O'Donnell, when that chieftain generously restores Spencer to his liberty, in order that he may go to the assistance of his friends in Derry, tells the truth. Let them look to it whom it

concerns:

"I am of the invaded, you are the invader; I want my ancient rights, you want to keep what you think yours; I look upon your rule, the rule of your nation, as an usurpation; you call it loyalty to uphold what I think honour calls me to destroy: no, if we are not altogether trampled on, if the arm of O'Donnell can still strike a blow for his ancient rights, you and I must be on opposite sides, and a bloody fray it will be; not like this child's contest between King William and King James, as you call your rival usurpers."

It is the old sentiment of the nation; and notwithstanding the Plantation of Ulster, the nation still subsists. A heavy responsibility lies on those who omit anything, in the power of good citizens to do, for the prevention of troubles in which such feelings will assuredly be stirred up. Great, also, is the criminality of those who conceal from the one country the wishes of the other; who, either by the suppression of facts, or the suggestion of untruths, induce our rulers, or the press of our more powerful neighbours, to disregard or make light of the signs which prudent men may read plainly in the events of every day, in the progress of each day's opinion, and especially in

the issue of works like this-the emanations of reflective and cultivated minds, which shadow forth what may be, in the revival of what has been; and give, at once, evidence of the extent to which considerations of this kind occupy the thoughts of the educated classes, and warning of the evils which such men see approaching.

On the whole, the Gap of Barnesmore" is a remarkable work, appearing in extraordinary times, and worthy of being read with no common attention. The author is evidently a scholar and a man of genius. Whoever he may be, we earnestly hope he may have the satisfaction of knowing that his voice of warning has been heard in influential places; for the book is plainly written as a warning, though, as we have said, on behalf of none of our present political sections; unless, indeed, we could say, the dream of our patriots of 1847 had been realised, and that there was in existence an Irish Party. An Irish party, however, we assuredly will have yet; and if violence can be avoided just now, the laws at present in operation will call it into existence speedily. If violence be not averted, it may not be merely an Irish party, but an Irish nation, that may spring up amid the tumult such, at least, is the conclusion to which our own reflections have long since brought us; and such is the whole tenor of the warning given by the able author of the " Gap of Barnesmore."

ANY work coming from the author of the publication whose title is prefixed to this notice, must have a claim upon our prompt attention. Mr. Pim is a respected merchant of our city, and he was one of the secretaries to the Central Relief Association of the Society of Friends during the appalling seasons of famine and of pestilence, through which this portion of the empire has passed; and deep and lasting as our gratitude must be for the universal outburst of generous sympathy and effective succour which our country's agony called forth from the whole civilized world, to none are we more deeply indebted than to that admirable society which ranks our author among its members. We have to complain of Mr. Pim for not having recorded, as his opportunities afforded him the means of doing, the extent of relief which was administered by the Quakers to our suffering population. It is due to society at large that services such as theirs should not be unrecorded. Shall the historian relate, with scrupulous fidelity, the skill and energy which the military commander exhibits in the destruction of his fellow-men, and shall such narrations stir up the strongest emotions of our nature; and will we be slow to acknowledge that high energy, those great sacrifices, and that Christian zeal, which, undaunted by the overwhelming extent of a visitation such as the world had never seen the like of before, devoted time, wealth, strength, talent, everything, to the preservation of our fellow-beings and God's creatures. We are reminded, indeed, by Mr. Pim's work, that we would be wrong in limiting our gratitude to the civilized world

"The Sultan of Turkey," Mr. Pim tells us, "sent his aid; the people of India offered their assistance; the enfranchised negroes of the West Indies, and the red men of the far West of Ame.

rica, added their mites; and even enslaved negroes in the United States contributed from their poverty, for the relief of those whose condition was, in this respect, one of greater distress than their own. Never before had any civilized people experienced such suffering -never had there existed such a feeling of universal sympathy, accompanied by exertions for their relief, on so gigantic a scale."

