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possibly through some discontent among his tenantry, though he was a kind landlord, the King's County magistrates reverted to Mr Drummond's proposition, as a subject on which to vent their passion; and it shews how wild and desperate must have been their wrath that they could fall out with a proposition so simply indisputable. It was declared that in that letter, the Tipperary magistrates were 'bearded and insulted' by Mr Drummond. resolution was carried without a division, that it appears to this meeting that the answer conveyed to the magistrates of Tipperary from Mr Undersecretary Drummond has had the unfortunate effect of increasing the animosities entertained against the owners of the soil by the occupants, who now constitute themselves the sole arbiters of the rights as well as the duties of property.' Lord Charleville ventured to declare, in moving this resolution, that the saying about property having duties as well as rights, though innocent enough in itself, was felt to be little less than a deliberate and unfeeling insult in the circumstances under which it was offered. When the plainest truths of morals are felt to be personal insults, all men see how the matter stands; and all men know that those plain truths are then made vital. And so it was in this case. The Tory landlords of Ireland have never forgotten that property has its duties as well as its rights. But the annunciation of this truth was fatal to all perception on their part of the impartiality of government rule.

One instance of the impartiality—of the want of respect of persons-exasperated the ascendency' leaders extremely. It was not only poor men-subconstables and the like-who were dismissed from the government service for Orangeism, but great men also, with equal speed and certainty. Colonel Verner, who represented the Orangemen of the empire in the Commons, during the investigation of the Fairman plot, gave at an election dinner, as a party toast, the battle of the Diamond.' Mr Drummond wrote to inquire whether it could be possible that Colonel Verner was thus a party to the commemoration of a lawless and disgraceful conflict. Colonel Verner's reply first supposed that he could not be expected to condescend to reply, and requested that any future question which the secretary might be desired to ask, should be expressed in terms better qualified to invite an answer;' and then refused to answer the inquiry at all. The chiefsecretary, Lord Morpeth, now wrote himself, and, assigning reasons at length for the step taken by the government, signified to Colonel Verner his removal from the commission of the peace, and from the office of deputy-lieutenant of the county of Tyrone. Colonel Verner brought the matter before parliament, and thereby did an unintentional service to the government by publishing, in the most effectual manner, the evidence of its principles and methods of rule. Among the ignorant and passionate poor, meantime, the repressive and equalising rule of the government was extending, without its being felt as pressure. The police force of Dublin, and the constabulary throughout the country, were renovated and organised till they became as fine a body of

police as exists in any country. Where the justices could not be relied on for repressing political demonstrations, stipendiary magistrates were planted, to direct the constabulary; and the quiet which followed surprised even the authors of it. Many causes of breach of the law were removed by the Tithe Act, and by new provisions and arrangements in relation to the collection of rents and the serving of the processes of the inferior local courts. Collisions between the people and rent-collectors and processservers were thus almost entirely obviated. But provision was at the same time made for the more certain and effectual punishment of all who still offended. Government undertook the prosecution of several classes of offences which before must be pursued by private parties, who might be accessible to fear or favour. Crown prosecutors appeared at the quarter-sessions-one for each county-and obtained convictions for a great number of offences which would otherwise, though well known, have gone unpunished-to the disgrace of justice, and the demoralisation of the people. Witnesses were protected by government, before and after the trials, and publicly recognised as citizens who were doing their duty to society. By a steady use of these methods, more was done to enlighten the Irish as to the true function of law, and to convince them of its being a blessing to every man of them all, than could have been supposed possible in so short a term of years. But the underlying mischief was not removed nor touched; and those who looked to the admirable administration of law and justice by Lord Normanby's government for the redemption of Ireland were wrong.

3. The idea that an affectionate despotism-a government by apostles-is the only government that will suit the Irish people, unfit as they are thought to have shewn themselves for a share in a representative system, seems almost too romantic and unpractical for an express mention in our age. But it happens, curiously enough, that we have evidence before our eyes that, suitable as a government by apostles may be to the Irish mind and temper, it could not avail for the redemption of the country. There has been no want of apostles or of idols in our own time; and little permanent good has accrued from the action of the very best. Lord Normanby and his coadjutors were truly apostles, on a mission of justice and mercy; yet, after how short a course of years were they compelled to avow that their 'policy of conciliation was exhausted!' In the latter years of their term, too, they had the advantage of speaking in the name of the queen, who was perfectly idolised throughout the length and breadth of the land. We are assured by those who have explored the repository of Irish songs, and collected the political ballads which abound among the peasantry, that in O'Connell's most triumphant days, his simplest admirers did not dream of his title of king interfering with that of the queen. Her majesty, we are told, had a perfect host of volunteer poet-laureates; and the publishers of the popular literature declared that the most favourite old national ballads would not sell unless some lines in praise of Victoria were added. In the religious ballads, her majesty is even

