be for some time maintained. But how long would this last? or how can it be imagined that it To us it certainly appears that this would would end? Would the foreign allies remain be a most desperate, wild, and impracticable for ever, on their own charges, and without inenterprise. But it is not upon this account terfering with the independence or the policy the less likely to be attempted by such a of the new state which they had thus been nation as the Irish-and it cannot be dis- the means of creating? If they did, it would, sembled that the mere attempt would almost after all, be but a vassal republic-a dependunavoidably plunge both countries in the most ency on a more distant and still more impefrightful and interminable ruin. Though the rious master-an outlying province of France separation even of distant and mature de- -a military station from which to watch and pendencies is almost always attended with to harass England, and on which the first terrible convulsions, separation, in such cir- burst of her hostilities must always be broken cumstances, is unquestionably an ultimate and exposed, of course, in the mean time, good; and if Ireland were a mere depend- to all the license, the insolence, the rigour, ency, and were distant enough and strong of a military occupancy by a foreign and enough to subsist and flourish as an independ- alien soldiery. ent community, we might console ourselves, But this, it is plain, could never be more even for the infinite misery of the struggle than a temporary measure. The defende s attending on the separation, by the prospect and keepers of the Hibernian republic would, of the great increase of happiness that might in no long time, make peace with England, be the final result. But it is impossible, we and quarrel, both with their new subjects, and think, for any one but an exasperated and with each other-and then would come the anthinking Irishman, not to see and feel that renovated, the embittered, the unequal strug this neither is, nor ever can be, the condition gle with that exasperated power. Weakened Ireland. Peopled by the same race, speak- as England might be by the separation, it ing the same language, associated in the same would be absurd to suppose that she would pursuits, bound together and amalgamated by not still be a tremendous overmatch for Ire continual intermarriages, joint adventures in land, single-handed;--or that this new state trade, and every sort of social relation, and, wasted and exhausted by the war of her indeabove all, lying within sight and reach of pendence, could supply the means of making each other's shores, they are in truth as inti- and equipping a fleet, or appointing an army, mately and inseparably connected as most such as would be required to make head of the internal provinces of each are with one against this formidable antagonist. Though another; and we might as well expect to the numerical majority of her people, too, see two independent kingdoms established in might be zealous for maintaining her indefriendly neighbourhood, in Yorkshire and Lan-pendence, it is obvious that England would cashire, as to witness a similar spectacle on the two sides of the Irish Channel. Two such countries, if of equal strength, and exasperated by previous contentions, never could maintain the relations of peace and amity with each other, as separate and independent states; but must either mingle into one-or desolate each other in fierce and exterminating hostility, till one sinks in total exhaustion at the feet of the bleeding and exhausted victor. In the actual circumstances of the two countries, however, the attempt would be attended with still more deplorable consequences. Ireland, with whom alone it can originate, is decidedly the weakest, in wealth, population, and all effective resources-and probably never will venture on the experiment without foreign assistance. But it must be at once apparent how the introduction of this unhallowed element darkens all the horrors of the prospect. We are far from making light of the advantages

still have in her bosom a body of most formidable allies. The most intelligent, the most wealthy, the most politic and sagacious of her inhabitants, are at this moment in the English interest;-and, however sweeping and bloody the proscription by which they might have been overthrown, multitudes would still remain, with means and influence sufficient to render their co-operatian most perilous, in a contest for its restoration. Even if left to her own resources, we have little doubt that the country would soon be a prey to civil wars, plots, and insurrections, which the want of skill and experience in the new rulers, as well as the state of their finances, would aggravate into universal disorder. It is no easy thing to settle a new government amicably, even where there is no foreign interference:-and, in Ireland, from the temper of the people, and the circumstances which would leave less than an ordinary proportion of men of rank,

education, and personal authority in the bands in the first instance, to diminish the tremets of the successful party, the difficulty would dous hazard, by simply "doing Justice ana probably be insurmountable. It is impossible, showing Mercy" to those whom it is, in al however, not to suppose that England would other respects, her interest, as well as het eagerly avail herself of those dissensions, both duty, to cherish and protect. by intrigue, corruption, and force; and equally impossible to doubt that she would succeed, if not in regaining her supremacy, at least in embroiling the unhappy country which was the subject of it, in the most miserable and interminable disorders.

