I L LINOI S UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN PRODUCTION NOTE University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Library Brittle Books Project, 2010. N [P4 Ft S f Skk - ' .1 r * r1 cs ------------ THE UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS LIBRARY From the collection of James Collins, Drumcondra, Ireland. Purchased, 1918. V87 COPYRIGHT NOTIFICATION In Public Domain. Published prior to 1923. This digital copy was made from the printed version held by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. It was made in compliance with copyright law. Prepared for the Brittle Books Project, Main Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign by Northern Micrographics Brookhaven Bindery La Crosse, Wisconsin 2010 THE VOICE OF TH£ NATION. AJmanual of ati lla itl? BY THT: WRITERS OF THE NATION NEWSIPAPER, DUBLIN: PUBLISHED BYr JAMES 25, ANGLE SEA-STRET. 1844. DIJFFY, JAMES DTUFF, .25, ANGL ESEA-STRE ET, DUBLIN. PREFACE. IT is an unusual thing to reprint newspaper articles. Mr. FONBLANQUE'S articles were republished from the Ex- aminer, because of the great beauty of his style; Cobbett's Register articles were brought out as a book speculation; and a volume of extracts from the United Irish paper, The Press, went through several editions from its historical interest. We have been induced to reprint some of the leading articles of the " NATIoN" from none of these motives. They contain little history, are not finished in style, and are not likely to be a fortune to the publisher. Here is the reason why we reprint them. We wrote the "NATION" less as a paper of news than of education. We did not seek to gratify people by hot intelligence, but to preach to them the gospel of nationality. Our name, our feelings, our wvhole design led to this. Sect had been gallantly served and party skillfully marshalled by the Irish press. Nationality, which was indifferent to sect and independent of party, had never had an organ in Ireland till the "NATION" was published. Other political writers advocated it, wished it, helped it; we devoted ourselves to it. In domestic and foreign policy, in agita- b? PREFACE. tion and trade, in art and literature, in season and out of season, we urged it, explained it, guarded it. We succeeded. Nationality is understood by multitudes of Irishmen. The Tories understand it, and praise it; almost to a man they desire nationality in everything. They are generously promoting it in art and literature. They would promote it in politics but for their mistaken fear of Catholic ascendancy. The Whigs have very generally become Federalist. They, therefore, after their fashion, seek political nationality, though, as yet, we fear they have done less for national art and literature than the Tories. Nationality is no longer an unmeaning or despised name. It is welcomed by the higher ranks, it is the inspiration of the bold, and the hope of the people. It is the summary name for many things. It seeks a literature made by Irishmen, and coloured by our scenery, manners, and character. It desires to see art applied to express Irish thoughts and belief. It would make our music sound in every parish at twilight, our pictures sprinkle the walls of every house, and our poetry and history sit at every hearth. It would thus create a race of men full of a more intensely Irish character and knowledge, and to that race it would give Ireland. It would give them the seas of Ireland to sweep with their nets and launch on with their navy; the harbours of Ireland, to receive a greater commerce than any island in the world; the soil of Ireland to live on, by more millions than starve here now; the fame of Ireland to enhance by their genius and valour; the independence of Ireland to guard by laws and arms. PREFACE. This is what the " NATION" preached more widely, more constantly, and, as the result proved, more successfully than ever had been done here before. To fix these principles, and to further their progress, we have printed this volume. On this account we excluded many papers which we thought best of as pieces of writing, because they had not the same permanent bearing on nationality. We now give it to the public, thinking moderately of its literary merits, but sure that it contains an honest assertion of those national principles which will eventually be received by all, and end in making Ireland a Nation. " NATION" Office, February, 1844. *** A second part of "The Voice of the Nation," containing Literary and Historical Papers, is being prepared for the press. CONTENTS. Names of Articles. Writers' Initials. Patience and Propagandism Voice from America...... ........... Page C. G. D..........I T. D.............. 7 ........... ............ M 12 ....... War with every body...... Popular Debating Societies............... C. G.D......... 17 Facts and Principles. T.D ............ 19 M. D............. 22 J 24 Crime in Tipperary Five Paragraphs.. ..................... Repeal or Degradation................... What. if the Whigs come in?............ : T. M' 6N ......... 27 Foreign Policy............................ T.D ............ 31 Ways and Means........................... C. G.D ......... 35 Father Mathew.......... T. D..........40 ....... tZepeal considered.......................... W. J. O'N. D... 43 Sympathy.................................. 47 T. D........... The comingStruggle ......................... M. D........ 48 The Kirk of Scotland.....................T. D........ 51 The Viceregal Hotel ...... ... 54 .... e... ... . C.G1 1.,- C~ONTENTS.vi Vii Writers' Initials Names of Articles Prospectsof England in 1842 ............. JOHN D........58 Foreign Information .......................... T. D The Rights and Wrongs of Property ..... Page .......... C. G. ........ 62 65 Letter to a Connaught Squire ................ T. M'N........68 The Morality of War T. P .......... ................. Repeal Arguments ........................... 77 O'N. 78 W. J. D Plan of Popular Education .................. C. G. D........84 Aristocratic, Institutions ...................... JOHN P........90 Our brave fellow Citizens..... .... New Jerusalem Mission... Worship our Crimes ........... ..... T.D..........95 M- ......... 98 102 ...................... Elects of the Union on Protestant Tradesmen...... ....................... T. D .......... 103 Street Ballads and popular Poetry........C. G. D.......104 ......... 107 The young Men of Ireland ................ C. G. P ........ 110 England's Missions ................... Slaves' Disarming Bill..................... T. T. DP........... 115 National Distinctions....................... C. G. D......... 116 Ourselves Alone............................ M. D... . ...... 119 Busts of Irishmen.......................... C. G.D........ 122 General Nott's Proclamation.............. T. P.......... .. 123 A Tory's Account of Wolfe Tone ......... T. D ............ 125 Anti-Irisi Catholics ....................... T. P............ 126 Popular Reading Rooms.................. C. Go.......... 127 C0i viii ONENs. L Names of Articles. Present and Future........................ Writers' Tnitials. M. D.......... Page 129 Orange Anniversaries ..................... C. G. D........ 132 People's Law............................... T. D........... 136 Landlordism in Ulster ..................... C. G. D........ 143 Lord Brougham ............................ T. M'N........ 149 Ireland, France and England .............. T. D............ 154 Public Monuments. ....................... C. G. D........ 155 Queen's Visit ....................................... T. D................ 156 Irish and Scotch Sedition .................. C. G. D........ 157 Oiling the Hinges.......................... T. 160 D.......... P'opular Map .of Ireland ................... C. G. D......... 163 An Irish Navy.............................. T. D............ 163 Protestant Interest ......................... T. M'N....... .165 The Wrath of America..................... T. P............ 171 Time, a Title................................ T. D............ 172 The Right of the Landlord ................ C. G. D......... 173 Protestant Ascendancy ..................... PD........... 176 French Policy not Aggressive.............. T. D............. 179 Advice to the People in October, '43......C. G. D........ 182 A Year's Work............................T. P. . O....o ... 187 THE VOICE OF THE NATION. PATIENCE AND PROPAGANDISM. THE followers of COLUMBUS who tortured his noble heart with doubts and fears, and ignorant impatience up to the last hour of experiment-even when the promised land was only hidden from their view by the morning mist-have their successors in all ages and countries. If you tell such men that the sun will surely rise to-morrow, they are incredulous, and shake their dull heads, and scoff at you because you cannot show them day-dawn at midnight. If you infer the stately oak from the healthy sappling, or the gallant ship from the matured tree, your hopes appear as extravagant as if you expected both to spring up by legerdemain. Philosophy has taught them nothing; the Past has existed for them in vain; they have not learned the simplest of its lessons-that whatever has been may be again. Their faith is, that whatever they have not seen happen in their own day, is a moral impossibility. They doubted of American Independenee at Bunker's Hill, and sneered at Emancipation after the Clare election. They are the Infidels of Politics. We are ashamed to confess, but there is no denying, that we have many such doubters in Ireland, the unbelieving THOMASES of a faithful people. These are the men who tell you they would be glad to see Repeal, if it could be got, but (SoLoMoNs that they are) they know it is impossible. B 4 THE VOICE OF THE NATION. These are the fellows who ask with protruded tongue and leering eye-What is keeping your Repeal-you have been agitating for it so many months (we forget the number), and you have not got it yet P No, we have not got it yet; the revolution of a great kingdom is not to be effected in a shorter time than the law demands to settle the disputed inheritance of a farm. Four hundred and forty-two years of fierce, intermittent war, and a hundred and eighty-eight years of fraud and stratagem, were spent in the bloody task of reducing this country to slavery; and it is true that all this litany of crime and misery, has not been reversed in as many days. We confess it. Alas! human freedom is not of speedy growth. You cannot force it in any hot-bed or steam atmosphere; it must grow up under the sun-shine and storm of Heaven, chilled by its frost as well as nourished by its rain. If it leaped into maturity like the gourd tree, its duration would be as brief. No we have not got it yet. But steadily, incessantly, unalterably, we have marched on towards our purpose, without looking to the right or to the left, and every week saw some new element of strength acquired. Funds, members, organisation, these came first. The Catholic Bishops, the Superseded Magistrates, the Ulster Presbyterians, these came quickly after. SMITH O'BRIEN'S Debate, the Declaration of the Irish Members, the movement for Federalism, comprised the third act in the national drama. The Council of Three Hundred-the unelected Irish Parliament, that is coming next, with the fifth act-the Repeal-in its train. No one of this chain of circumstances could well have occurred out of the order in which it actually happened. They were the phenomena by which the political philosopher marked the natural growth of the agitation, from the bud and blossom to the leaf and fruit. Nothing is or was or shall be wanting. Exactly all the progress compatible with health and strength the question has made-no more and no less. Try it by any fair test. Measure it with the march of liberty in other countries. Count how many years America agitated, and how many more she fought, before her work was accomplished. Turn to Greece, or to Belgium, and ask if it was in weeks or in months their liberation was effected. Contrast how much THE VOICE OF THE NATION. 5 France suffered, and how little she gained in her great struggle, with our small risk and glorious reward. Look to Canada for a lesson of patience and of hope. Her contest was more protracted, her enemy was the same, her resources were fewer, but in good time her independence was achieved. The prosperity of a country is no more to be accomplished without time and toil than the prosperity of a man. There are no Lotteries now a-days. Success has a hard husk and a sweet kernel, and" Whoso loveth the nut well Must crack the shell." But it is not those who believe, but those who fear and disbelieve, that demand miracles. The brave and trustful look into their own hearts for assurance that we cannot fail. But we must work like men in earnest. There is employment for all who have inclination and capacity to serve their country. Better to be up and working, than whining because the task that we will not help is not done. The materials of nationalisation-the food to nourish a healthy and permament knowledge and love of country in the minds of all classes-each after its own fashion-are scanty and defective. They must be increased. We want national books, and lectures and music-national paintings, and sculpture, and costume-national songs, and tracts, and mapshistorical plays for the stage-historical novels for the closet-historical ballads for the drawing-room-we want all these, and many other things illustrating the history, the resources, and the genius of our country, and honouring her illustrious children, living and dead. These are the seeds of permament nationality, and we must sow them deep in the People's hearts. These are the weapons with which we may take by assault the bosom of the young student in his library, and the merchant in his relaxation. Let not our armoury want them any longer. Every propagandism, but the glorious one of our nationality, can reckon its thousand apostles. Where are ours ? Puseyism has piled volume upon volume, till no point of doctrine remains without illustration, and no avenue of the heart is left unassailed. They have books THE VOICE OF THE NATION. 6 to teach ladies the mysteries of church architecture, that taste may be enlisted by religion-books to teach the peasantry to love good old games and good old customs, and with them the good old forms of worship. The Sacra Iyra sings Anglo-Catholicism in all measures, and the pulpit orators preach it with all the resources of rhetoric. Even the Anti-Corn Law movement has its lecturers in every village, and its tracts in every house, and one or two magazines are devoted to the higher questions of political economy involved in its success; it has its encyclopaedia in the works of Colonel Thompson. We have nothing but the Orator. We want many histories of Ireland. There is not one fit to be read. We want biographies of our great men, popular in spirit and price; such as we have are either out of print or out of the reach of the People. Let us have reprints and popular editions. We want histories of the rise and progress of other free nationsessays upon government--pamphlets on the resources of Ireland--proposals for naturalising new trades and fostering old ones for the support of her People-books on her literature, laws, customs, resources and productions. We want, in one word, the evidence of a thousand intellects, being alive and active for the present and future welfare of our country. We want historical maps-maps of the Pale, with its variations-maps specifying the battle grounds and memorable places of the land-even maps of its natural beauties and of its cromleachs, cairns and ruins, that at length no one may be ignorant we have a country worth loving and defending. We want to see about us the evidences that this land we live in is Ireland, not England. We want to have our hearts stirred with our own national music and to see our national history and national manners reflcted in the drama, instead of having one prohibited and the other shamefully caricatured. We have at present no national theatre in town or country. A drama was recently driven from the Dublin stage, on the avowed ground that it was founded on an event in Irish history; and in Belfast the Scotch air of " Rob Roy" has long been substituted for ",Patrick's Day," as the national anthem of that com- THE VOICE OF THE NATION. munity.* Ireland is to be heard of individually nowhere but in penal Acts of Parliament and Royal Speeches. When all this is set right, and every man can do something towards its reform-if he cannot write books or furnish the other appliances of nationality, he can encourage them and purchase them. Or if not, he can at least help to preserve what are better than books, the memorials of our forefathers; (the castles which they held so stoutly, or won so gallantly, the churches where they prayed, the graves where they lie-every one of them ought to be guarded from destruction, and none is so weak but he may help this work. The songs they sung, the weapons they wielded, the legends they invented-they too, are all part of a legacy which we must guard and love,) when this is done, let us be then asked-When shall we have Repeal ? and we will be prepared to answer, and expect no thanks for our pains. It will be a self-evident proposition. But the sowing time must precede the harvest. Let it not be thought that we are ignorant how many are already at work, or that we are ungrateful to them. A hundred heads, active, and incessant, and, like all machinery unseen, are daily labouring to nationalise the public mind; but we want to multiply them to thousands._ There is work for them all to root out the weeds of seven hundred years, and fortune will, by-and-bye, repay their labour with munificence. She will give them Ireland. As it is, she offers them the highest price that genius ever aspired to earn-the affection of their country, and the sunshine of self-respect. THE VOICE FROM AMERICA. ONCE before, a voice from America "shouted to Liberty," and Ireland woke from her trance, and the Volunteer came out armed from the bosom of the convulsed country. Ireland became a nation. Britain, through all the degrees of her government, swore to respect our nationality. The oath was believed, and Ireland "seated herself, as she vainly imagined, in modest security and a long re* We are glad to learn that this insult has been recently discontinued. THE VOICE OF THE NATION. pose." " Vainly;" for England, perjured and insatiable, came upon us in the hour of sorrow, and tore away the prerogatives she had sworn to guard, and the institutions which had existed here beyond the memory of man. And now, again, a voice is heard from America-less loud and awful, but not less encouraging, than that of yore. Canada calls across the Atlantic, Sister Ireland, my chains are breaking. Why sleepest thou, oh! my sister ?" That national questioning has penetrated the land, and is reflected in the talk and the thoughts of many an Irish home. And the child asks his father, " Shall not we also be free ?" " Are we too few, too paltry, to attain liberation, when Canada is able to extort it ?" " What is Canada that she should be free andilreland a slave P" " How is it that the Canadians have succeeded and we have failed P" " What is this Canada, and how did she prevail P" To answer these questions--this sobbing and heaving for the truth which can make us free-to impregnate this chaos of great desire with that spirit which shall liberate us, must be the work of time, and genius, and godlike devotion, and to the care of the apostles of freedom we commend it. But we may, without assumption, call our countrymen's regard to the few marked features of the Canadian Revolution. They must bear with a short history of that event, or it cannot instruct or guide them. By the battle wherein Wolfe defeated Montcalm, at Quebec, in 1759, Canada, which France had held since 1525, and colonised since 1608, became a posoession of England, and this possession was guaranteed by the Treaty of Paris in 1763. The people were French in blood and language, and Catholic in religion; and yet from thence it was governed by English laws and Englishmen-the English language was alone legally used, and the country was managed by an English officer, with his courtmartial-no, his council, we believe, they called it-for England's convenience. But here comes the first lesson from Canadian history. In 1773 the British cargoes of tea were destroyed in Boston; April 1775, saw the battle of Lexington-the first fight wherein modern democracy crossed its sword with that of the old artistocracy. The imtermediate THE VOICE OF THE NATION. year, 1774, was a year of organization and recruiting on both sides; and the British, frightened at the approaching war with the Colonies, passed the Quebec Act, restoring French civil law, and the French as an official language to the Canadians. Thus England's danger was Canada's gain, and the foes of England were the friends of Canada. In 1791 a war with the French Republic was impending. The United States were threatening reprisals for the English having retained American posts, and having bribed the Creek Indians to war. No time was to be lost. Pitt was a bold man. He hurried through Parliament an act to afford ",the advantages of the British Constitution to Canada," appointing a House of Assembly of 52 representatives, from whom no property qualification was required, and who were paid by the public. The franchise was given to 40s. freeholders in the counties, and 51. freeholders and 101. householders in the towns-a most liberal institution-and here, again, England's danger was Canada's gain; and the States and France, in menacing England, served Canada. But Pitt accompanied the gift of the House of Assembly with the institution of a Legislative Council of from 15 to 23 persons, named for life by the Crown; and this part of the Constitution has been the cause of the disputes in Canada. The Legislative Council consisted of creatures of the Crown. The House of Assembly represented the will and interests of the People. In 1827, the agitation for popular control over the Council and the public property increasing, a petition, signed by 87,000 Canadians, was sent to England, praying redress. A civil-tongued Committee of the English Commons reported vague promises; but, beyond the sending of Governor Lord Aylmerin place of Governor Sir James Kempt, nothing was done. Accordingly, after a feverish interval, the Canadians found they had been tricked-the Assembly, repeated their demands, and refused the supplies. They were dissolved, and on their triumphant reelection passed the notable ninety-two propositions on the grievances of Canada, the Charter, the rallying flag of their after agitation--a measure which Ireland must soon adopt. On this vote being carried by 56 to 24 voices, another House of Commons report heralded Lord Aylmer home 10 THE VOICE OF THE NATION and sent Lord Gosford out in 1834, as if a change of misgovernors, not the abandonment of misrule, was what Canada desired. But poor Lord Gosford was not Joshua-he might bid the sun to stop, but it kept never minding him. Papineau, who had (as he tells us in his account of "The Resistance of Canada," published in Paris in 1839) been asked by Lord Bathurst, in 1823, to leave Canada to the forced and unnatural government of England for some five-and-twenty years, till it could ripen for freedom, and who had refused to make such terms-this bold Celt, with the "0 " after his name instead of before it, began to hold meetings, got up societies, appealed to every feeling of Canadian pride, and Canadian hope, and shook the country from side to side. England had her hands free this time. Ireland was in unhappy league with the Whigs. The demands of Canada were met by martial law and proscriptions-an insurrection of the unarmed peasantry followed in 1836, and was put down with an overwhelming force and an unsparing sword by Sir John Colburne, the Carhampton of Canada. Deep was the misery of Canada. Her wisest in exile, her bravest slaughtered; hundreds remained for month after month in prison, untried; but many, too many, left the cell to tread the scaffold. Canada was down, and a foreign sword waved over her, sprinkling her with patriot blood. Still she did not despair. Then commenced a new system of experiments-fresh plans to reconcile her to oppression. " Why is it that you won't be quiet ?" said England, "we have sent you all sorts of Governors-the foolish and the clever-the cunning and the cruel-the Heads, and Colburnes, and Gosfords-and you won't do their bidding; here, take a Captain-General !" and Lord Durham, glittering with stars like a frosty night, entered Canada in May, 1838. But his lordship's dinners, and speeches, and orders, and all, were in vain. He left in October, and left an insurrection for the rebel-slayer, Colborne, to suppress. He did suppress it, and thus Canada remained under him and Sir George Arthur and martial law, till the arrival of Lord Sydenham, in June, 1840. Sydenham called the Canadian Assemblies. The Government nominees were returned-the union of the provinces agreed to-and the Assemblies dissolved. In THE VOICE OF THE NATION. 11 February, '41, the union was proclaimed, and the new parliament summoned, in whose second year this revolution has occurred. Sydenham's was a government of half conciliation; he took into the council some English Liberals, but excluded the French. Still, on the whole, the wounds were healing under his care. But as strength came back, the anxiety for completer emancipation came with it, and the agitation became as vigorous as ever, and more cautious. Nor was this relaxed when Sir Charles Bagot took the place vacant by Sydeham's death. All the tactics of a parlimentary opposition, and the agitation of a popular party, were used; but still the Governmet retained its majority of English Anti-Canadians in the council. Canada and its Assembly were divided by sects and factions. The French Canadians-400,000 out of a population of 900,000-returned two-eighths of an Assembly of 83. The British of Lower Canada, a " loyal" and intolerant " yeomanry," flushed with triumph over the "rebels," returned one-eighth. In Upper Canada the Tories, or Family Compact, the Old Undertakers, who were lords of the soil, and had long been lords of the Government, had one-eighth. The Upper Canada Liberals made three-eighths, and there was one eighth called " Loose Fish"-weak men who went with the majority. At length the French party joined the Reformers of Upper Canada, carried the "Loose Fish" with them, and thus, constituting three-fourths of the Assembly, out-voted the Government, and refused the supplies. It was vain to dissolve them-the new Assembly would have been more hostile. Under other circumstances England would have suspended the constitution, restored martial law, and taken her taxes with the bayonet's point. And here, again, England's weakness was Canada's strength. The Affgans had overthrown the Englishtroops were wanting in India-money was scarceIreland no longer in alliance with an English partyFrance.and America sulky. Thus the triumphs of freedom in Asia prepared fresh victories in America. England quailed-the will of the Assembly conquered. Its leaders-the Baldwins, Lafontaines, and Girouards, the 'proclaimed rebels, received virtual possesion of the Government; and it only remains for them now to carry B5 12 THE VOICE OF THE NATION. out their policy, when in power, with as much courage and perseverance as they did in opposition, and England will not give them much further trouble. But let them never relax. Let them again and again repeat and remember, " England's strength is Canada's ruin-England's weakness is Canada's victory." This, Irishmen! is one of the lessons taught us also by the revolution in Canada-mark, learn, and digest it! To the utterance of such a voice as this your fathers listened, believed, and became free. WAR WITH EVERYBODY. WAR with every body is at present the enviable condition of our amiable sister of England. At the uttermost end of earth her soldiers and sailors are triumphing--if triumph that can be called which is victory without glory-over a nation of feminine creatures, destitute even of the brute instinct of resistance, and apparently incapable of imitating the most timid animals, which become valorous by despair. Thousands of these unhappy wretches, who yet, be it remembered, are human beings, nurtured to men's estate, not without many sufferings, tears, and cares-every one of them having parents, wives, children, friends, or some or all of these to lament their loss-are being butchered mercilessly-mowed down by canister and grape, or driven into the rivers at the point of the bayonet-and for what P Why, simply, because a horde of scoundrel smugglers, busy in the pursuit of unhallowed gain, have been interdicted by the Emperor of China-a potentate whose relation towards his subjects is less monarchical than paternal-from poisoning with their contraband opium the bodies, and rendering more imbecile the minds, of his People. This is, truly, an honorable warfare for a great, moral (!), and religious(!!) nation to be engaged in; and, we need hardly say, we wish it all the success it deserves. Then, in the country beyond the Indus, where, really and truly, they had no business whatever-in Affghan- THE VOICE OF THE NATION. 13 istan--where ruled a monarch friendly, or at least not hostile, to the British-some insane fear of Russia and Persia, or rathler some accursed lust of power, plunder and blood-shedding, disguised uuder the mask of affected fear, set armies in motion through dangerous passes, and over barren mountains, to achieve the semblance of a triumph in the capture of Cabul, and the dethronement of DOST MAHOMED-the best, if not the only friend the British had in these barbarous regions. But there are no Chinese men-women in Affghanistan nor is AKHBAR KHAN a mandarin of the third button. The doctrine of resistance is perfectly well understood among these fierce children of the crescent; and fearfully have they carried this doctrine into practice. Let the bones of thirteen thousand British subjects, whitening in the wintry blast, testify how dearly England has paid for her unjust, and worse than that-her foolish, her stupid aggression upon this indomitable People. There is no disguising or denying the fact: England has been "thrashed" by a fellow living at the back of a mountain, this said AKHBAR KHAN. He shot down their Envoy-exterminated their legions-carried away captive their women and children; and the whole energy, wisdom and bravery of their rulers are now put in action, not to subdue the Affghans-not to tax them-not to divide and govern them-not even to convert them; but to buy off British women and children, get the most respectable terms they can for future transactions, and " cut their lucky." Canada, if not actually at war, has a war establishmnent, which is the same as war to the poor devils of tax-payers at home; and in Canada, we must remark, as an example of the subdued tone and diminished insolence of our amiable sister, every exertion is now being made to conciliate the native inhabitants, by giving them their fair share of public appointments, and in other ways. But while Britain, by brute force, triumphs in China, over the most miserably effeminate and dastardly creatures of God's earth-while she keeps Canada down by civility and fixed bayonets-and while she is trying to make the best bargain she can with that ugly customer, AKHBAii KHAN, let us come home to consider how the European Powers, one and all, are making war against 14 THE VOICE OF THE NATION. her, and of the probable ultimate results of that new mode of warfare. Triumphs by the bayonet, Continental nations have at last found out, are at best doubtful triumphs, while defeats are very dear indeed. They seem also to have discovered that to beggar a shopkeeper the cheapest, easiest, and most civil method is, to buy nothing at his shop, and to get all their neighbours to do likewise. Upon this principle they have begun, one and all, to act towards John Bull-they declare war, not against his person but his pocket-they carry the war, not into the enemy's camp, but into his shop-they are ready to sell him anything he chooses to buy; but they unanimously decline buying anything that he has got to sell. This lesson they have been taught by John Bull himself, or rather by the sordid aristocracy, that represents that respectable gentleman: while Continental nations were ready and willing to sell John victuals for half the price he could procure them at home, John's masters, the aristocrats, refuse to buy, keeping John upon half diet, rather than that their extravagant rents should suffer the slightest diminution. Formerly England sold and would not buy, while the rest of Europe bought but could not sell; of this the latter soon grew tired, and now they begin to follow the bright example of the former, With this striking superiority over John, that they can manufacture clothes for their few backs with much more economy than John can manufacture food for his many mouths. France set the example of this improved system of warfare against England by an increase of duty, amounting almost to a prohibition, upon linen yarns. As this affected a staple of our nation, of course it was considered no great matter. When poor Ireland, whether it be the Protestant North or the Catholic South, suffers -whether the linen manufacturers of the former, or the graziers of the latter, are ruined-they are only Irish, and there is no harm done. This, however, was only the beginning of that unbloody but most fatal Warfare, which-expending neither grape nor canister, powder nor ball, pay or allowances, and using, as its only weapon, a paper of prohibitory duties called a Tariff-strikes at the root of the resources of a nation of manufacturers for foreign markets. THE VOICE OF THE NATION. 15 Belgium, intimately connected, politically and geographically, with France, has flung herself entirely into the .arms of the latter, having concluded a commercial treaty whereby the iron districts of Belgium will supply the place of Birmingham to the Gallic territories; while Antwerp will become the Liverpool, not of France only, but of the countries along the Rhine. Germany has begun gloriously to bestir herself, despite the freezing influence of her great and little tyrants -her arbitrary, unconstitutional Governments-and her military despotisms. There begins to stir in her the quickenings of a NATIONAL spirit-such a spirit as we labour to awaken among ourselves; and the analogy is so striking and beautiful that we shall dwell on it with that pleasure with which, after a dark and dreary night, men behold the dawning of a glorious day. Hear this, Irishmen, and profit by the hearing : "Every misfortune," says the organ of the great German Commercial League, " that we have suffered for centuries past, may be traced to one cause; and that is, that we have ceased to consider ourselves a united nation of brothers, whose first duty it is to exert our common efforts to oppose the common enemy." And, again, how appropriate to our own condition is the noble aspiration that follows :" More beautiful than the spring of nature-more beautiful than any picture created by poetic imagination-more beautiful even than the death of the hero resigning his life for the benefit of his country, is this dawning of a new and glorious era for Germany. That which has been gradually vanishing from us since the days of the Hohenstauffeen Emperors-that which is indispensible to enable us to fulfil the destination marked out for us in the history of the world-that which alone is wanting to render us the mightiest of all the nations of the earth-viz., the feeling of nationalhonor-we are now about to recover. For what object have our honored To imbue the People with patriots been striving the feeling of national honor." Such is the generous, the noble spirit animating the young blood of Germany. SSo much for the old world-turn we now to the new ; there we find the same manifestation of deadly hostility to British manufactures. The new American Tariff ? 16 THE VOICE OF THE NATION. adopts, as far as possible, the Continental system of exclusion-so that everywhere the British manufacturer now finds himself in the condition in which he was placed by the Berlin decree of NAPOLEON, with this striking difference, that then his manufactures were excluded againstthe will of Europe, but now are prohibited, not by her conqueror, but by her people. We look without exultation, but at the same time without grief, at the position in which England, as the just punishment of her insolence and rapacity, now finds herself among the nations of the earth, barbarous and civilised. We regard it merely in a philosophic point of view, as exhibiting the probable tendency of the decline and fall of her hitherto unrivalled wealth and power. The latter has been derivative of the former-the power of England has been the consequence of her wealth; and whence flows that stream of opulence which has made Britain what she is ? Why, from her manufacturesand from her manufactures alone is her real wealth derived. Hence it follows that war declared against Manchester, Birmingham, Sheffield, Leeds, their capitalists and operatives will be, in fact and in truth, the most destructive of all modes of warfare-more fatal in its ultimate consequences than PERKINS'S steam-gun, I CONGREVE'S rocket, or Captain WARNER'S benevolent invention for blowing up navies by wholesale. The whole world is stirred up against the insolence and rapacity of the English oligarchy-not the English People, for they, poor devils, have in fact as little practical influence in the government of their country as ourselves-her power, too, they begin to despise, seeing that in Canada, in the United States, and beyond the Indus, she is obliged to "sing small;" but above all, and before all-and what is the EXAMPLE FOR OUR IMITATION, and our only reason for dwelling so long upon this subject-they are impressed with the idea we have been labouring to inculcate in our own country, that it is their DUTY, as it is their PRIDE, to prefer their own manufactures to the manufactures of England, and ii this way to foster and keep alive a spirit of preference for their countrymen and their country. Despotic Germany, liberal Belgium, and republican America, will have nothing to do with British goods at any price. They say, one and all-and they say gene- THE VOICE OF THE NATION. 17 rously and truly--" your goods may be better than ours, but it is our duty to prefer our own; they may be cheaper than ours, but it is our duty to prefer our own; and by so doing, in a little while, by a little self-denial, we will be able to manufacture as good articles as ever you did." Would to GOD we had infused throughout this oppressed, impoverished, and misgoverned nation, the same self-preferring spirit. If we had the spirit we ought to have-the spirit we had in the days of the ever-glorious DRAPIER, " when we burned every thing that came from England except the coals"-there is not an Irishman who would not feel prouder wearing a sheepskin" The woolly side out and the skinny side in."- than dressed in the best broadcloth that ever crossed the Channel in exchange for Irish money. There is not a man who wears an Irish manufactured coat that has not done something towards the advancement of his country. Why, then, does this spirit of self-preference, which animates and unites to this mutual honour and mutual profit, the drowsy Germans in the North and the energetic Americans in the West, slumber in our country ? Why-why-in shame and sorrow, we repeatedly askwhy ? POPULAR DEBATING SOCIETIES. A CORRESPONDENT wishes us to recommend Debating Societies to our young countrymen, but we hesitate to do so. Debating societies sometimes make smart, pert, self-sufficient talkers; but we fear they seldom enlarge or mature the mind; and in this country, above all others, we dread their influence. The great fault of our young men is want of application. They don't read enough, or think enough, and they talk over much. They are too fond of display, and too averse to the cultivation that ought to precede it. Such societies would nourish this very fault. We would much rather see reading clubs starting up in every parish, where they would find suggestive books to make them think. Lectures would 18 THE VOICE OF THE NATION. be very valuable to the same end, and when these cannot be had from a qualified person, a good substitute may always be found in printed lectures, which, if tolerably well read, are equally useful; but talking societies ought not to precede thinking ones. Any one connected with journalism, or in any other position to see the crude attempts in literature of our young men, must have met many proofs of this unhealthy precocity of mind. In both poetry and prose, sense is habitually sacrificed to sound; and sentences which fill the ear with music, have no meaning at all, or mean something quite different from what the writer intended. We wish we could teach our young friends that there is no success to be attained in any pursuit without long and careful preparation. It is harder to be an Orator, or a Writer than a Shoe-maker, whatever they may think to the contrary, and requires at least as long an apprenticeship. If they had the patience and perseverance of the Saxon, with the quickness and vivacity of the Celt, they could accomplish anything. But they are not content to creep before they walk, or even to creep before they gallop. We have often, with more sorrow than anger, heard men gifted with natural talents, but too popular to take the trouble of cultivating them, draw down the thundering cheers of a meeting for hours by a tissue of stark nonsense, which turned into print, would turn them into laughing stocks, even for the men who applauded them. The cure for all this is not fresh schools for declamation, but the diffusion of reading among the multitude, which will spoil effectually their appetite for nonsense. It is our pride to know that we are educating the young mind of the country, and it shall not be our fault if it is mistaught. We repeat then that careful training is the road to success-and that training means learning to think, to act and to endure; and does not mean talking nonsense with effrontery. THE VOICE OF THE NATION. 19 FACTS AND PRINCIPLES. MYSTERIES OF THE CONSTITUTION. The British constitution recognises, as its deepest mystery, that the private opinion of the Sovereign can never he officially known. The sovereign is personally irresponsible (in theory), and his or her neck is safe from the block reserved for tyrant rulers. This, at least, has been the rule since 1692; since then, the minister, for the time being, possesses the whole power. The sovereign dare not enter the cabinet council. The minister is the substantial, though removeable, king; and possessing the power, he is justly responsible with his property, his place, and his head, for the honest and right government of the country. The mode is mysterious and humbugging, but the principle is not unjust. It is one of the wisest parts of the English constitution. Sir ROBERT PEEL, that bragging constitutionalist, violated the principle indecently. Had he been met as he ought to have been, his retraction would have been humiliating as well as complete-but he has completely retracted. MOBS AND BRAGGING. 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 ordrly, hospitable, and kindly every day. Let us have no more tussling and patrolling. What do these mobs mean P 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 ordered men, like the myriads of Tipperary, or like one of Napoleon's armies, is a noble sight, and a mighty power; but a scolding, hooting mob, which meets to make noise, and runs away from a stick, a horse, or a sabre is a wretched affair. 20 THE VOICE OF THE NATION " 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 facts, 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. TEMPERANCE PROCESSIONS. The music has greatly improved-some of the bands were first-rate, though their airs were occasionally not national. In such cases none but national airs and national flags should be tolerated. We should also recommend a more accurate sub-division of the societies, with a view to a more formal and orderly movement. In many cases we saw the rere ranks running to catch their leaders. Now, the appointment of regulating men, bearing peculiarly shaped and coloured flags, to every dozen and to every hundred persons, would remedy this, and greatly improve the respectability and beauty of a temperance processsion. THE VOICE OF THE NATION. 21 CITY POPULATIONS. 'Tis false to say that city populations are always cowardly and irregular. Athens and Platea made their armies from the men of walled cities. Milan, and Barcelona, and Ghent, and Venice, and Hamburg, braved the armies of all the empires of Europe with their weavers, and smiths, and carpenters. We trust there will be no need of asking the men of Tipperary, or Meath, or Dublin, to imitate the military virtues of these citizens. But if there be, men of Dublin! may we promise (may we promise by your daily-improving organization, order, and steadiness), that you would dispute with these great counties, the post of danger and palm of conquest ? THE RIGHTS OF CONSCIENCE. WE do not quarrel with the Protestant operatives for thinking Catholicity erroneous in many things. The Catholics, with equal sincerity, think Protestantism erroneous in many things. That is an affair between each man and his God. Every man is bound to act in his religion, and his business, and his manner, according to his own conscience and convictions; but he has no right to expect any other man to see things in the same way, or to submit without so seeing them, or to suffer any pain, disfranchisement, or disability, for seeing the very reverse. Either or both may be wholly or partly wrong or right, without the other being able to know whether he is or not. Every man, whether Presbyterian, Catholic, or Protestant, should act by his own conscience-and be judged by it, and by no other man's. It would be equally improper for a Catholic to deprive a Protestant of his life, liberty, property, rank, representation, or any other right, as a man or a citizen, because he rejected transubstantiation and purgatory, or for a Presbyterian 22 THE VOICE OF THE NATION. so to injure a Catholic or a Protestant because they reject the Westmininister confession, as for a Protestant to so punish, or disfranchise, or dominate over a Catholic because he finds certain doctrines in the Bible which the Protestant does not find. CRIME IN TIPPERARY. INDIVIDUAL suffering or individual villainy, we have regarded as minor details only of the extensive degradation of provincialism-as the burning mark of foreign rule. Ours we hope, is a higher duty and holier mi sion-to plant deep in the nation's heart this honest teaching, that there is no crime so damnable as cowardice, no virtue so great as love of country, and no condition so degrading as subjection to a swindler, a liar, and a bully. This is our calling, and in fulfilling it, if we glance aside at local circumstances, it is because they range intimately within the great category of the domination of foreigners-because, perhaps, they supply lessons for a better future, and indicate the faults it would be essential to shun. With this view, it is not beside our purpose to trace to its source the disorganisation of Tipperary, or more aptly to designate it, the intolerance of oppression exhibited by the people of that county, and worked out through crime, and in the very shade of the gibbet. Whether there be a degree more or less of oppression, of exaction, of the wayward burst of bitter and ignorant tyranny in Tipperary, is a quesion not worth inquiring into. There is no doubt that throughout all Ireland the rich and privileged are given to grinding, and the poor man's lot is suffering. Everywhere the two races have opposing tendencies and interests, that by a dark fate refuse to coalesce. But nowhere else is vengeance so prompt or daring as in Tipperary; and whence this is, is the problem we have undertaken to solve. THE VOICE OF THE NATION. 23 It was on Slievenamon CROMWELL stood, when, pointing his iron mace to the plain before him, he cried out to his regicide freebooters, "Behold a country worth fighting for " That encouraging license was well appreciated, and the dark hope it held out, fulfilled in blood. Every acre of Tipperary-even then so fair, and fertile, and tempting to the adventurer--became his prey, still more fertilised by the blood of its owners and occupiers. Alas! the People then had no common cause, and the invaders were stimulated by all the fierce passions of fanaticism and desperation. In the disastrous struggle that ensued, the Irish People, disunited, undisciplined, Without leaders, or even a watchword to fight for, were cloven down. Enough of them were spared to minister to the conquerors' wants-to toil for them--to sweat for them-to die for them, when such a sacrifice was wanting to their caprice. The first settlers were not, however, left to enjoy unmolested domination; and many and many a time that stern murder, which they had taught to walk abroad, came back to their own hearths. Vengeance was the only bold virtue of the time--the only inheritance of those to whom successful rebellion left neither heritage nor home. In process of time the names and forms of things had changed. Usurpation became sanctified, rebellion the constitution, and robbery law. But the fate of the Irishman remain chequered, and dark, and hopeless as ever. Law to him was but a crafty wile, whereby the murder of his race and the plunder of his property were consecrated. Hence the hand that was shut out from all honest means of existence claimed kindred with vengeance, and was raised red in wrath. Who shall stand up to say that in his then condition--hunted with keener scent and a more insatiable instinct of hate than the wolves of his native fields-who shall say that, according to the moral conventionalities of modern rule, the Irishman's conduct was acrime ? But things have much altered-tyranny has been modified into toleration, and the Irishman's existence is recognized by the law. This is much, no doubt, and should have produced a corresponding result on the 24 THE VOICE OF THE NATION. minds of those on whom it was graciously bestowed. The People are not, however, such apt casuists as to be able suddenly to make nice distinctions; nor is it wonderful that they should shrink from that as a means of protection which memory and experience combine to brand as the instrument of extermination. They do not love the law because it but recently sheltered them. From those who were the owners of the land all their woes sprung, and seeing that the laws were made by this class, and for their interest, retaliation became a blind vengeance, wreaked alike on the deserving andundeserving of that class. The crimes of Tipperary, such as they are, had their source in a weak attempt to check plunder, to arrest murder, to disarm successful rebellion; and they were long fostered by the law which sanctified these vices, and made Irish existence a crime. Experience pronounces that they will continue to flourish until all this is changed, and Irish laws are made by Irishmen, and for the interests of the Irish People. " REPEAL OR-DEGRADATION." A BETTER heading, though not so strong as " Repeal or Death," which smacks a little too much of idle vapour to be adopted by those who are in earnest in labouring for a good and great end, and desire to accomplish it-as they know it most assuredly can be accomplished-by the force of opinion alone. Yes: we must have Repeal, or be even more degraded than we are at present; and so remain for ever. What is our present state ? We are in bondage to the Tories, because the English boors took money and drink for their votes at the last elections. The Irish peasant went up to the hustings at that time to do as he had done time on time before-to spurn all offers or promises of personal advantage-to fling to the winds all interested considerations-to brave the heavy threats of THE VOICE OF THE NATION. 