Chapter III: Father and Son (3)

The terrible and tragic result of the strife in the streets of Paris in June, has done scarcely a less service to mankind, by opening the eyes of the world to the real nature of crimes which recent events had rendered popular, and restoring their old and just appellation to acts of the deepest atrocity, which the general delusion had caused to pass for virtues. Since the successful result of the Revolt of the Barricades in 1830, the ideas of men have been so entirely subverted, that no government was practicable in France but that of corruption or the sword; and treason and sedition appeared to have been blotted out of the list of crimes in the statute-book of England. So licentious had the age become, and so much was government paralysed by terror at the unprecedented turn which the public mind had taken, that, in Ireland especially, it can scarcely be said, for the last ten years, that, in regard to state offences, there has been any government at all. The Repeal agitation--the wholesale liberation of prisoners by Lord Normanby--the unchecked monster meetings,--the quashing of O'Connell's conviction by the casting vote of one Whig peer, in opposition to the opinion of the twelve judges of England--the unparalleled and long-continued violence of the treasonable press in Dublin--the open drilling and arming of the people in the south and west of Ireland--the undisguised announcement of an approaching insurrection, of which the time was openly fixed for the completion of harvest--were so many indications that Government had become paralysed, and ceased to discharge its functions, in the neighbouring island.

If matters were not as yet so menacing in England, it was not that the executive was more powerful or efficient in this country, but that the English mind was slower to take fire than on the other side of the Channel, and that more weighty interests required to be subverted among the Saxons than the Celts, before the institutions of society were overturned, and anarchy, plunder, and spoliation, became the order of the day. Yet even here there were many indications of Government having become paralysed, and lamentable proof that the public tranquillity was preserved, more by the moderation of its assailants than the strength of its defenders. The violence and general impunity of the trades-unions, in both England and Scotland; the open and undisguised preparations of the Chartists in both countries; the toleration in the metropolis, on two different occasions, of a Chartist Convention, which aspired at usurping the government of the country; the uniform and atrocious violence of the revolutionary press; the entire impunity with which, on every occasion, the most dangerous sedition was spouted on the platform, or retailed in the columns of the journals; the open preparation, at last, of treasonable measures; and the organisation of the disaffected in clubs, where arms were distributed, and projects of rebellion, massacre, and conflagration hatched--were so many indications, and that, too, of the most alarming kind, that matters were approaching a crisis in these islands; and that the paralysis and imbecility of a Government which had ceased to discharge its functions, might prove, as it did in France in the feeble hands of Louis XVI., the precursor of a dreadful and disastrous convulsion.

Thanks to the French revolution and Irish rebellion, this state of matters has met, for the time at least, with a decisive check. The eyes of men have been opened; things are called by their right name. We again hear of treason and sedition--words, of late years, so much gone into disuse that the rising generation scarcely knew what they meant. In France the heroes of the barricades have ceased to be lauded as the greatest of men. Insurrection is no longer preached as the first of social duties. That which was the chief of civic virtues on the 24th February has become the greatest of civic crimes on the 24th June. The soldiers of treason no longer meet with an honoured sepulchre, nor, if surviving, are they feted and caressed by royal hands. If killed, they are thrust into undistinguished graves; if taken alive, they are immured in dungeons or transported. Universal suffrage has done that which royalty was too indulgent or too timorous to do--it has ceased the dallying with treason. It has fought the Red Republic with its own weapon, and conquered in the strife. It has erected a military despotism in the great revolutionised capital. Industry, almost destroyed by, the first triumph of anarchy in France, is slowly reviving under the protection of absolute power. With suppression of the trade of the "journaliste," the "emeutier," and the "homme des barricades," other branches of employment are at length beginning to revive.[12]

Nor is the change less remarkable in Great Britain, where government have not only followed Mr Pitt's example of suspending the Habeas Corpus Act in Ireland, but have passed a special statute, assimilating for two years the punishment of aggravated cases of sedition to what it was by the old common law of Scotland. Great was the abuse which the Whig writers for half a century bestowed on the Scotch Judges in 1793, for applying the punishment of the Scotch law to the sedition of 1793, and transporting Muir and Fische Palmer, for trying to force on a revolution by means of a national convention. The "Martyrs' Monument" in Edinburgh stands as a durable monument of their sympathy. Lord Campbell, in his _Lives of the Chancellors_, has in bitter terms exhaled their collected indignation. But scarcely was the ink of his lordship's lucubrations dry, when he saw fit, as a member of Lord John Russell's cabinet, to bring in a bill to _assimilate the punishment of sedition in Ireland to the old law of Scotland_; and under it Mitchell has been transported fourteen, and Martin ten years--the very punishments inflicted for similar offences on Muir and Fische Palmer. The difference is, that for one person transported or imprisoned under Mr Pitt's system of timely coercion and prevention, in 1793, in Great Britain and Ireland, a hundred will be transported or imprisoned under the Whig system of long temporisation and final repression, in 1848. So true it is, that undue weakness in the prevention of crime is the inevitable parent of undue sternness in its punishment, and that in troubled times government incur the reality of severity to avoid its imputation.

