usages, institutions, habits, and affections of the community. A popular revolution would overthrow the monarchy and the aristocracy; and even if it were not true that revolution propagates revolution, as waves gives rise to waves, till the agitation is stopped by the iron boundary of despotism, it would still require ages of anxious discomfort, before we could build up again that magnificent fabric, which now requires purification rather than repair; or secure that permanency to our new establishments, without which they could have no other good quality. march, and mix with the ranks of the offend ers, that they may be enabled to reclaim and repress them, and save both them and them selves from a sure and shameful destruction They have no longer strength to overawe o. repel either party by a direct and forcible attack; and must work, therefore, by gentle and conciliatory means, upon that which is most dangerous, most flexible, and most capable of being guided to noble exertions. Like the Sabine women of old, they must throw themselves between the kindred combatants; and stay the fatal feud, by praises and embraces, and dissuasives of kindness and flattery. Grievances, but to comply with their Desires, in so far as they can be complied with, with less hazard than must evidently arise from disregarding them. We do not say, therefore, that a thorough reconciliation between the Whig royalists and the great body of the people is desirable merely-but that it is indispensable: since it is a dream-a gross solecism and absurdity, to suppose, that such a party should exist, unless supported by the affections and approbation of the people. The advocates of prerogative have the support of prerogative; and they who rule by corruption and the direct agency of wealth, have wealth and the means of corruption in their hands:-But the friends of national freedom must be recognised by the nation. If the Whigs are not supported by the people, they can have no support; and, therefore, if the people are seduced away from them, they must just go after them and bring them back: And are no more to be excused for leaving them to be corrupted by Demagogues, than they would be for leaving them to be oppressed by tyrants. If a party is to exist at all, therefore, friendly at once to the liberties of the people and the integrity of the monarchy, and holding that liberty is best secured by a monarchical establishment, it is absolutely necessary that it should possess the confidence and attachment of the people; and if it appear at any time to have lost it, the first of all its duties, and the neces sary prelude to the discharge of all the rest, is to regain it, by every effort consistent with probity and honour. Such we humbly conceive to be the course, and the causes, of the evils which we believe Even those who do not much love or care to be impending. It is time now to inquire for the people, are now called upon to pacify whether there be no remedy. If the whole them, by granting, at least, all that can reasonnation were actually divided into revolution-ably be granted; and not only to redress their ists and high-monarchy men, we do not see how they could be prevented from fighting, and giving us the miserable choice of a despotism or a tumultuary democracy. Fortunately, however, this is not the case. There is a third party in the nation-small, indeed, in point of numbers, compared with either of the others--and, for this very reason, low, we fear, in present popularity-but essentially powerful from talents and reputation, and calculated to become both popular and authoritative, by the fairness and the firmness of its principles. This is composed of the Whig Royalists of England,-men who, without forgetting that all government is from the people, and for the people, are satisfied that the rights and liberties of the people are best maintained by a regulated hereditary monarchy, and a large, open aristocracy; and who are as much averse, therefore, from every attempt to undermine the throne, or to discredit the nobles, as they are indignant at every project to insult or enslave the people. In the better days of the constitution, this party formed almost the whole ordinary opposition, and bore no inconsiderable proportion to that of the courtiers. It might be said too, to have with it, not only the greater part of those who were jealous of the prerogative, but all that great mass of the population which was apparently neutral and indifferent to the issue of the contest. The new-sprung factions, however, have swallowed up almost all this disposable body; and have drawn largely from the ranks of the old constitutionalists themselves. In consequence of this change of circumstances, they can no longer act with Now, it may be true, that the present alieneffect, as a separate party; and are far too ation of the body of the people from the oid weak to make head, at the same time, against constitutional champions of their freedom, the overbearing influence of the Crown, and originated in the excesses and delusion of the the rising pretensions of the people. It is nec- people themselves; but it is not less true, that essary, therefore, that they should now leave the Whig royalists have increased that alien. this attitude of stern and defying mediation; ation by the haughtiness of their deportment and, if they would escape being crushed-by the marked displeasure with which they along with the constitution on the collision of the two hostile bodies, they must identify themselves cordially with the better part of one of them, and thus soothe, ennoble, and control it, by the infusion of their