*

*

in everything, passionate in their patriotism, passionate in their religion, passionately courageous, passionately loyal and affectionate. * They possess and have always possessed some qualities the moral worth of which it is impossible to over-estimate, and which are rare in the choicest races of mankind. Wherever and in whomsoever they have found courage and capacity, they have been ready with heart and hand to give their services, and whether at home in sacrificing their lives for their chiefs, or as soldiers in the French or English armies, or as we now know them in the form of modern police, there is no duty however dangerous and difficult, from which they have been found to flinch, no temptation however cruel, which tempts them into unfaithfulness."*

While such testimony can be found, and from such a quarter, an Irishman may stand aside. "The sums of money," says Mr. Goldwin Smith, "which have been lately transmitted by Irish emigrants to their friends in Ireland, seem a conclusive answer to much loose denunciation of the national character, both in a moral and in an industrial point of view." Sir John Davies testified that no man loved equal justice more than the Irish Celt, and this feeling would not be lessened by Norman and Teutonic admixtures. The crimes committed by Whiteboys had their counterpart in England, as Macaulay shows, under the Norman, and indeed England bears away the palm from Ireland in crime. The Irishman is singularly free from a class of loathsome offences which are common elsewhere; and shooting landlords, which is dying out or has wholly died out under wise legislation, was the offspring of bad laws and crying injustice. Agrarian conspiracy implies no propensity to ordinary crime, either on the part of the wretched peasant who reverts to the wild justice of revenge, or on the part of those who screen him from detection. But for agrarian out

* The historian of Wyoming tells of an Irish settler," an old man named Fitzgerald," whose fidelity has the true ring. "The Indians and their allies placed him on a flaxbrake and told him he must renounce his rebel principles and declare for the king or die. 'Well,' said the stout-hearted old fellow, I am old and have little time to live anyhow, and I had rather die now a friend of my country than live ever so long and die a Tory.' They had magnanimity enough to let him go."-Miner's Hist. of Wyoming, page 200.

*

rages the judges of assize in most parts of Ireland would often have had white gloves, the proportion of agrarian to all the other crimes being very large, something like seven to ten, and, as has already been indicated, agrarian crimes will soon be unheard of.

In Munster, in 1833, there were 627 whiteboy or agrarian crimes, against 246 crimes of all other descriptions. The influence of just laws, and the readiness of the Irish character to respond to them, is shown by the marked change wrought by Mr. Gladstone's legislation. In the years 1873 and 1874 the average number of agrarian crimes for all Ireland was 233, against 324 in the two preceding years, and in 1874 crimes of this class were 41 less than in 1873. But mere statistics do not convey the full effect produced within recent years, because they do not convey the improvement in the bearing and sentiments of the farmers and peasantry.+

When we come to ordinary offences, we find the state of things full of grounds for hope. The whole number of indictable offences in 1874 was 6,662, of which more than half were committed in Dublin.

In regard to crimes against property, the statistics show that Ireland stands in a more favourable position than England by 35 per cent., but riots and assaults are more common in Ireland, while indictable offences, disposed of summarily, are 17 per cent. more common in England; thefts 56 per cent.; aggravated assaults on women and children, 39 per cent. In the Province of Ulster, in 1874, the total of offences of all kinds was 59,976, whilst in portion of the population of Scotland, equal to that of Ulster, it was in 1873, 71,313, the balance being 19 per cent. in favour of Ireland. Scotland consumes a much greater quantity of intoxicating liquors than Ireland, but the Scotchman can bear more

* “It would be unjust to confound these agrarian conspiracies with ordinary crime, or to suppose that they imply a propensity to ordinary crime, either on the part of those who commit them, or on the part of the people who connive at and favour their commission."-Goldwin Smith's Essay, p. 153.

† See "Remarks on a Recent Irish Election." Frazer's Magazine, August. 1875. The writer, an Ulsterman, settled in Tipperary, says a revolution has taken place in the feelings of the people.

See Professor Hancock's Statistics.

alcohol, and he is more prudent in his cups than the Irishman, of which fact the lesson is obvious.

It is hard to speak of the events of '48, without doing more harm than good. The tone of England, the legislation of the Imperial Parliament, have changed since the dreadful years of which no Irishman can think without tears, whose miseries it would be hard for any man born wheresoever, to realize without pain and humiliation. The indictment which can be drawn up against the Irish gentry is a dreadful one. This does not prove that Irish gentlemen were worse than other men; it only proves what has been made too palpable in the history of humanity, that human greed is too strong for human brotherhood, and that no man can be trusted not to abuse power; for the Irish gentry were not unworthy of the great people of whom they should have been the leaders. A class more fruitful in great men has never existed in any country, but they, like the peasants, were the victims of bad laws. The duties of the nobles, who spent the fruits of Irish soil in Paris and in London, were, in an aristocratic country, thrown on them, and their lavish expenditure was the consequence; nor were they all wanting in sympathy for the tenant. To this day in England, even with the ballot, the tenant is so cowed that he is afraid to vote against his landlord ;† nor is there any protection on which man can rely against the cupidity of his brother man, but equal laws equally administered.

