/ ' /; /| "./' ■■■■■ ,/, ■/; •A i/i / / '•/: / :/, '^1 / /! / \/\ ■/! !^^ '■/ / / / / /; / / /: !/! '"/ ■/_ /}, /' &g!f:Sx \ \ \ \\\\\\\\\\\ \\\ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ M> \J^/ / I / / / / / /I 5! A Word on the Merits: OR,- ENGLAND'S "KeTTLE-OF-F1SH" RULE IN IREIvAND [From (and Supplement to) St. Joseph's Advocate.] Inficriheil reaperJfHlhj to R1. Rev. Consignor Edward lifeColgan, P.P., V.(r., of Ballimore. /ml GLADSTONE. OFFICE OF ST. JOSEPH'S 1893. ':aTE, 401 COURTLAND STREET, -., MD. / / 1/ c / / / / / / /. '/ / / / / / /\ / / / / /\ / / / / / / / / / / / / / y\ / / / m _ --tt.-j;/' Profusely )ense. — ^Price 50 Cents. \ 1 A Word on the Merits: I \ ■OR,- ENGLAND'S "KeTTLE-OF-FISH" RULE IN IRKIvAND [From St. Joseph's Advocati;.] Inscribed respactfidhj to lit. Rev. 3Io>isi(/nor Edward IlcColijan. P.P., V.G., of Baltimore. 0. , K "%. GLADSTONE. 1893. V. Xi/.j." • y' OFFICE OF ST. JOSEPH'S ADVOCATE, 401 COURTLAND STREET, BALTIMORE, MD. A WORD ON THE 3IERITS. ^fc^^'^M-'",-' THE CLADDAGH (gALWAy) FISHING FLEET BLESSED BY THE PRIEST BEFORE PUTTING TO SEA. "The appearance of the village of Claddagh'is dirty, but the houses are clean enough inside ; and be it known that before the famine their houses were models of cleanliness ; and we must recollect that those manure heaps which fre- quently offend the eye in Irish villages have no offensive odor, on account of the deodorizing power of the peat which forjus a large portion of tlie compost. The men and women have generally clean linen, although often covered with rags. It is a general fact worthy of note that in Ireland a dirty outside generally covers a clean heart." — The, Ulsler^Journal of Archmology. A LITTLE old Gazetteer published in Dublin, 1789, says of Giilway: "The salmon and herring fisheries are carried on here with great spirit, and employ several hundred boats." But that was under an Irish Parliament. A WORD ON THE MERITS. :4^WMBt ■m.,j^?ii- HOLY CROSS ABBEY, ON THE RIVER SUIR, COUNTY TIPE'ERARY. (BEFORE ENGLISH INVASION). RELAND. The Recoiil: Invasion— Slauglilei — Confiscation— Exlcrnii- nation— The Slave Shiv>— Priest Hunting and Penal Code Against Conscienie— Forbidding the Selioolniaster and Penalties on the Alpliabet — Killing Manufactures- Slaughter of Commerce — Seduction of Innocence — Bribery— Political Corruption and Swindle of :t Legis- lature — Defamation of Character even Geograi)hical — Starvation — Degradation — Depopulation and Slavery— All Legalized by Statute to Break which was " a Crime ! " We have nothing to do with politics as popularly under- stood, but have much to do with race hatred and oppression and every ph.ise of slavery, whether black or white, red or brown. This our readers know. For eleven years we have advocated the rights and exposed the wrongs of the African and the Indian, no mattT where the gospel of hate or oppression was preached or joractioed, giving much space to such remote places as Brazil, the Sandwich Islands and the Dark Continent, as well as to Texas and Dakota ; and would to God that our humble advocacy at any date during those years were one-half as opportune and practical as it is to-day when the very air is full of nur present subject and the reading world is awaiting with bated breath the legislative battle now pending in the British Commons. In all proba- bility the first tug of war will have gone into history before these lines see the light. Thus the subject is forced upon us here and now. Our readers call for it, not only those of Irish birth and extraction who are simply absorbed by it (and these are our main support), but others as well who want to be posted on the merits of this burning question. Not a blow struck at white slavery that is not one leveled as well at the black bull's-eye of the other; no mistaking, then, how the colored people will enjoy this indictment. When Chauncey M. Depew (who went out of his way at tlie Chicago celebration last October to insult the Catholic Church) could have lately assured Mr. Gladstone, while his guest at Ha warden, that out of sixty-four millions of people, barely a tenth part of one million in these States could be found opposed to the Irish demand for legislative freedom, we know well how this paper will be received by the Catholic portion of those sixty-four millions, bishops, priests and monastic saints, as well as the faithful laity. We can't assist this sacred cause by S'30,000, like Major John Byrne of New York, but as "every little helps," this is ours. We are not dealing with any abstract legislative question of Home Rule, for that is politics, but with the cause and roof, of periodic famine, the slavery of coercion acts by the score in this one century, the half-starved condition of the laboring classes from year to year, the legislative and ad- r A WORD ON THE MERITS. iniijisti-ative management which has got rid of the Catholic population by nearly one-half since 1841 and will not allow it to grow, while Orangemen multiply, grow fat and kick. The glaring outrage on common sense of five Britishers to one Irishman in the London Commons voting on jJurely and e.cclusiveh/ Irish, hills to whose merits, hccanse local, many of these five io one (English, Scotch and Welsh) are utter aliens and many avoived enemies! — this fundamental and notorious wrong, this great international scandal and nine- teenth-century anachronism, has had full swing for ninety- two years loiih the result just stated, a result easily foreseen and repeatedly foretold from the first broachment of the swindle one hundred years ago. Nor is this all, for there is the Executive ! a truly terrible root of wrong in itself, when the discretionary powers of Dublin Castle, an anti-Irish judiciary, packed juries and a standing army are considered. Witness the Rebellion of 1798, in-no sense a Parliamentary result, but a well proven Executive concoction (admitted by Mr. Gladstone himself) for the Irish Parliament was completely independent of the English legislature at that time, and had won the respect of Catholics by the Act of 1793. By that concoction Ireland lost her independent legislature of which Mr. Gladstone's bill is but a mere installment! How true then the argument here attempted when now at last honest Englishmen by the million, if not by a clear majority of the population, (including every member of llie present government) acknowledge it, are converts to it, lead the van in proclaiming it., and arc committed to its statutory enactment ! Was there ever- within the memory of living men such a moral victory as this ? It is certainly one of the most sig- nal in modern history. With its bare announcement we might be well content and close this article, but we don't think that would satisfy our readers any more than ourselves. Our readers may want to judge for tliemselves from a full statement of the facts in the case , and we want to give our own widow's mite to so sacred a cause. DIGGINS FOK THE ROOTS. Can any rational being take exception to the following position, as being untrue or unfair — that the social phenom- enon we are about to investigate must bo attributed to Almighty God, as the Author of nature, or to man, or to tioth ; in other words : 1. Either the geographical limits of (he island are too cii-- eumscrilied for the poimlation ; 2. Or the soil is cui'sed with sterility ; 3. Or the climate is invested with a veto over the gifts of the soil and the energies of the jieople ; 4. Or the people are too lazy to work ; 5. Or a sufficiency of work upon their own soil is not within their reach ; 0. Or the remuneration of labor in that land is miserably inadequate ; 7. Or the inhabitants are improvident ; 8. Or they are robbed of the fruits of industry and econ- omy by bad government, legislative and executive. Inevitably, the solution wo seek is to be found in the altcru.atives just put, taken individually or collectively. God's House Must Fit His Family. FIRST ALTERNATIVE — IS IRELAND TOO SMALL FOR THE POPULATION ? According to two independent official surveys of Ireland, its superficial extent has been differently stated at 31,874 and 32,513 square miles, or about 21,000,000 of acres. Many a kingdom of Europe before the late changes on its map not so large. Ireland is more extensive than Bavaria, once and a half as large as the kingdom of Denmai-k or the kingdom of Greece, more than double the size of the Swiss Republic, two and a fialf times the area of Holland or Hanover, nearly three times the superficies of Belgium, and more titan four times that of Wurtemberg or Saxony — all kingdoms. In short, there were, till lately, .sixteen sov- ereign states in Europe (not counting the smaller republics and principalities) not one of which is equal to Ireland, either in superficial or agricultural extent. On this side of the Atlantic, neither Vermont nor Maryland is a third of its size; and if Rhode Island, Delaware, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Jersey and New Hampshire were all put tof/etlier, they would make a territory little larger ! Take these sis sovereign States and reduce their peoples, by any means natural or political, to the starving condition of Ireland, and see how the world would be shocked ! In 1840 the aggregate population of these six States barely amounted to 3,000,000. At the .same date the British Poor- Law Commissioners reported 3,385.000 people as dei)ending, for thirty weeks in the year, on charity in Ireland ! ! Will it l)e said that the population was superuumer.ary by th.at precise number? Very well, they have been got rid of with a vengeance : popnlatinu of Ireland per census of A WORD ON THE MERITS. Pleaskin Head, as shown iu this illustration, isonlv one of the man) wonders of the Giant's Causeway, North Coast of Antrim. Basaltic pillars are found in several countries but nowhere else /j* on so great a scale being here innum erable— 40,000 aie visible, mosth pentagonal a n d sexagonal, as regu- lar as if cut with a chisel Some have only three sides, otheis even nine. The best shaped are articulated, consisting of parts, like finger joints, fitting with ball and socket ! e A WORD ON THE MERITS. 1841—8,175,124; Us total by Unit ol 1881— 0,174,SoG, a re- duction ia the forty years of i/iree millions! The latest census was that of 1891 reporting another reduction down to precisely 4,468,248 ! What became of them ? Ex- actly this — so many died of starvation between the autumn of 1845 and the winter of 1848 that the flight from the country came to be known as the Esodus, while the former has ever since been called the Great Famine to distinguish it from the periodic little ones. The failure of the potato crop at the former date could never have produced these results if the other crops and meats had not been swept to England to pay theGuvernment and its landlords. By the hundred thousand sheep, hogs and cattle are exported to England every year — think of two millions nearly of these three alone in a single year, 1880 ! Nor would the failure of one article of produce, even though of prime importance, result so fatally if the prosperous manufactures of former times had not been discouraged and some actually broken down by direct legislation in the interests of English ex- ports of the same class. This serious charge cannot be de- nied, for there is the statute book in black and white to-day, and further on, in its proper place, we shall hold it up to the light. We must not lose sight of the present issue — the relation of population to territory. All the litei-ary hacks of the Government and the Government itself did their utmost to account for the poverty of Ireland by the density of its population. If God created fewer babies all would be right. The fault was not to be laid at the door of the Government, but at the gate of heaven. If Irish women were less virtuous there would be less poverty. Re- duce the population and you have the remedy. Well, the population has been reduced, but where is the remedy? Fifty years ago J. R. McCullough wrote: "There can be no question that this wonderful density of population in Ireland is the immediate cause of the abject poverty antl depressed condition of the great bulk of the people." Notice the saving adjective '■'immediate.'" As well may the abettors of lynching here say the immediate cause of the murder was the rope. To give such a "cause" for a grave condition of things is the merest pretext and little short of a palpable calumny asrainst God. Whatever na- ture is capable of producing nature is capable of sustain- ing ; as Mr. Caulfield Heron, LL.D., says in a pamphlet just issued, '■ PopnlatioH is everyiohere proportioned to the means of snhsistence ;" and at this hour more than one Kuropean, not to say Asiatic state, has a larger population, iu proportion to territory, than Ireland has ever had. Cow- per, advocating the cause of the brute creation, insists, that not even the " creeping vermin, loathsome to the sight," should be tread upon where God jtlaced them. "Who having formed, designed them an abode." Be that as it may, the very thing proposed took place ; the density of '41 was pretty well thinned out in '61, nearly two and a h,alf millions got rid of even then in one way or another, aTid since the latter date another million, as per the last census of '91, with this result at both dates — appeals to America to save whole districts from starvation still! The very same last year ('92) made memorable by Balfour's ostentatious tour througli the famine-stricken counties. True, Ireland was more densely peopled forty-five or fifty years ago than some kingdoms on the continent, including France, Austria and some German States, but when had it the density of Belgium, Saxony or the Netherlands? As respects England, here are some interesting figures : Popula- tion of England and Wales, as per actual count commencing with ihe first census taken, 1821—12,172,664; 1831—14,- 051,980; 1841-16,035,198. At the same dates the same census reports g,ave Ireland these credits resp)ectively : 6,801,- 827; 7,767,401 and 8,17.").124. Thus the combined popula- tions of England and Wales fell short every time of doubling that of Ireland, which at the Legislative Union (so to call (he swindle of 1801) was about one-half of all the people then credited to England , Scotland and Wales united, for on the best authorities here are the figures : All Great Britain, 10,689,933 ; Ireland, 5,216,329. But how is it now ? Six to one! So, after all, the Great Famine was very useful, as any one coiUd have .seen iu advance, and why interfere with the little ones turning up every two or three years when so much good resulted from non-prevention of the big one! Think of it, a smaller population in 1893 