labored for, is a proof that the two parties have not the same interest, and that the liberty wanted by the one is not the liberty wanted by the other. If the interests of both parties were the same, their union would come of itself, as a matter of course. As the case stands, it can be effected only by a compromise, and that compromise must be all on one side,—a concession on the part of the patriots of all that they are struggling for. The Celtic Irish, in order to effect it, must be able to make it for the interest of the Anglo-Irish to cut themselves loose from it, which they can do only by consenting to become more completely their slaves than they now are. The Anglo-Irish have no country but England, and they regard Ireland as their country only in so far as it is inseparably united to England, and under the British government. They cannot, then, be made to join the patriots from love of country. To make them abjure England, and adopt Ireland separated from England, you must give them something more than they can get by union with England. And what have you to give them? They are now the ruling caste, and are sustained in their dominion by their connection with the English government. How will you make them believe it is for their interest to sever that connection, and to make common cause with you against England, which sustains them in power over you, unless you give them sufficient guaranties, in some shape, of a more extended and complete dominion over you than they now have, or can have, if the connection with England continues?

The union of races in Ireland, it is clear, is possible only on the condition that the Celt consents to be swallowed up in the Saxon. The Saxon must be continued as the ruling race, and for Celtic Ireland we should have a Saxon Ireland. The original population of the island, the oldest people now known, retaining, perhaps, the earliest civilization of which any traces have been preserved, would become gradually extinguished through slavery, or lost in the dominant race. No friend to Ireland can wish this. We wish to see Celtic Ireland preserved. We would not see the old Irish nationality destroyed, or even weakened. We respect it, and should regret to see the old Celtic civilization give way to the Anglo-Saxon. We may not like to have the Irishman perpetually thrusting his nationality into our faces, telling us, when he is pleased with us, that we have a great deal of the Irishman in us, and cursing us as a Saxon dog when we

are so unfortunate as to displease him, but we would not see him less of an Irishman than he is. We are Saxon, and intend to remain so; for we are not yet convinced that we cannot be Catholic without being Celtic; but we know few things more ridiculous than the Irishman who disowns his own order of civilization, and undertakes to pass for a Yankee. A yankeefied Irishman is a sorry sight. He has abandoned the good qualities of his own race, without adopting the good qualities of ours, and is merely a compound of the bad qualities of each. No: let the Irishman remain an Irishman, and the Anglo-Saxon remain an Anglo-Saxon; and while they study to love and respect each other as brothers, let neither attempt or suppose that either ought to be the other. Each has his peculiar excellences, and each his peculiar defects, and it is not necessary to undertake to strike the balance between them. We would have neither swallowed up in the other. In our daydreams for Ireland, we have pictured her rising from her thraldom, after ages of oppression and misery, to her proper rank among the nations of the earth, a genuine Celtic kingdom, retaining and transmitting the virtues and the glories of the old Celtic race. The union of Saxon and Celt on the soil of Ireland for such an end is impossible, and any end for which it could be effected would be opposed to it, and necessarily tend to defeat it.

For the same reason, we are opposed to the call for a union without distinction of creed. Celtic Ireland is at heart Catholic, and can be nothing else. Its essential character is gone, if it ceases to be Catholic. Protestant Ireland is English, and depends for its existence on the connection with England. Sever that connection, give the power to the national party, and it would soon melt away before Catholic Ireland. Protestant Ireland knows this. On what conditions, then, Ön will it make common cause with Catholic Ireland? On the condition that Catholic Ireland is to rule? Not at all. It will demand a guaranty that Catholic Ireland shall either cease to be Catholic, or be subject to Protestant Ireland. The Protestant coöperation can be purchased on no other condition, unless we suppose the Protestants are prepared to sign their own death-warrant as Protestants; and this guaranty must be given in the shape of democracy, or in that of indifferentism, for it can be given in no other. If the patriots waive their Catholicity, put their church out of the question, and make politics the paramount affair, the Protestant may consent to unite with them, if he is to run no

great pecuniary hazard; for he knows very well, that, when Catholics suffer any interest to take precedence of their religion, or when they become willing to forsake it for a temporal object, however laudable in itself, there is very little to be feared from it. Indifferentism is sure to follow, and then in religious matters the Protestant can have every thing his own way. Democracy, which in a country like Ireland must be Jacobinism, will afford him an equal guaranty, and therefore in a Jacobinical revolution he might not be unwilling to engage; for he cannot but see that a democracy in Ireland would throw the whole power of the state into the Protestant party, who are the principal owners of the soil. The natural tendency of a democracy is to throw the power of the state into the hands of the property-holders by the voluntary action of the party without property, and to engross a whole people with their material interests. A people ruled by the representatives of money, and engrossed with material interests, make but sorry Catholics, such Catholics as Protestants would have nothing to fear from. But a democratic, or rather Jacobinical, Ireland under the rule of Protestant proprietors and indifferent demagogues, bent only on material interests, would be any thing but Celtic Ireland, and do any thing but preserve the old Celtic civilization and the primitive virtues of the Milesian race.

