the gentlemen whose testimony we have just cited ? But the writer in the Quarterly adventures upon a still bolder flight. In page 165, he says, “ In the kindness of their landlords, much abused and calumniated as they are, there is every thing to keep the peasantry quiet.” In answer to this shame less assertion, in support of which no evidence whatever is even referred to, we could cite some hundreds of authorities of the most unexceptionable character. We must, however, content ourselves for the present with calling only four witnesses into court. The Right Hon. John Wilson Croker, whose word will pass for something in Albemarle Street, informs us, in his work upon the state of Ireland, that "rents in that country are not a portion of the produce, but nearly the whole of it'; that the actual cultivator is seldom better paid than by scanty food, ragged raiment, and a miry hovel; and that competitors for land will offer the whole ralue of the produce, minus the daily potatoe.”* These are comical proofs

' of the benevolence of landlords, and of the absence of causes for discontent amongst the tenants. In the Times of the 25th of Oct. 1839, some very interesting and important extracts are given from what the editor very justly calls a very valuable book. Amongst these extracts are the following: “More misery is crowded into a single province in Ireland than can be found in all the rest of Europe put together. To this pass are things come, in order to benefit a small knot of haughty, unfecling, rapacious landlords, the well-being of millions is disregarded, famine and misery stalk through the land, and all good government in Ireland is rendered impossible, and government of any kind impracticable, except through the medium of a militry force."

The next witness whom we shall examine is Mr. Sadler, who represented the Duke of Newcastle in the House of Commons, and who, in a work upon the evils of Ireland, which was published by John Murray of Albemarle Street, bath expressed his opinion upon the matter in question in the following words:

“Is a system which can only be supported by brute force, and which is kept up by constant blood-shedding, to be perpetuated for ever? Are we still to garrison a country to protect the property of THOSE WHOSE CONDUCT OCCASIONS ALL THE EVILS UNDER WHICH THE COUNTRY HAS GROANED FOR CENTURIES-properly which has

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been treated in such a manner, that it would NOT BE WORTH A DAY'S PURCHASE were the proprietors its sole protectors; but the presence of a large body of military and police enables them to conduct themselves with as little apprehension as REMORSE. The possessions of the whole empire would be lost to their owners were such conduct GENERAL; and are these so meritorious a class, that they are to be protected in the audacious outrage OF ALL THOSE DUTIES, upon the direct and reciprocal discharge of which THE WHOLE FRAME OF THE SOCIAL SYSTEM IS FOUNDED. If they persist in this course let them do so at their own peril; the British soldier is too noble a being to be degraded into the exactor of enormous rents, &c."*

The fourth and last authority to which we shall appeal is none other than the Quarterly Review itself, which, miraculous as the fact may appear, does actually contain the following passage upon the subject in question:

"In Ireland alone is to be found a population abandoned to the mercy of the elements of chance, or rather of THE LEGAL Owners of THE SOIL, who are protected by an ARMED POLICE, AND A STRONG MILITARY GARRISON, IN THE EXACTION OF UNHEARD OF PECUNIARY RENTS from a DESTITUTE TENANTRY—rents which are ONLY paid by the EXPORTATION OF THE GREAT BULK OF THE FOOD RAISED IN THE COUNTRY, leaving to those who grow it a BARE SUBSISTENCE UPON potatoes, EKED OUT WITH WEEDS. We fearlessly assert, that there rests not so foul a blot upon the character of any other government. The wretchedness of the mass of the people has no parallel on the face of the globe, in any nation, savage or civilized. A population of eight millions left to live or die as it may happenthe people STARved, dispirited, naked, and BEGGARLY-the produce of whose industry is swept off to other lands to be sold for the EXCLUSIVE BENEFIT OF MEN WHOM THE LAW INVESTS with the unconditional ownership of this fair portion of God's earth, and with the POWER OF ABSOLUTELY STARVING ITS INHABITANTS; and THIS LAW WE EXPECT THIS UNHAPPY POPULATION TO CHERISH, VENE

RATE, AND IMPLICITLY OBEY.-SHAME! SHAME! we repeat,"+ &c.

Here then we have the Quarterly Review declaring in one place, that in the kindness of the Irish landlords, there is everything to keep the population of that country quiet, and that the persons who attribute any part of the disturbances to the landlords are abusive calumniators; whilst the same Review states, in another place, that the same landlords habitually murdered the same population, by robbing them of almost the whole of the food which they had themselves produced, and leaving them to live, or rather to die, by feeding upon

* Second Edition, pp. 161-2.

+ Quarterly Review, Dec. 1835, p. 145.

weeds. Where is the editor of the Quarterly Review, or what is he about?

“Sleep you or wake you, oh L-t bright." Thy Quarterly Review, like the “delicate monster," in The Tempest, hath, in the language of Stephano,

“Two voices. His forward voice now is to speak well of his friends. His backward voice is to utter foul speeches, and to detract." -Act ii, scene 2. Both voices cannot be true. By which, then, will it abide ? If its forward voice be correct, then is the monster, according to its own decision, an abusive calumniator. If its backward voice is entitled to credit, then is it, self-evidently, guilty of uttering a wilful and a deliberate falsehood.

