officers from contractors as a thing of course; we could tell of commissioners pocketing pay and laughing at duty; we could tell of road bills passed, not for improvement, but because their promoters were in possession of a convenient quarry or gravel pit; we could tell even of pious elders and deacons, securing or preventing the appointment of ministers, by all the mean and wicked trickery of electioneering pettifoggers; we could tell of churches vamping up spurious accounts of prosperity and good prospects in order to cheat the government, and appropriate the royal bounty; and of presbyteries indorsing the lie; we could tell of large joint stock companies puffed into existence, and then so recklessly and rapaciously mismanaged, that the widow and the orphan were reduced to beggary, and men, gathering up their available funds, fled from ruin into distant lands; we could tell of situations offered for open competition, while they were already pledged away; we could tell of railways prospectussed and surveyed, and subscribed for, and passed through parliament, but never finished, sometimes hardly begun, because the first call for cash from native shareholders demonstrated that it was not forthcoming; we could tell how Englishmen will not embark their capital in these Irish adventures, because they can place no confidence in the direction of them; we could tell how in the election of representatives, the bribe, the bludgeon, and the bottle are systematically plied, how the sacred lawn is dabbled with political defilement, and a priest-ridden peasantry are hounded on to violence, though it is known and anticipated that their limbs may be mangled and their lives sacrificed by the musket balls of martial law, which has been evoked to suppress it; we could venture to affirm, by sure and certain inference, that the conduct of the 500,000 laborers, to which, in our former article, we referred, and the immense sums of government money, which in some shires have not been accounted for, are in no small degree attributable to the dishonesty and rapacity of superintendents; all this we could tell of and more; and we could shew that it is a prevalent, a charactertstic, not an exceptional state of affairs. The very union with England, which has been held up by repealers as a grievance so intolerable, affords a confirmation of more than one of these remarks. Pensions and posts, and peerages, where shamefully held out by British statesmen, who knew the parties they had to deal with, and who might excuse themselves by reflecting that, while most of the cabinets of Europe might thus have purchased a kingdom, only one country pretending to civilization would so have sold itself. Now do such proceedings appear strange to Americans, or are they nothing new? If strange, then must they manifestly demonstrate that Irish society, even of the higher order, is replete with the elements of danger. If on the other hand they seem nothing new, then do we call upon our countrymen to beware in time, and to rest assured that it is only because they hold a far wider territory than Ireland, and still enjoy the vigor of a young and wealthy people, that they

are not dreeing the wierd" of dishonest speculation, and of proud and profligate partizanship.

With respect to the Celtic population of Ireland, who, especially in the south and west, constitute the great body of the peasantry, we have already said that all the anomalies and contradictions in their character, are explained by the fact that they live in the middle of the nineteenth century, and under the freest government in the world except our own, while they are yet only half civilized. Had we no other proofs of their semi-barbarism, we should deem it eminently probable, in consequence of the singular precision with which this key, even as a hypothesis, answers all those wards, and opens all those intricacies which Irish patriots themselves cannot or will not put us up to, although they continually acknowledge their existence. But such other proofs are neither far to seek nor hard to find. They are to be found, not so much in the peculiarities of Celtic blood, though that has something to do with them, as in the history of Ireland's invasion, and Ireland's oppression, and Ireland's administration down to the commencement of the present century, and in the utter incompatibility of Roman Catholicism with civil liberty, and self-relying improvement.

We regret exceedingly that our limits do not at present permit us to enter, as we intended, on the history of Ireland. In our next we propose to compare the conquest of England by the Normans with the so-called conquest of the sister country by Henry II. The results of the former have been peace, plenty and greatness; those of the latter have been turbulence, poverty and shame. But as we have hazarded certain charges against the Irish Celtic and catholic population, we cannot dismiss this article without delivering our opinion somewhat more fully on their character.

We freely and with pleasure accord to them the excellencies which we admitted to belong to the upper classes of their countrymen. King David of Israel ranks, in power and sublimity, the commotions of the sea with the tumults of the people. The combination of two elements so grand is magnificent, and bespeaks the true poet. Now the Irish peasantry are like the ocean. In all the "balmier hours" of the great deep, when its bosom heaves in the sunshine, and its "moist lips" murmur placidly on the shore; when we behold it

"Soothing the home-bound navy's peaceful way,
And rocking even the fisher's little bark

As gently as a mother rocks her child;"

then do we love it, and could repose, like the wild bird, on its breast. But how treacherous is the sea! How obedient to every breeze, whether favorable or adverse; how liable to storm; how passively subject to its turbulent arbiter, the wind; how terrible, how uncontrollable in its fury; how "remorseless" the "dash" of its angry billows; how fatal the swell and the sweep of its flood. The voice of the tempest bids it awake and roar, and in vain do you

say to it, "peace, be still." Then do you fear it and quake exceedingly; then do you fully understand the poet when he almost denounces the presumption of the man who commits his vessel, truci pelago, to the scowling deep; and you appreciate the daring comparison of the devil's brow to the sea when tempest-tost. It is even so with the unstable peasantry of the Emerald isle. When they are quiet you cannot but love them, and sport with them, and feel that you are almost one of themselves. They seem to live and move and have their being in the glow of a joyous sunshine. But you cannot trust them. The breath of the demagogues and priests who rule them at will, can bring the blackness of darkness over the scene, and stir them quickly into rage and the wild revelry of tumult. On they roll, and foam, and dash, and howl, like Ocean in his wrath; and while the wreck is all their own deed, it is all confined to their own domain.

