This brings us to the great concluding Act of Emancipation in 1829, which the Catholics had so often assured their Protestant fellow-subjects was the whole end and object of their warmest wishes. No incapacity can be named, to which any reasonable Catholic can now make any objection. He is eligible to all offices under the crown, civil and military, except those of Lord Chancellor, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, and Lord High Commissioner to the Church of Scotland. The whole penal laws have been swept away, and all restrictions upon the trade of Ireland have been removed. The British market is open to every kind of Irish produce; there are no assessed taxes in Ireland-and articles of British or foreign produce consumed in Ireland, either pay no taxes at all, or taxes considerably lower than those to which they are subject in the sister island. No man, of whatever creed or party, will venture to say that any English interest in opposition to the Irish is now encouraged at the Castle:―more than two-thirds of the business of every session is devoted to the real or pretended business of Ireland; the most sincere and anxious desire is manifested by both English and Scottish members to promote its interests; and large sums of public money are annually voted for the improvement of its manufactures, harbours, roads, bridges, roads, and rivers.

In consequence of all these acts of kindness and consideration has agitation either ceased or slackened? Not for a moment. defiance of one of the express provisions of the Act of 1829, several of the Catholic bishops have, in open published documents, to say nothing of social life and clerical functions, assumed and blazoned their titular dignity; and in contravention of the distinctly explained and avowed intent, if not of the letter of another of its enactments, Roman Catholic members of the House of Commons immediately asserted their right of voting upon all questions affecting the present Church establishment. The Act itself had scarcely received the royal assent, when the Romanists insultingly intimated that the favour had come too late; that no gratitude was due for what their power and position had extorted; and complaints of the misgovernment and oppression of England are still wafted on the wings of every gale that blows from Ireland. The House of Commons is year after year converted into a committee-room for the promotion of Romish discontent. Its tone is insensibly lowered, the character of the country injured abroad, and its business impeded at home, by a style of conversation and debate, to which until of late it had been wholly unaccustomed. Is there to be no end of this ceaseless and unmeaning clamour? Why has not Mr. O'Connell, who, like Hotspur's starling, speaking nothing but Mortimer, scarcely utters

any sound in or out of parliament but justice for Ireland-why has he not been formally called upon to make out a specific list of the grievances he affects to be lamenting? The substantial justice which Ireland has long required was ten years' subjection to martial law under such an officer as Cromwell, whose strictness and impartiality would have thoroughly habituated the country to peace and good order. A course of discipline of this sort would put an end to the murders of Tipperary, and the turbulence of Fathers M'Hale, Kehoe, and Maher for ever. It has long been the misfortune of Ireland to have institutions forced upon it, in imitation of those of England, for which it was obviously unfit. The justice which Mr. O'Connell and his followers want is of a very different sort. The real purpose of the justice which they are invoking never was more truly or forcibly expressed than in the following words of one of the most distinguished statesmen of his age or country :

'If government,' said Lord Clare, is to yield to the claims of the Popish subjects of this country, to be admitted to political power on the ground of right, I desire to know where we are to make a stand? Religion is the great bond of society, and, therefore, in every country there must be a religion connected with the state, and maintained by it against all attacks and encroachments; and therefore I deny the right of any man who dissents from the religion established by the state to demand admission into the state, upon which alone the established religion can rest for support. Should parliament once admit the claims of Irish Papists to political power on the ground of right, I desire to know where we are to draw a line? If Papists have a right to sit in parliament, they have a right to fill every office in the statethey have a right to pay tithes exclusively to their own clergy-they have a right to restore the pomp and splendour of their religion-they have a right to be governed exclusively by the laws of their own church -they have a right to seat their bishops in the House of Lords-they have a right to seat a Popish prince on the throne-they have a right to subvert the established government, and to make this a Popish country, which I have little doubt is their ultimate object.'

These remarkable words, which were uttered in the Irish House of Lords not very long before the rebellion broke out in 1798, are as characteristic of Romish agitators of every class and denomination in 1836, as they were of the Society of United Irishmen, to whom Lord Clare applied them. The commotion and excitement which has disturbed and perverted Ireland for almost the whole of the intervening period has at last acquired a degree of force and extension which must speedily either increase or diminish. In the latter case, the mass of the Roman Catholics tired with the length and violence of their own exertions, and calmed and enlightened by the spread of religious truth, will burst

the

the bonds by which they have hitherto been enthralled, and priests and agitators will sink back into their proper place together. This is the course which all wise and good men would wish events to take, and such an alternative is by no means hopeless. On the other hand, let the agitation which now prevails be pushed but a little farther, and then that formidable conflict between the Reformed and Roman Churches will begin, for which so many concurrent circumstances have been making preparation. None but those who have closely attended to the subject can fully comprehend the irreconcileable differences which exist between them. Philosophers and statesmen may depend upon it, that every attempt to effect a compromise between them, and to make them co-operate in the work of education, or co-exist as national establishments, will finally prove abortive. Among those who are warmly attached to the principles of the Reformation, which we believe the great body of Protestants of all ranks and in all parts of the kingdom to be, every proposal made in favour of the Roman Catholic Church will create permanent distrust and dissatisfaction, as going too far; while it will with equal certainty fail to conciliate the Catholics, as not going far enough. It is our belief that concession has gone too far already. We well know the difficulties with which the whole of this subject is surrounded-but a stand must be made somewhere; and if parliament and the government were temperately to intimate their determination of being braved and browbeaten no longer, we are persuaded the Roman Catholics would speedily be brought to reason. If this be not done, poiut after point will be given up to no purpose, and their demands will rise, as the means of concession become exhausted. At first their alleged rights were respectfully solicited: now they are extorted; and at last they will be proclaimed in the shout of rebellion. Whether the promoters of the movement ever have, or have not, taken a calm and comprehensive survey of the consequences which must attend the catastrophe they are urging forward-if that movement be prolonged but a few years longer, it will inevitably terminate in the entire extinction of the power and prospects of the Irish Catholics, or the dismemberment of the British empire,

