French Directory, in order to induce them to send an expedition to Ireland, he stated that at that period more than two-thirds of the sailors in the British navy were Irish; that he was present when the Catholic delegates urged this to Lord Melville as one reason for having fixed the time to meet A CHALLENGE I have thus narrowed the question into a tangible compass, that you may not escape me by raising groundless objections; and, that I may not use more words here than are necessary, the following are the conditions :— To Messrs. Singer, Daly, Hamilton, Pope, Urwick, and Burnet. GENTLEMEN,-Seeing, from the granting emancipation; and that public papers, that you have dehis lordship had not denied the clined accepting the challenge of fact. This statement was under. Dr. M'Sweeny, on certain grounds, stood to have had great weight I have determined that you shall with the Directory, who immedi- not escape the ridicule and reproof ately committed the whole of the which the ostentatious advocates of subject to the consideration of a serious error merit. I therefore Carnot (then one of the Directory) challenge you, thus openly, to a aud Generals Clarke and Hoche. public disputation on the following Soon after the question of an ex-question- Whether the Bible, pedition had been left to them, they without note or comment, be a fit named an evening to meet Tone at and proper book to be put into the the Palace of the Luxembourg. hands of every person in the comTone arrived at the appointed munity? You support the affirinahour, eight o'clock. He was ush- tive of this question; I alone shall ered into a splendid apartment. maintain the negative. Shortly after the director and the generals made their appearance; they boed coldly, but civilly, to Tone, and almost immediately retired, without apology or explanation, through a door opposite to that by which they had entered. Tone was a good deal struck by so unexpected a reception; but his surprise increased when ten o'clock arrived, without the appearance of, or message of any kind from, those Secondly-The judges to be fifty on whom all his hopes seemed to Protestant gentlemen, selected thus depend. The clock struck ele--I shall name one hundred Proven, twelve, one-all was still in the palace; the steps of the sentinels,on their posts without, a lone interrupted the dead silence that prevailed within. Tone paced the room in considerable anxiety; not even a servant had entered, of whom to inquire his way out, or if the director and the generals had retired. About two o'clock the folding doors were suddenly thrown open; Carnot, Clarke, and Hoche, entered; their countenances brightened, and the coldness and reserve so observable at eight o'clock had vanished. Clarke advanced quickly to Tone, and, taking him cordially by the hand, said, Citizen! I congratulate you; we go to Ireland The others did the same; and, First-The place of meeting to be either London or Dublin, and held within a month from the first of November next. testant individuals, and you may may Thirdly-The mode of disputa- wishes, provided that I am allowed to reply. Fourthly-No reference shall bu made to ang authority whatever but the Bible. As you advocate the utility and necessity of every one reading the Bible without note or comment, you cannot consist. ently object to this. I shall abide by it. Fifthly-There shall be no cant whatever made use of. This rule I consider absolutely necessary, for otherwise Mr. Urwick, judging from his letter to Dr. M'Sweeny, would be perpetually offending against the second clause in the third proposed rule. If the second proposed rule con. tain any thing which you, as Protestants, caunot submit to, I am ready to accede to any reasonable alteration, as my object is to show the public how few proofs you can bring in support of your favourite doctrine. I have mentioned that you may make as many speeches as you please: but I am very much mistaken if your oratorical powers will be wanted, for you shall advance nothing which you cannot prove to the satisfaction of the fifty judges, or at least a majority of them. The business will thus soon be concluded. Such, gentlemen, are the terms on which I am willing to encounter you in a public disputation. I cannot see how you can refuse to accept my challenge. I am, Gentlemen, Your obedient servant, DECIMUS ROCK. ROCK NOTICES. AN Address to the Irish Peasantry nest week. Mr.Andrews's last 'Truthteller' contains a gross attack upon me; together with numerous falsehoods! But Mr. Andrews and his friend Cobbett shall hear from me next week. Irish Landlords. Hibernicus is referred to the twenty-third number of my Gazette for an answer. LONDON-J. Robins and Co. Ivy Lane No. 35. Or, The Chieftain's Weekly Gazette. PRIVATE MEMOIRS OF SATURDAY, OCTOBER 29, 1825. The following accurate description of PRICE TWO PENCE. the caineadh.* I have the original by me; the following is rather an imperfect translation : THE CAINEADH. 'Where are thy chieftains, Mumhain 2+ Where are thy princes, Olnegmacht? I have watched the door, like a damsel watching for her fair-haired lover, but, alas! I cannot behold the darkening shadow of thy heros. Be not angry, Mac Alla.