Chapter 21: , forbidding the importation of foreign coals, was designed (7)

Our military history could also receive much illustration from Irish travellers going with some previous knowledge and studying the traditions and ground, and using the libraries in the neighbourhood of those places where Irishmen fought. Not to go back to the Irish who (if we believe O'Halloran) stormed the Roman Capital as the allies of Brennus of Gaul, nor insisting upon too minute a search for that Alpine valley where, says MacGeoghegan, they still have a tradition of Dathy's death by lightning, there are plenty of places worth investigating in connection with Irish military history. In Scotland, for example, 'twere worth while tracking the march of Alaster MacDomhnall and his 1,500 Antrim men from their first landing at Ardnamurchan through Tippermiur, Aberdeen, Fivy, Inverlochy, and Aulderne, to Kilsyth--victories, won by Irish soldiers and chiefs, given to them by tradition, as even Scott admits, though he tries to displace its value for Montrose's sake, and given to them by the highest cotemporary authorities--such as the Ormond papers.

Then there is the Irish Brigade. From Almanza to Fontenoy, from Ramillies to Cremona, we have the names of their achievements, but the register of them is in the libraries and war offices and private papers of France, and Spain, and Austria, and Savoy. A set of visits to Irish battle-fields abroad, illustrated from the manuscripts of Paris, Vienna, and Madrid, would be a welcomer book than the reiterated assurances that the Rhone was rapid, the Alps high, and Florence rich in sculpture, wherewith we have been dinned.

We have no lives of our most illustrious Irish generals in foreign services--Marshal Brown, the Lacys, Montgomery of Donegal, the rival of Washington; and yet the materials must exist in the offices and libraries of Austria, Russia, and America.

Talking of libraries, there is one labour in particular we wish our countrymen to undertake. The constant emigration of the princes, nobles, and ecclesiastics of Ireland, from the Reformation downwards, scattered through the Continent many of our choicest collections. The manuscripts from these have been dispersed by gift and sale among hundreds of foreign libraries. The Escurial, Vienna, Rome, Paris, and Copenhagen are said to be particularly rich in them, and it cannot be doubted that in every considerable library (religious, official, or private) on the Continent some MSS. valuable to Ireland would be found. In many cases these could be purchased, in some copied, in all listed. The last is the most practical and essential labour. It would check and guide our inquiries now, and would prepare for the better day, when we can negotiate the restoration of our old muniments from the governments of Europe.

A study of the monuments and museums throughout France, Spain, Italy, and Scandinavia, in reference to the forts, tombs, altars, and weapons of ancient Ireland, would make a summer pleasant and profitable.

But we would not limit men to the study of the past.

Our agriculture is defective, and our tenures are abominable. It were well worth the attention of the travelling members of the Irish Agricultural Society to bring home accurate written accounts of the tenures of land, the breeds of cattle, draining, rotation, crops, manures, and farm-houses, from Belgium or Norway, Tuscany or Prussia.

Our mineral resources and water-power are unused. A collection of models or drawings, or descriptions of the mining, quarrying, and hydraulic works of Germany, England, or France, might be found most useful for the Irish capitalist who made it, and for his country which so needs instruction. Besides, even though many of these things be described already, yet how much more vivid and practical were the knowledge to be got from observation.

Our fine or useful arts are rude or decayed, and our industrial and general education very inferior. The schools and galleries, museums and educational systems of Germany deserve the closest examination with reference to the knowledge and taste required in Ireland, and the means of giving them. One second-rate book of such observations, with special reference to Ireland, were worth many greater performances unapplied to the means and need of our country.

Ireland wants all these things. Before this generation dies, it must have made Ireland's rivers navigable, and its hundred harbours secure with beacon and pier, and thronged with seamen educated in naval schools, and familiar with every rig and every ocean. Arigna must be pierced with shafts, and Bonmahon flaming with smelting-houses. Our bogs must have become turf-factories, where fuel will be husbanded, and prepared for the smelting-house. Our coal must move a thousand engines, our rivers ten thousand wheels.

Our young artisans must be familiar with the arts of design and the natural sciences connected with their trade; and so of our farmers; and both should, beside, have that general information which refines and expands the minds--that knowledge of Irish history and statistics that makes it national, and those accomplishments and sports which make leisure profitable and home joyous.

Our cities must be stately with sculpture, pictures, and buildings, and our fields glorious with peaceful abundance.

But this is an Utopia! Is it? No; but the practicable object of those who know our resources! To seek it is the solemn, unavoidable duty of every Irishman. Whether, then, oh reader, you spend this or any coming season abroad or at home, do not forget for a day how much should be done for Ireland.

"THE LIBRARY OF IRELAND."

While the Gaelic-speaking people of Ireland were restricted to traditional legends, songs, and histories, a library was provided for those who used English by the genius and industry of men whose names have vanished--a fate common to them with the builder of the Pyramids, the inventor of letters, and other benefactors of mankind. Moore has given, in _Captain Rock_, an imperfect catalogue of this library. The scientific course seems to have been rather limited, as Ovid's _Art of_ (let us rather say essay on) _Love_ was the only abstract work; but it contained biographies of _Captain Freney the Robber_, and of _Redmond O'Hanlon the Rapparee_--wherein, we fear, O'Hanlon was made, by a partial pen, rather more like Freney than history warrants; dramas such as the _Battle of Aughrim_, written apparently by some Alsatian Williamite; lyrics of love, unhoused save by the watch; imperial works, too, as _Moll Flanders_; and European literature--_Don Beliants, and the Seven Champions_. Whether they were imported, or originally produced for the grooms of the dissolute gentry, may be discussed; but it seems certain that their benign influence spread, on one side, to the farmers' and shopkeepers' sons, and, on the other, to the cadets of the great families--and were, in short, the classics of tipsy Ireland. The deadly progress of temperance, politics, and democracy has sent them below their original market, and in ten years the collector will pay a guinea apiece for them.

