than from any ill intention, as if it were some monstrous conception aiming at the breaking up of the very foundations of society. But that dreaded monster, if such it was, has now become a domesticated idea. It has entered, we may say, into every house; and it lies as quietly by every fireside, as if it were the favourite cat or dog of the family."* Mr Goldwin Smith, indeed, gives the aphorism a place among the few gains to the world which form a set-off to the centuries of Irish misery. By virtue of her long unsettlement and her special claims to consideration, Ireland is affording a clear field for the discussion of political, ecclesiastical, and social questions which the English nation, satisfied with an early and limited progress, will not suffer to be mooted directly in respect to itself. An Irish famine repealed the Corn Laws. Irish outrage gave to the empire the benefit of a regularly organised police. The desperate state of Irish property led to the passing of an Encumbered Estates Act. Ireland has introduced the system of mixed education. In Ireland the relations between landlord and tenant have been first made the subject of discussion, with some prospect of an equitable solution. In Ireland was promulgated the potent aphorism- PROPERTY HAS ITS DUTIES AS WELL AS ITS RIGHTS!' In Ireland, where the members of the dominant Church are in a small and hopeless minority, and the Establishment is clearly a political evil, the great question of Church and State will probably be first raised with effect, and receive its most rational solution.”+

The authorship of the letter to the Tipperary Magis* The Liverpool Mercury, Oct. 13, 1864.

P. 197.

Irish History and Irish Character," Oxford and London, 1861,

trates, in which the aphorism occurs, has been the subject of some controversy. The aphorism itself has been claimed for the philosopher Paley. It has been claimed by Dr Madden for Mr (afterwards Chief Baron) Woulfe, who, at the time, was the Irish AttorneyGeneral. Lord Normanby himself, after a fashion, set up a claim to it.

The aphorism does not occur in Paley's works. There was nothing in keeping with it either in the man or in his system. He rested his ethics on positive law almost as distinctly as did the late Dr Whewell, till the ecclesiastics concussed him into founding his system on Scripture. "The real foundation of the right of property," says Paley, "is the law of the land.

My right to my estate does not at all depend upon the manner or justice of the original acquisition; nor upon the justice of each subsequent change of possession; nor upon the expediency of the law which gives it to me." It depends solely on the legal title, which being indefeasible in respect of the support of policemen's batons and soldiers' bayonets, is identical, in the Paleyan system, with "the will of God" on the subject. The law is thus at once the foundation and the measure of the rights of property, which can be limited only by legal contracts. There are rights and duties of parents and children in Paley's system; but only rights of property. So averse was he to sentimentalism, that he endeavoured to define even the duties of parents with quasi-legal distinctness. "When moralists," he says, "tell us that parents are bound to do all they can for their children, they tell us more than is true." The duties of parents are then defined, and lie close to the mere parental obligations of the law books. As to the rights of property, the only case in which

Paley provided for their suspension or limitation is that of extreme necessity. Even in this case he would enforce restitution, on the emergency being

over.

The relation of a proprietor to a population that has grown up on his estates, owing to his system of managing his property, was never in his contemplation, nor was any similar relation through which, by suggestion, the aphorism, or any equivalent of it, could have occurred to him.

The claims of Normanby and Woulfe are thus dealt with in an article written by the late Dr Andrew Combe, and published in the Scotsman of June 26, 1844:

"Six years have scarcely passed away since, in a letter addressed to the Tipperary magistrates, the late lamented Mr Drummond first gave utterance to the memorable words, 'Property has its duties as well as its rights,' the moral force and pregnant truth of which carried them like wildfire over the length and breadth of the land, and thereby touched a chord in the hearts of his countrymen which still continues to vibrate in unison with the noble and generous humanity which inspired him in their expression; and little more than half that space of time has elapsed since the tomb closed over him for ever. Yet, strange to say, brief as the interval has been, two claims-or, more correctly speaking, one apparent and another real claim-have been already set up in behalf of other parties for the authorship of that letter, although there can be no more room for doubt as to who wrote it, than there is about the noonday position of the sun in the heavens !