Yet, as we have said, pre-eminent in this rivalry of charity were the efforts of the Quakers. Si monumentum quæris circumspice. Is there a district or parish in Ireland that cannot tell of distributions of rice, Indian meal, cloth. ing, or some such other articles of relief, contributed by the Society of Friends, during the dreadful seasons through which we have passed. As secretary to the relief committee of this society, Mr. Pim's attention was forcibly directed to the condition of the country, and his impressions on that subject, and his suggestions for its improvement, are contained in the volume which is now before us.

It would be a useless thing now to speculate on what would be the present condition of Ireland, if it had not fallen under the British rule some seven centuries ago. The tradition that at one period, more than a thousand years ago, about four hundred years before the English invasion, Ireland had enjoyed a reputation for learn ing, is not unsupported by authority. But however this may have been, certainly in 1170, when Dermot MacMorrough solicited the aid of Henry the Second to restore him to his kingdom of Leinster, from which he had been deposed, Ireland was sunk low, indeed, in the scale of ignorance and barbarism-was distracted by civil dis sensions—was unacquainted with the most ordinary arts of life-was the continued scene of violence and out

rage, and acknowledged a system of

laws which contained in itself full provision, that this dissension, violence, and outrage should be perpetual. The Brehon law laid a pecuniary fine, proportioned to his rank, on the head of every man who was murdered. The offences short of murder it took little or no account of; indeed, it was hardly to be expected that outrages merely against property should be much regarded-first, because no man had more than a life-interest in his lands, according to this code; and, secondly, because the prevailing ignorance on agricultural pursuits rendered these lands of little value to their possessor. On the death of any member of a sept, the chieftain redivided all the lands, giving to each member his share; so that the desire to provide for a family, the strongest incentive to action in civilized man, was wholly taken away. All forethought and industry was thus effectually suppressed. The chieftains themselves were not hereditary, but elective. Here was again a neverending source of strife and contention, and their authority was subject to little or no regular control, while their state was supported by arbitrary exactions. So that it would be impossible for the wit of man to devise a scheme so entirely antagonistic to the great purposes of civilization, for which law and government were intended, as the state of things under which the Irish lived, and pillaged, and strove in deadly animosity with each other, at the time when the English colonists landed on their shores

a state of things which Cromwell with difficulty uprooted, when he destroyed the power of the feudal chief. tains of Ireland, four hundred years afterwards. The only towns which were found in the country had been erected by the Danish freebooters; so that for this first step in civilization, the Irish were indebted to invaders, who were themselves pirates and marauders.

Whether if Ireland had been left wholly to herself, she would yet have emerged from so low a depth of barbarism, it is hard to say. We have no instance on record of a savage people having ever of themselves attained to civilization. Archbishop Archbishop Whately has drawn attention strongly to this remarkable feature in the history of man. History does not reVOL. XXXII.-NO. CLXXXVIII.

cord an instance of any race that ever attained a knowledge of the arts or usages and manners of civilized life, except by being brought into proximity with a people who were more advanced and better instructed than themselves. We have no reason to suppose that Ireland would have proved an exception to this universal rule, nor that a people whose social state was such as we have described, and among whom even the simple arts of tillage and agriculture were almost unknown, had yet passed that limit, which, uncrossed, all progress and advancement is unattainable.

But it is absurd to suppose that Ireland could have maintained a barbarous independence in such immediate proximity to other powerful and civilized states. Under the dominion of some one or other of these must she have fallen, if she were not to owe her civilization to Great Britain. England was at all times, from the Norman Conquest, a powerful country, and was constantly engaged in war with her continental neighbours. The occupation of Ireland must ever have been an object of primary importance to the enemies of England. Notwithstanding the possession of the country by the British forces, it was twice invaded by Spain in the reign of Elizabeth; and many yet living remember the designs of the French upon this country, and their unsuccessful invasion of our shores. Under either of these powers, Ireland would most probably have fallen, and what would then have been her lot? She would have been the theatre on which French licentiousness, or the Spanish Inquisition, would have exhibited. The deadly conflicts of England and of France would have been transferred to her plains; the rack, the sword, and the faggot, which devastated Cuba, Hispaniola, and Peru, would have been her fate; and writers upon Ireland would never have to complain that the country had only been half conquered.

