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Zbe damelot Sevfes. 
 
 Edited by Ernest Rhys. 
 
 EROSE WRITINGS, 
 
P ROSE WRITINGS OF 
 THOMAS DAVIS. EDITED, 
 WITH AN INTRODUCTION, BY 
 T. W, ROLLESTON. W 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 WALTER SCOTT, 24 WARWICK LANE, 
 
 PATERNOSTER ROW. 
 
3i54ii 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAG K 
 
 Thomas Davis ...... vii 
 
 An Address delivered before the Historical 
 Society, Dublin ..... i 
 
 Udalism and Feudalism. . . . .44 
 
 Literary and Historical Essays — 
 
 ANCIENT IRELAND . . . . . ?6 
 
 HISTORICAL MONUMENTS OF IRELAND . . 8 o 
 
 IRISH ANTIQUITIES . . . , .83 
 
 THE ROUND TOWERS OF IRELAND . . .90 
 
 THE IRISH BRIGADE . . . . . I04 
 
 THE SPEECHES OF GRATTAN .... I08 
 
 MEMORIALS OF WEXFORD . . . . II6 
 
 THE HISTORY OF TO-DAY . . . . II9 
 
 THE RESOURCES OF IRELAND. . . • I23 
 
 THE VALUATION OF IRELAND. . . . I30 
 
 COMMERCIAL HISTORY OF IRELAND . . . I4I 
 
 NATIONAL ART . . . . . .146 
 
 ART UNIONS . . . . . .153 
 
 HINTS FOR IRISH HISTORICAL PAINTINGS . -155 
 
 OUR NATIONAL LANGUAGE . . . • I58 
 
 INSTITUTIONS OF IRELAND . . . . 1 66 
 
vi CONTENTS, 
 
 Literary and Historical Y.s^h.YS—Conti?nied, page 
 
 IRELAND’S PEOPLE, LORDS, GENTRY, COMMONALTY 1 74 
 THE STATE OF THE PEASANTRY . . .179 
 
 HABITS AND CHARACTER OF THE PEASANTRY . 1 82 
 
 IRISH SCENERY . . . . .184 
 
 IRISH MUSIC AND POETRY . . . . 188 
 
 BALLAD POETRY OF IRELAND . . . I92 
 
 A BALLAD HISTORY OF IRELAND . . .201 
 
 REPEAL READING-ROOMS .... 2o8 
 
 INFLUENCES OF EDUCATION . . . .212 
 
 FOREIGN TRAVEL . . . . . 217 
 
 “the library of IRELAND” . . . 223 
 
 A Chronology of Ireland .... 228 
 
 Political Articles— 
 
 NO redress— NO INQUIRY .... 236 
 
 THE RIGHT ROAD . . . . . 24I 
 
 FOREIGN POLICY AND FOREIGN INFORMATION . 245 
 
 MORAL FORCE ...... 250 
 
 CONCILIATION ...... 254 
 
 SCOLDING MOBS ..... 258 
 
 MUNSTER OUTRAGES ..... 260 
 
 A SECOND year’s WORK . . . .265 
 
 ORANGE AND GREEN ..... 270 
 
 ACADEMICAL EDUCATION .... 273 
 
 Maxims and Reflections .... 280 
 
THOMAS DAVIS. 
 
 “ There came a soul into Ireland.” 
 
 Oh, brave young men, my love, my pride, my promise, 
 
 ’Tis on you my hopes are set. 
 
 In manliness, in kindliness, in justice. 
 
 To make Ireland a nation yet. 
 
 Self-respecting, self-relying, self-advancing, 
 
 In union or in severance, free and strong ; 
 
 And if God grant this, then, under God, to Thomas Davis 
 Let the greater praise belong ! ” 
 
 Samuel Ferguson. 
 
 (From a ^oem written on the death of Davis. ) 
 
 The writings of Thomas Davis are mainly the records of 
 a life of action. Literature with him was a means to an 
 end, not, so far as his short life gave him the chance to 
 cultivate it, an end in itself. Have, then, the poems, essays, 
 articles which have been and will be published under 
 his name no interest apart from the objects they were 
 written to promote? Few readers will endorse such a 
 judgment. Few readers, we hope, can fail to be touched 
 and exalted by the revelation which these writings contain, 
 of a spirit as high, sincere, unselfish, sweet, and brave as 
 ever illuminated the history of any people. Whatever be 
 the life-work to which any man has set his hand, it should 
 help him to see the spirit in which Thomas Davis did his. 
 
THOMAS DA VIS. 
 
 viii 
 
 But for the country to whose cause Davis devoted so 
 much “industrious valour how precious must be every 
 line which helps it to realise what he was and what he 
 would have it be ! He would have Ireland a nation, 
 visibly and formally charged with the fulfilment of her 
 own destinies, inwardly and spiritually united in the con- 
 sciousness of them, and in that resolve to maintain her 
 own distinct existence, which (where the elements of such 
 distinction exist) he regarded as the primary condition of 
 all wholesome and helpful energy. The first part of this 
 aim looks as if it were on the way to some measure of 
 fulfilment; but what of the second? Never since the 
 Union were those inhabitants of that country who dread 
 and hate the prospect of her legislative independence 
 relatively more numerous or positively more embittered 
 than at present. Davis, in his short lifetime, by his 
 justice, his candour, his large sympathies, his high ideals, 
 and the courage with which he attacked everything un- 
 worthy and false, on whichever side it might appear, was 
 fast winning the confidence of all his countrymen and 
 dissolving the most obstinate prejudices. His work was in- 
 terrupted, not so much by his own death (for his influence 
 was of that rare kind which is rather bequeathed than 
 withdrawn) as by the Famine of ’45-49, in whose graves 
 so much of noble enterprise was buried. But what can 
 any other successes avail while this work remains 
 undone ? What Irish constitution can be worth the 
 parchment on which it is written, unless it is written also 
 in the hearts of the whole Irish people? This was the 
 idea which dominated all Davis’s public activity. Not 
 indeed that he proposed to wait for Repeal until all Ireland 
 was unanimous in demanding it. But he made the further- 
 ance of this unanimity of national feeling the test of every 
 
THOMAS DA VIS, 
 
 IX 
 
 method used to gain the measure he desired ; and if there 
 had been, as there now is, any question of the character of 
 that measure, he would have made it the test of that also. 
 
 In striving to unite his own countrymen he strove also 
 with the most vehement endeavour to rend asunder all the 
 ties of sympathy and reverence which bound them to 
 England. That union of hearts of which so much has been 
 said during the last three years was, it must be acknow> 
 ledged, no part of his aim — indeed it is certain that he 
 would have preferred even slavery to such a union. 
 England, with him, stood for selfishness, ruthless greed, 
 mammon-worship, incorporate in national form; and it is 
 true that in her relations with Ireland such qualities had 
 sometimes been very prominent. Davis thought them still 
 prominent both in the internal life and the foreign policy of 
 England, and he wished by every means in his power to 
 protect his own country from their contagious influence. A 
 fair representation of what he wrote with this aim is given 
 in the present volume, which without it would lose much 
 in value for the student of history or politics ; and the 
 English reader must take it with what equanimity he can ; 
 remembering two things — that it was hardly possible, 
 without falling into some intemperateness, to attack the 
 slavish adoration of all English as opposed to all Irish ways 
 and things which prevailed among a large section of Davis’s 
 contemporaries; and secondly, that, if a bitter foe, he 
 was a scrupulously honourable one, under whose flag the 
 use of base or criminal means was certain of the sharpest 
 condemnation. 
 
 Davis was born in 1814 at Mallow, in the County Cork, 
 “the centre,” as Sir Charles Duffy writes, “of some of the most 
 notable transactions, and of the finest scenery in Munster.” 
 Through his mother’s family, the Atkins of Firville, County 
 
X 
 
 THOMAS BA VIS, 
 
 Cork, he inherited Irish blood; his father, a surgeon in the 
 Royal Artillery, was of a Buckinghamshire family, originally 
 from Wales. As a boy he was shy, easily moved, 
 and anything but quick in learning. In Trinity College, 
 however, the passion of the student took possession of him; 
 he read history, literature, philosophy, and social science, 
 and though he made little effort to distinguish himself as 
 a winner of prizes and honours, his attainments so far 
 impressed his contemporaries, that he was elected Auditor 
 of the Historical Society, and in that capacity delivered the 
 striking address printed in this collection. In 1838 he was 
 called to the Bar, but never practised very assiduously. A 
 monthly magazine called the Citizen was the first periodical 
 with which he had any connection, and he published in it 
 his articles on ‘‘Udalism and Feudalism,’’ and an admirable 
 historical study of the Irish Parliament under James II. ^ 
 In association with John Dillon he took up, in 1840, the 
 editorship of the Morning Register^ a Dublin daily paper, 
 whose readers, accustomed to statistical disquisitions on 
 finance and industry, now found themselves, to their intense 
 astonishment, invited to take an interest in “ speculations 
 on the revival of Protestant nationality,” with “ historical 
 parallels from classic and mediaeval history,” and even 
 “essays on the agencies and conditions of guerilla warfare.”^ 
 The astonishment with which this new departure was 
 regarded was wholly unmixed with delight, and the Morning 
 Register was soon again abandoned to facts and figures. 
 But there was something in these young men which 
 
 ^ Mr. Lecky has described this as the best existing account of its 
 subject. It is intended to reprint it from Davis’s MSS. in an enlarged 
 and improved form. 
 
 2 Sir Charles Duffy’s Young Ireland^ Pt. I., Chap. iii. Mr. Duffy 
 was sub-editor of the Morning Register in its statistical days. 
 
THOMAS DA VIS. 
 
 XI 
 
 demanded utterance, and it was not long before a fitting 
 organ for that utterance was created. In the spring of 
 1842 Mr. Duffy, who had some time previously made the 
 acquaintance of John Dillon, was introduced by him 
 to Thomas Davis. They strolled together into the 
 Phoenix Park, and a long conversation on the prospects 
 of the Repeal movement, then at its period of greatest 
 depression, 1 revealed to them their community of feeling 
 and aspiration. From this conversation sprang that current 
 of patriotic energy which for six years swelled ever fuller 
 and faster in the veins of Ireland ; which brought back into 
 the national movement the sincere and valiant spirit of its 
 true originator and greatest counsellor, Wolfe Tone; and 
 which planted in the land the seed of a national literature 
 which, apart from all political changes past or to come, 
 would make the beginning of the Young Ireland move- 
 ment a memorable date in Irish history. The project of the 
 establishment of a new newspaper arose with Duffy, who 
 found the necessary funds, and became sole proprietor and 
 responsible editor. The title of the Nation was an 
 amendment of Davis upon Duffy^s original suggestion, 
 the National. In October 1842 the first number of the 
 new periodical appeared, and it leaped at once into the 
 popularity and influence which never deserted it until death 
 or exile had wholly dispersed the small band who originally 
 gathered round the enterprise. 
 
 Most of the work of Thomas Davis was done in connec- 
 tion with the Nation, But of the extent of that work his 
 own contributions give but a very inadequate idea. He 
 
 ^ In 1841 a general election had taken place, which gave O’Connell 
 a chance of testing the feeling of Ireland about Repeal. The result 
 showed a great falling off in popular support, O’Connell himself losing 
 his seat for Dublin. 
 
XU 
 
 THOMAS DA VIS. 
 
 was the soul of the undertaking, and all who were con- 
 nected with it, men assuredly not wanting in ability and 
 vigour, felt that his originative faculty, his wide learning, 
 his bold yet sagacious spirit, his steadfast industry, and the 
 utter carelessness of self with which he merged his great 
 gifts and acquirements in the common effort, made him 
 their natural leader. “ His comrades,” writes the most 
 eminent of them, “ had the same careless confidence in 
 him men have in the operations of nature, where irregularity 
 and aberration do not exist.” And this planetary regularity 
 had been imposed — by what a triumph of will ! — upon the 
 passionate and sensitive nature of genius. His was the 
 suggestion which gave the journal so much of its distinctive 
 character, the introduction of poetry of a stirring and popular 
 kind, for the purpose of awakening in the nation a vivid 
 sense of what was great and noble in its past ; and his own 
 beautiful “ Lament for Owen Roe ” set the example so 
 eagerly and successfully followed by the writers whose 
 contributions are collected in that stirring and powerful 
 little book, “ The Spirit of the Nation.” The project of a 
 “ Library ” of cheap books, designed to make the rising 
 generation acquainted (as in large measure it has done) 
 with the great personages and periods of their country’s 
 history, was also his, and he intended to have enriched the 
 collection with a life of Wolfe Tone. 
 
 The policy of the Nation^ its views of the needs of the 
 country — both for the prosecution of the Repeal movement 
 and the utilisation of its success, if it did succeed — may 
 be summed up in three words : Education, Organisation, 
 Toleration. No one had a more vivid sense of what the 
 Irish people needed in all these respects, especially the 
 first named, than Thomas Davis. He was a keen though 
 sympathetic critic of his countrymen’s failings, and there 
 
THOMAS JDAVIS, 
 
 xiii 
 
 was no power, no prejudice on earth which he would not 
 confront in the cause of enlightenment or liberty. He was 
 ■ inspired to the finger-tips with the passion of reform. From 
 the deepest lessons in political ethics, in the resources of 
 the country, in the forces that strengthen and purify 
 national character, down to instruction in the manner in 
 which Repealers should march to their meetings, Davis was 
 ever on the watch for some example, some fact which it 
 might profit his countrymen to attend to, ever urging them 
 * to observe, reflect, apply, persevere. He held up before his 
 people a broad ideal of self-education, the development of 
 a noble physical and moral manhood, of which he thought 
 the mixed race now inhabiting Ireland possessed many rare 
 and admirable elements. This was his deepest and most 
 enduring aim. No imaginable political success could have 
 compensated, in his eyes, for the habits of cant, imposture, 
 slavishness, and injustice which he saw the agitation of 
 O’Connell was tending to engender, and which he opposed, 
 even to the length of encountering the mighty orator before 
 the Repeal Association, with unwavering determination. ^ 
 And this sincerity and loftiness of purpose had their reward. 
 O’Connell, who was an eminent political leader before 
 Davis was born, did not give the Irish national movement 
 so powerful and enduring an impulse as the young man who 
 for three years worked unnoticed in the shadow of his 
 fame. 
 
 His death took place, happily perhaps for him, before 
 O’Connell had finally resolved to drive out the men who 
 
 ^ See Young Ireland, Pt. Y, passim, and Chap. vii. in particular. It 
 may be mentioned here that Sir Charles Duffy will immediately publish, 
 through Messrs. Kegan Paul & Co., the Life and Letters of Thomas 
 Davis ; which should be one of the most interesting of the author’s 
 contributions to Irish history. 
 
XIV 
 
 THOMAS DA VIS. 
 
 formed the truest metal of his enterprise, and before the 
 long agony of the famine years had blighted, to a great 
 extent, the fruits of his own labours. He died of scarlet 
 fever on September i6, 1845. All Ireland, irrespective of 
 creeds and parties, mourned for him, and has still too good 
 cause to mourn. 
 
 The present collection is the fullest published of the 
 prose writings of Davis, It consists chiefly of articles, 
 selected and classified, from the Nation newspaper. Many 
 of these were contained in the volume of 1845, edited by 
 Sir Charles Duffy, but some papers in that collection have 
 now been omitted, either because their substance is given 
 elsewhere, or because they seemed out of place in a 
 volume not addressed, like the earlier and smaller one, to a 
 specially Irish audience. Besides essays from the Nation^ 
 the present collection also contains Davis's papers from 
 the Citizen on “ Udalism and Feudalism." Others of his 
 numerous essays and articles, which seemed of too 
 ephemeral an interest to need republication, have furnished 
 a short section of Maxims and Reflections. 
 
 It needs no long exordium to commend the writings of 
 Thomas Davis to his countrymen. They will go wherever 
 the Irish race has gone. And they should go wherever 
 there exists any desire to obtain a vital understanding 
 of the problems connected with English government in 
 Ireland. 
 
 T. W. R. 
 
 Dublin^ 1889 . 
 
rROSE WRITINGS. 
 
THOMAS DAVIS’S WRITINGS. 
 
 AN ADDRESS DELIVERED BEFORE THE 
 HISTORICAL SOCIETY, DUBLIN. 
 
 To the Members of the Historical Society, 
 
 Gentlemen, — The following Address was written for you, and, 
 some few passages excepted, was read before you. You are in 
 no one way connected with any opinions contained in it. Many, 
 perchance most of you, differed from those opinions. Your 
 candour and fairness, therefore, in printing it, is highly honour- 
 able to you. This prefatory letter is written not to defend you, 
 but to explain my motives. 
 
 Now, tell me, candidly, do you think it can be any pleasure 
 to me to advance opinions which, differing as they do from 
 those of most of my cotemporaries, must have been taken up 
 with much hesitation? Think you I have many temptations to 
 advance opinions, which so many of you, my friends and 
 companions, will censure ? You will respect, for you know my 
 motives. There are some, not of you, who are likely enough 
 to read this paper, who will condemn me, as well as it, harshly, 
 uncharitably, ignorantly : I shall not mind them. But let 
 you fairly weigh my opinions, and, if you approve of them, do 
 not suffer what will tJmi be your opinions to be sneered down 
 — do not be swindled or bullied out of them; and trust me, 
 you will find that your mterest as well as your duty is to avow 
 and act on them. You have much to learn, much to dare. 
 Look on our class in Ireland; are they worthy of their nature 
 
 693 
 
2 
 
 ADDRESS. 
 
 or their country? Are they like the young men of Germany; 
 as students, laborious; as thinkers, profound and acute ? like the 
 young men of France, independent, fearless, patriotic ? like the 
 young men of England, Scotland, America, energetic, patient, 
 successful? (I speak of the virtues of these foreigners). And 
 if not, if the young men of Ireland are careless, prejudiced, 
 unhonoured — if their pupilage never ends — if no manhood of 
 mind, no mastery in action comes for most of them — if pre- 
 paration, thought, action, wisdom, the order of development 
 in successful men, is not for them ; if so, are their misleaders, 
 the duped or duping apostles of present systems, alone to 
 blame ? No ; you, young Irishmen, must blame yourselves. 
 The power of self-education, self-conduct, is yours : “ Think 
 wrongly if you will, but think for yourselves.” ^ Are you ambitious 
 of honourable success ? — you must become learned, determined, 
 just, pious. There is no short cut to greatness. You who are 
 called the upper classes in Ireland possess no institutions for 
 any sort of instruction worthy of you. Nay, more, so strong 
 are bigotry, interest, and laziness that you will get none. 
 You must found your own institutes— y oil must conduct your 
 own affairs. I have, in the following pages, discussed some, 
 and hinted at other parts of the subjects which I thought most 
 useful for you to reflect on. If you will discuss them fearlessly 
 and unshrinkingly, ^tis well. I care little for the fate of any 
 opinions, but much for the fate of free discussion. Accept no 
 opinion or set of opinions, without examination, no matter 
 whether they be enrobed in pomp, or holiness, or power; 
 admire the pomp, respect the power, venerate the holiness; 
 but for the opinions, strip them ; if they bear the image of 
 truth, for its sake cherish them; if they be mixed, discriminate 
 them ; if false, condemn them. That faith or philosophy 
 which proclaims the unlimited right and innocence of free 
 inquiry and self-government of mind is moving among you. 
 Are there none to bear its standards ? Will you linger when 
 such powers are in motion ? Do you pay no worship to 
 plain unritual virtue? Owe you no allegiance to truth? Or 
 ^ Lessing. 
 
ADDRESS. 
 
 3 
 
 are places on one hand, and prejudices on the other, to keep 
 you apart from each other, and from the common highway 
 to your country’s prosperity ? You have capacities ; will you 
 use them, or will you not ? Will you use them for free thought 
 — for virtue — for Ireland? Intellect has its duties as well as 
 its rights ; — the rights of power, fame, and authority cannot 
 be withheld from it ; human nature cannot refuse them ; but 
 the duties to yourselves — your fellows — your country, have you 
 not neglected ? Are you now compromising them ? How long 
 will you sin against patriotism ? Let no one dare to call me 
 factious for bidding you act in union with any men, be they 
 of what party they may, for our common country. 
 
 I shall not apologise for taking the same freedom with you 
 collectively that (you know) I should take with each one of 
 you in private. 
 
 I leave these things with you. I feel my own weakness, but 
 am equally conscious of, and ready to assert, my right of free 
 thought and expression ; but you, some of you at least, possess 
 powers as well as rights. I therefore have done my duty 
 in pointing out, though with feeble arm, the path I believe 
 you ought to pursue. Again, I say, “Think wrongly if you will, 
 but think for yourselves.” — I remain, gentlemen, your obedient 
 servant and faithful friend, Thomas Davis. 
 
 6 1 Baggott Street, October i2thy 1840. 
 
 ADDRESS. 
 
 Gentlemen, — I am now about to surrender the office which 
 you intrusted to me. Its duties, up to the last night of the 
 session, may be well discharged by any man of common 
 courtesy and firmness. But to-night your President has a 
 harder task. At our usual meetings we seek to prepare our- 
 selves for certain duties and pursuits, of which this society is a 
 fit learning-place. We leave a single evening in the year for the 
 consideration of what are or what should be those duties and 
 
4 
 
 ADDRESS. 
 
 pursuits, and by what rules we should guide ourselves in that 
 preparation. 
 
 Need I defend the custom of making a periodical inquiry 
 into the theory of this Institution ? If general principles be of 
 any use, they cannot be, without hazard, neglected when we 
 attempt to educate ourselves, for as Swift says somewhere, 
 “ He who knows his powers seldom fails ; he who is ignorant 
 of them hardly ever succeeds.” 
 
 The maxim in self-teaching, as in all teaching, is to study 
 wherein lie our deficiencies as well as our powers, and what are 
 the means of supplying those defects. This Society is one 
 means of correcting many errors and fostering many powers ; 
 and my duty is to call your attention to our more probable and 
 dangerous defects, to state the objects of the institution, and 
 what it is fitted to teach or unteach us. In attempting the dis- 
 charge of that duty, I labour under some disadvantages. I am 
 the first person who has attempted to address this particular 
 society on these topics ; yet I cannot forget that addresses to 
 similar societies, by men whose pupil I should desire to be, 
 abound in Dublin. If I tread the same path as these men, I 
 shall be accused of imitation ; if I leave it, their example will 
 be pointed out, and I shall be called irrelevant. Now these 
 addresses have laid down with logical precision the divisions 
 of eloquence and the rules for its diversified application. Prin- 
 ciples investigated by philosophers, tested by successful orators, 
 and illustrated by the lights of taste and fancy, exist in these 
 addresses. They are in your hands, and you may study them 
 with profit. They are so many abridgments of, or supple- 
 ments to, the standard works on rhetoric. As I could not hope 
 to improve on the matter or style of these papers, I should, if 
 unable to address you relevantly on other topics than theirs, 
 have declined to do so at all. I should shrink from rivalry, but 
 I am now before you because I am not forced to compete. It 
 is common to all speculators on such societies as ours to say 
 we want to study oratory ; and satisfied with that observation, 
 they launch guideless into the ocean of rhetorical criticism. 
 Now* this dogma conveys too wide or too narrow a notion of 
 
ADDRESS. 
 
 % 
 
 what we come here for. We are associated to prepare, to 
 make, to hear, to support, to answer speeches on historical, 
 literary, and political subjects. Discussion of social topics, 
 with all its necessary preparation, and all the natural results of 
 both the preparation and discussion, is not too comprehensive 
 a definition of our general object. That object being so com- 
 prehensive, our individual designs are somewhat various. 
 Some indeed want to acquire mere facility and courage ; some 
 use this society as a means of studying history ; some, politics; 
 others, the mind of man ; most of you, ultimately, to study 
 eloquence — the power of making the best use of every kind 
 of information, and of every faculty, intellectual and senti- 
 mental, in public speaking. The addressers of such societies 
 have usually confined themselves to the abstract theory of 
 eloquence on the one hand, and to florid descriptions of its 
 details on the other. But surely the other steps in the series 
 deserve some consideration, and the more so because informa- 
 tion is the seed-sowing, and study and experience the sun and 
 shower, without which no harvest of eloquence can gladden 
 the mind. Botany and the change of prices are not the sole 
 studies of the agriculturists. 
 
 In calling your attention to the condition and cultivation of 
 mind which must precede and prepare for eloquence, rather 
 than to the theory of its power or the details of its application, 
 I am not seeking to deprecate, but to guide the study of it. If 
 eloquence required a eulogy, or if I had time for the work, 
 though superfluous, there could be no more grateful task for 
 my pen, “Labor ipsa voluptas.” For though unvisited by its 
 favours, I do not the less love its brightness. “ Do the stars” — 
 asks the French peasant — “Do the stars think of us, yet if the 
 prisoner see them shine into his dungeon wouldst thou have 
 him turn away from their lustre?”^ No, gentlemen, the power 
 and beauty be its own ; the worship mine, even though I vainly 
 worship. 
 
 Gentlemen, you consist of members and students of the 
 learned professions. Many of you cherish a literary ambition, 
 ^ Claude Melnotte, in Bulwer’s “ Lady of Lyons.” 
 
6 
 
 ADDRESS. 
 
 most of you hope for success in public life ; you thus, though 
 coming here with different powers, and various qualities, are 
 yet all under circumstances which will make the acquisition of 
 the orator’s powers an object of ambition. Your country and 
 your times offer opportunities for a generous — temptations to 
 a selfish ambition. I trust, I am sure, your impulses are not 
 ungenerous. Methinks I know the element at work within 
 you. You aspire to political power, and you must be up and 
 doing ; you will, ere you reach the goal, need an amount of 
 labour which you little thought of at the starting. ’Tis no 
 light thing to move the mind of man. ’Tis no child’s play 
 to wield the passions. The recruit must not seek to lead an 
 army, nor the student to instruct a nation. Look back on 
 those who have been the mind-chieftains in the civil strifes of 
 Ireland — Swift, Lucas, Grattan. Did all the boasted precocity 
 of Irish genius abridge their toils No; a youth of hardest 
 study, a manhood of unceasing labour, are the facts common to 
 the lives of them all ; and yet they lived under favourable 
 auspices for individual eminence. Though the Irish leaders 
 have not seldom been unblessed with ancestral wealth or 
 dignity, yet the body of competitors for political power were 
 of the aristocracy ; for they inherited a monopoly of education, 
 that which summons men to distinction. You also belong to 
 what are called the upper classes in Ireland. But you will 
 have competitors from whom your ancestors were free. 
 
 The college in which you and your fathers were educated^ 
 from whose offices seven-eighths of the Irish people are 
 excluded by religion, from whose porch many, not disqualified 
 by religion, are repelled by the comparative dearness, the 
 reputed bigotry, and pervading dulness of the consecrated 
 spot — that institution seems no longer to monopolise the 
 education funds of Ireland. Trinity College seems to have 
 lost the office for which it was so long and so well paid — of 
 preventing the education of the Irish. The people think it 
 better not to devote all their spare cash to a university, so 
 many of whose favourite alumni are distinguished by their adroit 
 and malignant calumnies on the character, and inveterate 
 
ADDRESS. 
 
 7 
 
 hostility to the good of that people with whose land and money 
 they are endowed. The self-denying virtues are “passing away, 
 passing away.” 
 
 Do you weep their departure ? or are you consoled by the 
 number of people-wrongs still endured ? But away with this 
 insulting jest — your hearts are with your countrymen — yours is 
 a generous ambition to lead them, not their foes. 
 
 But then, I repeat, you must strip for the race ; you will 
 have competitors from among the people. The middle classes 
 of Ireland are now seeking, in spite of the most perverse 
 opposition chronicled in the annals of even our Anglo-Irish 
 bigotry, to establish provincial colleges — schools for their own 
 education. When the men of the middle class once come into 
 the field, if I do not greatly overrate the stuff of which they are 
 made, they will compel the men of the upper classes at home — 
 nay, with humility be it said, the men of every country — to fight 
 a hard battle for their literary laurels and political renown. 
 Prepare for that time. If you would rule your countrymen 
 you must be greater than they. But even now the National 
 Schools, the first bold attempt to regenerate Ireland, are 
 working, ay, and, with all their faults, working well. The 
 lower classes, for whom they are suited and designed, are 
 beginning to add the acquisitions of science and literature to 
 that facile apprehension, ingenuity, and comprehensive genius 
 with which even their enemies credit them. I tell you, gentle- 
 men of Trinity College, the peasant boys will soon put to the 
 proof your title to lead them, and the only title likely to be 
 acknowledged in the people-court is that which our country- 
 man, himself once a peasant boy, ascribes to Pericles — 
 
 “ He waved the sceptre o’er his kind, 
 
 By nature’s first great title — mind.” 
 
 Gentlemen, I have not come here to flatter you. That many 
 of you possess the highest natural abilities I feel convinced, 
 but that is probably true of many who preceded you. And 
 when I compare the cotemporary literature of Ireland with the 
 
8 
 
 ADDRESS, 
 
 gifted nature of the Irish, I am forced to think there are some 
 gross errors in the education of the only class which hitherto 
 has received any education. Many of you acknowledge this, 
 and professedly join this society less for its peculiar advantages 
 than to correct such errors. I think they do wisely: these 
 errors may be lessened by exertions here, and that belief has 
 determined the nature of this Address. This is no professor’s 
 chair. My opinions have no weight save from the truth 
 they may bear, and the proofs with which they are combined. 
 Chosen from among yourselves to advise you touching your 
 intellectual pursuits, it is my plain duty to tell you your 
 defects : thus alone can I convince you of the necessity for 
 a remedy, and not until then can we be prepared to discover it. 
 
 You are all, I believe, connected with the Dublin University. 
 Of how many of its graduates may I say that to prepare for 
 college occupies their boyhood, to pass through college 
 occupies the time between boyhood and manhood, and 
 having, loaded with cautions like Swift, or with honours, like 
 many a dunce I know, got to their degrees, they are by their 
 parents supposed to have received a good general ediication,^ 
 and to be fitted to devote the rest of their lives to spending 
 or making a fortune, as they are endowed with an estate or 
 a profession. If, as assuredly is the case, you, born under 
 propitious stars, have been preserved from such a destiny, do 
 you owe your superiority over the multitude of A.B.’s., T.C.D. 
 to the system of the college? No ; they are the result of the 
 system — you of a generous nature too strong for it. 
 
 Yet Trinity College has a fine bill of fare. First you have 
 mathematics, in which, to make the best of it, you are taught 
 to follow out subtle trains of reasoning without reference to the 
 principles of investigation, which few students will study volun- 
 tarily ; and further, whole years are thus spent on subjects 
 admitting of demonstration, with anything like to which you 
 will seldom have to do for the rest of your lives. 
 
 Then comes that amphibious thing called natural philosophy, 
 consisting (as taught in Dublin College) of some application 
 of mathematics to the general properties of matter, and to the 
 
ADDRESS. 
 
 9 
 
 simpler physical phenomena. But so far as these sciences 
 illustrate the human mind in the history of their improvement, 
 and in the relations which physical science bears to human 
 progress, they are ill-taught. Perhaps it is not the business of 
 a college to teach, nor is it important to comprise in a general 
 education the practical part of natural philosophy or mathe- 
 matics. Indeed, the fault of the French system is that it does 
 so largely. But then they are equally ill-taught if you regard 
 them as fitted to supply illustrations of mind or a guide to 
 nature. As branches of natural history : astronomy, mechanics, 
 and such subjects are so ill taught that I verily believe the 
 twelvemonths members of the Mechanics’ Institue could teach 
 them to half the medal men in college. Indeed, to the pro- 
 fessors of medical or mechanics’ institutes, all that geology, 
 physiology, and chemistry contain is handed over. Natural 
 history could not be tortured into a scholastic form ; it could 
 only be taught in the way it was investigated, and as alone all 
 subjects can be well taught, by analysis. But be that as it may, 
 external nature supplies inexhaustible materials for thought 
 and illustration to the philosopher, the poet, and the orator ; 
 though some of the greatest of them never studied it in the 
 schools, yet all were familiar to its face. You have facilities 
 for the study of it outside the university, and you may lay up a 
 hive of such materials, useful and agreeable for both public and 
 private life, without once fluttering a wing in the collegiate 
 parterre. Ireland offers temptations to such pursuits of which 
 we are at length beginning to avail ourselves.^ 
 
 Then there are the courses of moral philosophy : and such 
 as they are they are thought hazardous commodities ; and 
 with some reason, for it is impossible for the student to read 
 the bold and sceptical works of Bacon, Butler, and Locke 
 without imbibing some of their spirit. I would augur that from 
 such studies, even from within the walls of college, a better 
 system must arise, that the tongue of the Silent Sister will be 
 
 ^ I refer to the increase of societies for the study of natural history. 
 This IS owing mainly to the exertions of the medical profession, so 
 often, as here, in advance of their age. 
 
10 
 
 ADDRESS, 
 
 loosened, and unwonted words of truth and freedom will issue 
 from her lips. Such studies forced, as they are likely to be, on 
 the ecclesiastics of every sect, by an unavailing hope of using 
 them to defend their wealth and importance, must sooner or 
 later reform the pulpit and for superstition you may meet 
 enlightened piety ; for bigotry, generous toleration and sweet- 
 voiced charity. And who knows but that as they advance the 
 priesthoods may forget the calumnies of their predecessors on 
 man, and may attain notions of the Deity as lofty as those of 
 the philosophers whom they persecuted ; and from contem- 
 plating the vindicated Supreme may, with hearts softened and 
 souls ennobled, bid men venerate nothing more highly than 
 their own nature, save the nature of that Deity who moulded 
 man in his own image.^ 
 
 But this day would seem to be far distant. Nay, the time of 
 even subordinate utility from such studies is remote ; for by the 
 proselytising dulness of management the mere conclusions of 
 the ethical and psychological writers are taught by rote. A 
 recollection of definitions insures collegiate success to whoever 
 lets his mind be debased to its standard. The students are 
 
 ^ See an excellent article by Trenchard on clerical teachers in the 
 fifth number of the Independent Whig. Why is not this admirable 
 book reprinted ? 
 
 ^ I say this in reference to all minds, and not merely to those 
 superior spirits who, every system will allow, are a “light unto 
 themselves ” ; and so far is this from being opposed to religion that it 
 is the true origin of worship ; for thanksgiving is the echo from earth 
 back to heaven of God’s pronounced blessing on man. The “ vulgar 
 misbelief,” as Coleridge calls it, of this day and in this land is a low 
 estimate of man’s moral nature — that nature which proves his heavenly 
 origin and immortal destiny. How have we fallen from the great 
 thoughts of Socrates, of Cicero, of Shakespeare, of Butler, of Sterne, 
 and yet we read those men’s books nearly as much as our newspapers. 
 Wordsworth bids us “ reverence the dust of man ” ; and in sooth I 
 would with him “rather be a Pagan born in a creed forlorn” than 
 with our theologians shut my eyes to the beauty, the docility, the 
 sublimity, the virtue, the godliness of all God’s creation, travailing, 
 though our part of it be, in probation for a higher state. 
 
ADDRESS, 
 
 II 
 
 taught to skip the principles of reasoning, and perch on the 
 conclusions, with a touch which transmutes into dogmas the 
 last doubts of the sceptic. Hence we do not learn the 
 metaphysical principles of reasoning, or the moral principles 
 by which society is tied together, nor that highest philosophy 
 which teaches the position of man and his duties in relation to 
 God, until driven to defend ourselves from the tricks of legal 
 sophists or political quacks, or from the ferocity of misemployed 
 pulpits.^ The cumbrous state of our literature renders a formal 
 study of metaphysical and moral philosophy essential. Indeed, 
 without an early acquaintance with the abstruser philosophy, 
 few minds will be able to force their way through the thicket of 
 subjects and authors which surround them in modern society. 
 And not only will the critical and comprehensive temper 
 resulting from such enquiries marshal your way and pioneer 
 your path in all your studies and pursuits, but many subjects, 
 as the foundations of government, the rationale^ of reward and 
 
 ^ I have an affectionate reverence for the man, layman or priest, 
 who devotes his time to preaching virtue and moral greatness and piety 
 to his fellows. But when I see assumption of the right to instruct, 
 without learning ; intolerance and intemperance in opinion, without 
 self-denial in conduct ; when I hear a sentimental profession of 
 dogmas intruding on the rightful domain of noble and kindly feeling 
 and good works ; when I see all this, I speak of ‘ ‘ misemployed 
 pulpits ” as no imaginary evil, but a real and wide-spread infliction 
 upon my fellow-religionists in this country. The church which had an 
 Ussher, a Taylor, and a Berkeley among its bishops might have more 
 learning, eloquence, and profundity than it has : and yet I would abate 
 such demands for a little of the modesty and mildness of these indeed 
 holy men. 
 
 2 The history of this study is a testimony to the value of the more 
 abstract philosophy; men reasoning on human nature have half 
 persuaded the world not to kill offenders, and even to treat them 
 gently, and educate them, and make much of them. Such scenes as a 
 whole nation getting together and putting to death a poor pinioned 
 helpless thing are becoming less common, even in Britain, wdth its 
 brutal criminal law. How men with the moral profession of Christians 
 ever did so consistency knows not. 
 
12 
 
 ADDRESS, 
 
 punishment, and the leading truths of political^ economy, rest 
 on facts common to all minds, and learned in metaphysical 
 schools. If I mistake not, Butleds, Cicero’s, and Hume’s 
 philosophical works are the proper horn-books for the lawyer, 
 the statesman, and the divine. May I suggest to you, that 
 contemporaneously with the process of getting definitions by 
 rote, which is essential to collegiate distinction, some efforts 
 might be made by the students to compare the different 
 systems of philosophy, and the relative merits of these systems, 
 when tested by their own or their neighbours’ minds? Such a 
 society as ours is plainly unfit for the purpose ; but whether a 
 metaphysical society meeting to inquire, not to dispute, could 
 be established within the walls of college, I leave you who 
 are personally interested in its formation to determine : I am 
 content to have suggested it to you. 
 
 The classics, even as languages, are shafts into the richest 
 mines of thought which time has deposited. The fossils of 
 Greek and Latin mind prove races like enough in opinions to 
 enable us to understand and sympathise with them, were they 
 now, for the first time, discovered by the moderns. But in 
 sooth we have been, through every faculty of mind, and every 
 member of society, through our literature, our languages, our 
 laws, our arts of war and peace, galvanised, as it were, by the 
 minds of Greece and Rome, though the force of our life may be 
 of Gothic or Celtic origin. And this great and original differ- 
 ence between us and the ancients makes their literature, in some 
 respects, the more valuable for that unlikeness. Who that 
 has thought for himself, or been taught to think in Lord 
 Bacon’s school, cannot feel this advantage? Classic literature, 
 though tinctured with its own doctrinal cavils, its own preju- 
 dices and superstitions, is free from cavils and prejudices and 
 superstitions like to ours, and from these last is the only 
 danger to us. The contrast of our idolatries and theirs (to 
 use Bacon’s metaphor) is the most instructive of criticisms, 
 
 ^ Dr. Baillie (in his Essays on Value) and Archbishop Whateley 
 have sufficiently shown that metaphysical philosophy is the real remedy 
 for the word -squabbles and confusion of the Political Economists. 
 
ADDRESS. 
 
 13 
 
 while the standard truths which we find there, undisguised by 
 such errors as could deceive us, mete our growth, or discover 
 our degeneracy. Many a mind have they saved from doubt and 
 dogmatism. No language of mine shall underrate the value of 
 such a possession. Injured though they be, still are they a mighty 
 mass of the picked thoughts of two most renowned nations — 
 nations, too, the very death of whose states of society has 
 stamped on their works immortal freshness and originality. 
 
 But, gentlemen, these are benefits which can only be derived 
 from classic studies by a powerful and already disciplined 
 mind, and which are supposed to require a very close know- 
 ledge of two difficult languages; but in my judgment the last 
 requisite is overstated, for it is preferable to read well a good 
 translation than to stumble through the original ; and any fair 
 man, considering how much of the spirit of classic lore can be 
 translated, will confess the folly of expecting one man out of a 
 hundred to learn so much from the originals as from good 
 translations. We do not hesitate as to this in the compara- 
 tively easy modern, why then do so in the more difficult 
 ancient languages? 
 
 I may shortly state here that my objections to the classical 
 system of the Dublin college are, that even if well pursued 
 it takes from a young man the best years of his life to in- 
 form him on the languages, poetry, politics, religion, man- 
 ners, and conditions of nations which have perished from 
 the earth many centuries ago; and that having so employed 
 the spare years between boyhood and business, you insure, as 
 far as in you lies, his ignorance of all the facts that have 
 happened, all the knowledge that has been discovered, all that 
 imagination has produced for some seventeen hundred years. 
 He is ignorant of modern history, including that of his own 
 country, whose facts would, if stored in his memory, be of 
 direct use and application, unlike those of any remote time or 
 unconnected country, which are of use only by analogy. He 
 knows not of what materials the people around him are com- 
 posed ; he knows not the origin of their thoughts and feelings ; he 
 therefore knows not themselves. The condition of cotemporary 
 
^4 
 
 ADDRESS. 
 
 nations is surely more valuable to be known than that of 
 extinct peoples. He is equally ignorant of modern languages ; 
 of French, essential to him if he visit any foreign nations other 
 than Britain or America; of German, the root of that English 
 language which it is more important for him to speak and write 
 with critical fluency than to command every dialect of the 
 Greeks or Italians from the Attic to the Oscan. Finally, for 
 English literature he is left to the accidents of a circulating 
 library, or a taste beyond that of his instructors.^ 
 
 1 venture to assert, and could prove, that numerous works, 
 English, French, and German, are intrinsically superior to the 
 corresponding Greek, and still more above the parallel Roman 
 works. But even though the ancient writers were of more 
 value to their countrymen than the modern writers to theirs, 
 yet lay aside the philosophical, and, so to speak, the esoteric 
 use of the classics which I have mentioned, and fling the old 
 waiters among a modern people, and instantly the superiority is 
 lost. I do not say all their value is gone, but the living men 
 and women teach us more of strength and beauty than the 
 mummies or the statues of a dead race.^ But this is an 
 inadequate condemnation of the system. If the student knew 
 the politics and philosophy, and felt the poetry, or even appre- 
 ciated the facts to be found in the Greek and Roman writers, I 
 might forgive the error of selecting such studies in preference 
 to native and modern; but still he would leave college, if not 
 well instructed, yet possessed of much valuable thought, and 
 prepared to master the more important subjects which he would 
 want in his professional, literary, or political career. But no, 
 his memory is crammed with phrases and rules of prosody, and 
 what is called literal, that is to say, erroneous translation of 
 
 ^ Whatever may have been the case fifty years ago, no one acquainted 
 with contemporary thought and literature will suppose that these 
 reproaches apply to Trinity College in the present day. — Ed. 
 
 2 There is a story told of Benjamin West, which pleases me more 
 than his paintings do : — When unexpectedly shown the Apollo 
 Belvidere, “My God!” he exclaimed, “a young Mohawk warrior.’* 
 A brilliant and sagacious criticism, and worth analysing. 
 
ADDRESS, 
 
 15 
 
 words, or correct translation, if you will; familiarising him, I 
 may remark, with a foreign idiom ere he has learned his own, 
 and therefore almost precluding him from ever writing good 
 English. Seriously, what does the student learn besides the 
 words of the classics The thoughts are obscured not merely 
 by the foreign language, but by allusions and opinions which he 
 begins to guess at towards the close of his career. How strange 
 would it be if a young man could benefit by such an occupation ! 
 
 Men cannot master <3:// knowledge. If you believe this, con- 
 clude with me that a knowledge of his own nature and duties, 
 of the circumstances, growth, and prospects of that society in 
 which he dwells, and of the pursuits and tastes of those around 
 him, accompanied too by the running comment of experience, 
 is what every man should first learn ; if he does learn this, he 
 has learned enough for life and goodness; and if he finds this 
 not enough, he is prepared in the only feasible way to profit by 
 studying the works and thoughts of ancient Italy, or Greece, or 
 France, modern Italy, or Germany. If the student take more 
 interest in the history, and feel more admiration for the litera- 
 ture, or even derive more profit from the contemplation of those 
 moderns than of these ancients, let us not condemn his taste or 
 doubt his wisdom. The varieties of feeling, interest, and oppor- 
 tunity make these differences, and a preference for the study of 
 the modern continental nations is fostered and vindicated by 
 the greater analogy of the people of these islands to them, than 
 to the men of old Greece or old Italy. 
 
 I do not mean to say that some knowledge is not picked up 
 by all the students, and much knowledge by some; and yet 
 college may be an inferior school to the few, and is mischievous 
 to the many, by leading them into a five years’ specious idle- 
 ness. Even for a knowledge of the classics the plan of begin- 
 ning with them is bad. To a man of genius they cannot be 
 mischievous or useless ; he has thought or read up to them. 
 But I believe that if no one foreign literature were preferred, a 
 much larger number of men would be apt and good classical 
 scholars than are so now ; and therefore, as it is only to those 
 ^ Poes he generally learn so much? 
 
i6 
 
 ADDRESS. 
 
 who succeed that the present system can be called good, that 
 such would be a better means of encouraging classic studies 
 than the present. 
 
 I ask you again, how can the student profit by the study of 
 the difficult literature of any foreigners, ancient or modern, till 
 he learns to think and feel ; and these he learns easiest from 
 w’orld or home life, refined and invigorated by his native litera- 
 ture; and even if by chance the young student, fresh from a bad 
 school,^ has got some ideas of the picturesque, the generous, 
 the true, into his head, he is neither encouraged nor expected 
 to apply them to his classic studies. Classics ! good sooth, he 
 had better read with the hedge-school boys the History of the 
 Rogues, Tories, and Rapparees, or Moll Flanders,^ than study 
 Homer and Horace in Trinity College. I therefore protest, and 
 ask you to struggle against the cultivation of Greek or Latin or 
 Hebrew, while French or German are excluded;^ and still 
 more strongly should we oppose the cultivation of any, or all of 
 these, to the neglect of English and, perhaps I should add, Irish 
 literature. 
 
 1 may as well say something here on the study of that 
 
 ^ That is to say, from any school in which he is likely to be prepared 
 for college. Our private schools are absolutely contemptible. One 
 hardly knows which to condemn most, the stupid ignorance of the 
 teachers, or the niggardliness of the parents, whose stinginess has 
 produced and endures such schools; yet there are men of learning and 
 genius pining and annually dying away within even Trinity College. 
 But they are so unfortunate, as far as this life is concerned, as to have 
 generous tastes and independent characters. These men should ‘‘rage, 
 not droop,” for as some one says, “’tis for woman to lament, man to 
 remember.” 
 
 2 These were some of the standard authors in the hedge-school 
 library, so says the report of the Education Commissioners. See 
 some more of this Catalogue Raisonne in Moore’s Captain Rocky 
 p. 187, etc. 
 
 2 There are Professors of French, German, and Italian, and medals 
 are given once a year to promote such studies; but they form no part of 
 the graduate course, or even the fellowship, and the provisions for 
 teaching them are notorious mockeries. 
 
ADDRESS, 
 
 17 
 
 language which is spoken by the majority of our countrymen, 
 and by the people of the countries immediately east and west 
 of this kingdom. English philological studies are, to say the 
 least, useful in the formation of style. I do not say they are 
 essential, but they certainly give an accuracy and aptness to 
 the writing of him who is familiar with them. There are so 
 few English works on the philosophy of words, that I may 
 enumerate them. Tooke’s Diversions of Piirley is the most 
 valuable for acquiring a critical habit in etymology and gram- 
 matical analysis; for the common use of words, Webster’s 
 Dictionary is the best; Todd’s Johnson, as an authority and 
 illustration for the modern variations; but Richardson is the 
 hand-book for him who would cultivate a pure English style. 
 Horne Tooke, to be sure, was of opinion that each word had but 
 one and an unalterable meaning in a language. Richardson 
 has pressed this error still further, and has thereby enfeebled 
 the otherwise admirable essay prefixed to his larger Dictionary, 
 but his errors (if so they be) only give a sterner purity and 
 force to the language he teaches. His faults are on the right 
 side, for one whose native language is English, though incon- 
 venient enough to a foreigner. Cobbett’s Grammar, the book 
 on words in Locke’s Essay, some chapters in the first volume 
 of Mill’s treatise on the mind, are the only other books of con- 
 sequence; at least, if I add a few articles in the magazines, the 
 list is complete. When you have examined these books, and 
 they are well worth reading, you must trust to the effect of your 
 other literary studies, to the eager and full mind, to supply you 
 with words and varieties of style, and to your metaphysical 
 studies, to a patient taste, and habits of revision to correct them. 
 
 The standard authors, especially the older writers — the 
 writers who preceded Lord Bacon, contain the best vocabulary. 
 These books, in common with their successors to Queen Anne’s 
 time, are rather affluent in words than critical in the application 
 of them. Shakespeare is more exact and felicitous, and equally 
 copious. The fault of most writers since Shakespeare’s time 
 has been the neglect of Saxon words for Latin, and the employ- 
 ment of a Latin, artd more lately a Ftrench idiom, I may 
 
 694 
 
i8 
 
 ADDRESS, 
 
 mention that Spenser was the favourite leisure-book of that 
 word-wielder, William Pitt, and of his greater father, Chatham. 
 Erskine and Fox are said to have known Milton and 
 Shakespeare almost by heart. Curran’s inspiration, next to the 
 popular legends of Ireland, was the English translation of the 
 Bible.^ Coleridge, indeed, says that a man familiar with it can 
 never write in a vulgar style; but this, like many of Coleridge’s 
 show-sayings, is an exaggeration. I could add many other 
 authorities for my liking for the language of the early English 
 poets and chroniclers; but their fault, a profusion of imagery, 
 more often fitted to obscure than illustrate, to confuse than 
 make plain, went on increasing. For ordinary use, therefore, 
 Bolingbroke, Swift, Hume, and even Cobbett, with all his 
 coarseness, and the common letters and narratives of the last 
 century, are safer though not so splendid models. Amongst 
 the orators whom you will, and, perhaps, ought to copy more 
 than other writers, you can study the speeches of Pitt for a 
 splendid plausibility; Fox, for an easy diction and fluent logic; 
 Sheridan, for wit; Curran, for wit and pathos; Burke and 
 Grattan, 2 for grandeur and sublimity of thought, language, and 
 
 1 “The style of this translation is, in general, so enthusiastically 
 praised, that no one is permitted either to qualify, or even explain the 
 grounds of his approbation. It is held to be the perfection of the 
 English language. I shall not dispute this proposition; but only 
 remark, as to a matter of fact, which cannot be reasonably censured, 
 that in consequence of the principle of adherence to the original version 
 which had been kept up ever since the time of Henry VIII., it is not 
 the language of the reign of James I. It may, in the eyes of many, be 
 better English, but it is not the English of Daniel, or Raleigh, or 
 Bacon, as any one may easily perceive. It abounds in part, especially 
 in the Old Testament, with obsolete phraseology, and with single 
 words, long since abandoned, or retained only in provincial use.”— > 
 Hallam’s Literature of Europe^ vol. iii. p. 131. 
 
 2 In wealth of imagination and in expressive power, Grattan is next 
 to Shakespeare; his speeches are full of the most valuable imformation 
 on Irish politics, and are the fit hand-book for .an Irishman. But his 
 Style is not for imitation ; let no subject assume the purple. 
 
ADDRESS. 
 
 19 
 
 illustration. Erskinc possesses most of these qualities, but 
 with a chaster, and, methinks, less racy manner; but perhaps 
 surpassing all, by combining the best qualities of all, are the 
 speeches so valuable, and so little known, of Lord Plunket.^ 
 His precise vigour marks him the Demosthenes of the English 
 language. But I am coming to our cotemporaries. Criticism 
 on them could not be unprejudiced. I shall hazard but one 
 piece of advice : keep to the plainer styles. However you may 
 dislike their opinions, or question their depth of judgment, 
 the style of Southey, Smith, and some few more of the older 
 reviewers is excellent. Coleridge, Carlyle,^ and the rest of the 
 Germanic set are damaging English nearly as much as the 
 Latinists did; their writings are eloquent, lively, and vigorous, 
 to those who understand them; curry and mulagatawny to the 
 literary world, but ‘^caviare to the general.’’ Just as the dish 
 possesses a high-cooked and epicurean flavour, is it unfit for 
 the people or the men of the people. The literary style most 
 in fashion is corrupt, and corrupting; the patois of the coteries, 
 it is full of meaning and sensibility to them. But as your 
 horoscope tells not of coterie fame, shun that jargon. The 
 orator should avoid using it as one would a pestilence ; for the 
 people own not its power; it belongs not to the nations. 
 
 I have mentioned and illustrated the vices of the university 
 
 1 Dudley writes — “ I wish you had heard Plunket. He had made 
 great speeches before, but in this he has surpassed them all. I have 
 not for many years heard such an astonishing display of talent. His 
 style is quite peculiar ; for its gravity^ I prefer it to all others of ivhich 
 I ever heard a specime 7 t. If he had been bred to Parliament, I am 
 inclined to think he would have been the greatest speaker that ever 
 appeared in it.” — Lord Dudley's Letters to the Bishop of Llandaff^ 
 p. 280. 
 
 2 I speak of their style merely, which is like that of the Puritans ; 
 but it was natural in the latter; it is imitative in the others. Carlyle is 
 a more honest, hut less learned thinker than Coleridge. Their 
 opinions are unsafe, but their works are of the greatest use, in 
 tempting men by their enthusiasm, or forcing them by their paradoxes, 
 to think. 
 
20 
 
 ADDRESS, 
 
 system. I need not say that it is with its system I quarrel 
 Some of its members are my very good friends, and many 
 pleasant hours^ have I spent within the walls of the merry 
 monastery. I have not, personally, one sad or angry remin- 
 iscence of old Trinity, and it is therefore with pain I sum up 
 its defects; which are, that the subjects of its studies are not 
 adapted to the different tastes, interests, and capacities of the 
 students ; that this evil is aggravated by the peculiar direction 
 of this exclusive system, shutting out the literature of modern 
 nations, especially the English, which should be the first and 
 principal study, and the Irish, which should at least be in the 
 second rank ; lastly, that the studies, of what kind soever, 
 are pursued in a dogmatical and shallow spirit, loading the 
 memory with the words of the ancient literators, and the 
 definitions and conclusions of the modern philosophers ; but 
 neglecting, making indeed no effort to cultivate the reason, 
 imagination, or sentiments of the students. Is my reasoning 
 fallacious I pray you to look around your different circles 
 and you will see the native abilities of hundreds of young men 
 ruined in our college. “ By their fruits ye shall know them.” 
 
 Gentlemen, the Dublin University is the laughing-stock of 
 the literary world, and an obstacle to the nation’s march ; its 
 inaccessible library, “the mausoleum of literature,” and ^ effete 
 system of instruction, render it ridiculous abroad ; add its 
 unaccounted funds, and its bigot laws, and know why it is 
 hated at home. 
 
 1 have already pointed out to you how some faults of the 
 collegiate system may be remedied by voluntary association. 
 
 ^ Alas for such hours ! few can, fewer will return ; alas for the 
 companions of the past ! 
 
 “ Some are dead, and some are gone, 
 
 And some are changed I wist not why.” 
 
 2 I should make an exception in favour of the medical and surgical 
 school ; but that is a thing apart. The alterations of the divinity 
 course have made it more laborious, but more bigot-fostering than 
 ever. 
 
ADDRESS, 
 
 21 
 
 I shall presently show you that many of its defects may be 
 compensated by this society. But then comes the question, 
 Would not an academic reform accomplish all these objects 
 at once 1 I doubt it. Material improvements could be made, 
 but that university education should be continued at all seems 
 questionable; and this doubt extends to the collegiate systems 
 generally, metropolitan and provincial, though to the latter in 
 a less degree. I might rely on their being in this dilemma, 
 that if they do not enforce residence they are intellectually 
 useless; and if they do they are morally pernicious, by destroy- 
 ing family ties and, too often, purity of character. 
 
 But I do not rest on this. I contend that theory and experi- 
 ence show the superiority of the Lyceum to the University 
 system. That during childhood the mind requires to be 
 guided though not schooled, as it commonly is, and that the 
 affections do then most deserve and repay cultivation, form 
 conclusive reasons for the domestic education of children. 
 But in more educated years I believe that a young man, 
 whether, a hermit, he seclude himself with nature and his 
 own breast to instruct him, or more wisely combine for mutual 
 instruction with his fellows, will by either way grow into an 
 eager, thorough-thinking man, and become better informed 
 and of more vigorous faculties than had he been dry-nursed 
 by a candidate bishop, or tied to the apron-string of even such 
 an alma rnater as Trinity College. 
 
 Gentlemen, the Lyceum system was that of Greece in its 
 best days, of Greece when it produced in two hundred years 
 more eminent men than did all Europe with all its universities 
 in twice that period. 
 
 Universities at best can only store the memory which 
 wants no aid ; they are unfit to develop the other powers 
 of head or heart. I entreat of you to bear this assertioii 
 of mine in mind when I come to speak of the working 
 of this society on its members. I cannot now discuss the 
 question at length ; suffice it, in support of the truth and 
 relevancy of my opinion, that such societies as this are 
 strictly Lyceums, bearing a close resemblance in their mode 
 
22 
 
 ADDRESS, 
 
 of operation to the famous schools of Athens ; and further- 
 more, such societies have existed among the students of Italy, 
 Spain, France, England, and Germany, indeed of all Europe, 
 to coinpensate the evils of the Universities. Indeed, I at first 
 intended to have traced out what would be a good education, 
 and then to have shown the fitness of the Lyceum system to 
 teach it ; but I remembered that my reasoning would be met, 
 in the mind of every good, easy man, with the question. Was 
 not Trinity College after all a very good thing? Therefore I 
 have gone to the trouble of showing it to be a bad thing in 
 theory. I appeal to the experience of every disinterested man 
 of sense in proof of its positive inefhcacy; and if I be told 
 that the general idleness or dulness of the students would make 
 any higher system so much too good as to be good for nothing, 
 I shall then appeal to the history of the Lyceum system, to the 
 minute experience of every man on mind-formation, and lastly 
 to poor calumniated human nature itself.^ 
 
 But be the University education good or bad, with it, and 
 such knowledge as they have smuggled from novels, news- 
 papers, and experience, the students are flung out to spend, 
 as chance may lead, the years till business compel them to 
 industry. How is this interval generally passed ? You recollect 
 the song — 
 
 “ Now I’m of age and come into my property, 
 
 Devil a ha’p’orth I’ll think of but fun.” 
 
 Gentlemen, let the Purists and Calvinists pour out their 
 gloomy and often hypocritical invectives against the weakness 
 of man ; I have no sympathy with their declarations ; the path 
 of reasonable virtue may be narrow ; they may make it a 
 
 ^ I would suggest the propriety of forming an Irish Lyceum, with 
 sections for the study of the different branches of philosophy, history, 
 and literature. Sections should be specially devoted to the cultivation 
 of the Irish language, and to promoting a knowledge of Ireland’s 
 natural history, its statistics and civil history, and its native literature. 
 I have spoken to many persons about it, and all thought the plan 
 feasible. 
 
ADDRESS. 
 
 23 
 
 sword-bridge — God made it wider.^ He made man, and the 
 path of his pilgrimage or triumph. He limits our aberrations 
 as he steers the courses of the suns — to no unvarying road — 
 employing our errors to instruct us, justifying his attributes 
 to himself, and ultimately to us; and He has so made man 
 that “ to step aside is human.” Do not therefore suppose 
 me a “pedant in morals,” when I tell you that to spend the 
 noon of life in trifles or indulgences is for a feeble and 
 degenerate mind. God forbid that we should so sin against 
 human nature as to become cold, gloomy, and ambitious men. 
 No ! I rejoice that is not the side we err to. 
 
 O Life ! how pleasant is thy morning, 
 
 Young fancy’s rays the hills adorning ! 
 
 Cold-pausing caution’s lesson scorning, 
 
 We frisk away, 
 
 Like schoolboys, at the expected warning, 
 
 To joy and play. 
 
 We wander there, we wander here. 
 
 We eye the rose upon the brier, 
 
 Unmindful that the thorn is near, 
 
 Among the leaves ; 
 
 And though the puny wound appear. 
 
 Short while it grieves.” ^ 
 
 But, gentlemen, a manhood of mere pleasure preludes an old 
 age of care, a death of contempt. In that dangerous time, 
 therefore, ere professional business, like a Mentor, comes to 
 our aid, how useful such societies as this must be in leading 
 the mind from frivolous thoughts to grave studies, and pre- 
 paring the spirit for stirring scenes ; even then, as an occupa- 
 tion of so much time otherwise likely to be fooled away, a 
 membership of our society is useful. But it does much more ; 
 and first, it is a noble, indeed the only effective institute of the 
 
 ^ There is no such thing as philosophical misanthropy. — Taylor, 
 Preface to Philip Van Arievelde. 
 
 2 Burns, “ Epistle to James Smith.” 
 
24 
 
 ADDRESS, 
 
 social sciences. It is perhaps more valuable in this way than 
 as a school of oratory ; whether it shall be a school for 
 eloquence or loquacity depends more on the management of 
 it, but whether well or ill-used, it teaches ihmgs which a citizen 
 should know. If a member prepare himself for your debates, 
 and listen to, or engage in them, how many valuable subjects 
 must he learn ! In politics the various questions relating to 
 local and central governments, the host of disputes on doctrines 
 of representation, its proper extent and restrictions, and the 
 plans for its improvement. How far, if at all, monarchy and 
 aristocracy should be imposed on democracy, the undoubted 
 basis of free government ; and whether a social equality 
 should or indeed could be added to the political ; and when, 
 in addition to these, you discuss such details as the influence 
 of a free press, of the jury system and penal code, you lay a 
 broad and deep foundation for political knowledge. 
 
 Again, in political economy, there are the disputes, whether 
 of the agricultural or manufacturing systems one should be 
 encouraged to the exclusion of the other ; ending generally in 
 the conviction that all classes in the country should be left 
 to their own natural development ; only taking care that no 
 matter how connected with, or dependent on, each other, they 
 shall, if possible, be independent of the stranger. Then the 
 questions on Poor and Corn Laws, on Absenteeism, Colonies, 
 and Finance afford opportunities for acquiring a knowledge 
 not only of these particular topics, but of fixing in the memory, 
 and applying the doctrines of supply and demand, wages, 
 capital, rent, and taxation, so hard to learn, and indeed so ill 
 learned by systematic reading, but which, always of importance, 
 have become still more so in our day. The production, 
 accumulation, distribution, and consumption of wealth occupy 
 much, indeed too much regard. You must, and here you can, 
 learn these things. The people are pressing on in a career 
 certain of sweeping away every law and custom which impedes 
 their physical comfort, though in doing so they may overthrow 
 some of the barriers which protect their morals, and therefore 
 guard their happiness. 
 
ADDRESS. 
 
 25 
 
 Gentlemen, if we stopped here, if only these subjects I have 
 named were earnestly studied (and voluntary studies are 
 always earnest), would you not have learned more of the 
 things which you would want in life, more of what goes to 
 make a wise and influential citizen, than from the demonstra- 
 tions and “ dead vocables ” of the whole college course? But 
 we do not stop here. I shall not mention your discussions on 
 literary subjects ; for except when such a society contains a 
 number of men practised in debate and of vast information, it 
 is vain to think of debating them ; and even then they do not 
 excite a sufficiently warm interest. Yet familiarity with the 
 standard writers is an essential preparation for your political 
 debates ; and the critical habits which grow up naturally from 
 competition render this as a mere literary society of some 
 value. But, gentlemen, this is an Historical Society, and ample 
 means does it afford for studying history ; not as a record of 
 facts, but with that philosophy which first examines these facts 
 as parts of political and social institutions, as manifestations of 
 human nature on great occasions ; and having done so, and 
 7iot before^ applies them to the circumstances occurring around 
 it, to the institutions and men of its own time. 
 
 Without knowing the history of a time we cannot accurately 
 comprehend its philosophy. 
 
 Taste and politics alike receive from history correctives 
 which prevent over-refinement. I would especially point to 
 the opinions of the middle ages, when an ingenuity in specu- 
 lation, quite unequalled, led to profitless refinement, from the 
 want or neglect of the touchstone of experience, which history 
 combined with personal observation (that is, past, and cotem- 
 porary history) could, and could alone, supply. 
 
 But is it not more than this ? What ! will you tell me that 
 history is no teacher of the head and heart ? It is— it is example 
 that gives impulse and vitality to principles. I might tell you 
 of the faults from which a know'ledge of history shields us. Is 
 it nothing to warn us against the brilliant vices of an aris- 
 tocracy ? Is it nothing that its beacons gleam to keep the 
 people from beginning to shed blood ? 
 
26 
 
 ADDRESS, 
 
 Philosophy may account for the danger, and may on its 
 principles forewarn the people ; but without the garnered 
 thoughts of history would philosophy have discovered those 
 truths ? or will a man, or a senate, or a people, be more 
 influenced by a string of metaphysical truths, or by the portrait 
 taken from life of the blood-stained and jewelled despot, or the 
 picture of a scaflbld-applauding mob? History well read is a 
 series of pictures of great men and great scenes and great acts. 
 It impresses the principles and despair, the hopes and powers 
 of the Titans of our race. Every high hill and calm lake, 
 every rich plain and rolling sea in the time-world is depictured 
 in history’s pages. With rare exceptions 7iational history 
 does dramatic justice, alien history is the inspiration of a 
 traitor.^ 
 
 In home-history the best is generally the greatest ; though 
 the clatter of cotemporary fame may have concealed the good 
 by the celebrity of the great, yet Washington is more dear to 
 history than Frederick, Brutus than Caesar. Historic writing 
 begins now to be improved, or rather regenerated, restored to 
 what it was in Greece. ’Tis a glorious world, historic memory. 
 As we gaze we long to resemble. Our mental bulk extends 
 as each shade passes in visioned pomp or purity. From the 
 grave the sage warns ; from the mound the hero, from the 
 temple the orator-patriot, inspire ; and the poet sings in his 
 shroud. 
 
 The field of fame, the forum of power, the death-bed or 
 scaffold of the patriots, “who died in righteousness” — you look 
 -—you pause — you “swear like them to live, like them to die.” 
 You have a list of questions not long, which I defy any man 
 to study, with the view of making really sound speeches in 
 this room, without learning much, and that well too. Men (I 
 
 ^ I mean the histories of a country, by hostile strangers. They 
 should be refuted, and then forgotten. Such are most Histories of 
 Ireland, and yet Irishmen neglect the original documents, and such 
 compilations as Carey’s Vmdicice; and they sin not by omission only — 
 too many of them receive and propagate on Irish affairs “quicquid 
 Anglia mendax in historia audet.” 
 
.BOB i O JN ^ 
 
 •n^ '-BTi^UT HILL, MASS. 
 
 ADDRESS, 2^ 
 
 speak, having known its working) learn history in this society 
 with a rapidity and an ease, a profundity in research, and 
 sagacity in application not approached by any other mode of 
 study. Suppose a man to prepare a defence of what most 
 histories condemn, or to censure some favourite act, or man, or 
 institution, or policy : he makes use of all the generalities of 
 criticism, he shakes the authority of popular writers, or shows 
 our reasoning inapplicable from the different state of society 
 on which we reason from that in which we live, and by which 
 alone we are apt to judge. In his eagerness to persuade he 
 becomes more sensitive of the times of which he speaks than 
 could the solitary student, and we half follow him to the scene 
 over which his spirit stalks. 
 
 In aught that could be called a good speech on a historical 
 subject there is not merely a laborious selection of such facts 
 as have an argumentative or illustrative value, and of those 
 alone ; they must be united, not by crude generalities or tire- 
 some details, but by practical intermediate principles. Familiar 
 command of such principles justly confers a character for 
 maturity in thought, and they are more readily suggested by 
 close thinking on historical analogies than by refinements on 
 general principles. Gentlemen, you will find that the employ- 
 ment of facts by the lawyer and senator is exactly similar to 
 this which I have described as ours ; and if so, a practice of 
 speaking here would seem no bad discipline for the bar or 
 the senate.! I would suggest to you that your questions might 
 be so systematically chosen as, without at all diminishing the 
 
 ! The style of speaking acquired in a good Historical Society is 
 certainly best suited to political assemblies ; yet, even for the bar, a 
 Historical Society is preferable to what is called a Law Debating 
 Society, in which popular law and crabbed rhetoric struggle for mastery 
 with a heavy perseverance. And I may add that a few campaigns in a 
 debating society might give the pulpit oratory of the deacons a flexi- 
 bility and fairness, contrasting it favourably with that of the priests. 
 Three out of four of the orators of the last eighty years (the oratorical 
 period in these kingdoms) were trained in debating societies, as were 
 all the great orators of Greece and Rome. 
 