§ The Lamentation. ↑ Munster. Conaught. § Literary son of the Rock. In private life our family name was Mac Alla, but on public occasions we were always called || Spirits. ROCKS. strangers in the western parts of Ireland, The English are to this day called and almost every peasant can tell you the origin of those families who now lord it My aged mother attended, and several old women assisted in making the necessary preparations. A CHAPTER XXVII. long table was placed in one corner OLD CAPTAIN ROCK'S WAKE. -the deceased laid on it-a white THOSE who have attended the sheet spread over him, and a cross bed-side of a dying father, and felt fixed above his head. A silver cruthe last agonizing grasp of the cifix-a relic in the family-was author of their being, will be able then placed on his breast, and to sympathise in my feelings on a canopy of white sheets having the melancholy occasion of this been formed by means of poles, aged Chieftain's death. The usual there was nothing more wanted circumstances of such a scene, even than lighted candles, a roll of to- They are gone to the land of in ordinary cases, are alone suffi-bacco, and a supply of pipes." the sidhe. They do not hear the cient to awaken pity and provoke These were soon procured; after call of thy bard. The sons of the tears; but in the present instance which the door opened for the ad-stranger are seated in their halls, I the attendants of death received ad. mission of friends. These quickly ditional horror and poignancy, thronged in, and, among others, from the reflection which was irre- some celebrated female keeners; sistibly forced upon the friends of but O'Flaherty, the family bard, the deceased. They beheld the would permit them to perform only corps of a brave and patriotic man, a subordinate part, reserving to stretched upon a rude bed of straw, himself the honour of composing and surrounded by mud walls, while they could not help remem. bering that he was born heir to opulence and grandeur. Let philosophy say what it may, there is something in human nature which will not let us contemplate in undisturbed tranquillity such a scene as this; for though we can survey with calmness the absence of pomp and splendour from a peasant's wake, who could view without a pang the once wealthy inheritor in a similar situation? The occasion of the captain's death also added to the gloom of all around; but what served to harrow up the very soul, was the necessity we were under of denying the honours of a wake to the body of the deceased in his own house. The harpies of the law were seen hovering about; and, lest they should seize on the lifeless remains of their once daring enemy, or arrest some of his friends in attendance, it was thought advis. able to remove the corpse to the barn of a neighbour. done during the privacy of night. This was The body, which once bore the name of Ned Kilpatrick, was laid out in a spacious barn, which was converted, for the occasion, from its purpose of a granary into a melan. choly hall of mourning. Around the dead man's bed were hung, with artful contrivance, large sheets of white linen, which, as they inclined towards the wall, displayed many fantastic images of flowers, angels, and seraphim. Over the corpse was spread a cloth to correspond with the canopy, which was strewed with roses, marigolds, image of our Redeemer on the cross reand "sweet-smelling flowers;" whilst an posed, as it were, upon odours-emblematic of the dead man's faith. There is something very terrible in death, when even divested of those circumstances which add a solemn gloom to the awful presence of a lifeless body; but, in Ireland, these scenes, which remind us of what "stuff we are made," receive a desponding influence of the deceased being arranged around, from the circumstance of the nearest friends according to their degrees of affinity: and, as the poor have more cause than the affluent to lament the dreaded departure of their relatives, there is seldom a want of loud and copious sorrow; for simple nature cannot learn to modulate woe by the rules of fashionable grief." over the descendants of those who once ruled in the land. Perhaps they are indebted for this tradition to their bards, who, before their extinction, kept alive a hereditary hatred of the Sassanachs. Mr. O'Conor, of Balengare, gives the following extract from a poem, by O'Gnive, familyollamh to the O'Neills of Clonoboy : 'Oh the condition of our dear countrytheir sorrows! the wrecks of a party ruined! men! how languid their joys! how pressing their wounds still rankling! the wretched crew of a vessel long tossed about; finally cast away. Are we not the prisoners of the Saxon nation? the captives of remorseless tyranny? Is not our sentence therefore pronounced, and our destruction inevitable? Frightful, grinding thought! Power exchanged for servitude; beauty, for deformity; the exultations of liberty, for the pangs of slavery-a great and brave people, for a servile, desponding race. How came this transformation? Shrouded in a mist, which bursts down on you like a deluge; which covers you with successive indundaNeed I appeal to your senses? But what tions of evil; ye are not the same people! sensations have you left? In most parts of the island, how hath every kind of illegal and extrajudicial proceeding, taken the pay sof law and equity? and what must that situation be, wherein our only security (the duspension of our excision) must depen upon, an intolerable subservience to and the friends of Erin's chief are laid in the narrow house. Be not angry, Mac Alla. 