own spirit, and the authority of their own wisdom and experience. Like faithful generals, whose troops have mutinied, they must join the have disavowed most of the popular proceedings-and the tone of needless and imprudent distrust and reprobation with which they have treated pretensions that were only partly inadmissible. They have given too much way to the offence which they naturally received from the rudeness and irreverence of the terms in which their grievances were frequently We, in short, are for the monarchy and the aristocracy of England, as the only sure supports of a permanent and regulated freedom: But we do not see how either is now to be preserved, except by surrounding them with the affection of the people. The admirers of arbitrary power, blind to the great lesson which all Europe is now holding out to them, have attempted to dispense with this protec tion; and the demagogues have taken advan tage of their folly to excite the people to withdraw it altogether. The true friends of the constitution must now bring it back; and must reconcile the people to the old monarchy and the old Parliament of their land, by restraining the prerogative within its legitimate bounds, and bringing back Parliament to its natural habits of sympathy and concord with its constituents. The people, therefore, though it may be deluded, must be reclaimed by gentleness, and treated with respect and indulgence. All indications, and all feelings of jealousy or contempt, must be abjured. Whatever is to be granted, should be granted with cordial alacrity; and all denials should be softened with words and with acts of kind stated; and have felt too proud an indignation, sions. But the chief and the leading reason for supporting the proposal at present is, that the people are zealous for its adoption; and are entitled to this gratification at the hands of their representatives. We laugh at the idea of there being any danger in disfranchising the whole mass of rotten and decayed boroughs, or communicating the elective franchise to a great number of respectable citizens: And as to the supposed danger of the mere example of yielding to the desires of the people, we can only say, that we are far more strongly impressed with the danger of thwarting them. The people have far more wealth and far more intelligence now, than they had in former times; and therefore they ought to have, and they must have, more political power. The danger is not in yielding to this swell, but in endeavouring to resist it. If properly watched and managed, it will only bear the vessel of the state more proudly and steadily along;-if neglected, or rashly opposed, it will dash her on the rocks and shoals of a sanguinary revolution. 77 The wounds that are curable, should be cured; those that have festered more deeply should be cleansed and anointed; and, into such as it may be impossible to close, the patient should be allowed to pour any innocent balsam, in the virtues of which he believes. The irritable state of the body politic will admit of no other treatment.-Incisions and cauteries would infallibly bring on convulsions and insanity. We had much more to say; but we must close here: Nor indeed could any warning avail those who are not aware already. He must have gazed with idle eyes on the recent course of events, both at home and abroad, who does not see that no government can now subsist long in England, that is not bottomed in the affection of the great body of the people; and who does not see, still more clearly, that the party of the people is every day gaining strength, from the want of judgment and of feeling in those who have defied and insulted it, and from the coldness and alienation of those who used to be their patrons and defenders. If something is not done to conciliate, these heartburnings must break out into deadly strife; and impartial history will assign to each of the parties their share of the great guilt that will be incurred. The first and the greatest outrages will probably proceed from the people themselves; but a deeper curse will fall on the corrupt and supercilious government that provoked them: Nor will they be held blameless, who, when they might have repressed or moderated the popular impulse, by attempting to direct it, chose rather to take counsel of their pride, and to stand by, and see the constitution tora to pieces, because they could not approve entirely of either of the combatants! 610 (October, 1827.) The History of Ireland. By JOHN O'DRISCOL. In two vols. 8vo. pp. 815. London: 1827.♦ be, often an offender: But even when the guilt may have been nearly balanced, the weight of suffering has always fallen on the weakest. This comparative weakness, indeed, was the first cause of Ireland's misery A GOOD History of Ireland is still a deside-even a partial memorial of the truth. That ratum in our literature;-and would not only truth is, no doubt, for the most part, at once be interesting, we think, but invaluable. revolting and pitiable;—not easily at first to There are accessible materials in abundance be credited, and to the last difficult to be for such a history; and the task of arranging tol. with calmness. Yet it is thus only that them really seems no less inviting than im- it can be told with advantage-and so told, portant. It abounds with striking events, and it is pregnant with admonitions and sugges with strange revolutions and turns of fortune tions, as precious in their tenor, as irresisti -brought on, sometimes by the agency of ble in their evidence, when once fairly reenterprising men,-but more frequently by ceived. the silent progress of time, unwatched and Unquestionably, in the main, England has unsuspected, alike by those who were to suf- been the oppressor, and Ireland the victim; fer, and those who were to gain by the result.