25 bi andlord, or his landlord's agent-although, alas ! too surely knowing that those threats could and would be carried into effect, to the ruin of himself and destitution of his family--still up he went, regardless of everything but his sacred duty to his country ; and that duty he did, resigned to suffer all for conscience sake. The English peasant, where he exercised any liberty of choice at all, and was not driven to the hustings as his master's bullocks would be to the fair, reeled into the " treating" houses ; and while he stuffed and guzzled, until even his brutal appetites were palled, he asked what was the price of that day ; and if he thought it not high enough, delayed until the morrow, till the commodity he had brought to market---his vote---should have risen with the increased demand ! Yet the will of this debased being has controlled the will of the self-sacrificing Irishman'! How so ? Because the majority which we return of our own representatives is completely swamped and lost amid the overwhelming majority of members returned by these English boors. .What degradation can surpass this ? Oh! yes-there is the asses' kick to the enthralled lion-the Whig laudation of " her M1Iajesty's present Government, for the general tenor of their conduct in Ireland"-for " the least objectionable part of their policy-the recent law oppointments in Ireland !" And then there are predictions and promises of the return of the Ebrington regimedinners at the Castle, smiles and places for the "Reformbut 'no Repeal' "-clique; and frowns and exclusion for those who dare to think well of their country, and to refuse assent to the base doctrine that Ireland could have been doomed, by a God of justice, to remain ever the servant and slave of England ! Nay; frowns and exclusions were not all-there was official insult too--insult as dared to be offered to one of the most exemplary, most pious, most beloved of the admirable Catholic hierarchy of Ireland-when he, the Right Rev. Dr. BROWNE, Bishop of Galway (there is no reason why he should not be named), asked an act of common justice from Lord EBRINGTON"' Dr. BROWNE, you are a Repealer," was the answer !!! When the last agony of the Whigs was approaching, 26 THE VOICE OF THE NATION. great was the desire to conciliate and make friends. " Oh,' it was said, " that declaration of Lord EBRI TON'S was a mere inconsiderate act of his own. Our friends in London were very angry with him for so unnecessary an insult to any, particularly to so important, a body of Reformers." Pitiable fraud! He spoke from long preconcerted design. Notice had been taken at the Castle of the immense number of applications pressing in from those who, throughout various localities in Ireland, had been " leaders of the People" in former agitations. These applications were carefully registered and noted; and when the list was found to contain the names of a large majority of such persons, the "Declaration" was made as a proclamation and warning to them, and made with only too shameful success. Nearly all those leaders were silenced. They did, indeed. ."Fall down, And foul corruption triumphed over them!" Corruption--that other arm of England, whenever she seeks to strike down the rising liberties of Ireland! Force -- when we give her the excuse for using it-Corruption, when she cannot provoke us to give her that excuse! Degraded as Ireland at present* is, how great-how past words would be her degradation were she to be altogether quiescent. But there is, thank Heaven, little fear of that; for if patriotism had altogether deserted the wealthier classes it would still be found warm, and active, and efficient as ever, among those who form the bone and sinew, and heart and spirit of Ireland-the noble people of Ireland. And we are not without hopes of seeing, before long, many of those classes who have hitherto stood aloof from the "People's struggle," coming forward to throw themselves heartily and generously into it. Many who have hitherto thought the agitation premature-but who are in heart and soul devoted to Ireland-are begining to recognise the hopelessness of other efforts. Many are beginning to gather, from the signs of the times, the well-grounded assurance, that the only chance of the Whigs coming into power again in England is by their associating themselves with strong and broad popular * Written in October, '43. 27 THE VOICE OF THE NATION. principles, much in advance of their bygone principles of conduct; and that, when that time comes, the voice of the people of Ireland must be as potential with regard to Irish affairs as that of the people of England with regard to English affairs. Many are being moved by the increasing poverty of the country-the increasing misery of the people-the, from day to day, more and more galling nature of the reflection, that all the self-devotion of our poor voters at the elections, that our Liberal majorities, for ten years back, in our own representation, are all nullified and rendered nought by English legislative majorities returned by dint of intimidation, bribery, and the most revolting drunkenness. All these considerations and feelings are rapidly winning upon what is good, and honest, and patriotic amongst the present absentees from the Repeal party; and we shall have them ere long working in the foremost ranks for Ireland, and labouring not only to do away with the reality of her present degradation, but to blot out the very memory from our minds. WHAT IF THE WHIGS COME IN SINCE the rumours of PEEL'S resignation have become frequent several of our friends put this question to us, and we purpose to answer it as fairly as we can. It is, perhaps, only a matter of fairness and propriety on the part of a journal, we are bold to say, representing as large a mass of public opinion as any in Europe, at once to declare our sentiments with regard to such a contingency, and, as far as we can, to undeceive that portion of the English nation which fancies that the Irish People have taken up the present agitation under the stringent pressure of Toryism, and not from a sincere desire to get into Irish hands the administration of their own affairs. It is quite possible that the extraordinary demonstrations which have surprised the Empire might have been deferred for a while. We do not pledge ourselves that such would have been the case; but we think it very possible that the sentiment of opposition to an English GovernC 28 THE VOICE OF THE NATION. mentl might have been less boldly and determinedly expressed: under an Executive which made some show of placing generous confidence in the People, and of conferring benefits upon their leaders and favorites. Under the Whig Government the Repeal agitation was simply the expression of a rational desire on the part of the People to govern themselves-a desire springing from the irresistable conclusion they had reached, that even under a Government of their own creation, dependent upon the toleration of the Irish People and the votes of the Irish m[Iembers, it was impossible to obtain anything substantial; impossible to obtain the real elevation of the peasantry of Ireland into comfort-into the existence of men out of the existence of brutes; impossible to obtain anything but a few, smiles at the Castle, a few appointments of a few patriots, a scattering of the crumbs of patronage, to appease the appetite which even public virtue sometimes feels. Do we forget NORIMANBY ? That name is a pleasing memory in Ireland. He was a kind, a generous, a gallant being. The aristocracy of Ireland stood aloof from him. He met personal affront from the hereditary enemies of the People, and he bore it bravely. He did kind things; but what thing could he do that could have an effect when his Government passed away, except, indeed, giving a "local habitation" and a place to a few Yes, he did one thing-he deserving individuals? created a sentiment of affection and confidence in the People; and he thus furnished the grounds of a glorious contrast to the harsh, unfeeling, soulless, loveless Eecutive which now rules our present destinies. Then came FORTESCUE. Poor old gentleman'! he paid u, the compliment-a compliment, by the way, often paid by Englishmen-of marrying an Irish woman. But not content with the amorous declarations of fifty, or something more, he had the audacity, the unconstitutional audacity, to fulminate a declaration against those young men, who, poor in means, but rich in ambition and education, might justly look to promotion in their different professions ad callings-that if they dared to stand beforo the crowd, and to state the political faith they had, the shQuld rnot presule to hope for hQnur or emolument A THE VOICE OF THE NATION. 29 hands of an English Government! Taking a hint the frim Dante's inscription upon the gates of Hell, he said"For you there is no hope here." The meagre phantom passed, and another "slippered pantaloon" succeeded. Then came the day of strong Governments, of which the vigorous agent was THOMAS DE GREY, and what was before a-mere deduction of reason became an all-absorbing passiin. Irishmen before his accession had reasoned on the Repeal; and the occasional stimulant applied by the folly and conceited egotism of " base, bloody, and brutal" Whiggery, gave warmth and animation to their reasonings, but the ferocity of Toryism-the revival in its regime of the old spirit which has, since the accursed landing of the Norman adventurers, made our country the beggarly victim of a sanguinary commercial tyrant, elevated reasoning into passion. "The Union must be preserved at all hazards !" is the cold-blooded and sanguinary declaration of that cold and callous hypocrite--the hated plebeian who now supports the oligarchic system of England. "The Union must be preserved by all constitutional means !" answers Lord PALMERSTON. Thus the promise of Whiggery is the same, with a little modification, as that of the Conservative faction. We are somewhat surprised, knowing the habitual extravagance with which the Whig party bids for support, that its leaders thought proper to go out of their way in stating their determination to support the Union, however averse to the feelings of the Irish nation. They might have held their tongues, and thus have allowed us-if we were idiots enough for the purpose-to hope something at their hands of benefit to the great object which we have now at heart. They have disabused us on that point-let us disabuse them on another. There are in every party-history has left us no reA coided exception to the rule-timid and selfish men. There are men who have some virtue, and much love of -elf; and the latter quality is constantly fishing for an ex euse to impose upon the former. The return of the Whigs to power might subtract as many of such men as biEiin our party. To be sure they would be no great lis indsidtally, and as men; but their secession to the inw 30 THE VOICE OF THE NATION. sidious policy of Whiggery might give a handle to the enemies of the Repeal, and might work discouragement to the People. We have tried the Precursor policy once we shall never try it again. What, then, if the Whigs come in? It will be the duty of the People to adopt a steady course; to watch those who adhere to that pledge which was justly pronounced to be the holiest that man could take, or Priest administer, and to doubt, mistrust, and shun all those who are guilty of coquetry with the insidious enemies of Irish independence; to prefer, upon all occasions where the privilege of choice exists, those who are known to be sincere Repealers, and to manifest equal enmity to Whigs, Radicals, and Tories, who are opposed to the Repeal; to resist the miserable bribes, the wretched boons of Whiggery; the Judges' places and Barristers' appointments; the little in'ignificant patronage which will be distributed amidst some score of the " friends of the People," as mere traps for popularity; biddings for popular aid; worthless gauds thrown to selfish public men; most unsubstantial, goodfor-nothing things, as far as the interests and honour of the Irish Nation are concerned. Let it be remembered that we have created a public opinion in Europe and America in favor of Ireland, and the legislative independence of our country. This have we done most fraudulently and falsely, if any change of circumstances, any alteration of Government, could make us abandon the cause of the Repeal. If it were possible that any modification of the Government could render Repeal unnecessary; and if it were possible that England could at all administer the affairs of Irelandl to her advantage and honour, it was our bounden duty to have endeavoured to procure that modification before we threw her into what must be a struggle of difficulty--though, according to all the analogies of history, it must be successful. Having stated our firm belief that the result of all our previous efforts was to demonstrate most clearly that the only way by which a security could be given to Ireland for good government is the possession of legislative independence; end having, by the detail of our wrongs, and the fierce and angry denunciations of the oppressors of six centurlies, THE VOICE OF THE NATION. rused the feeling of America and France, and the unspoken sympathy of other European People, we should by faiiing back upon worthless Whiggery, and placing eliance on so rotten a reed, be trifling with the men of other nations whose sympathies are with us now. We iauld be abdicating for ever the generous aid which our of foreign countries are tendering to the oppressed and slandered People of Ireland. If we abandoned the Repeal now, we abandoned it for ever. We relinquished for ever the trust of Nations upon Irish firmness, and the sympathy of nations for Irish sorrow. A thriftless, talking, fickle, variable tribe would we write ourselves down, if we fell victims but for a day to the delusive trickery of the Whig party--to their promises and their promotions. We venture to anticipate that such a thing is entirely impossihle; and we, in a right friendly spirit, do suggest to the Whig leaders to play their game of faction irrespective of us. Let them not calculate upon Ireland. She will be as great a difficulty to PALMERSTON, as to PEEL. She has high and lofty objects of her own, different indeed from the wretched stakes of vicious ambition « hich the rival factions of England are playing for; a starving peasantry, a ruined commerce, a lost manufacture. There are, then, men and things which Irishmen must seek to comfort, elevate or restore. They will not consent to toil to raise the obscene idols of Whiggism upon the altar of power. To them it is indifferent Whether the Aristocrat of Bedford or the Plebeian of Tamworth is Minister of England. "fello-men FOREIGN POLICY. is full time to extend the foreign policy of Ireland. Ever since those distant ages when Europe rang with the praise of Irish scholarship, we have been too secluded. Yet something remained besides English intercourse. During the long struggle with England, the sons of the Irish.chiefs were commonly brought up at the Spanish or Oman Courts, and during the wars of the 16th and 17th It 32 THE VOICE OF THE NATION. centuries, there was constant commercial, military, and diplomatic intercourse between Ireland and the Continent. We made treaties with France, Lorraine, Spain, and the :Ecclesiastical States ; we exchanged our fabrics for theirs; we received assistance in arms and men from them all. Still there was not enough of this. There was enough to make Irish parties occasionally the tools and victims of foreign ministers; not enough to secure help when and how 'twas required ; not enough to obtain habitual recognition of our nationality, which would have awed down Italian intriguers, and English tyrants. In the 18th century there was still some intercourse, but it was by stealth, and existed only to procure soldiers for the continental armies, and maintain certain religious connections. Our foreign relations, restored for a moment during the existence of the French republic, perished with the Union, and it was not till the crisis of the Catholic agitation, in 1827, that we again established them. How great an influence our American and French connections exercised on our oppressor, need hardly be repeated. We had aided America during her struggle with 16;000 soldiers, and her best General-MONTGOMERY. Grateful for our help, and filled with our exiles, she was ready to return the compliment. Fearful lest the veterans of Valley Forge should come eastward, or France spare Lafayette for a campaign, England grew pale and conceded free trade in 1779, and legislative independence in 1782. Not that England feared France or America but she feared Ireland, when aided by them. It has been often said that DUMOURIER helped to carry the Toleration act of 1793, but his victory of Jemappe derived half of its persuasive power from the intimacy of Ireland with France, amounting to fraternity, in the case of the Ulster Protestants. For Belfast boasted a brotherhood :with Paris, and Irish addresses were seen on the table of the convention. In 1828, the letters, money, and miscellaneous hints of America, the instructive voice of the Parisian press, and the minute inquiries made by the French Cabinet into certain branches of Irish statistics, hastened Emancipation. .With reference to this last period, we may state that THE VOICE OF THE NATION. 33 such an effect had the articles published in l'Etoile on ieland;, that CANNING wrote a remonstrance to M. de VitELE, asking him, "was it intended that the war of The remonstrance pens should bring on one of swords ?' as unavailing-the French sympathy for Ireland increased, and other offices than newspaper offices began But arms to brush up their information on Ireland. yielded to the gown, and the maps and statistics of Ireland never left the War-office of France ! The history of our partial success is, then, one reason for having a foreign policy for Ireland, as an instrument for still greater triumphs. England holds us with so old a gripe, and such unsparing talons, that her hold requires more .than internal struggle to force her off. Repeal must be agitated on the Hudson as well as the Liffey. A shout f;r Irish independence on the shores of the Seine would only yield in importance to the same cry from the banks of the Shannon and the Bann. Would it not, ought it not, encourage us to know that the brave hearts of France beat for us? Have not the threatening accents of America shaken the foe ? But still all depends on ourselves. Occasions resulting from France's wrath, or America's sympathy, may come and go=may have come, and gone--and we be, as we have been, unable to avail ourselves of them. Had Ireland been organised when THIERS was in office in 1840, we shoild now be independent. A foreign policy, then, is practicable and important, for it has been tried with success. Nor is our own history 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, direct help, are secured by old and generous lliances. Thus, the alliance of Prussia carried Englanid through the wars of the 18th century; the alliance of France rescued the wavering fortunes of America; the Salliance of Austria maintains Turkey against Russia, and so in a thousand instances beside. A People known and regarded abroad will be more 34, THE VOICE OF THE NATION. 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 saldier'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 stimulates its sons to greatness and nobility. The 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 th :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; but they will be useful in banishing any dreams of invasion which might otherwise haunt the brain of our old enemy. We are the last men in the country to counsel helpless dependence on foreign sympathy. We must work out our ot liberation with steady, courageous, unflinching industry. We must deserve to succeed or we cannot. Or even if we did, 'twould bring no blessing! If Ireland do not contain, and trust men so virtuous, learned, valorous, anid wise, as to be fit to assume the reins of Government in a land where religious quarrels, blood-feuds, social inequality, and constant English intrigue, would render aniy Government a great task, then Ireland does not deserve freedom, nor is she in a condition to profit by it. Bit our obtaining the countenance and help of foreigners, i tidt at all inconsistent with this. On the contrary, THE VOICE OF THE NATION. 35 j1 ist as Ireland exhibits intelligence, courage, and integrity, she will win the trust and sympathy of other nations. The honest disinterested help of foreigners, be they the yeomen of America, the Whigs, Chartists, or Radicals of England, the literary and chivalrous classes of France, or the religious and democratic bodies in Scotland, will come in proportion as we deserve it. Mere machinery may win it for a moment; but for any permanent and practical end, it can only arise from the merits and devotion of Ireland. The, Gods were said to sympathise with good men struggling with adversity. We shall have God's grace and man's assistance if we deserve them by a pious, fearless, and incorruptible patriotism, and thus alone. WAYS AND MEANS. " Let well alone, is an old proverb-let ill alone, bids fair to rival it. The Irish agitator and his agitation are evils which will cure themselves ; both are fast dyiny for want of aliment. He feels the death-grip upon him; and, in his despair, seeks to provoke government by his taunts to furnish him with the means of prolonging his noxious existence. Agitation unopposed must die the death. Even the priest-ridden dupes who flock together at the demagogue's signal, who are stormy or are stilled at his bidding, and whom he rules as despotically as Prosperodid the airy tenants of his island, are, &c."-London Morning Herald, July, '43. Is this true ? Are we the dupes of an Impostor-we who have embarked in this Repeal agitation ? The poor peasant who earns a shilling by twelve hours of bitter toil, and with more than princely generosity bestows it upon his country-is he swindled of his earnings under false pretences ? And the rest of us-the farmer, who defies a despotic and relentless landlord, and, with his ,t¢kmaster's ukase in his pocket, swells the ranks of some prohibited meeting; the magistrate, who voluntarily puts off the coveted robe of office and power ; the young professional man, who abdicates the throne of his ambition (a prouder one than any actual throne that ever emperor sat upon), all for their country-are they the mere pawns played by a Charlatan, who all along knows that he cannot c2 36 THE VOICE OF THE NATION. win the game ? And these solemn assemblies we have seen-assemblies of injured, patient men-are they the puppets of a political showman, who, when it suits his purpose, needs but to ring his bell, and announce that the performance has concluded ? If this be the creed of England, her folly will be a bye-word when the site of St. James's is forgotten. She will furnish another lesson for apprentice statesment to be studied side by side with the contempt of Charles I. for the partizans of " a Huntingdon Brewer," and ~hat sadder story of the gay derision with which the doomed Court of Louis XVI. regarded the " Sanscullotes" of Paris when they rose up in an agony of hunger and talked of rights and justice. No, believe us, Euglishmen, human nature is not so pliant a thing as that, when you point the road that it does not wish to go. Few men appeal in vain who would rouse the passions of an INJURED people. Any voice may excite them to resistance, as any spark will explode a mass of gunpowder--there is nothing so inflammable as injured men. But when they see the way to redress, and feel all their sufferings with the keen impatience begotten of that knowledge, will the same voice-will any voicewill the voice of an Archangel persuade them that it is good to suffer on ? Such a hope is the hope of fools. If O'CONNELL, instead of being the giant leader of a united people, were a coward, who was willing to forego his purpose from fear, or a knave, who would sell the glorious inheritance of a people's love and gratitude for some of the nicknames and millinery that kings bestow, he could not undo his own work. He has taught the people to know their wrongs and the redress. They have eaten of the tree, and though their instructor proved to be a tempter, a serpent, and a devil, they cannot unlearn the knowledge of good and evil. Injured men are always in earnest. Let our enemies keep in mind that infallible test, and judge us by it. If our sufferings are a delusion, then le them be sure that the agitation also is a delusion. If we are making dishonest pretences for disturbing the public peace, than are they justifled in assuming that sooner or later we will be put ,4wa THE' VOICE OF THE NATION. 37 with shameand confusion. But if there are tens of thousands of sad homes which furnish these monster meetings with .artizans, idle because the produce of their country is spent iri forign cities, and hungry because they are idle, and who look to the issue of this agitation as their relief. If .there are millions of men tilling the soil from sun-rise to sub-set, and receiving for their pains less than a subsistence--a scanty supply of spongy potatoes, shared with their pigs--and other millions who have no employment atall, and exist on the casual charity of their more fortunate brethren, who are permitted to toil without the legitimate reward of labour--if hundreds of merchants who have seen our ports full of ships and our warehouses of customers-and hundreds of manufacturers, whose trade has died of inanition, are scattered through the ci-ties and towns of the kingdom, then let them be assured that the agitation is not a delusion, but a sad and awful reality. Then let them believe that as well may the robber hope to carry off his plunder with impunity in the open day, as any power that inflicts these evils, whether it had its birth half a century or seven centuries ago, hope to continue them without resistance. This is " the alimient" for lack of which the agitation will not die-the sense of injustice in a plundered and oppressed people. There is no cause recorded in history by which kingdoms rose or fell, that had juster grounds. It rests its broad ,(base upon the first law of human nature. Men feel the sharp pangs of want, and they ask relief--that is all. Trusting that "such an evil will cure itself," is like leaving an open artery to time and chance. But even the actual sufferers-the traders without wealth, and the mechanics without food-are less dangerous to England than others, in whom her tyranny has made patriotism a passion. Let England beware of the class that produced Robert Emmet and Wolf Tone-the young men who come into the world hot from the contemplation of classic courage and virtue, and restless to act the thing they have been taught to love. She knows little of them, for there is nothing like them among her people; but these are the men she has chiefly to fear. They from a. Relpeal Association that no proscription can reac h. THE VOICE OF THE NATION. If to-morrow one blow struck down every man who has hitherto shared in the agitation-from the great Leader to the humble writer of these lines-the success would be only more distant, not a jot more uncertain. In a hundred colleges, mansions, cottages, in the high courts of law, and the humble reading clubs of the provinces, the young intellect and energy of the country are silently devoting themselves to the task of her regeneration. O'CONNELL has bequeathed his spirit to them, if they lose his presence. The time, the money, the prospects and fortunes of many able and distinguished men, have been thrown into the flame that rages in the heart of Ireland but these young men, who bring little else than their intellect and their courage to the struggle, are more formidable opponents. Let it not be feared that their young vigour will be exhausted in a week or two, and die of old age, to justify the hopes of the Tory journalist. And in what nook of the country, no matter how distant, how bleak, how poor, is there not a Catholic Priest to preach the principle of nationality ? There is nothing more holy but the sublime truths which he was ordained to teach; and it does not discredit his sacred office to be its herald. The Priesthood are omnipresent and perennial, and the experience of eighteen centuries justifies us in believing that they will not die " for want of aliment." These men, lay and clerical, set to work, knowing that it is not the labour of an hour to build up the greatness of 4 nation, but equally assured that energy and intellect are irresistible. To such a junction nothing is impossible. The incredible of last year may become the commonplace of the next. Twelve summers ago, a few men in Oxford University, with these gifts, and no others, resolved that they would reform the church of England; to-day their proselytes in the ministry reckon by thousands-in the laity by hundreds of thousands; they fill the dignified chairs of professors, the august thrones of bishops; and they count among them some of the most distinguished noiens in literature, many of the finest intellects in the Segislature, and, it is said, the Sovereign of the country herself. THEY WERE IN EARNEST-that was their secret; an their success has been no greater than true zeal may THE VOICE OF THE NATION. 39 always: command. The sacred fire that is unquenchable by ,human skill, and irresistible by human barrier, is but the type of ENTHUSIASM. The agitation of such men :and there are such men amongst us, is not likely to die "for want af aliment." Men who deserve, or can attain to influence a People, ought to have in their hearts the conviction that there is no true success without thorough honesty of intention. Wanting this, their success is not successful. The shout of an applauding multitude, unless there be the conviction within that it is justly earned-the payment of honest services---hisses like a serpent in the ears. It is only men so endowed that can serve our country. But we do not regret to know that in addition to such men, who must always be few in a community, our Enemy has to fear the ambition of a class with mixed motives of patriotism and personal interest-men who think the elevation of their country a fair opportunity for the improvement of their owh fortune; who, like BONAPARTE'S conscripts, enlist in the ranks, not so much to serve the state, as with the hope of becoming Field Marshals. Years of legitimate labour could not give them what hope pictures as the sure result of a successful revolution. Let PEEL beware of these men too, with their hungry ambition and their lively imaginations. They are dangerous enemies to a paralytic government. Personal ambition will strike as hard a blow as patriotism, and be less scrupulous, when it is just to throw away the scabbard. - It is a strange judgment upon England, that her tyranny has not raised a more passionate storm of indignation in true hearts, than of hope in corrupt ones. Neither is likely to die for " want of aliment," while there is a Union or an Arms' Bill. hopes of England spring from the grossest ignorance of us and of herself-of our strength, and of her own weakness. She forgets her American colonies, and the bitter lesson they taught her; and talks over again the bluster and insolence which they would not endure. And why should we endure it? If we are taunted with the hopelessness of contending with an empire upon whose plundered dominions the sun never sets, may we not retort with the warning of history? Why should we not SThese 40 THE VOICE OF THE NATION. tell her that Spain, in her pride and ignorance, made the self-same boast, in the self-same words; and that to-day she lies like a dismantled hulk on the waters, the helpless prey of robbers ? Territory to a selfish state is weakness; and the man who thinks the brown hills of the murdered Affghans, the invaded home of the French Canadians, the islands peopled by exiled Irish Catholics, or the penal colonies, partitioned between the scum of society transported for their crimes, and brave men unjustly exiled for political offences, give strength to England, are poor judges of mankind. To retain any one of them she must take warning by the effects of misgovernment on Ireland, and hasten to make reparation for all her injustice. If she does not, a Spanish ship may some day repay her courtesy to Espartero, by affording a shelter to her chief governor, flying from a host of domestic factions, who, having learned to plunder and torture in the Colonies, exercise at home the crimes for which there is no longer a vent abroad. Even rats in extremity prey upon each other. FATHER MATHEW. To drunkenness of the Irish was unlike that of any other people. Many of the happiest, wealthiest, and most moral nations in Europe, drink more than the Irish did, man for man. The Scotch drink whiskey, the Southern nations wine, the English and German porter, and the Swedes and Norwegians potato brandy; but, then, they drink these liquors habitually-every day-as a part of their ordinary sober diet. Far unlike was the Irishman's drukenness. He drank nothing for some 350 days in the year; but once, or, may be oftener in the month, he got roarting drunk. This occasional- debauch was the Lethe-moment of all his sorrows. He then forgot all his wrongs. His cabin was warm, his belly full, his back covered- for an afternoon ! But he woke in the morning penniless, broken-headed, guilty, conscience-sore. During his4intoxication he had flutig off his chains, and his duties. THE VOICE OF THE NATION. 41 He had lost sight of his own miseries, and the comfort of his wife and children also. And for this transient flush of intemperance he not only inflicted severer privations on himself, but the hearth of his bosom's wife was colder, and the board of his young ones more scanty, for months to come. Narrowed means, injured character, and soured temper, with starvation, and quarrels, and degradation, were a fearful penalty for a short pleasure. Still the very greatness of his suffering was his excuse -his natural excuse, for making it greater, in order to achieve liberty and luxury for an hour, by the magic of intoxication. It is neither justice to our countrymen nor to the illustrious author of the Temperance Reformation to represent their past error as a proof of vicious character, nor their late change as the victory of mere genius over a multitude. Irish intoxication was the luxury of despair-the saturnalia of slaves. Irish Temperance is the first fruit of deep-sown hope, the offering of incipient freedom. The moment when political organisation, social action, and the rudiments of education had set the People thinking, hope came down upon them like dew, and the fever of their hearts abated. Whenever, in past times, any great call was made upon their energies, when the rallying of multitudes gave them hope, and the teaching of leaders gave them intelligence, they became for the time temperate-witness their Temperance during the progress of the United Irish system, and through parts of the Emancipation struggle. But the excitement faded, and the hope grew cold, and they returned to habitual despair, and its periodic alleviation, drunkenness. But deeper instruction, and the steadier hope which rests on self-trust, have more slowly and more surely come down and dwelt with the People, and this it is that has rendered Temperance general and permanent. The peasant thinks that he, too, may become an independent yeoman, fed, clad, and housed, like a man, not worse than the beasts as he is now. The artizan thinks that his trade can be extended and made profitable. All classes 42 TIE VOICE OF THE NATION. are led to believe that upon their own hard industry, on their bold and intelligent assertion of their social rights, their future lot depends; and they begin to see that education, force of character, energy, virtue, and patience, are necessary to qualify them for gaining their ends, and that intemperance must ruin all. Everything that advances the intellect, raises the spirits, invigorates the taste, and swells the courage of the People, will confirm their temperance. The more free arid refined they grow, the more independent of the mad joy of drink will they become. The greater their material comfort, and their intellectual strength, the greater their pride of heart and security of rights, the more will they prize, and cling to Temperance. In what we have here said we do not bruise one leaf of Theobald Mathew's laurels. His mission was to convince the People, through their reason and affections, of the virtue, and wisdom, and duty of Temperance; and he did his work. He did it thoroughly, nobly, purely, wonderfully. He came clothed in plain humility-his words were the native household speech of the People-his principles, virtue and hope. He opened the cabin door, and showed the sober man how the wife and children of the drunkard withered to supply his debauch-he rolled on the changes of time; and rent unpaid, and land untilled, and deficient food, and sick bodies, and ruined affections, were seen in the train of excess. He pointed out to them the difficulty of amendment, and the impossibility of such impetuous minds as theirs compromising with vice, till they saw in his picture-words the drunkard hurrying to his fate as surely as the water which has leaped the cliff goes to break orin the rocks at its base. And brighter visions came, too-comfort, for excess; mirth, and music, and bold sports, for sottish indulgence; the pride of virtue, for the vaunt of vice. To have regenerated the People by such means is the glory of him who taught, and of them who learned. THE VOICE REPEAL OF THE NATION. 43 CONSIDERED. IT is one of our most sacred duties-it is the duty of which the performance gives us the liveliest pleasureto keep constantly before the minds of the People of Ireland the -paramount, the all-indispensable, necessity for national self-government. Without the free, unfettered energies of national independence, exercised with no other control than that of a rational directing judg ment, it is utterly and totally impracticable that Ireland can ever be prosperous or happy. It is a strange and a perverse fate that deprives such a country as Ireland of the precious jewel of self-legislation; for whenever the legislative acts of the Irish Parliament or Government have really been accordant with the wishes of the Irish people-whenever those acts have really had the sanction of the national sympathythen has Irish legislation been 'invariably pure and just in its spirit, lofty in its sentiment, beneficial and salutary in its practical consequecnes. The irresistible inference from all this is-that there never existed on the face of the earth a nation better fitted to make their own laws than the People of Ireland. People of Ireland ! we bid you be of good cheer. Keep yourselves at work for the Repeal in untiring, incessant activity. Your cause is the cause of justiceand the cause of justice is the cause of Gon. We bid you be of good cheer for, mark it well! your deliverance rests with yourselves-your success is absolutely in your own hands. We say to you, therefore-work out your deliverance ! achieve your honest triumph. There is nothing so important for you to be thoroughly convinced of-there is nothing we feel so desirous to impress and to reiterate, as this simple fact-" YOUR SUCCESS IS ENTIRELY IN YOUR OWN HANDS." Recollect, and bear constantly in mind your own strength. Recollect, also, that in politics there is no such thing as strength without combined exertion. It is true we are eight millions and a half; but it is also true that if we were eight times eight millions, our nu- 44 THE VOICE OF THE NATION. merical amount would be morally contemptible and politically powerless, unless we asserted and demonstrated our title to freedom, by sternly, indefatigably WORKING FOR IT. We say to you, then, People of Ireland-Work for your freedom. If you work there is no fear but you will get it. THE POWER, WE REPEAT, IS IN YOUR HANDS. Recollect your own strength. Recollect that you have majestic with you, in the first place, the might might-of TRUTH. It is not more true that two and two make four, than that every nation has the sole and indefeasible right to make her own laws for the governrient of her own affairs. It is a right derived from the ALMiGHTY. It is perfectly true that this right may be modified on the part of one nation by compact, or treaty, with some other nation : but this is not the case ofIreland. The Irish nation indignantly disclaim having ever, by treaty or compact, surrendered one tittle of their sole and exclusive right to make their own laws to govern themselves. The Union was not the act of the Irish people. The tyrant's ruthless gripe was on Ireland's throat: and during the moment of her weakness her ruin was achieved by her enemies. But GoD has raised up honest men in Ireland-ay, and strong men, too. GOD has implanted an indomitable hatred of oppression and tyranny, and an inextinguishable love of justice, in the hearts of the Irish millions. O'CoNNELL's thrilling summons to his countrymen to -the struggle for their rights has not fallen idly upon apathetic Auditors it has penetrated to the heart's core of Irish- men. They will struggle with him, and they will be free. Recollect your own strength, People of Ireland. The TRUttH is thoroughly and entirely with you. The TRUTH is with you in principle-it is with you through all the details. Repealers of Ireland ! you have the magic weapon of Titr a in your grasp--justice, right, and sound policy are thoroughly on your side. Remember the mode in which you are efficiently to wield your weapon--yout must combine with O'CONNELL by becoming members and associates of the Loyal National Repeal Association. THE.VOICE 'OF THE NATION. 45 It is thus (and thus only) that you can give practical and irresistible efficacy to your national desires. -Recollect your own strength. There are in Ireland between eight and nine millions of inhabitants. Take :out of these all the rabid and incurable enemies of their native country ; all persons who are influenced by the bitter and malignant insanity of religious bigotry; who think that the interests of Protestantism are incompatible with the freedom of Ireland, and are willing to sacrifice that freedom to this unhappy error; take out, also, all the wretched, cringing, thoroughly-contemptible antiRepeal Catholics, (thank GoD there are none of these among the frieze coats !) whose motive is more base and despicable than that of the Protestant bigots, inasmuch as, in ninety-nine cases out of an hundred, it results from a paltry and degrading desire to fawn upon and crouch before some aristocratic neighbour or acquaintance; take :out all these, and along with them every man who, from whatsoever sordid or debasing motive, is a foe to the Repeal of the Union-and we will still have left at least 'seven millions of persons who have not one scrap of either motive or pretext to withhold their aid from the Repeal movement. Seven millions of persons, whose highest in,terest: it is to have the springs of Irish enterprise and industry freed from the paralyzing shackles of the Union. Seven millions who, by a steady and unflinching perseverance in the constitutional struggle, can just as certainly, and a great deal more rapidly, effect the Repeal of the Union, than the millions of Irishmen under the guidance of O'CONNELL achieved Emancipation. We emphatically say more rapidly. We stand upon a vantage ground now, which the strugglers for Emancipation were destitute of. Because we have now tested, by the ultimate success of that struggle, the potent efficacy of the means whereby it was achieved-means which then were matter of problematical speculation-but which now are demonstrated by the conclusive evidence of triumphant experience to be fully adequate to their end. Yes, there is a moral and a politically omnipotent influence in the peaceful combination of seven millions of human beings, standing forth before the nations of the earth to assert 46- THEE VOICE OF THE NATION. their indomitable resolve to win for themselves the enjoyment of national liberty. No Government can finally crush that'combination. No tyranny can finally resist it. It meets and thwarts the oppressor in a thousand varied shapes-it renders him uneasy in his seat-it palsies, and ultimately destroys his evil energies. Rally, then, ye honest millions of the Irish Nationrally for Repeal. Protestant--CatholicDissenter-all ye who feel you have a country too good to be plundered, degraded, insulted, and oppressed by foreign legislation rally for old Ireland. RECOLLECT YOUR OWN STRENGTH -recollect also that your strength lies in your numbers, your energy, your COMBINED AND UNTIRING PERSEVERANCE. One million of enrolled Associators carried Emancipation-why should not three millions of enrolled Repealers now emancipate Ireland from the accursed Union? England, moreover, is much weaker in 1843 than she was in 1829 ; and consequently far less able to resist the Repeal movement than she was to resistEmancipation. To the work, then, ye millions of the Irish Peopleto the work ! Catholic-Dissenter-Protestant! band together under the Green Standard of your common country ! Bear aloft that proud, stainless banner; and, with the blessing of the great and just GOD, it will soon wave over your heads in the temple of the Irish Consti- tution Yes; we feel and know that such a land as ours, and such a people as inhabit it, are not destined for provincial bondage. The proud consciousness animates our hearts -our aspirations for the future partake less of hope than of joyous, buoyant confidence. GOD did not make us to be slaves. We will we must be free. Our confident expectations for the future are not the visions of a blind enthusiasm. Although the nature of our struggle necessarily thrills all the higher, nobler, sensations of men's souls, and awakens all the poetry of the human heart, yet there never was a struggle more solidly based than is ours upon the sober calculations of shrewd common sense. The blessings which we anticipate from Repeal are THE VOICE OF THE NATION. 47 not superhuman or Utopian-they are tangible and substantial. Distress must, more or less, exist in every country, but Repeal will render it less frequent. Repeal will give us the control of our own taxation. It will give us the command of our own money-it will effectualty avail to keep Irish money in Ireland-it will enable us to open up the national resources of our country-it will plant once more amongst us the central power of local legislation, which acts as a magnet to attract around it the great, the noble, the gifted, the powerful, the wealthy, of the land-it will generate and cherish zeal for fatherland among these classes-it will bind anew those ties of patriotic love which absenteeism has broken it will give us domestic markets, by restoring among us the wealthy consumers-it will concentrate and combine the national energies of Irishmen it will reinvigorate our trade and manufactures-it will give us a constitutional legislative organ at home, unswayed by any alien feeling, and unincumbered by any business other than Irish-it will redeem us from the foul disgrace and the grinding evil of being exposed to the legislative intermeddling of the Stanleys and the Lyndhursts-of the hostile faction of another land. People of Ireland! we ask you are these blessings worth struggling for ? If they be, then, in GoD's name, join, one and all, for the Repeal. WE TELL YOU THAT THE POWER TO REDEEM YOUR COUNTRY IS IN YOUR OWN HANDS ! SYMPATHY. All who are free sympathise with the struggling slave, for they know the worth of freedom. All who wish to be free sympathise with him too, for his case is their own. Were the slave nations of the earth banded togethier, they could scatter their gaolers as the avalanche breaks the bulwarks on which its snows, if disunited, would have stormed in vain. If the free nations were to unite to liberate the enchained, another equinoctial would not blow on a People's chains. 48 THE VOICE OF THIE NATION. Whoever hears the cry of a nation for liberty longs to help them. Even the despot commonly feels for all slaves but his own. Let not us only rejoice, but let all who, like us, are provincials, fighting for nationality-let not only Ireland, but Poland, Italy, and Hungary, be glad at the progress which the foreign policy of Ireland is making. If Ireland be liberated by internal union and American and French sympathy, what People can be kept as an unwilling province ? We demand, we claim the intercourse, the good word, at least, now--something more, perhaps, by-and-by--of every Helot and every Liberator on both sides of the Atlantic. We are battling for Ireland; if we conquer, 'twill be for mankind. THE COMING STRUGGLE. THE clouds are thickening-Heaven only knows with what they are charged. Is it national triumph, won without blood or suffering-or is it national disaster, the doom of cowardice and shame ? Have we mocked the higher virtues when claiming communion with them, or are our pledges those of men ? Is Ireland strong, conscious, self-trusting-is she up to the level of her destiny ? Is the past in her heart, and the future in her eye; and is she nerved to the task that both counsel ? If so, she is worthy of the time, and may be proud it has come; if not, . But wherefore the alternative? The horrors it involves are nowhere written. History has them not, for no man dare indite them. What a pirate horde may do--checked, beaten back for a moment, captured, and then; free and victorious, would afford a mimnic imagery of the treatment of the self-abased and fallen People who would fail in being equal to the rising destiny of Ireland. Death in any shape were preferable. The vista leading on to glory is not more inviting than the abyss behind is dark with ruin. There is no going back, unless we are prepared to fall in. Are we ? Ques- THE VOICE OF THE NATION. 