than in " 1801 by seven hundred and forty-eiglit thousand! "What About "Waste Land? SECOND ALTERNATIVE — CHARACTER 0I-' THE LAXP. But it may be justly i-emarked : Sir, you seem to forget that territorial extent does not cover your assumption, un- less your spade or your ploughshare can turn up more or less of soil upon every foot of it. Very well ; and having treated of the quantity we now examine the quality of that territorial superficies. The Ordnance survey of Ireland de- termined 2.833,000 acres of bog. 630,825 acres of fresh KOPK BKILGE TO CORMU-A-KEDE, (WLAND), NEAlt UIAHT's CAUSEWAY, CUUNTV AUTRIil. A WORD ON THE MERITS. water (one lake nearly 100,000, the largest in Western Europe), 374,483 of plantation, 43,935 under towns, and 53,800 of mountain heights, computed from a base line of 2,000 feet above low water. It is quite common in Ireland to cultivate the gently-rounded hills, and appropriate to pasture the more rugged mountain bases to a height of one thousand feot above th? level of the sea, or seven hundred above the great, central. Limestone Plain. Making every acre of deduction from the arable area on account of bog and mountain and strand and forest and lake and river and town and highway and rocky upland and untillable low- land, there was still left for the husbandman in 1880 the precise agricultural sui'face of 15,855,598 acres. Here are two and a half Belgiums ! These fifteen millions include a large percentage of reclaimed bog, forest, mountain land, etc., reported as "waste" in the Ordnance survey and the census of 1841, and the work of reclamation is still gohig on. We select Belgiiim because it supports the densest population of any country in Europe, and we are supposing that its every acre is arable which is not so, very far from it. Within our own experience one-fifth of the kingdom was a forest, and even then it stood at the head of Europe in point of population to the square mile. Now if Belgium can support six millions without handing round the hat, surely an arable land more than twice as large, not includ- ing one square mile of mountain, moore or meer, in nearly the same latitude, ought to support in comfort twelve or fourteen millions. The best writers, experts of authority, say twenty millions; and one, a Mr. Owen, who traveled through Ireland in 1833, says fifty ! Here are his words : I saw a soil fertile beyond the previous conception I had formed of it ; a climate well suited to the soil ; rivers, har- bors and coasts presenting great natural advantages — a country, in fact, possessing resources which, whenever she shall be called into action, will be more than sufBcient to support in high comfort upwards of fifty millions of in- habitants, while at present the island has only seven mil- lions, who, if their industry were properly directed, could with ease and pleasure to themselves create abundance of all the necessaries, comforts and beneficial luxuries of life for a population of at least four times their number. If this be the celebrated Dale Owen, our quondam min- ister to Spain, we never thought he could make such a fool of himself. He seems to think that God made Ireland for the Irish, to increase and multiply and have enough to eat —such nonsense ! Who would then leave a happy home to '•lake the shilling" and a red coat (instead of a green one) and go off in thousands to be shot — go off in other thousands every year to save harvests and pocket insults beyond the sea (crossed twice in four mouths!) — go off in more thousands to man a merchant service, which so kindly relieved them of their crops and flocks from beginning to end of the Great Famine ! — go off in still more thousands to man a navy which, up to the repeal of the Corn Laws, acted sentry at all their harljors as that dread calamity progressed and humanity screamed " Open the ports!" Oh, that Famine of '45, '-1G and '47 was such a god-send ! See how poverty in Ireland becomes capital in England, keeping up her ai-my, saving her harvest, running her ships and manning her navy! THE MOUNT AISS. The so-called '' waste land " of Ireland consists in the main of mountains and bogs, if the highest liills there can properly be called "mountains." Only one comes up to the foirr-fifths of a mile perpendicular, and the magic va- riety of Killarney has luckily got the striking contrast of that, too. The whole island is elevated, 300 feet above low water being quite common on the level plain, thus needing the providential protection from storms of the bason-Uke rim made around it by the mountains. In every sense they are a great natural blessing — a protection from wind and wave, a feature of endless variety in the highest degree of the picturesque, with many touches of the sublime, as our illustrations show, and, in an industrial sense, nearly all a source of profit in minerals, timber, pasture, peet, fruit and a species of wild cotton, for both of which latter a market has been recently opened in England. Only the rocky peaks of the most lofty are exceptions to the general rule just stated, say those of 3,000 feet above the Atlantic or 3,600 from the cultivated soil at their bases. What a frac- tion of the island these summits occupy in the aggregate is easily shown when we give the actual survey not only of these, but of the whole surface of Ireland exceeding 3,000- feet in height, and here it is, 83A square miles — Just one- fourth of httle Louth, the smallest of the thirty-two coun- ties ! Whole districts depend on mountain bog for their winter's fuel ; and fuel of another nature, so easily trampled out of sight on the plain, has held its ground for genera- tions in the mountains, defying horse, foot and artillery be- hind those barricades of God ! THEIR VALUE AS PASTURES. As authorities on agricultural subjects Arthur Young and Edward Wakefield stand at the head of English authors. Their works on Ireland were a startling revelation A WORD ON THE MERITS. \ f ill 111 |fcfi;ii ... '-'i )> "-;[f®63i ^ ,^^ sift"- 10 A WORD ON THE 3IERITS. to lllnglishiiien nearly a century ago. "In fact," says Veuiig, "the mountains of Ireland are the principal nur- soi'ies for those numerous herds of bullocks and cows which are fattened or fed on the luxuriant lowlands and almost the only nurseries Cor those that- are exported to England." Will the reader believe it, that the number exported to ICngland diu-ing the famine year 1847 were 190,952!— o?(e c/itss only, the live beef, not including one sheep or hog, fowl or fish, whose hundreds of thousands taken off the same year we shall see further on. Sec for .almost incrcdil:)le figures Encyclopii'dia Britan- nica article, "Ireland," where this astounding fact may be seen — nearly three and one-half iiiillions of liullocks aneing converted into artificial coal, generating a gas equal if U(jt superior to any lighting our streets and houses, with a S|)ecific gravity much greater than that of any bituminous coal found in Eiiglaml so abundantly. It does not soil the fingers when handled or endanger life when its gas is inhaled as mineral coal does. In 185o a young Irisli genius, Richard L. Johnson, of Dublin, surprised that city Ijy lighting his partner's shop in Mary street with turf gas generated in a retcjrt of his own invention for which he took out a patent. Tliough in liis confidence and shown his secret in full operation, we can- not positively say why he gave it up, but well rememlier his complaining to tlie writer of this that the Knglish coal interest in Irisli gas works cruslied him ! —not, however, till he had fully demonstrated the illuminating power of Irish turf by lighting one or two small towns in Westmeath and some private mansions. The reader will permit us to drop a little green sprig on his grave. Discouraged and witliont capital he tool; no more contracts, but turned to tlie medi- cal profession, settled down in London, wrote two or three books of light literature and in time found himself the lead- ing physician of more than one public hospital. Dr. .lohn- son gave his professional services gratiutonsly to our College of Mill Hill, though ten or twelve miles off, continuing his regular weekly visits \\y to his jiremature death, a few years ago. With a loving, fatherly, patriotic Irish Parliment, here is a field of employment for teas of thousands. It is said (writes Anthony Marmion in his valuable work on the mari- time ports of Ireland, p. 051) that 100 tons of dried peat will produce that number of gallons of heavy oil, 300 gal- lons of naptha, -300 lbs of parafline (making caudles whiter than any wax), .52 gallons of wood oil and 14 cwt. (1568 lbs.) of acetate of lime. A bog only thirteen feet deep is comparatively shalhuv in Ireland, yet even at that depth every acre will yield 8,500 tons of turf simply dried on the bank in the open air then as simply shaped between the hands into "sods " or cut rectangular like bricks wit,li a kind of spade or ''slane." Elsewhere will be found a good illu,stration of the very simple process of ••cutting turf." than which no cleaner or better fuel in the world. If it be true that Ireland has not a snlTiciency of bitu- minous coal, (a report not above suspicion), here is the best possible substitute in superabundance, with many -special recomiiiendations -tour/iiity heallli, cleaiiHiiess, ciiUiiari/ and laundinj interests, antiseptic, deoderiziny and ferti- lisiiiy properties and ereii nertain inaiiufactures wkicli, no bituminotts coal can claim ! Is it true or not that for the mighty industry of iron and steel production no mineral charcoal can be com|)ared to the vegetable article got from certain woods? We don't pretend to know of ourselves, we can say only that, as admitted on all hands without con- tradiction, the statement is true. But we do know that Irish turf charcoal is essentially wood charcoal and nothing else. This is denied by nobody as every stage of the natu- ral process of transmutation is plainly visible all over the country. We ourselves have seen and handled a most in- teresting illustration in the shape of a tree, lying on the surface of a bog in Munster — one end solid wood, the other solid iieat, the special characteristics of each, coming nearer and nearer to similarity till that point was reached, which could not lie called either wood or peat, being a nondescrijit blending of both. Even tlie turf end retained the outward shape of the tree to perfection not losing, apparently, a single knob of connection with the long-lost branches. Now if this huge trunk were cut across into two or more parts and all separately reduced to coke or charcoal, could any practical difEerence l)e discovered between any two residuums? It seems not, and if not, what a mighty store house of smelting power, in volume and excellence is the peat deposit of Ireland ! But if on the other hand an essential or practical difference can be found, then one resi- duum is better than the other, while this other and the worse is admittedly superior to that produced from coal which is used all over England, and to which that country is limited ! Hence the well-known inferiority of her iron and steel as smelted and refined by her own native carboni- ferous charcoal and then compared with the ii^on and steel iif bwtdeii, Rus&id. Bohtniia iind '{ uthei coinitiies full of tinibei. This England ha,& to uiijioit foi nei better laodurtioiib, a \eiy i,'ia\e dependence on foieigu countiies foi a inanufaotiuiiig nation like hei, and which any Eurojiean con\ulbion, jjolitical oi natuial may suddenly turn to a similai dejiendence on Ireland. This actually took place m 1809 ! Napoleon had shut England out CLIFFS, NEAR KILKEE, COUNTY CLARE, (ON THE ATLANTIC) 14 A WORD ON THE 3IERITS. LADIES CHAIR, GIAXT S CAUSEWAY. t'l'Min the liivadstuffs of Europe and her only hope of keep- ing hur liUlo population of ten millions with her army and navy from starving was Ireland. In that year an Act of ParliamtMil was passed to survey and rejiort on the Irish bogs with ihe view of reclamation into food prod uciiig land! So here is anotlier asjiect of our subject anil one of the first iuijior- tance nuuiifestly. That enactment of 1800 caused all the peat fields (it Ireland Id be surveyed, mapped and reiiorled mi at an expense of nearly two millions of our prc'sent mmicy, Iixhind III! I'limlclij vl'lii/nl lu foot llw bill. .' Thousands of acres have been reclaimed already and the |irocess has lieen energetically carried on these tifly years. Of this virgin soil Arthur young says: ''j-Vo iiicad- uirs are equal tv tlw^c ijniiicil hy impruviiiij ii hog ; iliei/ are uf a valiie wlhi.rli, scarce any lands rise to." And here is the highest author- ity yet cpmted or that can, Lie quoted on Irish industrial problems, the illus- trious Sir Robert Kane, whose great work, ••the Indv.slrinl Jiesourres of Inland" well merited as it ai/tually obtained the title prefixed to his name. lie says : "The uncultivated land includes bogs and mountains. It has been already shown that the area of bog is 3, .So3, 000 acres of which almost all is cdpable of reclama- tion, and of being adapted to productive husbandry, if not required as reiJositories of fuel. Of the mountainy land also comparatively little is beyond the domain of agricultural enterprise. In fact there is no district in Ireland sulhciently elevated to thereby present serious impediments to cultiva- tion and scarcely an, acre lu icliich llie name, of incapable, of cultivatioti can be applied." It is half a century since those words (page 2o7) wei'e written (between the census of '41 and that of '01), so the figures which they give above for the total area of bog no longer hold. The latter census as comiiared with the fminer showed a wonderful reduction of waste land (mainly mountain and liog) the difference of more than a million of acres in the ten years, a striking confiruKitiun of the great agricultural chemist in the pass- age quoted. THE AUABI.E SOIL — RARE FACTS. The second alternative above is vital. All the others hang upon it, so we must do it justice. The question of any country's capability to support its jjopulation plainly in- volves two main issues which the adjectives productive and HORIZONTAL FORMATION, GIANt's CAUSEWAY. A WORD ON THE MERITS. 