afford slender aid to unfortunates who ask in vain for employment from men unable to pay wages. The Irish, at least, are provided with an answer to the question, 'Is not a large emigration going on at present?' They know that an emigration of capitalists, such as is at present going on, will not diminish the evils of an unemployed population; and that if the unemployed are not assisted to emigrate they must needs drive the farmers away. The Irish can reply to the argument, 'If emigrants were assisted they would do nothing for themselves;' for they know that the greater number of the poorer class who have hitherto emigrated have done so through the assistance of landlords or of friends; that such aid, applied with discrimination, has incited, not superseded, r their own exertions; and that the same aid might be applied on an infinitely larger scale through the intervention of loans from the State. The Irish, at least, know the force of the objection, that because the poor have died off in some parts of the country it is not necessary to step in and save other parts from becoming a charnel. In Ireland these things are known. In Ireland, then, a determined effort should be made to make them known. From every parish in Ireland which groans beneath the pressure of unemployed numbers a petition should be addressed to parliament, praying for an assisted and organized Emigration. But to increase capital is as necessary as to remove superfluous numbers, otherwise cultivation will recede pari passu with population, and the condition of the people will remain what it is. A system of agriculture almost wholly new to Ireland is rendered necessary by the calamity which has put an end, let us hope, to that miserable system based on the potato. That improved system is not to be learned without instruction, and little time is afforded for the acquisition of knowledge. Surely, then, it would not be too much to demand that educationa thing so highly valued at the present time-should include in it one element which could excite no religious animosities, and which would be certain of effecting practical good, -a system of industrial instruction. Something has been done in this way already, but little when compared to what is needed. Agricultural schools and model farms are needed all over the country: they are established only on condition of such local contributions as cannot possibly be made in those more distressed districts in which least agricultural knowledge exists and most is required. Why should there not be attached to every national school in the country sufficient land to instruct the children, and through them the parents, in the mysteries of stall-feeding and a due rotation of crops? For this purpose a very few acres would suffice. This would be a mode of 'protecting' Irish agriculture by which all classes would benefit alike. The developement of Ireland's industrial resources would, however, be also greatly expedited if the State were to undertake a few of those great public works, such as bridges, piers, harbours and railways, of which the chief characteristic is that they lead indirectly to more employment than that which they directly give during their progress. In England, a country abounding in capital and enterprize, no aid from the State may be necessary for such works; but it is one of the difficulties of British legislation at present that the same principles are by no means invariably applicable to England and to Ireland. The relief afforded by such employment during the present period of transition, in which the best-devised measures come but slowly into operation, would be very great: the bestowal, however, of such employment should be considered but as a collateral advantage; the works should be undertaken for the sake of their utility; none but good labourers should be employed, and from them honest labour should be inflexibly required. Thus, then, we have already discovered three remedial courses which might legitimately be made the object of petition from one end of Ireland to the other, besides the redress of her chief grievance-systematic emigration, agricultural education, and useful public works. Further we need not seek at present; for we are concerned only with questions of immediate importance as relief measures. Is the present representation of Ireland in parliament as large as she is entitled to? This important question, as an abstract one, is met by the practical rejoinder, What is the character of those representatives of whom you would increase the number?' The answer, if not just, is yet effectual. Let Irish members of parliament but do their duty for a single session, and then we shall know whether their duties are above their present powers. Let the whole people of Ireland call upon their representatives to represent their interests with resolution, and with concert. There have been honourable exceptions; but as a body they have been weak indeed, and to nothing has that weakness been more attributable than to their want of concert. They have no leader. Many of the ablest among them are connected by old party ties, as well as by office, with the Government; and among the better of those who remain are members with little experience, because, till lately, excluded from parliament by their opposition to Repeal. But to these causes of weakness we are bound to add others which proceed from the ordinary faults of our national character-indolence, rashness, unpunctuality, incoherency; in other words, the qualities which in the aggregate may be called the unbusiness-like.' From this fault proceeds mainly that want of combination, without which it is as impossible to act efficiently as it would be to build a wall with round stones, or to steer without a rudder. So far as it can be this weakness must be corrected. If it be impossible to choose a leader for a session, some plan of operation may, notwithstanding, be determined on for the conduct of a particular debate. How many a division during recent sessions of parliament went against Ireland for want of the most ordinary concert among Irish members; how often was that want of concert the result of inconsistency, of personal jealousy, or