laws which contained in itself full provision, that this dissension, violence, and outrage should be perpetual. The Brehon law laid a pecuniary fine, proportioned to his rank, on the head of every man who was murdered. The offences short of murder it took little or no account of; indeed, it was hardly to be expected that outrages merely against property should be much regarded-first, because no man had more than a life-interest in his lands, according to this code; and, secondly, because the prevailing ignorance on agricultural pursuits rendered these lands of little value to their possessor. On the death of any member of a sept, the chieftain re- a state of things which Cromwell with difficulty uprooted, when he destroyed the power of the feudal chief. tains of Ireland, four hundred years afterwards. The only towns which were found in the country had been erected by the Danish freebooters; so that for this first step in civilization, the Irish were indebted to invaders, who were themselves pirates and marauders. Whether if Ireland had been left wholly to herself, she would yet have emerged from so low a depth of barbarism, it is hard to say. We have no instance on record of a savage people having ever of themselves attained to civilization. Archbishop Whately has drawn attention strongly to this remarkable feature in the history of man. History does not re VOL. XXXII.-NO. CLXXXVIII. cord an instance of any race that ever attained a knowledge of the arts or usages and manners of civilized life, except by being brought into proximity with a people who were more advanced and better instructed than themselves. We have no reason to suppose that Ireland would have proved an exception to this universal rule, nor that a people whose social state was such as we have described, and among whom even the simple arts of tillage and agriculture were almost unknown, had yet passed that limit, which, uncrossed, all progress and advancement is unattainable. But it is absurd to suppose that Ireland could have maintained a barbarous independence in such immediate proximity to other powerful and civilized states. Under the dominion of some one or other of these must she have fallen, if she were not to owe her civilization to Great Britain. England was at all times, from the Norman Conquest, a powerful country, and was constantly engaged in war with her continental neighbours. The occupation of Ireland must ever have been an object of primary importance to the enemies of England. Notwithstanding the possession of the country by the British forces, it was twice invaded by Spain in the reign of Elizabeth; and many yet living remember the designs of the French upon this country, and their unsuccessful invasion of our shores. Under either of these powers, Ireland would most probably have fallen, and what would then have been her lot? She would have been the theatre on which French licentiousness, or the Spanish Inquisition, would have exhibited. The deadly conflicts of England and of France would have been transferred to her plains; the rack, the sword, and the faggot, which devastated Cuba, Hispaniola, and Peru, would have been her fate; and writers upon Ireland would never have to complain that the country had only been half conquered. But it is said that under the English rule, the food, and clothing, and other physical comforts of the great bulk of the population of Ireland, is inferior to the condition of any other civilized people; and the justice of this reproach must be admitted. We speak not, of course, of the condition of the people during the late year of unpa R ralleled famine, when the loss of potatoes alone was estimated at between nine and ten millions of tons, and the whole loss on potatoes and oats was equivalent to the absolute destruction of 1,500,000 arable acres; but, even in ordinary seasons, the diet of the people is never, in point of quality, such as it ought to be; while the nature of the potato husbandry, by entrusting every family at once with the entire supply for the whole year, combined with the improvidence of the Irish character, leads to that reckless consumption at the beginning of the season, which never fails to entail scarcity, and in some districts almost periodical famine, before the new crop comes in. Whether the food of our people in ordinary years falls so much short of that of the continental states, as most writers would have us to suppose, we would be rather inclined to question. In the government tables, which were prepared in France with great care, in the year 1846, from returns made from every commune or parish in France, we find that the average daily consumption for the whole population, including as well the surplus consumption of the wealthy and luxurious as the more limited sustenance of the poor, was as follows: When such is the average for the whole population, both rich and poor, wretched indeed must be the condition of the latter. This average, we are told, is less by a third than the allowance to convicts. But the questions that press upon us are, to what is it that our own misery is to be ascribed, and what are the means of its alleviation? To answer these questions honestly, we must be careful to distinguish between a remote and immediate cause; and looking at our condition fairly, and in a candid spirit, we are forced to avow that our present degradation is in so great