whether it is given to the landlord, and he is bound to pay the clergyman-or the state, and they undertake the maintenance of the church -the existing burden on the cultivator will be greatly augmented. The owner of the soil may be benefited by the change; but the farmer who holds of him unquestionably will not. The example of Scotland is decisive on this point. Two hundred years ago, the tithes of that country were commuted with admirable wisdom by Charles I.; and the consequence has been, that although the vexation of collecting tithes in kind, and the animosity between the clergyman and the tenantry have thus ceased, the burdens on the latter have been considerably augmented. The Scotch farmer now pays much more for rent alone, than the English does for rent and tithe together.

The overwhelming mendicity and redundant population of Ireland, is by no means an insurmountable evil. Scotland, at the close of the seventeenth century, was overrun by 200,000 beggars, who set all law at defiance, and lived at free quarters on the industrious poor in every quarter; but this immense mass of mendicity, amounting to about a fifth of the whole population of the country at that time, has long since disappeared, and the condition of her labouring classes become the object of envy to the surrounding states. The resources, both agricultural and commercial, of Ireland, are immense. Her soil contains above 12,000,000 arable acres, exclusive of 5,000,000 that might be rendered arable. Now, supposing that of this quantity 3,000,000 of acres are annually devoted to potatoes, 3,000,000 to wheat, and 6,000,000 to grass, oats, or barley, we shall find, that from this arable portion alone there might be raised the following quantity of food. 3 millions acres in wheat, at 2 quarters per acre, 6,000,000 quarters. 3 millions acres potatoes, at 50 bolls per acre, 150,000,000 bolls. Now, six millions of quarters of wheat will maintain six millions of souls, and 150,000,000 bolls of potatoes will at the very least maintain 15,000,000 more; so that the wheat

and potatoes growing on these six millions of acres alone, would maintain twenty-one millions of souls, This is supposing the waste lands in the island to yield nothing, the mountain pasture to yield nothing, and six millions of the arable acres to be devoted to the production of grass, oats, or barley, for the convenience and luxuries of life. It is evident, therefore, that there is ample room in the soil of Ireland to maintain at least three times its present population, in the highest state of affluence and comfort.

The manufacturing and commercial advantages of Ireland also are immense. From the cheapness of labour, which, at an average, is little more than half that in Great Britain, the linen manufactures of the North have of late years made the most rapid progress,* and a considerable part of the commercial capital of Glasgow has already emigrated to that more favourable seat of manufacturing industry. The numerous natural harbours and deeply indented bays of the Irish coast, give it facilities for the formation of seaports, and a coastways commerce, unknown to any other part of the empire. All along the west coast the shore is so precipitous, that almost every bay may be formed at little expense into a harbour; and Valentia, the nearest point of Europe to America, is evidently destined, if the intentions of nature are not thwarted by her own demagogues, to become the great emporium of British export to the countless millions of the New World, and render the West of Ireland the scene of as great commercial activity as the Severn or the Mersey.

lized the herring-fishery of the Shetland Isles; and in Adam Smith's time, it was calculated that it yielded to them annually a clear profit of two millions a-year; it may safely be affirmed, that the coast and deepsea fisheries of Ireland are capable of yielding a clear profit to the nation of at least double that sum. The religion of the great bulk of the inhabitants is as great an advantage in this, as in every other it is a disadvantage to their industry: - the Catholics, by consuming fish only on fast-days and Lent, afford the great market for fisheries all over the world. There is no reason why the peasantry of Ireland should not generally consume salt herrings with their daily meal of potatoes; and if so, no limit can be assigned to the extent of their fisheries, or the degree of comfort which they may spread through their labouring population.