'Land of my fathers, how is this? Are there no Boro's left in Erin to chase away the spoilers? Are the Sassanachs to be for ever victorious? Are the children of the Scythian to be for ever bondsmen ? No, the sons of Eber Scot are yet brave. The descendants of heros are yet numerous. Like the oak of the forest on a winter's day, lawless law? In truth, our miseries were predicted a long time, in the change these strangers wrought in the face of our country. They have hemmed in our sporting lawns, the former theatres of glory and virtue. They have wounded the earth, and they have disfigured, with towers and ramparts, those fair fields, which Nature bestowed for the support of God's animal creation-that Nature, which we see defrauded, and whose laws are so wantonly counteracted, that this late free Ireland is metamorphosed into a second Saxony. The slaves of Ireland no longer recognize their common mother-she equally disowns us for her children-we both have lost our forms-and what do we see, but insulting Saxon natives, and native Irish aliens?-Hapless land!-thou art a bark, through which the sea hath burst its way-we hardly discover any part of you, in the hands of the plunderer. Yes! the plunderer hath refitted you for his own habita they are unbending amidst the storm, and though stripped of their summer honors they are not the less strong. The rage of desolation will pass, spring will come once more, and, Erin, thy children shall again be clothed in honors. Be not angry, Mac Alla. Yes, my country shall revive like a virgin after weeping for her lost one, for she is young and beautiful. Then, hoary chieftain, thy death shall be revenged. The foe and the stranger shall fly before the Mac Alla's like mist before the north wind, and proctors and parsons be as scarce in Erin as reptiles since the days of our patron. Be not angry, Mac Alla. "Why did I bewail the absence of princes and chieftains? Are they not here around? Yes, the best blood of Mumhain flows through the veins of those who hear me; and though not crowned with diadems, they are the descendants of those who wore them. Be not angry, Mac Alla. · Mourn with ollamh, my friends, the hero who sleeps in his gore. He was like his fathers, the terror of Erin's foes. Like the spirits of the tion-and we are new-molded for his pur-storm, he was dreaded on the hill poses.-Ye Israelites of Egypt-ye wretched inhabitants of this foreign land! is there no relief for you! Is there no Hector left, for the defence, or rather for the recovery, of Troy?-It is thine, O my God! to send us a second Moses: thy dispensations are just! and unless the children of the Scy-may no hand raise a cairne over thian EGFR SCOT return to thee, old Ireland is not doomed to arise out of the ashes of modern Saxony.' Mr. O'Conor adds, The author of this poetical declamation preserved himself from punishment, by remaining constantly in the Irish quarters; and the English were far from being mistaken, when they allotted the severest penalties for these incendiary bards; a race of men, who were perpetually stirring up the natives to rebellion, and as constantly giving rebellion another name, nothing less than the rights of the nation, and the spirit of liberty. Poetry preserved the spirit of our language, the force of elocution, and, in some degree, the ancient genius of the nation, even in ages of anarchy. In conjunction with its sister-art, Music, it must have produced much more powerful effects, in better times: in the worst, it preserved the people from degenerating into savages. Their manners approached nearer to those of citizens, than of barbarians.' and in the valley. Proctors, rejoice your enemy is no more. Cursed be the hand who slew him. May no keener attend his funeral his ashes!-Cursed be his memory. Be not angry, Mac Alla. 'Mac Alla, be not angry, the pulse of your heart" weeps by your coffin, and the heir of your name stands beside you. Already the chieftain's feather waves in the wind sleep in peace; he possesses all your valour. Like his sire, he is tall and handsome, and is the foe of strangers and proctors: like the soaring eagle, he will pounce upon land-pirates; and the churl who drank thy blood shall feel his anger. Be not angry, Mac Alla.' This translation can give the reader but a faint idea of the beauty of the original; and it must be * Wife. ROCK'S SIXTH LETTER TO IRISH LANDLORDS. LANDLORDS,—By the advice of persons, whose opinions I highly value, I delayed addressing to you the continuation of these letters. They requested of me to wait until the parliamentary committees made their report on the state of Ire, land, and until the evidence taken before them was published. I