28 
 
 ADDRESS, 
 
 interest, to take in the more important changes and conditions 
 of ancient and modern states. For example, are there not 
 questions which open up the nature, both theoretical and 
 working, of the constitutions of the leading states of Greece, 
 separately, and also as a confederation, bearing some likeness 
 to those of the Netherlands, Lombardy, and America? The 
 effects of the conquest of Asia by Alexander give a question 
 not unlike that of India by the English — alien civilisation — 
 native ruin. It were easy to name many questions from 
 Grecian history, affording ample and accessible materials, 
 which we do not sufficiently use, 
 
 Rome fares better from our hands. We have its whole early 
 constitution displayed in the question on the tribunician power; 
 the feuds of the aristocracy, first of race, then of wealth, with 
 the plebians ; the institutions which so long remedied these 
 disorders, and at last failed, and why they perished. The 
 wisdom of adopting the imperial constitution, if well discussed, 
 would develop the circumstances which defeated the policy of 
 Cicero and Pompey, the patriotism of Sulpicius and Brutus. 
 Then comes the time when “Rome imperial bowed her to the 
 storm,” and by the deluge of rushing war the seeds of renas- 
 cent freedom were spread over southern Europe ; and though 
 the trees which sprung from the diluvium wore a rude form, yet 
 tough was the fibre, deep the root, and healthy the sap. The 
 autumns of war, the winters of superstition have come and 
 gone, and yet are many of them sound at the core; and even 
 were they dead they have leaved and fruited, and their kind 
 has been transplanted to far lands. But as yet we are in the 
 vestibule: let us pass in this temple of history from the antique 
 periods; and as we advance through the aisles of time we stop 
 to gaze on, perchance we open, the tomb of the crusader, and 
 demand the hopes that maddened him, the state and circum- 
 stances of his peers and vassals. We glance in anger at the 
 brutal conqueror of the Saxons, or with more interest eye the 
 trophies of Azincourt, or the standards so often lost and won in 
 the wars of the Roses ; and we question the gain, motives, and 
 effects of this civil fray, or that foreign conquest; or we turn 
 
ADDRESS, 
 
 29 
 
 with holler emotions to the banners which waved over the 
 peasants of Sempach and Dalecarlia, or the civic emblems 
 which led on the leaguers of Lombardy and Holland to victory 
 and confederate freedom. But hastily, too hastily, we move to 
 the altar of modern civilisation, and yet it is a glorious show; 
 glorious in the names of its saints, more glorious in those of its 
 martyrs ; splendid, if not always free from idolatrous rites, is 
 the sacrifice of its priests ; yet more noble is the occasional, the 
 interrupted worship of the laity and the democracy; sublime 
 are the hymns of rejoicing for the past; melting its songs of 
 sorrow over the departed great; divine its thanksgivings for the 
 blessings present; yet more sublime, yet more pathetic, divine 
 are the anticipations of the future which its prophets sing. 
 Who can discuss the nature of each revolution which reformed 
 England, convulsed France, and liberated America, without 
 becoming a wiser man ? who can speculate on their destinies, 
 and not warm with hope ? 
 
 I shall not now reprove your neglect of Irish history. I shall 
 say nothing of it but this, that I never heard of any famous 
 nation which did not honour the names of its departed great, 
 study the fasti, and the misfortunes — the annals of the land, 
 and cherish the associations of its history and theirs. The 
 national mind should be filled to overflowing with such 
 thoughts. They are more enriching than mines of gold, or 
 ten thousand fields of corn, or the cattle of a thousand hills, 
 more ennobling than palaced cities stored with the triumphs of 
 war or art, more supporting in danger’s hour than colonies, or 
 fleets, or armies. The history of a nation is the birth-right of 
 her sons — who strips them of that “takes that which not 
 enriches him, but makes them poor indeed.” 
 
 Such is a partial and feebly-drawn sketch of the information 
 which may be learned here ; and incomplete as is my account 
 of it, it still is so extensive that I may seem to exaggerate ; but 
 the wonder ceases when we look to the advantages inherent in 
 our mode of study. Gentlemen, we hear frequent invectives 
 against what is clumsily called universalism in education; and 
 certainly, if this refer to authors, or even languages, no invective 
 
30 
 
 ADDRESS. 
 
 seems necessary; it will be sufficient to send the bold aspirant 
 into any public library, even of Trinity College (if not in winter), 
 and after a week’s rummaging he will come out convinced of 
 the utter hopelessness of any attempt at universalism. Authors 
 are a cannibal race, they devour each other’s carcasses, and the 
 death of one set supports the lives of another. There is a 
 certain set of books which any man mixing in literary circles 
 must read to please the world ; there is another set which he 
 ought to read for his own sake, and there are the few master- 
 pieces of his own, and, if convenient, of foreign literature. 
 Perhaps about twenty writers in English, a dozen in Greek and 
 French, and half of that number in each of the other popular 
 languages will comprise this class. With these exceptions, 
 which may be reduced still further, every prudent man will 
 study subjects.^ not authors. Thus alone can you go through 
 the wilderness of writers, and it is only by requirmg ourselves 
 to 77iaster subjects that we render this society what it is — a 
 means of sound general education. When once this is acquired 
 you can get that sort of knowledge of writers which enables 
 you to refer to them on occasion. Learning, as such, is the 
 baggage of the orator: without it he may suffer exhaustion or 
 defeat from an inferior foe; with it his speed and agility are 
 diminished. Those are best off who have it in magazines, to be 
 drawn on leisurely occasion. That which should be carried by 
 the memory should be borne after the expedite fashion, leaving 
 the other faculties free; but borne some of it must be. Learn- 
 ing is necessary to orator, and poet, and statesman. Book- 
 learning, when well digested, and vivified by meditation, may 
 suffice, as in Burke and Coleridge; but otherwise it is apt to 
 produce confusion and inconsistency of mind, as it sometimes 
 did in both these men. Far better is the learning of previous 
 observation.^ the learning of past emotions and ideas, the learn- 
 ing caught by conversation, invented or dug up by meditation 
 in the closet or the field; impressions of scenery, whether 
 natural or artificial, in the human, animal, or material world. 
 Such learning is used by every great poet, philosopher, and 
 orator; perhaps it requires propitious training or nascent 
 
ADDRESS. 
 
 31 
 
 genius to be able to acquire it, but ability to acquire ensures 
 ability to use. 
 
 When Grattan paced his garden, or Burns trod his hill-side, 
 were they less students than the print-dizzy denizens of a 
 library? No, — that pale form of the Irish regenerator is trem- 
 bling with the rush of ideas ; and the murmuring stream, and 
 the gently-rich landscape, and the fresh wind converse with 
 him through keen interpreting senses, and tell mysteries to 
 his expectant soul, and he is as one inspired ; arguments 
 in original profusion, illustrations competing for his favour, 
 memories of years long past, in which he had read philosophy, 
 history, poetry, awake at his call. That man entered the 
 senate-house, no written words in his hand, and poured out 
 the seemingly spontaneous,^ but really learned and prepared 
 lullaby over Ireland’s cradle, or caoine over Ireland’s corse. 
 Read too Burns’s own account of the birth and growth of some 
 of his greatest lyrics. Read, and learn to labour, if you would 
 be great. There is no more common error than that great 
 works are usually the result of extemporaneous power. You 
 have all read an article on Sheridan by Lord Brougham, full 
 of depreciating criticism, founded on the evidences, the chisel- 
 marks of composition which Sheridan left, and so many 
 others (Brougham among the number) concealed. Henry 
 Brougham is a metaphysician j he made no mistake on this; 
 but Lord Brougham is an egotist and he misrepresented. 
 
 You are familiar to weariness with the talk about inspirations 
 and sudden efforts of genius, in novelists, and the daily press. 
 The outbursts of most minds, until highly educated, are frothy 
 or ashes-laden. The instances adduced to the contrary will 
 be found fallacious. The continuous and enthusiastic labours 
 of men brimful of knowledge proved the energy of the men, 
 not the inutility of learning. But then, as I have told, or 
 
 * After repeated experience^ and after he had filled his 77iind with 
 knowledge, Grattan, or such a man, could, whe7t greatly roused, co77ipose 
 his speeches in the house, or even make the design and execution of them 
 simultaneous, 
 
32 
 
 ADDRESS. 
 
 rather described to you, experience^ is even a greater well of 
 knowledge than books. Without experience book-learning 
 makes the pedant and spoils the man. 
 
 The common fault of all education, public and private, is 
 that memory, which requires less care, receives an exclusive 
 attention. No crop is sought from the other faculties — reason, 
 fancy, imagination ; and accordingly the business of life finds 
 too many unschooled in thinking, unprepared to act. 
 
 The best way of teaching others the things we know, and 
 of analysing or discovering things now unappreciated or un- 
 known, is this; — On the very threshold of every art, and 
 science, and subject of thought, men, either from its known 
 uses and applications, from some knowledge of a particular 
 detail of its exterior, or working, or of the materials used in 
 constructing it ; or from knowing the history of its formation; 
 or from any or all of these ; or from the analogy of some com- 
 binations of them, should try to judge of other parts, and their 
 origin; or, if you will, guess at the whole from any part of 
 it. Analogy is the first law of thought, and therefore we 
 may do thus, naturally and without presumption, “worms in 
 the cabinet drawer” though we be, and proceeding as I have 
 described, and testing and correcting our guesses and fancies 
 by learning ; these particular facts acquired by deliberate 
 study become mixed with our other information or familiar 
 knowledge, and we arrive always at cJia7‘acteristic^ if not actual 
 
 ^ That is, the deliberate noticing and treasuring for use of our 
 experience ; our treating every scene and group as a book to be read, as 
 materials for every variety of thought and sentiment. “ Ariosto’s 
 father one day rebuked him sharply, charging him with some great 
 fault, but all the while he returned no answer. Soon after his brother 
 began the same subject, but he easily refuted him, and with a strong 
 argument justified his own behaviour. “Why, then,” said his brother, 
 “did you not satisfy my father?” “In truth,” said Ludovico, “I 
 was thinking of part of my comedy, and methought my father’s words 
 so suited to the part of an old man chiding his son that I forgot I was 
 concerned in it myself, and thought only of making it part of my play.” 
 Shakespeare must have lived doing thus. 
 
ADDRESS, 
 
 33 
 
 truths, and ultimately acquire that power of general analysis 
 which is the main force of a great mind. If our memory or 
 information be deficient, our reason is exercised in the highest 
 and most inventive way. Thus only can the inventive faculties, 
 reason, fancy, imagination, be trained. Once they have been 
 so trained, once the mind can readily anticipate, combine, and 
 compare information, the acquisition and use of knowledge 
 has no imaginable limit.^ Here^ fortunately, invention and 
 judgment are as 7nuch de7na7ided and are therefore as well 
 supplied as mere information. And this forms the distinctive 
 superiority of Lyceum teaching over every other kind. 
 
 Gentlemen, do not, however, suppose that information and 
 matured powers, such as I have named, can be produced by an 
 occasional or idle attendance at our meetings, or by chattering 
 speeches without preparation ; no, — to borrow an expression, — 
 you must ‘‘read yourselves full, and think yourselves hungry,” 
 on the society’s questions for at least two or three years. I 
 entreat of you to abandon the notion that you will speak 
 well merely from speaking often. Of a surety, all your faculties 
 grow with use, but this very quality of mind behoves you to be 
 judicious as well as earnest in the exercise of your powers. 
 
 A bad style grows worse by repetition, as much as a good 
 style improves ; or more generally, bad habits grow as rapidly 
 as good ones. Give up the idea of being great orators without / 
 preparatioTi^ till you are so with it. When you are, with your 
 utmost labour, able to make one really great speech, you will 
 be above me, my criticism, and my advice, but will, perchance, 
 agree with my opinion. The advantage of speaking geTterally 
 
 ^ Most writers underrate the power of improving or forming faculties. 
 When I see a man who knows or foreknows his powers, and plans his 
 own faculty-formation, I think of Napoleon, who when some one said 
 it was impossible to do a certain thing, replied, “ Do not let me hear 
 that foolish word again.” This is the creed of a man of action, rather 
 than of a speculator. Edmund Burke’s “presiding principle and prolific 
 energy ” seems the finest, indeed a perfect rule of action for self- 
 government, and all government. — See the Reflections 07 i the Fi cmh 
 Revolution^ p. 220 to 225 of the Dublin edition. 
 
 695 
 
34 
 
 ADDRESS, 
 
 with a complete preparation, both of matter and style, is that 
 when occasionally you speak (voluntarily or otherwise) with 
 incomplete preparation, your usual arrangement and style will 
 present a good, and, what is more, an easily-Unitated model ; 
 and thus, not only will your manner of speaking be kept 
 accurate and forcible, but you will acquire that quality useful 
 to all men of business, and essential to the orator and the 
 public man, presence of 7nind, I think there is scarcely a 
 finer expression in the language. It conveys, in picturesque 
 words, a vigorous thought. Great orators have not only great 
 but present minds. They are self-possessed, and have all their 
 resources at command. The memory, the knowledge must be 
 prodigious that can carry a man through the common business 
 of life without the position strange, and the occasion sudden 
 opening in his path, to trip or pit-fall the star-gazer. But in the 
 great contests of public life, no day but demands the presence 
 of a mind unembarrassed by prejudice, unimpeded by know- 
 ledge obsolete, or wisdom inapplicable ; a mind whereby a man 
 can think on his legs, and act discreetly even when he acts 
 from his intuitions, steering his course by the same power that 
 impels him. But the men who, by often extemporising as the 
 spirit moved them, have got unabashed brows and flippant 
 tongues, are as far from this noble attainment as the pertness 
 of the sparrow differs from the valour of the eagle. 
 
 But let me reiterate that a prudent and industrious use of 
 this society can alone make it a means of improvement. To 
 the idle and the vain your membership may be a probation in 
 folly. I have known men of some capacity come here, pro- 
 fessedly with the design of learning oratory. I have watched 
 them till their patriotism was cooled, their sagacity lessened, 
 their courtesy not improved, all from a reckless misuse of the 
 society. 
 
 There is another danger I would warn you against. Elo- 
 quence is contained in words, and therefore some men would 
 turn an oratorical society into a word-school. There are worse 
 employments than inventing smart sentences, though some 
 men would quarrel with a friend for the sake of uttering one. 
 
ADDRESS. 
 
 35 
 
 There are worse pastimes than spinning periods, though some 
 men prefer the display of such fabrics to character for sense, 
 or the cause of justice. I do not object to the study of lan- 
 guage ; I commend it to your early and learned care, but do 
 not suppose that a court of justice, that a political assembly, 
 that a senate, or even a vestry,^ that a mob of peers or peasants, 
 will care for fine words, unless there be strong thoughts within 
 them. 
 
 The successful orator must be prepared in a good siyle^ 
 ready with a flue7it one ; but he must also be learned in the 
 sympathies and the prejudices of <^// his audience, but especially 
 of their influential men ; he must have a thorough knowledge 
 of the 7iiaterials on which, and with which, he is to work. 
 Common industry will inform him on the immediate subject of 
 discourse, and his task is done. Some will tell you not to 
 rouse the animosity of a judge, or the suspicions of a jury, with 
 showy words, or weary a mob with cold words. No, gentle- 
 men, but thoughts, thoughts; the wise man against the wordy 
 man all the world over. And even for style’s sake, study thoughts 
 before words. The style suggested by long meditation on a 
 subject is mostly apt to it, forcible and consistent. A style 
 for77ied by verbal studies or imitation is generally inflated, 
 unequal, and obscure. In fine, then, the order of your noviciate 
 should be, much research, and more meditation preceding, 
 combining with, and following that research. When you have 
 acquired a facility in discovering information, and invent- 
 ing and combining thoughts, it remains for you to 77mke 
 opporiu7iities'^ for gradtially learning to speak well without 
 
 ^ I am sorry I cannot add, a congregation ; but the religion of 
 passions, not practice, of the day, the want of critical knowledge in 
 priest and people, and the bigotry which that ignorance begets, have 
 made congregations tolerate or admire a style of preaching which any 
 practical assembly would scorn. This is sad, for there is no nobler, no 
 more useful office than the preacher’s. Never was there a finer field 
 or a greater need for good preaching than in the large cities of this 
 empire. 
 
 2 The strong man never waits for, he 7/iakes opportunities. 
 
36 
 
 ADDRESS. 
 
 particular preparation. Act thus with eagerness, enterprise, 
 and with much reflection, and you will succeed.^ 
 
 Gentlemen, I have detained you very long ; bear with me yet 
 a little while. I would give you my parting advice. 
 
 If you suppose it possible to be great orators, great states- 
 men, greatly known, without having expanded hearts and 
 mighty imaginations, without being great men, you sadly 
 deceive yourselves. Hear the second poet of Scotland (for 
 Burns is the first), hear how Scott murmurs his requiem over 
 the tomb of Charles Fox — 
 
 “ Mourn genius high and lore profound, 
 
 And wit that loved to play, not wound ; 
 
 And all the reasoning powers divine, 
 
 To penetrate, resolve, combine ; 
 
 And feelings keen, and fancy’s glow — 
 
 They sleep with him who sleeps below,”* 
 
 If you want to be great orators, you must not set about 
 learning the mountebank juggles — the phrase-spinning tricks 
 of little men attempting great parts. I shall not wrong you 
 by supposing that any petty vanities or selfish hopes brought 
 you here. No ; I do believe that the bold aspirations of 
 your boyhood (for the foundation of greatness is laid in child- 
 hood), those pure and dazzling visions which have flashed upon 
 you in dreams, and caught the steadier glance of your young 
 
 ^ The printed Addresses of which I spoke at the beginning of this 
 paper are full of analyses and rules of application connected with this 
 part of my subject. The writers on metaphysics and rhetoric, from 
 Aristotle to Mill, and Quinctilian to Whateley, also contain plenty of 
 good truths on the principles of persuasion and the tactics of debate. 
 Their advice being general, is easier understood than acted on. I 
 have sought to batter down the more salient errors which I saw and felt ; 
 to deal with what is now here^ and not what might he; and rather to 
 offer a few careful^ than many loose recommendations. My fellow- 
 students can follow out this as well as I could, but their attention 
 wanted some urgency. They have at their head one much better able 
 to advise them than I am, and one who can enforce advice by example, 
 
 * “ Marmion,” Introduction to the first Canto. 
 
ADDRESS, 
 
 37 
 
 waking eye, have not yet faded wholly away. What though 
 many a glorious expectation has failed? What though even 
 you have learned that toil and danger guard the avenue to 
 success? What though disappointment and suffering have 
 somewhat touched you, and made you less sanguine ; yet, has 
 not time rewarded your sorrows — has it not refined— has it not 
 purified — has it not strengthened, even when it humbled you? 
 This world is called hard; his the outside of each little circle of 
 feelings and ties that is so, and who is not within the bounds of 
 at least one such ? None here, I trust : and yet if there be one 
 so wounded and desolate — one who longs for that solitude 
 which it has been said is ‘‘fit only fora demon or an angel,” 
 or for the equally dubious quiet of the tomb, — such a soul 
 must, under the benign influence of early feelings, and the 
 propitious circumstances and the teaching nobler than that of 
 manhood, which is given to us then, have felt the generous 
 resolve to serve a world which might not thank him. Oh, if I 
 had the power to “bid the happy thought of innocent days 
 play at his heart-strings,” and in enthusiastic strains to 
 melodise the conviction, that nor prosperity, nor content, nor 
 the blessings of friendship or love (which are dearest to the 
 best minds) can lift to the same sublimity, or should warm 
 with the same proud joy, as the consciousness of him who is a 
 benefactor of mankind. Let not gentleness or virtue shrink 
 from the boisterous elements of publicity ; such a spirit makes 
 a calm around; nor let want of rank or of wealth awe him into 
 silence, 
 
 “ For service comes of gentleness, 
 
 And lealest hearts of low degree.” 
 
 To each age has God given a career of possible improve- 
 ment; it may exceed, it may fall short of that in other ages. 
 The march during the daylight of our age may be limited by 
 the time and training; but we have it in our power to accelerate 
 that march. 
 
 The time is past when the omnipotence of the sword might 
 excuse the sentimental, or learned, or melancholy retirement. 
 
38 
 
 ADDRESS. 
 
 The man who now avoids his citizenship has no defence but 
 imbecility; for if he have sagacity and learning he has power^ 
 and sins in folding up his talent from want of zeal to use it. 
 He lacks not means, but a virtuous will. 
 
 I would especially desire the diffusion of civic zeal, because 
 in it I see the means, the only means, of human improvement. 
 The effect of modern civilisation up to a certain point has been 
 good ; it has tended to free man from the dominion of an armed 
 minority, who stupefied and worked the human race as if they 
 were so many machines which they had made, and could make, 
 and had no reason to abstain from abusing, save the prudence 
 of perpetuating them. This step has been taken in some 
 countries, and seems likely to be taken in all. But on the 
 J shore of democracy is a monstrous danger ; no phantasm is it, 
 but alas ! too real — the violence and frowardness of selfish men, 
 regardful only of physical comfort, ready to sacrifice to it all 
 sentiments — the generous, the pious, the just (victims in their 
 order), till general corruption, anarchy, despotism, and moral 
 darkness shall re-barbarise the earth. A great man^ has said, 
 if you would qualify Democracy for power, you must “purify 
 their morals, and warm their faith, if that be possible.” How 
 awful a doubt ! But it is not the morality of laws, nor the 
 religion of sects, that will do this. It is the habit of rejoicing in 
 high aspirations and holy emotions ; it is charity in thought, 
 word, and act ; it is generous faith, and the practice of self- 
 sacrificing virtue. To educate the heart and strengthen the 
 intellect of man are the means of ennobling him. To strain 
 every nerve to this end is the duty from which no one aware 
 of it can shrink. A sphere of mjiuence belongs to every man 
 and every age, and over every man, and every nation, and 
 every succeeding age ; but that of acti07i is more confined. 
 The influence of moral power extends but gradually and 
 indirectly over cotemporary foreign nations. Those whose 
 acts can directly influence the republic of nations are few, 
 
 ^ De Tocqueville, preface to La De7uocratie en Ainerique. What 
 might not the clergy do if they would devote themselves in a charitable 
 and liberal spirit to the work of moral civilisation ? 
 
ADDRESS. 
 
 39 
 
 and at so lonely an elevation above common habits that they 
 usually lose our common sympathies, and their power is a 
 curse. But no man is without a sufficient sphere of action, and 
 of direct influence. I speak not of private life; in it, blessed be 
 God ! our people are tender, generous, and true-hearted. But, 
 Gentlemen, you have a country. The people among 
 whom we were born, with whom we live, for whom, if our minds 
 are in health, we have most sympathy, are those over whom we 
 have power — power to make them wise, great, good. Reason 
 points out our native land as the field for our exertions, and 
 tells us that without patriotism a profession of benevolence is 
 the cloak of the selfish man ; and does not sentiment confirm 
 the decree of reason 1 The country of our birth, our education, 
 of our recollections, ancestral, personal, national ; the country 
 
 of our loves, our friendships, our hopes ; our country : the 
 
 cosmopolite is unnatural, base — I would fain say, impossible. 
 
 To act on a world is for those above it, not of it. Patriotism is ^ 
 human phila7ithropy. 
 
 Gentlemen, many of you possess, more of you are growing 
 into the possession of, great powers — powers which were given 
 you for good, which you may use for evil. I trust that not as 
 adventurers, or rash medlers, will you enter on public life. 
 But to enter on it in some way or other the state of mind in 
 Ireland will compel you. You must act as citizens, and it is 
 well, “non nobis solum nati sumus, ortusque nostri partem 
 patria vindicat.” Patriotism once felt to be a duty becomes so. 
 
 To act in politics is a matter of duty everywhere ; here, of 
 necessity. To make that action honourable to yourselves, and 
 serviceable to your country, is a matter of choice. In your 
 public career you will be solicited by a thousand temptations 
 to sully your souls with the gold and place of a foreign court, 
 or the transient breath of a dishonest popularity ; dishonest, 
 when adverse to the good, though flattering to the pre- 
 judices of the people. You now abound in patriotism, 
 and are sceptical of public corruption ; yet most assuredly, 
 if you be eloquent and strong-thinking, threats and bribes 
 will be held out to you. You will be solicited to become the 
 
40 
 
 ADDRESS, 
 
 barking misleaders of a faction, or the gazehounds of a minister 
 — dogs who can tell a patriot afar off. Be jealous of your 
 honour and your virtue the7ij yield not. Bid back the tempter. 
 Do not grasp remorse. Nay, if it be not a vain thought, 
 in such hours of mortal doubt, when the tempted spirit rocks 
 to and fro, pause and recall one of your youthful evenings, 
 and remember the warning voice of your old companion, who 
 felt as a friend, and used a friend’s liberty. Let the voice 
 of his warning rise upon your ear, think he stands before you 
 as he does now, telling you in such moments, when pride or 
 luxury or wrath make you waver, to return to communings 
 with nature’s priests,^ the Burns, the Wordsworths, the Shake- 
 speares, but, above all, to nature’s self. She waits with a 
 mother’s longings for the wanderer ; fling yourselves into her 
 arms, and as your heart beats upon her bosom your native 
 nobility will return, and thoughts divine as the divinest you 
 ever felt will bear you unscathed through the furnace. Pardon 
 the presumption, pardon the hope (’tis one of my dearest now), 
 “forsan et hcBC olim meminisse juvabit.” 
 
 And I do not fear that any of you will be found among 
 Ireland’s foes. To her every energy should be consecrated. 
 Were she prosperous she would have many to serve her, 
 though their hearts were cold in her cause. But it is because 
 her people lieth down in misery and riseth to suffer, it is 
 therefore you should be more deeply devoted. Your country 
 will, I feir, need all your devotion. She has no foreign 
 friend. Beyond the limits of green Erin there is none to 
 aid her. She may gain by the feuds of the stranger ; she 
 
 ^ Poetry is the instructor of the heart and fancy. As man is a moral 
 and imaginative being, beyond “the reasoning, self-sufficing thing,” 
 h's heart is the virgin soil wherein poetic feeling, that is, lofty senti- 
 ment, the sense of beauty, the desire of perfection, the joy of goodness, 
 may be sown with a certainty of a rich crop. I rejoice at the early 
 cultivation of poetic taste nowadays, not as a means of fame, nor for 
 ostentation ; but to accustom the young to look abroad, with the eye 
 pure and undefiled, thence to fill his soul with what may nourish it, and 
 give it immortal longings. 
 
ADDRESS, 
 
 41 
 
 cannot hope for his peaceful help, be he distant, be he near; 
 her trust is in her sons. You are Irishmen. She relies on 
 your devotion. She solicits it by her present distraction and 
 misery. No ! her past distraction — her present woe. We 
 have no more war bills : we have a mendicant bill for Ireland. 
 The poor and the pest-houses are full, yet the valleys of her 
 country and the streets of her metropolis swarm with the 
 starving. Her poet has described her 
 
 “ More dear in her sorrow, her gloom, and her showers, 
 
 Than the rest of the world in its sunniest hours.” 
 
 And if she be miserable, if “ homely age hath the alluring 
 beauty took from her poor cheek, then who hath wasted it.^’^ 
 The stranger from without, by means of the traitor within. 
 Perchance kis a fanciful thing, yet in the misfortunes of 
 Ireland, in her laurelled martyrs, in those who died “per- 
 secuted men for a persecuted countr}^’ in the necessity she was 
 under of bearing the palms to deck her best to the scaffold-foot 
 and the lost battlefield, she has seemed to me chastened for 
 some great future. I have thought I saw her spirit from her 
 dwelling, her sorrowing place among the tombs, rising, not 
 without melancholy, yet with a purity and brightness beyond 
 other nations, and I thought that God had made her purpose 
 firm and her heart just ; and I knew that if He had, small 
 though she were. His angels would have charge over her, “ lest 
 at any time she should dash her foot against a stone.” And I 
 have prayed that I might live to see the day when, amid the 
 reverence of those once her foes, her sons would 
 
 “ Like the leaves of the Shamrock unite, 
 
 A partition of sects from one foot-stalk of right ; 
 
 Give each his full share of the earth and the sky. 
 
 Nor fatten the slave where the serpent would die.”^ 
 
 But not only by her sufferings does Ireland call upon you. 
 
 1 Beaulies of the Press, p. 38. 
 
42 
 
 ADDRESS, 
 
 Her past history furnishes something to awake proud recollec- 
 tions. I speak not of that remote and mysterious time when 
 the men of Tyre traded to her well-known shores, and every art 
 of peace found a home on her soil ; and her armies, not unused 
 to conquest, traversed Britain and Gaul. Nor yet of that time 
 when her colleges offered a hospitable asylum to the learned 
 and the learning of every land, and her missions bore know- 
 ledge and piety through savage Europe ; nor yet of her gallant 
 and romantic struggles against Dane, and Saxon, and Norman 
 still less of her hardy wars, in which her interest was sacrificed 
 to a too-devoted loyalty, in many a successful, many a disastrous 
 battle. Not of these. I speak of sixty years ago. The memory 
 is fresh,, the exarnple pure,, the success inspiring, I speak of 
 “the lifetime of Ireland.” 2 
 
 But if neither the present nor the past can rouse you, let the 
 sun of hope, the beams of the future, awake you to exertion in 
 the cause of patriotism. Seek, oh seek to make your country 
 not behind at least in the progress of the nations. Education, 
 the apostle of progress, hath gone forth. Knowledge is not 
 virtue, but may be rendered its precursor. Virtue is not 
 alone enjoyment, is not all happiness ; but be sure, when the 
 annunciation of virtue comes, the advent of happiness is at 
 hand. Seek to make your country forward in her progress to 
 that goal, where she, in common with the other nations, may 
 hear that annunciation of virtue, and share that advent of 
 happiness, holiness, and peace. 
 
 Gentlemen, I have done. You have been disappointed ; you 
 expected, your partiality expected, from me prescriptions to 
 
 ^ Ireland was then a confederation with local governments, and her 
 stubborn and protracted resistance may be added to the many such 
 instances accumulated by Sismondi, to shew the greater stability and 
 greater defensive force of countries with a minute local organisation 
 and self-government over the largest centralised powers. — See the 
 admirable Etudes sur les Constitutions des Peuples Libres, p. 290 
 (Brussels edition) to the end. See also, Lo?'d Caernarvon on the 
 Basques. Sketches^ vol. ii. 
 
 ^ Curran. 
 
ADDRESS. 
 
 43 
 
 make the best of good speeches, at the bar, pulpit, and senate 
 — all. in a brilliant address. Yet, though to hear them has 
 given you little pleasure, and to write them has cost me little 
 time, the thoughts are not rash or inconsiderate ; they were the 
 best I had. It would have been easier, much easier, for me 
 to have written rhetorical precepts, and the distinctions of a 
 shallow metaphysics, and to have conveyed such thoughts in 
 a showy diction and with pointed periods. I should have 
 avoided the trouble of combining my scattered thoughts on 
 the subject of our education, but I should have violated my 
 conscious duty. I should have won a louder and more frequent 
 cheer.^ You would have cheered and have forgotten me. I 
 shall heartily wish you, gentlemen, what each of you will, I 
 know, wish me in return : that you may struggle and succeed 
 in a career, honourable and useful to yourselves and those 
 who are dear to you, in time ; and which, I say it in the 
 sincerest solemnity of my heart, may render you better fitted 
 for eternity. 
 
 ^ I was in no sanguine mood when I penned that paragraph, I 
 perhaps misjudged the expectations ; I much underrated the generosity 
 of my friends. They heard my lay sermon kindly, attentively, and 
 with no cold or critic minds. 
 
UDALISM AND FEUDALISM. 
 
 PART I. 
 
 “ Who was the happiest of men?” said Croesus to Solon. “Tellos,” 
 answered the sage; “he was an Attic yeoman; he lived a good 
 neighbour, and a good farmer, till his children had grown up strong, 
 and comely, and honest, and then he died, fighting for Athens, The 
 Athenians honoured him greatly.” — Herodotus^ Book I. s. 20. 
 
 The world has had great lights; Athens and Thebes, and 
 the constellation of the Peloponessus, Lombardy, Switzerland, 
 Holland, and America. Norway is a new planet — new and 
 old. Older than history, new to us. A few years ago men 
 spoke of Norway as the half-savage province of Sweden, wrapt 
 in they could not tell what rudeness and gloom. At last a 
 wise and honest man got some inkling of her. He went and 
 saw her, and told us of her. We all wonder now why we did 
 not know her before. She was long since as she is now, and 
 therefore we doubt the account, which implies our ignorance ; 
 yet after all the secretness of Norway is no wonder. Seldom 
 can we hear, save from a nation’s own voice, what its heart 
 is full of, and how it lives; and yet the very happy talk most 
 to themselves. He who has a comfortable home stays in it, 
 but misery comes out into the thoroughfares, noticeable, and 
 screaming. “Pity us,” cries Italy; “help us,” cries Ireland; 
 “just God ! is it thus thou scourgest the brave ?” cries Poland. 
 Circassia which wars, and Norway which lives at peace, yet all 
 busy and godlike, weep not, ask not, tell not. There is no 
 missionary like the wailing exile, and far nations listen to the 
 clank of the slave’s chains. Again, the gaudy tribes who 
 44 
 
UDALISM AND FEUDALISM, 
 
 45 
 
 hire themselves to oligarchs and triumphant kings, and live 
 for fame and appearance, have a thousand busy tongues and 
 pens to tell of arts, and arms, and subservient muses. France, 
 and Scotland, and England have empire or letters, or both, 
 and console themselves by fame for the loss of virtue. But 
 Norway sits alone, self-revering, not dependant upon fame, 
 nor urged to complaint — nearly silent. She can keep herself 
 from slavery, yet not from fame — it will come upon her un- 
 sought. Fame is one of the sorest temptations which the very 
 good must suffer for the sake of others. May her unsought 
 renown not corrupt Norway. 
 
 Greater part of the globe is not private property. The sea, 
 with its fish harvests, has few and partial laws, such as national 
 rights to certain fisheries, and the prohibitions on some coasts 
 against catching pregnant or half-grown fish. Of land the 
 most is still in the hands of nomad and hunting tribes — for 
 instance, the huge oval of Asia, whose long diameter reaches 
 from Kamtschatka to the Black Sea, also the larger part of 
 Persia, Arabia, Syria, Africa, Australia, and the Americas. 
 
 Europe,^ China, India, and much of America, are split 
 into private holdings under more or less stringent laws of 
 property.^ 
 
 In the change from either a nomad, or a hunter, to an 
 agricultural stale, the soil remained the property of the tribe, 
 though the crop was the property of the tiller. The patches 
 of tilled land in Germany and Persia were, we know, possessed 
 only until the harvest was reaped by him who sowed it. It is 
 easy to see from what principles of our nature, how from 
 strength, from habit, from foresight, from policy, land came 
 to continue, first for years and then for life, in the possession 
 
 ^ There are many remains of Nomadism in Europe : the Transhu- 
 mante system of Spain, and the summer emigration of the Norwegians 
 to their ‘‘seaters” or hill pastures, are instances. The Laplanders 
 are still mere nomads. 
 
 2 The tyrannous and unsocial extent to which the laws of trespass 
 are now carried in England are among the barbarities of what is 
 falsely called civilisation. 
 
46 
 
 UDALISM AND FEUDALISM. 
 
 of one inan. At this stage property remained in Ireland to 
 a late period; where, on the death of the head of a family, 
 his land returned into the common stock of the clan, and 
 at the same time land was distributed in such quantity as 
 was convenient among his children.^ 
 
 Thus was the first great code of property completed; the 
 seed was always sown, for he who sowed was always to reap ; 
 while the redistribution on the death of every generation pre- 
 served the equality of conditions. 
 
 The next stage of landed property is to become divisible 
 among the family of the possessor at his death. It still 
 remained, and ever does remain^ subject to the will and wants 
 of the tribe or nation ; but except in cases of gross abuse 
 and monopoly, or of the want of heirs, few nations (having once 
 sanctioned inheritance) exercise their still undoubted right 
 to resume possession. Much about the same stage, certain 
 rights of mortgage, and even of sale, appear to have been 
 given, or assumed. But in allowing inheritance, incumbrance, 
 and alienation, society limited them. 
 
 Thus, as to inheritance, history tells that a custom which 
 we may call gavelkind (as opposed to primogeniture) was 
 universal. The details were certainly various. In some sons 
 and daughters inherited equally; in others the sons only; in 
 some the eldest son had a little more than the second, and 
 the second than the third. In others the whole household, 
 including uncles, aunts, etc., took shares; but in all laws, the 
 Indian, the Jewish, the Greek, the Celtic, the Roman, the 
 Persian, and the Teutonic, subdivision amongst the family 
 
 ^ Vallancey, Collectanea. The state of property here described, 
 united with a high civilisation, led to the quantity of corporate lands; 
 such were the mensal lands of the Chief, the Corbes and Erenach’s 
 Lands, the Bard’s Lands, the Hospitality Lands for the Ballybetaghs 
 (the hotels or caravanserais). Such institutions seem to confer many 
 of the benefits of an aristocracy, without some of its dangers and 
 evils. It is a mistake to treat the Irish chiefs as forming an aristocracy, 
 for each clan was a nation, and each kingdom of the Irish Pentarchy 
 was a confederation. 
 
UDALISM AND FEUDALISM, 
 
 47 
 
 was the rule, and such it remained in them all till conquest 
 changed it.i 
 
 The rights of sale, and mortgage too, were subject not only 
 to the principle of national ownership, but also of family 
 inheritance.^ In many cases the restraint on alienation was 
 unqualified. 
 
 In others the land (as among all the Teutonic tribes) might 
 be pledged or mortgaged, but not absolutely parted with ; for 
 either the family resumed possession on the death of the 
 mortgager, or they had in the order of their relationship a 
 right of re-purchase. 
 
 Among the Jews this right of re-purchase was never barred 
 (save in case of houses in walled towns not belonging to 
 Levites, where the redemption should be within a year), and 
 moreover, on the fiftieth year, the trumpet of liberation sounded, 
 the year of jubilee arrived, and each family resumed, without 
 any payment, the lands of their fathers.^ 
 
 Looking over all the early codes, it is safe to say from 
 induction that land (where parted with by the tribe) was 
 given as a strict inheritance for the support of a family in all 
 generations, not the enjoyment of one; and also that, though 
 
 ^ See Numbers, chap. xxvi. Deuteronomy, chap, xxi, Plutarch’s 
 Life of Solon ; Sir W. Jones’ Attic Law ; Boeckh, Eco7iomie Politique 
 des Atheniens, Laws of the Twelve Tables of Ro7ne^ in Terrasson : see 
 also Plutarch’s Nutna^ and Arnold’s Ronie, For the Chinese, see the 
 Ta Tsingleu Lee^ and Davis’s Chinese^ p. 137. Zendavesta, in Anquetil 
 and Heeren. Institutes of Menu CIX., Articles 100 to 200. Sale’s 
 Koran^ and Sir W. Jones on the Sirajiyyah, s. iii. 4. Tacitus de Morihus 
 Cer 77 ianorum, Sismondi, Palgrave, and Turner on the Anglo-Saxons. 
 All go to establish the assertion here made. 
 
 2 See Mirabeau’s Speeches (Paris, 1792), vol. v. p. 498, for a very 
 clear and able argument for coTnpulsory gavelkind. This speech settled 
 the adoption of that law in France. It was not delivered by Mirabeau, 
 but given by him, when on his death-bed, to Talleyrand, who read 
 it the day after Mirabeau’s death, amid the tears and shouts of the 
 National Assembly. 
 
 ^ Leviticus, chap. xxv. 
 
48 
 
 UDALISM AND FEUDALISM. 
 
 a slight preference was sometimes shown to the grow7i ttp 
 sons, yet gavelkind is the true name for the national rule 
 of inheritance. Such remains in a great degree the law 
 of India, China, Norway, Biscay, Switzerland. Such, in some 
 measure, is that of France. Such was the law of old Germany, 
 and such its first principle of distribution, when it conquered 
 Caul, England, Spain, and Italy. But in conquests, as in 
 other great bursts of mind, the law of present impulse is 
 the prevailing law. The Jews on their irruption into Canaan, 
 gave the lots according to the numbers in the family; 
 yet we find the children of Joseph complaining that they were 
 straitened, while other tribes had wide borders.^ And in the 
 Teutonic conquests merit in war strove with the settled 
 customs of the tribes; and though Chief Clovis could not get 
 the vase of Soissons from the soldier to whose lot it fell, nor 
 take from the meanest Frank a share of Gaul, yet he dared 
 afterwards to slay that soldier, and reserved for himself and 
 his allied chiefs mighty domains not thrown into the common 
 stock.2 
 
 Few corners of Europe belong to the first possessors. 
 Helvetia, Lapland, Biscay, are perhaps the only lands the 
 conquest of which never transferred the soil, and therefore 
 conquest must be looked to as the origin not only of the 
 governments, but of the ownership of land in Europe. The 
 relative numbers and condition of conquered and conqueror 
 before the conquest regulate their state after it. 
 
 Where the numbers of the vanquished do not much exceed 
 ^ those of the victor, actual slavery is their usual lot, unless 
 they leave their country to the new-comer, as the Indians are 
 doing before the Anglo-Americans, instead of submitting, as 
 the Mexican and Southern Indians did, to the Spanish. 
 
 ^ Joshua, chap. xvii. 
 
 ^ The account of the Barbarian conquests in the Spirit of Laivs^ 
 Books 28, 30, and 31, is excellent, but contains some errors which Mr. 
 Hallam has well corrected ; but incomparably the best narrative is 
 Sismondi’s, in his History of the Fre^ich^ a work accurate, graphic, and 
 profound. 
 
UDALISM AND FEUDALISM, 
 
 49 
 
 The Kelts seem to have retired in a similar way before the 
 Teutons, and also the Laplanders before some tribes of the 
 same Teutons under Odin or his successors. 
 
 The numbers of the Visigoths, and Franks, and Burgundians 
 in Gaul compared with the Gauls and Romans; the proportion 
 of Saxons to Britons, and afterwards of Normans to Saxon and 
 Britons, were so smalF that in neither England nor France did 
 the victors seize the lands nor enslave the people on their first 
 inroad. The Visigoths and Saxons appeared as allies; the 
 Franks were “guests” of the Gaulish farmers; the Normans, 
 friends of England. 
 
 Not but there was praedial slavery before Clovis and William 
 the First. 
 
 The Romans found it in Gaul,^ and left it there when the 
 Germans rushed in. The Saxons and Danes had reduced the 
 remaining Britons to personal or praedial slavery long before 
 the battle of Hastings, and east of the Severn the Welshm.an 
 was a fettered serf, though to the west of it the descendants 
 of Caratach, aided by the Irish, maintained their Keltic tongue 
 and aboriginal freedom. But we repeat, it was not the first ' 
 conquest which made the bulk of the French and English the 
 serfs we find them in the middle ages. Udalism was the law 
 of Frank and Saxon. The necessity of military rules, where 
 the conquered were so outnumbered; the constant wars, wherein 
 the prisoners became slaves; the perpetual insecurity of pro- 
 perty from the private feuds, and from Danish, Norman, and 
 
 1 See Mr. Turner’s Anglo-Saxons ; also the Table of the Saxon 
 Population, calculated from Doomsday Book, at the back of the first 
 vol. of Sir James Mackintosh’s History of England ; also p. 97 in the 
 same vol., where Mackintosh agrees with Sismondi in estimating 
 William’s army at 20,000 or 25,000 men, instead of 60,000. See 
 also Thierry’s Letters on the History of France^ and his inimitable 
 History of the Norman Conquest, 
 
 2 Sir James Mackintosh well contrasts the polity and social state of 
 Gaul, as described by Csesar, with Tacitus’s Germany. Theocracy and 
 prcedial slavery existed in ancient Gaul, which shows us that the Gauls 
 [Kelts ?] were conquerors, if the Gauls were Kelts. 
 
 6g6 
 
50 
 
 UDALISM AND FEUDALISM, 
 
 Saracen invasions, introduced feudalism into France, parts of 
 Italy, and the Low Countries. The Goths carried it from 
 Asturias over Spain. The causes which had produced it in 
 France had nearly produced it in England before the eleventh 
 century, when the Normans, re-emigrating from France, landed 
 in Sussex. 
 
 The struggles of the Saxons and Danes with these Normans, 
 and the confiscation of the greater part^ of England in con- 
 sequence, also the long baronial wars under the Plantagenets, 
 completed the villenage of England, even at the time when by 
 the introduction of municipal rights, and the parliamentary 
 constitution, principles were brought in which were one day to 
 destroy that villenage. Yet stubborn was the battle fought by 
 udalism. The readers of Sismondi^ and Hallam^ will see for 
 how many centuries of violence and fraud allodial or udal pro- 
 perties still appeared scattered among the feuds. Kent and 
 Southern France retained, even through the worst times, some 
 relics of better days. But by the twelfth century it might be 
 truly said of France and England, there was “no land without 
 a lord.’’ The noble classes, to the number of a few thousands, 
 held these kingdoms by military service. The first distinction 
 indeed between noble and commoner was exactly the same as 
 that between the Turk and the Christian rayahs^ — namely, the 
 former, with their households, freedmen, and mercenaries, bore 
 arms, but were not subject to taxation; the latter paid the 
 taxes, and were not allowed to carry arms. But the peasant 
 f was in a worse condition than any rayah ; he was a thi7ig 
 belonging to the baron, even like other beasts; he had no pro- 
 perty; you might call his cabin his, as we say the cow-house 
 belongs to the cows; his wife and children were as the mate 
 
 ^ “ The territory won at the battle of Hastings was not a fourth part 
 of the kingdom ; but most of the remainder was won by confiscation 
 following the unsuccessful struggles which the Normans called rebel- 
 lion.” — Mackintosh. 
 
 ^ History of Fratice, ^ Middle Aqes, 
 
 ^ See Urquhart’s_7>^r>^^, and its Resources, 
 
UDALISM AND FEUDALISM, 
 
 51 
 
 and young of a domestic animal; he might be slaughtered in 
 rage or sport, like the hound or the deer. 
 
 Such was feudalism as taught, as admitted; but it would be 
 treason to human nature to suppose that it was always as bad 
 as it might be. Peace, law, religion, tenderness, came often, 
 no doubt, to restore and heal. 
 
 It is not for us to trace how religion and knowledge, how 
 commerce and policy, how the dangers of kings, and the 
 increasing numbers of the serfs, led to their emancipation. 
 France, which was the first to renounce absolute slavery, 
 retained the worst ills of feudalism till the revolution came, 
 with its tremendous legislation, to repeal the deeds of all the 
 conquerors of France, Keltic, Roman, and Teutonic; came 
 with torch and sword, to enlighten and destroy, to smite and 
 save ; came with confiscation to the noble, and udalism to the 
 peasant. Strange, unconscious antiquarians were Mirabeau and 
 Danton, who treated primogeniture and landlordism as vulgar 
 novelties, and restored the land to the people. 
 
 In England the feudal tenants constantly aspired to the 
 allodial or udal rights ; and the socman grew into a freeholder, 
 the villein into a copyholder; their rents were trifling, their 
 inheritance sure. The state of the tenantry of England, from 
 the time feudalism relaxed to the end of the seventeenth 
 century, was the pride of England, the envy of Europe. This 
 was the age of the “ yeomanry of England.” 
 
 Never had an aristocracy a nobler heritage than the fearless 
 love borne to them by that yeomanry. It was a stern and 
 enormous power ; it had carried the banner of England through 
 every province of France ; Scotland broke her spear against it, 
 and Spain assailed it vainly with the power of three empires. 
 Could this modified feudalism have afforded security against 
 royal power, and resisted the temptations of luxury, it had been 
 (if not the happiest) a very noble state. 
 
 We have described three states ; first, udalism ; second, the 
 rank feudality of the dark ages ; thirdly, the modified feudality 
 which in England, and we may add in Germany, succeeded it. 
 The fourth state remains — landlordism. 
 
52 
 
 UDALISM AND FEUDALISM. 
 
 The Revolution of 1641 was a victory of the modified 
 feudalism, animated by religion, over the crown ; 1688 was 
 another victory of the aristocracy, after it had lost its religion 
 and honour, over the same crown. Here landlordism begins. 
 Mercenary troops had succeeded militia ; arts, commerce, and 
 gold-worship succeeded military virtues and religious passions. 
 Gold in his purse, not vassals at his back, was the desire of the 
 gentleman. The aristocracy began to make head against the 
 initiative udalism, into which freehold and copyhold weie 
 naturally rising in times of peace. Commerce, which from the 
 accidents of naval genius — and trade, which from the security 
 of property, and their mechanical turn, the Saxon English were 
 beginning to acquire, did, by giving a vent to the ejected 
 tenants, enable the landlords to succeed. The village was 
 deserted and the town filled ; waged labourers were preferred 
 to stiff-necked tenants ; and thus the English yeomen, struggling 
 hard against landlordism, as their fathers did against feudalism, 
 were ultimately overthrown. Farms have become huge manu- 
 factories of grain and cattle, for the benefit of the landlord. 
 The people of England have lost all hold of the soil. The 
 bulk of them are artisans in towns. Their agricultural popula- 
 tion, which, taking the whole people, ought to be two-fifths 
 more than the Irish, or taking the produce, ought to be three 
 and a half the Irish agricultural population, is much less. The 
 few agriculturists of England are not landholders, but depend 
 on daily wages, working for hire on rich men’s lands, without 
 the rights or feelings of yeomen. 
 
 The English invasion of Ireland began in the twelfth century, 
 when feudalism was at the vvorst, and towards the close of the 
 sixteenth century the Pale consisted of parts of five small 
 counties. The rest of Ireland, Keltic and Norman alike, 
 adhered to the old gavelkind of the country ; villenage was 
 never known, and primogeniture was regarded as a sin. From 
 the time that Mountjoy defeated Hugh O’Neill, in the beginning 
 of the seventeenth century, the Pale ceased, and England 
 pressed upon all Ireland. Ever since, a constant war was 
 waged against the property, religion, and nationality of Ireland ; 
 
UDALISM AND FEUDALISM. 
 
 S3 
 
 2,836,837 acres were confiscated from the Reformation to James 
 the First’s death ; 7,800,000 acres from thence to the Restora- 
 tion; and 1,200,000 acres under William the Third. The long 
 wars, which Cromwell’s sword and Ormond’s treason ended in 
 1650, were renewed at William the Third’s usurpation, and were 
 followed by the penal laws, more vicious and cruel than any 
 war. Thus has it happened, that while the extension of the 
 modern English laws to all Ireland, Catholic as well as 
 Protestant, has substituted the rules of landlordism for those 
 of gavelkind, the events which happened in the seventeenth 
 and eighteenth centuries have produced a feudalism closely 
 resembling in its evils that of France under the old regime.^ 
 
 To complete this sketch let us return to Germany, the cradle 
 of all these conquerors. For five centuries after Clovis 
 Germany sent fresh hordes from the right bank of the Rhine 
 whenever a weak monarch reigned on the le.'t. And when a 
 great king held the French sceptre he hurled his legions into 
 Germany. Witikind crossed swords with Charlemagne; but 
 the tempestuous genius of that predecessor of Napoleon levelled 
 the Saxons. Such mutual wars, the system of granting immense 
 territories to royal officers (who in troubled times became 
 independent princes, and rallied under their flags, or reduced to 
 slavery by the lance, the once free inhabitants), the Hunnish 
 wars — in short, causes parallel to those which introduced 
 feudalism into France, established it in Germany. There was 
 this difference ; Hugh Capet, Philip Augustus, Philip the 
 Fair, and Lewis the Eleventh manufactured France into one 
 kingdom ; but partly from the superior fierceness of the German 
 
 ^ It is a mistake to search for causes of Ireland’s woes, when the 
 facts of her history and state plainly account for them. The origin of 
 the Irish aristocracy is in confiscation. The nature of that aristocracy 
 results from their alienage — first, of country, then of religion. Their 
 power was founded on conquest ; and though penal laws, carrying out 
 what confiscation began, increased their sway during three-fourths of 
 the last century ; and though ejectment acts and insurrection have 
 continued their legal sway, yet their real power rests, as it originated, 
 in the force of British regiments, recruited by inconsiderate Irishmen. 
 
54 
 
 UDALISM AND FEUDALISM. 
 
 tribes, partly from the late period at which Germany was 
 separated from France ; from physical circumstances in the 
 country; from inferior genius, or ambition in its emperors; 
 and lastly, from the quarrels with Rome, Germany retained the 
 most valuable part of feudalism — the multiplication of small 
 states. The German boor remained a villein long after 
 villenage was abolished by lazv in France ; but his condition, 
 from causes which we cannot at present examine, was greatly 
 superior to that of the freedman of France, and resembled that 
 of the English yeoman. 
 
 Thus have we sketched the progress of feudalism, till modified 
 in Germany and England, rejected by France, rotted away in 
 Italy and Spain, and lastly, imposed in modern times (in the 
 seventeenth century) by war, confiscation, and penal laws, upon 
 that Ireland which had retained its primitive institutions until 
 then. 
 
 Scandinavia has never suffered feudality. There the Teutons 
 remained pure. “The Norwegians have been always free- 
 men.”^ In the ninth century we find among them the manners 
 which Tacitus found in Germany. They were republican, yet 
 hero-followers. The Vikings, who dwelt on the Norwegian 
 coasts, had their wooden halls full of free and fierce warriors. 
 The Scandinavians were in absolute possession of the soil. 
 Like their brethren on the banks of the Danube centuries 
 before, they had domestic slaves, the captives of their sword, 
 not hereditary serfs. Under its native chief, each tribe held its 
 own. Each freeman had his land, which on his death was 
 divided among his children ; ’tvvas his own to use, his children’s 
 to inherit. The conquest of Harold the Fair-haired, in the 
 ninth century, was over the more turbulent of the sea kings, 
 who bore away their manners and freedom to Iceland and 
 Greenland ; but over the nation Harold made no conquest, nor 
 assumed its rights. Nor amid those changes of central govern- 
 ment, which alternately gave Norway, Denmark, and Sweden 
 supremacy over the other, were the social institutions of 
 Norway destroyed. Sometimes they were encroached on, as 
 ^ “ How glorious, how happy a victory ! ” — Laing. 
 
UDALISM AND FEUDALISM. 
 
 SS 
 
 by Christian the Second and Christian the Third of Denmark, 
 in the beginning of the sixteenth century ; sometimes aided, as 
 by the judicial institutions of the late Danish government. 
 
 And, after all, Norway remains almost alone, an unbroken 
 experiment from time immemorial of the original and once 
 universal law of udalism. 
 
 ‘‘ The social order in Ireland is essentially bad, and must be 
 changed from top to bottom” is the emphatic summary of 
 Sismondi,^ and every peasant from Antrim to Cork says the 
 same. Every one of every party confesses that something must 
 be done. Everything that benevolence, everything that atrocity 
 could suggest, has been recommended. But away with this 
 probing, and irritating, and fiddling with Irish grievances. We 
 must deal with the master-grievance. Ireland exists, and her 
 millions toil for an alien aristocracy, her soil sends forth its 
 abundance to give palaces, equipages, wines, women, and 
 dainties to a few thousands ; while the people rot upon their 
 native land. What trifling, what madness, what crime, to talk 
 of prosperity from railroads, and poor-laws, from manufacturing 
 experiments, and agricultural societies, while the very land, ay, 
 Irela7id its elf belongs not to the people.^ is 7iot tilled for the people! 
 Redress this, and your palliatives will be needless, your projects 
 will be realised. Leave this unredressed, and your “prosperity” 
 plans may amuse or annoy the public, may impede or assist one 
 or other of the foreign parties who alternately afflict us, but 
 cannot make the sick nation well. But we pray attention to 
 this, that all the plans, legislative and private, whereby it has 
 been sought of late years to serve Ireland, proceed on this 
 common falsehood, that it is desirable and possible to assimilate 
 Ireland to England. Nay, more ; we were said to be in a 
 “transition state,” and poor-laws and public works were sup- 
 ported as helpers, midwives to the change. The English 
 farms were large, and to make the Irish so being assumed to be 
 desirable, gave rise to the two great plans for making consolida- 
 tion of farms easy — viz., emigration and extermination. The / 
 agricultural societies came in the rear of these. 
 
 ' Econo 77 iie PolitiqiLey p, 273. 
 
56 
 
 VDALISM AND FEUDALISM. 
 
 England’s population was chiefly manufacturing ; hence the 
 benevolent galvanism which thought to enable the hand-loom 
 of the Liberty to compete (without legislative protection) with 
 the steam engines of Manchester, fed as they are by the 
 richest coal-mines on earth, sustained by the accumulated 
 capital and skill of centuries, commanding the markets of the 
 world. 
 
 If the condition of the Irish must be changed, there seem but 
 two states at all desirable. One of these is Udalism, which at 
 once meets and conquers our ills. The other is a sort of pious 
 Feudalism, which Mr. Blacker, Mr. Sadlier, and others have 
 imagined. In this vision the once absentee appears resident 
 in his Irish mansion, superior to the temptations of luxury and 
 power. At present he has neither inclination nor (minded as 
 he is) inducement to live here. He is of a different creed from 
 the people. Is it possible to change his religion or that of the 
 feople? If not, how can that thorough sympathy arise without 
 which a good aristocracy is impossible? Different sects may 
 dwell kindly together ; nay, without different sects there will 
 neither be religious activity nor religious freedom ; but, with- 
 out common religious sympathy, the tie of vassal a7id lord 
 is fragile and uneasy. This alone seems an insuperable diffi- 
 culty. But is not the whole design chimerical ? The recollec- 
 tions, blood, and habits of the Irish landlords are utterly alien; 
 they despise the people, the people hate them. Is it not flat 
 nonsense to represent the absentee recalled to this contentious 
 and uncomfortable rejecting his religious and political 
 
 prejudices, giving up London notions and Paris habits, and 
 dealing out justice, economy, and seed oats to his wo7idermg 
 tenants, who (safe in their low-rented possessions, by the 
 kindness of their chief) learn from him farming, quiet, loyalty, 
 and Church-of-Englandism ? You will easier make bread of 
 our granite mountains than reclaim the alien landlords of 
 Ireland. Their own bold resolve is more reasonable — to keep 
 things as they are, and to coerce the people. 
 
 Ere we turn to the other alternative, which, hopeless of 
 reclaiming the lords and squires, would cashier them, let us 
 
UDALISM AND FEUDALISM. 
 
 57 
 
 show that all the ordinary proposals which drive at assimilating 
 us to England are worthless. 
 
 Now let no man take refuge in the details of his little plans. 
 By the end and object of the “ Irish-improvement” people, we 
 must judge them ; their emigration, their works, their poor 
 laws, are all meant to be so many precursors of Anglicism. For 
 the present we deal only with the economical condition of 
 England ; though we are even more ready to reject with scorn 
 the notion of assimilating our morals, manners, or passions to 
 those of any other people on the face of God’s earth : least of 
 all would we wish to change the faithful, pure, natural, affec- 
 tionate Irishman into that animal, John Bull. 
 
 England’s progress for the last two hundred and fifty years 
 has been towards manufactures and large farms, each aiding 
 the other. The village and cottage were deserted from the 
 landlord’s oppressions, while the increase of trade, by giving 
 the people support, prevented that agrarian war which is the 
 natural and just consequence of driving the peasantry from the 
 land. Yet statesmen and poets, from Sir Thomas More to 
 Goldsmith, lamented it with sorrowful speeches, and warned 
 England in vain. The vengeance seems not far off. The 
 wrongs of Ireland and India, the wrongs of England herself, 
 have appealed not in vain against the aristocracy ; and in this the 
 hour which they think triumphant, they are in peril. This genera- 
 tion shall hear “ the howl in their halls, and the cry from their 
 ships.” The large farms are maintained, but trade can support 
 no more. Expedients may delay revolution, but they will be 
 expedients giving the aristocracy a foretaste of their doom. 
 The repeal of the Corn Laws will straiten their means, and may 
 enable England to force her goods farther than ever, and 
 support another million of artisans; but once that burst is over, 
 she will have used her last reserve, and the people will fall 
 back on the land, their native property and ultimate resource.^ 
 
 ^ Here Davis is simply reproducing the well-known forecast of 
 Carlyle. Nor is this by any means the only passage in which Carlyle’s 
 influence on his thought is apparent. Indeed, all the Young Irelanders 
 
UDALISM AND FEUDALISM, 
 
 ss 
 
 But men still murmur, “Assimilate us to England.” Is it 
 possible or desirable to do so? How are you to establish large 
 farms? Emigrate, say the quacks. Exterminate, say the 
 squires. To the latter our reply is short — Try it, “Clearing” 
 has been tried every four or five years for the last century and 
 a half. It was tried when our population was under three 
 millions; when we were bowed by the memory of unsuccessful 
 war, and weighed down by religious tyranny. “ Clearing” was 
 tried then in the hour of our weakness, and it utterly failed ; 
 levellers, and hearts of steel, right boys, white boys, terry alts, 
 ribbonmen, rose against the clearers, encountered them, quelled 
 them. It was a desperate internecine war, in which the 
 peasants should slay or be slain. Who shall judge them ? 
 Ask Michael Sadlier, the great-hearted Tory, whom England 
 sneered into his grave? “If they persist in this course, let 
 them do so, but let it be at their proper peril.” Ask Gustave de 
 Beaumont, who tells you “all your efforts will be sterile.” If you 
 seek to “clear,” the people will resist. Resistance is the shield 
 against oppression. But you will put down the resistance. 
 Will you ? What code more fierce, what army more numerous, 
 what union amongst yourselves more close, will you procure 
 now than you ever had before ? The deliberate and repeated 
 attempts of the English government to destroy your intended 
 victims failed. No, no, give it up; give it up. The day even 
 for attempts of the sort is past. The whole world gazes upon 
 your iniquities.^ England herself blushes at the horrid services 
 
 were ardent students of the English thinker who unintentionally, but 
 most powerfully, confirmed their hatred of the rule of the British 
 Parliament in Ireland by the scorn and anger which he poured upon 
 its attempts at government on its own proper soil. — Ed. 
 
 ^ De Beaumont : — “In this country (Ireland) the poor man ought to 
 preserve his pride : he humbles himself in vain before the rich, who 
 enjoys his degradation without relieving his misery.” — Vol. i. p. 235. 
 
 “ Its (the aristocracy’s) falling state, far from being the defence, is the 
 condemnation of it; it is nothing more now for the Irish people but the 
 bloody phantom of a government; and assuredly it will never recover its 
 strength amid the storm of blows which showers on it, when, in a time 
 
UDALISM AND FEUDALISM, 
 
 59 
 
 she has done you, and is almost ready to bid you begone and 
 tempt her not. The consolidation of farms by “clearing’^ is a 
 subject not for argument but execration, — turn we away from it. 
 
 Send them to Australia; let them be shipped to America, 
 says some emigration quack. We are not quite sure whether a 
 cool project for unpeopling a country does not merit reproof 
 without further inquiry. But why emigrate? Is the produce 
 too little for the people? No. We export annually millions 
 worth of food, and this while our country is agitated and 
 miserably farmed. Just read too what Mr. Blacker says : — 
 
 ‘‘It appears that the county of Armagh contains 212,755 acres, and 
 a population of 220,653 souls, and that the entire kingdom contains 
 17,190,726 acres, and 7,839,469 souls. Now, in the county of 
 Armagh, by a recent survey, more than one-seventh of the surface is 
 taken up by lakes and unprofitable land, and the remainder is, for the 
 greatest part, indifferently cultivated ; and yet the peasantry are better 
 clothed, lodged, and fed than they are in most other counties in 
 Ireland. I cannot therefore be accused of taking away from the 
 comforts of the rest of this kingdom by taking the county of Armagh as 
 a standard ; and its proportion of unprofitable surface is not very 
 remote, I believe, from the average of the others. If then, 212,755, 
 the number of acres in Armagh, give a population of 220,653 souls, 
 17, 190,726 acres, the entire contents of the kingdom, ought to give a 
 population of 17,828,888, in place of 7,839,469, the population at present. 
 It therefore appears that, supposing the other parts of Ireland to be as 
 well cultivated as Armagh, it would support two and a half times the 
 number of its present inhabitants, and be able to export provisions 
 largely beside; for Armagh, notwithstanding its population, exports 
 pork, butter, and grain, in great quantities. 
 
 “ But before deciding finally upon the population which the kingdom 
 could support, it ought to be examined how far the county of Armagh 
 
 of unmolested tyranny, it has sunk so low. It is then nothing but an 
 obstacle, which men should hasten to remove.” — Vol. ii. p. 172. 
 
 “ It would not be enough to destroy the Protestant aristocracy; it is 
 necessary to abolish the principle of aristocracy in Ireland. In the 
 place of this about to be suppressed, no other should be established.” 
 —Vol. ii. p. 179. 
 
6o 
 
 UDALISM AND FEUDALISM, 
 
 (the standard taken) has arrived at its full complement; and in regard 
 to this I would say, from a pretty general knowledge of it, that under 
 an improved system of agriculture, and a regular rotation of crops, the 
 produce would be treble of what it yields at present; and I think this 
 may be practically proved, if I can show farmers, possessing land of an 
 average quality, who, being induced to change their manner of cultiva- 
 tion in the way already described, are now receiving fully treble 
 produce from the identical same farm to what it formerly yielded. But 
 supposing it only to yield double as much, it would follow that the 
 population of Armagh, if that beneficial change became general, might 
 be doubled also, without in any degree lessening the comforts of the 
 inhabitants, which increase being taken as the basis of the calculation, 
 and applying it to the whole of Ireland, would make it adequate to the 
 support of better than thirty-five million of souls.” 
 
 Under what pretence can it be proposed to transport millions 
 (for a less emigration would effect nothing) from a land which 
 could support four or five times its present population, from a 
 land which exports corn and meat, from a land which contains 
 five and a half million acres of waste land, as good or better 
 than those fields of Belgium which sustain a population two 
 and a half times as dense as that of Ireland, from a land which 
 only wants social justice and self-government to give comforts, 
 nay luxuries, to its present inhabitants and their multiplying 
 descendants, for many an age, from a lovely land, from a dear 
 land, from fatherland.^ No, as long as these truths are known, 
 nobody that has the people’s trust will ask them to emigrate; 
 nay, let these truths be forgotten, and the people will still cling 
 to the soil, like the infant to the mother’s breast, with the same 
 instinct and the same fidelity. 
 
 It has been calculated that it would take seven years of the 
 whole revenues of the Irish landlords to transport two millions 
 of people to the nearest part of Canada. Will the landlords 
 adjourn their existence for seven years to “consolidate” their 
 farms ? Knowing that in the end their incomes would be 
 less (for the density of the population enables them to get 
 high rents), it would be suicide for the men who only want 
 their rents to diminish the population. Then has England 
 
^ UDALISM AND FEUDALISM. 6i 
 
 twenty or thirty millions to spend in transporting the popula- 
 tion of Ireland ? We fancy not. Again, unless you employed 
 the marine of Europe, it would take a dozen years to effect 
 this emigration, and in the meantime millions more would be 
 born, for utter poverty in the most prolific of states. 
 
 If, then, you can neither exterminate nor exile the people, 
 you must, as you turn them off the lands in the progress to 
 large farms, have profitable employment ready for them in 
 manufactures. And will this accomplish your end ? Not at 
 all. As fast as you empty the cabins they will fill again ; or 
 faster perchance, for the unloaded spring rises above its steady 
 height. So long as you leave independent poverty to a people 
 with the morals and religion of the Irish, they will multiply 
 beyond calculation, so that unless you could suddenly, in the 
 course say of two or three years, remove the impoverished 
 masses, and change the rest into substantial farmers, you would 
 labour in vain. 
 
 But how can you realise even your own data? What will 
 you make ? Soft goods ? Manchester is ready to sell them 
 to all the world at three per cent, profit on her capital, and 
 cannot. Or hardware ? Birmingham is canting her stores, 
 and can hardly get bidders. Have you coals? No. Have 
 you capital to pay wages ? Have you capital in machinery ? 
 No. Have you the hereditary skill, the shipping, the com- 
 mand of the markets that England has ? No. What have 
 you then ? Cheap labour, water-power, harbours, and position 
 for trade. All well and good ; but are you serious in thinking 
 water-power can compete with steam, and naked hands with 
 the overflowing capital of England ? Look, you say, to 
 Germany competing with England. But how has Germany 
 been able to do so ? Thus : she had water-power and coals 
 in abundance; she had labour as cheap as Ireland, and yet 
 she long failed, and England gorged her markets. How then 
 did she succeed ? Come to the point ! Thus, sir, thus : she 
 had national government. She did as Ireland did when we 
 had national government. She imposed duties or prohibitions 
 on English goods. She was willing to pay a little dearer to 
 
62 
 
 VDALISM AND FEUDALISM, 
 
 her own manufacturer than to foreigners. The German farmer 
 paid a little more for clothes, and furniture, and utensils ; but 
 he was saved twice as much, which he should have given in 
 poor tax. And now comes the German’s reward (if manufac- 
 turing success be desirable); Germany has trained artisans, 
 great factories, the home market a monopoly, and she therefore 
 begins to undersell England. Why not imitate her? you say. 
 Why not have a national protection against the competition of 
 England ? Why not have a national government ? Good sir, 
 we may differ about the use of manufactures, but when they 
 give you so decisive a reason for our last cry, we won’t quarrel. 
 
