Our young artisans must be familiar with the arts of design and the

natural sciences connected with their trade; and so of our farmers; and

both should, beside, have that general information which refines and

expands the minds--that knowledge of Irish history and statistics that

makes it national, and those accomplishments and sports which make

leisure profitable and home joyous.

Our cities must be stately with sculpture, pictures, and buildings, and

our fields glorious with peaceful abundance.

But this is an Utopia! Is it? No; but the practicable object of those

who know our resources! To seek it is the solemn, unavoidable duty of

every Irishman. Whether, then, oh reader, you spend this or any coming

season abroad or at home, do not forget for a day how much should be

done for Ireland.

"THE LIBRARY OF IRELAND."

While the Gaelic-speaking people of Ireland were restricted to

traditional legends, songs, and histories, a library was provided for

those who used English by the genius and industry of men whose names

have vanished--a fate common to them with the builder of the Pyramids,

the inventor of letters, and other benefactors of mankind. Moore has

given, in _Captain Rock_, an imperfect catalogue of this library. The

scientific course seems to have been rather limited, as Ovid's _Art of_

(let us rather say essay on) _Love_ was the only abstract work; but it

contained biographies of _Captain Freney the Robber_, and of _Redmond

O'Hanlon the Rapparee_--wherein, we fear, O'Hanlon was made, by a

partial pen, rather more like Freney than history warrants; dramas such

as the _Battle of Aughrim_, written apparently by some Alsatian

Williamite; lyrics of love, unhoused save by the watch; imperial works,

too, as _Moll Flanders_; and European literature--_Don Beliants, and

the Seven Champions_. Whether they were imported, or originally

produced for the grooms of the dissolute gentry, may be discussed; but

it seems certain that their benign influence spread, on one side, to

the farmers' and shopkeepers' sons, and, on the other, to the cadets of

the great families--and were, in short, the classics of tipsy Ireland.

The deadly progress of temperance, politics, and democracy has sent

them below their original market, and in ten years the collector will

pay a guinea apiece for them.

During the Emancipation struggle this indecent trash shrunk up, and a

totally different literature circulated. The Orange party regaled

themselves chiefly with theology, but the rest of the country (still

excepting the classes sheltered by their Gaelic tongue) formed a

literature more human, and quite as serious. There occasionally is

great vigour in the biographies of Lord Edward, Robert Emmet, and other

popular heroes chronicled at that time; but the long interview of Emmet

with Sarah Curran, the night before his execution, is a fair specimen

of the accuracy of these works. The songs were intense enough,

occasionally controversial, commonly polemical, always extravagant; the

Granu Wails and Shan-Van-Vochts of the Catholic agitation cannot be too

soon obsolete. The famous Waterford song:--

"O'Connell's come to town,

And he'll put the Orange down,

And by the heavenly G---- he'll wear the crown,

Says the Shan Van Vocht!"

is characteristic of the zeal, discretion, and style of these once

powerful lyrics. A history of the authorship of these biographies and

songs would be interesting, and is perhaps still possible. The reprint

in the series of Hugh O'Reilly's Irish history--albeit, a mass of

popular untruth was put at the end of it--shows as if some more

considerate mind had begun to influence these publications. They, too,

are fast vanishing, and will yet be sought to illustrate their times.

In the first class we have described there was nothing to redeem their

stupid indecency and ruffianism; in the latter, however one may grieve

at their bigotry, and dislike their atrocious style, there were purity,

warmth, and a high purpose.

The "Useful Knowledge Society" period arrived in Britain, and flooded

that island with cheap tracts on algebra and geometry, chemistry,

theology, and physiology. Penny Magazines told every man how his

stockings were wove, how many drunkards were taken up per hour in

Southwark, how the geese were plucked from which the author got his

pens, how many pounds weight of lead (with the analysis thereof, and an

account of the Cornish mines by way of parenthesis) were in the types

for each page, and the nature of the rags (so many per cent. beggars,

so many authors, so many shoe-boys) from which the paper of the

all-important, man and money-saving Penny Magazine was made. On its

being suggested that man was more than a statistician, or a dabbler in

mathematics, a _moral_ series (warranted Benthamite) was issued to

teach people how they should converse at meals--how to choose their

wives, masters, and servants by phrenological developments, and how to

live happily, like "Mr. Hard-and-Comfortable," the Yellow Quaker.

Unluckily for us, there was no great popular passion in Ireland at the

time, and our communication with England had been greatly increased by

steamers and railways, by the Whig alliance, by democratic sympathy,

and by the transference of our political capital to Westminster.

Tracts, periodicals, and the whole horde of Benthamy rushed in. Without

manufactures, without trade, without comfort to palliate such

degradation, we were proclaimed converts to Utilitarianism. The Irish

press thought itself imperial, because it reflected that of

London--Nationality was called a vulgar superstition, and a general

European Trades' Union, to be followed by a universal Republic, became

the final aspirations of "all enlightened men." At the same time the

National Schools were spreading the elements of science and the means

of study through the poorer classes, and their books were merely

intellectual.

Between all these influences Ireland promised to become a farm for

Lancashire, with the wisdom and moral rank of that district, without

its wealth, when there came a deliverer--the Repeal agitation.

Its strain gradually broke the Whig alliance and the Chartist sympathy.

Westminster ceased to be the city towards which the Irish bowed and

made pilgrimage. An organisation, centring in Dublin, connected the

People; and an oratory full of Gaelic passion and popular idiom

galvanised them. Thus there has been, from 1842--when the Repeal

agitation became serious--an incessant progress in Literature and

Nationality. A Press, Irish in subjects, style, and purpose, has been

formed--a National Poetry has grown up--the National Schools have

prepared their students for the more earnest study of National politics

and history--the classes most hostile to the agitation are converts to

its passions; and when Lord Heytesbury recently expressed his wonder at

finding "Irish prejudices" in the most cultivated body in Ireland, he

only bore witness to an aristocratic Nationality of which he could have

found countless proofs beside.

Yet the power of British utilitarian literature continues. The wealthy

classes are slowly getting an admirable and a costly National

Literature from Petrie, and O'Donovan, and Ferguson, and Lefanu, and

the _University Magazine_. The poorer are left to the newspaper and the

meeting, and an occasional serial of very moderate merits. That class,

now becoming the rulers of Ireland, who have taste for the higher

studies, but whose means are small, have only a few scattered works

within their reach, and some of them, not content to use these

exclusively, are driven to foreign studies and exposed to alien

influence.

To give to the country a National Library, exact enough for the wisest,

high enough for the purest, and cheap enough for all readers, appears

the object of "The Library of Ireland."

Look at the subjects--_A History of the Volunteers_, Memoirs of Hugh

O'Neill, of Tone, of Owen Roe, of Grattan, Collections of Irish Ballads

and Songs, and so forth. It would take one a month, with the use of all

the libraries of Dublin, to get the history of the Volunteers. In

Wilson's so-called history you will get a number of addresses and 300

pages of irrelevant declamation for eight or ten shillings. Try

further, and you must penetrate through the manuscript catalogues of

Trinity College and the Queen's Inns (the last a wilderness) to find

the pamphlets and newspapers containing what you want; yet the history

of the Volunteers is one interesting to every class, and equally

popular in every province.

Hugh O'Neill--he found himself an English tributary, his clan beaten,

his country despairing. He organised his clan into an army, defeated by

arms and policy the best generals and statesmen of Elizabeth, and gave

Ireland a pride and a hope which never deserted her since. Yet the only

written history of him lies in an Irish MS. in the Vatican, unprinted,

untranslated, uncopied; and the Irishman who would know his life must

grope through Moryson, and Ware, and O'Sullivan in unwilling libraries,

and in books whose price would support a student for two winters.

Of Tone and Grattan--the wisest and most sublime of our last

generation--there are lives, and valuable ones; but such as the rich

only will buy, and the leisurely find time to read.

The rebellion of 1641--a mystery and a lie--is it not time to let every

man look it in the face? The Irish Brigade--a marvellous reality to

few, a proud phantom to most of us--shall we not all, rich and poor,

learn in good truth how the Berserk Irish bore up in the winter streets

of Cremona, or the gorgeous Brigade followed Clare's flashing plumes

right through the great column of Fontenoy?

Irish Ballads and Songs--why (except that _Spirit of the Nation_ which

we so audaciously put together), the popular ballads and songs are the

faded finery of the West End, the foul parodies of St. Giles's, the

drunken rigmarole of the black Helots--or, as they are touchingly

classed in the streets, "sentimental, comic, and nigger songs." Yet

Banim, and Griffin, and Furlong, Lover and Ferguson, Drennan and

Callanan, have written ballads and songs as true to Ireland as ever

MacNeill's or Conyngham's were to Scotland; and firmly do we hope to

see with every second lad in Ireland a volume of honest, noble, Irish

ballads, as well thumbed as a Lowland Burns or a French Beranger, and

sweetly shall yet come to us from every milking-field and harvest-home

songs not too proudly joined to the sweetest music in the world.

This country of ours is no sand bank, thrown up by some recent caprice

of earth. It is an ancient land, honoured in the archives of

civilisation, traceable into antiquity by its piety, its valour, and

its sufferings. Every great European race has sent its stream to the

river of Irish mind. Long wars, vast organisations, subtle codes,

beacon crimes, leading virtues, and self-mighty men were here. If we

live influenced by wind and sun and tree, and not by the passions and

deeds of the past, we are a thriftless and a hopeless People.

A CHRONOLOGY OF IRELAND.

There is much doubt as to who were the first inhabitants of Ireland;

but it is certain that the Phoenicians had a great commerce with it.

The Firbolgs, a rude people, held Ireland for a long period. They were

subdued by the Tuatha de Danaan, a refined and noble race, which in its

turn yielded its supremacy to the arms of the Milesians. The dates

during these centuries are not well ascertained.

B.C.

1000. Dr. O'Conor, the Librarian of Stowe, fixes this as the most

probable date of the Milesian invasion.

---- Ollamh Fodhla institutes the Great Feis, or Triennial Convention,

at Tara.

---- Thirty-two monarchs are said to have reigned between this

sovereign and Kimbaoth, who built the Palace of Emania.

A.D.

40. Reformation of the Bardic or Literary Order, by Conquovar,

King of Ulster.

90. The old population successfully revolt against the Milesians,

and place one of their own race upon the throne.

130. Re-establishment of the Milesian sway.

164. King Feidlim, the Legislator, establishes the laws of Eric.

258. From Con of the Hundred Battles descended the chieftains who

supplied Albany, the modern Scotland, with her first Scottish rulers,

by establishing, about the middle of the third century, the kingdom of

Dalriada in Argyleshire.

333. The Palace of Emania destroyed during a civil war.

387. The birth of St. Patrick.

396. Nial of the Nine Hostages invades Britain.

432. His Mission to Ireland.

436. Dathi, the last of the Pagan monarchs of Ireland, succeeded Nial,

and was killed while on one of his military expeditions, at the foot of

the Alps, by lightning.

465. March 17--Death of St. Patrick.

554. The last triennial council held at Tara.

795. First Invasion of the Danes.

1014. April 23, Good Friday--Defeat of the Danes at Clontarf by Brian

Boroihme.

1152. Synod of Kells. Supremacy of the Church of Rome acknowledged.

1159. Pope Adrian's bull granting Ireland to Henry II.

1169. May--First landing of the Normans.

1171. October 18--Henry II. arrives in Ireland.

1172. A Council, called by some a Parliament, held by Henry II. at

Lismore.

1185. Prince John is sent over by his father as Lord of Ireland,

accompanied by his tutor, Giraldus Cambrensis.