CHAP. VI.]

more prominent still. The prophecies of this beloved order of poetry, whose tone is prophetic throughout, all point to the restoration of the true Church, and of Irish prosperity in consequence. Always favourites of the Catholic peasantry, from Queen Elizabeth's days to Queen Victoria's, they circulate most diligently in times of discontent and approaching revolt; and they now, for the first time since the Revolution, expressed trust in a lawful ruler. In Elizabeth's days, the retriever was to be the King of Spain; then the O'Neill; then the Stuarts, regnant and exiled; then Dan. O'Connell; and, at the time under our notice, Queen Victoria. She is to build up the old Munster Cathedral, and the Catholic Church generally; and to remedy every evil, great and small, that afflicts humanity in her Irish dominions. And there is, in the eyes of the singers of these ballads, no unreasonableness in expecting such things from 'our noble young queen:' on the contrary, it would be impious to expect less-Victoria being especially watched over by the Virgin, and aided by St Francis; and having as supporters Lord Mulgrave on the one hand, and Dan. O'Connell on the other. While the Orangemen of the north were striving to outdo everybody in protestations of devotion to the queen, and she was thus adored by the Catholic peasantry of the south, her representative and ministers had no permanent success in their efforts to 'tranquillise Ireland.' Nor, as it appears, would they have succeeded better if the great apostle of all had been at the antipodes. In governing by an affectionate despotism, it would always be a difficulty to make sure of having but one despot at a time. O'Connell, however, though he might at any moment interfere with the course of the Mulgrave or any other administration, was not, in fact, at this period interfering with it. For a short time, he left off calling the government 'the base, bloody, and brutal Whigs,' and mentioned repeal only now and then, to keep up the government to its business, as he thought. He heard with delighted ears, and repeated with an untiring tongue, the declaration of Lord John Russell, in February 1837, of the principles which the Whigs consulted in their theory of Irish government; a declaration which he interpreted as a manifesto in favour of ruling Ireland by an affectionate despotism. 'I will take leave,' said Lord John Russell, in introducing the Irish Municipal Reform Bill, 'to quote the principle of our conduct from the recorded words of a very great man. . . . . Mr Fox stated, in very eloquent speech which he delivered in 1797, the principles upon which he conceived the government of Ireland should be conducted. He stated in his usual frank, it might be said incautious manner, that he conceived that concessions should be made to the people of Ireland; he said, if he found he had not conceded enough, he would concede more; he said that he thought the only way of governing Ireland was to please the people of Ireland-that he knew no better source of strength to this country; and he declared in one sentence which I will read to the House, his wish with respect to the government of Ireland. "My wish is," said Mr Fox, "that the whole people of Ireland should have the same principles, the same system, the same operation of

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government; and though it may be a subordinate consideration, that all classes should have an equal chance of emolument: in other words, I would have the whole Irish government regulated by Irish notions and Irish prejudices; and I firmly believe, according to another Irish expression, the more she is under Irish government, the more will she be bound to English interests." This would have been all very well, if the only danger of antagonism had been between Ireland and England; but the theory was vitiated, fatally, by the antagonism of parties within Ireland herself. However, its enunciation gave sufficient satisfaction to O'Connell to secure his temporary co-operation. He praised the Whigs, dined with the viceroy, railed at the opposition in the House of Commons with a coarseness of language and demeanour which confounded the speaker himself; called upon every peasant in every village to regard himself as a supporter of the government; but. withal kept up his General Association-the successor of the Catholic Association-and gave it the name of the Precursor Society, as a broad hint of the repeal agitation that would follow, if the government fell below his mark.

It was in 1836, when the Lords were throwing out their Municipal Reform Bill, that the organisation was restored, for the rousing of the millions of Ireland,' as Mr Sheil said, 'and a development of the might which slumbers in her arm.' 'The association, the old association, with its millions for its sustainment, is what we want, and what we needs must have again.' And they had it, at its old place of meeting, the Corn Exchange, with its old chair, presented to it by O'Connell; its tribute, under the new name of the justice-rent; its machinery of appeals and of regulation, and of registration, and its old assumption of dictatorial power. It was an affectionate despotism, corroborative for a time of British government, but ready for opposition at any moment. Its change of title from the General to the Precursor Association, was ominous; and it sounded somewhat like a bull when O'Connell, in 1839, at the time of the fiercest parliamentary opposition to the Normanby administration, called upon his 'two millions of Precursors' to rally in defence of the Saxon government of the day. How far the mission of the great apostle of all tended to the tranquillisation of Ireland, it would be a mere mockery to pretend to point out.

