consequence of the immense extent of the demand for agricultural produce which its expenditure occasioned, without feeling any of the burdens which neutralised its extension in this country. No poor's rates are levied on her landholders-in other words, they are levied on England and Scotland instead-and this island is in consequence overwhelmed by a mass of indigence created in the neighbouring kingdom, but which British indulgence has relieved them from the necessity of maintaining. The amount of the sums annually paid by the Parliament of Great Britain to objects of charity and utility in Ireland almost exceeds belief, and is at least five times greater than all directed to the same objects in both the other parts of the empire taken to

gether. Yet with all their good deeds,

past, present, and to come, Ireland is the most discontented part of the United Kingdom. She is incessantly crying out against her benefactor, and recurring to old oppression rendered necessary by her passions, instead of present benefactions, of which her democratic population have proved themselves unworthy by their ingratitude.

"Notwithstanding all the efforts of her demagogues to distract the country, and counteract all the liberality and beneficence of the English Government, Ireland has advanced with greater rapidity in industry, wealth, and all the real sources of happiness, during the last thirty years, than any other part of the empire. Since the Union, she has made a start both in agricultural and manufacturing industry, quite unparalleled, and much greater than Scotland had made during the first hundred years after her incorporation with the English dominions. It is quite evident that, if the demagogues would let Ireland alone-if the wounds in her political system were not continually kept open, and the passions of the people incessantly inflamed, by her popular leaders, she would become as rich and prosperous as she is populousthat, instead of a source of weakness, she would become a pillar of strength to the united empire-and instead of being overspread with the most wretched and squalid population in Europe, she might eventually boast of the most contented and happy.

So far what we wrote in December 1832. We make no apology for the length of this quotation. So precisely

is it applicable to the present time, that were we to write anew on the subject, we should certainly reproduce the same ideas, and probably, in a great degree, make use of the same words. It affords a remarkable proof of the manner in which Ireland has been influenced, in all periods of its history, by the same causes; and of the way in which all its natural advantages have been thrown away, by the indolence and want of energy in its inhabitants, joined to the unhappy extension to it, through British connexion, of the privileges, excitement, and passions, consequent on a free constitution, for which it was unfitted by its character, temperament, and

state of social advancement.

Need it be said how precisely the same truths have been illustrated in later times, and, most of all, in the memorable year in which we now write? The melancholy tale is known to all: it is written in characters of fire in England's annals. Such was the state of excitement, anarchy, and licentiousness to which the Irish were brought under the Whig rule, by the combined operation of the Reform mania, and the Repeal agitation, that Lord Grey, albeit the most impassioned opponent of Mr Pitt's preventive policy, was compelled to adopt it; and the celebrated Coercion Bill of 1833 invested Government with extraordinary powers, and for a time superseded, by martial law, in some districts of Ireland, the ordinary administration of justice. The result, as much as the anarchy which had preceded it, demonstrated where the secret of Ireland's ills was to be found, and what was the species of government adapted for its unsettled, impassioned, and semi-barbarous inhabitants.* Instantly, as if by enchantment, the disorders ceased: midnight fires no longer illuminated the heavens, midnight murders no longer struck terror into the inhabitants. The savage passions of the people, growing out of the civilised license unhappily allowed them under British rule, were rapidly coerced, and, instead of Ireland exhibiting an amount of agrarian

at once to leap into the privileges of the Saxon, without going through his seven centuries of painful apprenticement. Monster meetings became general. Assemblages said to consist of eighty or a hundred thousand, and which really contained twenty or thirty thousand persons, were held in the whole south and west of Ireland. Meanwhile industry was paralysed; capital shunned the agitated shores; labour was diverted from the field to the platform; the earnings of the poor were wrenched from them, by priestly influence and the terrors of purgatory, to aid in the great work of dismembering the empire. Instead of attending to their business-instead of working at their lazy-beds or tending their cattle-instead of draining their bogs or reclaiming their wastes, the people were continually kept running about from one monster meeting to another, and taught to believe that they were to look for happiness, not through the labour of their hands, or the sweat of their brows, but in swelling seditious processions, listening to treasonable harangues, and extending the ramifications of a vast and atrocious Ribbon conspiracy throughout Ireland.

Society could not long exist under such a system; but it was long ere the Liberal party saw the error of their ways when Sir Robert Peel's government, in 1843, at length became convinced that the evil had come to such a height that it could no longer be endured, and that society would be dissolved under its influence. The meeting, accordingly, at Clontarff was proclaimed down; O'Connell was prosecuted, and a conviction obtained. But the Whigs were not long of coming up to the rescue. A majority of three Whig law peers to two Conservative ones-Lords Lyndhurst and Brougham being in the minority-overruled the opinion of the twelve judges of England, and quashed the prosecution. Elated with this victory, agitation resumed its sway in Ireland; but it did so under darker auspices, and with more dangerous ends. Organisation, with a view to insurrection, was now avowedly set on foot; arms were purchased in large quantities; and the Whig Secretary of

Ireland had the extreme imprudence to write a letter, which found its way into the public prints, and was soon placarded over Ireland, in which it was stated generally, and without qualification, that every Irishman was entitled to possess and carry arms. Nay, this was made the cheval de bataille between the two parties; and when Sir R. Peel was turned out in July 1846, it was on the question of the bill for prohibiting the possession of arms in Ireland. The Whigs came into power on the basis of the Irish peasantry being entitled to be armed. It covers, like charity, a multitude of sins in Sir R. Peel, that he left office on the same question.

