four provinces, resolved that if they could not recover the land for tillage, they would make it a barren possession to its owners. We find here as yet no notice of the tithe insurrections--perhaps Mr. Froude reserves it for his second volume-but the condition of the peasantry was made still worse by the habit of exacting tithe exclusively from tillagelands, and not from grass-lands. Thus, the rich Protestant grazier paid no tithe at all, though the clergy made a powerful effort to wrest it from him, and the poor Roman Catholic occupier of three or four acres was compelled to pay it. The protracted and disgraceful outrages of the Whiteboys and other bands, which in succession desolated Ireland, had their origin, for the most part, in the exaction of tithes. The country was convulsed by the attempt to crush these outrages; laws of the most unheard-of severity were passed; but as no attempt was made for three generations to deal with the causes out of which they sprang, this severity only gave them a darker shade of atrocity.

It is an interesting fact that one of the first measures passed by the Irish Parliament of the Volunteers was a patriotic but ill-contrived effort to open the lands of Ireland to universal cultivation. It was deemed wise, by holding out factitious encouragements, to make amends for the partial and unjust restrictions by which England had fettered the industry of the country. The results of the experiment were ultimately most prejudicial. For, in imitation of English policy, very high bounties were granted on the exportation of corn and other raw produce. This led to an extraordinary extension of tillage, and the poverty of the peasantry incapacitating them from taking large farms, the landlords were obliged to divide their estates into very small portions. Thus, the measure led naturally to the enormous and rapid multiplication of the agricultural population of Ireland, till, before the famine, a quarter of a century ago, it actually rose so high as eight millions. Thus, increased husbandry brought no blessing, and increased population only marked the progress of misery.

It is a weary task to recite the story of the oligarchical faction which ruled Ireland in the eighteenth century. It came into power when the Catholic party, by its support of the House of Stuart, had excited against it the fears and hatreds of the friends of liberty, and it kept that power by fostering distrust and animosity after those causes had disappeared. There never was a faction so richly endowed with all the qualities that could insure to its possessors the hatred of a nation, for it always paraded its contempt for the

dearest interests of the country, and seemed to take a pleasure in letting the Irish feel of how little weight in its deliberations was the consideration of their happiness. Notwithstanding his defect of sympathy for the Celt, Mr. Froude has exposed with great severity the chief errors of the English administration during the last century. To promote the prosperity of Ireland was not its idea of duty, for the poorer the country could be kept, the less was the likelihood of its being troublesome :

'England governed Ireland for what she deemed her own interest, making her calculation on the gross balance of her trade ledgers, and leaving her moral obligations to accumulate, as if right and wrong had been blotted out of the statute-book of the universe.'

'The spirit of the seventeenth century was dead. Protestantism had spent its force, or survived only among the Presbyterians, whose bitterness over their prolonged disabilities was stronger than their loyalty. Public spirit, pride in the glorious empire of which they were permitted to be a part, had no longer an existence in the minds of the Irish colonists; or, if they recognised that they possessed a country, it was to thank God they had a country to sell.'

Meanwhile, the political degradation wrought by the penal laws lowered the moral dignity of the people. Moral restraints had little influence in a country so circumstanced, for the masses of the people eagerly grasped at any immediate gratification within their reach, and, reckless of consequences, plunged into every excess. This was the period that was so distinguished by the ferocity of Irish duels, by the hereditary feuds of the native people, by abductions, gambling, hard drinking, Rapparees, and Tories. Mr. Froude supplies us with a most picturesque account of the various phases of Irish society during this exciting period. The readers of Irish novels will remember the amusing accounts of abductions which we were always taught to regard as the most romantic episodes in Celtic life. Mr. Froude, however, puts these atrocious and disgusting crimes in a very different light:

'Another set of young gentlemen of the Catholic persuasion were in the habit of recovering equivalents for the lands of which they considered themselves to have been robbed, and of recovering souls at the same time to Holy Church, by carrying off young Protestant girls of fortune to the mountains, ravishing them with the most exquisite brutality, and then compelling them to go through a form of marriage, which a priest was always in attendance, ready to celebrate. The High Church party in the English and Irish Governments could not bring themselves to treat a sacrament as invalid however irregularly performed, and the unfortunate victims were thus driven, in the majority of instances, to make the best of their situation, and accept the fate from which there was no legal escape. In vain Parliament passed bill

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upon bill making abduction felony, and threatening penalties of the harshest kind against the officiating ecclesiastics. So long as the marriages themselves were regarded as binding, the families injured preferred to cover their disgrace, and refused to prosecute. The heroes of these performances were often highly connected. Political influence was brought to bear for them, and when convicted, which was extremely seldom, the Crown pardoned them. The priests, secure in the protection of the people, laughed at penalties which existed only on paper, and encouraged practices which brought converts to the Faith, and put money in their own pockets.'