1210. King John, at the head of a military force, arrives in Ireland.

1216. Henry III. grants Magna Charta to Ireland.

1254. Ireland granted, under certain conditions, by Henry III. to his

son, Prince Edward.

1277. Some of the Irish petition Edward I. for an extension of English

laws and usages to them.

1295. A Parliament held at Kilkenny by Sir John Wogan, Lord Justice.

1309. A Parliament held at Kilkenny by Sir John Wogan. Its enactments

on record in Bolton's Irish Statutes.

1315. Edward Bruce lands with 6,000 men at Larne in May, invited by the

Irish. Crowned near Dundalk.

1318. Defeat and death of Bruce at Faghard, near Dundalk.

1367. Parliament assembled at Kilkenny by Lionel, Duke of Clarence, at

which the celebrated Anti-Irish Statute was passed prohibiting adoption

of Irish costume or customs, intermarriage with the Irish, etc., under

very severe penalties, to the Anglo-Irish of the Pale.

1379. The first Act ever passed against Absentees.

1394. Richard II. lands with an army at Waterford.

1399. Richard II.'s second expedition to Ireland.

1463. A College founded at Youghal by the Earl of Desmond. Another at

Drogheda.

1472. Institution of the Brotherhood of St. George for the protection

of the Pale.

1494. Nov.--The Parliament assembled at Drogheda passed Poyning's Law.

1534. First step of the Reformation in Ireland.

1536. Nearly total destruction of the Kildare Geraldines. Henry VIII.'s

supremacy enacted by Statute.

1537. Act passed for the suppression of religious houses.

1541. Act passed declaring Henry VIII. _King_ of Ireland.

1579. The last Earl of Desmond proclaimed a traitor.

1583. The Earl of Desmond assassinated.

1586. April 26--Attainder of Desmond and his followers. Forfeiture of

his estate--574,628 Irish acres. Elizabeth institutes the planting

system.

1592. The Dublin University founded.

1595. Aodh O'Neill's victory at Blackwater, and death of Marshal Bagnal.

1603. March 30--Submission of O'Neill (Tyrone) to Mountjoy.

1607. Flight of the Northern Earls, Tyrone and Tyrconnell. Consequent

seizure by the Crown of the six entire counties of Cavan, Fermanagh,

Armagh, Derry, Tyrone, and Tyrconnel (now Donegal), amounting in the

whole to about 511,456 Irish acres.

1608. May 1--Sept.--Sir Cathair O'Dogherty's rising.

1613. May 18--After the creation of fourteen peers and forty new

boroughs, a Parliament is assembled to support the new _plantation_ of

Ulster by the attainder and outlawry of the gentlemen of that province.

1616. Commission for inquiring into defective titles.

1635. Lord Wentworth's oppressive proceedings to find a title in the

Crown to the province of Connaught.

1641. Oct. 23--The breaking out of the celebrated Irish insurrection.

1642. The confederate Catholics form their General Assembly and Supreme

Council at Kilkenny--"Pro Deo, pro rege, _et patria, Hibernia,

unanimes_," their motto.

1646. June 5--Monroe totally defeated by Owen Roe O'Neill at Benburb,

near Armagh.

1649. Aug. 15--Oliver Cromwell arrives in Dublin.

---- Sept. 2, 10, 15.--Siege, storming, and massacre of Drogheda.

---- Oct. 1--Siege and massacre of Wexford.

---- Nov. 6--Death of Owen Roe O'Neill at Cloch-Uachdar Castle, Co.

Cavan.

1650. May 29--Cromwell embarks for England.

1653. Sept. 26--The Irish war proclaimed ended by the English

Parliament.--Act of Grace, ordering the Irish Catholics to transport

themselves, on pain of death, into Connaught before 1st of March, 1654.

1661. May 8, 1666. Acts of Settlement and Explanation. 7,800,000 acres

confiscated and distributed under them.

1689. March 12--James II. landed at Kinsale.

---- May 7 } The Irish Parliament summoned by him: met at the

---- July 20 } Inns of Court.

1690. June 14--William III. landed at Carrickfergus Bay.

---- July 1--Battle of the Boyne.

---- Aug 30--The first siege of Limerick under William III. raised by

Sarsfield.

1691. June 30--Athlone taken after a gallant defence.

1691. July 12--Battle of Aughrim.

---- Oct. 3--Capitulation and Treaty of Limerick.

1692. April 5--The articles agreed upon by the Treaty confirmed by

William III.

---- Nov. 3--Lord Sydney's protest against the claim of the Irish

House of Commons to the right of "preparing heads of bills for raising

money"--the beginning of the struggle between the Protestant ascendency

and the English Government, which bore national fruit in 1782, but

which was crushed in 1800.

1695. August--Parliament violated the Treaty of Limerick--

7 William III., c. 67--Prohibits Catholic education at home or

abroad.

7 William III., c. 5--Disarms Papists.

1697. 9 William III., c. 1--Banishes Popish archbishops, bishops,

vicars-general, and all regular clergy, on pain of death. 9 William

III., c. 2--An Act "to confirm the Treaty of Limerick," which directly

and grossly violates its letter and spirit. It is fit to remember that

in the Irish House of Lords, from which Catholics were excluded, seven

spiritual and five temporal peers protested against this infamous

legislation.

1698. The 9 and 10 William III., c. 40--An Act aimed at the Irish

woollen manufacture. Molyneux published his famous _Case of Ireland

being bound by Acts of Parliament passed in England_. This book, by

order of the English House of Commons, was burned by the hangman.

1704. March 4--The "Act to prevent the further growth of Popery," one

of the most noted links in the penal chain.

1719. October 17--Representation of the Irish House of Lords against

appeals to England.

1720. 6 Geo. I.--Act passed by the English Legislature to secure the

dependency of Ireland.

---- Swift's first Irish pamphlet--"A proposal for the universal use of

Irish manufactures." Prosecuted by Government.

1724. Wood's patent to coin half-pence for Ireland, and Swift's

successful opposition to the scheme by the "Letters of M. B. Drapier."

The first time all Irish sects and parties were unanimous upon national

grounds.

1728. 1 Geo. II., c. 9, s. 8.--The Act disfranchising Roman Catholics.

1737. The tithe of agistment got rid of by the Irish gentry, and the

chief burden of the tithe thereby thrown on the farmers and peasantry.

1743. Lucas rises into notice in the Dublin Corporation.

1745. April 30--Battle of Fontenoy.

1749. Dr. Lucas is obliged to leave Ireland.

1753. Dec. 17--The House of Commons asserts its control successfully

over the surplus revenue, in opposition to Government.

1756. The first public effort by Mr. O'Connor and Dr. Curry to inspire

the Catholics with the spirit of freedom. They succeed with the

mercantile body, but are opposed by many of the gentry and clergy.

1760. March and April--Mr. Wyse and Dr. Curry revive the scheme of an

association to manage Catholic affairs.

1761. Dr. Lucas returned as representative of Dublin to the first

parliament of George III.

1763. Establishment of the _Freeman's Journal_ by Dr. Lucas--the

first independent Irish newspaper.

1768. The duration of parliament limited to eight years.

1778. First relaxation of the Penal Code, Catholics allowed long

tenures of land, etc.

---- The Volunteers first formed. Flood the foremost popular leader.

1779. The achievement of Free Trade [_i.e._, Ireland's right to trade

with the colonies, etc.].

1782. Ireland's legislative independence won. Grattan's prime.

1785. Orde's Commercial Propositions.

1789. Debates upon the Regency question.

1790. The formation of the Society of United Irishmen at Belfast.

Theobald Wolfe Tone its founder.

1792.} The Franchise restored to the Roman Catholics; the Bar opened

1793.} to them, etc.

1795. Sept. 21--First Orange Lodge formed.

1796. Dec. 24--The remnant of the French expedition arrives in Bantry

Bay without General Hoche, the commander.

1798. May 23--Breaking out of the insurrection.

---- June 21--Battle of Vinegar Hill.

---- August 22--General Humbert lands with a small force at Killala.

---- Dec. 9--Meeting of the Bar to oppose the projected Union. Saurin

moves the resolution, which is carried.

1799. Jan. 22--The Union proposed.

---- June 1--Parliament prorogued, Government having been defeated by

small majorities.

1800. Feb. 10--The House of Lords divided, 75 for and 26 against the

Union.

---- Feb. 15--The House of Commons divided, 158 for, 115 against the

Union.

---- March 17--On this day, the first of the following January was

fixed in the Commons for the commencement of the Union.

1803. Robert Emmet's insurrection and execution.

1810. Great Repeal meeting in Dublin.

1821. George IV. in Ireland.

1823. Catholic Association formed.

1825. Act passed to put down the Catholic Association.

1828. O'Connell's election for Clare.

1829. April 13--Emancipation granted.

1831. Education Board formed.

1833. Coercion Bill passed by the Whigs.

1836. May--Parliament rejects Repeal motion.

1838. Poor Law. Temperance Movement.

1840. Corporation Reform. Repeal Association formed by O'Connell.

1842. October 15--Establishment of the _Nation_.

1843. Monster meetings. Prosecutions. William Smith O'Brien joins the

Repeal Association.

1844. Verdict against, and imprisonment of Repeal leaders, 12th

February, and 30th May. Liberation, 7th September.

The future is ours--for good, if we are persevering, intelligent, and

brave; for ill, if we quarrel, slumber, or shrink.

III. Political Articles.

NO REDRESS--NO INQUIRY.

The British Parliament has refused to redress our wrongs, or even to

inquire into them. For five long nights were they compelled to listen

to arguments, facts, and principles proving that we were sorely

oppressed. They did not deny the facts--they did not refute the

reasoning--they did not undermine the principles--but they would not

try to right us.

"We inherit the right of hatred for six centuries of oppression; what

will you do to prove your repentance, and propitiate our revenge?"--and

the answer is, "That's an old story, we wish to hear no more of it."

Legislature of Britain, you shall hear more of it!

The growing race of Irishmen are the first generation of freemen which

Ireland nursed these three centuries. The national schools may teach

them only the dry elements of knowledge adulterated with Anglicism, and

Trinity College may teach them bigotry, along with graceful lore and

strong science; but there are other schools at work. There is a

national art, and there is an Irish literature growing up. Day after

day the choice of the young men discover that genius needs a country to

honour and be loved by. The Irish Press is beginning to teach the

People to know themselves and their history; to know other nations, and

to feel the rights and duties of citizens. The agitation, whose surges

sweep through every nook of the island, converts all that the People

learn to national uses; nothing is lost, nothing is adverse; neutrality

is help, and all power is converted into power for Ireland.

Ireland is changing the loose tradition of her wrongs into history and

ballad; and though justice, repentance, or retribution may make her

cease to need vengeance, she will immortally remember her bondage, her

struggles, her glories, and her disasters. Till her suffering ceases

that remembrance will rouse her passions and nerve her arm. May she not

forgive till she is no longer oppressed; and when she forgives, may she

never forget!

Why need we repeat the tale of present wretchedness? Seven millions and

a half of us are Presbyterians and Catholics, and our whole

ecclesiastical funds go to the gorgeous support of the Clergy of the

remaining 800,000, who are Episcopalians. Where else on _earth_ does a

similar injury and dishonour exist? Nowhere; 'twas confessed it existed

nowhere. Would it weaken the empire to abolish this? Confessedly not,

but would give it some chance of holding together. Would it injure

Protestantism? You say not. Idle wealth is fatal to a Church, and

supremacy bears out every proud and generous convert. Why is it

maintained? The answer is directly given--"England (that is, the

English aristocracy) is bigoted," and no Ministry dare give you

redress. These are the very words of Captain Rous, the Tory member for

Westminster, and the whole House assented to the fact. If you cannot

redress--if you will not go into inquiry, lest this redress, so needed

by us, should be fatal to your selfish power, then loose your hold of

us, and we will redress ourselves; and we will do so with less injury

to any class than you possibly could, for a free nation may be

generous--a struggling one will not and ought not to be so.

