teeth of a strong periodical north-west wind, until it reached the confines of Persia; where, however, it did not stop, but, proceeding in a course direct for England, shot obliquely for a while into the Russian provinces of Asia-and at this moment that we are writing is wasting the invading ranks of the Russians in Poland, having cut off the general-in-chief, and the elder brother of the Emperor, Constantine, by whose tyrannical conduct those sufferings were endured which at last has roused that resistance, hitherto so successful, against Russian aggression. The diagnosis of the disease is, that no bile is secreted from the blood, and calomel is the only drug known that can remedy this evil; but, besides this, the first stage of the attack is attended with such intense sickness and syncope, that many have sunk during the collapse, before the more aggravated stages of the disease had time to come on. Neither is this all; internal excoriation and ulceration is produced; and the disease is invariably attended with most severe and excruciating spasms: so that, while calomel, with ammonia or brandy, is indicated for the first symptom, opium is no less necessary for the last. Furthermore, the blood, when drawn from the arm, does not coagulate, and is found to be surcharged with acid. Truly, this is the "pestilence that walketh in darkness."

Now be it remembered, that in the portion of our dominion in which this pestilence arose, systematic, legalized, acknowledged, and justified plunder of the natives, for the purpose of enriching the sons of England, has been perpetrated for upwards of a century. The Government of England has refused to allow the Gospel to be preached to the natives, lest it should interfere with our commercial relations with that country: while, on the contrary, a revenue has been collected from the murderous car of Juggernaut and from the human sacrifices of women on the funeral piles of their husbands! These are thy works, O England, in the East! these are the acts against which the hierarchy of thy church has been silent!

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The next judgment which has been manifested is the Sword. During the winter of 1830-1831, the agricultural labourers were (to use the language of Lord Grey in the debate on Lord Wharncliffe's motion) in open rebellion:" Cobbett and others called it a "servile war:" while the subsequent trial, under a special commission, of nearly a thousand misguided people, fully justified these expressions. Two long official letters were addressed from the King, through the Secretary of State for the Home Department, finding fault with the pusillanimous conduct of the magistrates, in not earlier and more promptly suppressing the riots: large bodies of special constables were sworn in, but the magistrates reported to Lord Melbourne that no reliance could be placed upon them. As soon as the turmoil had some

what subsided, regiments of yeomanry cavalry were embodied. Be it remembered, that there neither was at that time, nor is there now, the slightest expectation of danger from foreign invasion; that it is not against aggression from without that ten thousand horsemen are prepared to draw the sword, but against their own countrymen; and that politicians of every class have hailed the organization of this force as one of indisputable necessity.

While these two sore plagues, pestilence and the sword, were preparing on one side and in our centre, on the western border of the empire Famine began to stalk abroad. In Ireland this severe scourge shewed itself,—the quarter which our politicians had thought to tranquillize by yielding to the menaces of Popery, and which had been the scene of profligacy in the ministers of the Church without a parallel in the history of any other sect. For three hundred years had tithes been exacted by the bayonet from flocks the language of whom the traitorous shepherds could not speak. Never was the description more applicable, of pastors who fleece the flock without feeding them, than to the Irish clergy. Instead of preaching the Gospel to the people, Queen Elizabeth sent over an establishment of priests to collect the tithes into their own pockets, leaving the principles and errors of the people just where they found them. Never before, or since, was the experiment tried of appointing shepherds before there was a flock to teach. The famine has indeed been allayed, by the exertions chiefly of Christian men, but no paternal act of the Government has proceeded to prevent its recurrence, by compelling the produce of the land to be devoted in the first instance to the sustenance of those whose labour has produced it.

The most undeniable proof of the state of Ireland is one drawn from the Times newspaper, because that journal has ever been the foremost to urge the concession of the Popish claims for the purpose of tranquillizing the people. How well that end has been attained is seen in the following extract from that journal.

"All accounts from the west of Ireland represent the counties of Clare and Galway to be in a state of the most unmitigated and frightful anarchy.

"In the former of the above counties, where an election for a representative has recently terminated in the return of a young man of the name of O'Connell, a son of Mr. Daniel O'Connell, altogether unconnected with the county of Clare, who was preferred to Sir Edward O'Brien, the head of an old and opulent family always resident on their estate in that county, as described to us by persons of observation and veracity, the name of law is held in utter derision. Pasture land is broken up at noon-day by assemblages of hundreds of people; gates are torn off their hinges; fences levelled to the earth; cattle turned from what used to be enclosures, into the public roads; and herdsmen, or other farm-servants, forbidden, on pain of death, to resume their work, and protect or watch their masters' property. No gentleman's family, be the members of it ever VOL. IV.NO, I.

