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THE LAST RESORT FOR IRELAND.

It is surely impossible that Irish affairs can go on as they have done the English people will not bear it. They are beginning to understand Irishism better. So long as Ireland was really oppressed, the " wrongs of Ireland" were always translated to be the crimes of English officials; but now the English are beginning to understand with painful distinctness how much was contributed to "the wrongs of Ireland" by her own children. Do not let us be told of exceptions to the general conduct: such there are, no doubt, and large exceptions; but the bad spirit belongs to the widest districts, to the most multitudinous classes, to the most active. The good exceptions are too weak, too passive, perhaps, to act on what is properly the national character. Rebellion was a crime easily excused by "oppression," but rebellion was far from being the worst crime committed by Irishmen; nor is their propensity to murder their worst-nor their conspiracy-nor their repudiation of contracts to pay rent and other social obligations: their most heinous and deplorable treason is their treachery to truth, and the worst shape of that delinquency is the systematic falsehood which is employed by "Irish patriots" to flatter the weaknesses and bad passions of their countrymen. These are strong terms, and we pause while we use them; but they are the only terms equal to express the fact. The grossest "wrongs of Ireland" are those inflicted by educated Irishmen, who teach their countrymen to look for subsistence to other things than industry-who call the enforcement of rent 66 extermination"-who extenuate murder by a quibbling set-off which calls the landlords "murderers"who are coming from those that will not work to importune hard-working England for money. Yes, parliament reässembles, and a reinforcement of these patriots stands open-mouthed to burst upon the British Commons with the old nauseous mixture of vituperation, falsehood, and mendicant importunity.

shores, to eat the bread of charity; they strive to wring a pauper-squatter's subsistence out of the soil, by deterring landlords from collecting their rents or changing their tenants; and if their destitution is not in all cases and in all parts voluntary, the generally low condition which subjects them to the chances of that condition has been the choice of the ignorant Irish, abetted, if not applauded, by those educated Irish who set up for patriots, and are now coming as sturdy beggars to the British parliament. But England has learned to know their case, and their reception will be different from what it has been. Mr. Roebuck is out of the house, but they will find his spirit there.

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How will ministers venture to grant money Already influential writers have been recommending, in so many words, that the Irish should be left to starvation if nothing else will teach them. And although Mr. Trevelyan and General Burgoyne, too close to the misery of the wretched people and over-imbued with a natural feeling of compassion, have by anticipation indorsed the begging applications, yet Lord Clarendon has been addressing the Irish themselves in quite an opposite sense. From Lord Clarendon to Mr. Campbell Foster, such objectors speak with a knowledge of the feeling in England, and of the necessity. The Irish, flattered in their suicidal weaknesses, have made their own case impracticable, and have exhausted the patience of England.

For it is not a mere dislike to give money that will confront the representative beggars: England is not close-fisted, and enough could be found for proper uses. It is that in Ireland the money does no good. It excites no gratitude; but as soon as the Irish have received it, they turn round upon us and say that we have only injured them—that we misapply the alms-that it was their own alreadynay, they will even say that it has not reached them! "Thank you for nothing" is the Irish thanks for ten millions. Well, even that might be got over; but the money really does seem to But that infliction is not the worst that England work mischief. It makes the Irish worse beggars will have to endure. There are false facts as well-it is a premium to them to be more destitute, as false words. We know in England that the more helpless, until the very heaping up of aid destitution of our professional beggars is not al- seems to extinguish hope. The demand for monways feigned such is not the sole form of beggary; ey will be hateful, not only for its begging imbut misery is often voluntarily incurred: the beg-portunity, but for its thrusting these convictions gar prefers the passive endurance of privation to an irresistibly on the English mind. industrious struggle for his bread. What distin- A change of policy towards Ireland, therefore, is guishes the lowest class in the scale of English unavoidable. Last week we indicated the nature society is a national characteristic in Ireland. of the only innovation that is practicable—a thorHow shameful a reproach!—and yet the indigna-ough enforcement of every law. We see that tion felt in England is less provoked by the knowl- the idea has taken root elsewhere, and probably it edge of having been imposed upon, than by de- will reäppear in the substantial form of ministerial spair at finding that the Irish will not be helped. measures. We believe that for any ministry which They cry out that they want "capital :" but af- does not wish to become the object of odium and ter all it is a mere pretext. Capital is but ac- contempt in England, there is but one alternative cumulated labor;" and if the Irish want it, the to that policy of thorough enforcement: the union reason is that there has been no labor accumu- must be thoroughly carried out-all must be done lated. The Irish preferred to live miserably on for Ireland that would be done for a part of Engthe potato because it required the minimum of la- land, and no less exacted from Ireland-or Ireland bor; they prefer now to live miserably on alms must cease to be a part of the same kingdom: from England; they neglect the fish at their very there must be an English measure of Repeal.

