UNIVERSITY MAGAZINE

A

Literary and Political Journal.

VOL. XVI.

JULY TO DECEMBER.

1840.

NCT :3 1377
NEW-YOR

DUBLIN:

WILLIAM CURRY, JUN. AND COMPANY,

W. S. ORR AND COMPANY, LONDON.

DUBLIN:

PRINTED BY JOHN S. FOLDS,

5, Bachelor's-Walk.

IRELAND has, for seven centuries, pre-
sented the spectacle of two nations
existing in one kingdom. Unlike the
Gauls and Franks in France, or the
Saxons and Normans in England, or
the Picts and Celts in Scotland, it
would seem as if there was or could
be no cementing of such discordant
particles as ours. No more than the
iron and the clay in the feet of the pro-
phet's image, could they coalesce so as
to form any thing that was stable.
is not for us here to explain this
difficulty of fusion. All we desire

It

to say is, that towards the close of the last century the two races remained still distinct-still strongly characterized by features which, though exceedingly unlike, yet were, in their respective aspects, exceedingly deformed-the one, a self-sufficient, overbearing, but sometimes a generoust

FITZGERALD.

race, that had grown secure, if not strong, under the operation of the penal laws the other, one just awakening from a torpor-the effect of a heavy blow-under which it had lain for three quarters of a century, prostrate yet, but now just feeling as if it had the right, and strength, and would soon acquire the power to assume equality, and, in due time, predominance. To both nations -for as separate we must behold them -the penal laws, like all vicious and unwise enactments, were most injurious

reacting on the oppressor and the oppressed-producing characteristics that have survived the enactments that gave them birth, and of which the unhappy effects are to be seen and felt at this day. They made the Protestants insolent, factious, corrupt and improvident-so secure and self-sufficient as

Connaught Legends. By the Author of "Connaught in 1798." 8vo. Dublin: 1839. The assumption that one human being possessing power may inflict penalties on another, because differing in religious sentiment, being learned and borrowed from the Church of Rome, was, when resorted to on a principle of retaliation by Protestants, never carried out into unmitigated operation. Unlike the exterminating severity exercised in France and Spain, where public opinion was found backing the law, and carrying all its strongest enforcements into effect; in Ireland the Protestants, content with seeing that the Roman Catholics were excluded from political power, took no care to enforce penalties affecting persons or property. Neither priests nor schoolmasters were, as they might be, informed against and banished; nor were the Romanists jealously, as they might be, debarred from the acquisition or retention of property. In this way very many properties were vested in trust with the Protestant gentry for the benefit of their Roman Catholic neighbours, and it was a singular thing, and universally scouted at, when a Protestant took advantage of the law, and proved a traitor to his point of honour. The fact is, that while penal laws enforced by Romanism did their work effectually, and drove Protestantism out of popish lands, they were com paratively inoperative in Ireland, and Roman Catholics increased in numbers and in property, in a proportion, perhaps, not equalled since the disabilities were removed.

VOL. XVI.

B