the same effects. It is to the abject condition of the Irish peasant, therefore, and the feelings thence arising, that we must look for the real causes of those atrocities in which we find him engaged. The subject divides itself into a great variety of considerations: but the most prominent, and perhaps the most important, is the smallness of the recompence of labor. The portion allotted to the laborer in that country is so scanty, that any dimunition of it reduces him to extreme distress: for he possesses no stock of comforts, in curtailing which the calamity may expend itself and leave behind an adequate provision for his necessities.* We shall make ourselves best understood by our readers, when we state that in some places in Ireland the wages of the laborer are sixpence per day; and they will be enabled to form a conception of his situation when they contrast it with that of the English laborer, who usually receives eighteen-pence per day in wages, and one shilling from the parish, besides an allowance to every individual of his family. The situation of the small farmer is not much better: he seldom enjoys a beneficial interest in his land; and the rent at which he holds it falls little short of the entire value of the produce, leaving him a pittance not more than is absolutely needed for bare sustenance. In some countries, chiefly the southern and western, a middleman is introduced, who takes the land from the proprietor, and portions it among under-tenants; and in these circumstances the actual cultivatior is worse off than when he holds, as it may be termed, in capite. The smallness of farms also constitutes a great evil: the system of husbandry is necessarily very bad under it; the implements of tillage are of the most clumsy and inadequate sort; either none or only the most wretched cattle are maintained; the various capacities of the soil must be entirely neglected; there is no room for a rotation of crops, and often seed of an inferior description is used: the farmer cannot find constant or sufficient occupation in his own holding; pride forbids him to work for another; and he becomes a pray to sloth and its train of evils. Many landlords, aware of it, have still found themselves unable to prevent this mischief, which has arisen within the last fifty years, and has augmented with the population. The holders of farms of thirty or forty acres made it a practice to subdivide them among their offspring. Each son, as he attained manhood and married, received his share; and thus families have

* "A number of peasants were lately seen re-digging a potatoefield, in search of the few roots which remained in the ground. Mayo Constitution."

swarmed.

swarmed, to eat potatoes and salt, and wear rags. It could not be expected that the landlord should interpose, for he could only do so by insisting that the parents on his estate should turn out of doors the children who were contented to "increase and multiply" on such terms.

This state of things is in itself sufficiently disastrous: but it receives extreme aggravation from the bad understanding which prevails between the peasantry and their superiors. In Ireland, little of that class of feelings exists in which the Poorlaws have origin. The policy of those laws may be erroneous but they have had considerable operation in producing that attachment to law and authority, by which the English yeomanry are distinguished; while they have taught the landed proprietors that the people also have an interest in the soil. Little, also, of that spirit of mutual kindness and confidence prevails in Ireland, by which the various classes of the community in England are held together, and the inequalities of condition are reconciled. The proprietors and the tenantry of Ireland are for the most part distinct people, professing different religions, speaking different languages, and enjoying in an unequal degree the advantages of our constitution. The features of the Conquest remain fresh and entire; and the accumulated errors of the policy pursued towards Ireland have had the effect of preserving all the distinctions, by which the early inhabitants were divided from the invaders. So powerful has been the mischief, that it has counteracted the influence of Time itself; and after the lapse of seven centuries, the native Irish, who may be said to constitute the peasantry, regard the descendants of the English, who may be stated in the gross to fill the ranks of the gentry, with a suspicion and dislike little inferior to such as prevailed at the earliest period of the connection with England. If any doubts of the accuracy of our representation arise, let the nature and character of that system to which we attribute such pernicious efficacy be considered;-and let it be remembered that, at one time, it was a good plea in bar of an indictment for murder, that the deceased was mere Irish; that an Irishman could not sue, though he might be sued, in any court of justice; that a grant of letters of denization to a native was matter of high grace and favor; and that the total extirpation of the natives was unscrupulously recommended by some, who deemed confiscation and outlawry measures of imbecile lenity. The first settlements were made by needy and profligate adventurers, whose interests were directly opposed to those of the ill-fated land in which they fixed themselves; and, if it acquiesced in the rule of England, if its people were received within the

pale

pale of law, the opportunity for gratifying their cupidity and ambition would have been lost. It was therefore their policy to harass and irritate those whom to reduce to peace and. order was their ostensible object. They transmitted the most extravagant reports of the barbarism of the Irish; and grave historians have described the national character by a catalogue of the foulest and most odious vices. In vain did the victims of oppression appeal from the depositaries of power in Ireland to the English government: - their grievances were referred to the consideration of their task-masters, and again they betook themselves to arms. When, in the slow progress of things, some approaches to tranquillity were made, religious dissensions arose to supply new rancour to waning national animosity. The same people, who under colour of the papal supremacy had justified their original aggressions, now abjured its authority, and proclaimed the Reformation: but the apostles of the new creed appeared in the guise of tyrants and enemies, and it was universally rejected:"the example alone of the English," says Hume, "was sufficient to render the Reformation odious to the prejudiced and discontented Irish." (Eliz. chap. 45.)

