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ART. X. Past and Present Policy of England towards Ireland. 8vo, pp. 559. Edward Moxon, London. 1845.

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POPULAR discontent springs almost invariably from popular suffering. The sense of suffering, too, in such quarters, is generally allied with a sense of injury. Individuals may grow restless and complain without reason, but it is not so with communities and nations. The well-paid artizan, intent on more pay and less work, and the selfish demagogue of a somewhat higher grade, may ply their vocation in all weathers, but they find it gainful only as the heavens become dark, and as the elements are disturbed. Like the flesh-birds which hover on the rear of an army, these amiable devotees to the public interest, find their aliment where others find despair and the grave. It is true, where there is great suffering, a portion of it we may suppose have been self-induced, but it is natural at such times that the weak should be disposed to blame the strong rather than themselves, and in general they are right in so doing. Hence in the history of popular insurgency we see little else than the history of suffering weakness or the outbreak against wrong when it has become too heavy to be borne. If there are exceptions to this rule, they are very rare, and admit of easy explanation. Nothing can be more manifest, when we look to the general history of society, than that it is the law of Providence that the bias of the multitude should be on the side of passiveness, that they should rarely murmur without cause, and that they should put forth the wild energy which is lodged in them only as those junctures come round when the disorders of the social system appear to demand that terrible expedient. In ordinary circumstances, the groove natural to common men is that of labour, and with a moderate return of comfort they are content. They may sometimes fall under bad influences, and may venture upon untried ground; but if their case be not a good one, their experiments as correctors of the machinery of society become failures, and they drop into their natural groove again at the first convenient season. In our own history, the strongest exception to the above remarks is found in the proceedings of our tradesunions-associations which have been, and still are, the great curse in the lot of the working-man, and which sometimes threaten to be the canker-worm of our commercial greatness.

From these observations it will be conjectured that we are not about to deliver any favourable judgment concerning the policy of England towards Ireland. Every man of sense, indeed, will feel that such widely-spread and deeply-seated disaffection as

exists in that country, must have its root in great suffering. It is this fact, and the fact that this suffering must be traced in a great degree, if not altogether, to the policy of the rulers of Ireland, that the demagogue owes his power. What the policy of those rulers has been is matter of history, and its effects are among the many things of the kind which have been bequeathed to us by the wisdom of our ancestors. More effort has been made within the last forty years to call attention to the wrongs of Ireland, and to point out remedies for its evils, than during all the previous centuries of its connexion with this country. The case of Ireland, accordingly, whether we look to what it is, or to what ought to be done for it, is not a topic on which any man can hope to be very original. But where there is disease, there is a frequent change of posture-social maladies are inseparable from social restlessness the distemper may be the same, but its stages and symptoms may change, and the vigilant physician, while using the same means, may see reason from these altered appearances to vary the mode of administering them. The question of Ireland has changed its aspect considerably during the last forty years. Short intervals have sufficed to give it a comparatively new complexion, and to demand some new adjustment of appliances. What its history has been in this respect it must continue to be-for we are in the midst of the drama, not at its close, and our own interest, no less than the interests of Ireland, require that its claims should be kept continually before the eyes of the English people, until the wrongs of that ill-fated country are redressed, and its inhabitants become, at least as regards their social condition, a regenerated people.

The volume at the head of this article is the production, as we understand, of a gentleman well known in some of the highest circles of this country. It is evident that the pleasure which belongs to the kind of society with which the writer is familiar, has not been allowed to render him insensible to the claims of society in its widest sense, nor to prevent his bestowing his thoughts on many grave topics. His publication will not fail to attract attention, and its influence will be considerable on the side of a wiser and more humane policy towards the sister island. With the general views of the author in regard to the conduct of England towards Ireland we fully concur, and the sense of justice, the humanity, the thorough manliness by which the work is characterized, have delighted us exceedingly. It is an able and a faithful exposition of the wrongs of Ireland, set forth with dispassionateness, fulness, and dignity, by one who was not the man to have been expected to commit himself to such an effort, and who has entered upon his work evidently

from the promptings of a noble nature. It is this which gives the book its character and value. In regard to the remedies that should be applied to the evils exposed, the author says little, except on one point-and on that point we regret to say that we are at issue with him. It is clear that the work has been written under a strong impression that no man can judge wisely concerning the state of Ireland who has not been at some pains to make himself acquainted with the causes which have served to place it in the condition in which we find it. We scarcely need say that this impression is just. We shall have occasion, we fear, to call the attention of our readers to the affairs of Ireland very frequently; and, in doing so for the first time, we shall advert to some of the most characteristic facts in the policy of England towards that country through the past, before touching on those remedies which we regard as demanded by its present state, and which we deem of much greater necessity and potency than the one with which the attention of our author is chiefly occupied.