4,R i for tinp : cowards this! It has passed our pen, not in apprehension, but to show that even if we were such, there isnow no room for a compromise with fate. Our demand isthat which never could be urged except in the earnestness wherein life weighs but little, or abandoned without eternal disgrace. Suph is our position. We ask but for the re-assertion of a recognised, established, and long-enduring principlea principle which not forty years ago was the polar star of every Irishman who looked high for his country's fortune, To worship it was the political faith of Irelandit was found to be consistent with the highest glory or England, and the undisturbed integrity of the empire. Out of it no germ of public danger sprung; in its freest action was the highest security of the United Kingdoms. But it was sold in the public market by a cut-throat--and then ? And then-Ireland annuls the bargain; therefore is she in the language of her torturers, "seditious." Be it sonay, if this be treason, we are traitors. Let them mouth at us their saucy epithets--call Repeal "dismemberment," and uneasiness in our fetters "turbulence"-let them brand ourselves as " disaffected" and "rebellious"--no coarse invective shall scare us from the task of blotting out a public lie, daubed on the Deed of Union by the bloody hands of a suicide. But these men grimly taunt us, and say that those who have a a stake" in the country are against "dismemberment." Let us not quarrel about a nickname; but is there no "stake" among the Repealers? What is a "stae?" Is it the means of independent existence realised by honest toil, by good culture, by energy, industry, an skill?-or the rank, vegetable-like hoard, descending to the sleepy heir from a plundering ancestor? Which of these is "stake," in the honourable or decent acceptation of that word ? If the former (and who will gainsay it.?) thoe: have the Repealers a stake twenty times as large, and a thousand times as suggestive of virtuous ambition as that of those who prate about "something to lose." Apart from this, too, every man's first stake is his life, his honour, and the lives, happiness and honour of 4 50 THE VOICE OF THE NATION. those whom God has linked with him on earth. Whoever looks on ought else as higher than these is a sot or a slave, incapable of living the life or dying the death of a man. Oh ! who can calculate the stake of him who has a heart to love his country-the pledge irrevocable of the man who has felt history? Who can look into the grave of murdered patriots, and not find something there to take to heart? Is there no stake in altars polluted and laid low-pledges made and broken-heroism betrayed and martyred by the artifice, insincerity, and truculence of the Saxon ? What track of his along a blackened land not marked by lust, rapine, and crime? Stake! Irishmen have a stake in the grave-a stake of higher measure than the wealth of the world. But this, it will be said, means separation. It is for those who say so to turn the word into an act. There is one thing which binds the Irish irrevocably to the British Crown-their oaths. No act of their own can make that oath unbinding ; and should its obligations ever lose their hold upon the Irish heart, it must be when the compact on which it is based is rudely broken by some other hand. 'On an equality with England, and out of the reach of her rapacity, there is nothing in the privilege of the Monarch to which Ireland could be averse. The respective advantages of each country would compel from them mutual respect; and the throne would ever be the honourable medium of adjusting international differences. What could lead to separation? Injustice, treachery, crime, on either part. On that of Ireland they shall not be. Why pre-suppose our own guilt? If others do so for themselves, and that their anticipations be correct, we say at once, and boldly, that to struggle for separation would be a duty no less imperative and holy than it is at present to struggle for the consolidation of the countries, by establishing the independence of the Irish Parliament. 61 THE VOICE OF THE NATION. THE KIRK OF SCOTLAND. THE Scotch democracy established Presbyterianism, and endowed it. Yet, in conferring on it national support, they guarded it jealously against Government control. They anade it an endowed, yet independent and democratic Church, and the People used to choose their own Ministers. Afterwards the choice vested in the Presbytery, (the most venerable members of the Congregation,) subject to the control of the Synod and Assembly. This, being the will and custom of Scotland, was confirmed by Acts of Parliament, especially by one passed in 1690, and this Act was, in express words, made part of the Treaty of Union with Scotland in 1706. Whether part, or all of this policy was right or wrong, matters not-'twas the will of the Scottish People-'twas the constitution of Scotland. It outlived revolutions and dynasties. It bent to some storms, it braved others, it outlasted all, while Scotland was a nation, and could nourish and guard its root. Nay, even the traitors who sold their nationhood for an equivalent-a heavenly birthright for a mess of pottage--even they had not the depravity or the boldness to sell the Church of their country. The Union of 1706, which plundered Scotland of so much, guarded the continuance and independence of the Kirk. Vain thought, to let the foe inside your works, and fight a Limerick battle in your citadel. The Union Act was violated in 1711. Patronage, the worst enemy to Presbyterianism, was enacted by the English Parliament. That violation has been repeated by every instance of patronage from that day to this. And now when the Scotch People, represented by their Elders and Ministers in General Assembly, according to the constitution, have declared that this encroachment is no longer to be tolerated, they are deprived of the power of removing it by a still worse encroachment--no less than the destruction of their independence. Civil Courts, including the Saxon Peers, and backed by the Executive, have undertaken to decide the limits of the jurisdiction of the Church; and, still further, .The D THE VOICE OF THE NATION. have prohibited Clergymen, closed and opened Churches, punished Presbyteries for their conduct in ecclesiastical matters, and, as Sir George Grey, in his admirable speech, showed, have exercised all the functions which reason, Presbyterianism, and custom, treat as inherent in the Ecclesiastical Courts of such a Church as the Scottish. Scotland seems little inclined to bear these wrongs. Her Assembly has pronounced the decision of the House of Peers to be unconstitutional, and a usurpation. The Assembly appeal to the People to vindicate their rights. The words of the declaration are: "We have also declared, if these decisions are allowed to stand -are sanctioned by the legislature--after using all the legitimate means of remonstrance at our disposal, we shall still say that the constitution is violated-that the treaty of union is not observed -that the act of security is broken. But we say that after we have exhausted all our legitimate resources of remonstrance and expostulation, it is not the business of the church to vindicate the constitution farther. If the treaty of union be broken, that is an affair for the nation of Scotland. " The battle is about to be waged. We are entering on our last conflict. The church of Scotland is called on in these days not only to take up the testimony of our fathers, but to complete it. She has not merely resumed the standard which they resigned only with their blood, but she has resumed it with a fuller motto than ever they had." This is the language of a nation that has a history to tell, a name to boast, and honour to guard. This is the spirit of men who think duty above gain, and independence cheaply purchased by a people's gold or a people's blood. This smacks of old times--this is full of promise. Let Scotland think of what she was--and is-and how she became so. She was a nation, who traced her pedigree behind the first flight of the Roman eagle, from whose pinions she tore their speed--iu whose breast the arrow of Galgacus quivered. The Dane who subdued England, fled bleeding from Loncart ie. Saxon and Norman came on in vain. They were repelled, and the triumphant tide of Scottish victory followed them over half England. But dissension rose, and with it weakness. Edward the Cruel rushed upon herbe burned the records of her independence-he rent from THE VOICE OF THE NATION. 5 53 her the " Stone of Destiny''--the "Liafail" which Ireland had entrusted to her--the palladium of her freedom and the ward of her honour; he placed his minion on her spoiled throne, and his mercenaries in her strongholds. But the strongest was not subdued. " Gude Wallace" did not despair. In the citadel of his heart his country's hope took refuge. The victory of Falkirk only freed Scotland for a moment; but it was a moment worth ages. It was a glimpse of her beloved freedom. It was an act of self-redemption, the power of which, nothing 9ould destroy. Where is the Scot who does not offer worship to the hero of five hundred years ago ?-who does not start, and then blush, when he hears the name of Falkirk?--who does not remember, against England, the day " When matchless Wallace first was seen In mockery crowned with wreaths of green ?" What Scot but needs vengeance, as his mind's eye sees the glorious limbs of the gentle and brave upon the provincial castles of England, and the head of the faithful and generous, who, with his band, faced the pursuer in defence of the weak, and accepted death in preference to one base word--sees that head on the gates of haughty London ? Country of Wallace, art thou a province of England? What need to follow her from Royal Bruce to Royal James--from him who sowed the slopes of Bannockburn with the corses of England's chivalry, to him, round whom fought the " Scottish circle deep," which the Knighthood and the Yeomanry of the Southron vainly assailed ? Victor of Bannockburn, dost thou serve? Victim of Flodden, thou wert better with thy dead King and nobles, stiff in their gore upon "Flodden bent," than serving their slayer.* * Since then 500 of the ministers of Scotland, headed by Drs. Chalmers and Candleish, have seceded. The body of the Scotch Presbyterians went with them, and the Irish Presbyterians sanctioned their proceedings under the advice o: Dr. Cooke. The Scession is rich, powerful, persecuted, and in the right. The Refuse Assembly is a state of injustice. The issue is certain, and oatvrxy remote. 54 THE VOICE OF THE NATION. THE VICEREGAL HOTEL. " 21,3761. was proposed to defray the charges of the Chief Secretary and Privy Council of the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. '" Mr. Hume objected to this vote. He would appeal to the noble lord, the chief secretary for Ireland, whether the amount was not too large ? "Lord Eliot said that it would altogether depend on what might be expected from the Chief Secretary. If the Chief Secretary was expected to receive persons who might come from the country on the business of the government, and TO EXERCISE HOSPITALITY, as had hitherto been the case, he thought the amount was not too large. " The vote was agreed to."-House of Commons, March 31st. WE congratulate our provincial friends on the recognition by Parliament of their right to hospitable entertainment at the Chief Secretary's Lodge. Right, we say; for a solemn vote of 21,3761. a-year for the purpose, surely establishes a substantial title in equity. There is no actual statute law entitling a pauper to demand relief in a Workhouse, or a street-beggar at the Mendicity, but the claim is invariably conceded ; and we take it that the principle is the same in all houses of entertainment supported by the public money-whether in North Brunswick-street, Usher's-Island, or the Phenix-park. But the officer who has the management of the institution, is in no instance but this entrusted with the duty of selecting the objects of public bounty. Such a system is liable to jobbing and favouritism; when the right exists at all it is universal. Some country gentlemen ought to raise this point, to put it beyond all doubt ; for what signifies the outcry of the Repealers about native trade, and native laws, and speculative questions of that sort, compared to this eminently practical question to the great landed interest, of-Where shall we dine ? " Party," says Locke, "is the madness of many for the gain of a few ;" and Lord Eliot's entertainments are parties which this definition fits to a nicety. We can fancy how the few enjoy the good things, and chuckle at the deputized hospitality of the many, who pay the bill, but don't play the host. We hope, that Lord Eliot has the grace to invite his guests in suitable THE VOICE OF THE NATION. 55 terms. It would require more impudence than we gave him credit for, to ask them to dine with him, when, in fact, they are dining with the People. His enter.tainments are " public dinners" in a wider sense than .any held in the Rotundo ; and we think that it ought to be insisted upon that the Castle organs, instead of the usual formula, " the Chief Secretary entertained at dinner at his Lodge, yesterday, Mr. Justice Leatherlungs, Mr., Mrs., and Miss Castlehack ; Lord Fetchandcarry, Aide-de-Camp to his Excellency ; Alderman Trueblue, and the Hon. Mr. Rackrent, D. L.," the announcement should run, "that Messrs. So-and-So had the honour of dining, at the expense of the country, in the Viceregal Hotel in the Park." If we have the cost let us have the credit of entertaining such good company. The principle upon which the invitations are distributed is unexceptionable. They are given to the friends of Government in town and country. The idea of including the friends of the poor devils who pay the expense, is, of course, not to be thought of. But the especial object of them are country gentlemen who visit town on the business of the Government. If the Corporation of Enniskillen or Bandon sends an address to Lord DE GREY, lauding his liberality to the Mendicity, or his patronage of Native Manufacture, it is obviously necessary that they should be feasted at the public expense. It is worth a good fourth of the twenty-one thousand and odd pounds a-year, which we pay for the establishment in the Phoenix Park, to have upon record the opinions of so sagacious a body upon so momentous a question. But is not the entertainment at present lame and defective ? If we pay for their board, why not for their beds ? why not for their coach-hire ? why not their travelling expenses ? If the principle be good for anything, it is good for " the entire animal ;" and some Irish County Member ought to move for an extension of the system. While it rests where it is, the Mail has just cause to complain that the gentry of Ireland are treated with contempt by the Government of their own manufacture. It would be a curious inquiry, the relative cost of the two branches of public expenditure feeding paupers ,"6 THE VOICE OF THE NATION. in the Workhouse and feeding country gentlemen in the Chief Secretary's Lodge. How many times a mendicant's allowance would be eaten by one foxhunting squire of social habits and good digestion? The cost of a Workhouse dinner is about a penny; and we ascertain, by vulgar arithmetic, that the Chief Secretary's allowance would afford dinners to exactly Jive millions one hundred and thirty-two thousand two hundred and forty paupers-or about three times the number of poor in the country. If the friends of the Government could be entertained as cheaply as the Paymasters of the Government-the creators of the wealth that supports, and the source of the authority that sustains, the Government-we could hold open-house in the Park for a hundred years at less than it costs us now in one, and give a dinner to every squire in the four provinces, whether he comes to town on the business of Government or his own. We beg to refer this part of the case to our statistical friends of the North Dublin Union, vice Martha K'Keown, superannuated. But one cannot help asking if this public dinner duty inflicted upon the Secretary does not interfere somewhat with the more pressing business of his office ? When Lord GLENELG was removed from this country, he left several thousand unopened letters behind him-none of them, we presume were refusals to dine in the Park; but it is possible that it might have been better for the public service if he had left that number of invitations unwritten, and attended to these epistolary complaints and inquiries of the People. We dare say he spoiled as many digestions by" hope deferred," as by the stewed meats and claret of the Lodge. A division of labour is one of the favorite hobbies of this mechanical age ; and on the same principle that a separation of the legislative and judicial functions of the Chancellor is thought advisable, we would suggest that the executory and culinary duties of Lord ELIOT might be divided with advantage. Let us have a Chief Secretary and a Chief Butler, and the affairs of the kitchen-table and the council-table will both run the smoother. The present over-worked functionary must be often sadly puzzled bel ween giving gentlemen t eir deserts in the state and their desserts in the Phoenix Park-be- THE VOICE OF THE NATION. $7 tween A, who is to be placed in the Commission of the Peace for backing the Tory candidate at the last election; B, who is to be hanged without reprieve (being, of course, a Papist) ; and C, who is to be invited to dinner, having come up to town on the business of the Government ! there is one objection to tlese public dinners, which, with all our admiration for them, we cannot conceal. Mr. O'CONNELL and other philanthropists oppose the Poor Law system because it is calculated to destroy the benevolent and humanising sentiment and practice of private charity. We humbly suggest that this system of eleemosynary dinners is still more calculated to undermine and destroy our national virtue of hospitality. Suspicion will haunt men's minds if they are invited to put their legs under the mahogany of any official personage, from a Secretary of State down to a Clerk of the Peace, that their rump and dozen are to be charged in the " supplies,"' or add an item to the Secret Service account. They will conceive that such hospitality demands no re,turn, and that it is as superfluous to reciprocate invitations with their host of the Phoenix Park, or of the County Court, as with the landlord of the Bilton, or Boniface of the local Head-Inn. This will manifestly be a heavy In blow and great discouragement to Irish hospitality. fact, we can't help thinking, that if the English Noblemen who do us the honour of pocketing enormous salaries at our expense, must be paid for the feasts they condescend to bestow upon us, it would be better they should send in a bill, after dinner, for prompt payment. This plan would be a protection against extortion, and the guests would, no doubt, feel themselves more at home when their reckoning was discharged in the usual, rather than in this new-fangled way. But THE VOICE OF THE NATION. IROSPECTS OF ENGLAND, IN 1842. " Methinks I hear a little bird that sings, The People by-and-by will be the stronger." IF the weakness of England be a cause to hope-if history tell the truth-if '82 be not a fable-then was there never a moment more propitious than the present. It vou d seem as if the new world and the old had conspired to create the opportunity by accumulating embarrassments upon England. Six great nations have simultaneously proclaimed war against her commerce. The united voices of France and America have declared that her sovereignty of the sea-the true secret of her strength -shall exist no more. In her Colonies, rebellion-sometimes the tyrant's name for virtue and true loyalty-is triumphant. The conquering sword of the Affghan has laid thousands of her soldiers on his native fields, unjustly and wickedly invaded-a mournful yet glorious sacrifice to that freedom which they went forth to destroy. The Indian Empire is not likely to escape the general shock. There, as elsewhere, the dominion of England has rested for many years, not on the solid basis of interest or affection, nor even on the less solid one of real force, but upon reputation, and the recollection of former achievements; it was built upon the sand, and it rocks before the storm. While the two great pillars of English supremacy-her Colonies and her dominion of the seasare thus shaken to their foundations, her enemies are every day growing more bitter in their jealousy, more arrogant in their demands, and more conscious of their superior strength. Well do they know that the eight hundred millions of debt have said to the English Minister-" Thou shalt not go to war." Lightly do they hold the boasting and the threats of the London press, when it talks (as did the Morning Post some months back) of "burning into the hearts of the uncivil Republicans a terrible conviction of the power of England." America said she would try MI'LvoD in spite of England she did so. America says her ships must not be searched they are not searched. America calls for a part of Canada- THE VOICE OF THE NATION. 59 she gets it; by-and-by she will call for it all, and she will get it. The British Minister has forgotten the language of denial-the British Lion roars no more. To the troubled eye of the British statesman the aspect of the foreign affairs of England exhibits a gloom unpenetrated by a single ray of safety or of hope. On every side there is disaffection, jealousy, and gathering anger. Whether he turn to the East or to the West, he sees the far horizon skirted with portending clouds. From every quarter the cry of " Down with English monopoly and English pride," strikes upon his ear. It is shouted by millions of voices, and finds an echo in millions of impatient hearts. It calls up every passion of the human breast, from the meanest to the noblest-from the grovelling selfishness of the merchant to the patriot's great revenge for wrongs and dishonour inflicted on his country, and arrays them all in deadly hostility to England. And if the foreign prospects of England are calculated to excite apprehensions in the minds of her rulers, those apprehensions are not likely to be soothed by a glance at her internal condition. For what do we find here ? A revenue hopelessly deficient-taxation strained to the uttermost-a state of society the most unstable, and most favorable to a revolution of any that could possibly be devised-a starving People, with wealth, abundance, and luxury, glittering before their eyes-thousands of workmen unemployed--the midnight incendiary at his work of ruin--the sober, industrious, middle classes, who have hitherto stood between the aristocracy and the wild, though hardly reprehensible, fury of the multitude, in the act of being themselve precipitated into the general mass of poverty and disaffection. For the first time in the history of English finance, there is a falling off in the revenue, in the face of considerable additions to the existing taxes, and the imposition of a new and most oppressive tax, never resorted to except in cases of the last extremity. Never since the Conqueror, at the head of his Norman robbers, laid in plunder and massacre the first foundation of that aristocracy which crushes the country to this day, did the distresses of the People reach such a degree of intensity, or their discontent assume so bold and menacing a front. n2 60 THE VOICE OF THE NATION. When the foe is at the gates and dissension raging within, what hope for the city ? Yes! England, that supremacy of thine-not less fatal to thy own debased and overburthened People, than to those upon whom its withering shadow has fallen-is at length drawing towards its end. The day is not distant when the iron sceptre with which thou didst smite the afflicted nations, shall be wrested from thy grasp-when thy empire, cemented with the blood of so many patriot hearts, the price of so many tears, shall crumble into ruin. Even now the tempest howls about thy bewildered head. Within thy racked and distracted bosom there sleeps an earthquake whose incipient heavings are already felt. But what are the feelings with which true Irishmen ought to look upon those dangers and embarrassments which beset, not the People of England who share in our sufferings-nor the throne of Britain and Ireland to which our allegiance is due-but that plundering aristocracy which torments and tyrannises over both? What ought they be but triumph and hope and bright anticipations of approaching freedom ? Never let it be forgotten, as it never was denied, that this country has experienced kindness or concession from England only in the moments of her difficulty and danger. Why, then, should we conceal our satisfaction at seeing her shorn of that strength which she has ever used to impoverish and enslave us? They tell us we have nothing more to wish for- we have got Emancipation-we have got Reform. Who have got these things? A section of the aristocracy. The People of Ireland have got nothing-they have been invariably overlooked and trampled down in the strife of contending parties. The bondage of the Russian would be freedom to them-the privations of the savage, who roams the forests, are luxuries compared to their privations. Have we nothing to hope for-nothing to complain of? Do we not at this moment live under a Government forced upon us by England-the leading members of which have been ever distinguished for their bigoted hostility to our country ? What is slavery if it be not-to be ruled by those who rule in our despite ? Every place is filled with our enemies, from the Judge to the perjured spy, who is THE VOICE OF THE NATION. to 61 swear away the People's paid with the People's money lives. Yet, what of these ? They are but straws upon the torrent of oppression which deluges this land, and covers its disfigured aspect with unseemly ruin. Look upon our fertile fields, and ask-did that Gon, who created them so fair, curse them from the beginning, and doom them to be for ever the abode of hunger and misery and despair ? Look into our hearts-they were made for love and kindness and confiding friendship-what fatal power has changed their nature, and converted them into dark dwelling-places of hatred, bigotry, and distrust ? It was the policy of the tyrant, the wiles of the stranger, who divided, that he might command. While the nations of Europe are rapidly advancing in knowledge, civilization, and freedom, why are we alone stationary ? It is because the degrad:ng consciousness of provincialism paralyses our energies, and chills our hopes. It is because dependence and alien domination have taken from us the incitements of legitimate ambition. It is because we have no name to be proud of--no flag to fight for-no country to honour, to labour for, and to love. Impressed with these sentiments, we regard the crisis to which England is fast hastening with mingled feelings of apprehension and of hope-hope from the opportunity which it offers of recovering our independence, the only remedy for the evils that afflict us-apprehension, lest this To the Irish opportunity should find us unprepared. People we say, the time is approaching which shall try their souls-which shall show to the world whether they are worthy of that universal sympathy which they possess, and of that freedom after which they have yearned so ardently and so long. To their great leader (if we might venture on a suggestion to one so much wiser and more experienced than ourselves) we would say, that it is on the People, and on them alone, that he should now rely. On this question the English Parliament will never yield, unless to necessity and fear. It is on Irish ground-it is in the towns and the villages of Ireland that the battle for nationality must be fought; and to be fought with success, and without blood, it must be fought by him. Let him fling himself upon the bosom of the People, and he 62 THE VOICE OF THE NATION. will find their hearts beat as warmly and as true to the good old cause, as when, under his guidance, they trampled upon a power ten times as great as any that can be opposed to them now. FOREIGN INFORMATION. ENGLAND is a pedagogue as well as a gaoler to us. fHer 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 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 artizans. Every seventh person you meet in France is a landowner in fee, subject to moderate taxation. Taxes and tenantcies-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 constitution 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 THE VOICE OF THE NATION. 63 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 shall hear a free and just criticism on England's constitution and social state. We shall have a still better and fairer commentary, in the condition and civil structure of other countries. We shall see small free states--Norway, Sweden, Holand Portugal-maintaining their land, Switzerland, homes free, and bearing their flags in triumph for long ages. We shall learn from themselves how they kept their freedom afloat amid the perils of centuries. We shall salute them as brethren subject to common dangers, and interested in one policy--localisation of power. The Catholic shall see the Protestant states of Prussia, Holland, Saxony, and America; and the Protestant shall 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 languages, creeds, and races, flourish kindly side by side, and he will seek in English intrigue the real well of the bitter woes of Ireland. SGermany, 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 -4 THE VOICE OF THE NATION. than the treacherous and servile wages system of modern England. These, and a host of lessons more, shall we learn if we study the books, laws, and manners, and cultivate an intimacy with the citizens of foreign states. We shall thus obtain countenance, sympathy, and help in time of need, and honour and friendship in time of strength; and thus, too, we shall 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 and moral ways. We will be without those aids on which even the largest nations have at times to depend; and we shall be liable to the advances of England's treacherous and deceptive 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 usefil 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 depen-' dants-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, concession 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. TRE VOICE OF THE NATIION. 6 6S THE -RIGHTS AND WRONGS OF PROPERTY. INNUMERAB~LE are the fine sermons we have heard preached :upon that saying of rHOMAS DRuAMOND'S or STEPEN WOULFE'S, that "property hits its duties as Aell as its riglhts." But, like other fine texts, it only serves to point la moral; for whereabouts do we find it adorning a tale? If property have its duties, what are they, and where are they ? Mr. DAVERN tells us that the duty on which he finds it employed in his neighbourhood is turning out families by the hundred from tenements to which their right is as distinct and inalienable as the landlord's to his rent, or the State's to its taxes. Mr. CoNNoR's person:d ex'perience enables him to define the rights of to mean the privilege of immunity from exposure (the royal prerogative of doing no wrong); and its duties the prosecution for sedition of any one who lets in the daylight of truth upon its iniquities. Thie duties of property, in this sense, we have most rigidly performed; but beyond this Mr. DUMfND'S sentiment involves an ethical theory too superfine for the understanding of country gentlemen. Let us puzzle them no more, then, with the metaphysics of legislation ; let us lose no more time in vain attempts -to explain lities (an sensibi- obligations which their blunted moral no way comprehend ; let us give Mr. DRUM - XIOND's over-wrought axiorn a perpetual holiday, and instead of whining appeals which fall upon them like derv upon a desert, let us thunder in their ears that wE have which we understand and will maintain. Let us rights tellis chargeable with the support of it that them this land is ours not less than theirs-that us, the men whose toil and sweat made it fertile, before all other incum- feudal brander, whether rent) tithes, or taxes-that the -system, which gave the life of the serf to the disposal of his lord, was not a jot more barbarous or irrational than the right they claim to exterminate their tenantry- that we see no moral distinction between the edict of the brutal Baron that, hung his offending vassal on the next the tree, and the ejectment of ruffian landlord, which :turns out his tenant to die by the way side-and that as 66 THE VOICE OF THE NATION. soon wbuld we permit the revival of the one tyranny as the continuance of the other. We promise you they will understand this. And it is the tone of earnest, honest men. day for puling and whining is gone by. We must speak out like men asking their own, and no more. We must declare in the simplest and shortest terms, that the enormous prerogative of property and the interests of society are incompatible; and that the time is when one or other must give way. And assuredly this trial of strength is coming, and no man in the country but has a direct interest in the contest. .To uphold the system, if he be a sharer in its plunder, to pull it to pieces if he be not. There can no more be a class of neutrals in this case than in case of an invasion or a civil war; for the rights and interests of the community are as universally involved in the operation of the agrarian code, as if a Russian army were debarked at Bantry, or at an insurgent camp pitched on the Curragh of Kildare. If you desire cheap bread, the avaricious landlords will not let you have it--if you love freedom of election, the tyrannical landlords interdict it-if you desire to restore the country to tranquillity, and put an end to agrarian outrages, the exterminating landlords again stand in the way. If our farmers are paupers-if our workhouses are crowded-if our shopkeepers are lamenting over a scanty trade growing daily less, the landlords are chargeable with full half of the evil. The landlords and the union-the union and the landlords-they share the infamy fairly between them. No man is justified in holding back from this strugglea struggle for the food and clothes, the liberties, and happiness of the People--a struggle for life and everything that makes life worth possessing-a struggle for peace, prosperity, and plenty. What will you, friend, do to help it ? You go the whole length with us in defence of the suffering poor, and feel an honest pride in maintaining right against might. But, remember, while you philosophise, the farmer is plundered. What matters it to him how warmly you sympathise with him, or with what conclusive logic you prove that he is entitled to protection, if you ,The THE VOICE OF THE NATION. can give him none? What will you D to aid him ? 67 This is the question. For, know this fact-never lose sight of it, or you may as well attempt to speculate on the condition of the men in the moon as on that of the men of Conneinara-the agricultural classes cannot agitate this question for themselves. If the towns will not agitate for them, they have nothing to do but to suffer and be dumb. They are at the mercy of their masters; and the punishment of resistance, in the agrarian code, is extermination, which is the popular synonyme among the landed interest for death by cold and hunger. But if you will work for the farmers as they have often done for you-if you will agitate and petition and remonstrate, justice must be done. If public opinion will not effect the remedy, even an English Parliament can and will do it. Why should landlords be the only class of traders above the law? There is no inherent dignity in selling land more than in selling shoes; and the traders in acres ought to be just as amenable to the law, and just as easily punished for extortion, as his more industrious brother. If the labourers put a particular price upon their labour, it is called combination, and punished as a crime. And this is fair, if the principle be carried out universally; but if the landlords put an exorbitant price upon their commodity, which is more indispensable to society, ought it not to be called robbery, and punished in the same manner ? Come then, put your shoulder to the wheel, friend, and help us in this good work. Tell every man, woman, and child, that will listen to you, the enormous tyranny the People are enduring, and their determination to get rid of it; originate meetings upon the subject everywhere you can; promote discussion upon it "in season and out of season;" scatter among the farmers every paper and speech bearing on the question that falls into your hands; get up little reading clubs to enlighten the People; convince townsmen of every grade that, while they eat bread and potatoes, they have just as much interest in the question as any man that holds a plough; and urge upon all who are free from the lash of the agrarian task-masters to ad you in fighting the battle for the farmers, who have so often fought the battle for them. THE VOICE OF THE NATION. LETTER ON IRELAND AND IRISH MATTERS, TO A CONNAUGHT SQUIRE. The Lodge, Glen of the Downs. My DEAR ULIcK--There's no use in trying to conceal it-you are an Irishman, by all the marks and tokens; and the strong efforts which a fashionable mother, and amiable, but aspiring sisters, have induced you to make to cast the Belzebub of country behind you, are quite vain and idle. The hundreds that have been lavished on giving you a Harrow and a Cambridge polish, have, nevertheless, left you the same undoubted, but not altogether unadulterated, Irishman that you were when you first tore yourself, weeping, from the bosom of an affectionate family. Neither, indeed, are the efforts of the ladies themselves much more successful; for, though they do effect a sort of Britannia metal imitation of the pure silver of the English accent, the integrity of birth and locality vindicates itself at times; and I must plead guilty to having more than once taken tay with your mother, and stolen sweet moonlight walks by the .ay with your sisters. Don't try to deny the fact, Ulick. Nature planted you where Cromwell sent many a better man than yourself. You were born where the true gentility of Ireland is, and where the descendants of kings are nothing uncommon, if you believe the genealogies of Betham, and the researches of O'Donovan and Hardiman. Besides, you have the pregnant evidence of your whereabout ia every lineament. The twinkling of the blue eye, the light hair crisply curling round your broad front, where modest assurance is sweetly throned, and the amorous complexion -- if you never spoke, Ulick, there is not a Cockney Lavater that would not see Connaught in your mouth, and Galway in your eye. Cut the effort, then; seem to be what you are. 'Tis a respectable calling, that of an Irishman. There are few courts in Europe which have not seen our polished exiles-few fields in which they have not fought-and few churchyards in which the grave has not closed over the brave but expatriated children of your country. And let me tell you, my dear Ulick, that we TElE VOICE OF THE NATION. 6 69 been--as 7nust have no doubt ve are to this day-an attractive people. The civiisation of England gravitated towards us, and it took many a piece of legislation, and many a savage deed of violence, to prevent the marau'ding Anoglo-Nornmans, N ho came over, from becoIning Irishmen in spite of their kings and their deputies. They took our lands, our property, our churches, our casties; and finally, they took, too, our manners, our names, 'and our laws. They'd all Ie O'Briens, MCarthys, and O'Neills. They were the scum of Normandy and Brit-tany, of Maine, Poicton, anid Acquitaine, vio carried murder and robbery into Eigland, and transferred them, but not by easy stages, into Ireland. And these were the fathers and founders of the Anglo-Irish aristocracy of this country. would be an instructive study, that of the genealogy of the great lords wvhro have been the gaolers of the people, and the living manacles on their limbs. Thierry says that the upper anti lower classes, which we iow see struggling with each other for systems of political n 'ideas, or of government, are in several countries no other the conquering nations and tie enslaved nations of an earlier period. In this country you see the vast multitude-the children of the oppressed-the original Celtic owners of the soil those vho have survived the bloody -struggles of the conquest and the legal oppressions of confiscation, standing aloof from the descendants of the oppressor, struggling as well for the right to live as for any system of goverment, or any cherished political idea -still the same in character, in passion, and in national peculiarities, as they were when O'Brien of Thomond, or MacArthy of Desmnond, carried fire and sword into the camp of the Geraldine. They have refused to assimilate withi elements essentially antagonist. They have main.tairid, arid will maintain, thait which made them a peculiar people. Let us hope that the action of liberty and ctivilization may work upon the characteristics of the people, and raise them yet in wealth, power, and greatness over those who have so long ruled and ruined them. But I forgot your predilections--i forgot that you were an ascetic in politics, and had triumphed over all the natural barbarous Jt .than instincts of patriotism:, and with great self-deinal fore- 70 THE VOICE OF THE NATION. gone the sweet indulgence of that noblest of the passions. You think, with Bolingbroke, that love of country is not an institution of nature; and you have taken good care not to make it a lesson of reason. Neither must I forget that you are what is called an Imperialist, a man for centralisation, a great lover of glory, a great advocate for imperial politics, and one who thinks it quite absurd that we should have, in this paltry island, with only nine millions of inhabitants, any institution of native growth whatsoever. We should, in your opinion, be very absurd, indeed, to presume to pretend to a heart and blood-vessels and organisation peculiar to ourselves-it is quite enough for us to be, as it were, one of the great toes of the empire. As it is, we share the glory of England, and ought to be proud and glad to pay the piper. Besides, as you remarked to me the other day, and as your last letter pathetically reiterates, we have no history in Ireland. No history at all! Ah, then, Ulick, one would think we had been doing nothing at all since the flood here-not breeding little Ulicks by the million-not living and dying, fighting and loving, and all the other things that man's history is familiar with. You feel indignant that we are a people utterly without credible annals or a glorious story. Primarily educated in the classic seminaries of Galway; having had the propria quce maribus, in the first instance, engrafted on your physique, if not on your morale, amidst the morasses of your native province; and, moreover, having had the Corinthian capital of Cambridge puppyism elevated above the brick and mortar edifice of native acquirements, you naturally feel indignant that a man of such varied knowledge, experience, and accomplishments, should belong to a country so vastly behind the rest of the world-so low, so vulgar, so un-English in its modes and manners, and so actually without a history. Many a youth like yourself have I heard-and you know I have heard and Sseen somewhat-who knew very little of any history, still less of philosophy, and probably nothing at all of morals, who held the same language about this poor country. Many a ridiculous little lawyer-a schoolboy in gown and horse-hair-who had duly imported a stock of Eng- THE VOICE OF THE NATION. 71 lish ideas from the sweepings of the Middle Temple, and who walks the " Hall" the very personification of industrious idleness-many of this sort of cattle (and a very contemptible cattle, too) there are who run about with their miserable mouths full of such notions as I regret to find copious enough in your last letter. And many a poor squireen in your country-and you know, Ulick, between you, and me, and the wall, squireens are as plenty as blackberries there, and aristocrats grow ripe and ready on every hedge-who actually imagine they have conferred a very particular compliment upon this country in having done it the honour of being born on its bosom. Something like this broke out in your last epistle. Delighted as I was with the quantity of grouse you bagged, and of claret you guzzled; and more than delighted as I was with the narrow escape your neck had in Crackskull Gap, I suffered not a little from the very decided tone of your political lucubrations. Yet I must confess that your acuteness is considerable. You scarcely left your own country a single pretension to its being called a country at all. You demolished our Persian descent; our round towers were but nine-pins to your giant criticism; and you despatched the delicate theory of O'Brien in an antithesis; and, finally, you wind up all with-" Where's your history ?-where your battles ?where your triumphs ?-where your defeats ?...where your retreats ?" Believe me, Ulick, we have more than enough of them all; and if the obstinate struggles, for 400 years continued, of a people to preserve their liberty ---- a thousand bloody fields of alternate victory and deif feat-if to preserve the original character which God has implanted on our ancestors-if an obstinate resistance to any assimilation with those who in every shape brought ruin into the country-if the now erect and ready posture of the people-if the record of these things be history, we have a history. We may not have a colonial department in our annals-for we had enough to do at home. Our embassies to foreign nations and our foreign policy may occupy no portion of our story. We carried no destruction into any country-we scattered no desolation in the fields of India. Our country is not ornamented with the 721 THE VOICE OF THE NATION. scalps of nations on her crimson robe of triumph. We have no blood to atone for, for we spilled none but that of tyrants. We have borne wrongs, but inflicted none. I think I could show you that we have not been stagnant as our own bogs-a mere national vegetable, as you say, growing, dying, and reproducing. And so little Mips "Vicky," as you loyally christened her, is turning rebel to parental politics. Bless her little nose for it! It would be a hard thing to have three generations of Galway going the same way. You know, my dear Ulick, that there is scarcely a son in the county that does not run directly counter to the failing of his father; and wherever the latter lived on Ortolans and champagne, the former is sure to patch up the expense by luxurious indulgence in salt herrings and boiled rabbits. And let me tell you, my boy, that we shall become more respectable by throwing off the habits of our ancestors in more ways than one. I am delighted my little friend Clementina Victoria is beginning to get right notions about politics. Next to orthodoxy in religion, orthodoxy in patriotism is the most soul-saving; and if you have a pound to spare I'll send her down a Repeal card, together with the other little commissions of delicate trumpery which my wife has been executing for her during the last week. Knowing the musical propensities of your little Ulick, and, moreover, remembering how admirably his granduncle (he, I mean, of the Beresford branch of the family) played on the instrument, I have bought a triangle for my godson. May he play it like his uncle, butnot tosuch audiences! or so much at the expense of his friends ! You were quite right in your suggestion about red-nosed Noll. Oliver was fond of the alternative of "Hell or Connaught." He considerately gave the latter to our Papistical ancestors; and I presume he kept the former for himnself and his Saxon Roundheads. May they long continue to enjoy it ! They have amply earned the damnation of history. A murdered Sovereign' and a slaughtered People are very probably making Noll's nose a shade redder than it was in this sublunary sphere. I confess, my dear Ulick, I dqn't see why you have any season to be vexed with the present aspect of things, THE VOICE OF THE NATION. 73 Your indignation would sour a jug of Sneyd and Barton's best. For my own poor part, Itthink it quite immaterial for Ireland whether Whigs or Tories are in. The latter, who, in pocketing the fees of office and doing nothing, practise the dolce far niente with a vengeance, plead their "difficulties," and leave us where they found us. The Whigs treat us as beggars treat borrowed children-they excite compassion for their assumed offspring, and they fob the alms which the " crying grievances" extract from public sympathy; but some how or other, Ulick, they forget to give even a scrap to the pleading miserables whose griefs have filled their wallets. As for the Tories, they have erected two monuments of their wisdom-the Arms' Bill and Sergeant Howley. I am delighted with the appointment; for I indulge a charitable hope that it will occasion half a dozen of suicides amongst the Inner Bar. Apoplexy or epilepsy, truffles or turbot, will be nothing to Sergeant Howley in thinning the ranks, or disturbing the slumbers of the embryo judges, solicitors, and attorneys-general It is altogether an " astonisher." of the "profession." And yet why ? Mr. Howley is a man of talent, and if he happened to stick to the law would probably have got up higher than half the prating fellows of the silk gown. He has courteous manners, and, I understand, is as thorough Now, these are all very capital a Papist as myself. qualities, and confoundedly unlike the usual merits which a Tory government looks out for in the aspirants to official rank. But do you seriously suppose Mr. Howley's appointment to be in the least degree material in any sense but one-that one being that it is an official announcement of the destruction of the ascendancy party, the last blow, the coup de grace to the detestable crew whom Sir Robert Peel, with "curious felicity," designated vagabonds, and who have so long sucked the blood and tortured the sense of this country ? In other respects what is it ? A crumb from the loaf of patronage-and not a very rich one--thrown to a Catholic. The truth is, we make a monstrous The people are fuss about these bar appointments. neglected--public improvements are left undone-lands are unreclaimed---and the whole government of England appears, in the opinion of the Irish bar, to be expressly 74 THE VOICE OF THE NATION. formed for the purpose of making their fortunes-a sort of huge machinery for turning and polishing ambitious lawyers into judges, attorney-generals, sergeants, and silk gown men; and the worst of it is, that they have induced the people to think so too. These meek aspirants rush over to England; they besiege Downing-street; they throng every available avenue ; they puff and pant, and persuade the official givers of good things that the public nilnd of Ireland is agitated as to whether Mr. Bluster Blunderbore or Mr. Sergeant Buzzwig is to be the vacant puisne. Happy is the government that can compromise the matter by giving the modest politician the chance of a fever in Sierra Leone-pleasant climate, that !