Not less important, to the final interests of mankind, is the exposure of the real designs and objects of the revolutionary party, over the world, which has now taken place. The days of delusion are gone past; words have ceased to mislead men as to the nature of things. For half a century, men have been continually misled by the generous and elevated language under which the democratic party veiled their real designs. The strength of revolution consists in the power it possesses of rousing effort by the language of virtue, to render it subservient to the purposes of vice. But its designs have now reached their accomplishment: men see what was intended under all this veil of philanthropic intentions. The revolutionists have been victorious in Paris; and immediately their projects of spoliation, anarchy, and plunder, were set on foot, and approached so near their accomplishment, that a desperate and last effort of all the holders of property became indispensable, to prevent the total ruin of society; and carnage to an unheard of extent for three days stained the streets of Paris, to avert the triumph of the Red Republic, and the return of the Reign of Terror. The cry for repeal turned into rebellion in Ireland; and a vast concentration of the forces of England was requisite to prevent the Emerald Isle becoming the theatre of general massacre, devastation, and ruin. For two hours the Chartists got possession of Glasgow, and instantly a general system of plunder and sacking of houses commenced. The Chartist Convention was long tolerated in England, and, in return, they tried to overturn the Government on the 10th April; and organised a general plan of plunder and conflagration, which was to have broken out in the end of August, and was only mercifully prevented by the designs of the conspirators having become known, and the timely vigour of Government having prevented their accomplishment. The ultimate objects of the enemies of society, therefore, have become apparent: deeds have told us what meaning to attach to words. Revolution in France means spoliation, and the division of property, at a convenient opportunity. Repeal in Ireland means the massacre of the Protestants, and the division of their estates at a convenient opportunity. Chartism in England means general plunder, murder, and conflagration, the moment there is the least chance of perpetrating these crimes with impunity.

Ireland has been, in an especial manner, the subject of these general delusions; and there is perhaps no subject on which foreigners, the English, and the Irish themselves, have for so long a period been entirely misled, as in regard to the real cause of the protracted, and apparently irremediable evils of that distracted country. The proneness of the English to believe, that all mankind will be blessed by the institutions under which they themselves have flourished and waxed great, and the virulence with which party ambition has fastened upon Ireland, as the battle-field on which to dispossess political opponents, and gain possession of power, are the main causes of this long-continued and wide-spread misconception. We have to thank the Irish for having, by their reception of the magnificent gift of England in 1847, and subsequent rebellion in 1848, done so much to dispel the general delusion. To aid in disseminating juster views on the subject, we shall proceed to disinter from the earlier volumes of this Magazine, an extract from the first of a series of papers on Ireland, published in 1833, immediately before Lord Grey's Coercion Act, and which might pass for an essay on present events. It affords a striking example, both of the justice of the views there enunciated, and of the pernicious and continual recurrence of those real causes of Irish suffering, which party spirit in both islands has so long concealed from the people of Great Britain.

"It is in vain to attempt to shake ourselves loose of
Ireland, or consider its misery as a foreign and extraneous
consideration with which the people of this country have
little concern. The starvation and anarchy of that kingdom is
a leprosy, which will soon spread over the whole empire. The
redundance of our own population, the misery of our own poor,
the weight of our own poor-rates, are all chiefly owing to
the multitudes who are perpetually pressing upon them from
the Irish shores. During the periods of the greatest
depression of industry in this country since the peace, if
the Irish labourers could have been removed, the native poor
would have found ample employment; and more than one
committee of the House of Commons have reported, after the
most patient investigation and minute examination of evidence
from all parts of the country, that there is no tendency to
undue increase among the people of Great Britain, and that
the whole existing distress was owing to the immigration from
the sister kingdom.

"Nature has forbidden us to sever the connexion which
subsists between the two countries. We must swim or sink
together. It is utterly impossible to effect that disjunction
of British from Irish interests, for which the demagogues of
that country so strenuously contend, and which many persons
in this island, from the well-founded jealousy of Catholic
ascendency in the House of Commons, and the apparent
hopelessness of all attempts to improve its condition, are
gradually becoming inclined to support. The legislature may
be separated by act of Parliament; the Government may be
severed by Catholic revolts; but Ireland will not the less
hang like a dead weight round the neck of England; its
starving multitudes will not the less overwhelm our
labourers; its passions and its jealousies will not the less
paralyse the exertions of our Government. Let a Catholic
Republic be established in Ireland; let O'Connell be its
President; let the English landholders be rooted out, and
Ireland, with its priests and its poverty, be left to shift
for itself; and the weight, the insupportable weight of its
misery, will be more severely felt in this country than ever.
Deprived of the wealth and the capital of the English
landholders, or of the proprietors of English descent; a prey
to its own furious and ungovernable passions; ruled by an
ignorant and ambitious priesthood; seduced by frantic and
unprincipled demagogues, it would speedily fall into an abyss
of misery far greater than that which already overwhelms it.
For every thousand of the Irish poor who now approach the
shores of Britain, ten thousand would then arrive, from the
experienced impossibility of finding subsistence at home;
universal distress would produce such anarchy as would
necessarily lead the better classes to throw themselves into
the arms of any government who would interfere for their
protection. France would find the golden opportunity, so long
wished for, at length arrived, of striking at the power of
England through the neighbouring island; the tricolor flag
would speedily wave from the Giant's Causeway to Cape Clear;
and even if England submitted to the usurpation, and
relinquished its rebellious subjects to the great parent
democracy, the cost of men and ships required to guard the
western shore of Britain, and avert the pestilence from our
own homes, would be greater than are now employed in
maintaining a precarious and doubtful authority in that
distracted island.

