Puslapio vaizdai
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"Och one! och one! och one!' cried the beggar-man. "Spare me,' said Snapper, and I'll swear-oh, I'll make every amends, every amends, all amends. I'll swear, I'll swear. spare me!'

Oh,

"The rebel deliberately, and fastly, too, tied Shaun and Snapper together, and just as deliberately tied them both to the grate. He then quietly-even slowly, it was so quietly-he quenched all the lights the murderer seemed to have conceived some frightful thought. He would not shoot them perhaps he would beat out their brains, or cut their throats, or

"Snapper felt a knife at his neck!

"Humbly and fervently, though not loudly, he cried for 'mercy.' "Och one! och one!' repeated Shaun a Dherk. 'Silence! silence! like the grave of poor Brown,' said the stranger. 'Silence, like the empty cabins of the roadside,' he continued, or by the eternal you shan't get one minit longer.'

"Mr. Snapper shook from head to foot. He pushed closer to Shaun a Dherk, who still muttered his low Och one!'

"There was an awful silence. The heart of Mr. Joyce Snapper thumped so loudly at his breast, that it was audible through the whole room.

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Having engaged himself for some minute or two about the old desk, and muttered some other threats and curses, the assassin went down stairs. He was determined to be secure. The servants were first to die, or to be prevented from giving the alarm. What moments these were to Mr. Joyce Snapper and to Shaun a Dherk!

"However, five minutes passed, and no one was heard returning; ten minutes passed, no one came; a quarter of an hour, and steps were heard at a distance-a measured tread it was, and of more than one. Steadily, steadily, the steps approached the land-agent's house.

"A gleam of hope-he knew not why-shot into the soul of Mr. Joyce Snapper.

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At length the steps were heard on the walk, approaching the door; and then at the door, and then in the hall, and then on the stairs. There was scrambling, and tumbling, and cursing, in the burry; but Mr. Snapper recognized the voices of the police.

Hurra!' cried the land-agent. 'Hurra!' he cried again.

'Here! here!' he cried.

"God save the Queen!' cried Shaun a Dherk.

"Caps knocked against the door-frame, and bayonet scabbards against the door, and guns made frightful noise as they were 'grounded' on the floor; and during all that time Mr. Joyce Snapper was laughing-laughing immoderately. He was almost beside himself with joy-a thing not very surprising, we should think, considering the time he has had.

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Why, Mr. Snapper,' said the sergeant of police, 'here is dread

ful work indeed. Where are you? Johnston, will you strike a light? So! Thunders!' cried the sergeant, when he beheld the pair of captives. Thunders! but the rascals have left you in an awful pickle, sir.'

"There was no resisting the impulse to a simultaneous roar of laughter.

"Desk rifled!' said the corporal.

"Devil mend him!' said a private, in a side whisper to another, who answered, 'Amen!'

"Mean time Mr. Joyce Snapper was liberated, much to his comfort. He was so rejoiced, that for a moment he did not dream of his losses.

"Shaun a Dherk came beside him and gave him a nudge. "Let the polis folly him,' whispered Shaun.

"A hundred pounds for his capture!' cried Snapper."-pp.

141-153.

We need not say that Shaun secures the bond, and that the money taken by the burglar, a confederate of Shaun, is carried to young Shanahan, who is thereby enabled to pay his rent, and save his old father from being turned out in the street to die. The whole scene is peculiarly Irish, and one can hardly help sympathizing with Shaun in his wild way of doing justice. We would gladly make several more extracts, but our limits will not permit. Father Baptist, as in duty bound by his profession, condemns Ribbonism, but it is very clear that his heart is with Shaun a Dherk, and his book will make a hundred Shaun a Dherks to one it will convert to law and order. Will the reverend author permit us to remark that the evident sympathy with which he describes the Ribbon man and his doings, detracts much from the effect of his condemnation of Ribbonism? We may in our writings depict truthfully what we hold to be wrong, and suggest all the palliatives or excuses possible for those whose conduct we must disapprove, but to depict it with evident sympathy, and to enlist the judgment or the passions of our readers on its side, is not allowable, and we make but poor amends for the countenance we thus give to what is wrong, by a formal and professional condemnation of it at the end. Father Baptist enlists our sympathies with Shaun a Dherk, and gives us admirable reasons for defending him. When the law ceases to afford protection, when it is made by its administrators only an instrument of oppression, it ceases to bind in conscience; civil society is dissolved; men

