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wherever they may-if they want to buy the best linens and the finest muslins. There is no reason why Cork, the representative city of Munster, should not be equally prosperous with Belfast, the capital of Ulster: at least there can be no legislative reason. The latter began the world with nothing: the former with a fortune in the finest harbour of Europe. The one had to make averything for itself: the other had a business half made. And Cork keeps crying out for national ships to enliven its port; while Belfast builds ships for itself, and could not give berths to idle craft, unless they lay to be stared at a few miles from its harbour. Belfast, and the country that backs it, make a great fact for the Union, and answer many arguments.

The sentimentality of nationalism is very good; so also is that of "countyism;" but the people of Yorkshire would spoil a good idea by insisting on a native parliament meeting in York, with the power of levying taxes and making peace or war.

in morals, the greater security for life to be gained; or even the economy of living to be practised, in these countries.-In page 113, we are told that Ireland should have, at least, one royal dockyard; and the best arguments are adduced to support the proposal. Royal dockyards should not be distributed on a geographical scale; but because Ireland furnishes the best ports of departure, it should have a royal dockyard, not on account of its being Ireland; but for the general interest. The writer concedes, in the same page, that the United Parliament might pass these measures; and will pass them, we may add, if they are vigorously sought. At page 114, he varies his arguments, or puts them in the form of answers to objections against his favourite scheme. The first objection quoted by him is a valid one :-" Repeal would destroy the unity of the Empire," especially with the conditions on which he seeks that measure. The second objection which he enumerates and resists is, "that it would give encouragement and opportunity to foreign invasion and domestic rebellion." The two objections may be put into one, as the second is mainly a consequence of the first. After recording other five objections that may be made, the writer refers to those most unhappy calamities in the present state of Ireland that really have no connexion with the subject under discussion. The potato disease could not have been prevented by a Dublin Parliament. The pest that withered by its invisible touch the fruits of our fields was not produced by men's legislation. The destroying Angel had nothing to fear from the presence of an aristocracy. The powers and principalities of earth were weak before his strength. He might have crushed armies and senates, as he blasted the food of man and beast. The judgment was irresistible, and by no imaginable course of inference can be traced to the Union. But, then, Mr. O'Connell reasons on the ground that this Union has reduced the people of Ireland to such a state of poverty, as leaves them entirely dependent on potatoes for their daily food. He reasons apparently in forgetfulness of the fact that the French people, in many departments, are equally destitute; and that the suffering of the Belgians is even more intense, if that be possible, than the wants of the Irish people ; although both Belgians and French have a Parliament, a capital, a flag, and even a sovereign, for their especial benefit.

We do not consider the reclamation of waste lands so trivial an affair as it is said to be, at page 112; for will it not add, even on a contracted scale, homes for a million of people, and property worth eight or ten millions yearly to the country? We cannot regard that as an insignificant matter; and, while we are told that the reclamation of waste land would only afford an interval of rest, yet "a breathing time" of fifteen or twenty years is not to be altogether sneered at. Twenty years will leave little over in the active life of the present generation; and it will be something to secure labour, food, homes, and a property, for the now existing people of Ireland. Poor-laws are an indirect mode of reaching the same end. Out-of-door relief to able-bodied men is a penalty on property for looking only to its rights and neglecting its duties; and a well-ordered system of poor-laws is valuable, not only as a relief, but a preventive of pauperism. Absenteeism is one of the greatest evils of Ireland; but we could make up a long list of absentee proprietors in Scotland; and though we press forward without them, yet the drain of money is disadvantageous. This argument would have more weight if the fascinations of a Dublin parliament could be more attractive than those of London; for the Irish absentees are generally to be found out of the empire-in France, at Naples, or Florence, or Rome; in any place but where their duties are. An absentee tax to meet local purposes-to We are not surprised that the strongest intelpay poor-rates, and county rates: a permanent lects should be bewildered in the present state of labour act, applicable to those alone who neglect Ireland. Famine and fever render the cool distheir country and their business, is the remedy cussion of social and political grievances entirely for voluntary banishment. The argument of the impossible. How can any man see the wan face preceding pages on this head would be more of poverty grow into the "waner" face of famine, powerful, if the Irish absentees were all to be and be sharpened and lengthened into the cold found in London or in England; but one-half of features of death-death from hunger-and write them cannot be caught there. They do not stop or speak quietly of the cause? No man could at London, and would not be arrested in their stand by and witness the uncoffined dead hurried erratic flights by Dublin. The majority of Irish into their shallow graves, and barely covered, absentees are to be met in France or in Italy; scarce decently covered by the turf above their not certainly on account of the superiority | heads, yet feel as he might have felt when no