"Whence is all this misery, and these furious passions, in a
country so richly endowed by nature, and subjected to a
Government whose sway has, in other states, established so
large a portion of general felicity? The Irish democrats
answer, that it is the oppression of the English Government
which has done all these things; the editors of the Whig
journals and reviews repeat the same cry; and every Whig,
following, on this as on every other subject, their leaders,
like a flock of sheep, re-echo the same sentiment, until it
has obtained general belief, even among those whose education
and good sense might have led them to see through the
fallacy. Yet, in truth, there is no opinion more erroneous;
and there is none the dissemination of which has done so much
to perpetuate the very evils which are the subject of such
general and well-founded lamentation. Ireland, in reality, is
not miserable because she has, but because _she has not been
conquered_; she is suffering under a redundant population,
not because the tyranny of England, but the tyranny of her
own demagogues, prevents their getting bread; and she is torn
with discordant passions, not because British oppression has
called them into existence, but because Irish licentiousness
has kept them alive for centuries after, under a more
rigorous Government, they would have been buried for ever.

"It is the more extraordinary that the popular party in both
islands should so heedlessly and blindly have adopted this
doctrine, when it is so directly contrary to what they at the
same time maintain in regard to the causes of the
simultaneous rise and prosperity of Scotland. That poor and
barren land, they see, has made unexampled strides in wealth
and greatness during the last eighty years: its income during
that period has been quadrupled, its numbers nearly doubled,
its prosperity augmented tenfold; they behold its cities
crowded with palaces, its fields smiling with plenty, its
mountains covered with herds, its harbours crowded with
masts, the Atlantic studded with its sails; and yet all this
has grown up under an aristocratic rule, and with a
representative system from which the lower classes were in a
great measure excluded. In despair at beholding a nation
whose condition was so utterly at variance with all their
dogmas of the necessity of democratic representation to
temper the frame of government, they have recourse to the
salutary influence of English ascendency, and ascribe all
this improvement to the beneficial influence of English
freedom. Scotland, they tell us, has prospered, not because
she has, but because she has not, been governed by her own
institutions: and she is now rich and opulent, because the
narrow and jealous spirit of her own Government has been
tempered by the beneficial influence of English freedom.
Whether this is really the case, we shall examine in a
succeeding Number; and many curious and unknown facts as to
the native institutions of Scotland we promise to unfold;
but, in the mean time, let it be conceded that this
observation is well founded, and that all the prosperity of
Scotland has been owing to English influence. How has it
happened that the _same_ influence at the _same_ time has been
the cause of all the misery of Ireland? The common answer
that Scotland was always an independent country, and that
Ireland was won and ruled by the sword, is utterly
unsatisfactory, and betrays an inattention to the most
notorious historical facts. For how has it happened that
Ireland was conquered with so much facility, while Scotland
so long and strenuously resisted the spoiler? How did it
happen that Henry II., with eleven hundred men, achieved with
ease the conquest of the one country, while Edward II., at
the head of eighty thousand men, was unable to effect the
subjugation of the other? How was it that Scotland, not once,
but twenty times, expelled vast English armies from her
territory, while Ireland has never thrown them off since the
Norman standard first approached her shores? And without
going back to remote periods, how has it happened that the
same influence of English legislation, which, according to
them, has been utterly ruinous to Ireland, has been the sole
cause of the unexampled prosperity of Scotland? that the same
gale which has been the zephyr of spring to the one state,
has been the blast of desolation to the other? It is evident
that there is a fundamental difference between the two
states; and that, if we would discover the cause of the
different modes in which the same legislation of the dominant
state has operated in the two countries, we must look to the
different condition of the people to whom it was applied.

"One fact is very remarkable, and throws a great light on
this difficult subject--and that is, that at different
periods opposite systems have been tried in Ireland, and that
invariably the system of concession and indulgence has been
immediately followed by an ebullition of more than usual
atrocity and violence.

"The first of these instances is the great indulgence showed
to them by James I. That monarch justly boasted that Ireland
was the scene of his beneficent legislation; and that he had
done more to its inhabitants than all the monarchs who had
sat on the English throne since the time of Henry II. He
established the boroughs; gave them a right of sending
representatives to Parliament; and first spread over its
savage and unknown provinces the institutions and the
liberties of England. What was the consequence? Did the
people testify gratitude to their benefactors? Did they prove
themselves worthy of British freedom, and capable of
withstanding the passions arising from a representative
government? We shall give the answer in the words of Mr Hume.

"'The Irish, everywhere intermingled with the English, needed
but a hint from their leaders and priests to begin
hostilities against a people whom they hated on account of
their religion, and envied for their riches and prosperity.
The houses, cattle, goods, of the unwary English were first
seized. Those who heard of the commotions in their
neighbourhood, instead of deserting their habitations, and
assembling for mutual protection, remained at home, in hopes
of defending their property, and fell thus separately into
the hands of their enemies. After rapacity had fully exerted
itself, cruelty, and the most barbarous that ever, in any
nation, was known or heard of, began its operations. A
universal massacre commenced of the English, now defenceless,
and passively resigned to their inhuman foes. No age, no sex,
no condition, was spared. The wife weeping for her butchered
husband, and embracing her helpless children, was pierced
with them and perished by the same stroke. The old, the
young, the vigorous, the infirm, underwent a like fate, and
were confounded in one common ruin. In vain did flight save
from the first assault: destruction was every where let
loose, and met the hunted victims at every turn. In vain was
recourse had to relations, to companions, to friends;
connexions were dissolved, and death was dealt by that hand
from which protection was implored and expected. Without
provocation, without opposition, the astonished English,
living in profound peace and full security, were massacred by
their nearest neighbours, with whom they had long upheld a
continual intercourse of kindness and good offices.