During the Emancipation struggle this indecent trash shrunk up, and a totally different literature circulated. The Orange party regaled themselves chiefly with theology, but the rest of the country (still excepting the classes sheltered by their Gaelic tongue) formed a literature more human, and quite as serious. There occasionally is great vigour in the biographies of Lord Edward, Robert Emmet, and other popular heroes chronicled at that time; but the long interview of Emmet with Sarah Curran, the night before his execution, is a fair specimen of the accuracy of these works. The songs were intense enough, occasionally controversial, commonly polemical, always extravagant; the Granu Wails and Shan-Van-Vochts of the Catholic agitation cannot be too soon obsolete. The famous Waterford song:--

"O'Connell's come to town,
And he'll put the Orange down,
And by the heavenly G---- he'll wear the crown,
Says the Shan Van Vocht!"

is characteristic of the zeal, discretion, and style of these once powerful lyrics. A history of the authorship of these biographies and songs would be interesting, and is perhaps still possible. The reprint in the series of Hugh O'Reilly's Irish history--albeit, a mass of popular untruth was put at the end of it--shows as if some more considerate mind had begun to influence these publications. They, too, are fast vanishing, and will yet be sought to illustrate their times.

In the first class we have described there was nothing to redeem their stupid indecency and ruffianism; in the latter, however one may grieve at their bigotry, and dislike their atrocious style, there were purity, warmth, and a high purpose.

The "Useful Knowledge Society" period arrived in Britain, and flooded that island with cheap tracts on algebra and geometry, chemistry, theology, and physiology. Penny Magazines told every man how his stockings were wove, how many drunkards were taken up per hour in Southwark, how the geese were plucked from which the author got his pens, how many pounds weight of lead (with the analysis thereof, and an account of the Cornish mines by way of parenthesis) were in the types for each page, and the nature of the rags (so many per cent. beggars, so many authors, so many shoe-boys) from which the paper of the all-important, man and money-saving Penny Magazine was made. On its being suggested that man was more than a statistician, or a dabbler in mathematics, a _moral_ series (warranted Benthamite) was issued to teach people how they should converse at meals--how to choose their wives, masters, and servants by phrenological developments, and how to live happily, like "Mr. Hard-and-Comfortable," the Yellow Quaker.

Unluckily for us, there was no great popular passion in Ireland at the time, and our communication with England had been greatly increased by steamers and railways, by the Whig alliance, by democratic sympathy, and by the transference of our political capital to Westminster. Tracts, periodicals, and the whole horde of Benthamy rushed in. Without manufactures, without trade, without comfort to palliate such degradation, we were proclaimed converts to Utilitarianism. The Irish press thought itself imperial, because it reflected that of London--Nationality was called a vulgar superstition, and a general European Trades' Union, to be followed by a universal Republic, became the final aspirations of "all enlightened men." At the same time the National Schools were spreading the elements of science and the means of study through the poorer classes, and their books were merely intellectual.

Between all these influences Ireland promised to become a farm for Lancashire, with the wisdom and moral rank of that district, without its wealth, when there came a deliverer--the Repeal agitation.

Its strain gradually broke the Whig alliance and the Chartist sympathy. Westminster ceased to be the city towards which the Irish bowed and made pilgrimage. An organisation, centring in Dublin, connected the People; and an oratory full of Gaelic passion and popular idiom galvanised them. Thus there has been, from 1842--when the Repeal agitation became serious--an incessant progress in Literature and Nationality. A Press, Irish in subjects, style, and purpose, has been formed--a National Poetry has grown up--the National Schools have prepared their students for the more earnest study of National politics and history--the classes most hostile to the agitation are converts to its passions; and when Lord Heytesbury recently expressed his wonder at finding "Irish prejudices" in the most cultivated body in Ireland, he only bore witness to an aristocratic Nationality of which he could have found countless proofs beside.

Yet the power of British utilitarian literature continues. The wealthy classes are slowly getting an admirable and a costly National Literature from Petrie, and O'Donovan, and Ferguson, and Lefanu, and the _University Magazine_. The poorer are left to the newspaper and the meeting, and an occasional serial of very moderate merits. That class, now becoming the rulers of Ireland, who have taste for the higher studies, but whose means are small, have only a few scattered works within their reach, and some of them, not content to use these exclusively, are driven to foreign studies and exposed to alien influence.

To give to the country a National Library, exact enough for the wisest, high enough for the purest, and cheap enough for all readers, appears the object of "The Library of Ireland."

Look at the subjects--_A History of the Volunteers_, Memoirs of Hugh O'Neill, of Tone, of Owen Roe, of Grattan, Collections of Irish Ballads and Songs, and so forth. It would take one a month, with the use of all the libraries of Dublin, to get the history of the Volunteers. In Wilson's so-called history you will get a number of addresses and 300 pages of irrelevant declamation for eight or ten shillings. Try further, and you must penetrate through the manuscript catalogues of Trinity College and the Queen's Inns (the last a wilderness) to find the pamphlets and newspapers containing what you want; yet the history of the Volunteers is one interesting to every class, and equally popular in every province.

Hugh O'Neill--he found himself an English tributary, his clan beaten, his country despairing. He organised his clan into an army, defeated by arms and policy the best generals and statesmen of Elizabeth, and gave Ireland a pride and a hope which never deserted her since. Yet the only written history of him lies in an Irish MS. in the Vatican, unprinted, untranslated, uncopied; and the Irishman who would know his life must grope through Moryson, and Ware, and O'Sullivan in unwilling libraries, and in books whose price would support a student for two winters.