What is it, then, which retains in such an abject state of misery a country so prodigally gifted by nature, and so indulgently treated by government? How has it happened that Ireland, so kindly cherished by Great Britain for the last half century, almost without taxation, certainly without any of the burdens which at the same period have overwhelmed British industry, is in so deplorable a state; that, abounding in agricultural riches, its people should so often be starving; enjoy ing every advantage for manufactures, its industry should in so many quarters be languishing; and begirt with the finest fisheries in Europe, it should derive comparatively nothing from that inexhaustible source of wealth? The Irish have an answer ready; they say it is misgovernment. We agree with them; it is misgovernment; but it is not the misgovernment of England, but of their own factious demagogues, which has occasioned all the misery; and if it is in a worse state than ever now, it is not because, under our Whig rulers, they have been too harshly, but too leniently treated; it is not because government has been too rigorous, but because it has, by undue concession, been dissolved.

In truth, if the matter be considered dispassionately, it must occur to every man of historical information, that the vulgar theory which ascribes all the miseries of Ireland to English conquest, is totally unfounded. Ireland is no doubt a province of a great empire; but so also is Scotland, Hanover, and Canada; and yet all these countries, so far from being in a miserable condition, are in the very highest state of prosperity. Ireland was conquered six centuries ago; but so was England by the Normans, Gaul by the Franks, and the North of Italy by the Lombards; and yet from the mixed population of the victors and vanquished, has arisen all the wealth, prosperity, and grandeur of those great countries. A living historian of philosophic ability has justly traced to the severities and misery consequent for centuries on the Norman conquest, the remote seeds of British freedom; and observed, that those ages of national suffering were the most valuable ages which England has ever known.* There must have been something more, therefore, than the mere fact of early subjugation, which is to be looked to as the origin of Irish misery, something which has counteracted in this alone, of all other European states, the healing powers of nature, and rendered the intermixture of different races, consequent on foreign conquest, the source of so much benefit to other states, the predecessor of so much wretchedness to that unhappy land.

This fundamental cause is to be found in the annexation of Ireland to a country possessing free institutions; and the consequent and not unnatural extension to her population of privileges which they were not capable of bearing, and of passions whose excitation they could not withstand.

For nearly two hundred years, ever since the beneficent labours of James I., Ireland has enjoyed the forms, and been delivered over to the passions, of a free state. She has had county elections, Parliaments, grand juries, trial by jury, and all the other machinery which has grown up in England during eight centu

ries from the seeds of Saxon liberty. What has been the consequence? During all that time she has been divided, distracted, and unhappy. Justice has been ill administered, or totally denied; property unprotected, and insecure; industry without encouragement; wealth without employment; the higher orders indolent, and in many cases corrupted; the lower, violent, and too often abandoned. The long continuance and present extent of these disorders can be traced only to one source, practical weakness, and inefficiency of government; no strict or regular execution of justice; a general dissolution of authority; in other words, the abandonment of the virtuous and pacific to the profligate and the daring. This is exactly the present state of Ireland; and it is under these evils that it has been labouring for three hundred years. What remedy is appropriate to the evil? Is it to be found in increasing the democratic spirit of the people; throwing into an already ardent and excited population the additional firebrand of political animosity; and applying to a nation, three-fourths of whom are little better than savages, the passions and the desires of popular ambition? Or is it to be found in a regular and severe administration of justice; a coercion of the lawless spirit and extravagant passions of the lower classes; a steady and unflinching repression of popular excitation; and a gradual preparation of the nation, by the habits of industry, and the acquisition of property, for the moderation and self-control indispensable for the safe discharge of the duties of a popular government.

The great misfortune of the English always has been, that they think that whatever is found to work well among themselves, must necessarily work well in all other countries; and that to secure the happiness of all the nations in alliance or subjection to them, it is quite sufficient to transplant into their soil the English institutions. Ireland has been the victim of this natural and well-meaning, but most mistaken and ruinous policy. Scotland is so prosperous, chiefly because her ancestors first so bravely with their swords resisted English invasion, and so long afterwards steadily withstood the al

lurements of English innovation. In making these observations, we mean nothing disrespectful to England; on the contrary, they are founded on the highest perception of its political superiority to the other parts of the empire. England is greatly farther advanced in social civilisation; much better able to bear the excitation of democratic institutions, than Scotland-; and incalculably more so than Ireland. The progress of Scotland in wealth, industry, and prosperity, for the last eighty years, has been unexampled; but it is not in eighty years that a nation becomes capable of bearing the excitements of popular power. The English apprenticeship to it has lasted for eight centuries; the Irish has not yet begun. The ruin of Ireland throughout has been, that the English, instead of the steady sway adapted to their infant civilisation, have given them at once the institutions fitted for the last stage of free existence; and which centuries of pacific industry would alone enable them to bear.