We are most dishonestly taxed for _your_ debts; the fact was not

denied--an ominous silence declared that not a halfpenny of that mighty

mortgage would be taken off our shoulders.

You raise five millions a year from us, and you spend it on English

commissioners, English dockyards, English museums, English ambition,

and English pleasures. With an enormous taxation, our public offices

have been removed to London, and you threaten to remove our Courts of

Justice, and our Lord Lieutenancy, the poor trapping of old nationhood.

We have no arsenals, no public employment here; our literary,

scientific, and charitable institutions, so bountifully endowed by a

Native Legislature, you have forced away, till, out of that enormous

surplus revenue raised here, not L10,000 a year comes back for such

purposes, while you have heaped hundred upon hundred thousand into the

lap of every English institution. For National Education you dribble

out L50,000 a year--not enough for our smallest province. Will you

redress these things? No, but you boast of your liberality in giving us

anything.

"Oh, but you are not overtaxed," says Peel; "see, your Post-office

produces nothing to the revenue." Ay, Sir, our Post-office, which

levies the same rates as the English Post-office, produces nothing;

Ireland is too poor to make even a penny-postage pay its own cost. No

stronger mark of a stagnant trade could be adduced. "And then we

lowered your spirit duty." Yes you did, because it brought in less than

the lower duty. What single tax did you take off, except when it had

been raised so high, or the country had declined so low, that it ceased

to be productive? You increased our taxation up to the end of the war

two and a half times more rapidly than you did your own, and you

diminished our taxation after the war thirty times less rapidly.

You have a fleet of steamers now--you had none in 1817, says some

pattern of English Senators, whose constituents are bound to subscribe

a few school-books for him if they mean to continue him as their

delegate.

And my Lord Eliot says our exports and imports have increased. We wish

your Lordship would have separate accounts kept that we might know how

much. But they _have_ increased--ay, they have; and they are

provisions. And our population has increased: and when we had one-half

the number of People to feed we sent out a tenth of the provisions we

send away now. This is ruin, not prosperity. We had weavers,

iron-workers, glass-makers, and fifty other flourishing trades. They

sold their goods to Irishmen in exchange for beef and mutton, and

bread, and bacon, and potatoes. The Irish provisions were not

exported--they were eaten in Ireland. They are exported now--for Irish

artisans, without work, must live on the refuse of the soil, and Irish

peasants must eat lumpers or starve. Part of the exports go to buy rags

and farming tools, which once went for clothes and all other goods to

Irish operatives, and the rest goes to raise money to pay absentee

rents and imperial taxes. Will you tax our absentees? Will you employ

our artisans? Will you abate your taxes, or spend them among us? No;

you refuse redress--you refuse inquiry.

Your conquests and confiscations have given us land tenures alien to

the country and deadly to the peasant. Will you interfere in property

to save him, as you interfered to oppress him? You hint that you might

inquire, but you only offered redress in an Arms' Bill--to prostrate

the poor man, to violate the sanctity of his home, to brand him, and

leave him at the mercy of his local tyrant.

Will you equalise the franchise, and admit us, in proportion to our

numbers, into your Senate, and let us try there for redress? You may

inquire, perhaps, some other time; if much pressed, you may consider

some increase of the franchise--you decline to open the representation.

And if England will do none of these things, will she allow us, for

good or ill, to govern ourselves, and see if we cannot redress our own

griefs? "No, never, never," she says, "though all Ireland cried for

it--never! Her fields shall be manured with the shattered limbs of her

sons, and her hearths quenched in their blood; but never, while England

has a ship or a soldier, shall Ireland be free."

And this is your answer? We shall see--we shall see!

And now, Englishmen, listen to us! Though you were to-morrow to give us

the best tenures on earth--though you were to equalise Presbyterian,

Catholic, and Episcopalian--though you were to give us the amplest

representation in your Senate--though you were to restore our

absentees, disencumber us of your debt, and redress every one of our

fiscal wrongs--and though, in addition to all this, you plundered the

treasuries of the world to lay gold at our feet, and exhausted the

resources of your genius to do us worship and honour--still we tell

you--we tell you, in the names of liberty and country--we tell you, in

the name of enthusiastic hearts, thoughtful souls, and fearless

spirits--we tell you, by the past, the present and the future, we would

spurn your gifts, if the condition were that Ireland should remain a

province. We tell you, and all whom it may concern, come what

may--bribery or deceit, justice, policy, or war--we tell you, in the

name of Ireland, that Ireland shall be a Nation!

THE RIGHT ROAD.

By the People the People must be righted. Disunion, and sloth, and

meanness enslaved them. Combination, calm pride, and ceaseless labour

must set them loose. Let them not trust to the blunders of their

enemies, or the miracles of their chiefs--trust nothing, men of

Ireland, but the deep resolve of your own hearts.

As well might you leave the fairies to plough your land or the idle

winds to sow it, as sit down and wait for freedom.

You are on the right road.

The Repeal Year is over--what then?--Call next year the Repeal Year if

you have a fancy for names; and if that, too, searches your

fetter-sores with its December blast, work the next year, and the next,

and the next. Cease not till all is done. If you sleep, now that you

have climbed so far, you may never wake again.

Abandon or nod over your task, and the foreign minister will treat you

as mad, and tie you down, or as idiotic, and give you sugar plums and

stripes. Every man with a spark of pride and manhood would leave you to

bear alone the scorn of the world, and from father to son you would

live a race of ragged serfs till God in his mercy should destroy the

People and the soil.

You are on the right road. You don't want to go to war. Your greatest

leader objects, on principle, to all war for liberty. All your friends,

even those who think liberty well worth a sea of blood, agree with him

that it is neither needful nor politic for you to embark in a war with

your oppressor. It is not that they doubt your courage nor resources--it

is not that they distrust your allies--but it is that they _know_ you

can succeed without a single skirmish, and therefore he who harms

person or property in seeking Repeal is criminal to his country.

But if they preach peace loudly, they preach perseverance with still

greater emphasis. It is the universal creed of all Liberals, that

_anything_ were better than retreat. One of the most moderate of

the Whigs said to us yesterday: "I would rather walk at O'Connell's

funeral than witness his submission." And he said well. Death is no

evil, and dying is but a moment's pang. There is no greater sign of a

pampered and brutish spirit in a man than to wince at the foot-sound of

death. Death is the refuge of the wronged, the opiate of the restless,

the mother's or the lover's breast to the bruised and disappointed; it

is the sure retreat of the persecuted, and the temple-gate of the

loving, and pious, and brave. When all else leaves us, it is faithful.

But where are we wandering to pluck garlands from the tomb?

Retreat would bring us the woes of war, without its chances or its

pride. The enemy, elate at our discomfiture, would press upon our rear.

The landlord would use every privilege till he had reduced his farms to

insurgentless pastures. The minister would rush in and tear away the

last root of nationality. The peasant, finding his long-promised hope

of freedom and security by moral means gone, and left unled to his own

impulses, would league with his neighbour serfs, and ruin others, in

the vain hope of redressing himself. The day would be dark with

tyranny, and the night red with vengeance. The military triumph of the

rack-renter or the Whiteboy would be the happiest issue of the strife.

If the People ought neither spring into war, nor fall through confusion

into a worse slavery, what remains? Perseverance. They are on the right

road, and should walk on in it patiently, thoughtfully, and without

looking back.

The Repeal organisation enables the People to act together. It is the

bark of the tree, guarding it and binding it. It is the cause of our

unanimity; for where else has a party, so large as the Irish Repealers,

worked without internal squabbles? It is the secret of our discipline.

How else, but by the instant action of the Association on the whole

mass of the People, through the Repeal Press and the Repeal Wardens,

could our huge meetings have been assembled or been brought

together?--how else could they have been separated in quiet?--how else

could the People have been induced to continue their subscriptions

month after month and year after year?

An ignorant or unorganised People would soon have tired of the constant

subscriptions and meetings, and have broken into disorder or sunk into

apathy.

He is a long-sighted and sober-minded man that lays out money on a

complex yet safe speculation, or lays it by for an evil day. That is a

People having political wisdom which denies itself some present

indulgence for a future good. It had been pleasanter, for some at least

of the People, to have spent in eating or clothing the shilling they

sent to the Repeal Association, just as six years ago they found it

pleasanter to spend the shilling, or the penny, or the pound, on the

whiskey shop. But the same self-denying and far-seeing resolve which

enabled them to resign drink for food, and books, and clothing, induced

them to postpone some of these solid comforts to attend meetings, and

to give money, in order to win, at some future time, fixed holdings,

trade, strength, and liberty.

The People, if they would achieve their aim, must continue their

exertions.

It will not do to say, wait till the trials are over. The rate of the

trials will not determine Repeal.

The conviction, imprisonment, or death of their present leaders will

not crush it. There are those ready to fill the vacancies in the

column, and to die too. The rudest and the humblest in the land would

grow into an inspired hero were leader after leader to advance and

fall. Victory would be the religion of the country, and by one means or

other it would triumph. A stronger spirit than his who died issues from

the martyr's coffin.

Nor would the success of the accused carry Repeal.

It would embarrass the minister--it would gain time--it would give us

another chance for peaceful justice.

But the Queen's Bench is not the imperial Parliament, nor is the

Traversers' plea of "not guilty" a bill to overturn the Union, and

construct Irish independence on its ruins.

To win by peace they must use all the resources of peace, as they have

done hitherto.

Is there any parish wherein there are no Repeal Wardens active every

week in collecting money, distributing cards, tracts, and newspapers?

Let that parish meet to-morrow or to-morrow week, appoint _active_

Wardens, send up its subscriptions, and get down its cards, papers, and

tracts, week after week, till the year goes round or till Repeal is

carried.

Is there any town or district which has not a Temperance Band and

Reading-room? If there be, let that town or district meet at once, and

subscribe for instruments, music, and a teacher; let the members meet,

and read, and discuss, and qualify themselves by union, study, and

political information to act as citizens, whether their duty lead them

to the public assembly, the hustings, or the hill-side. By acting thus,

and not by listening for news about trials, the People have advanced

from mouldering slaves into a threatening and united People; continuing

to act thus, they will become a triumphant nation, spite of fortified

barracks, Wellington, Peel, and England. They are in the right road;

let them walk on in it.

FOREIGN POLICY AND FOREIGN INFORMATION.

Our history contains reasons for our extending the Foreign Policy of

Ireland. This we tried to develop some months back.

The partial successes of the wars of the sixteenth and seventeenth

centuries, from Hugh O'Neill to James the Second, were in no slight

degree owing to the arms and auxiliary troops of Spain and France.

Our yet more complete triumphs in the political conflicts of the

eighteenth and nineteenth centuries owed still more to our foreign

connections--witness the influence of the American war on the creation

of the Volunteers, the effect of the battle of Jemappes, and of the

French Fraternity of Ulster on the Toleration Act of 1793, and how much

the presence of American money, and the fear of French interference,

hastened the Emancipation Act of 1829.

With reference to this last period, we may state that such an effect

had the articles published in _l'Etoile_ on Ireland that Canning

wrote a remonstrance to M. de Villele, asking him "was it intended that

the war of pens should bring on one of swords." The remonstrance was

unavailing--the French sympathy for Ireland increased, and other

offices than newspaper offices began to brush up their information on

Ireland. But arms yielded to the gown, and the maps and statistics of

Ireland never left the War Office of France.