Of Tone and Grattan--the wisest and most sublime of our last generation--there are lives, and valuable ones; but such as the rich only will buy, and the leisurely find time to read.

The rebellion of 1641--a mystery and a lie--is it not time to let every man look it in the face? The Irish Brigade--a marvellous reality to few, a proud phantom to most of us--shall we not all, rich and poor, learn in good truth how the Berserk Irish bore up in the winter streets of Cremona, or the gorgeous Brigade followed Clare's flashing plumes right through the great column of Fontenoy?

Irish Ballads and Songs--why (except that _Spirit of the Nation_ which we so audaciously put together), the popular ballads and songs are the faded finery of the West End, the foul parodies of St. Giles's, the drunken rigmarole of the black Helots--or, as they are touchingly classed in the streets, "sentimental, comic, and nigger songs." Yet Banim, and Griffin, and Furlong, Lover and Ferguson, Drennan and Callanan, have written ballads and songs as true to Ireland as ever MacNeill's or Conyngham's were to Scotland; and firmly do we hope to see with every second lad in Ireland a volume of honest, noble, Irish ballads, as well thumbed as a Lowland Burns or a French Beranger, and sweetly shall yet come to us from every milking-field and harvest-home songs not too proudly joined to the sweetest music in the world.

This country of ours is no sand bank, thrown up by some recent caprice of earth. It is an ancient land, honoured in the archives of civilisation, traceable into antiquity by its piety, its valour, and its sufferings. Every great European race has sent its stream to the river of Irish mind. Long wars, vast organisations, subtle codes, beacon crimes, leading virtues, and self-mighty men were here. If we live influenced by wind and sun and tree, and not by the passions and deeds of the past, we are a thriftless and a hopeless People.

A CHRONOLOGY OF IRELAND.

There is much doubt as to who were the first inhabitants of Ireland; but it is certain that the Phoenicians had a great commerce with it. The Firbolgs, a rude people, held Ireland for a long period. They were subdued by the Tuatha de Danaan, a refined and noble race, which in its turn yielded its supremacy to the arms of the Milesians. The dates during these centuries are not well ascertained.

B.C.

1000. Dr. O'Conor, the Librarian of Stowe, fixes this as the most probable date of the Milesian invasion.

---- Ollamh Fodhla institutes the Great Feis, or Triennial Convention, at Tara.

---- Thirty-two monarchs are said to have reigned between this sovereign and Kimbaoth, who built the Palace of Emania.

A.D.

40. Reformation of the Bardic or Literary Order, by Conquovar,
King of Ulster.

90. The old population successfully revolt against the Milesians,
and place one of their own race upon the throne.

130. Re-establishment of the Milesian sway.

164. King Feidlim, the Legislator, establishes the laws of Eric.

258. From Con of the Hundred Battles descended the chieftains who supplied Albany, the modern Scotland, with her first Scottish rulers, by establishing, about the middle of the third century, the kingdom of Dalriada in Argyleshire.

333. The Palace of Emania destroyed during a civil war.

387. The birth of St. Patrick.

396. Nial of the Nine Hostages invades Britain.

432. His Mission to Ireland.

436. Dathi, the last of the Pagan monarchs of Ireland, succeeded Nial, and was killed while on one of his military expeditions, at the foot of the Alps, by lightning.

465. March 17--Death of St. Patrick.

554. The last triennial council held at Tara.

795. First Invasion of the Danes.

1014. April 23, Good Friday--Defeat of the Danes at Clontarf by Brian Boroihme.

1152. Synod of Kells. Supremacy of the Church of Rome acknowledged.

1159. Pope Adrian's bull granting Ireland to Henry II.

1169. May--First landing of the Normans.

1171. October 18--Henry II. arrives in Ireland.

1172. A Council, called by some a Parliament, held by Henry II. at Lismore.

1185. Prince John is sent over by his father as Lord of Ireland, accompanied by his tutor, Giraldus Cambrensis.

1210. King John, at the head of a military force, arrives in Ireland.

1216. Henry III. grants Magna Charta to Ireland.

1254. Ireland granted, under certain conditions, by Henry III. to his son, Prince Edward.

1277. Some of the Irish petition Edward I. for an extension of English laws and usages to them.

1295. A Parliament held at Kilkenny by Sir John Wogan, Lord Justice.

1309. A Parliament held at Kilkenny by Sir John Wogan. Its enactments on record in Bolton's Irish Statutes.

1315. Edward Bruce lands with 6,000 men at Larne in May, invited by the Irish. Crowned near Dundalk.

1318. Defeat and death of Bruce at Faghard, near Dundalk.

1367. Parliament assembled at Kilkenny by Lionel, Duke of Clarence, at which the celebrated Anti-Irish Statute was passed prohibiting adoption of Irish costume or customs, intermarriage with the Irish, etc., under very severe penalties, to the Anglo-Irish of the Pale.

1379. The first Act ever passed against Absentees.

1394. Richard II. lands with an army at Waterford.

1399. Richard II.'s second expedition to Ireland.

1463. A College founded at Youghal by the Earl of Desmond. Another at Drogheda.

1472. Institution of the Brotherhood of St. George for the protection of the Pale.

1494. Nov.--The Parliament assembled at Drogheda passed Poyning's Law.

1534. First step of the Reformation in Ireland.

1536. Nearly total destruction of the Kildare Geraldines. Henry VIII.'s supremacy enacted by Statute.

1537. Act passed for the suppression of religious houses.

1541. Act passed declaring Henry VIII. _King_ of Ireland.

1579. The last Earl of Desmond proclaimed a traitor.

1583. The Earl of Desmond assassinated.

1586. April 26--Attainder of Desmond and his followers. Forfeiture of his estate--574,628 Irish acres. Elizabeth institutes the planting system.

