pends upon the expectations and intentions of the agent; but the language referred to is teaching us to expect from him, what in a thousand instances the agent neither intends nor expects himself. The Schoolmaster may have gone abroad, and, if a man of principle, will do great good; but to apply to him or his efforts the language of Sacred Writ, which regards another order of men and another exercise, is calculated to injure the work of his hands, as well as blind our own minds with respect to another duty,- -a duty which, so far as the Native Irish are concerned, is at once not only incumbent, but unfulfilled.

Unquestionably the privileges of reading the Scriptures, and being taught to read them in our native language, are of inestimable value; but were they even universally enjoyed, in no single instance could they supersede the necessity of hearing the word; of hearing it explained and applied by a Man who is apt to teach, by one who himself believes, and therefore speaks. How frequently did the great Founder of our faith himself exclaim," He that hath ears to hear, let him hear," that is, let him listen; and now certainly, if the attention is to be awakened and fixed, if the general truths of revelation are to be applied to the consciences of men, or afterwards to the varied experience of the Christian life, the human voice can neither be dispensed with nor superseded. "When an important subject is presented to an audience, with an ample illustration of its several parts, its practical improvement enforced, and its relation to the conscience and the heart insisted upon with seriousness, copiousness, and fervour, it is adapted in the nature of things to produce a more deep and lasting impression than can usually be expected from reading. He who knows how forcible are right words, and how apt man is to be moved by man, has consulted the constitution of our frame, by appointing an order of men, whose office it is to address their fellowcreatures on their eternal concerns. Strong feeling is naturally contagious; and if, as the wise man observes, "as iron sharpeneth iron, so doth the countenance of a man his friend," the combined effects of countenance, gesture, and voice, accompanying a powerful appeal to the understanding and the heart, on subjects of everlasting moment, can scarcely fail of being great. But, independently of the natural tendency of the Christian ministry to convert the soul and promote spiritual improvement, it derives its peculiar efficacy from its being a Di

vine appointment. It is not merely a natural, it is also an instituted means of good; and whatever God appoints by special authority, he graciously engages to bless, provided it be attended to with right dispositions and proceed from right motives.'

Is it possible then, in the nature of things, that Ireland is doomed to remain longer in this condition? That the Native Irish in particular are to continue from Sabbath to Sabbath to spend that day as they have done for ages? It cannot be. Shall men continue to leave their native shores and go far hence to the heathen only? Will the inhabitants of Ireland itself and those of Britain continue to encourage and call forth such men for their work, and shall our countrymen and fellow-subjects be forgotten? Shall we enforce the necessity and importance of acquiring the languages of India, of China, and Japan, in order to reach the heart through the ear, and shall it seem a hard task to acquire the use of a tongue spoken by such a multitude in the immediate vicinity of our own, nay intersecting it in almost every direction?

But this subject we shall have occasion to resume afterwards. It is time to hear what can be advanced against such measures as have been advised throughout the three preceding sections.

* Robert Hall,-on the duty, and proper manner of hearing the Word of God.

SECTION 1V.

UNFOUNDED OBJECTIONS

Against the employment of the Irish language answered, and shewn to be of baneful tendency in every sense; as it is not only essential to the effectual instruction of the people, but its neglect is injurious, as well to the progress of the English language as to that of general information.

THE preceding pages may be said to involve an answer to every objection against the employment of the Irish language in the business of education or instruction, wherever it happens to be daily spoken; but as the objections themselves furnish occasion for adducing a curious, if not instructive variety of collateral proof, they are here noticed. The same objections were indeed answered in a memorial on behalf of the Native Irish in 1815; but that has been for some time out of print. Of course I often employ the same language, but with many additional facts.

I. Such measures would give too much encouragement to the language itself, for the sooner it is destroyed or abolished, so much

the better.

This is an ancient objection, and it is still heard on both sides of the channel, though within these fourteen years a great change has taken place, and all who have paid attention to the subject see through its fallacy. To expect that any language will decline by denouncing it is vain. Nay, only neglecting to teach the people to read it, though at the same time enforcing the reading of another as the only channel of instruction to

the poor, and as the only road to preferment or indulgence, is an attempt, the merits of which can very easily be put to the proof and examined by the result. The following cases not only include a reply to the objection, but furnish so many powerful arguments for immediate, and cordial, and general attention, as well to the language as to the circumstances of the Native Irish people.

ENGLISH.-The argumentum ad hominem is not without its value, and may be employed here with some force. It is but fair, and may not be unseasonable, to remind the Englishman of this day, as well as the Anglo-Hibernian, that when Ireland was invaded in the twelfth century, English was not the language of authority and command, but French. When Henry II. himself was returning from Ireland in 1172, and passing through Pembroke, a Welshman accosted him. The Cambrian, supposing that a King of England must understand English, addressed Henry in that language, calling him gode olde Kynge.' Understanding nothing of this salutation, his Majesty said to his esquire, in French, What does this man mean?' and the esquire, who had been so situated as to converse with the Native English, had to act as interpreter. Thus the fifth King of England after the Conquest did not seem to know the signification of the word King in the English tongue. His son and successor, Richard, probably knew as little, at least it is certain that he could not hold a conversation in English; though, sitting upon the throne of England, he is said to have made amends for this deficiency, by speaking and writing well the two languages of Gaul, both north and south, the language of oui and the language of oc !* The English tongue, therefore, such as it was in these days, was indeed spoken by men in that army; but all the chiefs were Norman French. English was spoken by soldiers in the streets and markets within the pale; but French was the language in the castles and houses of the Barons. Thus the men of English race, upon Irish ground, occupied only a middle state between the Normans and the Irish. Their language, indeed, at that period was, in fact, proscribed, and in their own country despis

* Brompton, p. 1079. Thierry's Norman Conquest, vol. iii. p. 180.

ed, while in Ireland it held but an intermediate rank between that of the new government and the ancient dialect of the aborigines. Taught as the English or Anglo-Saxons had been, by this time, for a century, and were to be for two hundred years longer, that the edicts or dicta of the reigning power cannot wrest from a people the use of their mother-tongue; was it not strange that they could not perceive that the Native Irish were certain to act by their vernacular tongue, just as they themselves had done by theirs? Yet is it not a little remarkable, that the evil under which the Native Irish have laboured for so many ages, and up to the present hour, is the precise evil under which England groaned for three hundred years, from the time of the Norman invasion? This last territorial conquest in the west of Europe is never to be forgotten, as having introduced a species of policy into this country which has checked the diffusion of knowledge perhaps more than any one circumstance which can be mentioned. It was a sort of crusade on the colloquial dialect of the subdued party, and it certainly had its effects. It checked the diffusion of knowledge among the Native English, it sank the lower orders into darkness, and restricted all useful and scientific information to a privileged class. But did this experiment of three hundred years duration root out, diminish, or abolish the English tongue? No such thing. Long after the Conquest the preaching of the Normans was not at all understood by the audience ;* and though the court, the law, and the nobility used French, the Native English never, as Robert of Gloucester informs us, abandoned their vernacular tongue. In the first part of the reign of Edward III. Norman-French had reached its highest ascendency in England. Boys in the schools were instructed in the French idiom, after this, in some instances, came Latin, and there was no regular instruction of youth in English. The children of the nobles were even sent abroad to secure correctness of pronunciation. Yet what signified all this unnatural procedure? Rolle, or, as he is sometimes named, Richard Hampole, who died in 1348-9, intimates, that the generality of the laity understood no language except the English, and the English versifier of the romance of Arthur and

Hist. Ingulf. p. 115.