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That repeal, too, must be thoroughly carried force allegiance to the laws?-Spectator, 20 Novemout. If Ireland cannot continue to form part of the United Kingdom, the United Kingdom must be quite freed from the embarrassing connection. The repeal of the union must be absolute, complete, and accompanied by due precautions-by an alien act, protecting the English. laborer from the competition of the hostile Celt, whose standard of remuneration ranks just above starving, though his indifferent industry and squalid habits make him anything but cheap at the money; and the whole Western coast of Great Britain must be fortified against Celtic inroad. The ministers of England must either manage Ireland as England is managed, with equal laws and equal responsibility of the subject; or England must be relieved of the connection.

With all her improvidence, what dark, despairing dismay would strike on the soul of Ireland at such a course! Imagine the return of the Irish laborers, in sudden multitudes regurgitated on the shores-not coming back with the wages of an English harvest, but dismissed, forever dismissed from England, her employment, and her comforts. Call upon the busy and clever "leaders" of the people the O'Connells and the O'Briens, the Reynoldses and the Meaghers, to say how they would provide for all those multitudes added to their own. Would they give them employment? -How? What industrious work is it that repealers, "Young" or "Old," provide for their countrymen? Would they give them money?— Whence? There would be no English millions to snatch without thanks. Would they emigrate In what ships? Would they give food? What food? They have not been teaching their countrymen to grow enough for themselves; and till now the shortcoming has been made good with English money to buy maize. True, they might seize the corn and stock of the landlords and better farmers. That would be the sole resource it is the natural one the Irishman's gun: there would be a jacquerie. "Tenant-right" would on the moment swell to confiscation. Landlords would here and there try to save their estates, and their lives, as they tried in France, by falling prostrate before the mob-but vainly. All would be eaten up. One mad, burning, bloody holyday, would consume all; and then the nation would awake, cold and hungry, and ask its leaders for bread.

But meanwhile, how would "the Black North" behave? Would it look on in timid ease with its Saxon blood unstirred? Would it share the wild

joys or wilder despairs of the real Irish? No; the north would stand to its arms, defensively. The dispossessed landlords would rally round it: supplies would be obtained from England; there would be civil war between Irish Catholic anarchy and Protestant order; Ulster and the landlords would reconquer Ireland; and Ireland, thus self-pacified, would petition to come back to her old allegiance.