So completely, in the apprehension of the Irish, were the characters of stranger in its evil acceptation, Protestant and Englishman, identified, that up to this day the term Sassenagh is used indifferently for each. Some few of the Anglo-Irish, adhering to the old Faith, made common cause with the Irish defenders of papacy, and thus arose the bloody contest which has been intitled "Bellum quindecim annorum." Thence

forth the persecution of the Irish was not left to the fortuitous rapacity or cruelty of individuals: for it received the solemn sanction of the legislature in those enactments, by which fivesixths of the population were subjected, under the denomination of Papists, to all the complicated penalties that human ingenuity could devise. Of the wisdom of proscribing any religious sect, we are at no loss to form an opinion: but the outrageous cruelty, which thus deprived nearly the entire inhabitants of a country of almost every natural right, can scarcely be characterized in terms of too unmeasured abhorrence. It is not necessary that we should detail the inflictions of the penal code: they were well adapted to create in the victims that sense of debasement, of which we see the effect in the abject penury of the Irish Catholic peasant. To the same source may be attributed the ferocity by which he is distinguished, when he shakes off the restraint of law in the perpetually recurring insurrections. Extreme wretchedness, national antipathy, and religious rancour engrafted on it, all

contribute

contribute to exasperate him: his condition is that of a slave, and he takes a slave's revenge.

The importance of sustaining the spirit of the laborer is now so well understood, that we do not anticipate contradiction when we allege that those circumstances, which have caused the depression of it in Ireland, form one of the main causes of the hapless state of that country: but we fear that we shall not be equally successful in awakening our readers to a conviction of the ill consequences, which these same circumstances produced on the sentiments and dispositions of the upper classes. The truth is that such abuses, as those by which Ireland has been cursed, fall entirely without the sphere of ordinary apprehension; and the structure of society in that country has been so widely different from the happy frame of it in this, that the most inadequate conceptions of it are inevitably created. All information has, moreover, been derived by us from quarters not indifferent; and the People could only speak their discontents in the fearful language of insurrection there existed for them no "safety-valve of the constitution." Protestants and Britons ourselves, we have a livelier sympathy with the settlers in the sister-isle, and receive with reluctance any impressions to their disadvantage: but it is nevertheless true that those penal laws, and the feuds arising from them, which debased and demoralized the Catholic, produced superciliousness and tyranny in the Protestant; and, while they caused misery in the tenant, they rendered his landlord calious to his sufferings and contemptuous of his feelings. We do not now intend to refer to the disgraceful rage of party-spirit which was exhibited by the Orange-associations: we mean that the gentry of Ireland seem wanting in proper feelings of compassion and tenderness for the suffering people around them; and that the landlords of Ireland do not appear to have that quick and lively regard for the welfare and happiness of those who live under them, as contra-distinguished with their own immediate interest, which does so much honor to the landlords of England. They are most unbecomingly slow to abate their rents; and it is our firm persuasion that to their tardiness much of the existing spirit of insurrection may be traced. The calamitous state of the small farmers in the south of Ireland might surely have been foreseen ere the commencement of their associations. -The great Provision-trade, which belonged to that part of Ireland chiefly, had almost entirely disappeared, and the Butter-trade had grievously declined; symptoms which should surely have been observed, while the great crash of the banks in the last year ought to have made a strong impression.

Charges

Charges of a still graver nature may be made against some proprietors. It has been known that in the haste to get rid of a disorderly and wretched tenantry, or, strange as it may seem, under the influence of violent religious and political animosity, a whole district has been depopulated; the inhabitants expelled from their dwellings, naked and hungry, exposed without remorse to the rage of the seasons; and, lest they should return to seek a temporary shelter beneath them, the roofs have been torn off their huts. In what do such acts differ from the worst outrages of the peasants, except in their being beyond the reach of the law? The mean estimation in which the laboring classes of Ireland are held is strongly evinced in the conduct observed towards them, and it is sometimes particularly remarkable in the Field: the horses trample the poor man's crop, and no sturdy farmer appears to threaten or remonstrate; the gates are flung open and the fences are prostrated at the bidding of the sportsmen: who evince no regard for the lives or limbs of any who may cross their way, but heedlessly jostle them, bestowing a brutal curse and too often a brutal blow. This tyranny on the one side produces such servility on the other, that if an Irish peasant meets in the garb of a gentleman even a perfect stranger, he crouches an obeisance: abroad, even in the most inclement season, he always presents himself uncovered; and, if any intimation of the rights imparted to him by the Constitution have reached him, still no thoughts of asserting them in resistance to the aggression of a superior enters his mind. While, however, his spirit is thus subdued, it is rendered savage; and the same treatment, which makes him cringe in the face of day, gives to his nocturnal violences their outrageous ferocity.

Besides all the other circumstances which tend to make the Irish peasant a bad citizen, the Revenue-laws come in for their share of effect; and the temptation to illicit distillation which they hold out is one of the greatest misfortunes now afflicting Ireland. The spirit of insubordination and the habits of violence, which it produces, are alone sufficient to explain the situation of the island: but few of our readers are aware of the extensive operation of this tremendous evil. They may form some idea of it when they learn that it appears, from returns made of the number of convictions in Ireland for the last four years, that nearly one-fourth of the whole arise from crimes connected with illicit distillation. Something has been said of the probability of the mischief being diminished by the use of smaller stills, and the consequent increase in the number of distilleries: but, while the duty on whiskey continues what it now is, the illicit trade