1592. The Dublin University founded.

1595. Aodh O'Neill's victory at Blackwater, and death of Marshal Bagnal.

1603. March 30--Submission of O'Neill (Tyrone) to Mountjoy.

1607. Flight of the Northern Earls, Tyrone and Tyrconnell. Consequent seizure by the Crown of the six entire counties of Cavan, Fermanagh, Armagh, Derry, Tyrone, and Tyrconnel (now Donegal), amounting in the whole to about 511,456 Irish acres.

1608. May 1--Sept.--Sir Cathair O'Dogherty's rising.

1613. May 18--After the creation of fourteen peers and forty new boroughs, a Parliament is assembled to support the new _plantation_ of Ulster by the attainder and outlawry of the gentlemen of that province.

1616. Commission for inquiring into defective titles.

1635. Lord Wentworth's oppressive proceedings to find a title in the Crown to the province of Connaught.

1641. Oct. 23--The breaking out of the celebrated Irish insurrection.

1642. The confederate Catholics form their General Assembly and Supreme Council at Kilkenny--"Pro Deo, pro rege, _et patria, Hibernia, unanimes_," their motto.

1646. June 5--Monroe totally defeated by Owen Roe O'Neill at Benburb, near Armagh.

1649. Aug. 15--Oliver Cromwell arrives in Dublin.

---- Sept. 2, 10, 15.--Siege, storming, and massacre of Drogheda.

---- Oct. 1--Siege and massacre of Wexford.

---- Nov. 6--Death of Owen Roe O'Neill at Cloch-Uachdar Castle, Co. Cavan.

1650. May 29--Cromwell embarks for England.

1653. Sept. 26--The Irish war proclaimed ended by the English Parliament.--Act of Grace, ordering the Irish Catholics to transport themselves, on pain of death, into Connaught before 1st of March, 1654.

1661. May 8, 1666. Acts of Settlement and Explanation. 7,800,000 acres confiscated and distributed under them.

1689. March 12--James II. landed at Kinsale.

---- May 7 } The Irish Parliament summoned by him: met at the ---- July 20 } Inns of Court.

1690. June 14--William III. landed at Carrickfergus Bay.

---- July 1--Battle of the Boyne.

---- Aug 30--The first siege of Limerick under William III. raised by Sarsfield.

1691. June 30--Athlone taken after a gallant defence.

1691. July 12--Battle of Aughrim.

---- Oct. 3--Capitulation and Treaty of Limerick.

1692. April 5--The articles agreed upon by the Treaty confirmed by William III.

---- Nov. 3--Lord Sydney's protest against the claim of the Irish House of Commons to the right of "preparing heads of bills for raising money"--the beginning of the struggle between the Protestant ascendency and the English Government, which bore national fruit in 1782, but which was crushed in 1800.

1695. August--Parliament violated the Treaty of Limerick--

7 William III., c. 67--Prohibits Catholic education at home or
abroad.

7 William III., c. 5--Disarms Papists.

1697. 9 William III., c. 1--Banishes Popish archbishops, bishops, vicars-general, and all regular clergy, on pain of death. 9 William III., c. 2--An Act "to confirm the Treaty of Limerick," which directly and grossly violates its letter and spirit. It is fit to remember that in the Irish House of Lords, from which Catholics were excluded, seven spiritual and five temporal peers protested against this infamous legislation.

1698. The 9 and 10 William III., c. 40--An Act aimed at the Irish woollen manufacture. Molyneux published his famous _Case of Ireland being bound by Acts of Parliament passed in England_. This book, by order of the English House of Commons, was burned by the hangman.

1704. March 4--The "Act to prevent the further growth of Popery," one of the most noted links in the penal chain.

1719. October 17--Representation of the Irish House of Lords against appeals to England.

1720. 6 Geo. I.--Act passed by the English Legislature to secure the dependency of Ireland.

---- Swift's first Irish pamphlet--"A proposal for the universal use of Irish manufactures." Prosecuted by Government.

1724. Wood's patent to coin half-pence for Ireland, and Swift's successful opposition to the scheme by the "Letters of M. B. Drapier." The first time all Irish sects and parties were unanimous upon national grounds.

1728. 1 Geo. II., c. 9, s. 8.--The Act disfranchising Roman Catholics.

1737. The tithe of agistment got rid of by the Irish gentry, and the chief burden of the tithe thereby thrown on the farmers and peasantry.

1743. Lucas rises into notice in the Dublin Corporation.

1745. April 30--Battle of Fontenoy.

1749. Dr. Lucas is obliged to leave Ireland.

1753. Dec. 17--The House of Commons asserts its control successfully over the surplus revenue, in opposition to Government.

1756. The first public effort by Mr. O'Connor and Dr. Curry to inspire the Catholics with the spirit of freedom. They succeed with the mercantile body, but are opposed by many of the gentry and clergy.

1760. March and April--Mr. Wyse and Dr. Curry revive the scheme of an association to manage Catholic affairs.

1761. Dr. Lucas returned as representative of Dublin to the first parliament of George III.

1763. Establishment of the _Freeman's Journal_ by Dr. Lucas--the first independent Irish newspaper.

1768. The duration of parliament limited to eight years.

1778. First relaxation of the Penal Code, Catholics allowed long tenures of land, etc.

---- The Volunteers first formed. Flood the foremost popular leader.

1779. The achievement of Free Trade [_i.e._, Ireland's right to trade with the colonies, etc.].

1782. Ireland's legislative independence won. Grattan's prime.

1785. Orde's Commercial Propositions.

1789. Debates upon the Regency question.

1790. The formation of the Society of United Irishmen at Belfast. Theobald Wolfe Tone its founder.

1792.} The Franchise restored to the Roman Catholics; the Bar opened 1793.} to them, etc.