-or change his venue to the malaria of some colonial establishment for forensic incompetency! Meanwhile, the likelihood is, that the most impudent place-hunter gains his point, and whilst he subsides in simmering comfort upon the drowsy cushion of judicial ease, the unfortunate people are left vwithout one solitary benefit, or one substantial acquisition. We must get rid of this folly, Ulick, even though your cousin, "the counsellor," expects the next vacancy. These bar appointments are the apples of the Hesperides, diverting the runners from the true goal of the contest; and the worst of it is, that, though the people lose the race, they don't get an apple-not a crab, not a pippin! There is one thing pretty clear, the discreet members of the Catholic bar will now, in all probability, discover that, though the Tories are as great rogues as their immortal namesakes of historical notoriety, still they are, as Plato said of Socrates, like the "gallipots of apothecaries, which on their outside have apes, and owls, and antiques, but contain within them sovereign and precious liquors and confections"-these same liquors and confections being the valuable essences of official existence with which Catholic Ireland is to be soothed through the palates of the seducible members of the Catholic bar. Will the gudgeon bite? I think not. Yet will every prudent Papist use the magic mirror in which the future fortunes him who consults it are imaged, and I have no doubt that miserable ineptitude and dishonest trimming will see their vulgar form and features reflected from the polished of THE VOICE 75 OF THE NATION. surface of Hope, decked out in the sergeant's coif and the judge's big wig. Lord grant us patience to endure the conciliation with which we are threatened! To turn from these temporary topics to the graver subjects of your pleasant and racy letter, I assure you, "Ulick, I am by no means such an antiquarian as you imagine. To be sure, I have occasionally listened, and with delight, to my honest, able, and admirable friend, James Hardiman; and I must plead guilty to the soft impeachment of having finished more than one tumbler with my respected friend, John O'Donovan, who can discuss equally well the old native and the " old natives;" and neither can I deny that John Dalton and I have had many a social chat on matters much beyond my comprehension, Ulick, but not beyond my sympathy. The silent patriotism of the lives of such men has been to furnish materials to the future historian of our country, and to belie such assertions as yours, that we have no annals but those of violence, rapine, and discord. But though my younger spirit has occasionally borrowed strength from them-learned and experienced as they are-yet, I confess, you do me more than justice in supposing that I may be able or inclined to fix the ancient respectability of our country any where farther back than the deluge, a period to which you rmust be aware that your own family genealogy professes to run in an undisturbed lineal current. No, indeed I regret it-I am not an antiquarian, and I do not at all aspire to rifle the graves of antiquity, as Mr. Butt said, for the purpose of raising the spirits of past miseries in testimony against our oppressors. I am no resurrection-man, either in history or anatomy; but I do think it of use occasionally to refer to the doings of England, if it were only as a gentle warning of the things she may do-a warning taught to trembling experience by the things she has done. We, my dear Ulick, as I said just now, are a very ancient and respectable people-re- spectable for many noble qualities. But, respectable as we are, we are but young as a nation. We have to learn a great deal and to learn it well. We are a spoiled child -not spoiled by lollipops or gingerbread, but spoiled by torment, injustice, and brutal cruelty. We have not E THE VOICE OF THE NATION. been brought up by those who took upon themselves our guardianship-no, we have been (as Charles Lamb says of the children of the poor) " dragged up," and dragged up, too, amidst cruelties the most diabolical, and trea chery the most base. We must remember this, Ulick. Whilst the great question is in agitation-whilst the whole people are asking themselves, "What do we gain by these English ?-what do they want here ?-are they here for our good or their own ?"-it is highly beneficial to open the pages of the old almanac, and ask it, "What did they here before ?-whom do they serve-God or Mammon?" And we should not be stopped in this inquiry by the puerility which gently requests us not to dabble in the blood that was spilled long ago, nor to awake the spirits of millions of martyrs, whose blood flowed as the oblation of English conquest in Ireland. When I hear what your notions are upon these subjects I may trouble you again. It is pleasant, whilst the roar of agitation is heard around-whilst contending interests-those of sinful monopoly and painful want-are fighting that battle whose issue we may all confidently predict, to interchange sentiments with a philosophical friend like yourself, whose metaphysics are so comprehensible and whose turbot is so delicious. My dear Ulick, I must always be a partial judge in our little contests-partial against myself; for how can I suppose that your reasoning can be wrong when your potheen is so faultless ? Put a bridle on your liberality or you can never hear truth from me. Love to your dear mother. I trust she will not be offended with the slight allusion to our little tay drinking; and blessings on little Victoria, who I am convinced, in the whole course of her life, will never make such an extraordinary speech as her namesake. Yours, T. M. N. P.S.--" Irish blackguard," which you asked for, has become much less plentiful since the destruction of the late corporation; a few samples, however, can be had, notwithstanding the municipal reform act. THE VOICE OF THE NATION. 77 THE MORALITY OF WAR. lhas U vJusT War is, like all other unjust things, very wicked and condemnable. But a just war is as noble to him who justice on his side as any other just act. Nay, it is snore noble ; for there is more of self-restraint, more con-, tempt of bodily suffering, more of high impulse, more of greatness achieved for its own great sake-more, in short, of heroism in war than in almost any other human occupation. This is the case to some extent in all wars, but increases as the justice of the cause, and the efforts of the just combatant increase. But his cause must be good to justify our unqualified praise of the soldier. If he fight to rob or oppress ; if he fight in the ranks of an invader or a tyrant ; if he fight against the cause of liberty, and against the land that gave him birth, may his banner be trampled, and his sword broke in disastrous battle, and may his name rot in eternal infamy ! But if he fight for truth, country, and freedom, may fortune smile on his arms, may victory charge by his side, may wealth, strength, and honour wait on him and his, if he survive his conquest; and, if he fall in achieving it, may glory sit upon his tomb, and may a grateful country cherish those he loved ! War, the exposure of ourselves to wounds, toil, and death, is as much our duty in a ,just cause, as any other mode of sustaining justice. We are as surely bound to encounter the march, the watch, the breach, and the battle-field, for country, altars, friends, rights, and freedom, as we are to sustain our parents, defend our wives and children, and adhere to our religion and virtue, by any other less hazardous means. War may be often unnecessarily employed; and so may love, anger, law, teaching, or any other human act or feeling. Moral agitation has its woes as well as war. Ruined fortunes, broken friendships, the wreck of hopes, aiAd the tearing of ties dearer than life, have followed lome of those religious and social changes effected by azoral means, and which, notwithstanding, all men wisely and justly unite to honour. 78 THE VOICE OF THE NATION. We have now done with the subject. We shall not return to it. We feel no wish to encourage the occasions of war ; but whenever the occasion comes, here or elsewhere, may sagacious and informed souls, bold hearts, and strong arms, be found to plan, lead, and fight. May the examples of M:ILTIADES and WASHINGTON never want imitators where there are tyrants to invade, freemen to defend, or slaves to struggle for liberty. We recommend the following passage, from a grave, and able, and one of the latest English historians, to our readers - Besides, economy and the military virtues are the great sup. ports of national existence, as food and exercise support our individual bodies. I grant that the existence so supported may be worthless-may be sinful ;yet self-preservation is anessential condition of all:virtue. In order to do their duty, both' states and in- dividuals must first live and be kept alive. But, more than all this, economical and military questions are not purely external-.. they are connected closely with moral good and evil: A faulty political economy is the fruitful parent of crime-a sound military 'system is no mean school of virtue; and war, as I have said before, has, in its vicissitudes, and much more in the moral qualities Which it calls into action, a deep and abiding interest for every one worthy of the name of man.--Dr. Arnold's Lectures on His- tory, p. 183. REPEAL ARGUMENTS. "Ireland for the Irish, and the Irish for Ireland." O'CONNELL. T.E organization for Repeal is daily extending itself. The communications from every part of Ireland received by the Rlepeal Association, afford the most unequivocal evidence that the sacred principle of nationality has struck root--deeply and ineradically-in the hearts of the people of Ireland. SThe great mass of the Irish nation are resolved to resume, by all constitutional and legal means, that power of making their own laws, which was wrested from them by as diabolical a combination of fraud, force, and THE VOICE OF THE NATION. ,r butchery, as can be found in the records of history. Tlhee renever was a legislative act so stained'and saturated with demoniac guilt, as is the Union Act. Our People would be the most unmitigated fools, as Well as the most despicable slaves upon the face of the earth, if they did not legally struggle to get rid of that abominable Act. The common sense of the case is entirely and exclusively upon the side of the Repeal. We should richly deserve to be the scoff and scorn of every other civilized nation in the world, if we did not put our shoulders to the work with the firm resolution never to desist, until the accursed Union lies prostrate in the dust. .Every colonial dependency of England has got a Parliament of its own. Canada has got a local Parliament. Why should not Ireland have a Parliament as well as Canada ? Jamaica has got a Parliament. Why should not Ireland have a Parliament as well as Jamaica? Even Newfoundland has got a local Parliament. Why should not Ireland have a Parliament of her own as well as :Newfoundland? It would really seem as if our rulers .were determined to render the science of government a farce aid a mockery; for what can be more exquisitely absurd than the denial to Ireland of that which is conceded to Newfoundland ? or more ludicrous than the assumption that whereas a handful of whalers on the frozen shores of that island are sufficiently important to require the superintendence of a legislature Ireland, teeming with natural fertility, and peopled with eight millions and a half of an active, intellige: it, and moral populationi Ireland, thus favoured by the hand of GoD, is yet too insignificant to need or to deserve the parental supervision of a resident Parliament ? When we look at the natural capacities of Irelandwhen we look at what our country might become under the guidance of a domestic legislature, and when we contrast that glorious possibility with the actual realities of provincial bondage and its hateful fruits, we are indignant-but are we despondent? Oh, no. Our indignation embodies itselfin a firm and unflinching resolve that Ireland SHALL be righted; for we feel and know that 6ere is strength enough and virtue enough among Ire- so THE VOICE OF THE NATION. land's sons to emancipate themlselves from the degrading and detestable thraldom of the Union. People of Ireland! what we want is to effect the consummation described by O'CONNELL in these words-'Irelandfor the Irish, and the Irish for Ireland." We wish the phrase was written out, framed, glazed, and hung up over every cottage chimney in the kingdom-. ' Irelandfor the Irish, and the Irish for Ireland." All the good England could do us we could do for ourselves if we had a Parliament of our own, and somewhat more, too, into the bargain. Ireland had everything to lose, and nothing to gain, by the Union. Ireland has everything to gain, and nothing to lose, by the Repeal. People of Ireland, we beg to present to you a plain and unadorned series of contrasts between what Ireland is under the Union, and what Ireland would be under an Irish Parliament. Under the Union-The aristocracy, the lords, squires, squireens, and almost the entire body of aspirants for the social favours of what are termed by courtesy "the upper classes"-these people are a great deal more English than Irish in their feelings. To exalt England-to degrade and depress Ireland-thisis, tone and the current of the their sympathies. We need not say one word as to the disastrous results to the country which contains such a host of unnatural enemies within her circuit. But, Under an Irish Parliament-aParliament constructed on the basis of a wide and honest suffrage- these pestilent enemies of Ireland would necessarily soon become her friends. The very existence of a popular domestic Parliament would speedily teach the whole tribe, that honour, emolument, political influence and power could thenceforth only be attained by working for Ireland, not by working against her. They would soon become patriots from this resistless pressure; and they would find their own account in it. Thus the pestiferous hostility of this large class of persons would be neutralized by Repeal, and converted into friendship for their country-a result fraught with blessings to every class of the community. Our magnates and their followers would then be Irishmen indeed; and " would no longer be mere Englishmen with THE VOICE OF THE NATION. 81 Irish estates"' Alas! that phrase is precisely descriptive of what they are at present ! Under the Union The absentees draw four millions hard cash per annum out of Ireland. But, Under an Irish Parliament-These worthies should stay at home, to look after their own interests, both social and political. Their money, we need not observe, would then circulate amongst us. Under the Union-Irish manufactures have perished in almost all the places where they once were flourishing. Mr. RAY's report on this subject is pregnant with instruction so far as it extends. When the trades shall have made up the statistics of their several branches, we shall feel it our duty to circulate the sad details throughout the kingdom. Alas ! most of our manufactures are all but extinct. But, Under an Irish Parliament-A moderate and wise protection would be given to Irish industry. Moderate duties, sufficient to give fair play to the infant Irish manufacture, but not so high as to become a total prohibition to the fabric of foreigners; such duties would operate conjointly with the largely increased domestic market consequent upon the return of the absentees, to call forth Irish manufactures into a renewed and a healthy existence. Under the Union-The imposition of Irish taxes, and the control of the Irish revenue, is entirely in the hands of Englishmen. It would be mockery to talk of the "power" of one Irishman against six Englishmen (the proportion in the English parliament) to resist a tax on Ireland, or to regulate its expenditure. The practical result appears in the annual drain of between one and two mil: lions of pounds sterling, in surplus taxes, out of Ireland into England. But, SUnder an Irish Parliament-The imposition of Irish taxes, and the control of the Irish revenue, would be entirely in the hands of Irishmen. Irishmen alone would have the power to incur national liability and regulate national expenditure. England now has her claws in our pockets. Those pockets would then be buttoned tightly against the intrusion of anybody's hands but our own. of 02 TlE VOICE OF THE NATIONS Wllig-cbeerfully willing-as we should be at all time to contribute our share to the common exigencies of the empire, we are not the less ready to struggle against that execrable system which converts contribution into plunder, by 'depriving the contributor of his just and legitimate -. control over his own purse. UTnder the 'Union-The public boards and official dew partments in Ireland. have (with the sole exception of the Viceroy's establishment) been one by one transferred to London, thus depriving already impoverished Ireland of a large anilual sum in: official expenditure, and removing the stamp of Nationality from the administrative manage ment -of local affairs. And in the subordinate offices -re tained,' the places are crowded with Englishmen and Scotebmen. . But, Under an Irish Parlianent-We will recover our national establishments-create our own offices, appoint our own officers--and those officers shall be Irishmen " Ireland for the Irish, and the Irish for Ireland." Under the Union-The People of Ireland are compelled to pay tithes to the Clergy of a very small minority of the 'whole population. But, Under an 1 ish Parliament-While a life-compensation of adequate amount would be secured to each existing Parson by the State, the iniquitous system of making People -pay for doctrines they repudiate would be totally abolished. The Episcopal Protestant Clergy would (orn the gradual extinction, in the course of nature, of the present incumbents) be placed on precisely the same. footing with the religious teachers of every other denomination of Christians-that is to say, they should be paid by their own flocks exclusively ; no great hardship to that' Clergy, 'one should' think-seeing that their flocks indlude the wealthiest portion of the Irish People. People of Ireland 'we could continue our series of just ! contrasts to a much greater length'; but we deem it better- to rivet your, minds for the present on the subjects we hove thrown ,out for your reflection. a glorious country will be ours when wve get the Repeal ! There is amongst us as much material for the making of a noble and illustrious nation as in other, 'What 'any 83 THE VOICE OF THE NATION. ountrv under the sun. We must get rid of that poisonous keaven-that anti-Irish sentiment, the influence of which is destructive to our honour and incompatible with our prosperity. We must banish that leaven from the land. : Work, People of Ireland ! work hard, and work untiringly for the noble object in view. Every one of you can do something. What a national jubilee will be yours When your high-souled virtue and unflinching patriotism shall have wrought out your deliverance! Look calmly at what our native Ireland will become beneath the legislative rule of her own sons. She will be a land of merry-hearted, cheerful industry. The undeveloped resources of Ireland are so great, that if we had a resident Parliament to call them into action, they would furnish remunerative labour to far more than our present unemployed population. The domestic expenditure of Irish money inprivate and public improvements, and works, will adorn the face of the land with magnificence and beauty-will diffuse fertility through tracts now barren because they are uncultivated, and will thus give plenteous bread to humble, honest industry. Ireland will be a land not alone of agricultural, but of manufacturing industry. The same Divine Power that las given to us temperate skies and a fertile soil, has also bestow.ed on us the ample elements of manufacturing prosperity, which need but domestic legislation to call them forth for the national benefit. Ireland will be a land of political freedom. The democratic principle will progress, not to the detriment of the aristocracy, but to the protection of the People. The writer of this article has aristocratic predilections and principles; but he deems that the vast advantages of wealth and station possessed by the aristocracy are amply sufficient to preserve the just interests of their order without also investing them with overwhelming or exclusive political power. The People have indefeasible rights; and the body of Repealers will take right good care that those rights shall practically form the basis of the restored constitution of Ireland. Ireland will be a land of religious freedom. No state patronage, state payment, or state power, exclusively en- E2 84 THE VOICE OF THE NATION. joyed by any one persuasion. No political disqualifica tion of any Christian man because of his peculiar sect. No "ascendancy" (accursed word!) of any particular set of Christians over any otIer set of Christians. Each and all free to worship the Most High Gon according to the dictates of their consciences. Religious teachers dependent for support on the voluntary contributions of their respective flocks. Ireland we say it with awe, with reverential gratitude -- will be a moral, faithful, and religious land. Her people have ever clung with the utmost fidelity to the ancient faith of their fathers. The foul and noxious principles of infidelity have never been able to find footing in Ireland. The Temperance movement in Ireland has exhibited to the nations of the world the astonishing spectacle of a rapid and triumphant national crusade against a favourite vice. We trust that the same Great Being whose hand we gratefully recognise in this sublime move. ient, will lead our People forward to successive victories over every other vice to which human infirmity is prone; and that, under His heavenly protection, we may speedily exhibit the magnificent example of a GREAT NATION enjoying our undoubted birthright-national independence a PROSPEROus NATION, availing ourselves of our incalculable natural advantages-and, above all, a CHRIsTIAN NATION, moral, virtuous, and pious; ready, if re- quisite, to die for our faith, yet fully arid gladly recognising an equal right of conscience amongst all! Go forth, People of Ireland, and work to make your loved country the illustrious and honored land which we here have faintly endeavoured to pourtray. THE rowER, WE TELL YOU, IS IN YOUR OWN HANDS. PLAN OF POPULAR EDUCATION. A NEW moral power has grown up among us, of which we know little, and profit less. It shares the fate of al We our great natural advantages in running waste. possess at this moment the machinery for adult education THE VOICE OF THE NATION. in greater perfection than any people in Europe. The wide extent, and perfect organization of the Teetotal Societies supplies this machinery. An entire parish may be converted to an honest principle, or armed against a dan. gerous one, at present, as easily as a single individual befoire the People learned to combine for their mutual good. The modern principles of education, which introduced " classes" and " monitors" to the school-room, may be transferred to the nation at large and the schoolmaster, who is abroad, need no longer teach individuals, This machinery is lying but lecture entire " forms." waste. It is too gigantic for an individual to control; and the State is not wise enough or humane enough to make use of it. But we see at length other means to the end. The gentlemen who propose to commemorate Father MaTHEW's labours by a TESTIMONIAL, can do it in no way so effectually as by completing this work which he began. The means are easy and obvious: Let the subscriptions be devoted TO THE ESTABLISHMENT OF LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC INSTITUTIONS IN CONNECTION WITH THE EXISTING SOCIETIES IN EVERY CONSIDERABLE TOWN IN IRELAND. A donation of 601., with an annual grant of 151. to each town, would be sufficient for this purpose. There is no town that would not cheerfully subscribe a sum as large as may be granted to it ; and with 1201. in hand, a considerable Library, and a quantity of scientific apparatus might be purchased, and a number of occasional Lectures secured. Here the grbund-work is at once laid for popular education, and what it has been in vain sought to effect through Mechanics' Institutes, would The organization, the enthusiasm, at length be secured. the attendance-all of which were wanting to the success of the other institutions-are ready at hand, only waiting a proper direction ; and if not put in a right direction, liable to go in a wrong one. Let the friends o. Teetotalism be wise, and take advantage of them to a good end. Give us such societies and their usefulness need not stop even here. They might include not only Lectures and Libraries for grown men, but Schools for the young. They might be encouraged to establish gradually, as their means 86 THE VOICE OF THE NATION. and opporttinities permit, Museums, Baths, Public Walks, -Bands,Exhibition Rooms, Benefit Societies, and all the other means of popular enlightenment, refinement, and comfort, which wise Governments encourage, and generous ones provide. We might rival Prussia in education, and France in social enjoyments. Need it be urged that such institutions would give employment and excitement to the minds of thePeople, and tend materially to prevent relapses into drunkenness; that they are natural auxiliaries to Teetotalism, or, above all, that the positive good of Education might, under wise guidance, become as great a blessing to the country as the negative good of Total Ab° stinence. Under the control of a Central Board in Dublin all this, and much more, could be accomplished. With such a recognised body to promote social and industrial reforms, a thousand public improvements would ensue, which nobody attempts at present, because they would attempt them in vain. The thoughtful man, looking calmly from the midst of his books on the multitude struggling for bread, has often suggestions to offer for rendering their labour less oppressive, or more productive, which he has no means of conveying to them. He cannot brawl at public meetings, or, if he could, no one would listen to him-his practical sagacity would be out of order. But with a body of wise and benevolent men to select and reject, we should have in operation in a few years every sound project for bettering the condition of the People, and probably none besides. Look at what has been done by such means elsewhere. There are numbers of towns in Scotland, for example, where some small branch of industry was planted by benevolent societies or individuals, by which the inhabitants now live exclusively; having obtained a monopoly of it by perseverance, and the offspring of perseverance-skill. One town has grown prosperous by making wooden snuffboxes, sold at half-a-crown a dozen; another, by the manufacture of lace, which brings less than a penny a yard; a third, by knitting mittens and mufflers ; several by weaving plaid ; and others by making boys' caps, constructing toys, and a hundred other trifling employments. THE VOICE OF THE NATION. 87 -Whatdoes it need but the attempt to establish among our intelligent People similar branches of industry? We get a thousand things from the Continent and from Great Britain which we could make at home, without the outlay of any capital worth naming, if we were only set a-going. Nay, how many branches of industry already in operation are so languidly or unskilfully pursued as to be almost useless to the People. Our coasts would employ many thousand additional men in fishing, if we had the requisite enterprize and skill. Education and encouragement will give us both ; and we would willingly owe these, with so many other blessings, to Father Mathew. We cannot conceive of any Teetotaller who would not wish to see these things done. Who would not wish to see the Temperance Hall the temple of all the useful arts and innocent enjoyments which bless and adorn life. In the morning its door opening to the young scholars--the future men and women of the country, coming to be taught knowledge that would make them wise, and habits that would make them respectable. In the midday, the industrious enterprising Teetotaler visiting its Loan Fund to receive honourable assistance in his business, which in the hands of a man whose mind is not alone unclouded by intoxication, but refreshed with knowledge, must speedily fructify abundantly: Education is the key that opens the gate of fortune. In the afternoon, the artisan, after his day's labour, enjoying the two-fold pleasure of breathing the open air and gaining useful information by wandering through its cultivated grounds-. laid out as a Botanic garden ; and, at night, entering the Hall, to listen to a lecture upon some branch of popular science, to read some useful book, or perhaps better than either, to visit the Exldhibition-room, where the fancy may be delighted, the taste cultivated, and the mind informed. And if the night is finished with a jovial song or mirthful dance under its roof, where none of the indecency or vice that follow in the train of drunkenness dare be seen-who will say that it is not wisely done ? Next to the House of Gon in each town, the Temperance Hall, with such means of usefulness, would be looked upon with the greatest affection and respect. It would ' 88 THE VOICE OF THE NATION. act as a kind of outer conscience standing up in the public eye, a perpetual monument of the success of the great movement, and a reproach to all who abandoned it. With a hundred such popular universities, a dozen years would find our People the most cultivated in the world, as they are the most virtuous; and in the train of knowledge would come prosperity and happiness. And let us not conceal from ourselves that some such measure as this is needful. The education of the People has been wofully neglected. Our rulers discouraged it as long as they dare, and our poverty set up a new barrier on the road to knowledge when the old one decayed. The multitude did not read, because they could not; and those who could had no books. So late as the year 1824 there were eleven counties in Ireland without a bookseller. This fact was sworn to before a Parliamentary Committee eighteen years ago ; even at this day there is a more flourishing Mechanics' Institute in Sydney than in Belfastthe town in all Ireland which sets up the noisiest pretensions to universal education. But there is another view of the subject which must not be left out of account. Teetotalism has taken from the people their only enjoyment. They are altogether without public sports. They have not the out-door amusements of the French peasantry, the fireside enjoyments of the Dutch, the beef and beer of John Bull, or the Militia meetings and anniversaries of Brother Jonathan ! They need some stimulant. They are a social, lively, enjoying People, and must have excitement. Here is an opportunity to give it. of the purest and most healthy character-to give something that will strengthen them in their principles, make their path smoother and pleasanter --- that will honour and reward their self-denial, and, in this way, give a new impetus to Teetotalism. If such a stimulant be not given, the People will assuredly find some other for themselves. There will be one objection raised against this scheme -.w e cannot conceive a second-that education tends to make the working classes idle and discontented. This is not an error, or a fallacy, but a lie. Knowledge ever was, and ever will be, a stimulant to industry. It would be THE VOICE OF THE NATION. 8W if only because it teaches men how much more maybe purchased by labour than the mere daily bread for which it slaves. But it is so for better reasons. All that is worth preserving from decay in the world-all that is useful in mechanics, rare in art, valuable in science, profound in philosophy, and delightful in literature, is the result of industry joined with education ; neither would have produced it alone, and both will work harmoniously together while civilization exists. If education tends to make labour less-and certainly it does so by enabling men to do the same amount of work in a shorter timeevery benevolent man will rejoice in such a result. Leisure is the. poor man's right as much as food and clothes. Leisure to think, leisure to read, leisure to enjoy ; and whatever is calculated to secure it to him, confers a blessing on the whole community. Whoever may have the happy fate to raise the operative classes from daily drudges to be reflecting, reading, enjoying, human creatures, will havo effected a revolution second in So, no way to Father MATHEW'S. We would rather be that man than the Monarch of England. We do not stop to argue that you will honour Father MATHEW in this way more than by any stone and lime testimonial. It is not by mason work or metal work that the Revolution of 1840 ought to be commemorated. The Moral outlives the Material; and Father MATHEW'S name will be a household word in Ireland when there would be no other remains of any Testimonial than fragments or dust. Increase his usefulness, and you increase his distinction-perpetuate his glorious work, and you perpetuate his glory with it. But it is idle to talk of honour to him apart from the diffusion of his saving principle. His reward is not to be here but hereafter. Why should we hesitate to add what we feel to be true, that a national subscription for any object less comprehensive, would bean injustice at such a time and among a People so little prepared for a new demand on their slender resources. But with this purpose, every man with two coins in his purse will feel that he has one coin to spare. Heaven knows it is time to think of something tangible for the benefit of our own People. We have had 90" THE VOICE OF THE NATION. subscriptions for every absurdity under the sun-for the, physical comfort of the negroes of Jamaica, and the splritual comfort of the savages of New Zealand-for Hibernian Sociey-Schools, where there are no scholars-and for Home Missions, where there are no converts ; and if it were only for the sake of novelty, it would be desirable to try how a subscription with a comprehensive and rational object in view-a subscription which we would see expended under our own eyes, would succeed among those w-ho are so liberal in giving us what we don't require. ARISTOCRATIC INSTITUTIONS. " Society is composed of three classes-those who work, those who beg, and those who rob." Mirabeau. NOTHING would go farther towards putting an end to dis- putes respecting matters of legislation, than if all men -wiuld agree upon some common standard whereby each individual law should be judged, and from which it might receive its denomination of just or unjust-good or evil. If, for instance, it were received as a maxim in jurisprudence that a good law is that which makes the People miserable, where would there be found a man impudent enough to dispute those praises which the lawyers bestow on " our glorious Constitution ?"-or, if such a specimen of obstinate incredulity could be met with, how easy would it be to silence, if not to convince him by a thousand examples? A peep into one of the coal mines in Wales, or a tour through Connaught, would set the thing at rest for ever; il fact, the argument might be reduced to one word-circUrnspice. But, unfortunately, there are some turbulent fellows to be mnet with who will not be persuaded that the bulk of the People have been created for misery; and who, instead of appi-oving of those laws which make them miserable, ctitertain a strong prejudice against them. This test, then, wants the essential quality of being universally received. Nor will it do, we think, to say with BLACKSTONE, that laws are made to enforce pre-existent rights ; 9 THE VOICE OF THE NATION. 91 1igtceaccording fob whQ is to determine those rights? The law cannot-to the supposition, it is made to enforce nd oif to judge them. The landlord says he has a right he t6 as mnuch as can get for his land; the tenant says he hias a right to a fair reward for his labour-to as much as will enable himself and his family to live. Who is to decide ,between them ?-which is the right the law ouight to protect? We can see no solution of the*question save that, summary one which one of two philosophic did putants in Bentham's Deontology had recourse-viz., kicking: his weaker 'adversary in the first instance, and then putting him behind a fire. Their reasoning (if it may be so called) will consist of assertion and negation, and. will end either in nothing or in blows. Where, then, shall wive look fora standard in tion? How shall we ascertain whether laws and institutions are proper objects of affection and obedience, or of aversion and discontent? Where.shall we fix the imit between authority and oppression.? 'Laws andinstitutions, like other human contrivances, wvere made for: a certain end,- and they good bad according as they are calculated to accomplish this end or not. The end o'f laws is human happiness. Every law which: produces;,"on the whole, more happiness than misery is wise aud just, and it is our duty to obey it. Every law which produces, on the whole, more misery-than happiness, which legisla- all are or to. that 'it at is wicked and unj ust, and it is -our duty resist it, or least to 'insist be abolished. If it could be shown that the majority of the People would offthat be better ,laws the. whole. amount of human .happiness would be greater writhdaut government -or than with= them, -then there' ought- to _be -neither government nor law. .If there- be .any or" particular. law, in existence which detracts -from -,the amoun of unin hAipiness, stands: in the way ,of its advance the mn who would .suppor t that any' pre1 text vrhatever, offends against public. morality, anid should, be regarded-as 'a public: enemy.. any new. measure ment -proposed, law- on. When it should is is the ,only- question .rcgarding be,cakuilated; to dd. to the amiount of should be,-n'o objection t.4tt ;.it -encroaches upon: the,. rights: of this, man: or .of that ;for ;those .things .which; stand ini thy} way .of improvement -are happiness?-: If'si not, rights, but wrongs... Trull 92 THE VOICE OF THE NATIONv rights cannot be opposed to happiness, for they exist only to promote it. Even the protection of those individual rights which are held most sacred, should have for its only object the good of all. Why ought each member of the community be shielded from the assaults of violence? Because, and only because, it is for the good of all that violence should be punished and repressed. Why is the poor man prevented from seizing upon the property of the rich? Because, and only because, it is for the good of all that property should be secure. In short, human happiness being the sole end of laws and institutions, these latter are good or bad, just or unjust, to be loved or to be hated, according as they promote or obstruct the advancement of this end. Having fixed upon this test, then, let us next proceed to apply it. Without descending to particulars, let us take a general view of the country, and mark the condition of the different classes of its inhabitants. Let us, in the first place, observe the vast numbers of people who pass their whole lives in idleness, serving the public in no way, doing mischief or doing nothing--let us mark the wealth, the pomp, the pride, the magnificence and boundless profusion of this idle useless class-let us observe them in possession of palaces and chariots, of wines and costly ornaments, of everything that can minister to vanity or to luxury; and, turning from this vision of dazzling splendor, let us next observe the condition of the People who produce, by their labour, the materials of all this splendor--the state of abject slavery to which they are reduced-the unlimited power which landlords and their agents have over them-their uncultivated minds-their physical sufferings-their haggard looks-their naked children-their wet potatoes-their hovels-their rags-and their beds of straw. Let us contemplate all this without prejudice, and as if from a distance, and then put the question: Were the laws which have brought this state of things into existence made for the good of the People ? Is it for the good of the People that about one-third of the entire produce of their labour is distributed amongst this idle class, of whom it would be speaking much too favourably to say, that they make no return for what they get? Is it for the good of the People that their money in mil-. THE VOICE OF THE NATION. 'to 93 lions, and their men in thousands-the sweat of their brows, and the blood of their veins, should be wasted in destroy the independence of a heroic a: wicked effort people far away, who never injured them, and from whose subjugation, if effected, they could not derive any possible advantage?-and this while fifty thousand pounds-not a twentieth of the cost of a single expedition-are grudgingly allowed for an object of the last importance to them the education of their children. Is it for the good of the People that spies are sent amongst them to lure them to destruction? Was it for their good that the Civil Bill Ejectment Act was passed, and the other laws, without number and without mercy, which enable the landlord to pull down the poor man's house with the least possible delay-which place daggers in the hands of their enemies to pierce their hearts? The system from which such results have flowed must be unsound. The institutions which have worked so much evil contain within them some secret poison of which they should be purged. If our Government is more oppressive and expensive-if our taxes are comparatively enormousif our wars are more ruinous and more wicked-if our army, our navy, our pensions and places--if all the rewards and receptacles of profligacy, servility, and corruption, are on a larger scale with us than with our neighbours, there must be some cause for all this-some evil to which we are subject, and from which they are free. Let us, then, instead of wasting our time in discussions about who will be the next Judge, Bishop, or Policeman, honestly and manfully apply ourselves to the investigation of this evil, and to its removal. Let us search for the root from which this crop of misery has sprung, and pluck it forth gently, if it will come-if not, why, tear it forth with a strong hand. What, then, is the real cause of this unnatural, monstrous combination of poverty and profusion? We answer, with DE BEAUMONT, a landed aristocracy. Where this exists there is neither economy in government, nor freedom or happiness in society. You may have the forms of liberty-you cannot have its substance. Those who have the land will ultimately have the power. If they form a large portion of the community, their power will not be 94 THE VOICE OF THE NATION. abused, for their interest and that of the public will coincide. If their number be small, then their arid the public good will no longer lie in the same direction-class ii.terests are created, selfishness is arrayed against duty; and the history of nations--deformed as it is by the crimes of oppressors and the sufferings of the oppressed-too plainly tells on which side, in this contest, victory is likely to declare. The existence of a landed aristocracy is incompatible with public economy. Primogeniture is the basis on which it rests. The eldest son gets the estate-the rest must live. They know not how to work-they are too proud to beg-to the third expedient, then, they must have recourse. Places are created -- the pension list swells out-systems of plunder are set on foot under the respectable titles of official, naval, military, .and colonial. These are the branches--aristocracy the trunk--universal beggary the bitter fruit, . A landed aristocracy makes idlers, and gives them the bread of industry-still worse, it makes idleness respectable and industry contemptible. Who does not see that it has, in fact, produced this effect? What is the grand object of every young man's ambition here? To be a gentleman-i. e., -an idler--to get a place-to quarter himself uipon the public--above: all things, to keep clear of work. To be useful--to earn his bread, is regarded as a stain upon a man's character--to be idle, a title to respect and a passport to good society.. The most worthless of the puppies who infest the streets, if he but feel the proud consciousness of having spent his days in idleness or somethig worse, if he cannot upbraid himself with any single benefit onferred upon mankind, would scorn to touch the hand ,that is soiled by honest industry. The feeling is natural. The human mind, when it observes two objects frequently together is apt, to imagine some connection between =ther , and after a little begins to r egard them 1ith similar feelings. The shop-boy, who sees a lord {nid a cigar, transfers to :the. latter his veneration for the former -buys a cigar, and becomes a lord. Wealth and idleness. poverty; and labour, are with us so inseparably united, that' idlgness -has some .to share largely in the respect which attends, uppn wealth, and labour bears its portion of the shame which follows poverty. 5 THE VOICE OF THE NATION. 95 The :question, cui bono the landed aristocracy ?--is freunently asked in private; publicly it has been put as hope shall frequently .as. we think it ought to be--as idlers' fund-the taxes and rents of these coun be, tries--are close upon one hundred and fifty millions a year Jtis the business of every man who helps to produce this fund, to inquire whether it is well laid out. It is time to ascertain in what relation we of the plebeian order towards :those people--whether- we pay them a tribute as their slaves, or a salary for their services. It is possible .there may be some hidden virtues in the system which we cannot discern. If so, we shall have given its when were wealth and :power without defcnders?-an point them out. Let them but convince opportunity us that a landed aristocracy is favourable to happiness, pand, good utilitarians, we are bound to support it. If -as it be good--let them prove it; if not--it ought not to not we The it stand defenders-- to ,exist.. OUR BRAVE FELLOW-CITIZENS. TaiI old men of Dublin remember it the capital of a nation. It had long been the capital of the English Iae, and the municipal spirit, then at full tide in Europe, sustained. it. But, laws forbidding trade with the native Irish, and the vexations of alien and savage rulers,. kept it within humble limits. The Pale expanded to the island, and Dublin became: the of the nation. That nation was divided, butwvas still a nation ;and Dublin advanced slowly, 'but constantly. At lIast 17812 and independence came-Dublin was capital the capital of a united People, and it leaped into 'pros-of industry fed by all the- perity. National feeling dictated the principles alike taste ;and. legislation. Native was resources of the land, guarded by its laws, .enlightened by its genius,, and inspired by its glory. A. splendid gentry crowded our streets with their equipAges, :and set every trade at work supply their comforts, their luxury, or their benevolence. Tfhe busi- 'to 96 THE VOICE OF THE NATION. ness and the piety of the nation required new Senate Houses, new Courts, new Exchanges, new Temples-and our; city was adorned with some of the fairest buildings in Europe. The mansions of our nobility pushed on one another into the country; while many a thronged suburb rose to supply their wants. A Senate which boasted more genius than England's ever did before, applied itself to rear up great staple trades. The linen trade was encouraged, so that in a few years it reached that degree of excellence from which it never has been driven, and that extent of which nothing but English neglect and hostility deprived it. The woollen, the silk, and every other trade which required support against premature competition received it. Aided, as such laws were, by public spirit, these manufactures shot up so rapidly that they were largely exported, and few years more of tranquillity and care would have enabled them to guard their own rights by their own strength. There was food on every table, a roof over every head, and hope in every heart in Dublin. How proudly the workman gazed on the national flag as it floated over the Castle, for that flag was his ownthe emblem of his liberty, and the pledge of his prosperity. How heartily he cheered as the leaders of the Senate entered the Council-house of the nation, for he knew that they went to consult for Ireland, and for Ireland alone. How confidently his eye followed the battalions of the Volunteers (if he did not wear their dress), for they were Irish soldiers, ready to fire to their last cartridge, and fight to their last breath, in defence of the industry and happiness of Ireland. But 'tis all changed now! The nobles are in London and Vienna. The gentry are, half of them, insolvent, and the other half pinched absentees, hated at home and despised aboad. Their mansions are asylums, or the shops of foreign adventurers. A few hundred officials and professional men live here, with little literature and less nationality. They, and the sweepings in of the minor gentry who cannot emigrate, suffice to occupy our streets and with the pretence of an aristocracy. The looms squares, THE VOICE OF THE NATION. 97 that supported thousands were sold, or rusty, or rotten, years ago. ;Oh! the banners of the Trades' procession here fair to see, and their legends were bold and true; but they had banners whose wavings fluttered the heart till more, and on them were words which woke a stronger feeling. They contained the amount of men at work irr each trade, before the Union, and now. Here was a trade which gave work to two thousand families, and now employs two hundred and fifty; and there another, and another, which gave bread to one, two, or three thousand men, and now supports three hundred, or eighty, or ..