Methinks I see them straying on the beach,
And asking of the surge that bathes their feet,
How often it has wash'd our shore-in sight!
You see one weep, and his are honest tears,
Like patriot's for his country-they are sad
At thought of her forlorn, neglected state,
From which no pow'r of theirs can raise her up.
Thus Fancy paints them, and, though apt to err,
Perhaps errs little, when she paints them thus.
These, therefore, I must pity-placed so near
To all that science traces, art invents,
Or inspiration teaches.

In but a few short years circulating Irish teachers, if they were men who fear God, might work wonders here; and what a field is this for the powers of oral instruction! There was once ONE who not only taught in the temple and the synagogue, but preached on mountains, and in barges and ships -his immediate followers imitated his example-convenience for the time was consecration of the place; and the voice of that authority under which they acted, reaches to the end of time. Were this voice but once heard and obeyed, one can scarcely conceive of a more delightful change on a Sabbath morning, than that of the voice of praise ascending from these numerous islets of the sea. By the blessing of Heaven they would thus form, as it were, a wall of fire round this long-neglected country, not forgetting what, by similar means and an Irish ministry, might also, before long, be styled the glory in the midst. For why should not this praise be heard in the language natural to this people? And what perverse policy is that which would forbid it! I know not why I may not add, what heart must he have, who would stand proof against their own simple and plaintive petition, uttered lately by one of their best friends? It at least shows what an anxiety is felt on the subject of vernacular instruction :

:

And oh! be it heard in that language endearing,
In which the fond mother her lullaby sung,

Which spoke the first lispings of childhood, and bearing
The father's last prayer from his now silent tongue :

That so, as it breathes the pure sound of devotion,
And speaks with the power that still'd the rough ocean,
Each breast may be calm'd into gentler emotion,
And Erin's wild harp to Hosannas be strung.

And soon from the cliffs, by the ocean surrounded,
To that milder shore, by the shallow sea bounded,
May the call of the Shepherd be faithfully sounded,

O'er marshes and mountain, through isle and through grove!

At all events, their situation being now brought more fully before the public eye, I cannot believe, that, in such a day as this, these islanders will be suffered to remain longer, much less to die, in their present condition, without any regarding it. It may indeed seem to the reader as if a mist had risen and dispersed, exhibiting to his view an assemblage of his countrymen hitherto unknown; but no man can innocently desire that this misty obscurity should descend again, to conceal them from the eye of the intelligent and humane.

In the inhabited Western Isles of Scotland, amounting to sixty-eight in number, there are at present above seventy schools, where the vernacular language is taught, and in many of these, other branches of education:-In the inhabited islands round the coast of Ireland, amounting to one hundred and forty, we know that there has been appointed-one Irish school! but know not whether it is yet in active operation.

"If obedience to the will of God be necessary to happiness, and knowledge of his will be necessary to obedience, I know not how he that withholds this knowledge, or delays it, can be said to love his neighbour as himself."

JOHNSON.

SECTION VI.

UNFOUNDED OBJECTIONS

Against the employment of the Irish language answered, and shown to be of baneful tendency in every sense; as it is not only essential to the effectual instruction of the people, but its neglect is injurious, as well to the progress of the English language as to that of general information.

THE preceding pages may be said to involve an answer to every objection against the employment of the Irish language in the business of education or instruction, wherever it happens to be daily spoken; but as the objections themselves furnish occasion for adducing a curious, if not instructive variety of collateral proof, they are here noticed. The same objections were indeed answered in a memorial on behalf of the Native Irish in 1815; but that has been long out of print. Of course I often employ the same language, but with many additional facts.

I. Such measures would give too much encouragement to the language itself, for the sooner it is destroyed or abolished, so much the better.

This is an ancient objection, and it is still heard on both sides of the Channel, though within these fifteen years a great change has taken place, and all who have paid attention to the subject see through its fallacy. To expect that any language will decline by denouncing it, is vain. Nay, only neglecting to teach the people to read it, though at the same time enforcing the reading of another as the only channel of instruction to the poor, and as the only road to preferment or indulgence, is an attempt, the merits of which can very easily be put to the proof and examined by the result. The following cases not only include a reply to the objection, but furnish so many powerful arguments for immediate, and cordial, and general attention, as well to the language as to the circumstances of the Native Irish people.