 Let us pause on these much-desired manufactures, if it be 
 possible to make yeomen (“bonder,” as the Norwegians say) 
 of our peasantry. To us much meditating, it seems that if 
 England have nothing to tempt us with but its manufacturing 
 system, ’twere better trust in God and remain as we are. The 
 equal distribution of comfort, education, and happiness is the 
 only true wealth of nations. What is it to the English father, 
 with an emaciated body, that Manchester can sell cheap 
 cottons, and Birmingham surpass the fame of Damascus ? 
 How gains he because Lord Buccleuch adds another ten 
 thousand to his acres, and the riches of Lord Westminster 
 shame the treasuries of kings ? He is a weaver, or the worker 
 in a dye-house, or an iron-worker, and was so from childhood. 
 He grew up amid such revelations of God as the crash of 
 stampers and the twirling arms of some bright steel Briareus 
 can give, and among sickly faces and vicious and despairing 
 looks, and he came home when a child to a weaver’s home. 
 The field, the hill,^ the tree, the corn, the lowing herd, the 
 bleating lamb, the whistling plough-boy, the village church, he 
 never knew. But he is a man, and is above circumstances. 
 Partly ’tis so, for heaven is merciful ; but what a man ! That 
 
 ^ The loss of wealth by much of the soil being occupied by mountains 
 is overpaid by the effects of scenery and wild exercise on men, not that 
 the glory is in the mountain, but in the mind which sees God in these 
 revelations of great power. 
 
UDALISM AND FEUDALISM. 
 
 63 
 
 withered, blotched thing, querulous as a sick noble, or des- 
 perately calm, stunned with noisy mill-work ; filled to the top 
 of his mind with cranks and yarns ; trembling lest fashion, or 
 the change of trade, or the competition of some wretch more 
 desperate than himself, may end his hiring, and drive him to 
 the poor-house. The poor-house! the prison for poverty^ with 
 its fancy and impertinent lodge, its elaborate starvation, its 
 imprisonment not merely from the vague public through which 
 he used (with some imitation of cheerfulness) to bustle along, 
 but from the wife and children, who, poor and meanness- 
 stricken as they were, were yet the only angels who had entered 
 his tent and sat at meat with him, messengers from heaven 
 reminding him of God. 
 
 Oh, no I oh, no 1 ask us not to copy English vice, and 
 darkness, and misery, and impiety ; give us the worst wigwam ^ 
 in Ireland and a dry potato rather than Anglicise us. 
 
 Home Ma7ucfac Hires we ask, Ay^ Home Manufactures^ 
 Manufactures made at Home. Remember that ere the 
 Factory System existed manufactures were carried on in the 
 farm-house. If there were nothing to be said against large 
 farms and large factories than that for some (disputed) increase 
 of produce and economy, you deprive the farm-house of its 
 motives to a useful and wholesome industry during those 
 seasons when nature interrupts tillage, or in those classes whom 
 sex or age unfits for the field, it were almost enough. But when 
 we add that for this end you must sentence the majority of 
 families to an unwholesome, debasing, and unhappy life in 
 factories, enough is said. That frieze, spun in the farm-house, 
 of winter nights, and wove by the country weaver (who is a bit 
 of a farmer too), is precious in our eyes. This cloth from the mill 
 tells of man and woman and tender child, all day long, from 
 year’s end to year’s end, in a factory room, with nothing to ennoble, 
 purify, or comfort them, and liable by the slightest change in the 
 most changeable of things, trade,^ to unsolaced pauperism. 
 
 ^ “ How frightful nowadays is the position of the father of a family, 
 stripped of all means of existence, whenever a commercial crisis, a 
 
64 
 
 UDALISM AND FEUDALISM. 
 
 Is it or is it not for the good and happiness of the people 
 that provident yeomen, fed by their own labour, and clothed by 
 that of the women of the farm-house, should be changed partly 
 into country labourers for daily wages, without the education, 
 independence, or virtue of yeomen, and partly into the poor, 
 broken-bodied, broken-hearted denizens of a manufacturing 
 town ? But in the names of reason and humanity, why seek to 
 create those large farms which can only be kept up by such 
 devices as we have mentioned ? 
 
 The answer invariably given is, “ the produce is greater than 
 from small farms.” 
 
 This answer is not true, nor, if it were, would it be sufficient. 
 
 Let us enumerate some of the errors in this. It assumes that 
 the produce will be as great from the work of a few on one 
 large farm as of many on several small ones. 
 
 Large farms are, and must be, worked by hired labourers. 
 Let us contrast them with small ones, worked by proprietors. 
 The hired labourer has a direct interest (his personal comfort) 
 in doing the least work for his wages ; or if he work by the job, 
 in doing it in the worst possible (or least troublesome) way. 
 He who works on his own land never idles, never botches. 
 His pride, his comfort, the support of his family throughout the 
 year, depends on the quantity and excellence of his labour. 
 He is up early, and down late. He drives his spade with an 
 eager will, and scans every clod lest it be too big for the growth 
 of his corn. How proudly he shows it to his neighbour ! with 
 what pains he strives to till according to the received system of 
 his country ! 
 
 We are not defending rack-rented labour against hired 
 
 change in the direction of labour, or in the demand for it, or a stoppage 
 of the work in which he co-operates, comes suddenly to reduce his 
 wages, or throw him out of work. How frightful, above all, when the 
 progress of industry offers him ten thousand objects of new enjoyments 
 of which education has taught him to know the value, and made 
 necessary, too, which yet his poverty seems about to forbid him for 
 ever.” — Morogues, p. 7. 
 
UDALISM AND FEUDALISM. 65 
 
 labour, for exactly the same sort of reasons which prevent the 
 latter from being efficient weigh against the former. 
 
 But the principle is more general. The labour is in a great 
 degree proportioned to the worker’s interest in its success. A 
 man may dig his friend’s field as well as his own, or better, for 
 love is as strong as selfishness; but what sympathy ties him to 
 the interests of a rich employer ? Proportionate to the interest 
 in the work is the work. The effect of taxation in diminishing 
 the eagerness of the labourer (even where it leaves him a large 
 profit) is just as certain as that, when excessive, it will prevent 
 the land from being cultivated at all, as we often see in the 
 East. All taxes, tithes, and charges confessedly have this 
 effect. If you are to till and reap, partly for yourself, and 
 partly for men who are not you nor yours, you will not work as 
 if you and yours were alone to be served. 
 
 Exactly similar in effect is rent. Why should I toil another 
 hour (provided I have secured subsistence), when for every dig 
 I give for myself I give two, or three, or four for others ; how 
 poor shall be my reward for this huge labour Thus argues 
 human nature. Ere we pass from this topic, let us notice, that 
 in order to establish any system approaching to the English in 
 Ireland you should establish the same relations between the 
 aristocracy and people of Ireland as exist between the corres- 
 ponding bodies in England. Whatever may be the vices of the 
 English aristocracy, they are by choice and nature heavens- 
 high above the corresponding class in Ireland. They are 
 English to the back-bone. They are not “aliens in religion or 
 language.” They are never the avowed foes of their tenants or 
 labourers — they do not defame his faith, or insult his priest, or 
 deny his country. 
 
 The English labourer may have a benevolent and sympathetic 
 employer, rich enough to be liberal, having one creed, one 
 country, with him, and if so, his labour will be the heartier, and 
 his lot less irksome therefore, though he can never reach the 
 
 ^ “ We may hope that the day Ireland will have small proprietors 
 most of her miseries will cease,” — De Beaumont, vol. ii. p. 198. 
 
 697 
 
66 
 
 UDALISM AND FEUDALISM. 
 
 firm bearing, the independent and brave virtues, of the yeoman 
 proprietor. But take the case of the Irish tenant, who pays 
 two-thirds or three-fourths of the produce as his rack-rent, or 
 as Sismondi literally and justly translated it, “ rente torturde,” 
 torture-rent. Are you an Irish peasant ? Then he who is the 
 unsought and monopolising partner in your industry is one 
 unconnected with you by blood, hostile to your creed, con- 
 temptuous towards your manners and customs, alternately 
 (nay often, at one and the same time) the traitor and tyrant of 
 your country, insolent to your joys, regardless of your sorrows. 
 Must not this go with you to the field, and return with you to 
 the cabin ? Worn and withered is that once rosy girl you 
 wedded, and old in sorrow are her infants ; and as you leave 
 your dreary wigwam to toil little for them, much for the proud 
 alien who made them what they are, what thoughts are in your 
 heart? To us the industry of the Irish is wonderfuP — their 
 patience miraculous. If they were not one of the most religious 
 and least sensual people on earth they would from their circum- 
 stances be the most despairing and savage. Toil as they may, 
 they only labour to increase the rent. We repeat, it would 
 madden any other people on earth. 
 
 In censuring the English system of wages, we much more 
 condemn the rack-rent system of Ireland. Other things being 
 
 ^ ‘‘ Really I am not inclined to think the Irish are an indolent 
 people. I think that as far as spirit (of industry) is concerned, I would 
 look with more confidence to the spirit of the Irish people in maintain- 
 ing their independence than perhaps I should look to the population of 
 either England or Scotland.” — Alexander Nimmo, Evidence, House of 
 Lords, 1824. 
 
 “ Before I came to Birmingham I could not bear the thoughts of an 
 Irishman ; now I would sooner have an Irishman than an Englishman 
 for a labourer. An Englishman could not do the work they do. When 
 you push them, they have a willingness to oblige which the Englishman 
 has not ; they would die under anything sooner than be beat. They 
 show as much ingenuity and skill as the same class of English.” 
 — Evidence of Mr. J. Holmes: vide Lewis on the Irish Poor in 
 England. 
 
UDALISM AND FEUDALISM. 
 
 67 
 
 equal, a system of tenancy is better than one of wages, for it is 
 a step less in the scale of dependence ; but a system of wages 
 under the national aristocracy of England is better than a 
 system of tenancy under the alien landlords of Ireland.^ What 
 then would be a system of wages under this last-named body? 
 Something, if possible, worse than we now suffer. The wages 
 
 * Yet see, on the English system, Cobbett, passim. 
 
 See also a smashing book, in Cobbett’s style, called Colonisation 
 and Small Farms^ by Colonel C. J. Napier, at present, we believe. 
 Governor of the Cape of Good Hope. 
 
 We copy one passage from it — 
 
 ‘‘The poor day-labourer, uncertain of work, cannot afford to put his 
 child to school ; if in harvest time he saves a few shillings, he puts 
 them by to support his family in winter : his children idle while the 
 father works, if he have work, or help him to poach if he have not 
 work ; thus they grow up ignorant from necessity, and idle from habit, 
 and perhaps end, if they are males, by becoming thieves ; if girls, 
 by becoming prostitutes ; and our wise men taunt them with being 
 DEMORALISED, forsooth ! Yes, they are demoralised A which will 
 
 always happen when people starve. Even the law admits starving to 
 be an excuse for theft. Starving makes men eat each other ! In short, 
 what will it not make men and women do ? 
 
 “ How different is the life of a small farmer’s child ! The farni is a 
 school, and a noble school too, where he learns industry from habit ; 
 he grows up honest, because he is not driven to dishonesty by early 
 and biting want; and he is proud and independent because he is 
 honest : it is true, he may not have read the Penny Magazine, and may 
 never know the history of the Grand Chartreuse, or the Vatican, and 
 other more pleasant histories, of deep import, no doubt, to English 
 working-men; but, to make up for this misfortune, he will know, 
 right well, how to manage a farm. The poor hired labourer sees his 
 half-starved infant steal ; he wishes it were otherwise ; though he dare 
 not correct it : who dares chastise a beloved and starving child ? But 
 the small farmer’s son, who was guilty of such an action, would tremble 
 in the presence of his indignant family. 
 
 “It is now time to examine how farmer Middleman robs his land- 
 lord, having, as I think, shown how he robs the labourer. I have said, 
 and in a little periodical work published by the Labourer’s Friend 
 
68 
 
 UBALISM AND FEUDALISM. 
 
 system has broken the yeoman heart of England, though 
 worked by her own gentry; what then would it be in Ireland, 
 under an aristocracy so bad as to have reduced a tenantry to 
 the last stage of misery ? 
 
 Again we ask, is it probable that a man can exercise the same 
 
 Society it is proved ; by reference to Lichtervelde it is proved ; by 
 reference to all and every one that has seen it tried it has been proved 
 that spade husbandry and small farms give, comparatively, a greater 
 produce than large farms ; because there is not, as I have before said, 
 any waste of time, of knowledge, of labour, of money, of land, of 
 tools. By the farm being worked by one pair of hands, all these are 
 economised, improved, ^ combined^ and the result of this ^distribu- 
 tion"* (as the author of England and America terms it) is increased 
 produce. 
 
 “Let us take the hired labourer, John Clod, to whom Farmer Big 
 pays the lowest wages, and receives naturally the least portion of 
 work that John can give; who also wastes time and material by his 
 indifference to the interest of a man who shows no pity for him. It may 
 be that he daily takes a few potatoes home in his pocket, and so forth ; 
 those who are at their ease call this stealings but John reconciles it to 
 his conscience (after a hard struggle) by the pinchings of hunger, by 
 some passages of the Bible, and by human nature, which tells him that 
 starvation never was^ never will be^ never ought to be^ and never can be 
 borne. Suppose that this same John Clod had twenty acres of his 
 own^ or of which he has a good lease^ instead of being a day-labourer 
 on Farmer Big’s large farm of a thousand acres. Does the said John 
 Clod now lose time, or labour, or material, or compromise with his 
 conscience in a struggle with hunger? No — he loses nothing, unless, 
 perhaps, sometimes a little sleep and some deep potations at a public- 
 house ; in his eager desire to make the most of his little farm, this 
 desire makes him give up drinking, and urges him to extra exertion, 
 making him rise at four o’clock in the morning, cheerful and full of 
 hope, instead of creeping in sulky discontent to Farmer Big’s farm at 
 six. All is labour and thrift — even his pleasure consists in watching 
 his farm, and in its increase of production — the very dung that falls on 
 the public road he picks up — he watches his cabbages growing — he 
 waters them — he manures them — he weeds them — he digs deep before 
 he plants them — he tries experiments — he studies their health — their 
 
UDALISAI AND FEUDALISM. 
 
 69 
 
 prudence, caution, and economy over two hundred acres that 
 each small owner can over ten or twenty. In small proprietor- 
 ships there is the provident eye and ready hand of a master 
 (not above his work) over every few acres. 
 
 Will a rich man make the same effort, when he can only 
 
 nature — their whole progress day by day, nay, hour by hour, from the 
 moment he plants them till he eats or sells them ; he does both with a 
 pride, a pleasure, which he can take in no other man’s cabbages ; and 
 this pleasure is his reward ; it gives him health and content ; but he 
 will not do all this for Farmer Big’s cabbages, nor can Farmer Big do 
 it himself : they are too numerous, and his general concerns too large 
 — he has to buy his port — his claret — go to the club — hunt — and has a 
 variety of necessary avocations to attend to besides his cabbages. 
 Here then we have combination of mind, and of labour, and of experi- 
 ence concentrated into the small space of twenty acres by John Clod ; 
 while Farmer Big’s equal talents and industry are dispersed over a 
 thousand acres, and applied to other matters. ‘ Oh / hut he has four 
 labourers besides^ says the advocate for great farms. Yes, sir, he has, 
 but he has not half their exertions ; he has all the loss produced by 
 their waste — by their idleness — suffers if they are dishonest — has all 
 their hate for his low wages — in fine, has none of their good will, and 
 as little of their work as they can bestow. The result is that John 
 Clod’s cabbages are bigger, and better, and more in quantity, on an 
 equal space of ground, than Farmer Big’s are ; and Clod and his whole 
 family apply their knowledge and talents to the cultivation of their 
 own cabbages, instead of applying the same industry to stealing 
 Farmer Big’s cabbages to save themselves from starvation ! Thus we 
 easily account for Minheer Lichtervelde’s assertion, that all improve- 
 ments made in Belgian farming have been made by small farmers. 
 So I fire off my ponderous Minheer Lichtervelde, the big-bellied 
 Belgian, against my opponent’s ^ petit Monsieur de Bonald^' the 
 herring-gutted Frenchman ! and Minheer carries weight both physical 
 and moral ; for farming is better understood in Belgium than in France, 
 which last country has, however, improved in its knowledge of agricul- 
 ture since the revolution — that is to say, since it became broken up 
 into small farms ; but (to leave Belgian and French authorities) no one 
 can deny that the man with twenty acres will observe the operations 
 of nature more closely, and consequently more accurately, than he who 
 
70 
 
 UDALISM AND FEUDALISM. 
 
 swell a large fortune by abandoning its enjoyment for hard 
 farming, as a middling man, whose comforts and family hopes 
 are so much on the fate of his little holding ? 
 
 There are, however, two direct tests of the relative produc- 
 tiveness of large and small farms. One of these is the rent 
 they pay. Now it is certain that lands let to small farmers pay 
 higher rents than the same lands would if let in very large 
 holdings, which can result only from the surplus produce being 
 greater. This is so, even under the rack-rents of Ireland, 
 J which tend to put the tenant in the condition of a slave who 
 labours for another. This contrast is much stronger between 
 large farms and small proprietorships, and facts here afford a 
 second proof that large farms are less productive. The parts 
 of Europe in which cultivation and production are greatest 
 are Belgium, Holland, Biscay, Piedmont,^ all of which are 
 divided into properties so small as in many instances to 
 deserve the name of gardens rather than farms. Also compare 
 
 has a thousand, and is obliged to use other men’s eyes ; that the man 
 of twenty acres will have the assistance of his family, and he will work 
 harder for himself than the labourer hired by the farmer of a thousand 
 acres, whose family do not work at all. ‘ Oh I but Mr. Coke of Nor- 
 folk had large farms^ and did wonders.' Very likely, Sir. Now, let 
 us suppose Mr. Coke of Norfolk was a polypus; cut him into as many 
 pieces as his estates could be divided into, of twenty acres each ; stick 
 a bit of him upon every small farm of twenty acres, so that each bit 
 should become a perfect ‘ Coke of Norfolk ’ on each farm, an 
 whether all these little Cokes would not do much more with the land 
 than the one great Coke did ? The fact is, that this gentleman has a 
 talent for farming ; and it is Mr. Coke’s personal abilities^ not the size of 
 his farms ^ that produce the wonders.” 
 
 See too the work of the Baron de Moroges on Pauperism (Paris, 
 1834), in which he takes a similar view of the effect of attempting to 
 consolidate the Irish farms that we have. 
 
 ^ See exact references on each of these in Alison on Population, 
 Sismondi on the Agriculture of Tuscany, and the Communications on 
 Belgium to the Board of Agriculture, by the Abbe Mann and M. de 
 Poederle, are amongst the most valuable original authorities. 
 
VDALISM AIS/D FEUDALISM. 
 
 71 
 
 France before the Revolution with her present state, as 
 consisting of small proprietors.^ 
 
 Remember, too, that the strength and power of England 
 were sustained for centuries by her yeomen, her freeholders and 
 copyholders, who were almost proprietors, when the rest of 
 England was in little more than a state of nature ; and again 
 we ask you to admit that small proprietorships are more pro- 
 ductive than small farms. , 
 
 Tenancy (in the motives which it gives for industry in the 
 labourer) is inferior to proprietorship, but superior to large 
 farms worked by hired labour. Yet, mark that the economy of 
 work, and the division of labour, and the use of machinery 
 which may be urged in favour of the present English system, 
 are quite inapplicable in defence of tenancies ; for if the 
 peasantry be tenants, their holdings must be small. 
 
 We have sufficiently for the present contrasted waged labour 
 and proprietorship ; let us follow the contrast between tenancy 
 and proprietorship a little further. The man who has a pro- 
 perty for one year rent free will labour his best, but he will not 
 provide for the future productiveness of his land ; give it to him 
 for ten years, and mark how cautious he is, with all his eager- 
 ness, least he exhaust the land ; how many repairs and little 
 improvements he makes, until he comes near the end of the 
 ten years, and then see how he “takes the heart out of the 
 land,” repairs nothing, improves nothing, and tosses it up a 
 wreck. Give it to him for twenty years, and you extend his 
 care and improvements over some eighteen of them. Give it 
 to him and his for ever, and then there is no end to his care 
 and no limit save means to his improvements ; not for his own 
 interest nor his own time only does he work. He is the friend 
 
 ^ See Mr. Henry Bulwer’s Monarchy of the Middle Classes. Even 
 Mai thus says — “ The effect of the revolution in France has been to 
 make every person depend more on himself and less on others. The 
 labouring classes are therefore become more industrious, more saving, 
 and more prudent in marriage than formerly, and it is quite certain 
 that without these effects the revolution would have done nothing for 
 them.”— Essay on Population (second edition), vol. ii. p. 116. 
 
72 
 
 UDALISM AND FEUDALISM. 
 
 and servant of posterity ; his children and his grand-children 
 become so many motives powerfuller than self-interest to make 
 him improve that farm. 
 
 In propo^Fon then to the permanence of Ms holdmg will be 
 the caution with which the occupier will use the land^ and the 
 energy and care with which he will improve it 
 
 Remember what we showed before, that a labourer for wages 
 (besides the other ills of his position) is a comparatively 
 wasteful and negligent workman, especially where there is 
 little sympathy between him and his employer. A7td further^ 
 that in proportion to the interest which a stranger ( be he tax 
 gatherer^ alien minister^ or alien landlord) has in the crop and 
 i7nprove77ients^ the 77iotives for the tenants industry will lessen. 
 
 Put these together, and they amount to this — Make a 77ia7i!s 
 interest in his laboitr — perfect a7id permanent^ and you do the 
 best to ensure his industry and wisdo7n as a labourer. That is, 
 make hhn proprietor of the land he tills. 
 
 The influence of the possession of a small estate on the 
 family affections, on hardihood, on morals, on patriotism, are 
 greater still ; and the virtue and valour, the faith to God, and 
 faith to country of the regions of Europe are found age after 
 age when hunted from aristocratic empires, to have taken 
 refuge among the small proprietors in small states, in Switzer- 
 land, in Lombardy, in Dalecarlia, in Biscay. But these enno- 
 bling effects of such a system are undisputed, the economical 
 benefits have been questioned, and therefore we have dwelt 
 most on them. 
 
 We have thus far explained our subject — we have followed 
 property till it rose into udalism, and further followed it till it 
 sunk into feudality. We have shown how undesirable and 
 impracticable are the plans for Anglicising us (as if forsooth we 
 had nor nature nor destiny of our own). Less minutely, but 
 enough to justify our conclusions to thoughtful and observing 
 men, we have contrasted the effects of wage-labour on the 
 goodness and riches of man with the labour of him who tills 
 his own little estate, and we have drawn a singular contrast 
 between tenancy and proprietorship ( 2 >., feudalism and udalism). 
 
VITALISM AND FEUDALISM. 
 
 73 
 
 Thus much of preface we thought needful, but whether needed 
 or not it has exhausted our space, and we must postpone till 
 next month those facts on Norway, the importance of rightly 
 valuing, which has led us into this long discourse. 
 
 PART II. 
 
 [The second paper consists almost entirely of extracts, chiefly from 
 Mr. Samuel Laing’s valuable work, Journal of a Residence in Norway 
 (London, 1836), and from authorities on the condition of the Irish 
 peasantry. The prosperity of Norway and the unhappiness of Ireland, 
 and the apparent causes of the vast difference in well-being which 
 exists between these two agricultural countries, are now so generally 
 known and understood that it is needless to reprint here the mass of 
 evidence with which Davis supported his views of Udalism and 
 Feudalism. He closes his discussion of the subject with the following 
 words — ] 
 
 Let us ask our readers whether any of the plans for improving 
 Ireland, with which their ears have been ringing in these latter 
 times, can for a moment compare with udalism.^ Will the 
 peddling emigration, will the quackery of railroads and public 
 works, will the cruel and chimerical “ assimilation to England,” 
 will poor rates and work-houses, will the romance of reclaimed 
 landlords, or will savage attempts at ‘‘consolidation of farms” 
 compare with udalism? Nay, take all these plans, combine 
 them, twist them as you like, do your best with them, and say 
 could they by possibility produce anything equal to udalism? 
 
 What are the evils under which our peasantry labour? 
 Poverty. Give them land of their own to work on, they will 
 then have motives to labour, and will soon cease to be poor. 
 What else? Improvidence and recklessness. Give them the 
 education which the possession of property gives, and they will 
 grow prudent and economical. What else ? They are subjects 
 to an alien aristocracy, who have the administration of justice, 
 local taxation and expenditure, and control over the representa- 
 tion in their hands. Make the mass of landlords proprietors 
 
74 
 
 UDALISM AND FEUDALISM, 
 
 instead of dependants, and the aristocracy will crumble in the 
 presence of the people. 
 
 Quacks will talk about the law of gavelkind causing excessive 
 subdivision of land. Whenever you hear one talk thus, ask 
 him, reader, whether he can point out a single instance of it, 
 and then tell him that gavelkind is the law of human nature, 
 that it was the universal law of mankind, and that primogeni- 
 ture was a garrison order of conquerors; tell him that when 
 subdivision becomes too great on any farm, some of the 
 children will sell their shares; and finally, point to Norway, 
 and say that there is an experiment of a thousand years of this 
 gavelkind, and yet the Norwegian properties support the 
 owners in greater comfort than any other people on earth. 
 
 We must unwillingly close this subject for the present. We 
 have omitted much in our quotations from Mr. Laing, which 
 would have interested those for whom we write, and we recom- 
 mend them to read the book itself. 
 
 Those whom the people trust must cease to trifle with 
 romantic schemes, and apply themselves, body, soul, and spirit, 
 to the work of emancipating the peasantry. While the people 
 remain feudal serfs they will be trampled beggars. Free the 
 peasantry from the aristocracy. All else is vanity and vexation 
 of spirit. 
 
 We do not venture to point out the means whereby this great 
 salvation is to be worked out ; but we must say this much, that 
 we think the devices of a subtle policy will delay success. Also 
 the adoption of any particular plan for Irish tenures we think 
 mischievous, because premature. Some would postpone this 
 tenure question to the hope of nationality. So would not we. So 
 should no man, for tenure is a question of life or death with the 
 people. Yet it is equally far from us to counsel the postpone- 
 ment of the national question to it; for though, were that 
 hope realised, it would not (being political) cure the ills of 
 tenure, which are social; yet inasmuch as the Irish landlords, 
 if left alone, could not resist the popular demand for udal 
 tenures, and while supported by a foreign army, will never 
 yield to that demand, it may not be unwise to regard this 
 
UDALISM AND FEUDALISM, 
 
 75 
 
 political change as a good means to that social end. Some 
 men may think that agitated alone the demand for proprietor- 
 ship would end in some paltry and unprincipled compromise, 
 but that if kept as an ulterior result of nationality, and agitated 
 as one of its blessings, it will be won by the same effort — or fail, 
 ing, we shall keep our principles whole, and our rights uncove- 
 nanted, till all-redressing time gives us opportunities. 
 
 At all events, let the question be spoken of, written of, 
 taught, preached, agitated, in fairs and markets, in church and 
 by the fireside, in festivity and business (for it is a solemn sub- 
 ject, and worthy to engross us), and then, when the nation’s 
 heart is full of godlike resolve, it will tell out in accents not to 
 be mistaken, the means and the end, the will and the power, 
 and the chains will fall from it. Of this we are sure, that unless 
 they are fools or cowards, eight millions will not wish in vain. 
 
LITERARY AND HISTORICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 ANCIENT IRELAND. 
 
 There was once civilisation in Ireland. We never were very 
 eminent, to be sure, for manufactures in metal, our houses were 
 simple, our very palaces rude, our furniture scanty, our saffron 
 shirts not often changed, and our foreign trade small. Yet was 
 Ireland civilised. Strange thing ! says some one whose ideas 
 of civilisation are identical with carpets and cut-glass, fine 
 masonry, and the steam engine; yet ’tis true. For there was 
 a time when learning was endowed by the rich and honoured 
 by the poor, and taught all over our country. Not only did 
 thousands of natives frequent our schools and colleges, but men 
 of every rank came here from the Continent to study under the 
 professors and system of Ireland, and we need not go beyond 
 the testimonies of English antiquaries, from Bede to Camden, 
 that these schools were regarded as the first in Europe. 
 Ireland was equally remarkable for piety. In the Pagan times 
 it was regarded as a sanctuary of the Magian or Druid creed. 
 From the fifth century it became equally illustrious in Christen- 
 dom. Without going into the disputed question of whether 
 the Irish church was or was not independent of Rome, it is 
 certain that Italy did not send out more apostles from the fifth 
 to the ninth centuries than Ireland, and we find their names 
 and achievements remembered through the Continent. 
 
 Of two names which Hallam thinks worth rescuing frqm the 
 darkness of the dark ages, one is the Irish metaphysician, John 
 
 76 
 
ANCIENT IRELAND, 
 
 77 
 
 Erigena. In a recent communication to the ‘‘Association” 
 we had Bavarians acknowledging the Irish St. Kilian as the 
 apostle of their country. 
 
 Yet what beyond a catalogue of names and a few marked 
 events do even the educated Irish know of the heroic Pagans 
 or the holy Christians of old Ireland. These men have left 
 libraries of biography, religion, philosophy, natural history, 
 topography, history, and romance. They cannot all be worth- 
 less; yet, except the few volumes given us by the Archaeological 
 Society, which of their works have any of us read ? 
 
 It is also certain that we possessed written laws with exten- 
 sive and minute comments and reported decisions. These 
 Brehon laws have been foully misrepresented by Sir John Davies. 
 Their tenures were the gavelkind once prevalent over most of 
 the world. The land belonged to the clan, and on the death 
 of a clansman his share was re-apportioned according to the 
 number and wants of his family. The system of erics or fines 
 for offences has existed amongst every people from the Hebrews 
 downwards, nor can any one, knowing the multitude of crimes 
 now punishable by fines or damages, think the people of this 
 empire justified in calling the ancient Irish barbarous because 
 they extended the system. There is in these laws, so far as 
 they are known, minuteness and equity ; and what is a better 
 test of their goodness we learn from Sir John Davies himself, 
 and from the still abler Baron Finglass, that the people 
 reverenced, obeyed, and clung to these laws, though to decide 
 by or obey them was a high crime by England's code. More- 
 over the Norman and Saxon settlers hastened to adopt these 
 Irish laws, and used them more resolutely, if possible, than the 
 Irish themselves. 
 
 Orderliness and hospitality were peculiarly cultivated. Pub- 
 lic caravansarais were built for travellers in every district, and 
 we have what would almost be legal evidence of the grant of 
 vast tracts of land for the supply of provisions for these houses 
 of hospitality. The private hospitality of the chiefs was equally 
 marked ; nor was it quite rude. Ceremony was united with 
 great freedom of intercourse ; age, and learning, and rank, and 
 
78 
 
 ANCIENT IRELAND. 
 
 virtue were respected, and these men, whose cookery was pro- 
 bably as coarse as that of Homer’s heroes, had around their 
 board harpers and bards who sang poetry as gallant and fiery, 
 though not so grand, as the Homeric ballad-singers, and flung 
 off a music which Greece never rivalled. 
 
 Shall a people, pious, hospitable, and brave, faithful observers 
 of family ties, cultivators of learning, music, and poetry, be 
 called less than civilised because mechanical arts were rude 
 and “ comfort ” despised by them ? 
 
 Scattered through the country in MS. are hundreds of books 
 wherein the laws and achievements, the genealogies and 
 possessions, the creeds and manners and poetry of these our 
 predecessors in Ireland are set down. Their music lives in the 
 traditional airs of every valley. 
 
 Yet mechanical civilisation^ more cruel than time, is trying 
 to exterminate them, and therefore it becomes us all who do 
 not wish to lose the heritage of centuries, nor to feel ourselves 
 living among nameless ruins, when we might have an ancestral 
 home — it becomes all who love learning, poetry, or music, or 
 are curious of human progress, to aid in or originate a series of 
 efforts to save all that remains of the past. 
 
 It becomes them to lose no opportunity of instilling into the 
 minds of their neighbours, whether they be corporators or 
 peasants, that it is a brutal, mean, and sacrilegious thing to 
 turn a castle, a church, a tomb, or a mound into a quarry or a 
 gravel pit, or to break the least morsel of sculpture, or to take 
 any old coin or ornament they may find to a jeweller, so long 
 as there is an Irish Academy in Dublin to pay for it or 
 accept it. 
 
 Before the year is out we hope to see A Society for the 
 Preservation of Irish Music established in Dublin, under 
 the joint patronage of the leading men of all politics, with 
 branches in the provincial towns for the collection and diffusion 
 of Irish airs. 
 
 An effort — a great and decided one — must be made to have 
 the Irish Academy so endowed out of the revenues of Ireland 
 that it may be A National School of Irish History and 
 
ANCIENT IRELAND, 
 
 79 
 
 Literature and a Museum of Irish Antiquities on the 
 largest scale. In fact, the Academy should be a secular Irish 
 College, with professors of our old language, literature, history, 
 antiquities, and topography ; with suitable schools, lecture- 
 rooms, and museums. 
 
HISTORICAL MONUMENTS OF IRELAND. 
 
 We were a little struck the other day in taking up a new book 
 by Merimde to see after his name the title of “ Inspector-General 
 of the Historical Monuments of France.” So then France, 
 with the feeding, clothing, protecting, and humouring of thirty- 
 six million people to attend to, has leisure to employ a Board 
 and Inspector, and money to pay them for looking after the 
 Historical Monuments of France, lest the Bayeux tapestry, 
 which chronicles the conquest of England, or the Amphitheatre 
 of Nimes, which marks the sojourn of the Romans, suffer any 
 detriment. 
 
 And has Ireland no monuments of her history to guard ; has 
 she no tables of stone, no pictures, no temples, no weapons ? 
 Are there no Brehon’s chairs on her hills to tell more clearly 
 than Vallancey or Davies how justice was administered here? 
 Do not you meet the Druid’s altar and the Gueber’s tower 
 in every barony almost, and the Ogham stones in many a 
 sequestered spot, and shall we spend time and money to see, to 
 guard, or to decipher Indian topes, and Tuscan graves, and 
 Egyptian hieroglyphics, and shall every nation in Europe 
 shelter and study the remains of what it once was, even as one 
 guards the tomb of a parent, and shall Ireland let all go to 
 ruin ? 
 
 We have seen pigs housed in the piled friezes of a broken 
 church, cows stabled in the palaces of the Desmonds, and corn 
 threshed on the floor of abbeys, and the sheep and the tearing 
 wind tenant the corridors of Aileach. 
 
 Daily are more and more of our crosses broken, of our tombs 
 effaced, of our abbeys shattered, of our castles torn down, of 
 our cairns sacrilegiously pierced, of our urns broken up, and of 
 our coins melted down. All classes, creeds, and politics are to 
 8o 
 
HISTORICAL MONUMENTS OE IRE LA NT, 8i 
 
 blame in this. The peasant lugs down a pillar for his sty, the 
 farmer for his gate, the priest for his chapel, the minister for his 
 glebe. A mill-stream runs through Lord Moore’s Castle,^ and 
 the Commissioners of Galway have shaken, and threatened to 
 remove, the Warden’s house — that fine stone chronicle of 
 Galway heroism. 
 
 How our children will despise us all for this ! Why shall we 
 seek for histories, why make museums, why study the manners 
 of the dead, when we foully neglect or barbarously spoil their 
 homes, their castles, their temples, their colleges, their courts, 
 ^heir graves ? He who tramples on the past does not create for 
 the future. The same ignorant and vagabond spirit which 
 made him a destructive, prohibits him from creating for 
 posterity. 
 
 Does not a man, by examining a few castles and arms, know 
 more of the peaceful and warrior life of the dead nobles and 
 gentry of our island than from a library of books; and yet a 
 man is stamped as unlettered and rude if he does not know and 
 value such knowledge. Ware’s Antiquities^ and Archdall, 
 speak not half so clearly the taste, the habits, the everyday 
 customs of the monks, as Adare Monastery,^ for the fine 
 preservation of which we owe so much to Lord D unraven. 
 
 The state of civilisation among our Scotic or Milesian, or 
 Norman, or Danish sires, is better seen from the Museum of 
 the Irish Academy, and from a few raths, keeps, and old coast 
 towns, than from all the prints and historical novels we have. 
 An old castle in Kilkenny, a house in Galway give us a peep at 
 the arts, the intercourse, the creed, the indoor, and some of the 
 outdoor ways of the gentry of the one, and of the merchants of 
 the other, clearer than Scott could, were he to write, or Catter- 
 mole were he to paint for forty years. 
 
 We cannot expect Government to do anything so honourable 
 and liberal as to imitate the example of France, and pay men to 
 describe and save these remains of dead ages. But we do ask 
 it of the Clergy, Protestant, Catholic, and Dissenting, if they 
 
 ^ Mellifont, founded in 1142 by O’Carroll, King of Oriel. — C.P.M. 
 
 ^ See Irish Franciscan Monasteries^ by C.P.M,, C.C. 
 
 698 
 
82 HISTORICAL MONUMENTS OF IRELAND, 
 
 would secure the character of men of education and taste — we 
 call upon the gentry, if they have any pride of blood, and on 
 the people, if they reverence Old Ireland, to spare and guard 
 every remnant of antiquity. We asjc them to find other quarries 
 than churches, abbeys, castles, and cairns — to bring rusted 
 arms to a collector, and coins to a museum, and not to iron or 
 gold smiths, and to take care that others do the like. We talk 
 much of Old Ireland, and plunder and ruin all that remains of it 
 — we neglect its language, fiddle with its ruins, and spoil its 
 monuments. 
 
IRISH ANTIQUITIES. 
 
 There Is on the north (the left) bank of the Boyne, between 
 Drogheda and Slane, a pile compared to which, in age, the 
 Oldbridge obelisk is a thing of yesterday, and compared to 
 which, in lasting interest, the Cathedrals of Dublin would be 
 trivial. It is the Temple of Grange. History is too young to 
 have noted its origin — Archseology knows not its time. It is a 
 legacy from a forgotten ancestor, to prove that he too had art 
 and religion. It may have marked the tomb of a hero who 
 freed, or an invader who subdued — a Brian or a Strongbow. 
 But whether or not a hero’s or a saint’s bones consecrated it at 
 first, this is plain — it is a temple of nigh two thousand years, 
 perfect as when the last Pagan sacrificed within it. 
 
 It is a thing to be proud of, as a proof of Ireland’s antiquity, 
 to be guarded as an illustration of her early creed and arts. It 
 is one of a thousand muniments of our old nationality which a 
 national government would keep safe. 
 
 What, then, will be the reader’s surprise and anger to hear 
 that some people having legal power or corrupt influence in 
 Meath are getting, or have got, a presentmeiit for a road to 
 ru7i right through the Temple of Grange ! 
 
 We do not know their names, nor, if the design be at once 
 given up, as in deference to public opinion it must finally be, 
 shall we take the trouble to find them out. But if they persist 
 in this brutal outrage against so precious a landmark of Irish 
 history and civilisation, then we frankly say if the law will not 
 reach them public opinion shall, and they shall bitterly repent 
 the desecration. These men who design, and those who con- 
 sent to the act, may be Liberals or Tories, Protestants or 
 Catholics, but beyond a doubt they are tasteless blockheads — 
 
 83 
 
84 
 
 IRISH ANTIQ,U1TIES. 
 
 poor devils without reverence or education — men who, as 
 Wordsworth says — 
 
 *•' Would peep and botanise 
 Upon their mothers’ graves.” 
 
 All over Europe the governments, the aristocracies, and the 
 people have been combining to discover, gain, and guard every 
 monument of what their dead countrymen had done or been. 
 France has a permanent commission charged to watch over her 
 antiquities. She annually spends more in publishing books, 
 maps, and models, in filling her museums and shielding her 
 monuments from the iron clutch of time, than all the roads in 
 Leinster cost. It is only on time she needs to keep watch. A 
 French peasant would blush to meet his neighbour had he 
 levelled a Gaulish tomb, crammed the fair moulding of an 
 abbey into his wall, or sold to a crucible the coins which tell 
 that a Julius, a Charlemagne, or a Philip Augustus swayed his 
 native land. And so it is everywhere. Republican Switzer- 
 land, despotic Austria, Prussia, and Norway, Bavaria, and 
 Greece are all equally precious of everything that exhibits the 
 architecture, sculpture, rites, dress, or manners of their 
 ancestors — nay, each little commune would guard with arms 
 these local proofs that they were not men of yesterday. And 
 why should not Ireland be as precious of its ruins, its manu- 
 scripts, its antique vases, coins, and ornaments, as these 
 French "^and German men — nay, as the English, for they too 
 do not grudge princely grants to their museums and restoration 
 funds. 
 
 This island has been for centuries either in part or altogether 
 a province. Now and then above the mist we see the whirl of 
 Sarsfield’s sword, the red battle-hand of O’Neill, and the points 
 of O’Connor’s spears ; but ’tis a view through eight hundred 
 years to recognise the Sunburst on a field of liberating victory. 
 Reckoning back from Clontarf, our history grows ennobled 
 (like that of a decayed house), and we see Lismore and Armagh 
 centres of European learning ; we see our missionaries seizing 
 and taming the conquerors of Europe, and, farther still, rises 
 
IRISH ANTIQUITIES, 
 
 H 
 
 the wizard pomp of Eman and Tara — the palace of the Irish 
 Pentarchy. And are we the people to whom the English 
 (whose fathers were painted savages, when Tyre and Sidon 
 traded with this land) can address reproaches for our rudeness 
 and irreverence ? So it seems. The Atheftceum says — 
 
 “It is much to be regretted that the society lately established in 
 England, having for its object the preservation of British antiquities, 
 did not extend its design over those of the sister island, which are 
 daily becoming fewer and fewer in number That the gold ornaments 
 which are so frequently found in various parts of Ireland should be 
 melted down for the sake of the very pure gold of which they are 
 composed, is scarcely surprising ; but that carved stones and even 
 immense druidical remains should be destroyed is, indeed, greatly to 
 be lamented. At one of the late meetings of the Royal Irish Academy 
 a communication was made of the intention of the proprietor of the 
 estate at New Grange to destroy that most gigantic relic of druidical 
 times, which has justly been termed the Irish pyramid, merely because 
 its vast size ‘ cumbereth the ground.’ At Mellifont^ a modern corn- 
 mill of large size has been built out of the stones of the beautiful 
 monastic buildings, some of which still adorn that charming spot. At 
 Monasterboice, the churchyard of which contains one of the finest of 
 the round towers, are the ruins of two of the little ancient stone Irish 
 churches, and three most elaborately carved stone crosses, eighteen or 
 twenty feet high. The churchyard itself is overrun with weeds, the 
 sanctity of the place being its only safeguard. At Clonmacnoise, 
 where, some forty years ago, several hundred inscriptions in the ancient 
 Irish character were to be seen upon the gravestones, scarcely a dozen 
 (and they the least interesting) are now to be found — the large flat 
 stones on which they were carved forming excellent slabs for doorways, 
 the copings of walls, etc. ! It was the discovery of some of these 
 carved stones in such a situation which had the effect of directing the 
 attention of Mr. Petrie (then an artist in search of the picturesque, but 
 now one of the most enlightened and conscientious of the Irish 
 antiquaries) to the study of antiquities ; and it is upon the careful 
 series of drawings made by him that future antiquarians must rely for 
 very much of ancient architectural detail now destroyed. As to 
 
 ^ See Note, p. 8i. 
 
86 
 
 IJilSir ANTIQUITIES. 
 
 Glendalough, it is so much a holiday place for the Dubliners that it is 
 no wonder everything portable has disappeared. Two or three of the 
 seven churches are levelled to the ground — all the characteristic carvings 
 described by Ledwich, and which were ^ quite unique in Ireland^ 
 are gone. Some were removed and used as key-stones for the arches 
 of Derrybawn-bridge. Part of the churchyard has been cleared of its 
 gravestones, and forms a famous place, where the villagers play at ball 
 against the old walls of the church. The little church, called ‘ St. 
 Kevin’s Kitchen,’ is given up to the sheep, and the font lies in one 
 corner, and is used for the vilest purposes. The abbey church is 
 choked up with trees and brambles, and being a little out of the way 
 a very few of the carved stones still remain there, two of the most 
 interesting of which I found used as coping-stones to the wall which 
 surrounds it. The connection between the ancient churches of 
 Ireland and the North of England renders the preservation of the Irish 
 antiquities especially interesting to the English antiquarian ; and it is 
 with the hope of drawing attention to the destruction of those ancient 
 Irish monuments that I have written these few lines. The Irish 
 themselves are, unfortunately, so engrossed with political and religious 
 controversies, that it can scarcely be hoped that single-handed they 
 will be roused to the rescue even of these evidences of their former 
 national greatness. Besides, a great obstacle exists against any inter- 
 ference with the religious antiquities of the country, from the strong 
 feelings entertained by the people on the subject, although practically^ 
 as we have seen, of so little weight. Let us hope that the public 
 attention directed to these objects will have a beneficial result and 
 ensure a greater share of ‘justice to Ireland ; ’ for will it be believed 
 that the only establishment in Ireland for the propagation and 
 diffusion of scientific and antiquarian knowledge — the Royal Irish 
 Academy — receives annually the munificent sum of the 
 
 Government 1 And yet, notwithstanding this pittance, the members of 
 that society have made a step in the right direction by the purchase of 
 the late Dean of St. Patrick’s Irish Archaeological Collection, of which 
 a fine series of drawings is now being made at the expense of the 
 academy, and of which they would, doubtless, allow copies to be made, 
 so as to obtain a return of a portion of the expense to which they are 
 now subjected. Small, moreover, as the collection is, it forms 
 a striking contrast with our own National Museum, which, rich in 
 foreign antiquities, is alinost without a single object of native 
 
n^ISir ANTIQUITIES. 87 
 
 archaeological interest, if we except the series of English and Anglo- 
 Saxon coins and MSS.” 
 
 The Catholic clergy were long and naturally the guardians of 
 our antiquities, and many of their archaeological works testify 
 their prodigious learning. Of late, too, the honourable and 
 wise reverence brought back to England has reached the Irish 
 Protestant clergy, and they no longer make antiquity a 
 reproach, or make the maxims of the iconoclast part of their 
 creed. 
 
 Is it extravagant to speculate on the possibility of the 
 Episcopalian, Catholic, and Presbyterian clergy joining in an 
 Antiquarian Society to preserve our ecclesiastical remains — our 
 churches, our abbeys, our crosses, and our fathers’ tombs, from 
 fellows like the Meath road-makers ? It would be a politic and 
 a noble emulation of the sects, restoring the temples wherein 
 their sires worshipped for their children to pray in. There’s 
 hardly a barony wherein we could not find an old parish or 
 abbey church, capable of being restored to its former beauty 
 and convenience at a less expense than some beastly barn is 
 run up, as if to prove and confirm the fact that we have little 
 art, learning, or imagination. 
 
 Nor do we see why some of these hundreds of half-spoiled 
 buildings might not be used for civil purposes — as alms- 
 houses, schools, lecture-rooms, town-halls. It would always 
 add another grace to an institution to have its home venerable 
 with age and restored to beauty. We have seen men of all 
 creeds join the Archaeological Society to preserve and revive 
 our ancient literature. Why may we not see, even without 
 waiting for the aid of an Irish Parliament, an Antiquarian 
 Society, equally embracing the chief civilians and divines, and 
 charging itself with the duties performed in France by the 
 Commission of Antiquities and Monuments 1 
 
 The Irish antiquarians of the last century did much good. 
 They called attention to the history and manners of our pre- 
 decessors which we had forgotten. They gave a pedigree to 
 nationhood, and created a faith that Ireland could and should 
 
88 
 
 IRISH ANTIQ UITIES, 
 
 be great again by magnifying what she had been. They 
 excited the noblest passions — veneration, love of glory, beauty, 
 and virtue. They awoke men’s fancy by their gorgeous 
 pictures of the past, and imagination strove to surpass them by 
 its creations. They believed what they wrote, and thus their 
 wildest stories sank into men’s minds. To the exertions 
 of Walker, O’Halloran, Vallancey, and a few other Irish 
 academicians in the last century, we owe almost all the Irish 
 knowledge possessed by our upper classes till very lately. It 
 was small, but it was enough to give a dreamy renown to 
 ancient Ireland ; and if it did nothing else it smoothed the 
 reception of Bunting’s music, and identified Moore’s poetry 
 with his native country. 
 
 While, therefore, we at once concede that Vallancey was a 
 bad scholar, O’Halloran a credulous historian, and Walker a 
 shallow antiquarian, we claim for them gratitude and attach- 
 ment, and protest, once for all, against the indiscriminate abuse 
 of them now going in our educated circles. 
 
 But no one should lie down under the belief that these were 
 the deep and exact men their contemporaries thought them. 
 They were not patient nor laborious. They were very graceful, 
 very fanciful, and often very wrong in their statements and their 
 guesses. How often they avoided painful research by gay 
 guessing we are only now learning. O’Halloran and Keatinge 
 have told us bardic romances with the same tone as true 
 chronicles. Vallancey twisted language, towers, and traditions 
 into his wicker-work theory of Pagan Ireland ; and Walker 
 built great facts and great blunders, granite blocks and rotten 
 wood, into his antiquarian edifices. One of the commonest 
 errors, attributing immense antiquity, oriental origin, and 
 everything noble in Ireland to the Milesians, originated with 
 these men ; or, rather, was transferred from the adulatory 
 songs of clan-bards to grave stories. Now, it is quite certain 
 that several races flourished here before the Milesians, and that 
 every thing oriental, and much that was famous in Ireland, 
 belonged to some of these elder races, and not to the Scoti or 
 Milesians. 
 
IRISH ANTIQUITIES, 
 
 89 
 
 Premising this much of warning and defence as to the men 
 who first made anything of ancient Ireland known to the mixed 
 nation of modern Ireland, we turn with pure pleasure to 
 their successors, the antiquarians and historians of our own 
 time. 
 
 We liked for awhile bounding from tussuck to tussuck, or 
 resting on a green esker in the domain of the old academicians 
 of Grattan’s time ; but ’tis pleasanter, after all, to tread the firm 
 ground of our own archceologists. 
 
THE ROUND TOWERS OF IRELAND.^ 
 
 Accustomed from boyhood to regard these towers as revela- 
 tions of a gorgeous but otherwise undefined antiquity — dazzled 
 by oriental analogies — finding a refuge in their primeval great- 
 ness from the meanness or the misfortunes of our middle ages, 
 we clung to the belief of their Pagan origin. 
 
 In fancy we had seen the white-robed Druid tend the holy 
 fire in their lower chambers — had measured with the Tyrian- 
 taught astronomer the length of their shadows — and had almost 
 knelt to the elemental worship with nobles whose robes had the 
 dye of the Levant, and sailors whose cheeks were brown with 
 an Egyptian sun, and soldiers whose bronze arms clashed as 
 the trumpets from the tower-top said that the sun had risen. 
 What wonder that we had resented the attempt to cure us of so 
 sweet a frenzy ? 
 
 We plead guilty to having opened Mr. Petrie’s work strongly 
 bigoted against his conclusion. 
 
 On the other hand, we could not forget the authority of the 
 book. Its author we knew was familiar beyond almost any 
 other with the country — had not left one glen unsearched, not 
 one island untrod ; had brought with him the information of a 
 life of antiquarian study, a graceful and exact pencil, and feel- 
 ings equally national and lofty. We knew also that he had the 
 aid of the best Celtic scholars alive in the progress of his work. 
 The long time taken in its preparation ensured maturity ; and 
 the honest men who had criticised it, and the adventurers who 
 had stolen from it enough to make false reputations, equally 
 testified to its merits. 
 
 ^ The Transactions of the Royal Irish Acadetny^ vol. xx. Dublin: 
 Hodges & Smith, Grafton Street. 
 
 90 
 
THE ROUND TOWERS OF IRELAND, 91 
 
 Yet, we repeat, we jealously watched for flaws in Mr. Petrie’s 
 reasoning ; exulted, as he set down the extracts from his 
 opponents, in the hope that he would fail in answering them, 
 and at last surrendered with a sullen despair. 
 
 Looking now more calmly at the discussion, we are grateful 
 to Mr. Petrie for having driven away an idle fancy. In its 
 stead he has given us new and unlooked-for trophies, and more 
 solid information on Irish antiquities than any of his predeces- 
 sors. We may be well content to hand over the Round Towers 
 to Christians of the sixth or the tenth century when we find 
 that these Christians were really eminent in knowledge as well 
 as piety, had arched churches by the side of these campanilia^ 
 gave an alphabet to the Saxons, and hospitality and learning 
 to the students of all western Europe — and the more readily, as 
 we got in exchange of a Pagan race having a Pelasgic 
 architecture, and the arms and ornaments of a powerful and 
 cultivated people. 
 
 The volume before us contains two parts of Mr. Petrie’s 
 essay. The first part is an examination of the false theories of 
 the origin of these towers. The second is an account not only 
 of what he thinks their real origin, but of every kind of early 
 ecclesiastical structure in Ireland. The third part will contain 
 a historical and descriptive account of every ecclesiastical 
 building in Ireland of a date prior to the Anglo-Norman 
 invasion of which remains now exist. The work is crowded 
 with illustrations drawn with wonderful accuracy, and engraved 
 in a style which proves that Mr. O’ Hanlon, the engraver, has 
 become so proficient as hardly to have a superior in wood- 
 cutting. 
 
 We shall for the present limit ourselves to the first part of 
 the work on the 
 
 “erroneous theories with respect to the origin 
 AND uses of the ROUND TOWERS,” 
 
 The first refutation is of the 
 
92 THE ROUND TOWERS OF IRELAND. 
 
 “theory of the DANISH ORIGIN OF THE TOWERS.” 
 
 John Lynch, in his Cambrensis Eversus^ says that the Danes 
 are reported (dicunttir) to have first erected the Round 
 Towers as watch-\o^^xs^ but that the Christian Irish changed 
 them into clock or bell-towers. Peter Walsh^ repeated and 
 exaggerated the statement ; and Ledwich, the West British 
 antiquary of last century, combined it with lies enough to 
 settle his character, though not that of the towers. The only 
 person, at once explicit and honest, who supported this Danish 
 theory was Dr. Molyneux. His arguments are, that all stone 
 buildings, and indeed all evidences of mechanical civilisation," 
 in Ireland were Danish ; that some traditions attributed the 
 Round Towers to them ; that they had fit models in the 
 monuments of their own country ; and that the word by which 
 he says the native Irish call them, viz., “Clogachd,” comes 
 from the Teutonic root, clugga, a bell. These arguments are 
 easily answered. 
 
 The Danes, so far from introducing stone architecture, found 
 it flourishing in Ireland, and burned and ruined our finest 
 buildings, and destroyed mechanical and every kind of civilisa- 
 tion wherever their ravages extended — doing thus in Ireland 
 precisely as they did in France and England, as all annals 
 (their own included) testify. Tradition does not describe the 
 towers as Danish watch-towers, but as Christian belfries. The 
 upright stones and the little barrows, not twelve feet high, of 
 Denmark, could neither give models nor skill to the Danes. 
 They had much ampler possession of England and Scotland, 
 and permanent possession of Normandy, but never a Round 
 Tower did they erect there ; and, finally, the native Irish name 
 for a Round Tower is cloiclheach^ from teach^ a house, and 
 cloc.^ the Irish word used for a bell in Irish works before “the 
 Germans or Saxons had churches or bells,” and before the 
 Danes had ever sent a war-ship into our seas. 
 
 ^ A turbulent and learned Franciscan friar who figured in the 
 Confederation of Kilkenny. — C.P.M. 
 
THE ROUND TOWERS OF IRELAND. 93 
 
 We pass readily from this ridiculous hypothesis with the 
 remark that the gossip which attributes to the Danes our lofty 
 monumental pyramids and cairns, our Druid altars, our dry 
 stone caisils or keeps, and our raths or fortified enclosures for 
 the homes or cattle of our chiefs, is equally and utterly un- 
 founded; and is partly to be accounted for from the name of 
 power and terror which these barbarians left behind, and 
 partly from ignorant persons confounding them with the most 
 illustrious and civilised of the Irish races — the Danaans. 
 
 THEORY OF THE EASTERN ORIGIN OF THE ROUND TOWERS. 
 
 Among the middle and upper classes in Ireland the Round 
 Towers are regarded as one of the results of an intimate con- 
 nection between Ireland and the East, and are spoken of as 
 either — i, Fire Temples; 2, Stations from whence Druid 
 festivals were announced; 3, Sun-dials (gnomons) and astro- 
 nomical observatories; 4, Buddhist or Phallic temples, or two 
 or more of these uses are attributed to them at the same 
 time. 
 
 Mr. Petrie states that the theory of the Phoenician or Indo- 
 Scythic origin of these towers was stated for the first time so 
 recently as 1772 by General Vallancey, in his ‘‘Essay on the 
 Antiquity of the Irish Language,” and was re-asserted by him 
 in many different and contradictory forms in his Collectanea 
 de Rebus Hibernicis^ published at intervals in the following 
 years. 
 
 It may be well to premise who 
 
 GENERAL CHARLES VALLANCEY 
 
 was. His family were from Berry, in France; their name Le 
 Brun, called De Valencia, from their estate of that name. 
 General Vallancey was born in Flanders, but was educated at 
 Eton College. When a captain in the 12th Royal Infantry he 
 was attached to the engineer department in Ireland, published 
 a book on Field Engineering in 1756, and commenced a survey 
 
94 the round towers OF IRELAND. 
 
 of Ireland. During this he picked up something of the Irish 
 language, and is said to have studied it under Morris 
 O’Gorman, clerk of Mary’s Lane Chapel. He died in his house, 
 Lower Mount Street, i8th August 1812, aged 82 years. 
 
 His Collectanea^ and his discourses in the Royal Irish 
 Academy, of which he was an original member, spread far and 
 wide his oriental theories. He was an amiable and plausible 
 man, but of little learning, little industry, great boldness, and 
 no scruples; and while he certainly stimulated men’s feelings 
 towards Irish antiquities, he has left us a reproducing swarm 
 of falsehood, of which Mr. Petrie has happily begun the 
 destruction. Perhaps nothing gave Valiancey’s follies more 
 popularity than the opposition of the Rev. Edward Ledwich, 
 whose Antiquities of Ireland a mass of falsehoods, disparag- 
 ing to the people and the country. 
 
 FIRE TEMPLES. 
 
 Vallancey’s first analogy is plausible. The Irish Druids 
 honoured the elements and kept up sacred fires, and at a 
 particular day in the year all the fires in the kingdom were 
 put out, and had to be re-lighted from the Arch-Druid’s fire. 
 A similar creed and custom existed among the Parsees or 
 Guebres of Persia, and he takes the resemblance to prove 
 connection and identity of creed and civilisation. From this 
 he immediately concludes the Round Towers to be Fire 
 Temples. Now there is no evidence that the Irish Pagans 
 had sacred fires, except in open spaces (on the hill-tops), and 
 therefore none of course that they had them in towers round 
 or square ; but Vallancey falls back on the alleged existence 
 of Round Towers in the East similar to ours, and ort 
 etymology. 
 
 Here is a specimen of his etymologies. The Hebrew word 
 gadul signifies great, and thence a tower ; the Irish name for a 
 round tower, cloghad, is from this gadul or gad and clogh, a 
 stone: and the Druids called everyplace of worship cloghad. 
 To which it is answered— is not gad — clogh, a stone, is 
 
THE ROUND TOWERS OE IRELAND. 95 
 
 not clock, a 3ell. The Irish word for a Round Tower is clock- 
 thack, or bell-house, and there is no proof that the Druids 
 called any place of worship clogkad. 
 
 Vallancey’s guesses are numerous, and nearly all childish, 
 and we shall quote some finishing specimens, with Mr. Petrie’s 
 answers — 
 
 “ This is another characteristic example of Vallancey’s mode of 
 quoting authorities : he first makes O’Brien say that Cuilceach becomes 
 corruptly Claiceach^ and then that the word seems to be corrupted Clog- 
 theach. But O’Brien does not say that Cuilceach is corruptly Claiceach, 
 nor has he the word Culkak or Claiceach in his book ; neither does he 
 say that Cuilceach seems to be a corruption of Clog-theach, but states 
 positively that it is so. The following are the passages which Vallancey 
 has so misquoted and garbled — 
 
 “ ‘Cuilceach, a steeple, cuilceach, Cluan-umba, Cloyne steeple— 
 this word is a corruption of Clog-theach. 
 
 “ ‘ Cloig-theach, a steeple, a belfry; corrupts Cuilg-theach.’ 
 
 “ Our author next tells us that another name for the Round Towers 
 is Sibheit, Sithbeit, and Sithbein, and for this he refers us to O’Brien's 
 and Shaw’s Lexicons ; but this quotation is equally false with those I 
 have already exposed, for the words Sibheit and Sithbeit are not to be 
 found in either of the works referred to. The word Sithbhe is indeed 
 given in both Lexicons, but explained a city, not a round tower. The 
 word Sithbhein is also given in both, but explained a fort, a turret, and 
 the real meaning of the word as still understood in many parts of 
 Ireland is a fairy-hill, or hill of the fairies, and is applied to a green 
 round hill crowned by a small sepulchral mound. 
 
 “ He next tells us that Caiceach, the last name he finds for the Round 
 Towers, is supposed by the Glossarists to be compounded of cai, a 
 house, and teach, a house, an explanation which, he playfully adds, is 
 tautology with a witness. But where did he find authority for the word 
 Caiceach 1 I answer, nowhere ; and the tautology he speaks of was 
 either a creation or a blunder of his own. It is evident to me that the 
 Glossarist to whom he refers is no other than his favourite Cormac ; but 
 the latter makes no such blunder, as will appear from the passage 
 which our author obviously refers to — 
 
 ‘ ‘ ‘ Cai i. teach unde dicitur ceard cha i. teach cearda ; craes cha i. 
 teach cumangd 
 
96 THE ROUND TOWERS OF IRELAND. 
 
 “ ‘ Cai^ i.e., a house; unde dicitur ceard-cha^ the house of the 
 artificer; creas-cha^ i.e.^ a narrow house/” 
 
 The reader has probably now had enough of Vallancey’s 
 etymology, but it is right to add that Mr. Petrie goes through 
 every hint of such proof given by the General, and disposes of 
 them with greater facility. 
 
 The next person disposed of is Mr. Beauford, who derives 
 the name of our Round Towers from Tlacht — earthy asserts 
 that the foundations of temples for Vestal fire exist in Rath-na- 
 Emhain, and other places (poor devil !) — that the Persian Magi 
 overran the world in the time of the great Constantine, introduc- 
 ing Round Towers in place of the Vestal mounds into Ireland, 
 combining their fire-worship with our Druidism — and that the 
 present towers w’ere built in imitation of the Magian Towers* 
 This is all, as Mr. Petrie says, pure fallacy, without a particle 
 of authority; but we should think iwelfth^^ is a misprint for 
 
 seventh^^ in the early part of Beauford’s passage, and 
 therefore that the last clause of Mr. Petrie’s censure is 
 undeserved. 
 
 This Beauford is not to be confounded with Miss Beaufort. 
 She too paganises the towers by aggravating some mis- 
 statements of Mason’s Parochial Survey ; but her errors are 
 not worth notice, except the assertion that the Psalters of Tara 
 and Cashel allege that the towers were for keeping the sacred 
 fire. These Psalters are believed to have perished, and any 
 mention of sacred fires in the glossary of Cormac M‘Cullenan, 
 the supposed compiler of the Psalter of Cashel, is adverse to 
 their being in towers. He says — 
 
 Belli an By i.e. bil iene, i.e. iene bily i.e. the goodly fire, i.e. two 
 goodly fires, which the Druids were used to make, with great incanta- 
 tions on them, and they used to bring the cattle between them against 
 the diseases of each year.” 
 
 Another MS. says — 
 
 Beltainey i.e.y Bel-dine: Bel was the name of an idol; it was on it 
 {Le.y the festival) that a couple of the young of every cattle were exhibited 
 
THE ROUND TOWERS OR IRELAND. 97 
 
 as in the possession of Bel; U 7 tde Beldine» Or, Belthie^ i.e.^ Bil-tine^ 
 i,e., the goodly fire, two goodly fires, which the Druids were used to 
 make with great incantations, and they were used to drive the cattle 
 between them against the diseases of each year.” 
 
 Mr. Petrie continues — 
 
 ^Mt may be remarked that remnants of this ancient custom, in per- 
 haps a modified form, still exist in the May-fires lighted in the streets 
 and suburbs of Dublin, and also in the fires lighted on St. John’s Eve 
 in all other parts of Ireland. The Tinne Elgin of the Highlands, of 
 which Dr. Martin gives the following account, is probably a remnant 
 of it also, but there is no instance of such fires being lighted in towers 
 or houses of any description — 
 
 ‘‘ ‘ The inhabitants here (Isle of Skye) did also make use of a fire call’d 
 Tin-Egin {i.e.), a forced Fire, or Fire of necessity, which they used as 
 an Antidote against the Plague or Murrain in cattle ; and it was per- 
 formed thus : All the Fires in the Parish were extinguish’d, and eighty- 
 one marry’d Men, being thought the necessary number for effecting this 
 Design, took two great Planks of Wood, and nine of ’em were employed 
 by turns, who by their repeated Efforts rubb’d one of the Planks against 
 the other until the Heat thereof produced Fire; and from this forc’d 
 Fire each Family is supplied with new Fire, which is no sooner kindled 
 than a Pot full of water is quickly set on it, and afterwards sprinkled 
 upon the People infected with the Plague, or upon cattle that have the 
 Murrain. And this, they all say, they find successful by experience.’ 
 — Description of the Western Islands of Scotland (second edition), p. 
 II3- 
 
 “ As authority for Miss Beaufort’s second assertion, relative to the 
 Tower of Thlachtga, etc., we are. referred to the Psalter of Tara^ by 
 Comerford (p. 41), cited in the Parochial Sui'vey (vol. iii. p. 320); and 
 certainly in the latter work we do find a passage in nearly the same 
 words which Miss Beaufort uses. But if the lady had herself referred 
 to Comerford’s little work, she would have discovered that the author 
 of the article in the Parochial Suj'vey had in reality no authority for his 
 assertions, and had attempted a gross imposition on the credulity of his 
 readers.” 
 
 Mr. D’ Alton relies much on a passage in Cambrensis^ wherein 
 he says that the fishermen on Lough Neagh (a lake certainly 
 
 699 
 
93 THE ROUND TOWERS OE IRELAND, 
 
 formed by an inundation in the first century, a.d. 62) point to 
 such towers under the lake ; but this only shows they were 
 considered old in Cambrensis’s time (King John’s), for Cam- 
 brensis calls them iurres ecdesiasticas (a Christian appellation) ; 
 and the fishermen of every lake have such idle traditions from 
 the tall objects they are familiar with ; and the steeples of 
 Antrim, etc., were handy to the Loch n-Eathac men. 
 
 One of the authorities quoted by all the Paganists is from 
 the Ulster Annals at the year 448. It is — “ Kl. Jenair. 
 Anno Domini cccc.xP.viiP. ingenti terrae motu per loca varia 
 imminente, plurimi urbis auguste muri recenti adhuc reaedifica- 
 tione constructi, cum l.vii. turribus conruerunt.” This was 
 made to mean that part of the wall of Armagh, with fifty-seven 
 Round Towers, fell in an earthquake in 448, whereas the 
 passage turns out to be a quotation from “ Marcellinus of 
 the fall of part of the defences of Constantinople — “Urbis 
 Augustae 1 ” 
 
 References to towers in Irish annals are quoted by Mr. 
 D’ Alton ; but they turn out to be written about the Cyclopean 
 Forts, or low stone raths, such as we find at Aileach, etc 
 
 CELESTIAL INDEXES. 
 