an extent attributable to ourselves, that any other causes that may have concurred sink into utter insignificance. It is to the indolence, improvi dence, and ignorance, which has uniformly pervaded, at least, three provinces of Ireland, that we must unhesitatingly ascribe our present de graded condition. To what this indolence, improvidence, and ignorance is to be ascribed is, as we have said, a distinct consideration; but it is its existence that has degraded us. We except no class. We admit that the landlords of Ireland have, of late years, become, in a great measure, alive to the responsibilities which the possession of property entails, and to the necessity for exercising an active and vigilant control over its management. This improvement in the upper classes is yet very imperfectly developed, and is of very recent date. It is thwarted and impeded, notwithstanding the best intentions on the part of very many of the present race of landlords, by the circumstances in which they find themselves placed, involved as they are, and rendered utterly powerless by a load of incumbrances created by their predecessors, who have, indeed, a heavy account to answer for, for the grievous perversion and abandonment of the trusts that were confided to them. A still more responsible, because with the Irish peasantry a more influential body, the Roman Catholic priesthood are still more heavily accountable for the condition of the country. The faults of the landlords were chiefly those of neglect those of the Roman Catholic priesthood are crimes of the most deliberate commission. They have in every way perverted and desecrated the du ties of their sacred calling. Instructors of their flocks, they have studiously kept them in ignorance; ministers of the gospel, they have sown rancour, hatred, and malevolence, against their Protestant rulers and fellowsubjects, as widely as they could disseminate it. There are, and always have been, some few bright and holy exceptions — exceptions the brighter and the nobler, because that, acting from a sense of right, they have placed themselves in opposition and hostility to the opinions and practices of their fellows, the surest test of a brave and good man; but the great bulk of the Roman Catholic priesthood have ever been ready to head an insurrection in the field, or to stimulate to outrage even from the altar. And up to this very hour how few of them are to be found in the disturbed districts of Ireland, who avail themselves of the unquestionable control which they possess over their people, to suppress those cold-blooded and revolting enormities, which have brought such infamy upon the land. Could these continue, if universally opposed by the priesthood? "My unaltered opinion," said that unflinching statesman, Lord Clare, some fifty years ago, "is, that so long as human nature and the Popish religion continue to be what I know they are, a conscientious Popish ecclesiastic never will become a well-attached subject to a Protestant state, and that the Popish clergy must always have a commanding influence on every member of that communion." Intelligence and independence will abate or destroy this influence; but so long as ignorance and poverty abound, this influence will prevail, and the continued turbulence and discontent of Ireland will confirm the justice of Lord Clare's prediction. Then to this indifference on the part of the upper classes, and direct incentives to evil on the part of the Roman Catholic priesthood, we have the lower classes, the industrial energy of the country, paralyzed by ignorance, abandoning themselves, when at home, to that indolence which has become the temper of the country, though capable of active and sustained exertion,when transferred to some happier sphere, where industry prevails; a people most enduring of privation, most patient under suffering, eminently intelligent, excelling in all the domestic virtueskindly, hospitable, compassionate, and the very opposite to what strangers, judging from the few plague-spots which deform the land, would pronounce them to be; but as a consequence of their ignorance and indolence, abandoning themselves, with the most absolute credulity, to those expectations of political advantage, which bad and designing men have constantly held forth, to the utter prostration of all self-reliance, energy, and forethought, by which alone prosperity can be attained. We are aware that this is not the language that is popular, but we know that it is the language that is true, and we feel that it is the language that is necessary. A people are as susceptible of flattery as an individual, if not more so. Democrats must pander to the passions, and flatter the humours of their supporters; and now that Catholic Emancipation, Parliamentary Reform, and Municipal Reform have served their turn, and had their daynow that there is not a single political grievance which they can, by any amount of sophistry, make appreciable by the people, they fall back upon the old enmity to England, which would long since have subsided with the causes in which it originated, but for the incessant efforts which are made to perpetuate it, and ascribe all the social distress of the country to the English connexion. This, we need hardly tell our readers, is mere assertion on their part, and is not supported by one single tittle of proof. We challenge them to