nounced, and the whole force of the association must be brought to bear against him, to blast his reputation, to cripple his exertions, to crush him to the earth, and pulverize him beneath the trampling of its feet. O'Connell was a kind, liberal, generous-hearted man, a sincere Catholic, and remarkable for his tender piety; but how often did he denounce and blast those of his fellow laborers who attempted independent thought and action! Yet it was not he that did it; it was his system that compelled him to do it. Of what use his association, if divided within, if it did not speak one voice, and present a uniform front to the enemy?

It is not to the agitation which arises from free and earnest discussion that we object; nor the free and full discussion of all the great questions which are in their nature open to discussion. What we object to is agitation systematized and carried on through self-constituted and therefore irresponsible associations. These associations are the grand feature. of our times, and they are of most dangerous tendency. In the hands of a great and good man, as was O'Connell, directed by his wisdom, loyalty, faith, and piety, they may, perhaps, be comparatively harmlesss; but formed for social or political reforms, and placed in the hands of such men as Ledru-Rollin, Blanqui, Raspail, Cabet, or Proudhon, or such men as are at the head of the Protestant Alliance or the various anti-slavery societies, it is easy to see that they are powerful engines for mischief. They tend necessarily to swamp the individual in the crowd, and to establish a central despotism, which no freeman can endure. If, like the church, they were divinely constituted, and placed under the control of divinely commissioned chiefs, who have from Almighty God the promise of infallibility, they of course would be compatible with the most perfect freedom, and their force would be really a moral force; but as they are, -purely human associations, self-formed, sanctioned by no regular authority, and under the control of self-appointed leaders, they are pure despotisms, are a contrivance to do by force of combination and numbers what no one has any right to do, further than he can do it by individual thought and action. They are, to our way of thinking, far more fatal in the long run to a people than war itself. War slays the body and mangles the limbs, it is true; the moral force of these associations kills reason, slays the soul itself. A people worthy of freedom will scorn them. Even in O'Con

nell's hands the system become intolerable; its own children revolted against it, and he, heart-broken, went to die in a foreign land.

In a religious point of view, the system has a most deleterious effect. It destroys the freedom of the clergy, and enslaves religion. Its tendency is to concentrate the mind and the heart on a given object, and to keep out of sight every thing else. It agitates for that one object, makes it all in all, engrosses the mind and heart with it alone. That one object becomes the only thing seen, the only thing desired, the sole remedy of the numerous ills flesh is heir to. It absorbs all moral and all religious considerations in itself, and for the time being religion and morality are esteemed only as they are subsidiary to it. It itself is religion. Agitation for it, then, must spare no one who opposes it,the clergy no more than the laity. It is supreme, and while it condescends to accept the services of the clergy, and to honor them as long as they serve it, it claims the right to sit in judgment on them and to denounce them, if they venture to arraign it. It has taken possession of the people,. and become their guide and master. The clergy are no longer free; they cannot resist it, without losing all influence with them, and all opportunity to exercise for them the functions of their sacred ministry; and therefore, if they possibly can, they must, as the less of two evils, fall in with it, and do what they can to direct it, and to prevent it from effecting the complete spiritual ruin of its subjects. But if they fall in with it as the less of two evils, the agitators immediately claim that it has the support of the clergy; then it is religious; then its cause is the cause of God as well as of man; and then no one with a safe conscience can oppose it.

Moreover, the notion, that this system of agitation can be carried on for any great length of time with undiminished enthusiasm and remain peaceful, is a fatal mistake. It certainly, when carried on for temporal objects, has never yet been long continued without resulting in physical violence. It has led to violence in Rome and Italy, in France and Germany, and even in Ireland. The Young Irelanders were legitimately begotten of the repeal agitation, and it is a mistake to regard them as seceders. They were its natural. and inevitable development. Men had for seventeen years been promised repeal; had had their attention directed to it, had been agitated and had agitated for it; had been told,

and had believed, that repeal was the sovereign remedy for the intolerable evils under which they were suffering,-evils rendered doubly intolerable by the continual direction of their minds to them; and yet repeal did not come, did not appear to be coming,-appeared, in fact, as far off as ever. They could wait no longer. It was of no use to preach patience to them. Had you not been doing all in your power for seventeen years to render them impatient? Had you not painted their sufferings to them in the most vivid colors? Had you not exhausted imagination and language in describing the horrors of their condition? Had you not expended all your force in arousing them to the most lively sense of their wrongs? Had you not inflamed them, and worked them up to the highest pitch of impatience? And after this, could you suppose they would be calm and quiet, that they would be patient, at your bidding? It is not thus that we have learned human nature. They saw that you had exhausted your peaceful means, and gained nothing of what you had led them to expect, and they said, "Since words fail, try what virtue there is in leaden balls and cold iron." So human nature always speaks, or we have studied it to no purpose.