15 unproductive sufficiently express. The laltcr, uinlor tlit- general head of " waste land," we have amply discussed in each of its two obvious divisions as bearing on the moun- tains and the bogs ; and further information on this subject is implied in almost every sentence of the following, though addressed directly and specially to the other issue, the more productive area or arable soil. We use the word arahle in its literal and only proper sense — fit for the plow, [aralrum), and little did we dream that any respectable writer would think of using it in any other till we found it repeated over and over again in tlie English cyclopedia Brifannica in the illiterate sense of not actuallij tilted or tin-noA nphy the plow! See page 235 ("England") of Scribner's edition wiiere tlie adjective is . persistently employed in contradistinction to "pasture;" for example, " the arable land of England ami Wales is on t the decrea-KP. wliile tlie area of pasture land is on the i increase!" Not that tlie once arable land has fallen l)ack ; to the fens and marshes or the rocks, but that it is not Jioiv {. actually worked by spade or plow — a strange misuse of } terms in sucli a work. ! Using tlio woi'd •■ arable " in its proper sense as napnhlc ' of heincj tilled, we complete this discussion by tlie following strange facts, now fifty or sixty years old, taken from an old State document , "The Poor-rate Valuation of Ireland," which gives tlie arable condition of every county at ttuit time. OC course the aralile area of every county is much greater noic, as the facts given above amply prove ; liuf after a tiresome search t.lirough our pulilic libraries we can l find no later returns in this line. Comparing the two » Islands of Great Britain and Ireland, (the largest belonging £ to the continent of Europe) beyond ,all question (each taken ~ as a whole) the more arable, fertile and productive in point ,« of food-producing ca]>acity is emphatically Ireland. As , contrasted with Ireland in this respect of productive ca]ia- bility. touching agriculture .and pasture, the Larger Island taken as a wliole is, hy nature, without straining the truth, little short of a comparative waste. Observe tlie terms of that sentence and then see if it is not true. Add the fens and marshes, sand plains and mountains of England proper to those of Scotland and Wales, and what is one-tliiid (nearly one-half) of Great Britain as compared with tlie agricultural remainder of it, but a comparative waste ? Scotland, including all her islands, is nearly as large as Ire- land ; Wales is Larger than one-fifth of Ireland ; yet the three nation.alities, including all England proper, could CLIFFS OF MOIIKI! BOUNTY (;t,ai;k, (on toe Atlantic). 16 A WORD ON THE MERITS. TUE SSVEN ARCHES, LOUGU SWILIA'. COUNTY IJONEGAL. liurclv donlili' tin' iiiipuL-ilioii o[ Ireland till they were helped by artifipiiil fainiuei? in the smaller Island, as we have seen. Xay, is it not a statistic record, that in 1845 when Ireland's coiistantlv swelliun' jiMjiulation for half a century previous bad attained its maxi.vmm. this maximum was equal if not f/rcaliT than the united |)opulations of England, Scotland and Wales seventy years before — the bottom fact and very secret of England's inability to whip the armed. Irish volun- teers out of their demand of total legislative separation, which whipping she diit not even try, and which deniaiul she was coni|ielled to grant in 17S3 ! It was a bitter pill, but she /irid to swallow it. and she dkl. declaring by solemn .act of Parliament, signed by George the Thinl, that Great Britaiii renounces "forever " all claim to legislate for Ire- laiul and that no power on earth has any right to make laws for Ireland but the King, Lords and Commons of Ireland !" Thanks to an insular semi-desert (taking the Island as a whole) which had not men enongh, with its trifling popula- tion of seven or eight millions, to supply the place at home of her whipjied brigades at Yorktown. But to come to the rare facts promised above, are there not moor and mountain districts by the whole connty in the larger Island not having 2.5 per cent of arable land, and that ill England too, the most arable division, as well as in Scotland and Wales ? In these two latter we believe there are counties not having 15 per cent. Of the tlm-ty-two counties in Indaml. the least arable fifty years ago was Donegal, which had even (hen 33 per cent, of arable land and only three others were found to stand inider but close to 50 per cent., namely. Kerry, Mayo and Galway. These four are the largest counties (with one exception) all moun- tain liari-iers to the Atlantic. Taken together, for they are together on the coast line, they contain nearly five and a half millions of acres at an average of 38 per cent, of good soil, thus exceeding the Kingdom of Saxony in extent and fertility and more than one State at this side of the "Big Pond," as New Jersey, Delaware, Rhode Island, etc. Th.at was half a ccntnry ago when the largest of these four coun- ties, (talway. hail within a decimal of 50 per cent, fit for the spade and the ]ilow. before l-ho extensive reclamations A WORD ON THE MERITS. ■f CHIMNEY TOPS, GIANT's CAUSEWAY, refen-ed to above, as made since, were commenced. Some of these two million acres of arable land is equal in point of fertility to any portion of the great Limestone Plain, and Wakefield expresses his "astonishment" at finding valleys of such superior soil in the coldest and least tillable spot in all Ireland, exceptional Donegal, exceptional too in its literary celebrities, all Catholic except one, the learned Protestant and infidel, Toland. No other county had a per- centage under 55, and only three so low, namely, Clare, Ty- rone and Wicklow ; whilst sixteen (one-half the whole number) from Derry, the lowest, to Armagh, the highest, in point of arabil- ity, ran up from 01 to 81 per cent. Still higher were tlienineremainingcounties, Carlow at the foot having had 83, and Meath at the head "touchingthe beam" at the highest point of all 94.3 ! In other words (for our boys and girls) out of every hundred acres in the county Meath— with its eighty thousand, over half a million— six acres could not be found, fifty years ago, unfit for tillage ! And very nearly as much can be said of Kilkenny where eight could not be found ; of Monaghan where eleven did not exist; of Louth and Wexford, in neither of which could a dozen acres of such poor land have been discovered in a hundred. But does it follow that these most arable districts surpass the others in depth and richness of soil ? Certainly not ; that's another question. The richest soil is found in every one of them. We have spoken of quantities, and that on the authority of a Government survey and report; now let us see what other high authorities, all English, say of qualities. Wakefield says : " In at least eighteen out of the thirty-two counties there are tracts of land which for the most part are not to he surpassed in natural fertility iij any other land in the world. Some places exhiiit the richest loam that I ever saxu turned up with a plotv." And here is the most noted English agriculturist of the last century, Arthur Young, author of the Annals of Agriculture : " If I was to IS A WORD ON THE MERITS. THE PIGEON HOLE — SUBTEKRANEAN OUTLET OF LOUUH MASK INTO LOUGH CORMB, 25,000 AND 4o.000 ACRES RESPECTIVELY. name the characteristics of an excellent soil. I should say, that upon which you may fatten an ox and feed off a crop of turnips — little or no such soil in England, yet it is not uncommon in Ireland." Comparing the two kingdoms: " Natiiral fertility, acre for acre, over the tioo kingdoms, "is certainly in favor of Ireland." Notice that the com- parison here is with England, the most arable division of Great Britain, and that too over a hundred years ago when the bogs of Ireland were regarded as so much "waste land." Those words of Young have been resented by another fam- ous writer, I. K. McCuUoch, author of the "Statistical Ac- count of Great Britain," the "Universal Gazetteer," etc. McCulloch writes : ''Ireland has no stifE clay soils, such as " those of Essex, Hants, Oxford, etc., nor any chalk soil, as "those of Hertford, Wilts and Sussex. [England], sahdy soils " are also rare. Loam, resting on a substratum of lime- " stone, ]>redominates in Ireland, and, though often shallow, " it is almost everywhere very fertile. A large part of Lim- A WORD ON THE MERITS. 19 I'EASAXTRY CUTTING TURF I.N SUMMER FOR WINTER'S FUEL. "erick, Tippei-ary, Roscommon, Meath ami Loiigl'ord, eon- "sists of deep, fine, friable loam, and is, perhaps, nut siir- " passed by any land in Europe. It is not permaiieutly in. " jnred by the bad system of culture to which it is subjected, "and, if kept clean, will yield an almost interminable series " of corn crops ; and, how bad soever the order in which it is " laid down to grass, it is, in no long time, covered with "the finest pasture. The deep, rich grazing lands on the "banks of the Shannon and Fergus are not surpassed by " the best in Lincolnshii-e. A good judge of such matters, 'Arthur Young, contends that, acre for acre, the soil of ' Ireland is superior to that of England ; tliough, as the pro- ' portion of waste land in the former is much greater than 'in tlie latter country, we incline to think this an exagger- ' ated statement. But had Mr. Young confined his remark ' to the cultivataljle land in both countries, it would have ' been quite correct. In fact, if we deduct the bogs and ' mountains, we believe that Ireland is about the ricJtest ' coimtry, in respect of soil, in Europe. As a grazing 'country, she is probably superior to any other, and is, 20 A WORD ON THE MERITS. "certainly, surpassed hy none." — Article, "Ireland," in last named ""*" wovk. Tet the tillers of this soil starve under English rule ! Another Natural-History Problem. TIIIKD ALTERNATIVE — CLIMATIC DIFFICULTIES. As noliody attributes the poverty of Ireland to its climate in any sense whatever, this third alternative must not detain ns long ; and it should not detain us at all if certain cereal crops were less frequently aSected by the weathei'. As nothing we can say has the weight or authority of the English writer last quoted, I. K. McCuUoch, let us consult the same work of his, wliich may be found in almost every public library in this country. Speaking of Ireland, here are his words, which we can personally endorse as most trne and evidently founded on his own ol:iservation : HOME SPINNING AND WEAVING. "The climate is more temperate and equable than that of other parts of Europe in the same latitude. The iieat of summer is less opjiressive and the cold of winter less severe ; A WORD ON THE 3IERITS. 21 and when anything like immoderately hot or cold weather takes place, it lasts for a much shorter time. The great defect of the climate of Ireland is excess of humidity ; not only is rain more frequent than in England, but the atmos- phere, when there is no rain, is largely impregnated with moisture. This circumstance, the result of the insular position of Ireland and of the prevalence of westerly winds for three-fourtlis of the year, accounts for the greater verdure of tlie country and for the trees continuing in leaf much longer than in England. In the driest seasons, Ire- land rarely suffers from drought, but the crops are often injured by too m.ueh wet." If rain is more "frequent" in Ireland than in England, it does not necessarily follow that the annual rain-fall on the former is, acre for acre, greater in qnantiiy. Hear ihe great Dr. Kane : " In average half as much more rain falls in England than on the continent of Europe. Here (in Ireland) there is probably not more actual rain than in Eng- land, but there is more damp." Then follows (page To) a table giving the average rain-fall for the very conclusive period of sis years at Dublin, and five other cities with I his result, that on the east at the capital not quite 31, at Bel- fast close on 35, at Derry on the north, a little over 31, and at Cork on the south in two long tests of six years each, a little over 3G and 40 inches of rain yearly. He calculates that of the west of Ireland at the highest figure 40, and then concludes that the whole rain-fall "over the entire surface of Ireland " is on an average 3G inoiies, one year with anotlier. Leaving out Scbtland for the present, our best authorities point to the same figure, 36, for the rest of Great Britain ; but if Scotland is included, then up goes the average rain-fall beyond that of Ireland. As a rule Eng- lish wi'iters seem to shrink from comparisons between the two islands as such, each taken as a whole ; but somehow or other we love those very wise, tidy, natural and ora/y /rue comparisons immensely. They do us good in the region of the kidneys, provided it is God's worlc that's compared with God's work. Comparing then the two islands in this relation, emphatically the more favored land in point of climate as well as soil is Ireland. Leaving Scotland out again, there is the immense figure of 84 inches of rain in England, at Cumberland quite often, as reported by Dr. Patterson, and there is the huge notation of lOli inches in Carnarvonshire, as stated in the Britannica, page 217. No doubt these are exceptions for England ; but where are such to be found in Ireland even as exceptions ? John Leslie OaOSS OF MONASTERBOICE, COUNTY LOUTII. ( Six 1'undyp.d iieavs before the EnfjU&h ). Foster is quoted by Wakefield (page 313, vol. 1) as stating that ■' three times as much rain falls in Lombardy as in Ire- land." Further on he says : " Mr. Young gives, as a con- vincing proof that the climate of Ireland is far moister than that of England, the amazing tendency of the soil to pro- 22 a: word on the merits. AULUSTINIAN ABBEY OF CONG, COUNTY MAYO, WHERE LAST RIUHTFUL KIXG OF lEELANIi DIED. iUeJure the English). ducc grass ; and lie speaks o£ iusfaiiees of turnip land and stubljle left without ploughing, which yielded the next sum- mer a full crop of hay — ^facts, he oljserves, of wJuch ire have no idea in England." So then, after all, this solitary disadvantage of the Irish climate is not without its counter- poise, as Kane puts it : " It is hence tliat this island has been called the Emerald set in the ring of the sea." Not even this subject of climatic geography can be treated of without calling up the misgovernment of Ireland ; for if its climate had much or anything to do with its social condition, then the far more rigorous climate of Scotland should tell in like manner on the social condition of that country ami show results still more terrilile than those we are now discussing. But nothing of the kind exists in North Britain, and nothing of the kind would exist in Ire- land if her superior geographical position, milder climate, greater extent of arable land and richer soil had not tempted her next-door neighbor to act anything but neigh- borly. "Anything but neighborly" — what a kid-glove covering for hands dripping with blood, full of plunder and caught in the act erery day in the year ! If climate, rain- fall and damp could account for poverty anywhere under the English flag in Europe, that identical spot is North Britain — this manifestly and notoriously, because of its im- mense mountain wastes with two maximum latitudes on the same east and west parallel (for there is such a blessing south and such a curse north as vertical latitude affecting climate and every phase of animal as well as vegetable life), and that tlie highest under the English flag in Europe. How this fixed and unalterable fiat of nature affects population in Scotland may be seen at once from this fact, that np to the first day of the great Irish famine, in the winter of 1845, the swelling population of Erin for seventy years previously was going oit four times the population of Scotland, though I nearly as large as Ireland I But how stands the case now : I Why the popidation of Scotland is as near being doubled as that of Ireland is near being halved ! — not that the former I has increased phenomenally in the fifty years or at all out of A WORD ON THE MERITS. 