Examine the institutions of Ireland; what are they? All those adapted for a sober, rational, phlegmatic people, such as might suit the moderation of the Gothic or German race of mankind. You see popular elections where two or three thousand electors are brought forward for the larger counties, and as many for the greater cities; public meetings, where the demagogues of the day thunder in vehement and impassioned strains to an ignorant and excited multitude; grand juries, where the prosecution of crimes is subjected to the influence of party zeal or religious rancour; jury trials, where the accused are alternately convicted on the doubtful testimony of traitors, or acquitted from the force of prejudice or popular intimidation; the people every where combined, under skilful leaders, in one vast and systematic opposition to authority of every sort, civil or religious; a hidden unseen ecclesiastical authority, universally and implicitly obeyed; an open and avowed government, insulted and defied at the head of 30,000 men. What can be expected from such institutions, existing amongst a semibarbarous and impassioned people? Just such a result as would instantly ensue if they were established at once in Hun

gary, Bohemia, Poland, or Russia; such a result as the revolutionists over all the world are constantly labouring to effect-universal confusion, anarchy, and misery; the rich divided against the poor; violence, intimidation, and ferocity among the labouring classes; the despotic authority of frantic demagogues; the prostration and ruin of industry in every quarter of the country; the growth of habits which render the enjoyment of freedom utterly impracticable for ages to come. Such is the state of Ireland; such it will continue to be while the present feeble and inefficient government, or rather total absence of government, exists among its impassioned people.

We are far from being insensible to the other evils of Ireland, on which the revolutionary party lay so much stress, and to which they ascribe all the wretchedness which so remarkably distinguishes it. We know well the extent and injustice of the confiscations of land consequent on Cromwell's suppression of the Tyrone rebellion; the rancour and heartburnings which it has left in the descendants of the dispossessed proprietors; and the wretched consequences which have resulted, and do result, from the adoption of one faith by the dominant landlords, and another by the insurgent peasantry. All that we know well. But what we rest upon is this: All these evils have existed to an equal or greater extent in other countries, who have nevertheless rapidly recovered from them, and shortly after exhibited unequivocal symptoms of the most remarkable prosperity. For example, the confiscation of property during the French Revolution was carried to a much greater length than it ever was in Ireland, and the old proprietors were in most places almost entirely rooted out; yet the revolutionists are the first to tell us, that France has been immensely benefited by the revolution; and there can be no doubt that, under the rule of the Bourbons, from 1815 to 1830, it exhibited a degree of prosperity unprecedented in any former period of its history. In like manner, in Scotland the religion of the owners of the soil is in a great degree different from that of the peasantry-two-thirds of

the former belonging to the Episcopal communion; yet religious rancour is unknown in that country. And if it be said, that this is because the Presbyterian religion, as the religion of the majority, is established to the north of the Tweed, what is to be said of England, where, according to the constant boast of the democratic party, the Dissenters are as numerous as the members of the Establishment, and yet no religious animosity prevails? Difference of religion is very common in the continental states. One-half of the population of France is said to be Protestant, but, nevertheless, religious rancour has never been added to its numerous causes of discord. All religions exist in Russia. When the Emperor Alexander took the field against Bonaparte, he went with a Greek patriarch at the head of the Church, a Catholic chancellor of the empire, and a Protestant general-in-chief of all the armies; and yet tranquillity, industry, and prosperity, prevail through the wide extent of the Czar's dominions. In the East, our empire is inhabited by persons professing such discordant religions, that they would rather perish than eat together; and in Canada, upon an old and stationary Catholic population, a new and rapidly increasing Protestant race has been superinduced; yet in no part of the world are the seeds of prosperity more rapidly germinating. The Whigs told us, that Ireland was an exception to the general rule, because the Catholics were not emancipated; but that assertion, like most of the others which they advanced, is now disproved; the Catholics have been emancipated, and Ireland ever since has been in an unprecedented state of misery

the whole country is in a state of virtual insurrection, and the passions of the people are more furious than ever.