 Dr. Charles O’Connor, of Stowe, is the chief supporter of the 
 astronomical theory. One of his arguments is founded on the 
 mistaken reading of the word tiiras^hun'^'^ (which he derives 
 from tur^ a tower, and agha 7 t^ or adhaii^ the kindling of flame), 
 instead of truaghan^^ an ascetic. The only other authority of 
 his which we have not noticed is the passage in the Ulster 
 Annals^ at the year 995, in which it is said that certain Fidhne- 
 mead were burned by lightning at Armagh. He translates the 
 word celestial indexes, and paraphrases it Round Towers, and 
 all because fiadh means witness, and 7 ieimhedh^ heavenly or 
 sacred, the real meaning being holy wood, or wood of the 
 sanctuary, from Jidh^ a wood, and nehnhedh^ holy, as is proved 
 by a pile of exact authorities. 
 
 ^ Author of the Life of Thucydides. — C. P.M. 
 
THE ROUND TOWERS OE IRELAND. 99 
 
 Dr. Lanigan, in his ecclesiastical history, and Moore, in his 
 general history, repeat the arguments which we have men- 
 tioned. They also bring objections against the alleged 
 Christian origin, which we hold over; but it is plain that 
 nothing prevailed more with them than the alleged resem- 
 blance of these towers to certain oriental buildings. Assuredly 
 if there were a close likeness between the Irish Round Towers 
 and oriental fire temples of proved antiquity, it would 
 be an argument for identity of use; and though direct 
 testimony from our annals would come in and show that 
 the present towers were built as Christian belfries from 
 the sixth to the tenth centuries, the resemblance would at 
 least indicate that the belfries had been built after the model of 
 Pagan fire towers previously existing here. But rotundos of 
 above thirty feet in diameter” in Persia, Turkish minarets of 
 the tenth or fourteenth centuries, and undated turrets in India, 
 which Lord Valentia thought like our Round Towers, give no 
 such resemblance. We shall look anxiously for exact measure- 
 ments and datas of oriental buildings resembling Round 
 Towers, and weigh the evidence which may be offered to show 
 that there were any Pagan models for the latter in Ireland or in 
 Asia. 
 
 Mr. Windele, of Cork, besides using all the previously- 
 mentioned arguments for the Paganism of these towers, finds 
 another in the supposed resemblance to the nurraggis of 
 SARDINIA, which are tombs or temples formed in that island, and 
 attributed to the Phoenicians. But, alas for the theory, they 
 have turned out to be “ as broad as they’re long.” A square 
 building, 57 feet in each side, with bee-hive towers at each 
 angle, and a centre bee-hive tower reaching to 45 or 65 feet 
 high, with stone stairs, is sadly unlike a Round Tower ! 
 
 The most recent theory is that the Round Towers are 
 
 HERO-MONUMENTS. 
 
 Mr. Windele and the South Munster Antiquarian Society 
 started this. Sir William Belham sanctioned it, and several 
 rash gentlemen dug under towers to prove it. At Cashel, 
 
100 THE ROUND TOWERS OF IRELAND, 
 
 Kinsale, etc., they satisfied themselves that there were no 
 sepulchres or bones ever under the towers, but in some other 
 places they took the rubbish bones casually thrown into the 
 towers, and in two cases the chance underlying of ancient 
 burying-grounds, as proofs of this notion. But Mr. Petrie 
 settles for this idea by showing that there is no such use of the 
 Round Towers mentioned in our annals, and also by the follow- 
 ing most interesting account of the cemeteries and monuments 
 of all the races of Pagan Irish : — 
 
 HISTORY OF THE CEMETERIES. 
 
 “A great king of great judgments assumed the sovereignty of Erin, 
 
 Cormac, son of Art, son of Conn, of the Hundred Battles. Erin 
 was prosperous in his time, because just judgments were distributed 
 throughout it by him ; so that no one durst attempt to wound a man in 
 Erin during the short jubilee of seven years ; for Cormac had the faith 
 of the one true God, according to the law ; for he said that he would 
 not adore stones, or trees, but that he would adore Him who had made 
 them, and who had power over all the elements, /.<?., the one powerful 
 God who created the elements ; in Him he would believe. And he 
 was the third person who had believed in Erin before the arrival of St. 
 Patrick. Conchobor Mac Nessa, to whom Altus had told concerning 
 the crucifixion of Christ, was the first ; Morann, the son of Cairbre 
 Cinncait (who was surnamed Mac Main), was the second person ; and 
 Cormac was the third ; and it is probable that others followed on their 
 track in this belief. 
 
 Where Cormac held his court was at Tara, in imitation of the kings 
 who preceded him, until his eye was destroyed by Engus Gaibhuaiph- 
 nech, the son of Eochaidh Finn Futhairt : but afterwards he resided at 
 Acaill (the hill on which Serin Colaim Cille is at this day), and at 
 Cenannas (Kells), and at the house of Cletech ; for it was not lawful that 
 a king with a blemish should reside at Tara. In the second year 
 after the injuring of his eye he came by his death at the house of Cletech, 
 the bone of a salmon having stuck in his throat. And he (Cormac) told 
 his people not to bury him at Brugh (because it was a cemetery of 
 Idolaters), for he did not worship the same God as any of those interred 
 at Brugh ; but to bury him at Ros na righ, with his face to the east. 
 He afterwards died, and his servants of trust held a council, and came 
 
THE ROUND TOWERS OF IRELAND, loi 
 
 to the resolution of burying him at Brugh, the place where the kings of 
 Tara, his predecessors, were buried. The body of the king was after- 
 wards thrice raised to be carried to Brugh, but the Boyne swelled up 
 thrice, so that they could not come ; so that they observed that it was 
 ‘ violating the judgment of a prince ’ to break through this Testament 
 of the king, and they afterwards dug his grave at Ros na righ, as he 
 himself had ordered. 
 
 “These were the chief cemeteries of Erin before the Faith (/.<?., 
 before the introduction of Christianity), viz., Cruachu, Brugh, Tailltin, 
 Luachair, Ailbe, Oenach Ailbe, Oenach Culi, Oenach Colmain, Tern- 
 hair Erann. 
 
 “Oenach Cruachan, in the first place, it was there the race of 
 Heremon the kings of Tara) were used to bury until the time of 
 Cremhthann, the son of Lughaidh Riabh-n-derg (who was the first king 
 of them that was interred at Brugh), viz., Cobhlhach Coelbregh, and 
 Labhraidh Loingsech, and Eocho Fedhlech with his three sons 
 the three Fidhemhna — i.e.^ Bres, Nar, and Lothoe), and Eocho Airemh, 
 Lughaidh Riabh-n-derg, the six daughters of Eocho Fedhlech 
 Medhbh, and Clothru, Muresc, and Drebrin, Mugain, and Ele), and 
 Adill Mac Mada with his seven brothers (/.(?., Cet, Anion, Doche, et 
 ceteri)^ and all the kings down to Cremhthann (these were all buried at 
 Cruachan). Why was it not at Brugh that the kings (of the race of 
 Cobhthach down to Crimthann) were interred? Not difficult; because 
 the two provinces which the race of Heremon possessed were the 
 province of Gailian the province of Leinster), and the province of 
 Olnecmacht {Le.^ the province of Connaught). In the first place, the 
 province of Gailian was occupied by the race of Labhraidh Loingsech, 
 and the province of Connaught was the peculiar inheritance of the race 
 of Cobhtach Coelbregh ; wherefore it the province of Connaught) 
 was given to Medhbh before every other province. (The reason 
 that the government of this land was given to Medhbh is because there 
 was none of the race of Eochaidh fit to receive it but herself, for Lug- 
 haidh was not fit for action at the time). And whenever, therefore, the 
 monarchy of Erin was enjoyed by any of the descendants of Cobhthach 
 Coelbregh, the province of Connaught was his riddles {i.e,, his native 
 principality). And for this reason they were interred at Oenach na 
 Cruachna. But they were interred at Brugh from the time of 
 Crimhthann (Niadh-nar) to the time of Loeghaire, the son of Niall, 
 except three persons, namely. Art, the son of Conn, and Cormac, the 
 son of Art, and Niall of the Nine Llostages. 
 
102 THE ROUND TOWERS OF IRELAND, 
 
 “ We have already mentioned the cause for which Cormac was not 
 interred there. The reason why Art was not interred there is because 
 he ‘believed,’ the day before the battle of Muccramma was fought, 
 and he predicted the Faith ( 2 .^., that Christianity would prevail in 
 Erin), and he said that his own grave would be at Dumha Dergluachra, 
 where Treoit [Trevet] is at this day, as he mentioned in a poem which 
 he composed — viz., Cain do demta den (i.e., a poem which Art com- 
 posed, the beginning of which is Cain do denna den^ etc.). When his 
 (Art’s) body was afterwards carried eastwards to Dumha Dergluachra, 
 if all the men of Erin were drawing it thence, they could not, so that 
 he was interred in that place because there was a Catholic church to be 
 afterwards at the place where he was interred (/.<?., Treoit hodie), 
 because the truth and the Faith had been revealed to him through 
 his regal righteousness. 
 
 “ Where Niall was interred was at Ochain, whence the hill was 
 called Ochain, i,e., Och Caine^ i,e.^ from the sighing and lamentation 
 which the men of Erin made in lamenting Niall. 
 
 “ Conaire More was interred at Magh Feci in Bregia {i.e.^ at Fert 
 Conaire) ; however, some say that it was Conaire Carpraige was 
 interred there, and not Conaire Mor, and that Conaire Mor was the 
 third king who was interred at Tara — viz., Conaire, Loeghaira, 
 and * * * 
 
 “At Tailltin the kings of Ulster were used to bury — viz., Ollamh 
 Fodhla, with his descendants down to Conchobhar, who wished that 
 he should be carried to a place between Slea and the sea, with his face 
 to the east, on account of the Faith which he had embraced. 
 
 “ The nobles of the Tua ha De Danann were used to bury at Brugh 
 (i.e., the Dagda with his three sons; also Lughaidh and Oe, and 
 011am, and Ogma, and Etan, the Poetess, and Corpre, the son of 
 Etan), and Cremhthann followed them because his wife Nar was of the 
 Tuatha Dea, and it was she solicited him that he should adopt Brugh 
 as a burial-place for himself and his descendants, and this was the 
 cause that they did not bury at Cruachan. 
 
 “ The Lagenians (i.e., Cathair with his race and the kings who were 
 before them) were buried at Oenach Ailbhe. The Clann Dedad (i.e., 
 the race of Conaire and Erna) at Temhair Erann ; the men of Munster 
 (i.e., the Dergthene) at Oenach Culi, and Oenach Colmain ; and the 
 Connacians at Cruachan.” 
 
The round towers of Ireland, 103 
 
 ANCHORITE TOWERS. 
 
 Because Simon Stylites lived in a domicile, sized “scarce 
 two cubits,” on a pillar sixty feet high, and because other 
 anchorites lived on pillars and in cells. Dean Richardson sug- 
 gested that the Irish Round Towers were for hermits ; and 
 was supported by Walter Harris, Dr. Milner, Dr. King, etc. 
 The cloch angcoire, or hermit’s stone, quoted in aid of this 
 fancy, turns out to be a narrow cell \ and so much for the 
 hermits! 
 
 The confusion of 
 
 TOURS AND TOWERS 
 
 is a stupid pun or a vulgar pronunciation in English ; but in 
 Irish gave rise to the antiquarian theory of Dr. Smith, who, in 
 his Histo7y of Cork,, concludes that the Round Towers were 
 penitential prisons, because the Irish word for a penitential 
 round or journey is iuras I 
 
 THE PHALLIC THEORY 
 
 never had any support but poor Henry O’Brien’s enthusiastic 
 ignorance and the caricaturing pen of his illustrator. 
 
 We have now done with the theories of these towers, which 
 Mr. Petrie has shown, past doubt, to be either positively false 
 or quite unproved. His own opinion is that they were used — 
 I, as belfries; 2, as keeps, or houses of shelter for the clergy 
 and their treasures; and 3, as watch-towers and beacons; and 
 into his evidence for this opinion we shall go at a future day, 
 thanking him at present for having displaced a heap of incon- 
 gruous, though agreeable fancies, and given us the learned, the 
 most exact, and the most important work ever published on the 
 antiquities of the Ancient Irish Nation. 
 
THE IRISH BRIGADE. 
 
 When valour becomes a reproach, when patriotism is thought 
 a prejudice, and when a soldier’s sword is a sign of shame, the 
 Irish Brigade will be forgotten or despised. 
 
 The Irish are a military people — strong, nimble, and hardy, 
 fond of adventure, irascible, brotherly, and generous — they have 
 all the qualities that tempt men to war and make them good 
 soldiers. Dazzled by their great fame on the Continent, and 
 hearing of their insular wars chiefly through the interested lies 
 of England, Voltaire expressed his wonder that a nation which 
 had behaved so gallantly abroad had “ always fought badly at 
 home.” It would have been most wonderful. 
 
 It may be conceded that the Irish performed more illustrious 
 actions on the Continent. They fought with the advantages of 
 French discipline and equipment ; they fought as soldiers, with 
 the rights of war, not “rebels, with halters round their necks;” 
 they fought by the side of great rivals and amid the gaze of 
 Europe. 
 
 In the most of their domestic wars they appeared as divided 
 clans or abrupt insurgents ; they were exposed to the treachery 
 of a more instructed, of an unscrupulous and a compact enemy; 
 they had neither discipline, nor generalship, nor arms; their 
 victories were those of a mob, their defeats were followed by 
 extermination. 
 
 We speak of their ordinary contests with England from the 
 time of Roderick O’Connor to that of ’98. Occasionally they 
 had more opportunities, and their great qualities for war 
 appeared. In Hugh (or rather Aodh) O’Neill they found a 
 leader who only wanted material resources to have made them 
 an independent nation. Cautious, as became the heir of so 
 long a strife, he spent years in acquiring military knowledge 
 104 
 
The IRISH BRIGADE. 
 
 los 
 
 and nursing up his clan into the kernel for a nation ; crafty as 
 Bacon and Cecil, and every other man of his time, he learned 
 war in Elizabeth’s armies, and got help from her store-houses. 
 When the discontent of the Pale, religious tyranny, and the 
 intrigues and hostility of Spain and Rome against England 
 gave him an opening, he put his ordered clan into action, 
 stormed the neighbouring garrisons, struck terror into his 
 hereditary foes, and gave hope to all patriots ; but finding that 
 his ranks were too few for battle, he negotiated successfully for 
 peace, but unavailingly for freedom ; his grievances and designs 
 remained, and he retired to repeat the same policy, till, after 
 repeated guerillas and truces, he was strong enough to proclaim 
 alliance with Spain and war with England, and to defeat and 
 slay every deputy that assailed him, till at last he marched from 
 the triumph of^ Beal-an-ath Buidhe (where Marshal Bagenal 
 and his army perished) to hold an almost royal court at 
 Munster, and to reduce the Pale to the limits it had formed in 
 the Wars of the Roses ; and even when the neglect of Spain, the 
 genius of Mountjoy, the resources and intrigues of England, 
 and the exhaustion and divisions of Ireland had rendered 
 success hopeless, the Irish under O’Ruarc, O’Sullivan, and 
 O’Doherty vindicated their military character. 
 
 From that period they, whose foreign services, since Dathi’s 
 time, had been limited to supplying feudatories to the English 
 kings, began to fight under the flags of England’s enemies 
 in every corner of Europe. The artifices of the Stuarts 
 regained them, and in the reign of Charles the First they were 
 extensively enlisted for the English allies and for the crown ; 
 but it was under the guidance of another O’Neill, and for 
 Ireland,^ they again exhibited the qualities which had sustained 
 Tyrone. The battle of Benburb affords as great a proof of 
 Irish soldiership as Fontenoy. 
 
 But it was when, with a formal government and in a regular 
 war, they encountered the Dutch invader they showed the full 
 
 ^ See Mitchel’s Life of Hugh OHeill^ and Meehan’s Flight of the 
 Earls. Dublin : Duffy & Sons. 
 
 ^ Owen Roe, who defeated Monro, 1646. 
 
THE IRISH brigade. 
 
 106 
 
 prowess of the Irish; and at the Boyne, Limerick, Athlone, and 
 Aughrim, in victory or defeat, and always against immensely 
 superior numbers and armaments^ proved that they fought well 
 at home. 
 
 Since the day when Sarsfield sailed the Irish have never 
 had an opportunity of refuting the calumny of England which 
 Voltaire accepted. In ’98 they met enormous forces resting on 
 all the magazines of England ; they had no officers ; their 
 leaders, however brave, neither knew how to organise, pro- 
 vision, station, or manoeuvre troops — their arms were casual — 
 their ignorance profound — their intemperance unrestrainable. 
 If they put English supremacy in peril (and had Arklow or 
 Ballinahinch been attacked with skill, that supremacy was 
 gone), they did so by mere valour. 
 
 It is therefore on the Continent that one must chiefly look 
 for Irish trophies. It is a pious and noble search ; but he who 
 pursues it had need to guard against the error we have noticed 
 in Voltaire, of disparaging Irish soldiership at home. 
 
 The materials for the history of the Irish Brigade are fast 
 accumulating. We have before us the Military History of 
 the Irish Natiojt^ by the late Matthew O’Conor. He was a 
 barrister, but studied military subjects (as became a gentleman 
 and a citizen), peculiarly interested himself in the achievements 
 of his countrymen, and prepared materials for a history of 
 them. He died, leaving his work unfinished, yet happily 
 sufficiently advanced to offer a continuous narrative of Irish 
 internal wars, from Hugh O’Neill to Sarsfield, and of their 
 foreign services up to the Peace of Utrecht, in 1711. The 
 style of the work is earnest and glowing, full of patriotism and 
 liberality ; but Mr. O’Conor was no blind partisan, and he 
 neither hides the occasional excesses of the Irish, nor dispar- 
 ages their opponents. His descriptions of battles are very 
 superior to what one ordinarily meets in the works of civilians, 
 and any one reading them with a military atlas will be gratified 
 and instructed. 
 
 The value of the work is vastly augmented by the appendix, 
 which is a memoir of the Brigade, written in French, in 1749, 
 
THE IRISH BRIGADE. 
 
 107 
 
 and including the War Office orders, and all the changes in 
 organisation, numbers, and pay of the Brigade to that date. 
 This memoir is authenticated thus — 
 
 “ His Excellency, the Duke of Feltre, Minister of War, was so kind 
 as to communicate to me the original memoir above cited, of which 
 this is a perfect copy, which I attest. 
 
 “ De Montmorency Morres (Herve), 
 Adjutant-Commandant, Colonel. 
 
 Paris, 1st September 1813.” 
 
 To give any account of the details of Mr. O’Conor’s book we 
 should abridge it, and an abridgment of a military history is a 
 catalogue of names. It contains accounts of Hugh O’Neill’s 
 campaigns and of the wars of William and James in Ireland. 
 It describes (certainly a new chapter in our knowledge) the 
 services of the Irish in the Low Countries and France during 
 the religious wars in Henri Quatre’s time, and the hitherto 
 equally unknown actions abroad during Charles the Second’s 
 exile and reign. 
 
 The wars of Mountcashel’s (the old) Brigade in 1690-91, under 
 St. Ruth in Savoy, occupy many interesting pages, and the 
 first campaigns of the New Brigade, with the death of Sarsfield 
 and Mountcashel, are carefully narrated. The largest part of 
 the work is occupied with the wars of the Spanish succession, 
 and contains minute narratives of the battles and sieges of 
 Cremona, Spire, Luzzaca, Blenheim, Cassano, Ramilies, 
 Almanza, Alcira, Malplaquet, and Denain, with the actions of 
 the Irish in them. 
 
 Here are great materials for our future History of Ireland. 
 
THE SPEECHES OF GRATTAN.^ 
 
 Of the long line of Protestant patriots Grattan is the first 
 in genius, and first in services. He had a more fervid and 
 more Irish nature than Swift or Flood, and he accomplished 
 what Swift hardly dreamed, and Flood failed in — an Irish 
 constitution. He had immeasurably more imagination than 
 Tone; and though he was far behind the great Founder of the 
 United Irishmen in organising power, he surpassed him in 
 inspiration. The statues of all shall be in our forums, and 
 examples of all in our hearts, but that of Grattan shall be 
 pre-eminent. The stubborn and advancing energy of Swift 
 and Flood may teach us to bear up against wrong ; the 
 principles of Tone may end in liberation ; but the splendid 
 nationality of Grattan shall glorify us in every condition. 
 
 The speeches of Grattan were collected and his memoirs 
 written by his son. The latter is an accessible and an invalu- 
 able account of his life ; but the speeches were out of print, not 
 purchasable under five or six guineas, and then were unman- 
 ageably numerous for any but a professed politician. Mr. 
 Madden’s volume gives for a trifle all Grattan’s most valuable 
 speeches, with a memoir sufficient to explain the man and the 
 orator. 
 
 On the speeches of Grattan here published we have little to 
 say. They are the finest specimens of imaginative eloquence 
 in the English, or in any, language. There is not much pathos, 
 and no humour in them, and in these respects Grattan is far 
 less of an Irishman, and of an orator too, than Curran ; but a 
 
 ^ “ The Select Speeches of the Right Hon. Henry Grattan. To 
 which is added his Letter on the Union, with a Commentary on his 
 Career and Character.” By Daniel Owen Madden, Esq., of the Inner 
 Temple. Dublin : James Duffy, 1845. 8vo, pp. 534. 
 
 108 
 
THE SPEECHES OF GRATTAH, 
 
 109 
 
 philosophy, penetrating constitutions for their warnings, and 
 human nature for its guides — a statesman’s (as distinguished 
 from an antiquarian’s) use of history — a passionate scorn and 
 invective for the base, tyrannical, and unjust — a fiery and 
 copious zeal for liberty and for Ireland, and a diction and 
 cadence almost lyrical, made Grattan the sudden achiever of a 
 Revolution, and will make him for ever one of the very elements 
 of Ireland. 
 
 No other orator is so uniformly animated. No other orator 
 has brightened the depths of political philosophy with such 
 vivid and lasting light. No writer in the language except 
 Shakespeare has so sublime and suggestive a diction. His 
 force and vehemence are amazing — far beyond Chatham, far 
 beyond Fox, far beyond any orator we can recall. 
 
 To the student of oratory Grattan’s speeches are dangerously 
 suggestive, overpowering spirits that will not leave when bid. 
 Yet, with all this terrible potency, who would not bask in his 
 genius, even at the hazard of having his light for ever in your 
 eyes. The brave student will rather exult in his effulgence — 
 not to rob, not to mimic it — but to catch its inspiration, 
 and then go on his way resolved to create a glory of his own 
 which, however small, being genuine, shall not pale within its 
 sphere. 
 
 To give a just idea of Grattan’s rush and splendour to any 
 one not familiar with his speeches is impossible; but some 
 glimmer may be got by one reading the extracts we shall add 
 here. We shall take them at random, as we open the pages in 
 the book, and leave the reader, untaught in our great orator, to 
 judge, if chance is certain of finding such gems, what would 
 not judicious care discover ! Let him use that care again and 
 again. 
 
 “ Sir, we may hope to dazzle with illumination, and we may sicken 
 with addresses, but the public imagination will never rest, nor will her 
 heart be well at ease ; never ! so long as the parliament of England 
 exercises or claims a legislation over this country : so long as this shall 
 be the case, that very free trade, otherwise a perpetual attachment, will 
 
no 
 
 THE SPEECHES OF GRATTAN, 
 
 be the cause of new discontent ; it will create a pride to feel the indig- 
 nity of bondage ; it will furnish a strength to bite your chain, and the 
 liberty withheld will poison the good communicated, 
 
 ^ “ The British minister mistakes the Irish character; had he intended 
 to make Ireland a slave he should have kept her a beggar ; there is no 
 middle policy ; win her heart by the restoration of her right, or cut off 
 the nation’s right hand ; greatly emancipate, or fundamentally destroy. 
 We may talk plausibly to England, but so long as she exercises a power 
 to bind this country, so long are the nations in a state of war ; the 
 claims of the one go against the liberty of the other, and the sentiments 
 of the latter go to oppose those claims to the last drop of her blood. 
 The English opposition, therefore, are right ; mere trade will not 
 satisfy Ireland — they judge of us by other great nations, by the nation 
 whose political life has been a struggle for liberty ; they judge of us 
 with a true knowledge and just deference for our character : that a 
 country enlightened as Ireland, chartered as Ireland, armed as Ireland, 
 and injured as Ireland, will be satisfied with nothing less than liberty. 
 
 “ Impracticable ! impracticable ! impracticable ! a zealous divine 
 will say; any alteration is beyond the power and wisdom of parliament ; 
 above the faculties of man to make adequate provision for 900 clergy- 
 men who despise riches. Were it to raise a new tax for their provision, 
 or for that of a body less holy, how easy the task ! how various the 
 means ! but when the proposal is to diminish a tax already established, 
 an impossibility glares us in the face, of a measure so contrary to our 
 practices both in church and state.” 
 
 We were wrong in saying there was no humour in Grattan. 
 Here is a passage humorous enough, but it is scornful, rhetorical 
 humour — 
 
 ‘‘ It does not affect the doctrine of our religion; it does not alter the 
 church establishment ; it does not affect the constitution of episcopacy. 
 The modus does not even alter the mode of their provision, it only 
 limits the quantum, and limits it on principles much less severe than 
 that charity which they preach, or that abstinence which they inculcate. 
 Is this innovation ? — as if the Protestant religion was to be propagated 
 in Ireland, like the influence of a minister, by bribery ; or like the 
 influence of a county candidate, by money; or like the cause of a 
 potwalloping canvasser, by the weight of the purse ; as if Christ could 
 not prevail over the earth unless Mammon took him by the hand. Am 
 
THE SPEECHES OF GRATTAN. 
 
 Ill 
 
 I to understand that if you give the parson I2s. in the acre for potatoes, 
 and IDS. for wheat, the Protestant religion is safe on its rock? But if 
 you reduce him to 6s. the acre for potatoes and wheat, then Jupiter 
 shakes the heavens with his thunder, Neptune rakes up the deep with 
 his trident, and Pluto leaps from his throne ! See the curate — he 
 rises at six to morning prayers ; he leaves company at six for evening 
 prayer ; he baptises, he marries, he churches, he buries, he follows with 
 pious offices his fellow-creature from the cradle to the grave ; for what 
 immense income ! what riches to reward these inestimable services ? 
 (Do not depend on the penury of the laity, let his own order value his 
 deserts); a year ! ;,f5o ! for praying, for christening, for marrying, 
 for churching, for burying, for following with Christian offices his fellow- 
 creature from cradle to grave ; so frugal a thing is devotion, so cheap 
 religion, so easy the terms on which man may worship his Maker, and 
 so small the income, in the opinion of ecclesiastics, sufficient for the 
 duties of a clergyman, as far as he is connected at all with the Christian 
 religion. 
 
 “ By this trade of parliament the King is absolute ; his will is 
 signified by both houses of parliament, who are now as much an 
 instrument in his hand as a bayonet in the hands of a regiment. Like 
 a regiment we have our adjutant, who sends to the infirmary for the old 
 and to the brothel for the young, and men thus carted, as it were, into 
 this house, to vote for the minister, are called the representatives of the 
 people ! Suppose General Washington to ring his bell, and order his 
 servants out of livery to take their seats in Congress — you can apply 
 this instance. 
 
 ‘‘ It is not life but the condition of living — the slave is not so likely V 
 to complain of the want of property as the proprietor of the want of 
 privilege. The human mind is progressive — the child does not look 
 back to the parent that gave him being, nor the proprietor to the 
 people that gave him the power of acquisition, but both look forward 
 — the one to provide for the comforts of life, and the other to obtain 
 all the privileges of property.” 
 
 But we have fallen on one of his most marvellous passages, 
 and we give it entire — 
 
 “ I will put this question to my country; I will suppose her at the 
 bar, and I will ask her, Will you fight for a Union as you would for a 
 
1 12 
 
 THE SPEECHES OF GRATTAN. 
 
 constitution ? Will you fight for that Lords and that Commons who, 
 in the last century, took away your trade, and, in the present, your 
 constitution, as for that King, Lords, and Commons who have restored 
 both ? Well, the minister has destroyed this constitution ; to destroy 
 is easy. The edifices of the mind, like the fabrics of marble, require 
 an age to build, but ask only minutes to precipitate ; and as the fall of 
 both is an effort of no time, so neither is it a business of any strength — 
 a pick-axe and a common labourer will do the one — a little lawyer, a 
 little pimp, a wicked minister the other. 
 
 “ The constitution, which, with more or less violence, has been the 
 inheritance of this country for six hundred years — that modus tenendi 
 parliajnentum^ which lasted and outlasted of Plantagenet the wars, of 
 Tudor the violence, and of Stuart the systematic falsehood — the con- 
 dition of our connection — yes, the constitution he destroys is one of the 
 pillars of the British Empire. He may walk round it and round it, 
 and the more he contemplates the more must he admire it — such a one 
 as had cost England of money millions and of blood a deluge, cheaply 
 and nobly expended — whose restoration had cost Ireland her noblest 
 efforts, and was the habitation of her loyalty — we are accustomed to 
 behold the kings of these countries in the keeping of parliament — I say 
 of her loyalty as well as of her liberty, where she had hung up the 
 sword of the Volunteer — her temple of fame as well as of freedom — 
 where she had seated herself, as she vainly thought, in modest 
 security and in a long repose. 
 
 I have done with the pile which the minister batters, I come to 
 the Babel which he builds ; and as he throws down without a prin- 
 ciple, so does he construct without a foundation. This fabric he calls 
 a Union, and to this his fabric there are two striking objections — first, 
 it is no Union ; it is not an identification of people, for it excludes the 
 Catholics ; secondly, it is a consolidation of the Irish legislatures — that 
 is to say, a merger of the Irish parliament, and incurs every objection 
 to a Union, without obtaining the only object which a Union pro- 
 fesses ; it is an extinction of the constitution, and an exclusion of the 
 people. Well ! he has overlooked the people as he has overlooked the 
 sea. I say he excludes the Catholics, and he destroys their best chance 
 of admission — the relative consequence. Thus he reasons, that here- 
 after, in course of time (he does not say when), if they behave them- 
 selves (he does not say how), they may see their subjects submitted to 
 a course of discussion (he does not say with what result or determina- 
 
THE SPEECHES OE GRATTAN. 113 
 
 tion) ; and as the ground for this inane period, in which he promises 
 nothing, and in which, if he did promise much, at so remote a period 
 he could perform nothing, unless he, like the evil he has accomplished, 
 be immortal. For this inane sentence, in which he can scarcely be 
 said to deceive the Catholic, or suffer the Catholic to deceive himself, 
 he exhibits no other ground than the physical inanity of the Catholic 
 body accomplished by a Union, which, as it destroys the relative 
 importance of Ireland, so it destroys the relative proportion of the 
 Catholic inhabitants, and thus they become admissible, because they 
 cease to be anything. Hence, according to him, their brilliant 
 expectation; ‘You were,’ say his advocates, and so imports his 
 argument, ‘ before the Union as three to one, you will be by the Union 
 as one to four.’ Thus he founds their hopes of political power on the 
 extinction of physical consequence, and makes the inanity of their 
 body and the nonentity of their country the pillars of their future 
 ambition.” 
 
 We now return to the memoir by Mr. Madden. It is not 
 the details of a life meagre for want of space, and confused 
 for want of principles, as most little biographies are; it is 
 an estimate — a profound one — of Grattan’s original nature, 
 of the influences which acted on him from youth to man- 
 hood, of his purposes, his principles, and his influence on 
 Ireland. 
 
 Henry Grattan was twenty-nine years of age when he entered 
 on politics, and in seven years he was the triumphant leader of 
 a people free and victorious after hereditary bondage. He 
 entered parliament educated in the metaphysical and political 
 philosophy of the time, injured by its cold and epigrammatic 
 verse and its artificial tastes — familiar with every form of aris- 
 tocratic life from Kilkenny to London — familiar, too, with 
 Chatham’s oratory and principles, and with Flood’s views 
 and example. He came when there were great forces rushing 
 through the land — eloquence, love of liberty, thirst for com- 
 merce, hatred of English oppression, impatience, glory, and, 
 above all, a military array. He combined these elements and 
 used them to achieve the Revolution of ’82. Be he for ever 
 honoured ! 
 
 700 
 
THE SPEECHES OF GRATTAN, 
 
 114 
 
 Mr. Madden defends him against Flood on the question of 
 Simple Repeal. Here is his reasoning — 
 
 ‘‘ It is an easy thing now to dispose of the idle question of simple 
 repeal. In truth, there was nothing whatever deserving of attention in 
 the point raised by Mr. Flood. The security for the continuance of 
 Irish freedom did not depend upon an English act of parliament. It 
 was by Irish will and not at English pleasure that the new constitution 
 was to be supported. The transaction between the countries was of a 
 high political nature, and it was to be judged by political reason, and 
 by statesmanlike computation, and not by the petty technicalities of the 
 court of law. The revolution of 1782, as carried by Ireland, and 
 assented to by England (in repealing the 6th George the First;, was 
 a political compact — proposed by one country, and acknowledged by 
 the other in the face of Europe ; it was not (as Mr. Flood and his 
 partisans construed the transaction) of the nature of municipal right, to 
 be enforced or annulled by mere judicial exposition,” 
 
 This is unanswerable, but Grattan should have gone further. 
 The Revolution was effected mainly by the Volunteers, whom 
 he had inspired ; arms could alone have preserved the constitu- 
 tion. Flood was wrong in setting value on one form — Grattan 
 in relying on any ; but both before and after ’82 Flood seems to 
 have had glimpses that the question was one of might, as well 
 as of right, and that national laws could not last under such an 
 alien army. 
 
 Taken as military representatives, the Convention at the 
 Rotundo was even more valuable than as a civic display. Mr. 
 Madden censures Grattan for having been an elaborate neutral 
 during these Reform dissensions ; but that the result of such 
 neutrality ruined the Convention proves a comparative want of 
 power in Flood, who could have governed that Convention in 
 spite of the rascally English and the feeble Irish Whigs. Oh, 
 had Tone been in that council 1 
 
 In describing Grattan’s early and enthusiastic and ceaseless 
 advocacy of Catholic liberty, Mr. Madden has a just subject for 
 unmixed eulogy. Let no one imagine that the interest of these 
 Emancipation speeches has died with the achievement of what 
 
THE SPEECHES OF GRATTAN. 
 
 115 
 
 they pleaded for ; they will ever remain divinest protests against 
 the vice and impolicy of religious ascendency, of sectarian 
 bitterness, and of bigot separation. 
 
 For this admirable beginning of the design of giving Ireland 
 its most glorious achievement — the speeches of its orators — to 
 contemplate, the country should be grateful ; but if there can be 
 anything better for it to hear than can be had in Grattan’s 
 speeches, it is such language as this from his eloquent editor — 
 
 “ Reader ! if you be an Irish Protestant, and entertain harsh pre- 
 judices against your Catholic countrymen, study the works and life of 
 Grattan — learn from him, for none can teach you better how to purify 
 your nature from bigotry. Learn from him to look upon all your 
 countrymen with a loving heart — to be tolerant of infirmities caused by 
 their unhappy history — and, like Grattan, earnestly sympathise with 
 all that is brave and generous in their character. 
 
 “ Reader ! if you be an Irish Catholic, and that you confound the 
 Protestant religion with tyranny, learn from Grattan that it is possible 
 to be a Protestant and have a heart for Ireland and its people. Think 
 that the brightest age of Ireland was when Grattan — a steady Pro- 
 testant — raised it to proud eminence ; think also that in the hour of 
 his triumph he did not forget the state of your oppressed fathers, but 
 laboured through his virtuous life that both you and your children 
 should enjoy unshackled liberty of conscience. 
 
 “ But reader ! whether you be Protestant or Catholic, or whatever 
 be your party, you will do well as an Irishman to ponder upon the 
 spirit and principles which governed the public and private life of 
 Grattan. Learn from him how to regard 'your countrymen of all 
 denominations. Observe, as he did, how very much that is excellent 
 belongs to both the great parties into which Ireland is divided. If 
 (as some do) you entertain dispiriting views of Ireland, recollect that 
 any country containing such elements as those which roused the genius 
 of Grattan never need despair. Sursum co7'da. Be not disheartened. 
 
 “Go — go — my countrymen — and, within your social sphere, carry into 
 practice those moral principles which Grattan so eloquently taught, and 
 which he so remarkably enforced by his well -spent life. He will teach 
 you to avoid hating men on account of their religious professions or 
 hereditary descent. From him you will learn principles which, if 
 carried out, would generate a new state of society in Ireland.” 
 
MEMORIALS OF WEXFORD. 
 
 ^Twixt Croghan-Kinshela and Hook Head, ’twixt Carnsore 
 and Mount Leinster, there is as good a mass of men as ever 
 sustained a state by honest franchises, by peace, virtue, and 
 intelligent industry; and as stout a mass as ever tramped 
 through a stubborn battle. There is a county where we might 
 seek more of stormy romance, and there is a county where 
 prospers a shrewder economy, but no county in Ireland is fitter 
 for freedom than Wexford. 
 
 They are a peculiar people — these Wexford men. Their 
 blood is for the most part English and Welsh, though mixed 
 with the Danish and Gaelic, yet they are Irish in thought and 
 feeling. They are a Catholic people, yet on excellent terms 
 with their Protestant landlords. Outrages are unknown, for 
 though the rents are high enough, they are not unbearable by a 
 people so industrious and skilled in farming. 
 
 Go to the fair and you will meet honest dealing, and a look 
 that heeds no lordling’s frown — for the Wexford men have 
 neither the base bend nor the baser craft of slaves. Go to the 
 hustings, and you will see open and honest voting; no man 
 shrinking or crying for concealment, or extorting a bribe under 
 the name of “ his expenses.” Go to their farms, and you will 
 see a snug homestead, kept clean, prettily sheltered (much 
 what you’d see in Down), more green crops than even in 
 Ulster, the National School and the Repeal Reading-room well 
 filled, and every religious duty regarded. 
 
 Wexford is not all it might be, or all that, with more education 
 and the life-hope of nationality, it will be — there is something to 
 blame and something to lament, here a vice sustained, and there 
 a misfortune lazily borne ; yet, take it for all in all, it is the 
 most prosperous, it is the pattern county of the South ; and 
 
 ii6 
 
MEMORIALS OF WEXFORD, 
 
 117 
 
 when we see it coming forward in a mass to renew its demand 
 for native government, it is an omen that the spirit of the people 
 outlives quarrels and jealousies, and that it has a rude vitality 
 which will wear out its oppressors. 
 
 Nor are we indifferent to the memories of Wexford. It owes 
 much of its peace and prosperity to the war it sustained. It rose 
 in ’98 with little organisation against intolerable wrong ; and 
 though it was finally beaten by superior forces, it taught its 
 aristocracy and the government a lesson not easily forgotten — a 
 lesson that popular anger could strike hard as well as sigh 
 deeply ; and that it was better to conciliate than provoke those 
 who even for an hour had felt their strength. The red rain 
 made Wexford’s harvest grow. Theirs was no treacherous 
 assassination — theirs no stupid riot — theirs no pale mutiny. 
 They rose in mass and swept the country by sheer force. 
 
 Nor in their sinking fortunes is there anything to blush at. 
 Scullabogue was not burned by the fighting men. 
 
 Yet nowhere did the copper sun of that July burn upon a 
 more heart-piercing sight than a rebel camp. Scattered on a 
 hill-top, or screened in a gap, were the grey-coated thousands, 
 their memories mad at burned cabins, and military whips, and 
 hanged friends ; their hopes dimmed by partial defeat ; their 
 eyes lurid with care ; their brows full of gloomy resignation. 
 Some have short guns, which the stern of a boat might bear, 
 but which press through the shoulder of a marching man ; and 
 others have light fowling-pieces, with dandy locks — troublesome 
 and dangerous toys. Most have pikes, stout weapons, too ; and 
 though some swell to hand-spikes, and others thin to knives, yet, 
 for all that, fatal are they to dragoon or musketeer if they can meet 
 him in a rush ; but how shall they do so? The gunsmen have 
 only a little powder in scraps of paper or bags, and their balls 
 are few and rarely fit. They have no potatoes ripe, and they 
 have no bread — their food is the worn cattle they have crowded 
 there, and which the first skirmish may rend from them. There 
 are women and children seeking shelter, seeking those they 
 love ; and there are leaders busier, feebler, less knowing, less 
 resolved than the women and the children. 
 
ii8 MEMORIALS OF WEXFORD. 
 
 Great hearts ! how faithful ye are ! How ye bristled up when 
 the foe came on, how ye set your teeth to die as his shells and 
 round-shot fell steadily ; and with how firm a cheer ye dashed 
 at him, if he gave you any chance at all of a grapple ! From 
 the wild burst with which ye triumphed at Oulart Hill, down to 
 the faint gasp wherewith the last of your last column died in the 
 corn-fields of Meath, there is nothing to shame your valour, 
 your faith, or your patriotism. You wanted arms, and you 
 wanted leaders. Had you had them, you would have guarded 
 a green flag in Dublin Castle a week after you beat Walpole. 
 Isolated, unorganised, unofflcered, half-armed, girt by a swarm 
 of foes, you ceased to fight, but you neither betrayed nor 
 repented. Your sons need not fear to speak of Ninety-eight. 
 
 You, people of Wexford, almost all Repealers, are the sons 
 of the men of ’98 ; prosperous and many, will you only shout 
 for Repeal, and line roads and tie boughs for a holiday ? Or 
 will you press your organisation, work at your education, and 
 increase your political power, so that your leaders may know 
 and act on the knowledge that, come what may, there is trust 
 in Wexford? 
 
THE HISTORY OF TO-DAY. 
 
 From 1793 to 1829 — for thirty-six years — the Irish Catholics 
 struggled for Emancipation. That Emancipation was but 
 admission to the Bench, the Inner Bar, and Parliament. It 
 was won by self-denial, genius, vast and sustained labours, 
 and, lastly, by the sacrifice of the forty-shilling freeholders — 
 the poor veterans of the war — and by submission to insulting 
 oaths ; yet it was cheaply bought. Not so cheaply, perchance, 
 as if won by the sword ; for on it were expended more 
 treasures, more griefs, more intellect, more passion, more of all 
 which makes life welcome, than had been needed for war ; still 
 it was cheaply bought, and Ireland has glorified herself, and 
 will through ages triumph in the victory of ’29. 
 
 Yet what was Emancipation compared to Repeal? 
 
 The one put a silken badge on a few members of one 
 profession ; the other would give to all professions and all 
 trades the rank and riches which resident proprietors, domestic 
 legislation, and flourishing commerce infallibly create. 
 
 Emancipation made it possible for Catholics to sit on the 
 judgment seat ; but it left a foreign administration, which has 
 excluded them, save in two or three cases, where over- 
 topping eminence made the acceptance of a Judgeship no 
 promotion; and it left the local Judges — those with whom 
 the people has to deal — as partial, ignorant, bigotted as 
 ever ; while Repeal would give us an Irish code and Irish- 
 hearted Judges in every Court, from the Chancery to the Petty 
 Sessions. 
 
 Emancipation dignified a dozen Catholics with a senatorial 
 name in a foreign and hostile Legislature. Repeal would 
 give us a Senate, a Militia, an Administration, all our own. 
 
 The Penal Code, as it existed since 1793, insulted the faith of 
 119 
 
120 
 
 THE HISTOR Y OF TO-DA V. 
 
 the Catholics, restrained their liberties, and violated the public 
 Treaty of Limerick. The Union has destroyed our manufac- 
 tures, prohibits our flag, prevents our commerce, drains our 
 rental, crushes our genius, makes our taxation a tribute, our 
 representation a shadow, our name a by-word. It were 
 nobler to strive for Repeal than to get Emancipation. 
 
 Four years ago the form of Repeal agitation began — two 
 years ago, its reality. Have we not cause to be proud of the 
 labours of these two years If life be counted, not by the 
 rising of suns, or the idle turning of machinery, but by the 
 growth of the will, and the progress of thoughts and passions in 
 the soul, we Irishmen have spent an age since we raised our 
 first cry for liberty. Consider what we were then, and what 
 we have done since. We had a People unorganised — disgusted 
 with a Whig alliance — beaten in a dishonourable struggle to 
 sustain a faction — ignorant of each other’s will — without 
 books, without song, without leaders (save one), without 
 purposes, without strength, without hope. The Corn Exchange 
 was the faint copy of the Catholic Association, with a few 
 enthusiasts, a few loungers, and a few correspondents. 
 Opposite to us was the great Conservative party, with a 
 majority exceeding our whole representation, united, flushed, 
 led by the craftiest of living statesmen and the ablest of living 
 generals. Oh, how disheartening it was then, when, day by 
 day, we found prophecy and exhortation, lay and labour, flung 
 idly before a distracted People ! May we never pass through 
 that icy ordeal again ! 
 
 How different now ! The People are united under the 
 greatest system of organisation ever attempted in any country. 
 They send in, by their Collectors, Wardens, and Inspectors, to 
 the central office of Ireland, the contributions needed to carry 
 on the Registration of Voters, the public meetings, the publica- 
 tions, the law expenses, and the organisation of the Association ; 
 and that in turn carries on registries, holds meetings, opens 
 reading-rooms, sends newspapers, and books, and political 
 instructions, back through the same channel; so that the 
 Central Committee knows the state of every parish, and every 
 
THE HISTOR Y OF TO-DA K 
 
 I2I 
 
 parish receives the teaching and obeys the will of the Central 
 Committee. 
 
 The Whig Alliance has melted, like ice before the sun, and 
 the strong souls of our people will never again serve the 
 purposes of a faction. 
 
 The Conservative party, without union and without principle, 
 is breaking up. Its English section is dividing into the tools of 
 expediency and the pioneers of a New Generation — its Irish 
 section into Castle Hacks and National Conservatives. 
 
 Meantime, how much have the Irish people gained and 
 done ? They have received and grown rich under torrents of 
 thought. Song and sermon and music, speech and pamphlet, 
 novel and history, essay and map and picture, have made the 
 dull thoughtful and the thoughtful studious, and will make the 
 studious wise and powerful. They have begun a system of 
 self-teaching in their reading-rooms. If they carry it we shall, 
 before two years, have in every parish men able to manufac- 
 ture, to trade, and to farm — men acquainted with all that 
 Ireland was, is, and should be — men able to serve The Irish 
 Nation in peace and war. 
 
 In the teeth, too, of the Government we held our meetings. 
 They are not for this time, but they were right well in their 
 own time. They showed our physical force to the Continent, 
 to ourselves, to America, to our rulers. They showed that the 
 people would come and go rapidly, silently, and at bidding, in 
 numbers enough to recruit a dozen armies. These are literal 
 facts. Any one monster meeting could have offered little 
 resistance in the open country to a regular army, but it con- 
 tained the materials — the numbers, intelligence, and obedience 
 — of a conquering host. Whenever the impression of their 
 power grows faint we shall revive them again. 
 
 The toleration of these meetings was the result of fear ; the 
 prosecution of their chiefs sprung from greater fear. That 
 prosecution was begun audaciously, was carried on meanly 
 and with virulence, and ended with a charge and a verdict 
 which disgraced the law. An illegal imprisonment afforded a 
 glorious proof that the people could refrain from violence under 
 
122 
 
 THE HISTOR Y OF TO-DA Y. 
 
 the worst temptation ; that their leaders were firm ; and, 
 better than all, that had these leaders been shot, not prisoned, 
 their successors were ready. Such an imprisonment served 
 Ireland more than an acquittal, for it tried her more ; and then 
 came the day of triumph, when the reluctant constitution 
 liberated our chiefs and branded our oppressors. 
 
 This is a history of two years never surpassed in importance 
 and honour. This is a history which our sons shall pant over 
 and envy. This is a history which pledges us to perseverance. 
 This is a history which guarantees success. 
 
 Energy, patience, generosity, skill, tolerance, enthusiasm, 
 created and decked the agitation. The world attended us 
 with its thoughts and prayers. The graceful genius of Italy 
 and the profound intellect of Germany paused to wish us well. 
 The fiery heart of France tolerated our unarmed effort, and 
 proffered its aid. America sent us money, thought, love — she 
 made herself a part of Ireland in her passions and her organisa- 
 tion. From London to the wildest settlement which throbs in 
 the tropics or shivers nigh the Pole, the empire of our misruler 
 was shaken by our effort. To all earth we proclaimed our 
 wrongs. To man and God we made oath that we would never 
 cease to strive till an Irish nation stood supreme on this island. 
 The genius which roused and organised us, the energy which 
 laboured, the wisdom that taught, the manhood which rose up, 
 the patience which obeyed, the faith which swore, and the 
 valour that strained for action, are here still, experienced, 
 recruited, resolute. 
 
 The future shall realise the promise of the past. 
 
THE RESOURCES OF IRELAND.i 
 
 Bishop Berkeley put, as a query, could the Irish live and 
 prosper if a brazen wall surrounded their island ? The question 
 has been often and vaguely replied to. 
 
 Dr. Kane has at length answered it, and proved the affirmative. 
 Confining himself strictly to the land of our island (for he does 
 not enter on the subjects of fisheries and foreign commerce), he 
 has proved that we possess physical elements for every im- 
 portant art. Not that he sat down to prove this. Taste, duty, 
 industry, and genius prompted and enabled him gradually to 
 acquire a knowledge of the physical products and powers of 
 Ireland, and his mastery of chemical and mechanical science 
 enabled him to see how these could be used. 
 
 Thus qualified, he tried, in the lecture-room of the Dublin 
 Society, to communicate his knowledge to the public. He was 
 as successful as any man lecturing on subjects requiring 
 accurate details could be ; and now he has given, in the volume 
 before us, all his lectures, and much more. He then is no 
 party pamphleteer, pandering to the national vanity; but a 
 philosopher, who garnered up his knowledge soberly and surely, 
 and now gives us the result of his studies. There was 
 undoubtedly a good deal of information on the subjects treated 
 of by Dr. Kane scattered through our topographical works and 
 parliamentary reports, but that information is, for the most part, 
 vague, unapplied, and not tested by science. Dr. Kane’s work 
 is full, clear, scientific, exact in stating places, extent, prices, and 
 every other working detail, and is a manual of the whole subject. 
 
 ^ The Industrial Resources of Ireland^ by Robert Kane, M.D., 
 Secretary to the Council of the Royal Irish Academy, Professor of 
 Natural Philosophy to the Royal Dublin Society, and of Chemistry 
 to the Apothecaries* Hall of Ireland. Dublin ; Hodges & Smith, 21 
 College Green, 
 
 123 
 
124 
 
 THE RESOURCES OE IRELAND. 
 
 In such interlaced subjects as industrial resources we must 
 be content with practical classifications. 
 
 Dr. Kane proceeds in the following order : — First, he con- 
 siders the mechanical powers of the country — viz., its fuel and 
 its water powers. Secondly, its mineral resources — its iron, 
 copper, lead, sulphur, marble, slates, etc. Thirdly, the agricul- 
 ture of the country in its first function — the raising of food, and 
 the modes of cropping, manuring, draining, and stacking. 
 Fourthly, agriculture in its secondary use, as furnishing staples 
 for the manufacture of woollens, linens, starch, sugar, spirits, etc. 
 Fifthly, the modes of carrying internal trade by roads, canals, 
 and railways. Sixthly, the cost and condition of skilled and 
 unskilled labour in Ireland. Seventhly, our state as to capital. 
 And he closes by some earnest and profound thoughts on the 
 need of industrial education in Ireland. 
 
 Now, let us ask the reader what he knows upon any or all 
 of these subjects; and whether he ought, as a citizen, or a 
 man of education, or a man of business, to be ignorant of 
 them ? Such ignorance as exists here must be got rid of, or 
 our cry of “ Ireland for the Irish” will be a whine or a brag, 
 and will be despised as it deserves. We must know Ireland 
 from its history to its minerals, from its tillage to its antiquities, 
 before we shall be an Irish nation, able to rescue and keep 
 the country. And if we are too idle, too dull, or too capricious 
 to learn the arts of strength, wealth, and liberty, let us not 
 murmur at being slaves. 
 
 For the present we shall confine ourselves to the subjects 
 of the mechanical powers and minerals of Ireland, as treated 
 by Dr. Kane. 
 
 The first difference between manufactures now and in any 
 former time is the substitution of machines for the hands of 
 man. It may indeed be questioned whether the increased 
 strength over matter thus given to man compensates for the ill 
 effects of forcing people to work in crowds; of destroying 
 small and pampering large capitalists, of lessening the dis- 
 tribution of wealth even by the very means which increase its 
 production. 
 
THE RESOURCES OF IRELAND, 125 
 
 We sincerely lament, with Lord Wharncliffe, the loss of 
 domestic manufactures ; we would prefer one house-wife skilled 
 in the distaff and the dairy — home-bred, and home-taught, 
 and home-faithful — to a factory full of creatures who live amid 
 the eternal roll, and clash, and glimmer of spindles and rollers, 
 watching with aching eyes the thousand twirls, and capable 
 of but one act — tying the broken threads. We abhor that 
 state; we prefer the life of the old times, or of modern Norway. 
 
 But, situated as we are, so near a strong enemy, and in 
 the new highway from Europe to America, it may be doubted 
 whether we can retain our simple domestic life. There is 
 but one chance for it. If the Prussian Tenure Code be intro- 
 duced, and the people turned into small proprietors, there is 
 much, perhaps every hope of retaining our homestead habits, 
 and such a population need fear no enemy. 
 
 If this do not come to pass, we must make the best of our 
 state, join our chief towns with railways, put quays to our 
 harbours, mills on our rivers, turbines on our coasts, and under 
 restrictions and with guarantees set the steam engine to work 
 at our flax, wool, and minerals. 
 
 The two great mechanical powers are fire and water. Ireland 
 is nobly endowed with both. 
 
 We do not possess as ample fields of flaming coal as Britain ; 
 but even of that we have large quantities, which can be raised 
 at about the same rate at which English coal can be landed 
 on our coast. 
 
 The chief seats of flaming coal in Ireland are to the west 
 of Lough Allen, in Connaught, and around Dungannon, in 
 Tyrone. There is a small district of it in Antrim. 
 
 The stone coal, or anthracite, which, having little gas, does 
 not blaze, and, having much sulphur, is disagreeable in a room, 
 and has been thought unfit for smelting, is found — first, in the 
 Kilkenny district, between the Nore and Barrow; secondly, 
 from Freshford to Cashel; and thirdly, in the great Munster 
 coal country, cropping up in every barony of Clare, Limerick, 
 Cork, and Kerry. By the use of vapour with it, the anthracite 
 appears to be freed from all its defects as a smelting and engine 
 
126 
 
 THE RESOURCES OF IRELAND, 
 
 coal, and being a much more pure and powerful fuel than 
 the flaming coal, there seems no reason to doubt that in 
 it we have a manufacturing power that would supply us for 
 generations. 
 
 Our bogs have not been done justice to. The use of turf in a 
 damp state turns it into an inferior fuel. Dried under cover, or 
 broken up and dried under pressure, it is more economical, 
 because far more efficient. It is used now in the Shannon 
 steamers, and its use is increasing in mills. For some purposes 
 it is peculiarly good — thus, for the finer ironworks, turf and turf- 
 charcoal are even better than wood, and Dr. Kane shows that 
 the precious Baltic iron, for which from £i^ to ^35 per ton is 
 given, could be equalled by Irish iron smelted by Irish turf for 
 six guineas per ton. 
 
 Dr. Kane proves that the cost of fuel, even if greater in 
 Ireland, by no means precludes us from competing with Eng- 
 land ; he does so by showing that the cost of fuel in English 
 factories is only from i to i ^ per cent., while in Ireland it 
 would be only 2% to 3^^ per cent., a difference greatly over- 
 balanced by our cheaper labour — labour being over 33 per cent, 
 of the whole expense of a factory. 
 
 Here is the analysis of the cost of producing cotton in 
 England in 1830- 
 
 Cotton wool ;^8,244,693 or per cent. 26.27 
 
 Wages 10,419,000 ,, 33- 16 
 
 Interest on capital ... 3,400,000 ,, 10.84 
 
 Coals 339; 6S0 ,, 1.08 
 
 Rent, taxes, insurance, 
 other charges, and 
 
 profit 8,935,320 „ 28.65 
 
 ;^3i, 338,693 100-00 
 
 In water-power we are still better off. Dr. Kane calculates 
 the rain which falls on Ireland in a year at over 100 billion 
 cubic yards; and of this he supposes two-thirds to pass off in 
 evaporation, leaving one-third, equal to nearly a million and a 
 
THE RESOURCES OF IRELANH 
 
 127 
 
 half of horse-power, to reach the sea. His calculations of the 
 water-power of the Shannon and other rivers are most interest- 
 ing. The elements, of course, are the observed fall of rain by 
 the gauge in the district, and the area of the catchment (or 
 drainage) basins of each river and its tributaries. The chief 
 objection to water-power is its irregularity. To remedy this he 
 proposes to do what has increased the water-power on the Bann 
 five-fold, and has made the wealth of Greenock — namely, to 
 make mill-lakes by damming up valleys, and thus controlling 
 and equalising the supply of water, and letting none go waste. 
 His calculations of the relative merits of undershot, overshot, 
 breast, and turbine wheels are most valuable, especially of the 
 last, which is a late and successful French contrivance, acting 
 by pressure. He proposes to use the turbine in coast mills, the 
 tide being the motive-power ; and, strange as it sounds, the 
 experiments seem to decide in favour of this plan. 
 
 “ The turbine was invented by M. Fourneyron. Coals being 
 abundant, the steam engine is invented in England; coals being 
 scarce, the water-pressure engine and the turbine are invented in 
 France. It is thus the physical condition of each country directs its 
 mechanical genius. The turbine is a horizontal wheel furnished with 
 curved float-boards, on which the water presses from a cylinder which 
 is suspended over the wheel, and the base of which is divided by 
 curved partitions, that the water may be directed in issuing, so as to 
 produce upon the curved float-boards of the wheel its greatest effect. 
 The best curvature to be given to the fixed partitions and to the float- 
 boards is a delicate problem, but practically it has been completely 
 solved. The construction of the machine is simple, its parts not liable 
 to go out of order ; and as the action of the water is by pressure, the 
 force is under the most favourable circumstances for being utilised. 
 
 ‘ ‘ The effective economy of the turbine appears to equal that of the 
 overshot wheel. But the economy in the turbine is accompanied by 
 some conditions which render it peculiarly valuable. In a water-wheel 
 you cannot have great economy of power without very slow motion, 
 and hence where high velocity is required at the working point, a train 
 of mechanism is necessary, which causes a material loss of force. Now, 
 in the turbine the greatest economy is accompanied by rapid motion, 
 
128 
 
 THE RESOURCES OF IRELAND. 
 
 and hence the connected machinery may be rendered much less com- 
 plex. In the turbine also a change in the height of the head of water 
 alters only the power of the machine in that proportion, but the whole 
 quantity of water is economised to the same degree. Thus if a turbine 
 be working with a force of ten horses, and that its supply of water be 
 suddenly doubled, it becomes of twenty horse-power; if the supply be 
 reduced to one-half, it still works five horse-power; whilst such sudden 
 and extreme change would altogether disarrange water-wheels, which 
 can only be constructed for the minimum, and allow the overplus to go 
 to waste.” 
 
 Our own predilection being in favour of water-power — as 
 cheaper, healthier, and more fit for Ireland than steam — gave 
 the following peculiar interest in our eyes : — 
 
 “ I have noticed at such length the question of the cost of fuel and 
 of steam-power, not from my own opinion of its ultimate importance, 
 but that we might at once break down that barrier to all active exertion 
 which indolent ignorance constantly retreats behind. The cry of 
 ‘What can we do? consider England’s coal-mines,’ is answered by 
 showing that we have available fuel enough. The lament that coals 
 are so dear with us and so cheap in England, is, I trust, set at rest by 
 the evidence of how little influential the price of fuel is. However, 
 there are other sources of power besides coals ; there are other motive- 
 powers than steam. Of the 83,000 horse-power employed to give 
 motion to mills in England, 21,000, even in the coal districts, are not 
 moved by fire but by water. The force of gravity in falling water can 
 spin and weave as well as the elasticity of steam ; and in this power we 
 are not deficient. It is necessary to study its circumstances in detail, 
 and I shall therefore next proceed to discuss the condition of Ireland 
 with regard to water-power.” 
 
 Dr. Kane proves that w^e have at Arigna an inexhaustible 
 supply of the richest iron ore, with coals to smelt it, lime to 
 flux it, and infusible sand-stone and fire-clay to make furnaces 
 of on the spot. Yet not a pig or bar is made there now. He 
 also gives in great detail the extent, analysis, costs of working, 
 and every other leading fact as to the copper mines of 
 Wicklow, Knockmahon, and Allihies; the lead, gold, and 
 
THE RESOURCES OF IRELAND, 129 
 
 sulphur mines of Wicklow ; the silver mines of Ballylichey, and 
 details of the building materials and marbles. 
 
 He is everywhere precise in his industrial and scientific state- 
 ments, and beautifully clear in his style and arrangement. 
 
 Why then are we a poor province ? Dr. Kane quotes Forbes, 
 Quetelet, etc., to prove the physical strength of our people. He 
 might have quoted every officer who commanded them to prove 
 their courage and endurance ; nor is there much doubt ex- 
 pressed even by their enemies of their being quick and inven- 
 tive. Their soil is productive — the rivers and harbours good 
 — their fishing opportunities great — so is their means of making 
 internal communications across their great central plains. We 
 have immense water, and considerable fire power ; and, 
 besides the minerals necessary for the arts of peace, we are 
 better supplied than almost any country with the finer sorts of 
 iron, charcoal, and sulphur, wherewith war is now carried on. 
 Why is it, with these means of amassing and guarding wealth, 
 that we are so poor and paltry ? Dr. Kane thinks we are so 
 from want of industrial education. He is partly right. The 
 remote causes were repeated foreign invasion, forfeiture, and 
 tyrannous laws. Ignorance, disunion, self-distrust, quick 
 credulity, and caprice were the weaknesses engendered in us 
 by misfortune and misgovernment ; and they were then the 
 allies of oppression ; for, had we been willing, we had long ago 
 been rich and free. Knowledge is now within our reach if we 
 work steadily ; and strength of character will grow upon us by 
 every month of perseverance and steadiness in politics, trade, 
 and literature. 
 
 701 
 
THE VALUATION OF IRELAND. 
 
 The Committee of 1824 was but meagrely supplied with 
 evidence as to foreign surveys. They begin that subject with 
 a notice of the Survey of England, made by order of William 
 the Conqueror, and called the Doomsday Book. That book 
 took six years to execute, and is most admirably analysed by 
 Thierry. 
 
 The following is their summary account of some modern 
 surveys : — 
 
 “ In France the great territorial survey or cadastre has been in 
 progress for many years. It was first suggested in 1763, and after an 
 interval of thirty years, during which no progress was made, it was 
 renewed by the government of that day, and individuals of the highest 
 scientific reputation, MM. Lagrange, Laplace, and Delambre, were 
 consulted with respect to the best mode of carrying into effect the 
 intention of government. Subsequent events suspended any effectual 
 operations in the French cadastre till the year 1802, when a school of 
 topographical engineering was organised. The operations now in 
 progress were fully commenced in 1808. The principle adopted is the 
 formation of a central commission acting in conjunction with the local 
 authorities ; the classification of lands, according to an ascertained 
 value, is made by three resident proprietors of land in each district, 
 selected by the municipal council, and by the chief officer of revenue. 
 
 ‘ In the course of thirteen years, one-third only of each department had 
 been surveyed, having cost the state 20,000 per annum. At the 
 rate at which it is carried on, it may be computed as likely to require 
 for its completion a total sum of ;£'4,68o,ooo, or an acreable charge of 
 8|d.’ The delay of the work, as well as the increase of expense, 
 seem to have been the result of the minuteness of the survey, which 
 extends to every district field — a minuteness which, for many reasons, 
 your committee consider both unnecessary and inexpedient to be 
 sought for in the proposed Survey of Ireland. 
 
 130 
 
THE VALUATION OF IRELAND. 131 
 
 “ The survey of Bavaria is of modern date, but of equal minuteness. 
 It is commenced by a primary triangulation, and principal and verifica- 
 tion bases ; it is carried on to a second triangulation, with very accurate 
 instruments, so as to determine ‘ all the principal points ; the filling up 
 the interior is completed by a peculiar species of plane table ; and in 
 order to do away with the inaccuracies of the common chain, the 
 triangulation is carried down on paper to the most minute corners of 
 fields.’ The map is laid down on a scale of twelve inches to the fnile, or 
 one-five-thousandth part of the real size; and as it co 7 ttains all that is 
 required in the most precise survey of property^ it is used in the purchase 
 and sale of real estates. 
 
 “ The cadastre of Savoy and Piedmont began in 1729, and is stated 
 to have at once afforded the government the means of apportioning 
 justly all the territorial contributions, and to have put an end to 
 litigations between individuals, by ascertaining, satisfactorily, the 
 bounds of properties. 
 
 “ The Neapolitan survey under Visconti, and that of the United 
 States under Heslar, are both stated to be in progress ; but your com- 
 mittee have not had the means of ascertaining on what principles they 
 are conducted.” 
 
 The committee adopted a scale for the maps of six inches to 
 a statute mile, believing, apparently with justice, that a six-inch 
 scale map, if perfectly well executed, would be minute enough 
 for buyers and sellers of land, especially as the larger holdings 
 are generally townlands, the bounds of which they meant to 
 include. And, wherever a greater scale was needed, the pen- 
 tagraph afforded a sufficiently accurate plan of forming maps 
 to it. They, in another point, proposed to differ from the 
 Bavarian Survey, in omitting field boundaries, as requiring too 
 much time and expense ; but they stated that barony, parish, 
 and townland boundaries were essential to the utility of the 
 maps. They also seemed to think that for private purposes 
 their utility would much depend on their being accompanied, as 
 the Bavarian maps were, by a memoir of the number of families, 
 houses, size, and description of farms, and a valuation. And for 
 this purpose they printed all the forms. The valuation still 
 goes on of the townlands, and classes of soil in each. The 
 
132 
 
 THE VALUATION OF IRELAND. 
 
 Statistical Memoir has, unfortunately, been stopped, and no 
 survey or valuation of farms, or holdings as such, has been 
 attempted. We would now only recall attention to the design 
 of the Committee of 1824 on the subject. 
 
 They proposed to leave the whole Survey to the Board of 
 Ordnance, and the Valuation to Civil Engineers. 
 
 The Valuation has been regulated by a series of Acts of 
 Parliament, and we shall speak of it presently. 
 
 The Survey commenced in 1826, and has gone on under the 
 superintendence of Colonel Colby, and the local control of 
 Captain Larcom. 
 
 The following has been its progress : — First, a base line of 
 about five miles was measured on the flat shore of Lough 
 Foyle, and from thence triangular measurements were made 
 by the theodolite and over the whole country, and all the chief 
 points of mountain, coast, etc., ascertained. How accurately 
 this was done has been proved by an astronomical measure- 
 ment of the distance from Dublin to Armagh (about seventy 
 miles), which only differed four feet from the distance calculated 
 by the Ordnance triangles. 
 
 Having completed these large triangles, a detailed survey of 
 the baronies, parishes, and townlands of each county followed. 
 The field books were sent to the central station at Mountjoy, 
 and sketched, engraved on copper, and printed there. The 
 first county published was Derry, in 1833, and now the town- 
 land survey is finished, and all the counties have now been 
 engraved and issued, except Limerick, Kerry, and Cork. 
 
 The Survey has also engraved a map of Dublin City on the 
 enormous scale of five feet to a statute mile. This map repre- 
 sents the shape and space occupied by every house, garden, 
 yard, and pump in Dublin. It contains antiquarian lettering. 
 Every house too is numbered on the map. One of its sheets, 
 representing the space from Trinity College to the Castle, is on 
 sale, as we trust the rest of it will be. 
 
 Two other sets of maps remain to be executed. First — maps 
 of the towns of Ireland, on a scale of five feet to a mile. What- 
 ever may be said in reply to Sir Denham Norreys’ demand for 
 
THE VALUATION OF IRELAND. 
 
 133 
 
 a survey of holdings in rural districts does not apply to the 
 case of towns, and we therefore trust that the holdings will be 
 marked and separately valued in towns. 
 
 The other work is a general shaded map of Ireland, on a 
 scale of one inch to the statute mile. At present, as we else- 
 where remarked, the only tolerable shaded map of Ireland is 
 that of the Railway Commission, which is on a scale of one 
 inch to four statute miles. Captain Larcom proposes, and the 
 Commission on the Ordnance Memoir recommend, that con- 
 tour lines should be the skeleton of the shading. If this plan 
 be adopted the publication cannot be for some years ; but the 
 shading will have the accuracy of machine-work instead of 
 mere hand skill. Contours are lines representing series of 
 levels through a country, and are inestimable for draining, road- 
 making, and military movements. But though easily explained 
 to the eye, we doubt our ability to teach their meaning by 
 words only. 
 