23 propovtioii to its past record, Miut that the latter has decreased terribly, scandalously and out of all proportion to its antecedents since the slaughter and decimation of Cromwell, which left the very highest es- timated enumeration at the accession of William of Orange under one million and a quarter! Its jump to eight milhons and a quarter forty-seven years ago is without parallel in Great Britain up to that date, even without considering the periodic famines of which there were six in the former half of the last century and as many more in the former half of this; and this natural increase in the very teeth of the Union Act which, by demoUshing the Irish Parliament and obliging its peers and members to live in London, had the immediate effect of compelling the titled landlord class and the upper grades of society to leave the country and spend their unearned wealth in more fashionable quarters. The hardy Scot has to struggle with the very elements over his head and under his feet and into his mouth ; but being a bed-fellow, holding by right and irrevoc- ably the key of one of the three doors which, as a staunch Protestant, he is not likely to open to such a mortal enemy of England as the Pope ; and (best of all \i reasons in the world) not a thing to he stolen in his sleep from his poclceis on the chair ; he is certainly entitled to all possible consideration at Westminster ever since he or some axe-grinders in his name were induced to adopt that spot for his legislative lodgings so far back as 1707. Here was a precedent and an example to be followed, set by one national body of anti-papists for another — that other a mere fragment of the Irish population ! But the bait did not take. We have seen how the bans were forbidden some seventy or eiglity years after in the strange words, (for Protestants), "clear out ! " for practically the attitude of the Volunteers (non-Catholic) and the victory won by them in 1782 came to that. Thus Irish Catholics and Protestants at that era were pretty SHRINE OF ST. PATRICK'S BELL. [Before the EnciUsh). much of a unit in regarding England as the common enemy of their country ; but Scotland remained with Eng- land to present a united Britain against a united Ireland which could be kept up only by keeping the bride in good humor, lest regretting the nuptials she too should demand a divorce. Nor do we deny that gratitude as well as policv on the part of England prompted this course and kept it up. So no deaths by starvation, even among the cruelly pinched Crofters of the Grampians, scraping their granite rocks for a fistful of soil ; no thriving business of esterrai- 24 A WORD ON THE MERITS. amount of Satanic hate would have escaped the evidence of the English statute book ! The Tillers of the Soil. ALTERNATIVES 4 AND 7 — INDOLENCE AND IMPROVIDENCE. LEATHER CASE OF THE BOOK (JF ARMAGH. [Before the EnijUsh). nation liy the wholesale when bidders can't be founil for the market at retail ; no land-shark south of the Tweed to bite the bait of one of thera for all their mountain moor is worth ; no bullocks and cows and sheep to lie legally stolen at the rate of seven millions in five years; no farms by the thousand of ''rich, fine, friable loam" to be coveted and "cleared;" no sea-separation to make aliens and defy them, but nest door neighbors who could easily give trouble if provoked. Politically and socially Scot- land is privileged, and what nature denies, art supplies, as far as possible. In point of legislation she has this great privilege, a Supervisory Board (somewhat similar to her old powerful intermedium of the "Lords of the Articles"), which, as we understand it, has the right o^ passing upon all bills relating to Scotland before their first reading in either House of Parliament ! Had h-eland such a privilege by the nefarious Act of Union or by statute since, what an •' Too lazy to work " are the terms of our fourth alternative, but it matters little how expressed, being easily met in any form. No man or woman can be justly characterized as lazy or indolent whose whole life is habitually "laborious" — the very word commonly employed by the best writers to stamp the industrial feature of Irish character. Even some of the bitterest maligners of everything Irish {not excepting the brightest gifts of Ood to soil and soul) use the same word in the same way but try to minimize its significance by drawing a distinction 1 lotween labor and industry. This used to be a favorite theme in the daily, weekly, monthly and even book press of England, as applied to Ireland, whose every cry of hunger in famine years, heard across the seas, was followed promptly either by a flat denial or " Too lazy to work I " Even the fixed chronic condition of the country was attributed to the same cause and not to legis- lation or the government. With little or no foreign circu- lation the local papei's of Ireland were utterly impotent to counteract this Satanic conspiracy of the English press against God's truth, especially during the whole of the last century and the first quarter of this, when the noble Wake- field appeared and went all over Ireland to find out the truth for himself. His two heavy quartos were published in 1809, and what a record from an Englishman ! But nothing short of wholesale immigration into foreign coun- tries — that is to say, a full representation of every quarter of Ireland, especially in these States, Canada and Australia — squelched the lie. It is seldom heard now, and when it is the papers of these countries, some of even the most preju diced against the race and religion of the Celt, can answer and have answered from their own experience. Thirty ^1" CLEW BAY, COUNTY MAYO. M^^' » ^^ A^P R^%- fe? OARROMIN, (CONNEMARa), COUNTY OALWAY. 26 A WORD ON THE 'MERITS. - ■>%%; -1^„ .<5t ■U" sj^- ~7 '''^, V . f A.O'.r'i.ilW. .-Tir.TS. !l!~ ^«]BK,lW-r«g M<».tiSSlilltWiriB»«5' ^v^iT.c3^ ->-' — ag^jaa/'^J_j^. R[VER LEE, AT BLlOlv ROCK, BET\S'EliX CiiHK AND C(JVE, ("QUEEXSTOWX. years ago the Ciiioiimati Daily 'Gazette was a religions organ, bitterly anti-Catholic very often, (not so now, we think, nnder its altered name), yet twice in two or three weeks of '63 had strong editorials against this slander. Witness tlie following from its issue of June 6, 1863 : " Tlbe American ''■people 'know the Irish are not indolent in this country. " That the condition of the Irish laborers is not owing to " the indolence of the people, is shown by the enormous rents " they pay for land. Is it the indolent who can pay £S ($JlO) "an acre for land, and shift it each year, manuring a ' ' fresh acre and giving up the improved one ? Are they in- " dolenl who can be made to pay a preminm of ten guineas " (§50) an acre for a renewal of their leases? The share '■'of his product, [the Irish laborer' s),whichheis compelled " to subsist on is, we verily believe, less than that con- " sumed by the uiirequited black laborers of the iSouth." That is testimony, but the following is advocacy ; yet be- cause of its ilowing numbers (valuable even now as a historic record, because then true,though probably doubled, if not trebled since), we give them, and for this other reason too, that it was first published at the same place and nearly at the same time as the above quotation from the Gazette which simply followed suit. Of course no one supposes any claim that all this work was done by Irishmen alone : " There happens to have dropped on the hospitable floor of this broad land a little sprinkling from the population watering-pot of Ireland. We leave it to the American peo- ple to say, if the Irish in this country be, as a general rule, too lazy to work. They, as well as every other race, have their ethnological and acquired faults, but is this of indol- ence one? Answer, ye 5,000 miles of canal, through all the geological impediments of American topography ! Ans- wer, ye 25,900 miles of railroad, through mountain and moor, through brake and forest, through bridged ravine and tunneled rock ! Answer, ye navigable rivers thousands of miles long, the veins and arteries of this gigantic body-poli- tic, by what hands is the commercial stomach crammed which supply your chyle ? Answer, ye thousands of wharfs A WORD ON THE MERITS. 27 .t A •A GOnSANE BAKRA, COUNTY CORK, (HERMITAGE OF ST. FINBAR), BETWEEN CORK AND KILLARNET. and levees along their courses, where tlie porterage of a continent is tumbled on and off, day and night! Answer, ye seaports of two oceans, whose are the hands which first receive the 3,000,000 tons which the nations of the earth float to your doors ; and whose hands are the last to touch and pelt across the world the other tliree millions as tlie quid .pro quo? Answer, ye 2,200 iron factories, ye 39,000 work- ers iu wool, and j-e Caucasians among the 92.000 laborers on cotton within this single community ! Answer, ye 1,440,000 farms, and ye 118,457,000 acres of prairie and forest transformed into kitciien gardens by the magic wand of the spade ! Answer, ye innumerable abodes of simple neatness and comfort or dazzling grandeur and luxury, whose hands are daily responsil)le for your status quo; whose knees (if not the only ones) first bend in the morning, at half past four, supplicating the Most High for blessings on your roofs ; whose gentle motion through your corridors first awakes the slumberuig echoes of your halls amid an unconscious liousehold, to be ready at its earliest rising with the complicated repast, to sweat at the laundry, to swelter at the stove, to anticipate every nod at the table, to read- just the upper chaos of the dormitory, and obey the poly- glot commands of husband and wife, and son and daughter and guest, with a smiling face and a ready hand during tlu'ee Iiundred and sixty-five days in the year?" We omit from that quotation its military conclusion, be- cause the industry of the camp is not the industry of the farm or the factory. Now if every word just quoted applied exclusii'dy to tlie Irish race (which is far from being the case), would the record be more wonderful than the following ASTOUNDING FACT, for fact it is on the very highest autliority, an Englisli parliamentary Blue Book. We give the round sums in British currency, that at a glance their equivalents in 28 A WORD ON THE MKBTfi^. LAKES OF KILLARNEY^INNISFAI.LKN, (ISLAND), AND OLD CHURCn RUIN ON THE LEFT, COUNTY KERRY. "Sit-'eel. innUfaUai, fare thee weU." — MoOUE. American dollars may lie seen. The Great Famine which, as already stated, had originated in the failnre of the potato crop in the autumn of 1845 and lasted during '46 and '47 had the immediate eSect of precipitating immigration to the great extent of nearly re mill ton and a lialf in_sis years I the vast majority coming to these States. Now see the in- dustry and economy of these mulcitudes and of their kins- folk here before them, sending the following sums of money to Ireland in the years given : 1848 400,000 pounds sterling. 1849 540,000 1850 957,000 " 1851 990,000 1853 1,404,000 1853 1,439,000 1854 1,730,000 1855 873,000 1856 ....951.00 Total £9,344,000 Over nine yiiiUio/is of pounds sterling! which, at five dol- lars to the pound, amounted to nearly foiiy-'seven millions of dollars in gold — precisely §46,730,000, or more than five millions every year for nine years ! ! For these facts see "Thirteenth General Keport of the Colonial Land and Immigration Commissioners," 1853. Nor is this the Jt'/»o/e amount sent to Ireland from America during those years, for the commissioners take care to state that they have cog- nizance only of bank transmissions and such public con- veyances, having no means of ascertaining liow much was sent by hand or private means '^ of which lite amoniit must have been considerable " — their very words. It looks as if this stupendous proof of moral, mental and physical greatness, unrivalled if paralleled in the history of any people, had prompted the little work, " Homage to Ire- land," published up North some thirty years ago. '-Do you A )VORi) ON THE MEklfS. ^9 i^^ /'- I .■wM'-'^-W > ft^ ; i ,'>»j, n .i2& LAKES OP KILLARNEY — OLD WETR BRIDGE, BETWEEN UPPER AND LOWER LAKE. "know the sura the poor immigrants send to Ireland every "year? " asks a pious French priest. Rev. Aristides Pierard, of St. Andrew's, New York. ("Homage to Ireland," p. 30.) "You would scarcely believe it. It is prodigious. 