But our own history is not the only advocate for a Foreign Policy for

Ireland.

Foreign alliances have ever stood among the pillars of national power,

along with virtue, wise laws, settled customs, military organisations,

and naval position. Advice, countenance, direct help, are secured by

old and generous alliances. Thus the alliance of Prussia carried

England through the wars of the eighteenth century, the alliance of

France rescued the wavering fortunes of America, the alliance of

Austria maintains Turkey against Russia, and so in a thousand instances

beside.

A People known and regarded abroad will be more dignified, more

consistent, and more proud in all its acts. Fame is to national manners

little less than virtue to national morals. A nation with a high and

notorious character to sustain will be more stately and firm than if it

lived in obscurity. Each citizen feels that the national name which he

bears is a pledge for his honour. The soldier's uniform much less

surely checks the display of his vices, and an army's standard less

certainly excites its valour than the name of an illustrious country

stimulates its sons to greatness and nobility. The _prestige_ of Rome's

greatness operated even more on the souls of her citizens than on the

hearts of her friends and foes.

Again, it is peculiarly needful for _Ireland_ to have a Foreign Policy.

Intimacy with the great powers will guard us from English interference.

Many of the minor German states were too deficient in numbers,

boundaries, and wealth to have outstood the despotic ages of Europe but

for those foreign alliances, which, whether resting on friendship or a

desire to preserve the balance of power, secured them against their

rapacious neighbours. And now time has given its sanction to their

continuance, and the progress of localisation guarantees their future

safety. When Ireland is a nation she will not, with her vast population

and her military character, require such alliances as a _security_

against an English _re-conquest_; but they will be useful in banishing

any _dreams of invasion_ which might _otherwise_ haunt the brain of our

old enemy.

But England is a pedagogue as well as a gaoler to us. Her prison

discipline requires the Helotism of mind. She shuts us up, like another

Caspar Hauser, in a dark dungeon, and tells us what she likes of

herself and of the rest of the world. And this renders foreign

information most desirable for us.

She calls France base, impious, poor, and rapacious. She lies. France

has been the centre of European mind for centuries. France was the

first of the large states to sweep away the feudal despotism. France

has a small debt and an immense army; while England has a vast debt and

scanty forces. France has five millions of kindly, merry, well-fed

yeomen. England swarms with dark and withered artisans. Every seventh

person you meet in France is a landowner in fee, subject to moderate

taxation. Taxes and tenancies-at-will have cleared out the yeomanry

of England. France has a literature surpassing England's modern

literature. France is an apostle of liberty--England the turnkey of the

world. France is the old friend, England, the old foe, of Ireland. From

one we may judge all. England has defamed _all other countries_ in

order to make us and her other slaves content in our fetters.

England's eulogies on herself are as false and extravagant as her

calumnies on all other states. She represents her constitution as the

perfection of human wisdom; while in reality it is based on conquest,

shaken by revolution, and only qualified by disorder. Her boasted

tenures are the relics of a half-abolished serfdom, wherein the

cultivator was nothing, and the aristocrat everything, and in which a

primogeniture extending from the King to the Gentleman _often_ placed

idiocy on the throne, and tyranny in the senate, and _always_ produced

disunion in families, monopoly in land, and peculation throughout every

branch of the public service. Her laws are complicated, and their

administration costly beyond any others ever known. Her motley and

tyrannous flag she proclaims the first that floats, and her tottering

and cruel empire the needful and sufficient guardian of our liberties.

By cultivating Foreign Relations, and growing intimate with foreign

states of society, we will hear a free and just criticism on England's

constitution and social state. We will have a still better and fairer

commentary in the condition and civil structure of other countries.

We will see _small_ free states--Norway, Sweden, Holland, Switzerland,

and Portugal--maintaining their homes free, and bearing their flags in

triumph for long ages. We will learn from themselves how they kept

their freedom afloat amid the perils of centuries. We will salute them

as brethren subject to common dangers, and interested in one

policy--localisation of power.

The Catholic will see the Protestant states of Prussia, Holland,

Saxony, and America; and the Protestant will see the Catholic states

of Belgium, Bavaria, and France, all granting full liberty of

conscience--leaving every creed to settle its tenets with its

conscience, and dealing, _as states_, only with citizens, not sects.

He who fancies some intrinsic objection to our nationality to lie in

the co-existence of two languages, three or four great sects, and a

dozen different races in Ireland, will learn that in Hungary,

Switzerland, Belgium, and America, different languages, creeds, and

races flourish kindly side by side, and he will seek in English

intrigues the real well of the bitter woes of Ireland.

Germany, France, and America teach us that English economics are not

fit for a nation beginning to establish a trade, though they may be for

an old and plethoric trader; and therefore that English and Irish

trading interests are directly opposed. Nor can our foreign trade but

be served by foreign connections.

The land tenures of France, Norway, and Prussia are the reverse of

England's. They resemble our own old tenures; they better suit our

character and our wants than the loose holdings and servile wages

system of modern England.

These, and a host of lessons more, will we learn if we study the books,

laws, and manners, and cultivate an intimacy with the citizens of

foreign states. We will thus obtain countenance, sympathy, and help in

time of need, and honour and friendship in time of strength; and thus,

too, we will learn toleration towards each other's creed, distrust in

our common enemy, and confidence in liberty and nationality.

Till Ireland has a foreign policy, and a knowledge of foreign states,

England will have an advantage over us in both military and moral ways.

We will be without those aids on which even the largest nations have at

times to depend; and we will be liable to the advances of England's

treacherous and deceptive policy.

Let us, then, return the ready grasp of America, and the warm sympathy

of France, and of every other country that offers us its hand and

heart. Let us cultivate a Foreign Policy and Foreign Information as

useful helps in that national existence which is before us, though its

happiness and glory depend, in the first instance, on "ourselves

alone." Ireland has a glorious future, if she be worthy of it. We must

believe and act up to the lessons taught by reason and history, that

England is our interested and implacable enemy--a tyrant to her

dependants--a calumniator of her neighbours, and both the despot and

defamer of Ireland for near seven centuries. Mutual respect for

conscience, an avoidance of polemics, concession to each other,

defiance to the foe, and the extension of our foreign relations, are

our duty, and should be our endeavour. Vigour and policy within and

without, great men to lead, educated men to organise, brave men to

follow--these are the means of liberation--these are elements of

nationality.

MORAL FORCE.

There are two ways of success for the Irish--arms and persuasion. They

have chosen the latter. They have resolved to win their rights by moral

force. For this end they have confederated their names, their moneys,

their thoughts, and their resolves. For this they meet, organise, and

subscribe. For this they learn history, and forget quarrels; and for

this they study their resources, and how to increase them.

For moral success internal union is essential.

Ireland, through all its sects and classes, must demand Repeal before

the English Minister will be left without a fair reason to resist it,

and not till then we be in a state to coerce his submission.

Conciliation of all sects, classes, and parties who oppose us, or who

still hesitate, is _essential_ to moral force. For if, instead of

leading a man to your opinions by substantial kindness, by zealous

love, and by candid and wise teaching, you insult his tastes and his

prejudices, and force him either to adopt your cause or to resist

it--if, instead of slow persuasion, your weapons are bullying and

intolerance, then your profession of moral force is a lie, and a lie

which deceives no one, and your attacks will be promptly resisted by

every man of spirit.

The Committee of the Repeal Association have of late begun to attend to

the Registries. The majority of Irish electors belong to the middle

class; and if all of that class who could register and vote did

register and vote, it would be out of the landlords' power to coerce

them. The landlords have awoken to a sense of their danger. They begin

to know that if once the quiet patriots of this country conclude that

reform of the landlords is hopeless, the only barrier between them and

their tenants will sink, and they will sink too.

There will be less landlordism next election--at least we warn the

landlords that there _must_ be less.

If, then, the majority of members chosen by the middle class oppose

Domestic Legislation, the middle class is suspected of not being truly

national--the sincerity of the People is made doubtful--an impediment

is opposed to Repeal, which the Repeal Association properly strive to

upset.

Therefore do they and we urge the Repealers to serve notices

diligently, accurately, and at once. Therefore do they and we prompt

them to attend at the Sessions, and boldly claim their rights as

citizens contributing to the State, and entitled to a vote in electing

its managers; and therefore do they and we advise each constituency to

consider well whether they have or can procure a representative whose

purity of life, undoubted honesty, knowledge of politics, and devoted

zeal to secure Domestic Government fit him to legislate in St.

Stephen's, or to agitate in the Corn Exchange, or wherever else

nationality may have a temple.

We say, the advocacy of a "Domestic Legislature," because _that_ is

what Ireland wants. We are a province, drained by foreign taxation and

absentees, governed by a foreign legislature and executive. We seek to

have _Ireland_ governed by an Irish senate and executive for herself,

and by Irishmen; and although a man shall add to this a claim for a

share in the government of the _empire_, and of course a consent to

give taxes and soldiers, therefore that (though to us it seems unwise)

is not such a difference as should make us divide. He is a Repealer of

the Union as decidedly as if he never called himself a Federalist. Such

Repealing Federalists are Messrs. Crawford, Wyse, John O'Brien,

Caulfield, Ross, O'Malley, O'Hagan, Bishop Kennedy, and numbers of

others in and out of the Association. In selecting or in agitating

about Members we must therefore never forget that a Federalist is quite

as likely to be national as a technical Repealer, and that if his

morals and ability be better than those of a _so-called_ Repeal

candidate, he is the better man.

We have also classed morals, ability, and zeal as being quite as

requisite as national opinions in a Representative.

If our Members were a majority in the House, it might not be very

moral, but at least it would have some show of excuse if we sent in a

flock of pledged delegates to vote Repeal, regardless of their powers

or principles; though even then we might find it hard to get rid of the

scoundrels after Repeal was carried, and when Ireland would need

virtuous and unremitting wisdom to make her prosper.

But now, when our whole Members are not a sixth of the Commons, and

when the English Whigs are as hostile to Repeal as the English Tories,

and more hostile to it than the Irish Tories--now, it is plain we must

get weight for our opinions by the ability and virtue of our Members;

and therefore we exhort the People, as they love purity, as they prize

religion, as they are true to themselves, to Ireland, and to liberty,

to spurn from their hustings any man who comes there without purity and

wisdom, though he took or kept a thousand Repeal pledges.

We want men who are not spendthrifts, drunkards, swindlers--we want

honest men--men whom we would trust with our private money or our

family's honour; and sooner than see faded aristocrats and brawling

profligates shelter themselves from their honest debtors by a Repeal

membership, we would leave Tories and Whigs undisturbed in their seats,

and strive to carry Repeal by other measures.

Conciliation, virtue, and wisdom are our moral means of success. They

must be used and sought on the hustings as well as in the Conciliation

Hall. We must not prematurely, and at Heaven knows what distance from

an election, force a good and able man to accept a pledge or quarrel

with us. Pledges are extreme things, hardly constitutional, and highly

imprudent in a well-governed country. Nevertheless, they are sometimes

needed, as are sharper remedies; and such need will exist here at the

general election. No man must go in for any place where the popular

will prevails unless he is a Repealer or a Federalist; and, what is

_equally_ essential, an upright, unstained, and zealous man, who will

work for Ireland and do her credit. But it seems to us quite premature

to insist on those pledges from honourable, proud, and patriotic men

_now_, who will, in all likelihood, be with us before an election

comes, provided they are treated with the respect and forbearance due

to them whether they join us or not.

These are some of the canons of moral force; and if, as we trust,

Ireland can succeed without cannon of another kind, it must be by using

those we have here mustered.