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But the laws of nature are more durable in their operation than the revolutions of statesmen. The effects of twenty years' agitation and disorder in Ireland ere long became apparent. The reign of murder, incendiarism, and terror, brought down an awful retribution on its authors. Agriculture, neglected for the agreeable and gainful trade of agitation or assassination, had fallen into such neglect, that the land, in many parts of the country, had become incapable of bearing grain crops. Nothing would do but lazy-beds, in which often a wretched crop was raised in the centre of the ridge, on a third of the land, while the remaining two-thirds were under water. The potato famine came, in 1846, upon a country thus prepared for such a visitation-wasted by agitation, disgraced by murder, impoverished by the protracted reign of terror. Its effects are well known. Ireland, wholly incapable, from its infatuated system of self-government, of doing any thing for itself, fell entirely as a burden on England. Great part of Scotland was wasted by a similar calamity, and in regions-the West Highlands and Islands-far more sterile and barren than the south and west of Ireland. But Scotland had not been torn by political passions, nor palsied by repeal agitation. Scotland righted itself. It bore the visitation with patience and resignation. It neither sought nor received aid from England. Not a shilling was advanced by the Exchequer to relieve

Scotch suffering. Ten millions were given by the nation to relieve that of Ireland: of this immense sum eight millions were borrowed, and remain a lasting charge on Great Britain. Hundreds of thousands, raised from the suffering and won by the labour of England and Scotland, followed in the same direction. In return, the Irish gave us contumely, defiance, and ingratitude. The Nation thundered forth weekly its fiendish vituperation against the people who had saved its countrymen. It was eagerly read by hundreds of thousands who owed their existence to British generosity. The beggar gave place to the bully. Great part of the funds, lavished with misplaced humanity on Irish suffering, was employed in the purchase of arms to destroy their benefactors; and the unparalleled munificence of England to Ireland in 1847, was succeeded by the unparalleled rebellion of Ireland against England in 1848.

He must be blind indeed who cannot read in this rapid summary the real causes of the long-continued misery and distraction of Ireland. It has arisen in a great degree from English connexion, but in a way which the Irish do not perceive, and which they will be the last to admit. It is all owing to a very simple cause--so simple that philosophers have passed it over as too obvious to explain the phenomena, and party-men have rejected it because it afforded no handle for popular declamation, and gave them no fulcrum whereon to rest the lever which was to remove an opposite party from power. It is not owing to the Roman Catholic religion,-for, if so, how have so many Roman Catholic countries been, and still are, great, and powerful, and happy? It is not owing to the confiscation of the land, for confiscation as great followed the establishment of the Normans in England, and the victories of Robert Bruce in Scotland; and yet, in process of time, the ghastly wound was healed in both these countries, and from the united effort of the Britons, Saxons, and Northmen, have arisen the glories and wonders of British civilisation. is not owing to the exclusion, from 1608 to 1829, of the Roman Catholics

It

from Parliament; for, since they were admitted into it, the distractions of Ireland have gone on constantly increasing, and its pauperism and mendicancy have advanced in an accelerated ratio. It is entirely owing to this,— that England has given Ireland institutions and political franchises, for the exercise of which it is wholly disqualified by temperament, habit, aud political advancement. We have put edged tools into the hands of children, and we are astonished that they have mangled their limbs. We have emancipated from necessary control the Bedouin or the savage, and we are disappointed he does not exercise his newly-acquired powers with the discretion of an Englishman or an American. We have plunged a youth of sixteen, without control, into the dissipation of London or Paris, and we are surprised he has run riot in excess. Thence it is that all the concessions made to Ireland have instantly and rapidly augmented its political maladies, and that the only intervals of rest, tranquillity, and happiness it has enjoyed for the last two hundred years, have been those in which it has for a brief period been coerced by the wholesome severity of vigorous government. Thence it is that Whig solicitude, fastening on the griev ances of Ireland as its battle-field, and winning for the inhabitants privileges for which they are not fitted, has in every instance so grievously augmented its wretchedness and crimes. This is the true key to Irish history. Viewed in this light, it is perfectly clear, intelligible, and consistent with what has occurred in other parts of the world. Without such guidance, its annals exhibit a chaos of contradictions; and Ireland must be considered as a casus singularis-an exception from the principles which elsewhere have ever regulated mankind.

The whole machinery of a free constitution—those institutions under which the Anglo-Saxons have so long flourished on both sides the Atlanticare utter destruction to the semi-barbarous Celtic race to which they have been extended. Grand juries and petty juries, self-governments, municipalities, county and burgh elections,