 To return to the townland or six-inch survey. The names 
 were corrected by Messrs. Petrie, O’Donovan, and Curry, from 
 every source accessible in Ireland, Its maps contain the 
 county, barony, parish, townland, and glebe boundaries, names 
 and acreage ; names and representations of all cities, towns, 
 demesnes, farms, ruins, collieries, forges, limekilns, tanneries, 
 bleach-greens, wells, etc, etc.; also of all roads, rivers, canals, 
 bridges, locks, weirs, bogs, ruins, churches, chapels ; they have 
 also the number of feet of every little swell of land, and a mark 
 for every cabin. 
 
 Of course these maps run to an immense number. Thus for 
 the county of Galway there are 137 double folio sheets, and for 
 the small county of Dublin 28. Where less than half the sheet 
 is covered with engraving (as occurs towards the edges of a 
 county) the sheet is sold, uncoloured, for 2s. 6d.; where more 
 than half is covered the price is 5s. 
 
 In order to enable you to find any sheet so as to know the 
 bearings of its ground on any other, there is printed for each 
 county an index map, representing the whole county on one 
 sheet. This sheet is on a small scale (from one to three miles 
 
134 
 
 THE VALUATION OF IRELAND, 
 
 to an inch), but contains in smaller type the baronies and 
 parishes, roads, rivers, demesnes, and most of the information 
 of general interest. This index map is divided by lines into as 
 many oblong spaces as there are maps of the six-inch scale, 
 and the spaces are numbered to correspond with the six-inch 
 map. On the sides of the index maps are tables of the acreage 
 of the baronies and parishes; and examples of the sort of marks 
 and type used for each class of subjects in the six-inch maps. 
 Uncoloured, the index map, representing a whole county, is sold 
 for 2 s. 6d. 
 
 Whenever those maps are re-engraved, the Irish words will, 
 we trust, be spelled in an Irish and civilised orthography, and 
 not barbarously, as at present. 
 
 It was proposed to print for each county one or more volumes, 
 containing the history of the district and its antiquities, the 
 numbers, and past and present state and occupations of the 
 people, the state of its agriculture, manufactures, mines, and 
 fisheries, and what means of extending these existed in the 
 county, and its natural history, including geology, zoology, etc. 
 All this was done for the town of Derry, much to the service 
 and satisfaction of its people. All this ought to be as fully 
 done for Armagh, Dublin, Cork, and every other part of 
 Ireland. 
 
 The commissioners recommend that the geology of Ireland 
 (and we would add natural history generally) should be investi- 
 gated and published, not by the topographical surveyors nor in 
 counties, but by a special board, and for the whole of Ireland; 
 and they are right, for our plants, rocks, and animals are not 
 within civil or even obvious topographical boundaries, and we 
 have plenty of Irishmen qualified to execute it. They also 
 advise that the statistics should be entrusted to a statistical 
 staff, to be permanently kept up in Ireland. This staff would 
 take the census every ten years, and would in the intervals 
 between the beginning and ending of each census have plenty 
 of statistical business to do for parliament (Irish or Imperial) 
 and for public departments. If we are ever to have a registry 
 of births, deaths (with the circumstances of each case), and 
 
THE VALUATION OF IRELAND, 
 
 135 
 
 marriages, some such staff will be essential to inspect the 
 registry, and work up information from it. But the history, 
 antiquities, and industrial resources, the commissioners recom- 
 mend to have published in county volumes. They are too 
 solicitous about keeping such volumes to small dimensions ; but 
 the rest of their plans are admirable. 
 
 The value of this to Ireland, whether she be a nation or a 
 province, cannot be overrated. From the farmer and mechanic 
 to the philosopher, general, and statesman, the benefit will 
 extend, and yet so careless or so hostile are ministers that they 
 have not conceded it, and so feeble by dulness or disunion are 
 Irishmen and Irish members, that they cannot extort even 
 this. 
 
 We now come to the last branch of the subject — 
 
 THE VALUATION. 
 
 The Committee of 1824 recommended only principles of 
 Valuation. They were three, viz. : — 
 
 Ҥ I. A fixed and uniform principle of valuation applicable through- 
 out the whole work, and enabling the valuation not only of towniands 
 but that of counties to be compared by one common measure. 
 § 2. A central authority, under the appointment of government, for 
 direction and superintendence, and for the generalisation of the returns 
 made in detail. § 3. Local assistance, regularly organised, furnishing 
 information on the spot, and forming a check for the protection of 
 private rights.” 
 
 Accordingly, on the 5th of July 1825, an Act was passed 
 requiring, in the first instance, the entry in all the grand jury 
 records of the names and contents of all parishes, manors, 
 towniands, and other divisions, and the proportionate assess- 
 ments. It then went on to authorise the Lord Lieutenant to 
 appoint surveyors to be paid out of the Consolidated Fund. 
 These surveyors were empowered to require the attendance 
 of cess collectors and other inhabitants, and with their help to 
 examine, and ascertain, and mark the “ reputed boundaries of 
 
t36 the valuation of IRELAND, 
 
 all and every or any barony, half barony, townland parish, or 
 other division or denomination of land,” howsoever called. 
 The Act also inflicted penalties on persons removing or 
 injuring any post, stone, or other mark made by the surveyors ; 
 but we believe there has been no occasion to enforce these 
 clauses, the good sense and good feeling of the people being 
 ample securities against such wanton crime. Such survey was 
 not to affect the rights of owners, yet from it lay an appeal to 
 the Quarter Sessions. 
 
 This, as we see, relates to civil boundaries^ not valuations. 
 
 In May, 1820, another Act was passed directing the Ordnance 
 officers to send copies of their maps, as fast as finished, to the 
 Lord Lieutenant, who was to appoint one Commissioner of 
 Valuation for any counties and to give notice of such appoint- 
 ment to the grand jury of every such county. Each grand jury 
 was then to appoint an Appeal Committee for each barony, 
 and a Committee of Revision for the whole county. This 
 Commission of Valuation was then to appoint from three to 
 nine fit valuators in the county, who, after trial by the Com- 
 missioner, were to go in parties of three and examine all parts 
 of their district, and value such portion of it, and set down 
 such valuation in a parish field book, according to the following 
 average prices : — 
 
 ‘‘scale of prices. 
 
 “Wheat, at the general average price of los. per cwt., of 112 lbs. 
 
 “ Oats, at the general average price of 6s. per cwt., of 112 lbs. 
 
 “ Barley, at the general average price of 7s. per cwt., of 112 lbs. 
 
 “Potatoes, at the general average price of is. cwt., of 
 
 1 12 lbs. 
 
 “ Butter, at the general average price of 69s. per cwt., of 112 lbs. 
 
 “Beef, at the general average price of 33s. per cwt., of 112 lbs. 
 
 “Mutton, at the general average price of 34s. 6d. per cwt., of 
 1 12 lbs. 
 
 “ Pork, at the general average price of 25s. 6d. per cwt., of 112 lbs. 
 
 “ That is, having examined each tract — say a hill, a valley, an inch, 
 a reclaimed bit, and by digging and looking at the soil, they were to 
 consider what crop it could best produce, considering its soil, elevation. 
 
THE VALUATION OF IRELAND, 
 
 137 
 
 nearness to markets, and then estimating crops at the foregoing rate, 
 they were to say how much per acre the tract was, in their opinion, 
 worth. 
 
 ‘‘ From this Parish Field Book the Commissioner was to make out a 
 table of the parishes and townlands, etc., in each barony, specifying 
 the average and total value of houses in such subdivisions, and to 
 forward it to the high constable, who was to post copies thereof. A 
 vestry of twenty pound freeholders and twenty shilling cesspayers was 
 to be called in each parish to consider the table. If they did not appeal, 
 the table was to stand confirmed ; if they did appeal, the grand jury 
 committee of appeal, with the valuation commissioner as chairman, 
 were to decide upon the appeal ; but if the assessor were dissatisfied, 
 the appeal was to go to the committee of revision. The same com- 
 mittee were then to revise the proportionate liabilities of baronies^ 
 subject to an appeal to the Queen’s Bench. The valuation so settled 
 was to be published in the Dublin Gazette^ and thenceforward all 
 grand jury and parish rates and cesses were to be levied in the pro- 
 portions thereby fixed. But no land theretofore exempt from any rate 
 was thereby made liable. The expenses were to be advanced from the 
 consolidated fund, and repaid by presentment from the county.” 
 
 It made the proportionate values of parishes and townlands, 
 pending the baronial survey and the baronial valuation, to bind 
 after revision and publication in some newspaper circulating in 
 the county ; but within three years there was to be a second 
 revision, after which they were to be published in the Duhlm 
 Gazette^ etc., and be final as to the proportions of all parish or 
 grand jury rates to be paid by all baronies, parishes, and town- 
 lands. It also directed the annexation of detached bits to the 
 counties respectively surrounding them, and it likewise pro- 
 vided for the use of the valuation maps and field books in 
 applotting the grand jury cess charged on the holders of lands, 
 but such valuation to be merely a guide and not final. From 
 the varying size and value of holdings this caution was 
 essential. 
 
 Under this last Act the valuation has been continued, as 
 every reader of the country papers must have seen by Mr. 
 Griffith’s Notices, and is now complete in twenty counties, 
 
138 THE VAL UA TION OF IRELAND. 
 
 forward in six, begun in two, and not yet begun in Cork, Kerry, 
 Limerick, or Dublin. 
 
 Mr. Griffith’s instructions are clear and full, and we strongly 
 recommend the study of them, and an adherence to their forms 
 and classifications, to valuators of all private and public 
 properties, so far as they go. He appointed two classes of 
 valuators — Ordinary Valuators to make the first valuation all 
 over each county, and Check Valuators to re-value patches in 
 every district, to test the accuracy of the ordinary valuators. 
 
 The ordinary valuator was to have two copies of the Town- 
 land (or 6-inch) Survey. Taking a sheet with him into the 
 district represented on it, he was to examine the quality of the 
 soil in lots of from fifty to thirty acres, or still smaller bits, to 
 mark the bounds of each lot on the survey map, and to enter in 
 his field book the value thereof, with all the special circum- 
 stances specially stated. The examination was to include 
 digging to ascertain the depth of the soil and the nature of the 
 subsoil. All land was to be valued at its agricultural worth, 
 supposing it ‘liberally set, leaving out the value of timber, turf, 
 etc. Reductions were to be made for elevation above the sea, 
 steepness, exposure to bad winds, patchiness of soil, bad fences, 
 and bad roads. Additions were to be made for neighbourhood 
 of limestone, turf, sea, or other manure, roads, good climate and 
 shelter, nearness to towns. 
 
 The following classification of soils was recommended : — 
 
 ‘‘arrangement of soils. 
 
 “ All soils may be arranged under four heads, each representing the 
 characteristic ingredients, as — i. Argillaceous, or clayey ; 2. Silicious, 
 or sandy ; 3. Calcareous, or limy ; 4. Peaty. 
 
 “For practical purposes it will be desirable to sub-divide each of 
 these classes : — 
 
 “ Thus argillaceous soils may be divided into three varieties, viz. — 
 Clay, clay loam, and argillaceous alluvial. 
 
 “ Of silicious soils there are four varieties, viz. — Sandy, gravelly, 
 slaty, and rocky. 
 
THE VALUATION OF IRELAND, 
 
 139 
 
 “ Of calcareous soils we have three varieties, viz. — Limestone, 
 limestone gravel, and marl. 
 
 “ Of peat soils two varieties, viz. — Moor, and peat, or bog. 
 
 ‘Mn describing in the field book the different qualities of soils, the 
 following explanatory words may be used as occasion may require : — 
 
 “ Stiff— a soil contains a large proportion, say one-half, or 
 even more, of tenacious clay, it is called stiff. In dry weather this 
 kind of soil cracks and opens, and has a tendency to form into large 
 and hard lumps, particularly if ploughed in wet weather. 
 
 Friable — Where the soil is loose and open, as is generally the case 
 in sandy, gravelly, and moory lands. 
 
 Strong — Where a soil contains a considerable portion of clay, and 
 has some tendency to form into clods or lumps, it may be called strong. 
 
 Deep — Where the soil exceeds ten inches in depth the term deep 
 may be applied. 
 
 Shallow — Where the depth of the soil is less than eight inches. 
 
 Dry — Where the soil is friable, and the subsoil porous (if there be 
 no springs), the term dry should be used. 
 
 ^^Wet — Where the soil, or subsoil, is very tenacious, or where springs 
 are numerous. 
 
 “ Sharp — Where there is a moderate proportion of gravel, or small 
 stones. 
 
 Fine or Soft — Where the soil contains no gravel, but is chiefly 
 composed of very fine sand, or soft, light earth without gravel. 
 
 “ Cold — Where the soil rests on a tenacious clay subsoil, and has a 
 tendency when in pasture to produce rushes and other aquatic plants. 
 
 “ Sandy or gravelly — Where there is a large proportion of sand or 
 gravel through the soil. 
 
 “ Slaty — Where the slaty substratum is much intermixed with the soil. 
 
 “ Worn — Where the soil has been a long time under cultivation, 
 without rest or manure. 
 
 “ Poor — Where the land is naturally of bad quality. 
 
 ‘‘ Hungry — Where the soil contains a considerable portion of gravel, 
 or coarse sand, resting on a gravelly subsoil ; on such land manure does 
 not produce the usual effect. 
 
 ‘‘ The colours of soils may also be introduced, as brown, yellow, blue, 
 grey, red, black, etc. 
 
 “Also, where applicable, the words steep, level, shrubby, rocky, 
 exposed, etc., may be used.” 
 
140 
 
 THE VALUATION OF IRELAND. 
 
 Lists of market prices were sent with the field books, and the 
 amounts then reduced to a uniform rate, which Mr. Griffith 
 fixed at 2 s. 6d. per pound over the prices of produce mentioned 
 in the Act. 
 
 Rules were also given for valuation of houses, but we must 
 refer to Mr. Griffith’s work for them. 
 
COMMERCIAL HISTORY OF IRELAND. 
 
 While the Irish were excluded from English law and inter- 
 course, England imposed no restrictions on our trade. The 
 Pale spent its time tilling and fighting, and it was more sure of 
 its bellyful of blows than of bread. It had nothing to sell, why 
 tax its trade? The slight commerce of Dublin was needful to 
 the comforts of the Norman Court in Dublin Castle. Why 
 should it be taxed? The market of Kilkenny was guarded by 
 the spears of the Butlers, and from Sligo to Cork the chiefs and 
 towns of Munster and Connaught — the Burkes, O’Loghlens, 
 O’Sullivans, Galway, Dingle, and Dunboy, carried on a trade 
 with Spain, and piracy or war against England. How could 
 they be taxed ? 
 
 Commercial taxes, too, in those days were hard to be 
 enforced, and more resembled toll to a robber than contribu- 
 tion to the state. Every great river and pass in Europe, from 
 the Rhine and the Alps to Berwick and the Blackwater, was 
 affectionately watched by royal and noble castles at their 
 narrowest points, and the barge anchored and the caravan 
 halted to be robbed, or, as the receivers called it, to be taxed. 
 
 At last the Pale was stretched round Ireland by ait and 
 force. Solitude and peace were in our plains; but the armed 
 colonist settled in it, and the native came down from his hills as 
 a tenant or a squatter, and a kind of prosperity arose. 
 
 Protestant and Catholic, native and colonist, had the same 
 interest — namely, to turn this waste into a garden. They had 
 not, nor could they have had, other things to export than 
 Sydney or Canada have now — cattle, butter, hides, and wool. 
 They had hardly corn enough for themselves; but pasture was 
 plenty, and cows and their hides, sheep and their fleeces, were 
 equally so. The natives had always been obliged to prepare 
 141 
 
142 COMMERCIAL HISTORY OF IRELAND. 
 
 their own clothing, and therefore every creaght and digger 
 knew how to dress wool and skins, and they had found out, or 
 preserved from a more civilised time, dyes which, to this day, 
 are superior to any others. Small quantities of woollen goods 
 were exported, but our assertion holds good that in our war- 
 times there was no manufacture for export worth naming. 
 
 Black Tom Wentworth, the ablest of despots, came here 210 
 years ago, and found “ small beginnings towards a clothing 
 trade.” He at once resolved to discourage it. He wrote so to 
 the king on July 25th, 1636, and he was a man true to his 
 enmities. “ But,” said he, “ I’ll give them a linen manufacture 
 instead.” Now, the Irish had raised flax and made and dyed 
 linen from time immemorial. The saffron-coloured linen shirt 
 was as national as the cloak and birred ; so that Strafford rather 
 introduced the linen manufacture among the new settlers than 
 among the Irish. Certainly he encouraged it, by sending 
 Irishmen to learn in Brabant, and by bringing French and 
 Flemings to work in Ireland. 
 
 Charles the Second, doubtless to punish us for our most 
 unwise loyalty to him and his father, assented to a series of 
 Acts prohibiting the export of Irish wool, cattle, etc., to England 
 or her colonies, and prohibiting the direct importation of several 
 colonial products into Ireland. The chief Acts are 12 Charles, 
 c. 4; 15 Charles, c. 7; and 22 and 23 Charles, c. 26. Thus 
 were the value of land in Ireland, the revenue, and trade, and 
 manufactures of Ireland — Protestant and Catholic— stricken 
 by England. 
 
 Perhaps we ought to be grateful, though not to England, for 
 these Acts. They plundered our pockets, but they guarded our 
 souls from being Anglicised. To France and Spain the produce 
 was sent, and the woollen manufacture continued to increase. 
 
 England got alarmed, for Ireland was getting rich. The 
 English lords addressed King William, stating that “ the 
 growth and increase of the woollen manufacture in Ireland had 
 long been, and would be ever^ looked upon with great jealousy 
 by his English subjects, and praying him, by very strict laws, 
 totally to prohibit and suppress the same.” The Commons 
 
COMMERCIAL HISTORY OF IRELAND, 143 
 
 said likewise; and William answered comfortably — ‘‘ I shall do 
 all that in me lies to discourage the woollen manufacture in 
 Ireland, and to encourage the linen manufacture there, and to 
 promote the trade of England.” 
 
 He was as good as his word, and even whipped and hum- 
 bugged the unfortunate Irish Parliament to pass an Act, putting 
 twenty per cent, duty on broad, and ten per cent, on narrow 
 cloths — 
 
 “ But it did not satisfy the English Parliament, where a perpetual 
 law was made, prohibiting from the 20th of June, 1699, the exportation 
 from Ireland of all goods made or mixed with wool, except to England 
 and Wales, and with the licence of the commissioners of the revenue ; 
 duties had been before laid on the importation into England equal to a 
 prohibition, therefore this Act has operated as a total prohibition of the 
 exportation.” 
 
 There was nothing left but to send the wool raw to England ; 
 to smuggle it and cloths to France and Spain, or to leave the 
 land unstocked. The first was worst. The export to England 
 declined, smuggling prospered, “ wild geese ” for the Brigade, 
 and woollen goods were run in exchange for claret, brandy, and 
 silks; but not much land was left waste. Our silks, cottons, 
 malt, beer, and almost every other article was similarly pro- 
 hibited. Striped linens were taxed thirty per cent., many other 
 kinds of linen were also interfered with, and twenty-four 
 embargoes in nineteen years straitened our foreign provision 
 trade. Thus England kept her pledge of wrath, and broke her 
 promise of service to Ireland. 
 
 A vigorous system of smuggling induced her to relax in 
 some points, and the cannon of the Volunteers blew away the 
 code. 
 
 By the Union we were so drained of money, and absentee 
 rents and taxes, and of spirit in every way, that she no longer 
 needs a prohibitory code to prevent our competing with her in 
 any market, Irish or foreign. The Union is prohibition enough, 
 and that England says she will maintain. 
 
 Whether it be now possible to create home manufactures, in 
 
144 COMMERCIAL HISTORY OF IRELAND, 
 
 the old sense of the word — that is, manufactures made in the 
 homes of the workers — is doubted. 
 
 In favour of such a thing, if it be possible, the arguments are 
 numberless. Such work is a source of ingenuity and enjoy- 
 ment in the cabin of the peasant ; it rather fills up time that 
 would be otherwise idled than takes from other work. Our 
 peasants* wives and daughters could clothe themselves and 
 their families by the winter night work, even as those of 
 Norway do, if the peasants possessed the little estates that 
 Norway’s peasants do. Clothes manufactured by hand-work 
 are more lasting, comfortable, and handsome, and are more 
 natural and national than factory goods. Besides, there is the 
 strongest of all reasons in this, that the factory system seems 
 everywhere a poison to virtue and happiness. 
 
 Some invention, which should bring the might of machinery 
 in a wholesome and cheap form to the cabin, seems the only 
 solution of the difficulty. 
 
 The hazards of the factory system, however, should be 
 encountered, were it sure to feed our starving millions ; but this 
 is dubious. 
 
 A Native Parliament can alone judge or act usefully on this 
 momentous subject. An absentee tax and a resident govern- 
 ment, and the progress of public industry and education, would 
 enable an Irish Parliament to create vast manufactures here by 
 protecting duties in the first instance, and to maintain them by 
 our general prosperity, or it could rely on its own adjustment of 
 landed property as sufficient to put the people above the need 
 of hazarding purity or content by embarking in great manu- 
 factures. 
 
 A peasant proprietary could have wealth enough to import 
 wrought goods, or taste and firmness enough to prefer home- 
 made manufactures. 
 
 But these are questions for other years. We wish the reader 
 to take our word for nothing, but to consult the writers on Irish 
 trade. Laurence’s Interest of Irela 7 id {\bZ2) \ Browne’s Tracts 
 (1728); Dobbs on “Trade” (1729); Hutchinson’s Conwiercial 
 Restraints (1779); Sheffield on “ Irish Trade” (1785); Wallace 
 
COMMERCIAL HISTORY OF IRELAND, 145 
 
 on “ Irish Trade” (1798); the various “Parliamentary Reports,” 
 and the very able articles on the same subject in the Citizen, 
 
 Do not be alarmed at the list, reader; a month’s study would 
 carry you through all but the Reports, and it would be well 
 spent. But if you still shrink, you can ease your conscience by 
 reading Mr. John O’Connell’s Report on “The Commercial 
 Injustices,” just issued by the Repeal Association. It is an 
 elaborate, learned, and most useful tract 
 
 702 
 
NATIONAL ART. 
 
 No one doubts that if he sees a place or an action he knows 
 more of it than if it had been described to him by a witness. 
 The dullest man, who “put on his best attire” to welcome 
 Caesar, had a better notion of life in Rome than our ablest 
 artist or antiquary. 
 
 Were painting, then, but a coloured chronicle, telling us facts 
 by the eye instead of the ear, it would demand the Statesman’s 
 care and the People’s love. It would preserve for us faces we 
 worshipped, and the forms of men who led and instructed us. 
 It would remind us, and teach our children, not only how 
 these men looked, but, to some extent, what they were, for 
 nature is consistent, and she has indexed her labours. It 
 would carry down a pictorial history of our houses, arts, 
 costume, and manners to other times, and show the dweller 
 in a remote isle the appearance of countries and races of his 
 cotemporaries. 
 
 As a register of facts — as a portrayer of men, singly or 
 assembled— and as a depicter of actual scenery, art is biography, 
 history, and topography taught through the eye. 
 
 So far as it can express facts, it is superior to writing ; and 
 nothing but the scarcity of faithful artists, or the stupidity of 
 the public, prevents us from having our pictorial libraries of 
 men and places. There are some classes of scenes — as where 
 continuous action is to be expressed — in which sculpture quite 
 fails, and painting is but a shadowy narrator. 
 
 But this, after all, though the most obvious and easy use of 
 Painting and Sculpture, is far indeed from being their highest 
 end. 
 
 Art is a regenerator as well as a copyist. As the historian, 
 who composes a history out of various materials, differs from 
 146 
 
NATIONAL ART 
 
 M7 
 
 a newspaper reporter, who sets down what he sees — as Plutarch 
 differs from Mr. Grant, and the Abbd Barthelemy from the last 
 traveller in India — so do the Historical Painter, the Landscape 
 composer (such as Claude or Poussin) differ from the most 
 faithful Portrait, Landscape, or Scene Drawer. 
 
 The Painter who is a master of composition makes his 
 pencil cotemporary with all times and ubiquitous. Keeping 
 strictly to nature and fact, Romulus sits for him and Paul 
 preaches. He makes Attila charge, and Mohammed exhort, 
 and Ephesus blaze when he likes. He tries not rashly, but by 
 years of study of men’s character, and dress, and deeds, to 
 make them and their acts come as in a vision before him. 
 Having thus got a design, he attempts to realise the vision on 
 his canvas. He pays the most minute attention to truth in his 
 drawing, shading, and colouring, and by imitating the force of 
 nature in his composition, all the clouds that ever floated by 
 him, “the lights of other days,” and the forms of the dead, or 
 the stranger, hover over him. 
 
 But Art in its highest stage is more than this. It is a creator. 
 Great as Herodotus and Thierry are, Homer and Beranger are 
 greater. The ideal has resources beyond the actual. It is 
 infinite, and Art is indefinitely powerful. The Apollo is more 
 than noble, and the Hercules mightier than man. The Moses 
 of Michael Angelo is no likeness of the inspired law-giver, nor of 
 any other that ever lived, and Raphael’s Madonnas are not the 
 faces of women. As Reynolds says, “ the effect of the capital 
 works of Michael Angelo is that the observer feels his whole frame 
 enlarged.” It is creation, it is representing beings and things 
 different from our nature, but true to their own. In this self- 
 consistency is the only nature requisite in works purely imagin- 
 ative. Lear is true to his nature, and so are Mephistopheles, 
 and Prometheus, and Achilles ; but they are not true to human 
 nature ; they are beings created by the poets’ minds, and true 
 to their laws of being. There is no commoner blunder in men, 
 who are themselves mere critics, never creators, than to require 
 consistency to the nature of us and our world in the works of 
 poet or painter. 
 
148 
 
 NATIONAL ART 
 
 To create a mass of great pictures, statues, and buildings is 
 of the same sort of ennoblement to a people as to create great 
 poems or histories, or make great codes, or win great battles. 
 The next best, though far inferior, blessing and power is to 
 inherit such works and achievements. The lowest stage of all 
 is neither to possess nor to create them. 
 
 Ireland has had some great Painters — Barry and Forde, for 
 example, and many of inferior but great excellence ; and now 
 she boasts high names — Maclise, Hogan, and Mulready. But 
 their works were seldom done for Ireland, and are rarely known 
 in it. Our portrait and landscape Painters paint foreign men 
 and scenes ; and, at all events, the Irish people do not see, 
 possess, nor receive knowledge from their works. Irish history 
 has supplied no subjects for our greatest Artists ; and though, 
 as we repeat, Ireland possessed a Forde and Barry, creative 
 Painters of the highest order, the pictures of the latter are 
 mostly abroad ; those of the former unseen and unknown. 
 Alas ! that they are so few. 
 
 To collect into, and make known, and publish in Ireland the 
 best works of our living and dead Artists is one of the steps 
 towards procuring for Ireland a recognised National Art. And 
 this is essential to our civilisation and renown. The other is by 
 giving education to students and rewards to Artists, to make 
 many of this generation true representers, some of them great 
 illustrators and composers, and, perchance, to facilitate the 
 creation of some great spirit. 
 
 Something has been done — more remains. 
 
 There are schools in Dublin and Cork. But why are those 
 so neglected and imperfect 1 and why are not similar or better 
 institutions in Belfast, Derry, Galway, Waterford, and Kil- 
 kenny ? Why is there not a decent collection of casts anywhere 
 but in Cork, and why are they in a garret there? And why 
 have we no gallery of Irishmen’s, or any other men’s, pictures 
 in Ireland? 
 
 The Art Union has done a great deal. It has helped to 
 support in Ireland artists who should otherwise have starved 
 or emigrated; it has dispersed one (when, oh when, will it 
 
NATIONAL ART 
 
 149 
 
 disperse another?) fine print of a fine Irish picture through 
 the country, and to some extent interested as well as instructed 
 thousands. Yet it could, and we believe will, do much more. 
 It ought to have Corresponding Committees in the principal 
 towns to preserve and rub up old schools of art and foster 
 new ones, and it might by art and historical libraries, and by 
 other ways, help the cause. We speak as friends, and suggest 
 not as critics, for it has done good service. 
 
 The Repeal Association, too, in offering prizes for pictures 
 and sculptures of Irish historical subjects, has taken its proper 
 place as the patron of nationality in art; and its rewards 
 for Building Designs may promote the comfort and taste of 
 the people, and the reputation of the country. If artists will 
 examine the rules by which the pictures, statues, and plates 
 remain their property, they will find the prizes not so small 
 as they might at first appear. Nor should they, from interest 
 or just pride, be indifferent to the popularity and fame of 
 success on national subjects, and with a People’s Prizes to 
 be contended for. If those who are not Repealers will treat 
 the Association’s design kindly and candidly, and if the 
 Repealers will act in art upon principles of justice and 
 conciliation, we shall not only advance national art, but gain 
 another field of common exertion. 
 
 The Cork School of Art owes its existence to many causes. 
 
 The intense, genial, and Irish character of the people, the 
 southern warmth and variety of clime, with its effects on 
 animal and vegetable beings, are the naitural causes. 
 
 The accident of Barry’s birth there, and his great fame, 
 excited the ambition of the young artists. An Irishman and 
 a Corkman had gone out from them, and amazed men by the 
 grandeur and originality of his works of art. He had thrown 
 the whole of the English painters into insignificance, for who 
 would compare the luscious commonplace of the Stuart painters, 
 or the melodramatic reality of Hogarth, or the imitative beauty 
 of P^eynolds, or the clumsy strength of West, with the over- 
 bearing grandeur of his works. 
 
 But the present glories of Cork, Maclise and Hogan, the 
 
NATIONAL ART 
 
 15^ 
 
 greater, but buried might of Forde, and the rich promise which 
 we know is springing there now, are mainly owing to another 
 cause; and that is, that Cork possesses a gallery of the finest 
 casts in the world. 
 
 These casts are not very many — 117 only; but they are 
 perfect, they are the first from Canova’s moulds, and embrace 
 the greatest works of Greek art. They are ill placed in a dim 
 and dirty room — more shame to the rich men of Cork for 
 leaving them so — but there they are, and there studied Forde, 
 and Maclise, and the rest, until they learned to draw better 
 than any moderns, except Cornelius and his living brethren. 
 
 In the countries where art is permanent there are great 
 collections — Tuscany and Rome, for example. But, as we have 
 said before, the highest service done by success in art is not 
 in the possession but in the creation of great works, the spirit, 
 labour, sagacity, and instruction needed by the artists to 
 succeed, and flung out by them on their country like rain from 
 sunny clouds. 
 
 Indeed there is some danger of a traditionary mediocrity 
 following after a great epoch in art. Superstition of style, 
 technical rules in composition, and all the pedantry of art, too 
 often fill up the ranks vacated by veteran genius, and of this 
 there are examples enough in Flanders, Spain, and even Italy. 
 The schools may, and often do, make men scholastic and 
 ungenial, and art remains an instructor and refiner, but creates 
 no more. 
 
 Ireland, fortunately or unfortunately, has everything to do 
 yet. We have had great artists — we have not their works — we 
 own the nativity of great living artists — they live on the Tiber 
 and the Thames. Our capital has no school of art — no facilities 
 for acquiring it. 
 
 To be sure there are rooms open in the Dublin Society, and 
 they have not been useless, that is all. But a student here 
 cannot learn anatomy, save at the same expense as a surgical 
 student. He has no great works of art before him, no Pantheon, 
 no Valhalla, not even a good museum or gallery. 
 
 We think it may be laid down as unalterably true that a 
 
NATIONAL ART 
 
 igt 
 
 student should never draw from a flat surface. He learns 
 nothing by drawing from the lines of another man — he only 
 mimics. Better for him to draw chairs and tables, bottles and 
 glasses, rubbish, potatoes, cabins, or kitchen utensils, than 
 draw from the lines laid down by other men. 
 
 Of those forms of nature which the student can originally 
 consult — the sea, the sky, the earth — we would counsel him to 
 draw from them in the first learning ; for though he ought 
 afterwards to analyse and mature his style by the study of 
 works of art, from the first sketches to the finished picture, yet, 
 by beginning with nature and his own suggestions, he will 
 acquire a genuine and original style, superior to the finest 
 imitation ; and it is hard to acquire a master’s skill without his 
 manner. 
 
 Were all men cast in a divine mould of strength and straight- 
 ness and gallant bearing, and all women proportioned, graceful, 
 and fair, the artist would need no gallery, at least to begin his 
 studies with. He would have to persuade or snatch his models 
 in daily life. Even then, as art creates greater and simpler 
 combinations than ever exist in fact, he should finally study 
 before the superhuman works of his predecessors. 
 
 But he has about him here an indiflerently-made, ordinary, 
 not very clean, nor picturesquely-clad people ; though, doubt- 
 less, if they had the feeding, the dress, and the education (for 
 mind beautifies the body) of the Greeks, they would not be 
 inferior, for the Irish structure is of the noblest order. 
 
 To give him a multitude of fine natural models, to say 
 nothing of ideal works, it is necessary to make a gallery of 
 statues or casts. The statues will come in good time, and we 
 hope, and are sure, that Ireland, a nation, will have a national 
 gallery, combining the greatest works of the Celtic and Teutonic 
 races. But at present the most that can be done is to form a 
 gallery. 
 
 Our readers will be glad to hear that this great boon is about 
 to be given to Irish Art. A society for the formation of a 
 gallery of casts in Dublin has been founded. 
 
 It embraces men of every rank, class, creed, politics, and 
 
^52 
 
 NATIONAL ART 
 
 calling, thus forming another of those sanctuaries, now multiply- 
 ing in Ireland, where one is safe from the polemic and the 
 partisan. 
 
 Its purpose is to purchase casts of all the greatest works of 
 Greece, Egypt, Etruria, ancient Rome, and Europe in the 
 middle ages. This will embrace a sufficient variety of types 
 both natural and ideal to prevent imitation, and will avoid the 
 debateable ground of modern art. Wherever they can afford it 
 the society will buy moulds, in order to assist provincial 
 galleries, and therefore the provinces are immediately interested 
 in its support. 
 
 When a few of these casts^ are got together, and a proper 
 gallery procured, the public will be admitted to see, and artists 
 to study, them without any charge. The annual subscription 
 is but ten shillings, the object being to interest as many as 
 possible in its support. 
 
 It has been suggested to us by an artist that Trinity College 
 ought to establish a gallery and museum containing casts of all 
 the ancient statues, models of their buildings, civil and military, 
 and a collection of their implements of art, trade, and domestic 
 life. A nobler institution, a more vivid and productive com- 
 mentary on the classics, could not be. But if the Board will 
 not do this of themselves, we trust they will see the propriety 
 of assisting this public gallery, and procuring, therefore, special 
 privileges for the students in using it. 
 
 But no matter what persons in authority may do or neglect, 
 we trust the public — for the sake of their own pleasure, their 
 children’s profit, and Ireland’s honour — will give it their instant 
 and full support. 
 
 ^ Foley’s splendid legacy to the Royal Dublin Society in some 
 measure realises Davis’s suggestion. 
 
ART UNIONS. 
 
 Art Unions are a substitute for State patronage. The State 
 can do much for art. It can furnish teachers and models to a 
 large class, and it can enable an artist to live by great works. 
 Private patronage does not encourage great works. They 
 require much time, and occupy a larger space than suits 
 the size of private dwellings. Their price is immense, not only 
 from the labour they require, but because of the rarity of men 
 able to execute them. Wherever the arts have flourished, the 
 State has been their chief patron. So it was in Athens, where 
 art was a branch of public business. In Rome the patronage 
 was even more liberal, if not quite so just. When arts revived 
 they were sustained by the monarchs and ecclesiastical corpora- 
 tions of all Europe. But amongst their earliest, firmest, and 
 wisest friends were the little republics of Italy and the corpora- 
 tions of the Low Countries. Even now there is more art of a 
 high order called out by the patronage of the little court of 
 Munich than by any people in the world. When we speak of 
 high art we mean art used to instruct and ennoble men ; to 
 teach them great deeds, whether historical, religious, or 
 romantic ; to awaken their piety, their pride, their justice, 
 and their valour ; to paint the hero, the martyr, the rescuer, 
 the lover, the patriot, the friend, the saint, and the Saviour — 
 nor is it confined to expressing moral excellence. It expresses 
 intellectual and physical might— the poet, the orator, the sage, 
 the giant savage, the falling angel. Whatever can be painted 
 or sculptured, of strength or sweetness, of grace or terror, of 
 piety or power — that belongs to high art. 
 
 In prizing State patronage so high, we do not assume it 
 sufficient to produce great artists. Public passions, strong 
 thoughts, condensed and deep education must exist (along with 
 facilities to learn, and State patronage) to produce great artists. 
 The perfect success of the little states of Greece, Italy, and the 
 
 153 
 
154 
 
 AJ^T UNIONS. 
 
 Low Countries in art, was owing less to their patronising art 
 than to the strong passions, the public spirit, the concentration 
 and earnestness of character produced by local government. 
 Polygamy is not more unnatural and debasing than central 
 government. We do not hope to see art advance much till 
 national character is restored by the break up of two or three of 
 the huge and hateful empires. 
 
 Latterly a substitute for State patronage has been found, or 
 supposed to have been found, in Art Unions. The clubbed 
 guineas of thousands form a sum large enough to buy the 
 costliest pictures. We do not think these Unions can realise 
 all their more sanguine friends look for. Some people sub- 
 scribe to encourage art, most people to get pictures and prints. 
 There is therefore a strong inducement among the managers 
 of these institutions to have as many prizes as possible to 
 distribute. Their motive is excellent. Their desire is to serve 
 artists and satisfy the public. They are all gratuitous labourers 
 in this excellent work. But the effect is to break up the fund 
 into small sums, and to prevent Art Committees from buying 
 great, and therefore costly pictures, and thus to discourage 
 them. Perhaps even in this respect these committees are 
 blameless; a petty style existed, and has not been got rid of, 
 and it may be many years before they have the opportunity of 
 buying a picture great in design and execution. 
 
 Still these institutions do and have done a great deal. They 
 have given the guineas of tens of thousands to support artists 
 who might otherwise have starved or painted portraits. They 
 have put hundreds of pictures and thousands of fine prints into 
 houses where a catch-penny London engraving, or nothing at 
 all, would have reached. They have created an excitement 
 about art. Men talk of it, read of it, think of it, and recom- 
 mend it, who, ten years ago, would not have heeded its 
 existence. Artists thus encouraged and honoured are improv- 
 ing, and there is every hope that by the continuance of such 
 support, and by the increase of public spirit, a school of 
 eminent Irish artists will be created to illustrate their country’s 
 history and character, and to associate their fame with hers. 
 
HINTS FOR IRISH HISTORICAL PAINTINGS. 
 
 National art is conversant with national subjects. We have 
 Irish artists, but no Irish, no national art. This ought not to 
 continue; it is injurious to the artists, and disgraceful to the 
 country. The following historical subjects were loosely jotted 
 down by a friend. Doubtless, a more just selection could be 
 made by students noting down fit subjects for painting and 
 sculpture, as they read. We shall be happy to print any 
 suggestions on the subject — our own are, as we call them, mere 
 hints with loose references to the authors or books which 
 suggested them. For any good painting, the marked figures 
 must be few, the action obvious, the costume, arms, architecture, 
 postures historically exact, and the manners, appearance, and 
 rank of the characters strictly studied and observed. The 
 grouping and drawing require great truth and vigour. A 
 similar set of subjects illustrating social life could be got from 
 the Poor Report, Carleton’s, Banim’s, or Griffin’s Stories, or 
 better still, from observation. 
 
 The references are vague, but perhaps sufficient. 
 
 The Landing of the Milesians. — Keating, Moore’s Melodies. 
 
 Ollamh Fodhla Presenting his Laws to his People. Keating’s, 
 Moore’s, and O’Halloran’s Histories of Ireland. — Walker’s Irish Dress 
 and Arms, and Vallancey’s Collectanea, 
 
 Nial and his Nine Hostages. — Moore, Keating. 
 
 A Druid’s Augury. — Moore, O’Halloran, Keating. 
 
 A Chief Riding Out of his Fort. — Griffin’s Invasion, Walker, Moore. 
 
 The Oak of Kildare. — Moore. 
 
 The Burial of King Dathy in the Alps, his thinned troops laying 
 stones on his grave.— MGeoghegan, “ Histoire de I’lrlande” (French 
 edition). Invasion, Walker, Moore. 
 
 St. Patrick brought before the Druids at Tara. — Moore and his 
 Authorities. 
 
 H5 
 
156 IRISH HISTORICAL PAINTINGS. 
 
 The First Landing of the Danes. — See Invasion, Moore, etc. 
 
 The Death of Turgesius. — Keating, Moore. 
 
 Ceallachan tied to the Mast. — Keating. 
 
 Murkertach Returning to Aileach. — Archaeological Society’s Tracts. 
 Brian Reconnoitring the Danes before Clontarf. 
 
 The Last of the Danes Escaping to his Ship. 
 
 O’Ruarc’s Return. — Keating, Moore’s Melodies. 
 
 Raymond Le Gros Leaving his Bride. — Moore. 
 
 Roderic in Conference with the Normans. — Moore, M^Geoghegan. 
 Donald O’Brien Setting Fire to Limerick. — M‘Geoghegan. 
 
 Donald O’Brien Visiting Holycross. — M ‘Geoghegan. 
 
 O’Brien, O’Connor, and M‘Carthy making Peace to attack the 
 Normans. — M ‘Geoghegan, Moore. 
 
 The Same Three Victorious at the Battle of Thurles. — Moore and 
 O’Conor’s Rerum Hibernicarum Scriptores. 
 
 Irish Chiefs leaving Prince John. — Moore, etc. 
 
 M‘Murrough and Gloster. — Harris’s Hibernica, p. 53. 
 
 Crowning of Edward Bruce. — Leland, Grace’s Annals, etc. 
 Edgecombe Vainly Trying to Overawe Kildare. — Harris’s Hibernica. 
 Kildare “ On the Necks of the Butlers.” — Leland. 
 
 Shane O’Neill at Elizabeth’s Court. — Leland. 
 
 Lord Sydney Entertained by Shane O’Neill. 
 
 The Battle of the Red Coats. — O’Sullivan’s Catholic History. 
 
 Hugh O’Neill Victor in Single Combat at Clontibret. — Fynes 
 Moryson, O’Sullivan, M ‘Geoghegan. 
 
 The Corleius. — Dymmok’s Treatise, Archaeological Society’s Tracts. 
 Maguire and St. Leger in Single Combat. — M ‘Geoghegan. 
 O’Sullivan Crossing the Shannon. — Pacata Hibernia. 
 
 O’Dogherty Receiving the Insolent Message of the Governor of 
 Derry. — M ‘Geoghegan. 
 
 The Brehon before the English Judges. — Davis’s Letter to Lord 
 Salisbury. 
 
 Ormond Refusing to give up his Sword. — Carte’s Life of Ormond. 
 Good Lookers-on. — Strafford’s Letters. 
 
 Owen Conolly before the Privy Council, 1641. — Carey’s Vindiciae. 
 The Battle of Julianstown. — Temple’s Rebellion, and Tichbourne’s 
 Drogheda. 
 
 Owen Roe Organising the Creaghts. — Carte, and also Belling and 
 O’Neill in the Desiderata Curiosa Hibernica. 
 
IRISH HISTORICAL PAINTINGS 
 
 157 
 
 The Council of Kilkenny. — Carte. 
 
 The Breach of Clonmel. — Do. 
 
 Smoking Out the Irish. — Ludlow’s Memoirs. 
 
 Burning Them. — Castlehaven’s Memoirs. 
 
 Nagle before the Privy Council. — Harris’s William. 
 
 James’s Entry into Dublin. — Dublin Magazine for March 1843. 
 
 The Bridge of Athlone. — Green Book and Authorities. 
 
 St. Ruth’s Death. — Do. 
 
 The Embarkation from Limerick. — Do. 
 
 Cremona. — Cox’s Magazine. 
 
 Fontenoy. — Do. 
 
 Sir S. Rice Pleading against the Violation of the Treaty of Limerick. 
 — Staunton’s Collection of Tracts on Ireland. 
 
 Molyneux’s Book Burned. 
 
 Liberty Boys Reading a Drapier’s Letter. — Mason’s St. Patrick’s 
 Cathedral. 
 
 Lucas Surrounded by Dublin Citizens in his Shop. 
 
 Grattan Moving Liberty. — Memoirs. 
 
 Flood Apostrophising Corruption. — Barrington. 
 
 Dungannon Convention. — Wilson, Barrington. 
 
 Curran Cross-examining Armstrong. — Memoirs. 
 
 Curran Pleading before the Council in Alderman James’s Case. 
 Tone’s First Society. — See his Memoirs. 
 
 The Belfast Club. — Madden’s U. I., Second Series, vol. i. 
 
 Tone, Emmet, and Keogh in the Rathfarnham Garden. 
 
 Tone and Carnot. — Tone’s Memoirs. 
 
 Battle of Oulart. — Hay, Teeling, etc. 
 
 First Meeting of the Catholic Association. 
 
 O’Connell Speaking in a Munster Chapel. — Wyse’s Association. 
 
 The Clare Hustings. — Proposal of O’Connell, 
 
 The Dublin Corporation Speech. 
 
 Father Mathew Administering the Pledge in a Munster County. 
 Conciliation. — Orange and Green. 
 
 The Lifting of the Irish Flags of a National Fleet and Army.^ 
 
 ^ Let us add to this list that conversation of Davis, Duffy, and 
 Dillon under a “ noble elm within view of the Park gate ” ( Young 
 Ireland^ p. 17), which led to the establishment of the Nation news- 
 paper. — E d. 
 
OUR NATIONAL LANGUAGE.'^ 
 
 Men are ever valued most for peculiar and original qualities. 
 A man who can only talk commonplace, and act according to 
 routine, has little weight. To speak, look, and do what your 
 own soul from its depths orders you are credentials of great- 
 ness which all men understand and acknowledge. Such a 
 man’s dictum has more influence than the reasoning of an 
 
 ^ Davis’s enthusiasm for the Irish language was sometimes a subject 
 of pleasantry to his friends of the Nation^ sometimes, however, of 
 pain also, for he used to alter, or insist on their altering, their verses in 
 order to adapt them to the proper form of Irish names. One of them 
 declared that if he sent in a poem beginning 
 
 Let us go down 
 To pretty Kingstown,” 
 
 he might confidently expect to find in his proof — ■ 
 
 “ Let us go down 
 To pretty Dunleary. ” 
 
 Some of the ideas in this essay were not so unreasonable in Davis’s 
 time as they will appear now ; for the wholesale disappearance of the 
 Irish language is a matter of quite recent times, and has proceeded 
 with a startling rapidity. And the effects of this widespread and 
 sudden change have been calamitous enough ; for with the language 
 has perished a whole world of romantic tradition, maxims, poems, etc., 
 whose influence on culture and conduct was great and elevating. One 
 of the most competent of living observers, Mr. Douglas Hyde, has 
 remarked that the Irish peasantry of the East, who lost their language 
 several generations ago, approximate much more nearly in character to 
 those who still possess it, than to those with whom the loss is com- 
 paratively a matter of yesterday. — Ed. 
 
 158 
 
OUR NATIONAL LANGUAGE. 
 
 159 
 
 imitative or commonplace man. He fills his circle with con- 
 fidence. He is self-possessed, firm, accurate, and daring. 
 Such men are the pioneers of civilisation, and the rulers of the 
 human heart. 
 
 Why should not nations be judged thus? Is not a full indul- 
 gence of its natural tendencies essential to peoples greatness ? 
 Force the manners, dress, language, and constitution of Russia, 
 or Italy, or Norway, or America, and you instantly stunt and 
 distort the whole mind of either people. 
 
 The language, which grows up with a people, is conformed 
 to their organs, descriptive of their climate, constitution, and 
 manners, mingled inseparably with their history and their soil, 
 fitted beyond any other language to express their prevalent 
 thoughts in the most natural and efficient way. 
 
 To impose another language on such a people is to send 
 their history adrift among the accidents of translation — ’tis to 
 tear their identity from all places — ^’tis to substitute arbitrary 
 signs for picturesque and suggestive names — ’tis to cut off the 
 entail of feeling, and separate the people from their forefathers 
 by a deep gulf— tis to corrupt their very organs, and abridge 
 their power of expression. 
 
 The language of a nation’s youth is the only easy and full 
 speech for its manhood and for its age. And when the lan- 
 guage of its cradle goes, itself craves a tomb. 
 
 What business has a Russian for the rippling language of 
 Italy or India? How could a Greek distort his organs and his 
 soul to speak Dutch upon the sides of the Hymettus, or the 
 beach of Salamis, or on the waste where once was Sparta ? 
 And is it befitting the fiery, delicate-organed Celt to abandon 
 his beautiful tongue, docile and spirited as an Arab, “ sweet as 
 music, strong as the wave” — is it befitting in him to abandon 
 this wild, liquid speech for the mongrel of a hundred breeds 
 called English, which, powerful though it be, creaks and bangs 
 about the Celt who tries to use it? 
 
 We lately met a glorious thought in the “Triads of 
 Mochmed,” printed in one of the Welsh codes by the Record 
 Commission : “ There are three things without which there is 
 
OUR NATIONAL LANGUAGE. 
 
 1 6o 
 
 no country — common language, common judicature, and co-till- 
 age land — for without these a country cannot support itself in 
 peace and social union.” 
 
 A people without a language of its own is only half a nation. 
 A nation should guard its language more than its territories — 
 His a surer barrier, and more important frontier, than fortress 
 or river. 
 
 And in good times it has ever been thought so. Who had 
 dared to propose the adoption of Persian or Egyptian in 
 Greece — how had Pericles thundered at the barbarian.^ How 
 had Cato scourged from the forum him who would have given 
 the Attic or Gallic speech to men of Rome ? How proudly and 
 how nobly Germany stopped “the incipient creeping” progress 
 of French ! And no sooner had she succeeded than her genius, 
 which had tossed in a hot trance, sprung up fresh and 
 triumphant. 
 
 Had Pyrrhus quelled Italy, or Xerxes subdued Greece for a 
 time long enough to impose new languages, where had been 
 the literature which gives a pedigree to human genius ? Even 
 liberty recovered had been sickly and insecure without the 
 language with which it had hunted in the woods, worshipped at 
 the fruit-strewn altar, debated on the council-hill, and shouted 
 in the battle-charge. 
 
 There is a fine song of the Fusians, which describes 
 “ Language linked to liberty.” 
 
 To lose your native tongue, and learn that of an alien, is the 
 worst badge of conquest — it is the chain on the soul. To have 
 lost entirely the national language is death ; the fetter has worn 
 through. So long as the Saxon held to his German speech he 
 could hope to resume his land from the Norman; now, if he is 
 to be free and locally governed, he must build himself a new 
 home. There is hope for Scotland — strong hope for Wales — 
 sure hope for Hungary. The speech of the alien is not universal 
 in the one; is gallantly held at bay in the other; is nearly 
 expelled from the third. 
 
 How unnatural — how corrupting His for us, three-fourths of 
 
OUR NATIONAL LANGUAGE. 
 
 i6i 
 
 whom are of Celtic blood, to speak a medley of Teutonic 
 dialects ! If we add the Celtic Scots, who came back here 
 from the thirteenth to the seventeenth centuries, and the Celtic 
 Welsh, who colonised many parts of Wexford and other 
 Leinster counties, to the Celts who never left Ireland, probably 
 five-sixths, or more, of us are Celts. What business have we 
 with the Norman-Sassenagh 1 
 
 Nor let any doubt these proportions because of the number 
 of English na 77 tes in Ireland. With a politic cruelty the 
 English of the Pale passed an Act (3 Edw. IV., c. 3) com- 
 pelling every Irishman within English jurisdiction “to go 
 like to one Englishman in apparel, and shaving off his beard 
 above the mouth,” “and shall take to him an English sirname 
 of one town, as Sutton, Chester, Trym, Skryne, Corke, Kinsale ; 
 or colour, as White, Blacke, Browne ; or art or science, as 
 Smith, or Carpenter ; or office, as Cook, Butler ; and that he 
 and his issue shall use this name, under pain of forfeiting his 
 goods yearly.” 
 
 And just as this Parliament before the Reformation, so did 
 another after the Reformation. By the 28th Henry VIII., c. 15, 
 the dress and language of the Irish were insolently described 
 as barbarous by the minions of that ruffian king, and were 
 utterly forbidden and abolished under many penalties and 
 incapacities. These laws are still in force ; but whether the 
 Archaeological Society, including Peel and O’Connell, will be 
 prosecuted seems doubtful. 
 
 There was also, ’tis to be feared, an adoption of English 
 names, during some periods, from fashion, fear, or meanness. 
 Some of our best Irish names, too, have been so mangled as 
 to require some scholarship to identify them. For these and 
 many more reasons the members of the Celtic race here are 
 immensely greater than at first appears. 
 
 But this is not all; for even the Saxon and Norman colonists, 
 notwithstanding these laws, melted down into the Irish, and 
 adopted all their ways and language. For centuries upon 
 centuries Irish was spoken by men of all bloods in Ireland, and 
 English was unknown, save to a few citizens and nobles of the 
 
 703 
 
i 62 
 
 OUR NATIONAL LANGUAGE. 
 
 Pale. ’Tis only within a very late period that the majority of 
 the people learned English. 
 
 But, it will be asked, how can the language be restored now? 
 
 We shall answer this partly by saying that, through the 
 labours of the Archaeological and many lesser societies, it zs 
 being revived rapidly. 
 
 We shall consider this question of the possibility of reviving 
 it more at length some other day. 
 
 Nothing can make us believe that it is natural or honourable 
 for the Irish to speak the speech of the alien, the invader, the 
 Sassenagh tyrant, and to abandon the language of our kings 
 and heroes. What ! give up the tongue of Ollamh Fodhla and 
 Brian Boru, the tongue of M‘Carty, and the O’Nials, the tongue 
 of Sarsfield’s, Curran’s, Mathew’s, and O’Connell’s boyhood, for 
 that of Strafford and Poynings, Sussex, Kirk, and Cromwell ! 
 
 No ! oh, no ! the “ brighter days shall surely come,” and 
 the green flag shall wave on our towers, and the sweet old 
 language be heard once more in college, mart, and senate. 
 
 But even should the effort to save it as the national language 
 fail, by the attempt we will rescue its old literature, and hand 
 down to our descendants proofs that we had a language as 
 fit for love, and war, and business, and pleasure, as the world 
 ever knew, and that we had not the spirit and nationality to 
 preserve it ! 
 
 Had Swift known Irish he would have sowed its seed by the 
 side of that nationality which he planted, and the close of 
 the last century would have seen the one as flourishing as the 
 other. Had Ireland used Irish in 1782, would it not have 
 impeded England’s re-conquest of us ? But ’tis not yet too 
 late. 
 
 For if the mixed speech called English was laid with 
 sweetmeats on your child’s tongue, English is the best speech 
 of manhood. And yet, rather, in that case you are unfortunate. 
 The hills, and lakes, and rivers, the forts and castles, the 
 churches and parishes, the baronies and counties around you, 
 have all Irish names— names which describe the nature of the 
 scenery or ground, the name of founder, or chief, or priest, 
 
OUR NATIONAL LANGUAGE, 163 
 
 or the leading fact in the history of the place. To you these 
 are names hard to pronounce, and without meaning. 
 
 And yet it were well for you to know them. That knowledge 
 would be a topography, and a history, and romance, walking 
 by your side, and helping your discourse. Meath tells its 
 flatness, Clonmel the abundant riches of its valley, Fer- 
 managh is the land of the Lakes, Tyrone the country of Owen, 
 Kilkenny the Church of St. Canice, Dunmore the great fort, 
 Athenry the Ford of the Kings, Dunleary the Fort of O’Leary; 
 and the Phoenix Park, instead of taking its name from a fable, 
 recognises as christener the ‘‘sweet water” which yet springs 
 near the east gate. 
 
 All the names of our airs and songs are Irish, and we every 
 day are as puzzled and ingeniously wrong about them as the 
 man who, when asked for the air, “ I am asleep, and don’t 
 waken me,” called it “ Tommy M‘Cullagh made boots for me.” 
 
 The bulk of our history and poetry are written in Irish, and 
 shall we, who learn Italian, and Latin, and Greek, to read 
 Dante, Livy, and Homer in the original — shall we be content 
 with ignorance or a translation of Irish 1 
 
 The want of modern scientific words in Irish is undeniable, 
 and doubtless we should adopt the existing names into our 
 language. The Germans have done the same thing, and no 
 one calls German mongrel on that account. Most of these 
 names are clumsy and extravagant ; and are almost all derived 
 from Greek or Latin, and cut as foreign a figure in French and 
 English as they would in Irish. Once Irish was recognised 
 as a language to be learned as much as French or Italian, 
 our dictionaries would fill up, and our vocabularies ramify, 
 to suit all the wants of life and conversation. 
 
 These objections are ingenious refinements, however, rarely 
 thought of till after the other and great objection has been 
 answered. 
 
 The usual objection to attempting the revival of Irish is, that 
 it could not succeed. 
 
 If an attempt were made to introduce Irish, either through 
 the national schools or the courts of law, into the eastern side of 
 
164 
 
 OUR NATIONAL LANGUAGE, 
 
 the island, it would certainly fail, and the reaction might 
 extinguish it altogether. But no one contemplates this save as 
 a dream of what may happen a hundred years hence. It is 
 quite another thing to say, as we do, that the Irish language 
 should be cherished, taught, and esteemed, and that it can be 
 preserved and gradually extended. 
 
 What we seek is, that the people of the upper classes should 
 have their children taught the language which explains our 
 names of persons or places, our older history, and our music, 
 and which is spoken in the majority of our counties, rather than 
 Italian, German, or French. It would be more useful in life, 
 more serviceable to the taste and genius of young people, and a 
 more flexible accomplishment for an Irish man or woman to 
 speak, sing, and write Irish than French. 
 
 At present the middle classes think it a sign of vulgarity to 
 speak Irish — the children are everywhere taught English and 
 English alone in schools — and, what is worse, they are urged 
 by rewards and punishments to speak it at home, for English is 
 the language of their masters. Now, we think the example and 
 exertions of the upper classes would be sufflcient to set the 
 opposite and better fashion of preferring Irish ; and, even as a 
 matter of taste, we think them bound to do so. And we ask it 
 of the pride, the patriotism, and the hearts of our farmers and 
 shopkeepers, will they try to drive out of their children’s minds 
 the native language of almost every great man we had, from 
 Brian Boru to O’Connell — will they meanly sacrifice the 
 language which names their hills, and towns, and music, to the 
 tongue of the stranger ? 
 
 About half the people west of a line drawn from Derry to 
 Waterford speak Irish habitually, and in some of the mountain 
 tracts east of that line it is still common. Simply requiring the 
 teachers of the national schools in these Irish-speaking districts 
 to know Irish, and supplying them with Irish translations of the 
 school books, would guard the language where it now exists, 
 and prevent it from being swept away by the English tongue, as 
 the Red Americans have been by the English race from New 
 York to New Orleans. 
 
OUR NATIONAL LANGUAGE. 165 
 
 The example of the upper classes would extend and develop a 
 modern Irish literature, and the hearty support they have given 
 to the Archaeological Society makes us hope that they will have 
 sense and spirit to do so. 
 
 But the establishment of a newspaper partly or wholly Irish 
 would be the most rapid and sure way of serving the language. 
 The Irish-speaking man would find, in his native tongue, the 
 political news and general information he has now to seek 
 in English ; and the English-speaking man, having Irish 
 frequently before him in so attractive a form, would be tempted 
 to learn its characters, and by-and-by its meaning. 
 
 These newspapers in many languages are now to be foun .1 
 everywhere but here. In South America many of these papers 
 are Spanish and English, or French ; in North America, 
 French and English ; in Northern Italy, German and Italian ; 
 in Denmark and Holland, German is used in addition to the 
 native tongue ; in Alsace and Switzerland, French and German ; 
 in Poland, German, French, and Sclavonic; in Turkey, French 
 and Turkish ; in Hungary, Magyar, Sclavonic, and German ; 
 and the little Canton of Grison uses three languages in its 
 press. With the exception of Hungary, the secondary lan- 
 guage is, in all cases, spoken by fewer persons than the Irish- 
 speaking people of Ireland, and while they everywhere tolerate 
 and use one language as a medium of commerce, they cherish 
 the other as the vehicle cf history, the wings of song, the soil of 
 their genius, and a mark and guard of nationality. 
 
INSTITUTIONS OF DUBLIN. 
 
 Judged by the Directory^ Dublin is nobly supplied with 
 institutions for the promotion of Literature, Science, and Art; 
 and, judged by its men, there is mind enough here to make 
 these institutions prosper, and instruct and raise the country. 
 Yet their performances are far short of these promises, and 
 the causes for ill-success are easily found. We believe these 
 causes could be almost as easily removed. 
 
 In the first place, we have too many of these institutions. 
 Stingy grants from Government and the general poverty of 
 the people render economy a matter of the first consequence; 
 yet we find these societies maintaining a number of separate 
 establishments, at a great expense of rent and salaries. 
 
 The consequence, of course, is that none of them flourish 
 as they ought — museums, meetings, lectures, libraries, and exhi- 
 bitions are all frittered away, and nothing is done so well as 
 it might be. Moreover, from the want of any arrangement and 
 order, the same men are dragged from one society to another — 
 few men do much, because all are forced to attempt so many 
 things. 
 
 But ’tis better to examine this in detail, and in doing so we 
 may as well give some leading facts as to the chief of these 
 bodies. Take, for example, as a beginning, the 
 
 INSTITUTIONS FOR THE PROMOTION OF FINE ARTS. 
 
 And first there is the Hibernian Academy. It was founded 
 in 1823, received a present of its house in Abbey Street, and 
 some books and casts, from Francis Johnston, a Dublin 
 architect, and has the miserable income of ^300 a year from 
 the Treasurv. It has a drawing-school, with a few casts, no 
 166 
 
INSTITUTIONS OF DUBLIN 167 
 
 pictures, bad accommodation, and professors whose pay is 
 nearly nominal. 
 
 It undoubtedly has some men of great ability and attain- 
 ments, and some who have neither ; but what can be done 
 without funds, statues, or pictures? To aggravate its difficulties, 
 the Dublin Society has another art school, still worse off as to 
 casts, and equally deficient in pictures. As a place of instruc- 
 tion in the designing of patterns for manufactures and the like, 
 the Dublin Society school has worked well ; and many of the 
 best-paid controllers of design in the English manufactories 
 were educated there ; but as a school of fine arts it does little ; 
 and no wonder. Another branch of the Hibernian Academy’s 
 operations is its annual exhibition of pictures. These exhibi- 
 tions attract crowds who would never otherwise see a painting, 
 promote thought on art, and procure patronage for artists. In 
 this, too, the Hibernian Academy has recently found a rival in 
 the Society of Irish Artists established in 1842, which has an 
 annual exhibition in College Street, and pays the expenses of 
 the exhibition out of the admission fees, as does the Hibernian 
 Academy. We are not attaching blame to the Society of Irish 
 Artists in noticing the fact of its rivalry. 
 
 There are three other bodies devoted to the encouragement 
 of art. One of these is the Art Union, founded in 1840, and 
 maintained entirely by subscriptions to its lottery. It dis- 
 tributes fine engravings from Irish pictures among all its 
 members, and pictures and statues, bought in the exhibitions of 
 the Hibernian Academy, and of the Society of Irish Artists, 
 among its prize-holders ; and it gives premiums for the works 
 of native or resident artists. Its operation is as a patron of 
 art; and, in order to get funds for this purpose, and also to 
 secure superior works and a higher competition, it extends its 
 purchases to the best foreign works exhibited here. It has no 
 collection, and has merely an office in College Street — in fact 
 its best permanent possession is its unwearied secretary. The 
 Society of Ancient Art was established last year for the forma- 
 tion of a public gallery of casts from classical and mediaeval 
 statues, and ultimately for purposes of direct teaching by 
 
i68 
 
 INSTITUTIONS OF DUBLIN 
 
 lectures, etc. It obtained some funds by subscription; but 
 under the expectation, ’tis said, of a public grant, has done 
 nothing. Lastly, there is the “ Institute of Irish Architects,” 
 founded in 1839 “for the general advancement of civil archi- 
 tecture, for promoting and facilitating the acquirement of a 
 knowledge of the various arts and sciences connected there- 
 with, for the formation of a library and museum,” etc. 
 
 To us it is very plain that here are too many institutions, and 
 that the efficiency of all suffers materially from their want of 
 connection and arrangement. Some, at least, might be amal- 
 gamated with great advantage, or rather all, except the Art 
 Union. That is only a club of purchasers, and any attempt 
 materially to change its nature would peril its funds. Some 
 such plan as the following would accomplish all that is 
 vainly attempted now. Let the Government be pressed to 
 give £7.000 a year, if the public supply ;£iooo a year. Let 
 this income go to a new Hibernian Academy — the present 
 Hibernian Academy, Artists’ Society, Society of Ancient Art, 
 the Art Schools of the Dublin Society, and the Institute of 
 Irish Architects being merged in it. This merger could be 
 easily secured through the inducements secured by the charter, 
 and by accommodation, salaries, and utility of the new body. 
 The present property of these bodies, with some moderate 
 grant, would suffice for the purchase of a space of ground 
 ample for the schools, museums, library, lecture-room, and 
 yards of such an institution. 
 
 At the head of it should be a small body governing and 
 accounting for its finances, but no person should be a governing 
 member of more than one of its sections. These sections should 
 be for Statuary, Painting, Architecture, and Design Drawing. 
 Each of these sections should have its own Gallery and its own 
 Practice Rooms ; but one Library and one public Lecture 
 Room would suffice for the entire. The architectural section 
 would also need some open space for its experiments and its 
 larger specimens. A present of copies of the British Museum 
 casts, along with the fund of the Ancient Art Society, would 
 originate a Cast Gallery, and a few good pictures could be 
 
INSTITUTIONS OF DUBLIN 
 
 169 
 
 bought as a commencement of a National Gallery of Painting, 
 leaving the economy of the managers and the liberality of the 
 public gradually to fill up. Collections of native works in 
 canvas and marble, and architectural models, could be soon 
 and cheaply procured. The Art Library of the Dublin Society 
 added to that of the Hibernian Academy would need few 
 additions to make it sufficient for the new body. 
 
 Such an Institute ought not to employ any but the best 
 teachers and lecturers. It should encourage proficiency by 
 rewards that would instruct the proficient ; it should apply 
 itself to cataloguing, preserving, and making known all the 
 works of art in the country ; give prizes for artistical works ; 
 publish its lectures and transactions ; issue engravings of the 
 most instructive works of art ; and hold evening meetings, to 
 which ladies would be admitted. It should allow at least £^oo 
 a year for the support of free pupils. In connection with its 
 drawing and modelling schools should be a professorship of 
 anatomy, or, what were better, some arrangement might be 
 made with the College of Surgeons, or some such body, for 
 courses of instruction for its pupils. The training for its pupils 
 in sculpture, painting, and design should include the study of 
 ancient and modern costumes, zoology, and of vegetable and 
 geological forms. For this purpose books should not be so 
 much relied on as lectures in gardens, museums, and during 
 student excursions. Of course the architectural pupils should 
 be required to answer at a preliminary examination in mathe- 
 matics, and should receive special instruction in the building 
 materials, action of climate, etc., in Ireland. 
 
 Were the buildings standing, and the society chartered 
 judiciously, the sum we have mentioned would be sufficient. 
 Four professors at from ;^20o to Jiy^o a year each, four 
 assistants at £\oo a year each, a librarian at the same rate, 
 with payments for extia instruction in anatomy, etc., etc., and 
 for porters, premiums, and so forth, would not exceed £2000 
 a year. So that if ;^4oo were expended on free pupils, there 
 would remain £600 a year for the purchase of works for the 
 galleries. 
 
INSTITUTIONS OF DUBLIN 
 
 170 
 
 At present there is much waste of money, great annoyance, 
 and loss of time to the supporters of these institutions, and 
 marvellously little benefit to art. The plan we have proposed 
 would be economical both of time and money; but, what is of 
 more worth, it would give us, what we have not now, a National 
 Gallery of Statuary and Painting — good Exhibition Rooms 
 for works of art — business-like Lecturers and Lectures — great 
 public excitement about art — and, finally, a great National 
 Academy. 
 
 If any one has a better plan, let him say it; we have told 
 ours. At all events, some great change is needed, and there 
 can be no fitter time than this for it. 
 