CONCILIATION.

The People of Ireland have done well in naming the scene of their

future counsels the Conciliation Hall.

It intimates the cause of all our misery, and suggests the cure.

Prostrated by division, union is our hope.

If Irishmen were united, the Repeal of the Union would be instantly and

quietly conceded. A Parliament, at whose election mutual generosity

would be in every heart and every act, would take the management of

Ireland. For oh! we ask our direst foe to say from the bottom of his

heart, would not the People of Ireland melt with joy and love to their

Protestant brethren if they united and conquered? And surely from such

a soil noble crops would grow. No southern plain heavy with corn, and

shining with fruit-clad hamlets, ever looked so warm and happy as would

the soul of Ireland, bursting out with all the generosity and beauty of

a grateful People.

We trust that the opening of the Conciliation Hall will be a signal to

Catholic and Protestant to _try_ and agree.

Surely our Protestant brethren cannot shut their eyes to the honour it

would confer on them and us if we gave up old brawls and bitterness,

and came together in love like Christians, in feeling like countrymen,

in policy like men having common interests. Can they--ah! tell us, dear

countrymen!--can you harden your hearts at the thought of looking on

Irishmen joined in commerce, agriculture, art, justice, government,

wealth, and glory?

Fancy the aristocracy placed by just laws, or by wise concession, on

terms of friendship with their tenants, securing to these tenants every

farthing their industry entitled them to; living among them, promoting

agriculture and education by example and instruction; sharing their

joys, comforting their sorrows, and ready to stand at their head

whenever their country called. Think well on it. Suppose it to exist in

your own county, in your own barony and parish. Dwell on this sight.

See the life of such a landlord and of such farmers--so busy, so

thoughtful, so happy! How the villages would ring with pleasure and

trade, and the fields laugh with contented and cheered labour. Imagine

the poor supporting themselves on those waste lands which the home

expenditure of our rents and taxes would reclaim, and the workhouse

turned into an hospital, or a district college. Education and art would

prosper; every village, like Italy, with its painter of repute. Then

indeed the men of all creeds would be competent by education to judge

of doctrines; yet, influenced by that education, to see that God meant

men to live, and love, and ennoble their souls; to be just, and to

worship Him, and not to consume themselves in rites, or theological

contention; or if they did discuss, they would do so not as enemies,

but inquirers after truth. The clergy of different creeds would be

placed on an equality, and would hope to propagate their faith not by

hard names or furious preaching, but by their dignity and wisdom, and

by the marked goodness of their flocks. Men might meet or part at

church or chapel door without sneer or suspicion. From the christening

of the child, till his neighbours, Catholic and Protestant, followed

his grey-haired corpse to the tomb, he might live enjoying much,

honoured much, and fearing nothing but his own carelessness or vice.

This, 'twill be said, is a paradise.

Alas! no--there would still be individual crime and misfortune,

national difficulties and popular errors. These are in the happiest and

best countries.

But the condition of many countries is as Paradise to what we are.

Where else in Europe is the peasant ragged, fed on roots, in a wigwam,

without education?

Where else are the towns ruined, trade banished, the till, and the

workshop, and the stomach of the artisan empty? Where else is there an

exportation of over one-third of the rents, and an absenteeism of the

chief landlords? What other country pays four and a half million taxes

to a foreign treasury, and has its offices removed or filled with

foreigners? Where else are the People told they are free and

represented, yet only one in two hundred of them have the franchise?

Where, beside, do the majority support the Clergy of the minority? In

what other country are the majority excluded from high ranks in the

University? In what place, beside, do landlords and agents extort such

vast rents from an indigent race? Where else are the tenants ever

pulling, the owners ever driving, and both full of anger? And what

country so fruitful and populous, so strong, so well marked and guarded

by the sea, and with such an ancient name, was reduced to provincialism

by bribery and treacherous force, and is denied all national

government?

And if the answer be, as it must, "nowhere is the like seen," then we

say that union amongst Irishmen would make this country comparatively a

paradise. For union would peacefully achieve independence; would enable

us to settle the landlord and tenant question; would produce religious

equality, as the first act of independence; would restore the absentees

by the first of our taxes; would cherish our commerce, facilitate

agriculture and manufactures, and would introduce peace and social

exertion, instead of religious and political strife.

Again, then, we ask the Protestant to ponder over these things--to

think of them when he lies down--to talk over them to his Catholic

neighbours--to see if he and they couldn't agree--and to offer up in

church his solemn prayers that this righteous and noble conclusion of

our mourning may be vouchsafed.

Where, in aught that has been said or done by the Catholic party, is

there evidence of that intolerant and usurping spirit which the

Protestants seem to dread?

Do they think it possible for a whole People of some millions of men,

women, and children to tell a public lie, and to persevere in the giant

falsehood for years? The present generation have been brought up in

this faith of religious equality, and they would be liars, and

apostates too, if they wished for ascendency. We may add it would not

be safe nor possible for the Catholics to establish an ascendency,

even if the Union were repealed; and, therefore, we again ask the

Protestants, for the sake of peace, interest, and religion, to _try_ if

they cannot unite with the Catholics for the prosperity of Ireland.

To the Catholics we have nothing to say but to redouble their efforts.

Conciliation is a fixed and everlasting duty, independently of the

political results it might have. If they despaired of winning the

Protestants to Repeal, conciliation would still be their duty, as men

and Christians. But there is every ground for hope. The Protestants, in

defeating the rack-renters' anti-Repeal meeting, showed they began to

see their interest. Something has been, more shall be done to remove

the prejudice against the Catholics, derived from lying histories; and

if we may take the stern reproof of the _Banner of Ulster_ to the

_Evening Mail_ as speaking the sentiments of the Presbyterians of the

North, then they begin to feel like religious Irishmen, and they will

presently be with us.

SCOLDING MOBS.[50]

Why on earth have so many of the People of Dublin made fools of

themselves by getting together in Sackville Street every evening to

hoot at coaches? The coach contract was an injury and an insult to us,

but it is now irremediable. We have serious work before us, and let us

have no by-battles. To the devil with the whole affair, rather than

compromise our cause.

Nothing could please the Government more than frequent little rows,

which would get up a hatred between the soldiers and police and the

people. They are now very good friends. The armed men are becoming

popular and patriotic, and the unarmed, we trust, more orderly,

hospitable, and kindly every day. Let us have no more tussling and

patrolling.

What do these mobs mean? A noisy mob is always rash--often cruel and

cowardly. A good friendly shout from a multitude is well, and a passing

hearty curse endurable. The silent and stern assemblage of orderly men,

like the myriads of Tipperary, or like one of Napoleon's armies, is a

noble sight and a mighty power; but a scolding, hooting mob, which

meets to make a noise, and runs away from a stick, a horse, or a sabre,

is a wretched affair.

"I hate little wars," said Wellington. So do we; and we hate still more

a petty mob meeting without purpose, and dispersing without success.

Perfect order, silence, obedience, alacrity, and courage make an

assemblage formidable and respectable. We want law and order--we are

seriously injured by every scene or act of violence, no matter how

transient. Let us have no more of this humbug. If we are determined men

we have enough to _learn_ and to do without wasting our time in hissing

and groaning coaches.

In reference to popular faults, we cannot help saying a word on the

language applied to certain of the enemy's leaders, especially the Duke

of Wellington. We dislike the whole system of false disparagement. The

Irish People will never be led to act the manly part which liberty

requires of them by being told that "the Duke," that gallant soldier

and most able general, is a screaming coward and doting corporal. We

have grave and solemn work to do. Making light of it or of our enemies

may inspire a moment's overweening confidence, but would ensure

ultimate defeat. We have much to contend against; but our resources are

immense, and nothing but our own rashness or cowardice can defeat us.

---------------------------------------------------------------

[50] The withdrawal of the Coach Contracts from Ireland is but

another instance of the same spiteful and feeble policy. Messrs.

Bourne and Purcell had for years held the contract for building the

Irish Mail Coaches. This contract was less a source of wealth to

them than of support and comfort to hundreds of families employed

by them. The contract runs out--Messrs. Bourne & Purcell propose in

form for it--an _informal_ proposal, at a rate inconsiderably

lower, is sent in by another person, and is at once accepted. It is

accepted notwithstanding its irregularity, and notwithstanding the

offer of Messrs. Bourne & Purcell to take it, even at a loss, as

low as anyone else. It is given to a foreigner. Were the difference

triple what it was, that contract should have been left in

Ireland.--_Nation_.

MUNSTER OUTRAGES.

The people of Munster are in want--will murder feed them? Is there some

prolific virtue in the blood of a landlord that the fields of the South

will yield a richer crop where it has flowed? As the Jews dashed their

door-posts on the Passover, shall the blood of an agent shelter the

cabins of Tipperary? Shame, shame, and horror! Oh! to think that these

hands, hard with innocent toil, should be reddened with assassination!

Oh! bitter, bitter grief, that the loving breasts of Munster should

pillow heads wherein are black plots, and visions of butchery and

shadows of remorse! Oh! woe unutterable, if the men who abandoned the

sin of drunkenness should companion with the devil of murder; and if

the men who, last year, vowed patience, order, and virtue, rashly and

impiously revel in crime.

But what do we say? Where are we led by our fears? Surely, Munster is

against these atrocities--they are the sins of a few--the People are

pure and sound, and all will be well with Ireland! 'Tis so, 'tis so; we

pray God 'tis so: but yet the People are not without blame!

Won't they come and talk to us about these horrid deeds? Won't they

meet us (as brothers to consider disorders in their family) and do

something--do all to stop them? Don't they confide in us? Oh! they

know, well they know that our hearts love them better than life--well

they know that to-morrow, if 'twould serve, we would be ready to die by

their side in battle; but we are not ready to be their accomplices in

crime--we would not be unsteady on the scaffold, so we honestly died

for them, but we have no share with the murderer!

Nor is it we alone, who have ever professed our willingness to take the

field with the people, who loathe and denounce these crimes. Let the

men of Munster read the last Act of the Repeal Association, and they

will find Daniel O'Connell, William Smith O'Brien, and the entire

Repeal League confederated to proclaim and trample down the assassins.

Let them enter their chapels, and from every altar they will hear their

beloved priests solemnly warning them that the forms of the Church are

as fiery coals on the heads of the blood-stained. Let them look upon

government, and they will find a potent code and vast police--a

disciplined army--all just citizens, combined to quell the assassin;

and then let them with their consciences approach their God, and learn

that the murderer is dark before Him.

Heaven and earth raise their voices against these crimes. Will they not

be hopeless?--must they not be desperately wicked?

What chance has the guilty of success?--what right to commit so deadly

a sin? These murders will not give the people the land, nor leases, nor

low rents. When the country was in a rude state, intimidation easy, and

concealment easier, they tried the same thing. They began butchering

bailiffs--they rose to shooting landlords. Did they get nearer their

object? Did they overpower their oppressors, stop the law, mitigate

their condition?--No, but the opposite; the successors of the

slaughtered men levied the rents and enforced the ejectments of the

slain. They did so with greater zeal, for vengeance strengthened their

resolve. They did so with greater effect, for the law that might have

interfered where the people were oppressed, and society, which would

have aided the wronged people, took arms against assassins, and the

death groan of the victim was the best rallying cry of oppression.

So it will be again. Already men whose tongues, and pens, and hearts

were busy pleading for better tenures and juster rents are silenced.

They will not clamour for rights when assassins may recruit their gangs

with the words of the innocent. Already minds deep in preparing

remedies for popular suffering are meditating means of popular

coercion. The justice, not only of government but society, has grown

cautious of redress, and is preparing to punish--a repetition of guilt

will aggravate that punishment and postpone that redress.

