be a little deeper read in the history of Ireland, they will find that in Ireland blood has been shed,—that in Ireland leaders have been seized, trials have been had, and punishments have been inflicted. They will find, indeed, almost every page of the history of Ireland darkened by bloodshed, by seizures, by trials, and by punishments. But what has been the effect of these measures? They have, indeed, been successful in quelling the disturbances of the moment; but they never have gone to their cause, and have only fixed deeper the poisoned barb that rankles in the heart of Ireland. Can one believe one's ears, when one hears respectable men talk so lightly-nay, almost so wishfully — of civil war? Do they reflect what a countless multitude of ills those three short syllables contain? It is well, indeed, for the gentlemen of England, who live secure under the protecting shadow of the law, whose slumbers have never been broken by the clashing of angry swords, whose harvests have never been trodden down by the conflict of hostile feet, - it is well for them to talk of civil war, as if it were some holiday pastime, or some sport of children: "They jest at scars who never felt a wound." But, that gentlemen from unfortunate and ill-starred Ireland, who have seen with their own eyes, and heard with their own ears, the miseries which civil war produces,—who have known, by their own experience, the barbarism, ay, the barbarity, which it engenders, that such persons should look upon civil war as anything short of the last and greatest of national calamities,—is to me a matter of the deepest and most unmixed astonishment. I will grant, if you will, that the success of such a war with Ireland would be as signal and complete as would be its injustice; I will grant, if you will, that resistance would soon be extinguished with the lives of those who resisted; I will grant, if you will, that the crimsoned banner of England would soon wave, in undisputed supremacy, over the smoking ashes of their towns, and the blood-stained solitude of their fields. But I tell you that England herself never would permit the achievement of such a conquest; England would reject, with disgust, laurels that were dyed in fraternal blood; England would recoil, with loathing and abhorrence, from the bare contemplation of so devilish a triumph! 111. ON PARLIAMENTARY REFORM.-Lord John Russell, June 24, 1831. I AM not one of those, Sir, who would hold out to the People vain hopes of immediate benefit, which it could not realize, from this measure. Neither am I one of those who maintain the opposite theory, such as is well expressed in a well-known couplet, "How small, of all that human hearts endure, That part which laws or kings can cause or cure! Far am I from agreeing in the opinion which the poet has so well expressed in those lines. They are very pretty poetry, but they are not true in politics. When I look to one country as compared to another, at the different epochs of their history, I am forced to believe that it is upon law and government that the prosperity and morality, the power and intelligence, of every Nation depend. When I compare Spain (in which the traveller is met by the stiletto in the streets, and by the carbine in the high roads) to England, in the poorest parts of which the traveller passes without fear, I think the difference is occasioned by the different Governments under which the People live. At least, Sir, it cannot be denied, that the end attained by the two Governments of these respective countries is essentially different. Is it possible, indeed, for any intelligent person to travel through countries, and not trace the characters and conduct of the inhabitants to the nature of their Institutions and Governments? When I propose, therefore, a Reform of Parliament, when I propose that the People shall send into this House real Representatives, to deliberate on their wants and to consult for their interests, to consider their griev ances and attend to their desires, when I propose that they shall in fact, as they hitherto have been said to do in theory, possess the vast power of holding the purse-strings of the monarch, I do it under the conviction that I am laying the foundation of the greatest improvement in the comforts and well-being of the People. 