Mr.

fore, affords a very convenient loop-hole for present escape, as we have no hesitation whatever in saying, that were a Poor Law proposed in the House, and were the proposition aided by the weight of the Irish members, it would speedily become a law. The members of Government are well known to hold different opinions on the subject, but this is no time for sections of administrations to be impediments to the progress of any important national measure. What are the objections to Poor Laws for Ireland? Mr. Senior has said, that Poor Laws would divide Ireland into as many distinct countries as there are parishes, each peopled by a population ascripta glebæ; multiplying without forethought; impelled to labour principally by the fear of punishment; drawing allowance for their children, and throwing their parents on the parish; considering wages not a matter of contract, but of right; attributing every evit to the injustice of their superiors; and when their own idleness and improvidence has occasioned a fall of wages, avenging it by firing the dwellings, maiming the cattle, and murdering the persons of the landlords and overseers; combining, in short, the insubordination of the freeman with the sloth and recklessness of the slave." Senior has, however, copied his picture from Ireland as she is, and he has been faithful in his portrait: but why he should assume that this state of things would continue by the imposition of a moderate rate -by the judicious administration of relief-by the advent of capital when protected from violence-by the conversion of an unsettled and wandering people into a fixed body of labourers, we know not. If he draws his argument from the evil effects which have arisen from an injudicious application of the Relief Fund in England, during a period of unprecedented industrial changes, he argues from wrong premises. If we consider Poor Laws in the abstract, there are many reasons that might readily be brought to bear against their principle, but it is too late to talk of abstractions; the necessity for these laws has been generated by the changes in society-changes which have operated so unfavourably upon the labouring man, that his capital-that is, his labour-has at present no available field for its profitable employment. We cannot retrograde-we cannot go back to a period when home manufacture, agricultural prosperity, and the non-existence of steam power, made human labour the main-spring of national production, and when we consequently paid for its agency a remunerating price. We must go on, but in this progress we cannot leave the poor man behind us,-we must adapt ourselves to his joint fellowship. We acknowledge the necessity of a compulsory rate for the purpose of aiding our own destitute poor; and by what strange reasoning is it, therefore, that we arrive at the conclusion that a measure which relieves one portion of the community, must prove a curse to the other? Why refuse the means which will save them from utter and hopeless poverty, with its concomitant crimes? why refuse that which would convert the wandering and miserable hordes into labourers of settled habits? At present, capital is driven from the greater portion of Ireland; her landed proprietors abandon her, her public works languish, and her manufactures desert her. Α Poor Law is the first step towards remedying these evil conditions. The

scheme of encouraging industry by the cultivation of the wastes and bogs of that country, of making home colonies for the absorption of unemployed labour, would be excellent as a subsidiary, but it will utterly fail as an unsupported measure. The home colonies of Belgium, which have been held up as models for our imitation, have failed: we were lately examining them, and notwithstanding the excellent motives on which they were founded, and the equally excellent measures which had been devised to make them permanently useful, they were crumbling rapidly to pieces, overwhelmed by debt.

That enlightened philanthropist, M. Ducpetiaux, general inspector of the prisons in Belgium, with whom we reckon it an honour to be acquainted, has said, "The augmentation or diminution of mendicity depends principally upon the means employed to succour indigence. When benevolence is practised without discrimination, when alms are lavished without examination, the circle of mendicity naturally enlarges. Supply creates demand, and poverty becomes a profession, and organises itself upon institutions of its own. But when benevolence is enlightened, when a careful distinction is made between poverty and feigned poverty, when vice and idleness and imposture are systematically repulsed, mendicity loses its ground, and, premium upon it being withdrawn, it is no longer in credit.“ The principal object of the social system should consequently be, not only to relieve indigence, but to extinguish, and thus prevent, pauperism. But the latter can only be regarded as a public benefit, when it arises from the general well-being of the labouring classes, and is not the result of violence." And again, "Labour and prudence-that is, labour which produces the means, and prudence which regulates its employment,-these are now the two essential conditions of the existence of the working community. But it is not enough that the labourer shall have employment,-it is needful equally that his labour shall be adequately remunerated. Labour, economy, and prudence in marrying, are the three essential sources of welfare relating to the labouring community; and these governments should foster. But, spite of every effort, these sources may be disturbed, and for a time exhausted. The origin of misery is double it arises from fixed laws, with which the labourers are familiar, and by which they are bound to regulate their conduct; and from accidental circumstances, that cannot enter into the calculations of human prudence: and this is a fundamental distinction, which, unknown or disregarded, has caused the failure of the majority of the systems which have been planned for the relief of poverty, and the prevention of pauperism; these have either produced no results, or have aggravated the evils they have been intended to mitigate. Such, for instance, has been the fate of the English Poor Laws." Exactly,-our own Poor Laws have been a source of mischief, and that because the administrators have been remiss, or, rather, in utter ignorance of the consequence of indiscriminate relief. But is this an argument against assisting the poor? Is it to be said that because one mode of administration has