visible or extraordinary judgment was on his land, Still it is perfectly vain to call this sorrow the handywork of any legislators—either those of England, of Belgium, or of France. A legislature may do much to mitigate famine; it may induce habits of forethought to meet famine; it may remove all barriers to the means of supplying local necessities; it may withdraw all impediments to popular prosperity; it' may even from the general stock, as in the present instance, supply more or less efficiently the lost fruits of individual labour; it may be mistaken in its measures of relief; but no legislature can be, and none should be, charged with a famine as its handywork, for of all imaginable calamities legislatures have necessarily the greatest dread of famine. Indirectly their laws may induce a state of society most susceptible of such visitations; but this can be only indirectly, and Mr. O'Connell does not name those now existing laws that can be implicated in an indirect way as a cause not of the famine, but of the unpreparedness to meet loss and suffering.

extremely injurious and inconvenient. The experience hitherto obtained of such unions does not warrant us to seek an experiment of the same kind again; for undoubtedly one state in such circumstances must be more or less subservient to the other. There is a direct acknowledgment of this fact in the remainder of the paper; which is occupied in the discussion of the third objection, another consequence of the first, or, strictly, another mode of stating the first; namely, that "harmonious action could not be expected to exist between two distinct and mutually independent legislatures in the same empire." On one of the questions which might possibly arise between two such legislatures, Mr. O'Connell promises, for Ireland, to resign any claim to choice or selection. The matter is the most delicate that could be raised. He stipulates, for Ireland, that the sovereign de jure there shall be whoever is monarch de facto in Britain. The stipulation is useless, because no man, and no body of men, have any right to make bargains for posterity. The Ireland of 1947 is not likely to consider itself bound by the compacts of this present Ireland of 1847. The proposal is not merely useless, but unjust. If practical, it would destroy that sentiment of nationality on which so much value is placed. It might make Ireland the helpless doer of a great crime; for it binds her to reject the unfortunate— not because they are wrong, but because they are unsuccessful. To a suffering monarch Ireland might be obliged to say, Your claim is the bestyour loss we deplore; but we must refuse the crown you seek, and the asylum you need, because who

by right, govern Ireland. The arrangement would overset all sense of moral right or wrong, for it would make that absolutely right in Ireland which was wrong but successful in Britain.

In page 115, the argument is again resumed; and we are reminded that “a unity of Parliaments" is not necessarily "a unity of empire;" and that the former existed "while the Irish Parliament was independent." The Irish Parliament has certainly not been independent for several centuries-never, indeed, since the days of Henry's invasion. The Parliament to which Mr. O'Connell refers was dependent on England; for we care nothing for a theoretical independence, if accompanied by practical thraldom. The members of that Parliament, even the Hiberni-ever governs Britain, by right or by wrong, must, ores Hibernices, were in Ireland, without identifying themselves with the majority of its people. Even the reformers of that Parliament, who assembled at Dungannon, and passed a celebrated string of resolutions, desired to rule through the ministry alone. No individual acquainted with Irish history will venture to call the acts of that Parliament forward as any evidence of the shape which the acts of an Irish Parliament would now assume; and at the same time anticipate respect for the argument from other parties equally well acquainted with the history of the country; unless he be prepared to restore, so far as possible, the state of society, the mode of elections, and the qualifications of the elected, as they existed in the period quoted, from 1792 to 1800, and previously. The argument, therefore, built on this statement, disappears on the slightest investigation. The Parliament was not independent-it afforded no representation of the people-and it neither could nor should be restored. This remark carries as down to the second column of the 116th page, leaving the two objections, Nos. 1 and 2, such as they are, untouched. We do not say that the two kingdoms might not remain united under the same crown, as England and Scotland were united at a distant, and Britain and Hanover at a more recent, period; but we cannot suppose the existence of two independent actions without such differences as must prove