"'But death was the slightest punishment inflicted by those
rebels: all the tortures which wanton cruelty could devise,
all the lingering pains of body, the anguish of mind, the
agonies of despair, could not satiate revenge excited without
injury, and cruelty derived from no cause. To enter into
particulars would shock the least delicate humanity. Such
enormities, though attested by undoubted evidence, appear
almost incredible. Depraved nature, even perverted religion,
encouraged by the utmost license, reach not to such a pitch
of ferocity, unless the pity inherent in human breasts be
destroyed by that contagion of example, which transports men
beyond all the usual motives of conduct and behaviour.

"'The weaker sex themselves, naturally tender to their own
sufferings, and compassionate to those of others, here
emulated their more robust companions in the practice of
every cruelty. Even children, taught by the example, and
encouraged by the exhortation of their parents, essayed their
feeble blows on the dead carcasses or defenceless children of
the English. The very avarice of the Irish was not a
sufficient restraint of their cruelty. Such was their frenzy,
that the cattle which they had seized, and by rapine made
their own, were yet, because they bore the name of English,
wantonly slaughtered, or, when covered with wounds, turned
loose into the woods and deserts.

"'The stately buildings or commodious habitations of the
planters, as if upbraiding the sloth and ignorance of the
natives, were consumed with fire, or laid level with the
ground. And where the miserable owners, shut up in their
houses and preparing for defence, perished in the flames,
together with their wives and children, a double triumph was
afforded to their insulting foes.

"'If any where a number assembled together, and, assuming
courage from despair, were resolved to sweeten death by
revenge on their assassins, they were disarmed by
capitulations and promises of safety, confirmed by the most
solemn oaths. But no sooner had they surrendered, than the
rebels, with perfidy equal to their cruelty, made them share
the fate of their unhappy countrymen.

"'Others, more ingenious still in their barbarity, tempted
their prisoners by the fond love of life, to imbrue their
hands in the blood of friends, brothers, parents; and having
thus rendered them accomplices in guilt, gave them that death
which they sought to shun by deserving it.

"'Amidst all these enormities, the sacred name of RELIGION
resounded on every side; not to stop the hands of these
murderers, but to enforce their blows, and to steel their
hearts against every movement of human or social sympathy.
The English, as heretics, abhorred of God, and detestable to
all holy men, were marked out by the priests for slaughter;
and, of all actions, to rid the world of these declared
enemies to Catholic faith and piety, was represented as the
most meritorious. Nature, which, in that rude people, was
sufficiently inclined to atrocious deeds, was farther
stimulated by precept; and national prejudices impoisoned by
those aversions, more deadly and incurable, which arose from
an enraged superstition. While death finished the sufferings
of each victim, the bigoted assassins, with joy and
exultation, still echoed in his expiring ears that these
agonies were but the commencement of torments infinite and
eternal.'"

"This dreadful rebellion left consequences long felt in Irish
government. Cromwell, the iron leader of English vengeance,
treated them with terrible severity: at the storming of a
single city, 12,000 men were put to the sword; and such was
the terror inspired by his merciless sword, that all the
revolted cities opened their gates, and the people submitted,
trembling, to the law of the conqueror. The recollection of
the horrors of the Tyrone rebellion was long engraven in the
English legislature; and it produced, along with the terrors
of religious dissension, the severe code of laws which were
imposed on the savage population of the country before the
close of the seventeenth century. A hundred years of peace
and tranquillity followed the promulgation of these
oppressive laws. That they were severe and cruel is obvious
from their tenor; that they were in many respects not worse
than was called for by the horrors which preceded their
enactment, and followed their repeal, is now unhappily proved
by the result.

"The next great period of concession commenced about the year
1772, soon after the accession of George III. The severe code
under which Ireland had so long lain chained, but quiet, was
relaxed; the Catholics were admitted to a full share of the
representation; the more selfish and unnecessary parts of the
restrictions were removed; and, before 1796, hardly any part
of the old fetters remained, excepting the exclusion of
Catholics from the Houses of Lords and Commons, and the
higher situations in the army. Did tranquillity,
satisfaction, and peace, follow these immense concessions,
continued through a period of thirty years? On the contrary,
they were immediately followed by the same result as had
attended the concessions of James I. A new rebellion broke
out; the horrors of 1798 rivalled those of 1641; and the
dreadful recollection of the Tyrone massacre was drowned in
the more recent suffering of the same unhappy country.

"The perilous state in which Ireland then stood, imperfectly
known at the time even to the Government, is now fully
developed. From the Memoirs of Wolfe Tone, recently
published, it appears that 250,000 men were sworn in,
organised, drilled, and regimented; that colonels and
officers for this immense force were all appointed; and the
whole, under the direction of the central committee at
Dublin, only awaited the arrival of Hoche and the French
fleet to hoist the tricolor flag, and proclaim the _Hibernian
Republic_ in close alliance with the Republic of France. With
truth it may be said, that the fate of England then hung upon
a thread. Napoleon, and the unconquered army of Italy, were
still in Europe; a successful descent of the advanced guard,
15,000 strong, under Hoche, would immediately have been
followed up by the invasion of the main body under that great
leader; and the facility with which the French fleet reached
Bantry Bay in February 1797, where they were only prevented
from landing by tempestuous gales, proves that the command of
the seas cannot always be relied on as a security against
foreign invasion. Had 40,000 French soldiers landed at that
time in Ireland, to organise 200,000 hot-headed Catholic
democrats, and lend the hand of fraternity to their numerous
coadjutors on the other side of St George's Channel, it is
difficult to say what would have been the present fate of
England.