Headstrong and vain men, your sins will not give you a landlord the

less nor a persecutor the less; while ever the land is liable to the

rent there will be found men willing to hazard their lives to get it,

and you but arm them with fresh powers, with the sympathy of the public

and the increased force of law and government, to lean yet heavier on

you.

Why, too, should Munster lead in guilt? Our richest province, our

purest race, our fairest scenes--oh! why should its bloodshed be as

plenteous as its rains? Other people suffer much. The peaceful people

of Kerry, the whole province of Connaught, many counties of Leinster

are under a harsher yoke than the men of North Munster: yet they do not

seek relief in butchery.

Thank God! they do not. How horrid a blot upon earth were Ireland, if

its poor had no reliance but the murder of the rich; better by far that

that people rose and waged open war. That were wild--that were

criminal; but 'twould be wisdom and mercy compared with these

individual murders.

How horrible is the condition of a district subject to such crimes! Few

are struck, but all suffer! 'Tis as if men knew assuredly that a spirit

of plague were passing through the land, but knew not whom it would

wither. Think of a district where there has been peace--the People are

poor, but they are innocent; some of the rich are merciless, but some

are just, and many are kind and sympathising; in their low homes, in

their safe chapels, in the faith of their fellows, in the hope of

better days, in the effort for improvement, but above all in their

conscious innocence, the most trampled of them have consolation, and

there is a sort of smile even on the wretched. But let some savage

spirits appear among them--let the shebeen house supply the ferocity

which religion kept down, and one oppressor is marked out for

vengeance, his path is spied, the bludgeon or the bullet smites, and he

is borne in to his innocent and loving family a broken and stained

corpse, slain in his sins.

Pursuit follows--the criminals become outlaws--they try to shelter

their lives and console their consciences by making many share their

guilt--another and another is struck at. Haunted by remorse, and

tracked by danger, and now intimate with crime, a less and a less

excuse suffices. He began by avenging his own wrong, becomes the

avenger of others, then perhaps the tool of others, who use the wrongs

of the country as a cloak for unjustified malice, and the _suspected_

tyrant or the rigid, yet not unjust, man shares the fate of the glaring

oppressors. What terror and suspicion--what a shadow as of death is

there upon such a district! No one trusts his neighbour. The rich,

excited by such events, believe the poor have conspired to slay them.

They dread their very domestics, they abhor the People, rage at the

country, summon each other, and all the aid that authority can give to

protect and to punish; they bar their doors before sunset, their

hearths are surrounded with guns and pistols--at the least rustle every

heart beats and women shriek, and men with clenched teeth and

embittered hearts make ready for that lone and deadly conflict--that

battle without object, without honour, without hope, without quarter.

Then they cover the country with patrols--they raise up a cloud of

hovering spies--no peasant, no farmer feels safe. Those who connive

shudder at every passing troop, and see an informer in every stranger.

Those who do not connive tremble lest they be struck as enemies of the

criminal; and thus from bad to worse till no home is safe--no heart

calm of the thousands.

As yet no district has attained this horrible ripeness; but to this

North Munster may come, unless the People interfere and put down the

offenders.

Will they suffer this hell-blight to come upon them? Will they wait

till violence and suspicion are the only principles retaining power

among them? Will they look on while the Repeal movement--the educating,

the ennobling, the sacred effort for liberty--is superseded by the buzz

of assassination and vengeance? Or will they now join O'Connell and

O'Brien--the Association, the Law, and the Priesthood; and whenever

they hear a breath of outrage, denounce it as they would

Atheism--whenever they see an attempt at crime, interpose with brave,

strong hand, and, in Mr. O'Brien's words, "leave the guilty no chance

of life but in hasty flight from the land they have stained with their

crimes."

Once again we ask the People--the guiltless, the suffering, the noble,

the brave People of Munster--by their patience, by their courage, by

their hopes for Ireland, by their love to God, we implore them to put

down these assassins as they would and could were the weapons of the

murderers aimed at their own children.

A SECOND YEAR'S WORK.

It was a bold experiment to establish _The Nation_. Our success is more

honourable to Ireland than to us, for it was by defying evil customs

and bad prejudices we succeeded.

Let us prove this.

Religion has for ages been so mixed with Irish quarrels that it is

often hard to say whether patriotism or superstition was the animating

principle of an Irish leader, and whether political rapacity or bigoted

zeal against bigotry was the motive of an oppressor. Yet in no country

was this more misplaced in our day than in Ireland. Our upper classes

were mostly Episcopalians--masters not merely of the institutions, but

the education and moral force of the country. The middle ranks and much

of the peasantry of one of our greatest provinces were Presbyterians,

obstinate in their simple creed--proud of their victories, yet

apprehensive of oppression. The rest of the population were Catholics,

remarkable for piety and tenderness, but equally noted for ignorance

and want of self-reliance. To mingle politics and religion in such a

country was to blind men to their common secular interests, to render

political union impossible, and national independence hopeless.

We grappled with the difficulty. We left sacred things to consecrated

hands--theology and discipline to Churchmen. We preached a nationality

that asked after no man's creed (_friend's or foe's_); and now, after

our Second Year's Work, we have got a _practical_ as well as a verbal

admission that religion is a thing between man and God--that no citizen

is to be hooted, or abused, or marked down because he holds any

imaginable creed, or changes it any conceivable number of times.

We are proudly conscious that, in preaching these great truths with

success, we have done more to convince the Protestants that they may

combine with the Catholics and get from under the shield of England

than if we had proved that the Repeal of the Union would double the

ears of their corn fields.

There had been a long habit of looking to foreign arms or English mercy

for redress. We have shared the labours of O'Connell and O'Brien in

impressing on the People that self-reliance is the only liberator. We

have, not in vain, taught that, though the concessions of England or

the sympathy of others was to be welcomed and used, still they would be

best won by dignity and strength; and that, whether they came or not,

Ireland could redress herself by patience, energy, and resolution.

Yet, deficient as the People were in genuine self-reliance, they had

been pampered into the belief that they were highly educated, nobly

represented, successful in every science and art, and that consequently

their misery was a mysterious fate, for which there was no remedy in

human means. We believe we have convinced them of the contrary of this.

Ireland has done great things. She has created an unrivalled music and

oratory, taken a first place in lyric poetry, displayed great valour,

ready wit--has been a pattern of domestic virtue and faith under

persecution; and lately has again advanced herself and her fame by

deliberate temperance, by organised abstinence from crime, and by

increasing political discipline. Yet there is that worst of all facts

on the face of the census, that most of the Irish can neither read nor

write; there is evidence in every exhibition that this land, which

produced Barry, Forde, Maclise, and Burton, is ignorant of the fine

arts; and proof in every shop or factory of the truth of Kane's motto,

that industrial ignorance is a prime obstacle to our wealth. We have no

national theatre, either in books or performance; and though we have

got of late some classes of prose literature--national fiction, for

instance--we have yet to write our history, our statistics, and much of

our science.

We have week after week candidly told these things to the People, and,

instead of quarrelling with us, or running off to men who said "the

Irish have succeeded in everything," they hearkened to us, and raised

our paper into a circulation beyond most of the leaders of the London

press, and immensely beyond any other journal that ever was in Ireland.

What is more cheering still, they have set about curing their defects.

They are founding Repeal Reading-rooms. They have noted down their

ignorance in many portions of agriculture, manufactures, commerce,

history, literature, and fine arts; and they are working with the

Agricultural Societies, forming Polytechnic Institutions for the

improvement of manufactures, and giving and demanding support to the

antiquarian and historical and artistical books and institutions in

Ireland. Large _classes_ wished well to, and small ones supported

each of these projects before; but in this journal _all_ classes

were canvassed incessantly, and not in vain--and if there be unanimity

now, we claim some credit for ourselves, but much more for the People,

who did not resent harsh truth, and took advice that affronted their

vanity.

A political impatience and intolerance have too often been seen in this

country. It is one of the vices of slaves to use free speech to insult

all who do not praise their faults and their friends and their

caprices. We rejoice, in looking over our files, to see how rarely we

were personal and how generally we recognised the virtues of political

foes. It is an equal pleasure to recall that in many questions, but

especially in reference to the Liberal Members not in the Association,

we stood between an impolitic fury and its destined victims. The People

bore with us, and then agreed with us. We told them that men able and

virtuous--men who had gone into Parliament when Repeal was a Whig

buggaboo to frighten the Tories, were not to be hallooed from their

seats because Repeal had suddenly grown into a national demand. These

men, we said, may become your allies, if you do not put them upon their

mettle by your rudeness and impatience. If they join you, they will be

faster and more useful friends than men who compensate for every defect

by pledge-bolting at command.

Mr. O'Connell, who had at first seemed to incline to the opposite

opinion, concurred with us. Mr. O'Brien was zealous on the same side;

the "premature pledges" were postponed to their fit time--an

election--and the people induced to apply themselves to the Registries,

as the true means of getting Repeal members.

We have maintained and advanced our foreign policy--the recognition and

study of other countries beside England, and a careful separation of

ourselves from England's crimes. We have, we believe, not neglected

those literary, antiquarian, and historical teachings, and those

popular projects which we pointed to last year as part of our labours;

and we are told that the poetry of _The Nation_ has not been worse than

in our first year. But these things are more personal, less indicative

of national progress, and therefore less interesting than our success

in producing political tolerance, increased efforts for education, and

that final concession to religious liberty--the right to change without

even verbal persecution.

The last year has been a year of hard work and hard trial to the

country and to us. Our first year was spent in rousing and

animating--the second in maintaining, guiding, and restraining. Its

motto is, "Bide your time." Never had a People more temptation to be

rash; and it is our proudest feeling that in our way we aided the

infinitely greater powers of O'Connell till his imprisonment, and of

O'Brien thereafter, to keep in the passion, while they kept up the

spirit of the People.

They and we succeeded.

The People saw the darling of their hearts dragged to trial, yet they

never rioted; they found month after month go by in the disgusting

details of a trial at bar, yet, instead of desponding, they improved

their organisation, studied their history and statistics--increased in

dignity, modesty, and strength. At length came the imprisonment; we

almost doubted them, but they behaved gloriously--they recognised their

wrongs, but they crossed their arms--they were neither terrified,

disordered, nor divided--they promptly obeyed their new leaders, and,

with shut teeth, swore that their "only vengeance should be victory."

They succeeded--bore their triumph as well as their defeat, and are now

taking breath for a fresh effort at education, organisation, and

conciliation.

It is something to have laboured through a Second Year for such a

People. Let them go on as they have begun--growing more thoughtful,

more temperate, more educated, more resolute--let them complete their

parish organisation, carry out their registries, and, above all,

establish those Reading-rooms which will inform and strengthen them

into liberty; and, ere many years' work, the Green Flag will be saluted

by Europe, and Ireland will be a Nation. The People have shown that

their spirit, their discipline, and their modesty can be relied on;

they have but to exhibit that greatest virtue which their enemies deny

them--perseverence--and all will be well.

ORANGE AND GREEN.

Here it is at last--the dawning. Here, in the very sanctuary of the

Orange heart, is a visible angel of Nationality:--

"If a British Union cannot be formed, perhaps an Irish one might.

What could Repeal take from Irish Protestants that they are not

gradually losing '_in due course_'?

"However improbable, it is not impossible, that better terms might

be made with the Repealers than the Government seem disposed to

give. A hundred thousand Orangemen, with their colours flying,

might yet meet a hundred thousand Repealers on the banks of the

Boyne; and, on a field presenting so many solemn reminiscences to

all, sign the Magna Charta of Ireland's independence. The Repeal

banner might then be Orange and Green, flying from the Giant's

Causeway to the Cove of Cork, and proudly look down from the walls

of Derry upon a new-born nation.