The only other subject mentioned in the yet unfinished argument is "free trade." We know not whether free trade be now the rule of the Repealers, but it was not so always, nor when a protective tax, to be levied on British manufactures, was one of the grand measures spoken of as likely to follow Repeal. How otherwise, indeed, would that measure materially or immediately benefit Irish manufactures? So far as the absentees resident in Britain are concerned, if the Irish could now produce goods under the British price, they would buy them. An English shopkeeper buys his goods at the market where he expects to find the best and cheapest. Irish shopkeepers follow the same rule; and if all the Irish aristocracy were resident in Dublin, the sole advantage gained by the Irish manufacturer would be a very trifling difference in carriage, unless his trade were fictitiously supported, in a sickly growth, by protective duties at the public cost. We freely admit that absenteeism extended to the Continent, or wherever duties are levied on the importation of Irish goods, is a different matter; but the allurements of Dublin would fail to keep persons at home who cannot be stopped by the attractions of London. Another evil springs from an habitual absenteeism-in the neglect of local interests and

improvements; but, for an estate in Donegall or Galway, it matters not whether "the runaway" be in Dublin or London, as in either case he is out of reach.

The paper, on which our notes extend farther than we anticipated, is divided into two parts. The first contains a list of measures that may be carried in the Imperial Parliament; and would be adopted, we believe, by an Irish Parliament. These are the reclamation of waste lands-an improved poor-law-an absentee tax-an addition to the elective franchise-a better division of constituencies, a measure not more necessary for Ireland than for England, as London, for example, has a smaller proportionate representation than all Ireland-and the establishment of a Royal Naval Yard in Ireland, the latter being recommended strongly by considerations of imperial policy. All these measures can be carried in the United Parliament. Only two even involve organic change; and if they were passed it is evident that the inducement to agitate this great question would be reduced.

Free trade in land is everywhere a necessity; but in Ireland it has become an essential to existence. Land is the peasant's bread-his children's life. This fact, renders the struggle for its occupancy so incessant, arms the mid-day assassin, and converts often a naturally kind and gentle-hearted peasantry into the shelterers of the murderer, and the abettors of his crime.

A few weeks since, a considerable portion of the Earl of Blessington's estates was sold in lots. They were divided and bought in compact divisions by gentlemen, who extended their purchases to sums varying from ten to twenty and twenty-five thousand pounds each; and at prices nearly equal to thirty years' purchase. Some of the buyers were men who have realised by industry in their business considerable sums of money, even in Ireland. There is clearly still some profitable business doing here notwithstanding the Union. They are men-some of them, we know-who will improve the land, deal justly and humanely with their tenantry; and the change will be a happy one in many districts, because the tenants will have practical men of business to counsel, direct, and assist them, instead of an agent cramped by his instructions, and unable, probably, to act in the way that he thought most advisable. Any process that would convert the holders of mortgages into the holders of land would produce the happiest results for Ireland.

We have given a number of pages to this discussion, because it intimately concerns the pros

The second part of the paper is occupied with answers to objections, which have not been stated in their full force, because we are not attempting to debate a question, but to ascertain the grounds adduced in favour of this measure, which has engaged so much attention, and occupied so much time. We have dealt respectfully with the answers to these objections, and we think them insufficient. There are measures even more necessary for the improvement of Ireland than any of those mentioned in the preced-perity of the empire. The wounds of Ireland ing pages. A large portion of its surface is entailed, and in consequence under-cultivated. The abolition of these entails would enable proprietors to sell their mortgaged lands to parties who would reside on and attend to their estate; while the present proprietors would be in more comfortable circumstances, with the balance of their property unencumbered, than in their existing position. Another, and a large section of the entailed land, belongs to great English families, and falls, with other family estates, to the representative of the title; but if these entails were abolished, the Irish estates would come to younger branches of these families, and in course of few years there would be many valuable additions made to the resident landowners of that country.

The shackles on land are felt in England less painfully than in Scotland, and, especially, than in Ireland; because there cultivation of land is not only the staple business, but, in three provinces, almost the exclusive trade of the people.

I.

must be closely traced and cured; for the sufferings of that country will react on the people of England and Scotland, absorbing all in one common wreck, if decisive measures be not adopted to prevent their continuance. We must raise Ireland, or consent to sink in its fall; and, if our advice had any weight with those gentlemen who have great influence with numerous classes of their countrymen, we should urge them to press plain and practical measures on the Legislature-measures calculated to give the people an opportunity of securing food and clothing, and proper homes for themselves and their children; and, when these things are accomplished, we can talk of the poetry of nationalism with comfort and at leisure; for, so far as yet appears, "the bread and cheese" part of the question can be rectified in the Imperial Parliament, if it were pressed firmly and vigorously. Let us get at dinner first, and we dispute concerning the dessert afterwards with far more comfort than now that millions are on the verge of starvation.

THE FAMINE-STRICKEN.

