the people of England and the people of Scotland. The Tory Landlord class-exterminators and all-prime favourites at the Castle, countenanced and sustained as the nucleus of that anti-Irish faction which would once again transplant the Catholics of Ireland to the remotest regions, if that faction had the power to do so; and which actually drives those Catholics to transport themselves in multitudes to every country out of Ireland.

The worst result of British prosperity is, the protection it gives to the hard-hearted and bigoted class among the Irish landlords.

It is also of the utmost importance that the Sovereign and Statesmen of England should be apprised that the people of Ireland know and feel that they have a deep and vital interest in the weakness and adversity of England. It was not for themselves alone that the Americans gained the victory over Burgoyne at Saratoga: they conquered for Irish as well as for American freedom. Nor was it for France alone that Dumourier defeated the Austrian army at Genappe; the Catholics of Ireland participated in the fruits of that victory.

At the present day it would be vain to attempt to conceal the satisfaction the people of Ireland feel at the fiscal embarrassments of England. They bitterly and cordially regret the sufferings and privations of the English and Scotch artisans and operatives. But they do not regret the weakness of the English Government, which results from fading commerce and failing manufacture. For the woes of each suffering individual they have warm compassion and lively sympathy; from the consequent weakness of the Government party they derive no other feelings than those of satisfaction and of hope.

Mr. O'Connell will have it that there never was a people so cruelly and basely treated as the Irish have been by aliens and Protestants; and to inculpate the people of England rather than the Government, who he asserts were cruel to the extent of being guilty of the wish to exterminate the Irish nation, he assails Cromwell and the Cromwellians according to a truly Irish method of exaggeration, of recklessness of facts, and of ludicrous blarney. Says the historian,

Cromwell gorged himself with human blood. He committed the most hideous slaughters; deliberate, cold-blooded, persevering. He stained the annals of the English people with guilt of a blacker dye than has stained any other nation on earth.

And-after all-for what? What did he gain by it? Some four or five years of unsettled and precarious power! And if his hideous corpse was interred in a royal grave, it was so, only to have his bones thence transferred to a gibbet!

Was it for this that he deliberately slaughtered thousands of men, women, and children? Female loveliness and the innocent and beautiful boy-aged but seven years [and rising three feet six inches]-of Colonel Washington? It has often been said that it was not the people, but the Government of England, who were guilty of the attempts to exterminate the Irish nation. The observation is absurd. The government had at all times in their

slaughter of the Irish, the approbation of the English people. Even the present administration is popular in England in the precise proportion of the hatred they exhibit to the Irish people; and this is a proposition of historic and perpetual truth. But to the Cromwellian wars, the distinction between the people and the Government could never apply. These were the wars, emphatically, of the English people. They were emphatically the most cruel and murderous wars the Irish ever sustained.

We are obliged to a contemporary for reminding us that neither Cromwell nor his troops had anything at all to do with the slaughter, and that the tale about the "beautiful boy," if not apocryphal, appears here in a new version, and unsupported by Mr. O'Connell's alleged authority.

Next listen to the way in which our author attacks and denounces a man of cool and philosophic research, a habitual sifter of evidence, and an acute logician, whose great work will ever hold a foremost place among histories, while the "Memoir" before us would have gone forth unheeded, or as an ephemeral burst of intemperance, but for the name that figures on the title-page :

Notwithstanding all this, for considerably more than a century after the Restoration, the Catholics of Ireland were set down as wholesale murderers, and were charged with murdering 50,000 Protestants on the 23rd of October 1641. And this atrociously false calumny was reiterated in books and pamphlets, in speeches and sermons and acts of parliament! The arch liar, Hume, the man who of all historians is least to be relied on-for throughout his history scarcely one fact is stated accurately-has given great circulation to this enormous falsehood; and he is the more criminal, inasmuch as shortly after the appearance of the volume of his history containing the reign of Charles the First, documents were furnished to him demonstrating the utter falsehood of his account of the alleged massacre. But all in vain. The immoral infidel adhered to his falsehood, as it gave a greater interest to his fictitious history.