112. THE ESTABLISHED CHURCH OF IRELAND, 1845. — T. B. Macaulay. Or all the institutions now existing in the civilized world, the Established Church of Ireland seems to me the most absurd. Is there anything else like it? Was there ever anything else like it? The world is full of ecclesiastical establishments. But such a portent as this Church of Ireland is nowhere to be found. Look round the continent of Europe. Ecclesiastical establishments from the White Sea to the Mediterranean; ecclesiastical establishments from the Wolga to the Atlantic; but nowhere the church of a small minority enjoying exclusive establishment. Look at America. There you have all forms of Christianity, from Mormonism-if you call Mormonism Christianity - to Romanism. In some places you have the voluntary system. In some you have several religions connected with the State. In some you have the solitary ascendency of a single Church. But nowhere, from the Arctic Circle to Cape Horn, do you find the Church of a small minority exclusively established. In one country alone-in Ireland alone is to be seen the spectacle of a community of eight millions of human beings, with a Church which is the Church of only eight hundred thousand! Two hundred and eighty-five years has this Church been at work. What could have been done for it in the way of authority, privileges, endowments, which has not been done? Did any other set of bishops and priests in the world ever receive so much for doing so little? Nay, did any other set of bishops and priests in the world ever receive half as much for doing twice as much? And what have we to show for all this lavish expenditure? What, but the most zealous Roman Catholic population on the face of the earth? On the great, solid mass of the Roman Catholic population you have made no impression whatever. There they are, as they were ages ago, ten to one against the members of your Established Church. Explain this to me. I speak to you, the zealous Protestants on the other side of the House. Explain this to me on Protestant principles. If I were a Roman Catholic, I could easily account for the phenomenon. If I were a Roman Catholic, I should content myself with saying that the mighty hand and the outstretched arm had been put forth according to the promise, in defence of the unchangeable Church; that He, who, in the old time, turned into blessings the curses of Balaam, and smote the host of Sennacherib, had signally confounded the arts and the power of heretic statesmen. But what is the Protestant to say? Is this a miracle, that we should stand aghast at it? Not at all. It is a result which human prudence ought to have long ago foreseen, and long ago averted. It is the natural succession of effect to cause. A Church exists for moral ends. A Church exists to be loved, to be reverenced, to be heard with docility, to reign in the understandings and hearts of men. A Church which is abhorred is useless, or worse than useless; and to quarter a hostile Church on a conquered People, as you would quarter a soldiery, is, therefore, the most absurd of mistakes. 113. ON LIMITING THE HOURS OF LABOR, 1846.-T. B. Macaulay. If we consider man simply in a commercial point of view, simply as a machine for productive labor, let us not forget what a piece of mechanism he is, how "fearfully and wonderfully made." If we have a fine horse, we do not use him exactly as a steam-engine; and still less should we treat man so, more especially in his earlier years. The depressing labor that begins early in life, and is continued too long every day, enfeebles his body, enervates his mind, weakens his spirits, overpowers his understanding, and is incompatible with any good or useful degree of education. A state of society in which such a system prevails will inevitably, and in no long space, feel its baneful effects. What is it which makes one community prosperous and flourishing, more than another? You will not say that it is the soil; you will not say that it is its climate; you will not say that it is its mineral wealth, or its natural advantages, - its ports, or its great rivers. Is it anything in the earth, or in the air, that makes Scotland a richer country than Egypt; or, Batavia, with its marshes, more prosperous than Sicily? No; but Scotchmen made Scotland what she is, and Dutchmen raised their marshes to such eminence. Look to America. Two centuries ago, it was a wilderness of buffaloes and wolves. What has caused the change? Is it her rich mould? Is it her mighty rivers? Is it her broad waters? No; her plains were then as fertile as they are now,―her rivers were as numerous. Nor was it any great amount of capital that the emigrants carried out with them. They took a mere pittance. What is it, then, that has effected the change? It is simply this, you placed the Englishman, instead of the red man, upon the soil; and the Englishman, intelligent and energetic, cut down the forests, turned them into cities and fleets, and covered the land with harvests and orchards in their place. - I am convinced, Sir, that this question of limiting the hours of labor, being a question connected, for the most part, with persons of tender years, -a question in which public health is concerned, and a question relating to public morality, it is one with which the State may properly interfere. Sir, as lawgivers, we have errors of two different kinds to repair. We have done that which we ought not to have done; we have left undone that which we ought to have done. We have regulated that which we ought to have left to regulate itself; we have left unregulated that which it was our especial business to have regulated. We have given to certain branches of industry a protection which was their bane. We have withheld from public health, and from public morality, a protection which it was our duty to have given. We have prevented the laborer from getting his loaf where he could get it cheapest, but we have not prevented him from prematurely destroying the health of his body and mind, by inordinate toil. I hope and believe that we are approaching the end of a vicious system of interference, and of a vicious system of non-interference. 