5,000,000 "dollars! As for me, I have never seen such a thing in "this world. " Anthony Marmion pronounces the fact "almost incred- ible." Here are his words : " The immigration for the six years ending 1852 has been already given, as well as the large sums remitted by the Irish immigrants to their friends in Ireland up to that period, and since then they have con- tinued to remit sums almost incredible, if it was not so well authenticated, and which the commissioners admit is not only ' singular and interesting, hut most creditable to the Irish peasantry. ' " ("Maritime Ports," p. G18.) Here is an extract from the Liverpool Journal of Febru- ary the 9th, 1856 : " What must be the industry and what "the thrift and what the self-denial of poor navvies and "artisans to freight across the Atlantic from 1847 to 1853, "both included, the enormous number of two hundred and '^twenty thousand of their countrymen [the Irish people] "every year for those six years, the aggregate exceeding "the entire population of Norway, and nearly equal to that "of all British America!" We believe tliis statement needs qualification : the annual 330,000 include many who paid their own way, owing to their own thrift and industry at home ; and that number was tlie average, not the ipso facto annual immigration of those sis years. The entire immigration for that period from Ireland to all countries, according to the General Keport already referred to. was, in round numbers, 1,330,000, the one-sixth of which gives the above number precisely ! We ask again the full significance of this huge fact. Does it not cover completely the two imputations marked 30 A WORD ON THE 3IEIHT8. :^:,ji^w&>^'' 'M-'^r ji'r'fr^ LAKES OF KILLARNBY — TOBC CASCADE AND MIDDLK LAKE. "4" and "7" in our premises— the one reterring to in- dustry, the oilier to economy ? Does it not speak, besides, ot a big heart, a determined purpose, a persistent assiduity, a sublime sense ot responsibility, the most exalted patriot- ism and the purest spirit of self-sacrifice ? — a virtue which keeps the mass of Irishmen poorer than tliey otherwise would be at home and abroad. The Irish come here em- phatically and incomparably the poorest class of immi- grants, and they will remain, as a matter of course, the poorest for generations. In the race of life a good start is all-important. Impetus is the only posi/'tce element in momentum. Society is a ladder, in climbing which it is no easy mattei' to pass the man before you ; and if the man behind has to carry, besides, the inconvenient weight of a big heart, it is sure to "keep his head under." By toiling and moiling and self-abnegation he rises in time to the dignity of eighty or ninety dollars, with which he has no sooner shaken hands than he parts, to ••bring over" some dear one whose shadow on the floor is the sunshine of heaven to his heart. Thus he deliberately breaks the upper rung under his weary feet, to find himself at the foot ot the ladder once more, but this time with a little lulus under In's arm or his gray-haired Anchises on his back. Sketch now the grotesque group in all the relief of light and shade — see, it curls the lip ot ridicule, but see, too, it moistens the eye ot virtue — the cockney grins contempt, but the angels of God drop tears of sympathy and appro- bation. Oh! it is a great calumny to say those people are not in- dustrious, people who have scattered themselves over the A WORD ON THE MERITS. 31 r-^^ cr.EXOARIFl' (BANTRY BAY), COUJiTV COKK. whole civilized globe in quest o£ employment, over all England, over all Scotland, over all Canada, over all colonized Australia, o\er all these American States. Not one Catholic nation in Europe where they are not to be met with in more or less numbers, more particularly in France, Spain and Austria. "Never," said Archduke Charles, of Austria, to Colonel O't^hea, who commanded 3,000 Austrians at the great battle of Wagram, "Never "was the House of Austria better officered than when "possessing so many Irish, of whom, at one time, upwards "of thirtij were generals." (Wakefield, p. 573, vol. 3.) France at one time had 20,000 Irish, commanded by their own Irish officers, in one phalanx of her army. (See O'Conner's, O'Callaghan's and D'Altan's Military Memoirs of the Irish in the service of France.) ANOTHER BIG FACT IM THE SAME UIREOTION. It may not be generally known in this country that w/wk shiploads of laborei's from tlie west of Ireland cross the Irish Sea twice crenj year, with the punctuality of the autumnal equiiiox. The annual migration used to be from 40,000 to 60,000. They go to cut down and save the English harvest, and they come back in a few weeks to save their own ! And it is au uncolored fact, that before the Midland Great Western Railroad was opened for transit, about 1848, the entire journey of these indefatigable thousands, from the Atlantic seaboard to Dublin, and from Liverpool throughout central and southern England, was trndged on foot ! The Channel voyage to Liverpool or Holyhead used to be made on open decks, exposed to the surf of the sea and the cataracts of heaven ; while the ex- ported cattle and hcrses (English property, mind,) were finder cover in the same vessel ! This we have seen with our own eyes and can attest on oath. We ask now, do the annals of toil record anything 32 A WORD ON THE 3IERIT8. LOUGH GILI,, COUNTY SLIGO. parallel to these extriiordiiiary eifnrls to live ? So niucli for the industry of these poor people, not only abroad, but at home ; and as to their economy, we do sincerely believe that few Americans can form a just conception of it, without drawing upon a creative imagination. These thou- sands return home with every penny they have earned, minus only that for transit and a dry crust. Here are economy of time aiul economy of means — of time, in turning the interval between the two harvests to such won- derful account ; and of means, in the wretched stinginess whicli the poor fellows are compelJcd to perpetrate ujion their own animal needs, with money in their pockets — as the laiv's Shylock must have his pound of Jlesh ; in the words of McCulloch, " The anxiety of the peasantry to "procure the means of paying their rent, thoiigh at tlie "expense of th,eir comforts." Precisely identical is the testimony of the Chambers, of Edinburgh : " During the hay and corn harvests of England and Scot- land, the service of the Irish laborers are very important. They are generally sober, well-conducted, and inoffensive; laboring hard and living hard, that they may bring their earnings home to pay /he rent of their little farm or direll- ing. A spalpeen, or harvest-man, carries home from four to eight or ten pounds; to do which, he is contented, while away, almost to starve himself." ("Information for the People," vol. ], p. 660.) Strange facts indeed and strange testimony from aliens to bring home to this people the charges of indolence and improvidence ! Even the more feasible accusation of in- temperance unfortunately bnt too common among almost every civilized people, the rich as well as the poor, (the former having many "a cloak " to cover it, from the closed carriage which picks their tottering steps from the public street to the curtained couch where they sleep it off at their perfect leisure] — even this accusation of intemperance is covered by the body of testimony on these " sober, well conducted and inoffensive" thousands and tens of thou- sands who, of all the people in insular Europe, have the most need of drowning their hardships in the popular cup of oblivion. Would to God we could say as much of the same grade of sucicty on this continent. No doubt tlie extraordinary facts aliove go far to cover the whole ground of our present twofold contention. A WORD ON THE 3IERITS. ''>,^'%*i J& ROSERK ABBEY, COUNTY 3IAT0. They certainly demolish completely and utterly the charge of Indolence, whether asserted of the Irishman at home or of hi; brother abroad. For this distinction between the two is now made, or at least came to be made, since the tide of emigration set in with its couiiter-ldast against the old sweeping slander of the whole race. Names under this aspersion have gone out by the million to become synonyms of prosperous industry in every sphere of human activity the world over — many having shone as beacon lights in church and state, in literature and art, in the army and the navy, in medicine and surgery, in legislation and jurispru- dence, as well as in husbandry, manufactures and commerce. As respects the Chui-eh, does she not literally swarm with them wherever the modern vernacular of Ireland obtains, as in this country and Australia? and' what other- vocation can hold a candle for that of the Church as a merit-voucher in every true sense of the word merit? What other calling of life so completely excludes the very idea of indolence and improvidence? Here is a notorious fact of the very highest significance and right to the point, as the bishops, priests, monks and nuns, of whom we speak, Itelong almost exclusively to the hard-working mass of the race. The last or female division of these four classes outnumbers, we think, all the others combined, and where on the face of God's earth can be found among the industrial walks of life out in the world such incarnate models of industry, frugality, prudence, foresight, self-abnegation, life-long de- votion to duty and every moral virtue, as these nuns and sisters spread all over the globe by the thousand ? Our immense American Hierarchy of to-day is swelled by model men of many nationalities, American. German, French. Spanish, Italian, Dutch, Flemish and Irish, to which last belong nearly one-half of all the seventy-eight Bishops and nine out of the fourteen Archbishops — every man of them from and of the people ! The same is true of our only two Cardinals, of the first Papal Legate and of the first Bishoji and father of this wonderful Hierarchy. If the annals of the money-making world show no such record of this race, is it not pretty evident that this race has more leaning for the service of God tlian for tlie service of 34 A WORD ON THE MERITS. 'pattern'' at holy well, coxne>hka, county galway. the iiiouey-makiiig world 1 Or must we take the siill iiioiv ' flattering alternative that the Spouse of Christ, being a better judge of character than a selfish world, deposits in the bank least likely to fail ! Be this as it may, and not to go outside these States, see the countless numbers of poor exiles of Erin whose children have risen to wealth and prominence without the inheritance of a dollar ! Look at the portraits of one married couple among these exiles, as given in Frank Leslie's Popular Moiitlily of November, '88, (and very likely in several other illustrated magazines too), ! and do they not strike you as those of a very depressed ]iair indeed belonging to the poorest grade of the persecuted Catholic peasantry, as if they had Just come over from their i tumbled cabin without one penny of compensation on the ])art of the landlord? But what claim is that for their pictures in the magazines? None at all ; only their son • had just died and he was covuiiander-iii-chief of the United States Army, "the Hero of Winchester ! " Some- thing like this had happened before, and if John Bull could only have foreseen it, they'd surely be one married couple \ less among poor Irish eniigrauls ; for tlie son of that pair, as President of this Repuhlie, turned Johnny up on his knee and gave him sncli a spanking down thei'e at New Orleans that he ran back home crying to his mother! True, these cases are exceptional, but exceptional in degree only, most certainly not in /cind. as the records of the late civil war amply attest. And if we turn from the battle- field to the corn-field or the counter, the mine or the factory, we see in every quarter "exceptional cases," so to call them, beyond counting, some simply surprising, and that of the immigrants tliemselves, without waiting for their chil- dren to give the credit to the American soil of their birth. Witness the Mackeys, the Floods, the Kelleys, the Banni- gans, the Donohues, the O'Briens and others, once poor Irish boys, landing on these shores almost without a dollar and now ranking with the richest men around them, a few even with tlie noted millioiuures of t!ie continent ! It is not fair to point to the mass of struggling iiulustry, and even poverty, out of wliich these men have risen without any thought of the Jive millions a year above (page 28) and A WORD ON THE MERITS. 35 JIOYNE ABBEV, BALLIXA, OOUN'TV MAVi without any thouglit of their condition at laniling;, and without any knowledge of tlie fact that Census Bnlletin No. 357," published last February, asserts that ot the Irish element in the population of the United States, 1,871,500 were actually born in Ireland. This is the highest foreign- born population (that of Germany excepted) contributed by any of the twenty-six nationalities named in the census, and it is only within the last dozen years or so that even the German Empire came to be an exception either ! Of course this fraction of the century could not possibly counter- balance the whole past, so the fact is manifest that up to this hour the largest foreign element in the population of this nation is that contributed by Ireland.! What wonder *Page two of the Bulletin lias this rejnark at "Englauarticipate in the bounties granted for the exportation of these descriptions of linen from Great Britain to foreign countries." (•' English in Ireland." vol. 11, p. 177.) Such the punic faith of the selfish coward and bully, every word of the historian corroborated by Lord Rocking- ham in the English House of Lords. When Cromwell did his best to make a desert and call it peace, even his own countrymen tried to open his eyes to the injury his brutish nature was inflicting on English settlers in Ireland. One Vincent Gookin published a re- monstrance in which this testimony is given : " Moreover, there are few of the Irish peasantry but -wevQ skillful in husbandry and more exact than any of the Eng- lish in the husbandi-y proper to the country, few of the women but were skillful in dressing hemp and flax, and making woolen cloth. In every hundred men there were five or six masons and carpenters, at least, and iiiueh more skillful in supplying the defects of instrumentsand materials than English artificers." And long before Cromwell the iron mines and mills of Ireland gave extensive employment in every one of the four provinces. Our esteemed friend, Mr. John F. Seanlan's book. " Why Ireland is Poor," tells the plain truth at page 33 in the following extract, which the old Natural History of Ireland by Boate (written nearly three hundred years ago) and a still higher authority. Dr. Kane, fully support, as we have taken the trouble to verify : '' At the opening of the sixteenth century iron mills were located in Tallow, county Corlc, Dingle, in Kerry, and in Desart, in King's county. " Mines were worked in Fermanagh. Cavan, Tyrone. Queen's A WOBD ON THE MERITS. ■M 4^iMSagiftfe-Myy^^fi'r€'^'''ags!!SgB IJOMIXICAX ABBEY OK TUB HOLY CROSS, SLIGO. county. Clare, Roscommon and Leitrim. The product of i tliese mines, after Ijeing manufactured, was generally shipped from Waterford to London. So that over three hundred years ago the capital of the British Empire was supplied with iron from Ireland. If that industry had been care- fully nurtured up to this time, Ireland would not uovy have a periodical famine, nor would her children be scattered over the earth, the hewers of wood and drawers of water. England saw and feared this, and, through restrictive laws and the agency of British gold and British protection, transferred those industries to herself, resulting in wealth for England and jioverty for Ireland." Sir William Petty reported to the Government that there were then in all Ireland 6,(i00 snielti\ig iron factoi-ies in full blast! — all destroyed by English jealousy! Here is the high corroboration of Kane : " Some cen- '■turies ago Ireland presented a picture of manufacturing "industry. * * •■" Covered with forests and possessing "iron ore, as we shall hereafter show, of the highest purity " in great abundance, Ireland was sprinkled over with "small iron works in which the wood charcoal was em- " ployed; and thus iron manufactured of excellent quality — "in fact, such as tee now import from Suvdi'ii and, Russia '■'for all (h.e finer purposes of cutlery and meclianism." THROWN ON THE LAND, ROBBED BY THE LANDLORDS. This must suffice to show how, one by one, the manufac- turing iudustri(?s of Ireland were ruined and put out of the way l)y England for her own selfish and unscrupulous ends, thus crowding /.lie working classes on the land for employ- ment with this necessary and, indeed, inevitable result — the most terrible competition for its possession of which history has any record in modern times. Being the only means of supporting existence for seren-eigliths of the population, thousands were compelled to submit to every exaction of the landlords, even to the parting with the whole fruits of their toil, except a single vegetahle to keep soul and body together — every head of cattle, every sheep, every hog. every crop of wheat, of oats, of barley, etc., even the few hens and their very eggs ! Here is an extract from the rep(n-t of the Latid Commis- 38 A WORD ON THE MERITS. i'-f.