1795. Sept. 21--First Orange Lodge formed.

1796. Dec. 24--The remnant of the French expedition arrives in Bantry Bay without General Hoche, the commander.

1798. May 23--Breaking out of the insurrection.

---- June 21--Battle of Vinegar Hill.

---- August 22--General Humbert lands with a small force at Killala.

---- Dec. 9--Meeting of the Bar to oppose the projected Union. Saurin moves the resolution, which is carried.

1799. Jan. 22--The Union proposed.

---- June 1--Parliament prorogued, Government having been defeated by small majorities.

1800. Feb. 10--The House of Lords divided, 75 for and 26 against the Union.

---- Feb. 15--The House of Commons divided, 158 for, 115 against the Union.

---- March 17--On this day, the first of the following January was fixed in the Commons for the commencement of the Union.

1803. Robert Emmet's insurrection and execution.

1810. Great Repeal meeting in Dublin.

1821. George IV. in Ireland.

1823. Catholic Association formed.

1825. Act passed to put down the Catholic Association.

1828. O'Connell's election for Clare.

1829. April 13--Emancipation granted.

1831. Education Board formed.

1833. Coercion Bill passed by the Whigs.

1836. May--Parliament rejects Repeal motion.

1838. Poor Law. Temperance Movement.

1840. Corporation Reform. Repeal Association formed by O'Connell.

1842. October 15--Establishment of the _Nation_.

1843. Monster meetings. Prosecutions. William Smith O'Brien joins the Repeal Association.

1844. Verdict against, and imprisonment of Repeal leaders, 12th February, and 30th May. Liberation, 7th September.

The future is ours--for good, if we are persevering, intelligent, and brave; for ill, if we quarrel, slumber, or shrink.

III. Political Articles.

NO REDRESS--NO INQUIRY.

The British Parliament has refused to redress our wrongs, or even to inquire into them. For five long nights were they compelled to listen to arguments, facts, and principles proving that we were sorely oppressed. They did not deny the facts--they did not refute the reasoning--they did not undermine the principles--but they would not try to right us.

"We inherit the right of hatred for six centuries of oppression; what will you do to prove your repentance, and propitiate our revenge?"--and the answer is, "That's an old story, we wish to hear no more of it."

Legislature of Britain, you shall hear more of it!

The growing race of Irishmen are the first generation of freemen which Ireland nursed these three centuries. The national schools may teach them only the dry elements of knowledge adulterated with Anglicism, and Trinity College may teach them bigotry, along with graceful lore and strong science; but there are other schools at work. There is a national art, and there is an Irish literature growing up. Day after day the choice of the young men discover that genius needs a country to honour and be loved by. The Irish Press is beginning to teach the People to know themselves and their history; to know other nations, and to feel the rights and duties of citizens. The agitation, whose surges sweep through every nook of the island, converts all that the People learn to national uses; nothing is lost, nothing is adverse; neutrality is help, and all power is converted into power for Ireland.

Ireland is changing the loose tradition of her wrongs into history and ballad; and though justice, repentance, or retribution may make her cease to need vengeance, she will immortally remember her bondage, her struggles, her glories, and her disasters. Till her suffering ceases that remembrance will rouse her passions and nerve her arm. May she not forgive till she is no longer oppressed; and when she forgives, may she never forget!

Why need we repeat the tale of present wretchedness? Seven millions and a half of us are Presbyterians and Catholics, and our whole ecclesiastical funds go to the gorgeous support of the Clergy of the remaining 800,000, who are Episcopalians. Where else on _earth_ does a similar injury and dishonour exist? Nowhere; 'twas confessed it existed nowhere. Would it weaken the empire to abolish this? Confessedly not, but would give it some chance of holding together. Would it injure Protestantism? You say not. Idle wealth is fatal to a Church, and supremacy bears out every proud and generous convert. Why is it maintained? The answer is directly given--"England (that is, the English aristocracy) is bigoted," and no Ministry dare give you redress. These are the very words of Captain Rous, the Tory member for Westminster, and the whole House assented to the fact. If you cannot redress--if you will not go into inquiry, lest this redress, so needed by us, should be fatal to your selfish power, then loose your hold of us, and we will redress ourselves; and we will do so with less injury to any class than you possibly could, for a free nation may be generous--a struggling one will not and ought not to be so.

We are most dishonestly taxed for _your_ debts; the fact was not denied--an ominous silence declared that not a halfpenny of that mighty mortgage would be taken off our shoulders.

You raise five millions a year from us, and you spend it on English commissioners, English dockyards, English museums, English ambition, and English pleasures. With an enormous taxation, our public offices have been removed to London, and you threaten to remove our Courts of Justice, and our Lord Lieutenancy, the poor trapping of old nationhood. We have no arsenals, no public employment here; our literary, scientific, and charitable institutions, so bountifully endowed by a Native Legislature, you have forced away, till, out of that enormous surplus revenue raised here, not L10,000 a year comes back for such purposes, while you have heaped hundred upon hundred thousand into the lap of every English institution. For National Education you dribble out L50,000 a year--not enough for our smallest province. Will you redress these things? No, but you boast of your liberality in giving us anything.

"Oh, but you are not overtaxed," says Peel; "see, your Post-office produces nothing to the revenue." Ay, Sir, our Post-office, which levies the same rates as the English Post-office, produces nothing; Ireland is too poor to make even a penny-postage pay its own cost. No stronger mark of a stagnant trade could be adduced. "And then we lowered your spirit duty." Yes you did, because it brought in less than the lower duty. What single tax did you take off, except when it had been raised so high, or the country had declined so low, that it ceased to be productive? You increased our taxation up to the end of the war two and a half times more rapidly than you did your own, and you diminished our taxation after the war thirty times less rapidly.