As if to meet the objection that the failure of such a mission is ascribable to the vices of the apostle, another affectionate despotism, exercised by a blameless apostle, was now extending in Ireland. In 1829, Ireland spent £6,000,000 on proof-spirits; and there was not a town where men 'beastly drunk' with whisky were not staggering about the streets, ready for a fight on any pretence or none; and not a hamlet in the country where the hovel of the sot might not be seen, bare of comfort and teeming with disease. In the summer of that year, an American gentleman visited a friend at Belfast; and some must have afterwards thought of that blessing on the hospitable, that they may entertain angels unawares.' Dr Penny from America found his host, Dr Edgar, of Belfast, meditating the means

of securing the better observance of the Sabbath, and a purer social conduct altogether, in the city of his abode. Just before this, all good men in the cities of the United States had taken alarm at the spread of intemperance in their prosperous country, and were glad to embrace any method which might promise even a temporary check. The wisest of them were far from supposing that moral restraint can be effectually and permanently secured by any mechanical organisation; and there were many who seriously dreaded the consequences of imposing an artificial check which, if it gave way, would plunge the victim into the worse sin of perjury, and utterly degrade him in his own eyes. If the dispossessed devil should return, he would inevitably bring with him others worse than himself. And the testimony of physicians soon proved but too plainly that there were frequent violations of the pledge, and hopeless relapses into intemperance, now made doubly foul by having become secret and wrapped up in lies. Still, it was so absolutely necessary that something should be done, that the wisest, with trembling tread, followed where the rash rushed in upon the sacred precincts of conscience, and lent a hand to work the machinery by which its free action was to be superseded. They thought they must take their chance with the adults for the sake of the young. They must run the risk of betraying the mature sinner into deeper guilt, to save the rising generation from overpowering temptation. They must shut up the spirit-shops and distilleries, and clear the streets of drunken men, and cleanse the private houses of the smell of rum; they must put the sin and its means and incentives out of sight-out of the reach of every sense-that it might occur as little as possible to any mind, and that children might not be infected into the destruction which had overtaken their fathers. Those who were most clearly sensible of the unsoundness of the principle of societies for individual moral restraint, yet dared not refuse to join this movement in a crisis which, to use the words of an American clergyman, 'threatened to overthrow society, and humanity itself, in the United States.' The work was in progress in that summer when Dr Penny visited Dr Edgar at Belfast. From what he heard, Dr Edgar resolved that his efforts should be made in this direction; and he published his first appeal on behalf of temperance societies, in August 1829. In the course of a year, four travelling-agents dispersed his tracts all over the island. By keeping the subject constantly before the public eye, he caused knowledge, as well as interest, to spring up in every direction; and it was not long before thoughtful men in all parts of Ireland had become aware that four-fifths of the crime brought up for justice, three-fourths of the hopeless beggary at that period, and an immeasurable amount of disease and mental suffering, proceeded from the practice of spirit-drinking. The surgeon-general for Ireland testified that, in Dublin, nearly one-fourth of the deaths of adults were caused by spirit-drinking; a county magistrate of Antrim furnished a list of fortyeight persons who had perished from the same cause, within two miles of his house, and within his own recollection; and there was abundant proof that in

extensive neighbourhoods not one dwelling was pure from the vice. Here was scope for the operations of an affectionate despotism. A fitting apostle came, and the experiment was tried.

From that summer of 1829, temperance societies had been formed here and there-the first being in New Ross, proposed and opened by the Rev. George Carr, a clergyman of the Established Church. In course of time some inhabitants of Cork—a clergyman, a Quaker, a slater, and a tailor-anxious to accomplish a similar object in their city, commended the enterprise to a man, popular above every one in the place, and liberal enough to be on good terms with men of all opinions-a Capuchin friar, and superior of the order, by name Theobald Mathew. It was some years after the first movement that he gave his mind and heart to the work, and thereby became the great moral, as O'Connell was the political, apostle of Ireland.

