fined prospects of important advantages, to be obtained from political changes, which have tended to withdraw them from a reliance on their own exertions, as the only sure means of improving their condition."

One argument, indeed, we have known to be urged against the British connexion. It is said, and there is but too much truth in the observation, that the administration of Ireland is conducted by playing off one party against another-by now sacrificing

the interests of Protestants to Roman Catholics, and again that of Roman Catholics to Protestants, as it best suits at the time the state of parties, and the political convenience of the ministry. But admitting that this evil exists in our connexion with Great Britain, is it one which we can in any way hope to get rid of by being severed from her? Lamentable as it is that such a state of things should exist, yet is it not the necessary and unavoidable consequence of party? How would we become exempt from it by having a government in Ireland? Would such a government be less dependant on the great divisions into which society is resolved, or less anxious to procure the support of either of them? In a popular constitution, to say that the government is anxious to conciliate any particular party, is merely equivalent to saying, that such party is itself influential. Very probably, indeed, under an Irish government, Protestantism would never be conciliated at the expense of Romanism, for it is by no means likely that Protestantism would then have much influence in the state; but Republicanism would be conciliated at the expense of Communism, or Communism at the expense of Socialism; for so long as powerful and antagonistic parties divide the state, which will be as long as man is fallible, and the expression of opinion is free, so long will the government be administered, and the equilibrium of the state preserved, by the mutual counterpoise of one party against the other. We never can expect to escape from such a state of things, except by sinking into a pure democracy, then indeed all party will be absorbed, and all expression of opinion suppressed, in the uncontrolled will of the tyrant majority.

But although we are firmly con

vinced that it is impossible to maintain that the poverty and degradation of Ireland is referable to the connexion between the two countries as it now subsists, it is equally impossible to deny that much, very much, of the evils under which we labour, the greatest of them being those which are fixed in the habits and character of our people, are to be traced to the relation which existed between the countries, from their first connexion, down to comparatively a very recent date, perhaps we might say down to the period of the Union. The nature of this relation, and its effect upon the character of the country, is sketched by Mr. Pim in the two opening chapters of his book. One very important feature he thus notices :

"The energetic character and industrious habits of the people of England have been ascribed, and probably correctly, to the thorough amalgamation of the Saxon inhabitants with their Norman conquerors. These, seizing on all the property of the country, reduced its former possessors to unresisting submission to their will, yet in course of time yielded to the influence of numbers, adopted the language, and much of the laws and political institutions of the conquered Saxons, and the two nations became one people. But Ireland, although invaded, vanquished in warfare, her princes stripped of their inheritance, and her people bent beneath the yoke of strangers, was never so thoroughly subdued as to blend the conquerors and the conquered into one.

"Some intention of subjugating the whole island appears to have existed at first, as is shown by the settlement of the Fitzgeralds, the De Courcys, the families of Roche, Barry, and others in Munster, and of the De Burghs in Connaught. But these distant settlers, so far separated from the seat of govern ment, intermarried with the native Irish, adopted their language and manners, assumed the power and state of Irish chieftains, and became, in the language of the old chroniclers, ipsis Hibernis Hiberniores.' Even the powerful ba rons of Leinster, the Fitzgeralds earls of Kildare, the Butlers earls of Ormonde, and others, while professing allegiance to the King of England, exercised independent authority in their own territories. They made war upon each other, or against the native Irish, at their own pleasure. The king's writ had no course within their jurisdiction. The Irish princes who had offered homage, and made nominal submission to

Henry, resumed their former independence as soon as he left Ireland; and thus, before the termination of a century, the English rule and law were confined to the limits of the Pale, comprising the four counties of Dublin, Louth, Meath, and Kildare, and to the maritime cities of Cork, Waterford, and a few others of less note."