failed, none other can succeed? Shall we turn round upon our pauperised people, and treat their poverty as a crime? We boldly say that the people are the victims of influences over which they have had no control, and that it is our bounden duty to place them in such a position that their labour can be made available. It is acknowledged that it is so in England-and why not then for Ireland? What sophistry is it that makes the distinction, and by what arguments is it proved? Not that our present measures for enforcing relief are either wise or prudent; we on the contrary declare them to be unwise and foolish what we would urge is, that, if Poor Laws are believed to be absolutely essential to preserve the English labourer, there is a tenfold necessity for them on the part of the Irish poor. When is this one-handed policy to cease? when is it to be, that we shall direct to Ireland some portion of dispassionate judgment, and when shall her unhappy people receive the benefits of being a part and parcel of a flourishing kingdom? Religious intolerance, and faction in its worst shapes based upon the most miserable destitution, are riving her to pieces; and if some steps are not taken to impose a bond of union upon her disorganised people, she will break out into open rebellion. This bond must be a welldevised system of Poor Laws. This would give protection to capital, would rouse the dormant productive capabilities of a fine and rich country, and would make the owners of property sensible that their own best interests are closely woven up with the wellbeing of the labouring poor.

It is a charge repeatedly brought against the Irish, that they are a rebellious and unmanageable people. Whatever the genius of the people may be, the treatment they have received from Great Britain easily explains why they are contumacious. It is impossible they can be otherwise. Shall we glance our eye over her history as connected with ourselves, beginning with the military aristocracy of the Second Henry, and ending with the presidency of Mr. O'Connell? The page on which it is recorded is so stained with blood, crime, and suffering, that we advert to it unwillingly. Can we forget that the doctrine openly pronounced by us, from the time of Strongbow to the reign of Elizabeth, was perpetual war with Ireland, and the extermination of her people-that the imperious princess endeavoured to force religious reformation by the edge of the sword-that James the First escheated a large portion of her soil by the most ruthless despotism that a Parsons and a Borlase led to the rebellion of O'Neale, a rebellion attended by sanguinary atrocity, rarely, if ever, equalled in any country or in any age-and that the Parliamentary forces over-ran her soil, fleshing their fierce fanaticism by murder and spoliation. If we come nearer our own times, do we find Ireland better treated? We destroyed her woollen trade in the reign of William the Third, by the jealousy of our own manufacturers; and as mechanism is acting upon ourselves now, so injustice acted upon Ireland then; and from that time, we have gone on doling out partial remedies, till in the nineteenth century a large army is required to prevent her miseries assuming an attitude of determined

resistance. But she may still be saved. We have never legislated for the people of Ireland, emphatically so called. We have made

laws for religious intolerance and civil factions but we have made no laws to elevate the bulk of the Irish population to their fair position amongst our people. We must make such laws, or she will be lost to us.

SPECIMENS OF WIT AND WISDOM-ELOQUENCE AND LEARNING,

FROM THE OLD WRITERS.

BY E. H. BARKER, ESQ.

OF TRIN. COLL., CAMB.