66 114. REFORM, THAT YOU MAY PRESERVE, MARCH 2, 1831.-T. B. Macaulay. TURN where we may, within, around, the voice of great events is proclaiming to us, Reform, that you may preserve! Now, therefore, while everything at home and abroad forebodes ruin to those who persist in a hopeless struggle against the spirit of the age; now, while the crash of the proudest Throne of the Continent is still resounding in our ears; now, while the roof of a British palace affords an ignominious shelter to the exiled heir of forty Kings; now, while we see on every side ancient institutions subverted, and great societies dissolved; now, while the heart of England is still sound; now, while the old feelings and the old associations retain a power and a charm which may too soon pass away; now, in this your accepted time, now, in this your day of salvation, take counsel, not of prejudice, not of party spirit, not of the ignominious pride of a fatal consistency, but of history, of reason, of the ages which are past, of the signs of this most portentous time. Pronounce in a manner worthy of the expectation with which this great debate has been anticipated, and of the long remembrance which it will leave behind. Renew the youth of the State. Save property, divided against itself. Save the multitude, endangered by their own ungovernable passions. Save the aristocracy, endangered by its own unpopular power. Save the greatest, and fair *Charles the Tenth, of France. est, and most highly civilized community that ever existed, from calamities which may in a few days sweep away all the rich heritage of so many ages of wisdom and glory. The danger is terrible. The time is short. If this bill should be rejected, I pray to God that none of those who concur in rejecting it may ever remember their votes with unavailing regret, amidst the wreck of laws, the confusion of ranks, the spoliation of property, and the dissolution of social order. 115. MEN ALWAYS FIT FOR FREEDOM.-T. B. Macaulay. THERE is only one cure for the evils which newly-acquired freedom produces, and that cure is freedom! When a prisoner leaves his cell, he cannot bear the light of day; he is unable to discriminate colors, or recognize faces; but the remedy is not to remand him into his dungeon, but to accustom him to the rays of the sun. The blaze of truth and liberty may at first dazzle and bewilder Nations which have become half blind in the house of bondage; but let them gaze on, and they will soon be able to bear it. In a few years men learn to reason; the extreme violence of opinion subsides; hostile theories correct each other; the scattered elements of truth cease to conflict, and begin to coalesce; and, at length, a system of justice and order is educed out of the chaos. Many politicians of our time are in the habit of laying it down as a self-evident proposition, that no People ought to be free till they are fit to use their freedom. The maxim is worthy of the fool in the old story, who resolved not to go into the water till he had learned to swim! If men are to wait for liberty till they become wise and good in slavery, they may, indeed, wait forever! 116. THE REFORM BILL A SECOND BILL OF RIGHTS, JULY 5, 1831.- Id. THE whole of history shows that all great Revolutions have been produced by a disproportion between society and its institutions; for, while society has grown, its institutions have not kept pace, and accommodated themselves to its improvements. The history of England is the history of a succession of Reforms; and the very reason that the People of England are great and happy is, that their history is the history of Reform. The great Charter, the first assembling of Parliament, the Petition of Right, the Revolution, and, lastly, this great measure, are all proofs of my position, - are all progressive stages in the progress of society, and I am fully convinced that every argument urged against the step we are now called upon to take might have been advanced with equal justice against any of the other changes I have enumerated. At the present moment we everywhere see society outgrowing our institutions. Let us contrast our commerce, wealth, and perfect civilization, with our Penal Laws, at once barbarous and inefficient, the preposterous fictions of pleading, the mummery of -- |