connect the existing poverty of Ireland in the slightest degree with the present relations subsisting between the two countries. Our author would not hesitate one moment, if he thought it right, to denounce the Union as the source of our social grievances. He condemns the past misgovernment of England in some respects in harsher terms than occurs to us to be reasonable; but among the many suggestions which he submits to his readers for the improvement of the country, that of the Repeal of the Union never once occurs to him. Bear in mind, too, that our author is an eminent inerchant-one who carries on his business in this metropolis, and is a member of that class which it is the fashion to say would be peculiarly benefited by severing the connexion between the countries. This makes his testimony peculiarly valuable on this subject; and yet this gentleman, writing at this time, when political excitement on the subject of repeal is at the highest, wedded to no party, most competent, if any man be so, to form a sound judgment, and incapable of concealing or suppressing what he feels to be true-one who has proved his affection for his country by the exertions which he made for the relief of her famine-stricken peoplehe never ventures to suggest that the slightest social advantage could be derived from a Repeal of the Union. As to the effect of the agitation of this measure, he thus expresses himself: "The agitation produced in the minds of men by the various political associations, whether for the advocacy of those claims, or for a repeal of the Union, has had a serious effect in depressing industry; by holding out to the people unde fined prospects of important advantages, to be obtained from political changes, which have tended to withdraw them from a reliance on their own exertions, as the only sure means of improving their condition." One argument, indeed, we have known to be urged against the British connexion. It is said, and there is but too much truth in the observation, that the administration of Ireland is conducted by playing off one party against another-by now sacrificing the interests of Protestants to Roman Catholics, and again that of Roman Catholics to Protestants, as it best suits at the time the state of parties, and the political convenience of the ministry. But admitting that this evil exists in our connexion with Great Britain, is it one which we can in any way hope to get rid of by being severed from her? Lamentable as it is that such a state of things should exist, yet is it not the necessary and unavoidable consequence of party? How would we become exempt from it by having a government in Ireland? Would such a government be less dependant on the great divisions into which society is resolved, or less anxious to procure the support of either of them? In a popular constitution, to say that the government is anxious to conciliate any particular party, is merely equivalent to saying, that such party is itself influential. Very probably, indeed, under an Irish government, Protestantism would never be conciliated at the expense of Romanism, for it is by no means likely that Protestantisin would then have much influence in the state; but Republicanism would be conciliated at the expense of Communism, or Communism at the expense of Socialism; for so long as powerful and antagonistic parties divide the state, which will be as long as man is fallible, and the expression of opinion is free, so long will the government be administered, and the equilibrium of the state preserved, by the mutual counterpoise of one party against the other. We never can expect to escape from such a state of things, except by sinking into a pure democracy, then indeed all party will be absorbed, and all expression of opinion suppressed, in the uncontrolled will of the tyrant majority. But although we are firmly con vinced that it is impossible to maintain that the poverty and degradation of Ireland is referable to the connexion between the two countries as it now subsists, it is equally impossible to deny that much, very much, of the evils under which we labour, the greatest of them being those which are fixed in the habits and character of our people, are to be traced to the relation which existed between the countries, from their first connexion, down to comparatively a very recent date, perhaps we might say down to the period of the Union. The nature of this relation, and its effect upon the character of the country, is sketched by Mr. Pim in the two opening chapters of his book. One very important feature he thus notices : "The energetic character and industrious habits of the people of England have been ascribed, and probably correctly, to the thorough amalgamation of the Saxon inhabitants with their Norman conquerors. These, seizing on all the property of the country, reduced its former possessors to unresisting submission to their will, yet in course of time yielded to the influence of numbers, adopted the language, and much of the laws and political institutions of the conquered Saxons, and the two nations became one people. But Ireland, although invaded, vanquished in warfare, her princes stripped of their inheritance, and her people bent beneath the yoke of strangers, was never so thoroughly subdued as to blend the conquerors and the conquered into one. "Some intention of subjugating the whole island appears