It is now proved by experience, that the causes to which the Whigs ascribed the misery of Ireland, and which long misled so large a portion of the British public, are not the real sources of the evil. The system they recommended has been tried-it has not only totally failed, but made the country much worse than before.

What, then, should a government

have done, called upon to legislate for this distracted and divided country? We answer, without hesitation, done every thing, on the one hand, to protect its industry, develope its resources, relieve its poor, assuage its sufferings; and on the other, crushed its demagogues, restrained its excesses, rendered hopeless its violence. The task was a difficult one; it could be accomplished only slowly and graduallyand more than one generation must have descended to the grave, before the whole fruits of those really healing measures could have been seen; but still it was the only path which promised a chance even of safety, and it was the only one on which political wisdom would have cared

to enter.

Many measures might have been adopted, which would already have had a great effect on the sufferings of Ireland: many avoided, which would have prevented the terrible increase of its discord which has lately taken place.

1. The first measure which is indispensable to the revival of Irish prosperity, is the adoption of the most vigorous measures to restore the administration of justice, and give to life and property somewhat of that protection which is now afforded only to rapine and outrage. This is a matter of first-rate importance; so much so, indeed, that without it all attempts to tranquillize or improve Ireland will, as they hitherto have done, prove completely nugatory. As long as the south of Ireland is illuminated by midnight conflagrations, or disgraced by assassinations at noon-day-as long as families are roasted alive in their houses, and witnesses murdered for speaking the truth-as long as legal payments are resisted by organized multitudes, and the power of government set at nought by Catholic authority-so long will Ireland remain in its present distracted and unhappy state, miserable itself, a source of misery to others, a dead weight about the neck of the empire.

The intimidation of juries and witnesses has been carried to a length in Ireland, of which, on this side of the Channel, we can form no conception; and it is one of the many evils which it owes to the democratic spirit, organized, as it has been,

by the skill and influence of the priesthood. This is an evil of the utmost magnitude, corrupting, as it does, the sources of justice, and securing impunity to rapine and vengeance. Government can never combat too vigorously this terrible evil. The mode of doing so must be developed by the local authorities; but we venture to prophecy, the evil will never be eradicated till justice is administered as in Scotland, by public authorities appointed and paid by the Crown; and till the Government are authorized, upon a report from the Judges, that the conviction of offenders has become impossible, from the effects of intimidation, to suspend jury trial for a time in the turbulent districts, and try the of fenders, as in courts martial, by the Judges alone. Many estimable men will hesitate as to this: let them recollect what is the other alternative, namely, impunity to assassins, incendiaries, and robbers, and ceaseless anarchy to the country.

On this subject it is sufficient to quote the testimony of a gentleman of acknowledged talent, intimately acquainted with Ireland, and certainly any thing rather than favourable to the Conservative cause. Sir Henry Parnell has said in his place in the House of Commons, "that as member for Queen's County, he could not help adverting to the state of that part of Ireland. He had received information that a confederacy prevailed among the lower orders of that county, which enabled them to exercise a complete control over the higher orders, and to set at defiance the laws which were passed for the general protection of the community. He was further informed that houses were frequently attacked by armed parties in the open day, and that murders were sometimes committed during such attacks. He was likewise informed that the reign of terror made it impossible to obtain a conviction against these marauders when brought to trial, and that thus peaceable persons, who disapproved of these violent proceedings, were obliged, by a regard to their own safety, to give them an implied but involuntary sanction. He called the attention of the right hon. secretary for Ireland to this subject: he trusted that something would be done to restore peace and