ᎪᎡᎢ,

ART. VI. Journal of the Arctic Land Expedition to the Mouth of the Great Fish River, and along the Shores of the Arctic Ocean, in the Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. By Captain Back, R.N. Commander of the Expedition. 1 vol. 8vo. London, Murray. Paris, Galignani. Brussels, Pratt & Barry. Leipsig, Black & Armstrong. Frankfort, Jügel. Philadelphia, Carey & Hart. 1836.

THIS is an honest book-the production of a plain, straightforward, veracious traveller-and that is saying a great deal. If Captain Back be not known to the reading world as an author, his name, at least, is familiar to all who have taken any interest in the northern expeditions of Franklin and Richardson, of whose perilous adventures he was the constant sharer and unflinching companion. In the course of these enterprises he distinguished himself on two occasions, the object being that of extending the geography of the sea-coast of the arctic regions of North America, and of confirming the accounts given by Hearne and Mackenzie, the first travellers who had reached these shores; and at the same time to endeavour to ascertain the continuity or otherwise of a water-communication between Behring's Strait and Hudson's Bay. There is nothing perhaps on record more truly affecting than the simple and unadorned tale told by Sir John Franklin of the almost unparalleled sufferings which he and his companions were doomed to undergo from the fatigue of travelling hundreds of miles amidst frost and snow-storms, without shelter, without fire, and without food; so nearly at one time reduced to a state of absolute starvation, as to be driven to the last resource of devouring their own shoes and leather gun-cases, rendered somewhat perhaps more palatable by the addition of a miserably bitter lichen which they picked off the rocks. We advert to these adventures now to show that Captain Back, in voluntarily undertaking the one here recorded, was fully aware of the dangers, the privations, and the hardships which it was all but certain it would be his lot again to suffer. It was with such a prospect before his eyes, that on hearing, when in Italy, in the year 1832, that the fate of Ross and his companions still remained uncertain, he hastened to England, with the intention of offering his services to government to conduct an expedition in search of them. He arrived here at the moment when such an expedition was in preparation; and it is almost unnecessary to add that the volunteer services of Captain (then Commander) Back were joyfully accepted.

After the accounts we have formerly given of the expeditions under Sir John Franklin and Dr. Richardson in the northern re

gions of America, it would be idle in us to enter into a particular description of the incidents in Captain Back's. In his own nervous and picturesque narrative, the details of even the first part of his travels are most interesting: the best analysis we could afford would seem a mere repetition.

Captain Back left London on the 17th February, 1833, accompanied by Mr. King, a surgeon, and three men, two of whom had gained experience under Sir John Franklin. At New York they received every possible attention and hospitality; and a steamvessel was offered for their conveyance to Albany. Nothing could exceed the kindness and exertions of Governor Simpson and all the servants of the Hudson's Bay Company. A sufficient number of voyageurs were procured at La Chine; and Captain Back was ready to leave Norway House on the 28th June with sixteen persons, consisting of steersmen, carpenters, artillery-men, fishermen, and voyageurs, to whom were afterwards added nine others. This,' says the Captain, was a happy day for me; and as the canoe pushed off from the bank, my heart swelled with hope and joy. Now, for the first time, I saw myself in a condition to verify the kind anticipations of my friends. The preliminary difficulties had been overcome: I was fairly on the way to the accomplishment of the benevolent errand on which I had been commissioned; and the contemplation of an object so worthy of all exertion, in which I thought myself at length free to indulge, raised my spirits to a more than ordinary pitch of excitement.'-p. 57.

At Pine Portage he met with Mr. M'Leod, one of the Hudson's Bay Company's servants, and though this gentleman was on his way to Canada for the re-establishment of his health, no sooner did he learn the humane object of the mission, than he determined at once to sacrifice his own plans to the pleasure of becoming the companion of Back; by which disinterested act, six personsMr. McLeod, his wife, three children, and a servant-were added to the eight, who with their baggage had already pretty well filled the single canoe. This, however, it appears, was nothing unusual, and not to be compared with the compact way in which the Indians stow themselves. A whole fleet of their canoes was met on the Slave River descending from the Great Slave Lake: the description of one of them is as follows :

'It was small even for a canoe; and how eight men, women, and children contrived to stow away their legs in a space not more than large enough for three Europeans, would have been a puzzling problem to one unacquainted with the suppleness of an Indian's unbandaged limbs. There, however, they were, in a temperature of 66°, packed heads and tails, like Yarmouth herrings-half naked-their hair in elf-locks, long and matted-filthy beyond description-and all squalling together. To complete the picture, their dogs, scarce

one