ART. II.- CAUSES OF THE PRESENT CONDITION OF IRELAND.

1. Tracts relative to the Laws against Popery in Ireland. By Edmund Burke. [In Works, Vol. V., New York, 1813.]

2. The History of Ireland from the Invasion of Henry II., with a Preliminary Discourse on the Ancient State of that Kingdom. By Thomas Leland, D. D., Senior Fellow of Trinity College and Prebendary of St. Patrick's, Dublin. 3 vols. 4to. London, 1773.

THOUGH these Tracts of Burke are not all finished, and some of them mere fragments, we consider them more valuable than any other work on this particular subject. On questions relating to Ireland, with which he was so thoroughly acquainted, and in whose concerns he took such a deep interest, we think even the unfinished works of Burke more valuable than the most finished productions of any other writer.

In these tracts, the author endeavors to give a full and clear view of the laws against Popery in Ireland, enacted in the reigns of William and Mary, and of Queen Anne. He shows very strongly their absurdity, injustice, and cruelty, and their ruinous effects on the character, morals, and prosperity of the people.

It was said, by an English writer, about twenty years ago, that the history of Ireland is full of instruction and interest; and that to the people of England, especially, and of this age, it holds out lessons far more precious, far more forcible, and far more immediately applicable than all that is elsewhere recorded in the annals of mankind.

Ireland, so important a subject to the people of Great Britain, is also one of much interest to Americans. Formerly subject to the same sovereign, and a part of the same empire, no inconsiderable portion of our population is of Irish origin; and this proportion is rapidly, and, in the opinion of many, most alarmingly on the increase. The emigrants from Ireland to America are more numerous than from all the rest of Europe. For several years past, from one to two hundred thousand people have come from this island to our shores, and the effects are visible and striking in many parts of our country, and especially in our large cities. In our political contests,

this influence is very sensibly felt, and more than one of our most important elections have been decided by Irish votes.

Ireland is said to be more poor and miserable than any other community called civilized, and the cause of more unhappiness to all who have any thing to do with it.

The land does not produce more than one-fourth, perhaps not more than one-eighth of what might be obtained from it by fair industry and good cultivation. Much land is waste; the land in tillage and the meadows for hay do not probably include together more than one-fourth part of the island.

Agricultural laborers are in great abundance in Ireland,considerably more numerous than in England; and it is said the product of their labor is not more than one-third or onefourth as much.

England has an abundance of surplus capital for all enterprises at home, and for loans to foreign countries to any amount, where tolerable security can be obtained.

Here, then, are all the elements of a flourishing agriculture -a fertile soil, a temperate climate, abundance of labor; and England not only has capital enough, if applied to this purpose, but also furnishes a good market.

Before the late famine,- by which two hundred and fifty thousand persons perished in one year in Ireland, it was supposed that the great majority of the population seldom or never tasted bread or meat. Five millions of the people lived on potatoes, two and a half millions on oat meal, and the remaining half million on wheat bread and animal food.

Irish poverty and misery are not owing to the soil and climate, both of which are uncommonly favorable. With a good social system, there is probably no part of Europe or America where a comfortable subsistence can be obtained with less. labor than in Ireland. The evil must be owing to moral causes, the government, laws, social system, or character of the people.

Says the London Quarterly Review :—

"Absenteeism is one great cause of the poverty and misery of the Irish. The chief proprietors of land, in Ireland, are almost universally absent from the country, and their estates are managed by middlemen and agents.' The system of subdividing and subletting land, partly caused by absenteeism, is the source of much wretchedness.

"When other countries export commodities, they import, in return, other articles of equal intrinsic value. But, for the vast quantities

of wheat, beef, butter, &c., worth, we should suppose, at least, four millions sterling, per annum, now sent out of Ireland to pay absentee landlords, that country receives no return except receipts for rent. The hungry population of Ireland are doomed to stand idly by, and see a vast proportion (probably not less than onehalf) of the whole produce of the country exported from its different harbors, to be expended, by absentee landlords, on foreign domestics and artisans. The meal is taken away, while the mouths into which it ought to go are left behind."

The evil complained of may be considered as owing, in some degree, to the history of landed property in Ireland. Nearly the whole of the land in Ireland has been confiscated, at different periods, and some of it several times over, under the pretext of treason or rebellion, in the native occupants or their chiefs, against the English government. Confiscated lands are considered in England, as our readers know, as the property of the crown, and the Irish lands were granted in immense tracts to favorites, generally to Englishmen.