You great ones of the earth,
Whose halls each day ring out
With music and with mirth,
With revel and with rout;
Forgetful of the doom
That once on Dives fell-
His corse laid in the tomb,
His soul deep, deep in hell!

II.

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And still you dance and sing, eurem a sdi
And still your tables groan

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With all that wealth can bringen sila

From either distant zone;

Your gold and purple doff,

Ere yet it be too late;

Your revellings leave off,

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energy of the religious reform. The lights were extinguished in the windows, but the work was busily carried on within the house. Upon many an invisible forge, the armourer shaped the weapons with which the fight was to be fought in the following reign."

We preserve this extract for subsequent use. It is only with the fifth chapter that we get into Jeremy Taylor's life. He was born at Cambridge in 1615, and died at Lisburn, in Ireland, in 1667. Mr. Willmott says→→

THE works of Jeremy Taylor have had, perhaps, a wider | the external activity, without benumbing the internal range of readers than those of any divine of his age. Their character has tended to preserve for their author such respect as his actions, when he came into power, by no means deserved. Few men ever more successfully trampled on their own counsel than the celebrated author of "The Liberty of Prophesying," and few good men ever more abundantly tasted of adversity to profit so little by the draught. His biographer sees no shading in Taylor's character, or avows none in this small volume containing the story of his life, interspersed with many anecdotes of “Taylor's father was church-warden of his parish in his contemporaries. The preliminary chapters afford a 1621, and while discharging the humble duties of his calbrief sketch of the progress of the reformation in Eng-ling, seems not to have been indifferent to the cultivation land, written by one who seems to detest Geneva and Rome in equal proportions. Mr. Wilmott, after detailing the numerous obstacles which it was beginning to surmount, says

"The return of Roman tyranny under Mary silenced

of his mind." In the present day, the calling of a churchwarden is not so very "humble;" but probably Mr. Taylor, sen., had been merely beadle in the parish, and if so, the beadle's son contracted a singular alliance, for his second wife was the reputed daughter of one monarch,

A fact stated before the Mallow Relief Committee, some weeks ago, by a Protestant and a Roman Catholic clergyman, who, on entering the cabin, found the family in fever, brought on by famine. The mother was in the act of milking her breast, and distributing it amongst the children.

+By the Rev. Robert Aris Willmott. One voluume. London: J. W. Parker.

Charles the 1st, whose place in the calender of Saints is not tarnished by some circumstances of this nature; the sister of two English sovereigns; and the aunt of two of England's Queens. We are even told by Mr. Willmott, that Charles the 2nd made his humble brotherin-law Bishop of Dromore, in Ireland, probably because he feared that freedom which his relationship might have justified, and his opinions induced, the theologian to adopt in rebuking the crimes of this frivolous king. Taylor was educated in a bad school, for he was at one time Laud's chaplain, and subsequently to his obtaining the rectory of Uppingham, in Rutlandshire, he was appointed one of the chaplains to Charles the 1st. He married in 1639, in his twenty-third year, but his wife died before three years had elapsed. Shortly afterwards, on account of his adhesion to the king's party, whom he followed as chaplain at the commencement of the civil war, he lost the living of Uppingham. He married subsequently-at what date is not very evident, but posterior to 1644-the lady, who was understood to be so nearly allied to the stubborn and fallen monarch, and he resided on her property in Wales. But he was soon compelled, or induced, to turn schoolmaster; and, while in his Welsh retirement, he published his work on "The Liberty of Prophesying," with no sincere intention, it appears, but really out of an evil design :

course.

"In the same year in which the Grammar was published, Taylor produced his Liberty of Prophesying, written, as he informed Lord Hatton, in poverty and tribulation, without books or leisure to consult them. This was the work that Coleridge read with the highest admiration and the liveliest apprehension. He saw in it all the confluent powers of the author, swelling the majestic stream of genius, as it rolled onward in its diversified and winding The avowed object of the treatise was to plead the cause of the persecuted Church of England. Hallam rejects this interpretation. He denies that the reader can perceive in it the slightest bearing on any toleration that the Episcopal Church might then ask of her victorious enemies. He believes Taylor to have had another class of controversies in his eye. Hallam may, perhaps, refer to a remark of Wood, who tells us that Taylor employed a stratagem to break the compact force of the Presbyterian power, by sowing seeds of division among the various sectaries; that, with this view, he lay in ambuscade.' That he wrote, also, with an indirect reference to the leaders of his own party, is not improbable. Heber has ingeniously shown, that the circumstances of the time encouraged a hope of a peaceful adjustment of political differences. The King was in the keeping of Cromwell, and the use of the Prayer Book was permitted; the army had assumed an attitude of hostility towards the Parliament; and the Independents were assailing the Presbyterians with virulence equal to their own. The early stages of seditious intemperance had not yet been inflamed into frenzy. Hall was only just driven from Norwich. It is quite in harmony with the disposition of Tayler to suppose, that he may have been desirous to impress upon the monarch and his advisers among the high church party, the paramount importance of meeting the demands of the Presbyterians in a conciliatory and liberal temper. Of the book itself, I shall have another opportunity of speaking. Its plan is extremely simple. Considering the Apostles' creed to contain the elements of Christian truth, he regards every subsidiary doctrine as indifferent and dispensable. From this principle the argument spreads on every side into the luxuriant amplitude of learning and illustration which, while it beautifies so often overshades the vigour and massiveness of his teaching."