- none ! Such was the tale they told; such is the story of the Repealing Trades; and such, say the Protestant Operatives, is the fact. Our custom-house is leased to store-keepers, or turned into a nest for the remnants of half-a-dozen public offices, once great, but now ruined, or transferred to London. Our Exchange is locked up, and the tourist must hunt out for some mournful mechanic, who once a month un, locks for the curious the scene of Dublin's commerce. Our great manufacturing quarters are rotten ruins, where the children and grand-children of wealthy artisans lurk and linger on the casual supplies of charity. Our Senate. house harbours those who live on the wants of some, and the despair of others. Our flag is nowhere but in the bosoms of those who will yet wave it, and our Volunteer army is an example. Alas for Dublin! alas for Ireland! Who shall lift up the fallen city ? Who shall heal the bruised nation ? Is there balm in Gilead ? is there hope for the pining, and strength for the worn, and rest for the weary? There is! The men who went out solemnly, the whole population of our greatest city, they tell us there is. There is hope; for they are ardent, cautious, and firm. There is safety; for they are many, organised, and irresistible. All Dub.. lin--we say advisedly, all Dublin went in heart, if not in person, with the Trades last Monday. The Protestant moulders under the Union-blight, and his pride of country and his personal hopes beat with those who seek 4Ireland for the Irish." Nay, the soldiers, prisoned up ,' their barracks that day, sent their blessings, and someo 98 THE VOICE OF THE NATION. sent still more, and many longed to go, weapon-laden, to that meeting, for they are Irish; and those who are not Irish are men, and they see the tumbling streets where trade and health once bloomed. And the squalid child, and the worn cheek of girlihood make them swear not to aid in perpetuating such deep misery upon their poor brethern and sisters. THE NEW JERUSALEM MISSION. "G-o, teach all nations," was the injunction of the Divine Founder of our Holy Religion to those divinely ordained Missionaries to whom he bequeathed the rich inheritance of the Gospel of grace. The Church of England, long slumbering on crimsoncushionied benches of the House of Lords; lazily reclining in Prebendal stall; or, with tithe pig and old port sore oppressed, dozing inl snug vicarage, entrenched in circumferential glebe, left missionary labours, toils, and dangers, to Churches more zealous and less wealthy than its own. Instead of going forth to teach all nations, they preferred staying at home, rejoicing in the temporalities of the nation they left untaught. Filled to repletion with the fatness of the land, the "lean kine" of Heathenism were left «ithout compunction in their benightedness. Churchmen of a Church "by law established," happy in the arms of their orthodox spouses, and casting prudently about in search of provision for the little pledges of their connubial love, found no inspiration strong enough to call them away from reverend uselessness, across the stormy main, to unconverted climes, where Pagans are obstreporous and Port inferior ; where labours of the ministry are great, but ministers' money little-inhospitable and anti. Church-by-law-established regions, where lions and tigers are abundant, but tithe-pig an animal utterly unknown. Missionaries, to be sure, boasted, and still boast, this self-styled Catholic and Apostolic Church ; but these babes of grace, such as the Rev. TRASIH GR EGG, the THE VOICE OF THE NATION. 09 Rev. JOE BAYLEE, and the Rev. Renegado O'SULLIVAN, seldom penetrate into foreign parts farther than the Town Hall of Liverpool. Saints, too, have they-Saint PLUMTRE, Saint KNATCHBULL, Saint STOWELL-fishwomen in full canonicals, who now and then do a bit of Billingsgate at:Exeter Hall; proselytes they have made of poor men, to vote against their consciences; and their conversions are many-into the three and a half per cents.; but for converting the Heathen, they leave that to Papists and Dissenters, convinced at the bottom of their hearts, many by experience, many more by hope, that the coronet of a Peer dispenses rays more substantial and more glorious than the heaven-descended halo encircling the brows of expiring martyrs. Latterly, however--public opinion stirring them up, as it were, with a long pole--my Lords the Bishops of the Anglican Church, very much against their grain, have been compelled to an activity surprising in men of their corpulence and habits of feeding-they have actually gone down in their purple carriages, with a purple coachman in a flaxen wig, and three purple footmen, in purple plushes, hanging on behind, and got a bill passed for endowing out of the Consolidated Fund-that is, out of the pockets of the People-a squad of foreign Bishops, foreign Chaplains, foreign Archdeacons, foreign Deans ; in short, a complete foreign and colonial rookery; and, having passed their bill, went home at seven o'clock to their stewed meats and claret. To begin the thing in good style, they first outfitted a Bishop of Jerusalem; and having provided his Lordship with silver forks, a grand piano, and other necessaries for his mission, shipped him off with, as DOGBERTRY says, "everything handsome about him." The account of his Lordship's embarkation for the Holy City we transcribe from the columns of a London paper, at the time; and as it is a splendid specimen of Ecclesiastico-warlike intelligence, we cannot withhold it from our readers, more especially as they help to pay for it :"The Devastation steam-frigate, Commander Hastings Reginald Henry, will be fuilly completed and ready for sea this afternoon. A large quantity of shot and shells were put on board this morning from F 100 THE VOICE OF THE NATION. the arsenal. The Reverend Michael Solomon Alexander, Bishop of England and Ireland(?) in Jerusalem, and suite (1!) are expected to embark at the Woolwich Dock-yard on Tuesday next, and sail immediately afterwards for their destination. The original inten. tion of the Reverend Divine to embark at Portsmouth has been altered, in consequence of the daily expected confinement of his ladl, who, with her family of six daughters, the eldest not above thirteen years of age, will have ample accommodation on board the splendid vessel, and avoid the fatigue of travelling by rail to Portsmouth," This is certainly rich: rochets and rockets-canons and cannon shot-missionaries and marines-homilies and howitzers-the bishop and the bombardier-the Devestation steam-frigate and--delightful combination of Heathen, Hebrew, and Christian names-the Reverend MICHAEL SOLOMON ALEXANDER! The Church militant is beautifully exemplified in the happy union of the messenger of peace and implements of war. The conjugal consideration, too, of the Missionary Bishop for Mrs. and the half dozen Misses ALEXANDERS, in embarking them at Woolwich, to avoid the fatigue of journeying by rail to Portsmouth, however gratifying as a picture of domestic bliss, give us but feeble hope of much activity on the part of his Lordship in awa kening to the sublime truths of Christianity the unbelievers of the City of the Sepulchre. The next account we had of the Bishop of England and Ireland in Jerusalem was, that he had made a triumphal entry into that city-a sort of entry, indeed, which must have impressed the Mahometans, and much more the Franks, with an extraordinary notion of the Church of England and Ireland as by law established. We forget the exact order of the procession upon this memorable occasion, but believe it was headed by a squadron of Arab cavalry, followed by the butler, chaplain, upper and under housemaids, Mrs. ALEXANDER'S lady's maid, and the Misses ALEXANDElRS' ladies' maids, cook, scullery-maids, coachman, grooms, and upper and under footmen in purple plushes, newly provided for the occasion. All this...albeit not exactly apostolical-was episcopal and orthodox. But when Mrs. ALEXANDER, whose interesting condition rendered it impossible for her to bear the motion of a camel, came in sight, extended upon the flat of her back on a palanquin, upborne by 'THE VOICE OF 101 THE NATION. fourthe motley population the the Holy City and disgust bare-legged infidels, astonishment of of burst forth into open ribaldry and sarcasm. " Allah is great," said an old Turk, withdrawing the pipe for a moment from his bearded lip, " behold the mnufti. of the gaiour i" " Bishallah !" shouted another, "see the naked-faced spouse of the mufti supine upon a palanquin !" " And the little muftis in frilled trowsers," exclaimed a third. " Vescovo, the Bishop," exclaimed one of the Christian population. "Vescova, Mrs. Bishop," observed another, opening his eyes in astonishment. " O Ceilo--Dei Vescovini--good Heavens! the little Bishops," echoed a third, lifting up his hands. " Dogs," exclaimed one of the Arabs, spitting, as he said it, upon the ground. " Sons and daughters of dogs," observed another, picking up a fistful of mud and letting fly at the worthy Prelate, and hitting his Lordship in the eye. In this edifying manner, hooted, mobbed, and pelted, did the Reverend MICHAEL SOLOMON ALEXANDER and suite make his episcopal entry into the City of the Sepulchre. From such a beginning as this, exhibiting so flagrant a disregard of the prejudices of the population, both Frank-and Turk, we could not expect that any progress could be made in the work of proselytism, and so it has turned out: we have not a single converted infidel to show for our money. The Bishop is desponding, though the butler thinks that with good old crusty port business might yet be done. He calculates on three proselytes to the dozen, but does not conceal his apprehensions that backsliding will be the consequence of emipty bottles. The last account we have of the Bishop and 'uite is rather melancholy. He writes home to a friend: "Every one of my household, excepting only the native servants, have had an attack of fever more or less severe. The children and the English servants have more or less recovered; but Mrs. A. and myself are but slowly gaining ground, this having been my second attack. This is the trying season-we are obliged to F2 102 THE VOICE OF THE NATION. leave our houses for change of air, but the only abode we can find is an old convent, about two miles from Jerusalem; we hope to go there to-morrow." Now, we really cannot help thinking that it is little better than a pious fraud upon the people of England and Ireland to make them pay for a Bishop in Jerusalem, his teeming wife, his half-dozen of half-grown daughters, his English servants in the fever, and his native servants out of it; and it is little better than a holy humbug to suppose that a man so 'hampered' by his family and suite can attend to the arduous duties of his mission. We have no doubt the Bishop is a very good man, and uxorious; and as he has got into a convent, we hope, in future, to hear a better account of his Lordship, Mrs. ALEXANDER, the six Misses ALEXANDER, and, above all, the "baby." WORSHIP OUR CRINES. THE crimes have been confessed, and are undefended, as they are indefensible; but they succeeded. "We went out to rob," say the English, "we went out to dishonor, we went out to slay people who had not injured us, a people to whom we swore our friendship while we were drawing the dagger to stab them; but-we succeeded; Irishmen congratulate us. We are your superiors. You, people of a miserable province, what countries have you plundered, what nations have you decimated, what treaties have you broken? You have served us long enough in other ways-you have exaggerated our merits and our power-you have believed every calumny against our enemies-your peasant labours for us-your voice is silent, lest we should be offended-you are taught to suppress your groansyour very name is erased so far as we could remove it. Yet one submission more. Worship our crimes, for we are your masters !" Why, the Babylonians who pandered to the sensuality of their priests, in order to propitiate their demon, were upright and honorable men compared to the Irishman vhlo flatters the vices of England. THE VOICE OF THE NATION. 103 FFECTS OF THE UNION ON PROTESTANT TRADESMEN. THE Protestant operatives know before the Union that there were 91 masters and 4,938 workmen employed in woollen weaving in Dublin-now there are about 400. There were 30 master and 230 operative wool-combers in Dublin then-there are about 60 now. There were 13 master and 720 working carpet-makers in Dublin before 1800-there are half-a-dozen now. At the Union 25 master and 1,491 operative stuff and serge makers lived well in Dublin--now 130 men and 1 employer linger in our liberties. And the flannel trade is gone altogether. Near 100 employers and 14,000 workers were clothed, housed, and fed, by cotton weaving in Dublin before the union-5 or 6 employers and 1,000 or 1,200 persons get half sustenance from it now. 4,000 persons were employed then at calico-printing-there are now 800 or 900. About 6,700 persons lived well by the different branches of the silk trade, and a large proportion of these were Protestant operatives-now about 400 struggle to subsist by it. 1,200 persons were supported by the hosiery trade--now some 30 or 40 families live poorly by it. The Protestant operatives know, too, that, if they had a native government, absenteeism would be stopped, either by good example, or, if necessary, an absentee tax ; and that the enormous sums which now flow every year from Ireland to London, Vienna, and Naples, would be spent here. They know that Ireland pays five million pounds a-year tribute or tax to the English treasury. They know that the foreign officials who make fortunes here, taken their savigs away to spend in England, They know that nothing is done to support, instruct, or encourage the Irish operatives, be they Protestants or Catholics. And they know that if the Union were repealed, all these evils would be removed, and the whole resources of this fertile and mighty land would be applied to the use and advantage of Irishmen resident in Ireland. And knowing these things, they will, when consulting quietly for the support of their wives and children, require some better reasons against joining Repeal than a hurrah for an exploded ascendancy which no power in the universe could revive. 104 THE VOICE OF THE NATION. STREET BALLADS AND POPULAR POETRY. IT is time the hideous nonsense sung as street ballads should be superseded. Sense and temperance ought to begin their reign together. It is a disgrace to the people when a ballad-singer is plundered of his songs, according to the present practice of the police, that they are generally found to be a heap of gingling gibberish, with scarcely a glimmer of meaning. Nothing can have a worse effect upon their minds than the custom of listening to such songs. Their lively imagination is naturally inclined to jump at a meaning without waiting to have it made out distinctly; and this fault is, of course, increased by productions in which the meaning is either obscured by the inflated language, or rendered quite different from what the writer intended--when he intended anything. The Repeal Wardens, and our wardens, the officers of the popular reading societies, should put an end to this. They ought to arrange with the printers of popular ballads to provide the people better. Most of the national songs of Banim, a few of Moore's, one or two of Lover's, and the " Spirit of the Nation," would furnish them with an ample supply for this purpose; or, if they desire original ones, there are men who would rather undertake to furnish them, than see the popular mind drugged with this perilous nonsense. We think with Fletcher, that it is of little consequence who makes the laws of a country if the song-making be in proper hands; and as we hold the office of national lyrist at present, vice Thomas Moore, superannuated, we are bound to discourage the circulation of spurious Irish melodies as strongly as our fellow-labourers, the gentlemen who have the making of the laws, discourage the circulation of base money. While we are on this subject we must remind a host of correspondents that this acknowledged influence of national poetry is the chief reason we are chary in printing their contributions. If the songs of a people are more important than the laws, they are surely no work for schoolboys and half educated men. Twice a week, at least, we receive letters accusing us of harshness to poetic correspondents, and admonishing us that we ought to foster young genius THE VOICE OF THE NATION. 105 till it grows into maturity. Aye, friends, but are we to foster nonsense ?--are we to foster a sow's ear with the hope that it will become a silk purse ? We foster genius or even talent when we can find it, which, thank heaven, is abundantly often: but are we, therefore, to be guilty of the treachery of giving the people a stone instead of bread, or the cruelty of promoting a taste for scribbling among those whom nature never never intended to touch pen and ink? There is not a more pitiable creature in existence than a man inflicted with the itch of writing poetry, but denied the capacity. We would as soon encourage a lame man to turn ballet-master as such a one to make verses. But the danger to the individuals is of less consequence than the danger to the tastes and opinions of the people and these immature productions are generally as full of outrages on proper feeling as on poetry. One set of them, that mimicked the silver flute of Moore on a penny whistle, consisted of moving appeals to England for compassion, and dull litanies of our services and sacrifices in her cause. We are not of the pathetic school of politicians, and as we don't know what a country so blessed by heaven as ouri, and with the capacity to make her own fate, has to do with whining, we put these in the fire. Another set sent us songs about Paddy and Teddy, after the fashion of the London pseudo " Irish" Melodies. Writers of this class are the disgrace of our country, and have done a million times more mischief than they can ever repair. The worst effect of their slang wit is, not that England is taught habitually to regard us as a race of blundering servant-men, scarcely fit to deliver a medsage, and utterly unfit for anything better but that we form some such notion of ourselves. While the Scotch nourish their proper national pride uwith such spirit-stirring songs as "Scots wha hae," and " Blue boinnets over the border,"we are encouraging the contempt of our enemies, and exciting it unconsciously in the minds of our own children, by singing or applauding " Barny Brallaghan,"" Teddy Roe," and the rest of the ridiculous libels on our national character. Of course we set our face against this class. A third set went into the opposite extreme, and committed the deadlier error of turning our national pride into 106 THE VOICE OF THE NATION, ridicule, by either praising the country for something that did not deserve praise, or that she did not possess at all. Here is an example in a song just come to hand: "Hurrah for old Ireland, the great and the glorious, On whose turf never trampledthe coward or slave! Here's her patriot sons in the field still victorious, And her chiefs round whose temples her eyergreens wave! Hurrah for old Ireland, where no reptile, oh, never, Has prosper'd or flourish'd, but languish'd and diedWhere the bright beams of fellowship ever and ever, Have the storms of corruption and treason defied!" Is this true ? If no coward or slave ever trampled on our soil--whence came our conquest by a foreign enemy, whom we could have driven back into Wexford Bay, had not cowards and slaves betrayed our cause ? If our patriots were always victorious-are Dundalk, Kinsale, Rathmines, the Boyne, and Drogheda only fictions ? If no reptile flourished on our shore-were Castlereagh, Reynolds, and Armstrong foreigners ? If corruption and treason never prospered-how came the Union? Allowing poetry its full licence to deal in fiction, we cannot reverse the records of history to enforce a wrong moral. We have had many traitors and slaves. and too many woful defeats. But let it be told to our honour, that we had victories, in the light of which they may be forgotten; and an unbending spirit that neither yielded to defeat nor victory-that was not driven to despair by the one, nor stimulated into excesses by the other. This is our true glory. Others, again, who heard, we suppose, of "doing good by stealth," sent us bundles of plagiarisms from the most familiar sources. Thus we have been told three-score-and-ten times a month that the sunburst is "flung on the gale"that the harp "is taken from the willow,"-that this is the "Emerald Island"-and that the ships of Ireland will sail "into the harbour of freedom at last ;" while "Minstrel Boys," and "Exiles of Erin" were as plenty as blackberries. Perhaps it was in no small degree owing to the steady discouragement of all these classes that so vigorous and racy a school of poetry has grown up in the country, and that we now possess songs, many of them written by peasants and artizans, that have been more warmly praised and more ex- TIE VOICE OF THE NATION. 107 tensively circulated than any poetry published in this country for a generation. Every one of these we reckon of more value, as an evidence of the condition of the popular mind, than a hundred speeches, or a wagon-load of petitions. They echo the true, inner, heartfelt feelings of the people. Song is the language of the heart, and will not lie when addressed to or springing from the millions. We have no doubt a philosophical speculator on the prospects of Ireland would take this apparently trifling circumstance as one, and not the least material, of his criteria in coming to his conclusion. Men who think such thoughts, and men who sympathise with them, must be in earnest; and earnestness is the foreshadow of success. ENGLAND'S MIISSION IT remains for us to notice the "Mission" of England. We are not inclined to charge the English democracy with an active participation in the crimes of the ruling classes, but so long as they tolerate these crimes, they incur much of the guilt of them. If the People of England act like men loving justice and hating iniquity, they shall have our cordial support, and we shall try to forget our wrongs. We now deal with England as represented by her Government. Why should we share her joy who never shared her prosperity ? Why should we rattle our fetters in saturnalia, because our tyrant is the stronger to keep us enslaved? Why should we sing hymns of victory because an inscru.table Providence has allowed the bad to triumph and the good to die ? Is it pretended that the cause was just ? No! Or that we would gain by its success? No! Or that she who triumphed was not our deadly foe and oppressor, and only enemy-other nations not having the will or means to hurt us ? No! Why, then, should we disturb Heaven with such impious insanity as thanks for our ruin, and our foe's successful sin? Is it the "mission" of Ireland ever to bend the knee to England in her most ruffian moods, when she sends us her glutton tyrant, as yesterday, or F3 108 THE VOICE OF THE NATION. bids us thank her blood hounds to-day ? Shall we alway exhibit the "Patient folly who, on bended knee, Gives back the steel that stabb'd him ?" Must we be the mockery of the earth-a nation clamour. ous and servile, discontented and degraded, impatient an cowardly; the mean and flattering sycophant, and the stealth) calumniator by turns ? Is this the fate, the destiny, th( "mission" of Ireland ? If it were, sooner would we se( every son and daughter of the soil lying in bloody deat upon her green slopes--if it were, sooner would we pra3 that the island ihight sink to perdition, and the name anc being of it be annihilated from God's earth. But is it so ? No, no-in the name of the beating and haughty and resolved hearts of millions, no ! no! no ! Ireland has had, like every other land, her times of degradation; and more than most other lands, her times of suffering. She suffers now only a little less, but she is not now degraded ! She is rising up from slumber and putting or her armour, and lo ! she will be upon her threshold ! There is hope on her brow and lightning in her eye; but, above all, there is resolve in her heart--the resolve which remembers remorse, and shrinks from it alone-the resolve that hope shall not fail while life lasts, nor life outlast her effort for freedom. But we have wandered from our subject---the " mission" of England. We ask for its proofs, and they are at hand. Her mission is not from Heaven. Yet, 'tis wide. She is a sort of world-hydra, as Carlyle would call her. From Canada to the Cape, from Ireland to Australia, from India and China to Western Africa, and the distant realms of South America, no nation but has felt the teeth, and claws, and venom of this incongruous and pitiless monster. England has warred for gain, against liberty, and with all the weapons of ferocity and deceit. Yet she seldom wanted some moral pretence or religious humbug to justify her actsfrom the slave trade to the opium war. Thus warred she against the red Americans and the White Americans, from Saratoga and Lexington to Buenos Ayres, where she ordered her troops to "give no quarter." She swept whole tribes from Africa to sudden death, or death in chains. And TIHE VOICE OF THE NATION. 109 though it is but yesterday, and after a century's labour of philanthropists, she abandoned her open share in it-and though it is notorious that the slave-trade is chiefly carried on by her sons, with her capital, yet so audaciously does she mix aggression and hypocrisy, that she is trying to enforce an intolerable maritime supremacy, under the pretence of suppressing it. She has rotted away by her avarice and vices, half the population of Australia and Polynesia; and cleared out, with bullet and bayonet, the "last man" from the great island of Van Dieman--thus accomplishing at the Antipodes that extermination so often and vainly tried in Ireland.* She has, between her wars and her taxes, slain many millions of Hindus, and reduced kingdoms to a jungle. She spared no infliction, and despised no gain. Edmund Burke said, after much research, that she never made a treaty in India which she did not break, and that no power was safe from her, save so far as it distrusted and repelled her, Even now she lies on the breast of India like weights on the dying mute. Such has she been in other quarters of the globe; and in Europe her conduct is sufficiently described by-Ireland! One illustration of England's missionary spirit here occurs to. us, exactly in keeping with the " Te Deum Laudamus" for " The Triumph of Crime"-the name by which we warrant these late wars will long be known in India:"Divers of the enemy retreated into the ' Mill Mount,' a place very strong, and of difficult access, being exceedingly high, having a good graft, and strongly palisadoed. The governor, Sir Arthur Ashton, and divers considerable officers, being there, our men getting up to them, they were ordered by me to put them all to the sword; and; indeed, being in the heat of action, I forbid them to spare any that were in arms about the town, and I think that night they put to the sword two thousand men; divers of the officers and men being fled over the bridge into the other part of the town, where about one hundred of them possessed St. Peter's Church stee- ple, some the West-gate, and others a round tower, next the gate, called St. Sunday's--these being summoned to yield to mercy,. refused : whereupon I ordered the steeple of St. Peter's to be fired, when one of them was heard to say iu the midst of the flames, God damn me-God confound me ! I burn, I burn!' "Although it may seem very chargeable to the state of England I*et any one who thinks this assertion too strong consult III. Leland, p. 192; S6C;arey's 'Vindicie Hiiernicie,chap. 22:. . 110 THE VOICE OF THE NATION, to maintain so great a force, yet surely to stretch a little for the present, in following God's providence in hope, the charge will not be long. I trust it will not be thought by any (that have not irreconcilable or malignant principles) unfit for me to move for a constant supply, which in all human probability, as to outward means, is most likely to hasten and perfect this work; and, indeed, if God please to finish it here as he had done in England, the war is likely to pay itself." This is the preaching of England's greatest missionary. No wonder that it was said, in the Corporation, that the next step to voting thanks to the English slaughter-chiefs in India and China would be, to vote a monument to Cromwell in Drogheda. THE YOUNG MEN OF IRELAND. THE Planet,a London journal of some ability, has been speculating upon the character and sentiments of that class on whom the fortune of this country mainly depends-its young men of education and intellect. "A new spirit (says the Planet) has grown up amongst the Irish people, during the last ten years. The lull that was produced in the public mind by the passing of the Catholic Relief Bill has passed away : A NEW RACE-a new spring of sentiments have spread themselves over the land, and evidently displaced that timid, cautious class, whose boyhood was impressed with the terrors of the early portion of the present century. The men of twenty-five have placed in the rear rank the men of fifty-and they come forward with all the energies, and all the courage of their grandfathersthe Volunteers of 1782-to declare, that they will not be content with a secondary position for Ireland amongst the nations of the earth. We may not approve of the spirit. It may hurt our pride to find such a feeling avowed, but it would be a paltering with truth to conceal the fact. We see it; it is evidenced by every Irish newspaper that comes to hand, and in a collection of songs and poems (the Spirit of the Nation) it bursts upon us with all the suddenness, quickness, and force of the electrical spark from heaven. There is a soul-there is an energy in this collection of poems, such as are only brought forth in times when the hearts of men are moved, as if by a mighty convulsion. In energy, in power, in peculiar national feeling, they will be found greatly to resemble the compositions that spread over Spain during the time of the war of independence against the might of Napoleon, and his then almost countless, as up to that time his unconquered, legions. These are specimens of the Irishman-not as he is in paltry Irish stories, ,nd worse farces, but in his grief and in his daring-these are the THE VOICE OF THE NATION. III thoughts of the Irishmen of 1843. We pray our readers to attend to. them-we hope our rulers may in time learn to profit by them." The Planet has not mistaken the pedigree of the young men of '43--they are the legitimate successors of the Vo. lunteers, either "by right of birth or servitude." They are heirs to what was best worth inheriting. If they have not their blood in their veins, or their gold in their coffers, they have their principles and their courage in their hearts. But they claim kindred with all the brave men who asserted the natural rights of this island, whether against Esterling, Norman, or Englishman. To be their countrymen is their pride. Beyond this, they are indifferent to pedigree ; for many of the actual sons and grandsons of the Volunteers are ranged against Ireland, while some descendants of the Anglo-Irish party of that day are amongst her surest friends. There can be little of hereditary party spirit in a country where the lineal progeny of Brien Borhoime are bitter Unionists, while John Philpot Curran and Father Mathew owed their existence to Cromwellian soldiers. The young men of Ireland claim kindred with all who struck a stout blow for the country, on one ground alone-that they would do as much if need were. Neither is the Morning Post wrong in declaring that these men are playing for a kingdom, and that they may win the game. It is true they are playing for a kingdom, though not in his sense. They are playing for the happiness and prosperity of this kingdom of Ireland-not for themselves, not in any mad dream of selfish ambition, but with a resolution to restore gaiety and plenty to her forlorn cabins, and love and pride of country to her mansions; to revive the glorious old memories that made her sons proud to call her mother ; to keep at home and consecrate to her service the genius that has long gone to adorn her worst enemy; ,to make her name known throughout the world, not as the slave of a sulky tyrant, but as the generous and gifted patroness of arts, science, and literature-once more the centre of European learning and civilization. This is their ambition, free from any alloy of selfishness; and a prouder career was never destined to men than it opens before them. While their cotemporaries in England are wasting their manhood in the gambling-house and the 112 THE VOICE OF THE NATION. race-course, or running over the bogs of controversy after the Will-o'-the-Wisp of Puseyism-while the young Germans are making syllogisms, and young Italians are making songs, the young Irishmen, in a spirit of chivalry that has died out of the worn and wasted heart of old Europe, plant their feet firmly upon their fatherland, and declare that they will right her wrongs--gainsay it who may. The statesman who speculates on the fortunes of this country, and omits to take into account those young fresh hearts who have set all their hopes upon this cast-who, with the eagerness of youth, will see no other way to happiness if a thousand lay open, and to whom it would be fhr worse than loss of life to lose the honest triumphs they anticipate, will make a poor attempt at reading the riddle of our destiny. There is more of the future to be gathered from the unreported debates in the Four Courts, in the Medical Schools, in Old Trinity, in the provincial Colleges, in the Temperance Societies, in the National Schools, than the expert reporters which the Times has sent over to Daguerreotype our speeches will be able to catch at the Corn Exchange. And surely fortune never had a happier lot to bestow than to live in the era that is to see the independence of our country achieved, and in that calmer and prouder era to follow, when we devote ourselves to the task of exalting her into the magnitude and glory of a great nation. There The honourable is work and its reward for us all. wealth that our merchants must speedily attain will have a new value as an evidence of the reviving prosperity of their country. They will be working for themselves The Bar will find other employment for and for us. the cultivated intellect of Ireland than spending the midnight oil over the petty squabbles of "John Doe and Richard Roe"-they will have to ponder upon laws to secure the liberty and prosperity of a great and free kingdom-to revive and protect her trade, and make her name honoured among the nations. It will become the artist's glory to devote his talents to the illustration of the history and manners of his own country: he will no longer have to fly for patronage to a foreign land, where his Irish tongue reverses all the ,triumphs that the grace and power of his Irish pencil THE VOICE OF THE NATION. 113 attains. He will stay at home, and have a home to stay in. Irish literature will mean something else than slang stories about Paddy and Thady, or log-books of the eatings and drinkings ofpseudo Irish Dragoons-it will reflect the hues of our national character, echo the music of our national heart, and chronicle all that we love and hate in the chequered history of our country. Who but must see that already the public mind has received a strong impulse from the sentiment of nationality spreading among us--so strong that all intellectual pursuits and societies confess the influence of it. The Art-Union, the Archaeological Society, the publishing trade, the exhibition of the Hibernian Academy-institutions the most removed from mere party politics-have been benefited to an incredible extent by the national agitation. Men were beginning to forget they had a country-they looked to England for opinions, tastes, and customs, as well as for laws, and were badly suited in both cases. They got Arms' Bills and fashionable vices, and sung Te Deums for whatever came. But all this is gone as irrevocably as the snow of last December. But what of this--for surely no sane man doubted that we could do what we would with this country ? If there was any such forlorn unbeliever within our reach, instead of talking to him of effects produced by agitation at home, we would take him by the ear to the map of the world, and, putting his finger upon Greece, ask him to tell us what that glorious but long-suffering country was two dozen years ago, and what it is to-day. We would turn him next to Belgium, and if he were idiot enough to be an Orangeman instead of being an Irishman, we would show him that prosperous little country that thrust out, neck and crop, the foreign family which he worships-the Orange Nassaus-and, setting up for themselves, learned how to be happy and respectable. And, last of all, we would take him to Canada, and if he would condescend to remember that just three years ago, he along with all long-sighted and "loyal" subjects was drinking destruction to the' Canadian patriots (or rebels, we will not quarrel about words) then in arms against England, we would tell him that: these identical patriots are now the government of that country, with the perfect concurrence of 114 THE VOICE OF THE NATION. her gracious Majesty and her advisers, After this, if he attempted to argue that three years hence we may not witness a similar spectacle at home, he would be entitled to the dunce's cap in the dullest old lady's school in Christendom. History records many glorious revolutions which met more resistance than this one can---which had stronger prejudices and deeper interests arrayed against them-but never one that excited more profound and unquenchable ena thusiasm in the hearts of a proud, bold, and sensitive people-never one that had more irresistible evidences of success. Why will not the intelligent, reflecting Tories of Ireland see this, and leave off howling against Peel for neglecting and betraying them ? Neglect them ! To be sure he does, for they are Irish, and deserve no better. But why will not they join hands with us, and, instead of begging for a mouthful at their own table, take " share and share alike" of what is not Peel's nor England's, but theirs and ours ? Why does not the Warder which represents the young Protestant intellect of the country, ask us what terms we are ready to offer them, and enable us to prove to demonstration the kind feelings we entertain for all our countrymen. The young men of Ireland are willing to pledge their lives, properties, and characters, and the rich reversion of honourable fame, for which they live and labour, that they will defend the civil and religious liberty of their Protestant countrymen to the death. This is their offer; and the generous and candid will recognise their own spirit in it, and accept it. They will prefer to trust their fellow countrymen rather than a weak and haughty foreign minister. And it is only such men we want. Let the selfish drones who would rather snore out their worthless lives in gilded chains as English pensioners-whose ambition is, to be stallfed on some paltry pittance of the wealth plundered from their own country, hold fast by the system that erects the island of England over the island of Ireland; but the young, the brave, the ambitious--those who have hope in their hearts and fire in their veins will bless God if any sacrifice, even that of their lives, will rescue their native country from the ignominy of such a fate. THE VOICE OF THE NATION4 115 THE SLAVES' DISARMING BILL. WE need no longer ask, will there be a Coercion Bill ? Here it is. What means disarmament but coercion ? What means defencelessness but slavery ? The father does not disarm his son, nor the friend wring away the defence of his friend; but the robber disarms his victim, and the pirate nails down the hatches that he may butcher unresisted. To carry arms is the first right of man, for arms are the guardians ofproperty, 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. To carry arms is the ultimate guarantee of life, property, and freedom. To be without the power of resisting oppression is to be a slave. What matter that, with delusive words, your ruler says he will not rifle your altars, nor pollute your hearths.-what matter that your gaoler boasts his power to protect you, and flourishes his weapon before your cell! Arms and liberty are synonimous. If you see an unarmed and an armed man together, you instantly conelude that the one is a prisoner-the other a guard. Arms are the badges of freemen. He who is unarmed will soon be in chains. Disarmament and slavery were convertible terms in every age. The conquering barbarians forbade the Romans to carry arms; the Normans forbade the Saxons to carry arms; the Spaniards tore their arms from the Americans-the English took arms from Ireland whenever they dared. Irish disarmament has ever been the first step to plunder and tyranny. Cromwell disarmed us, and twenty years of Egyptian bondage followed. The first act of the hellish Penal Code, under which we winced in a bloody dungeon for eighty years, was an Arms' Bill. The Volunteers extorted independence by arms, and ere the system of terror which forced on the insurrection was begun, anr Arms' Bill was passed. Arms' Bills and Castlereagh-ruin and despair--were upon us during the reign of the abominable' 116 THE VOICE OF THE NATION. Regent, George. An Arms' Bill was the leading law of coercion by the Whigs, and now the Tories open their campaign against our rising hopes with an Arms' Bill ! An Arms' Bill-there is a curse in the name. An Arms' Bill-pah! why not give it its right name, a Slavery Bill? Call it a bill to prevent resistance to tyranny-call it a bill to allow an old enemy to rob, crush, defame, and trample upon us for ever--for ever, or till some stranger, half in pity, half in contempt, steps in and smites our oppressor. An Arms' Bill-a bill to take away the means whereby men protect homes and altars, free speech, free industry, free worship-a bill to place us at the mercy of a tyrant, and that is "the definition of slavery." Why stop short with branding arms ? Why not brand ourselves ? Why not with equal propriety imitate the Grecian conqueror, and mutilate us ? The best and most natural Arms' Bill would be one to cut off our right hands; but no, we must do the work as well as bear the chains of bondsmen-we must be unmutilated slaves. NATIONAL DISTINCTIONS. SINCE the re-awakening of Ireland, our national distinctions are becoming precious again, and we learn, without surprise, that many Irish families who dropped the O' from their names long ago, from bad taste or bad example, are resuming it. They do right. England may well treat our historical names with contempt if we set her the example. And so she does, and so does her garrison of serfs and mercenaries. When the Anglo-Irish journals want to insult Dr. Higgins, they call him Dr. O'Higgins; and Chief Baron Brady's name they used to metamorphose into O'Brady. How comes this ? O' was a prefix to the names of many of our kings and chieftains before the first English invader set his foot on our shores, and it has since belonged to nearly all the native Irish that distinguished themselves in defence of THE VOICE OF THE NATION. 117 their own country or in the service of others. It claims antiquity beyond most European names, and is associated with the heroism of nearly thirty generations of gallant men. Why has it become a mark of contempt ? In no other portion of the world but Ireland does any party exist that would profane the venerable historical associations of their country. The Spaniard rejoices to trace his Castilian pedigree back to a date before the Moorish invaders took possession of his beautiful land, and, with the cunning of robbers, called it their own. The Frenchman, if his ancestors fought for France, and, under the command of a fair young girl, scourged the English out of their plundered cities, exults in his pedigree; and there is no Frenchman base enough to detract from his honour, or upbraid him, aa crime, with the patriotism of his forefathers. The Englishman is proud if his progenitors drew a good bow al Hastings, and no man says him nay. It is only in Ireland that it is a crime and a shame to belong to the land and share in its ancestral glories. Our fathers fought with invaders possessing all the ferocity and little of the civi. lization of the gallant infidels who made Spain the seal of learning and genius, and, like the Frenchmen, they too, had their Joan of Arc, " the scourge of the Eng lish;" but ignorance, and the base treachery of factior to its country, strive to make that which is the pride of other nations our shame. If we had no other proof how far we art from equality with Englishmen in our own land, this is siffi cient. The Norman Fitz, the badge of illegitimacy, is distinction in this country-a feather in the cap of pride because it is not Irish; the national O', which, even in it original assumption, required an ancient family (it is equi valent to grandson) is a disgrace. If we cannot amend thi wholly-if we cannot make it a cause of just pride to be al Irishman in Ireland, better be in exile, or in the grave, that in such a country. In the same spirit that the O' is being reassumed b; Connors, Reillys, and the like, we must deliberately und all that has been done to assimilate us with Englishmen, b; the sacrifice of any national habit or distinction. There i no people we less desire to resemble. To Anglicise ou peasantry would be to teach them the grossest indulgene 118 THE VOICE OF THE NATION. in the lowest vices. And never is vice so hideous as whei engrafted upon the character of an English boor, who has neither constitutional gaiety nor natural chivalry to control his brute-beast propensities. He pursues a vice with the same dogged determination that he fights a Frenchman, and is no more touched by a sentiment in the one case than the other. Where an Irish peasant is gay and gallant, an English boor is sullen and sensual. The Saxon plots a vice where the Celt meditates a gallantry ; and when he falls into habitual immorality, he wallows like a hog in the stye of his moral filth, till he becomes the very beast he resembles. From such a leprosy as this we have been preserved partly by our poverty, much more by the influence and example of the clergy of the people, but most of all by our national character. The gay, bold, joyous Irishman has no tendency to the darker vices. His animal spirits and his love of fun supply him with abundant materials for enjoyment. If you give him the plodding habits of the Briton, he will have his vices along with them. You cannot have the spirit of the racer and the endurance of the waggonhorse together. For these reasons, if for no other, we must contend for ever against the ignorant quackery of assimilating the habits and character of people so unlike. If we must sacrifice our gaiety, our enthusiasm, our wit, and all the finer elements of our nature, let it be for something better than the filthy vice of the Socialist-the fanaticism of the Thomite---or the ignorance and cowardice of the Chartist. The sacred bullock of the Egyptians was a respectable deity compared to the vile and unclean animal set up for our worship. THE VOICE OF THE NATION. 119 " OURSELVES ALONE." " Ourselves alone !" Alas! that the sentiment should suggest gloomy as well as cheering considerations. Would that "ourselves together" were as familiar, as well recognized, and as true. 'Tis a proud consciousness--self-reliance. 'Tis a mighty faithi; and, when it is the inspiration of great national undertakings, its augury cannot deceive. But the conviction that Irish deliverance is not a work too great for Irish hands; and, even though most men's hearts, and acts, and hopes bear the stamp of such assurance, is somewhat chequered by the knowledge that it is by Irishmen, and Irishmen only, it is or can be delayed. They are, no doubt, but few-yet they are Irishmen, This ill-omened exception consists of two classes. Both are influenced by fear; but fear leading to different actions, though tending finally to the same result. The one it prompts to skulk from good--while from the hearts of the other it evokes a daring in an evil cause too earnest and enthusiastic to be ranged below virtue. Let us analyze the conduct and motives of both. The first-the dead things in a nation's life, like maggots that crawl and rot in the crannies of dry walls, rather than look for sustenance beyond--affect to worship freedom until their white hearts grow red; but the blush of manhood mantles no higher. They cannot utter the name of country, in the only sense that "country" has a meaning, without a terror that the fatal spell would exorcise some omnipotent and all-devouring apparition. They would beg for liberty, but attune their mendicant prayers to the capricious ear of English masterdom. " You are right," say they; "your demands are just, honest, and honorable; but, oh! do not anger the English-see you provoke them not; for, if you do, we are a ruined people." "Beware how you provoke England The cant of cowardice, this. But call it an argument, or principle of action, and what subserviency will be too vile ? Who can tell how far even the beggar's whimper of those very men may not provoke England ? " Don't vex England---don't rouse England !" It would vex England-it would rouse !" 