A great portion of the new proprietors were absentees; and their Irish estates were managed by agents, or middlemen, and commonly let in small parcels; the most valuable part of the produce having to be sent out of the kingdom on account of the absentee landlords, leaving the tenant a bare subsistence, and that, commonly, a very poor one.

The common practice of the great proprietors of Irish estates is very different from that of English landlords. The former build no houses for their tenants, expend no money, and make no improvements on their lands. The rent is paid for the natural power of the soil, without any expense to the

owner.

It appears from the latest accounts that much land in Ireland, heretofore cultivated, has been recently abandoned and left entirely waste. This is the case with more than one hundred thousand acres in the single county of Mayo. The taxes, and especially the enormous pauper-rates, have driven off the farmers, who, with what personal property they can save, are emigrating. "In parts of this county," says one of the poor-law inspectors, "so wasted are the people by want and disease, that an able-bodied man is hardly to be seen.'

It has been lately stated in Parliament that the expense for the support of the paupers was much reduced, in consequence of the great diminution of the population by conflagration and disease.

There must be some great defects in the government and social state of a community, when such things are seen in so fine a country as Ireland.

The Established Church of Ireland, maintained as it is, may justly be considered a great grievance to the Catholics. Archbishop Magee, in his charge to his clergy, says that the Presbyterians have a religion without a church, and the Catholics a church without a religion; the Episcopal establishment happily combines the advantages of both a church and a religion! An advantage, not mentioned by the worthy prelate, is that of having all the wealth appropriated by the state to the support of religion, and of being one of the richest churches in Christendom. In Ireland, the Protestant church has the tithes, and the Catholic church the people. The one has all the church's wealth, but all the moral and religious instruction received by five-sixths of the people comes from the other. The annual income of the Established Church in Ireland is said, upon good authority, to have been about one million pounds; the annual average of the benefices to be eight hundred pounds. Three archbishops, having no property originally, have died within a few years, leaving no less a sum than eight hundred thousand pounds. One might suppose that these wealthy prelates were of opinion either that godliness is great gain, or that great gain is godliness.

It may be truly said that the Irish Catholics have never, or but very imperfectly, enjoyed the protection of law. They have generally, at least until a recent period, known government and law only as enemies, until they have come habitually to regard them as such.

How should they do otherwise? That collection of statutes called the "Popery Code," passed in the reigns of William and Anne, was specially directed against the Catholics, comprising from three-fourths to seven-eighths of the inhabitants. The great object plainly was to deprive of their property all Catholics who had any, and to prevent them, and all other Catholics, from acquiring any property in future. So rapidly was this effect produced that Burke supposes that the Catholics, comprising such a vast majority of the people, had not one-twentieth part of the property in Ireland.

Dean Swift describes, with much coolness, the condition of the Irish Catholics in his time:

"We look upon them to be altogether as inconsiderable as the women and children. Their lands are almost entirely taken from

them, and they are rendered incapable of acquiring any more; and, for the little that remains, provision is made by the late act against Popery that it will daily crumble away. In the mean time, the common people, without leaders, without discipline or natural courage, being little better than hewers of wood and drawers of water, are out of all capacity of doing any mischief, if they were ever so well inclined."

So far as the object of the Popery Code was to convert the Irish to the Protestant faith, there never was a more complete failure, the proportion of Catholics being much larger now than when the Code was enacted.

The successive confiscations of landed property in Ireland are probably without a parallel in any other country. In addition to those that took place before, the various confiscations during the reigns of the Stuarts, and in the time of the Commonwealth, amounted to nearly or quite as many acres as are contained in the island.

In the political contests of the English nations, whatever course was taken by the Irish, they seem in general to have been considered as rebels by the party in power, whether royalists or republicans, and treated accordingly. One of the largest confiscations was in the time of the Commonwealth, and the land was parcelled out by Cromwell among his soldiers.

When the English Revolution came, another large confiscation took place, and the Irish, for adhering to King James the Second, whom the English had set over them, were deemed rebels and traitors to William and Mary. Most of the confiscations were for treason, charged to have been committed the very day that the Prince and Princess of Orange accepted the crown, though the news of that event could not possibly have reached Ireland on the same day, and the Lord Lieutenant of James was then in Ireland, with an army, and in possession of the government.

It is admitted by all writers that the poverty, wretchedness, and suffering of the people are without a parallel.

It has been also admitted, with nearly the same unanimity, that their miserable condition was owing to the oppression and misgovernment of that unfortunate country by England, for nearly seven centuries past, or ever since the connection of the two countries. On this point, we believe there has been little or no difference of opinion. All parties - Tories, Whigs, and Radicals; Englishmen and Irishmen; Protestants and Catholics; Episcopalians and Dissenters; who agreed in hardly