But it is said that under the English rule, the food, and clothing, and other physical comforts of the great bulk of the population of Ireland, is inferior to the condition of any other civilized people; and the justice of this reproach must be admitted. We speak not, of course, of the condition of the people during the late year of unpa

R

ralleled famine, when the loss of pota toes alone was estimated at between nine and ten millions of tons, and the whole loss on potatoes and oats was equivalent to the absolute destruction of 1,500,000 arable acres ; but, even in ordinary seasons, the diet of the people is never, in point of quality, such as it ought to be; while the nature of the potato husbandry, by entrusting every family at once with the entire supply for the whole year, combined with the improvidence of the Irish character, leads to that reckless consumption at the beginning of the season, which never fails to entail scarcity, and in some districts almost periodical famine, before the new crop comes in. Whether the food of our people in ordinary years falls so much short of that of the continental states, as most writers would have us to suppose, we would be rather inclined to question. In the government tables, which were prepared in France with great care, in the year 1846, from returns made from every commune or parish in France, we find that the average daily consumption for the whole population, including as well the surplus consumption of the wealthy and luxurious as the more limited sustenance of the poor, was as follows:

15 oz.

Bread-stuffs and vegetables
Meat
1 oz.
Wine, beer, &c. 7 oz., or about a pint.

When such is the average for the whole population, both rich and poor, wretched indeed must be the condition of the latter. This average, we are told, is less by a third than the allowance to convicts.

But the questions that press upon us are, to what is it that our own misery is to be ascribed, and what are the means of its alleviation? To answer these questions honestly, we must be careful to distinguish between a remote and immediate cause; and looking at our condition fairly, and in a candid spirit, we are forced to avow that our present degradation is in so great an extent attributable to ourselves, that any other causes that may have concurred sink into utter insignificance. It is to the indolence, improvidence, and ignorance, which has uniformly pervaded, at least, three provinces of Ireland, that we must unhesitatingly ascribe our present de

graded condition. To what this indolence, improvidence, and ignorance is to be ascribed is, as we have said, a distinct consideration; but it is its existence that has degraded us. We except no class. We admit that the landlords of Ireland have, of late years, become, in a great measure, alive to the responsibilities which the possession of property entails, and to the necessity for exercising an active and vigilant control over its management. This improvement in the upper classes is yet very imperfectly developed, and is of very recent date. It is thwarted and impeded, notwithstanding the best intentions on the part of very many of the present race of landlords, by the circumstances in which they find themselves placed, involved as they are, and rendered utterly powerless by a load of incumbrances created by their predecessors, who have, indeed, a heavy account to answer for, for the grievous perversion and abandonment of the trusts that were confided to them. A still more responsible, because with the Irish peasantry a more influential body, the Roman Catholic priesthood are still more heavily accountable for the condition of the country. The faults of the landlords were chiefly those of neglect those of the Roman Catholic priesthood are crimes of the most deliberate commission. They have in every way perverted and desecrated the du ties of their sacred calling. Instructors of their flocks, they have studiously kept them in ignorance; ministers of the gospel, they have sown rancour, hatred, and malevolence, against their Protestant rulers and fellowsubjects, as widely as they could disseminate it. There are, and always have been, some few bright and holy exceptions-exceptions the brighter and the nobler, because that, acting from a sense of right, they have placed themselves in opposition and hos tility to the opinions and practices of their fellows, the surest test of a brave and good man; but the great bulk of the Roman Catholic priesthood have ever been ready to head an insurrec tion in the field, or to stimulate to outrage even from the altar. And up to this very hour how few of them are to be found in the disturbed districts of Ireland, who avail themselves of the unquestionable control which they possess over their people, to suppress