1856.] The Tenant-League Question solved. to allay, but only succeeded in inflaming. These incidents acquire a special importance from the fact that they have occurred in the very crisis which we are desired to regard as the inauguration of the new era,' when industry is to reap its just reward; when land and labour are to yield their full and legitimate value; when party and class animosities are to be absorbed in an unanimous effort for the promotion of the general prosperity; and when, above all, English capital is coming into the country on the faith and assurance of improved habits and universal tranquillity. This is the point to which I am anxious to direct your attention. I wish you to accept with caution all showy sentences and imaginative descriptions, and to test the rhetorical flourishes of agricultural meetings, proprietary banquets, and state visits, by the facts which are actually taking place at the same moment. But it would be a great delusion to suppose that the Irish have a monopoly of rhetorical artifices.' English landlords have invested largely in that speculation. Remember how deeply they are interested in putting a smiling face on the discontents of Ireland, in concealing the festering sores of society, and in making it appear that concord and security are reestablished-if, indeed, they ever existed here. Be assured it is not the Irish alone that indulge in oriental panoramas of repose and pacification; and whenever you read in the newspapers the enthusiastic panegyrics of an English landholder, you need not be afraid of committing any very flagrant injustice if you regard his statements with suspicion until you find them confirmed by trustworthy evidence. I have already shown you that the halcyon of Lord Stanley is in reality no other than the stormy petrel; and I might collect a heap of similar instances if so plain a matter required additional illustration. English capitalists who purchase, or possess, estates in Ireland labour, no doubt, under this signal disadvantage-that they do not understand the wants, desires, or habits of the people. Knowledge, so essential to self-preservation and the judicious 45 management of property, can be acquired only by a long residence amongst us; nor will this suffice unless the resident be of an adaptive disposition and a genial temperament. If he start with the notion of altering the people to his own pattern, he will fail egregiously; and lucky for him if it end merely in failure. His only chance is to alter himself. He must get rid of all angularities of character, his Saxon ideas of class organization, his exclusiveness, his external coldness, his frigid system of doing business by the card, and his tendency to take offence at good humour. He must show himself freely amongst the lower orders, make himself familiar with their customs and prejudices, endeavour to give and take, and if he cannot find the qualities of accuracy and punctuality which he has hitherto considered indispensable to the relations between the employer and the employed, to try whether he cannot discover a compensation for them in the readiness to oblige, the quick sense of benefits conferred, the mother-wit which is never at a loss for expedients, and the animal spirits which, like the Greek fire, cannot be quenched by any amount of cold water you may throw upon them. Yet, with all these efforts on the part of English proprietors to meet our Irish peculiarities half-way, I must honestly confess there are some things, native to the soil, which it is very difficult for the English understanding to comprehend; and the doctrine of landlord-and-tenant liability which we have just been discussing is one of them. No man who has been trained up under English law and practice can unravel this problem. Yet there is nothing more simple, if you once disencumber your mind of the antediluvian principles which continue to regulate the system of rent in England, but which have long since been discarded in this country-for reasons best known to the people themselves, who must be allowed to be competent judges in their own affairs. When an English capitalist purchases land here, he is generally well pleased with his bargain; and well he may, Dennis. He couldn't buy a bit of stony mountain or starved common at home for double the money that will put him in possession of the richest pasture land in Ireland, with a soil of fabulous depth, upon which he needn't lay out a halfpenny in manure for the next twenty years. He knows well enough that his scientific husbandry will enable him to extract gold from the teeming earth. Up to this point, therefore, he is in high delight. But he has no sooner got his land than a question presents itself which, like the death's head at the Memphian banquet, suddenly checks him in the midst of his festivity. He hears on all sides a multitude of speculations respecting the rights of landlords and tenants, which he had supposed to be settled by legal enactments that admitted of no difference of opinion. He finds that the subject, so far from being determined by law or usage, is not determined at all; and the more he endeavours to obtain exact information as to what is expected of him in his new position, the more he becomes bewildered. Now, as it is of the last importance that he should understand this matter clearly, I believe I may do good service by stripping it of all ambiguity, and stating explicitly the objects of the Tenantleague agitation. Without any circumlocution then, what is really wanted, and what alone will satisfy the demands of the suffering tenantry, may be thus briefly, and I hope intelligibly, summed up: Leases for ever, no rent to pay, and compensation for improvements. Let it not be said after this that the Irish are deficient in forethought, or that they do not practically understand their own interests. I believe, on the contrary, that no nation on the face of the globe has a livelier perception of the first law of nature -whatever perceptions they may have of other laws. Having shown you, Dennis, that the political economy of Ireland continues in its wonted state of ferment, and that our agrarian code