It was to this imperfect reduction of the native Irish that the constant rebellions that distracted the country for many centuries afterwards, is mainly to be referred. The great extent of the grants, moreover, that was from time to time made to the English nobles, who never resided on their Irish estates, nor concerned themselves about their management, laid at the very outset the foundation for that most deadly of Irish evils, absenteeism, and gave fresh facilities for revolt. The rebellions which distracted the country in the latter half of the sixteenth century, that of Desmond in Munster, and Tyrone and Tyrconnell in Ulster, afforded the British government an opportunity for repairing the mistakes of the first settlement; and had but the same system been adopted by Elizabeth after the confiscation of Munster, that was pursued by James on the confiscation of Ulster, we would not now have to lament a distracted country and an impoverished people; but Elizabeth disposed of the confiscated districts of the South, as preceding sovereigns had done, in large, indiscriminate grants to absentee proprietors (she gave as much as 20,000 acres to Sir Walter Raleigh), without providing in any respect for the order or settlement of the country. While James, on the other hand, took care to portion out the confiscated lands of Ulster in small grants, and to bind the grantees to settle their estates with enterprising and industrious English or Scotch settlers. the habits of industry, to the love of independence, to the invigorating spirit of Protestantism, and to the identity of feeling and sentiment with Great Britain, which was then infused into the North of Ireland, does the province of Ulster owe that freedom from insurrectionary offences, as well as that superior social condition by which she is so happily distinguished. Mr. O'Connell, in his examination before the Lords' Committee in 1825, when asked how it was he accounted for the

To

Insurrection Act never having been required to be put in force in Ulster, unhesitatingly referred it to the existence of the numerous Orange yeomanry in that province.

But in these later rebellions, in the reigns of Elizabeth and James, a new and fiercer element of dissension had arisen-religious difference had now begun to manifest itself-the principles of the Reformation were at this time adopted in England, but no care whatever was taken to introduce them or to expound them in Ireland. The indifference of England in this respect is beyond all measure the heaviest charge which can be laid at her door, and most grievously has she answered for it. In point of policy, and of justice, and of Christian feeling, she owed it to Ireland to give her at least an opportunity of embracing the tenets of the Protestant faith; but the concurrent testimony of every authority puts it beyond all question, that she most shamefully and most criminally neglected her duty in this respect

"The means," says Mr. Pim, "which had proved effectual in Great Britain, were not tried here. Preachers were not employed to explain the new doctrines to the people in their own language; there was no circulation of the Scriptures, translated into the vulgar tongue; the clergy being English, or of English descent, were unable to hold intercourse with a large portion of the people, and they felt little anxiety about increasing the number of their congregation, so long as their tithes were duly paid."

Mr. Pim cites several authorities, and might have added many more, if it had been necessary, in support of this lamentable truth; nay further, truth constrains us to say that, down to a very recent date, the same character for inefficiency attached to the Irish

Established Church. With its present well-merited character for piety, zeal, and learning, we need not scruple to acknowledge its past neglect and inefficiency-no past defects can dim the brightness of its present lustre; but we cannot but feel and acknowledge that the description of the Irish Church, which Mr. Pim quotes from Sir Henry Sidney's letter to Queen Elizabeth, might have been applied with truth for many ages afterwards—

"Your majesty may believe that, on

the face of the earth where Christ is professed, there is not a church in so miserable a case, the misery of which consisteth in these three particulars-the ruin of the very temples themselves, the want of good ministers to serve in them when they shall be re-edified, and competent living for the ministers being well chosen.'

The Reformation, consequently, as might be expected, made no more progress with the old English settlers than it did with the native Irish. By degrees, the old English leagued themselves with the Irish and the ancient creed, against the new settlers and the Reformed faith, and there were then three distinct races in the countrythe old Irish, the old English settlers, and the modern settlers. Of these the two former, bound together by the common tie of religion, united against the latter; in the language of Lord Clare, "All rallied to the banner of the Popish faith, and looked upon the new Protestant settlers as the common aggressor and enemy, and from that day all have clung to the Popish religion as a common bond of union, and an hereditary pledge of animosity to British settlers and the British nation."

From the reign of James the First to the Revolution, the hostile spirit of the Roman Catholic faith never ceased to manifest itself. In the massacre of the Protestants in 1641, in the wars with Cromwell, in the troublous period of the second Charles, and in the wars of James, the Roman Catholics but asserted their unquenchable hostility to the British connexion, and to the English Protestant settlers in this country. The iron energy of Cromwell crushed and for ever annihilated the power of the old Irish chieftains; but the envenomed spirit of religious rancour was too subtle an antagonist even for his master-spirit to grapple with. Ireland was thus everlastingly in revolt; there was but one effectual means by which this could have been prevented namely, by sedulously spreading the doctrines of the Refor mation, and thus identifying the senti ment of the two countries. This duty England most shamefully neglected. Spencer tells us that the Roman Catholic priests spared not to travel from Spain and Rome to Ireland, where they knew peril of death awaited them, and no reward was to be had only to