-lr ■Sgfi V •■*»» ^ *'*Q^^'£^ ■^^^^^ '.^^^* ,\ f^y.'^g^yr J"- '«'^^^£*iS'^% 1 , '■- -i,.,,.i - • ■ ,■ 'THE SEVEN CHURCHES OF CLONMACNOISE,'" COUNTY WBST5IEATH. sion, presided over by Lord Devon, and presented to the two Houses of Parliament in 1845. This document mainly consists of solemn dejjositions, affirmed on oath. The witness before us is an agricultural laborer named Michael Sullivan. The more detailed quotation of the questions and answers is precluded by our limits : " Under whom do you hold your house ? " "Under a farmer named Daniel Regan; just a liouso ami an acre of ground." '' What do you pay for it ? " " £3 ; £2 for the acre, and £1 for the lionse." " Have you the acre always in the same place ? " "The acre I have this year I cannot have it next year; he will have it himself. / ntu^t 'ma,n,ure another acre ; and without friends, I could not live." ''Have you constant employment?" "iVo; but whenever he wishes to call me, he gives me (jd. a day and ray diet ; and then at other times / go down into the country^ and earn .£1 or 30.s." " What family have you ? " "Five children, the oldest twelve years — seven of ns to be supported." " What is your general food ? " '^Nothing but dry potatoes. Not a drop of milk. I would think myself middling happy if I could give the children that. The farmers in the same district, except one out of a hundred, cannot drink a pint of sour milk, among five in family, from about Cliristmas until about the 17th of March, or so ; and then generally they are forced to sell their sour milk to meet the rent, or pawn their clothes." ' ' Have yon a pig ? " '■ Yes. He must be kept in some part of the house, in a corner. I might make room outside for the pig. if I was siire of tlie tuiuse for a second year: but I do not mean to go to the trouble ; and many the same as me do not do so, ■n,ot being s-vre of tlie honse for a second year." Tliere is the whole case in a nutshell, and upon oath. There are the toil without industry, the industry without reward, the improving of the soil and the improved soil taken away every yeai', the insecurity of tenure, the pinch- *Ontlie east tia,nk of the Sliaauon, ( the lai-f;e3t rtvef iu tlie British Isles), the rtiius showQ in our illustratioh above are all that remain of aa auoieat city and a great ecclesiastioal centre, antedating the llrst arrival of the Englisli by six hundred yearn. We don't claim this antiqtiiry tor the Sligo an ROCK OK CASHEL ,■'■■ COUNTY TIPPERAR'V. iiig economy, the selling of the necessaries of life to meet the rent, the straining to pay it faithfully, the migratory trudgings in quest of work, the faithful return t(3 wife and children, the compelled uncleanliness, as respects the pig, and the compelled "indolence " which will not build him a mansion outside. What Michael Sullivan says here of Daniel Regan, thg Daniel Regans haye to say of the Hawardens, the Trenches, the Pollocks, the Adairs and the Plunkets. The poor cottier is ground by the farmer, because the farmer is ground by the middle-man, upon whom the lord of the soil, rioting in luxm-y or debauchery in London or Paris, on the Rhine or on the Danube, keeps tight the pecuniary screw. Mr. Smyth affirms (p. 20) that the members of this poor tenant's class "are to be counted, not by thousands, but by millions." As the assertion stands without proof, we beg to sup[jly it. At the time referred to, according to the census of 1841, there were in Ireland 310,436 very small farms, of from one to five acres each ; and of holdings under one acre, there were 085,309. Here are 9913,745 very poor land tenants, and allowing to each any domestic re- sponsiljility you please, as respects wife and children, father or mother, brother or sister, how litei'ally true is it that the members of Michael Sullivan's cla.ss "are to he counted by millions ! " And where is the wonder, when, according to the same census, nearly seven-eighths of the population, precisely 7,089,659, depended for subsisteaice on agricul- ture ! See Thorn's (Dublin) Almanac, an ofBcial authority, for any year from '41 to '51. Having gone from province to province, from county to county, and town to town, having heard all the testimony of landlords as well as of tenants, and placed every word of it on record, the Devon -■= No tiUCXx imposing ecclesiastical ruin in Eui^laud as this ou the Kock of Gashel. Our illustl-atiou shows oue of the prdnstoric Round Tiiwers. saifi to autedate St. Patrick in Ireland, and also the Cathedral, hut It does not show the greatest wonder of all, Carmao's Chai:)ei, all rock, even the roof, a marvel of architecture and sculpture iu almost perfect preservation, though long antedating the English Invasion iu the twelfth century. 40 A WORD ON THE MERITS. Commissioners, every one of them an Irish landlord, placed on the same record their own solemn and unanimous con- clusion. The reader cannot but be cnrions to know it. Here it is, that he may judge for himself how far Michael Sullivan is to be regarded as a representative man, and how far his testimony on oath is to be credited : ''The agricultural laborers of Ireland suffer the greatest privations and hardships — they depend upon precartous and casual employment for subsistence — they are badly housed, badly fed. badly clothed, and badly paid for their labors — it would be impossible to describe adequately tlie sufferings and privations which the cottiers and laborers and their families in most parts of the country endure — in many districts their only food is the potato, their beverage water — their cabins are seldom a protection against the weather — a bed or a Ijlankct is a rare luxury — nearly in all. their pig and their manure heap constitute their only prop- erty — a large proportion of the entire population comes within the designation of agricultural laborers, and endure sulferings greater than the people of any other country in Europe have to sustain * * * It would be impossible for language to convey an idea of the state of distress to which the ejected, tenantry have been reduced, or of the disease, misery, and even vice which they have propagated in the towns wherein they have settled ; so that not only they wlio have been ejected have been rendered miserable, but they have carried with them and propagated their misery where- evcr they have dwelt." When a parliamentary court of Irish landlords thus testi- fies against their own class, how overwhelming must have been the testimony on the side of the oppressed ! Nor is this testimony one iota more trustworthy or respect- able than that of Wakefield, whose great pains to ascertain the truth in this matter have left behind a record fully as ponderous and nearly as minute as that of the Land Com- mission. The fact that he preceded Lord Devon by an interval of thirty-sis years is very much to the purpose, as showing that the present of Ireland is an unmitigated be- quest of the horrid past. The array of facts pi-esented by this laborious investigator, from every section of the coun- try, with all the corroborative circumstances of names and places and dates, puts us to our wits' end to determine what to select or where to commence. In this dilemma let us simply follow his own arrangement. From volume 1 we take the following, the captions and italics are our own: KXACTINO TUE SAME RENT TWICE ! "Six months' credit is generally given on the rents, which is called ' the hanging gale.' This is one of the great levers of oppression by which tl.'e lower classes are kept in a kind of perpetual liondage, for as every family almost holds some portion of land, and owes half a year's rent, which a land- lord can exact in a moment, this debt hangs over their heads like a load and keeps them in a continual state of anxiety and terror. If the rent is not paid the cattle are driven to the jiound, and if suffered to remain there a cer- tain number of days they are sold. Tliis I have frequently seen doiie after the occupying lenaiU had paid Ms reiU to the middle-man, ii^ho had- failed to pay it to the head land- lord!!''' The numerous instances of distress occasioned ^ ••Till- law aulhnrizfi; tlif landh rd in the event of the toankriipley of ;i nilddle-jiian to whom the occupiers h;id paid tlieir rents, to oomo upon the lattei' and to t'ai'ct Uii^iii to ■imij their rtints o-ocr afjain to In'm!" (M'Culloch, p. ai, vol. '2.) by this severity, which every one who has resided in Ireland must have witnessed, are truly deploralile ; and I believe them, to be one of the chief causes of those frequent, risings of the jieople, under various denominations, which at differ- ent times have disturbed the internal tranquillity of the countiT. WHOLESALE EXPULSION OF CATHOLICS TO MAKE ROOM FOR TROTESTANTS ! "At the same time he works for his landlord at the small wages of 5d. jier day ; but whcii he comes to settle he receives nothing, as the food of his few sheep is set off against what he charges for labor. In this manner the poor cottier must toil without end ; while his family eats up the produce of the small spot of land he has hired. This is called by the lower classes of the Irish ' working for a dead horse ; ' that is to say, getting in debt. Happening to dine at Cork with Dr. Moyhin, the Catholic Bishop, he related to me the fol- lowing circumstance in regard to some townlands belong- ing to the Duke of Devonshire : These lands were -occu- pied liy tico hitndred fantilies, and on the expiration of their leases the Duke's agents wishing to substitute Prot- estants in the room of Catholics, refused to renew them. The occupiers finding that they were likely to be deprived of their possessions, drew up a memorial of the case, which Dr. Moylan presented to the Right Jlonorable Henry Elliot, who transmitted it to General Walpole. But what was the result? It was returned to the very agent whose conduct was censured; and this gentleman, a zealous friend, no doul)t, to the Established Church, disregarding the claims of tlie Catholics, introduced Protestants in their stead; but interest, which often assumes the appearance of liber- ality, and in many cases impels men to do what they other- wise woukl not, induced the now tenants to enter into treaty with the old ones, and the latter obtained leases of their ftjrmer lands at a small rcock rent ; but with this dif- ference in their situation, th,a,t they were now suh-tenaiits, under persons who were middle-men." (pp. 253, 254.) LEVYING BLACKMAIL OF TEN GUINEAS (S'OS) PER ACRE ! "Since I was last in Ireland I have learned, not without considerable regret, a circumstance in regard to the conduct of the owner of one of the best estates in that country, which, as it cannot bo doubted, for I have it from the best authoi'ity, ought to be publicly known from one end of the British empire to the other. As soon as the proprietor came of age, his agent sent notice to all the tenants whose leases were expired that there could be no renewal for them unless each consented to pay a fi-ne of ten guineas per acre ! But this was not all : To those in possession of leases a thretxt was held out that unless they surrendered their leases, pa.id the required fine, imA took out new ones, a mark would be placed against their names in the rental book, and not only they, hU their heirs and families would he forever e.rcluded from any benefit of a renewal. Can words be found sufficiently strong to characterize this unparalleled exaction? Was it anything else than levying a tax of ten guineas per acre nearly in the same manner as the autocrat^ of Russia would order a new impost by an imperial ukase? The estate to which I allude extends over many miles of country, and refusal on their part would I have been sealing an act of expatriation. They had no alternative — they could only comply: and thus the hard- earned savings of many years' labor were wrested from the hands of industry to be employed, perhaps, for the leorst of ]Jiirposes — to be s|ient at the gaming table — to pamper luxury — or to gratify the vitiated t.aste of proti- gaey and dissipation. It was the apparent act of the A WORD ON THE MERITS. 