have suffered little from this annoyance, perhaps because men complain less loudly of bondage than of starvation. It is a hard thing, Sir, to be assailed by the immediate breath of some person whom we have injured, and who is loathsome to us;-hard to look upon the scar which we had inflicted long ago, and intended to forget. Within the last two years the distress of England on this score appears to have been increasing; and it has been expressed in a tone of acrimony rising through the gradations of animosity up to abhorrence and a sort of contempt, or assumed contempt, at which for some time it has been stationary. This anger has, however, been subject to laws, by a careful induction from which we are enabled to calculate its intensity and foretell its amount at any given period. The more you have had to pay for Ireland, the more you have disliked her. Had it not been for prejudice and antipathy, England would have been conciliated toward Ireland by the endeavour to serve her.

Before proceeding further, Sir, there is one statement which I desire to make, not so much for your sake as for my own, and because there are many countrymen of yours to whom I would not willingly give pain, and whose censure I would not wantonly incur. The class to which I allude are, I hope, neither so unjust nor so unwise as to resent the fact that I do not think the faults of their country past cure, or their country so far enfeebled and degenerate, that she cannot

afford (as sometimes happens to individual men who have no part in true greatness) to dispense with her faults. I have sometimes been tempted to think that, as the mythologists make mention of three Jupiters, so there must be at least two Englands. In her past history, I have observed indications of a compound nature as diverse as her twofold language; and in recent times they seem to contend for the mastery. It is with one only that I have to do at present.

I have to entreat that this plain introductory statement may be kept in mind by any one who chooses to read these observations. If he thinks that there exists a certain England, noble, wise, and strong, against which such charges as I make must be as unjust as the charges which I repel, I think the same; and I believe that this better England not only exists, but has existed for the last thousand years, and has wrought after its kind. It has also, I believe, slept at times, and not known what was done in its name by that more sordid England with which it is strangely bound up. The distinction to which I refer is not one of classes or orders: each of these two Englands is composed of clergy and laity, rich and poor, aristocrats and democrats, agriculturists and manufacturers, Whigs and Tories; and, a sad and singular fact, the two have occasionally concurred in the same course, influenced by the most opposite motives indeed, but by a common delusion. My

sentiments with regard to my better England, I shall state, before I conclude, with as much sincerity as I state my convictions in the first place concerning your England, which we believe also to exist by reason of the wounds which we bear; as, however, books are not always read to the end, especially the dull or the hostile, I have given this warning in time, in order that any person who applies to the whole of his country, what I have said of its baser element, may have only his own inattention to blame. For six centuries the bad England generally kept, vigil for Ireland, while for the rest of the world it generally slept. This fact is attested by the just award of European opinion, which reveres your history at large, but regards the Irish part of it with a sentiment of resentment, wonder, and scorn. It is not for me to determine how this mysterious duality exists; all I know is, that England is not one, but two; and that while the loftier influence reigns in her brain, and looks forth from her eye, the more earthly spirit occasionally masters her hand, and miserably simulates her voice. It is the latter England, that is to say, your England, with which I have at present to converse; and if you think my words too harsh, I beg to express my belief that nations are not called upon, like private persons, when smitten on one cheek to turn the other, and that a course of contumelious injury, justified by those who inflict it, and fatal alike to the maligner and the maligned, is less

fitly replied to by a gentle justice than by a just severity.

My intention is in these letters to search out the causes of your dislike to us, by analysing its symptoms, and to suggest to you motives for concealing its intensity, if you cannot absolutely control it. I shall next make some inquiry as to the pretexts by you commonly assigned for your sentiments towards us; and as these are grounded upon your notions of Irish character, I shall suggest a larger conception of that character, and indicate the mode in which its less amiable part was formed. I shall next point out a few reasons which make it the policy of England, though but in self-defence, rather to assist Ireland than to revile her, or at least not to attempt both courses at once; and shall mention a few strictly practical measures by which such aid may be afforded. I shall then touch upon certain reasons, secret even from yourself, which make this course distasteful to you; and since they rest on an estimate of your own character as erroneous as that which you have formed of ours, I shall lead you to a different point of view from which that character may be contemplated. It is the custom of effeminate men, whether rough or polished in deportment, to aggravate their own sufferings by supposing them to be peculiar, if not unprecedented; I shall therefore endeavour to mitigate yours by proving to you that your calamities result from natural laws, which, if you choose to understand

them, you may make your friends. I shall, in conclusion, describe the reward which may accrue to you if you should adopt a right course in time, and on right motives; as well as a career which may yet lie before your country more glorious than you have yourself conceived; and grounded on a character substantially nobler than you have ever cared to impute to her.

I adopt this method of treatment in the belief that it involves the most practical question which can be discussed—I mean that of the temper and spirit in which all secondary questions should be examined. Temporary success sometimes attends a selfish policy; but wisdom accompanies justice; nor can I doubt that England, if once liberated from the prejudices which enslave her, would exercise towards Ireland that sound judgment which characterizes her above most nations, in the management of her own immediate concerns.

In the spring of 1846 your sentiments towards Ireland were only incidentally expressed in debates on more important matters. "It was a shame," you said, "to make so much of the Irish famine by way of depreciating those laws which protected English agricultural industry." In the autumn of 1846 you were warned by many a significant voice from this country, that the measures adopted by the Imperial Parliament (hastily, and when honourable members were bent on enjoying a little partridge