"Such a union, not to be accomplished without concession on all

sides, would remove the great offence of Irish Protestants--their

Saxon attachment to their British fatherland. Cast off, as they

would feel themselves by Great Britain, and baptised on the banks

of the Boyne into the great Irish family, they would be received

into a brotherhood which, going forward towards the attainment of a

national object, would extinguish the spirit of Ribbonism, and

establish in its place a covenant of peace."

So speaks the _Evening Mail_, the trumpet of the northern confederates,

and we cry amen! amen!

We exult, till the beat of our heart stays our breathing, at the vision

of such a concourse. Never--never, when the plains of Attica saw the

rivals of Greece marching to expel the Persian, who had tried to

intrigue with each for the ruin of both--never, when, from the uplands

of Helvetia, rolled together the victors of Sempach--never, when, at

the cry of Fatherland, the hundred nations of Germany rose up, and

swept on emancipating to the Rhine--never was there under the sky a

godlier or more glorious sight than that would be--to all slaves,

balsam; to all freemen, strength; to all time, a miracle!

If Ireland's wrongs were borne for this--if our feuds and our weary

sapping woes were destined to this ending, then blessed be the griefs

of the past! His sickness to the healed--his pining to the happy

lover--his danger to the rescued, are faint images of such a birth from

such a chaos.

It is something--the cheer of an invisible friend--to have, even for a

moment, heard the hope. It must abide in the souls of the Irish,

guaranteeing the moderation of the Catholic--wakening the aspirations

of the Orangemen. There it is--a cross on the sky.

It may not now lead to anything real. Long-suffering, oft-baffled

Ireland will not abandon for an inch or hour its selected path by

reason of this message.

We hope from it, because it has been prompted by causes which will

daily increase. Incessantly will the British Minister labour to gain

the support of seven millions of freed men, by cutting away every

privilege and strength from one million of discarded allies.

We hope from it, because, as the Orangemen become more enlightened,

they will more and more value the love of their countrymen, be prouder

of their country, and more conscious that their ambition, interest, and

even security are identical with nationality.

We hope from it, because, as the education of People and the elevation

of the rich progress, they will better understand the apprehensions of

the Orangemen, allow for them in a more liberal spirit, and be able to

give more genuine security to even the nervousness of their new

friends.

We hope most from it, because of its intrinsic greatness. It is the

best promise yet seen to have the Orangemen proposing, even as a

chance, the conference of 100,000 armed and ordered yeomen from the

North, with 100,000 picked (ay, by our faith! and martial) Southerns on

the banks of the Boyne, to witness a treaty of mutual concession,

oblivion, and eternal amity; and then to lift an Orange-Green Flag of

Nationhood, and defy the world to pull it down.

Yet 'tis a distant hope, and Ireland, we repeat, must not swerve for

its flashing. When the Orangemen treat the shamrock with as ready a

welcome as Wexford gave the lily--when the Green is set as consort of

the Orange in the lodges of the North--when the Fermanagh meeting

declares that the Orangemen are Irishmen pledged to Ireland, and

summons another Dungannon Convention to prepare the terms of our

treaty; then, and not till then, shall we treat this gorgeous hope as a

reality, and then, and not till then, shall we summon the Repealers to

quit their present sure course, and trust their fortunes to the League

of the Boyne.

Meantime, we commend to the hearts and pride of "the Enniskilleners"

this, their fathers', declaration in 1782:--

"COUNTY FERMANAGH GRAND JURY.

"We, the Grand Jury of the county of Fermanagh, being

constitutionally assembled at the present assizes, held for the

county of Fermanagh, at Enniskillen, this 18th day of March, 1782,

think ourselves called upon at this interesting moment to make our

solemn declarations relative to the rights and liberties of

Ireland.

"We _pledge ourselves_ to this our country, that we will never

pay obedience to any law made, or to be made, to bind Ireland,

except those laws which are and shall be made by the King, Lords,

and Commons of Ireland.

"Signed by order,

"ARTHUR COLE HAMILTON, Foreman."

ACADEMICAL EDUCATION.[51]

The rough outlines of a plan of Academical Education for Ireland are

now before the country. The plan, as appears from Sir James Graham's

very conciliatory speech, is to be found three Colleges; to give them

L100,000 for buildings, and L6,000 a year for expenses; to open them to

all creeds; the education to be purely secular; the students not to

live within the Colleges; and the professors to be named and removed,

now and hereafter, by Government.

The announcement of this plan was received in the Commons with

extravagant praise by the Irish Whig and Repeal members, nor was any

hostility displayed except by the blockhead and bigot, Sir Robert

Inglis--a preposterous fanatic, who demands the repeal of the

Emancipation Act, and was never yet missed from the holy orgies of

Exeter Hall. Out of doors it has had a darker reception; but now that

the first storm of joy and anger is over, it is time for the people of

Ireland to think of this measure.

It is for them to consider it--it is for them to decide on it--it is

for them to profit by it. For centuries the Irish were paupers and

serfs, because they were ignorant and divided. The Protestant hated the

Catholic, and oppressed him--the Catholic hated the Protestant, and

would not trust him. England fed the bigotry of both, and flourished on

the ignorance of both. The ignorance was a barrier between our

sects--left our merchant's till, our farmer's purse, and our state

treasury empty--stupefied our councils in peace, and slackened our arm

in war. Whatsoever plan will strengthen the soul of Ireland with

knowledge, and knit the sects of Ireland in liberal and trusting

friendship, will be better for us than if corn and wine were scattered

from every cloud.

While 400,000 of the poor find instruction in the National Schools, the

means of education for the middle and upper classes are as bad now as

they were ten or fifty years ago. A farmer or a shopkeeper in Ireland

cannot, by any sacrifice, win for his son such an education as would be

proffered to him in Germany. How can he afford to pay the expense of

his son's living in the capital, in addition to Collegiate fees; and,

if he could, why should he send his son where, unless he be an

Episcopalian Protestant, those Collegiate offices which, though they

could be held but by a few score, would influence hundreds, are denied

him. Even to the gentry the distance and expense are oppressive; and to

the Catholics and Presbyterians of them the monopoly is intolerable.

To bring Academical Education within the reach and means of the middle

classes, to free it from the disease of ascendency, and to make it a

means of union as well as of instruction, should be the objects of him

who legislates on this subject; and we implore the gentry and middle

classes, whom it concerns, to examine this plan calmly and closely, and

to act on their convictions like firm and sensible men. If such a

measure cannot be discussed in a reasonable and decent way, our

progress to self-government is a progress to giddy convulsions and

shameful ruin.

Let us look into the details of the plan.

It grants L100,000 and L18,000 a year for the foundation of three

Provincial Colleges. The Colleges proposed are for the present numerous

enough. It will be hard to get competent Professors for even these.

Elementary Education has made great way; but the very ignorance for

which these Institutions are meant as a remedy makes the class of

Irishmen fit to fill Professors' chairs small indeed; and, small as it

is, it yearly loses its best men by emigration to London, where they

find rewards, fame, and excitement. The dismissal, hereafter, of

incompetent men would be a painful, but--if pedants, dunces, and cheats

were crammed into the chairs--an unavoidable task. A gradual increase

of such Colleges will better suit the progress of Irish intelligence

than a sudden and final endowment. But though the Colleges are enough,

and the annual allowance sufficient, the building fund is

inadequate--at least double the sum would be needed; but this brings us

to another part of the plan--the residence of the students outside the

College.

To the extern residence we are decidedly opposed. It works well in

Germany, where the whole grown population are educated; but in Ireland,

where the adult population are unhappily otherwise, 'tis a matter of

consequence to keep the students together, to foster an academic spirit

and character, and to preserve them from the stupefying influences of

common society. However, this point is but secondary, so we pass from

it, and come to the two great principles of the Bill.

They are--Mixed Education and Government Nomination; and we are as

resolute for the first as we are against the second.

The objections to separate Education are immense; the reasons for it

are reasons for separate life, for mutual animosity, for penal laws,

for religious wars. 'Tis said that communication between students of

different creeds will taint their faith and endanger their souls. They

who say so should prohibit the students from associating _out_ of the

Colleges even more than _in_ them. In the Colleges they will be joined

in studying mathematics, natural philosophy, engineering, chemistry,

the principles of reasoning, the constitution of man. Surely union in

these studies would less peril their faith than free communication out

of doors. Come, come, let those who insist on unqualified separate

Education follow out their principles--let them prohibit Catholic and

Protestant boys from playing, or talking, or walking together--let them

mark out every frank or indiscreet man for a similar prohibition--let

them establish a theological police--let them rail off each sect (as

the Jews used to be cooped) into a separate quarter; or rather, to save

preliminaries, let each of them proclaim war in the name of his creed

on the men of all other creeds, and fight till death, triumph, or

disgust shall leave him leisure to revise his principles.

These are the logical consequences of the doctrine of Separate

Education, but we acquit the friends of it of that or any other such

ferocious purpose. Their intentions are pious and sincere--their

argument is dangerous, for they might find followers with less virtue

and more dogged consistency.

We say "an _unqualified_ separate Education," because it is said, with

some plausibility, that the manner in which theology mixes up with

history and moral philosophy renders common instruction in them almost

impossible. The reasoning is pushed too far. Yet the objection should

be well weighed; though we warn those who push it very far not to fall

into the extravagance of a valued friend of ours, who protested against

one person attempting to teach medicine to Catholics and Protestants,

as one creed acknowledged miraculous cures and demoniacal possessions,

and the other rejected both!

It should be noted, too, that this demand for separate _Professors_

does not involve separate Colleges, does not assume that any evil would

result from the friendship of the students, and does not lead to the

desperate, though unforeseen, conclusions which follow from the other

notion.

'Tis also a different thing to propose the establishment of Deans in

each College to inspect the religious discipline and moral conduct of

the students--a Catholic Dean, appointed by the Catholic Church,

watching over the Catholic students; and so of the Episcopalians and

Presbyterians. Such Deans, and Halls for religious teaching, will be

absolutely necessary, should a residence in the Colleges be required;

but should a system of residence in registered lodgings and

boarding-houses be preferred, similar duties to the Deans might be

performed by persons nominated by the Catholic, Protestant, and

Presbyterian Churches respectively, without the direct interposition of

the College; for each parent would take care to put his child under the

control of his own Church. An adequate provision in some sufficient

manner for religious discipline is essential, and to be dispensed with

on no pretence.

These, however, are details of great consequence to be discussed in the

Commons' Committee; but we repeat our claim for mixed education,

because it has worked well among the students of Trinity College, and

would work better were its offices free, because it is the principle

approved by Ireland when she demanded the opening of those offices, and

when she accepted the National Schools--because it is the principle of

the Cork, the Limerick, and the Derry meetings; but above all, because

it is consistent with piety, and favourable to that union of Irishmen

of different sects, for want of which Ireland is in rags and chains.

Against the nomination of Professors by Government we protest

altogether. We speak alike of Whig or Tory. The nomination would be

_looked on_ as a political bribe, the removal as a political

punishment. Nay, the nomination _would_ be political. Under great

public excitement a just nomination might be made, but in quiet times

it would be given to the best mathematician or naturalist who attended

the levee and wrote against the opposition. And it would be an enormous

power; for it would not merely control the immediate candidates, but

hundreds, who thought they might some ten years after be solicitors for

professorships, would shrink from committing themselves to uncourtly

politics, or qualify by Ministerial partisanship, not philosophical

study, for that distant day. A better engine for corrupting that great

literary class which is the best hope of Ireland could not be devised;

and if it be retained in the Bill, that Bill must be resisted and

defeated, whether in or out of Parliament. We warn the Minister!

