I.

THE INCOMPATIBLES.

Ι.

THE Irish Land Bill has not yet, at the moment when I write this, made its appearance. No one is very eager, I suppose, to read more about the Irish Land Bill while we do not yet know what the Bill will be. Besides, and above all, no one under any circumstances, perhaps, can much care to read what an insignificant person, and one who has no special connection with Ireland, may have to say about the grave and sad affairs of that country.

But even the most insignificant Englishman, and the least connected with Ireland and things Irish, has a deep concern, surely, in the present temper and action of the Irish people towards England, and must be impelled to seek for the real explanation of them. We find ourselves,-though conscious, as we assure one another, of nothing but goodwill to all the world, -we find ourselves the object of a glowing, fierce, unexplained hatred on the part of the Irish people. "The Liberal Ministry resolved," said one of our leading Liberal statesmen a few years ago, when the Irish Church Establishment was abolished, "the Liberal Ministry resolved to knit the hearts of the

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empire into one harmonious concord, and knitted they were accordingly." "Knitted indeed! The Irish people send members to our Parliament, whose great recommendation with their constituencies is, says Miss Charlotte O'Brien, that they are wolves ready to fly at the throat of England; and more and more of these wolves, we are told, are likely to be sent over to us. These wolves ravin and destroy in the most savage and mortifying way; they obstruct our business, lacerate our good name, deface our dignity, make our cherished fashions of government impossible and ridiculous. And then come eloquent rhetoricians, startling us with the prediction that Ireland will have either to be governed in future despotically, or to be given up. Even more alarming are certain grave and serious observers, who will not leave us even the cold comfort of the rhetorician's alternative, but declare that Ireland is irresistibly drifting to a separation from us, and to an unhappy separation; a separation which will bring confusion and misery to Ireland, danger to us.

For my part, I am entirely indisposed to believe the eloquent rhetoricians who tell us that Ireland. must either be governed for the future as a Crown colony or must be given up. I am also entirely indisposed to believe the despondent observers who tell us that Ireland is fatally and irresistibly drifting to a separation, and a miserable separation, from England. I no more believe the eloquent rhetoricians than I should believe them if they prophesied to me that Scotland, Wales, or Cornwall would have either to be governed as Crown colonies for the future, or to be given up. I no more believe the despondent observers than I should believe them if they assured me that Scotland, Wales, or Cornwall were fatally and irresistibly drifting to a miserable