"The rebellion of 1798 threw back for ten years the progress
of the indulgent measures so long practised towards Ireland.
But at length the spirit of clemency again resumed its sway;
the system of concession was again adopted, and the last
remnants of the Irish fetters removed by the liberal Tory
administration of England. First, the Catholics were declared
eligible to any situations in the army and navy; and at
length, by the famous Relief Bill, the remaining distinctions
between Catholic and Protestant were done away, and an equal
share of political influence was extended to them as that of
their Protestant brethren. What has been the consequence? Has
Ireland increased in tranquillity since this memorable
change? Have the prophecies of its advocates been verified,
as to the stilling of the waves of dissension and rebellion?
Has it proved true, as Earl Grey prophesied it would, in his
place in the House of Lords,

Defluit saxis agitatus humor;
Concedunt venti, fugiuntque nubes;
Et minax (quod sic voluere) ponto
Unda recumbit?

"The reverse of all this has notoriously been the case. Since
this last and great concession, Ireland has become worse than
ever. Midnight conflagration, dastardly assassination, have
spread with fearful rapidity; the sources of justice have
been dried up, and the most atrocious criminals repeatedly
suffered to escape, from the impossibility of bringing them
to justice. A universal insurrection against the payment of
tithes has defied all the authority of Government, in open
violation of the solemn promises of the Catholics that no
invasion on the rights of the Protestant church was intended;
and the starving clergy of Ireland have been thrown as a
burden upon the consolidated fund of England. At this moment
the authority of England is merely nominal over the
neighbouring island; the Lord Lieutenant is less generally
obeyed than the great Agitator, and the dictates of the
Catholic leaders are looked up to in preference to the acts
of the British Parliament. In despair at so desperate a state
of things, so entirely the reverse of all they had hoped from
the long train of conciliatory measures, the English are
giving up the cause in despair; while the great and gallant
body of Irish Protestants are firmly looking the danger in
the face, and silently preparing for the struggle which they
well know has now become inevitable.

"The result of experience, therefore, is complete in all its
parts. Thrice, during the last two hundred years, have
conciliatory measures been tried on the largest scale, and
with the most beneficent intention; and thrice have the
concessions to the Catholics been followed by a violent and
intolerable outbreak of savage ferocity. The two first
rebellions were followed by a firm and severe system of
coercive government; as long as they continued in force,
Ireland was comparatively tranquil, and their relaxation was
the signal for the commencement of a state of insubordination
which rapidly led to anarchy and revolt. The present
revolutionary spirit has been met by a different system.
Every thing has been conceded to the demagogues; their
demands have been granted, their assemblies allowed, their
advice followed, their leaders promoted; and the country in
consequence has arrived at a state of anarchy unparalleled in
any Christian state.

"What makes the present state of Ireland, and the democratic
spirit of its inhabitants, altogether unpardonable is, the
extreme indulgence and liberality with which, for the last
fifty years, they have been treated by this country. During
the whole war, Ireland paid _neither income-tax nor assessed
taxes_; and the sum thus made a present of by England to her
people, amounted at the very lowest calculation to
L50,000,000 sterling. She shared in the full benefit of the
war in consequence of the immense extent of the demand for
agricultural produce which its expenditure occasioned,
without feeling any of the burdens which neutralised its
extension in this country. No poor's rates are levied on her
landholders--in other words, they are levied on England and
Scotland instead--and this island is in consequence
overwhelmed by a mass of indigence created in the
neighbouring kingdom, but which British indulgence has
relieved them from the necessity of maintaining. The amount
of the sums annually paid by the Parliament of Great Britain
to objects of charity and utility in Ireland almost exceeds
belief, and is at least five times greater than all directed
to the same objects in both the other parts of the empire
taken together. Yet with all their good deeds, past, present,
and to come, Ireland is the most discontented part of the
United Kingdom. She is incessantly crying out against her
benefactor, and recurring to old oppression rendered
necessary by her passions, instead of present benefactions,
of which her democratic population have proved themselves
unworthy by their ingratitude.

"Notwithstanding all the efforts of her demagogues to
distract the country, and counteract all the liberality and
beneficence of the English Government, Ireland has advanced
with greater rapidity in industry, wealth, and all the real
sources of happiness, during the last thirty years, than any
other part of the empire. Since the Union, she has made a
start both in agricultural and manufacturing industry, quite
unparalleled, and much greater than Scotland had made during
the first hundred years after her incorporation with the
English dominions. It is quite evident that, if the
demagogues would let Ireland alone--if the wounds in her
political system were not continually kept open, and the
passions of the people incessantly inflamed, by her popular
leaders, she would become as rich and prosperous as she is
populous--that, instead of a source of weakness, she would
become a pillar of strength to the united empire--and instead
of being overspread with the most wretched and squalid
population in Europe, she might eventually boast of the most
contented and happy."