thrown back under the law of nature, where every man becomes his own protector, and resumes the natural right of vindicating justice, and of doing whatever is not malum in se. On this principle alone can the Irish Ribbon men and our Vigilance Committees justify themselves. Now the question we ask Father Baptist, is, Is the state of things in Ireland such as to justify the appeal to this principle? If he says, yes, then why does he condemn Shaun a Dherk, and exclude him from the sacraments, solely because he resorts to it? If he says, no, does he do well to enlist his own and his readers' sympathies on his side? Is it wise to inflame our passions, work us up to a sort of madness, make us just ready to strike, and then come in with wise saws, and Gospel lectures, and tell us to forbear? Why work us up to a fit of mutiny, and then forbid us to mutiny, but exhort us to be patient and forgiving? Why bring the curse to our lips, and then tell us to bless? Is this treating us fairly? Either do not arouse our vindictive passions, or give them full swing. We do not say that the Reverend Father is wrong in condemning Shaun a Dherk, but he is wrong in our judgment, if he means to condemn him, in first justifying him, and enlisting all our human feelings in his support. It is not well to present nature and grace in opposition when we can help it, or to arm the passions against the authority of the priest. Authority should never create obstacles to itself, or enlist human nature unnecessarily against its commands.

There is here the great moral objection to a large portion, and that in general the better portion, of our popular literature. The author winds up usually with an admirable moral, but a moral in direct opposition to all the passions, feelings, and sympathies, his work during its perusal has excited. Now this moral tagged on to the end has seldom any power to counteract the mischief done before we reach it. Ailey Moore makes us curse the oppressors of Ireland, and we cannot read it without feeling that were we in Ireland, Shaun a Dherk should have in us a recruit, and one who would make war in every possible way to the death upon the base oppressors of Ireland's peasantry. We are maddened. We can hear nothing but one deep, coucentrated cry of vengeance, and in vain while in this state will the author, priest as he is, seek to hold us back. If

he means to manage me, to make me obey him, and follow his peace counsels, he should not first madden me, deprive me of all self-control, except in accordance with the master passion he has inflamed.

However, we can easily conceive that such books should have in Ireland far less influence in arousing vindictive passions than might at first sight be supposed. The daily reality is worse than any picture can represent it. The book is comparatively tame and feeble to those who suffer the things we only read of. The reading, no doubt, to them operates as an anodyne, and allays more than it arouses passion; and after all the concessions the author makes to lacerated feelings and the weakness of human nature, may even prepare his readers for the moral he would enforce. The author knows his countrymen better than we do, knows far better through what avenues to reach their hearts, and their understandings, and to make them love the Gospel, and yield to its blessed spirit, and we cannot doubt the purity or charity of his intentions.

We conclude our brief notice by recommending Ailey Moore to the public, and adding our voice to that of so many others in its praise. The author is, if we are not mistaken in his identity, one of the most active and zealous priests in Ireland,-one who is devoting himself day and night to the means of saving our young men, and making them feel that they can not only do something for themselves, but also something for the honor and glory of God in the prosperity of religion.

ART. V.-The Slavery Question once more.

WE have been told that our remarks on Slavery and the Incoming Administration in our Review for January last gave great offence to some of our readers, and we have found ourselves denounced in a Virginia Journal of note and influence as on the verge of Black Republicanism. We are not surprised at this, for partisans can rarely understand the position of one who holds himself independent of party, and who assumes the right to judge all parties.

Our views on slavery itself were given in The Boston Quarterly Review, for April, 1838, and were such as to secure us the friendship of the late John C. Calhoun, and of several of the more eminent statesmen of the slaveholding States. We are not aware of having changed our views on that subject since. We have never professed to admire slavery, or to wish its continuance; we have uniformly expressed ourselves as in opposition to it, wherever it is an open question, whether it shall exist or not. Thus we say to the South, January, 1841, "Slavery we cannot advocate, for we can see no affinity between slavery and Democracy. We shall undoubtedly speak out unquestioned, and unobstructed, in favor of universal freedom to universal man." "You must not think that we advocate slavery on principle, that we love the institution. There is not a Democrat north of Mason's and Dixon's line that does not loathe it, and believe it a crime against humanity. We refrain from meddling with it, simply because it is a matter which concerns States of which we are not citizens, because we can reach it by no constitutional action, and because we believe Liberty is more interested in preserving the Constitution, in maintaining State Rights, than in attempting the doubtful good of emancipating the slave without making any provision for him after his fetters are knocked off." Substantially the same views we have always expressed whenever we have alluded to the subject. We have maintained and still maintain that a man may hold slaves with a good conscience, in opposition to abolitionists who maintain that slavery is always and every where and under all circumstances a sin, but we have never approved it.

We have, ever since 1838, uniformly opposed,—no man more strenuously, whether efficiently or not, the whole abolition movement, on legal, moral, economical, and political grounds. Touching the question of slavery the several States are, in relation to one another, independent sovereignties, and must be regarded as so many independent foreign nations. New York has the same right to take cognizance of slavery in South Carolina that she has to take cognizance of any domestic institution of France or Great Britain, and no more; that is to say, no right

*Boston Quarterly Review, 1841, pp. 91, 92.

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