permit, in dispelling an error equally prejudicial to Ireland, and the realm of which it forms a part,-to advert briefly to the aspect which the country and people present,-to trace the historical events which are at once the cause and consequence of defects which we see existing,-and to direct the special attention of the reader to the measures which at the present crisis have been, or probably will be proposed, for its future benefit,—are the purposes we have in view in the following observations. It does not seem to us, that Ireland is upon the whole superior to England either in beauty or fertility, although it has sometimes been so represented. The resources of a neglected country, like the charms of a secluded beauty, are sometimes estimated too highly. We may refer, in support of this opinion, to the scenery which the direct road from Dublin to London offers. Beginning at the Menai bridge, and proceeding onwards by Capel Cerig, Llangollen, and Shrewsbury, through the midland counties, the traveller is presented with a succession of prospects, which, in point of magnificence, richness, and variety, no part of Ireland of the same extent can be found to equal. Transverse lines might be taken, passing through parts of Devonshire, Somersetshire, Gloucestershire, Herefordshire, and Warwickshire, to which nearly the same observation would be applicable. But it would be invidious to pursue the comparison. We have said so much, only because we conceived it right to correct the extravagant encomiums which Irish demagogues are accustomed to pass on the soil and scenery of their native land, in order to gratify the vanity of their hearers at home, and convey an exaggerated notion of its consequence to ignorant people in England and in other quarters. The At the same time, no visiter, however transient, can fail to perceive that it is an eminently favoured land; and we hope it will soon have as much reason to be proud of all classes of its people, as its people have to be proud of it. Its surface is neither low nor lofty; its streams are clear and lively; the soil fertile, but not deep; not so intermixed with clay as in England, and lying upon limestone throughout a large proportion of the country. climate is proverbially moist and temperate; and owing perhaps to this circumstance, to the nature of the substratum, and insufficiency of the draining, the land is everywhere gushing with water. Timber of all sorts grows freely and luxuriantly; but, from want of depth of soil, does not seem, except in particular tracts, to become large or lofty. Stone for building is found almost everywhere, of much beauty and variety, and in great abundance. The country still looks somewhat unfurnished, from the scarcity of trees and hedges. Where hedges are found they are made of furze, planted on the top of a wall, according to the custom custom of Devonshire and Cornwall. The immense number and peculiar effect of the bogs, though so material a part of Irish scenery, cannot well be imagined by those who have not seen them. Their dark appearance, and the groups of turf stacks with which they are studded, give a singular tone to the landscape which is not easily forgotten. The excellence of the harbours in Ireland, especially of those in the west and south, is universally known and acknowledged. The principal mountains and mountainous ridges do not run from north to south, as they do along the western side of England, but are dispersed singly and in groups all round its shores, as if to defend them, like towers and battlements, against the fury of its stormy waters. The coal hitherto found in Ireland is neither good nor plentiful; and as water-power is daily becoming less able to compete with steam, this defect is likely to prove an insurmountable obstacle to that advancement in arts and manufactures which the country might otherwise have attained. Ireland has considerable mines of copper and other metals, which, notwithstanding the inducements offered by them, have never yet been worked with sufficient skill and energy. The remains of its ecclesiastical architecture are neither remarkable for extent nor beauty. Its principal antiquities consist of the round towers, which have been the subject of so much examination and controversy, and the usual number of feudal castles found in other countries, now forming picturesque remains, but once the strongholds of robbers and oppressors, which in Ireland continued much too long to be their actual destination. With respect to the people, the high and the low are still the only classes into which they can be appropriately divided. The intermediate ranks are rapidly springing up in the towns, but as Ireland is almost wholly agricultural, the want of them will in most parts of the country continue to be felt for some time longer. Of the character of the higher classes who are possessed of rank and property, we shall here attempt no delineation. To do this with correctness and impartiality is, invariably, one of the most difficult of all tasks, and ought never to be undertaken except by those who have had the advantage of extensive private intercourse. Many of the aristocracy are known to the world to be as accomplished and valuable members of society as those of whom any country can boast. If the rest of the body differ from persons of the same rank or fortune at home or abroad, the shades of distinction can only be judged with fairness after long and familiar acquaintance. Of the common people a traveller may speak with less hesitation, because every particular relating to their manners, customs, or or circumstances, is more easily seen, and marked more strongly. It is undeniable that, with respect to food, habitation, and clothing, the farmers and labourers of Ireland, who, in most cases, may be classed together, are in a state which cannot be contemplated without emotion. Professor von Raumer, whose Letters on these kingdoms have just been published, says emphatically that, though he had spent much of his life in travelling, he never knew what poverty meant until he landed in Ireland. If such be the feeling of a German, it is almost needless to say that the impression is even stronger on an Englishman. Some parts, especially Ulster, are greatly in advance of others; but speaking of the country generally, the peasantry of Ireland, so far as the comforts of life are concerned, are nearly at the bottom of the scale of European civilization. Their dress is ragged in the extreme; their cabins mean and dirty; and their diet always poor in quality, and in quantity not seldom insufficient. Yet they are not always in reality in that abject plight in which hasty observers naturally enough suppose them. Unless when suffering from absolute hunger and want of shelter, the body continues strong and the mind undepressed. Under the most patched accoutrements in which he may walk about, or within the most miserable hovel in which he may rest his limbs at night, there still lies concealed the man, not