the symptoms of your uneasiness, draw conclusions from them as to its hidden causes, observe on some circumstances connected with the recent relief system which seem to have increased it, and persuade you, if possible, to mitigate your resentment, or at all events to express it as it is expressed by English gentlemen who share your delusion. In the most important of these objects I fear that I may have failed; and if so I ought to apologise for having given you so much trouble in vain. Should you accompany me farther, we will discuss in a more serious tone the more serious of the imputations brought against my countrymen. If, without palliating our faults, I can show that they are less than you imagine, I hope that you will be well pleased; and should I prove that, without ceasing to be ours, they are yours also in part, let me trust that you will draw an inference as to what your future policy in Ireland ought to be, and help to amend what you have helped to impair.

LETTER II.

The Faults of the Irish.-The continued Existence of Society in Ireland accounted for. The Connection between Irish Faults and past Misgovernment.-Brief Sketch of Events in Ireland.-Variations of English Policy according to Change of Circumstances.-Outlawry, Legal Tyranny, Corruption.-The Irish Constitution.--The Union.Catholic Emancipation.—Agitation.-The Penal Laws still operate in Ireland.-English Intolerance still finds a Mode of expressing itself. National Debt of England to Ireland.-Amendment the Test of Repentance. Imperial Legislation during Forty-seven Years.-A Poor Law. Neither the Responsibilities nor the Rights of Property asserted in Time.-The Problem of to-day the same as that at the Time of the Union.

SIR,

I PROCEED to discuss the specific charges brought against Ireland. It is not without humiliation that I admit the faults of my countrymen, although I believe that my country can afford those admissions which truth requires. The reluctance with which I make them is, however, mitigated by the consideration, that what you imagine to be our complete and final condemnation is by far the strongest part of our case against you. Unhappy the country in whose mouth even justice becomes a railing accusation; unhappy that other country whose faults are amongst her weapons of defence, and whose virtues have so often betrayed her! The

tu quoque argument is the last to which I would willingly resort; nor shall I allude in this letter to any defects on your part, except those which are so inextricably interwoven with ours, that to handle one class is to handle both. I would gladly omit all mention of these also were it possible to dispense in argument with that connection which subsists between cause and effect. In the mean time, Sir, be assured that this is a practical question. Material improvement will not take place without moral amendment; and should you be disposed to undertake the latter, you ought to understand that the work on your side of St. George's Channel and the work on our side is one work, and that, to be carried on in either country, it must be carried on simultaneously in both.

Among the sins with which you charge us are the following, ranged in the order of their presumed wickedness, viz. :—

1. Our poverty.

2. Our lawlessness.

3. Our disregard of truth.

4. Our bullying propensities.

5. Our sloth, procrastination, helplessness, &c. 6. Our insolent content, and savage merriment in

misery.

7. Our bad taste, and peevish ingratitude to you. I have already stated that I shall notice those accusations only which contain some particle of truth;

D

Land

but I must own that the first two charges in the above black list are true altogether. Poor we are, and he would be a bold man who denied it. lords, farmers, and labourers; these three classes are all poor, and so poor, that if you would support the country by compelling any one of them to maintain the other two, (to receive in turn no doubt the same assistance,) you act as wisely as if you desired a man to become rich by shifting his halfpence from one pocket into the other. Our merchants and manufacturers, also, of whom we have but few, are poor; you would call them adventurers: our professions are overstocked; in fact, the only men well paid are the attorneys who put diseased estates out of pain. The lawlessness of Ireland is about equal to the poverty which causes it. I do not speak of this year merely, which has exhibited the somewhat riotous saturnalia of despair; but, from the earliest times, the people of this country, though very reverential in disposition, have had no respect for the law of the land. They are much addicted to litigation among themselves; but though fond of the law as a game, law as an object of reverence is what they do not understand. This is a grievous calamity; but not enjoying your gift of wondering, we are obliged to contemplate the fact simply with regret. The marvel to us is, not the lawlessness that surrounds us, but that amidst so complete an indifference to the law of the land, as such, civil polity can exist. Society in this country

is a great Fact for which it is hard to account: under the same circumstances it would at once go to pieces in England. The truth is, that there exists a principle of compensation in all human things, the result of a Providence more compassionate than the theories of the philosophers. There is an unwritten law as well as a written; and of these, the more merciful has proved the more durable and the stronger. In all countries they flourish in some measure, each class at the other's expense. There are in Ireland social traditions (those immemorial and undefined "mores" without which laws are of no avail but to prolong decay) which have been to us a substitute for law; there are household affections which extend their peaceful influence far beyond the limit of the hearth; there is a reverence for antiquity and eminence, civil or ecclesiastical; there is a moral sense, profound though perverted; there is religion, abundant in quantity, whatever you may think of its quality. The consequence of these things is that there has been a Society.

Society would seem to include permanently its imaginative element as well as its sensual and moral; and the first, though on it hangs the whole gradation of ranks and honorary distinctions, is subject to strange aberrations. In England, fifty years ago, the man who was but a footpad on the common, was a hero at Tyburn. In Ireland, if any one shoots you for your purse, he is hated and despised; whereas the man who shoots you to revenge an agrarian feud