 In any community it is desirable to have Literary Institu- 
 tions, as well classified as legal offices, and as free from 
 counteraction ; but it is especially desirable here now. Our 
 
 literary class is small, and its duties measureless. The 
 diseased suction of London — the absence of gentry, offices, 
 and Legislature — the heart-sickness that is on every thoughtful 
 man without a country — the want of a large, educated, and 
 therefore book-buying class — and (it must be confessed) the 
 depression and distrust produced by rash experiments and 
 paltry failure, have left us with few men for a great work. 
 Probably the great remedy is the restoration of our Parliament 
 — bringing back, as it would, the aristocracy and the public 
 offices, giving society and support to Writers and Artists, and 
 giving them a country’s praise to move and a country’s glory to 
 reward them. 
 
 But one of the very means of attaining nationality is securing 
 some portion of that literary force which would gush abundantly 
 from it ; and therefore, consider it how you will, it is important 
 to increase and economise the exertions of the literary class in 
 Ireland. Yet the reverse is done. Institutions are multiplied 
 instead of those being made efficient which exist ; and men 
 talk as proudly of the new “ Teach’em-everything-in-no-time- 
 Society” as if its natty laws were a library, its desk a laboratory 
 and a museum, and its members fresh labourers, when all they 
 have done is to waste the time of persons who had business. 
 
INSTITUTIONS OF D UBLIN 1 7 1 
 
 and to delude those who had none, into the belief that they 
 were doing good. Ephemeral things ! which die not without 
 mischief— they have wasted hours and days of strong men in 
 spinning sand, and leave depression growing from their tombs. 
 
 It is a really useful deed to rescue from dissipation, or from 
 idle reading, or from mammon-hunting, one strong, passionate 
 man or boy, and to set him to work investigating, arranging, 
 teaching. It is an honest task to shame the ’broidered youth 
 from meditation on waistcoats and the display of polka steps 
 into manly pursuits. It is an angel’s mission (oftenest the work 
 of love) to startle a sleeping and unconscious genius into the 
 spring and victory of a roused lion. But it is worse than use- 
 less to establish new associations and orders without well con- 
 sidering first whether the same machinery do not already exist 
 and rust for want of the very energy and skill which you need 
 too. There is a bridge in a field near Blarney Castle where 
 water never ran. It was built “at the expense of the county.” 
 These men build their mills close as houses in a capital, taking 
 no thought for the stream to turn them. 
 
 We have already censured this in some detail with reference 
 to societies for the promotion of the Fine Arts, and have urged 
 the formation, out of all these fiddling, clashing bodies, of some 
 one great institution for the promotion of Painting, Sculpture, 
 and Architecture, with a Museum, a Library, a Gallery, and 
 Lecturers, governed by professional minds, great enough to be 
 known and regarded by the people, and popular and strong 
 enough to secure Government support. 
 
 Similar defects exist everywhere. Take the Dublin Society, 
 for example. Nothing can be more heterogeneous than its 
 objects. We are far from denying its utility. That utility is 
 immense, the institution is native, of old standing (it was 
 founded in 1731), national, and, when it wanted support, our 
 pen was not idle in its behalf. 
 
 But we believe its utility greatly diminished by its attempting 
 too many things, and especially by including objects more fitly 
 belonging to other institutions ; and on the opposite side it is 
 maimed, by the interference of other bodies, in its natural 
 
172 
 
 INSTITUTIONS OF DUBLIN 
 
 functions. The Dublin Society was founded for the promotion 
 of husbandry and other useful arts. Its labours to serve agri- 
 culture have been repeated and extensive, though not always 
 judicious. It has also endeavoured to promote manufactures. 
 It has gardens and museums fitter for scientific than practical 
 instruction, admirable lecturers, a library most generously 
 opened, a drawing-school of the largest purposes and of 
 equivocal success, and various minor branches. 
 
 The Irish Academy has some of this fault. It endeavours to 
 unite antiquarianism and abstract science. Its meetings are 
 alternately entertained with mathematics and history, and its 
 transactions are equally comprehensive. We yield to none in 
 anxiety for the promotion of antiquarian studies ; we think the 
 public and the government disgraced by the slight support 
 given to the Academy. We are not a little proud of the honour 
 and strength given to our country by the science of MacCullagh, 
 Hamilton, and Lloyd ; but we protest against the attempt to 
 mix the armoury of the ancient Irish, or the Celtic dialects, or 
 the essay on Round Towers, with trigonometry and the calculus, 
 whether in a lecture-room or a book. 
 
 Let us just set down, as we find them, some of the Literary 
 and Scientific Institutions. There are the Royal Dublin 
 Society, the Royal Irish Academy (we wish these royalties were 
 dropped — no one minds them), the Irish Archaeological Society, 
 the Royal Zoological Society, the Geological Society, the 
 Dublin Natural History Society, the Dublin Philosophical 
 Society, the Royal Agricultural Society, etc., etc. Now, we 
 take it that these bodies might be usefully reduced to three, 
 and if three moderate government grants were made under 
 conditions, rewarding such a classification, we doubt not it 
 would instantly be made. 
 
 In the first place, we would divorce from the Irish Academy 
 the scientific department, requiring Trinity College to form 
 some voluntary organisation for the purpose. To this non- 
 collegiate philosophers should be admitted, and, thus disen- 
 cumbered, we would devote the Academy to antiquities and 
 literature —incorporate with it the Archaeological Society — 
 
INSTITUTIONS OF DUBLIN 
 
 173 
 
 transfer to it all the antiques (of which it had not duplicates) 
 in Trinity College, the Dublin Society, etc., and enlarge its 
 museums and meeting-room. Its section of “ polite literature” 
 has long been a name — it should be made real. There would 
 be nothing inconvenient or strange in finding in its lecture- 
 rooms or transactions the antiquities and literature of Ireland, 
 diversified by general historical, critical, and aesthetical re- 
 searches. 
 
 The Dublin Society would reasonably divide into two 
 sections. One, for the promotion of husbandry, might be 
 aggrandised by tempting the Agricultural Society to join it, and 
 should have a permanent museum, an extensive farm, pre- 
 miums, shows, publications, and special lecturers. The second 
 section, for the encouragement of manufactures, should have its 
 museum, work-shops, and experiment ground (the last, perhaps, 
 as the agricultural farm), and its special lecturers. The library 
 might well be Joint, and managed by a joint committee, having 
 separate funds. The general lecturers on chemistry and other 
 such subjects might be paid in common. The drawing-school 
 (save that for pattern and machine drawing) might be trans- 
 ferred to the Art Institution; and the botanic garden and 
 museum of minerals to a third body we propose. 
 
 This third body we would form from a union of the 
 Zoological, the Geological, the Natural History, and all other 
 such societies, and endow it with the Botanic and Zoological 
 Gardens — give it rooms for a general, and for a specially Irish 
 museum, and for lecture-rooms in town, and supply it with a 
 small fund to pay lecturers, who should go through the 
 provinces. 
 
 We are firmly convinced that this re-arrangement of the 
 Institutions of Dublin is quite practicable, would diminish 
 unproductive expenses, economise the time, and condense the 
 purposes of our literary, scientific, and artistical men, and 
 increase enormously the use of the institutions to the public. 
 
 Of course the whole plan will be laughed at as fanciful and 
 improbable; we think it easy, and we think it will be done, 
 
IRELAND’S PEOPLE, LORDS, GENTRY, 
 COMMONALTY. 
 
 When we are considering a country’s resources and its fitness 
 for a peculiar destiny, its people are not to be overlooked. 
 How much they think, how much they work, what are their 
 passions, as well as their habits, what are their hopes and what 
 their history, suggest inquiries as well worth envious investiga- 
 tion as even the inside of a refugee’s letter. 
 
 And there is much in Ireland of that character — much that 
 J makes her superior to slavery, and much that renders her 
 inferior to freedom. 
 
 Her inhabitants are composed of Irish nobles, Irish gentry, 
 and the Irish people. Each has an interest in the independ- 
 ence of their country, each a share in her disgrace. Upon 
 each, too, there devolves a separate duty in this crisis of her 
 fate. They all have responsibilities ; but the infamy of failing 
 in them is not alike in all. 
 
 The nobles are the highest class. They have most to guard. 
 In every other country they are the champions of patriotism. 
 They feel there is no honour for them separate from their 
 fatherland. Its freedom, its dignity, its integrity, are as their 
 own. They strive for it, legislate for it, guard it, fight for it. 
 Their names, their titles, their very pride are of it. 
 
 In Ireland they are its disgrace. They were first to sell and 
 would be last to redeem it. Treachery to it is daubed on many 
 an escutcheon in its heraldry. It is the only nation where 
 slaves have been ennobled for contributing to its degradation. 
 
 It is a foul thing this — dignity emanating from the throne to 
 gild the filthy mass of national treason that forms the man’s 
 part of many an Irish lord. 
 
 We do not include in this the whole Irish peerage. God 
 J74 
 
IRELAiYI)\S PEOPLE. 
 
 I7S 
 
 forbid. There are several of them not thus ignoble. Many of 
 them worked, struggled, sacrificed for Ireland. Many of them 
 were true to her in the darkest times. 
 
 They were her chiefs, her ornaments, her sentinels, her 
 safeguards. Alas ! that they, too, should have shrunk from 
 their position, and left their duties to humbler, but bolder and 
 better men. 
 
 Look at their station in the State. Is it not one of unequi- 
 vocal shame ? They enjoy the half mendicant privilege of 
 voting for a representative of their order, in the House of 
 Lords, some twice or thrice in their lives. One Irish peer 
 represents about a dozen others of his class, and thus, in his 
 multiplex capacity, he is admitted into fellowship with the 
 English nobility. The borrowed plumes, the delegated 
 authority of so many of his equals, raise him to a half- 
 admitted equality with an English nobleman. And, although 
 thus deprived of their inheritance of dignity, they are not 
 allowed even the privilege of a commoner. An Irish lord 
 cannot sit in the House of Commons for an Irish county or 
 city, nor can he vote for an Irish member. 
 
 But an Irish lord can represent an English constituency. 
 The distinction is a strange one — unintelligible to us in any 
 sense but one of national humiliation. We understand it thus — 
 an Irish lord is too mean in his own person, and by virtue of his 
 Irish title, to rank with the British peerage. He can only qualify 
 for that honour by uniting in his the suffrages and titles of ten 
 or twelve others. But— flattering distinction ! — he is above the 
 rank of an Irish commoner, nor is he permitted to sully his 
 name with the privileges of that order. And — unspeakable 
 dignity ! — he may take his stand with a British mob. 
 
 There is no position to match this in shame. There is no 
 guilt so despicable as dozing in it without a blush or an effort, 
 or even a dream for independence. When all else are alive to 
 indignity, and working in the way of honour and liberty, they 
 alone, whom it would best become to be earliest and most 
 earnest in the strife, sink back replete with dishonour*. 
 
 Of those, or their descendants, who, at the time of the Union, 
 
176 
 
 IRELAND S PEOPLE, 
 
 sold their country and the high places they filled in her councils 
 and in her glory, for the promise of a foreign title, which has not 
 been redeemed, the shame and the mortification has been 
 perhaps too great to admit of any hope in regard to them. 
 Their trust was sacred — their honour unsuspected. The stake 
 they guarded above life they betrayed then for a false bauble; 
 and it is no wonder if they think their infamy irredeemable and 
 eternal. 
 
 We know not but it is. There are many, however, not in that 
 category. They struggled at fearful odds, and every risk, against 
 the fate of their country. They strove when hope had left them. 
 Wherefore do they stand apart now, when she is again erect, 
 and righteous, and daring ? Have they despaired for her 
 greatness, because of the infidelity of those to whom she had too 
 blindly trusted t 
 
 The time is gone when she could be betrayed. This one 
 result is already guaranteed by recent teaching. We may not 
 be yet thoroughly instructed in the wisdom and the virtue 
 necessary for the independent maintenance of self-government ; 
 but we have mastered thus much of national knowledge that 
 we cannot be betrayed. There is no assurance ever nation gave 
 which we have not given, or may not give, that our present 
 struggle shall end in triumph or in national death. 
 
 The writers of The Nation have never concealed the defects 
 or flattered the good qualities of their countrymen. They have 
 told them in good faith that they wanted many an attribute of a 
 free people, and that the true way to command happiness and 
 liberty was by learning the arts and practising the culture that 
 fitted men for their enjoyment. Nor was it until we saw them 
 thus learning and thus practising that our faith became perfect, 
 and that we felt entitled to say to all men, here is a strife in 
 which it will be stainless glory to be even defeated. It is one 
 in which the Irish nobility have the first interest and the first 
 stake in their individual capacities. 
 
 As they would be the most honoured and benefited by 
 national success, they are the guiltiest in opposing or being 
 indifferent to national patriotism. 
 
IRELAND'S PEOPLE. 
 
 177 
 
 Of the Irish gentry there is not much to be said. They are 
 divisible into two classes — the one consists of the old Norman 
 race commingled with the Catholic gentlemen who either 
 have been able to maintain their patrimonies, or who have 
 risen into affluence by their own industry; the other the 
 descendants of Cromwell’s or William’s successful soldiery. 
 
 This last is the most anti-Irish of all. They feel no personal 
 debasement in the dishonour of the country. Old prejudices, 
 a barbarous law, a sense of insecurity in the possessions they 
 know were obtained by plunder, combine to sink them into 
 the mischievous and unholy belief that it is their interest as 
 well as their duty to degrade, and wrong, and beggar the Irish 
 people. 
 
 There are among them men fired by enthusiasm, men fed by 
 fanaticism, men influenced by sordidness; but, as a whole, they 
 are earnest thinkers and stern actors. There is a virtue in 
 their unscrupulousness. They speak, and act, and dare as 
 men. There is a principle in their unprincipledness. Their 
 belief is a harsh and turbulent one, but they profess it in a 
 manly fashion. 
 
 We like them better than the other section of the same class. 
 These last are but sneaking echoes of the other’s views. They 
 are coward patriots and criminal dandies. But they ought 
 to be different from what they are. We wish them so. We 
 want their aid now — for the country, for themselves, for all. 
 Would that they understood the truth, that they thought justly, 
 and acted uprightly. They are wanted, one and all. Why 
 conceal it — they are obstacles in our way, shadows on our 
 path. 
 
 These are called the representatives of the property of the 
 country. They are against the national cause, and therefore 
 it is said that all the wealth of Ireland is opposed to the Repeal 
 of the Union. 
 
 It is an ignorant and a false boast. 
 
 The people of the country are its wealth. They till its soil, 
 raise its produce, ply its trade. They serve, sustain, support, 
 save it. They supply its armies— they are its farmers, its 
 
 704 
 
178 
 
 IRELAND'S PEOPLE. 
 
 merchants, its tradesmen, its artists, all that enrich and 
 adorn it. 
 
 And, after all, each of them has a patrimony to spend, the 
 honourable earning of his sweat, or his intellect, or his industry, 
 or his genius. Taking them on an average, they must, to 
 live, spend at least each by the year. Multiply it by seven 
 millions, and see what it comes to. 
 
 Thirty-five millions annually — compare with that the rental 
 of Ireland; compare with it the wealth of the aristocracy spent 
 in Ireland, and are they not as nothing ? 
 
 But a more important comparison may be made of the 
 strength, the fortitude, the patience, the bravery of those the 
 enrichers of the country with the meanness in mind and 
 courage of those who are opposed to them. 
 
 It is the last we shall suggest. It is sufficient for our purpose. 
 To those who do not think it of the highest value we have 
 nothing to say. 
 
THE STATE OF THE PEASANTRY. 
 
 In a climate soft as a mother’s smile, on a soil fruitful as God’s 
 love, the Irish peasant mourns. 
 
 He is not unconsoled. Faith in the joys of another world, 
 heightened by his woe in this, give him hours when he serenely 
 looks down on the torments that encircle him — the moon on a 
 troubled sky. Domestic love, almost morbid from external 
 suffering, prevents him from becoming a fanatic or a misan- 
 thrope, and reconciles him to life. Sometimes he forgets all, 
 and springs into a desperate glee or a scathing anger; and 
 latterly another feeling — the hope of better days — and another 
 exertion — the effort for redress — have shared his soul with 
 religion, love, mirth, and vengeance. 
 
 His consolations are those of a spirit — his misery includes 
 all physical sufferings, and many that strike the soul, not the 
 senses. 
 
 Consider his griefs ! They begin in the cradle— -they end in 
 the grave. 
 
 Suckled by a breast that is supplied from unwholesome or 
 insufficient food, and that is fevered with anxiety — reeking with 
 the smoke of an almost chimneyless cabin — assailed by wind 
 and rain when the weather rages — breathing, when it is calm, 
 the exhalations of a rotten roof, of clay walls, and of manure, 
 which gives his only chance of food — he is apt to perish in his 
 infancy. 
 
 Or he survives all this (happy if he have escaped from 
 gnawing scrofula or familiar fever), and in the same cabin, with 
 rags instead of his mother’s breast, and lumpers instead of his 
 mother’s milk, he spends his childhood. 
 
 Advancing youth brings him labour, and manhood increases 
 it; but youth and manhood leave his roof rotten, his chimney 
 179 
 
i8o THE STATE OF THE TEASAATEY. 
 
 one hole, his window another, his clothes rags (at best muffled 
 by a holiday cotamore ) — his furniture a pot, a table, a few hay 
 chairs and rickety stools — his food lumpers and water — his 
 bedding straw and a coverlet — his enemies the landlord, the 
 tax-gatherer, and the law — his consolation the priest and his 
 wife — his hope on earth, agitation — his hope hereafter, the 
 Lord God ! 
 
 For such an existence his toil is hard — and so much the 
 better — it calms and occupies his mind; but bitter is his feeling 
 that the toil which gains for him this nauseous and scanty 
 livelihood, heaps dainties and gay wines on the table of his 
 distant landlord, clothes his children or his harem in satin, 
 lodges them in marble halls, and brings all the arts of luxury 
 to solicit their senses — bitter to him to feel that this green land, 
 which he loves and his landlord scorns, is ravished by him of 
 her fruits to pamper that landlord ; twice bitter for him to see 
 his wife, with weariness in her breast of love, to see half his 
 little brood torn by the claws of want to undeserved graves, 
 and to know that to those who survive him he can only leave 
 the inheritance to which he was heir; and thrice bitter to him 
 that even his hovel has not the security of the wild beast’s den 
 — that Squalidness, and Hunger, and Disease are insufflcient 
 guardians of his home — and that the puff of the landlord’s or 
 the agent’s breath may blow him off the land where he has lived, 
 and send him and his to a dyke, or to prolong wretchedness 
 in some desperate kennel in the next town, till the strong wings 
 of Death — unopposed lord of such suburb — bear them away. 
 
 Aristocracy of Ireland, will ye do nothing? — will ye do 
 nothing for fear? The body who best know Ireland— the body 
 that keep Ireland within the law — the Repeal Committee — 
 declare that unless some great change take place an agrarian 
 war may ensue ! Do ye know what that is, and how it would 
 come? The rapid multiplication of outrages, increased violence 
 by magistrates, collisions between the people and the police, 
 coercive laws and military force, the violation of houses, the 
 suspension of industry — the conflux of discontent, pillage, 
 piassacre, war — the gentry shattered, the peasantry conquered 
 
THE STATE OF THE PEASANTRY, i8i 
 
 and decimated, or victorious and ruined (for who could rule 
 them ?) — there is an agrarian insurrection ! May Heaven guard 
 us from it ! — may the fear be vain ! 
 
 We set aside the fear ! Forget it ! Think of the long, long 
 patience of the people — their toils supporting you — their virtues 
 shaming you — their huts, their hunger, their disease. 
 
 To whomsoever God hath given a heart less cold than stone, 
 these truths must cry day and night. Oh ! how they cross us 
 like Banshees when we would range free on the mountain — 
 how, as we walk in the evening light amid flowers, they startle 
 us from rest of mind! Ye nobles! whose houses are as 
 gorgeous as the mote’s (who dwelleth in the sunbeam) — ye 
 strong and haughty squires— ye dames exuberant with tingling 
 blood — ye maidens, whom not splendour has yet spoiled, will 
 ye not think of the poor? — will ye not shudder in your couches 
 to think how rain, wind, and smoke dwell with the blanketless 
 peasant ? — will ye not turn from the sumptuous board to look at 
 those hard-won meals of black and slimy roots on which man, 
 woman, and child feed year after year ? — will ye never try to 
 banish wringing hunger and ghastly disease from the home of 
 such piety and love ? — will ye not give back its dance to the 
 village — its mountain play to boyhood — its serene hopes to 
 manhood ? 
 
 Will ye do nothing for pity — nothing for love? Will ye leave 
 a foreign Parliament to mitigate — will ye leave a native 
 Parliament, gained in your despite, to redress these miseries — 
 will ye for ever abdicate the duty and the joy of making the poor 
 comfortable, and the peasant attached and happy? Do — if so 
 you prefer ; but know that if you do, you are a doomed race. 
 Once more. Aristocracy of Ireland, we warn and entreat you to 
 consider the State of the Peasantry, and to save them with your 
 own hands. 
 
HABITS AND CHARACTER OF THE 
 PEASANTRY.! 
 
 There are (thank God !) four hundred thousand Irish children 
 in the National Schools. A few years, and they will be the 
 People of Ireland — the farmers of its lands, the conductors of 
 its traffic, the adepts in its aits. How utterly unlike that 
 Ireland will be to the Ireland of the Penal Laws, of the 
 Volunteers, of the Union, or of the Emancipation 1 
 
 Well may Carleton say that we are in a transition state. 
 The knowledge, the customs, the superstitions, the hopes of the 
 People are entirely changing. There is neither use nor reason 
 in lamenting what we must infallibly lose. Our course is an 
 open and a great one, and will try us severely ; but, be it well 
 or ill, we cannot resemble our fathers. No conceivable effort 
 will get the people, twenty years hence, to regard the Fairies 
 but as a beautiful fiction to be cherished, not believed in, and 
 not a few real and human characters are perishing as fast as the 
 Fairies. 
 
 Let us be content to have the past chronicled wherever it 
 cannot be preserved. 
 
 Much may be saved — the Gaelic language and the music of 
 the past may be handed uncorrupted to the future ; but what- 
 ever may be the substitutes, the Fairies and the Banshees, the 
 Poor Scholar and the Ribbonman, the Orange Lodge, the 
 Illicit Still, and the Faction Fight are vanishing into history, 
 and unless this generation paints them no other will know what 
 they were. 
 
 It is chiefly in this way we value the work before us. In it 
 
 ! Tales and Sketches illustrating the Irish Peasantry, By William 
 Carleton. James Duffy, Dublin, 1845. i vol. 8vo, pp. 393. 
 
 1 82 
 
HABITS OF THE PEASANTRY, 183 
 
 Carleton is the historian of the peasantry rather than a 
 dramatist. The fiddler and piper, the seanachie and seer, the 
 match-maker and dancing-master, and a hundred characters 
 beside are here brought before you, moving, acting, playing, 
 plotting, and gossiping ! You are never wearied by an inven- 
 tory of wardrobes, as in short English descriptive fictions ; yet 
 you see how every one is dressed ; you hear the honey brogue 
 of the maiden, and the downy voice of the child, the managed 
 accents of flattery or traffic, the shrill tones of woman’s fretting, 
 and the troubled gush of man’s anger. The moory upland and 
 the corn slopes, the glen where the rocks jut through mantling 
 heather, and bright brooks gurgle amid the scented banks of 
 wild herbs, the shivering cabin and the rudely-lighted farm- 
 house are as plain in Carleton’s pages as if he used canvas 
 and colours with a skill varying from Wilson and Poussin to 
 Teniers and Wilkie. 
 
 But even in these sketches his power of external description 
 is not his greatest merit. Born and bred among the people — • 
 full of their animal vehemence — skilled in their sports — as 
 credulous and headlong in boyhood, and as fitful and varied in 
 manhood, as the wildest — he had felt with them, and must ever 
 sympathise with them. Endowed with the highest dramatic 
 genius, he has represented their love and generosity, their 
 wrath and negligence, their crimes and virtues, as a hearty 
 peasant — not a note-taking critic. 
 
 In others of his works he has created ideal characters that 
 give him a higher rank as a poet (some of them not surpassed 
 by even Shakespeare for originality, grandeur, and distinctness); 
 but here he is a genuine Seanachie, and brings you to dance 
 and wake, to wedding and christening — makes you romp with 
 the girls, and race with the boys — tremble at the ghosts, and 
 frolic with the fairies of the whole parish. 
 
 Come what change there may over Ireland, in these Tales 
 and Sketches the peasantry of the past hundred years can be 
 for ever lived with. 
 
IRISH SCENERY. 
 
 We no more see why Irish people should not visit the Con- 
 tinent than why Germans or Frenchmen ought not to visit 
 Ireland; but there is a difference between them. A German 
 rarely comes here who has not trampled the heath of Tyrol, 
 studied the museums of Dresden and the frescoes of Munich, 
 and shouted defiance on the bank of the Rhine; and what 
 Frenchman who has not seen the vineyards of Provence and 
 the bocages of Brittany, and the snows of Jura and the 
 Pyrenees, ever drove on an Irish jingle.^ But our nobles and 
 country gentlemen, our merchants, lawyers, and doctors — and 
 what’s worse, their wives and daughters — penetrate Britain and 
 the Continent without ever trying whether they could not defy 
 in Ireland the ennui before which they run over seas and 
 mountains. 
 
 The cause of this, as of most of our grievances, was mis- 
 government, producing poverty, discomfort, ignorance, and 
 misrepresentation. The people were ignorant and in rags, 
 their houses miserable, the roads and hotels shocking; we had 
 no banks, few coaches, and to crown all, the English declared 
 the people to be rude and turbulent, which they were not, as 
 well as drunken and poor, which they assuredly were. An Irish 
 landlord who had ill-treated his own tenants felt a conscientious 
 dread of all frieze-coats, others adopted his prejudices, and 
 a people, who never were rude or unjust to strangers, were 
 considered unsafe to travel amongst. 
 
 Most of these causes are removed. The people are sober, 
 and are rapidly advancing to knowledge, their political 
 exertions and dignity have broken away much of the prejudices 
 against them, and a man passing through any part of Ireland 
 expects to find w^oful poverty and strong discontent, but he 
 184 
 
IRISH SCENERY, 
 
 1S5 
 
 does not fear the abduction of his wife, or attempts to assassi- 
 nate him on every lonely road. The coaches, cars, and roads, 
 too, have become excellent, and the hotels are sufficient for any 
 reasonable traveller. One very marked discouragement to 
 travelling was the want of information; the maps were little 
 daubs, and the guide-books were few and inaccurate. As to 
 maps we are now splendidly off. The Railway Commissioners* 
 Map of Ireland, aided by the Ordnance Index Map of any 
 county where a visitor makes a long stay, are ample. We have 
 got a good general guide-book in Fraser, but it could not hold 
 a twentieth of the information necessary to a leisurely tourist; 
 nor, till the Ordnance Memoir is out shall we have thorough 
 hand-books to our counties. Meantime let us not burn the 
 little guides to Antrim, Wicklow, and Killarney, though they 
 are desperately dull and inexact — let us not altogether prohibit 
 Mrs, Hall’s gossip, though she knows less about our Celtic 
 people than the Malays ; and let us be even thankful for Mr. 
 O’Flanagan’s volume of the Munster Blackwater (though it is 
 printed in London), for his valuable stories, for his minute, 
 picturesque, and full topography, for his antiquarian and 
 historic details, though he blunders into making Alaster 
 McDonnell a Scotchman, and for his hearty love of the scenery 
 and people he has undertaken to guide us through. 
 
 And now, reader, in this fine soft summer, when the heather 
 is blooming, and the sky laughing and crying like a hysterical 
 bride, full of love, where will ye go— through your own land or 
 a stranger’s ? If you stay at home you can choose your own 
 scenery, and have something to see in the summer, and talk of 
 in the winter, that will make your friends from the Alps and 
 Apennines respectful to you. 
 
 Did you propose to study economies among the metayers of 
 Tuscany or the artisans of Belgium, postpone the trip till the 
 summer of *45 or ’46, when you may have the passport of an 
 Irish office to get you a welcome, and seek for the state of the 
 linen weavers in the soft hamlets of Ulster — compare the cattle 
 herds of Meath with the safe little holdings of Down and the 
 well-fought farms of Tipperary, or investigate the statistics of 
 
i86 
 
 IRISH SCENERY, 
 
 our fisheries along the rivers and lakes and shores of our 
 island. 
 
 Had a strong desire come upon you to toil over the glacier, 
 whose centre froze when Adam courted Eve, or walk amid the 
 brigand passes of Italy or Spain — do not fancy that absolute 
 size makes mountain grandeur, or romance — to a mind full of 
 passion and love of strength (and with such only do the 
 mountain spirits walk) the passes of Glenmalure and Barnes- 
 more are deep as Chamouni, and Cam Tual and Slieve Donard 
 are as near the lightning as Mount Blanc. 
 
 To the picture-hunter we can offer little, though Vandyke’s 
 finest portrait is in Kilkenny, and there is no county without 
 some collection ; but for the lover of living or sculptured forms 
 — for the artist, the antiquarian, and the natural philosopher, 
 we have more than five summers could exhaust. Every one 
 can see the strength of outline, the vigour of colour, and the 
 effective grouping in every fair, and wake, and chapel, and 
 hurling-ground, from Donegal to Waterford, though it may take 
 the pen of Griffin or the pencil of Burton to represent them. 
 An Irishman, if he took the pains, would surely find something 
 not inferior in interest to Cologne or the Alhambra in study of 
 the monumental effigies which mat the floors of Jerpoint and 
 Adare, or the cross in a hundred consecrated grounds from 
 Kells to Clonmacnoise — of the round towers which spring in 
 every barony — of the architectural perfection of Holycross and 
 Clare-Galway, and the strange fellowship of every order in 
 Athassel, or of the military keeps and earthen pyramids and 
 cairns, which tell of the wars of recent, and the piety of distant 
 centuries. The Entomology, Botany, and Geology of Ireland 
 are not half explored ; the structure and distinctions of its races 
 are but just attracting the eyes of philosophers from Mr. 
 Wilde’s tract, and the country is actually full of airs never 
 noted, history never written, superstitions and romances never 
 rescued from tradition; and why should Irishmen go blundering 
 in foreign researches when so much remains to be done here, 
 and when to do it would be more easy, more honourable, and 
 more useful 1 
 
IRISH SCENER V. 
 
 187 
 
 In many kinds of scenery we can challenge comparison, 
 Europe has no lake so dreamily beautiful as Killarney ; no bays 
 where the boldness of Norway unites with the colouring of 
 Naples, as in Bantry; and you might coast the world without 
 finding cliffs so vast and so terrible as Achill and Slieve 
 League. Glorious, too, as the Rhine is, we doubt if its warmest 
 admirers would exclude from rivalry the Nore and the Black- 
 water, if they had seen the tall cliffs, and the twisted slopes, 
 and the ruined aisles, and glancing mountains, and feudal 
 castles through which you boat up from Youghal to Mallow, or 
 glide down from Thomastown to Waterford harbour. Hear 
 what Inglis says of this Avondhu — 
 
 “ We have had descents of the Danube, and descents of the Rhine, 
 and the Rhone, and of many other rivers; but we have not in print, as 
 far as I know, any descent of the Blackwater ; and yet, with all these 
 descents of foreign rivers in my recollection, I think the descent of the 
 Blackzvater not sui'passed by any of them, A detail of all that is seen 
 in gliding down the Blackwater from Cappoquin to Youghal would fill 
 a long chapter. There is every combination that can be produced by 
 the elements that enter into the picturesque and the beautiful — deep 
 shades, bold rocks, verdant slopes, with the triumphs of art superadded, 
 and made visible in magnificent houses and beautiful villas with their 
 decorated lawns and pleasure-grounds.” 
 
 And now, reader, if these kaleidoscope glimpses we have 
 given you have made you doubt between a summer in Ireland 
 and one abroad, give your country “ the benefit of the doubt,” 
 as the lawyers say, and boat on our lake or dive into our glens 
 and ruins, wonder at the basalt coast of Antrim, and soften 
 your heart between the banks of the Blackwater. 
 
IRISH MUSIC AND POETRY. 
 
 No enemy speaks slightingly of Irish Music, and no friend need 
 fear to boast of it. It is without a rival. 
 
 Its antique war-tunes, such as those of O’Byrne, O’Donnell, 
 Alestrom, and Brian Boru, stream and crash upon the ear like 
 the warriors of a hundred glens meeting; and you are borne 
 with them to battle, and they and you charge and struggle 
 amid cries and battle-axes and stinging arrows. Did ever a 
 wail make man’s marrow quiver, and fill his nostrils with the 
 breath of the grave, like the ululu of the north or the wirrasthrue 
 of Munster? Stately are their slow, and recklessly splendid 
 their quick marches, their “ Boyne Water,” and “ Sios agus sios 
 liom,” their “ Michael Hoy,” and Gallant Tipperary.” The 
 Irish jigs and planxties are not only the best dancing tunes, but 
 the finest quick marches in the world. Some of them would 
 cure a paralytic and make the marble-legged prince in the 
 Arabia?i Nights charge like a Fag-an-Bealach boy. The 
 hunter joins in every leap and yelp of the “Fox Chase”; the 
 historian hears the moan of the penal days in “ Drimindhu,” 
 and sees the embarkation of the Wild Geese in “ Limerick 
 Lamentation”; and ask the lover if his breath do not come and 
 go with “ Savourneen Deelish ” and “ Lough Sheelin.” 
 
 Varied and noble as our music is, the English-speaking 
 people in Ireland have been gradually losing their knowledge 
 of it, and a number of foreign tunes — paltry scented things 
 from Italy, lively trifles from Scotland, and German opera cries 
 — are heard in our concerts, and what is worse, from our 
 Temperance bands. Yet we never doubted that “ The Sight 
 Entrancing,” or “ The Memory of the Dead,” would satisfy 
 even the most spoiled of our fashionables better than anything 
 Balfe or Rossini ever wrote; and, as it is, “ Tow-row-iow ” is 
 i8S 
 
IRISH MUSIC AND POETRY. 189 
 
 belter than poieen to the teetotalers, wearied with overtures 
 and insulted by “ British Grenadiers” and “Rule Britannia.” 
 
 A reprint of Moore^s Melodies on lower keys, and at much 
 lower prices, would probably restore the sentimental music of 
 Ireland to its natural supremacy. There are in Bunting but 
 two good sets of words — “ The Bonny Cuckoo,” and poor 
 Campbell’s “ Exile of Erin.” These and a few of Lover’s and 
 Mahony’s songs can alone compete with Moore. But, save 
 one or two by Lysaght and Drennan, almost all the Irish 
 political songs are too desponding or weak to content a people 
 marching to independence as proudly as if they had never been 
 slaves. 
 
 The popularity and immense circulation of the Spirit of the 
 Nation proved that it represented the hopes and passions of the 
 Irish people. This looks like vanity; but as a corporation so 
 numerous as the contributors to that volume cannot blush, we 
 shall say our say. For instance, who did not admire “The 
 Memory of the Dead”? The very Stamp officers were gal- 
 vanised by it, and the Attorney-General was repeatedly urged 
 to sing it for the jury. He refused — he had no music to sing it 
 to. We pitied and forgave him; but we vowed to leave him no 
 such excuse next time. If these songs were half so good as 
 people called them, they deserved to flow from a million 
 throats to as noble music as ever O’Neill or O’Connor heard. 
 
 Some of them were written to, and some freely combined 
 with, old and suitable airs. These we resolved to have printed 
 with the music, certain that, thus, the music would be given 
 back to a people who had been ungratefully neglecting it, and 
 the words carried into circles where they were still unknown. 
 
 Others of these poems, indeed the best of them, had no ante- 
 types in our ancient music. New music was, therefore, to be 
 sought for them. Not on their account only was it to be 
 sought. We hoped they would be the means of calling out 
 and making known a contemporary music fresh with the spirit 
 of the time, and rooted in the country. 
 
 Since Carolan’s death there had been no addition to the 
 store. Not that we were without composers, but those we 
 
igo IRISH MUSIC AND POETRY, 
 
 have do not compose Irish-like music, nor for Ireland. Their 
 rewards are from a foreign public — their fame, we fear, will 
 suffer from alienage. Balfe is very sweet, and Rooke very 
 emphatic, but not one passion or association in Ireland’s heart 
 would answer to their songs. 
 
 Fortunately there was one among us (perchance his ex- 
 ample may light us to others) who can smite upon our harp 
 like a master, and make it sigh with Irish memories, and speak 
 sternly with Ireland’s resolve. To him, to his patriotism, to 
 his genius, and, we may selfishly add, to his friendship, we owe 
 our ability now to give to Ireland music fit for “The Memory 
 of the Dead” and the “ Hymn of Freedom,” and whatever else 
 was marked out by popularity for such care as his. 
 
 In former editions of the SpiriP we had thrown in carelessly 
 several inferior verses and some positive trash, and neither 
 paper nor printing were any great honour to the Dublin press. 
 Every improvement in the power of the most enterprising 
 publisher in Ireland has been made, and every fault, within our 
 reach or his, cured — and whether as the first publication of 
 original airs, as a selection of ancient music, or as a specimen 
 of what the Dublin press can do, in printing, paper, or cheap- 
 ness, we urge the public to support this work of Mr. James 
 Duffy’s — and, in a pecuniary way it is his altogether. 
 
 We had hoped to have added a recommendation to the first 
 number of this work, besides whatever attraction may lie in its 
 music, its ballads, or its mechanical beauty. 
 
 An artist, whom we shall not describe or he would be known, 
 sketched a cover and title for it. The idea, composition, and 
 drawing of that design were such as Flaxman might have been 
 proud of. It is a monument to bardic power, to patriotism, to 
 our music and our history. There is at least as much poetry 
 in it as in the best verses in the work it illustrates. If it do 
 nothing else, it will show our Irish artists that refinement and 
 
 ^ A splendid edition of this work, greatly enlarged, and printed in 
 The Irish Exhibition Buildings, has been issued by Messrs. Duffy & 
 Sons, September i8Sz. 
 
IRISH MUSIC AND POEIR Y. 191 
 
 strength, passion and dignity, are as practicable in Irish as in 
 German painting; and the lesson was needed sorely. But if it 
 lead him who drew it to see that our history and hopes present 
 fit forms to embody the highest feelings of beauty, wisdom, 
 truth, and glory in, irrespective of party politics, then, indeed, 
 we shall have served our country when we induced our gifted 
 friend to condescend to sketching a title-page. We need not 
 describe that design now, as it will appear on the cover of the 
 second number, and on the title-page of the finished volume. 
 
BALLAD POETRY OF IRETANDA 
 
 How slow we have all been in coming to understand the 
 meaning of Irish Nationality ! 
 
 Some, dazzled by visions of pagan splendour, and the pre- 
 tensions of pedigree, and won by the passions and romance of 
 the olden races, continued to speak in the nineteenth century 
 of an Irish nation as they might have done in the tenth. They 
 forgot the English Pale, the Ulster Settlement, and the filtered 
 colonisation of men and ideas. A Celtic kingdom with the old 
 names and the old language, without the old quarrels, was their 
 hope; and though they would not repeat O’Neill’s comment as 
 he passed Barrett’s castle on his march to Kinsale, and heard it 
 belonged to a Strongbownian, that “he hated the Norman 
 churl as if he came yesterday;” yet they quietly assumed that 
 the Norman and Saxon elements would disappear under the 
 Gaelic genius like the tracks of cavalry under a fresh crop. 
 
 The Nationality of Swift and Grattan was equally partial. 
 They saw that the government and laws of the settlers had 
 extended to the island — that Donegal and Kerry were in the 
 Pale; they heard the English tongue in Dublin, and London 
 opinions in Dublin — they mistook Ireland fora colony wronged, 
 and great enough to be a nation. 
 
 A lower form of nationhood was before the minds of those 
 who saw in it nothing but a parliament in College Green. 
 They had not erred in judging, for they had not tried to 
 estimate the moral elements and tendencies of the country. 
 They were as narrow bigots to the omnipotency of an institu- 
 tion as any Cockney Radical. Could they, by any accumulation 
 
 ^ Ballad Poetry of Ireland — Library of Ireland, No. II. Thirty- 
 nine editions of the Ballad Poetry have been published by Messrs. 
 James Duffy & Sons. 
 
 192 
 
BALLAD POETRY OF IRELAND. 
 
 193 
 
 of English stupidity and Irish laziness, have got possession of 
 an Irish government, they would soon have distressed every 
 one by their laws, whom they had not provoked by their 
 administration, or disgusted by their dulness. 
 
 Far healthier, with all its defects, was the idea of those who 
 saw in Scotland a perfect model — who longed for a literary and 
 artistic nationality — who prized the oratory of Grattan and 
 Curran, the novels of Griffin and Carleton, the pictures of 
 Maclise and Burton, the ancient music, as much as any, and 
 far more than most, of the political nationalists, but who 
 regarded political independence as a dangerous dream. Un- 
 knowingly they fostered it. Their writings, their patronage, 
 their talk was of Ireland; yet it hardly occurred to them that 
 the ideal would flow into the practical, or that they, with their 
 dread of agitation, were forwarding a revolution. 
 
 At last we are beginning to see what we are, and what is our 
 destiny. Our duty arises where our knowledge begins. The 
 elements of Irish nationality are not only combining — in fact, 
 they are growing confluent in our minds. Such nationality as 
 merits a good man’s help, and wakens a true man’s ambition — 
 such nationality as could stand against internal faction and 
 foreign intrigue — such nationality as would make the Irish 
 hearth happy and the Irish name illustrious, is becoming 
 understood. It must contain and represent the races of 
 Ireland. It must not be Celtic, it must not be Saxon — it must 
 be Irish. The Brehon law, and the maxims of Westminster, 
 the cloudy and lightning genius of the Gael, the placid strength 
 of the Sasanach, the marshalling insight of the Norman — a 
 literature which shall exhibit in combination the passions and 
 idioms of all, and which shall equally express our mind in its 
 romantic, its religious, its forensic, and its practical tendencies 
 — finally, a native government, which shall know and rule by 
 the might and right of all ; yet yield to the arrogance of none — 
 these are components of stick a nationality. 
 
 But what have these things to do with the “ Ballad Poetry of 
 Ireland”? Much every way. It is the result of the elements 
 we have named — it is compounded of all ; and never was there 
 
 705 
 
194 
 
 BALLAD POETRY OF LRELAND. 
 
 a book fitter to advance that perfect nationality to which 
 Ireland begins to aspire. That a country is without national 
 poetry proves its hopeless dulness or its utter provincialism. 
 National poetry is the very flowering of the soul — the greatest 
 evidence of its health, the greatest excellence of its beauty. 
 Its melody is balsam to the senses. It is the playfellow of 
 childhood, ripens into the companion of his manhood, consoles 
 his age. It presents the most dramatic events, the largest 
 characters, the most impressive scenes, and the deepest 
 passions in the language most familiar to us. It shows us 
 magnified, and ennobles our hearts, our intellects, our country, 
 and our countrymen — binds us to the land by its condensed and 
 gem-like history, to the future by examples and by aspirations. 
 It solaces us in travel, fires us in action, prompts our invention, 
 sheds a grace beyond the power of luxury round our homes, is 
 the recognised envoy of our minds among all mankind and to 
 all time. 
 
 In possessing the powers and elements of a glorious nation- 
 ality, we owned the sources of a national poetry. In the com- 
 bination and joint development of the latter we find a pledge 
 and a help to that of the former. 
 
 This book of Mr. Duffy’s,^ true as it is to the wants of the 
 time, is not fortuitous. He has prefaced his admirable collec- 
 tion by an Introduction, which proves his full consciousness of 
 the worth of his task, and proves equally his ability to execute 
 it. In a space too short for the most impatient to run by he 
 has accurately investigated the sources of Irish Ballad Poetry, 
 vividly defined the qualities of each, and laboured with perfect 
 success to show that all naturally combine towards one great 
 end, as the brooks to a river, which marches on clear, deep, and 
 single, though they be wild, and shallow, and turbid, flowing 
 from unlike regions, and meeting after countless windings. 
 
 Mr. Duffy maps out three main forces which unequally con- 
 tribute to an Irish Ballad Poetry. 
 
 The first consists of the Gaelic ballads. True to the vehe- 
 mence and tendencies of the Celtic people, and representing 
 ^ Ballad Poetry of Ireland , — Library of Ireland, No. II. 
 
BALLAD POETRY OF IRELAND. 
 
 195 
 
 equally their vagueness and extravagance during slavish times, 
 they nevertheless remain locked from the middle and upper 
 classes generally, and from the peasantry of more than half 
 Ireland, in an unknown language. Many of them have been 
 translated by rhymers — few indeed by poets. The editor of 
 the volume before us has brought into one house nearly all the 
 poetical translations from the Irish, and thus finely justifies the 
 ballad literature of the Gael from its calumnious friend : — 
 
 With a few exceptions, all the translations we are acquainted with, 
 in addition to having abundance of minor faults, are eminently un-Irish. 
 They seem to have been made by persons to whom one of the languages 
 was not familiar. Many of them were confessedly versified from prose 
 translations, and are mere English poems, without a tinge of the colour 
 or character of the country. Others, translated by sound Irish scholars, 
 are bald and literal ; the writers sometimes wanting a facility of versi- 
 fication, sometimes a mastery over the English language. The Irish 
 scholars of the last century were too exclusively national to study the 
 foreign tongue with the care essential to master its metrical resources ; 
 and the flexible and weighty language which they had not learned to 
 wield hung heavily on them, 
 
 * Like Saul’s plate armour on the shepherd boy, 
 
 Encumbering, and not arming them.’ 
 
 If it were just to estimate our bardic poetry by the specimens we have 
 received in this manner, it could not be rated highly. But it would 
 manifestly be most unjust. Noble and touching, and often subtle and 
 profound thoughts, which no translation could entirely spoil, shine 
 through the poverty of the style, and vindicate the character of the 
 originals. Like the costly arms and ornaments found in our bogs, they 
 are substantial witnesses of a distinct civilisation ; and their credit is no 
 more diminished by the rubbish in which they chance to be found than 
 the authenticity of the ancient torques and skians by their embedment 
 in the mud. When the entire collection of our Irish Percy — James 
 Plardiman — shall have been given to a public (and soon may such a 
 one come) that can relish them in their native dress, they will be 
 entitled to undisputed precedence in our national minstrelsy.” 
 
 About a dozen of the ballads in the volume are derived from 
 
196 BALLAD POETR Y OF IRELAND. 
 
 the Irish. It is only in this way that Clarence Mangan (a 
 name to which Mr. Duffy does just honour) contributes to 
 the volume. There are four translations by him exhibiting 
 eminently his perfect mastery of versification — his flexibility of 
 passion, from loneliest grief to the maddest humour. One of 
 these, “ The Lament for O’Neil and O’Donnell,” is the 
 strongest, though it will not be the most popular, ballad in 
 the work. 
 
 Callanan’s and Ferguson’s translations, if not so daringly 
 versified, are simpler and more Irish in idiom. 
 
 Most, indeed, of Callanan’s successful ballads are translations, 
 and well entitle him to what he passionately prays for — a 
 minstrel of free Erin to come to his grave, 
 
 And plant a wild wreath from the banks of the river, 
 
 O’er the heart and the harp that are sleeping for ever.” 
 
 But we are wrong in speaking of Mr. Ferguson’s translations 
 in precisely the same way. His “Wicklow War Song” is 
 condensed, epigrammatic, and crashing as anything we know 
 of, except the “Pibroch of Donnil Dhu.” 
 
 The seco7td source is — the common people’s ballads. Most of 
 these “make no pretence to being true to Ireland, but only 
 being true to the purlieus of Cork and Dublin yet now and 
 then one meets a fine burst of passion, and oftener a racy 
 idiom. The “ Drimin Dhu,” the “ Blackbird,” “ Peggy Bawn,” 
 “Irish Molly,” “Willy Reilly,” and the “Fair of Turlough- 
 more,” are the specimens given here. Of these “ Willy Reilly” 
 (an old and worthy favourite in Ulster, it seems, but quite 
 unknown elsewhere) is the best; but it is too long to quote, 
 and we must limit ourselves to the noble opening verse of 
 “ Turloughmore ” — 
 
 “ Come tell me, dearest mother, what makes my father stay. 
 
 Or what can be the reason that he’s so long away ? 
 
 Oh ! hold your tongue, my darling son, your tears do grieve me 
 sore ; 
 
 I fear he has been murdered in the fair of Turloughmore.” 
 
BALLAD POETRY OF IRELAND. 
 
 197 
 
 The ^/iird and principal source consists of the Anglo-Iris!^ 
 ballads, written during the last twenty or thirty years. 
 
 Of this highest class, he who contributes most and, to our 
 mind, best is Mr. Ferguson. We have already spoken of his 
 translations — his original ballads are better. There is nothing 
 in this volume — nothing in Percps Relics., or the Border 
 Afinstrelsj/, to surpass, perhaps to equal, “Willy Gilliland.’’ 
 It is as natural in structure as “ Kinmont Willie,” as vigorous 
 as “ Otterbourne,” and as complete as “ Lochinvar.” Leaving 
 his Irish idiom, we get in the “Forester’s Complaint” as 
 harmonious versification, and in the “Forging of the Anchor” 
 as vigorous thoughts, mounted on bounding words, as anywhere 
 in the English literature. 
 
 We must quote some stray verses from “Willy Gilliland”: — 
 
 “ Up in the mountain solitudes, and in a rebel ring, 
 
 He has worshipped God upon the hill, in spite of church and king; 
 And sealed his treason with his blood on Bothwell bridge he hath ; 
 So he must fly his father’s land, or he must die the death ; 
 
 For comely Claverhouse has come along with grim Dalzell, 
 
 And his smoking rooftree testifies they’ve done their errand well. 
 
 ‘ His blithe work done, upon a bank the outlaw rested now, 
 
 And laid the basket from his back, the bonnet from his brow ; 
 
 And there, his hand upon the Book, his knee upon the sod, 
 
 He filled the lonely valley with the gladsome word of God ; 
 
 And for a persecuted kirk, and for her martyrs dear, 
 
 And against a godless church and king he spoke up loud and clear, 
 
 “ * My bonny mare ! I’ve ridden you when Claver’se rode behind, 
 
 And from the thumbscrew and the boot you bore me like the wind; 
 And, while I have the life you saved, on your sleek flank, I swear, 
 Episcopalian rowel shall never ruffle hair ! 
 
 Though sword to wield they’ve left me none — yet Wallace wight 
 I wis, 
 
 Good battle did, on Irvine side, wi’ waur weapon than this.’ — 
 
 “ His fishing-rod with both his hands he griped it as he spoke. 
 
 And, where the butt and top were spliced, in pieces twain he broke ^ 
 
198 BALLAD POETR Y OF LRELA2VD. 
 
 The limber top he cast away, with all its gear abroad, 
 
 But, grasping the tough hickory butt, with spike of iron shod. 
 
 He ground the sharp spear to a point ; then pulled his bonnet down, 
 And, meditating black revenge, set forth for Garrick town.” 
 
 The only ballad equally racy is The Croppy Boy,” by some 
 anonymous but most promising writer. 
 
 Griffin’s “Gille Machree” — of another class — is perfect — 
 “striking on the heart,” as Mr. Duffy finely says, “like the 
 cry of a woman ; ” but his “ Orange and Green,” and his 
 “ Bridal of Malahide,” belong to the same class, and suffer by 
 comparison with Mr. Ferguson’s ballads. 
 
 Banim’s greatest ballad, the “Soggarth aroon,” possesses 
 even deeper tenderness and more perfect Irish idiom than 
 anything in the volume. 
 
 Among the Collection are Colonel Blacker’s famous Orange 
 ballad, “Oliver’s Advice” (“Put your trust in God, my boys, 
 but keep your powder dry”), and two versions of the “Boyne 
 Water.” The latter and older one, given in the appendix, is by 
 far the finest, and contains two unrivalled stanzas — 
 
 “ Both foot and horse they marched on, intending them to batter. 
 
 But the brave Duke Schomberg he was shot, as he crossed over the 
 water. 
 
 When that King William he observed the brave Duke Schomberg 
 falling. 
 
 He rein’d his horse, with a heavy heart, on the Enniskilleners calling ; 
 ‘ What will you do for me, brave boys ; se^ yonder men retreating. 
 Our enemies encouraged are — and English drums are beating ; ’ 
 
 He says, ‘ My boys, feel no dismay at the losing of one commander. 
 For God shall be our King this day, and I’ll be general under.’ ” 
 
 Nor less welcome is the comment — 
 
 “Some of the Ulster ballads, of a restricted and provincial spirit, 
 having less in common with Ireland than with Scotland ; two or three 
 Orange ballads, altogether ferocious or foreign in their tendencies 
 (preaching murder, or deifying an alien), will be no less valuable to the 
 patriot or the poet on this account. They echo faithfully the sentiments 
 
BALLAD POETRY OF IRELAND. 
 
 199 
 
 of a strong, vehement, and indomitable body of Irishmen, who may 
 come to battle for their country better than they ever battled for pre- 
 judices or their bigotries. At all events, to know what they love and 
 believe is a precious knowledge.” 
 
 On the language of most of the ballads Mr. Duffy says — 
 
 “ Many of them, and generally the best, are just as essentially Irish 
 as if they were written in Gaelic. They could have grown among no 
 other people, perhaps under no other sky or scenery. To an English- 
 man, to any Irishman educated out of the country, or to a dreamer 
 asleep to impressions of scenery and character, they would be achieve- 
 ments as impossible as the Swedish Skalds or the Arabian Nights, 
 They are as Irish as Ossian or Carolan, and unconsciously reproduce 
 the spirit of those poets better than any translator can hope to do. 
 They revive and perpetuate the vehement native songs that gladdened 
 the halls of our princes in their triumphs, and wailed over their ruined 
 hopes or murdered bodies. In everything but language, and almost 
 in language, they are identical. That strange tenacity of the Celtic 
 race, which makes a description of their habits and propensities when 
 Coesar was still a Proconsul in Gaul true in essentials of the Irish 
 people to this day, has enabled them to infuse the ancient and heredi- 
 tary spirit of the country into all that is genuine of our modern poetry. 
 And even the language grew almost Irish. The soul of the country 
 stammering its passionate grief and hatred in a strange tongue, loved 
 still to utter them in its old familiar idioms and cadences. Uttering 
 them, perhaps, with more piercing earnestness, because of the impedi- 
 ment ; and winning out of the very difficulty a grace and a triumph.” 
 
 How often have we wished for such a companion as this 
 volume ! Worse than meeting unclean beds, or drenching 
 mists, or Cockney opinions, was it to have to take the mountains 
 with a book of Scottish ballads. They were glorious, to be sure, 
 but they were not ours — they had not the brown of the climate 
 on their cheek, they spoke pf places afar, and ways which are 
 not our country’s ways, and hopes which were not Ireland’s, and 
 their tongue was not that we first made sport and love with. 
 Yet how mountaineer without ballads any more than without a 
 shillelagh ? No ; we took the Scots ballads, and felt our souls 
 
200 BALLAD POETR Y OF IRELAND. 
 
 rubbing away with envy and alienage amid their attractions ; 
 but now, Brighid be praised ! we can all have Irish thoughts on 
 Irish hills, true to them as the music, or the wind, or the sky. 
 
 Happy boys ! who may grow up with such ballads in your 
 memories. Happy men ! who will find your hearts not only 
 doubtful but joyous in serving and sacrificing for the country 
 you thus learned in childhood to love.^ 
 
 ^ A corresponding Essay on Songs, written by Davis, will be found 
 prefixed to Mr. Barry’s collection of I'he Songs of Ireland. 
 
A BALLAD HISTORY OF IRELAND. 
 
 Of course the first object of the work we project^ will be to 
 make Irish History familiar to the minds, pleasant to the ears, 
 dear to the passions, and powerful over the taste and conduct of 
 the Irish people in times to come. More events could be put 
 into a prose history. Exact dates, subtle plots, minute con- 
 nections and motives rarely appear in Ballads, and for these 
 ends the worst prose history is superior to the best ballad 
 series ; but these are not the highest ends of history. To 
 hallow or accurse the scenes of glory and honour, or of shame 
 and sorrow ; to give to the imagination the arms, and homes, 
 and senates, and battles of other days ; to rouse, and soften, 
 and strengthen, and enlarge us with the passions of great 
 periods ; to lead us into love of self-denial, of justice, of beauty, 
 of valour, of generous life and proud death ; and to set up in our 
 souls the memory of great men, who shall then be as models 
 and judges of our actions— these are the highest duties of history, 
 and these are best taught by a Ballad History. 
 
 A Ballad History is welcome to childhood, from its rhymes, its 
 high colouring, and its aptness to memory. As we grow into 
 boyhood, the violent passions, the vague hopes, the romantic 
 sorrow of patriot ballads are in tune with our fitful and luxuriant 
 feelings. In manhood we prize the condensed narrative, the 
 grave firmness, the critical art, and the political sway of ballads. 
 And in old age they are doubly dear ; the companions and 
 reminders of our life, the toys and teachers of our children and 
 grandchildren. Every generation finds its account in them. 
 
 ^ It had been proposed in the Nation^ by another contributor, to 
 write ballads on the great events in our annals and collect them into a 
 
 Ballad History of Ireland.” 
 
 201 
 
202 A BALLAD L7IST0RY OF LFELAND. 
 
 They pass from mouth to mouth like salutations ; and even the 
 minds which lose their words are under their influence, as one 
 can recall the starry heavens who cannot revive the form of a 
 single constellation. 
 
 In olden times all ballads were made to music, and the 
 minstrel sang them to his harp or screamed them in recitative. 
 Thus they reached farther, were welcomer guests in feast and 
 camp, and were better preserved. We shall have more to say 
 on this in speaking of our proposed song collection. Printing 
 so multiplies copies of ballads, and intercourse is To general, 
 that there is less need of this adaptation to music now. More- 
 over, it may be disputed whether the dramatic effect in the more 
 solemn ballads is not injured by lyrical forms. In such stream- 
 ing exhortations and laments as we find in the Greek choruses 
 and in the adjurations and caoines of the Irish, the breaks and 
 parallel repetitions of a song might lower the passion. Were we 
 free to do so, we could point out instances in the Spirit of the 
 Nation in which the rejection of song-forms seems to have been 
 essential to the awfulness of the occasion. 
 
 In pure narratives and in the gayer and more splendid, 
 though less stern ballads, the song-forms and adaptation to 
 music are clear gains. 
 
 In the Scotch ballads this is usual, in the English rare. We 
 look in vain through Southey’s admirable ballads — “ Mary the 
 Maid of the Inn,” “Jaspar,” ‘Mnchkape Rock,” “Bishop Hatto,” 
 “ King Henry V. and the Hermit of Dreux” — for either burden, 
 chorus, or adaptation to music. In the “Battle of Blenheim” 
 there is, however, an occasional burden line ; and in the 
 smashing “March to Moscow” there is a great chorusing 
 about — 
 
 ‘ ‘ Morbleu ! Parbleu ! 
 
 What a pleasant excursion to Moscow.” 
 
 Coleridge has some skilful repetitions and exquisite versifica- 
 tion in his “Ancient Mariner,” “Genevieve,” “Alice du Clos,” 
 but nowhere a systematic burden. Campbell has no burdens 
 in his finest lyric ballads, though the subjects were fitted for 
 
A BALLAD HISTORY OF IRELAND, 203 
 
 them. The burden of the ‘‘Exile of Erin’’ belongs very 
 doubtfully to him. 
 
 Macaulay’s best ballad, the “ Battle of Ivry,” is greatly aided 
 by the even burden line; but he has not repeated the experi- 
 ment, though he, too, makes much use of repeating lines in his 
 Roman Lays and other ballads. 
 
 While, then, we counsel burdens in Historical Ballads, we 
 would recognise excepted cases where they may be injurious, 
 and treat them as in no case essential to perfect ballad success. 
 In songs, we would almost always insist either on a chorus 
 verse, or a burden of some sort. A burden need not be at the 
 end of the verse ; but may, with quite equal success, be at the 
 beginning or in the body of it, as may be seen in the Scotch 
 Ballads, and in some of those in the Spirit of the Natio7i, 
 
 The old Scotch and English ballads, and Lockhart’s transla- 
 tions from the Spanish, are mostly composed in one metre, 
 though written down in either of two ways. Macaulay’s 
 Roman Lays and “ Ivry” are in this metre. Take an example 
 from the last — 
 
 “ Press where ye see my white plume shine, amid the ranks of war, 
 And be your Oriflamme to-day the helmet of Navarre.” 
 
 In the old ballads this would be printed in four lines, of eight 
 syllables and six alternately, and rhyming only alternately, 
 thus — 
 
 “ Press where ye see my white plume shine, 
 
 Amid the ranks of war, 
 
 And be your Oriflamme to-day 
 The helmet of Navarre.” 
 
 So Macaulay himself prints this metre in some of his Roman 
 Lays. 
 
 But the student should rather avoid than seek this metre. 
 The uniform old beat of eight and six is apt to fall monotonously 
 on the ear, and some of the most startling effects are lost in 
 it. In the Spirit of the Nation the student will find many 
 other ballad metres. Campbell’s metres, though new and 
 
204 A BALLAD HLSTORY OF IRELAND. 
 
 glorious things, are terrible traps to imitation, and should be 
 warily used. The German ballads, and still more, Mr. 
 Mangan’s translations of (them, contain great variety of new 
 and safe, though difficult metres. Next in frequency to the 
 fourteen-syllable line is that in eleven syllables, such as “ Mary 
 Ambree,” and “ Lochinvar ; and for a rolling brave ballad 
 ’tis a fine metre. The metre of fifteen syllables, with double 
 rhymes (or accents) in the middle, and that of thirteen, with 
 double rhymes at the end, is tolerably frequent, and the metre 
 used by Father Prout, in his noble translation of “Duke 
 D’Alengon,” is admirable, and easier than it seems. By the 
 way, what a grand burden runs through that ballad — 
 
 “ Fools ! to believe the sword could give to the children of the 
 Rhine, 
 
 Our Gallic fields — the land that yields the Olive and the 
 Vine ! ” 
 
 The syllables are as in the common metre, but it has thrice 
 the rhymes. 
 
 We have seen great materials wasted in a struggle with a 
 crotchety metre; therefore, though we counsel the invention 
 of metres, we would add that unless a metre come out racily 
 and appropriately in the first couple of verses, it should be 
 abandoned, and some of those easily marked metres taken up. 
 
 A historical ballad will commonly be narrative in its form, 
 
 but not necessarily so. A hymn of exultation — a call to a 
 
 council, an army, or a people — a prophecy — a lament — or a 
 dramatic scene (as in Lochiel), may give as much of event, 
 costume, character, and even scenery as a mere narration. 
 The varieties of form are infinite, and it argues lack of force 
 in a writer to keep always to mere narration, though when 
 exact events are to be told that may be the best mode. 
 
 One of the essential qualities of a good historical ballad 
 is truth. To pervert history — to violate nature, in order to 
 
 make a fine clatter, has been the aim in too many of the 
 
 ballads sent us. He who goes to write a historical ballad 
 
A BALLAD HLSTORY OF LRELAND. 205 
 
 should master the main facts of the time, and state them truly. 
 It may be well for those perhaps either not to study or to 
 half-forget minute circumstances until after his ballad is drafted 
 out, lest he write a chronicle, not a ballad ; but he will do well, 
 ere he suffers it to leave his study, to re-consider the facts of 
 the time or man, or act of which he writes, and see if he cannot 
 add force to his statements, an antique grace to his phrases, 
 and colour to his language. 
 
 Truth and appropriateness in ballads require great knowledge 
 and taste. 
 
 To write an Irish historical ballad, one should know the 
 events which he would describe, and know them not merely 
 from an isolated study of his subject, but from old familiarity, 
 which shall have associated them with his tastes and passions, 
 and connected them with other parts of history. How miserable 
 a thing is to put forward a piece of vehement declamation and 
 vague description, which might be uttered of any event, or 
 by the man of any time as a historical ballad. We have had 
 battle ballads sent us that would be as characteristic of 
 Marathon or Waterloo as of Clontarf — laments that might 
 have been uttered by a German or a Hindu — and romances 
 equally true to love all the world over. 
 
 Such historical study extends not merely to the events. A 
 ballad writer should try to find the voice, colour, stature, 
 passions, and peculiar faculties of his hero — the arms, furniture, 
 and dress of the congress, or the champions, or the troops he 
 tells of — the rites wherewith the youth were married — the dead 
 interred, and God worshipped ; and the architecture — previous 
 history and pursuits (and, therefore, probable ideas and phrases) 
 of the men he describes. 
 
 Many of these things he will get in books. He should shun 
 compilations, and take up original journals, letters, state papers, 
 statutes, and cotemporary fictions and narratives as much as 
 possible. Let him not much mind Leland or Curry (after he 
 has run over them), but work like fury at the Archoeological 
 Society’s books — at Harris’s Hibernica, at Lodge’s Desiderata 
 Curiosa Hibernica, at Strafford’s Pacata, Spencer’s View, 
 
2o6 a ballad history OF IRELAND. 
 
 Giraldus’s Narrative, Fynes Moryson’s Itinerary, the Ormond 
 Papers, the State Papers of Henry the Eighth, Stafford’s and 
 Cromwell’s and Rinuccini’s Letters, and the correspondence 
 and journals, from Donald O’Neil’s letter to the Pope down to 
 Wolfe Tone’s glorious memoirs. 
 
 In the songs, and even their names, many a fine hint can be 
 got ; and he is not likely to be a perfect Ealladist of Ireland 
 who has not felt to tears and laughter the deathless passions of 
 Irish music. 
 
 We have condemned compilations ; but the ballad student 
 may well labour at Ware’s Antiquities. He will find in the 
 History of British Costume, published by the Useful Know- 
 ledge Society, and in the illustrated work now in progress called 
 Old England, but beyond all other books, in the historical 
 works of Thierry, most valuable materials. Nothing, not even 
 the Border Minstrelsy, Percy’s Relics, the Jacobite Ballads, or 
 the Archaeological Tracts, can be of such service as a repeated 
 study of the Norman Conquest, the Ten Years’ Study, and the 
 Merovingian Times of Augustine Thierry. 
 
 We know he has rashly stated some events on insufficient 
 authority, and drawn conclusions beyond the warrant of his 
 promises ; but there is more deep dramatic skill, more 
 picturesque and coloured scenery, more distinct and charac- 
 teristic grouping, and more lively faith to the look and spirit of 
 the men and times and feelings of which he writes, in Thierry, 
 than in any other historian that ever lived. He has almost an 
 intuition in favour of liberty, and his vindication of the “ men 
 of ’98” out of the slanderous pages of Musgrave is a miracle of 
 historical skill and depth of judgment. 
 
 In the Irish Academy in Dublin there is a collection (now 
 arranged and rapidly increasing) of ancient arms and utensils. 
 Private collections exist in many provincial towns, especially in 
 Ulster. Indeed, we know an Orange painter in a northern 
 village who has a finer collection of Irish antiquities than all 
 the Munster cities put together. Accurate observation of, and 
 discussion on, such collections will be of vast service to a 
 writer of historical Ballads. 
 
A BALLAD LILSTORY OF LRELAND, 207 
 
 Topography is also essential to a ballad, or to any Historian. 
 This is not only necessary to save a writer from such gross 
 blunder as we met the other day in Wharton’s Ballad, called 
 “ The Grave of King Arthur,” where he talks of “ the steeps of 
 rough Kildare,” but to give accuracy and force to both general 
 references and local description. 
 
 Ireland must be known to her Ballad Historians, not by flat, 
 but by shaded maps, and topographical and scenic descriptions; 
 not by maps of to-day only, but by maps (such as Ortelius and 
 the maps in the State Papers) of Ireland in time past; and 
 finally, it must be known by the eye» A man who has not raced 
 on our hills, panted on our mountains, waded our rivers in 
 drought and flood, pierced our passes, skirted our coast, noted 
 our old towns, and learned the shape and colour of ground and 
 tree and sky, is not master of all a Balladist’s art. Scott knew 
 Scotland thus, and moreover he seems never to have laid a 
 scene in a place that he had not studied closely and alone. 
 
 What we have heretofore advised relates to the Structure, 
 Truth, and Colouring of ballads; but there is something more 
 needed to raise a ballad above the beautiful — it must have 
 Force. Strong passions, daring invention, vivid sympathy for 
 great acts — these are the result of one’s whole life and nature. 
 Into the temper and training of “A Poet” we do not presume 
 to speak. Few have spoken wisely of them. Emerson, in his 
 recent essay, has spoken like an angel on the mission of “ The 
 Poet.” Ambition for pure power (not applause) ; passionate 
 sympathy with the good, and strong, and beautiful; insight into 
 nature, and such loving mastery over its secrets as a husband 
 hath over a wife’s mind, are the surest tests of one “ called ” by 
 destiny to tell to men the past, present, and future, in words so 
 perfect that generations shall feel and remember. 
 