-not always a guiltless victim,-and it may In this respect, as well as in many others, it is as full of instruction as of interest, and to the people of this country especially, and of this age, it holds out lessons far more precious, far more forcible, and far more immediately applicable, than all that is elsewhere recorded in the annals of mankind. It is the very greatness of this interest, however, and the dread, an 1 the encouragement of these applications, that have hitherto defaced and even falsified the record-that have made impartiality almost hopeless, and led alternately to the suppression and the exaggeration of sufferings and atrocities too monstrous, it might appear, in themselves, to be either exaggerated or disguised. Party rancour and religious animosity have hitherto contrived to convert what should have been their antidote into their aliment, and, by the simple expedient of giving only one side of the picture, have pretty generally succeeded in making the history of past enormities not a warning against, but an incitement to, their repetition. In telling the story of those lamentable dissensions, each party has enhanced the guilt of the adversary, and withheld all notice of their own; -and seems to have had it far more at heart to irritate and defy each other, than to leave the second, her long separation. She had been too long a weak neighbour, to be easily admitted to the rights of an equal ally. Pretensions which the growing strength and intelligence of the one country began to feel intolerable, were sanctioned in the eyes of the other by long usage and prescription;-and injustice, which never could have been first inflicted when it was first complained of, was yet long persisted in, because it had been long submitted to with but litle complaint. No misgovernment is ever so bad as provincial misgovernment-and no provracial misgovernment, it would seem, as that which is exercised by a free people,-whether arising from a jealous reluctance to extend that proud distinction to a race of inferiors, or from that inherent love of absolute power, which gives all rulers a tendency to be despotic, and seeks, when restrained at home, for vent and indem nification abroad. The actual outline of the story is as clear as it is painful. Its most remarkable and most disgusting feature is, that while Religion has been made the pretext of its most sanguinary and atrocious contentions, it has been, from first to last, little else than a cover for the basest cupidity, and the meanest and most unprincipled ambition. The history which concerns the present times, need not be traced farther back than to the days of Henry VIII. and Queen Mary. Up to that period, the petty and tyrannical Parliaments of the Pale had, indeed, pretty uniformly insulted and des pised the great native chiefs among whom the bulk of the island was divided-but they had also feared them, and mostly let them ale. At that era, however, the growing strength and population of England inspired it with a bolder ambition; and the rage of proselytism which followed the Reformation, gave it both occasion and excuse. The passions, which It may be thought that this should rather have been brought in under the title of History: But the truth is, that I have now omitted all that is properly historical, and retained only what relates to the necessity of maintaining the legislative and incorporating union of the two countries; a topic that is purely political and falls, I think, correctly enough under the title of General Politics, since it is at this day of still more absorbing interest than when these observations were first published in 1827. If at that time I thought a Separation, or a dissolution of the union, (for they are the same thing,) a measure not to be contemplated but with horror, it may be supposed that I should not look more charitably on the proposition, now that Catholic emancipation and Parliamentary reform have taken away some, at least, of the motives or apologies of those by whom it was then maintained. The example of Scotland, I still think, is well put for the argument: And among the many who must now consider this question, it may be gratifying to some to see upon what grounds, and how decidedly, an opinion was then formed upon it, by one certainly not too much dis-led naturally enough to hostilities in such cirposed to think favourably of the conduct or the pre- cumstances, were industriously fostered by tensions of England. the cold-blooded selfishness of those who two separate countries, allied only, but not incorporated, the weaker should not be degraded, and the stronger unjust. The only remedy is to identify and amalgamate them throughout-to mix up the oppressors and the oppressed-to take away all privileges and distinctions, by fully communicating them,and to render abuses impossible, by confounding their victims with their authors. were to profit by the result. Insurrections | is in vain to hope that a provincial governwere now regularly followed by Forfeitures; ment should not be oppressive-that a deleand there were by this time men and enter-gated power should not be abused-that of prise enough in England to meditate the occupancy of the vast domains from which the rebel chieftains were thus first to be driven. From this period, accordingly, to that of the Restoration, the bloodiest and most atrocious in her unhappy annals, the history of Ireland may be summarily described as