to have existed at first, as is shown by the settlement of the Fitzgeralds, the De Courcys, the families of Roche, Barry, and others in Munster, and of the De Burghs in Connaught. But these distant settlers, so far separated from the seat of government, intermarried with the native Irish, adopted their language and manners, assumed the power and state of Irish chieftains, and became, in the language of the old chroniclers, ipsis Hibernis Hiberniores.' Even the powerful barons of Leinster, the Fitzgeralds earls of Kildare, the Butlers earls of Ormonde, and others, while professing allegiance to the King of England, exercised independent authority in their own territories. They made war upon each other, or against the native Irish, at their own pleasure. The king's writ had no course within their jurisdiction. The Irish princes who had offered homage, and made nominal submission to Henry, resumed their former independence as soon as he left Ireland; and thus, before the termination of a century, the English rule and law were confined to the limits of the Pale, comprising the four counties of Dublin, Louth, Meath, and Kildare, and to the maritime cities of Cork, Waterford, and a few others of less note." It was to this imperfect reduction of the native Irish that the constant rebellions that distracted the country for many centuries afterwards, is mainly to be referred. The great extent of the grants, moreover, that was from time to time made to the English nobles, who never resided on their Irish estates, nor concerned themselves about their management, laid at the very outset the foundation for that most deadly of Irish evils, absenteeism, and gave fresh facilities for revolt. The rebellions which distracted the country in the latter half of the sixteenth century, that of Desmond in Munster, and Tyrone and Tyrconnell in Ulster, afforded the British government an opportunity for repairing the mistakes of the first settlement; and had but the same system been adopted by Elizabeth after the confiscation of Munster, that was pursued by James on the confiscation of Ulster, we would not now have to lament a distracted country and an impoverished people; but Elizabeth disposed of the confiscated districts of the South, as preceding sovereigns had done, in large, indiscriminate grants to absentee proprietors (she gave as much as 20,000 acres to Sir Walter Raleigh), without providing in any respect for the order or settlement of the country. While James, on the other hand, took care to portion out the confiscated lands of Ulster in small grants, and to bind the grantees to settle their estates with enterprising and industrious English or Scotch settlers. the habits of industry, to the love of independence, to the invigorating spirit of Protestantism, and to the identity of feeling and sentiment with Great Britain, which was then infused into the North of Ireland, does the province of Ulster owe that freedom from insurrectionary offences, as well as that superior social condition by which she is so happily distinguished. Mr. O'Connell, in his examination before the Lords' Committee in 1825, when asked how it was he accounted for the To Insurrection Act never having been required to be put in force in Ulster, unhesitatingly referred it to the existence of the numerous Orange yeomanry in that province. But in these later rebellions, in the reigns of Elizabeth and James, a new and fiercer element of dissension had arisen-religious difference had now begun to manifest itself-the principles of the Reformation were at this time adopted in England, but no care whatever was taken to introduce them or to expound them in Ireland. The indifference of England in this respect is beyond all measure the heaviest charge which can be laid at her door, and most grievously has she answered for it. In point of policy, and of justice, and of Christian feeling, she owed it to Ireland to give her at least an opportunity of embracing the tenets of the Protestant faith; but the concurrent testimony of every authority puts it beyond all question, that she most shamefully and most criminally neglected her duty in this respect— "The means," says Mr. Pim, "which had proved effectual in Great Britain, were not tried here. Preachers were not employed to explain the new doctrines to the people in their own language; there was no circulation of the Scriptures, translated into the vulgar tongue; the clergy being English, or of English descent, were unable to hold intercourse with a large portion of the people, and they felt little anxiety about increasing the number of their congregation, so long as their tithes were duly paid." Mr. Pim cites several authorities, and might have added many more, if it had been necessary, in support of this lamentable truth; nay further, truth constrains us to say that, down to a very recent date, the same character for inefficiency attached to the Irish Established Church. With its present well-merited character for piety, zeal, and learning, we need not scruple to acknowledge its past neglect and inefficiency-no past defects can dim the brightness of its present lustre; but we cannot but feel and acknowledge that the description of the Irish Church, which Mr. Pim quotes from Sir Henry Sidney's letter to Queen Elizabeth, might have been applied with truth for many ages afterwards— "Your majesty may believe that, on |