When by agitation, by appeals to sentiment and passion, you have worked a people up to that degree of excitement necessary for your purpose, they are no longer under your control, and you must on with them or be crushed by them. It is idle for you to imagine that you can hold them back. Your power over them is in your sympathy with them. No matter how loudly they cheered you yesterday. No matter how eagerly they hang on your words, or run to do your slightest wish; let the sympathetic cord be broken, let them once feel that you go no further with them, or that you wish them to stop where they are, you are henceforth to them an enemy, a traitor, and, instead of thanking you for what you have done, they only execrate you for what you withhold. Has not the Holy Father within the last year experienced the truth of this? He did not agitate his people; he found them agitated, wrought up by others to a feverish state of excitement for political reforms. He placed himself in sympathy with them, gave them political reforms, and who ever saw a prince more beloved, a people more submissive, more ready to consult every wish of their sovereign? A whole year was devoted to feasting and rejoicing in honor of the liberal pontiff, who loved his people, and knew how

to march with the spirit of the age, and at its head. A new era had dawned. The church had formed an alliance with liberty. Pius IX. had baptized democracy, and placed himself at the head of the European liberals. How did the welkin ring again with shouts of Evviva Pio Nono! Heretics and schismatics, Jews and infidels, refugees and apostates, all joined in the chorus. A few short months go by, and this Roman people, so devout, so loyal, so enthusiastically submissive to their sovereign, remind him gently that there is a little additional reform which would please them very much; he, as an indulgent father, grants it. Evviva Pio Nono!-But, Santo Padre, here is one other little reform. It is conceded. Evviva Pio Nono!-Demand follows demand till the Holy Father has conceded to the last limit of possible concession, if he is to preserve government at all, and then what do these same people do? They look quietly on, if nothing worse, and see him imprisoned in his own capital, and virtually stripped of all power as a temporal prince. Has any one been surprised? Who, accustomed to study popular movements, did not expect, even foretell, as much, when the news of the far-famed amnesty reached him? A short time since Gioberti, the O'Connell of Italy, was allpowerful with the Italian liberals; how is it with him now, since he has attempted to restrain their movements within practical bounds? Alas! he is in a fair way of being less esteemed by them than the very Jesuits whose expulsion from all Italy, to please them, he has effected. Nay, O'Connell had himself lost the control of the Irish movement, and had he even retained all his early vigor, he could not have continued the tremendous excitement of the repeal year (1843) within its peaceful limits. His speeches even during that year became warlike, and we listened with breathless expectation to hear him give the command, "Sound to the charge!" At that point neither he nor the people could remain. And who sees not that he could not use more moderate language, without either undoing all he had done, or placing himself in opposition to the people he had agitated, and then ceasing to be their leader? The latter is what actually happened. After 1843, Daniel O'Connell ceased to be the leader of Ireland, and the ceremony that took place in his honor, after his liberation from prison, was only the crowning of the victim for sacrifice.

One thing only has surprised us. The Smith O'Brien. party was inevitable, and would have come, either under the

lead of O'Connell or in spite of him, let him have done all that mortal man could do to prevent it; but we were not prepared to find it so small, so insignificant; and we must believe that the suspension of repeal agitation in consequence of the arrest and imprisonment of O'Connell and his associates had in some measure abated the excitement of 1843, and that, in fact, the Irish people were far less inflamed than at this distance appeared. Nevertheless, their refusal to engage in the proposed insurrection, and the readiness with which they hearkened to their clergy, is what we did not expect, is, we believe, unexampled in the history of similar movements, and is in the highest degree creditable both to them and to their clergy. It proves that the clergy have not yet lost their influence over the mass of their people, and also that the people are cooler, are less inflammable, have more solid judgment, more prudence and practical good sense, than is commonly supposed. We have seen nothing in their history more noble than their conduct on that trying occasion, nothing that tended more to give us a high idea of their national character, or to inspire us with stronger hopes for their future redemption from slavery and oppression. They almost threw a doubt on the soundness of our doctrine of the dangerousness of the system of agitation, and would half falsify it, if we did not find the foiled agitators and their dupes throwing the fault of their miscarriage on the clergy. Till we saw the Irish refuse, at the direction of their spiritual guides, to embark in Smith O'Brien's insurrection, we had no hopes for Ireland; now we have no fears for her. We see and appreciate her character more truly, and know that her friends often do her great injustice. We see, also, that St. Patrick still intercedes for his people, and that Almighty God has them in his especial keeping. As long as they are prompt to obey their spiritual guides, nothing can harm them.

But we are extending our remarks to an unreasonable length. The subject is one of great interest, and for us as well as for Irishnen. Indeed, it is an American as well as an Irish subject. Irish politics are discussed here as they are in Ireland. We have associations, confederations, and all the machinery for agitation adopted in the mother country. We have newspapers published among us devoted exclusively to Irish interests; committees and directories are organized by Americans in our larger cities for the management of Irish affairs; public meetings are held, speeches