So far what we wrote in December 1832. We make no apology for the length of this quotation. So precisely is it applicable to the present time, that were we to write anew on the subject, we should certainly reproduce the same ideas, and probably, in a great degree, make use of the same words. It affords a remarkable proof of the manner in which Ireland has been influenced, in all periods of its history, by the same causes; and of the way in which all its natural advantages have been thrown away, by the indolence and want of energy in its inhabitants, joined to the unhappy extension to it, through British connexion, of the privileges, excitement, and passions, consequent on a free constitution, for which it was unfitted by its character, temperament, and state of social advancement.

Need it be said how precisely the same truths have been illustrated in later times, and, most of all, in the memorable year in which we now write? The melancholy tale is known to all: it is written in characters of fire in England's annals. Such was the state of excitement, anarchy, and licentiousness to which the Irish were brought under the Whig rule, by the combined operation of the Reform mania, and the Repeal agitation, that Lord Grey, albeit the most impassioned opponent of Mr Pitt's preventive policy, was compelled to adopt it; and the celebrated Coercion Bill of 1833 invested Government with extraordinary powers, and for a time superseded, by martial law, in some districts of Ireland, the ordinary administration of justice. The result, as much as the anarchy which had preceded it, demonstrated where the secret of Ireland's ills was to be found, and what was the species of government adapted for its unsettled, impassioned, and semi-barbarous inhabitants.[13] Instantly, as if by enchantment, the disorders ceased: midnight fires no longer illuminated the heavens, midnight murders no longer struck terror into the inhabitants. The savage passions of the people, growing out of the civilised license unhappily allowed them under British rule, were rapidly coerced, and, instead of Ireland exhibiting an amount of agrarian outrage and atrocity unprecedented in any Christian land, even her worst provinces returned to their usual, though yet serious and lamentable average.[14]

The evil days of conciliation and concession, however, soon returned. When Sir R. Peel assumed the helm for a brief period in 1835, he said, that his chief difficulty was Ireland. It was so in truth--not from the difficulties, great as they were, with which the administration of Ireland was surrounded, but from the monstrous delusions on the subject with which the Whigs, then possessed of the chief influence in the state, had imbued the public mind. So feeble was Government under his successors, from 1835 to 1841--so thoroughly had they drenched the people of Great Britain with the belief that severity of rule was the sole cause of the miseries of Ireland, and that conciliation and concession were their appropriate remedy--that powers the most disastrous, privileges the most undeserved, were bestowed on the Irish people. The very agitators were lauded, flattered, and promoted. O'Connell was offered a seat on the Bench; the whole, or nearly the whole, patronage of the country was surrendered into his hands. The greater part of the police were nominated according to the suggestions of himself or his party; the Orangemen of the north--the bulwark of the throne--were vilified, prosecuted, and discouraged; self-government became the order of the day; municipal reform was conceded; an ignorant, priest-led, half-savage people were intrusted with one of the highest duties of civilised citizens--that of electing their own magistrates. O'Connell, under the new municipal constitution, was elected Lord Mayor of Dublin; a majority, both of the constituency and members of Parliament, ere long became Repealers. The Whig system of governing Ireland, by yielding to its selfish passions and fostering its political vices, received its full development; Whig journals, reviews, and magazines, lauded the policy to the skies, and predicted from its effects the speedy removal of all the evils which had arisen from the Tory system of coercion and repression in the Emerald Isle.

The results were soon apparent. Assured of countenance and support from high quarters--cordially supported by the Popish hierarchy and priesthood--intrenched, beyond the power of assault, in almost all the boroughs--possessed of considerable support or connivance in the rural magistracy--backed, in many parts of the country, by the torch of the incendiary or the firelock of the assassin--wielding at once the delegated powers of Government, the daggers of desperadoes, the enthusiasm of the people, O'Connell proceeded with the step of a conqueror in the work of agitation. The Temperance movement, headed by Father Mathew, came most opportunely to aid its funds, by diverting the vast sums hitherto spent by the people on physical, to support the cause of mental agitation. Seventy temperance bands were soon established to head the temperance clubs; the uniforms of the musicians were so made, that, by being merely turned, they could be converted into the bands of so many regiments; the Rent flourished; whisky-shops were ruined; the grand Intoxicator demolished his inferior competitors; Conciliation Hall boasted of its three thousand pounds a-week! The distilleries were bankrupt. The simple, misled people of England believed that, under the combined influence of political agitation, municipal reform, and suddenly-induced sobriety, Ireland was to be effectually regenerated, and the Celt was at once to leap into the privileges of the Saxon, without going through his seven centuries of painful apprenticement. Monster meetings became general. Assemblages said to consist of eighty or a hundred thousand, and which really contained twenty or thirty thousand persons, were held in the whole south and west of Ireland. Meanwhile industry was paralysed; capital shunned the agitated shores; labour was diverted from the field to the platform; the earnings of the poor were wrenched from them, by priestly influence and the terrors of purgatory, to aid in the great work of dismembering the empire. Instead of attending to their business--instead of working at their lazy-beds or tending their cattle--instead of draining their bogs or reclaiming their wastes, the people were continually kept running about from one monster meeting to another, and taught to believe that they were to look for happiness, not through the labour of their hands, or the sweat of their brows, but in swelling seditious processions, listening to treasonable harangues, and extending the ramifications of a vast and atrocious Ribbon conspiracy throughout Ireland.