Some time afterwards, he was offered Golden Grove, in South Wales, as a residence, by Lord Carberry, and

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there he wrote his justly celebrated work, "Holy Living and Dying." Mr. Willmott becomes quite enthusiastic in his description of Golden Grove, of which he says :—

"It was singularly happy in its combination of woody
The Towy flowed
and pastoral fertility and repose.
through the grounds. Bonney gives a pleasing descrip-
tion of the place. Embracing the rich sweep of the val-
ley from Carmarthen to Llandovery; Gronger Hill, about
a mile and a-half to the north-west, is a prominent fes-
ture in the landscape. The whole scene lives in the pa-
norama of Dyer, with its streams, trees, and ruined castles.
Of these Dynevor, once the residence of the Welsh princes,
and Dryslwyn, are visible from the windows of the pre-
sent mansion. Dyer has not forgotten to notice the ex-
quisite variety of foliage for which the vale of Towy is re-
markable.

"Below the trees unnumbered rise,
Beautiful in various dyes,

The gloomy pine, the poplar blue,
The yellow beech, the sable yew:
The slender fir that taper grows,

The sturdy oak with broad spread boughs,"

He ascribes Taylor's style to the splendour of the scenery in South Wales, where he passed, though in adversity, many pleasant days :---

"His writings at Golden Grove contain lovelier and more numerous specimens of rural description and picturesque embellishment, than could be gathered from his collective works. A beautiful example occurs in his argument to show how sickness is sanctified by the grace

of God.

"For so have I known the boisterous north wind pass through the yielding air which opened its bosom, and appeased its violence, by entertaining it with easy compliance in all the regions of its reception. But when the same breath of heaven hath been checked with the stiffness of a tower, or the united strength of a wood, it grew mighty, and dwelt there, and made the highest branches stoop, and make a smooth path for it on the top of all its glories.'

"Pope's description of the trees round a monastery, waving high,' has always been esteemed for its vividness and truth; but it yields, in grandeur and force of painting, to the image of a mighty wood bending its multitude of boughs beneath the hurricane.

Touches of a lighter pencil also abound. The petulant solicitations of the passions in health are always restless and as atoms in the sun, always dancing and always busy.'

"Milton might have enriched a new Penseroso with the comparison of the soul's progress in moral and intellectual glory, to the course of the sun from its dawn till fulness.

But as when the sun, approaching towards the gates of the morning, first opens a little eye of heaven, and sends away the spirits of darkness, and gives light to a cock, and calls up the lark to matins, and by and by gilds the fringes of a cloud, and peeps over the eastern hills, thrusting out his golden horns, like those which decked the brows of Moses, when he was forced to wear a veil, because himself had seen the face of God: and still, while a man tells the story, the sun gets up higher, till he shows a fair face, and a full light, and then he shines one whole day, under a cloud often, sometimes weeping great and little showers, and sets quickly: so is a man's reason and his life. Taylor may have beheld this spectacle over the romantic hills that shelter Golden Grove on the north-east. The concluding circumstance shows this picture to have been composed in a fertile, yet hilly country, like South Wales; this sudden darkening of the sun with rain and tempest being the distinguishing peculiarity of mountainous regions. The change from splendour and joyfulness to vapours and melancholy, is often so wonderful as to resemble the effect of enchantment. The wind rises— mists roll up swiftly from the valleys-thunder roars along the ravines-the summits recede in smoke-and all the many-coloured landscape disappears, to return, after an interval, with heightened splendour. The light and festive Gay was the earliest English writer who pointed out the charm of this description. If compared with a

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