Does any one see another outlet? And will the loyal in Ireland not think it best and safest for themselves to render such a process superfluous, by energetically aiding "the government" to en

"has

"" EXTERMINATION AND VENGEANCE." "EXTERMINATION" is the offence alleged by Irish incendiaries, lay and clerical, against the landlords: we have this week full explanations of conduct in two instances to which this term had been applied, and they throw much light on the Irish meaning of the word. Mr. Ussher was denounced from the altar as an "exterminator," been a target for the aim of the assassin, and is now again denounced it appears, however, that the exterminator is what in England we should call an improving landlord. So it was with Major Mahon. The case of Mr. Ormsby Gore is very instructive. The Irish papers, alluding to his estate of Leganommer, had a terrific story of "extermination in Leitrem," full of direct falsehoods. Setting aside smaller matters, it appears that the tenants on the estate owed rent for several years, in some instances for as many as twelve or fourteen; one year's rent was demanded, under pain of a twelvemonth's notice to quit: not a shilling of rent was offered, and the notice was enforced; but the enforcement was accompanied with a declaration that those who could not retain their holdings would be aided by their landlord to emigrate to America. Such is the conduct which the Irish incendiaries name extermination." It is well, in the approaching debates, that the Irish meaning of that word should be understood.

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"Give a dog an ill name, and hang him," is rendered into the Irish dialect, “Call a good landlord an exterminator, and shoot him." Major Mahon, Mr. Ussher, and other landlords who go far beyond their English brethren in their sense of Mr. Drummond's dictum that " property has its duties as well as its rights," are shot, not only because they exact their rights, but because they fulfil their duties. In the Irish vocabulary this assassination is called "vengeance ;" and it is an act which is praised, all but directly, by that "advocate of peace," the "venerable Archdeacon Laffan." The archdeacon's notions as to what is manly and courageous further illustrate the difference between the English and Irish use of terms; a difference which it is most desirable to keep in view

"The Saxon scoundrel," says the venerable pastor, "with his bellyful of Irish meat, could very well afford to call his poor, honest, starving fellowcountrymen,'savages' and assassins; but if in the victualling department John Bull suffered one fifth of the privations to which the Tipperary men were subject, if he had courage enough, he would stand upon one side, and shoot the first man he would meet with a decent coat upon his back. But the Saxon had not courage to do anything like a man ; he growls out like a hungry tiger."

Such is the view of courage, manliness, justice, and providence, inculcated by a dignitary of the Irish church. The man who is in want, and who

does not "stand upon one side and shoot the first | lence incited by the "Irish Confederation" in Belman he would meet with a good coat on his back," fast exhibits as dangerous a proneness to defy the has not "the courage to do anything like a man" law as more sanguinary outrages have done. -to speak out, and not to shoot from behind a hedge, is tiger-like! It is impossible to imagine a more striking departure from the English use of these epithets.

We have no desire, however, to put harsh constructions on the state in which Irishmen suffer their country to remain; though the simple fact that they do so is difficult to comprehend. Lord It is to be observed that the Irish notion of Stanley, an Irish proprietor, and a statesman not vengeance is quite peculiar. It is not as in Cor-altogether ignorant of the country, broadly asserts sica-the land of the typical "vendetta"-re- that "in Ireland it is safer to violate than to obey venge for a personal injury sustained by the aven- the law;" undoubtedly the general belief in Engger but it is revenge because the avenger has failed land is the same; and if it is true that there is a to inflict an injury. In Corsica, the "vendetta" is large majority of the Irish people among whom dictated by a barbarous spirit of chivalry, and is the law is revered, their apathy in permitting a kept within set bounds by a rude sense of honor; worthless minority to bring upon the whole nation but the Irish vengeance knows no such limits, be- an unfounded calumny of the most disgraceful kind, cause it is determined by the extent to which the is as monstrous a fact as any in Ireland. But if avenger may be disappointed in inflicting injury. the assertion is true, assuredly the Irish people The more rent a dishonest tenant has withheld will at once exonerate themselves from the refrom his landlord, the bitterer the vengeance. proach. Why they have not done so hitherto, is Corsica has usually been accounted almost at the bottom of the European scale of civilization; but Ireland, we see, is far lower.-Spectator, 20th Nov.

