most consummate monument of legislative wisdom that human ingenuity has yet been able to devise. But these persons go back to quesabout for the oppressions and enormities of former ages, and hawk up the minutest details of the flagitious traffic that once was carried on at the expense of our rights and liberties. Honest and true men will pursue a very different course, and, however deeply they may deplore the wrongs and losses of their country, will unite their efforts to bury in oblivion those recollections, which can afford no remedy for evils past, and only kindle feelings of asperity to check the growth of present good. I too have read the history of my country with an interest painfully intense, and, as Lacon would say, "intensely painful;" but though the perusal be an useful and necessary exercise to enable us to account for the backward state of our people, (and, indeed, it then becomes the wonder to conceive how we have advanced even so far as we have done;) yet if we would read to good purpose, we must forbear to dwell upon the evil days that are gone by, and fix our steadfast regards upon the present, when every blessing that is open to the people of England is equally free to us, and every prospect of prosperity and happiness which has been matured already there, may be, and, with the

blessing of God, shall be, realized with us also. In truth, to us, as to the Athenians, it forms our best consolation that that which was the worst feature in our past history affords us the happiest presage for the future; for if whilst we were well and wisely governed we had come short of happiness and order, what would we now have left us to hope? It is not, however, by railing at the ill that dead Englishmen have done us, we shall reap any profit, but by proving it to living Englishmen, as we can prove, and that clearly too, that they can do themselves and their country a great and essential service by obliterating the distinction which has so long unfortunately subsisted between us, and by considering us, as we really are, an integral part of their own nation, in which they may vest their money, and exert their industry, with every the same safeguard for their security as on the east side of the channel, and with far more profit.

It is very true, indeed, that there are more and weightier duties incumbent on the possessor of property, whether landed or commercial, in Ireland than in England, because the people require yet to be instructed in much that they have already learned in the more advanced country, and this teaching must needs come from those that are set in authority over them.

Nothing can be more certain than that such habits of cleanliness and thrift as they are now deficient in they may most easily be taught, if their superiors will evince such an interest in their welfare as but to tell them what to do, and afterwards to ask, or still better to see, if they have done it. At a time, too, like the present, when the legislature is contemplating very expensive means of providing for the redundant population of the British Isles, such, for example, as transporting emigrants to our colonies, it may be worth while to consider that a large resource, both for the additional employment of human labour and for the production of human food, yet remain in the superior cultivation of the land in Ireland; and that if this be effected by a diminution of the number of small holdings, so as to throw the lands into the hands of persons possessed of capital enough to till it properly, not only will legitimate occupation be furnished for a greater number of individuals than there now is, but this will greatly tend to check their rapid increase for the future.

F

LETTER XIII.

"Qualem decet esse sororum."

THERE is a loud and foolish clamour amongst those who affect to be discontented with the state of things in Ireland against the legislative union of the two countries, but it is by no means true that a general prejudice against the English exists throughout the island. In fact, the very contrary is the case. As to the folly of this outcry of the agitators it is sufficiently apparent on the slightest investigation of the facts. The exposure of their ignorance is the best refutation of their calumny. They tell us there is more complaining in our streets than there was wont to be, and they point to stately mansions in our capital untenanted by the great, telling us that these are the effects of the never-sufficiently-to-be-detested Union. Now, it is true that fewer noblemen and great landed proprietors reside in Dublin since, than before, the Union; but it is also certainly true, that within fifteen years after that event, ere yet we could fully reap its benefits, the trade of the country had doubled, and every other

species of improvement had advanced with still more rapid strides. It is not for me to rake into every dirty proceeding that may have occurred in carrying the measure into effect. I know, indeed, that state physicians, as well as those of the body natural, often find it necessary to make the patient worse in the process of effecting his cure; but if acts of individual delinquency were committed, I seek not to palliate any man's enormities. I confess I do not think that we had any very great loss of our Irish houses of parliament,-that they contained many good-for-nothing men is a point which I believe few will be found to contest. Mr. Newenham, one of the few who have written with any tolerable degree of fairness and accuracy concerning Ireland, is of opinion, that we had a right to a greater number of representatives in the legislature of the United Kingdom than was then conceded to us. The method adopted was to adjust the proportion of Irish members to the comparative population and the comparative wealth of the kingdom; and there would have been little to complain of in this particular, had the comparison been fairly instituted on these data rightly assumed. But he complains that our population, which was estimated at four millions, was judged of by the returns of the hearth-money collectors,