have done so; and I am not sorry for it. Facts, and sworn evidence, illustrate my former remarks; yet it is with no small pain that I find the legislature attributing that misery to the subdivision of farms, which results from their own bad policy. But this, notwithstanding M'Culloch's lectures, is an age iu which the people are ignorant of political science, and in nothing more than in that which relates to the distribution of property. The reasonings,' says Mon. de Staël-Holstein, in a work lately pub. lished,* of their most distinguish ed writers on political economy have something vague and desul. tory on this question, which forms a contrast to the soundness of their ideas on other points of the science, and seems even to indicate, that they experience a sort of interior struggle between their principles and prejudices. Malthus and M'Culloch themselves, the one in * Letters on England.' his "Principles of Political Economy," the other in the article "Cottage System" in the Encyclopædia Britannica, have notescaped this defect. Ricardo has not treated the question in his writings, but I have heard him express an opinion more favourable to the system of the division of property, and his name alone is a host. 66 lightened minds? In fact, while One of the arguments,' continues the same author, most fre quently repeated in England against an equal division of property, is the tendency ascribed to it of increasing population, in a ratio infinitely more rapid than that of subsistence. 66 By the division of To assert, as many ignorant property," says Arthur Young, or superficial travellers have done, you will soon arrive at a point, that France is in a state of prowhere the land, however culti-gressive wretchedness; and that vated, cannot feed a greater number of mouths; yet men will retain that simplicity of manners, which is favourable to early marriages. Are not the consequences of such a system, the most frightful we can imagine? By persevering in it you would soon exceed the population of China, where we see unhappy creatures, who seem to have been brought into the world only to perish through want or starva. tion, greedily disputing the stinking carcases of dogs, cats, mice, and the filthy remains of animals of all kinds. Small properties subdivided are the greatest source of misery we can conceive; and this fatal system has already produced such ravages in France, that all division of land below a certain number of acres ought incontestably to be prohibited by law."* Thus does a traveller, justly celebrated for his agricultural knowledge express himself: and the learned writer of the article Cottage System, in the Encyclopædia Britannica, quoting this passage in support of his arguments, seems to adopt it himself, and give it all the weight of his authority. Is there, I ask, a more extraordinary proof of the influence of a prevailing prejudice over the most en* Travels in France, vol. I. p. 413, 414. the excess of its population, in Has not a similar law country, without perceiving evi- gion, by public instruction, and by the paternal if not enlightended government of the republic of Berne, This is mere Protestant cant, with out a single fact to support it. The Catholic religion does not in its tenets meddle with forms of government, and it is unjust to charge it with being inimical to civil liberty. Sir Robert Filmer, in his "Patriarcha," written in praise of absolute monarchy, directs all his argu ments against Catholic writers, and charges them with being favourable to republican principles; it is therefore hard to be found fault with in both ways. The argument from facts will appear in favour of the Catholic. Let any one extract from our Constitution what is of Catholic origin; our common law, including the trial by jury, and the law of treason, the internal government of our counties (where the sheriffs and the justices of the peace were elected till the time of Edward the Second), and our representative system,— and he will see how little remains to the Protestants' share beyond some statutes to enforce the execution of pre-existing laws; and let him consider whether, if we had not been in possession of those rights and privileges before the Reformation, we ing them since. Let him say what was done in favour of liberty when the Protestant religion was in the glow of its zeal, in the reigns of Henry VIII. Edward VI. Queen Elizabeth, and James 1. If we look to other countries, we find that Sweden, Denmark, and Norway, which were limited monarchies in Catholic times, are now absolute; and that nothing has been done in favour of their subjects by any sovereign in Germany who embraced the Reformation. All the Italian republics were Catholic; the most democratic cantons in Switzerland, who have in our days been the most strenuous defenders of their liberties, are so; St. Marino is so, and Genoa and Ragusa would still be free, if we had not aided in preventing it. Protestants in the great Catholic States have been completely restored to all civil rights; and, if it be true that the influence of the Catholic clergy is so great, we must infer that they have been