Society could not long exist under such a system; but it was long ere the Liberal party saw the error of their ways--when Sir Robert Peel's government, in 1843, at length became convinced that the evil had come to such a height that it could no longer be endured, and that society would be dissolved under its influence. The meeting, accordingly, at Clontarff was proclaimed down; O'Connell was prosecuted, and a conviction obtained. But the Whigs were not long of coming up to the rescue. A majority of three Whig law peers to two Conservative ones--Lords Lyndhurst and Brougham being in the minority--overruled the opinion of the twelve judges of England, and quashed the prosecution. Elated with this victory, agitation resumed its sway in Ireland; but it did so under darker auspices, and with more dangerous ends. Organisation, with a view to insurrection, was now avowedly set on foot; arms were purchased in large quantities; and the Whig Secretary of Ireland had the extreme imprudence to write a letter, which found its way into the public prints, and was soon placarded over Ireland, in which it was stated generally, and without qualification, that every Irishman was entitled to possess and carry arms. Nay, this was made the _cheval de bataille_ between the two parties; and when Sir R. Peel was turned out in July 1846, it was on the question of the bill for prohibiting _the possession of arms in Ireland_. The Whigs came into power on the basis of the Irish peasantry being entitled to be armed. It covers, like charity, a multitude of sins in Sir R. Peel, that he left office on the same question.

But the laws of nature are more durable in their operation than the revolutions of statesmen. The effects of twenty years' agitation and disorder in Ireland ere long became apparent. The reign of murder, incendiarism, and terror, brought down an awful retribution on its authors. Agriculture, neglected for the more agreeable and gainful trade of agitation or assassination, had fallen into such neglect, that the land, in many parts of the country, had become incapable of bearing grain crops. Nothing would do but lazy-beds, in which often a wretched crop was raised in the centre of the ridge, on a third of the land, while the remaining two-thirds were under water. The potato famine came, in 1846, upon a country thus prepared for such a visitation--wasted by agitation, disgraced by murder, impoverished by the protracted reign of terror. Its effects are well known. Ireland, wholly incapable, from its infatuated system of self-government, of doing any thing for itself, fell entirely as a burden on England. Great part of Scotland was wasted by a similar calamity, and in regions--the West Highlands and Islands--far more sterile and barren than the south and west of Ireland. But Scotland had not been torn by political passions, nor palsied by repeal agitation. Scotland righted itself. It bore the visitation with patience and resignation. It neither sought nor received aid from England. Not a shilling was advanced by the Exchequer to relieve Scotch suffering. Ten millions were given by the nation to relieve that of Ireland: of this immense sum eight millions were borrowed, and remain a lasting charge on Great Britain. Hundreds of thousands, raised from the suffering and won by the labour of England and Scotland, followed in the same direction. In return, the Irish gave us contumely, defiance, and ingratitude. The _Nation_ thundered forth weekly its fiendish vituperation against the people who had saved its countrymen. It was eagerly read by hundreds of thousands who owed their existence to British generosity. The beggar gave place to the bully. Great part of the funds, lavished with misplaced humanity on Irish suffering, was employed in the purchase of arms to destroy their benefactors; and the unparalleled munificence of England to Ireland in 1847, was succeeded by the unparalleled rebellion of Ireland against England in 1848.

He must be blind indeed who cannot read in this rapid summary the real causes of the long-continued misery and distraction of Ireland. It has arisen in a great degree from English connexion, but in a way which the Irish do not perceive, and which they will be the last to admit. It is all owing to a very simple cause--so simple that philosophers have passed it over as too obvious to explain the phenomena, and party-men have rejected it because it afforded no handle for popular declamation, and gave them no fulcrum whereon to rest the lever which was to remove an opposite party from power. It is not owing to the Roman Catholic religion,--for, if so, how have so many Roman Catholic countries been, and still are, great, and powerful, and happy? It is not owing to the confiscation of the land, for confiscation as great followed the establishment of the Normans in England, and the victories of Robert Bruce in Scotland; and yet, in process of time, the ghastly wound was healed in both these countries, and from the united effort of the Britons, Saxons, and North-men, have arisen the glories and wonders of British civilisation. It is not owing to the exclusion, from 1608 to 1829, of the Roman Catholics from Parliament; for, since they were admitted into it, the distractions of Ireland have gone on constantly increasing, and its pauperism and mendicancy have advanced in an accelerated ratio. It is entirely owing to this,--that _England has given Ireland institutions and political franchises, for the exercise of which it is wholly disqualified by temperament, habit, and political advancement_. We have put edged tools into the hands of children, and we are astonished that they have mangled their limbs. We have emancipated from necessary control the Bedouin or the savage, and we are disappointed he does not exercise his newly-acquired powers with the discretion of an Englishman or an American. We have plunged a youth of sixteen, without control, into the dissipation of London or Paris, and we are surprised he has run riot in excess. Thence it is that all the concessions made to Ireland have instantly and rapidly augmented its political maladies, and that the only intervals of rest, tranquillity, and happiness it has enjoyed for the last two hundred years, have been those in which it has for a brief period been coerced by the wholesome severity of vigorous government. Thence it is that Whig solicitude, fastening on the grievances of Ireland as its battle-field, and winning for the inhabitants privileges for which they are not fitted, has in every instance so grievously augmented its wretchedness and crimes. This is the true key to Irish history. Viewed in this light, it is perfectly clear, intelligible, and consistent with what has occurred in other parts of the world. Without such guidance, its annals exhibit a chaos of contradictions; and Ireland must be considered as a _casus singularis_--an exception from the principles which elsewhere have ever regulated mankind.