that of a series of sanguinary wars, fomented for purposes of Confiscation. After the Restoration, = and down till the Revolution, this was succeeded by a contest equally unprincipled and mercenary, between the settlers under Cromwell and the old or middle occupants whom they had displaced. By the final success of King William, a strong military government was once more imposed on this unhappy land; under which its spirit seemed at last to be broken, and even its turbulent activity repressed. As it slowly revived, the Protestant antipathies of the English government seem to have been reinforced, or replaced, by a more extended and still more unworthy National Jealousy-first on the subject of trade, and then on that of political rights: -and since a more enlightened view of her own interests, aided by the arms of the volunteers of 1780, have put down those causes of op-awed into the degraded instruments of a dispression, the system of misgovernment has been maintained, for little other end, that we can discern, but to keep a small junto of arrogant individuals in power, and to preserve the supremacy of a faction, long after the actual cessation of the causes that lifted them into authority. If any one doubts of the wretchedness of an unequal and unincorporating alliance, of the degradation of being subject to a provin cial parliament and a distant king, and of the efficacy of a substantial union in curing all these evils, he is invited to look to the obvious example of Scotland. While the crowns only were united, and the governments continued separate, the weaker country was the scene of the most atrocious cruelties, the most violent injustice, the most degrading oppressions. The prevailing religion of the people was proscribed and persecuted with a ferocity greater than has ever been systematically exercised, even in Ireland; her industry was crippled and depressed by unjust and intolerable restrictions; her parliaments corrupted and over The tant court, and her nobility and gentry, cut off from all hope of distinction by vindicating the rights or promoting the interests of their country at home, were led to look up to the favour of her oppressors as the only remaining avenue to power, and degenerated, for the most part, into a band of mercenary advenThis is "the abstract and brief chronicle "turers;-the more considerable aspiring to the of the political or external history of the sister island. But it has been complicated of late, and all its symptoms aggravated by the singularity of its economical relations. The marvellous multiplication of its people, and the growing difficulty of supplying them with food or employment, presenting, at the present moment, a new and most urgent cause of dissatisfaction and alarm. For this last class of evils, a mere change in the policy of the Government would indeed furnish no effectual remedy: and to find one in any degree available, might well task the ingenuity of the most enlightened and beneficent. But for the greater part of her past sufferings, as well as her actual degradation, disunion, and most dangerous discontent, it is impossible to deny that the successive Governments of England have been chiefly responsible. Without pretending to enumerate, or even to class, the several charges which might be brought against them, or to determine what weight should be allowed to the temptations or provocations by which they might be palliated, we think it easier and far more important to remark, that the only secure preventive would have been an early, an equal, and complete incorporating Union of the two countries-and that the only effective cure for the misery occasioned by its having been so long delayed, is to labour, heartily and in earnest, still to render it equal and complete. It wretched honour of executing the tyrannical orders which were dictated from the South, and the rest acquiring gradually those habits of subserviency and selfish submission, the traces of which are by some supposed to be yet discernible in their descendants. Revolution, which rested almost entirely on the prevailing antipathy to Popery, required, of course, the co-operation of all classes of Protestants; and, by its success, the Scottish Presbyterians were relieved, for a time, from their Episcopalian persecutions. But it was not till after the Union that the nation was truly emancipated; or lifted up from the abject condition of a dependant, at once suspected and despised. The effects of that happy consolidation were not indeed immediately apparent; For the vices which had been generated by a century of provincial misgovernment, the meannesses that had become habitual, the animosities that had so long been fostered, could not be cured at once, by the mere removal of their cause. The generation they had degraded, must first be allowed to die out-and more, perhaps, than one generation: But the poison tree was cut down-the fountain of bitter waters was sealed up, and symptoms of returning vigour and happiness were perceived. Vestiges may still be traced. perhaps, of our long degradation; but for, at least, forty years back, the provinces of Scotland have been, on the whole, but the North luckily, succeeded but too well. As their own comparative numbers and natural consequence diminished, they clung still closer to their artificial holds on authority; and, exasperated by feeling their dignity menaced, and their monopolies endangered by the grow ing wealth, population, and intelligence of the by clamour and activity, intimidation and deceit, to preserve the unnatural advantages they had accidentally gained, and to keep down that springtide