still asserts its Draconian characteristics, it only remains, in order to complete the survey, to assure you that our internecine wars on the subject of religion rage as fiercely as ever, although we have not quite so many pitched battles. You may take my word for it, whatever statements you may hear to the reverse, that the standing armies of the two churches have not been put upon the peace establishment; that recruiting is going forward with undiminished zeal; and that the hostile camps are kept up at their full number of fighting men. The I lay no stress upon the fact of the Bible-burning-a demonstration of piety in support of which there are numerous historical examples; nor upon the dubious point of law as to whether the commission of a particular act is, or is not, presumptive evidence of the intention to commit it. But I will direct your attention to the effect produced upon the people by the acquittal of Father Petcherine. The verdict was received with a clamour of exultation which might be compared to the frenzy of a triumphant army rushing in to sack a captured city. The delirium of the populace was a stirring spectacle to witness. streets were filled with jubilant crowds, the houses were illuminated as they used to be after a victory, 'when George the Third was king;' and if a stranger had been dropped from the skies amongst them, he would have naturally supposed that, at least, some great national anniversary was in course of celebration. Now, although the Irish are far from being a logical community, and sometimes arrive at conclusions on matters of opinion which are not strictly warranted by the premises, it is tolerably certain that in their actions they are governed by the same law of cause and effect which is common to the rest of mankind. We must, consequently, infer that there was an adequate cause for this outburst of popular hilarity; and it seems to me, upon an impartial examination of the case, that it must be referred to one or other of the two following reasons. Either the people believed Father Petcherine innocent, and therefore rejoiced in his acquittal; or they believed him guilty, and therefore rejoiced in his acquittal. They must have rejoiced for something; and I suspect that if all the lawyers, of every creed and denomination, in the Four Courts, were to put their wigs together, they couldn't find out a third reason why the acquittal of that learned and reverend person should have produced so extraordinary a sensation. Judging from all past experience, the first of these two reasons is apparently insufficient to account for the enthusiasm manifested on this occasion. Other innocent men have escaped condemnation without disturbing the serenity of the capital; and if the mere acquittal of a person accused of a crime which he had not committed, were considered so signal an event as to call for a popular demonstration, it would furnish indisputable proof that the pure administration of the law was mighty rare and exceptional. We are notoriously natural lovers of justice, but we have our own notions on the subject, which do not always square with the maxims of law; and it may be confidently affirmed that whenever we signify our approbation of a verdict, it is not because it vindicates the integrity of our legal institutions, but because it accords with our own judgment on the case. In no other country in the world are the two terms, justice and law, understood to mean things so diametrically opposed to each other; but it is not necessary to enter farther upon that consideration at present than to indicate, as an obvious corollary, that whenever the law happens to be defeated by a jury, the result is instinctively regarded, in the Irish. sense, as a triumphant vindication of the ends of justice. Hence we must look to the second ground for an explanation of the cause of the ecstasy into which this primitive people were thrown by the issue of Father Petcherine's case. The clear tendency of the law went the other way; Irish justice was, consequently, triumphant in the verdict. Commentary upon the fact would be an impertinence addressed to a barrister-at-law so sagacious in his vocation as my noble friend Dennis. You will have clearly perceived that the prosecution was conducted by the Attorney-General with consummate ability, and that finding himself placed, like a certain celebrated quadruped, between two bundles of hay, he ingeniously contrived to VOL. LIII. NO. CCCXIII. 47 observe such caution in his appeals to both sides as to leave himself perfectly free to choose either hereafter. Whether the bundles of hay are of opinion that he treated them with proper candour and respect remains to be seen. It would be a work of supererogation to analyse the religious sentiment that lay at the bottom of this business. I shall of course be told that if Father Petcherine had been only a private individual, and his imputed offence merely petty larceny, there would have been no illuminations. Probably not. But then it must be admitted that a religious sentiment of any kind is creditable to a country, and that so long as the element of zeal exists unadulterated by a spirit of compromise, you may be sure, at all events, that there is no danger of the people relapsing into indifference. I acknowledge that if such a demonstration had taken place in England, we should regard it as a display of bigotry and fanaticism-or perhaps something worse. But then again, Dennis, blood is thicker than water; and that is the reason why we cannot detect any faults in our friends, while we can see so clearly the smallest sediment in the character of our neighbours. The truth is, that our sectarian divisions are in the highest state of development. If you have not heard much about them latterly, it is because they have been kept in store ready for use, like powder in a magazine; and, to carry out the simile to its legitimate result, the slightest spark at any moment is sufficient to produce an explosion. The new millennium, whatever else it may have done, has in no essential particular abated our constitutional love of riot, civil and religious. From the earliest times, when, according