"The first reputed, but we trust unintentional claimant to the honour of Mr Drummond's letter, is Lord Normanby, who was Viceroy of Ireland at the time of its publication. In his speech on the address at the opening of the present session of Parliament, his lordship, when alluding to that letter, is reported in the newspapers to have used the rather remarkable words, "I DICTATED and directed to be sent a letter,' &c. This seems at first sight to be an explicit affirmation by Lord Nor

manby that he was really the author, in the ordinary sense of the word; but a moment's reflection will suffice to show that the phrase is either a mere clerical error, such as often occurs during the hurry of reporting, or that it must have been used by his lordship in a purely parliamentary sense, as implying that the official credit of that as of all other documents prepared by his subordinates, belonged of right to him who was alone responsible for their contents. In the same sense, Sir Robert Peel, Sir James Graham, and all other public men, habitually speak of letters proceeding from their respective departments as their own, although they may never set eyes upon them till they are laid before them for their signature, and are, individually, as guiltless of their composition as of that of the Novum Organon. In no other sense could Lord Normanby claim for a moment the authorship of a letter which, although written under his official direction, was, in its form and substance, as purely the emanation of the mind of Thomas Drummond as any private letter he ever wrote. This, indeed, was so palpably the case on this very occasion, that when the letter was subsequently referred to in the course of debate by Lord Brougham, Lord John Russell, Mr Cobden, and others, it was always as Mr Drummond's, and not one of them ever dreamt, merely on the faith of Lord Normanby's speech, of quoting his lordship as the author of either its words or sentiments.

"To those who knew (and who did not?) the scrupulous honour of Mr Drummond, a still stronger proof of his exclusive right to the letter which bore his name is to be found in the well-known fact, that when complimented on it in his private capacity, which he was in the highest terms by many eminent public men, he never repelled, but, on the contrary, always accepted the compliment; and most assuredly he was not the man to submit to the degradation of wearing honours which he knew to belong to another. But as we cannot believe that Lord Normanby really intended to convey the meaning which his words imply, if he ever used them, it is needless to accumulate further proofs where none are wanted. Indeed, we should scarcely have noticed the expression in his speech at all, had it not been that a second and direct claim has since

been set up, and that in a question of such general and abiding interest not even a doubt should be allowed to insinuate itself into the public mind.

"With regard to the second claim, we know not which most to admire the ignorance or the bad faith in which it has originated. It appeared in the English papers about three weeks ago, in a notice entitled 'ABILITY OF THE LATE CHIEF BARON WOULFE,' and is contained in the following words :-'One fact will show how ignorant the public were of the capacity for affairs which so eminently distinguished him. The celebrated letter to Lord Donoughmore and the magistrates of Tipperary, in which is the memorable aphorism, "Property has its duties as well as its rights," was from the pen of Mr Woulfe. Of the effects produced by that letter it is needless to speak. It never can be forgotten in Ireland. Seldom was a public document conceived in a happier spirit. Equal to the occasion which called it forth, its moral power can be best estimated by the stricken spirits of those whose arrogance and injustice were rebuked therein with stern dignity. Those who were acquainted with Woulfe, cannot be surprised at his having been the writer of the Donoughmore despatch. The faculty of saying the right thing at the right time belonged to him in a very eminent degree.'

Here, then, is a broad and unqualified assertion of Mr Woulfe's right to the credit of the Tipperary letter; and as it has been widely circulated, to pass it over in silence would be to imply the existence at least of an uncertainty, of which there is in reality not even a shadow; and had Mr Woulfe been alive, no man would, we venture to say, have been more surprised than himself at the honour now sought to be conferred upon him. If the assertor of his right was really so ignorant of the most recent and well-known facts as not to be aware that the credit belonged to Drummond alone, he was obviously a most unfit person to offer himself as a guide to public opinion in the distribution of its rewards. If, on the other hand, he knew the fact, and deliberately propounded a falsehood for the purpose of misleading the public, he was doubly deserving of condemnation. We have noticed this matter at some length, because