The whole machinery of a free constitution--those institutions under which the Anglo-Saxons have so long flourished on both sides the Atlantic--are utter destruction to the semi-barbarous Celtic race to which they have been extended. Grand juries and petty juries, self-governments, municipalities, county and burgh elections, popular representatives, public meetings, hustings' declarations, platform exaggerations, a licentious press, and all the other attendants on republican or semi-republican institutions, are utterly destructive to the impassioned, priest-ridden, ignorant Celtic tribes in the south and west of Ireland. A paternal despotism is what they require.

We are far from wishing that despotism to be severe--on the contrary, we would have it beneficent and humane in the highest degree--we would have it give to Ireland blessings tenfold greater than it will ever earn for itself in senseless attempts at self-government. We would commence the work by the grant of sixteen millions of British money, to set on foot the chief arteries and railroads of the country!--that grant which, proposed by the patriotic wisdom of Lord George Bentinck, was defeated by the insane resistance of the Irish members themselves.[15] We would in every imaginable shape stimulate the industry of Ireland, and aid the efforts of its really patriotic children, to extricate their country from the bottomless gulf into which selfishness, agitation, and the cry for repeal, have plunged it. But we would intrust little of this grant to the distribution of the Irish themselves. We would not again be guilty of the enormous error of committing a magnificent public grant to hands so unfit to direct it, that we know from the highest authority--that of the Lord-lieutenant himself--that great part of the fund was misapplied in private jobbing, and the remainder wasted in making good roads bad ones. We would execute the works by Irish hands, but distribute the funds, and guide the undertakings, by English heads. We would deprive the Irish, till they have shown they are fit to wield its powers, of the whole rights of self-government. We would commence with a rigorous and unflinching administration of justice, executed by courts-martial in cases of insurrection, and by judges without juries in ordinary cases. A powerful police, double its present strength, should give security to witnesses, who, if they desire it, should be provided with an asylum in the colonies at the public expense. "Every thing for the people, and nothing by them," which Napoleon described as the real principle of government at all times, should be applied to Ireland at least during the many years still to run of its national pupilage and minority.

The truth of these principles has been so signally demonstrated by the events of which Ireland has recently, and we lament to say is still, the theatre, that it has at length forced itself on the mind of the English people. Most fortunately, the Whigs being in power themselves, and having the responsibility and duties of government thrown upon them, have at length come to see the matter in its true light. The cry that all is owing to English misrule, is no longer heard in Great Britain. Its utter falsehood has been demonstrated in language too clear to be misunderstood. Even the Liberal journals, who have shown themselves most earnest in promoting the cause of reform and self-government in Great Britain, have come to see how utterly it is misapplied when attempted in Ireland. Hear the _Times_ on this subject, one of the ablest journals which formerly supported the cause of parliamentary and municipal reform, as well in Ireland as in this country.

"The slowly gathering wrath of years has been concentrated to
a point. John Bull was--as Jonathan would express
it--"properly riled" at the behaviour of his once beloved
fondling. He could put up with ingratitude; he could despise
insolence; he could treat bravado with contempt. But here was
the most wonderful combination of insolence, ingratitude,
bravado, and cowardice, that history has recorded. Here were
men belching out treason and fire and sword one day, and the
next day sneaking between the bulwarks of a cabbage-garden,
or through the loopholes of an indictment! For such, and on
such, had he been expending, not only money, but care,
anxiety, sympathy, and fear. He was fooled in the eyes of the
world and his own! The only hope for Ireland is in rest, and
a strong Government. Almost every Englishman who has regarded
her with solicitude within late years, is convinced that what
she and her people require, beyond all things, is discipline.
Her gentry require discipline; her middle classes require
discipline; her peasantry require discipline. They should
altogether be disciplined in a rigid but just system, as the
picked Irishmen have been who are distinguished as the best
foremen in our factories, and the best non-commissioned
officers in our army. Political privileges have been tried
and misused; judicial forms have been tried and abused; Saxon
institutions have been tried, and found not to harmonise with
the Celtic mind. It cannot comprehend them; it does not
appreciate them. It arrays liberty against law, and the
technicalities of law against its spirit. It wants that moral
sense, that instinctive justice and fairness, which have been
the soul and the strength of Anglo-Saxon jurisprudence. This
it must be taught by a strong, an irresistible, and, if need
be, a coercive authority. Duty must be impressed on it as a
habit, and then it will be inanealed with its sympathies. The
greatest boon to Ireland would be the rule of a benevolent
autocrat, who would punish all classes and all parties alike
for a breach of social and civil duties--the landlords for
their cruelty, the tenants for their mendacity, the priests
for their neglect of their most momentous function. This boon
Ireland will not get; but we can force upon her that which
comes the nearest to it, the suppression of a vain, vapid,
selfish, and suicidal agitation. If we do not do it while we
may, we shall rue it with bitterness and humiliation
hereafter."--_Times_, September 1847.

To the same purpose, it is observed in a late number of the _Economist_, also an able Liberal journal:

"Irish agitation has run its course, and shown its character.
It has had 'rope enough' allowed to manifest what are its
materials, and what its means--what are the objects it
proposes, and of what stuff its leaders are made. It has
displayed a mixture of ferocity, levity, and incapacity,
which has covered with shame and confusion all its quondam
sympathisers and admirers. Demagogism has been stripped
naked, and has appeared as what it really is--a low, savage,
dishonest enormity--an 'evil that walketh in darkness'--the
epidemic malady of Ireland--an enemy which no concessions can
conciliate, which no mildness can disarm, and with which,
because of its dishonesty, no parley can be held.