past comprehension. It cannot be sheer cowardice; because, whatever appearances may be in Ireland, we remember the gallantry of Irish soldiers in our army. It cannot be that the whole nation is overawed; because the lawless, as we THE RE-CONQUEST OF IRELAND. now learn, are so paltry a fraction. It cannot be THE ministerial measures for the pacification of that the majority sympathize with the lawless. Ireland may be decreed in Westminster, but it is We remember a story, indeed, of a consultation in on the other side of St. George's Channel that Dublin, between the executive and the judges, as they will be tested. It is not any particular "bill" to the best mode of putting down some former -whether it be an arms bill or a coercion bill-disturbances, which would seem to bear on the but the degree to which the law is enforced, that present state of affairs. An English lord chanis the cardinal question. Possibly the common cellor suggested that the usual proceeding was to law might suffice if it were thoroughly worked; call out the posse comitatus; on which an Irish perhaps more power expressly declared by statute chief baron wittily said that the posse comitatus may be convenient; but we await a sight of the was the very thing that it was desirable to keep ministerial bills with far less anxiety than we watch at home if the country was to be pacified; but we for ministerial action. There have been bills enow now learn that that libellous dignitary was sacrificalready, and to spare. A ruling will is the thing ing his country to his joke. Marvellous and inwanted now. Cromwell is ever in the mouths of credible as it may seem to downright English the Irish; he misused his will, but he had it, and understanding, Ireland is disposed to order, reveres to this day the Irish retain the impress of it; Crom-the law, and is quite willing to control herself; so well is their bugbear; yet they invoke a will like say all the Irish members, and some of our minishis, for their own purposes, as Mr. Henry Grattan ters seem to sanction the assurance. did on Tuesday. It is "civil war" in Ireland- We will not venture to contradict it. so says Lord Stanley, Lord Lansdowne, Lord the measures successfully taken by Mr. Grace, Brougham; Mr. John O'Connell describes a war representative and resident of the disturbed county of landlords on the tenantry; Lord Roden and of Roscommon, in arming his tenantry as a kind Mr. Stafford, a war of tenantry on the landlords; of defensive militia, is the practical beginning in in name or in spirit, all agree that it is civil war; and there is need of a strength adequate to cope with civil war.

Perhaps

the new social polity of Ireland. His effort deserves the attention of the executive. We make no great account of the facts that Mr. Grace is of Some say, indeed, that crime is strictly "local" an old feudal family; that he is a constitutional -that it is limited to "five" or "six" counties. whig, and not a repealer. We only say that if a We have a difficulty in understanding what is like spirit of order and energy is general, it will at meant by this limitation, since we find recorded in once show itself, not only in parliamentary speeches our own columns, within this instant November, and assurances, but in acts-in honest verdicts to or in the Irish papers of the week, acts of outrage vindicate the law; in a manly promptitude to aid indicating a lawless spirit in nearly twenty coun- the victim against the assassin in a zeal to supties-Carlow, Limerick, Roscommon, Galway, port constituted authority, before any other quesTipperary, Longford, Kilkenny, Clare, Ferma- tions of legislation and improvement are attended nagh, Down, King's County, Queen's County, to. A time of" civil war" is not the best time Sligo, Tyrone, Louth, Antrim, and some others. for bucolic speculations. If Irishmen are bent on We We say Antrim, because the three days' turbu- restoring order, they will set about it without delay

he found the remains of the Moor; in Moscow, of the Tartar. And, indeed, the reflection had continually been forced upon him, that man is everywhere and antipathies, as to make it wonderful that this one so much alike, in his moral attributes, his sympathies human family should so long have been enemies. As in a little comedy which he had seen at Paris, Faute de s'entendre, all the hardships seem to rest

and new statutes of "coercion" will be superfluous. Should it happen that these assurances are all a mistake—that the peaceable Irish majority have not the zeal, the courage, or the energy, to enforce law in their own land-their very love of order will prevent them from being either surprised or grieved at any measure for effecting their wish-upon mistakes; and it is discovered at last that even to the appointment of a dictator.

