consequences of the very evils which Catholic Emancipation was vainly expected to cure.*

There was much in England which called for amendment and with a like confidence "Parliamentary Reform " was held out as the panacea which would cure all evils. The people figured to themselves all sorts of impossible benefits which they were to derive from it, and were ready to rise in insurrection to force on "the bill, the whole bill, and nothing but the bill;" not because they recognized its principle, but because they were anxious to clutch these visionary advantages. The bill passed :—what did the masses gain by it? Their own answer may be heard now by those who choose to ask them; and with a frowning brow, and a bitter sneer, they reply-" Nothing."

Another political nostrum quickly followed this:-a New Poor Law was to do everything;

At the time when the above measure was in progress, the writer was in company with a Member of the House of Commons who was one of its strenuous supporters. "Now is your time to lay out your money to advantage," said he, " land is comparatively cheap now in Ireland on account of the disturbed state of the country. When this bill is passed, estates will be double in value, and if I had £ 20,000 to lay out I would become an Irish proprietor." The state of Ireland for many years past forms the best comment on this too sanguine prophecy.

the poor's rates were weighing down the energies of the country, and fostering crowds of sturdy idle labourers: "the workhouse test" was to set everything right, and it would soon be found that a man, with a wife and seven children, could maintain all upon the average wages of from ten to twelve shillings per week, even though the increasing extent of grass land left agricultural labourers frequently without work during many weeks. Workhouses arose every where, stately, and vast, and prison-like; outdoor relief was prohibited, and no doubt was entertained that the poor were at once to become well conducted, contented, and happy. What was the result? The alternative offered to the honest and industrious labourer was either starvation, or entrance into the Union Workhouse; where every dear domestic tie was at once torn asunder: where the children were separated from parents whose small mental resources generally render the family bond closer, and even more essential to comfort than among the rich: where the husband was placed among the idle and the reprobate; the wife among the dissolute of her own sex. They left the workhouse, probably, when summer work began; but were they what they were when they entered it? That law has been amended since, or perhaps England, like France,

might have witnessed another servile war; but the spirit which pervaded originally, and in which it was first administered, has branded its mark deeply in the wounded feelings of the poor.

Again a cry has been raised: the corn laws, it was said, stood in the way of the comforts of the poorer classes: they have been abolished; but the most sanguine of the Free Trade party has not seen, nor will he ever see accomplished the great results which he imagined were to follow.

What next?-are we to have a new nostrum every Session or two to cure the diseases of the body politic, like the quackeries which are depended on with equal faith in the cure of the diseases of the body natural, and which sometimes leave things worse, never better, than they were before? Economical Reform; the Five Points of the Charter; a Paper Currency; the Abolition of the Irish Church Establishment; all have their supporters; none of whom yield to the others in the magniloquence of their talk, while descanting on the wonders of their specifics; yet in the mean time, there the poor patient lies, dosed with course after course of new medicines of which no one can guess the

effect, while not a man among them all has the skill to find out the real seat of the disease. There is danger, great and imminent danger; and statesmen and legislators allow it: yet they dally with it, give an opiate here, and a cordial there, and trust to the vis medicatrix of good dame Nature.

Constant failure ought to have taught us more wisdom, and by shewing us where the evil is not, have brought us near the cause of the disease which is eating away the very life of our social system; for as in the body natural the illnesses which follow time after time upon exposure to cold, bad diet, insufficient ventilation, &c. are so many lessons to teach us the necessity of prudent care; so in the body politic, discontent among our poor, crime, revolutions, are so many symptoms of disease whose causes ought to be sought out and removed, if we would enjoy a state of health and comfort.

There was a time when pestilences were considered as immediate and inscrutable judgments of the Almighty, inflicted on guilty nations for their sins advancing science has taught us to modify that opinion, and we perceive that they result from disregard of those great physical laws to which the Creator has subjected all ma

terial things. It is often a guilty disregard it is true, as in cases where disease is caused by ignorance or misery which it is in the power of the higher and more educated classes to remove; and these last suffer a deserved punishment in sharing the danger with those neglected poor, among whom the seeds of disease have sprung up unheeded. The scourge, therefore, comes mediately not immediately from the Almighty; it might be avoided; and man inflicts on himself the punishment of his perverseness or his neglect. And thus it is also in regard to the moral laws of the universe: revolutions are not more direct inflictions from above than pestilences; they have been prepared long before, by a course of neglect or infraction of those great laws whose object is the happiness of all; and as surely as fever follows upon the breathing tainted air, so surely will crime and insurrection follow upon the misgovernment which allows any class to grow up amid a moral taint, no less fatal to the spiritual, than the former to the animal part, of man.

Much has been said and written on criminal law, and on "secondary punishments:"-" penitentiaries," "solitary confinement," the "silent system," &c. have been vaunted by their re