Here we must for the present conclude. In our next number we shall proceed to refute the remaining arguments, and subvert the other assertions of the Quarterly Review. In the meantime we submit as a question for the consideration of the editor of that eminent publication, whether it be in conformity with the established principles of civilised, political, or polemical warfare, to allow the influential work, over the composition of which he presides, to be made the medium for propelling into the world a mass of wild and calumnious a3sertions, some of the most important of which we have shown to be not only destitute of the smallest semblance or shadow of truth, but to be contradicted in the most glaring and inconceivable manner by other passages, not only in the same publication, but in the very same article itself.

ART. VI.-Sketches in Ireland, descriptive of interesting

districts in Donegal, Cork, and Kerry. Second Edition. Dublin : 1841. HE speakers in that admirable dialogue which exhibits

Spenser's “View of the state of Ireland” towards the close of the sixteenth century, set out with the following remarks.

“ Eudoxus. But if that countrey of Ireland whence you lately came, be of so goodly and commodious a soyll as you report, I won. der that no course is taken for the turning thereof to good uses, and reducing that nation to better government and civility.

“ Irenæus. Marry so there have bin divers good plottes devised,

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and wise councels cast already about reformation of that realme; but they say it is the fatall destiny of that land, that no purposes whatsoever which are meant for her good wil prosper or take good effect, which, whether it proceed from the very genius of the soyle, or influence of the starres, or that Almighty God hath not yet appointed the time of her reformation, or that Hee reserveth her in this unquiet state still for some secret scourge, which shall by her come unto England, it is harde to be knowne, but yet much to be feared.

“ Eudoxus. Surely I suppose this is but a vaine conceipt of simple men, which judge things by their effects, and not by their causes ; for I would rather thinke the cause of this evill which hangeth upon that countrey, to proceed rather of the unsoundness of the councels and plots, which you say have bin oftentimes laid for the reformation, or of faintness in following and effecting the same, then of any such fatall course appointed of God, as you misdeem ; but it is the manner of men, that when they are fallen into any absurdity, or their actions succeede not as they would, they are always readie to impute the blame thereof unto the heavens, so to excuse their own follies and impersections. So have I heard often wished also, (even of some whose great wisdomes in opinion should seem to judge more soundly of so weighty a consideration), that all that land were a sea-poole ;* which kinde of speech is the manner rather of desperate men farre driven to wish the utter ruine of that which they cannot redress, then of grave councellors which ought to think nothing so hard, but that through wisedome it may be mastered and subdued, since the poet saith that the wise man shall rule even over the starres,' much more over the earth."

Nearly two hundred and fifty years have elapsed since these observations were made by a clear-headed and most kindhearted man, himself one of the “ grave councellors” who loved Ireland well, and sincerely desired to promote her welfare. Nevertheless, there is much in these remarks which may still be justly asserted as applicable to the measures intended for the benefit of this country. There is, perhaps, no portion of Europe concerning the amelioration of which more has been written by economists of various descriptions than that which a great majority of them agree in designating as “ unfortunate Ireland” – unfortunate truly in many points of view, but most especially in the utter failure of numberless private and public projects desired for her social, political, agricultural, and commercial improvement.

The truth is, to use a coarse but very intelligible adage, “the bull has never yet been taken by the horns.” The

• The late Sir Joseph Yorke's famous exclamation—" That it were well if Ireland were buried in the bottom of the sea!"-- has not therefore the merit of novelty.

laws by which the aboriginal population of Ireland was governed, were calculated to repress and resist every form of legislation or custom by which any large mass of families could be brought within the pale of a fundamental system of organisation. On the contrary, the system which prevailed amongst our early generations, resembling closely that of the Scottish clans, by dividing our people into many factions, each having its separate chieftains, hereditary or elective, tended perpetually to keep asunder, and in an attitude of hostility against each other, sections of the inhabitants, who ought, for all purposes connected with the cause of tranquillity and order, to be combined by local arrangements into one great national family.

If we examine the history of England, we shall find that all her great juridical and legislative institutions are traceable to the tithings, and the hundreds, and the wapentakes, which were originally introduced from Germany. When Alfred inquired into the causes of the disorders which prevailed during the early part of his reign, he soon found that they were chiefly to be ascribed to the desuetude into which those noble devices for the maintenance of the public peace had fallen. He applied himself at once to the revival of those systems. He “ took the bull by the horns." He felt that the best mode of governing the multitude was to teach them how to govern themselves; he re-divided them into the local societies known under those ancient titles; those societies became answerable to each other and to the community at large for the preservation of order in their respective districts. The members of each society easily learned and practised their duties, acquired a respect not only for others but for themselves, learned not merely to obey, but to love and cherish, and enforce every ordinance of their legislator which facilitated the execution of the office they had pledged themselves to perform, and thus constituted a solid foundation, upon which the great pyramid of British society has since been raised.

No course of legislation parallel, or at all like to this, bas ever yet been adopted with reference to Ireland. When the English first turned their attention to this country, their predominating design was just the same as that of the Danesplunder. They next became ambitious of making conquests. They discovered here a land fertile beyond all expectation, charming for its scenery, and of a climate much milder than their own. They overran it, parcelled it out among their