In

Mr. O'Connell has avowed, as we have already heard, that his great object in writing the "Memoir," is to involve the people of England "in much-in very much of the guilt of their Government." other words, his grand aim seems to be the repeal of the Union, and to produce that result by exasperating the two nations,—by insulting the one and exciting the other. Nor is he diffident or uncertain with regard to the issue, as the passage which we last of all quote testifies:

The Precursor Association declared, in the name and with the assent of the Irish people, that they might have consented to the continuance of the Union, if justice had been done them;-if the franchise had been simplified and much extended-if the Corporations had been reformed and continued --if the number of Irish members had been augmented in a just proportion

—and if the tithe system had been abolished and conscience left completely free.

But on the other hand, these just claims being rejected-these just demands being refused-our just rights being withheld, the Irish people are too numerous, too wise, and too good, to despair, or to hesitate on the course they should adopt. The restoration of the National Legislature is therefore again insisted upon; and no compromise, no pause, no cessation of that demand, shall be allowed until Ireland is herself again.

One word to close. No honest man ever despaired of his country. No wise enemy will place his reliance on the difficulties which may lie in the way between seven millions of human beings and that liberty which they feel to be their right. FOR THEM THERE CAN BE NO IMPOSSIBILITY.

I repeat it-that as surely as to-morrow's sun will rise, Ireland will assert her rights for herself, preserving the golden and unonerous link of the crown-true to the principles of unaffected and genuine allegiance, but determined, while she preserves her loyalty to the British throne, to vindicate her title to constitutional freedom for the Irish people.

In short, Ireland demands that faction should no longer be encouraged; that the Government should be carried on for the Irish people, and not against them. She is ready and desirous to assist the Scotch and the English Reformers to extend their franchises and consolidate their rights— but she has in vain insisted on being an equal sharer in every political advantage. She has vainly sought EQUALITY-IDENTITY. She has been refused-contemptuously refused. Her last demand is free from any alter

native

IT IS THE REPEAL!

The tone and object of the "Memoir" become much clearer from these few extracts, than can ever be the case when a calm, candid, and reflecting writer publishes his thoughts and the results of grave investigation. But we must not dismiss the volume without giving some account of its plan, of its scope, and of its execution.

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The "Memoir" has been drawn up, says its author, "to facilitate the comprehension of the facts of Irish history," arranging it by what he considers to be "its chronology," and in such a manner to bring out in masses the iniquities practised by the English Government upon the Irish, with the full approbation, or at least entire acquiescence of the British people." The epoch in the first volume extends from 1172 to 1660. A large portion of the book consists of what are called "Proofs and Illustrations," being extracts from authors and contemporary documents; while there are, in the shape of "Observations," comment, and heated declamation, such fillings up as might be expected from the Repealer, were he making use of his compiled notes on any sudden emergency, and when addressing a few thousands of his countrymen.

It is to be remarked that the Proofs are professed to be obtained chiefly from Protestant authorities. But this is not uniformly the fact; neither, when appealed to, does Mr. O'Connell always care to

quote them fairly. But what is not less vicious,-he scruples not to cite for authority anonymous writings, and such as are clearly the opinions or testimonies of partisans; thus exhibiting a total indifference to critical discrimination, and a skilful examination of evidence. On the other hand, there stands the expert advocate, the special pleader, the adroit maker-up of a case of alleged facts and testimonies; while the inferences, the arguments, and the appeals which follow, or are interlarded, are such as would naturally operate strongly on a popular audience.