of a deficient appreciation of great principles compared with trivial objects more near the eye! If but one half of the Irish members constituted a firm phalanx in defence of their country, it would be impossible to carry out any policy destructive to her welfare. During the present session what have Irish members done for their country? What large and combined endeavour have they made to remove any one of her most pressing evils, or to introduce any measure of a remedial character? They have been for the most part as ciphers; and the unit who would have given value to those ciphers has not been found, or has not found his proper place. The present session has not yet gone by, however; even now it is possible to do much before its close, and to lay the foundation of more. A strong effort (though unsuccessful) in the right direction would produce one good effect,-it would give a direction to public opinion in Ireland. Gentlemen of Ireland, the time is short. Warning after warning has been given, and now the end has come. Those who once hoped that experience would correct the evils incurred by precipitation indulge that hope no more. Statesmen who do not see their way forward, as little see their way back. Where every road is dark they will walk in the easiest, that is, in the beaten way. Those, once more, who believed that the policy of the Poor-law Extension Act would be abandoned when it had been proved to be, not only fatal to property and to morals, but incapable of adequately affording even temporary relief, have been also undeceived. That lesson has been, not taught, but eluded. The limits which Nature herself has assigned to the devastations of a misapplied poor-law have been indefinitely extended by the Rate-in-Aid, and by that enactment which makes the fee-simple of the land answerable for the rates of the year. To work out that system to its conclusion, other measures, and yet worse, are required. Be assured that they will be provided. Let no one imagine that such a course will not be carried out because it is unjust and oppressive. Necessity, the mother of frauds and of force, is a hard taskmaster, not seldom to English senators, as well as to Irish peasants. Principles having been unprovided, and expedients being exhausted, statesmen are subjected to a political malesuada fames, which drives them upon dishonest courses. A presumed necessity inaugurated the present calamitous legislation; a real necessity will drive astonished statesmen on from premises to conclusions. Let us not imagine that the legislation of which we complain had its root in a zeal to destroy.' It was but the developement of a 'mistake.' That fatal measure-the Poor-law Extension Act, necessitated the measures of the last two years; that fraudulent measure, promising largely and effecting nothing, passed at a season of confusion and rebuke, when the passions of men inclined them to think the worst of Irish proprietors, and their interests to hope the best as to the duration of the Irish famineIt was that fatal and perfidious barque, built in the eclipse of reason, and dark with malediction to the third and fourth generations of both countries, that sank so low a party, of which the especial boast had been its acquaintance with economical science. Gentlemen of Ireland, there is no hope from the proved absurdities of the present law, from the chapter of accidents, or from the repentance of statesmen. From time itself there is no hope for you. Time, which changes the coral reef into a green island, and consolidates sand - beds into flourishing continents, repairs also the political ravage which it works, and will one day restore Ireland: but for you, and for your order, the future time will effect nothing unless the past time has taught you somewhat, and unless hard-won knowledge leads to timely action. The only hope which you possess exists in yourselves. You represent the land of the country;-guard it from devastation: you represent the rights of the unborn;-guard them from spoliation. Be not ashamed to vindicate your own; for no one surrenders to the violence of the spoiler, or to the clamour of a multitude, that which is justly his, without sacrificing the rights of others likewise. The most impudent of your defamers cannot accuse you of having betrayed, either on the introduction of the Poor-law or on its extension, any undue jealousy with regard to that measure. Discharge the duties of property to the utmost, but preserve the remnant of its rights for your descendants. Remember that you, too, are the Representatives of the people. For what purpose were you placed on high but that you should watch for the people; and that, seeing far, your own merits or demerits should be seen from afar? The sanction of power is this that the many find rest in its shadow. The feudal times are past; but the essential relations which they involved are indestructible and as the chief of old was the defender of his people, so the gentleman of modern days is called upon to protect his dependants, as a proprietor and as a politician, in the senate, in the court of justice, and at the board of guardians. Eminence of station will ever be based on the need of the many to be protected: the glory of the herd will be in its leader; and he who carries with him, along the perilous acclivities of life, the thoughts of men's hearts, will be their true Representative. The demagogue represents the passions of the populace, and, changing as they change, represents them often most faithfully when he seems most inconstant and without shame. You represent the people, not the populace; their permanent interests, not their caprices or their passions. Be faithful to them and to yourselves in this great hour of your common extremity. Protect their virtue: defend their lives. Deem not the task to be hopeless. If you but raise the banner, how many will follow it? What class will be against you? The farmer will be with you; he whose substance is daily wasted, and whose industry is made ridiculous by the rapine of the law. The labourer will be with you; he whose children are in rags because the law which stimulates employment, as it is said, cuts off that fund out of