120 THE VOICE OF THE NATION. England, if England dared, to check her avarice, to gainsay her behests, to question her supremacy, to arrest her robbery, or to ask her to relax to the least imaginable extent her tyrant hold in any spot of the universe where her money, her treachery, or her arms, have subjected men to her evil sway. Never yet did Ireland compel a concession, that it did not enrage England, even to pray for it. Never yet did any people, or any power, arrest the course of English plunder or English domination, that England did not vouchsafe to be vexed, roused--and, at last, silent. " Don't rouse England !" But, let us pass from this truckling counsel, this slave's faith, and leave those who hold it to the ignominy of their contentment. The other class is of higher mark. The fear of the men who compose it suggests manly resistance to a force far superior to their own. They apprehend that if Ireland stood alone-governed alone--fostered alone her own trade, cherished alone her own resources, and alone guarded her native honor-the Catholics would assume and exercise ascendancy. Against this supposed mischance to their faith and feelings, the young and manly blood of the Protestants curls into wrath. We will stake against it, say they, life, liberty, freedom, and fatherland; for it would not be freedom where we would be ourselves slaves to a more powerful class, and that is not national independence where there is not equality for all men. These are their motives, or they are hypocrites; this their purpose, or they are blustering liars. We do not suspect them to be either one or the other. Some there are among them, no doubt, whose religion is pelf-whose trade, a traffic upon ignorant bigotry. These men-selfish priests and grinding landlords-can turn the mistaken zeal and earnest courage of their followers into gold. But they form only an insignificant and worthless section, and would, of course, desert their infatuated dupes in the first moment of danger ; we care to appeal neither to them nor against them. But we feel it a task of honor to disabuse the young, and trusting, and disinterested of the Protestants of Irelandthose who are the victims of inflamed zeal, mistaken courage, and ill-grounded alarms. Nothing but the false teach- THE VOICE OF THE NATION.o 121 ing of huxter priests, or the adhering leaven of old and bad prejudices, could keep them and the party we act with asunder; whose mutual liberties, if acting together, mutual trust and kindred courage would secure against the world. We have often appealed to their sense of self-interest. We have proved to them that bigotry, while it tended to keep the poor Protestants, as well as the poor Catholics, unfed, naked, houseless, unemployed, would go farther to damn their own souls in the end, than all the imputed idolatry of Rome. Poor, denuded, and deluded, with bare backs and empty bellies, which of them has not felt that it does him no good, relieves no want of his, gratifies no manly feeling, or satisfies no honest desires, to shout out with Gregg" To hell with the Pope," or-" No peace with Rome ?" But we will take higher ground. We will call in historyexperience---the very events passing before our eyes, to prove that the fear of Catholic ascendancy is vain. Our anxiety as journalists to bring all Irishmen within the one bond of brotherhood, might aid in rendering the blindness of faction darker still. We did, to be sure, invoke our brother Protestants to make common cause with ourselves. Our country is theirs-our degradation identicaland our glory would be their glory too. We spoke from our own hearts to theirs, saying it was their duty and their interestthe duty and interest of all Irishmen-to strive together, and, if neel be, to die together, for native land. We repeat the same advice now. Opposite counsel they hear from the grinding landlord, who, if they are poor and dependent, will drain out their sweat and blood into his cup of revel, as well as if they were Papists. Opposite counsel they hear from selfish priests, who will dry their hearts of the last drachm of charity to feed their own avarice withal. But they are beginning to see through this. Cold and hunger, toil and nakedness, are no bad monitors. And, after all, the teachers of the Gospel cannot totally destroy its effects. As long as there is a common God, common salvation, and the same heaven for all, it must be apparent that the best way to gain it is not to ruin ourselves here in order to damn others hereafter. If there be truth in religion, this doctrine or practice- 122 THE VOICE OF THE NATION. namely, punishing ourselves in time, in order that others should be punished eternally-must come from hell. But let us drop polemics. The followers of this creed are become few, faint, faithless, and contemptible. There is in effect but one People--they have but one aim, and their purpose is one. In might-in faith--in danger, and death-they are one. From Belfast to Cork, from Dublin to Galway-they trust in each other, work with each other, and vow to each other, like men who have a great mission committed to them by GoD. Were ever men so leagued who did not succeed? They exchange no secret sign or password, and yet each man knows the other's heart. In this consists their might. The great truths they hold have no detraction in the world, and their cause is the cause of all men. Accordingly, look where sympathy for them springs up, From the arctic to the line, there is no man who is not a slave or a slaveholder, a sycophant or a tyrant, that does not send up a prayer for Ireland. All have pity for her, the generous have money for her-the brave, their blood. In how many languages are her wrongs spoken? In how many dialects are vows made to aid in her struggles at the hazard of everything life gives-and life itself ? Such is Ireland---the Minister scolds her. Be it so. BUSTS OF ILLUSTRIOUS IRISHMEN. EXCErT Turnerelli's O'Connell, there is seldom a bust of an Irishman to be seen in an Irish house. A friend recently mentioned a circumstance curiously illustrative of this dearth of national spirit in Ireland. He called at Nanetti's, in Church-lane, to purchase busts for his library. The collection is a very fine one; and he found abundance of Shakspeares, Scotts, Miltons, Byrons, Nelsons, Ciceros, Homers, Dantes, &c., but not a single Irishman. He inquired in turn for Sterne, Goldsmith, Burke, Curran, Banim, Griffin, 123 THE VOICE OF THE NATION. Lord Edward Fitzgerald, and Father Matthew. Not one of them all was to be had. The Duke of Wellington, the genius of military despotism, represented the country in Mr. Nanetti's collection. After a curious inspection of the premises, our friend discovered a head of Grattan on a high shelf, and a bust of Thomas Moore under a bench; and, when he purchased both, he left the collection of one of the principal modeller's in the capital of Ireland without one Irishman. Do we blame the artist for this? Not in the least-it is the fault of the public--a fault that must be amended. If we do not learn to love and cherish the memory of our illustrious countrymen, we will have no more illustrious countrymen to love. They order this better in Scotland : there, two-thirds of such a collection would consist of Scotchmen; and the very exaggeration of the sentiment to which this is traceable, makes their patch of bleak and rocky mountain known and respected throughout the world. In France 'tis better still. Statues, busts, and statuettes, of their remarkable men are not alone universal at home, but have spread all over Europe. Napoleon is in more Irish houses than O'Connell, and Joan of Arc than Henry Grattan. Our own Joan is unknown, and the very name of the Irish Napoleon, who carried his victorious arms to the Alps, a puzzle to the Court of Queen's Bench. To be "in curiosi suorum" is the reproach of barbarous or enslaved nations, and none others. GENERAL NOTT'S PROGLAMATION. IRISHMEN SOLDIERS ! I--Rumours of mutiny in your ranks have reached me-I at once reject them. You are ready as ever to shed your blood for England. You are still the hardy and devoted bands who bore her "meteor flag" from Vimiera to Waterloo. Why should you pause now? Now, as then, you march to crush an audacious people, who question our supremacy-deluded men, who refuse G 124 THE VOICE OF THE NATION. the blessings of our sway. Your gallant brigades will teach them both." You are bound to the British standard by no common ties. You can appreciate the madness of the Affghan who against it lifts his rebel flag, his insurgent green! By your gratitude for nigh seven hundre years, since sworn united allies we entered Ireland, answer ye as I say-Forward for England ! By the civilisation we bore through your provinces, rescued from barbarous peasants and bloody chiefs-by our justice, loving-kindness, and mercy-by Strongbow and Strafford-by Leonard Grey, and Beresford-by Cromwell and Carhampton--by our long suffering and toleration-by the acts of the House of Tudor, and the equal laws of the House of Hanover-Forward for England! By the traitors we quelled and the traitors we slewby O'Nial and Sarsfield-by Clanrickard and Emmettby Tone and Fitzgerald-musket and cannon-Forward for England! By the words we pledged and the treaties we kept-by the surrender of Drogheda, the capitulation of Limerickby the treaty of '82 and the compact of 1800-Draw the sword for England ! By battles won and battles lost-by Dundalk and the Pass of Plumes--by Oulart and Antrim-by the Boyne and Benburb-by Aughrim and Fontenoy-Shout your war-cry for England ! By your flourishing trade-by your liberties guardedby your honour respected-by your prosperous peasantry and your unimpeached nationality-On to the fight ! Impelled by such memories, triumph is certain. Justice and vengeance repeat the command of duty and gratis tude-" Forward for England ! " The sword has filled the snowy passes with thousands of your brethren, and sickness has laid thousands more in the sultry plain; but frost or fever, rock and river, the bullet of the Khyber and the sabre of the Ghilzie have no terrors for you. We stormed the Khyber with * As true as most English proclamations. The Peninsularwar wgs to expel ain invader-the Affghan warto sustain one.--ED. NATION. t The sacred flag of the Affghans is green, 125 THE VOICE OF THE NATION. gold, and Ghuznee with steel-the same weapons remain, The path to Cabul must open to our money or our swords. Its harems and bazaars shall repay your toil. When we pierce its walls your motto shall be our old one"' booty and beauty; "+ till then, fearless of danger and indifferent to death, let your watch-words be, gratitude and vengeance. Forward, Irishmen-forward for England. A TORY'S ACCOUNT OF WOLFE TONE. "Suppose (quoth the Standard)that in 1793 Mr. Pitt, instead of allowing his Irish government to coquet with the cuhning and cautious abettors of rebellion, had directed that such honest and extreme enthusiasts as Wolfe Tone, Hamilton Rowan, &c., should be received into the confidence and favor of the crown, enough is known of these gentlemen to shew that they would have served the crown faithfully; not betraying their principles, but reforming them upon better knowledge. The cautious, cunning, half-moderate, but whole traitor party, who justified rebellion without joining in it openly, would have been ruined, and Ireand would have been spared the shocking scenes of the five following years. The Irish aristocracy of the day, who, like their descendants, much more relished the surrender to an enemy of principles than of places, would have been shocked; even the disinterestedly loyal would have been for a time dismayed-but the country would have escaped civil war, and no principle of the constitution would need to be abandoned. Such we expect to be the result of the Canadian policy. If it is possible to save the colony under the Whig-made constitution, this policy will save it-none other can; and that none other can, is proved by the circumstances that have forced Sir Charles Bagot into his present line." This is truth-deep truth, which declares that the government of a state will be administered most firmly and most prudently by bold enthusiastic men--by men who bring popular trust to ratify and enforce their decisions. * The watchword at New Orleans. G2 126 THE VOICE OF THE NATION. The government of factions and undertakers not only sacrifice public interest to gratify their spleen or avaricethey compromise public dignity, and strip the state of its moral authority to maintain themselves in office. A better ruler for Ireland than THEOBALD WOLFE TONE never lived. He was a man of unaffected, deep, plain patriotism-liossessed of the highest political sagacity-of exact and comprehensive judgment; a man of quiet courage-per fectly conscious of, and confident in, his own powers-yet conciliating in manner, laborious in business, and gay and warm in heart. Such was that man: one of the greatest Ireland ever produced, But how strange a dispensation! after forty and odd years of insult, to have the representatives of the party who forced him over the precipice erecting a monument to him as "an honest and enthusiastic man." But we shall not repel from his grave any man who comes there reverently, no matter how he or his may have wronged the dead. Peace to his spirit! and oh, may the longings of that pure and patriot soul be fulfilled. May Ireland be a nation ! May she win her independence by a free concession of her rights ! for this, too, was the wish of his heart, though fate compelled him to forego it, and seek freedom with an armed hand. THE ANTI-IRISH CATHOLICS, LORDS Beaumont and Kenmare have sent forth a decree against the Catholic Hierarchy of Ireland. They have ruled it "disgraceful" for a Catholic bishop to be a democrat, and infamous for a Catholic hierarchy to be patriots. Most sapient and puissant princes! Their great souls were afflicted at hearing that a Catholic high-priest could feel "unbounded contempt" for the plunderers of the peoplefor the representatives of invasion--for the heirs of tyranny ! They gaped and shook i ith holy horror at the picture of prelates affording, in their chapels, a sanctuary to hunted patriotism; and they fainted at the vision of bishops walking to the scaffold in the name of freedom, and with their THE VOICE OF THE NATION. 127 last words bequeathing to their successors the care of their own wrongs and of their country's rights; they fainted with grief and indignation, not at the tyranny which could thus persecute-not at the sufferings so cruelly inflicted and so nobly borne-no I but at the audacity of a churchman pretending to have a country as well as a creed, and at the wickedness of an Irish priest aiming at the crown of martyrdom in the cause of the oppressed. Tis a peculiarity in Irish church history that its great martyrs were men who died nominally for creed, but really for country. With rare exceptions, fanaticism was here a pretence for plunder, and not the genuine lava from the soul of a zealot. The Catholics who joined their efforts to those of the Saxon got their share of the spoils; and their belief in transubstantiation gave little trouble to the consciences of their allies. But let a priest add advocacy of the peasant's rights to his other virtues, or a bishop champion Ireland as well as his religion, and the piety of the Saxon became intolerant; his zeal against Popish abominations blazed into a pyre, or blossomed into a scaffold, and the req sources of the civil power were religiously lent against the patriot or democratic Papist. Archbishop Oliver Plunket and Father Nicholas Sheehy are only the most prominent names in an array of Irish martyrs, who died, like the Presbyterian William Orr--" persecuted men for a persecuted country." Beaumont and Kenmare might have summoned many a bishop and many a priest from the dust of a bloody shroud, to testify how wicked and hazardous it was in alien eyes, to have a heart for the People and a voice for Ireland. Nor was the crime diminished by Orthodoxy, as the dangling carcass of many a Presbyterian Clergyman proved in '98. POPULAR READING-ROOMS. IN any town where the intelligent operative classes pull cheerfully together, the establishment of a news'-room is a matter of no difficulty. It needs only one resolute man to 128 THE VOICE OF THE NATION. accomplish it. A trifle from his Saturday night's pay will defray the weekly subscription of each reader; and there are few towns in Ireland where twenty members could not be had to contribute that trifile. Twenty members at six pence a-week, each, would produce a sum sufficient to hire a room at £1 a month, to pay the subscriptions of " Tait's Magazine," " Chambers's Journal," the "Penny Magazine," the "Freeman's Journal,"the " Weekly Register," and a good local newspaper; to purchase O"Connell's "Memoir on Ireland," " MacGeoghan's History," the " Green Book," the " Speeches of O'Connell and Sheil," " Moore's Melodies," " Chambers's Information for the People," "Captain Rock," half-a-dozen of Cobbett's cheap publications, and two or three other popular works, which, with the " Reports of the National Association," to be got by any Repeal Warden, would make an excellent foundation for a library. Every town can do this, and wherever there is a Teetotal Society they have done it already, or will do it speedily. But it is by no means easy to accomplish so much in the country, where money comes irregularly, and intercourse is difficult. The promise of a newspaper by a farmer's fireside will, at any time, gather a housefull to hear it read but few farmers have one to promise, and fewer are inclined to promise it. We believe there is a kind of tacit disrelish in this class to reading clubs among their dependants. They have a notion that it leads to idleness, and that men who can read well will work badly. This is a very silly prejudice, for knowledge teaches nothing earlier than the advantage of habitual industry; and the very analogy of their own daily employment might convince them that reading will do no harm--but much good. Cultivation does precisely the same thing for the human mind as for the lea field. What harrows and ploughs are to the one, elementary knowledge is to the other-the soil is loosened, the weeds destroyed, and a better and wholsomeir condition produced. Then comes the seed-sowing. If you sow good grain, a good crop will follow-if you sow none, you will have weeds and vermin; but you may as well look for a rich harvest without any seed, as a sound judgment without having stored the mind plentifully with knowledge. The farmers, ought to be the first to encourage reading socie- THE VOICE OF THE NATION. 1.29 ties; for men do everything, from ploughing the soil to ploughing the main, the better of education. We are no advocates for useless knowledge for the people-we want to teach them knowledge that will make them wiser and better-knowledge available in the daily duties and employments of their life-in fact, knowledge worth knowing. The man who is not acquainted with the best and speediest way of performing his habitual labour-who cannot tell you the natural resources of the country he was born in, or how she came to be in her present position, may be a mathematician or a linguist, or a Mem6 ber of Parliament, but he is an ignorant booby, and ought to be sent to school; while the man who can tell you these things, and things appertaining to them, and to his own condition, has got a good foundation for useful knowledge. THE PRESENT AND THE FUTURE. Royal Speeches in general, as mere jumbles of hypocrisy and evasion, and presuming that just delivered from the throne, to have init nothing distinguishing it from others of the class, we were prepared to dismiss it with brief and contemptuous notice. It is not for us, whose mission ranges above such jugglery, to meddle much with these foils of faction, brandished on the public stage for no purpose but to make a false glitter and empty clatter before the world. Wherefore should we; when it is a maxim, nay, an excellence of the law, that the person who uses them as his or her own, with whatever inward loathing, may adopt them without being guilty of a lie? But, on consideration, we find the last Speech either above or below the class. It contains some propositions of meaning warning-enunciations of English policywhich should determine the conduct and decide the fate of the Irish nation. The branch of the Speech to which we allude must be intended as a threat to those who are earnest, or as a check REGARDING 130 THE VOICE OF THE NATIONW or bribe to those who are lukewarm in the cause of Ireland. In the former sense, it is only entitled to contempt; in the latter, to contempt not unmixed with indignation. In either, or both, it can have no effect on coolly resolved millions, inspired by the highest hopes and struggling for the noblest objects that ever enaged the virtues and the courage of mankind. Woe to those who think the project of Repeal can be thus marred. It was not undertaken until it became inevitable, nor without having every hazard fully in view. But the Speech, although devoid of terror, is replete with lessons of useful instruction to every Irishman who is not a slave, a coward, or a cheat. There are two things in the world's circle the Queen is made to regret-the Welsh insurrection and the Irish agitation. For both the regret is equal; but how different the proposed treatment. The complainants of the Welsh, hitherto unheard-of and unknown, find vent in crime, and speak out in murder. Their wrongs are read by the lurid light of their own midnight conflagrations. They are "red in wrath"-they stand up in arms, demanding redress at the musket's muzzle and pike-head; and the answer from the Throne is, that "an inquiry shall be instituted into the CAUSES of their revolt, with a view to their removal." But the Irish-the " born thralls"-they are heard murmuring and not striking-they use reason instead of turbulence-they proclaim their own wrongs, which are old, manifest, bitter beyond endurance and undenied-they ask for an inquiry into them, and from the same Throne comes booming to them the voice of menace or corruption, without the faintest promise, or one word of hope. Of the latter we are heartily glad. We are not in Cabinet secrets; but, presuming on the truthfulness of the Queen, we believe it was owing to her that the Speech contained no lying promises with regard to Ireland. She may be deceived by spurious arguments, and wiled into wrong conclusions, but her character would be a mockery if she allowed herself to be made the instrument of palpable delusions--if she spoke words of royal faith which she must know would never be fulfilled. 131 THiE VOICE OF THE NATION. Are .the Ministers right ? Do they miscalculate when they deem such weapons efficacious to lure or deter the Irish people from a purpose to which, in the face of heaven, they stand solemnly pledged? Are they cowards, sot., idiots, to be affrighted by the fishwoman jargon that a crimiinal faction have not scrupled to put into the mouth of the Queen ? The Welsh rebel--they are caressed and flattered. Th Irish remonstrate-they are given over to unscrupulous coercion, or more unscrupulous corruption. The Ministekr say they calculate on the exercise of influence to suppreis the agitation in Ireland. The Irish nation acquits the Queen of any share in this flagrant attempt to corrupt public opinion in Ireland. But the attempt is therepalpable, indecent, monstrous. The bye-play, too, would not be, it was hoped, lost o-. whatever of meanness, cowardice, 'or selfishness, could l: found among us. The little drift of a huxter policy woulI easily find its way (so the Minister must have calculated) into little hearts. For this the dexterous flattery of men with arms in their hands was framed--" A people," says the speech, "hitherto so peaceably disposed and well-con ducted." There was a time-such is the effect of long subjection-when we would be in some alarm for this; but it is past. The rottenness produced by old fetters is cut away; we have outgrown the tiny springe of the crafty birdcatcher; the lure will be unavailing; the menace is despised and defied. We are not the men they take us for. Ours is not the position or the means they seem to calculate upon. If divided, uninformed, unprepared, the people might become an easy prey to the suborner, the cut-throat, or the spy. But, combined, conscious, forewarned, and ready, they need fear nothing. The Saxons-or, if they prefer it, the Normans-imay chuckle over the old evil hope of again subduing us by our own folly; and perhaps they may have supposed, even from our pages, that our enemies at home are more important us than they really are. to G3 132 T119 .VOICE 011111E SAS' i0199 ORANGE ANNIVERSARIES. THE Northern Orangemen, the tools, poor fellows, of the Landlords and Parsons, will, of course, have processions on the coming 12th of July; but we do not apprehend the smallest danger from them. The Repealers of Ulster understand too well their own position, and the position of these deluded men.-who are first made drunk with bigotry, and then plundered of their earnings, precisely in the manner that a bumpkin is swindled at a fair. The anger and animosity which they used to feel against the herd of Orangemen are entirely transferred to their leaders The unhappy victims they regard with more pity than hatred; and perhaps-for magnanimity is not the growth of a day-with more contempt than either. At all events, there is no fear of any collision-of that we have the utmost confidence. There cannot be a quarrel without two parties, and the Repealers will be neither one nor the other. An Orangeman, at any time, except as far as he was the outward sign of a sanguinary principle, was only an object to excite laughter---a fellow who thought the chief privilege of his existence was to wear a tawdry ribbon on his breast, in the fashion of a penny-show-man, and to drink a decoction of blue-stone and brown sugar (entitled by courtesy whiskey punch), to the confusion of a venerable Prince and Prelate whom he could as little 'reach as the sun or moon. A savage of New Holland might treat such a creature as this with contempt, as of a lower grade in the species, and rather farther removed from sense or civilization. And this is what an Orangeman was in the best days of Orange ism. Now, when the merry-Andrew dress is no longer a symbol of ascendancy---when it does not represent one rotten borough or one exclusive corporation-it would be downright madness to be angry with it; and we are well convinced there is not one Repealer in Ulster who will be guilty of such contemptible folly. If a set of poor, deluded dupes, who have no other prineiple in common than the incredible one of resisting pros. perity for themselves, and their families, and for the land where they were born, and in which they hope to die (for that is the exact meaning of Anti-Repeal), choose to pro- tHE VOICE OV Tilt elaim ATIO. 3 their folly to the world by the appropriate measure of making themselves scare-crows, with tattered millinery and Orange lillies, who can be angry with them? You might as well be angry with the mad lady in the play for decorating herself with weeds and faded flowers. If the poor Orangemen had any opportunity of looking at their own conduct, free from prejudice and self-deception, they would think of it just as we do; but they are kept in darkness by their masters, and are no more blameable for their illusions than men in a jaundice. If any one told them of African barbarians who were so deluded by their chiefs that they hallooed and hurraed, and were ready to shed their blood for some system which crammed the pouches of the chiefs with plunder, and left them in want and misery, they would make the welkin ring with their contempt for the niggars, and their exultation that they were not black savages, but enlightened Orangemen. To be angry at these poor fellows would be wholly inexcusable; we would not even wish to see any Repealer laugh at them or point them out, with no matter how goodhumoured a smile, to his wife and children, as the monomaniacs who think they can alter the resolution of a great people, by crying "No Popery," and beating their big drums, as some Indian tribes sound their gongs to frighten away an eclipse. What does "No Popery" mean to them, poor fellows ? It has a very intelligible meaning to the men who trade on their bigotry and ignorance. To those respectable adventurers it means Moderatorships in the General Assembly, and marble busts, and pieces of plate, and swingeing donations from the Protestant purse of Ulster, and numerous other very pleasant and profitable things. But what earthly meaning has it to the poor working men who pay the money to purchase all these gewgaws ? Did it ever put anything on their bare backs, or in their empty stomachs ? Did they ever get anything by it, but perhaps a hard word or a hard blow from some poor Catholic, whom they proyoked and persecuted into as inhuman a temper as their own? Persecution, like the waters of the great Ulster lough, turns all that it pervades into stone; and in the unhappy North it often hardens the hearts of men against 134 THE VOICE OF THE NATION. each other whom God placed together to live in peace, and who, by fulfilling His design, would ensure their own happiness. But while there are such rich prizes to be had by teaching them hatred instead of love, they will never learn this secret, except by a very active exercise of their native sense in tossing aside all the prejudices and falsehoods which they have been accumulating at Tory meetings, political sermons, and Otange lodges, for the last twenty years. The bitterest Orangemen we know-those of Belfastare the men of all Ireland who are in most need of Repeal. They are chiefly of the same trade as the poor men of the Liberty-and are quite as badly off for the necessaries of life. They live in small, unventilated, and shockingly filthy tenements, built on a swamp in the suburb of Ballymacarrett. On a summer evening, when they steal half an hour from the loom, to come out from the foeted air of their dens, strangers are frightened at their spectral appearance, and ask if they are the inmates of a fever hospital. These poor men work from twelve to fourteen hours a-day at their sedentary labours, and subsist almost exclusively upon starch sowens-a filthy and nauseous mess, which their Mahomet, Dr. Cooke, would not give to his pigs. They have but two or three holidays in the whole year, and---alas! for poor Ireland, and poor human nature-these are the days devoted to crying "No big loaf" at an election, or " No Repeal" (which includes not only big loaves and good wages, but every other physical comfort) at the heels of Dr. Cooke or Mr. Gregg. Every winter sees a collection to preserve them from starvation, and every spring another to assist them in emigrating to the forests of Canada or the frozen swamps of Nova Scotia. No, no, the Repealers of Ulster have something better to do than squabbling with these poor fellows. In fact, no Repealer, who is worthy to have any share in our great national struggle, will condescend to parish squabbles of any nature. If he does, he is no longer worthy. " Obedience and self-restraint" must be the motto of those who join hands with us in this work. Without these our attempt would inevitably fail. There is no use in concealing this. We have the strongest nation in the world to contend with, and we can throw away none of THE VOICE OF THE NATION. 135 our resources; least of all the sympathy and respect of all honourable men throughout Europe. Any brutal, bigoted squabbling with the Orangemen, or any by-battles of any kind, would forfeit these, and make Tour cause odious, and, what is worse than odious, contemptible. The Repealers of Ulster, then, must be careful to let no provocationtempt them to the smallest breach of the peace. They are strong enough, and their cause is successful enough, to make them patient and good-humoured under any insult from the losing party. If they want any additional triumph over their unfortunate, mistaken Orange countrymen, they are unworthy to enjoy the great victory for which we are labouring. But, possibly, there are some few hot spirits-more hot than heavy--who are provoked with these processions, as memorials of the past victories and the present strength of their enemies in Ulster. Let us just say two words to these people to quiet their unseasonable chivalry. As far as these processions commemorate the battles between James and William, they suggest no recollections of which we need be ashamed. No fields were ever more stoutly contested; and the accidents to which their issue was owing, might have happened to either side, and would have brought defeat in their train. If they had been as disgraceful as they were otherwise, the Catholics of Ulster might bear them without reproach, for there is not one county in the province in which their ancestors have not met and defeated superior forces of the English. The Boyne saw no victory half so glorious as the Blackwater. To the Orangemen they afford no grounds of triumph whatever. If they were lost by our ancesters, they were not won by theirs; but by Dutch, Danes, Saxons, and French Hugonots. They are even celebrated by the Orangemen themselves with foreign colours-the Dutch boven-as victories won by foreign generals and foreign soldiers. They do not care to commemorate Hillsborough or Dromore, where our forefathers met them with no strangers to stand between them. So much for their historical character. As demonstrations of force, they are contemptible-they could be out- -equally 136 THE VOICE OF THE NATION. numbered by the Repealers at an hour's notice. We speak not of the brave men of Louth, Meath, Longford, and Leitrim, who hem in the North; and, if actual aggressions were committed on the liberties of the people, would pour in their tens of thousands, and sweep resistance before them. Proudly and confidently as we reckon upon their assistance if it were necessary, we do not refer to that. But, on the 23rd of May, 1841, a hundred meetings took place in one day, AT ONE HOUR, in Ulster; and there were more men present at these meetings than ever bore the Orange badge in Ireland. There is nothing, then, to fear--nothing to be ashamed of-nothing to excite any other feeling than good-humoured contempt, in these processions ; and, once for all, we expect the Repealers will treat them accordingly. PEOPLE'S LAW. IN no country is the law so hated as in Ireland. It was a law passed to defend an unpopular church by penalties on conscience. It was a law passed to defend the lands of a pirate garrison. It was a law passed to grind away the nationality of an invaded people. A code enacted by foreigners, to be enforced by an alien aristocracy for their own profit, and for the protection of an unpopular church, was, and is, disrespected. Justice, mildness, nationality, and unsuspected purity in the passing and enforcing of laws, are their only titles to respect. Such have not been the laws and administration in Ireland. Society does not depend solely on laws. It is based on the unshaken depths of interest and inclination. It is necessity of our condition. But though society is not dissolved, it is shaken by the abolition of law, and tainted by a corrupt law. The opposition of law and might to justice and popular feeling drive the people to disorder, or to the establishment of Courts for themselves. THE VOICE OF THE NATION. 137 In Irelan'd the people adhered to their own law and judges, till well-sustained persecution of the Irish Courts and code at last conquered. Ireland, less faithful to the Brehon than the Priest, abandoned her own laws; but she did not adopt the English law heartily. Iu disputes with the ruling classes, the people were compelled to appear in the alien courts, and bear or resist their decrees as best they could, And sometimes spite or meanness led them to carry their own disputes there, too; and an occasional act of costly justice tempted them to continue such appeals. Disallowed a law of their own, and distrustful of the State law, disorder naturally followed. Private vengeance, or combination law, became general. The Penal laws have withered away; but the exclusive Church, the pirate tenures, and the anti-national Government continue, and the primary Courts are still composed of the alien and ignorant gentry. Few greater benefits could be conferred on Ireland than the restoration of law to its natural place-as the refuge of the wronged, the guardian of the weak, the tender and just parent of the poor and the orphan. To do so, the foreign rule and church ascendancy should cease, the land code be changed, and the lower Courts administered with impartiality and skill. But we should not wait for this revolution to restore justice to the people. The people have it in their power to resume popular Courts and fit laws, if they will exercise their judgments and control their passions. For a law to be respected, it must be wise and wisely administered; and on the selection and duties of the arbitrators we have much to say. If justice be done with skill and temper there, it is the people's duty to obey them at once. It is the duty of every man, to himself, to his family-it is his duty to his neighbour, and his bounden duty to his country, to carry every legal dispute to the arbitrators, Jand to obey their decision at once. If the people resort in any of their own disputes to any but their own Judges, they commit an injury to their interests, and a treason to their country. It is the suitor's interest to go there. He will get his 138 THE VOICE OF THE NATION. cause decided without costs to Attorneys, fees to Barristers, or taxes to the Court. He will have a decision from mev who concur with him in politics, and will not oppress him for them. Or, if men of Anti-Repeal opinions come there, the danger will not be of harshness but of favor to them; still, in their case, this natural feeling is on the right side. A pure Judge is doubly cautious when the case of one opposed to him in any of his social relations appears at his bar. The Judges will be men selected by the people, and approved by the popular leaders. Having much local information, we can say that the greatest anxiety prevails in every part of the country to get the men of most education and purity, and to throw every other consideration aside, We may, therefore, calculate that the men chosen will be wise and good-the best of their district-men living always on the spot--men familiar with the business, trades, and traffic of the people-men having to learn in each case only the special facts, but knowing well how the sort of business on which the dispute arose is commonly carried on. No bigot Protestant-no bigot Catholic shall dare to sit on that tribunal. Men tolerant to all creeds, however firm to their own, must alone mount the tribunal. Such alone are at all likely to seek or obtain such a distinction. A Court composed of men sympathising with the people, of their creed, or not bigoted against it, living among them, selected a the most wise, and virtuous, and educated of the popular party, entering at their acceptance of office, and by their acceptance of office, into the most binding obligation to conscience, honour, and character, to God and to man. Such will be the people's Courts, if they and their leaders choose as they ought and can. People of Ireland! is it not your interest to resort to this Court? Forbearance, punctuality, respect, silence in court, quick and true obedience, are all necessary. Try to settle your dispute at home; that is the setlement most agreeable to your interest, character, and Christian duty. It will not serve your reputation or interest, THE VOICE OF THE NATION 1 139 and it will throw doubt on your temper, justice, and piety, if any of you appear as a constant litigant before even an Arbitration Court. If, after making every effort to settle at home, and if, after having taken time to cool and think over the dispute on every side, you find you cannot arrange it in the way you think honestly due to your rights, then go to the Arbitration Court. The Court will have a form of summons; set it out regularly like a man of business, and serve it in as regular and inoffensive a manner as possible. When the day comes, let both parties be punctual in their attendance. If they are not punctual, business will be delayed, the Judges and other suitors harassed, the Court and the country will be treated with contempt; and, in the end, the only sufferers will be the people. The class likely to be chosen as Judges are those whose abilities, position, and character exempt from the worst evils of the Union and of the aristocratic laws. The people-the middle and the very poor classes-suffer most now, and for their good chiefly are the Courts designed. Let them, then, be even more punctual in their attendance at their own-the people's Court-than they would be at any other. When they enter the Court, let their uncovered heads, silence, order, and perfect decorum, prove that they know they are in a temple of justice-a place where good men decree on the rights of their fellows, before Gon and their country. Let no gesture, look, or murmur, follow the appearance of any man, or the giving of any evidence, or the uttering of any decree. Whether you like or dislike the man or the word, be silent. The place and circumstances demand all the respect you can pay. Be as peaceful as you would be in Church or Chapel. Let there be no wrangling with your neighbours; if you are a spectator, no bandying words with the Judges-no objection to their decision when it is given, even when it bears hard on you. Remember that you-if a party, or one of a party's family-are interested in pocket' or feelings, and are probably very inferior in knowledge to all the Judges. Their opinion is far more likely to be right than yours. Respect them. 140 THE VOICE OF THE NATION. If called on as a witness, you, too, by coming forward, undertake to your Creator and your countrymen to tell " the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth." Do not push forward as a witness unless you know a great deal. Do not dream of refusing to answer. To bear true witness of your neighbour, where disputes arise, is an honourable duty. Answer candidly, without the least equivocation : respectfully, and without introducing political or religious subjects, or any dispute not that moment before the Court. When the decree is pronounced, obey it at once. If it orders you to pay money, to do without money, or to receive it, still obey. If a party have to pay you money, or do any duty to you, and neglect it, you can procure the process of the Government law to compel him to do so. The Arbitrators' decision, given between parties who have snbmitted to them, is as binding in law as that of any Judge in the land. But be slow to resort to this. You weaken the power of the Court which decided for you. Public opinion will generally be strong enough to make him obey, if he can. If he have not means, be patient with him, and he will finally pay you all. If he unjustly withhold what the very words of the Arbitrators' decree ordered him to do, mention it to your clergyman, or to the more discreet of your neighbours, or go to the Arbitrators, and ask leave to tell them; and if they hear you, follow their advice, and forbear further, if they bid you forbear, and use the legal process if they bid you do so. People of Ireland! we have now, without softening, or flattery, or humbug, told you what you must do in reference to these Arbitrators, if you want them to be to you and your children Courts of cheap and sound justice. But its success depends not on the people only. It depends even more, perhaps, on the Arbitrators. A skilful and upright Court would be respected and obeyed even by a vicious people, if it could get time to be known. It would be their common interest to use and obey its decrees. If at all intelligent, they would soon THE VOICE OF THE NATION. 141 see this. It would be obeyed, and it would effect even improvement in their morals and customs. And, on the other hand, a corrupt, ignorant, rash, im patient, or mob-minded Court would help to vitiate and 'barbarize any people. Here, then, are what the Arbitrators should be, and what they should do. Here, too, are what they should guard against. We trust that no man will be so rash or wicked as to seek or accept the office of Arbitrator, unless from his previous life he knows that he can be firm, patient, discreet, self-denying, just. An Arbitrator should be a man well-informed in the ways of buying and selling, of making and performing contracts, of exercising rights of pasture, tillage, turbary, fishing, and travelling in his neighbourhood. He should be, if possible, a man of general education, notignorant of the bearing of the sciences on agriculture, manufactures, and commerce, and knowing how both social business and law judgments were managed in other places. But this is a secondary consideration. For though a Judge, especially in a new systein, should try to correct vicious and ignorant customs, yet it would be wrong for any one to set himself against the customs of a district as its Judge. If they be plainly unjust, indeed, then he must decide against them; but if merely unwise or superstitious, he should, as a Judge, tolerate them, and leave to experience, education, and the efforts of others to get rid of them. But, above all things, let him be just. Let him solicitously avoid the office, we charge him-on his conscience and honor, and trust in God: we beseech, him by here and hereafter, to refuse or lay down the office unless he can, and knows he can and will be just. Just under all circumstances. Not merely in a slight case, because it is slight, nor in a heavy case, because the criticism and responsibility in.crease with the case, but just for religion and honour's sake. Just under all circumstances, whether either party be friend or foe, dependant, neighbour, equal, or stranger-no matter how the decision affect his feelings, prejudices, and interests, we adjure him to be just. Intelligence, education, and justice are the qualities needed in such a judge. 142 THE VOICE OF THE NATION. And how much is contained in these general words. Such a judge would neither clamorously demand his office, nor decline it from cowardice, laziness, or gain. It is the duty of such a man to be willing to accept and perform the functions of an arbitrator. His country struggling against inveterate power, asks it of him-the oppressed and discontented poor need it. If well executed, it will uphold the country, improve the People, and confer honor on the man in life, and when his bones moulder, his children will be pointed to with respect, as " the children of a just judge." Once he accepts the office, he vows himself to spare no pains, to stop at no sacrifice in the just discharge of it. He publicly, by his acceptance, declares that he is competent to decide wisely, and resolved to decide justly. He is devoted to a godly and honourable calling; and woe, and disgrace, and perdition to him if he betray it Let him pray for God's grace, let him seek for knowledge, and be studious of all excellence from that hour when he undertakes this solemn office. To undertake it in a trivial spirit is nigh as bad as to practise it corruptly. When a litigant comes, let him be asked if a public arbitration is unavoidable. If the man says it is, let the arbitration notice be signed without gossip or inquiry into the case, beyond what is necesssry to express the nature and to fix the identity of the demand on the face of the notice. Once the notice is issued, the arbitrator has nothing to do till his arbitration-room, or court, opens. Let him be exact in attendance, then. Itis unprincipled of him to neglect it for any consideration. As he is unpaid, he is the more bound in honour to be exact. Besides, if he keep the suitors waiting one day, they will keep him waiting another. A Judge, who sets the fashion of irregularity, will never want imitators; and how can he object who first errs? A Court, changeable in its rules, or inexact in attendance, will soon go to ruin. In Court, the arbitrators should observe the strictest courtesy to each other. A contradiction should be avoided, and a difference of opinion expressed in the most kindly and respectful words. Nor should they be less so to the parties, witnesses, and all persons in court. THE VOICE OF THE NATION. 143 The business should be called on in regular order; and all changes in the order avoided, if possible. When a case is called, the complainant should state his case. The arbitrators should especially avoid anticipating him, either favorably or adversely. We have seen instances of the rejection of right, and the easy reception of bad eases, by most amiable magistrates. This is the greatest danger in unprofessional men. The arbitrator should keep the man, however, to the complaint stated in the notice. If the complainant has witnesses to examine, now is the time. The custom of Law Courts to compel one party to close before the other begins is proper, for it prevents confusion, contradiction, shifting of the case, and perjury. It should be observed in the " People's Courts." The same order and principles should attend the management of the reply-not to anticipate-not to allow of irrelevant statement or gossip. In all this the Court should be calm, thoughtful, and courteous. The decision should be well weighed. Haste, or the appearance of haste, should be avoided; it would bring the Court into contempt and danger. Once'tis given, no expostulation, rejoinder, or talk should be allowed about it. Any attempt to express popular applause or disapprobation at the entrance or going out of any man-or at any part of the statement, evidence, or decision, should be stopped at once-stopped without flurry or violence of manner, but firmly and courageously. The Judge, who provokes or permits the people to turn the Court into a hustings, will always be the tool, and finally the victim, of a mob. LANII)LORDISM IN ULSTER. "' How comes it to pass that we never hear of the landlords in the nprth of Ireland imitating the example of Lord Hawardan ancj others in th1e south, by sending their tenants adrift by the score 144 THE VOICE OF THE NATION. and by the hundred? The county of Down is as closely peopled as the county of Tipperary-if not more so. Lord Londonderry does not turn his people out--Lord Downshire certainly not. Nor do we hear of any ejectment in the neighbouring northern counties. Lord Hertford does not expel his tenantry-Lord Enniskillen does not--Sir Arthur Brooke never thinks of it-nor have we learned that the Irish Societies are engaged in thinning their vast estates. But these are great proprietors, it will be said, and it is not amongst that class of men we are to look for imitators of Lord Hawarden. Certainly not. But we have never heard of-what we may call without meaning any thing disrespectful instances of the kind amongst the smaller gentry of this province. And though there have been outrages enough in the north of Ireland-although Murtough O'Sullivan's Killyman Wreckers, and Colonel Verner's Orange heroes, have done mischief enough, and produced fearful agitation and loss of lives, we, certainly have not read of late years, of any agrarian disturbances worth speaking about in the province of Ulster. We shall take another occasion to investigate the cause of this creditable contrast."