Ivi Former Misgovernment not to be denied.

of thought, impracticability, and incapability of governing and directing, be it remembered that the great leader of the age is an Irishman, that the writings of the Irishmen, Swift and Burke, are extolled for their practical wisdom, and that one of the strictest chains of metaphysical reasoning which the world has seen proceeded from the Irish Bishop of Cloyne, who, in addition to his transcendant logic and his excellent Platonic style, possessed, according to Pope and other witnesses, "every virtue under heaven."

SECTION VIII.

Conduct of England toward Ireland.

THE history of a powerful nation is a history of human wickedness. England and her governments have not been more selfish and cruel than other nations and their rulers in darkling unconscientious times. Still we ought not to deny the criminality of a system which we dare no longer persist in, nor should the munificence of the present age, its Catholic Emancipation and present of ten millions, which might be imaged forth emblematically as a tree of rapid growth and showy bloom, attired in broad white blossoms of persuasive perfume, the odour of that best sanctity, which is one with goodness,-be suffered to keep out of view the knotted thorns of past oppression, blackening in the back-ground afar into the distance, like that infernal grove beheld by Dante, where self-murderers after the resurrection are to suspend the bodies they have violently cast aside,

Ciascuno al prun dell' ombra sua molesta

"Each on the thorn of his tormented shade."

Truly murderous was that oppression; nay, if Erin is,

Permissive Cruelty of the present Age. Ivii

as Berkeley affirms, “bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh," it might be called suicidal, and represented in spectral vision as a huge black-thorn bearing the semianimate mangled body of “ poor Ireland."

Those chimeras respecting Celtic original defect and faultiness tend to encourage a system of permissive cruelty, adapted to the delicate selfishness and timid injustice of the present age, which, in some things, reminds one of the brilliant and accomplished Edmund, in Shakespeare's sublime play, hasting out of sight of the barbarities about to be committed on the body of his miserable and defenceless parent. And this is no contradiction of what has been alleged of the superior virtue of these times and of Great Britain, or that, to use the language of Mr. Wordsworth, as I have already cited on the same point that of my Father, this country by its institutions, which spring out of itself, has been rendered "the happiest and worthiest of which there is any record since the foundation of civil society." It only implies that as far as we have advanced beyond other lands and ages so far do we lag behind the standard we ought to attain; and that, in the nation as well as the individual, gentleness and harshness, benignity and tyranny, strict justice and unconscientious dealing may lie side by side or intersect each other, as veins of precious metal alternate with strata of bare earth and clay or diamonds are embedded in the unvalued rock. Men, who would shrink from persecuting the poor directly, who would regard with horror any attempt to bring back the villenage of old times, are seen to dwell with fond admiration on Malthusian theories of the Poor Law, which really enslave the poor, nay would suffer them to remain in a condition far worse than West Indian Slavery, all the while mocking them with the lofty

lviii Duties toward the Irish People.

attributes of independence, dignity, and Heaven knows what, Mr. Hazlitt's account of these theories, when he describes them as teaching that "by the laws of God and Nature the Rich have a Right to starve the Poor, whenever they, the Poor, cannot maintain themselves," seems to me substantially just; for surely the Rich may be said to starve the Poor, if they make laws to protect the able and successful, the unimpeded and unincumbered, in the accumulation, augmentation and transmission of wealth, unlimited by any law providing that those who cannot obtain work or cannot perform it, shall not "want a morsel of bread while others roll in abundance," or only be granted enough to keep soul and body miserably together, while the fortunate are adding field to field and vineyard to vineyard; making the unavoidable imperfections of a truly Christian institution the pretext for putting it aside altogether. But this is the very principle of Socialism, of Communism, we are told. When Socialism and Communism have gone no further than a provision for the destitute who, in the complications of our Social System, fall through and find no standing place, it can hardly be thought to have diverged from the great High road of a wise and Christian Policy.

"It was your duty," says Mr. de Vere, addressing the English in the character of their Governments, "to have established among a people, whom you reproached with ignorance and prejudice, and among whom you had long prohibited knowledge, an ample system of education, both intellectual and industrial." They who could transplant the inhabitants of one district to another; who could root out the natives of Ulster and "drive them to the Devil or Connaught;" who could introduce hard men at arms into the soft bosom of the land; who could tie up the commerce of the Irish, persecute their religion, and turn

Cromwell's Procedure in Ireland cited. lix

their laws upside down, might surely have "introduced agriculture with a high hand,” according to the gentle Berkeley's recommendation, and might have regulated it too; might have prevented the ruinous growth of the potatoe, which causes men to multiply as fast above ground as itself multiplies below, but in misery and poorness of blood,―might have said to the usurping vegetable, “thus far shalt thou go and no farther." We may indeed drive a horse to the water when all the power in the world cannot make him drink. Mere orders will do little, unless skill and disposition to execute them are at the same time imparted. But by what Cromwell actually did for Ireland, after his campaign in that country, and which the Restoration, coming with Laxity and Corruption in its train, undid, we may understand how much an English Government might have effected for the reformation and prosperity of the Irish people.*

"In this way, not in the way of extermination, was Ireland settled by the Puritans.-The mass of the Irish nation lives quiet under a new land aristocracy; new, and, in several particulars, very much improved indeed: under these lives now the mass of the Irish nation; ploughing, delving, hammering; with their wages punctually paid them; with the truth spoken to them, and the truth done to them, so as they had never before seen it since they were a nation. Clarendon himself admits that Ireland flourished to an unexampled extent, under this arrangement. One can very well believe it. What is to hinder poor Ireland from flourishing, if you will do the truth to it and speak the truth, instead of doing the falsity and speaking the falsity?"

"Ireland under this arrangement would have grown up into a sober, diligent, drab-coloured population, &c. But the Ever-Blessed Restoration came upon us, all that arrangement was torn up by the roots, and Ireland was appointed

SECTION IX.

Present Management of Ireland, and Principle of the Poor Law.

WELL were it if we could speak of English mis

management of Ireland as a thing past or now active only in its consequences. Among other documents on this subject nine letters published last year in the Morning Chronicle may be cited as containing proof how much mischief may be done by the introduction of a law, most useful and equitable, when accompanied with a certain machinery for working it, without due adjustment to the circumstances and condition of the country into which it is introduced, so that it moves on like a steam-engine out of its track, crushing and ruining, till it comes to a stop, shattered but not restrained by the opposition it has met upon its course. Those letters were written by one

to develop itself as we have seen. Not in the drab-coloured Puritan way;-in what other way is still a terrible dubiety, to itself and to us!" Oliver Cromwell's Letters and Speeches by Thomas Carlyle.

It is curious to observe how Spenser's speculations and Cromwell's practicalities with respect to the Irish agree: the martial measures and economical regulations suggested by the interlocutor Irenæus, who seems, like Oliver, to have thought that the shore of Peace in Ireland could only be reached through seas of blood, were put in act by the master spirit of the Rebellion, the Hero of Puritanism. If the ghost of the Poet-Politician, in the time of the Stuarts and their mighty antagonist, haunted the shades of Kilcolman, the Curse of Cromwell, the carrying out of his stern counsels by a Protector of England, may have done much to settle his inquietude.