41 iiumei'ous agents who infest the estate; hut the plan must liare been Icnoicn to and approved by the owner." (pp. 350, 357.) lie reverses the picture to show what tliese pour, plun- dered people have the ability and inclination to do. wlien treated fairly : •' When at !Mr. Stewart's, at the Ards. iii Donegal, I found that he paid kis laborers in money every Saturday night. He v.as the only man in the county, perhaps, who tliouglit of it, and the difEerence wliich it produced was uudonlitedly striking. I was tliere iu couipany with Sir William Rowley, his sou, and liis brother, the Kev. Joshua Rowley ; aud I remeuilier we were all filled witli astonishment long before we got within the walls of his domain at tlie appearance of everything around us, being unable to discover what magical power could effect so speedy and so uncommon a difference as we observed, not only in the looks of the people, but ill their habitations, and whatever else belonged to t/tem. We, however, soon found that the spell was READY MONEY, AXD REGU- LAR WEEKLY PAV.MENTS. I found Dr. Dudley at Killowu employed iu the same manner, as 1 had often seen him at Brad- well, iu Essex, giving work to the poor, and en- couraging their honest industry. I shall not easily foi-get an exjjres- sion he made use of on that occasion; it deserves to be recorded, and may afford a useful lesson to those who are t(_)o apt to judge from prejudice: ' Wakefield, look at these poor fellows, and honest- ly aeknowledye that an Irishman can work; but bear this in mind, that he is paid every Satur- day night .' ' ' ' (pp. 513,513.) CITALICE OF ARDAGH, CO. LONGFORD, composed of 374 pieces, gold, silver, &c. As a work of art U7iique, rivaling the Cross of Cong. {Before the English. ) TAKINU CATTLE AND CROPS OF CATHOLICS TO SUPPORT PROT- ESTANT MINISTERS ! Wakefield devotes 310 pages quarto of volume II to the shocking Tythe System which, though now abolished, can never be forgotten when one is accounting for the poverty of Catholic Ireland or holding up to the spittle of outraged reason aud civilization the disgusting kettle-of-fish govern- ment. He dwells (English and Protestant though he was) on the manifest and unblushing wrong of compelling Catho- lics, who had a priesthood of their own to support, to hand over the tenth part of the produce of their poor industry, to maintain, in "luxury" and "idleness, " a ministry whose teachings they believed to be false, and whose services they most cordially repudiated. He shows how tithes of agist- ment (tithes on pasture lands and uncultivated grounds), were abolished in order to exempt the landlords from the payment of this tax for the support of their own clergy! (p. 484.) He describes the scenes of wailing aud lamenta- tion, of riot aud bloodshed, of arson and desolation, produced by the forcible carrying off of the crops, aud the impounding of cattle, horses and swine be- longing to Catholics, for inability, neglect or disin- clination to pay with punctuality this cruel cx.ietion. He calculates that fully seveti-eig/itlts of the rectoral tithes in the Province of Coniuiught aud elsewhere belonged to laymen ! He shows how the Presbyterians of Ulster re- sisted this injustice, and how gently this resistance was met ; while in the Catholic south and west the only coiv of the poor widow used to he taken from her little ones, and sold at public cant, to liquidate this cruel imposition to the last farthing ! He asserts the well-known fact, that any Protestant might have compelled any Catholic to dismount from his horse, and hand it over to tlie aggressor on the presentation of a five pound note, no matter what the value cjf the liorse might have been ! Such was the statute law of Ireland — no Catholic could keep a horse worth more than that sum — so it was useless, he affirms, for the Cath- olic to take his griev- ances into a court of , justtee! And then he exclaims in astonish- ment : " Yet still the ■■ Catlbol ics are re- ''proached with pov- '■'■erty: a circumstance " which is not to he '•imputed to them, hut in tlieir folly, thought it good policy to " to those who. "drive their u-eaUhy hrethreu into e.rile, and to impose "on those udio remained those cruel restrictions which "deprived than of every incitement to indrtstry, and de- " stroyed t lie hopes and poicer of promotion." (p. 054.) Notice, dear reader, how this single bit of testimony covers one-half of the eight alternatives above, and that from a stranger in Ireland, an Englishman aud a Protes- tant !— every word corroborated by McCuUoch, a witness of the same class. Mr. GrilKths, goverinnent engineer, and highest authority on Irish land-valuation, computed the tithes of Ireland paid to Church of England ministers at "£831,314" per annum — then fully five millions of dollars yearly, exacted mainly from the poor Catholic tillers of the soil!! "Yet the Catholics are reproached with poverty!" In 1838 an abatement of 35 per cent, was made, Icfvving aboiit 13,000,000 yearly fop collection, 42 A WORD ON THE 3IERIT8. England's Kettle of Fish. UUll LAST ALTERNATIVE — THE ENEMV. Hoc fecit iiuiiticii.s — ";iu enemy luUli ilune tliis," ;is we read in St. Miilthew at the |iaiiil)le uf tlie cockle, lliiw iiiiii'kly the good man of the house detected the ■■hand" of tlie ■'enemy!" P>ut our enemy beats Ids enemy, thougli liis represents the Devil; for the gospel enemy was content with sowing the cookie over the good seed, but our enemy helps himself to the whole crop of the laltrr. to the death of tlie jirod lifers lii/ xtnrvatiun 1 This has been shown above for tlie edification of some future gener- ation, as the present one (pretty generally at least) knows all aliout it tliruugh its own eyes ami ears, yes and stomachs ; for thous- .-xnds are living to-day in and out ol! lieland who had evidence of that monstrosity in tlieir own bodies, whilst they saw it with their eyes all around them in ■ complete accoiiipli.slimeitt. But the present genera- otion may want our rush-light to trace the past as much as a fut nre generation may need it to see the present. Ilul why call up the jiast ? I'.ecaiise she's the mother of the still monstrous present and there's no mistaking the pa'-eutal likeness in the daughter. Moreover, tliis discussion from its first line is purely and essentially a tracing of effects to tfieir causes, the fundamental, continual and true causes of a ter- rible social anomaly and notorious national seandal — the con\-ersLon of a terrestrial jiaradise into a hell upon earth. Plainly this is the Devil's work, tramp- ling on every direct precept and every indirect lint manifest inference of the Decalogue as respects our neighbor ; and tor the (iospel of Christ (the tiospel of justice, of mercy, of forgiveness, of peace, of doing as you would be done by), substituting the evangel of hate, revenge, insult, defamation and calumny, perfidy and pei'jury and treachery, thievery and plunder by the wholesale and without a blnsh; provocation to resistance beyond Immau endurance, and that with the diabolical motive of e.'ipulsion at the point of the bayonet and confis- cation hi/ the county and province, taking not only the land, but all upon it — houses, live-stock, farni-idant and growing crops : then the futile attempt to force conscience as relating to religion ; and will it be credited — oh, yes it will by every Sc(jtchman at least — that Ireland has many a Glen- coe upon its map as made by (Jod. where hospitality was till' butcher's ti'a|i to catch and slaughter! — brave men who could- not be caught or conquered. who had defied the enemy's best and worst, giving blow for blow, invited at last, to bury the hatchet under the supper table and smoke the calumet of rieace, ttien Initchered in, cold titooil over their plates, Hke the ilacDonalds, of Glencoe ! A still greater hnrror. though hardly a greater infamy, remains ty be tolil. and the horror was greater only in the immher of victims — throughout whole townlands, parishes and even counties t/ie torcti. applied to tlie crops III tlie fields and the food, of man and beast with their luitiitiition.s tltiis destroyed tiy fire ! Perhaps the reader may think that this was the climax, tiut it wasn't, for the brave Anglo-Saxon soldiery of England were not the stolid stupids in the faculty of inven- tion which they are so generally supposed to be; they must be credited with that refinement in military strategy which, looking far ahead, provide against jiossible resistance in the near future at least, sending tjaliies in, their innocence tu heaven as the best of escorts and intercessors for their mothers dispatched iritli. them at the same moment! These facts cannot be denied ; on the contrary, the pro-l^lnglish apologists, like Spenser, Hollingshed and Cox, seem to boast of them, apparently as a set-off against the temporary and local punishment inflicted CROSS OF CONG.* ,1,11 over the country time and again by the Iiish on their enemies. The victories of the Irish chieftains at such pitched battles as those of the Yellowford, Benburb and Limerick seem to have maddened all England. Ac- cording to the Government authority of Sir Wm. Petty, the liebellion of 1641 cost England over one hundred thou- sand men ! He certainly had opportunities of knowing that: -This miracle ot iaterwoven tracery iu capper aa:;l brass is i'i tect lilgli, studdeil with W jewels ( 5 lost), with one great couves crystal lu Uie OBiitre. Bejore Ike EiujlUlt. See lilustratlous, " Abbey o£ Coug " aatl " Pigeon Hole,'' above tor locality. A WORD ON THE MERITS. 43 )St over tlie but how he coukl have found out tliat tlie Irish four times as many we cannot suppose, except o principle that the wish is father to the thought. But let us liear some of the t)oastin,a:. Siienser. th( was one of the inva- ders. He came over as secretary to tlie viceroy. Lord (irey, and was grandly pro- vided for on the 1-ianks and braes of the lovely Aubeg, in tlie county Cork, and the finest quarter of confiscated Desmond. Here he composed his celebrated '-Faerie Queen," but frmii which the coward had to Hy with his life. lie returned to Eng- land, and al)used the Irish in all the moods and tenses of his )iar- barous Anglo-Saxon, because they woulil n ot sub in i t to lie ]ilundered with im- punity. He ui'gently pressed upon the English ( iovei'ii nient to red uce the Irish liy laying waste the crops, so that they might '■qiiicily on Slime ^'themselves and de- " vour one another/ " " The proof whereof," he continues, "I ".saw svfficiently in " these late warres of " Muuster ; for iidI- " withstanding that " I he same was a most '■ricli and plentiful ''country, full of "corn and cattle, " that you would have thought tliey should have been able " to stand long, yet in ons yeare and a halfe they were "brought to such wretc/iedness as that any stony tieart "icoulil liave rued lite same. Out of every corner of the '•woods and glyiines they came creeping forth upon their ' handes, for the%r legi/es could not he are them: then looked "Ulceanatonnes of death: tliey spo/ce lilce gliosts cryinu •'out of tlieir graves: tliey did eat the dead carrion^ ■' happy wliere tliey could find them, yea and one anot/ier "soone after m so much as tlie very carcasses tlipy spared poe:, I .<„„;. f„ ^frajje out of their graves, and if tliey' found a ' ' plot of wa ter cresse.'< ILLUMINATKL) I'AOK, BOOK OF DUKItOW, KINo's COUXTV. { Dniij hefo ■ Ike EnijUsh.) or sliamrocks, there " tliey flocked as to a "feast for the tivie : "yet not able long to " continue there icitli- "all, tliat in short "space there ice re "none almost teft.^ •' anda most popntoiis ■' and plentiful conn- " try suddciinly left " riiyde of man and, '•lieiist." ("View of the State of Ireland," by Edmund Spenser, page l(i.">. ) Holiinshed, whose politest nickname for the Irish was '• vile rebels, " thus de- scribes llie inarcli of the English soldiery tlirougli another dis- trict: "As they went "they drove the !('/io/p " country lie fore them "intotlie ventrie,and "then liy that means •'they preyed anil " took all tlie cattle 'fin the ctmntry to " I' he n II in b e r of '•y.OtlO kiiie, besides "horses, garrons. "sheep and goats: "and all such, people ''as they met. they "did icithout mercy 'J put to the sword. : " hy these means the " U'tiole country tiav- "ing no cattle or "liine, they were "driven to sucli e.r- "treniities, tliat for "want of victuals "they were eitlier to "die and perish for "famine or to 'die ■'under the sword. " The sold ierslikewise ''in the camp were ■' so hot upon the ''spur, and so eager " upon the vile rebels, •• that that day they CHILD, BUT ALL WAS Cln-onicles, vol. ''spared XErrnER .max, woman xor "committed to the sword." (Iliillinsh vi, p]i. 437, 4:i0, etc., etc., etc.) Cox, another historical enemy of the native Irish, s.ays that the English army "marched into Desmoml (('..rk aiid 44 A WORD ON THE AIEBITS. Kerry) witlujiit opposi/ion, biiriiini/ and spoilinij all as they went — they huriicd the coniitry till the 33d of Jidii" ("Hibcrnia Anglicana." by Ricliiird Cox. pub- lished in London, 1680, pp. 201. 311, etc., etc.. etc.) Moryson. the English historian, says: " Thousands per- ished by famine, and every road and district teas encum- bered by their unburied carcasses." See, also, Curry's "Civil Wars"; see Leland's "History of Ireland," in par- ticular. The time referred to in the above extracts is that of tlic sixteei)th and seventeenth centuries. Some forty pages back we commenced tills discussion by attribnling the pov- erty of Ireland In internal i>v extern at causes or some com- bination of both. As nobody can tind a flaw in that foun- dation of our argu- ment, we can't be accused of liuilding on a defective base- ment at all events. The reader is now invited to pass liis own verdict on the s u perstruct ure. This wc do most corinally and willi all confidence, l>i'- caiise c on V i n c e d tliat lie can't cliai'ge us witli sliirking a single issue, and seven out of f h c eight issues, em- bracing the wliole question, liear down heavily on tlie Irish or internal, possilde causes. Now, if it lias lieen shown that not one of these seven, noi- all of tliem put. together, can lie set down as responsible directly or indirectly for the shocking tragedy and scandal of mitlions of men starved to death lohere timir gnad Creator placed them in a land of plenty, that pletity. under (loil. tlieir own jiroduction, 4« the i)lac.e of their birlli, by I lie *■?(■('»/ (// their hrme, wliat follows but that the only other cause, tlie external cause, the foreign government cause, is tlie agent of the Devil in the slaughter, and in the transformation of a most beauti- ful and liounteous territorial gift of Ood into a hell on earth ! Criven all the alleged sources, eight in numljer. of a certain effect, seven are found to liave had nothing what- ever to do with it, then the eiglith has every thing to do with it. But this is not all. for (!very one of the seven negatives is seen to point most natur- ally in the very opposite direction to that effect, the direction of full and plenty, leaving th.at wretched effect to another, its t r n e cause, which is not only thus identified b u t actually af- firmed in the posi- tive a n d direct corollary so natur- ally flowing from each .and all. Here then is a two fold argument and two- fold proof through- out and here we might close this dis- cussion, .as not re- quiring one word 111 ore. li a v ing lirought home to the door of tlie nasty, revolting, kettle-of- fish ffovernment the MlllEOUS ILLUMINATION, BOOK OF KELLS, 00. MEATU. {ma years heftirf llii- Eiiijlislf.) "N« i-npii can (hijasUce lit Ihe exeaiJivc pn-fecl.iim nf the m-ii/ind?."— Stokes. whole responsililtlty for the past and present sufferings of the Irish people in their native land. THE PHOOK DIRECT AND POSITIVE. We have seen, by sample .at least proportioned to our limits, how English joalou.sy had put Irisli manufacturing and commercial competition out of her way, depriving thousands of their accustomed and profitable employments, thus forcing them to look to agriculture for a living. A WORD ON THE MERITS. 