"CATO Major was wont to say, that wise mea learned more by fools, than fools by wise men, as appears by this following example. A certain duke kept a fool: the duke falling sick of a quartan ague, it in a short time came to pass that the distemper grew to that height, that his physicians gave it forth that nothing would cure him of that malady, but a great fright; which thing coming to the fool's ear, he waited an opportunity to effect a cure for the duke, which he thus brought about. Taking notice in what part of his garden he used frequently to walk in near a river, he got himself into a hollow tree near hand, and when the duke was past by him, he rusheth forth, and thrusts him into the river, and calls out to those that awaited aloof off, 'Look to your duke, or he will be drowned else;' so they run with all speed, and plucked him forth, and in two or three days the duke was perfectly recovered: the fool absents himself for fear, but after a year's absence returns to court, where, being brought before the duke, the duke aggravates his fault to him, and told him that on the morrow he should die for it. The fool replied, that he thought the duke no harm by it, and many words to the like purpose; but all not serving, he the next morning appeared on a scaffold the duke had caused to be erected, to lose his head: so the hour being come, the fool laid his head on the block, and as the duke had appointed, instead of cutting his head off, he caused warm water to be poured upon his neck; and the fool with very fear expired to the great grief of the duke, who broke forth into this expression upon it, that it was wisdom for fools to jest with wise men, but the greatest folly in the world for wise men to jest with fools."-(Apophthegms of King James, from Witty Apoththegms, 1658, 12mo.)

Prepare for war when thou propoundest for peace, otherwise thy peace will be hardly obtained or too highly prized ;-whatever thy first article be, let disbanding be the last. A cunning cur,

though he wag his tail, will shew his teeth; the best treaty is with a drawn sword, and the safest peace is concluded under a buckler.”(Apophthegms of King Charles I., from the same.)

“A certain court-lady, being very extravagant in all pleasures of this life, was admonished to steer another course; and being pressed hard by the minister, of the vanity of all earthly things set forth so fully by Solomon, she answered,What tell you me of Solomon ? Solomon never said they were vanity until he had tried them-even so will I do, and then I will tell you my judgment of them.' His majesty's opinion of it was, that she was led more by sense than faith."-(From the same.)

"The true Character of a Dunce. He hath a soul drowned in a lump of flesh, or is a piece of earth that Prometheus put not half his proportion of fire into,—a thing that hath neither edge of desire, nor feeling of affection in it, the most dangerous creature for confirming an atheist, who would straight swear his soul were nothing but the bare temperature of his body;-he sleeps as he goes, and his thoughts seldom reach an inch further than his eyes. The most part of the faculties of his soul lie fallow, or are like the restive jades, that no spur can drive forwards towards the pursuit of any worthy design; one of the most unprofitable of all God's creatures, being as he is a thing put clean besides his right use, made fit for the cart and the flail, and by chance entangled amongst books and papers: a man cannot tell possibly what he is now good for, save to move up and down, and fill room, or to serve as animatum instrumentum for others to work withal in base employments, or to be a foil for better wits, or to serve (as they say monsters do) to set out the variety of nature, and ornament of the universe. He is mere nothing of himself, neither eats, nor drinks, nor goes, nor spits, but by imitation, for all which he hath set forms and fashions, which he never varies, but sticks to with the like plodding constancy that a millhorse follows his trace. Both the Muses and the Graces are his hard mistresses; though he daily invocate them,-though he sacrifice hecatombs, they still look asquint. You shall note him oft, (besides his dull eye, and louting head, and a certain clammy benumbed pace,) by a fair displayed beard, a nightcap, and a gown, whose very wrinkles proclaim him the true genius of formality. But of all others, his discourse and compositions best speak him; both of them are much of one stuff and fashion: he speaks just what his books or last company said unto him without varying one whit, and very seldom understands himself. You may know by his discourse where he was last; for what he read or heard yesterday, he now dischargeth his memory or note-book of,-not his understanding, for it never came there. What he hath, he flings abroad at all adventures without accommodating it to time, place, persons, or occasions. He commonly loseth himself in his tale, and flutters up and down windles [sic] without recovery; and whatsoever next presents itself, his heavy conceit seizeth upon and goeth along with, however heterogeneal to his matter in hand; his jests are either old-flead proverbs, or lean