 We merely meant to give some “ Hints on the Properties of 
 Historical Ballads” — they will be idle save to him who has the 
 mind of a Poet. 
 
REPEAL READING-RCOMS. 
 
 Knowledge and organisation must set Ireland free, and make 
 her prosperous. If the People be not wise and manageable, 
 they cannot gain liberty but by accident, nor use it to their 
 service. An ignorant and turbulent race may break away from 
 provincialism, but will soon relapse beneath a cunning, skilful, 
 and unscrupulous neighbour. England is the one — Ireland 
 must not be the other. 
 
 If she is to be self-freed — if she is to be a retaken slave, she 
 must acquire all the faculties possessed by her enemy, without 
 the vices of that foe. We have to defeat an old and com- 
 pact government. We must acquire the perfect structure 
 of a nation. We have to resist genius, skill, and immense 
 resources; we must have wisdom, knowledge, and ceaseless 
 industry. 
 
 We want the advisers of the People never for a day to forget 
 these facts : that of persons above five years old there are 
 829,000 females and 580,000 males who can only read, but 
 cannot write; and that above the same age there are 2,142,000 
 females and 1,623,000 males who can neither read nor write. 
 Let them remember, too, that the arts of design do not exist 
 here — that the leading economical difference between England 
 and Ireland is the “ industrial ignorance of the latter” — that we 
 have little military or naval instruction — and that our literature 
 is only beginning to bud. 
 
 We are not afraid for all these things, nor do we wish to 
 muffle our eyes against them. We want a brave, modest, 
 laborious, and instructed People. It is deeper pleasure to 
 serve, and glory to lead such a people. It is still deeper 
 pleasure and honour to head a race full of virtue and industry, 
 and a thirst for knowledge. But fora swaggering People, who 
 208 
 
REPEAL READING-ROOMS. 
 
 209 
 
 shout for him who flatters them, and turn from those who would 
 lead by plain, manful truth — who shall save them ? 
 
 The Repeal Association has fronted the difficulty. You, 
 it tells the People, are not educated nor organised as you 
 should be. Your oppressor has millions, cunning in all arts 
 and manufactures, for your thousands. Her literature is 
 famous among men — your’s still to be created. Her organisa- 
 tion embraces everything, from the machinery for moving an 
 empire to that of governing a parish. You, too, must learn 
 arts, and literature, and self-government, if you would repel 
 and surpass her. 
 
 The generation that will cover Ireland in twenty years will 
 have the instruction you want, but you must not surrender 
 your claim to knowledge and liberty. You, too, must go to 
 school and learn. You must learn to obey. You must learn 
 from each other, and obey the highest wisdom that is among 
 you all. 
 
 The Repeal Association has resolved that it is expedient 
 to establish Reading-rooms in the Parishes of Ireland, and has 
 appointed a Committee to carry out that resolution. 
 
 This is a great undertaking. A meeting, a gossip, or elo- 
 quent circular will not accomplish it. It will take months of 
 labour from strong minds and large sums of money to establish 
 such a system ; and only by corresponding zeal on the People’s 
 part can it be spread among them all. 
 
 The Repeal Association has now constituted itself School- 
 master of the People of Ireland, and must be prepared to carry 
 out its pretension. The People, knowing the attempt, must 
 sustain it with increased funds and zeal. 
 
 A Reading-room Committee must not stop its preliminary 
 labours till there is a Reading-room in every village ; and then 
 it will fill their hands and draw largely on their funds to make 
 them Reading-rooms, and not idling rooms. Their first duty 
 will be, of course, to ascertain what Reading-rooms exist — 
 how each of them is supported — what books, maps, etc., it 
 contains— at what hours it is open — and how it is attended. 
 For each separate School — we beg pardon, Reading-room — 
 
 706 
 
210 
 
 REPEAL READING-ROOMS. 
 
 the Committee should make separate arrangements. One will 
 want increased space, another will want industrial books, 
 another maps, another political and statistical tracts. 
 
 To the districts where the Irish language is spoken they 
 should send a purely Irish Grammar and an Anglo-Irish 
 Grammar and Dictionary for each room, to be followed by 
 other works containing general information, as well as peculiarly 
 Irish knowledge, in Irish. Indeed, we doubt if the Association 
 can carry out the plan — which they began by sending down 
 Dr. MacHale’s translations — without establishing a newspaper, 
 partly in English and partly in Irish, like the mixed papers of 
 Switzerland, New Orleans, and Hungary. 
 
 To come back, however, to the working of such a Committee. 
 Some of its members should attend from day to day to corre- 
 spond with the Repeal inspectors, and the Protestant and 
 Catholic Clergy, who may consent to act as patrons of these 
 rooms. It will be most desirable that each Committee have 
 an agent in Dublin who will receive and forward gratis all 
 books for it. The cost of postage would absorb the price of a 
 library. 
 
 It seems to us to be almost necessary to have persons sent 
 round the country from time to time to organise these Reading 
 Committees — to fix, from inspection, the amount of help which 
 the Association should give to the rent of each room, and to 
 stimulate the People to fresh exertion. This, of course, could 
 be united with a Repeal missionary system, on the same plan 
 as the “Anti-Corn Law League” missions. 
 
 Help should be given by the Association in some proportion 
 to the local subscriptions (say a third of them), or the Associa- 
 tion might undertake to supply a certain amount of books upon 
 proof of a local subscription large enough, and sufficiently 
 secured, for the wants of the neighbourhood. 
 
 A catalogue of the books sent to each room should be 
 always accessible in the Corn Exchange. 
 
 Of course, in sending books a regular system should be 
 adopted. The Ordnance index map of the county, the townland 
 map of the neighbourhood, a map of Ireland, and maps of the 
 
REPEAL READING-ROOMS, 
 
 211 
 
 five great sections of the globe (Asia, America, Australia, 
 Europe, and Africa) should be in every room. Of course 
 the Reports of the Association will be there; and they, we 
 trust, will soon be a perfect manual of the industrial statistics, 
 topography, history, and county, municipal, and general insti- 
 tutions of Ireland. Much has been done, and the Parlia- 
 mentary Committee consists of men who are able and willing 
 to carry out their work. What other works, fitted to cultivate 
 the judgment or taste of the People, may be sent must depend 
 on the exertions of the parishes and the faithfulness of the 
 Committee. 
 
 Were such a room in every village you would soon have a 
 knot connected with it of young men who had abjured cards, 
 tobacco, dissipation, and, more fatal, laziness, and were trying 
 to learn each some science, or art, or accomplishment — any- 
 thing that best pleased them, from mathematics to music. 
 We shall feel unspeakable sorrow if, from the negligence of the 
 Committee or the dulness or w'ant of spirit in our country 
 towns, this great opportunity pass away. 
 
INFLUENCES OF EDUCATION. 
 
 “ Educate, that you may be free.” We are most anxious to 
 get the quiet, strong-minded People who are scattered through 
 the country to see the force of this great truth ; and we there- 
 fore ask them to listen soberly to us for a few minutes, and 
 when they have done to think and talk again and again over 
 what we say. 
 
 If Ireland had all the elements of a nation she might, and 
 surely would, at once assume the forms of one, and proclaim 
 her independence. Wherein does she now differ from Prussia? 
 She has a strong and compact territory, girt by the sea; 
 Prussia’s lands are open and flat, and flung loosely through 
 Europe, without mountain or river, breed or tongue, to bound 
 them. Ireland has a military population equal to the recruit- 
 ment of, and a produce able to pay, a first-rate army. Her 
 harbours, her soil, and her fisheries are not surpassed in 
 Europe. 
 
 Wherein, we ask again, does Ireland now differ from Prussia? 
 Why can Prussia wave her flag among the proudest in Europe, 
 while Ireland is a farm ? 
 
 It is not in the name of a kingdom, nor in the formalities of 
 independence. We could assume them to-morrow — we could 
 assume them with better warrants from history and nature 
 than Prussia holds ; but the result of such assumption would 
 perchance be a miserable defeat. 
 
 The difference is in Knowledge. Were the offices of Prussia 
 abolished to-morrow — her colleges and schools levelled — her 
 troops disarmed and disbanded, she would within six months 
 regain her whole civil and military institutions. Ireland has 
 been struggling for years, and may have to struggle many more, 
 to acquire liberty to form institutions. 
 
 212 
 
INFLUENCES OF EDUCATION 
 
 213 
 
 Whence is the difference ? Knowledge ! 
 
 The Prussians could, at a week’s notice, have their central 
 offices at full work in any village in the kingdom, so exactly 
 known are their statistics, and so general is official skill. 
 Minds make administration — all the desks, and ledgers, and 
 powers of Downing Street or the Castle would be handed in 
 
 vain to the ignorants of any untaught district in Ireland. 
 
 The Prussians could open their collegiate classes and their 
 professional and elementary schools as fast as the order 
 therefor, from any authority recognised by the People, reached 
 town after town — we can hardly in ten years get a few schools 
 open for our people, craving for knowledge as they are. The 
 Prussians could re-arm their glorious militia in a month, and 
 re-organise it in three days ; lor the mechanical arts are very 
 generally known, military science is familiar to most of the 
 wealthier men, discipline and a soldier’s skill are universal. 
 If we had been offered arms to defend Ireland by Lord 
 Heytesbury, as the Volunteers were by Lord Buckinghamshire, 
 we would have had to seek for officers and drill-sergeants — 
 though probably we could more rapidly advance in arms than 
 anything else, from the military taste and aptness for war of the 
 Irish People. 
 
 . Would it not be better for us to be like the Prussians than as 
 we are — better to have religious squabbles unknown, education 
 universal, the People fed, and clad, and housed, and inde- 
 pendent as becomes men; the army patriotic and strong; the 
 public offices ably administered; the nation honoured and 
 powerful.^ Are not these to be desired and sought by Pro- 
 testant and Catholic ? Are not these things to be done^ if we 
 are good and brave men ? And is it not plain^ from what we 
 have said, that the reason for our not being all that Prussia is, 
 and something more, is ignorance — want of civil and military 
 and general knowledge amongst all classes ? 
 
 This ignorance has not been our fault, but our misfortune. 
 It was the interest of our ruler to keep us ignorant, that we 
 might be weak; and she did so — first, by laws prohibiting 
 education; then by refusing any provision for it; next, by 
 
214 
 
 INFL UENCES OF ED UCA FI ON. 
 
 perverting it into an engine of bigotry; and now, by giving it 
 in a stunted, partial, anti-national way. Practice is the great 
 teacher, and the possession of independence is the natural and 
 best way for a People to learn all that pertains to freedom and 
 happiness. Our greatest voluntary efforts, aided by the amplest 
 provincial institutions, would teach us less in a century than we 
 would learn in five years of Liberty. 
 
 In insisting on education we do not argue against the value 
 of immediate independence, lhat would be our best teacher. 
 An Irish Government and a national ambition would be to our 
 minds as soft rains and rich sun to a growing crop. But we 
 insist on education for the People, whether we get it from 
 the Government or give it to themselves as a round-about, and 
 yet the only, means of getting strength enough to gain freedom. 
 
 Do our readers understand this? Is what we have said clear 
 to you^ reader ! — whether you are a shopkeeper or a lawyer, a 
 farmer or a doctor? If not, read it over again, for it is your 
 own fault if it be not clear. If you now know our meaning, you 
 must feel that it is your duty to your family and to yourself, to 
 your country and to God, to act upon it, to go and remove some 
 of that ignorance which makes you and your neighbours weak, 
 and therefore makes Ireland a poor province. 
 
 All of us have much to learn, but some of us have much to 
 teach. 
 
 To those who, from superior energy and ability, can teach the 
 People, we now address ourselves. 
 
 We have often before, and shall often again repeat, that the 
 majority of our population can neither read nor write, and 
 therefore that from the small minority must come those fitted 
 to be of any civil or military use beyond the lowest rank. The 
 People may be and are honest, brave, and intelligent; but a 
 man could as well dig with his hands as govern, or teach, or 
 lead without the elements of Knowledge. 
 
 This, however, is a defect which time and the National 
 Schools must cure; and the duty of the class to which we 
 speak is to urge the establishment of such Schools, the 
 attendance of the children at them, and occasionally to observe 
 
INFL UENCES OF ED UCA TION, 2 1 5 
 
 and report, either directly or through the Press, whether the 
 admirable rules of the Board are attended to. In most cases, 
 too, the expenditure of a pound-note and a little time and 
 advice would give the children of a school that instruction 
 in national history and in statistics so shamefully omitted by 
 the Board. Reader ! will you do this ? 
 
 Then of the three hundred Repeal Reading-rooms we know 
 that some, and fear that many, are ill-managed, have few or 
 no books, and are mere gossiping-rooms. Such a room is 
 useless; such a room is a disgrace to its members and their 
 educated neighbours. The expense having been gone to of 
 getting a room, it only remains for the members to establish 
 fixed rules, and they will be supplied with the Association 
 Reports (political reading enough for them), and it will be 
 the plain duty of the Repeal Wardens to bring to such a 
 room the newspapers supplied by the Association. If such 
 a body continue and give proofs of being in earnest, the 
 Repeal Association will aid it by gifts of books, maps, etc., 
 and thus a library, the centre of knowledge and nursery of 
 useful and strong minds, will be made in that district. So 
 miserably off is the country for books, that we have it before 
 us, on some authority, that there are ten counties in Feland 
 without a single bookseller in thein. We blush for the fact; 
 it is a disgrace to us; but we must have no lying or flinching. 
 There is the hard fact; let us face it like men who are able 
 for a difficulty — not as children putting their heads under the 
 clothes when there is danger. Reader ! cannot you do some- 
 thing to remedy this great, this disabling misery of Ireland? 
 Will not you now try to get up a Repeal Reading-room, and 
 when one is established get for it good rules, books from the 
 Association, and make it a centre of thought and power? 
 
 These are but some of the ways in which such service can be 
 done by the more for the less educated. They have other 
 duties often pointed out by us. They can sustain and advance 
 the different societies for promoting agriculture, manufactures, 
 art, and literature in Dublin and the country. They can set 
 on foot and guide the establishment of Temperance Bands, and 
 
2i6 
 
 INFLUENCES OF EDUCATION 
 
 Mechanics’ Institutes, and Mutual Instruction Societies. They 
 can give advice and facilities for improvement to young men of 
 promise ; and they can make their circles studious, refined, 
 and ambitious, instead of being, like too many in Ireland, 
 ignorant, coarse, and lazy. The cheapness of books is now 
 such that even Irish poverty is no excuse for Irish ignorance — 
 that ignorance which prostrates us before England. We must 
 help ourselves, and therefore we must educate ourselves. 
 
FOREIGN TRAVEL. 
 
 We lately strove to induce our wealthier countrymen to explore 
 Ireland before they left her shores in search of the beautiful and 
 curious. We bid the economist search our towns and farms, 
 our decayed manufactures, and improving tillage. Waving our 
 shillelagh, we shouted the cragsman to Glenmalure and Cam 
 Tual, and Achill and Slieve League. Manuscript in hand, we 
 pointed the antiquary to the hundred abbeys of North Munster, 
 the castles of the Pale, the palaces and sepulchres of Dunalin, 
 Aileach, Rath Croghan, and Loughcrew, and we whispered to 
 our countrywomen that the sun rose grandly on Adragool, that 
 the moon was soft on Lough Erne (“The rural Venice’’), and 
 that the Nore and Blackwater ran by castled crags like their 
 sweet voices over old songs. 
 
 But there are some who had not waited for our call, but had 
 dutifully grown up amid the sights and sounds of Ireland, and 
 knew the yellow fields of Tipperary, and the crash of Moher’s 
 wave, and the basalt barriers of Antrim, and the moan or 
 frown of Wexford over the graves of ’98, and there are others 
 not yet sufficiently educated to prize home excellence. To 
 such, then, and to all our brethren and sisters going abroad, we 
 have to say a friendly word. 
 
 We shall presume them to have visited London, Woolwich, 
 the factories of Lancashire and Warwick, and to have seen the 
 Cumberland lakes, and therefore to have seen all worth seeing 
 in England, and that they are bound for somewhere else. For 
 a pedestrian not rich there is Wales — the soft vales of the far 
 North and South Clwyd, and the Wye and Llanrwst, and the 
 central mountain groups of Snowdon, and still finer of Cader 
 Idris. But if he go there we pray him not to return without 
 having heard and, so far as he could, noted down a few airs 
 217 
 
2i8 
 
 FOREIGN TEA VEE 
 
 from the harp and emit, collected specimens of the plants and 
 minerals of Wales for the museum (existing or to be) of his 
 native town, studied the statistics of their great iron works or 
 their little home-weaving; nor, if he has had the sense and 
 spirit to take a Welsh and an Irish vocabulary, without 
 some observations on the disputed analogy of the two lan- 
 guages, and how far it exists in general terms, as it certainly 
 does in names of places. By the way, we warn him that he 
 will know little of the peasantry, and come home in the dark 
 about Rebecca, unless he can speak Welsh. The Welsh have 
 been truer to their language than we were to ours ; their clergy 
 ministered in it ; their people refused their tongues to the 
 Saxon as if ^twere poison ; and even their nobles, though 
 tempted by England, welcomed the bard who lamented the 
 defeat of Rhuddlan, and gloried in the frequent triumphs 
 of Glendower. 
 
 But let us rather classify pursuits than countries. 
 
 We want the Irish who go abroad to bring something back 
 besides the weary tale of the Louvre and Munich, and the cliffs 
 of the Rhine, and the soft airs of Italy. We have heard of a 
 patriot adventurer who carried a handful of his native soil 
 through the world. We want our friends to carry a purpose for 
 Ireland in their hearts, to study other lands wisely, and to bring 
 back all knowledge for the sustenance and decoration of their 
 dear home. 
 
 How pleasantly and profitably for the traveller this can be 
 done. There is no taste but may be interested, no capacity but 
 can be matched, no country but can be made tributary to 
 our own. The historian, the linguist, the farmer, the econo- 
 mist, the musician, the statesman, and the man of science 
 can equally augment their pleasure and make it minister to 
 Ireland. 
 
 Is a man curious upon our language ? He can (not unread in 
 Neilson, nor unaccompanied by O’Reilly’s Dictionary) trace 
 how far the Celtic words mixed in the classical French, or in 
 the patois of Bretagne or Gascony, coincide with the Irish ; he 
 can search in the mountains of North Spain, whether in proper 
 
FOREIGN TRA VEL. 
 
 219 
 
 names or country words there be any analogy to the Gaelic of 
 the opposite coast of Ireland. 
 
 The proper names are the most permanent, and if there be 
 any truth in Sir William Betham’s theories, the names of many 
 a hill and stream in Tuscany, North Africa, and Syria ought to 
 be traceable to an Irish root. Nor need this language-search 
 be limited to the south. Beginning at the Isle of Man, up by 
 Cumberland (the kingdom of Strath Clyde), through Scotland, 
 Denmark, Norway, to Ireland, the constant intercourse in 
 trade and war with Ireland, and in many instances the early 
 occupation by a Celtic race, must have left indelible marks in 
 the local names, if not the traditions, of the country. To the 
 tourist in France we particularly recommend a close study of 
 the History of the Gauls, by Amadeus Thierry. 
 
 The student of our ecclesiastical history, whether he hold 
 with Dr. Smiles that the Irish Church was independent, or, 
 with Dr. Miley, that it paid allegiance to Rome, may delight in 
 following the tracks of the Irish saints, from Iona of the 
 Culdees to Luxieu and Boia (founded by Columbus), and St. 
 Gall, founded by an Irishman of that name. Rumold can be 
 heard of in Mechlin, Albhuin in Saxony, Kilian in Bavaria, 
 Fursey in Peronne, and in far Tarentum the traveller will find 
 more than one trace of the reformer of that city — the Irishman, 
 St. Cathaldus. We cannot suppose that any man will stray 
 from Stackallen, or Maynooth at least, without keeping this 
 purpose in mind, nor would it misbecome a divine from that 
 Trinity College of which Usher was a first fellow. 
 
 Our military history could also receive much illustration 
 from Irish travellers going with some previous knowledge and 
 studying the traditions and ground, and using the libraries in 
 the neighbourhood of those places where Irishmen fought. 
 Not to go back to the Irish who (if we believe O’Halloran) 
 stormed the Roman Capital as the allies of Brennus of Gaul, 
 nor insisting upon too minute a search for that Alpine valley 
 where, says MacGeoghegan, they still have a tradition of 
 Dalhy’s death by lightning, there are plenty of places worth 
 investigating in connection with Irish military history. In 
 
220 
 
 FOREIGN TRA VEE 
 
 Scotland, for example, ’twere worth while tracking the march 
 of Alaster MacDomhnall and his 1500 Antrim men from their 
 first landing at Ardnamurchan through Tippermiur, Aberdeen, 
 Fivy, Inverlochy, and Aulderne, to Kilsyth — victories, won by 
 Irish soldiers and chiefs, given to them by tradition, as even 
 Scott admits, though he tries to displace its value for Mon- 
 trose’s sake, and given to them by the highest cotemporary 
 authorities — such as the Ormond papers. 
 
 Then there is the Irish Brigade. From Almanza to Fon- 
 tenoy, from Ramillies to Cremona, we have the names of their 
 achievements, but the register of them is in the libraries and war 
 offices and private papers of France, and Spain, and Austria, and 
 Savoy. A set of visits to Irish battle-fields abroad, illustrated 
 from the manuscripts ot Paris, Vienna, and Madrid, would be a 
 welcomer book than the reiterated assurances that the Rhone 
 was rapid, the Alps high, and Florence rich in sculpture, 
 wherewith we have been dinned. 
 
 We have no lives of our most illustrious Irish generals in 
 foreign services — Marshal Brown, the Lacys, Montgomery of 
 Donegal, the rival of Washington ; and yet the materials must 
 exist in the offices and libraries of Austria, Russia, and America. 
 
 Talking of libraries, there is one labour in particular we wish 
 our countrymen to undertake. The constant emigration of the 
 princes, nobles, and ecclesiastics of I reland, from the Reformation 
 downwards, scattered through the Continent many of our 
 choicest collections. The manuscripts from these have been 
 dispersed by gift and sale among hundreds of foreign libraries. 
 The Escurial, Vienna, Rome, Paris, and Copenhagen are said 
 to be particularly rich in them, and it cannot be doubted that in 
 every considerable library (religious, official, or private) on the 
 Continent some MSS. valuable to Ireland would be found. In 
 many cases these could be purchased, in some copied, in all 
 listed. The last is the most practical and essential labour. It 
 would check and guide our inquiries now, and would prepare 
 for the better day, when we can negotiate the restoration of our 
 old muniments from the governments of Europe, 
 
 A study of the monuments and museums throughout France, 
 
FOREIGN TEA VEE 
 
 221 
 
 Spain, Italy, and Scandinavia in reference to the forts, tombs, 
 altars, and weapons of ancient Ireland, would make a summer 
 pleasant and profitable. 
 
 But we would not limit men to the study of the past. 
 
 Our agriculture is defective, and our tenures are abominable. 
 It were well worth the attention of the travelling members of 
 the Irish Agricultural Society to bring home accurate written 
 accounts of the tenures of land, the breeds of cattle, draining, 
 rotation, crops, manures, and farm-houses, from Belgium, or 
 Norway, Tuscany, or Prussia. 
 
 Our mineral resources and water-power are unused. A 
 collection of models or drawings, or descriptions of the mining, 
 quarrying, and hydraulic works of Germany, England, or 
 France, might be found most useful for the Irish capitalist who 
 made it, and for his country which so needs instruction. Besides, 
 even though many of these things be described already, yet how 
 much more vivid and practical were the knowledge to be got 
 from observation. 
 
 Our fine or useful arts are rude or decayed, and our industrial 
 and general education very inferior. The schools and galleries, 
 museums and educational systems of Germany deserve the 
 closest examination with reference to the knowledge and taste 
 required in Ireland, and the means of giving them. One 
 second-rate book of such observations, with special reference to 
 Ireland, were worth many greater performances unapplied to 
 the means and need of our country. 
 
 Ireland wants all these things. Before this generation dies, 
 it must have made Ireland’s rivers navigable, and its hundred 
 harbours secure with beacon and pier, and thronged with seamen 
 educated in naval schools, and familiar with every rig and every 
 ocean. Arigna must be pierced with shafts, and Bonmahon 
 flaming with smelting-houses. Our bogs must have become 
 turf factories, where fuel will be husbanded, and prepared for 
 the smelting-house. Our coal must move a thousand engines, 
 our rivers ten thousand wheels. 
 
 Our young artisans must be familiar with the arts of design 
 and the natural sciences connected with their trade ; and so of 
 
222 
 
 FOREIGN TRA VEL, 
 
 our farmers ; and both should, beside, have that general 
 information which refines and expands the minds — that know- 
 ledge of Irish history and statistics that makes it national, and 
 those accomplishments and sports which make leisure profitable 
 and home joyous. 
 
 Our cities must be stately with sculpture, pictures, and 
 buildings, and our fields glorious with peaceful abundance. 
 
 But this is an Utopia! Is it.^ No; but the practicable 
 object of those who know our resources I To seek it is the 
 solemn, unavoidable duty of every Irishman. Whether, then, 
 oh reader, you spend this or any coming season abroad or at 
 home, do not forget for a day how much should be done for 
 Ireland. 
 
“THE LIBRARY OF IRELAND; 
 
 While the Gaelic-speaking people of Ireland were restricted 
 to traditional legends, songs, and histories, a library was 
 provided for those who used English by the genius and industry 
 of men whose names have vanished — a fate common to them 
 with the builder of the Pyramids, the inventor of letters, and 
 other benefactors of mankind. Moore has given, in Captain 
 Rock^ an imperfect catalogue of this library. The scientific 
 course seems to have been rather limited, as Ovid’s Art of (let 
 us rather say essay on) Lo've was the only abstract work ; but 
 it contained biographies of Captain F7'67iey^ the Robber^ and of 
 Red7no7id O' Hanlo7i^ the Rapparee — wherein, we fear. O’ Hanlon 
 was made, by a partial pen, rather more like Freney than 
 history warrants ; dramas such as the Battle of Aughrhn^ 
 written apparently by some Alsatian Williamite ; lyrics of love, 
 unhoused save by the watch ; imperial works, too, as Moil 
 Fla7iders ; and European literature — Do7t Belianis^ and the 
 Seve7t Cha77ipio7is, Whether they were imported, or originally 
 produced for the grooms of the dissolute gentry, may be 
 discussed ; but it seems certain that their benign influence 
 spread, on one side, to the farmers’ and shopkeepers’ sons, and, 
 on the other, to the cadets of the great families — and were, in 
 short, the classics of tipsy Ireland. The deadly progress of 
 temperance, politics, and democracy have sent them below 
 their original market, and in ten years the collector will pay 
 a guinea a piece for them. 
 
 During the Emancipation struggle this indecent trash shrunk 
 up, and a totally different literature circulated. The Orange 
 party regaled themselves chiefly with theology, but the rest of 
 the country (still excepting the classes sheltered by their 
 Gaelic tongue) formed a literature more human, and quite as 
 223 
 
224 
 
 “ THE LIBRARY OF IRELAND! 
 
 serious. There occasionally is great vigour in the biographies 
 of Lord Edward, Robert Emmet, and other popular heroes 
 chronicled at that time ; but the long interview of Emmet with 
 Sarah Curran, the night before his execution, is a fair specimen 
 of the accuracy of these works. The songs were intense 
 enough, occasionally controversial, commonly polemical, always 
 extravagant ; the Granu Wails and Shan-van-Vochts of the 
 Catholic agitation cannot be too soon obsolete. The famous 
 Waterford song — 
 
 “ O’Connell’s come to town, 
 
 And he’ll put the Orange down, 
 
 And by the heavenly G — he’ll wear the crown. 
 
 Says the Shan Van Vocht ! 
 
 is characteristic of the zeal, discretion, and style of these once 
 powerful lyrics. A history of the authorship of these bio- 
 graphies and songs would be interesting, and is perhaps still 
 possible. The reprint in the series of Hugh O’Reilly’s Irish 
 history — albeit, a mass of popular untruth was put at the end of 
 it — shows as if some more considerate mind had begun to 
 influence these publications. They, too, are fast vanishing, 
 and will yet be sought to illustrate their times. 
 
 In the first class we have described there was nothing to 
 redeem their stupid indecency and ruffianism ; in the latter, 
 however one may grieve at their bigotry, and dislike their 
 atrocious style, there were purity, warmth, and a high purpose. 
 
 The “Useful Knowledge Society” period arrived in Britain, 
 and flooded that island with cheap tracts on algebra and 
 geometry, chemistry, theology, and physiology. Penny Maga- 
 zines told every man how his stockings were wove, how many 
 drunkards were taken up per hour in Southwark, how the geese 
 were plucked from which the author got his pens, how many 
 pounds weight of lead (with the analysis thereof, and an 
 account of the Cornish mines by way of parenthesis) were in 
 the types for each page, and the nature of the rags (so many per 
 cent, beggars, so many authors, so many shoe-boys) from 
 which the paper of the all-important, man and money-saving 
 
“ THE LIBRARY OF IRELAND! 225 
 
 Penny Magazine was made. On its being suggested that man 
 was more than a statistician, or a dabbler in mathematics, a 
 moral series (warranted Benthamite) was issued to teach people 
 how they should converse at meals — how to choose their 
 wives, masters, and servants by phrenological developments, 
 and how to live happily, like “Mr. Hard*and- Comfortable,” 
 the Yellow Quaker. 
 
 Unluckily for us, there was no great popular passion in Ire- 
 land at the time, and our communication with England had 
 been greatly increased by steamers and railways, by the Whig 
 alliance, by democratic sympathy, and by the transference of 
 our political capital to Westminster. Tracts, periodicals, and 
 the whole horde of Benthamy rushed in. Without manufactures, 
 without trade, without comfort to palliate such degradation, we 
 were proclaimed converts to Utilitarianism. The Irish press 
 thought itself imperial, because it reflected that of London — 
 Nationality was called a vulgar superstition, and a general 
 European Trades’ Union, to be followed by a universal 
 Republic, became the final aspirations of “all enlightened 
 men.’’ At the same time the National Schools were spread- 
 ing the elements of science and the means of study through the 
 poorer classes, and their books were merely intellectual. 
 
 Between all these influences Ireland promised to become a 
 farm for Lancashire, with the wisdom and moral rank of that 
 district, without its wealth, when there came a deliverer — the 
 Repeal agitation. 
 
 Its strain gradually broke the Whig alliance and the Chartist 
 sympathy. Westminster ceased to be the city towards which 
 the Irish bowed and made pilgrimage. An organisation, cen- 
 tring in Dublin, connected the People ; and an oratory full of 
 Gaelic passion and popular idiom galvanised them. Thus 
 there has been, from 1842 — when the Repeal agitation became 
 serious — an incessant progress in Literature and Nationality. 
 A Press, Irish in subjects, style, and purpose, has been formed 
 — a National Poetry has grown up — the National Schools have 
 prepared their students for the more earnest study of National 
 politics and history — the classes most hostile to the agitation 
 
 707 
 
226 
 
 ‘‘ THE LIBRAR Y OF IRELAND: 
 
 are converts to its passions; and when Lord Heytesbury 
 recently expressed his wonder at finding “ Irish prejudices” in 
 the most cultivated body in Ireland, he only bore witness to an 
 aristocratic Nationality of which he could have found countless 
 proofs beside. 
 
 Yet the power of British utilitarian literature continues. The 
 wealthy classes are slowly getting an admirable and a costly 
 National Literature from Petrie, and O’Donovan, and Ferguson, 
 and Lefanu, and the University Magazine, The poorer are 
 left to the newspaper, and the meeting, and an occasional serial 
 of very moderate merits. That class, now becoming the rulers 
 of Ireland, who have taste for the higher studies, but whose 
 means are small, have only a few scattered works within their 
 reach, and some of them, not content to use these exclusively, 
 are driven to foreign studies and exposed to alien influence. 
 
 To give to the country a National Library, exact enough for 
 the wisest, high enough for the purest, and cheap enough for 
 all readers, appears the object of “ The Library of Ireland.” 
 
 Look at the subjects — A History of the Volunteers^ Memoirs 
 of Hugh O’Neill, of Tone, of Owen Roe, of Grattan, Collec- 
 tions of Irish Ballads and Songs, and so forth. It would take 
 one a month, with the use of all the libraries of Dublin, to get 
 the history of the Volunteers. In Wilson’s so-called history 
 you will get a number of addresses and 300 pages of irrelevant 
 declamation for eight or ten shillings. Try further, and you 
 must penetrate through the manuscript catalogues of Trinity 
 College and the Queen’s Inns (the last a wilderness) to find the 
 pamphlets and newspapers containing what you want ; yet the 
 history of the Volunteers is one interesting to every class, and 
 equally popular in every province. 
 
 Hugh O’Neill — he found himself an English tributary, his 
 clan beaten, his country despairing. He organised his clan 
 into an army, defeated by arms and policy the best generals 
 and statesmen of Elizabeth, and gave Ireland a pride and a 
 hope which never deserted her since. Yet the only written 
 history of him lies in an Irish MS. in the Vatican, unprinted, 
 untranslated, uncopied; and the Irishman who would know his 
 
« THE LIBRARY OF IRELAND: 
 
 227 
 
 life must grope through Moryson, and Ware, and O^Sullivan in 
 unwilling libraries, and in books whose price would support a 
 student for two winters. 
 
 Of Tone and Grattan — the wisest and most sublime of our 
 last generation — there are lives, and valuable ones; but such as 
 the rich only will buy, and the leisurely find time to read. 
 
 The rebellion of 1641— a mystery and a lie — is it not time to 
 let every man look it in the face? The Irish Brigade — a 
 marvellous reality to few, a proud phantom to most of us — shall 
 we not all, rich and poor, learn in good truth how the Berserk 
 Irish bore up in the winter streets of Cremona, or the gorgeous 
 Brigade followed Clare’s flashing plumes right through the 
 great column of Fontenoy? 
 
 Irish Ballads and Songs — why (except that Spirit of the 
 Nation which we so audaciously put together), the popular 
 ballads and songs are the faded finery of the West End, the 
 foul parodies of St. Giles’s, the drunken rigmarole of the black 
 Helots — or, as they are touchingly classed in the streets, 
 “sentimental, comic, and nigger songs.” Yet Banim, and 
 Griffin, and Furlong, Lover and Ferguson, Drennan and 
 Callanan, have written ballads and songs as true to Ireland as 
 ever MacNeill’s or Conyngham’s were to Scotland ; and firmly 
 do we hope to see with every second lad in Ireland a volume of 
 honest, noble Irish ballads, as well thumbed as a Lowland 
 Burns or a French Beranger, and sweetly shall yet come to us 
 from every milking-field and harvest-home songs not too 
 proudly joined to the sweetest music in the world. 
 
 This country of ours is no sand bank, thrown up by some 
 recent caprice of earth. It is an ancient land, honoured in the 
 archives of civilisation, traceable into antiquity by its piety, its 
 valour, and its sufferings. Every great European race has sent 
 its stream to the river of Irish mind. Long wars, vast organisa- 
 tions, subtle codes, beacon crimes, leading virtues, and self- 
 mighty men were here. If we live influenced by wind and sun 
 and tree, and not by the passions and deeds of the past, we are 
 a thriftless and a hopeless People. 
 
A CHRONOLOGY OF IRELAND. 
 
 There is much doubt as to who were the first inhabitants of 
 Ireland ; but it is certain that the Phoenicians had a great 
 commerce with it. The Firbolgs, a rude people, held Ireland 
 for a long period. They were subdued by the Tuatha de 
 Danaan, a refined and noble race, which in its turn yielded its 
 supremacy to the arms of the Milesians. The dates during 
 these centuries are not well ascertained.^ 
 
 B.C. 
 
 looo. Dr. O’Conor, the Librarian of Stowe, fixes this as the most 
 probable date of the Milesian invasion. 
 
 Ollamh Fodhla institutes the Great Feis, or Triennial Convention, 
 
 at Tara. 
 
 Thirty-two monarchs are said to have reigned between this 
 
 sovereign and Kimbaoth,^ who built the Palace of Emania. 
 
 A.D. 
 
 40. Reformation of the Bardic or Literary Order, by Conquovar, 
 King of Ulster. [In the reign of this king, Conchobhar, or Conor 
 MacNessa, falls the great Conorian cycle of Irish legend, with its 
 heroic characters, Cuchullin, Fergus, Queen Macv, Deirdre, etc.] 
 
 ^ The successive pre-Christian “ invasions ” of Ireland recorded in 
 the Annals are now generally looked upon as the result of a nationalising 
 method applied by monkish chroniclers to the Irish mythology. It is 
 certain that the personages who in the Annals appear as historical 
 characters, with fixed dates, territories, etc., are represented in the 
 imagmative literature of ancient Ireland as gods and daemons. — Ed. 
 
 ^ “Omnia monumenta Scotorum ante Cimbaoth incerta sunt,” wrote, 
 ca. 1 100 A.D., Tighernach, Abbot of Clonmacnois ; a very remarkable 
 utterance for such an uncritical age, considering the fulness and veri- 
 similitude of the “monumenta” on which Tighernach pronounces. 
 Kimbaoth’s floruit is about 300 B.C. — Ed. 
 
 228 
 
A CHRONOLOGY OF IRELAND, 229 
 
 A.D. 
 
 90. The old population successfully revolt against the Milesians, 
 and place one of their own race upon the throne. 
 
 130. Re-establishment of the Milesian sway, 
 
 164. King Feidlim the Legislator establishes the laws of Eric. 
 
 258. From Con of the Hundred Battles descended the chieftains who 
 supplied Albany, the modern Scotland, with her first Scottish 
 rulers, by establishing, about the middle of the third century, the 
 kingdom of Dalriada in Argyleshire. [About this time is the zenith 
 of the Fenian organisation under Finn MacComhal, Ossian, Oscar, 
 etc. — a second, rather romantic than heroic, cycle of Irish legend.] 
 
 333. The Palace of Emania destroyed during a civil war. 
 
 396. Nial of the Nine Hostages invades Britain. 
 
 387. The birth of St. Patrick. 
 
 432. His mission to Ireland. 
 
 436. Dathi, the last of the Pagan monarchs of Ireland, succeeded Nial, 
 and was killed while on one of his military expeditions, at the foot 
 of the Alps, by lightning. 
 
 465. March 17 — Death of St. Patrick. 
 
 554. The last triennial council held at Tara. 
 
 795. First Invasion of the Danes. 
 
 1014. April 23, Good Friday — Defeat of the Danes at Clontarf by 
 Brian Boroihme. 
 
 1152. Synod of Kells. Supremacy of the Church of Rome acknow- 
 ledged. 
 
 1159. Pope Adrian’s bull granting Ireland to Henry II. 
 
 1169. May — First landing of the Normans. 
 
 1171. October 18 — Henry II. arrives in Ireland. 
 
 1172. A Council, called by some a Parliament, held by Henry II. at 
 Lismore. 
 
 1185. Prince John is sent over by his father as Lord of Ireland, 
 accompanied by his tutor, Giraldus Cambrensis. 
 
 1210. King John, at the head of a military force, arrives in Ireland. 
 
 1216. Henry HI. grants Magna Charta to Ireland. 
 
 1254. Ireland granted, under certain conditions, by Henry HI. to his 
 son Prince Edward. 
 
 1277. Some of the Irish petition Edward I, for an extension of English 
 laws and usages to them. 
 
 1295. A Parliament held at Kilkenny by Sir John Wogan, Lord 
 Justice. 
 
A CHRONOLOGY OF IRELAND, 
 
 230 
 
 A.D. 
 
 1309. A Parliament held at Kilkenny by Sir John Wogan. Its 
 enactments on record in Bolton’s Irish Statutes. 
 
 1315. Edward Bruce lands with 6000 men at Larne in May, invited 
 by the Irish. Crowned near Dundalk. 
 
 1318. Defeat and death of Bruce at Faghard, near Dundalk. 
 
 1367. Parliament assembled at Kilkenny by Lionel, Duke of Clarence, 
 at which the celebrated Anti- Irish Statute was passed [prohibiting 
 adoption of Irish costume or customs, intermarriage with the Irish, 
 etc., under very severe penalties, to the Anglo-Irish of the Pale. 
 Here too, as in many other notices, we find the influence of the 
 Irish bards denounced as peculiarly dangerous to the supremacy 
 and separateness of the English.] 
 
 1379. The first Act ever passed against Absentees. 
 
 1394. Richard II. lands with an army at Waterford. 
 
 1399. Richard II.’s second expedition to Ireland. 
 
 1463. A College founded at Youghal by the Earl of Desmond. Another 
 at Drogheda. 
 
 1472. Institution of the Brotherhood of St. George for the protection 
 of the Pale. 
 
 1494. Nov. — The Parliament assembled at Drogheda passed Poyning’s 
 Law. 
 
 1534. First step of the Reformation in Ireland. 
 
 1536. Nearly total destruction of the Kildare Geraldines. Henry VI IP’s 
 supremacy enacted by Statute. 
 
 1537. Act passed for the suppression of religious houses. 
 
 1541. Act passed declaring Henry VIII. King oi Ireland. 
 
 1579. The last Earl of Desmond proclaimed a traitor. 
 
 1583. The Earl of Desmond assassinated. 
 
 1586. April 26 — Attainder of Desmond and his followers. Forfeiture 
 of his estate — 574,628 Irish acres. Elizabeth institutes the planting 
 system. 
 
 [1591. Escape of Aodh O’Donnell (Hugh Roe) from Dublin Castle.] 
 
 1592. The Dublin University founded. 
 
 1595. Aodh O’Neill’s victory at Blackwater, and death of Marshal 
 Bagnal. 
 
 [1601. Defeat of Aodh O’Donnell (Hugh Roe, chief of Tirconaill) 
 and O’Neill at Kinsale. 
 
 1602. Sept. — Aodh O’Donnell poisoned at Simancas, in Spain, by 
 contrivance of Carew, President of Munster.] 
 
A CHRONOLOGY OF IRELAND, 
 
 231 
 
 A.D. 
 
 1603. March 30 — Submission of O’Neill (Tyrone) to Mountjoy, 
 
 1607. Flight of the Northern Earls, Tyrone and Tyrconnell. Consequent 
 seizure by the Crown of the six entire counties of Cavan, Fer- 
 managh, Armagh, Derry, Tyrone, and Tyrconnel (now Donegal), 
 amounting in the whole to about 511,456 Irish acres, 
 
 t6o8. May i — Sept. — Sir Cathair O’Dogherty’s rising, 
 
 1613. May 18 — After the creation of fourteen peers and forty new 
 boroughs, a Parliament is assembled to support the new plantation 
 of Ulster by the attainder and outlawry of the gentlemen of that 
 province. 
 
 1616. Commission for inquiring into defective titles. 
 
 1635. Lord Wentworth’s oppressive proceedings to find a title in the 
 Crown to the province of Connaught. 
 
 1641. Oct, 23 — The breaking out of the celebrated Irish insurrection. 
 
 1642. The confederate Catholics form their General Assembly and 
 Supreme Council at Kilkenny — “Pro Deo, pro rege, et patria 
 Hibernia^ unanimes^^'^ their motto. 
 
 1646. June 5 — Monroe totally defeated by Owen Roe O’Neill at Ben- 
 burb, near Armagh. 
 
 1649. Aug. 15 — Oliver Cromwell arrives in Dublin. 
 
 — Sept. 2, 10, 15— Siege, storming, and massacre of Drogheda. 
 
 Oct. I — Siege and massacre of Wexford. 
 
 --- — Nov. 6 — Death of Owen Roe O’Neill at Cloeh-Nachdar Castle, 
 Co. Cavan. 
 
 1650. May 29 — Cromwell embarks for England. 
 
 1653. Sept. 26 — The Irish war proclaimed ended by the English Par- 
 liament. — Act of Grace, ordering the Irish Catholics to transport 
 themselves, on pain of death, into Connaught before ist of March 
 1654. 
 
 1661 — May 8, 1666. Acts of Settlement and Explanation. 7,800,000 
 acres confiscated and distributed under them, 
 
 1689. March 12— James II. landed at Kinsale. 
 
 May 7 I The Irish Parliament summoned by him : met at the 
 
 July 20 / Inns of Court. 
 
 1690. June 14 — William III. landed at Carrickfergus Bay. 
 
 July I — Battle of the Boyne. 
 
 Aug. 30— The first siege of Limerick under William HI. raised 
 
 by Sarsfield. 
 
 1691. June 30 — Athlone taken after a gallant defence. 
 
A CHRONOLOGY OF IRELAND. 
 
 232 
 
 A.D. 
 
 1691. July 12 — Battle of Aughrim. 
 
 Oct. 3 — Capitulation and Treaty of Limerick. 
 
 1692. April 5 — The articles agreed upon by the Treaty confirmed by 
 William III. 
 
 Nov. 3 — Lord Sydney’s protest against the claim of the Irish 
 
 House of Commons to the right of “ preparing heads of bills for 
 raising money ” — the beginning of the struggle between the Pro- 
 testant ascendency and the English Government, which bore 
 national fruit in 1782, but which was crushed in 1800. 
 
 1695. August — Parliament violated the Treaty of Limerick — 
 
 7 William III., c. 67 — Prohibits Catholic education at home or 
 abroad. 
 
 7 William III., c. 5 — Disarms Papists. 
 
 1697. 9 William III., c. i — Banishes Popish archbishops, bishops, 
 vicars-general, and all regular clergy, on pain of death. 
 
 9 William III., c. 2 — An Act ‘Mo confirm the Treaty of 
 
 Limerick,” which directly and grossly violates its letter and spirit. 
 It is fit to remember that in the Irish House of Lords, from which 
 Catholics were excluded, seven spiritual and five temporal peers 
 protested against this infamous legislation. 
 
 1698. The 9 and 10 William HI., c. 40 — An Act aimed at the Irish 
 woollen manufacture. Molyneux published his famous Case of 
 Ireland being hound by Acts of Parliament passed hi England, 
 This book, by order of the English House of Commons, was 
 burned by the hangman. 
 
 [1703. Petition of the Irish House of Commons for legislative inde- 
 pendence or union.^] 
 
 1704. March 4 — The “ Act to prevent the further growth of Popery,” 
 one of the most noted links in the penal chain. ^ 
 
 1719. October 17 — Representation of the Irish House of Lords against 
 appeals to England. 
 
 1720. 6 Geo. I. — Act passed by the English Legislature to secure the 
 dependency of Ireland. 
 
 Swift’s first Irish pamphlet— “ A proposal for the universal use of 
 
 Irish manufactures.” Prosecuted by Government. 
 
 ^ See Journal of the Irish House of Commons, Oct. 20, 1703* 
 
 ^ It attacked the property of the Catholics, as previous Acts had 
 
 attacked them in education and in the practice of their religion. Intro- 
 duced Sept. 28, 1703 . — Ed. 
 
A CHRONOLOGY OF IRELAND. 
 
 233 
 
 A.D. 
 
 1724. Wood’s patent to coin half-pence for Ireland, and Swift’s 
 successful opposition to the scheme by the “ Letters of M. B. 
 Drapier. ” The first time all Irish sects and parties were unanimous 
 upon national grounds. 
 
 1728. I Geo. II., c. 9, s. 8. — The Act disfranchising Roman Catholics. 
 
 1737* The tithe of agistment got rid of by the Irish gentry, and the 
 chief burden of the tithe thereby thrown on the farmers and 
 peasantry, 
 
 1743. Lucas rises into notice in the Dublin corporation. 
 
 1745. April 30 — Battle of Fontenoy. 
 
 1749. Dr. Lucas is obliged to leave Ireland. 
 
 1753. Dec. 17 — The House of Commons asserts its control successfully 
 over the surplus revenue, in opposition to Government. 
 
 1756. The first public effort by Mr. O’Connor and Dr. Curry to inspire 
 the Catholics with the spirit of freedom. They succeed with the 
 mercantile body, but are opposed by many of the gentry and 
 clergy. 
 
 1760. March and April — Mr. Wyse and Dr. Curry revive the scheme 
 of an association to manage Catholic affairs. 
 
 1761. Dr. Lucas returned as representative of Dublin to the first 
 parliament of George III. 
 
 1763. Establishment of Freeman's Journal hyT>x. Lucas — the first 
 independent Irish newspaper. 
 
 1768. The duration of parliament limited to eight years. 
 
 1778. First relaxation of the Penal Code. Catholics allowed long 
 tenures of land, etc. 
 
 The volunteers first formed. Flood the foremost popular 
 
 leader. 
 
 1779. The achievement of Free Trade [/.<?., Ireland’s right to trade 
 with the colonies, etc.]. 
 
 1782. Ireland’s legislative independence won. Grattan’s prime. 
 
 1785. Orde’s commercial propositions [for a Zollverein between Great 
 Britain and Ireland, at first accepted by the popular party in 
 Ireland; afterwards rejected on inequalities, oppressive towards 
 Ireland, being introduced in a new draft of the measure by the 
 British Parliament]. 
 
 1789. Debates upon the Regency question. 
 
 1790. The formation of the Society of United Irishmen at Belfast. 
 Theobald Wolfe Tone its founder. 
 
234 ^ CHRONOLOGY OF IRELAND. 
 
 A.D. 
 
 [1791. Re-organisation of the Catholic Committee for active agitation, 
 and secession from that body of most of its peers and prelates.] 
 r The franchise restored to the Roman Catholics, the Bar opened 
 
 1792* J them, etc. [Far the greatest step towards Catholic Eman- 
 
 1793* y cipation ever made at one time.] 
 
 1795. Sept. 21 — First Orange Lodge formed. 
 
 1796. Dec. 24 — The remnant of the French expedition arrives in 
 Bantry Bay without General Hoche, the commander. 
 
 [ Four Catholic archbishops and six bishops endorse a proposal to 
 
 grant the British Government a right of Vefo on election of Catholic 
 bishops in Ireland, in consideration of emancipation.] 
 
 1798. May 23 — Breaking out of the insurrection. 
 
 [ June 21 — Battle of Vinegar Hill. On the following day landed 
 
 in Dublin the first English troops (the Buckinghamshire regiment) 
 sent to help in quelling the insurrection,] 
 
 August 22 — General Humbert lands with a small force at Killala. 
 
 Dec. 9 — Meeting of the Bar to oppose the projected Union. 
 
 Saurin moves the resolution, which is carried. 
 
 1799. Jan. 22 — The Union proposed. 
 
 [ Feb. 7 — Debate on the Union in English House of Commons. 
 
 To charge of wholesale bribery Mr. Secretary Windham replies 
 that it is necessary thus to guide Irish members into the line of 
 duty.] 
 
 June I — Parliament prorogued, Government having been defeated 
 
 by small majorities. [Lord Castlereagh analyses the division — 
 
 “ Against, or absent enemies 129 
 
 Of these, might be bought off 20”]^ 
 
 1800. Feb. 10 — The House of Lords divided, 75 for and 26 against the 
 Union. 
 
 Feb. 15 — The House of Commons divided, 158 for, 115 against 
 
 the Union. [60 new members since the prorogation.] 
 
 March 17 — On this day, the first of the following January was 
 
 fixed in the Commons for the commencement of the Union. 
 
 1803. Robert Emmet’s insurrection and execution. 
 
 [1808. Emancipation question before Parliament. The Ve/o agree- 
 ment made known, and Irish laity repudiate it.] 
 
 1810. Great Repeal meeting in Dublin. 
 
 ^ Cornwallis Correspondence^ iii. 45 
 
A CHRONOLOGY OF IRELAND. 
 
 235 
 
 A.D. 
 
 1813. Important debate on Emancipation. Measure lost, chiefly in 
 consequence of Irish attitude on the Ve/o.] 
 
 1821. George IV. in Ireland. 
 
 1823. Catholic Association formed. 
 
 1825. Act passed to put down the Catholic Association. 
 
 1828. O’Connell’s election for Clare. 
 
 1829. April 13 — Emancipation granted. 
 
 1831. Education Board formed. 
 
 1833. Coercion Bill passed by the Whigs. 
 
 1836. May — Parliament rejects Repeal motion. 
 
 [1839. Reform of the Tithe Laws, converting tithes into a fixed rent 
 charge payable by the landlords.] 
 
 1838. Poor Law. Temperance movement. 
 
 1840. Corporation Reform. Repeal Association formed by O’Connell. 
 
 1842. October 15 — Establishment of the Nation, [Its motto : “ To 
 create and foster public opinion in Ireland, and to make it racy 
 of the soil.”] 
 
 1843. Monster meetings. Prosecutions. William Smith O’Brien joins 
 the Repeal Association. 
 
 1844. Verdict against, and imprisonment of Repeal leaders, 12th 
 February and 30th May. Liberation, 7th September. 
 
 The future is ours — for good, if we are persevering, intelligent, and 
 
 brave ; for ill, if we quarrel, slumber, or shrink.^ 
 
 ^ This very useful Chronology of Ireland was first published in the 
 Nation. It is here printed from a copy corrected and slightly enlarged 
 by Davis’s own hand. The Editor hopes to be excused for having 
 endeavoured to make it still more instructive by a few further additions, 
 which are distinguished by being placed in brackets. 
 
POLITICAL ARTICLESI 
 
 NO REDRESS— NO INQUIRY. 
 
 The British Parliament has refused to redress our wrongs, 
 or even to inquire into them. For five long nights were they 
 compelled to listen to arguments, facts, and principles proving 
 that we were sorely oppressed. They did not deny the facts — 
 they did not refute the reasoning — they did not undermine the 
 principles — but they would not try to right us. 
 
 “ We inherit the right of hatred for six centuries of oppres- 
 sion ; what will you do to prove your repentance, and propitiate 
 our revenge?” — and the answer is, “That’s an old story, we 
 wish to hear no more of it.” 
 
 Legislature of Britain, you shall hear more of it ! 
 
 The growing race of Irishmen are the first generation of free- 
 men which Ireland nursed these three centuries. The national 
 schools may teach them only the dry elements of knowledge 
 adulterated with Anglicism, and Trinity College may teach 
 them bigotry, along with graceful lore and strong science; but 
 there are other schools at work. There is a national art, and 
 there is an Irish literature growing up. Day after day the 
 choice of the young men discover that genius needs a country 
 to honour and be loved by. The Irish Press is beginning to 
 teach the People to know themselves and their history; to 
 
 ^ Davis contributed a political article to the Nation nearly every 
 week. The plan of this Series does not permit any extensive illustra- 
 tion of this side of his activity; but a few of these articles are here 
 inserted in order to show something of the spirit of his teaching. — E d. 
 
 236 
 
NO REDRESS— NO INQUIRY. 
 
 237 
 
 know other nations, and to feel the rights and duties of citizens. 
 The agitation, whose surges sweep through every nook of the 
 island, converts all that the People learns to national uses; 
 nothing is lost, nothing is adverse; neutrality is help, and 
 all power is converted into power for Ireland. 
 
 Ireland is changing the loose tradition of her wrongs into 
 history and ballad; and though justice, repentance, or retribu- 
 tion may make her cease to need vengeance, she will immor- 
 tally remember her bondage, her struggles, her glories, and her 
 disasters. Till her suffering ceases that remembrance will 
 rouse her passions and nerve her arm. May she not forgive 
 till she is no longer oppressed; and when she forgives, may 
 she never forget ! 
 
 Why need we repeat the tale of present wretchedness ? 
 Seven millions and a half of us are Presbyterians and Catholics, 
 and our whole ecclesiastical funds go to the gorgeous support 
 of the Clergy of the remaining 800,000, who are Episcopalians. 
 Where else on earth does a similar injury and dishonour exist? 
 Nowhere; hwas confessed it existed nowhere. Would it 
 w^eaken the empire to abolish this ? Confessedly not, but would 
 give it some chance of holding together. Would it injure Pro- 
 testantism? You say not. Idle wealth is fatal to a Church, 
 and supremacy bars out every proud and generous convert. 
 Why is it maintained ? The answer is directly given — “ Eng- 
 land (that is, the English aristocracy) is bigoted,” and no 
 Ministry dare give you redress. These are the very words of 
 Captain Rous, the Tory member for Westminster, and the 
 whole House assented to the fact. If you cannot redress — if 
 you will not go into inquiry, lest this redress, so needed by us, 
 should be fatal to your selfish power, then loose your hold of 
 us, and we will redress ourselves ; and we will do so with less 
 injury to any class than you possibly could, for a free nation 
 may be generous — a struggling one will not and ought not to 
 be so. 
 
 We are most dishonestly taxed for debts ; the fact was 
 not denied — an ominous silence declared that not a halfpenny 
 of that mighty mortgage would be taken olf our shoulders. 
 
238 
 
 NO REDRESS— NO INQUIRY. 
 
 You raise five millions a year from us, and you spend it on 
 English commissioners, English dockyards, English museums, 
 English ambition, and English pleasures. With an enormous 
 taxation, our public offices have been removed to London, and 
 you threaten to remove our Courts of Justice, and our Lord 
 Lieutenantcy, the poor trapping of old nationhood. We have 
 no arsenals, no public employment here; our literary, scientific, 
 and charitable institutions, so bountifully endowed by a Native 
 Legislature, you have forced away, till, out of that enormous 
 surplus revenue raised here, not ;£io,ooo a year comes back for 
 such purposes, while you have heaped hundred upon hundred 
 thousand into the lap of every English institution. For 
 National Education you dribble out ^50,000 a year — not 
 enough for our smallest province. Will you redress these 
 things? No, but you boast of your liberality in giving us 
 anything. 
 
 “ Oh, but you are not overtaxed,” says Peel ; “ see your Post- 
 office produces nothing to the revenue.” Ay, Sir, our Post- 
 office, which levies the same rates as the English Post-office, 
 produces nothing; Ireland is too poor to make even a penny- 
 postage pay its own cost. No stronger mark of a stagnant 
 trade could be adduced. “And then we lowered your spirit 
 duty.’^ Yes, you did, because it brought in less than the lower 
 duty. What single tax did you take off, except when it had 
 been raised so high, or the country had declined so low that it 
 ceased to be productive? You increased our taxation up to the 
 end of the war two and a half times more rapidly than you did 
 your own, and you diminished our taxation after the war thirty 
 times less rapidly. 
 
 You have a fleet of steamers now — you had none in 1817, 
 says some pattern of English Senators, whose constituents are 
 bound to subscribe a few school-books for him if they mean to 
 continue him as their delegate. 
 
 And my Lord Eliot says our exports and imports have 
 increased. We wish your Lordship would have separate 
 accounts kept, that we might know how much. But they 
 have increased — ay, they have ; and they are provisions. 
 
NO REDRESS— NO INQUIRY. 
 
 239 
 
 And our population has increased ; and when we had one- 
 half the number of People to feed we sent out a tenth of the 
 provisions we send away now. This is ruin, not prosperity. 
 We had weavers, iron-workers, glass-makers, and fifty other 
 flourishing trades. They sold their goods to Irishmen in 
 exchange for beef, and mutton, and bread, and bacon, and 
 potatoes. The Irish provisions were not exported — they were 
 eaten in Ireland. They are exported now — for Irish artisans, 
 without work, must live on the refuse of the soil, and Irish 
 peasants must eat lumpers or starve. Part of the exports 
 go to buy rags and farming tools, which once went for clothes 
 and all other goods to Irish operatives, and the rest goes to 
 raise money to pay absentee rents and imperial taxes. Will 
 you tax our absentees 1 Will you employ our artisans Will 
 you abate your taxes, or spend them among us? No; you 
 refuse redress — you refuse inquiry. 
 
 Your conquests and confiscations have given us land tenures 
 alien to the country and deadly to the peasant. Will you 
 interfere in property to save him, as you interfered to oppress 
 him ? You hint that you might inquire, but you only offered 
 redress in an Arms’ Bill — to prostrate the poor man, to violate 
 the sanctity of his home, to brand him, and leave him at the 
 mercy of his local tyrant. 
 
 Will you equalise the franchise, and admit us, in proportion 
 to our numbers, into your Senate, and let us try there for 
 redress? You may inquire, perhaps, some other time; if much 
 pressed, you may consider some increase of the franchise — you 
 decline to open the representation. 
 
 And if England will do none of these things, will she allow 
 us, for good or ill, to govern ourselves, and see if we cannot 
 redress our own griefs ? “No, never, never,” she says, “though 
 all Ireland cried for it — never ! Her fields shall be manured 
 with the shattered limbs of her sons, and her hearths quenched 
 in their blood ; but never, while England has a ship or a 
 soldier, shall Ireland be free.” 
 
 And this is your answer ? We shall see — we shall see ! 
 
 And now, Englishmen, listen to us I Though you were 
 
240 
 
 NO REDRESS— NO INQUIRY, 
 
 to-morrow to give us the best tenures on earth — though you 
 were to equalise Presbyterian, Catholic, and Episcopalian — 
 though you were to give us the amplest representation in 
 your Senate— though you were to restore our absentees, dis- 
 encumber us of your debt, and redress every one of our fiscal 
 wrongs — and though, in addition to all this, you plundered 
 the treasuries of the world to lay gold at our feet, and exhausted 
 the resources of your genius to do us worship and honour, still 
 we tell you — we tell you, in the names of liberty and country — 
 we tell you, in the name of enthusiastic hearts, thoughtful souls, 
 and fearless spirits — we tell you, by the past, the present, and 
 the future, we would spurn your gifts, if the condition were 
 that Ireland should remain a province. We tell you, and all 
 whom it may concern, come what may — bribery or deceit, 
 justice, policy, or war — we tell you, in the name of Ireland, that 
 Ireland shall be a Nation ! 
 
THE RIGHT ROAD. 
 
 By the People the People must be righted. Disunion, and 
 sloth, and meanness enslaved them. Combination, calm pride, 
 and ceaseless labour must set them loose. Let them not trust 
 to the blunders of their enemies, or the miracles of their chiefs 
 — trust nothing, men of Ireland, but the deep resolve of your 
 own hearts. 
 
 As well might you leave the fairies to plough your land or 
 the idle winds to sow it, as sit down and wait for freedom. 
 
 You are on the right road. 
 
 The Repeal Year is over — what then ? — Call next year the 
 Repeal Year if you have a fancy for names; and if that, too, 
 searches your fetter-sores with its December blast, work the 
 next year, and the next, and the next. Cease not till all is 
 done. If you sleep, now that you have climbed so far, you may 
 never wake again. 
 
 Abandon or nod over your task, and the foreign minister 
 will treat you as mad, and tie you down, or as idiotic, and give 
 you sugar plums and stripes. Every man with a spark of pride 
 and manhood would leave you to bear alone the scorn of the 
 world, and from father to son you would live a race of ragged 
 serfs till God in his mercy should destroy the People and the soil. 
 
 You are on the right road. You don’t want to go to war. 
 Your greatest leader objects, on principle, to all war for liberty. 
 All your friends, even those who think liberty well worth a 
 sea of blood, agree with him that it is neither needful nor politic 
 for you to embark in a war with your oppressor. It is not that 
 they doubt your courage nor resources — it is not that they 
 distrust your allies — but it is that they know you can succeed 
 without a single skirmish, and therefore he who harms person 
 or property in seeking Repeal is criminal to his country. 
 
 241 708 
 
242 
 
 THE RIGHT ROAD, 
 
 But if they preach peace loudly, they preach perseverance 
 with still greater emphasis. It is the universal creed of all 
 Liberals, that anything were better than retreat. One of the 
 most moderate of the Whigs said to us yesterday — “ I would 
 rather walk at O’Connell’s funeral than witness his submission.” 
 And he said well. Death is no evil, and dying is but a 
 moment’s pang. There is no greater sign of a pampered and 
 brutish spirit in a man than to wince at the foot-sound of death. 
 Death is the refuge of the wronged, the opiate of the restless, 
 the mother’s or the lover’s breast to the bruised and dis- 
 appointed; it is the sure retreat of the persecuted, and the 
 temple-gate of the loving, and pious, and brave. When all 
 else leaves us, it is faithful. But where are we wandering to 
 pluck garlands from the tomb ? 
 
 Retreat would bring us the woes of war, without its chances 
 or its pride. The enemy, elate at our discomfiture, would press 
 upon our rear. The landlord would use every privilege till 
 he had reduced his farms to insurgentless pastures. The 
 minister would rush in and tearaway the last root of nationality. 
 The peasant, finding his long-promised hope of freedom and 
 security by moral means gone, and left unled to his own 
 impulses, would league with his neighbour serfs, and ruin 
 others, in the vain hope of redressing himself. The day would 
 be dark with tyranny, and the night red with vengeance. The 
 military triumph of the rack-renter or the Whiteboy would be 
 the happiest issue of the strife. 
 
 If the People ought neither spring into war, nor fall through 
 confusion into a worse slavery, what remains ? Perseverance. 
 They are on the right road, and should walk on in it patiently, 
 thoughtfully, and without looking back. 
 
 The Repeal organisation enables the People to act together. 
 It is the bark of the tree, guarding it and binding it. It is the 
 cause of our unanimity ; for where else has a party, so large as 
 the Irish Repealers, worked without internal squabbles ? It is 
 the secret of our discipline. How else, but by the instant 
 action of the Association on the whole mass of the People, 
 through the Repeal Press and the Repeal Wardens, could our 
 
THE RIGHT ROAD. 
 
 243 
 
 huge meetings have been assembled or been brought 
 together ? — how else could they have been separated in 
 quiet? — how else could the People have been induced to 
 continue their subscriptions month after month and year after 
 year ? 
 
 An ignorant or unorganised People would soon have tired 
 of the constant subscriptions and meetings, and have broken 
 into disorder or sunk into apathy. 
 
 He is a long-sighted and sober-minded man that lays out 
 money on a complex yet safe speculation, or lays it by for an 
 evil day. That is a People having political wisdom which 
 denies itself some present indulgence for a future good. It had 
 been pleasanter, for some at least of the People, to have spent 
 in eating or clothing the shilling they sent to the Repeal 
 Association, just as six years ago they found it pleasanter to 
 spend the shilling, or the penny, or the pound, on the whisky 
 shop. But the same self-denying and far-seeing resolve which 
 enabled them to resign drink for food, and books, and clothing, 
 induced them to postpone some of these solid comforts to attend 
 meetings, and to give money, in order to win, at some future 
 time, fixed holdings, trade, strength, and liberty. 
 
 The People, if they would achieve their aim, must continue 
 their exertions. 
 
 It will not do to say, wait till the trials are over. The fate of 
 the trials will not determine Repeal. 
 
 The conviction, imprisonment, or death of their present 
 leaders will not crush it. There are those ready to fill the 
 vacancies in the column, and to die too. The rudest and the 
 humblest in the land would grow into an inspired hero were 
 leader after leader to advance and fall. Victory would be the 
 religion of the country, and by one means or other it would 
 triumph. A stronger spirit than his who died issues from the 
 martyr’s coffin. 
 
 Nor would the success of the accused carry Repeal. 
 
 It would embarrass the minister — it would gain time— it 
 would give us another chance for peaceful justice. 
 
 But the Queen’s Bench is not the Imperial Parliament, nor is 
 
244 
 
 THE RIGHT ROAD, 
 
 the Traversers’ plea of “not guilty” a bill to overturn the 
 Union, and construct Irish independence on its ruins. 
 
 To win by peace they must use all the resources of peace, 
 as they have done hitherto. 
 
 Is there any parish wherein there are no Repeal Wardens 
 active every week in collecting money, distributing cards, 
 tracts, and newspapers? Let that parish meet to-morrow 
 or to-morrow week, appoint active Wardens, send up its sub- 
 scriptions, and get down its cards, papers, and tracts, week after 
 week till the year goes round or till Repeal is carried. 
 
 Is there any town or district which has not a Temperance 
 Band and Reading-room ? If there be, let that town or district 
 meet at once, and subscribe for instruments, music, and a 
 teacher ; let the members meet, and read, and discuss, and 
 qualify themselves by union, study, and political information 
 to act as citizens, whether their duty lead them to the public 
 assembly, the hustings, or the hill-side. By acting thus, and 
 not by listening for news about trials, the People have ad- 
 vanced from mouldering slaves into a threatening and united 
 People ; continuing to act thus, they will become a trium- 
 phant nation, spite of fortified barracks, Wellington, Peel, and 
 England. They are in the right road ; let them walk on in it. 
 
FOREIGN POLICY AND FOREIGN 
 INFORMATION. 
 
 Our history contains reasons for our extending the Foreign 
 Policy of Ireland. This we tried to develop some months 
 back. 
 