45 Having got seven-eighths of the Irish people there, here is how she trciited tliem— passing a whole code of Penal Laws, of which tlie following are Init a few, though per- haps the most severe: The 7th of William III. chapter 33; the lllh of Anne, c. 3: the !)th of Anne. c. 8; the 4t,h of George I., c. 5; the 8tli of George T., c. 2; the oih of George II., c. 4; the loth of George II., c. lo ; the Soth of Geoi'ge II., c. 13; the loth and Ifitli of George III., c. 27; the lOth and 20lh of George III., e. 30; the 2fith o[ George III., c. 24, ■.sec. 04; the 501 |i of George III, c. 88; the 58th of George III., c. 30; the 1st of Gcoi-ge IV., e. 87; the 7fh of George IV., c. 29 ; the 1st and 2.1 of William IV., o. 33 ; the 0th and 7th of William IV., e. 70— all directly aimed at tlie in- dnstry and liljerly of the tenant, tlie many springs from which have flowed all Iheagrai'ian mis- eries of the connti'y — the legal robber- ies of the landlord and his satraps, tlie many noctnrnal combinations of the people, the whole- sale exterminations covering the face of the land with mendicancy, the maddened revenge, which in turn ejected the ejector, scattering his Idood to manure the sod as him- self had manured it with the sweat of unrecpiited Ijrows. To describe tiie respective points and gravities of these parliamentary missiles would throw us into a dissertation fai beyond our limit THE CUMIIACU (cASE OR SUIXe), OF ST. MOLAISE's GOSPELS ( Annlha- minuie nf ancient Irish art in bronze and silrrr, lir/\,n' :l,e Emjlixh.) of the existing law— that, contrary to the spirit of all law, ancient and modern, whose very corner-stone is the principle, that in all matters of claim ami repudia- tion between man and man, appertaining to lilierty or prop- erty, a third jjarty, the constituted legal umpire, must decide— contrary to that fundamental basis of all social ordei-, an Irish landlord clainiiiig rent from his tenant may e n f, e r u p o ii t h e grounds and prem- ises of the hit, j er anil laki' away his properly, wit ho u t applying for the authorization of anv court or umpire in the uni\r]-sc ! Even if his i-laini be false in fact or unjust in equity, lie can do the same Ihiug. in wliii.'li ease I he mnis of commencing to play the cosily game of the e o n r t s is ihrowri U[ioii t he oppressed I A n d woe to I he tenant who has I he temer- ity (it ili-agging the landlonl into court I The local eoncep- lion of sncli rashiu'ss is— going to law with acejlain name- less personage and the court in a cer- tain nameless place! Another featnre of the law is— thii land- Let it suffice to state this one featurt loi'd. upon any whim after a night's debauch, can eject his tenant-at-will in Ihe face of all improvements by the latter and the existence of a just (lod. Be those improvements fencing or draining or manuring or weeding or planting or rpiarrying or building— let the land have been even so poor orneglecleil when he came into ]iossession by di'scenl or purchase, and he ever so rich now— let the marsh be 46 A WORD ON THE MERIT fi. drained, the bog recliiiiiied, the luiked rock covered, the thin soil deepened, the weedy soil cleaned, the boundaries fenced, the orchard planted, the honse or houses built— in the face ot all this outlay of time, labor and money the tenant may be ejected without one penny of coni]icnsation ! Nay, in Immh-i-ils of weU-aufheiificaled instances those very im- 2]rovemenis have heen the sole temptatioii to yet rid of him, and fake possession of all!.' And in thousands of other instauces, when lelt in possession, they have Ijeen the sole cause of those crushing impositions, in the shape of tines and increase truthfully portrayed liy another cluipter of this br( is a startling fact for the the single year 1844 the Cou: Pleas ejected 76 Irish farm tenants; the Court of E>:- chequer expelled 7f/0 ; the Queen's Bench. IHi:!. aid the Quarter Sessions Courts 4,083— in all. li.ol- in one year, whose fandlies n u m be re d 24,8:!'-' souls! In the next year the number of ejectments was 4,8!l!l, affecting 18,070 human lieiiigj ! The numlier swelled enormously during 1847, '48 and '49 ; the .aggregate for the three years having been o5,41(i. representing, at five to each 177,000 souls cast houseless in three vears ! ! 31 h of rising to any civic position — all passed between the seventh year of William the III. and the twenty-ninth of (lelniicn [irofcssiui,' tlie reliijion of Alfred the Great and the Jlagna Cluirta Barons was proscribed — all consigned to ignorance and poverty in the land of their birth ! •" Yet," in tlie words ol Wakefield, "the Catholics are reproached with poverty ! " As Burke beautifully expresses it: "To render humanity fit to be insulted, it was fit that it should be degraded." Xor was this all. Six other penal enactments were in force prior to any of the aliove. One of those ex- acted a Jiiiii of uiie shilliny fur eocnj umissiuit OIL the part of a Catholic to atfcnil « Frud'ntaiit churcli on. a Sanclay ! — a full third of an Irish la- borer's weekly wages, at the standard of 0:^. per day ! And it is often less. Here were thirds as Wi'W as tit lies 1 Has the woi Id ever witiressed such ad- herence to principle on the part of an entire nation ? For the Irish paid the fines or submitted to distraint or went to Jail sooner than act in violation of that divine jireoept: " Who denies me before men, him will I deny before my Father who is in heaven." THE VEltV IIIftllEST TESTIMONY. THE TAKA BROOCH It shows the perfection of The following extracts from a famous work by Sir Jonah Barrington, LL.D., K.C., .Judge of the High Court of Admiralty in Ireland, goes far to support this entire argument : The Irish people have been as little known, as they have been grossly defamed to the rest of Europe. The lengths to which English writers have proceeded in pureuit of this object would surpass all belief, were not the facts proved by history written under the immediate eye and sanction of Irish Governments, histories replete with falsehood, which, combined with the still more mischievous misrepresentations of modern writers, form altogether a mass of the most cruel calumnies that ever weighed down the character of a meritorious people. The people of England, and also of some continental kingdoms, are fully awai'e of the distracted state of Ireland, but are at a loss to account for it ; it is now, however, in proof, that thirty-three years of Union have been lliirly-three years of lieggary and disturbance, and this result, 1 may fairly say, I always foresaw. The internal and natural advantages of Ii'eland are great and inexhaustible. Itich mines are found in almost every quarter of tlie Island; gold is discovered in the beds of .streams, and washed from the sands of rivulets — the mountains are gener- ally arable to their summits-~tlie valleys exceed in fertility the most ] lolific soils of England — the rivulets. which flow along the declivities adapt the I onntry most peculiarly to the improvement of irriga- tnm: and the bogs and inc sses (if Ireland, utterly unlike the fens and marshes of England, emit no damp or nox- ious exhalations. Ireland, possessing the strongest features of a |)0werful state, though laboringunder every disad vantage which a restricted commerce and a jeal- ous ally could inflict up n her prosperity, might si I II have regarded with contem|)t the comparatively iiiKfpial resources and infe- rior powers of half the mon- archies of Europe. Her insular situation — her great fertility — the character o f her people — the amount of her revenues — and the ex- lent of her population, gave hera decided superiority over other nations, and rendered her crown, if ac- companied by her affections, not only a brilliant but a most substantial ornament to the Ihitish empire. The penal statutes, under the tyrannical pressure of which the Catholics had so long and so grievously labored, though in some instances softened down, still bore heavily upon four-fifths of the Irish popu- (REVERSE OR^BACK). jation-a code, which would * ' have dishonored even the san- irish Art iiel'ore the English. guiuary pen of Draco, had in- flicted every pain and penalty, every restriction and oppression, under which a people could linger out a miserable existence. By these statutes the ex- ercise of religion had been held a crime, the education of children a high misdemeanor — the son was encouraged to betray his father — the child rewarded for the ruin of his parent — the house of God declared a public nuisance — the officiating pastor proclaimed an outlaw — the acquire- ment of projierty alisolutely prohiliited — the exercise of trades restrained — plunder legalized in courts of law, and breach of trust rewarded in courts of equity — the Irish 48 A WORD ON THE MERITS. C'alliolic excluded from the possession of any ofTico nv occu- liatiiiu ill tlie Stale, tlic law, tlie army, (lie navy, llie niiini- cipal liodies, and tlie eliartered corpoialioiis— and the mild doetriiies of the Christian faith perveiteil, even in the juilpit, to the worst purposes ot religious persecution. The case of England anil Ireland is not merely a question of law, or even simply of constitution; it is a i|uestion actually embracing the biw of nations, commercial treaties existed between them as independent countries, and Ireland enjoyed for eighteen years all the rights which the law of nations confers on iiide|jendent States. Tlie difficulties of dissolving the union are exaggerated, the situation of both countries presented far greater ob- stacles for their arrangement in 1TS2 ihan are at this moment existing. England at that period had usurped a dominion over the Irish legislature; ]X)licy aud justice called on her to re- linquish that dominion: she obeyed the call, and the repeal of her own statute (sixth George 1.) by inference admitted the usurpation of centuries. Still the power of re-enactment remained; Ireland claimed a statutable renunciation of such a jiower, and a guarantee for the euHre and imqualijied IniUqiendencc (rf the Irish legislature, and realm, fur ever. England saw, and admitted, the policy and justice of the demand; she again obeyed the call, and voluntarily did guarantee for erer the independence and inlegrity of Ire- land . The experiment f>ucceeded. and both countries prospered. The union was enacted, and both countries feel the ruin of it. England, therefore, has only to act upon the very same )irinci|jle of honor, policy and justice, as in 1783, and follow her former precedent, which conferred such benefits on both — Ireland has nothing to repeal; her Parliament was in- competent, and her statute was a nullity. The English Act of Union was a statute de jure, and may be renounced as in 1783. When a million shadows fall thick and deep in open day, do we strain our eyes for further evidence in the slcy that the sun is there ? When the forest is a wreck, and the huge oak, as well as the tiny poplar, lies equally low, do we generally conclude that all the roots were rotten ? And when those np-torn roots, stout and rugged even in ruin, point, like so many fingers, to a certain point of the com- pass, do we look to any other for the source of the storm ? Is the ruin of a nation less self-demonstrative ? England flourishes. Ireland withers: has that notorious fact less significance than the mnte indications of inanimate nature? Is it not true, then, for .John Stuart Mill in his " Priuciples of Political Economy?" — ••Wli.en the inhahilanls of a country quit the country, en masse, because ils'government will not make it a jilaee jit for them to lire in, tub oo^- ERNME^•T IS JUDGED AND COXDEMXED." Pointing- Our Moral. In public affairs, as in private life, the responsible party will try to shift the blame or disgrace of a shameful failure by throwing it on some one else ; but England is debarred of that make-shift by two tyrannical nsurp;itioas of her own. Up to the first day of tlie present century she had to recu(jiiiie « native leijislature in Ireland, at least in theory, doing all she could t(j hanqjer it by her Viceroys and agents at the Castle of Uulilin, but more especially by two high-handed Parliament aiy agressions, one so far back as the reign of the 7tli Henry and (he other in that of the 1st George. The former is known as Poyning's Law, 10th of Eenry VII., chapters 4 and 33, requiring from the Irish Parliaiuent the bulimission to the English Privy Council of the headings of every proposed enactment before considera- tion in Dublin ; but the latter for tlie first time since the Eiiijlish. Invasion in. 1172 boldly asserted the right of the English Parliamentrto pass laws binding on Ireland. This was at the beginning of the second quarter of the last century. So she has all the credit with her hirelings in Ireland of the social and domestic chaos created there by the curse of her touch. AVhether the Irish Parliament has to share this peculiar credit with her or not. one thing stands out in the boldest historic relief, that the vast majority of the Irish people had not one representative in either House of either Parliament during the whole of the eighteenth century, and, therefore, their hands are clean of the foul bargain which bought and sold a nation's birthi'ight on the last day of that century. COXCLUSION. IIow far this little effort may be successful in reaching its goal, the creation or at least the extension here of an en- lightened public opinion favoralile to the present movement in the English Commons for Home Rule in Ireland — in better words, for the restoration of her swindled right to manage her own alfairs, a right continuously exercised (though often interrupted) not only before, but ever since the first landing of the EngUsh as invaders in the twelfth cen- tury till the first day of tliis century. IIow far this effort may succeed we cannot measure to the notch ; but this we are pretty sure of, that the twenty-four thousand copies of it which we print aud issue now have in themselves a double attraction, literary and artistic, which is well calculated to preserve this prcxiuction for many long years to come, with this obvious result — the correction of miscon- ceptions about Ireland and England, to the due appreciation of the former as a land of beauty and boiuity, and a due appreciation of the latter too as that of the kettle-of-fish. J LIBRPRY OF CONGRESS II I I 019 805 318 1 ^c:^Get Five Subscribers At $1 A Year each in Advance FOE- BALTIMORK, THEN RECEIVE THE MAGAZINE WITHOUT CHARGE , AND HAVE YOUR NAME UNDER THE HIGH ALTAR AS LONG AS THEY CONTINUE. In addition to this, special benefactors of the ADVOCATE are personally named daily in the Holy Sacrifice- great privileges indeed. #