of general reason and substantial power which they felt rising and swelling all around them. ern provinces of Great Britain. There are liberty, they felt that they could only main no local oppressions, no national animosities. tain themselves in possession of it, by keep Life, and liberty, and property, are as secure in ing up that distrust and animosity, after its Caithness as they are in Middlesex-industry causes had expired. They contrived, thereas much encouraged, and wealth still more fore, by false representations and unjust laws, rapidly progressive; while not only different to foster those prejudices, which would otherreligious opinions, but different religious estab-wise have gradually disappeared--and, unlishments subsist in the two ends of the same island in unbroken harmony, and only excite each other, by a friendly emulation, to greater purity of life and greater zeal for Christianity. If this happy Union, however, had been delayed for another century-if Scotland had been doomed to submit for a hundred years more to the provincial tyranny of the Lauder-country at large, they redoubled their efforts, dales, Rotheses, and Middletons, and to meet the cruel persecutions which gratified the ferocity of her Dalzells and Drummonds, and tarnished the glories of such men as Montrose and Dundee, with her armed conventicles and covenanted saints militant-to see her patriots exiled, or bleeding on the scaffold -her only trusted teachers silenced in her churches and schools, and her Courts of Justice degraded or overawed into the instruments of a cowardly oppression, can any man doubt, not only that she would have presented, at this day, a scene of even greater misery and discord than Ireland did in 1800; but that the corruptions and animosities by which she had been desolated would have been found to have struck so deep root as still to encumber the land, long after their seed had ceased to be scattered abroad on its surface, and only to hold out the hope of their eradication, after many years of patient and painful exertion? Such, however, is truly the condition of Ireland; and such are the grounds, and such the aspect of our hopes for her regeneration. So far from tracing any substantive part of her miseries to the Union of 1800, we think they are to be ascribed mainly to its long delay, and its ultimate incompleteness. It is not by a dissolution of the Union with England then, that any good can be done, but by its improvement and consolidation. Some injury it may have produced to the shopkeepers of Dublin, and some inconsiderable increase in the number of the absentees. But it has shut up the main fountain of corruption and dishonour; and palsied the arm and broken the heart of local insolence and oppression. It has substituted, at least potentially and in prospect, the wisdom and honour of the British Government and the British people, to the passions and sordid interests of a junto of Irish boroughmongers, and not only enabled, but compelled, all parties to appeal directly to the great tribunal of the British public. While the countries remained apart, the actual depositaries of power were almost unavoidably relied on by the general government for information, and employed as the delegates of its authority-and, as unavoidably, abused the trust, and misled and imposed on their employers. Having come into power at the time when the Catholic party, by its support of the House of Stuart, had excited against it all the fears and antipathies of the friends of Their pretence was, that they were the champions of the Protestant Ascendancy—and that whenever that was endangered, there was an end of the English connection. While the alliance of the two countries was indeed no more than a connection, there might be some truth in the assertion-or at least it was easy for an Irish Parliament to make it appear to be true. But the moment they came to be incorporated, its falsehood and absurdity should at once have become apparent. Unluckily, however, the incorporation was not so complete, or the union so entire, as it should have been. There still was need, or was thought to be need, of a provincial manage ment, a domestic government of Ireland and the old wretched parliamentary machinery, though broken up and disabled for its original work, naturally supplied the materials for its construction. The men still survived who had long been the exclusive channels of communication with the supreme authority; and though other and wider channels were now opened, the habit of employing the former, aided by the eagerness with which they sought for continued employment, left with them an undue share of its support. Still more unluckily, the ancient practice of misgovernment had left its usual traces on the character, not only of its authors, but its victims. Habitual oppression had produced habitual disaffection; and a long course of wrong and contumely, had ended in a desperate indignation, and an eager thirst for revenge. The natural and necessary consequences of the Union did not, therefore, immediately follow its enactment and are likely indeed to be longer obstructed, and run greater hazard of being fatally intercepted, than in the case of Scotland. Not only is the mutual exasperation greater, and the wounds more deeply rankled, but the Union itself is more incomplete, and leaves greater room for complaints of inequality and unfairness. The numerical strength, too, of the Irish people is far greater, and their causes of discontent more uniform, than they ever were in Scotland; and, above all, the temper of the race is infinitely more eager, sanguine, and reck |