What a picture has he drawn, from unimpeachable contemporary records, of the brutal ferocity, the utter disregard of human and divine laws, and the selfish perfidy which cankered at that period almost every class of Irish society! Irish ideas 'certainly prevailed; but they made the country a hell upon earth. Mr. Froude laments the almost complete paralysis of authority that prevailed over the whole country, and says the medicine Ireland needed at this time was not concession, but the for'gotten hand of Cromwell.' We can hardly think so. The hostile legislation of England had to a large degree impoverished and demoralised the country. The better plan would have been to dry up the springs of Irish evil by just legislation. Measures of harshness and severity may have been rendered temporarily necessary by the irregular habits of the people, but they have too often proceeded from the impatience of rulers, resorting to coercion as the shortest method, and attempting to do at once, and by violence, a work of improvement which time and legislation alone can effect, and a general well-directed change in national sentiments and habits.

Mr. Froude furnishes us with an interesting account of the rise of that patriotic movement, which subsequently reached its culmination in 1782. It was altogether a Protestant, and not a Catholic movement. The merchants, squires, and professional men-the very classes on whom Protestant ascendency depended-had become impatient of the restrictive system, which left Ireland the least-favoured nation of the earth, even for their English trade; and this struggle for free-trade and independence, the benefits of which they reserved for themselves, made them feel the importance of conciliating the Catholics. What was at first policy afterwards became liberality. As our

author well puts it: So long as the Protestantism of the Irish patriot lasted as a real principle, he endured the injuries of his country as a lighter evil than compromise with his old enemy. As the century waned away, community of injury 'created a sympathy of resentment.' Thus again the English

Government made it impossible that Ireland should become a Protestant country. But a new system of government was now introduced for the purpose of thwarting or extinguishing the patriotic movement. It was to corrupt where Ministers could not defy, and to demoralise the political intelligence of the nation by means of the Pension List. The effect was to create the trade of political agitation as the surest avenue to advancement and wealth, for it was only too commonas Mr. Froude tells us-for agitators to create a party in the country by denunciation of the hereditary oppressor, and then, having become dangerous, to betray the wretches who trusted in them, and to sell their services for title or promotion, or, grosser still, for bribes or sinecures. It is exactly at this point that Mr. Froude leaves us, at the close of his first volume, where he describes the anxiety of the Irish Commons to unearth the guilty secrets of the Pension List. The curtain drops on the year 1749.

In drawing these observations to a close, we hesitate not to repeat what we have often said, that Irish misery and discontent have been mainly owing to the long delay of the Union, which would have made Ireland and Great Britain a homogeneous nation, and rendered the penal laws unnecessary and impossible. If there had been no sea between the two countries, there would never have been an Irish difficulty at all; but, even with some leagues of water still between us, if the Union with Ireland. had been carried at the time of the Union with Scotland-the Catholics being at that period in no position to resist, and the Protestants warmly resenting their exclusion from the Parliament at Westminster-the story of the old confiscations and wars would have been an almost forgotten tradition. Ireland would thus have been spared the bitter experiences of the eighteenth century, and her people would not have been left helpless in the hands of the great proprietors who divided all the patronage of the country among them, and intercepted every benefit to the nation. The natural and

necessary consequences of the Union, however, did not immediately follow its enactment, because it was still incomplete and unequal. But, under the influence of an enlightened liberalism, England has, during the present century, assimilated all the institutions, rights, and privileges of Ireland to her own, and even by her church and land legislation, greatly exceeded the standard of her own home-statesmanship. Nothing but the power of misrepresentation now stands in our way. We know how the Nationalists of Ireland have received these healing measures. They see in them a powerful obstacle to the triumph

of their separatist views, for if the peasantry should become content with their secure position and their growing prosperity, there will be no possibility of arraying the ranks of disaffection against the Government in any formidable numbers. They have accordingly misrepresented the character especially of the Land Act in the most shameless manner, declaring that it was only effective when it trampled on the constitutional rights of the people. They feel it necessary to resist with all their malignity and power the healing process which Ireland is now unconsciously undergoing, for otherwise the trade of patriotic agitation will come to a premature end. It would seem, indeed, as if Home Rule were now employed as a cry to make Ireland wholly unmanageable, so as to force the dismemberment of the United Kingdom; but should strong measures ever become necessary to maintain the integrity of the Empire, the responsibility will surely rest, not upon that liberal statesmanship which has laboured for more than a generation to place Ireland on a platform of equal rights with Great Britain, but upon the wicked and factious perversity of Irish agitators, who would turn benefits and blessings into materials for insult, defiance, and rebellion. No clamour will ever induce us to compromise the claims of the Empire, or the permanent interests of the Irish themselves, who, as Mr. Froude has so eloquently shown, have never at any period been able to govern their own island. Towards all projects of separating the Empire into its component parts, and thus reducing it to a second-rate State, by placing what might at any time become an independent or hostile republic on our western shores, we must always remain sternly and implacably hostile. We will not grudge Ireland the utmost development of municipal independence for which she is qualified; we may even honour and sympathise with the genuine sentiment of Irish nationality, making every allowance for its little extravagances, and neither expecting nor desiring that all Irish institutions should be forced into the same mould with our own; but the two countries are bound together by natural ties which we can never undo for a mere fiction of the Irish fancy, and till nature is changed, geography readjusted, and history reversed, they must ever continue one indivisible community.

We confess, however, our inability to believe that the cry for Home Rule will be of very long duration. Irish Members of Parliament may for a time find it convenient to run with a popular sentiment, however mistaken or injurious in its effects, just as the Roman Catholic priests, though the servants of a church which opposes nationality everywhere on principle,