every one may be happy if he only knows what But at all events, and at all cost, the law must the rest are about. Mr. Cobden made a special allusion to Italy. He had come to the conclusion, be maintained somehow. Ireland is a province of from all he had witnessed, that the regeneration the British empire; and if the Irish themselves arose from the quiet progress of thought and intelcannot maintain respect for the law, it must be ligence dependent upon the better education of the done by the imperial forces. The safety and dig-people. He had found that in that country great nity of the empire demand no less. To speak it efforts had been recently made for the education of out, there is a very general feeling, among all the masses: to his astonishment he had discovered, classes in England, whether liberal or conservative, sand inhabitants, there were established several that in almost every town of fifteen or twenty thouthat the turbulent Irish have too long been suffered infant schools, supported by voluntary contributions to trifle with the law; that the British government and superintended by Italian nobles. He had even and empire are disgraced by tolerating so base and at Turin fallen in with a school where a marquis bloodthirsty a levity; and that if the ordinary ma-attended daily as director, joining the children in chinery of the country will not suffice to insure a their play and riding with them on a rocking-horse. better behavior, the government must not hesitate (Laughter.) There were now in Italy, as there to use the last resort-MARTIAL LAW in the dis-had always been, leading minds, great and striking individualities, in all directions-men who had been tricts that require it, on the summary proclamation engaged in discussing every question of social of the lord-lieutenant.-Spectator, 27 Nov.

importance; in every town of Italy men were to be met with who took a deep interest, not only in THE fifth annual soirée of the Manchester Athe-schools; but in prison discipline, and all other næum was celebrated in the Free Trade hall on questions affecting the moral condition of the peothe 18 Nov., with undiminished éclat. The chair-ple. He had been especially amazed at the number man was Mr. Alison, the historian of Europe. of practical people who sympathized with their Among the gentlemen on the platform, were Mr. efforts and controversies in England on the subject Cobden, Lord Brackley, Mr. Bright, Dr. Bowring, of political economy. Every lawyer, every counMr. Ralph Waldo Emerson the American essayist, Mr. George Cruikshank the artist, and Mr. George Wilson.

Mr. Alison made an agreeable speech; modestly founding his claim to take part in the proceedings of the Athenæum, not on his being a literary man, but on his being a man of laborious life who has employed his leisure in literature.

same race from which civilization had twice before proceeded to the rest of Europe, would again effect their redemption. (Loud cheers.)

sellor in Italy, now studied that science as a part of his professional education: and hence arose the deep interest there taken on that subject in which they had so long and so arduously engaged in England. To this quiet, slow, and gradual influence of the few on the many, and not to popular commotions and angry outbreaks, was the existing hopeful condition of Italy attributable. If the Mr. Cobden signalized his first public appearance Italians were only permitted, unmolested, to work since his return to England by a speech full of sug-out their own regeneration, he doubted not that that gestive matter. A considerable part of it was devoted to the immediate subject of the Athenæum and its uses in a town like Manchester. He then glanced at his travels, which ranged from Cadiz to Nishni Novgorod. He took the first public opportunity of expressing his thanks as an Englishman for the cordial welcome he had received in every country that he had visited. It was something rare in the annals of the world, that a foreigner should travel into almost every country of the continent, and should in each find men prepared publicly to sympathize with principles with which he happened to be identified in his own country; these principles being applicable, as they at home had thought, only to the domestic concerns of their own people. The whole world, however, he hoped and believed, was approaching the time when it would be discovered that the interests of all are identical. At the two extremes of his peregrinations, he had found the Oriental type predominate; in Andalusia

THE Spectator says, "The colonial office has chosen to set aside the facts; it has chosen to pretend that negro emancipation, which was neither so prepared nor so framed as to succeed, has been quite successful; it has chosen to affect a belief that the colonists, who have been brought to ruin, have not been injured; it has chosen to speak, and act, as if the attempts to repress the slave-trade had some sort of success. It has therefore deprived its distant agents of the only infallible guides, abstract truth and the facts of the case. There is nothing more silly in Sir Charles Grey's speech than the transparent hypocrisy with which treaties against the slavetrade are made and spoken of, or than the solemn pretence with which squadrons are fitted out to blockade Africa."