We have omitted a strange objection to the Bill--that it does not give

mixed education. It is said the Colleges of Cork and Galway would be

attended only by Catholics, and that of Belfast by Protestants. Both

are errors. The middle class of Protestants in Cork is numerous--they

and the poorer gentry would send their sons to the Cork College to save

expense. The Catholics would assuredly do the same in Belfast; they do

so with the Institution in the Academy there already; and though the

Catholics in Cork, and the Protestants in Belfast, would be the

majorities, enough of the opposite creed would be in each to produce

all the wholesome restraint, and much of the wholesome toleration and

goodwill, of the mixed system of Trinity. Were the objection good,

however, it ought to content the advocates of separate education.

It has been said, too, that the Bill recognises a religious ascendency

in the case of Belfast. This seems to us a total misconception of the

words of the Minister. He suggested that the Southern College should be

in Cork, the Western in Limerick or Galway, the Northern in Derry or

Belfast. Had he stopped at Derry the mistake could never have occurred;

but he went on to say that if the College were planted in Belfast, the

building now used for the Belfast Academy would serve for the new

College, and unless the echoes of the old theological professors be

more permanent than common, we cannot understand the sectarianism of

the _building_ in Belfast.

A more valid objection would be that the measure was not more complete;

and the University system will certainly be crippled and impotent

unless residence for a year at least in it be essential to a University

degree.

The main defect of the Bill is its omitting to deal with Trinity

College. It is said that the property is and was Protestant; but the

Bill of '93, which admitted Catholics to be educated on this Protestant

foundation, broke down the title; and, at all events, the property is

as public as the Corporation, and is liable to all the demands of

public convenience. But it is added that the property of Trinity

College is not more than L30,000 or L40,000 a year, and that the grant

for Catholic Clerical Education alone is L26,000 a year; and certainly

till the Protestant Church be equalised to the wants of the Protestant

population there will be something in the argument. When that

Reformation comes, a third of the funds should be given for Protestant

Clerical Education, and the College livings transferred to the Clerical

College, and the remaining two-thirds preserved to Trinity College as a

secular University.

Waiting that settlement, we see nothing better than the proposal so

admirably urged by the _Morning Chronicle_, of the grant of L6,000--we

say L10,000--a year, for the foundation of Catholic fellowships and

scholarships in Trinity College. Some such change must be made, for it

would be the grossest injustice to give Catholics a share, or the

whole, of one or two new, untried, characterless Provincial Academies,

and exclude them from the offices of the ancient, celebrated, and

national University. If there is to be a religious equality, Trinity

College must be opened, or augmented by Catholic endowment. For this no

demand can be too loud and vehement, for the refusal will be an affront

and a grievance to the Catholics of Ireland.

We have only run over the merits and faults of this plan. Next to a

Tenure or a Militia Bill, it is the most important possible. Questions

must arise on every section of it; and, however these questions be

decided, we trust in God they will be decided without acrimony or

recrimination, and that so divine a subject as Education will not lead

to disunions which would prostrate our country.

---------------------------------------------------------------

[51] From _The Nation_, May 17, 1845.

IV. Poetical Works.

A NATION ONCE AGAIN.

I.

When boyhood's fire was in my blood

I read of ancient freemen

For Greece and Rome who bravely stood,

THREE HUNDRED MEN AND THREE MEN.[52]

And then I prayed I yet might see

Our fetters rent in twain,

And Ireland, long a province, be

A NATION ONCE AGAIN.

II.

And, from that time, through wildest woe,

That hope has shone, a far light;

Nor could love's brightest summer glow

Outshine that solemn starlight:

It seemed to watch above my head

In forum, field and fane;

Its angel voice sang round my bed,

"A NATION ONCE AGAIN."

III.

It whispered, too, that "freedom's ark

And service high and holy,

Would be profaned by feelings dark

And passions vain or lowly:

For freedom comes from God's right hand,

And needs a godly train;

And righteous men must make our land

A NATION ONCE AGAIN."

IV.

So, as I grew from boy to man,

I bent me to that bidding--

My spirit of each selfish plan

And cruel passion ridding;

For, thus I hoped some day to aid--

Oh! can _such_ hope be vain?--

When my dear country shall be made

A NATION ONCE AGAIN.

---------------------------------------------------------------

[52] The Three Hundred Greeks who died at Thermopylae, and the

Three Romans who kept the Sublician Bridge.

THE GERALDINES.

I.

The Geraldines! the Geraldines!--'tis full a thousand years

Since, 'mid the Tuscan vineyards, bright flashed their battle-spears;

When Capet seized the crown of France, their iron shields were known,

And their sabre-dint struck terror on the banks of the Garonne:

Across the downs of Hastings they spurred hard by William's side,

And the grey sands of Palestine with Moslem blood they dyed;

But never then, nor thence, till now, has falsehood or disgrace

Been seen to soil Fitzgerald's plume, or mantle in his face.

II.

The Geraldines! the Geraldines!--'tis true, in Strongbow's van,

By lawless force, as conquerors, their Irish reign began;

And, oh! through many a dark campaign they proved their prowess stern,

In Leinster's plains and Munster's vales on king and chief and kerne;

But noble was the cheer within the halls so rudely won,

And generous was the steel-gloved hand that had such slaughter done;

How gay their laugh, how proud their mien, you'd ask no herald's sign--

Among a thousand you had known the princely Geraldine.

III.

These Geraldines! these Geraldines!--not long our air they breathed;

Not long they fed on venison, in Irish water seethed;

Not often had their children been by Irish mothers nursed;

When from their full and genial hearts an Irish feeling burst!

The English monarchs strove in vain, by law and force and bribe,

To win from Irish thoughts and ways this "more than Irish" tribe;

For still they clung to fosterage, to _breitheamh_[53], cloak,

and bard:

What king dare say to Geraldine, "your Irish wife discard?"

IV.

Ye Geraldines! ye Geraldines!--how royally ye reigned

O'er Desmond broad, and rich Kildare, and English arts disdained:

Your sword made knights, your banner waved, free was your bugle call

By Gleann's[54] green slopes, and Daingean's[55] tide, from

Bearbha's[56] banks to Eochaill.[57]

What gorgeous shrines, what _breitheamh_ lore, what minstrel

feasts there were

In and around Magh Nuadhaid's[58] keep, and palace-filled Adare!

But not for rite or feast ye stayed, when friend or kin were pressed;

And foemen fled, when "_Crom Abu_"[59] bespoke your lance in rest.

V.

Ye Geraldines! ye Geraldines!--since Silken Thomas flung

King Henry's sword on council board, the English thanes among,

Ye never ceased to battle brave against the English sway,

Though axe and brand and treachery your proudest cut away.

Of Desmond's blood through woman's veins passed on th' exhausted tide;

His title lives--a Sacsanach churl usurps the lion's hide;

And, though Kildare tower haughtily, there's ruin at the root,

Else why, since Edward fell to earth, had such a tree no fruit?

VI.

True Geraldines! brave Geraldines!--as torrents mould the earth,

You channelled deep old Ireland's heart by constancy and worth:

When Ginckel 'leaguered Limerick, the Irish soldiers gazed

To see if in the setting sun dead Desmond's banner blazed!

And still it is the peasants' hope upon the Cuirreach's[60] mere,

"They live, who'll see ten thousand men with good Lord Edward here"--

So let them dream till brighter days, when, not by Edward's shade,

But by some leader true as he, their lines shall be arrayed!

VII.

These Geraldines! these Geraldines!--rain wears away the rock

And time may wear away the tribe that stood the battle's shock;

But ever, sure, while one is left of all that honoured race,

In front of Ireland's chivalry is that Fitzgerald's place:

And, though the last were dead and gone, how many a field and town,

From Thomas Court to Abbeyfeile, would cherish their renown,

And men would say of valour's rise, or ancient power's decline,

"'Twill never soar, it never shone, as did the Geraldine."

VIII.

The Geraldines! the Geraldines!--and are there any fears

Within the sons of conquerors for full a thousand years?

Can treason spring from out a soil bedewed with martyrs' blood?

Or has that grown a purling brook, which long rushed down a flood?--

By Desmond swept with sword and fire--by clan and keep laid low--

By Silken Thomas and his kin,--by sainted Edward, no!

The forms of centuries rise up, and in the Irish line

COMMAND THEIR SON TO TAKE THE POST THAT FITS THE GERALDINE![61]

---------------------------------------------------------------

[53] _Angl._ Brehon.

[54] _Angl._ Glyn.

[55] _Angl._ Dingle.

[56] _Angl._ Barrow.

[57] _Angl._ Youghal.

[58] _Angl._ Maynooth.

[59] Formerly the war-cry of the Geraldines, and now their motto.

[60] _Angl._ Curragh.

[61] The concluding stanza was found among the author's papers, and

was inserted in the first edition. It is believed to have had a

personal reference, not to any Geraldine but to William Smith

O'Brien.--Ed.

O'BRIEN OF ARA.[62]

AIR--_The Piper of Blessington_.

I.

Tall are the towers of O'Ceinneidigh[63]--

Broad are the lands of MacCarrthaigh[64]--

Desmond feeds five hundred men a-day;

Yet, here's to O'Briain[65] of Ara!

Up from the Castle of Druim-aniar,[66]

Down from the top of Camailte,

Clansman and kinsman are coming here

To give him the CEAD MILE FAILTE.

II.

See you the mountains look huge at eve--

So is our chieftain in battle--

Welcome he has for the fugitive,--

_Uisce-beatha_[67] fighting, and cattle!

Up from the Castle of Druim-aniar,

Down from the top of Camailte

Gossip and ally are coming here

To give him the CEAD MILE FAILTE.

III.

Horses the valleys are tramping on,

Sleek from the Sacsanach manger--

_Creachts_ the hills are encamping on,

Empty the bawns of the stranger!

Up from the Castle of Druim-aniar,

Down from the top of Camailte,

_Ceithearn_[68] and _buannacht_ are coming here

To give him the CEAD MILE FAILTE.

IV.

He has black silver from Cill-da-lua[69]--

Rian[70] and Cearbhall[71] are neighbours--

'N Aonach[72] submits with a _fuililiu_--

Butler is meat for our sabres!

Up from the Castle of Druim-aniar

Down from the top of Camailte,

Rian and Cearbhall are coming here

To give him the CEAD MILE FAILTE.

V.

'Tis scarce a week since through Osairghe[73]

Chased he the Baron of Durmhagh[74]--

Forced him five rivers to cross, or he

Had died by the sword of Red Murchadh![75]

Up from the Castle of Druim-aniar,

Down from the top of Camailte,

All the Ui Bhriain are coming here

To give him the CEAD MILE FAILTE.

VI.

Tall are the towers of O'Ceinneidigh--

Broad are the lands of MacCarrthaigh--

Desmond feeds five hundred men a-day;

Yet, here's to O'Briain of Ara!

Up from the Castle of Druim-aniar,

Down from the top of Camailte,

Clansman and kinsman are coming here

To give him the CEAD MILE FAILTE.

---------------------------------------------------------------

[62] Ara is a small mountain tract south of Loch Deirgdheire, and

north of the Camailte, or the Keeper, hills. It was the seat of a

branch of the Thomond princes, called the O'Briens of Ara.

[63] _Vulgo_ O'Kennedy.

[64] _Vul._ M'Carthy.

[65] _Vul._ O'Brien.

[66] _Vul._ Drumineer.