You have a fleet of steamers now--you had none in 1817, says some pattern of English Senators, whose constituents are bound to subscribe a few school-books for him if they mean to continue him as their delegate.

And my Lord Eliot says our exports and imports have increased. We wish your Lordship would have separate accounts kept that we might know how much. But they _have_ increased--ay, they have; and they are provisions. And our population has increased: and when we had one-half the number of People to feed we sent out a tenth of the provisions we send away now. This is ruin, not prosperity. We had weavers, iron-workers, glass-makers, and fifty other flourishing trades. They sold their goods to Irishmen in exchange for beef and mutton, and bread, and bacon, and potatoes. The Irish provisions were not exported--they were eaten in Ireland. They are exported now--for Irish artisans, without work, must live on the refuse of the soil, and Irish peasants must eat lumpers or starve. Part of the exports go to buy rags and farming tools, which once went for clothes and all other goods to Irish operatives, and the rest goes to raise money to pay absentee rents and imperial taxes. Will you tax our absentees? Will you employ our artisans? Will you abate your taxes, or spend them among us? No; you refuse redress--you refuse inquiry.

Your conquests and confiscations have given us land tenures alien to the country and deadly to the peasant. Will you interfere in property to save him, as you interfered to oppress him? You hint that you might inquire, but you only offered redress in an Arms' Bill--to prostrate the poor man, to violate the sanctity of his home, to brand him, and leave him at the mercy of his local tyrant.

Will you equalise the franchise, and admit us, in proportion to our numbers, into your Senate, and let us try there for redress? You may inquire, perhaps, some other time; if much pressed, you may consider some increase of the franchise--you decline to open the representation.

And if England will do none of these things, will she allow us, for good or ill, to govern ourselves, and see if we cannot redress our own griefs? "No, never, never," she says, "though all Ireland cried for it--never! Her fields shall be manured with the shattered limbs of her sons, and her hearths quenched in their blood; but never, while England has a ship or a soldier, shall Ireland be free."

And this is your answer? We shall see--we shall see!

And now, Englishmen, listen to us! Though you were to-morrow to give us the best tenures on earth--though you were to equalise Presbyterian, Catholic, and Episcopalian--though you were to give us the amplest representation in your Senate--though you were to restore our absentees, disencumber us of your debt, and redress every one of our fiscal wrongs--and though, in addition to all this, you plundered the treasuries of the world to lay gold at our feet, and exhausted the resources of your genius to do us worship and honour--still we tell you--we tell you, in the names of liberty and country--we tell you, in the name of enthusiastic hearts, thoughtful souls, and fearless spirits--we tell you, by the past, the present and the future, we would spurn your gifts, if the condition were that Ireland should remain a province. We tell you, and all whom it may concern, come what may--bribery or deceit, justice, policy, or war--we tell you, in the name of Ireland, that Ireland shall be a Nation!

THE RIGHT ROAD.

By the People the People must be righted. Disunion, and sloth, and meanness enslaved them. Combination, calm pride, and ceaseless labour must set them loose. Let them not trust to the blunders of their enemies, or the miracles of their chiefs--trust nothing, men of Ireland, but the deep resolve of your own hearts.

As well might you leave the fairies to plough your land or the idle winds to sow it, as sit down and wait for freedom.

You are on the right road.

The Repeal Year is over--what then?--Call next year the Repeal Year if you have a fancy for names; and if that, too, searches your fetter-sores with its December blast, work the next year, and the next, and the next. Cease not till all is done. If you sleep, now that you have climbed so far, you may never wake again.

Abandon or nod over your task, and the foreign minister will treat you as mad, and tie you down, or as idiotic, and give you sugar plums and stripes. Every man with a spark of pride and manhood would leave you to bear alone the scorn of the world, and from father to son you would live a race of ragged serfs till God in his mercy should destroy the People and the soil.

You are on the right road. You don't want to go to war. Your greatest leader objects, on principle, to all war for liberty. All your friends, even those who think liberty well worth a sea of blood, agree with him that it is neither needful nor politic for you to embark in a war with your oppressor. It is not that they doubt your courage nor resources--it is not that they distrust your allies--but it is that they _know_ you can succeed without a single skirmish, and therefore he who harms person or property in seeking Repeal is criminal to his country.

But if they preach peace loudly, they preach perseverance with still greater emphasis. It is the universal creed of all Liberals, that _anything_ were better than retreat. One of the most moderate of the Whigs said to us yesterday: "I would rather walk at O'Connell's funeral than witness his submission." And he said well. Death is no evil, and dying is but a moment's pang. There is no greater sign of a pampered and brutish spirit in a man than to wince at the foot-sound of death. Death is the refuge of the wronged, the opiate of the restless, the mother's or the lover's breast to the bruised and disappointed; it is the sure retreat of the persecuted, and the temple-gate of the loving, and pious, and brave. When all else leaves us, it is faithful. But where are we wandering to pluck garlands from the tomb?

Retreat would bring us the woes of war, without its chances or its pride. The enemy, elate at our discomfiture, would press upon our rear. The landlord would use every privilege till he had reduced his farms to insurgentless pastures. The minister would rush in and tear away the last root of nationality. The peasant, finding his long-promised hope of freedom and security by moral means gone, and left unled to his own impulses, would league with his neighbour serfs, and ruin others, in the vain hope of redressing himself. The day would be dark with tyranny, and the night red with vengeance. The military triumph of the rack-renter or the Whiteboy would be the happiest issue of the strife.

If the People ought neither spring into war, nor fall through confusion into a worse slavery, what remains? Perseverance. They are on the right road, and should walk on in it patiently, thoughtfully, and without looking back.