It must be allowed that something beyond the morality of the case might probably be in the minds of the followers of Father Mathew. Of the two millions whom he had in a few months pledged to temperance, there were, no doubt, many who supposed that some great crisis was at hand which required this act of self-denial from all true Irishmen; that they might be up and awake, have their wits about them, and be ready for action-whether Victoria should come to restore the Catholic Church, or the liberator to be king of Ireland, or repeal should make every man's plot of ground fruitful in potatoes. It was a prevalent belief among the peasantry that Father Mathew could work miracles; and some even declared that he had raised a person from the dead. The terrific zeal with which the people rushed into a condition of temperance, shews an extraordinary strength of expectation, whatever the object of it might be; and there is no question of the fact, that the political leaders in Ireland considered it of importance to organise and train the water-drinkers of Ireland into a force, with its marching companies, its brass bands, and its community of sentiment. These things shew, not only the blessing that it was to the Irish to have for an apostle a man so disinterested as Father Mathew, but also how insecure and dangerous is government by affectionate despotism, which may always be liable to be appropriated by the most artful and unscrupulous agitator for his own purposes. After a year or two from the crowding of the countrypeople into Limerick to take the pledge, in such multitudes as to break down iron railings, and cause deaths from trampling and pressure-within a year or two of the time when Father Mathew found it necessary to travel among his hundreds of thousands of disciples, because their thronging to him was dangerous to life and limb, it was noticed that the Irish character appeared to have sensibly changed. If, as has been said, the rebellion of 1798 was put down by force of whisky, and not of arms, it had now evidently become of first-rate importance that the hosts of sober, grave-faced men, who came marching to the temperance field, without fun and frolic, and with no noise but that of their practised bands of music, should not be driven or led into rebellion;

CHAP. VI.]

for it was clear that whisky would not now put them down. It must be hoped that the evil-disposed would find it less easy now than formerly to lead or drive them into rebellion, for assuredly rebellion would henceforth be a more formidable thing than it had hitherto been. Here were two millions of men, of a passionate nature-suddenly debarred from an accustomed outlet of passion and animal spirits, and, by the same change, left with a large amount of time on their hands, and with heads cool for thought and device. If they had had more knowledge and a sufficiency of good leaders, this would have been the

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opportunity-the finest ever offered in the history of their country-for attaching them to the English connection, by shewing to them the benefits of that connection under the Normanby government, and the far greater blessings which must accrue upon their being merely deserved. Now was the golden opportunity for beginning a sound political education, if only the great political apostle had been worthy of the honour of his post. This could not have redeemed Ireland, directly or immediately, for the great underlying mischief was still untouched; but it might have somewhat softened the horrors of the

impending doom of Ireland; and it would at least have mitigated the pain on every hand, if that doom had overtaken a nation of thoughtful rational men, striving with courageous prudence and energy against their fate, amidst the respect of a sympathising world, instead of a mass of helpless and heart-wrung sufferers, betrayed by selfish or senseless agitators, and beguiled to the last by visions conceived in nonsense and vanishing in woe. Father Mathew did his work-did it in purity of heart and devotedness of soul. O'Connell perverted it, as we shall hereafter see. He seized upon the new gravity and critical leisure which Father Mathew had evoked -he seized upon the minds all alive with wonder, and the hearts all glowing with gratitude at the blessed change wrought by a general temperance in health and home, and turned them full into the channel of his repeal agitation. He called, and probably believed, his rule over the Catholic Irish an affectionate despotism; but we can hardly conceive of his influence being more fatal to his trusting countrymen, if he had laid waste their fields with actual firebrands instead of with those of the tongue, and driven them from their homes with curses, instead of unsettling their lives with cruel promises of fabulous good. Ireland has been abundantly cursed with barbarous despots; but it may

be doubted whether any one of them, in the long course of centuries, has perpetrated such effectual cruelty as the despot whom his victims called their liberator, and hoped to see their king.

Father Mathew did his work, on the whole, wellunquestionably with as much singleness of aim as devotion of soul. Wherever he had been, blessings sprang up, as if he had indeed been the heaven-sent friend that he was taken to be. The water-springs gave out health and refreshment, and the daily food had a new relish. The dull eye grew bright; the mad pulse subsided; the staggering gait became a manly tread. The cabin roof kept out the rain; the decent table, with decent seats round it, appeared again in the middle of the lately empty room. There was a bed now, inviting to a sleep which had become light and sweet. The chest gradually filled with clothes, and the stocking in the thatch grew heavy with money. The wrangling voice, roaring curses or tipsy songs, grew gentle and cheerful. The very echoes-at least the celebrated ones-of Killarney, and the mountain-passes sought by strangers, had changed their tone and theme, and now promised coffee instead of whisky to the guides on their return. The distilleries were shut up by dozens; and the little suspicious clouds of blue smoke which used to curl away over the heathery knolls