The excellent qualities of the Irish peasantry are accompanied by vindictiveness, disregard of life and limb, addictedness to plotting and conspiracy, gregariousness, credulity, superstition, hairbrained wildness, indolence, incapacity of lengthened enterprise, improvidence, overreaching, fondness of show, and carelessness of comfort.

We perceived from the latest European intelligence that though disease is fast disappearing, and harvest affords the prospect of plenty in Ireland, outrage and blood guiltiness are as rife and rampant as ever. A friend, whose impartiality we suspect, calls this an anomaly. So he explains the matter, and is silent. O, most profound and satisfactory explanation! It is only an anomaly, grand-mamma; only an anomaly! Blessings on your ingenuity, my boy, I now understand it perfectly. Yet we are not so easily contented as this gentleman's grandam. It is no anomaly, but the natural consequence and the undeniable evidence of truculent excitability, revenge, recklessness of precious life, and dark confederacy. True, murders are committed in England. But the murderer is there esteemed a common enemy; he is hunted out like a tiger or hyena from his lurking place; he is seized and brought to judgment, and the execution of the law's dread sentence scarcely restrains the shout of execration which trembles on the lips of an indignant people. Or if the proof breaks down and the miscreant escapes without a clear vindication, he is ever after avoided as a monster.

Even the common damned shun his society

And look upon themselves as fiends less foul!

But in Ireland he is sheltered, sympathized with! The peasantry are either his accomplices, or they dare not drag the wretch to justice because his confederates are numerous, strong, and as regardless of blood as himself. They are gregarious; they flock and herd together, (do we need any far-fetched proof of that id America?) and good government is esteemed the frowning adversary of free-born Irishmen-an adversary whom they rejoice in

outwitting, and trample on with something like a sense of merit. It is frequently alleged that the negroes are an inferior race and that if they were emancipated, their laziness would issue in starvation, or in insurrection. We do not intend to pronounce a decision on this question. But even without going to Ireland itself; for evidence of Irish indolence and want of enterprise, we might safely appeal to the energy of free colored people among ourselves and their capacity for "getting along," when compared with the energy and the resources of the Irish Celt. Only think under what antipathies, and restrictions, and disabilities the colored man labors, and his succeeding at all is a wonder. The Celt, however, has a white skin, and neither he nor his father was ever a slave! Yes, but there are more kinds of servitude than one; and he who implicitly submits for life to the direction of another, in the most momentous of all concerns, acquires a habit of dependence which follows him into every pursuit. He has never learned selfreliance. He is not encouraged he is not suffered to exercise it; and therefore although he will work, and work well, as a servant, he is a "lazy loon," when at any time he becomes his own master. This is a characteristic of his demi-savagery; and so likewise are those irregular bursts of wild enterprize, which last no longer than is necessary for the perpetration of a murder or the assault of a hostile faction.

But we will not farther dwell on this part of our subject. In one word, the credulity and superstition of the Irish peasantry expose them to be duped. Their susceptibility of hatred, their vindictiveness, recklessness, and love of secret combination lead them into wild and often cruel undertakings, while their gregariousness, their clannishness, provides harborage and concealment. Their want of prudence, energy and self-reliance, united to that spirit of covetousness and overreaching which usually attends improvidence-sui profusus, alieni appetens-renders them greedy of easy and rapid gain, impatient of business, and difficult to deal with in the way of trade. Yet after all, they are of a noble stock. We pray earnestly for their improvement; and in consideration of the love we bear them, we will never cease to uplift our feeble voice in their behalf, and to the confusion of those dangerous and dishonorable men who agitate and mislead them for selfish ends, or slyly cajole them with false and fulsome praise, in order to turn the scale of victory in a party struggle.

EPIGRAM.

A wight, who sought a berth for many a year,
Sought for it where our journalists so wise meant
It might be found, but only found, O dear!
A wedding, death and modest advertisement!

C. M. N.

THE OUTCAST.

BY ELIZABETH G. BARBER.

Yes, in sorrow's furnace tried,
Then her spirit purified,
Guarded by an angel band,
Gained that bright and better land,
Far beyond the starry skies

Where that glorious temple lies,

Faintly typified below,

Where her tears no more shall flow.