draw the people to the Church of Rome; but that our idle ministers would, neither for the love of God, nor zeal for religion, nor for all the good they could do by winning souls to Christ, be drawn forth from their warm nests. So utterly worthless was the ministration of the Established Church, that very many of the settlers who came over with Cromwell and with William, lapsed by degrees into the Roman Catholic faith, and amalgamating with the ancient Irish and original English settlers, added their numbers to the array of the enemies of England. The north escaped this evil by lerivin its clergy chiefly from the active intelligent people of Scotland. at when we recollect the number of Protestants who came over with Cromwell and with William, and in the intermediate period, and who settled on the lands which were then confiscated and ap propriated to their use, and compare them with the comparative numbers of Protestant and Roman Catholic as they now exist in three provinces of Ireland, it is plain to demonstration, if even we were without the aid of express authority on the subject, that a large proportion of the new Protestant settlers must have joined the Church of Rome; indeed we could point to districts in Ireland where the same names, and obviously the same families, are to be found, those of them in the plains adhering to the Reformed faith, and those in the adjacent moun. tain districts, which the zeal of the clergy of the Established Church, at that day, was unequal to penetrate, professing the doctrines of the Church of Rome.

England, having thus neglected the only really effectual means for extinguishing the spirit of rebellion in Ire land, adopted, in the reign of King William and of Queen Anne, the next most efficient means which was open to her, that of the enactment of the penal laws. We concur entirely with our author in his condemnation of these laws, as tending to the degradation of the people who were subjected to their operation; but we cannot close our eyes to the fact that the only period of tranquillity which Irish history can produce, was that which prevailed during the continuance of these enactments. And before we join in the unmeasured condemnation of these laws, for their effect

upon the industry of the country, we must ask ourselves the question, what was the effect upon the industry of the country of the state of things which prevailed for centuries prior to their enactment? What must have been the effect upon the industry of a country of the continuance of a state of things which perpetually revolved in the same fearful circle of conspiracy, insurrection, defeat, and confiscation? We are no advocates for such a code. We do not deny that its imposition, although it never was strictly enforced, was substantially in violation of a solemn engagement that entered into at the treaty of Limerick; but when we look to the tranquillity which ensued on their enactment, and to which Ireland had, for centuries before, been a stranger-and when we bear in mind that England had neglected, as we have said, to adopt the only other means by which peace could be ensured, we must confess, that we feel that, injurious as was their operation, their non-enactment would have allowed of greater evils; and that any permanent injury which they have done the country, has been more by their over-long continuance, when they should have been gradually relaxed, and by the magazine of grievances which they have furnished to every political adventurer who would trade upon the wrongs of Ireland, than by their original enactment.

Almost simultaneously with the repeal of the penal code, the privileges of free trade were obtained by Ireland. A most important advantage, unquestionably, this was, had the directors of the Irish people allowed them but to avail themselves of it; had they but guided the energies of the nation to the newly opened paths of industrial exertion which were thus made available to them, and which the people would, if properly encouraged, most gladly have entered on-but no; they were once more free, they should assert that freedom by rebellion, their old instincts should be stimulated afresh, they should be hounded on against the Sassenach. Thus it was that in, 1798, the fierce rebellion of that year blazed forth, and at length,in 1800, the Union was brought about, as a last experiment for preserving the country to Great Britain, and affording it a chance of repose from internal tumult, with free scope for the exercise of its industrial energies.

Before passing from this subject, we must notice a most unfair use which is made of the restrictions which had been imposed on Irish commerce, and which were done away with in the year 1778 and 1782. It is the fashion to speak of these restrictions as indicative of a peculiar tendency, on the part of Great Britain, towards the oppression of this country; whereas, in truth, they were nothing more nor less than an application of those mistaken commercial principles on which the colonial policy of England rested, and which were equally adopted by her in her relations with Canada, America, and all her other colonies. The several states of America could, no more than Ireland, derive their foreign commodities, but through the medium of Great Britain, nor could they trade with each other. Certain of the more refined manufactures they were prohibited from carrying on. They could not erect steel furnaces, nor slit-mills; and many of their most important products fell into the class of enumerated commodities, and could only be exported to the mother country. We do not attempt to justify these regulations, which were most unjust and most impolitic, whether they were applied to America or to Ireland, almost as injurious to Great Britain as to the colonies themselves-we are only anxious that the matter should rest on its true footing, and that the commercial policy of the age, the policy which was extended to every dependancy and colony of England, should not be represented as having been adopted for the special depression of this country.