We are very suspicious of the virtues of conquerors. Their aim may sometimes be to civilize the barbarous, and to show themselves benefactors to the vanquished; but while it is easy to make such promises, judging from history nothing can be more easy than to forget them. If we distrust the professions of conquerors when they claim to be the apostles of civilization, it is natural that we should scan their proceedings with a deeper scepticism when they call upon us to admire them as the apostles of religion. The Spaniards in South America were a memorable race of pretenders after this fashion. When they brandished their swords, and fleshed them as they did, it was the church eminently that was to be the gainer. In its name they had committed themselves to their enterprise, and its authority gave a convenient sanction to all their atrocities. Nothing could be more felicitous, than to be placed at full liberty to play the demon, and to be permitted to account themselves great saints in making such use of that liberty. There was too much of this in the conquest of Ireland. It began in religious hypocrisy, and that leprous taint has marked the English ascendancy in that island to this day. In Ireland, as in Mexico, nothing has been so bad that a religious reason might not be assigned for doing it, and for continuing to do it. Henry II. knew enough of the Irish people to be aware that their condition needed improvement, and it would not probably have been unpleasing to him could he have succeeded in raising his neighbours in that quarter to a more respectable status. While things continued as they were, England itself seemed to be disgraced, as being almost the

Ultima Thule of the civilized world. But the English monarch, instead of taking upon him the office of conqueror and civilizer in virtue of his own kingly power, professed to think that all countries in which Christianity was planted belonged to the Holy See, and dispatched John of Salisbury to Rome, with a request that Pope Adrian the Fourth should give him authority to subdue the Irish, in order that he might reform them,' which reformation was to consist in bringing them into a more regular and complete subjection to the papacy. This pretence on the part of the king was followed by a similar piece of grimace on the part of his holiness-one sanctioned the undertaking, the other was to accomplish it, and the parties came to amicable terms as to the division of the spoil. It is something to begin well.

But could Henry have given the requisite time to work out his plans, it is hardly to be doubted that he would have shown himself a real benefactor to his new subjects. Unhappily, the state of his affairs in France rendered such a course impracticable, and Ireland fell, in consequence, under the power of the military chiefs who had become adventurers in the invasion. These were, principally, Strongbow, Earl of Pembroke, and the two brothers, Fitz Stephen and Fitz Gerald.

It is a leading fact in the history of Ireland, that from the time of Henry the Second to that of James the First, the country does not appear to have made the slightest advance in wealth, or in any point of civilization. How is this to be explained? Certainly the territory is not to blame. That is visited with the wholesome returns of sunshine and showers, and is rich in variety, capability, and treasure. Nor is the subdivision of its surface among a number of comparatively petty chieftains sufficient to explain this result, inasmuch as a similar state of things obtained in England during the Heptarchy, and in ancient Greece through the most brilliant period of its history. But so late as the reign of Elizabeth, the rudeness of the Irish in many parts was such, that in that climate, and in the depth of winter, men, women, and even chiefs, made their appearance, on all occasions, with no other clothing than a loose mantle falling from the shoulders, and a slight vesture thrown around the waist. In that reign a Bohemian nobleman traversed some part of the north of Ireland, in his way from Scotland to make his appearance at court in London, and coming to the residence of O'Kane, who is described as a great lord amongst them,' our traveller was not a little confounded on being met at the door by some fifteen or sixteen women, many of them fair to look upon, but all in a state so little the better for the stores of their wardrobe, that we may as well

not attempt to describe their appearance. With true Irish hospitality, the ladies conducted the stranger to the interior, and then having seated themselves cross-legged, in the manner of so many tailors, round the fire, they invited their guest to take his place along with them. This exhibition was still more shocking to the artificial taste of our Bohemian than what had preceded. Presently, to the great relief of the new comer, O'Kane himself made his appearance. His lordship was as little burdened with clothing as those about him-except that he indulged in the luxury of wearing some kind of shoes. Shoes and mantle, however, were thrown aside on entering the house; and delighted with his own sense of freedom when that was done, O'Kane politely inquired if his guest would not feel the benefit of being equally disencumbered. At night, the fire around which such groups of people had sat during the day, was the centre around which they laid down and slept until the day returned. Their feet were placed in the direction of the embers, and their heads diverged like so many radii from that point. The parts of their persons nearest the fire were left to derive such comfort as they might from that quarter, but their heads and upper parts were folded in their woollen mantles, which they had steeped in water, because woollen is found to retain heat longer when wet than when dry, and the warmth of the sleeper during the night generally brought the saturated garment into a sufficient degree of steam to supply that species of comfort.*

When we read of such things, we are naturally disposed to question the accounts which are sometimes given by Irish antiquaries, concerning the wonderful learning which distinguished many of the ecclesiastics of Ireland, in times much more remote than those of which we now speak. Still there may be something in their romantic reminiscences. Even this O'Kane, naked New Zealander as he was, is said to have known Latin enough to be able to make himself understood in that language by his visitor.

The fault of the English settlers was not that they reduced the Irish to this condition, but that having found them in it, they did nothing effectual through so long a period to raise them out of it. The true cause of so much revolting barbarism was to be found in the customs and characters of the people themselves. Their usages with regard to property naturally wedded them to such wretchedness. When a man of any sept died, his lands did not descend to his sons, but reverted to the whole sept, to be divided among them, and for this purpose the chief made a new division of all the lands belonging to the sept, giving every man his part according to a law of seniority. So that no man possessed any

* Parnell's Historical Apology for the Irish Catholics, 98 et seq.