* The following testimony to the Irishman from Mr. Froude's History, embraces all classes:-"We lay the fault on the intractableness of race. The modern Irishman is of no race-that is to say, he is of the Irish race, which is a distinct type, and most valuable to the world, a type as distinct from the Saxon as the Celt, so blended now is the blood of Celt and Dane, Saxon and Norman, Scot and Frenchman. The Irishman of the last century rose to his natural level, whenever he was removed from his own unhappy country. In the seven years' war, Austria's best Generals were Irishmen. Brown was an Irishman, Lacy was an Irishman, O'Donnell's name speaks for him; and Lally Tollendal who punished England at Fontenoy, was O'Mullally of Tollendally. Strike the names of Irishmen out of our own public service, and we lose the heroes of our proudest exploits-we lose the Wellesleys, the Pallisers, the Moores, the Eyres, the Cootes, the Napiers; we lose half the officers and half the privates who conquered India for us, and fought our battles in the Peninsula. What the Irish could do as enemies, we were about to learn when the Ulster exiles crowded to the standard of Washington. What they can be, even at home, we know at this present hour."

See the London correspondent of the Toronto Globe, of Oct. 28th, 1876, on the Buckinghamshire election.

Since '48 the events of that time have been judged by the actors themselves, and it has been acknowledged that the relation between England and Ireland has changed for the better. If any one reads John Mitchel's diary, he will see how John Mitchel looked back on the fiasco with which he was connected, with feelings of exaggerated shame. In a book published for circulation among the Irish in the United States, the writer condemns in the strongest language the attempts of the Confederates to produce an armed revolution in Ireland.* Many popular Irish papers shew by their moderation that the Irishman is not like the Bourbon who hrs learned nothing and forgot nothing.+

Since '48 two of the leaders have been servants of the crown, and one has accepted an imperial title. '48 was a fiasco—which, as is sometimes the case, did more good than if the movement had been a success; if it deserves praise it deserves it because the aim was impossible. No momentary independence was attained, but a powerful lift forward was given to the cause which triumphed in 1868 and 1869. It added to the number of the national heroes; it inspired the muse of Davis, and the life and oratory of McGee. In an English magazine of acknowledged power and influence,§ a writer, who describes himself as of "Scoto-Presbyterian descent, and born and educated in one of the most Presbyterian parts of Ulster," gives facts which it would be well to recall when it is even still the fashion to speak as if Irish insurrections arose from some unaccountable perversity of nature, instead of from the most vicious laws which have ever disgraced and degraded a country. It is Mr. Froude who tells us that "Lord Burleigh, who possessed the quality of being able to recognize faults in his own countrymen, saw and admitted that the Flemings had no such cause to rebel against the oppression of the Spaniards, as the Irish against the tyranny of England." It is a long step from Burleigh to

* See the preface to "The Men of '48," by Col. James E. McGee.

+ See an article in the Irish Canadian, Oct. 25th, 1876, warning the "men of action" chat they might do incalculable harm to their country.

Thomas D'Arcy McGee, sometime Minister of Agriculture and Emigration in Canada. Charles Gavan Duffy, at one time Prime Minister of Australia, and who is now Sir Charles Gavan Duffy.

§ See Fraser's Magazine, August, 1875. The article is "Remarks on a Recent Irish Election." The recent Irish election was that in which John Mitchell was returned.

GLADSTONE'S LEGISLATION.

45

Beaconsfield. Mr. Disraeli, in 1843, said a country in the condition of Ireland, had nothing for it but to rebel. And what does this man of "Scoto-Presbyterian descent" say of the events of '48? He tells us that his Ulster birth and Presbyterian prejudices have not been able to blind him to the excellencies of the Munster character. Nor can he understand why love of country should not be more generally appreciated in the Irishman. The German is praised for his love of Fatherland, the Frenchman honoured for devoting fortune and life to the service of his country, everything English is made the standard of perfection all over the world by the Englishman. "In this love of country," says the writer, " and the inherent gratitude of the Irish peasantry, will be found the true solution of the much misinterpreted, but unanimous election of the formerly expatriated John Mitchel."

The writer contends that there was nothing disloyal in the vote cast for Mitchel. Since the passing of the Land Act, the majority of the voters have "no desire to repeal the Union," as this would be "parting company with the best consumers of their beef and mutton, their oats and flour." The reason, then, why a solid vote was cast for Mitchel, was not because they would now approve of his policy of '48, but because they felt that when Ireland needed an honest voice, Mitchel supplied it; and also that in the improved state of things, when an alien church had been deposed, a great measure of justice done to the tenants, the daily wages of the labourer doubled, evictions for non-payment of rent almost unheard of, Tipperary become a model county of peace and quietness, a great government might have allowed the returned rebel to take his seat.

When D'Arcy McGee was taunted in the Canadian Parliament with having been a rebel, he answered it was true he had rebelled against the mis-government of his country, because he saw his countrymen starving before his eyes, while his country had her trade and commerce stolen from her. "I rebelled," he added, "against the Church Establishment in Ireland; and there is not a Liberal man in this community who would not have done as I did, if he were placed in my position and followed the dictates of humanity." It has been alleged in defence of the Government of the day that it did not cause the blight of that agreeable but ill