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so respectable, or individually popular, consider themselves safe within their own grounds. More than half the gentry have fled their homes, and taken refuge in Limerick or Dublin. The remnant, who are bold enough to stay behind, or so much in want of money as to be incapable of removing to any distance, are forced to barricade their houses, and keep regular guard day and night, to prevent surprise by the wretched and ferocious peasantry.

"The last exploit of these desperate beings was the massacre of five policemen, and that a few hours after the King's representative had set his foot within the county on a journey of beneficent examination into the wants and sufferings of the poor.

"With regard to this particular crime, the circumstances attending it, as given by the Irish papers, are, like all statements of a struggle between authority and insubordination in Ireland, most glaringly irreconcileable. Irish factions make it a point of conscience to lie systematically for the public good.' Thus one print says that the policemen had caught two vagabonds in the act of administering Whiteboy oaths, and that while escorting them to gaol they were attacked by a mob, who broke in when the police had spent their ammunition, and literally stoned to death these martyrs of unavoidable duty. Another journal tells us, that the peasantry were marking out potatoe land in the presence of the proprietor, and with his entire sanction, when the police (not very probable) fired on them in mere wantonness, and after killing a man, were put to death in just retaliation. A third newspaper, with a prudent reserve as to the origin of the business, describes it as a regular battle, wherein the police were defeated. But whence arose the 'battle?' Somebody told us that in Emmett's rebellion, the object of which was to attack the Castle of Dublin and subvert the government, as its first and characteristic incident was the murder of the Lord Chief Justice Kilwarden, the gentle appellation bestowed upon that bloody and atrocious scene was the dispute in Thomas-street.' But the dispute' on this occasion has not confined itself to Clare-Galway is in open insurrection. Five thousand Whiteboys attacked the house of Sir John Burke, the county member, destroyed the windows, furniture, &c., and carried off several stand of arms. They threatened to storm the town of Woodford, and did actually plunder the habitations of other gentlemen besides Sir John Burke, making arms the chief purpose of their depredation. It seems clear that there is no political motivewe mean, as against the government-at the bottom of these terrible transactions; for if there were, Lord Anglesey could not have traversed the whole country without defence of any kind, and every where cheered by the people; nor is the slightest distinction made between man and man upon religious grounds, for many of those gentlemen, Sir John Burke among them, who have felt most severely the want of protection from the law, are known to be Roman Catholics.

"The war is a servile war. It is in every instance the poor against the richthe hungry man against the full man. It is reckless despair against ruthless cupidity. A remedial measure at once prompt and perfect, there is none; but imperfect measures may do something, if they are prompt; and if pains be taken to alleviate the suffering, as well as to punish legally the criminal expression of that suffering, the unfortunate people may at least be taught to hope that patience will not be for ever unavailing. In the mean time, it is much to be feared, that without the Insurrection Act-a dreadful, but energetic instrument-the confusion which now aggravates and perplexes every thing cannot be even momentarily suspended. To coercion, however, none but a government actuated by the spirit of a fiend would think of limiting its political operations. "The peasantry are ground down to the lowest point of misery ever borne by man. They are famishing-their wives and children are famishing. They are, to use a homely phrase, eating each other's heads off,' so fierce and unreflecting is their competition for land, the occupancy of which offers them their only chance of subsistence. It is said that the landlords deserve no blame for accepting the highest bidder as their tenant, where all bid desperately against

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each other. This is a wicked falsehood. The landlord has no right, in equity or humanity, to deal with human life as the pedlar with his wares. The duty, the bounden duty of the landlord, is to calculate what his land can produce, and charge the poor man no higher rent than the land well cultivated can furnish the means of paying, after rendering a fair recompence to the occupant for his outlay of labour, manure, and seed.

"The craving, snatching eagerness of the peasant, who will offer fifty times the value of all that the spot of earth can ever be made to produce, rather than lose the possession of it, ought not to be made the rule of the landlord's expectation, or the measure of his demand. We know that he is encumbered with a multitude of unprofitable mouths, and of helpless hands-the consequences of his own previous ambition and rapacity, aided by the barbarous habits and grovelling resignation of the rustic crowd who hang upon him ;-but such difficulties can be only further increased by continuing the practices which first created them. The gentlemen must help the legislature in striving to stop the growth of famine, for they have long since reason to know, that it is a giant whose force never fails to turn upon his authors. Poor laws must follow. It is inevitable: all the committees that ever sat cannot obviate the necessity of a provision for the poor from that soil of whose produce they have never yet tasted food of such quality as was due even to the ox that tilled it. So the burdens imposed by the Catholic priesthood, and by the Protestant Church Establishment, on the Irish people, must be revised, with a view to some more judicious distribution of them. As for absentee landlords, who will dare to be other than an absentee, at the risk of being robbed or murdered? The country must first be reduced-by force if necessary-to a condition of obedience and tranquillity: but woe to England if she does not instantly after apply the healing ointment to the sore!"