-EveningPost. How comes it to pass that you never hear of persecution in Ulster ? Probably because you never inquired; for there it is stark naked for any one to see and hear of, that will open his eyes and ears. Many of the northern landlords are fair and generous men, but many more of them ride like night-mares on their tenantry. In whole districts the tenants are literally thralls. The starvation of their bodies may not be pushed so close to the point where endurance ceases as in the unhappy South; but the prostration of their minds is more complete. Their feudal service does not end with the payment of votes and rent to the land- lord--they have a long train of additional duties to discharge, involving the disposal of every waking hour of the four-and-twenty. Lord Londonderry, the first paragon on the Post's list, exacts these services with all the strictness of a beadle or a bog-bailiff. Every conceivable and inconceivable absurdity in the shape of agricultural experiments, is practised at the expense of the tenantry. They pay in money, or in time, for all; and the poor serfs of Comber and Newtownards groan under a Pasha of as many whims as the Sublime Porte has tails on a gala day. One of his latest printed addresses (for he issues ukases periodically) happens to be in our possession; and as our intercourse with China is open, we print an extract from THE VOICE OF THE NATION. 145 it for the use of some lunatic Mandarin, who, being disgusted with the Court by the refusal of a peacock's feather, may, perhaps, betake himself to playing the Magnifico in the provinces :-"Next to being a distinguished tenant on the list above-mentioned (says the noble Marquis, in the address in question), I shall require that the tenant never absents himself from the agricultural meetings, but from total incapacity by illness. I shall require that he is a subscriber to our agriculturallibrary, which must now be established and kept for general use. "I shall require that he produces specimens of cattle of some description, at the shows, on each anniversary. " I shall require that green feeding be carried to the fullest extent-turnips cultivated in equal proportion with potatoes-clover and grass seeds sown, and, in short, every measure of good farm- ing adopted, especially thorough draining and well deepened soil, by the man who in future asksfor or looksfor a lease." In addition to paying all.his rent, and voting for the Marquess's distinguished son-a tenant must perform this long list of feudal services to be entitled to " ask or look for a lease;" and even then he will have no substantial claim to it unless he establishes it by kissing the Agent's feet or doing some other dirty work at his bidding. But this is but a trifle to what follows. In the conclusion of his ukase, he speaks of several of the tenants by name :-"Cooper," he says, "who unfortunately died, was an excellent farmer; Lowry would be better, if he attended more regularly our meetings; Maxwell is unpardonable, as he has the same whinfurze hedges as the first day he got the farm. Examples, therefore, must be made. Maxwell never can have read Mr. Andrew's orders, or he would not have neglected them. I shall remove Mr. Max- well from his holding; and this will show the tenantry sufficiently what they have a right to expect, if the good advice, anxiously and repeatedly tendered, is not followed. This is not invention, but the grave dictum of a man who unfortunately has the lives of a whole community at his disposal. He deliberately declares that a person who, for anything that appears to the country, was regular and punctual in the payment of his rent, is to be turned out of his holding-to be deprived of a means of livelihood, as important to him as the offices for neglecting which noble lords and honourable gentlemen receive compensation, are 146 THE VOICE OF THE NATION. to them-because he was guilty of a whin hedge! In the edicts of this agrarian autocrat an offence too ludicrous to mention with a grave face is punished by death. And observe the principle npon which the punishment is inflicted. It is admitted that the tenant never read the orders against which he had offended-that he was consequently ignorant of' their nature; and yet for this sin of omission-for it was clearly impossible that he could have been guilty of disobedience-his most noble and most gracious master sentences him to " extermination." Thrice unhappy tenantry of Ireland, who are liable to perish not only by the jaw of the wolf, but by the hoof of the donkey. We have seen a still later address of the Marquess', written under the pressure of bad times and low prices, in which he drops the vein of Cambyses for that of Edie Ochiltree-and half begs, half wheedles the arrears from his dependants. He touchingly reminds them of what a happy opportunity they have of being disinterested and munificent to a kind master. This is a safer tone than the imperative mood of his dealing with poor Maxwell, and, we have no doubt, will prove irresistible. Let the poor farmer of the Ards, who has toiled for six weary months on land as muddy as the intellect of his master, enjoy the luxury by all means; and since it is the only one he has, make much of it--of being "generous" to a Marquess. It is not every day an Ambassador to Russia, and a General with more stars, if not quite so many wounds as Bellisarius, clamours at his door for a penny, The wretched pittance that he has delved out of the earth, with many pains and groans, will be well bestowed, if it contributes to the comfort of a Marquess, an Earl, a Viscount, a Baron, a Grand Cross of the Bath, a Privy Councillor, a Custos Rotulorum, a Deputy Lieutenant, a Knight of heaven knows how many foreign orders, and a Colonel of the Tenth Hussars, all combined in one goodly personage, When a Spanish grandee, with almost as many titles announced himself at a country inn, the bewildered landlord begged to be excused, declaring that he had no accommodation for such a noble company; and our County Down peasant may perhaps plead the same excuse to such a stu-r pendous array. His beggarly savings, so far from pur- 147 THE VOICE OF THE NATION. chasing the appropriate costume for so long a catalogue of dignities, would scarcely buy powder for the Ambassador's wig, or cockades for the General's footmen. The Post "' has not learned that the Irish Society are engaged in thinning their vast estates." Possibly; but the fact, nevertheless, is so. In the one manor of Lizard, a hundred and thirty ejectments were served last year; and the war of aggression upon one hand, and resistance on the other, is going on at this very minute. A corporation of gorbellied pot and kettle makers in London, known by the style and title of the "Worshipful Ironmongers' Society," who have held that property since the famous plantation of Ulster, issued a mandate to their tenantry some time ago, ordaining, among other similar provisions, that they should not, for the future, be entitled to divide their property or their houses with their children-that they must quit their farms at the bidding of the agent, exchanging their old-accustomed homesteads for such others as he thought proper to bestow-that not only must they not shoot game themselves on their own land, but they must prosecute those who did-that they must not enter upon a certain branch of trade without permission from his high mightiness the agent-that all disputes should be referred to that potentate-r.-and, finally, that all his subordinates, down to the bog-bailiff, must be "strictly obeyed." The tenants were not Negroes or Russians, but Irishmen; they indignantly refused to submit to such terms, and they have resisted them successfully up to the present time. We may mention, en passant,as evidence that this is not a religipus question; but that the landlord is just as ready to suck the blood of the man who shouts," to hell with the Pope," as of him who swears by O'Connell-that these men of Lizard are sturdy Presbyterians, and, in fact, the descendants of a colony of English and Scotch, planted there by James I., to garrison the country against the Catholic natives. But, Celt or Saxon, the landlord knows no distinction till after the last penny of rent, andthe last office of servitude, are exacted. Touching Lord Downshire--another of these northern nonpareils-we have some facts in reserve for a future occasion; and in the meantime let us remind our cotempoH 148 THE VOICE OF THE NATION. rary that we read in the Post, some months ago, 'a letter from a Mr. Berwick, now residing in Edinburgh (brother to the Doctor Berwick recently a prisoner in Affghanistan), stating a case of the greatest hardship, of which he was the victim, and the Noble Marquess the chief actor. The smaller gentry are not exceptions. The Corrys, of Newry, ejected sixteen families within the last few years from some property termed " The Estates," near that town. These families were all Catholics; but, to balance this fact, Dr. Kerr, of Newbliss, a high Churchman, last year turned a Presbyterian congregation out of the house in which they had worshipped God for generations. Both may have been partly actuated by bigotry; but they were more actuated by landlordism. We have many other facts at hand, if they be necessary to establish our case-that the'tyranny'of property is the same everywhere throughout the country, and that the men of the North have the same interest in struggling with us for its reformation, as the farmers of Cork or Tipperary, To come to outrages--a whole catalogue of them occurs to us. The charge under which the late Francis Hughes and Patrick Woods were unhappily convicted and executed, was an agrarian murder. Mr. Smithson Corry, about this time twelve months, when about to eject a man, named Ralph Brown, from his holding in Shanrod, county Down, was shot at in the public day. There have been several cases of resistance to ejection, vie et armis, and burnings of houses from which tenantry were evicted. Even at this very minute the work of extermination is going on in The last number of the Vindicator contains Ulster. the following statement; " We regret to have to state that several unfortunate families, in this county, have been recently cast helpless upon the world, in the enforcement of a landlord's legal rights. On Wednesday, the 23rd ultimo, Mr. Bubinton proceeded to the lands of Grange, Ballyscullion, county of Antrim, the property of Mr Bruce, and dispossessed six unfortunate families, against whom ejectments had been obtained for non-payment of rent. They were all small holders,'and the sums due varied from £8 to £10. The land was et high; and in consequence of recent pressure upon the agricultural classes, the wretched tenants were unable to pay. In one case, however, £5 was tendered as an instalment of £8, the entire sum due, and good security offered for the remainder; but it was THE VOICE OF THE NATION. 149 of no avail. The cries of the unfortunate persons-amounting to forty-two--when they saw their doors closed against them, and no prospect of shelter before them from the wintry midnight cold and rain, were most heart-rending." Here, then, at last, we have a question on which Ulster will move with the rest of Ireland. Here we have found the long sought neutral ground, where we may again meet as friends and brothers. Our industrious yeomanry, Protestant, Catholic, and Presbyterian, are year after year leaving our shores in myriads to struggle with toil and hardship in the forests of the back States or the snows of Canada. We can keep them at home, and bless our own country with their industry and their virtues, if we will. In Heaven's name let us do so. Let the sturdy men of Ulster, whose fathers knew so well their rights, and how to maintain them, join with us in this work, and it will soon be accomplished. The " Standard "-the Tory and Protestant " Standard," tells them that their landlords do not care a bean blossom for their interest, but throughout the whole history of this country, "have played one uniform and consistent part-getting all they could in the name of Protestants, and giving away whatever was required to be taken from their poorer Protestant brethren, They have been deunder the pretence of liberality." luded long enough by those pocket Protestants, and if they are not duller than the sod they till, they will at length open their eyes to their own interest. LORD BROUGHAM. LORD Brougham has bestowed one of his paroxysms upon the Catholic priesthood, and has intimated his benevolent intention of taking the future care of their education upon himself. Lord Brougham has considerable pretensions as a school-master. He has taught a great many things in his day, and has been a great manufacturer of cheap and exH2 150 THE VOICE OF THE NATION. peditious knowledge. He possesses what Lord Baconwho may be considered in some respects as one of his models-calls " an infinite agitation of wit," which spins out laborious webs of something, which, if it be not learning, has all the appearance of it " My lords--my noble friend the noble marquis has so shown to you the uselessness of Maynooth, that you cannot stop in dealing with that institution. Either you must abolish it altogether and restore the priesthood of Ireland to their former education on the continent-an education which had some liberalizing effects, and produced priests much more fit to be trusted with the consciences of men than are those who are educated at Maynooth-either you must do this, or you must enlarge that institution; extend to the education of the priests all the salutary branches of human knowledge which are now excluded from them; plant its roots far and wide in the literature of the human race; draw from the letters and improvements of the age, all that wholesome sap which, rising through the trunk, will not merely produce leaf and blossom- will not merely give the appearance of an educational establishment, but will yield sound, solid, precious fruit of charitable opinions, of liberal views, and of that wholesome and rational religion which is the best prop of pure morality-(hear, hear)." We fancy that Lord Brougham had whole volumes of his " Penny Magazines" in his mind's eye when he talked of "leaf and blossom ;" but what put "sound, solid, precious fruit of charitable opinions" into his head? Charitable opinipns are the last which the most vivid imagination would think of attribqting to Lord Brougham, because, if we are to judge from his words, which we suppose are the " leaves and blossoms" which have been produced from the sap that rises through his trunk, he entertains no opinion of charity of any man, or men, or institution, or thing, saving only of himself, of the Duke of Wellington, and his late brother the Marquess of Wellesley. Even the interest of the moment cannot check the incessant jet d'eau of his vituperation. He has had the couragewhich is not a usual virtue of his-to attack Sir James Graham. The apostate out of power has fallen foul of the apostate in power. It was bold of the sturdy mendicant to barge the man at whose doors he is begging for the alms of' office. Who knows but Sir Robert himself may come in for his share ? Judging from the extract above, we must conclude that THE VOICE OF THE NATION. 151 Lord Brougham has a good deal more to learn yet, for we fear he possesses but little of that " wholesome rational religion, which is the best prop of pure morality," and which he says is the fruit of an enlightened education. For how stands his own pure morality ? The discarded official of a party which his absurd and fantastic tricks well nigh destroyed; his whole employment, at least in debate, consists in displays of the most furious malignity against his former associates, of the most startling egotism, of the most unjust insinuations, or of open and undisguised impustation. And yet, is he not by his conduct vindicating his dismissal from his last place? Is he not hourly playing the same antics which in Scotland were played at the expense of the King's dignity, and which excited such unconquerable aversion in the mind of the*late monarch? Where is the golden dignity of high rank in Lord Brougham? The " wretched Pinchbeck of petulance" is its substitute. Could any party have kept him; could any man have hugged such a firework ? He has his finger in every thing, His incessant activity drives him into every work. In all the graver business of the Legislature, he incongruously mixes himself up; in the most trivial matters he figures. Nothing is. too high or too low for him. The lust of judgment is one of his strongest passions. In the Privy Council, in the House of Lords, when sitting as a court of last resort, Lord Brougham is never missing. In the same house, in its Legislative sittings, the grave judge becomes the light comedian. His mask has two faces. The judicial and the senatorial; and no two faces ever were more unlike. He who dispenses justice in the morning, distributes mirth at night, and is not overscrupulous in his way of raising that poor reward of middling wit, a laugh. This is Lord Brougham-this was Henry Brougham. The latter wielded the fierce democracy of England, destroyed the slave- trade, traversed the globe in search of oppression to put his foot upon its head, and was the splendid advocate of a Queen; the former wields the lath of the Harlequin, tumbles and riggles in the dust, jumps and skips about in motly costume, and cries, "here we are," as lively as ever Grimaldi cried it in his best days. We remember Win. Cobbett saying of Lord Brougham, 152 THE VOICE OF THE NATION. whom he detested, upon the occasion of his publishing the celebrated pamphlets, signed "Isaac Tomkins," " That fellow, Brougham, abuses the English women because they like handsome men better than ugly men-well-dressed men better than ill-dressed men-and men with clean breath better than men with foul breath." The latter was a correct metaphor, and illustrates the style of Lord Brougham's later oratory. From the day when he wrote the celebrated letter to the Times newspaper, denouncing the then Queen as having impeded the passing of the Reform Bill, to this moment, he has gradually sunk step by step into the very depths of style, until at length the habitual use of Billingsgate has rendered him either a nuisance, or an amusement to the men whom he most strangely associates with. But it is not his style of speaking that has changed; his principles--if ever he had any principle but his own aggrandisement-have undergone a corresponding debasement. We are astonished how any body of gentlemen-to say nothing of the "most noble" and "illustrious princes" of the hereditary House-can endure such a monstrous specimen of political turpitude amongst them. For twenty-five years he was the leader of the English democracy, the fierce assertor of all species of political liberty, and the recognized champion in the ring of the people. He but touched upon the Chancellor's bench, and the first fruit of his elevation by the Whigs was, that, as he himself, in Bobadil fashion, says, "he enacted, continued, and carried into execution," one of the most stringent coercion bills ever directed against the liberty and happiness of this country. We did not, before this confession of Lord Brougham, know who was the peculiar deviser of the Irish Coercion Bill. We now know that it was the product of his infamous imagination, and we know it from the triumphant avowal he himself has made. The Coercion Bill was the first act of the patriot turned placeman; not "all tranquillity and smiles," but bolts, bars, and dungeons; and it was the apt beginning of a career of faithlessness towards friends, desertion of principle, angry abuse of his noble acquaintances, recrimination, and unprovoked hostility. When he annihilated the Whig Ministry-when the latter fell, crushed THE VOICE OF THE NATION 153 by the weight of his co-operation, and when the tacit act of banishment from their councils was passed against him, he became their undisguised foes After begging for a place-after dragging about, like an unfortunate menial, his bundle of qualifications from one party to the other, he suddenly took his position amongst those who were the political enemies against whom he had directed the severest blows, and on whom he had dealt most ably during his life. He certainly is in congenial company on the same side of the house with Lord Lyndhurst-this difference existing between them, that Lord Lyndhurst's change of principles was the work of his youth, and Lord Brougham's is the ripened product of his old age. Can anything equal the meanness of his appearance-the complacency with which he cultivates the noble art of the Jack-pudding, and " Gabbles like A thing most brutish" now rolling himself in the sawdust before the Duke of Wellington, and anon squaring out with the swagger of a bully at the present object of his contemptible anger, whoever that may be ? The turgid pomposity-the swelling ego- tism of his language, have reached a height quite unap3 proached in the oratory of ancient or modern days. " I have seen, both here and abroad, the effects on weak and on youthful minds, the effects of the operations of the Catholic priest hood for the accomplishment of their sinful and sordid objects, and I have seen in this country the consequences of political seduction by similar means and for similar objects. But, knowing as I do the honorable nature of my noble friend, his pure motives and the candour of his disposition, I do profess and declare that I never yet saw so melancholy and striking an exhibition in my whole life of the effects of such insidious arts on such minds, as has this night been exhibited by the marvellous declaration of my noble friend. It is only a lesson, my lords, to you, and I am sure it ought to be to the government, of the absolute and overwhelming necessity of looking to the education of the Irish people in spiritual things; of looking to their condition under the controul of a priesthood so educated as that which now instructs them, and misleads them, and now alternately agitates and seduces them-men ignorant of the most salutary branches of human knowledge-destitute of that true enlightenment in which both sound principles and good feelings find their best root, and from which they drew their purest and most wholesome support-it affords us this lesson, my lords, and at the same time gives me a most new, a 154 THE VOICE OF THE NATION. most powerful and irresistible, and at the same time, I must confess, a most unexpected confirmation of all those opinions, on this most vitally important subject which I have never ceased to entertain since I came into the government in the year 1830. Lord Brougham, we do certainly believe, never witnessed these effects, nor entertained those impertinent and calumnious opinions, until he came into the Government in 1830. Probably, his active observations were not commenced either abroad in the conviviality of the French metropolis, or at home in the classic circle of which he and Doctor Dionysius Lardner were such pious ornaments, touching the mischievous effects of Catholic teaching, until he was turned out of the government he had " come into" so disastrously to its well being. In the new college in which the Catholic priests of Ireland are to receive normal instruction at the hands of government, in which "spiritual things" are to be distributed, and "true enlightenment" is to proceed, we suppose, from a society for the diffusion of sacred knowledge-we anticipate the greatest advantage from the superintendence of his Lordship, particularly after his late interview with Father Mathew, and we trust that he will interest himself in the restoration of the expatriated Saint who was his partner in extending that "wholesome and rational, religion which is the best prop of pure morality." In the mean time let the Catholic priests look to it. Lord Brougham has universal talents. Like Buckingham, he is " fiddler, statesman, and buffoon," it is impossible to say that he may not turn priest. IRELAND, FRANCE, AND ENGLAND. FRANCE has twice the population, four times the standing army, twenty times the militia, an equal revenue, an almost equal fleet, and but one-fifth of the debt of England. How could England cope with France? Is Spain relied on ?-its ruler has enough to mind at home. Austria dare THE VOICE OF THE NATION. 15.' not stir, lest italy, and Hungary, and Illyria should hear the French bugles. Prussia can hardly keep her loose limbs together. Russia is far away, and is not unfriendly to France. England can no longer rely on hired allies--she has not the money to give--they are not interested in war. Ame; rica, the only power not European, likely to interfere, is gazing about for an opportunity of hurting England. France can ensure their neutrality by a quiet policy, which points to their interest and their fears. What has England ? A more effective fleet. Perhaps o ; yet steam-ships so facilitate invasion, and, when employed as fire-ships, render sailing navies so insecure, that the next naval war will destroy the prestige of "wooden walls" as bulwarks of any land. What else has England? Colonies who could not lend her a company of Infantry, and who would strike her if she were in the water. The picture of the feelings of the Hindus and Musselmen of India, in " Blackwood's Magazine" for this month, is exact. Both creeds are full of "joy and hope" at England's disasters in Cabul. Moreover, the revenue of India is deficient two million pounds a-year. Look, too, at Canada, the Cape, and the Ionian Isles; everywhere you see England's Colonies a weakness-a positive weakness to: her. What remains for her ? Ireland, with eight and a half millions of People-Ireland, which, during the late war supplied, two-thirds of her army and navy, and has still forty-two thousand men in England's regular army-Ireland--discontented Ireland! PUBLIC MONUMENTS. " A YOUNG Patriot" who suggests the erection of a national Pantheon for statues of the great men, our country has produced, from Ollam Fodhla to O'Connell, must wait till we have a native parliament. There is a long arrear of such work to be done; but we must be H3 156 16Tilt \(OICt3 OF TilE IATIOTI. a nation before we can hope for the symbols of nationhood. Up to this hour, Ireland has no public monuments of any kind except such as commemorate her defeat and degradation. All that she ought to forget is paraded in the face of day ; nothing that she ought to be proud of is recorded by a solitary testimonial. There is an obelisk on the banks of the disastrous Boyne, an equestrian statue of the Dutchman in College-green; but there is no pillar on the shores of Clontarf, or the memorable banks of the Blackwater. The battle of Waterloo, fought in a foreign country and for a foreign country, has its testimonial in the Phoenix Park; the battle of the Nile, won by Englishmen and for Englishmen, has its monument in Sackvillestreet; the holy and peaceful triumphs of '82 and '29, won by Irishmen and for Irishmen, are commemorated nowhere. Let us become a nation, and we will throw off the badges of slavery with the gyves. In other countries the past is the neutral ground of the scholar and the antiquary; with us it is the battle-field; for it is the fate of captive nations to be the scoff as well as the prey of their oppressors. A POPULAR MAP OF IRELAND. WE purpose, sometime or other, to publish a Map of Ireland, in which all the church lands and all the property held by foreigners and absentees shall be coloured green, and all the waste lands and reclaimable bogs and sea coast, and all the cultivable mountain, coloured orange. This we will do with a view of having it referred to a committee of Protestant, Catholic, and Dissenting Repealers, who shall consider how the two or three millions of acres of which they consist may be made available for the benefit of the people of Ireland. Smith O'Brien, David Roche, and James Haughton would form an efficient quorum. Possibly the inquiry will be to little purpose till there is an Irish Parliament to make the result of it the ground of THIE VOICE OF THE NATION. 157 legislation, for the English House of Commons, which has funds in abundance for building dog-kennels for Prince Albert, or sending Bishops and their progeny to Jerusalem, but have none to spare for the improvement of Ireland. But it will be something to know what a territory we have for industry and enterprise to take possession of when the good time comes. The waste lands we would give to the people by the -right of conquest, if they subjugated them to the plough and spade; and at no higher price than conquerors commonly pay: the others the nation has the same right to purchase, at a moderate price, that a mortgager has to reenter upon his property by paying forfeit. IRISH AND SCOTCH SEDITION. THE Times and Warder have discovered a frightful amount of treason lurking in our historical songs and ballads. They are as full, it seems, of modern allusions, as a pantomime. In a spirit of stark sedition, they make honourable mention of Brian Boroihme, who was a rebel by anticipation; and Ollam Fodhla, who was just such a wrong-headed, self-willed, strong-minded fellow, as would have refused to sit in a foreign Parliament: and in a more sly and covert fashion they praise the courage and virtues of a people who ought to leave such matters to their mniasters. We had some doubt of the justice of this charge against us, till we got possession, by a strange accident, of the following article, intended for a forthcoming number of the Times, which makes the same charge against Scotland. We doubt no longer that we are equally guilty: "The Non-Intrusionists have at length involved the country in ex- citement from end to end. The enrolment and organization proceeds, and the revenue of treason, destined to support the reverend rebels, has swelled to an enormous amount. In the name of Scotland and vengeance the whole country is summoned to arise. As you cherish the remembrance of your country's wrongs-as you abhor the yoke of 158 THE VOICE OF THE NATION. Saxon tyrrany-as you revere the memories of the heroes of 1314, and the martyrs of 1745--as you love Scotland and hate England'Gather, gather, gather,' for religion-liberty-vengeance ! This is not, indeed, Dr. Chalmers's invocation, but the language of the Non-Intrusion press, which circulates through every corner of the country. The Caledonia, the most extensively read of these organs, is publishing a series of inflammatory songs, celebrating, with treasonable exultation, the various successes of the Scotch rebels against England, from the days of Edward I. to those of George III.-for the last rebellion is sung with as little hesitation as the first. One of these songs, attributed to an anti-English writer, named Robert Burns, has attained great popularity, and may lie taken as a fair specimen of the whole series. It is entitled ' Bruce's Address to his Army' (Bruce! the thrice-perjured vassal of England, the dishonoured soldier, the ruffian murderer of his rival), and commences with these words:' Scots wha hae wi' Wallace bled.' With Wallace bled-mark you that--Wallace, the ' brawney rebel,' who was hanged in London for resisting the rightful claims of England. This is the cut-throat who is set up as a hero by the seditious church. men, with the purpose of exciting hatred against the English connexion. If this is not 'plain spoken treason,' we don't know what treason is. The patron, however, is worthy of the cause. To select a hero from the gallows is characteristic of the ignorant and seditious mob, who conceive they have a right to manage their own ecclesiastical affairs, keep their own purse, and settle their own quarrels, without the permission of the superior country. ".But the incendiary poet proceeds to say :' Now's the day, and now's the hour; See the front of battle lower.' Now's the day, says this laureate of rebellion-now's the day, and now's the hour. This is speaking out with a vengeance. It is, to be sure, artfully attempted to make this seditious appeal refer to a distant period in our history, by putting a date at the head of it; but nobody is to be blinded by such a ruse. The Non-Intrusionists, from Maidenkirk to John o'Groat's, well understand it, as it was intended they should, to have an immediate application to their own treasonable designs, and it will become the universal shibboleth of rebellion. It will be heard on every tongue, and the little boys, instead of their familiar chaunts of 'Jim Crow' and 'Hookey Walker,' will be taught to sing-Now's the day, and now's the hour.' These are considerations no sensible man can contemplate without alarm. They are straws upon the wind that portend a hurricane. "But to return to this spawn of sedition. The writer, growing bld3r and plainer in his treason, proceeds to say:- THE VOICE OF THE NATION. 159 'Lay the proud usurperlow, Tyrants fall in every foeLiberty's in every blow ! Let us do or die!' " Who think you, is the 'usurper,' so plainly denounced to death in the portentous line'Lay the proud usurper low?' "'No other than his late Most Gracious Majesty Edward I., King of England. This is the personage audaciously described as an usurper, and whom the people are called upon to lay low. Can any rational man doubt that the faction who plan and applaud the death of one English Monarch, would equally applaud the death of another ? or that what is pointed at Edward is aimed for Victoria? Dr. Chalmers is too cautious and too cowardly to recommend the assassination of the Queen; but when we see what he permits and encourages, we have the best evidence of what he desires. The mystery of the M'Naughten case is not yet cleared up. He was a Scotchman, and a Non.Intrusionist ! " And this lyric is but a single specimen from a long series of ryth. matical treasons. We have one entitled ' Royal Charlie,' lauding the hero of the bloody rebellion of '45; and another malignant strain, which significantly declares'England shall many a day Tell of the BLOODY FRAY, When the blue bonnets came over the border.' "'The bloody fray!' Stupidity itself cannot mistake these allusions. But we have done our duty-the friends of law and order must do theirs." After reading this very sagacious article, we are bound to admit that we are quite as bad as the Scotchmen, and liable to any judgment that can be prononnced against their treasonable practices. What more can the Warder desire ?' 160 THE VOICE OF THE NATION. OILING THE HINGES, In the decline of great states, the science which they cherished when they were prosperous often repays them for their care and gratefully invents weapons to defend their dotage. Thus the Greek fire preserved Constantinople from the Turks for more than a century after resistance by ordinary means had become impossibleand thus the English Government possesses resources which neither friend nor foe anticipated. When Lord De Grey was sent here, every one knew that he had some experience, possibly some taste, in furniture and architectural ornament-no one ever suspected hin of being a statesman or a general. Nor as a statesman has he been successful According to the Times, he found Ireland quiet and prosperous, and in two short years he has brought her to the verge of an insurrection. But herein his genius has had an opportunity-an opportunity of which he has promptly and nobly availed himself. Indeed, it may be questioned whether he did not designedly bring about these events; and whether what appears to all men, from the editor of the Times to ourselves, to have been mere blundering and bigotry, may not have been a far-sighted policy which knew its own resources, and sought to make an opportunity for using them. The resources he certainly has. A sublime invention is ready to stem that war which his misgovernment has striven to excite. He has-shall we say the awful words, or shall we leave our misguided countrymen to rush on their own ruin ? Patriotism prevails-the truth must out-he has OILED THE HINGES OF THIE CASTLE GATES. This settles the question. The hardy Presbyterians of the north, now willing to join to the repeal ranks, under the assurence that it is better to have our 4,800,0001. of taxes, and our 5,000,000 of absentee rents, spent in Ireland than abroad, will now pause ere they assail a Government thus defended. They may wish for a sure hold of their farms, and be convinced that none but an Irish Parliament will procure it for them-they may desire the abolition of tithes, and the equalization of all religions in the eye of the state, so that every man shall pay his own pastor, they may desire to have THE VOICE OF THE NATION. 161 the care of their own affairs in their own Parliamcntto have the spending of their own money, and the profits of their own labours; but all will be unavailing. They must remain over-taxed for a foreign treasury-overrented for an absentee landlord. They must hold their land by caprice, and pay a tenth of their produce to the Ministers of an establishment from which they dissent, for--Lord De Grey has oiled the hinges of the Castle gates. Leinster may rise in its own stern fashion for justice and old Ireland; but that province-one county of which shook the English throne 45 years ago-that rich and valorous province must make its peace with agents and tax-collectors, and live in chains, for-the hinges of the Castle gates are oiled-well oiled. The trampled serfs of Conaught must no longer dream of better days; and the dashing peasantry and the princely merchants of Munster must seek safety in crouching repentance, for-there is more oil on the hinges of the Castle gates than ever George the Fourth had in his wig. YES, THERE IS OIL ON THE HINGES OF THE CASTLE GATES! Upper and lower castle-yard gates-gates of Ship-street stables, and postern gate on Hoey's-court steps-all, all ore oiled! And let no traitorous citizen, relying on the wetness of the season, calculate on renewed rust and open portals for his attack. No; though even an Irish soldier were on guard, and refused to shoot his countrymen, yet Lord De Grey is ready; he has seven footmen, nine of the metropolitan police-for the green-coated police refused his greasy commands-and he has " four-and-twenty jolly marines ready to renew the oiling at a moment's notice. Daily and nightly he and his aides-de-camp inspect the hinges, lest a malicious and Irish rain should have swept out the oil, or lest wicked vitriol should have entered the iron, on whose free action his safety depends. Early in these dim mornings is he seen in ifull uniform, dashing from Cork-hill to Ship-street, accompanied by a tumbril containing a puncheon of train oil, and perse- veringly do the marines and footmen throw bucket after bucket on these hinges, which, 'tis hinted, were made by a Wexford blacksmith, and seem to devour the loyal 162 THE VOICE OF THE NATION. oil with most suspicious alacrity. Often, too, in the mid-day, regardless of fashionable sneers, does he labour at his Conservative task. Greasy he is, and to the thoughtless fashionables who frequent his court he may seem more like the boatswain of a whaler than the Vicegerent of the Queen; but what need he care, provided his castle gates run smoothly ? 'Tis even said that his wife has been heard to complain that her rest is disturbed by his heavy murmurings, ,' Oil the gates, oil the gates, and that more than once he has sprung from his bed, and in one-garmented haste rushed out, followed by a mixed crowd of maids, marines, footmen, and matrons, to examine the portals, some horrible dream of stiffened hinges having loomed upon his slumbers. Oh! Punch, with thy Retzch-like graver, and H. B., with thy classic pencil, why do you neglect the deeds of this vigilant nobleman ? Sydney Smyth, where is thy prose ? and Tom Moore, has thy poetic genius rusted, 'and do you maliciously neglect this " saviour of the nations ?" Look on him with those new but already formidable moustachoes; see him issuing hastily from his chamber in a wet morning, with one of them black and the other sandy, at duty's call ; see the despair of his amiable wife, lest his unclothed legs suffer from Irish bullets or Irish mist, or lest some desperate Milesian girl take an unfair advantage of his defenceless state. Watch with what rapid energy he gives his orders, how quickly the oil tumbril rattles across the pavement, and with what discipline the jollies shoulder their buckets, and then, at command, how they drench the refractory hinges. 'Tis true the populace may jeer-'tis true the soldiers may put thumb to nose and extend four fingers towards his lordship, and threaten some greasy punishment to the jollies-but to the loyal his labours are dear, and to you Punck, H. B., Smyth, and Moore, is given the glory of celebrating his deeds. THE VOICE OF THE NATION. THE QUEEN'S VISIT VERSUS 163 REPEAL. THE English Press declare that the success of the Repeal agitation in Ireland and America, and the bold tone of the Irish Press, " have renderedit a matter of publw policy to countervailthis state of things by the influence which a royal visit is likely to exert upon the minds of our warm-heartedneiqhbours." That is, in other words, the Irish are enthusiastic about national independence, but fonder of glass coaches, baubles, and processions. They will be thrown into a loyal madness by the display of a crown and sceptre; and when the bustle and extravagance of shows, dinners, and addresses are over, and when they recover from their brain-fever, they will have forgotten that they ever panted to be a nation. A grosser insult to our manhood, to our intelligence, and to our selfrespect, never yet was offered to us, since that unhappy creation of the cook and the hair-dresser, GEORGE THE FOURTH, was sent here to humbug us two-and-twenty years back. We do not believe that the QUEEN will allow herself to be made an instrument to enable a blundering Government to maintain their sway by stage-tricks over a People whom they will not conciliate, and cannot crush. But, come what may, the People of Ireland have got beyond the control of an apron-string, and the delusion of names and baubles. That artifice is not devised which can turn them for a moment-- aye, for a moment-from their eager and resolved pursuit of nationality. AN IRISH STEAM NAVY. IT is certain that ships either principally, or partially worked by steam, will soon engross the Indian trade, and to acquire a steam navy is not beyond our resour- 164 THE VOICE OF THE NATION. ces. The Dublin Steam Company is the first in the Empire; and, did we want any other example, we have it in the equipment of the Great Northern Steamer of Derry. Every article in her, from her masts to her steam-engine, was manufactured in Derry. What was done there, can be done there again, and done elsewhere. Derry is not rich-she has no capitalists equal to those of the other places we classed with her. Cannot they do as much ? Have they less enterprise ? Enterprise is all we want. Some of the reproach against Irish negligence is true. Scarcely at all is it true of the poor labourer, on whom it has been flung so falsely. Much of it, we repeat, is true of the richer classes. Would that the example of Derry were imitated-would that the suggestion of France were taken up-would that the Irish citizens, instead of tossing up their hands in despair, would make a dash at the The timber duties cannot stand long. China trade. When they fall, we may resume as much intercourse as we once had with Norway, when we sent missionaries, and she sent pirates with every favourable wind. Our intercourse with those illustrious freemen would not only enrich both; it would be a wise alliance of two small neighbouring states for mutual defence. This would be the great and remoter benefit - the immediate advantage in the removal of the timber duties would be the help to Irish ship-building. Still, we repeat, we need not wait. Ships can be built more cheaply and as well here as in Saxon land. An opportunity occurs now for making a start. The pockets of the ship-owners and builders, of the growers of flax, and exporters of linen and other such goods as we have fit for China, the cause of temperance, and the comforts of the poor, would be served by a direct trade between the Kingdom of Ireland and the Empire of China; but, last and best of all, it would give us a Navy. A Commercial Navy is the basis of a National Navy. A Navy was the desire of the Patriots of '82. THE VOICE OF THE NATION. 165 The triumph of steam has put it in our power to accomplish what they could only desire. France now relies on her Steam Navy as sufficient to defeat England's liners, and crush her commerce in case of a war. The testimony of some of the ablest naval officers of England is, that, whenever a war comes, steam will annihilate canvass. Shall Ireland be unenriched in peace and powerless in naval war, while she owns the finest naval situation and harbours in the world P Why should we not have protectionfor Irish ships and trade, as England gained her trade by the navigation laws, the source of her sea supremacy ? Why should we not favor, foster, and reward ship-building and foreign trade, and train up officers and seamen, as the patriot senate of 1689 proposed ? Why should we be forced to pay high for bad timber? Because, forsooth, England's colonies are justly discontented, and must be bribed into submission. Why should we not rather make use of the timber of our free neighbour Norway ? But this mention of Norway suggests an important fact. Norway is united to Sweden exactly as Ireland would be to England if the Union were repealed. Norway has her own Domestic Parliament and Ministry; but the King of SWEDEN is her King. Norway has her own flag, of which she is rightly jealous-her own mercantile, and her own military Navy. Ireland might not require this; but here is conclusive proof that an "Irish Navy" is consistent with the English connexion. THE PROTESTANT INTEREST. Ir the apprehensions of our Protestant fellow-countrymen were for their religion, there would be everything that is noble in their resistance to the Repeal of the 166 THE VOICE OE THE NATION. Union. A man who cannot think with freedom, and act with perfect independence upon his religious convictions, cannot be a freeman in any thing else. Religion should be the first element in the soul-corrupt that, and all else is rotten. If the Protestants of Ireland apprehended that the result of restoring to this country a National Council would be to peril the religion they profess, woe to the Protestant who would be a Repealer! But is it the religion they are trembling for ? Or is it for that evil thing, which, since the Reformation, has been the bane of Ireland an ascendancy ? And is an ascendancy necessary for Protestant truth ? Is Protestant truth a lie unless it be bulwarked by State Protection ? Is it a moral exotic, which cannot live but in the hot-house of the State ? Will the doctrines of Protestantism be unpalatable when taught by a Minister whose stipend is the loving contribution of a faithful flock, and not the involuntary meed of a hostile peasantry ? The truth is this. The Protestant interest is the interest of comparatively a few, and the few make a great party by enlisting the ignorant bigotry of the multitude, who are no gainers, but rather the reverse, by the preservation of an ascendancy. Protestant Operatives of Dublin-ye who listen with innocent rapture to the cunning oratory of a selfish Priest-what do you gain by an ascendancy ?-what would you lose by its overthrow? Suppose for a moment that the wild visions of clerical agitators-the fumes which rise from brains heated by vanity and theological frenzy-suppose them realised, and what would you gain ? Would you be enabled to practise your religion a whit more safely ? Would the sphere of religious action be enlarged ? Could you add another virtue to those you practise now ? Would your hope be stronger, your faith more pure, your charity more tender, because the lust of ascendancy--the correlative term for debasement-was gratified, and your fellow-countrymen, the Catholicsmen condemned by the same original sin, and saved by THE VOICE OF THE NATION. 167 the same atoning blood-were handed over to the mercies of a Penal Law ? For this is what Mr. GREGG wants. Let him speak out, and acknowledge that he would drive Catholic gentlemen from Parliament, Catholic merchants from Corporations, Catholic priests into caves or prisons, and the Catholic peasantry to Hell or Connaught--if he gave them an alternative. Why do we refer to Mr. GREGG ? Not because individually he is anything. He is but the sign of a thought. He is the voice of a spirit which has ruined Irelandthe spirit of intolerance ; and it is because you of the humble, but the powerful middle class listen to him, that we, in discussing the question, name him-the vigorous organ of that perilous and tremendous thing, religious intolerance. He' speaks the bigotry, and he seeks to stimulate it in you. Of course, he serves his ends. He raises himself from the honorable humility of his religious ministry. He leaves the pulpit; he relinquishes the sick room. He rushes to the arena where his soul grows fat upon the applauding shouts of honest, misguided men. He makes himself a leader. He advertises himself. But what are the means by which he effects this ? Out of the depths of your hearts he evokes the evil dispositions which it is the heritage of our nature to possess, and the pride of our religion to overthrow. He evokes your bigotry. He-the minister of godlike Charity-teaches you to hate, to despise, to curse your fellow-men, because they profess the religion of MASILLON, F ENELON, DOYLE, and MORE. And not he alone does this : but all who trade in the cry of "No Popery " do it. Your honest hatred of idolatry-your pardonable bigotry-these are the raw material out of which each angry talker manufactures his oratory. But does he show you how, as Protestants, you are better off by the humiliation of Catholics-how you would be worse if the Union were repealed ? We shall not discuss the likelihood of Catholics obtaining undue power if the Union were repealed. We believe that they would obtain no power---no predominance in pub- 168 THE VOICE OF THE NATION. lic affairs-no share in Government but what it would be just, and honest, and right that they should possess as citizens of a free state. But granting, for argument's sake, and only for argument's sake, that the Catholic party would have the means-would they have the will to retaliate upon the Protestants ? Would it be their game to oppress their Protestant fellow - countrymen ? We believe they would not-if they had the amplest power, the most unshackled means-use them to the injury of the' Protestant party. We think that in the nineteenth century there is little of that vile spirit which gave Penal Laws to Ireland and the Inquisition to Spain, and but for such men as Mr. GREGG, there would be none of it. The Catholics of Ireland have got a bitter lesson, teaching them at once the horror of persecution and the impolicy of division. They have suffered from the legislation of England--legislating for the bigotry of Irish Protestantism; and from their experience they know what a grinding despotism is that which seeks to assail the faith of man by heaping injustice upon his head and slaying the body to save the soul. They have learned, too, the folly of persecution; that, in place of being the storm to tear up by the roots, it is as fertilizing as though it were the gentlest dew of Heaven. It has rained blood on Catholics, and Catholicism has grown up under its fierce but fertilizing shower. Taught these lessons-and taught them by the best teacher, experience-we of the educated class of Catholics have learned them from our fathers-we would take up arms to repel any attempt at curbing the freedom of thought or interfering with the liberty of Protestants, equally as though the attempt were made against ourselves, for the principle we honour would be equally violated in the one case as in the other. This is the doctrine we teach at our firesides. This is the household pledge-" Equal liberty to all men." The Protestants of Ireland are a great, an intelligent, an educated, a powerful class; 'and though we do not agree with Sir W. SCOTT, that a few counties in Ireland could conquer the whole countryan opinion equally absurd and dogmatic-we, neverthe- THE VOICE OF THE NATION. 