One thing we take to be evident, and it the substance of all that can be said on the subject, that things are fast verging to a crisis, and cannot, in all probability, remain long as they are. The Union, in short, must either be made equal and complete on the part of England-or it will be broken in pieces and thrown in her face by Ireland. That country must either be delivered from the domination of an Orange faction, or we must expect, in spite of all our warnings and remonstrances, to see her seek her own deliverance by the fatal and bloody career to which we have already alluded-and from which we hold it to be the height of guilt and of folly to hesi tate about withholding her, by the sacrifice of that miserable faction.

Little, however, as we rely, without such co-operation, on the effect of our warnings, we cannot end without again lifting our feeble voice to repeat them-without conjuring the

The sum of the matter then is, that there could be no peace, and, consequently, no prosperity or happiness for Ireland, as a separate and independent neighbour to England. Two 'such countries, after all that has passed between them, could no more live in quiet and comfort beside each other, than a wife who had deserted her husband's house could live again in his society and that of his family, as a friend or visitor-having her expenses supplied, and her solitude enlivened, by the frequent visits of professing admirers: Nor can any lesson of prudence be addressed to the fiery and impatient spirits who may now meditate in Ireland the casting off of their ties with the sister island, more precisely ap-lovers of Ireland to consider how hopeless plicable to their prospects and condition, than the warnings which a friendly adviser would address to an exasperated matron, whose domestic grievances had led her to contemplate such a fatal step. And can any one doubt that the counsel which any faithful and even partial friend would give her, must be, to bear much from her husband, rather than venture on so desperate a remedy; to turn her thoughts rather to conciliation than recrimination or revenge; to avoid as much as possible all causes of reasonable or unreasonable offence-and, above all, firmly and temperately to assert the interests secured by the provisions of her marriage articles, and to stimulate and insist on the resolute interference of the trustees appointed to enforce them.

and how wretched any scheme of a permanent separation from England must necessa rily be, and how certainly their condition must be ameliorated by the course of events, the gradual extinction of the generation in whom the last life-use of antiquated oppressions is now centered, and the spread of those mild and liberal sentiments, to which nothing can so much contribute as a spirit of moderation and patience in those who have so long suffered from the want of them. By the Union, such as it is, we think the axe has been laid to the root of the old system of oppression and misgovernment in Ireland-and though its branches may still look green, and still afford shelter to the unclean birds who were bred and have so long nestled in their covert, the sap ascends in them no longer, and the whole will soon cease to cumber the ground, or obstruct the sight of the sky. In these circumstances, the only wise and safe course is to watch, and gently to assist the progress of their natural decay. If, in some fit of im patience, the brands are thrown into the mou. dering mass, and an attempt made to subject the land at once to the fatal Purgation of Fire, the risk is, not only that the authors will per ish in the conflagration, but that another and a ranker crop of abominations will spring from its ashes, to poison the dwellings of many fu ture generations.

Such are the warnings which we would address to the offended and exasperated party, in whose vindictive and rash proceedings the catastrophe we have been contemplating must originate. But though we certainly think they must appear convincing to any calm spectator, it is not the less probable that they would be of little avail with the inflamed and excited party, unless they were seconded by conciliatory and gentle measures on the part of the supposed offender. Nor are there wanting motives sufficiently urgent and imperious to make such measures, in all sound reason, indispensable. In the event of a war for independence, Ireland would probably be We may seem to have forgotten Mr. O'Dristhe scene of the greatest carnage, havoc, and col in these general observations: and yet devastation-and, in the end, we think her they are not so foreign to his merits, as they lot would be by far the most deplorable. But may at first sight appear. His book certainly to England also, it is obvious that such a con- does not supply the desideratum of which we test would be the source of unspeakable ca- spoke at the outset, and will not pass to pos lamity; and the signal, indeed, of her perma-terity as a complete or satisfactory History of nent weakness, insecurity, and degradation. That she is bound, therefore, for her own sake to avert it, by every possible precaution and every possible sacrifice, no one will be hardy enough to deny—far less that she is bound,

Ireland. But it is written at least in a good spirit; and we do not know that we could better describe its general scope and tendency, than by saying, that they coincide almost en tirely with the sentiments we have just been