to Giraldus Cambrensis, sundry natives were changed into wolves every seven years, to the present day, we have undergone no sensible modification in these aboriginal characteristics. The departure of Mr. Duffy from amongst us, on the ostensible ground that he could no longer find the requisite belligerent materials to work upon, might seem to favour Lord Stanley's view of our altered D condition. But Mr. Duffy is not an infallible guide in such matters. He is much more of a poet than a politician, and what he really missed-and could not do withoutwas the poetical credulity which in the old times acted as a sort of lightning conductor for the impassioned eloquence of the agitators. The taste for poetry, especially of the political kind, has been slowly dying out ever since the date of the Catholic Emancipation Act. Mr. Duffy fell on evil days. He was born a quarter of a century too late for the benefit of Ireland and his own ambition. Could he have assisted at the councils of Emmet, or even at the ever memorable aggregate meetings, as a double to Mr. Sheil, there is no saying to what rank of martyrdom he might not have fairly aspired. But just as he came in, the appreciation of insurrections set to ballad measure was going out. Nor is it likely that he will succeed much better in the new country he has selected for the sphere of his next operations. I am afraid Australia is even more hopelessly prosaic than Ireland; while, under any circumstances, wherever he may go, he will not find his exile yield him the melancholy consolation which a brother bard had the satisfaction of administering to a former patriot, Napper Tandy-to wit, that his native land was groaning under the régime of the hangman and the provost-marshal in his absence ; I met with Napper Tandy, and he took me by the hand: For they're hanging men and women there, for wearin' o' the green !' sap. The shades of night are descending, and burying Flax Lodge in obscurity. You will be gratified to see that I still keep the same place; but I am sorry to tell you that I keep it only as an address. It is no longer in my own possession, and 1856.] 49 LAST AUGUST IN THE BALTIC. PART II. AT last the lingering fleets arrive, further, the ugly heavy Ezechiel, seaming the sky for miles with their trains of smoke; English one day, French the next, and all take up their berths in one great threatening crowd, right opposite the western front at about a league from the forts, just on this side of Melkö and Renskär, where a wide piece of clear deep water affords tolerable room and anchorage in fair weather. The fleet has never been in this position before; last year it was always nearer to Miölo, more to the south, and thither the Russians had directed their chief care and efforts. Thus there is no surprise at the visible excitement in the town, as ship after ship takes up its station. Not that they are defenceless, exposed on this side, by no means ; look where you will, still the same maze of islands, and still the same network of batteries for mutual support, sweeping the outlying channels. Exposed indeed-why the Russians sow and grow guns!-wherever an enemy can come, these dragon teeth spring up, broadcast and full-grown. From the East the Russians come, and had Cadmus to their father no doubt. Rejoining now old friends, we for a while bid adieu to those who had so lately and so well befriended us at need, and leaving the 'sweeping' and the sounding to go on as perseveringly as before, and taking a last look at the ant-like swarms of labourers ashore, we slid across the intervening few miles to join the body of the fleet, passing thus in full view, first, the entrance under Gustafsvärd,across which lies the dun umbersided three-decker Russia, stripped to lower masts, the same ship which last year the dashing captain of the St. Jean d'Acre was dying to run down bodily-then the successive defences on the front of Vargön and West Swartö; by the last named island we open the next main passage, in front of which a long irregular wavy line just above the surface, looking like the shimmering heat upon the water on a summer's noon, indicates a sunken line of ships, bulwarks just showing above; and two-decker, guards the passage by Langörn: which last is itself a strong midchannel fort, containing spacious barracks, and a series of works, masonry and earth, mounting numerous guns, en barbette or casemated. Beyond, comes the Nicholas battery on Rentan, and the defences which properly belong to Helsingfors-while from the right, the parapets of the citadel of Gustafsvärd, and the telegraphs on Bakholmer, with their long guns clear cut against the sky, menace and lord it over the whole front. Joining the fleet which lies somewhat huddled together near Melkö, we sweep the coast and numerous islands yet further to the north and west: here, too, the Russians have been neither idle nor improvident. Formidable and regularly constructed redoubts on different islands and points of the main, sweep all approaches to Helsingfors; you can steal no march up there. One channel in particular, between Bussholm and the larger island of Drumsiö to the left, they seem to regard as especially untrustworthy: though wide, it is shallow, except a mere threadbreadth in the middle; but let gunboats or steamers of any kind once get in there, and Helsingfors is no longer a pleasant abiding place. Wherefore there are soldiers on Drumsiö lurking behind breastworks in the thick pine forests, within easy rifle shot, and such preparation about the adjacent islands as renders any mere demonstration inside Drumsiö quite a useless exposure, if Helsingfors is not to be seriously molested. It was in this direction that a great building on the mainland, half hid among the trees, attracted attention, by a large board or strip of canvas stretched along the roof: with the help of a glass, out come at a glance in large capitals, the words Lunatic Asylum'to the amusement of all, and the suspicions of not a few wise ones that here was a deep ruse; for what purpose it was difficult to say, beyond mere protection for the building. The suspicion was of course endorsed |