liberal on those occasions, nor have we heard that they offered any opposition to these concessions: it would undoubtedly be very desirable for the Catholic here to experience the same should have had much chance of obtain liberality or forbearance. But, notwithstanding this argument from facts, in which the balance appears to be in favour of the Catholic, it would be both unjust and absurd to attribute a predilection to despotic sway to any description of Christians-all take different parts according to circumstances and events, 'The estate of Coppet is in that part of French Switzerland, which, independent of their religious tenets. We after having been prepared for liberty by the Protestant reli believe that the love of liberty is planted in every cultivated mind and every honest property may have an injurious now enjoys with happiness and breast, for who likes oppression when it is brought home? If the Catholic, in the time of the Stuarts, was more favourable to with which I am best acquainted; the one all the social virtues, to ENGLISH LEGHORN. DURING the late war the importation of hats, and similar articles, manufactured of the fine straw grown for that purpose, and known by the name of Leghorn plait, was almost entirely put an end to. The natural consequence was an extraordinary degree of encouragement of our home manufacture of plaited straw, by the wives and children of the agricultural labourers of Bedfordshire, Hertfordshire, and Buckinghamshire. At the conclusion of the war, this branch of trade fell into the usual channels, and bonnets and hats of genuine Leghorn plait soon found their way again into our market. rendered more even, pliable, and durable, than that of equal fineness made from split straw. It is also much superior in colour. To which we may add, that the Leghorn plat admits of being joined by knitting the adjacent edges together, instead of overlapping and sewing them, as is the case with English plait. The Leghorn straw, being much more slender than the English, may 'Besides, and this is the truc be used whole for the finest artipoint in question, there are not incles, by which means the plait is the whole world two more distinct conditions of life, I would almost say more opposite, than that of a poor farmer in the service of a great lord, and that of an independant small proprietor. The consciousness of property, the duties and enjoyments attached to it, the remonarchy, it was because he was so op.sponsibility it imposes, unfold in pressed by the laws enacted by the popular party, that absolute monarchy would, to him, have been comparative freedom. Every description of Christians, if they follow the precepts they are taught, will be good themselves, and just and charitable to others. Our Saviour has expressly dis tinguished the civil power from the duties of religion, by declaring that his kingdom is not of this world, and by giving this distinction the force of precept, ordering us to give to Cæsar what is his due, and to God what appertains to him, and it is very clear that the Christian religion itselt is based, in fact, on the principle of religious liberty; for if religious liberty is not a civil right, then were all the persecutions of the first Christians morally justifiable, and the Christians were bad subjects. Every class of Christians may therefore consistently and without scruple maintain, that the right of every individual to religious liberty should be unshackled by worldly power:-and every government should consider that it has not the power to alter the mind of an individual, and make him believe or disbelieve any tenet, as he himself has not that control over it, and that to require that which is impossible must be an unjustifiable act of tyranny. -MR. HOWARD, of Thorndon Hall, our own.' 'Tis true this gentleman says several hard things of Irish farmers; but, as he has the candour to acknowledge that he knows them only from report, I shall pass over his mistakes on this subject, since I find him so just on others-particularly on those which had come under his own observations. 1 have now, landlords, accumulated facts and authorities in support of small farms, sufficient to convince the moft stupid and incredulous; and by-and-by I shall prove their utility, from the evidence taken before the select committees. Rock. For the protection of our do. mestic manufacture of plaited straw, and to encourage the importation of the Indian straw, which is much fitter for the purpose than that grown in England, a duty is imposed of three pounds a dozen on imported hats; a lighter duty of seventeen shillings a pound upon plait not made up; and a still smaller duty of one shilling in the pound upon straw not plaited. Such, however, is the cheapness of labour on the Continent, in comparison with England, that the best Hertfordshire straw is actually sent to Switzerland, plaited and returned to England, where, notwithstanding the import duty of seventeen shillings per pound, it may, after all, be sold about five shillings in the pound cheaper than plait made in this country. The process of plaiting straw in the Italian manner may easily be |