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PROSPECTUS. This work is conducted in the spirit of Littell's Museum of Foreign Literature, (which was favorably received by the public for twenty years,) but as it is twice as large, and appears so often, we not only give spirit and freshness to it by many things which were excluded by a month's delay, but while thus extending our scope and gathering a greater and more attractive variety, are able so to increase the solid and substantial part of our literary, historical, and political harvest, as fully to satisfy the wants of the American reader.

The elaborate and stately Essays of the Edinburgh, Quarterly, and other Reviews; and Blackwood's noble criticisms on Poetry, his keen political Commentaries, highly wrought Tales, and vivid descriptions of rural and mountain Scenery; and the contributions to Literature, History, and Common Life, by the sagacious Spectator, the sparkling Examiner, the judicious Athenæum, the busy and industrious Literary Gazette, the sensible and comprehensive Britannia, the sober and respectable Christian Observer; these are intermixed with the Military and Naval reminiscences of the United Service, and with the best articles of the Dublin University, New Monthly, Fraser's, Tail's, Ainsworth's, Hood's, and Sporting Magazines, and of Chambers' admirable Journal. We do not consider it beneath our dignity to borrow wit and wisdom from Punch; and, when we think it good enough, make use of the thunder of The Times. We shall increase our variety by importations from the continent of Europe, and from the new growth of the British colonies.

The steamship has brought Europe, Asia, and Africa, into our neighborhood; and will greatly multiply our connections, as Merchants, Travellers, and Politicians, with all parts of the world; so that much more than ever it

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now becomes every intelligent American to be informed of the condition and changes of foreign countries. And this not only because of their nearer connection with ourselves, but because the nations seem to be hastening, through a rapid process of change, to some new state of things, which the merely political prophet cannot compute or foresee.

Geographical Discoveries, the progress of Colonization, (which is extending over the whole world,) and Voyages and Travels, will be favorite matter for our selections; and, in general, we shall systematically and very ully acquaint our readers with the great department of Foreign affairs, without entirely neglecting our own.

While we aspire to make the Living Age desirable to all who wish to keep themselves informed of the rapid progress of the movement-to Statesmen, Divines, Lawyers, and Physicians-to men of business and men of leisure-it is still a stronger object to make it attractive and useful to their Wives and Children. We believe that we can thus do some good in our day and generation; and hope to make the work indispensable in every well-informed family. We say indispensable, because in this day of cheap literature it is not possible to guard against the influx of what is bad in taste and vicious in morals, in any other way than by furnishing a sufficient supply of a healthy character. The mental and moral appetite must be gratified.

We hope that, by "winnowing the wheat from the chaff," by providing abundantly for the imagination, and by a large collection of Biography, Voyages and Travels, History, and more solid matter, we may produce a work which shall be popular, while at the saine time it will aspire to raise the standard of public taste.

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Monthly parts.-For such as prefer it in that form, the Living Age is put up in monthly parts, containing four or five weekly numbers. In this shape it shows to great advantage in comparison with other works, containing in each part double the matter of any of the quarterlies. But we recommend the weekly numbers, as fresher and fuller of life. Postage on the monthly parts is about 14 cents. The volumes are published quarterly, each volume containing as much matter as a quarterly review gives in eighteen months.

WASHINGTON, 27 DEC., 1845.

Or all the Periodical Journals devoted to literature and science which abound in Europe and in this country, this has appeared to me to be the most useful. It contains indeed the exposition only of the current literature of the English language, but this by its immense extent and comprehension includes a portraiture of the human mind in the utmost expansion of the present age. J. Q. ADAMS.

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