 The partial successes of the wars of the sixteenth and seven- 
 teenth centuries, from Hugh O’Neill to James the Second, were 
 in no slight degree owing to the arms and auxiliary troops of 
 Spain and France. 
 
 Our yet more complete triumphs in the political conflicts of 
 the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries owed still more to our 
 foreign connections — witness the influence of the American war 
 on the creation of the volunteers, the effect of the battle of 
 Jemappes, and of the French Fraternity of Ulster on the 
 Toleration Act of 1793, and how much the presence of American 
 money, and the fear of French interference, hastened the 
 Emancipation Act of 1829. 
 
 With reference to this last period, we may state that such an 
 effect had the articles published in V Etoile on Ireland that 
 Canning wrote a remonstrance to M. de Villele, asking him 
 “was it intended that the war of pens should bring on one 
 of swords.” The remonstrance was unavailing — the French 
 sympathy for Ireland increased, and other offices than news- 
 paper offices began to brush up their information on Ireland. 
 But arms yielded to the gown, and the maps and statistics of 
 Ireland never left the War Office of France. 
 
 But our own history is not the only advocate for a Foreign 
 Policy for Ireland. 
 
 Foreign alliances have ever stood among the pillars of 
 national power, along with virtue, wise laws, settled customs, 
 military organisation, and naval position. Advice, countenance, 
 245 
 
246 FOREIGN POLICY AND INFORMATION, 
 
 direct help, are secured by old and generous alliances. Thus 
 the alliance of Prussia carried England through the wars of the 
 eighteenth century, the alliance of France rescued the wavering 
 fortunes of America, the alliance of Austria maintains Turkey 
 against Russia, and so in a thousand instances beside. 
 
 A People known and regarded abroad will be more dignified, 
 more consistent, and more proud in all its acts. Fame is to 
 national manners little less than virtue to national morals. A 
 nation with a high and notorious character to sustain will be 
 more stately and firm than if it lived in obscurity. Each 
 citizen feels that the national name which he bears is a pledge 
 for his honour. The soldier’s uniform much less surely checks 
 the display of his vices, and an army’s standard less certainly 
 excites its valour than the name of an illustrious country stimu- 
 lates its sons to greatness and nobility. prestige of Rome’s 
 greatness operated even more on the souls of her citizens than 
 on the hearts of her friends and foes. 
 
 Again, it is peculiarly needful for Ireland to have a Foreign 
 Policy. Intimacy with the great powers will guard us from 
 English interference. Many of the minor German states were 
 too deficient in numbers, boundaries, and wealth to have 
 outstood the despotic ages of Europe but for those foreign 
 alliances, which, whether resting on friendship or a desire to 
 preserve the balance of power, secured them against their 
 rapacious neighbours. And now time has given its sanction to 
 their continuance, and the progress of localisation guarantees 
 their future safety. When Ireland is a nation she will not, with 
 her vast population and her military character, require such 
 alliances as a security against an English re-conquest j but they 
 will be useful in banishing any dreams of invasion which might 
 otherwise haunt the brain of our old enemy. 
 
 But England is a pedagogue as well as a gaoler to us. Her 
 prison discipline requires the Helotism of mind. She shuts us 
 up, like another Caspar Hauser, in a dark dungeon, and tells us 
 what she likes of herself and of the rest of the world. And this 
 renders foreign information most desirable for us. 
 
 She calls France base, impious, poor, and rapacious. She 
 
FOREIGN POLICY AND INFORMATION. 247 
 
 lies. France has been the centre of European mind for 
 centuries. France was the first of the large states to sweep 
 away the feudal despotism. France has a small debt and an 
 immense army; while England has a vast debt and scanty 
 forces. France has five millions of kindly, merry, well-fed 
 yeomen. England swarms with dark and withered artisans. 
 Every seventh person you meet in France is a landowner in fee, 
 subject to moderate taxation. Taxes and tenancies-at-will 
 have cleared out the yeomanry of England. France has a 
 literature surpassing England’s modern literature, France is 
 an apostle of liberty — England the turnkey of the world. 
 France is the old friend, England the old foe, of Ireland. 
 From one we may judge all. England has defamed all other 
 countries in order to make us and her other slaves content in 
 our fetters. 
 
 England’s eulogies on herself are as false and extravagant as 
 her calumnies on all other states. She represents her consti- 
 tution as the perfection of human wisdom ; while in reality it is 
 based on conquest, shaken by revolution, and only qualified by 
 disorder. Her boasted tenures are the relics of a half-abolished 
 serfdom, wherein the cultivator was nothing, and the aristocrat 
 everything, and in which a primogeniture extending from the 
 King to the Gentleman often placed idiocy on the throne, and 
 tyranny in the Senate, and always produced disunion in 
 families, monopoly in land, and peculation throughout every 
 branch of the public service. Her laws are complicated, and 
 their administration costly beyond any others ever known. 
 Her motley and tyrannous flag she proclaims the first that 
 floats, and her tottering and cruel empire the needful and 
 sufficient guardian of our liberties. 
 
 By cultivating Foreign Relations, and growing intimate with 
 foreign states of society, we will hear a free and just criticism 
 on England’s constitution and social state. We will have a 
 still better and fairer commentary in the condition and civil 
 structure of other countries. 
 
 We will see small free states — Norway, Sweden, Holland, 
 Switzerland, and Portugal — maintaining their homes free, and 
 
248 FOREIGN POLICY AND INFORMATION, 
 
 bearing their flags in triumph for long ages. We will learn 
 from themselves how they kept their freedom afloat amid the 
 perils of centuries. We will salute them as brethren subject to 
 common dangers, and interested in one policy — localisation of 
 power. 
 
 The Catholic will see the Protestant states of Prussia, 
 Holland, Saxony, and America; and the Protestant will see 
 the Catholic states of Belgium, Bavaria, and France, all 
 granting full liberty of conscience — leaving every creed to 
 settle its tenets with its conscience, and dealing, as states,^ only 
 with citizens, not sects. 
 
 He who fancies some intrinsic objection to our nationality to 
 lie in the co-existence of two languages, three or four great 
 sects, and a dozen different races in Ireland, will learn that in 
 Hungary, Switzerland, Belgium, and America, different lan- 
 guages, creeds, and races flourish kindly side by side, and he 
 will seek in English intrigues the real well of the bitter woes of 
 Ireland. 
 
 Germany, France, and America teach us that English 
 economics are not fit for a nation beginning to establish a 
 trade, though they may be for an old and plethoric trader; and 
 therefore that English and Irish trading interests are directly 
 opposed. Nor can our foreign trade but be served by foreign 
 connections. 
 
 The land tenures of France, Norway, and Prussia are the 
 reverse of England’s. They resemble our own old tenures; 
 they better suit our character and our wants than the loose 
 holdings and servile wages system of modern England. 
 
 These, and a host of lessons more, will we learn if we study 
 the books, laws, and manners, and cultivate an intimacy with 
 the citizens of foreign states. We will thus obtain countenance, 
 sympathy, and help in time of need, and honour and friendship 
 in time of strength; and thus, too, we will learn toleration 
 towards each other’s creed, distrust in our common enemy, and 
 confidence in liberty and nationality. 
 
 Till Ireland has a foreign policy, and a knowledge of foreign 
 states, England will have an advantage over us in both military 
 
FOREIGN POLICY AND INFORMATION 249 
 
 and moral ways. We will be without those aids on which 
 even the largest nations have at times to depend; and we will 
 be liable to the advances of England’s treacherous and decep- 
 tive policy. 
 
 Let us, then, return the ready grasp of America, and the 
 warm sympathy of France, and of every other country that 
 offers us its hand and heart. Let us cultivate a Foreign Policy 
 and Foreign Information as useful helps in that national 
 existence which is before us, though its happiness and glory 
 depend, in the first instance, on “ ourselves alone.” Ireland has 
 a glorious future, if she be worthy of it. We must believe and 
 act up to the lessons taught by reason and history, that 
 England is our interested and implacable enemy — a tyrant to 
 her dependants — a calumniator of her neighbours, and both the 
 despot and defamer of Ireland for near seven centuries. 
 Mutual respect for conscience, an avoidance of polemics, con- 
 cession to each other, defiance to the foe, and the extension of 
 our foreign relations are our duty, and should be our endeavour. 
 Vigour and policy within and without, great men to lead, 
 educated men to organise, brave men to follow — these are the 
 means of liberation — these are the elements of nationality. 
 
MORAL FORCE. 
 
 There are two ways of success for the Irish — arms and per- 
 suasion. They have chosen the latter. They have resolved 
 to win their rights by moral force. For this end they have 
 confederated their names, their moneys, their thoughts, and 
 their resolves. For this they meet, organise, and subscribe. 
 For this they learn history, and forget quarrels ; and for this 
 they study their resources, and how to increase them. 
 
 For moral success internal union is essential. 
 
 Ireland, through all its sects and classes, must demand 
 Repeal before the English Minister will be left without a fair 
 reason to resist it, and not till then will we be in a state to 
 coerce his submission. 
 
 Conciliation of all sects, classes, and parties who oppose us, 
 or who still hesitate, is essential to moral force. For if, instead 
 of leading a man to your opinions by substantial kindness, by 
 zealous love, and by candid and wise teaching, you insult his 
 tastes and his prejudices, and force him either to adopt your 
 cause or to resist it — if, instead of slow persuasion, your 
 weapons are bullying and intolerance, then your profession of 
 moral force is a lie, and a lie which deceives no one, and 
 your attacks will be promptly resisted by every man of spirit. 
 
 The Committee of the Repeal Association have of late begun 
 to attend to the Registries. The majority of Irish electors 
 belong to the middle class ; and if all of that class who could 
 register and vote did register and vote, it would be out of the 
 landlord’s power to coerce them. The landlords have awoken 
 to a sense of their danger. They begin to know that if once 
 the quiet patriots of this country conclude that reform of the 
 landlords is hopeless, the only barrier between them and their 
 tenants will sink, and they will sink too. 
 
 250 
 
MORAL FORCE. 251 
 
 There will be less landlordism next election — at least we 
 warn the landlords that there must be less. 
 
 If, then, the majority of members chosen by the middle class 
 oppose Domestic Legislation, the middle class is suspected of 
 not being truly national — the sincerity of the People is made 
 doubtful — an impediment is opposed to Repeal which the 
 Repeal Association properly strive to upset. 
 
 Therefore do they and we urge the Repealers to serve notices 
 diligently, accurately, and at once. Therefore do they and we 
 prompt them to attend at the Sessions, and boldly claim their 
 rights as citizens contributing to the State, and entitled to a 
 vote in electing its managers ; and therefore do they and we 
 advise each constituency to consider well whether they have or 
 can procure a representative whose purity of life, undoubted 
 honesty, knowledge of politics, and devoted zeal to secure 
 Domestic Government fit him to legislate in St. Stephen’s, or to 
 agitate in the Corn Exchange, or wherever else nationality may 
 have a temple. 
 
 We say, the advocacy of a “Domestic Legislature,” because 
 that is what Ireland wants. We are a province, drained by 
 foreign taxation and absentees, governed by a foreign legis- 
 lature and executive. We seek to have Ireland governed by 
 an Irish senate and executive for herself, and by Irishmen ; 
 and although a man shall add to this a claim for a share in the 
 government of the empire^ and of course a consent to give 
 taxes and soldiers, therefore that (though to us it seems unwise) 
 is not such a difference as should make us divide. He is a 
 Repealer of the Union as decidedly as if he never called 
 himself a Federalist. Such Repealing Federalists are Messrs. 
 Crawford, Wyse, John O’Brien, Caulfield, Ross, O’Malley, 
 O’Hagan, Bishop Kennedy, and numbers of others in 
 and out of the Association. In selecting or in agitating 
 about Members we must therefore never forget that a 
 Federalist is quite as likely to be national as a technical 
 Repealer, and that if his morals and ability be better 
 than those of a so-called Repeal candidate, he is the better 
 man. 
 
252 
 
 MORAL FORCE. 
 
 We have also classed morals, ability, and zeal as being quite 
 as requisite as national opinions in a Representative. 
 
 If our Members were a majority in the House, it might not be 
 very moral, but at least it would have some show of excuse, if 
 we sent in a flock of pledged delegates to vote Repeal, regard- 
 less of their powers or principles ; though even then we might 
 find it hard to get rid of the scoundrels after Repeal was 
 carried, and when Ireland would need virtuous and unremitting 
 wisdom to make her prosper. 
 
 But now, when our whole Members are not a sixth of the 
 Commons, and when the English Whigs are as hostile to 
 Repeal as the English Tories, and more hostile to it than the 
 Irish Tories — now, it is plain we must get weight for our 
 opinions by the ability and virtue of our Members ; and there- 
 fore we exhort the People, as they love purity, as they prize 
 religion, as they are true to themselves, to Ireland, and to 
 liberty, to spurn from their hustings any man who comes there 
 without purity and wisdom, though he took or kept a thousand 
 Repeal pledges. 
 
 We want men who are not spendthrifts, drunkards, swindlers 
 — we want honest men — men whom we would trust with our 
 private money or our family’s honour; and sooner than see 
 faded aristocrats and brawling profligates shelter themselves 
 from their honest debtors by a Repeal membership, we would 
 leave Tories and Whigs undisturbed in their seats, and strive to 
 carry Repeal by other measures. 
 
 Conciliation, virtue, and wisdom are our moral means of 
 success. They must be used and sought on the hustings as 
 well as in the Conciliation Hall. We must not prematurely, 
 and at Heaven knows what distance from an election, force a 
 good and able man to accept a pledge or quarrel with us. 
 Pledges are extreme things, hardly constitutional, and highly 
 imprudent in a well-governed country. Nevertheless, they are 
 sometimes needed, as are sharper remedies; and such need 
 will exist here at the general election. No man must go in for 
 any place where the popular will prevails unless he is a 
 Repealer or a Federalist; and, what is equally essential, an 
 
MORAL FORCE, 
 
 253 
 
 upright, unstained, and zealous man, who will work for Ireland 
 and do her credit. But it seems to us quite premature to insist 
 on those pledges from honourable, proud, and patriotic men 
 now,, who will, in all likelihood, be with us before an election 
 comes, provided they are treated with the respect and forbear- 
 ance due to them whether they join us or not. 
 
 These are some of the canons of moral force ; and if, as we 
 trust, Ireland can succeed without cannon of another kind, it 
 must be by using those we have here mustered. 
 
CONCILIATION. 
 
 The People of Ireland have done well in naming the scene of 
 their future counsels the Conciliation Hall. 
 
 It intimates the cause of all our misery, and suggests the 
 cure. Prostrated by division, union is our hope. 
 
 If Irishmen were united, the Repeal of the Union would 
 be instantly and quietly conceded. A Parliament, at whose 
 election mutual generosity would be in every heart and every 
 act, would take the management of Ireland. For oh I we ask 
 our direst foe to say from the bottom of his heart, would not 
 the People of Ireland melt with joy and love to their Protestant 
 brethren if they united and conquered ? And surely from such 
 a soil noble crops would grow. No southern plain heavy with 
 corn, and shining with fruit-clad hamlets, ever looked so warm 
 and happy as would the soul of Ireland, bursting out with all 
 the generosity and beauty of a grateful People. 
 
 We trust that the opening of the Conciliation Hall will be a 
 signal to Catholic and Protestant to try and agree. 
 
 Surely our Protestant brethren cannot shut their eyes to the 
 honour it would confer on them and us if we gave up old 
 brawls and bitternes'S, and came together in love like 
 Christians, in feeling like countrymen, in policy like men 
 having common interests. Can they — ah ! tell us, dear 
 countrymen ! — can you harden your hearts at the thought of 
 looking on Irishmen joined in commerce, agriculture, art, 
 justice, government, wealth, and glory 
 
 Fancy the aristocracy placed by just laws, or by wise con- 
 cession, on terms of friendship with their tenants, securing to 
 these tenants every farthing their industry entitled them to; 
 living among them, promoting agriculture and education by 
 example and instruction ; sharing their joys, comforting their 
 254 
 
CONCILIATION. 
 
 255 
 
 sorrows, and ready to stand at their head whenever their 
 country called. Think well on it. Suppose it to exist in your 
 own county, in your own barony and parish. Dwell on this 
 sight. See the life of such a landlord and of such farmers — so 
 busy, so thoughtful, so happy I How the villages would ring 
 with pleasure and trade, and the fields laugh with contented 
 and cheered labour. Imagine the poor supporting themselves 
 on those waste lands which the home expenditure of our rents 
 and taxes would reclaim, and the workhouse turned into an 
 hospital, or a district college. Education and art would 
 prosper; every village, like Italy, with its painter of repute. 
 Then indeed the men of all creeds would be competent by 
 education to judge of doctrines ; yet, influenced by that 
 education, to see that God meant men to live, and love, and 
 ennoble their souls ; to be just, and to worship Him, and not to 
 consume themselves in rites, or theological contention ; or if 
 they did discuss, they would do so not as enemies, but 
 inquirers after truth. The clergy of different creeds would be 
 placed on an equality, and would hope to propagate their faith 
 not by hard names or furious preaching, but by their dignity 
 and wisdom, and by the marked goodness of their flocks. 
 Men might meet or part at church or chapel-door without sneer 
 or suspicion. From the christening of the child, till his neigh- 
 bours, Catholic and Protestant, followed his grey-haired corpse 
 to the tomb, he might live enjoying much, honoured much, and 
 fearing nothing but his own carelessness or vice. 
 
 This, ’twill be said, is a paradise. 
 
 Alas ! no, — there would still be individual crime and mis- 
 fortune, national difficulties and popular errors. These are in 
 the happiest and best countries. 
 
 But the condition of many countries is as Paradise to what 
 we are. 
 
 Where else in Europe is the peasant ragged, fed on roots, in 
 a wigwam, without education t 
 
 Where else are the towns ruined, trade banished, the till, and 
 the workshop, and the stomach of the artisan empty ? Where 
 else is there an exportation of over one-third of the rents, and an 
 
256 
 
 CONCILIATION. 
 
 absenteeism of the chief landlords ? What other country pays 
 four and a half million taxes to a foreign treasury, and has its 
 offices removed or filled with foreigners? Where else are the 
 People told they are free and represented, yet only one in two 
 hundred of them have the franchise? Where, beside, do the 
 majority support the Clergy of the minority ? In what other 
 country are the majority excluded from high ranks in the 
 University? In what place, beside, do landlords and agents 
 extort such vast rents from an indigent race ? Where else are 
 the tenants ever pulling, the owners ever driving, and both full 
 of anger? And what country so fruitful and populous, so 
 strong, so well marked and guarded by the sea, and with such 
 an ancient name, was reduced to provincialism by bribery and 
 treacherous force, and is denied all national government ? 
 
 And if the answer be, as it must, “ nowhere is the like seen,” 
 then we say that union amongst Irishmen would make this 
 country comparatively a paradise. For union would peacefully 
 achieve independence ; would enable us to settle the landlord 
 and tenant question ; would produce religious equality, as the 
 first act of independence ; would restore the absentees by the 
 first of our taxes ; would cherish our commerce, facilitate agri- 
 culture and manufactures, and would introduce peace and social 
 exertion, instead of religious and political strife. 
 
 Again, then, we ask the Protestant to ponder over these 
 things — to think of them when he lies down — to talk over them 
 to his Catholic neighbours — to see if he and they couldn’t 
 agree — and to offer up in church his solemn prayers that 
 this righteous and noble conclusion of our mourning may be 
 vouchsafed. 
 
 Where, in aught that has been said or done by the Catholic 
 party, is there evidence of that intolerant and usurping spirit 
 which the Protestants seem to dread ? 
 
 Do they think it possible for a whole People of some millions 
 of men, women, and children to tell a public lie, and to perse- 
 vere in the giant falsehood for years ? The present generation 
 have been brought up in this faith of religious equality, and 
 they would be liars, and apostates too, if they wished for 
 
CONCILIATION. 
 
 257 
 
 ascendency. We may add, it would not be safe nor possible 
 for the Catholics to establish an ascendency, even if the Union 
 were repealed ; and, therefore, we again ask the Protestants, 
 for the sake of peace, interest, and religion, to try if they cannot 
 unite with the Catholics for the prosperity of Ireland. 
 
 To the Catholics we have nothing to say but to redouble 
 their efforts. 
 
 Conciliation is a fixed and everlasting duty, independently of 
 the political results it might have. If they despaired of win- 
 ning the Protestants to Repeal, conciliation would still be their 
 duty, as men and Christians. But there is every ground for 
 hope. The Protestants, in defeating the rack-renters’ anti- 
 Repeal meeting, showed they began to see their interest. 
 Something has been, more shall be done to remove the pre- 
 judice against the Catholics, derived from lying histories ; and 
 if we may take the stern reproof of the Banner of Ulster to the 
 Evening Mail as speaking the sentiments of the Presbyterians 
 of the North, then they begin to feel like religious Irishmen, 
 and they will presently be with us. 
 
 709 
 
SCOLDING MOBS.^ 
 
 Why on earth have so many of the People of Dublin made 
 fools of themselves by getting together in Sackville Street 
 every evening to hoot at coaches ? The coach contract was an 
 injury and an insult to us, but it is now irremediable. We 
 have serious work before us, and let us have no by-battles. 
 To the devil with the whole affair, rather than compromise our 
 cause. 
 
 Nothing could please the Government more than frequent 
 little rows, which would get up a hatred between the soldiers 
 and police and the people. They are now very good friends. 
 The armed men are becoming popular and patriotic, and the 
 unarmed, we trust, more orderly, hospitable, and kindly every 
 day. Let us have no more tussling and patrolling. 
 
 What do these mobs mean? A noisy mob is always rash — 
 often cruel and cowardly. A good friendly shout from a 
 multitude is well, and a passing hearty curse endurable. The 
 silent and stern assemblage of orderly men, like the myriads of 
 Tipperary, or like one of Napoleon’s armies, is a noble sight 
 
 ^ The withdrawal of the Coach Contracts from Ireland is but 
 another instance of the same spiteful and feeble policy. Messrs. 
 Bourne & Purcell had for years held the contract for building the 
 Irish Mail Coaches. This contract was less a source of wealth to 
 them than of support and comfort to hundreds of families employed by 
 them. The contract runs out — Messrs. Bourne & Purcell propose in 
 form for it — an informal proposal, at a rate inconsiderably lower, is 
 sent in by another person, and is at once accepted. It is accepted 
 notwithstanding its irregularity, and notwithstanding the offer of 
 Messrs. Bourne & Purcell to take it, even at a loss, as low as any one 
 else. It is given to a foreigner. Were the difference triple what it 
 was, that contract should have been left in Ireland. — Natio7t, 
 
 258 
 
SCOLDING MOBS. 
 
 259 
 
 and a mighty power ; but a scolding, hooting mob, which meets 
 to make a noise, and runs away from a stick, a horse, or a 
 sabre, is a wretched affair. 
 
 “ I hate little wars,” said Wellington. So do we ; and we 
 hate still more a petty mob meeting without purpose, and 
 dispersing without success. Perfect order, silence, obedience, 
 alacrity, and courage make an assemblage formidable and 
 respectable. We want law and order — we are seriously injured 
 by every scene or act of violence, no matter how transient. 
 Let us have no more of this humbug. If we are determined 
 men we have enough to learn and to do without wasting our 
 time in hissing and groaning coaches. 
 
 In reference to popular faults, we cannot help saying a word 
 on the language applied to certain of the enemy’s leaders, 
 especially the Duke of Wellington. We dislike the whole 
 system of false disparagement. The Irish People will never be 
 led to act the manly part which liberty requires of them by 
 being told that “ the Duke,” that gallant soldier and most able 
 general, is a screaming coward and doting corporal. We have 
 grave and solemn work to do. Making light of it or of our 
 enemies may inspire a moment’s overweening confidence, but 
 would ensure ultimate defeat. We have much to contend 
 against ; but our resources are immense, and nothing but our 
 own rashness or cowardice can defeat us. 
 
LIUNSTER OUTRAGES. 
 
 The people of Munster are in want — will murder feed them? 
 Is there some prolific virtue in the blood of a landlord that the 
 fields of the South will yield a richer crop where it has flowed? 
 As the Jews dashed their door-posts on the Passover, shall the 
 blood of an agent shelter the cabins of Tipperary? Shame, 
 shame, and horror ! Oh ! to think that these hands, hard with 
 innocent toil, should be reddened with assassination ! Oh ! 
 bitter, bitter grief, that the loving breasts of Munster should 
 pillow heads wherein are black plots, and visions of butchery, 
 and shadows of remorse ! Oh ! woe unutterable, if the men 
 who abandoned the sin of drunkenness should companion with 
 the devil of murder ; and if the men who, last year, vowed 
 patience, order, and virtue, rashly and impiously revel in crime. 
 
 But what do we say? Where are we led by our fears? 
 Surely, Munster is against these atrocities — they are the sins of 
 a few — the People are pure and sound, and all will be well with 
 Ireland ! Tis so, his so ; we pray God his so : but yet the 
 People are not without blame ! 
 
 Won’t they come and talk to us about these horrid deeds ? 
 Won’t they meet us (as brothers to consider disorders in their 
 family) and do something — do all to stop them? Don’t they 
 confide in us ? Oh ! they know, well they know that our hearts 
 love them better than life — well they know that to-morrow, if 
 hwould serve, we would be ready to die by their side in battle ; 
 but we are not ready to be their accomplices in crime — we 
 would not be unsteady on the scaffold, so we honestly died for 
 them, but we have no share with the murderer ! 
 
 Nor is it we alone who have ever professed our willingness to 
 take the field with the people, who loathe and denounce these 
 crimes. Let the men of Munster read the last Act of the 
 260 
 
MUNSTER OUTRAGES. 
 
 261 
 
 Repeal Association, and they will find Daniel O’Connell, 
 William Smith O’Brien, and the entire Repeal League con- 
 federated to proclaim and trample down the assassins. Let 
 them enter their chapels, and from every altar they will hear 
 their beloved priests solemnly warning them that the forms of 
 the Church are as fiery coals on the heads of the blood-stained. 
 Let them look upon government, and they will find a potent 
 code and vast police — a disciplined army — all just citizens 
 combined to quell the assassin ; and then let them with their 
 consciences approach their God, and learn that the murderer is 
 dark before Him. 
 
 Heaven and earth raise their voices against these crimes. 
 Will they not be hopeless ? — must they not be desperately 
 wicked ? 
 
 What chance has the guilty of success? — what right to 
 commit so deadly a sin ? These murders will not give the 
 people the land, nor leases, nor low rents. When the country 
 was in a rude state, intimidation easy, and concealment easier, 
 they tried the same thing. They began butchering bailiffs — 
 they rose to shooting landlords. Did they get nearer their 
 object ? Did they overpower their oppressors, stop the law, 
 mitigate their condition.^ — No, but the opposite; the successors 
 of the slaughtered men levied the rents and enforced the 
 ejectments of the slain. They did so with greater zeal, for 
 vengeance strengthened their resolve. They did so with 
 greater effect, for the law that might have interfered where 
 the people were oppressed, and society, which would have 
 aided the wronged people, took arms against assassins, and 
 the death groan of the victim was the best rallying cry of 
 oppression. 
 
 So it will be again. Already men whose tongues, and pens, 
 and hearts were busy pleading for better tenures and juster 
 rents are silenced. They will not clamour for rights when 
 assassins may recruit their gangs with the words of the inno- 
 cent. Already minds deep in preparing remedies for popular 
 suffering are meditating means of popular coercion. The 
 justice, not only of government but society, has grown cautious 
 
262 
 
 . MUNSTER OUTRAGES. 
 
 of redress, and is preparing to punish — a repetition of guilt will 
 aggravate that punishment and postpone that redress. 
 
 Headstrong and vain men, your sins will not give you a 
 landlord the less nor a persecutor the less ; while ever the land 
 is liable to the rent there will be found men willing to hazard 
 their lives to get it, and you but arm them with fresh powers, 
 with the sympathy of the public and the increased force of 
 law and government, to lean yet heavier on you. 
 
 Why, too, should Munster lead in guilt 1 Our richest 
 province, our purest race, our fairest scenes — oh ! why should 
 its bloodshed be as plenteous as its rains ? Other people suffer 
 much. The peaceful people of Kerry, the whole province of 
 Connaught, many counties of Leinster, are under a harsher 
 yoke than the men of North Munster : yet they do not seek 
 relief in butchery. 
 
 Thank God ! they do not. How horrid a blot upon earth 
 were Ireland, if its poor had no reliance but the murder of the 
 rich ; better by far that that people rose and waged open war. 
 That were wild — that were criminal ; but ^twould be wisdom 
 and mercy compared with these individual murders. 
 
 How horrible is the condition of a district subject to such 
 crimes ! Few are struck, but all suffer ! ^Tis as if men knew 
 assuredly that a spirit of plague were passing through the 
 land, but knew not whom it would wither. Think of a district 
 where there has been peace — the People are poor, but they are 
 innocent; some of the rich are merciless but some are Just, and 
 many are kind and sympathising; in their low homes, in their 
 safe chapels, in the faith of their fellows, in the hope of better 
 days, in the effort for improvement, but above all in their 
 conscious innocence, the most trampled of them have con- 
 solation, and there is a sort of smile even on the wretched. 
 But let some savage spirits appear among them — let the 
 shebeen house supply the ferocity which religion kept down, 
 and one oppressor is marked out for vengeance, his path is 
 spied, the bludgeon or the bullet smites, and he is borne in to 
 his innocent and loving family a broken and stained corpse, 
 slain in his sins. 
 
MUNSTER OUTRAGES, 
 
 263 
 
 Pursuit follows — the criminals become outlaws — they try to 
 shelter their lives and console their consciences by making 
 many share their guilt — another and another is struck at. 
 Haunted by remorse, and tracked by danger, and now intimate 
 with crime, a less and a less excuse suffices. He began by 
 avenging his own wrong, becomes the avenger of others, then 
 perhaps the tool of others, who use the wrongs of the country 
 as a cloak for unjustified malice, and the suspected tyrant or 
 the rigid yet not unjust man shares the fate of the glaring 
 oppressors. What terror and suspicion — what a shadow as 
 of death is there upon such a district ! No one trusts his 
 neighbour. The rich, excited by such events, believe the 
 poor have conspired to slay them. They dread their very 
 domestics, they abhor the People, rage at the country, summon 
 each other, and all the aid that authority can give to protect 
 and to punish ; they bar their doors before sunset, their hearths 
 are surrounded with guns and pistols — at the least rustle every 
 heart beats and women shriek, and men with clenched teeth 
 and embittered hearts make ready for that lone and deadly 
 conflict — that battle without object, without honour, without 
 hope, without quarter. 
 
 Then they cover the country with patroles — they raise up a 
 cloud of hovering spies — no peasant, no farmer feels safe. 
 Those who connive shudder at every passing troop, and see an 
 informer in every stranger. Those who do not connive tremble 
 lest they be struck as enemies of the criminal ; and thus from 
 bad to worse till no home is safe — no heart calm of the 
 thousands. 
 
 As yet no district has attained this horrible ripeness; but to 
 this North Munster may come, unless the People interfere and 
 put down the offenders. 
 
 Will they suffer this hell-blight to com.e upon them ? Will 
 they wait till violence and suspicion are the only principles 
 retaining power among them ? Will they look on while the 
 Repeal movement — the educating, the ennobling, the sacred 
 effort for liberty — is superseded by the buzz of assassination 
 and vengeance? Or will they now join O’Connell and O’Brien 
 
264 
 
 MUNSTER OUTRAGES, 
 
 — the Association, the Law, and the Priesthood ; and whenever 
 they hear a breath of outrage, denounce it as they would 
 Atheism — whenever they see an attempt at crime, interpose 
 with brave, strong hand, and, in Mr. O’Brien’s words, “leave 
 the guilty no chance of life but in hasty flight from the land 
 they have stained with their crimes.” 
 
 Once again we ask the People — the guiltless, the suffering, 
 the noble, the brave People of Munster — by their patience, by 
 their courage, by their hopes for Ireland, by their love to God, 
 we implore them to put down these assassins as they would and 
 could were the weapons of the murderers aimed at their own 
 children. 
 
A SECOND YEAR’S WORK. 
 
 It was a bold experiment to establish The Nation, Our success 
 is more honourable to Ireland than to us, for it was by defying 
 evil customs and bad prejudices we succeeded. 
 
 Let us prove this. 
 
 Religion has for ages been so mixed with Irish quarrels 
 that it is often hard to say whether patriotism or superstition 
 was the animating principle of an Irish leader, and whether 
 political rapacity or bigoted zeal against bigotry was the 
 motive of an oppressor. Yet in no country was this more mis- 
 placed in our day than in Ireland. Our upper classes were 
 mostly Episcopalians — masters not merely of the institutions, 
 but the education and moral force of the country. The middle 
 ranks and much of the peasantry of one of our greatest pro- 
 vinces were Presbyterians, obstinate in their simple creed — 
 proud of their victories, yet apprehensive of oppression. The 
 rest of the population were Catholics, remarkable for piety and 
 tenderness, but equally noted for ignorance and want of self- 
 reliance. To mingle politics and religion in such a country 
 was to blind men to their common secular interests, to 
 render political union impossible, and national independence 
 hopeless. 
 
 We grappled with the difficulty. We left sacred things to 
 consecrated hands — theology and discipline to Churchmen. 
 We preached a nationality that asked after no man’s creed 
 {friendis or fois ) ; and now, after our Second Year’s Work, we 
 have got 2i practical as well as a verbal admission that religion 
 is a thing between man and God — that no citizen is to be 
 hooted, or abused, or marked down because he holds any 
 imaginable creed, or changes it any conceivable number of 
 times. 
 
 265 
 
266 
 
 A SECOND YEARNS WORK, 
 
 We are proudly conscious that, in preaching these great 
 truths with success, we have done more to convince the 
 Protestants that they may combine with the Catholics and 
 get from under the shield of England than if we had proved 
 that the Repeal of the Union would double the ears of their 
 corn fields. 
 
 There had been a long habit of looking to foreign arms or 
 English mercy for redress. We have shared the labours of 
 OUonnell and O’Brien in impressing on the People that 
 self-reliance is the only liberator. We have, not in vain, taught 
 that, though the concessions of England or the sympathy of 
 others was to be welcomed and used, still they would be best 
 won by dignity and strength; and that, whether they came 
 or not, Ireland could redress herself by patience, energy, and 
 resolution. 
 
 Yet, deficient as the People were in genuine self-reliance, 
 they had been pampered into the belief that they were highly 
 educated, nobly represented, successful in every science and 
 art, and that consequently their misery was a mysterious fate, 
 for which there was no remedy in human means. We believe 
 we have convinced them of the contrary of this. Ireland has 
 done great things. She has created an unrivalled music and 
 oratory, taken a first place in lyric poetry, displayed great 
 valour, ready wit — has been a pattern of domestic virtue and 
 faith under persecution ; and lately has again advanced her- 
 self and her fame by deliberate temperance, by organised 
 abstinence from crime, and by increasing political discipline. 
 Yet there is that worst of all facts on the face of the census, 
 that most of the Irish can neither read nor write; there is 
 evidence in every exhibition that this land, which produced 
 Barry, Forde, Maclise, and Burton, is ignorant of the fine 
 arts ; and proof in every shop or factory of the truth of 
 Kane’s motto, that industrial ignorance is a prime obstacle 
 to our wealth. We have no national theatre, either in books 
 or performance ; and though we have got of late some classes 
 of prose literature— -national fiction, for instance — we have yet 
 to write our history, our statistics, and much of our science. 
 
A SECOND YEAE^S WORK, 
 
 267 
 
 We have week after week candidly told these things to the 
 People, and, instead of quarrelling with us, or running off to 
 men who said “the Irish have succeeded in everything,” they 
 hearkened to us, and raised our paper into a circulation beyond 
 most of the leaders of the London press, and immensely beyond 
 any other journal that ever was in Ireland. What is more 
 cheering still, they have set about curing their defects. They 
 are founding Repeal Reading-rooms. They have noted down 
 their ignorance in many portions of agriculture, manufactures, 
 commerce, history, literature, and fine arts ; and they are 
 working with the Agricultural Societies, forming Polytechnic 
 Institutions for the improvement of manufactures, and giving 
 and demanding support to the antiquarian and historical and 
 artistical books and institutions in Ireland. Large classes 
 wished well to, and small ones supported each of these pro- 
 jects before ; but in this journal all classes were canvassed 
 incessantly, and not in vain — and if there be unanimity now, 
 we claim some credit for ourselves, but much more for the 
 People, who did not resent harsh truth, and took advice that 
 affronted their vanity. 
 
 A political impatience and intolerance have too often been 
 seen in this country. It is one of the vices of slaves to 
 use free speech to insult all who do not praise their faults, 
 and their friends, and their caprices. We rejoice, in look- 
 ing over our files, to see how rarely we were personal, and 
 how generally we recognised the virtues of political foes. 
 It is an equal pleasure to recall that in many questions, 
 but especially in reference to the Liberal Members not 
 in the Association, we stood between an impolitic fury and 
 its destined victims. The People bore with us, and then 
 agreed with us. We told them that men able and virtu- 
 ous — men who had gone into Parliament when Repeal was 
 a Whig buggaboo to frighten the Tories, were not to be 
 hallooed from their seats because Repeal had suddenly grown 
 into a national demand. These men, we said, may become 
 your allies, if you do not put them upon their mettle by your 
 rudeness and impatience. If they join you, they will be faster 
 
268 
 
 A SECOND YEARNS WORK. 
 
 and more useful friends than men who compensate for every 
 defect by pledge-bolting at command. 
 
 Mr. O’Connell, who had at first seemed to incline to the 
 opposite opinion, concurred with us. Mr. O’Brien was zealous 
 on the same side ; the “ premature pledges ” were postponed 
 to their fit time — an election — and the People induced to 
 apply themselves to the Registries, as the true means of getting 
 Repeal members. 
 
 We have maintained and advanced our foreign policy — the 
 recognition and study of other countries beside England, and 
 a careful separation of ourselves from England’s crimes. We 
 have, we believe, not neglected those literary, antiquarian, and 
 historical teachings, and those popular projects which we 
 pointed to last year as part of our labours ; and we are told 
 that the poetry of The Nation has not been worse than 
 in our first year. But these things are more personal, less 
 indicative of national progress, and therefore less interesting 
 than our success in producing political tolerance, increased 
 efforts for education, and that final concession to religious 
 liberty — the right to change without even verbal persecution. 
 
 The last year has been a year of hard work and hard trial 
 to the country and to us. Our first year was spent in rousing 
 and animating — the second in maintaining, guiding, and 
 restraining. Its motto is, “Bide your time.” Never had a 
 People more temptation to be rash ; and it is our proudest 
 feeling that in our way we aided the infinitely greater powers 
 of O’Connell till his imprisonment, and of O’Brien there- 
 after, to keep in the passion, while they kept up the spirit of 
 the People. 
 
 They and we succeeded. 
 
 The People saw the darling of their hearts dragged to trial, 
 yet they never rioted ; they found month after month go by in 
 the disgusting details of a trial at bar, yet, instead of despond- 
 ing, they improved their organisation, studied their history 
 and statistics — increased in dignity, modesty, and strength. 
 At length came the imprisonment ; we almost doubted them, 
 but they behaved gloriously — they recognised their wrongs, 
 
A SECOND YEARNS WORE 
 
 269 
 
 but they crossed their arms — they were neither terrified, dis- 
 ordered, nor divided — they promptly obeyed their new leaders, 
 and, with shut teeth, swore that their “ only vengeance should 
 be victory.” They succeeded — bore their triumph as well as 
 their defeat, and are now taking breath for a fresh effort at 
 education, organisation, and conciliation. 
 
 It is something to have laboured through a Second Year for 
 such a People. Let them go on as they have begun — growing 
 more thoughtful, more temperate, more educated, more resolute 
 — let them complete their parish organisation, carry out their 
 registries, and, above all, establish those Reading-rooms which 
 will inform and strengthen them into liberty; and, ere many 
 years’ work, the Green Flag will be saluted by Europe, and 
 Ireland will be a Nation. The People have shown that their 
 spirit, their discipline, and their modesty can be relied on ; 
 they have but to exhibit that greatest virtue which their 
 enemies deny them — perseverance — and all will be well. 
 
ORANGE AND GREEN. 
 
 HekE it is all last — the dawning. Here, in the very sanctuary 
 of the Orange heart, is a visible angel of Nationality : — 
 
 If a British Union cannot be formed, perhaps an Irish one might. 
 What could Repeal take from Irish Protestants that they are not 
 gradually losing ‘ in due course ’ ? 
 
 However improbable, it is not impossible, that better terms might 
 be made w'ith the Repealers than the Government seem disposed to 
 give. A hundred thousand Orangemen, with their colours flying, 
 might yet meet a hundred thousand Repealers on the banks of the 
 Boyne ; and, on a field presenting so many solemn reminiscences to 
 all, sign the Magna Charta of Ireland’s independence. The Repeal 
 banner might then be Orange and Green, flying from the Giant’s 
 Causeway to the Cove of Cork, and proudly look down from the walls 
 of Derry upon a new-born nation. 
 
 “ Such a union, not to be accomplished without concession on all 
 sides, would remove the great offence of Irish Protestants — their 
 Saxon attachment to their British fatherland. Cast off, as they would 
 feel themselves by Great Britain, and baptised on the banks of the 
 Boyne into the great Irish family, they would be received into a 
 brotherhood which, going forward towards the attainment of a 
 national object, would extinguish the spirit of Ribbonism, and establish 
 in its place a covenant of peace.” 
 
 So speaks the Evening Mail^ the trumpet of the northern 
 confederates, and we cry amen ! amen ! 
 
 We exult, till the beat of our heart stays our breathing, at 
 the vision of such a concourse. Never — never when the plains 
 of Attica saw the rivals of Greece marching to expel the 
 Persian, who had tried to intrigue with each for the ruin of 
 both — never, when, from the uplands of Helvetia, rolled 
 
 270 
 
ORANGE AND GREEN 
 
 271 
 
 together the victors of Sempach — never, when, at the cry of 
 Fatherland, the hundred nations of Germany rose up, and 
 swept on emancipating to the Rhine — never w^as there under 
 the sky a godlier or more glorious sight than that would be — to 
 all slaves, balsam ; to all freemen, strength ; to all time, a 
 miracle ! 
 
 If Ireland’s wrongs were borne for this — if our feuds and our 
 weary sapping woes were destined to this ending — then blessed 
 be the griefs of the past ! His sickness to the healed — his 
 pining to the happy lover — his danger to the rescued, are faint 
 images of such a birth from such a chaos. 
 
 It is something — the cheer of an invisible friend — to have, 
 even for a moment, heard the hope. It must abide in the souls 
 of the Irish, guaranteeing the moderation of the Catholic — 
 wakening the aspirations of the Orangemen. There it is — a 
 cross on the sky. 
 
 It may not now lead to anything real. Long-suffering, oft- 
 bafded Ireland will not abandon for an inch or hour its selected 
 path by reason of this message. 
 
 We hope from it, because it has been prompted by causes 
 which will daily increase. Incessantly will the British Minister 
 labour to gain the support of seven millions of freed men, by 
 cutting away every privilege and strength from one million of 
 discarded allies. 
 
 We hope from it, because, as the Orangemen become more 
 enlightened, they will more and more value the love of their 
 countrymen, be prouder of their country, and more conscious 
 that their ambition, interest, and even security are identical 
 with nationality. 
 
 We hope from it, because, as the education of People and 
 the elevation of the rich progress, they will better understand 
 the apprehensions of the Orangemen, allow for them in a more 
 liberal spirit, and be able to give more genuine security to 
 even the nervousness of their new friends. 
 
 We hope most from it, because of its intrinsic greatness. It 
 is the best promise yet seen to have the Orangemen propos- 
 ing, even as a chance, the conference of 100,000 armed and 
 
272 
 
 OJ^ANGE AND GREEN 
 
 ordered yeomen from the North, with 100,000 picked (ay, by 
 our faith ! and martial) Southerns on the banks of the Boyne, 
 to witness a treaty of mutual concession, oblivion, and eternal 
 amity ; and then to lift an Orange-Green Flag of Nationhood, 
 and defy the world to pull it down. 
 
 Yet His a distant hope, and Ireland, we repeat, must not 
 swerve for its flashing. When the Orangemen treat the 
 shamrock with as ready a welcome as Wexford gave the lily — 
 when the Green is set as consort of the Orange in the lodges of 
 the North — when the Fermanagh meeting declares that the 
 Orangemen are Irishmen pledged to Ireland, and summons 
 another Dungannon Convention to prepare the terms of our 
 treaty ; then, and not till then, shall we treat this gorgeous 
 hope as a reality, and then, and not till then, shall we summon 
 the Repealers to quit their present sure course, and trust their 
 fortunes to the League of the Boyne. 
 
 Meantime, we commend to the hearts and pride of “the 
 Enniskilleners” this, their fathers’, declaration in 1782 : — 
 
 “county FERMANAGH GRAND JURY. 
 
 “We, the Grand Jury of the county of Fermanagh, being con- 
 stitutionally assembled at the present assizes, held for the county of 
 Fermanagh, at Enniskillen, this i8th day of March 1782, think 
 ourselves called upon at this interesting moment to make our solemn 
 declarations relative to the rights and liberties of Ireland. 
 
 “ We pledge ourselves to this our country, that we never will pay 
 obedience to any law made, or to be made, to bind Ireland, except 
 those laws which are and shall be made by the King, Lords, and 
 Commons of Ireland. 
 
 “ Signed by order, 
 
 “ Arthur Colf Hamilton, P'oreman.” 
 
ACADEMICAL EDUCATION.! 
 
 The rough outlines of a plan of Academical Education fof 
 Ireland are now before the country. The plan, as appears 
 from Sir James Graham’s very conciliatory speech, is to found 
 three Colleges; to give them ;£ioo,ooo for buildings, and 
 £6000 a year for expenses ; to open them to all creeds ; the 
 education to be purely secular ; the students not to live within 
 the Colleges ; and the professors to be named and removed, 
 now and hereafter, by Government. 
 
 The announcement of this plan was received in the Commons 
 with extravagant praise by the Irish Whig and Repeal members, 
 nor was any hostility displayed except by the blockhead and 
 bigot, Sir Robert Inglis — a preposterous fanatic, who demands 
 the repeal of the Emancipation Act, and was never yet missed 
 from the holy orgies of Exeter Hall. Out of doors it has had 
 a darker reception ; but now that the first storm of joy and 
 anger is over, it is time for the People of Ireland to think of 
 this measure. 
 
 It is for them to consider it — it is for them to decide on it — 
 it is for them to profit by it. For centuries the Irish were 
 paupers and serfs, because they were ignorant and divided. 
 The Protestant hated the Catholic, and oppressed him — the 
 Catholic hated the Protestant, and would not trust him. Eng- 
 land fed the bigotry of both, and flourished on the ignorance of 
 both. That ignorance was a barrier between our sects — left 
 our merchant’s till, our farmer’s purse, and our state treasury 
 empty — stupefied our councils in peace, and slackened our arm 
 in war. Whatsoever plan will strengthen the soul of Ireland 
 with knowledge, and knit the sects of Ireland in liberal and 
 
 273 
 
 ^ From The Nation^ May 17, 1845. 
 
 710 
 
274 
 
 ACADEMICAL EDUCATION 
 
 trusting friendship, will be better for us than if corn and wine 
 were scattered from every cloud. 
 
 While 400,000 of the poor find instruction in the National 
 Schools, the means of education for the middle and upper 
 classes are as bad now as they were ten or fifty years ago. 
 A farmer or a shopkeeper in Ireland cannot, by any sacrifice, 
 win for his son such an education as would be proffered to him 
 in Germany. How can he afford to pay the expense of his 
 son’s living in the capital, in addition to Collegiate fees ; and, 
 if he could, why should he send his son where, unless he be 
 an Episcopalian Protestant, those Collegiate offices which, 
 though they could be held but by a few score, would influence 
 hundreds, are denied him. Even to the gentry the distance 
 and expense are oppressive ; and to the Catholics and Presby- 
 terians of them the monopoly is intolerable. 
 
 To bring Academical Education within the reach and means 
 of the middle classes, to free it from the disease of ascendency, 
 and to make it a means of union as well as of instruction, 
 should be the objects of him who legislates on this subject ; 
 and we implore the gentry and middle classes, whom it con- 
 cerns, to examine this plan calmly and closely, and to act on 
 their convictions like firm and sensible men. If such a measure 
 cannot be discussed in a reasonable and decent way, our pro- 
 gress to self-government is a progress to giddy convulsions and 
 shameful ruin. 
 
 Let us look into the details of the plan. 
 
 It grants 100,000 and £18,000 a year for the foundation of 
 three Provincial Colleges. The Colleges proposed are for the 
 present numerous enough. It will be hard to get competent 
 Professors for even these. Elementary Education has made 
 great way ; but the very ignorance for which these Institutions 
 are meant as a remedy makes the class of Irishmen fit to fill 
 Professors* chairs small indeed ; and, small as it is, it yearly 
 loses its best men by emigration to London, where they find 
 rewards, fame, and excitement. The dismissal, hereafter, of 
 incompetent men would be a painful, but — if pedants, dunces, 
 and cheats were crammed into the chairs — an unavoidable task. 
 
ACADEMICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 275 
 
 A gradual increase of such Colleges will better suit the progress 
 of Irish intelligence than a sudden and final endowment. But 
 though the Colleges are enough, and the annual allowance 
 sufficient, the building fund is inadequate — at least double the 
 sum would be needed ; but this brings us to another part of the 
 plan— the residence of the students outside the College. 
 
 To the extern residence we are decidedly opposed. It 
 works well in Germany, where the whole grown population are 
 educated ; but in Ireland, where the adult population are un- 
 happily otherwise, ’tis a matter of consequence to keep the 
 students together, to foster an academic spirit and character, 
 and to preserve them from the stupefying influences of common 
 society. However, this point is but secondary, so we pass 
 from it, and come to the two great principles of the Bill. 
 
 They are — Mixed Education and Government Nomination; 
 and we are as resolute for the first as we are against the second. 
 
 The objections to separate Education are immense ; the 
 reasons for it are reasons for separate life, for mutual animosity, 
 for penal laws, for religious wars. ’Tis said that communication 
 between students of different creeds will taint their faith and 
 endanger their souls. They who say so should prohibit the 
 students from associating out of the Colleges even more than 
 in them. In the Colleges they will be joined in studying 
 mathematics, natural philosophy, engineering, chemistry, the 
 principles of reasoning, the constitution of man. Surely union 
 in these studies would less peril their faith than free com- 
 munication out of doors. Come, come, let those who insist on 
 unqualified separate Education follow out their principles — let 
 them prohibit Catholic and Protestant boys from playing, or 
 talking, or walking together — let them mark out every frank or 
 indiscreet man for a similar prohibition — let them establish a 
 theological police — let them rail off each sect (as the Jews used 
 to be cooped) into a separate quarter ; or rather, to save pre- 
 liminaries, let each of them proclaim war in the name of his 
 creed on the men of all other creeds, and fight till death, 
 triumph, or disgust shall leave him leisure to revise his 
 principles. 
 
276 
 
 ACADEMICAL EDUCATION, 
 
 These are the logical consequences of the doctrine of 
 Separate Education, but we acquit the friends of it of that 
 or any other such ferocious purpose. Their intentions are 
 pious and sincere — their argument is dangerous, for they might 
 find followers with less virtue and more dogged consistency. 
 
 We say “an unqualified separate Education,” because it is 
 said, with some plausibility, that the manner in which theology 
 mixes up with history and moral philosophy renders common 
 instruction in them almost impossible. The reasoning is pushed 
 too far. Yet the objection should be well weighed ; though we 
 warn those who push it very far not to fall into the extrava- 
 gance of a valued friend of ours, who protested against one 
 person attempting to teach medicine to Catholics and Protes- 
 tants, as one creed acknowledged miraculous cures and 
 demoniacal possessions, and the other rejected both ! 
 
 It should be noted too that this demand for separate Pro- 
 fessors does not involve separate Colleges, does not assume that 
 any evil would result from the friendship of the students, and 
 does not lead to the desperate, though unforeseen, conclusions 
 which follow from the other notion. 
 
 ’Tis also a different thing to propose the establishment of 
 Deans in each College to inspect the religious discipline and 
 moral conduct of the students — a Catholic Dean, appointed by 
 the Catholic Church, watching over the Catholic students ; and 
 so of the Episcopalians and Presbyterians. Such Deans, and 
 Halls for religious teaching, will be absolutely necessary, should 
 a residence in the Colleges be required ; but should a system 
 of residence in registered lodgings and boarding-houses be 
 preferred, similar duties to the Deans might be performed by 
 persons nominated by the Catholic, Protestant, and Presby- 
 terian Churches respectively, without the direct interposition of 
 the College ; for each parent would take care to put his child 
 under the control of his own Church. An adequate provision 
 in some sufficient manner for religious discipline is essential, 
 and to be dispensed with on no pretence. 
 
 These, however, are details of great consequence to be 
 discussed in the Commons’ Committee ; but we repeat our 
 
ACADEMICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 277 
 
 claim for mixed education, because it has worked well among 
 the students of Trinity College, and would work better were its 
 offices free, because it is the principle approved by Ireland 
 when she demanded the opening of those offices, and when she 
 accepted the National Schools — because it is the principle of 
 the Cork, the Limerick, and the Derry meetings ; but, above 
 all, because it is consistent with piety, and favourable to that 
 union of Irishmen of different sects, for want of which Ireland 
 is in rags and chains. 
 
 Against the nomination of Professors by Government we 
 protest altogether. We speak alike of Whig or Tory. The 
 nomination would be looked on as a political bribe, the removal 
 as a political punishment. Nay, the nomination would be 
 political. Under great public excitement a just nomination 
 might be made, but in quiet times it would be given to the best 
 mathematician or naturalist who attended the levee and wrote 
 against the opposition. And it would be an enormous power ; 
 for it would not merely control the immediate candidates, but 
 hundreds, who thought they might some ten years after be 
 solicitors for professorships, would shrink from committing 
 themselves to uncourtly politics, or qualify by Ministerial 
 partisanship, not philosophical study, for that distant day. A 
 better engine for corrupting that great literary class which is 
 the best hope of Ireland could not be devised; and if it be 
 retained in the Bill, that Bill must be resisted and defeated, 
 whether in or out of Parliament. We warn the Minister ! 
 
 We have omitted a strange objection to the Bill — that it does 
 not give mixed education. It is said the Colleges of Cork 
 and Galway would be attended only by Catholics, and that of 
 Belfast by Protestants. Both are errors. The middle class 
 of Protestants in Cork is numerous — they and the poorer 
 gentry would send their sons to the Cork College to save 
 expense. The Catholics would assuredly do the same in 
 Belfast ; they do so with the Institution in the Academy 
 there already ; and though the Catholics in Cork, and the Pro- 
 testants in Belfast, would be the majorities, enough of the 
 opposite creed would be in each to produce all the wholesome 
 
278 
 
 ACADEMICAL EDUCATION, 
 
 restraint, and much of the wholesome toleration and good- 
 will, of the mixed system of Trinity. Were the objection 
 good, however, it ought to content the advocates of separate 
 education. 
 
 It has been said too that the Bill recognises a religious 
 ascendency in the case of Belfast. This seems to us a total 
 misconception of the words of the Minister. He suggested 
 that the Southern College should be in Cork, the Western 
 in Limerick or Galway, the Northern in Derry or Belfast. 
 Had he stopped at Derry the mistake could never have 
 occurred ; but he went on to say that if the College were 
 planted in Belfast, the building now used for the Belfast 
 Academy would serve for the new College, and unless the 
 echoes of the old theological professors be more permanent 
 than common, we cannot understand the sectarianism of the 
 building vci Belfast. 
 
 A more valid objection would be that the measure was not 
 more complete; and the University system will certainly be 
 crippled and impotent unless residence for a year at least in it 
 be essential to a University degree. 
 
 The main defect of the Bill is its omitting to deal with Trinity 
 College. It is said that the property is and was Protestant; 
 but the Bill of ’93, which admitted Catholics to be educated on 
 this Protestant foundation, broke down the title; and, at all 
 events, the property is as public as the Corporation, and is 
 liable to all the demands of public convenience. But it is 
 added that the property of Trinity College is not more than 
 ;^3o,ooo or ;^4o,ooo a year, and that the grant for Catholic 
 Clerical Education alone is £26^000 a year; and certainly till 
 the Protestant Church be equalised to the wants of the Pro- 
 testant population there will be something in the argument. 
 When that Reformation comes, a third of the funds should be 
 given for Protestant Clerical Education, and the College livings 
 transferred to the Clerical College, and the remaining two- 
 thirds preserved to Trinity College as a secular University. 
 
 Waiting that settlement, we see nothing better than the 
 proposal so admirably urged by the Morning Chronichy of the 
 
ACADEMICAL EDUCATION. 279 
 
 grant of £tooo — we say ^10,000 — a year, for the foundation of 
 Catholic fellowships and scholarships in Trinity College. Some 
 such change must be made, for it would be the grossest injustice 
 to give Catholics a share, or the whole, of one or two new, 
 untried, characterless Provincial Academies, and exclude them 
 from the offices of the ancient, celebrated, and national Univer- 
 sity. If there is to be religious equality. Trinity College must 
 be opened, or augmented by Catholic endowment. For this no 
 demand can be too loud and vehement, for the refusal will be 
 an affront and a grievance to the Catholics of Ireland. 
 
 We have only run over the merits and faults of this plan. 
 Next to a Tenure or a Militia Bill, it is the most important 
 possible. Questions must arise on every section of it; and, 
 however these questions be decided, we trust in God they will 
 be decided without acrimony or recrimination, and that so 
 divine a subject as Education will not lead to disunions which 
 would prostrate our country. 
 
MAXIMS AND REFLECTIONS. 
 
 ARISTOCRACY AND IRELAND. 
 
 It was one of Bishop Berkeley’s queries “ whether an unedu- 
 cated gentry be not the greatest of national evils?” It is 
 surely one of the greatest evils that those of high birth, large 
 property, and therefore great power, should misguide a com- 
 munity by low principles, rude intellects, and barbarous 
 manners. There is a certain royalty in the inheritor of an 
 honoured name and ample fortune ruling his neighbours into 
 wisdom, virtue, and taste by his preaching and example. How 
 smooth are the roads, how firm the bridges, how staunch and 
 roomy the houses, how plenteous the trees and flowers around 
 such a man’s inheritance. The church and school are fair to 
 see, and within are wise teaching and generous study. The 
 playground and the dancing-green are full, the tillage rich, the 
 court-house and drinking-shop empty. 
 
 This is what a really great aristocracy could do, and some- 
 times has done; but far oftener it is sensual, tyrannical, and 
 ignorant, as has been the case in Ireland, or it is effeminate, 
 selfish, and detached from the soil, as in France before the 
 great Revolution. We have no aristocracy of which we can 
 boast, nor have we almost any hope of getting it. We must 
 rather look to the examples of royal republics wherein the 
 executive was monarchical, the people small proprietors, the 
 place of an aristocracy supplied by minute local institutions, 
 corporate rights, and conservative habits. 
 
 MATERIALS OF IRISH NATIONALITY. 
 
 However closely we study our history, when we come to deal 
 with politics we must sink the distinctions of blood as well as 
 280 
 
MAXIMS AND REFLECTIONS, 
 
 281 
 
 sect. The Milesian, the Dane, the Norman, the Welshman, 
 the Scotchman, and the Saxon, naturalised here, must combine, 
 regardless of their blood — the Strongbownian must sit with the 
 Ulster Scot, and him whose ancestor came from Tyre or Spain 
 must confide in and work v/ith the Cromwellian and the 
 Williamite. This is as much needed as the mixture of Pro- 
 testant and Catholic. If a union of all Irish-born men ever be 
 accomplished, Ireland will have the greatest and most varied 
 materials for an illustrious nationality, and for a tolerant and 
 flexible character in literature, manners, religion, and life, of any 
 nation on earth. 
 
 “IRELAND FOR THE IRISH.’^ 
 
 We are true to our colour, “ the green,” and true to our 
 watchword, “Ireland for the Irish.” We want to win Ireland 
 and keep it. If we win it, we will not lose it, nor give it 
 away to a bribing, a bullying, or a flattering minister. But to 
 be able to keep it, and use it, and govern it, the men of Ireland 
 must know what it is, what it was, and what it can be made. 
 They must study her history, perfectly know her present state, 
 physical and moral — and train themselves up by science, 
 poetry, music, industry, skill, and by all the studies and accom- 
 plishments of peace and war. 
 
 IRISH LITERATURE. 
 
 A fiction, however gorgeous, which owed its safety to our 
 ignorance, and which would vanish before the first assault of 
 inquiry (like the goblin castle from the hurled mace of Sir 
 Roland), was a poor and shameful inheritance — ill for us to 
 have trusted in, criminal for us to leave our children. Our 
 oppressors have belied us to excuse their tyranny, and the 
 Irish too often dissembled for shelter, and bragged for con- 
 solation. As foreign rule widened and hope shrunk up — as 
 knowledge declined and vigour failed — more and more false- 
 hood came in, and the literature of the country became a 
 disease. Imagination, depth, and manliness are needed in a 
 
 710— T 
 
282 
 
 MAXIMS AND REFLECTIONS, 
 
 national literature; but before all things, better than all other 
 excellence, the condition of all health is truth. 
 
 GERALD GRIFFIN. 
 
 Gisipus is probably the greatest drama written by an Irish- 
 man, and The Collegians and Suil Dhuv are two of the most 
 perfect prose fictions in the world. The series of novels of 
 which they form a part contains descriptions of our southern 
 scenery perfect in colour, form, and motion ; and gives a truer 
 and more living account of the ways and character of our 
 middle and upper classes during the last one hundred years 
 than Scott does of the feudal times. 
 
 AN ARMED NATION. 
 
 To carry arms is the first right of man, for arms are the 
 guardians of property, honour, and life. God gave weapons, 
 as well as clothing, to the lion and the eagle; but to man he 
 gave skill to furnish himself with all bodily comforts, and with 
 weapons to defend them, and all his other rights, against every 
 assailant, be he the beast of the forest or the tyrant of society. 
 
 Other institutions apart, nations have been externally secure, 
 and internally free, in proportion as their citizens were trained 
 to and possessed of arms. And the laws of all nations pretend- 
 ing to freedom, from Athens to England, sanctified this right by 
 special and solemn laws. Ireland in this, as in other things, 
 has been treated by England, not as a nation, nor yet as a 
 portion of herself, but as a rightless dependant — an injured 
 slave, disarmed and disabled — starved, chained, darkened, and 
 prisoned — lest she should resume her rights or avenge her 
 sufferings. 
 
 ROME RULE. 
 
 We have ever thought the fear of Catholic ascendency 
 absurd. It implies that the Catholics are bigots and knaves — 
 bigots to desire it, knaves to conceal the desire. It forgets, 
 conveniently or weakly, the numbers, intelligence, and military 
 
MAXIMS AND REFLECTIONS, 
 
 283 
 
 force of the Protestants. An attempt to establish a Catholic 
 ascendency would lead to a civil war, in which justice, Pro- 
 testantism, and the sympathy of the world would triumph 
 over Catholic injustice. No man will ever be so mad or so 
 wicked as to attempt such a thing; or, if there be, he will be 
 treated with the safe contempt bestowed on the Repealers of 
 the Emancipation Act. 
 
 THE FIRST STEP TO NATIONALITY. 
 
 The first step to nationality is the open and deliberate 
 recognition of it by the People themselves. Once the Irish 
 People declare the disconnection of themselves, their feelings, 
 and interests from the men, feelings, and interests of England, 
 they are in march for freedom. Ireland must bid all whom it 
 concerns to know that her interests are separate, and her 
 rights peculiar. She must trace her frontier with firm hand, 
 and that frontier will be respected. 
 
 CENTRALISATION. 
 
 Democracy has only kept half the promise given by its 
 apostles. Centralisation is at least as great a foe to freedom, 
 to spirit, and to prosperity, as aristocracy. In fact, centralisa- 
 tion, when there are no independent powers to check it, creates 
 an official despotism, uniting the costliness and faction of an 
 aristocracy with the iron grasp of mere monarchy. 
 
 Europe’s interest, Europe’s hope is not to raise its olig- 
 archies from their tombs — not to plunge into despotism; no ! it 
 is to repeal centralisation — ’tis to create as many separate 
 nations, with separate governments, laws, manners, characters, 
 and languages, as possible. 
 
 To give back their separate heart and independent will to the 
 old states, which the wars of kings and the treachery of nobles 
 had forcibly united. 
 
 Local Governments, National Institutions, round which 
 national gems and literature can grow, which national recollec- 
 tions can adorn — this is, this ought to be the policy of the 
 
284 
 
 MAXIMS AND REFLECTIONS, 
 
 patriot and the philanthropist — this should be the propa- 
 gandism of our age. 
 
 HOME MANUFACTURES. 
 
 Whether it be now possible to create home manufactures, in 
 the old sense of the word — that is, manufactures made in the 
 homes of the workers — is doubted. 
 
 In favour of such a thing, if it be possible, the arguments are 
 numberless. Such work is a source of ingenuity and enjoyment 
 in the cabin of the peasant; it rather fills up time that would 
 be otherwise idled, than takes from other work. Our peasants’ 
 wives and daughters could clothe themselves and their families 
 by the winter night work, even as those of Norway do, if the 
 peasants possessed the little estates that Norway’s peasants do. 
 Clothes manufactured by handwork are more lasting, com- 
 fortable, and handsome, and are more natural and national 
 than factory goods. Besides there is the strongest of all reasons 
 in this, that the factory system seems everywhere a poison to 
 virtue and happiness. 
 
 Some invention, which should bring the might of machinery 
 in a wholesome and cheap form to the cabin seems the only 
 solution of the difficulty. 
 
 AGITATION. 
 
 Agitation is one means of redress, but it leads to much 
 disorganisation, great unhappiness, wounds upon the soul of a 
 country which sometimes are worse than the thinning of a 
 people by war. 
 
 IRELAND AND ENGLAND. 
 
 We need not examine by what force the great Southern 
 Colonies are held, nor deny the immense military importance 
 of the European garrisons; but is Ireland to go shares in the 
 criminal profits of the empire.^ Are the Irish people so for- 
 getful of the common cause which binds them to the Indian 
 and the American as to give their flexible genius, their valour. 
 
MAXIMS AMD REFLECTIONS. 
 
 285 
 
 and their passions, to holding down the subject races — 
 regardless, too, of the crimes against themselves of the partner 
 in such a career? We repeat, again and again, we have no 
 malice against — no hatred of the English. For much that 
 England did in literature, politics, and war, we are, as men, 
 grateful. Her oppressions we would not even avenge. We 
 would, were she eternally dethroned from over us, rejoice in her 
 prosperity; but we cannot, and will not try to forget her long 
 cursing, merciless tyranny to Ireland; and we don’t desire to 
 share her gains, her responsibility, or her glories. 
 
 IRISH IDEALS. 
 
 It is not a gambling fortune, made at imperial play, Ireland 
 wants ; it is the pious and stern cultivation of her faculties and 
 virtues, the acquisition of faithful and exact habits, and the 
 self-respect that rewards a dutiful and sincere life. To get her 
 peasants into snug homesteads with well-tilled fields and placid 
 hearths ; to develop the ingenuity of her artists, and the docile 
 industry of her artisans ; to make for her own instruction a litera- 
 ture wherein our climate, history, and passions shall breathe ; 
 and to gain conscious strength and integrity, and the high post 
 of holy freedom. These are Ireland’s wants. These she will 
 not sacrifice to pursue the chance of being allowed a third or a 
 half even of the offices, profligacy, and oppression of the British 
 empire. Peace with England — alliance with England — to some 
 extent, and under certain circumstances, confederation with 
 England ; but an Irish ambition — Irish hopes, strength, virtues, 
 and rewards for the Irish 1 
 
 Printed by Walter Scott, Felling, F ewcastle-on-Tyne. 
 
Grown 8 w, Cloth. Price 35 . Qd. per Vol.; Elf. Mor. 65 . 6 c?. 
 THE 
 
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 Most of the mis. will he illustrated, containing between 300 
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 1889. Others to follow at short intervals. 
 
 T he contemporary science series will bring 
 
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 THE EVOLUTION OF SEX. By Prof. Patrick Geddes and 
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 ELECTRICITY IN MODERN LIFE. By G. W. de Tunzel- 
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 THE ORIGIN OF THE ARYANS. By Dr. Isaac Taylor. 
 With numerous Illustrations. [Ready 25th December. 
 
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 KEBLE’S CHRISTIAN YEAR. 
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 LIFE. 
 
 MY CONFESSION. 
 
 CHILDHOOD, BOYHOOD, YOUTH. 
 
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