in the wilds, seemed to have whiffed away altogether. The grog-shops were changed into coffee-kitchens, and men laid their wits together in speculations about the tactics of O'Connell and the fate of Ireland, instead of breaking one another's heads in drunken frays. There was a large increase, in the very first year, in the number of depositors in savings-banks; at the end of two years, when the number of the pledged exceeded two millions and a half, no one of the whole host had appeared before judge or jury. Ireland had before paid away six millions in one year for proof-spirit: now, in two years, the consumption, for all purposes whatever, had lessened to little more than one half. The drawback on the satisfaction of all this was, that the principle on which the reform proceeded was not altogether sound, and the reform itself could not therefore be permanent in all its entireness. When the superstitious disciple kneeled down before the heaven-sent friar, spoke the oath, received the sign of the cross and the uniform blessing, and then had the medal and card put into his hand, it was in a firm belief that some tremendous plague would come upon him if he broke his pledge; that Father Mathew knew men's thoughts, and had a divine power to heal and to save; and that some divine virtue resided in the medal and card. Father Mathew did not originate the superstitions; but he thought it hopeless to contend with them. 'If I could prevent them,' he said in a letter, 'without impeding the glorious cause, they should not have been permitted; but both are so closely entwined, that the tares cannot be pulled out without plucking up the wheat also. The evil will correct itself; and the good, with the divine assistance, will remain and be permanent.' It needs no shewing that the temperance movement of Father Mathew is thus reduced from a secure moral reform to a temporary enthusiasm, in as far as the superstitions are included within its scope. It is a rational hope that much seed may have fallen into good ground; but the sower has grievously erred in consigning some to soil where it cannot take root, but must wither away. It is, however, a most impressive fact that, by one of the affectionate despotisms coexisting with Lord Mulgrave's eminently constitutional rule, two millions and a half of gay or brutal drunkards were turned into a corps of the most thoughtful and emotional men in Ireland.

4. There were persons and parties who believed that Ireland would be best redeemed by a cure of her notorious political corruption; and that that cure might be best wrought by such a machinery of supervision as would, in fact, restrict the franchise Iwithin what were called safe limits. When men related to each other how landlords in Ireland had cut up their estates to make small freeholds; what droves of ignorant serfs were carried to the pollingbooths to vote in a mass as their landlord bade them; how these freeholders suddenly passed over from the dominion of their landlords to that of their priests, and how this led to the disfranchisement of the forties--they were apt to agree that a state of things so bad as to have caused that disfranchisement must be most radically cured by an extension of the same process, or of an equivalent

safeguard. From such views and consultations issued Lord Stanley's Registration Bill for Ireland of 1840.

There was no dispute about the enormity of the abuses of the franchise in Ireland. Lord Melbourne's government waited only for a further settlement of the registration machinery of England and Scotland to take in hand the reform of such corruption in Ireland as was practised by means of registration certificates. It was not difficult for a man to get registered three or four times over, obtaining a certificate each time; and, of course, it was easy enough to make these certificates passports for fictitious votes. In order to guard against this and other abuses, Lord Stanley's measure proposed a method and machinery of registration so onerous and irksome as would, in the opinion of government and of a majority in parliament, act as a virtual disfranchisement. If every vote might be annually revised, and an appeal on the part of the voter must be made to the judge once a year, it could not be believed that voters circumstanced as multitudes of the Irish tenantry were, would or could undergo such a discipline for the sake of the privilege of the franchise. Lord J. Russell thought this bill the most formidable attack yet made on the principles of the Reform Act. The aim of the reform legislation was to extend and facilitate the exercise of the franchise, while this proposed method of registration threw every possible difficulty and discouragement in the way. As the case was, however, one which could not be neglected, and a bad measure would be carried if a good one were not proposed, the ministers bestirred themselves to prepare an Irish Registration Bill which should drive out Lord Stanley's. The ministers did not disguise their apprehensions of the effect of the opposition measure, if carried, nor that they conceived its operation, if not its intent, to be to counteract the emancipation measure of 1829, by rendering it difficult or impossible for the poorerthat is, the Catholic portion of Ireland-to send their fair share of representatives to parliament. Lord John Russell pointed to the much-dreaded power of O'Connell in Ireland as little formidable while the Irish should have faith in the justice and good-will of the British parliament. That,' said he, 'I believe to be the state of things now. But let this bill pass; shew that you are determined, step by step, to take away the franchise from the people of Ireland, to disable them from sending Roman Catholics as members of this House; obtain that supremacy, if you can, which you have not had for many years; indulge in the triumph which the minority would then indulge in over the majority; insult, vilify, and abuse the Roman Catholics; tell them that the people are ignorant, degraded, and priest-ridden, and speak of those priests in a tone of contumely and contempt: do all this, and you will have done more for repeal than anything the honourable and learned gentleman has been able to effect by his speeches upon this subject.' Such language as this from a member of the cabinet indicates what was felt of the extremity of the risk. Lord Stanley and his friends naturally