Whenever the rulers of any country avowedly adopt measures, not because they themselves think them right, but because they are demanded by the people, from that moment the government is virtually overthrown. If the measures demanded are right, they should be adopted, but the greatest care should be taken not to let the people feel that they are granted because they are demanded. This principle is so well understood in armies, that, whenever a system has been pursued which is oppressive to the soldiers, it is exceedingly difficult to alter it; and therefore the utmost vigilance is required on the part of officers to watch the comforts of the men, that no grievance should arise which may furnish them with a pretext to ask for redress. The seed of revolution is sown wherever rulers seek for the approbation of men, and seek not the honour that comes from God alone, in the faithful discharge of their duty. The most deep-sighted writers on the causes of the French Revolution trace that event to the profligate Louis XIV., who, by courting the flattery of poets and other popular writers of his day, admitted the breath of public opinion to be the controuling power of his conduct. He who will be impelled by applause will also be deterred by censure. The Whigs, Mr. Canning, and the Radicals, have all attempted to rule through the public press, and there does not exist at this moment sufficient energy in the government of this country to carry through any one political measure, however right they may deem it, if the newspaper editors should combine against it.

The state of a country under newspaper government cannot be better described than it is by the actual condition of Belgium, as detailed in the Times newspaper of April last; a paper which has been the great promoter of revolutionary principles, and one of the most profligate journals that ever was published.

"Accounts from Antwerp, of the 1st instant, give a deplorable representation of the state of things in that beautiful and once-flourishing town. The populace had, on the 31st ult., broken out into tumults, and proceeded to attack the houses of persons suspected of Orangeism. The offices of two newspapers, which have shewn a leaning towards a system of order by holding out as an example the government of the late King rather than the anarchy of the Regent, were first attacked. The residence of the late respectable Burgomaster next came under the vengeance of the mob, and subsequently several other houses were exposed to pillage and devastation. The National or Civic Guard, in all these cases, as during the troubles at Brussels, shewed themselves unwilling, or unable, to restore order or to protect property. The bonds of society seem rent asunder, the authorities have lost their power, and a ragged rabble, as in Brussels and other towns, have obtained the mastery over the citizens. The Belgic military governor has been obliged to declare it in a state of siege.

"The cause assigned for all these disorders, both in Antwerp, Brussels, Ghent, and Liege, is a hatred to the family of Nassau; but the fact is, that the alleged machinations of the Orangeists is only a pretext of these popular disorders. The labouring classes are suffering for want of bread, and idle from want of employment. They are therefore prepared for any attack against property, by which they are told they may better their condition or punish the authors of their misery. They would, of course, prefer simple, undisguised plunder, and therefore would generally take the richest victims, without reference to their political opinions. But this would not suit the purposes of their wealthier instigators, whose object is to cover pillage and devastation with the mask of patriotism. Hence they direct the rabble, who have no intimation of plots against the existing government, to attack persons supposed to be favourable to the Nassau family. The whole of the New National Association, as it is called, consisting of violent revolutionists, ex-ministers, generals, advocates,—in short, all the classes of persons most deeply implicated in the plots of the late insurrection, are the pledged leaders of these disorders. What would be the use of paying their twopenny subscription to exclude the Nassau family, unless they could head a riot against reputed Orangeists? They announce, by the terms of their union, that the government cannot take the most efficacious means to maintain the national independence, and to exclude the late family from the throne. They themselves, therefore, must do more than the government, and act without the intervention of the constituted authorities. And the method they take is, to incite the rabble against the most respectable citizens, who are disgusted and enraged at their selfish and factious proceedings. While, therefore, the legal authorities call out the civil or military force to maintain order or suppress disturbance, the clubs push forward the mob to overpower their enemies by terror.

"These infernal tactics they have pursued since the commencement of the revolution. The consequence is, that all those moderate men, who, before the final separation of the provinces, petitioned the king for a redress of grievances, and would have been satisfied with legislative and administrative independence, have now retired from the scene, and left the ground clear for even a more miserable set of intriguers than the clique who occupied at first the posts of the Provincial Government, or ran over Europe with the conceit of being diplomatists. The d'Arembergs, the de Lignes, the de Secus, and the respectable representatives of Ghent and Antwerp, are no longer heard of in public affairs, while briefless barristers or low-born demagogues occupy all the places of