The Repeal organisation enables the People to act together. It is the bark of the tree, guarding it and binding it. It is the cause of our unanimity; for where else has a party, so large as the Irish Repealers, worked without internal squabbles? It is the secret of our discipline. How else, but by the instant action of the Association on the whole mass of the People, through the Repeal Press and the Repeal Wardens, could our huge meetings have been assembled or been brought together?--how else could they have been separated in quiet?--how else could the People have been induced to continue their subscriptions month after month and year after year?

An ignorant or unorganised People would soon have tired of the constant subscriptions and meetings, and have broken into disorder or sunk into apathy.

He is a long-sighted and sober-minded man that lays out money on a complex yet safe speculation, or lays it by for an evil day. That is a People having political wisdom which denies itself some present indulgence for a future good. It had been pleasanter, for some at least of the People, to have spent in eating or clothing the shilling they sent to the Repeal Association, just as six years ago they found it pleasanter to spend the shilling, or the penny, or the pound, on the whiskey shop. But the same self-denying and far-seeing resolve which enabled them to resign drink for food, and books, and clothing, induced them to postpone some of these solid comforts to attend meetings, and to give money, in order to win, at some future time, fixed holdings, trade, strength, and liberty.

The People, if they would achieve their aim, must continue their exertions.

It will not do to say, wait till the trials are over. The rate of the trials will not determine Repeal.

The conviction, imprisonment, or death of their present leaders will not crush it. There are those ready to fill the vacancies in the column, and to die too. The rudest and the humblest in the land would grow into an inspired hero were leader after leader to advance and fall. Victory would be the religion of the country, and by one means or other it would triumph. A stronger spirit than his who died issues from the martyr's coffin.

Nor would the success of the accused carry Repeal.

It would embarrass the minister--it would gain time--it would give us another chance for peaceful justice.

But the Queen's Bench is not the imperial Parliament, nor is the Traversers' plea of "not guilty" a bill to overturn the Union, and construct Irish independence on its ruins.

To win by peace they must use all the resources of peace, as they have done hitherto.

Is there any parish wherein there are no Repeal Wardens active every week in collecting money, distributing cards, tracts, and newspapers? Let that parish meet to-morrow or to-morrow week, appoint _active_ Wardens, send up its subscriptions, and get down its cards, papers, and tracts, week after week, till the year goes round or till Repeal is carried.

Is there any town or district which has not a Temperance Band and Reading-room? If there be, let that town or district meet at once, and subscribe for instruments, music, and a teacher; let the members meet, and read, and discuss, and qualify themselves by union, study, and political information to act as citizens, whether their duty lead them to the public assembly, the hustings, or the hill-side. By acting thus, and not by listening for news about trials, the People have advanced from mouldering slaves into a threatening and united People; continuing to act thus, they will become a triumphant nation, spite of fortified barracks, Wellington, Peel, and England. They are in the right road; let them walk on in it.

FOREIGN POLICY AND FOREIGN INFORMATION.

Our history contains reasons for our extending the Foreign Policy of Ireland. This we tried to develop some months back.

The partial successes of the wars of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, from Hugh O'Neill to James the Second, were in no slight degree owing to the arms and auxiliary troops of Spain and France.

Our yet more complete triumphs in the political conflicts of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries owed still more to our foreign connections--witness the influence of the American war on the creation of the Volunteers, the effect of the battle of Jemappes, and of the French Fraternity of Ulster on the Toleration Act of 1793, and how much the presence of American money, and the fear of French interference, hastened the Emancipation Act of 1829.

With reference to this last period, we may state that such an effect had the articles published in _l'Etoile_ on Ireland that Canning wrote a remonstrance to M. de Villele, asking him "was it intended that the war of pens should bring on one of swords." The remonstrance was unavailing--the French sympathy for Ireland increased, and other offices than newspaper offices began to brush up their information on Ireland. But arms yielded to the gown, and the maps and statistics of Ireland never left the War Office of France.

But our own history is not the only advocate for a Foreign Policy for Ireland.

Foreign alliances have ever stood among the pillars of national power, along with virtue, wise laws, settled customs, military organisations, and naval position. Advice, countenance, direct help, are secured by old and generous alliances. Thus the alliance of Prussia carried England through the wars of the eighteenth century, the alliance of France rescued the wavering fortunes of America, the alliance of Austria maintains Turkey against Russia, and so in a thousand instances beside.

A People known and regarded abroad will be more dignified, more consistent, and more proud in all its acts. Fame is to national manners little less than virtue to national morals. A nation with a high and notorious character to sustain will be more stately and firm than if it lived in obscurity. Each citizen feels that the national name which he bears is a pledge for his honour. The soldier's uniform much less surely checks the display of his vices, and an army's standard less certainly excites its valour than the name of an illustrious country stimulates its sons to greatness and nobility. The _prestige_ of Rome's greatness operated even more on the souls of her citizens than on the hearts of her friends and foes.

Again, it is peculiarly needful for _Ireland_ to have a Foreign Policy. Intimacy with the great powers will guard us from English interference. Many of the minor German states were too deficient in numbers, boundaries, and wealth to have outstood the despotic ages of Europe but for those foreign alliances, which, whether resting on friendship or a desire to preserve the balance of power, secured them against their rapacious neighbours. And now time has given its sanction to their continuance, and the progress of localisation guarantees their future safety. When Ireland is a nation she will not, with her vast population and her military character, require such alliances as a _security_ against an English _re-conquest_; but they will be useful in banishing any _dreams of invasion_ which might _otherwise_ haunt the brain of our old enemy.

But England is a pedagogue as well as a gaoler to us. Her prison discipline requires the Helotism of mind. She shuts us up, like another Caspar Hauser, in a dark dungeon, and tells us what she likes of herself and of the rest of the world. And this renders foreign information most desirable for us.