torpid and wasted, but with all his faculties full and fresh about him, and showing, by his inquisitive and communicative disposition, that they are ready at the first favourable moment to be called into active operation. That they are sprung from the same stock with the Celtic inhabitants of Scotland is now universally admitted. Even though history did not attest the fact, their appearance, language, and a thousand nameless peculiarities, obvious to the eye, but almost impossible to be communicated by description, incontestably evince them to bear a much closer affinity to their Scottish than their English neighbours. How then has it happened, that two races, once in all respects so germane, should, in process of time, have come to present a national character and frame of society so strongly contrasted to each other? A recapi tulation of the chief points in Irish history may throw some light on this very interesting question. We begin this summary at the commencement of the connexion between Ireland and England under Henry II. It is useless to go farther back. The legendary tales of the arrival of Phoenician and Spanish colonies, the endless quarrels of petty kings or chiefs, and the traditions about the early learning and sanctity of the island, may amuse the idle and attract the credulous, but can contribute little to refine the taste or enlarge the understanding. understanding. The little we know with certainty of ancient Irish laws and customs only shows more clearly, how deep the foundations were laid of those broils and divisions by which, from time immemorial, the country has been distracted. The Brehon law, or law of tanistry, bestowed the vacant chieftainry of a sept, not on the eldest son, but on the person who might be elected by the whole sept as most worthy; and the lands of the sept, not conferred upon the chief, were, upon the death of any of the sept, thrown together, and divided anew among the whole of its then existing members. So impolitic a law never could have been generally observed; but, had it been contrived for the express purpose of perpetuating discord, it could not have been more effectual. Fostering and gossipred, those bonds which in Ireland attached foster-brothers and godsons and godfathers to one another, and so invariably induced them to adopt each other's feuds and friendships, greatly aggravated the preceding evil. It was the blind and implacable fury with which one of these quarrels was prosecuted, which led to the arrival of the English in the reign of Henry. That crafty and ambitious prince obtained a bull from Pope Adrian II., in 1159, fully authorizing him to enter that island, and execute therein whatever should pertain to the honour of God and welfare of the land ;' and commanding that the people of that land should receive him honourably and reverence him as their lord.'* Henry was subsequently solicited for assistance by Dermod Macmuragh, prince of Leinster, in 1167; but being then fully occupied in France, he gave Dermod a letter, inviting all his subjects to give him encouragement and assistance. In 1170, Fitzstephen, Fitzgerald, (the founder of the family of Desmond with its numerous branches,) and the other Welsh auxiliaries, to the number of three hundred, with little or no aid from Henry, first established at Wexford that authority which afterwards extended over all the island. Unwarrantable as this intrusion of Henry was, it is puerile to try to distinguish it, at this day, from any other successful conquest or usurpation which history has recorded. The right was in substance the same with that by which William I. overthrew the Saxon dynasty in England about a hundred years before; and by which the AngloSaxons, at an earlier period, had dispossessed the preceding rulers of that country. Subsequently to his invasion, Henry's title received all the additional confirmation which the case allowed; for the Irish people solemnly and successively submitted to Henry, John, Richard II., and to Sir Anthony St. Leger, the deputy of Henry VIII. A circumstance far more prejudicial to Ireland than the *Leland's Hist. of Ireland, vol. i. p. 9. English English invasion, was the enormous extent of the grants made by the English princes to their favourites and partizans, from the time of Henry to the end of the reign of Elizabeth. Henry granted nearly the whole of the island to ten men :-viz. Earl Strongbow, Fitzstephen, Cogan, Bruce, De Lacy, De Courcy, De Burg or Burke, Clare, Grandison, and Le Poer,* all of them well known in the succeeding troubles of the country. The same system was continued by succeeding princes, as forfeiture or failure of children afforded the means, and in the huge tracts of land thus bestowed upon a few powerful absentee nobles, originated an evil from which Ireland has not to this day been completely delivered. It would be tedious to trace the vicissitudes which the English settlement underwent, during the three centuries and a half which elapsed from this period to the time of the Reformation. It was an incessant and doubtful struggle for existence. On various emergencies it was only saved from destruction by that want of counsel and combination on the one hand, and that incurable proneness to discord on the other, which have in all ages so unaccountably characterized the Irish people. The clans and their chiefs were either secretly at variance or in open war with one another. The obedience of the septs to their leaders was imperfect, and the subordination of the leaders among each other was never regularly defined. To increase this confusion still further, Ireland never possessed any permanent or recognised royal race, whose power or influence could have settled those disputes which prevailed between different clans or confederacies, or repressed the depredations which were their necessary consequence. Though the English power was thus saved from destruction, little was done for its consolidation. Several able deputies were appointed, but they either died or were recalled shortly. The force employed was invariably inadequate, and forced contributions under the names of coyne and livery, coshering, cessings, and cuttings, all of them of native origin, and all burdensome and illegal, never ceased to be exacted. The extension of the English law to the native inhabitants, though repeatedly requested, was injuriously and unjustly withheld. The duties of allegiance and protection are reciprocal, and when the kings of England added the title of lords of Ireland to their other honours, it behoved them to labour diligently and faithfully to promote the security and prosperity of their new subjects. This obligation was shamefully neglected or forgotten. During upwards of four centuries, Ireland was visited by only three sovereigns, Henry II., John, and Richard II., and neither in their days, nor in those of any of the intermediate or succeeding monarchs, did its complete reduction and settlement *Davies, p. 180. Ibid., p. 134. engage |