169 less, know that Catholic oppression in Ireland would be resisted by a great and noble body of men, backed by all the power of England. Dare we attempt the tyrant ? Dare we, who have but lately come out of the furnace, attempt to thrust our Protestant brethren into its fiery jaws ? No such thing. We have not the will; and if we had, we dare not do it. United, Ireland might resist any power brought to bear upon her-divided, she is weak. And we know that; and it is because we know it that we sincerely covet a true union between the Catholics and Protestants - a union which the English Government fears above all things. Its strength and power here consist in fostering disease the worst of all political diseases, division; and for this purpose it has always kept a garrison of bad passions in Ireland. At one time they had an "English interest"at the present they have the "Protestant interest." Sir JAMES GRAHAM boldly avows that the Union could not be maintained but for this "Protestant interest." He says that Government will never allow the Church Establishment to be touched, for, if it were, that the Union could not continue to exist! Therefore, Protestants of Ireland, it is you who refuse to repeal the Union ! It is you who refuse to yourselves the right of self-Government-and for what ? For the benefit of the few hundred beneficed Clergymen who derive their support from the State. It is these few hundred men who really constitute the Protestant interest, and it is to their exclusive advantage that the trading, the agricultural and manufacturing interests of the whole People are sacrificed. Of course we are assuming that this is the chief objection the Protestant middle classwhich has been so materially injured by the Union-has to its Repeal. And we are justified in the assumption; seeing that this is the objection upon which the speakers relied at the meeting, which was principally composed of that class at the Rotundo; and it is the burthen of the anti-Repeal song in every place-from the House of Commons to the Dawson-street Club. The honest and well-meaning Operatives and Tradesmen, who make so 170 THE VOICE OF THE NATION. large a portion of the State, and who are, without doubt, its soundest and most useful body-very different, indeed, on the one hand, from the aristocrats, who profit by their mistakes; and on the other, from the odious rogues who trade upon their mistaken fears--are told that the result of the Repeal of the Union would be the overthrow of their religion. What is the Protestant religion ? Is it a material thing.? Is it, like the gates of Somnauth, a thing that a tyrant can throw down, or carry away, and a fool can re-erect or restore ? Or is it a sacred thing, resident in the heart, the affections, and the passions of man? Is it not a faith, a hope, and a charity? It is clear it is not the soul-which is religion-that the Protestant Statesmen fear to lose; it is the body-which is the Establishment-that their pious alarms are busy for. This Establishment, which is the representative of the English interest in Ireland-this system, hateful to the People, and disgraceful (as a piece of armed mendicancy) to the Protestants who allow it to exist-this detested system is the cause of the great evil of Ireland. It is not the sums of money it extracts from an unwilling peasantry -neither is it because it is the sign of a foreign oppressioni-no; it is because it creates division, and it gives a sinister interest to one portion of our fellow-country. men in yreserving an English influence in Ireland, as the best means of perpetuating an ascendancy from which the Protestant many derive no benefit, but which subserves the miserable ends of a few hundred Clerics, a few dozen ambitious Prelates, and a few great families whose young " detrimentals" take refuge in the bosom of mother Church from the harsh condition of younger children. Now, Protestant Operatives of Dublin, what will you gain by this system ? No plebeian child of yours will ever wear the Episcopal silk apron. The Church is a respectable calling, we would have you to know. None of these fishes and loaves, which-with a great improvement on the original miracle-have increased, and kept increasing since the days of LUTHER, will fall to your share. No; you will do the work, others will reap the THE VOICE OF THE NATION. 171 profits. Your duty will be to resist all attempts at a generous confidence between yourselves and the Catholics. You must cultivate malice, envy, and all uncha,ritableness. You must teach your children to lisp curses upon those who spring from the same common mother-who adore the same Gon-who are the citizens of the same State. You must teach them that English influence in every department in Ireland-that English power working in every channel-that English advantage consulted in every act-that all this is better than Irish independence and Irish honor, because without England the ascendancy must go. What matter though the Protestant tradesmen be beggared and starving-though trade in Ireland be the miserable speculation of hopeless men - though stagnation is felt everywhere-though beggary, like a spectre, is seen grinning from between the bars of Poor-house prisons, or frightening the propriety of the isle in every street, and lane, and rural way-what matter! the Establishment must remain, and the Union still continue as the greatest lie that was ever engrossed on parchment! THE WRATH OF AMERICA. WE cannot speak save with passionate joy, and deep, tearful gratitude, of the conduct of the Americans They were calmly and soberly helping our peaceful and progressive agitation for self-government, when the news burst upon them that the English rulers had declared their resolve to meet Repeal by force of arms, and that the Irish People, not unworthy of their fathers' fame and their great cause, dared them to the strife. Had the city of Washington been burnt again by England, greater indignation could not have been excited. The populations of whole cities have met and declared that at the first attempt to crush Ireland, the Baltimore clippers 172 THE VOICE OF THE NATION. will put to sea, and the woodmen of Kentucky will cross the Canadian frontier. One and all they have resolved that the same American might which felled the giant tyranny of England with its own iron mace in two wars before, will as freely put out its strength against her now, if she invade Ireland. They welcome the English ruler to the contest-they beckon him to the field. "Let him come, the brigand-let him come," is the note of the War-eagle of America. Ah, men of America! if you knew how much it nerves and ennobles the hearts of us and our poor, suffering, but still undegraded countrymen, to find that we are not all alone in the world--to know that highsouled freemen pant for, and praise, and pray for us, you would not grudge the pains you take about poor Old Ireland. God bless you-God bless you. TIME A TITLE, THE long possession should be enough. What means this talk of the "intention" of the men 130 years ago ? Shall the slow revolution of a congregation's opinion be less respectable than the sudden plunder of an armed invader? Yet who questions the titles of Cromwellian or Williamite P Again, you prohibit a man from entailing his property beyond the children of the living generation; you violate his expressed intentions in a generation and twenty-one years, and this in private property ! Will you respect his assumed intentions at the lapse of 130 years in a matter of public property? A man's power over his property, once his hand relaxes in death, is the galvanism of the law-is the creature of convenience. It acts where, when, and how the law likes. Society gives him such control as it pleases-tramples on his "intention" where inconvenient-upholds it where expedient. Away, then, with the pretence of " inten- 173 THE VOICE OF THE NATION. tion" being the rule. You perpetually violate it; it is unrecognised as a principle of law; it may, as in the case before us, be pestilent to society. Even a legislature is powerless to bind its successors. Shall a man, then, stretch out his dead hand through time, and govern the application of property centuries after his "intentions" passed away, and when it is impossible to know what his intentions would now be if he lived? Shall ages offer that homage to the caprices of the tomb, which no single age would pay to the deliberate decree of its assembled legislature? THE RIGHT OF THE LANDLORD TO DO WHAT HE LIKES WITH HIS OWN. SOME monopolist, with more wit than discretion, has sent us a letter, demanding to be supplied with the ration for nothing, inasmuch as we advocate "a fixity of tenure;" and he contends that we have no greater right of control over our journal than the landlord over his land; and, consequently, if the tenant can claim a title in the one, the subscriber may equally claim a title in the other. Moreover," he goes on to say, " since you published your essays against monopoly, and maintained the 'fixity of tenure,' my daughter Lucretia has visited Harvies'; Todd, Burns, and Co.'s; Pim's; Ferrier, Pollock, and Co.'s, and all the wholesale, as well as retail, houses for the sale of ladies' clothing in the city of Dublin; but every one of them, maintaining their old monopoly and I fixity of tenure,' the very reverse of your's, would not give her one screed to make her either chemise, frock, or petticoat." We are afraid our correspondent has no clearer notion of political economy than Lord GLENGALL seems to have of the condition of Tipperary. He is as blind to the most obvious distinctions in the nature of property, as if he were a Representative Peer with as many estates as ideas. And we undertake the task of 12 174 THE VOICE OF THE NATION. enlightening him with the same mixture of shame and scorn that one would set about teaching a great overgrown oaf his A, B, C. Be it known to him, then, that our journal and the lands of Ireland do not stand in the same relation to the people of Ireland; and that it is quite possible they may have no claim at all upon the one, and yet have the most irresistible claim possible upon the other. The Why and Because of this difference may be made clear to the meanest capacity, as the advertisements say. We make this newspaper with the hard labour of many hands and heads. The paper - maker, printer, pressmen, and editors all sweat for it before a sheet comes from the press. We create it out of rags and blacking, and when the work is done we call it our own with a safe conscience. But does the landlord CREATE the land-does the labour of his hand make the fallow acres out of dust, or 1the labour of his head cover them with verdure and fertility? Half a dozen men will make a newspaper; but will any given number of landlords make you an estate ? If so, the cases are exactly parallel, and they have as good a right to the sole, entire, uncontrolled disposal of their property as we have to ours; if not, we venture to object to their doing what they like with their own, till they prove that it is their own. We are afraid the case of Messrs. PIm and Co., who refused their finery to Miss LUCRETIA, without the money, is not more in point. They, too, manufactured their commodities, or paid others for manufacturing them. If they found them ready made by Nature, and as obviously provided for the first wants of the people born amidst them as they air they breathe, the case would have been different. But the farmer, the weaver, the dyer, and a hundred others, are paid liberally before the smooth linen of Belfast, and the soft cloths of Yorkshire, find their way to the warehouses of Messrs. PIM. Whom did the landlord pay for creating his commodity ? THE VOICE OF THE NATION. 175 No; the cases are not parallel at present. But if these hard times should drive our merchants to take up some new pursuit, and," for want of a better, they seized upon the sea or the sky, portioned it out among themselves, and refused us the right of traversing the one, or breathing the God-given air of the other, without paying toll to themselves as sealords and skylords, the resemblance would then become complete, and Messrs. PIM and Co. would be as unreasonable as any landlord in Munster. The fallacy that has bewildered our correspondent, or with which he wants to bewilder somebody else, has its origin in an utter misapprehension of the popular demand. We no more ask to make terms with individual landlords about their land, than with individual traders about their goods. No one goes to Lord RODEN or to Lord GLENGALL, and says: Here are twenty men born upon your estate; you are bound to employ them or to support them. No one says this. But they go to the Government of the country, and they say to them: You are bound to see that all the People born on this land shall be able to live on it by honest industry. GOD has made it abundantly fertile to supply all their wants fourfold; you, gentlemen, receive pleasant places, and high salaries, and very becoming liveries, not to lounge at levees and to caper at drawing-rooms, but to see that the gifts of nature are distributed for the benefit of the whole community; and if you do not do this, you are, notwithstanding your fine clothes and euphoneous titles, no better than respectable swindlers. This is what the friends of the People say. They do not demand justice from individuals, but from the State; but they undoubtedly ask it in that quarter with the full understanding that the interests of Lords Fiddlefaddle and Gimcrack are not to stand in the way of its accomplishment. The principleupon which a fixity of tenure is agitated is, that the land of the country owes support to the people of the cuntry; but if this high ground were abandoned-which it never can-the infliction of such a measure upon the landlord class, for the public good, 176 THE VOICE OF THE NATION. would be no more unjust or unreasonable than the in- fliction of an income tax upon the trader class, for the same purpose. The public good is the business of the State. But the principle is obvious and irresistible, that the land is not the landlord's own, because it can only be held in proprietorship subject to the prior claims of the inhabitants to get food and clothing out of it; that no length of time, and no concurrence of circumstances can annul that claim, or transfer it to a select circle of gentlemen entitled landed proprietors; and that the very minute one human being dies from the outrage of that principle, an injustice has been committed, as clear and distinct in its nature, as if the landlord class conspired to throw the entire land of the country out of cultivation, and left the population to starve. If, as they contend, the land be theirs without restriction or control, they may surely do this when they please. But if they may not do this-and we would travel to Tullamore Park barefooted, to see an individual impudent enough to assert that they may--they have no right to sacrifice ten men to their cupidity more than ten millions. We trust our facetious friend will not, for the future, be at any loss to guess why traders may do what they like with their own, and why landlords may not. PROTESTANT ASCENDANCY. Fon two hundred and fifty years past penal laws have been in force against the Irish Catholics. The motive in the breasts of their influential persecutors was a desire to guard their conquests by utterly ruining those they had robbed. They recruited from the disinterested mass of Protestants, by affecting a bigotry they did not feel. The bait took: and the majority of these Irish THE VOICE OF THE NATION. 177 'devoted Protestants themselves to the degradation of their neighbours, the impoverishment of themselves, and the disgrace of their country, to gratify hypocrites who fattened on their folly. Once they abandoned this grim delusion, and Ireland sprung into a prosperous nationality. Every sort of persecution, from disfranchisement to death, has been vainly used to change the creed of the Catholics. It became dear to their hearts, and necessary to their honour, as long as it was persecuted. Nobly did many of them who hesitated on its truth give the benefit of the doubt to the persecuted creed; and passionately did its firm believers brave every woe, rather than deny it. Had the two creeds changed places, the result would Persecuting Catholicity have been equally changed. would have rotted under its corruptions, and broken under its crimes. Persecuted Protestantism would have grown purer, bolder, and dearer to the true and good. To persecute the creed of brave hearts, is to bind them to it in life and death. This is an honour to humanitythis is Gon's guarantee against the policy of persecution. When the Irish Catholics were 600,000 or 700,000, they stood out successfully against persecution, and baffled it at length. They are now six millions and a-half--who shall coerce them from their creed now ? You cannot wrench their creed from six and a-half millions of People. Do the Protestant Operatives suppose that the race which clung to its creed under the swords of ELIZABETH and CROMWELL, and the felon laws of the House of Brunswick, will be frightened from its faith or cowed into a dishonest conversion by the legislation of Mr. GREG ? Do they think that if the Government of the Empire were in their hands they would be one bit nearer converting the Catholics by disfranchisement and penalties ? We ask them seriously to reflect on this. If it appear all but impossible for them to accomplish what the patient ascendancy of centuries failed to do, then we entreat of them, as sensible men, to either give up the attempt to convert the Irish 178 THE VOICE OF THE NATION. Catholics, or to try some more apostolic method than ascendancy. And again we ask them, what is the chance of the renewal of this ascendancy ? It is gone, and for ever. The Catholic who fears, and the Protestant who expects, Protestant ascendancy, are equally absurd. Even were Ireland re-conquered-if we by rashness provoked, and by stupidity and cowardice were beaten in a war-would that restore Protestant ascendancy ? Surely not. If we are to be coerced, it is not because the majority are Catholics, but because a majority of Protestants and Catholics united are nationalists. Coercion will be preceded by new concessions to the Catholics, and conquest would be accompanied by the utter abolition of the Church Establishment. Even now the whole English Whig press and many of the leaders unite in resisting Repeal, and cry out for the instant abolition of the Irish Protestant Establishment. Before next session the entire Whig party will be pledged to it. Nor let the Protestant Operatives calculate on PEEL'S Government to resist this assault. Even if that Government remain in, which is unlikely, can they rely on PEEL P Did he not basely desert them before? PEEL was much more deeply pledged against Emancipation, than he was in favour of the Church Establishment ! Not only is the notion of ascendancy a dream so foolish that two-thirds of the empire have forgotten it, and most of the remainder hardly think it worth while laughing at; but it is plain that the English Protestants of all parties are most anxious to establish the Catholic Church in Ireland, and that nothing but the dislike of the Irish Catholics to such a measure can prevent its being done. In short, every day larger and larger concessions of the kind will be offered by the English Cabinet, whether Whig or Tory. As men or statesmen, they do not care for Protestant ascendancy; but they have an interest in plundering the Irish Protestants and Catholics. The latest Tory proposals are to found a THE VOICE OF THE NATION. 179 Catholic Establishment in Ireland, and to send an embassy to the Pope to suppress Repeal. Fancy, Protestant Operatives ! Baron LEFROY making a decree for Easter dues; and police and soldiers going to enforce the confessional or sacramental fees of a Popish Priest! Yet this is the proposal of the most Protestant Peelite journal in the empire. Is the pass sold now or not P Who are your friends now P-those who bid you spend your little money, waste your time, and sear your hearts, in heaping hard old names on your brother Catholics, and in advocating an ascendancy which, though tried for centuries, failed to convert, and is now about to receive its last and extinguishing blow from Protestant England. Who befriends you best ?these blundering bigots, or we who counsel you to join your Presbyterian and Catholic countrymen in their holy and gallant effort to abolish absenteeism, to keep Irish money in Ireland, to bring back trade, to fill your stomachs and clothe your backs, to make you united, rich, free, and honoured ? Which do you prefer ? A hopeless and hard-hearted struggle to take away from your Catholic countrymen religious equality, or a hopeful, and wise, and noble union with them, to bring back wealth, strength, and happiness to old Ireland. Choose now; choose while your help can be of use to either party; choose like good-hearted, prudent, suffering Irishmen; choose between bigotry and brotherly love-between bread and ballyragging; choose between liberty and crime; choose between being the tools of aliens who will betray you, and being the prosperous citizens of Old Ireland. FRENCH POLICY NOT AGGRESSIVE. "It was not for themselves alone," says O'Connell in his new book on Ireland, "that the Americans gained the victory over 180 THE VOICE OF THE NATION. Burgoyne at Saratoga. They conquered for Irish as well as for American freedom. Nor was it for France alone that Dumourier defeated the Austrian Army at Gemappe. The Catholics of Ireland participated in the fruits of that victory." derived but half its influence on our destiny from the blow it gave to England's ally; the other half was from the avowed sympathy between Ireland and France. Belfast, then the head quarters of independence, blazed with bonfires, and joy was on every free brow in Ireland. Gratitude, love, and hope combined to make that triumph of France and liberty move the whole soul of the nation as if itself had conquered. And as our friends regarded it, so did our foes. They looked upon Gemappe, and saw its field strewn with vanquished aristocracies, and they were startled from gazing on it by the shout of Ireland-" Hurrah for France, our friends have won the day." France busied (after a stern fashion) in transferring the land and the government from a despot encircled by oligarchs to the People, was summoned from her household work to the field: was summoned with threats of vengeance and slavery. Proudly, fiercely, and at once she sprung into the fight, flinging down without mercy or remorse all that clung round her steps.. She thought not of ties; she valued not blood. She was boiling with the resolve to do all things, even the worst, rather than tumble back a chained idiot upon the litter where she had lain for ages. Panoplied as wrath and genius could arm a young nation, she bore down upon the stranger, who brandished his spear upon her threshold, and threatened her hearth. Her first rush swept him far from the borders of France. But repeated assaults compelled her to new resources; and she called aloud to Europe, not to bend to her sway, but to join her cause. She invoked all other countries by their own sorrows and aspirations, not to let her, their tallest champion, bear the strife alone. And in her wild struggles against such odds, what if France swept away the old and solemn boundaries; what if Burgundy, and Provence, and Bretagne, disappeared; what if the Netherlands and Italy suffered a union for a GEMAPPE THE VOICE OF THE NATION. 181 time; shall France, then, bear for ever the title of invader and centralizer P Remember that this fraternization was by the enthusiastic desire of all. It was sought by the lesser, not imposed by the greater. The destruction of the old provinces of France, and the incorporation of the bounding states was replete with mischief; but France revolutionised herself and her neighbours, not from permanent policy-though at the time she thought otherwise-but as a mere military organization. What justice is there in attributing the Emperor's policy of invasion to the French of to-day ? Why assume that France is an enemy of local institutions ? France is centralised in politics and literature. Her municipal corporations have little power, and her districts are small in extent, and without old associations or local spirit; and before France can enjoy the full benefit of her democratic revolution, she must complete it by repealing not only the centralisation established by her Republic, but the centralisation established by her Monarchs. Without a landed aristocracy she has no security against an official despotism, save in its separation. She must restore their time-honored names to Lorraine, and Provence, and Normandy, and the rest; allow the re-institution of local parliaments; and cherish the revival of local patriotism. Local government is of the essence of democracy. This is the policy of some of the wisest and most powerful men in France, though the time for its execution may not have yet come. France is interested, not in conquering others, but in localising government among her own provinces. But in the mean time we protest against the assumption made by all English and some Irish writers, that France is bent on conquest, or is an enemy to local institutions, as the charge is founded either on the acts of NAPOLEON, which his overruling genius alone is answerable for, or on the voluntary fraternisation which was part of the military tactics of the Convention. 182 THE VOICE OF THE NATION. ADVICE TO THE PEOPLE IN OCTOBER, '43. THE just indignation of the Irish People against those who have laid hands on the Leaders they trust and love, must not occupy their thoughts to the exclusion of what is far more vital --- a calm survey of the position We have not leisure to be angry; of our cause. we are too busy to squabble, and too earnest to scold; and if it were otherwise, clamour and outcry are not the weapons of brave men. They endure when it is not wise to act--they act when it is no longer needful to endure. But the woman's weapons of complaint and recrimination they scorn to use ever. All the Great Truths which mankind cherish have had their martyrs, and why not ours, too; it is the fate of Truth to be persecuted, and TO BE SUCCESSFUL. Our cause has accomplished the first half of its destiny; let us take heed of this only to make sure that it fail not in the second. We must be calm and vigilant as an army before battle. The resolute men, who know exactly the work they have entered upon, and have weighed well its difficulties and its results, will be so. Nothing that our enemies can do will take them by surprise. Wise men are never fluttered-unsteady men never accomplish anything. It was not a passionate mob, but a body of cool. unruffled citizens, that emptied the English tea chests into the harbour of Boston, and commenced the grea4 American Revolution. We are playing for as high a stake by greater and holier means, and we must watch the opposite movements without heat or excitement. Another move has been made-that is all. Let us reflect coolly whether it is not the move which checkmates our opponents. But must the faithful People see their chosen Leaders assailed by the Law, and covered with all the filth that a factious press can rake together, and still be patient ? Must they see this, and be indifferent ? No--not in- THE VOICE OF THE NATION. 183 different, but they must despise it. They must have too high a faith in their leaders to think they desire them to forget for a moment the interest of the cause in their personal sufferings. What matters it what they suffer, if the great end be attained ? Can they be more foully belied by the factions of the day, or more ruthlessly struck down by Power, than the men whom posterity delights most to honor P The HAMPDENS, KosciUSKOS, FRANKLINS, EMMETTS, -RUSSELLS, were "conspirators," hunted by the law, and hounded by the common cry of faction; but succeeding generations, and the calm voice of history, have found other names for them. And the men who are labouring for Ireland now, at all hazards that may come, do not fear any other verdict when they stand acquitted in their own conscience. The apostles of a new truth have to pass through three transitions in the estimation of the world. In the beginning, they are "weak enthusiasts;" by-and-bye, "turbulent agitators;" it is only when their work is accomplished that mankind acknowledge them for guides and benefactors. If those who serve Ireland are still in the second stage, no matter-it is the path which leads to the last. Christianity was denounced as a "baneful superstition," before it was recognised as an immortal truth. And still there is but the one way to the paradise of success-through the purgatory of persecution. Away, then, with all recollections of these prosecutions, except so far as they serve to stimulate the People to new exertions, and nerve them in a firmer and calmer determination to work out the liberation of their country. Those who have to bear their consequences do not fear them, and the blow must not fall where it was not aimed. They are but an episode-the bye-play-in the great struggle; they must not divert our attention for an hour from the work we have to accomplish. The newest feature in the aspect of our cause, is the late movement for Federalism. Our sentiments upon this question need scarcely be repeated. There is no extent to which any man has pushed the principle of 1S4 THE VOICE OF THE NATION. National Independence, that we are not prepared to march side by side with him for its attainment. Too much of a good thing is a surfeit that has killed nobody; and we are not afraid of too much nationality. But are we, therefore, to say "no" to these men who offer us such timely assistance? Most certainly not. They have the same object in view-they desire it as honestly, and, seek it as earnestly- they would do or suffer as much to achieve it-some of them have sacrificed more for it than many of us have any opportunity of doing; and we have no more right to reject their services than they have to reject ours. And when they offer us the expenditure of our own money and the control of our own institutions, they offer us, perhaps unconsciously, something that we value more than either-the power of shifting the agitation for independence from the masses, who have already suffered and sacrificed too much, to a legislative body, composed of a class that cannot be plundered by vindictive landlords, or coerced by partisan Magistrates and Police: for whatever preliminary measures are won or lost, there is no rest for this nation but in the complete fulfilment of the hope that is burning in the heart of the People. That hope can no more be extinguished than the elemental fire in nature. Thank GOD, you cannot unteach men to think, to feel, and to KNOW, more than you can unteach them to discriminate sounds or colours. The knowledge of wrong and the love of liberty once learned are learned for ever. The task would be less difficult to recal and annul all the effects of the Temperance reformation-to make a nation who have tasted the self-respect, the independence, and the home comforts that spring from sobriety, to be beasts again, than to cool the intense thirst for nationality in the heart of Ireland. Our agitation, partly by the visible embodiment of popular strength in the monster meetings, partly by the living fire poured into the excited minds of the People by O'CONNELL and the Press, has dQne what all earth cannot undo. It has kindled a new soul in the nation as impalpable and THE VOICE OF THE NATION. immortal as that which GOD has given to man. As little can you quell the one as the other. Look among the peasantry for its influence. You will find a new class of men created within twenty months, as distinct from the old as the teetotalers from the drunkards. Where are the sullenness, the apathy, the slavish condescension to rank, which hung like chains upon them: ? Gone for ever - they fell off in the agitation. It shook to pieces all the old idols of village despotism which an untaught People worship, and which crushes them, in return, like the idols of the East. It taught them the precious knowledge that makes men think honestly and act manfully. It dissipated old prejudices like a thunder storm among the mists, and enabled men--multitudes of them, for the first time-to see clearly before and about them, and to think for themselves. It gave a healthy and permanent stimulus to the young mind of the country. Scarcely the French Revolution, certainly none other, effected so miraculous and electric a change in the character of a People. And this revolution is not confined to that class or to any class. It is as universal as the population. Twelve months ago, and all the world could not produce a People so ignorant of their own history. To-day every man is familiar with it, or longs to be so. Its castles, its raths, its battle-fields, have become classic and sacred ground. Its triumphs are sung in racy melodies in every cottage, farm-house, and mansion through the land, and in many a drawing-room. The young Conservative, hot with instinctive love of country, takes its history to his heart, and in the moral darkness of a bigoted College, sighs in secret to "strike a blow" for Ireland. Old age has grown young again over the chivalrous tale of our struggles, and prayed GOD that it might not descend into the grave till it saw the redemption of our country. The young intellect 'of the land kindled over the bloody page, and vowed to add a new and brighter chapter to the record, that would efface the memory of all we had lost and suffered. It is their pride 186 THE VOICE OF THE NATION. to think that it was reserved for them to accomplish this great work with such weapons as it may demand, and they are ready for the toil and the sacrifice. This is the kind of growth in the strength and vigour of a nation, that can no more be revoked than the growth of the forest, or the ripeness of the harvest. This is our security that the regeneration of our countiry will never stop short of its entire accomplishment. The children of the desert have caught sight of the Promised Land, and you cannot turn them aside from their course. Thither they are bound, and there only will they rest. They are pilgrims and exiles till that goal is attained. Let us not fear, then, that a Federal Union, if it were effected to-morrow, could impede the march of nationality. Nothing can, and nothing shall impede it. And the agitation has left behind it another progeny which will make any permanent compromise impossible. A new race of public men will come out of it-the men who are devoted to its daily service in their closets and in colleges, in the tedious details of committees and the exciting labour of literature-a race trained to public business-full of practical knowledge, as well as of the knowledge in books--accustomed to think coolly, and to act promptly in emergencies-men apprenticed to the work of legislation-men whom the People will know and trust, not as they trust O'Co NNELL, after a life of services, but sufficiently to secure attention to their opinions both from them and from the Leader. These are men to build up a nation-a task still to be accomplished, if the Parliament were convened in College-green. And, assuredly, the labourers will do their destined work. If revolutions make such men, such men also make revolutions. Meantime let the People fear nothing from Proclamations and Prosecutions. They were too wise to expect that the work they undertook could be accomplished without labour. They knew they had impediments to remove, and dangers to brave, and temptations to resist. They braced themselves up for all these trials, as belong- THE VOICE OF THE NATION. 187 ing naturally to the work they had in hands, and if at length some of them are coming, why, let them come- we are prepared for them. As the traveller recognises in every land-mark a new evidence that he is on the right path, the People will see in each of these impediments a proof that they are approaching nearer and nearer to the great goal, which is surrounded by Coercion Bills and Proclamations, as the Palace in old romances was guarded by hydras and giants that fled before the first resolute knight who advanced against them. A YEAR'S WORK. THE first number of THE NATION was published a year ago; and our journal has now a circulatiou far exceeding that of any other paper in Ireland. The inclination of large masses of people to our opinions, and the influence we in turn must have exercised on them, possess a strong interest at least at present. If our cause succeed, the interest will be permanent. We are not glorifying ourselves, but speculating for no idle or selfish purpose. In examining the course pursued by THE NATION, we seek to furnish some clue to the principles working among the people-we hope to enable those who concur in our policy to understand it and promote it better, and by a review of the past we shall be prepared for the future. We have to confess faults to which men engaged in a pursuit which excites and exhausts, and is so variable as ours, are peculiarly liable. We have published some things that we regret; we have omitted and postponed many, very many, things of importance. We must therefore rather indicate what we designed than what we quite accomplished. Nationality was our first great object. All social and political movements we valued only as they promoted it; 188 THE VOICE OF THE NATION. and from it alone we sought, and do expect to gain, social and political prosperity for Ireland. Want of nationality has been the plague of Ireland. The upper classes were anti-national, and they either went to spend the money of Ireland and to calumniate it in some other land, or they allied themselves with the foreign government, and oppressed the People by excessive rents, jbbbed taxes, corrupt laws, and foul bigotry. They had no sympathy with the creed, tongue, history, or manners of the People; they were not national. Too many of the middle classes aped the vices, the stupidity, and the alienation of the higher. To copy the prejudices of the aristocracy was to be The satisfaction was great, and so far an aristocrat. the success easy. The son of an Irish country shopkeeper, or the owner of a few acres, often adopted the whine of a cockney, caricatured the manners of the Clubs, professed the creed of a foreign knave, and practised the politics of a foreign tyrant. Often, without independence or originality, despised by the high, spiteful to the poor, retailers of English lies, and mean suppliants for English patronage, they impeded local union and sneered at national virtue. The hearts of the poor were always right. They felt the hard crushing hand of tyranny. Starved on a bounteous soil, which they toiled late and early to make still more productive, they regarded the landlords as the peculating agents of a Saxon rule, rewarded by plunder and license for garrisoning this country for England. But, beyond this, most of them knew little. They too often confounded the vices of the landlord with his creed, ignorant that when England and the landlords were good Catholics, the same system existed of delegating to the aristocracy the right by law to rob and hang, in exchange for their labours in keeping Ireland enslaved. They knew of the past, only that they were ultimately put down. They did not know that their ancestors had THE VOICE OF THE NATION. 189 often defeated the English; had generally fought well; and were finally beaten by disunion, by the arms of some of their own kinsfolk, or by gross treachery. The past was a dark cloud thundering against all future manliness, and they inclined either to a mean resignation, or that despair which casts off its woes and its responsibilities by some desperate dash for change. Anglicism in literature, manners, and opinion, religious hatred, selfish despair, and historical ignorance, were the ramparts of oppression. Still some glorious elements were scattered through the People. The upper classes could not quite forget that their sires had sometimes thrown off their livery of shame, and stood for Ireland. The Catholic gentry did not forget the iron glories of Benburb and Limerick, the disastrous day of Aughrim, or the hundred years of persecution. The Protestants remembered Swift, and Grattan, and 1782, and the Presbyterians recalled the memory of the United Irishmen with a sigh and shut teeth. The middle classes, animated by the more active of the Catholic Clergy, often rose into independence and Irish democracy. The generosity of their hearts, the success of the Emancipation struggle, the gleaming traditions which float from each battle ground, and fill the breached wall with fighting men, and sanctify the graves of the dead patriots-all tended to create hope, charity, and knowledge among the poor. Our desire was to check the vices, increase the knowledge, and consolidate the virtues of all these classes. We think we can boast that this was the first paper in Ireland, of a political and serious character, which could defy the charge of sectarianism. The political andliterary writing of THE NATION has not only come from the pens of both Catholic and Protestant, but, with a few trivial exceptions, it has been respectful to all Christian creeds on all occasions. The property of the Presbyterian sect, most obnoxious 190 THE VOICE OF THE NATION. to Catholic and Episcopalian, was assailed-we were the first paper in Ireland to defend them, though in doing so in a country where religious disputes went so high, we incurred some ill-will and ran some hazard. We would do the like again in a like case. The Catholic Clergy were attacked by bigoted Protestants and servile Catholic nobles, and we were not slow to dispose of the pretensions of both. Aid so little did we regard such distinctions, that for our eulogies on Conservative Protestants who by their genius had honored Ireland, we came in more than once for the censure of those most influential with the People. We did our bare duty in this, and we were "unprofitable servants." We look upon the Protestant's fear of the Catholic, and on.the Catholic's fear of the Protestant, as rank nonsense. Their mutual dislike is something worse. And yet this trash and this crime have ruined the country. We implore the Protestant and Catholic to mix more together, and to judge of each other by observation, not report. The Catholic will find the Protestant an educated gentleman, misled in politics by bigoted training. The Protestant will discover a generous lover of country and of religious equalityin the Irish Catholic. Both the men of past and present time are mutually wronged. Knowledge of history, from critical sources, would redress the one error. Intimacy with men would cure the other. The experiment is worth making, and for a patriot motto we know no better than the Christian resolve, " Let us love one another." We endeavoured to create for Ireland a Foreign Policy. Until last year, most, even of the Liberal Papers, were retailers of the foreign politics of the London press. The scissors were handier than a library of foreign statistics, and pasting easier than thinking. Accordingly, every villainy perpetrated by England was hurraed for, every well-earned licking she got was howled over in the Irish journals by writers from London. THE VOICE OF THE NATION. 191 We affected to be, and passed as accomplices in the infamy of the Indian wars. Colonial Patriots and foreign insurgents in the cause of right, heard with scorn or wrath the base applause with which the Irish serf greeted each fresh usurpation of his tyrant. Every foreign nation against which England had a grudge was calumniated with all the grossness of the English tongue, no matter how friendly it was to Ireland. The generosity of France and the money of America were overlooked or mocked; Montgomery and Fontenoy were forgotten.Nay, we daily heard the miserable stupidity put forward, that we were ready to fight all England's battles, no matter against whom, or in what cause. Foreign nations knew nothing of our condition, and all they heard of our opinions was the braggart offer of some pampered slave to fight against them in support of English aggression. If the conduct of England in Affghanistan andChina is understood here now; if foreign nations know our strength, our discontent, our wrongs, our resolves; if they express sympathy for, and know that we feel too much gratitude to them, too much knowledge of our interest, too much self-respect, and too much conscience to attack or assist in attacking them, save in our own just defence, we believe THE NATION deserves a part of the credit of such a consummation. That Foreign Policy we shall pursue. We are ready to try its justice, its legality, and its wisdom, with any organ or body here or in England. We warn those who write for Ireland that the People will not be content with second-hand knowledge or servile sentiments. They must hear from sound sources, and in an Irish and not an English tone, of the state and feelings of France, Germany, Norway, America, and India. They must find that the language of independence suited to this country's dignity is observed. They must not see thanks and insults flung in alternate pages to the old allies and fast friends of Ireland, because England fears and hates them. "A public opinion, racy of the soil," could not be created 192 THE VOICE OF THIE NATION. unless we gave our readers plenteous information on the men who lived, and the deeds which were done on that soil. A national literature should be stamped with the popular idiom, inspired by patriotism, breathing of the climate and scenery, and informed of the history and manners of the People. A series Y:fbiographies of warriors and writers, sketches of some of its battles, and a vast number of short poems in which these qualities were sought, have appeared in our columns. Indeed, our songs have obtained more publicity, more praise, and more blame than any other part of our writings. The attacks of Shaw, Butt, and Lockhart, have possibly served us as much as the praise of others; though we seldom take up a provincial, and never an American Repeal paper without finding a song from THE NATION in it. On the Tenure Question our course has been an open and decided one. We seek to secure to the peasant land at a just rent. A just rent would leave him comfort and some leisure. We seek for him the value of all the labour or money he spends in improvements. And we seek prospective laws, which shall tend, by a natural and easy change, to reduce the great estates, and create a body of small proprietors in fee throughout every part of Ireland. But we are not ready to jump into a servile war for this purpose. On the contrary, we shall do our best to make the landlords recognise that the postponement of the tenure settlements or the decline of the political agitation, would lead to an anti-rent movement, which might end in a disastrous rebellion, but would begin by reducing them to beggary, and could not be quelled by the defeat of insurgent armies. .More directly we have sought to promote nationality, by suggesting, assisting, and enforcing National Projects of all kinds. Reading and lecture rooms, schools of art, public THE VOICE OF THE NATION. 193 patronage for national art and literature, nationality in speech, manners, education, costume, and amusement, have received all the support our pens could give them. In some things we have succeeded. A vast number of literary and artistical projects, with a national purpose, are being now worked out. But time is necessary to the exertions of many men. Let no one forget that he who gives on. favourable or instructive national fact to his circle - that he who saves an air, a relic of antiquity, a tradition, an old custom, from loss-he who makes a temperance band play, or a friend sing, an Irish, instead of a foreign tune-who gives or teaches a book on Ireland, or its literature, or history, instead of one on England or the English-that he who promotes, to the value of a farthing, Irish trade and agriculture, or helps in the least our knowledge, commerce, and respectability, does an act which tends to prepare and secure self-government and prosperity-does his duty, and does what the half of us must do, or Ireland cannot be a nation. We must now end this long gossip about ourselves. The success of THE NATION has been attributedto the success of the Repeal movement, of which it was one of the many moving powers. Others said the people had grown ripe for it; and more think it a lucky accident. We might play the juggler, but we prefer telling the secret. We succeeded, because we were in earnest. THE NATION was written by men smarting under the sight of the People's misery, and mad at their country's degradation; they felt that they could not rest quietin such a land. To struggle for Ireland was felt as a destiny and fixed duty upon the soul of each of them; and, by God's blessing, they will continue to strive till they have lost the faculty of using pen and sword, or that suffering but most loved country is free. THE END. PREPARING FOR PUBLiCATION, A MANUAL IIISTORICAL AND LITERARY KNOWLEDGE FOR THE PEOPLE. BEING TH1E SECOND PART OF Which will contain Sketches of Distinguished Irishmen Chapters on Historical Eras; Popular Projects ; and a variety of Papers upon the Literature, History, and Industrial Resources of Ireland. JAMES DUFFY, 25, ANGLESEA STREET, DUBLIN. This book is a preservation facsimile produced for the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. It is made in compliance with copyright law and produced on acid-free archival 60# book weight paper which meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (permanence of paper). Preservation facsimile printing and binding by Northern Micrographics Brookhaven Bindery La Crosse, Wisconsin 2010