There can be no difficulty in establishing a strong case under the head of English misrule, and tyranny in Ireland. Neither, however, can it be questioned that anarchy and faction characterized the social and political history of the Irish themselves; so that no dominant party could have ruled them but as a turbulent and comparatively barbarous people must, for their own sakes, be governed. It was in the nature of things also, that when those in the ascendant found that they were a superior race in regard to intelligence, the arts of peace, and general civilization, that pride would be fostered on that side, just as jealousy hatred, and rancour, would gather strength on the other. It is in vain to tempt denying that a strong English prejudice of the kind alluded to at one period existed. But Mr. O'Connell may be fearlessly challenged to prove that this prejudice is not daily losing a portion of its injustice and virulence, or that the great majority of the British people would not lend their voice in support of any feasible method of regenerating Ireland,—of placing the Irish on a level with themselves.

Is the repeal of the Union this feasible and practical measure? Mr. O'Connell's assertions on the subject, ought, we think, to be met with a direct contradiction, and an appeal to such facts as these:the Union was too long delayed; when it took place it was incomplete, and made subject to so many conflicting interests and opinions, like all other great Irish questions, as to have brought discredit on the general principle of such fraternal bonds; and lastly, the Irish nation has been making progress, and at a marked pace recently, however slowly the movement might have been at first, towards that eminence which the people of Great Britain have already attained. And yet there are multitudes of Irishmen who have been so misled as to advocate a more than doubtful measure, and certainly one that has never yet been so explained by the Repealer himself, as to promise aught but confusion, and perhaps terrible disaster to his country; and all this at a period of observable amelioration and advancement.

We have shortly characterized the plan and scope of the Memoir, the mode of compilation adopted in it, and the sort of comments and arguments made use of by Mr. O'Connell. The tone and animus of the writer cannot be mistaken. As to the execution of the work, in a mere literary sense, a word may suffice, and it is this,-that the

composition is irregular; it is like a thing produced at bursts, and its strength is far from equal to the noise of the phraseology. Vigour as well as fervour are not wanting in parts; but to speak generally, there is a far greater amount of vehemence and exaggeration than of eloquence, of the rhetorical than the terse,-of heavy bathos than of deep and melting pathos.

ART. V.-Pleasant Memoirs of Pleasant Lands. By Mrs. SIGOURNEY. Tilt and Bogue.

MRS. SIGOURNEY'S work is the result of the travels of an American lady and poetess through England, Scotland, and part of France. It is no regular account of a journey, but a series of separate notices, partly prose, partly in verse, of various places and persons of more than common interest, mingled with such reflections and remarks as might naturally suggest themselves to the fair traveller's mind. The production, therefore, is of no very laboured chcracter; but that does not prevent it from being very entertaining, and by no means uninstructive. The prose is generally very good,-some of the poetry excellent; and the whole,-free from any shade of querulousness or its frequent cause, national prejudice,-makes a de-lightful volume. These "Memoirs of Pleasant Lands," we are pretty sure, will be found by numerous readers as pleasant as (by her application of the epithet) we hope their authoress found the tour during which they were compiled. We care not how many works of the sort, conceived in the same right spirit, spring up interchangeably, from alternate visitors, between England and America. Their obvious and desirable tendency is to promote between the two countries that good feeling which the true friends of either would never wish to see interrupted; and, consequently, however feeble the attempt, some praise and thanks are always due for the intention. In this instance we have nothing to do, after general commendation, but to extract two or three of the numerous passages which have pleased us; but we should be no true critics did we not find some fault in the work even of a lady; and we must take leave to say, that we should not have regretted the omission of the greater number of the poems in blank verse. It is not that it is bad, but it is not good; and that, from the days of Horace, has been held a fatal fault in poetry. Why will people try to write blank verse? It is a hopeless task. Take away Milton, Shakspeare, Thomson's Seasons, and one or two more, and we have hardly a line of it worth reading in the language. Why, then, attempt what, ordinarily speaking, none can hope to accomplish? Mrs. Sigourney, however, has only failed where success would have been almost superhuman: that she can and does write elegant and graceful poetry is easily shown.