The call for a union of parties in Ireland without distinction of race or creed proceeds on what we regard as a false assumption, namely, that the real enemy of Ireland is the England out of Ireland. That enemy is England in Ireland, and an enemy that would be too strong for the Celtic population, even if it had no connection with England out of Ireland. Ireland is lost, if she severs her connection with Great Britain before she has subdued the England on her own soil. What seems to us, then, Ireland's true policy is, to detach the England out of Ireland from the Anglo-Irish, and gain its support for the national party. We would use the connection for the benefit of Celtic Ireland, instead of seeking to get rid of it. England has no real interest in supporting at the expense of the Celto-Irish the Anglo-Saxon party in Ireland, and she does it only because she believes that it is through their means, and theirs only, that she has been able to keep the crown of Ireland united with her own. They were her garrison in the country. She was obliged to support them, or lose the crown of Ireland. Let Celtic Ireland make her peace with England out of Ireland, and she can easily use the power of the imperial government to pro

tect her against the England in Ireland, from whom she suffers her principal grievances. This may require time for its full accomplishment; but it is not impracticable. Let the case be presented to the British government on its merits, as a question of justice and sound policy, without any vexing questions as to race or to bygone times, without any thing to humble the pride of either party, or to revive old animosities, and we are sure that the government could be induced to take the side of the Irish people, and to redress their grievances, as far as it is in the power of government to redress them.

The gifted author of the work before us, while his book shows clearly that the real enemy of Ireland is on her own soil, seems to think that the true policy for the patriots is the reverse of this. He appears to think that the landlords -the real oppressors of Ireland-would soon be brought to terms, if they no longer had England to back them. But he seems to us to forget that it is an axiom in political science, that they who hold the balance of the property of a nation are its masters. Man against money struggles in vain. We have never read or heard of a successful agrarian party, and in a war of the poor against the rich we have invariably found the poor defeated. Nineteen twentieths of the soil of Ireland, we are told, are held by the Anglo-Irish party, and the commercial and manufacturing capital of the national party is far from sufficient to overbalance this portion of the landed property. Their combined wealth must fall far short of that of their enemies. Let the national party do their best, then, whatever their numbers, their personal skill or bravery, and they can gain, at most, only a transient success, as the experience of ages has proved. The victory, if gained, will slip from their grasp as soon as won.

We know it is said that these landlords may be dispossessed, their estates confiscated, and distributed among the members of the national party. That is very true, if you have already a strong national government firmly established which is disposed to do it; but not otherwise. mob can plunder and lay waste, but it cannot confiscate, for it has no fisc. The national party, supposing it to have succeeded, supposing it to have got the landlords in its power, could, undoubtedly, confiscate their estates; but the difficulty is, that it cannot succeed until it has confiscated them. If it had on its own side men who would or could advance, on a pledge of the lands, the necessary funds for carrying

on the war, this difficulty might be got over; but it has not, and the scrip of the patriots issued on lands not in their possession, we apprehend, would be at a heavy discount in foreign markets. The contributions of Irish patriots out of Ireland would, no doubt, be something, but altogether inadequate to the struggle which the landlords would find means enough to protract.

We may be wrong, but we have no belief that the patriots, obliged to struggle single-handed against the landholders, let alone England, would be able to sustain themselves. In such struggles numbers alone are not enough, and even personal bravery is not much, as the whole history of the world proves. The first want of Ireland is some power to control the landlords and to compel them to do justice to their tenants; and we cannot see where she is to get this power, but from the imperial government. The landlords themselves dread the appeal of the patriots to that government, and feel that their security is much more endangered by Irish loyalty than by Irish rebellion, as has been proved on more occasions than one; and the very moment the imperial government shall undertake to restrain their excesses, and to compel them to treat their tenants with ordinary humanity, they will themselves turn patriots, and shout "Repeal!" as loud as the loudest. Is not this evident from the fact, that they are constantly fomenting and exaggerating what they are pleased to term Irish disloyalty? Is it not plain that what they most dread is that the patriots should supplant them at the English court? And is not this precisely what they study to prevent? How, then, can the Irish patriot mistake his true policy?

The author seems to us, also, to proceed on the assumption, that the Irish owe no allegiance to the British crown. But in taking this ground, is he not playing into the hands of Ireland's worst enemies? By what means do the landlords contrive to practise their oppression with impunity? By what means do they contrive to secure the protection of the British government, while they starve their tenantry, or compel them to seek relief in exile, or from the hands of strangers? Is it not by filling the ears of that government with tales of Irish disloyalty? Is it not by making the gov ernment believe that the Irish regard the sway of the English as a usurpation, and themselves as free, at any moment the opportunity offers, to throw it off, and therefore that it must not treat them as loyal subjects, and must place no