She calls France base, impious, poor, and rapacious. She lies. France has been the centre of European mind for centuries. France was the first of the large states to sweep away the feudal despotism. France has a small debt and an immense army; while England has a vast debt and scanty forces. France has five millions of kindly, merry, well-fed yeomen. England swarms with dark and withered artisans. Every seventh person you meet in France is a landowner in fee, subject to moderate taxation. Taxes and tenancies-at-will have cleared out the yeomanry of England. France has a literature surpassing England's modern literature. France is an apostle of liberty--England the turnkey of the world. France is the old friend, England, the old foe, of Ireland. From one we may judge all. England has defamed _all other countries_ in order to make us and her other slaves content in our fetters.

England's eulogies on herself are as false and extravagant as her calumnies on all other states. She represents her constitution as the perfection of human wisdom; while in reality it is based on conquest, shaken by revolution, and only qualified by disorder. Her boasted tenures are the relics of a half-abolished serfdom, wherein the cultivator was nothing, and the aristocrat everything, and in which a primogeniture extending from the King to the Gentleman _often_ placed idiocy on the throne, and tyranny in the senate, and _always_ produced disunion in families, monopoly in land, and peculation throughout every branch of the public service. Her laws are complicated, and their administration costly beyond any others ever known. Her motley and tyrannous flag she proclaims the first that floats, and her tottering and cruel empire the needful and sufficient guardian of our liberties.

By cultivating Foreign Relations, and growing intimate with foreign states of society, we will hear a free and just criticism on England's constitution and social state. We will have a still better and fairer commentary in the condition and civil structure of other countries.

We will see _small_ free states--Norway, Sweden, Holland, Switzerland, and Portugal--maintaining their homes free, and bearing their flags in triumph for long ages. We will learn from themselves how they kept their freedom afloat amid the perils of centuries. We will salute them as brethren subject to common dangers, and interested in one policy--localisation of power.

The Catholic will see the Protestant states of Prussia, Holland, Saxony, and America; and the Protestant will see the Catholic states of Belgium, Bavaria, and France, all granting full liberty of conscience--leaving every creed to settle its tenets with its conscience, and dealing, _as states_, only with citizens, not sects.

He who fancies some intrinsic objection to our nationality to lie in the co-existence of two languages, three or four great sects, and a dozen different races in Ireland, will learn that in Hungary, Switzerland, Belgium, and America, different languages, creeds, and races flourish kindly side by side, and he will seek in English intrigues the real well of the bitter woes of Ireland.

Germany, France, and America teach us that English economics are not fit for a nation beginning to establish a trade, though they may be for an old and plethoric trader; and therefore that English and Irish trading interests are directly opposed. Nor can our foreign trade but be served by foreign connections.

The land tenures of France, Norway, and Prussia are the reverse of England's. They resemble our own old tenures; they better suit our character and our wants than the loose holdings and servile wages system of modern England.

These, and a host of lessons more, will we learn if we study the books, laws, and manners, and cultivate an intimacy with the citizens of foreign states. We will thus obtain countenance, sympathy, and help in time of need, and honour and friendship in time of strength; and thus, too, we will learn toleration towards each other's creed, distrust in our common enemy, and confidence in liberty and nationality.

Till Ireland has a foreign policy, and a knowledge of foreign states, England will have an advantage over us in both military and moral ways. We will be without those aids on which even the largest nations have at times to depend; and we will be liable to the advances of England's treacherous and deceptive policy.

Let us, then, return the ready grasp of America, and the warm sympathy of France, and of every other country that offers us its hand and heart. Let us cultivate a Foreign Policy and Foreign Information as useful helps in that national existence which is before us, though its happiness and glory depend, in the first instance, on "ourselves alone." Ireland has a glorious future, if she be worthy of it. We must believe and act up to the lessons taught by reason and history, that England is our interested and implacable enemy--a tyrant to her dependants--a calumniator of her neighbours, and both the despot and defamer of Ireland for near seven centuries. Mutual respect for conscience, an avoidance of polemics, concession to each other, defiance to the foe, and the extension of our foreign relations, are our duty, and should be our endeavour. Vigour and policy within and without, great men to lead, educated men to organise, brave men to follow--these are the means of liberation--these are elements of nationality.

MORAL FORCE.

There are two ways of success for the Irish--arms and persuasion. They have chosen the latter. They have resolved to win their rights by moral force. For this end they have confederated their names, their moneys, their thoughts, and their resolves. For this they meet, organise, and subscribe. For this they learn history, and forget quarrels; and for this they study their resources, and how to increase them.

For moral success internal union is essential.

Ireland, through all its sects and classes, must demand Repeal before the English Minister will be left without a fair reason to resist it, and not till then we be in a state to coerce his submission.

Conciliation of all sects, classes, and parties who oppose us, or who still hesitate, is _essential_ to moral force. For if, instead of leading a man to your opinions by substantial kindness, by zealous love, and by candid and wise teaching, you insult his tastes and his prejudices, and force him either to adopt your cause or to resist it--if, instead of slow persuasion, your weapons are bullying and intolerance, then your profession of moral force is a lie, and a lie which deceives no one, and your attacks will be promptly resisted by every man of spirit.

The Committee of the Repeal Association have of late begun to attend to the Registries. The majority of Irish electors belong to the middle class; and if all of that class who could register and vote did register and vote, it would be out of the landlords' power to coerce them. The landlords have awoken to a sense of their danger. They begin to know that if once the quiet patriots of this country conclude that reform of the landlords is hopeless, the only barrier between them and their tenants will sink, and they will sink too.

There will be less landlordism next election--at least we warn the landlords that there _must_ be less.

If, then, the majority of members chosen by the middle class oppose Domestic Legislation, the middle class is suspected of not being truly national--the sincerity of the People is made doubtful--an impediment is opposed to Repeal, which the Repeal Association properly strive to upset.