ENGLISH.The argumentum ad hominem is not without its value, and may be employed here with some force. It is but fair, and may not be unseasonable, to remind the Englishman of this day, as well as the Anglo-Hibernian, that when Ireland was invaded in the twelfth century, English was not the language of authority and command, but French. When Henry II. himself was returning from Ireland, in the spring of 1173, and passing through Pembroke, a Welshman accosted him. The Cambrian, supposing that a King of England must understand English, addressed Henry in that language, calling him 'gode olde Kynge.' Understanding nothing of this salutation, his Majesty said to his esquire, in French, What does this man mean?' and the esquire, who had been so situated as to converse with the Native English, had to act as interpreter. Thus the fifth King of England after the Conquest did not seem to know the signification of the word King in the English tongue. His son and successor, Richard, probably knew as little, at least it is certain that he could not hold a conversation in English; though, sitting upon the throne of England, he is said to have made amends for this deficiency, by speaking and writing well the two languages of Gaul, both north and south, the language of oui and the language of oc!* The English tongue, therefore, such as it was in these days, was indeed spoken by men in that army; but all the chiefs were Norman-French. English was spoken by soldiers in the streets and markets within the pale; but French was the language in the castles and houses of the Barons. Thus the men of English race, upon Irish ground, occupied only a middle state between the Normans and the Irish. Their language, at that period was, in fact, proscribed, and in their own country despised, while in Ireland it held but an intermediate rank between that of the new government and the ancient dialect of the aborigines. Taught as the English or Anglo-Saxons had been, by this time, for a century, and were to be for two hundred years longer, that the edicts or dicta of the reigning power cannot wrest from a people the use of their mother-tongue; was it not strange that they could not perceive that the Native Irish were certain to act by their vernacular tongue, just as they themselves had done by theirs? Yet is it not a little remarkable, that the evil under which the Native Irish

• Brompton, p. 1079. Thierry's Norman Conquest, vol. iii. p. 180.

have laboured for so many ages, and up to the present hour, is the precise evil under which England groaned for three hundred years, from the time of the Norman invasion? This last territorial conquest in the west of Europe is never to be forgotten, as having introduced a species of policy into this country which has checked the diffusion of knowledge perhaps more than any one circumstance which can be mentioned. It was a sort of crusade on the colloquial dialect of the subdued party, and it certainly had its effects. It checked the diffusion of knowledge among the Native English, it sank the lower orders into darkness, and restricted all useful and scientific information to a privileged class. But did this experiment of three hundred years' duration root out, diminish, or abolish the English tongue? No such thing. Long after the Conquest the preaching of the Normans was not at all understood by the audience ;* and though the court, the law, and the nobility used French, the Native English never, as Robert of Gloucester informs us, abandoned their vernacular tongue. In the first part of the reign of Edward III., Norman-French had reached its highest ascendency in England. Boys in the schools were instructed in the French idiom; after this, in some instances, came Latin, and there was no regular instruction of youth in English. The children of the nobles were even sent abroad to secure correctness of pronunciation. Yet what signified all this unnatural procedure? Rolle, or, as he is sometimes named, Richard of Hampole, who died in 1348-9, intimates, that the generality of the laity understood no language except the English; and the English versifier of the romance of Arthur and Merlin asserts, that he knew even many nobles who were ignorant of French. A change of fashion was now at hand. In 1362 the act passed which recited that the French language was so unknown in England, that the parties to law-suits had no knowledge or understanding of what was said for or against them, because the counsel spoke French. It therefore ordered that all causes should in future be pleaded, discussed, and adjudged in English.† After this, English immediately so superseded its competitor, that by the year 1385 the teaching of French in all the schools had been discontinued, and English substituted. "How hard a matter it is,"

Hist. Ingulf. p. 115.

† 36 Edward 3, c. 15.

Turner's Hist. of England, 4to, vol. ii. p. 574. Three years after this, in 1388, the English was introduced into Parliament, though the absurd custom of recording the statutes in Norman, continued for ninety-five years longer. It was abolished by Richard III. in 1483.