From the time of the Union to the present day, the trade of Ireland has been as unshackled by commercial restraints, the industry of Ireland has been as uncontrolled by legislative enactments as it is possible for that of any country to be. From the year 1829, all political disabilities have been removed from every section of the people. Powerful nations have grown up within the space of half a century, even in our own time. Why has not such been the case with Ireland? That the country has improved to some extent within the last sixty years is obvious to every one, and is fully admitted by our author.

"The wealth of the country has increased. This is proved by the large

amount of the public funds transferred from England to Ireland. The comforts of the upper and middle classes have increased. The internal trade of the country has increased greatly, and many small towns have well-stocked shops and comfortable shopkeepers, where a few years since it would have been difficult to purchase the commonest necessaries of life. The state of society is better. The people are more industrious and more provident. But, in all these respects, we are much behind our richer neighbours, whose wealth and civilization date from a period so much earlier.

"The agricultural class is certainly much inferior to that of England in wealth, management of their farms, and manner of living; yet in many districts the farmers are in much better circumstances than they were; the system of cultivation is improved, and a consider ably greater value of stock is to be found on the farms."

But then he adds:

"The lowest class of all, the mere labourer, is the only one whose advance. ment is not evident; there is even cause to fear that his condition is worse now than it was sixty years ago. Certainly the number of the distressed has greatly increased.

The consideration then forces itself upon us with painful urgency; how can the general welfare of the country be promoted above all, how can the condition of the labourer be advanced? We have taken a hasty review of the connection between Great Britain and this country, in order to show how far the defects in our national character, how far our backwardness in civilization, is to be traced to the past relations between the two countries, and to what extent each country, respectively, is responsible for such a state of things. We have been also anxious to impress upon our readers, that there is not now, nor has there been for the last fifty years, anything in our connexion with England, which could, by possibility, impede our social progress. Within that period, the fault has lain with ourselves, and within ourselves must we seek the remedy. Let us endeavour to see wherein the remedy consists.

Education will, of course, suggest itself first to every man-but it is impossible that we could here enter upon the wide field of inquiry which this word suggests. Educate the peo

ple with no niggard hand, it is cheap at any cost. The present government grant for education is about equivalent to the cost of maintaining four cavalry regiments; how many of these could be dispensed with, if the people were universally educated. Educate them, and you will destroy the seditious influence of the priests and incendiaries. Educate them, and you will fit them to judge for themselves, at least on the ordinary interests of their everyday life; and, above all things, educate them industrially-educate them in those pursuits of industry to which their life is to be devotededucate them in the arts of til lage and agriculture, by which they and the country are to be sustained. Model farms, and such instructors as Lord Clarendon sent out, will do much. But, after all, to effect anything of general and universal benefit, the industrial education must originate with the proprietors of the estates. What can be accomplished in this way, is obvious to every one travelling through the country when he comes upon the estate of an active resident proprietor; but, perhaps, the most forcible example that the country affords of what can be effected in the way of industrial education, by an energetic and well-intentioned landed proprietor, is to be found in the estate of Lord George Hill, on the county Donegal. Lord George Hill purchased this property in 1837; it was a great tract of country, something over 20,000 acres ; the inhabitants were in the lowest depths of poverty and barbarism, the children naked, men and cattle housed promiscuously together, the houses filled with dung, never cleaned out but once in the year, wretched rags for gar ments, or rushes for bedding-in 1843, the same property shewed a considerable domestic manufacture of woollens, stockings, and flannels, comfortable cottages, well thatched; clean rooms, and proper and sufficient bedding and furniture. Such is the renovation which, in the short space of six years, can be accomplished by a proprietor, who is zealous and resolute, and intelligent; and who, moreover as in this case, has the control over his property, and has it unencumbered—but more of this presently.

Emigration is a subject that naturally suggests itself in the conside