which wages are paid. The pauper will be with you; he who knows that even if a pound of Indian meal a-day were a sufficient provision for one who has no fire with which to cook it, no blanket by night, and often no roof, that daily dole is still to him insecure. The tradesman and the merchant will be with you: they lived by supplying the luxuries of those who can no longer command necessaries. The professional men will be with you; they whose prosperity is interwoven with that of every class. The clergy of both churches will be with you; they whose incomes have suffered most in the general wreck of society; they whose weekly congregations are thinned by want and by death; they who behold the vices of lawlessness, dishonesty, perjury, a contempt for religious obligation and an indifference to natural ties, spreading like a plague over that land formerly with all its faults celebrated for faith and for charity, for patience and for the strength of domestic affection. To say that these will be with you is to say that the whole nation will be with you. A few plain words, and a course of action rational and resolved, are sufficient, in conjunction with a great emergency, to make a whole people unanimous ; and a unanimous people, backed by justice, is irresistible. In England also you will have, do not doubt it, your allies. You will find them, in the first place, among the men of your own Order, who, even if they had no fellow-feeling with their brethren in Ireland-their allies, from first to last faithful, if to nothing else, at least to the British connexion-cannot but see that their own battle is at this moment being fought upon Irish ground. Those who wage war against whatever is ancient and historical in the land, who brand with the name of feudal traditions not only the hereditary transmission of property and the hereditary institutions entwined therewith, but also the ordinary tenure of land, have taken advantage of the "Irish difficulty' to advocate principles which, if once conceded, must extend to England as well as to Ireland. Let all who are unwilling to remodel England after the pattern of the United States see clearly that your cause and theirs is one. Make known to them the practical working of recent legislation in its details; show them the ruin and dishonour wrought by a poor-law in name the same as theirs, in essentials the opposite; and they will consult for themselves and for you. But your friends are, in truth, to be found in every class. Multitudes of every degree sent over their munificent charity to your starving brethren. These men, however imperfectly informed many of them may be, cannot be the enemies of Ireland, since they are the friends of suffering humanity. Make them to understand why it is, that while her industry is banned and her resources are squandered, your country could derive no benefit from any number of millions gratuitously given to her. Nor is it only among the generous that you will find friends: seek them especially among the just. A love of justice is compatible, unfortunately, with inveterate prejudice; and in England there are multitudes who, professing no small zeal for fair play, extend it only to those whom they respect, and respect those only who respect themselves, and who have the faculty of making their cause good. To you there remains, if nothing else, a cause:—have faith in it, place it before you like a sword, and fling upon it the whole weight of your body. Wherever friends exist to order, to justice, to mercy, to ancient institutions, to the hopes of both countries, you will find friends, if you put forth that voice which never demands in vain. What voice is that? The united voice that neither supplicates nor bullies, that seeks no more than is due and will accept no less, the voice of justice, courage, and of rational resolve. Convictions spread through sympathies; let your actions attest your conviction, and new-born sympathies will find friends for you even among your enemies. In fine, if the gentlemen of Ireland are true to themselves and to their country, there is no party in the empire that can play them false. If they fall, let them not hope that they will be able to say hereafter, 'We have lost all but our honour.' It will correspond neither with the convenience nor with the traditions of their enemies to leave their good name unimpeached. They will blacken the characters of the race which they subverted; and posterity, an unimpassioned rather than an impartial judge, will side with the winIt will say, 'Those men lost by weakness what their forefathers won by force. They made no fight, because they knew that they deserved to fall. They were not proscribed as an Order, but detested as an abuse, and abolished.'-Perhaps even before posterity has made its award, the proscribed themselves (so great is the versatility of the irresolute) may, in their exile, or in the sunless depth of hospital, prison, or workhouse, have found rest in a conclusion not wholly dissimilar. ners. INDEX TO VOL. XLI. Ailesbury, the Countess of, Letters from, America, United States of, 564 Babrius, the Fables of, 529 Barter's Poems, Originaland Translated, 647 Batch of Biographies, a, 443 Bertha, the Good Dame, 601 Bright Room of Cranmore, 41 Cambridge University Reform, 627 Carlyle, Thomas, and John Howard, Chantrey, Sir Francis, Recollections of, 453 Chorus of Mænades. From an Unpub- Cistus Leaves, 75 Collins's Life of W. Collins, R.A. 443 Conway, General, Letters from, to Horace Country, State and Prospects of the, 135 Dantzic, the Dom of. Founded on Fact. Chap. I. 53; II. 56; III. 62; IV. Death, Love in, 512 Devon, North. Clovelly, 167; Lundy, 170 and Organic Reform of the System. 56; III. 62; IV. 177; V. 1 86; VI Drainage of the Metropolis, 190 Economical and Organic Reform of the England, Diplomacy, Diplomatists, and English Bar, of the, 578 English Revolution, Guizot on the, 340 Eötvös's, the Baron, Village Notary. Fables of Babrius, the, 529 Fletcher's, George, Study of Shakespeare Flowers of Mercy, 159 German Question, Bülow-Cummerow on Gertrude Bohun. Chap. I. 307; II. Good Dame Bertha, 601 Göthe's Herman and Dorothea, 33 Guizot and the English Revolution, 340 |