those who are busying themselves about Ireland, to these facts; the history of that unhappy country has continued to the present day the practical comment upon their pernicious principles: the same state of things would assuredly have continued here, if the population, thus "driven," had not ultimately found employment and bread, and by means which the system at present adopted in Ireland necessarily withholds from her wretched inhabitants. (4.) But as it respects that country, not only has the entire system of administering the landed property, especially that part of it called "clearing," inflicted private wrongs of the most fatal character, but it has been most assuredly the fruitful source of those public outrages which have so long disfigured the annals of that unhappy country. I am aware that some Irish landlords, and their apologists, have very dexterously attributed these outrages to the tithing system, as if any body upon earth could believe that such landlords as they generally are, in respect of ninetenths of the produce, would be kinder than ecclesiastical ones, were they put into possession of the remaining tenth: but more concerning this proposition hereafter. To mention a few of these fatal disturbances and insurrections. That in Munster, in the year 1760, originated in the oppressive treatment of many landed proprietors, especially in their turning adrift vast numbers of the old tenantry of the province, " in order to throw many farms into one," to obtain, if possible, a greater "surplus produce," to use the phraseology of the day. Numbers were thus at once deprived of their ancient holdings, probably the possessions of their forefathers: they were called levellers; and several years elapsed before they were put: down, and not before many of them were indeed levelled and put down for ever-laid in their native earth. One: of the Irish historians thus describes this insurrection : "It was occasioned by the expulsion of great numbers of labouring peasants, destitute of any regular: means of subsistence by any other species of industry, while those who remained unexpelled, or procured. small spots of ground, had no means of paying the exorbitant rents, even by labour, the pay of which was, by the smallness of the demand, beyond all due proportion low. The misery of these cottagers was completed when they were, by inclosures, deprived of commonage, which to many had been at first allowed. Numbers of them secretly assembled in the right, and vented their fury on objects ignorantly conceived to be the causes of their misery." I hardly know whether this insurrection was the same with that of the white-boys; in their cause, however, they were identified; which was the intolerable oppression of the landed proprietors. In 1763 and 1764, the hearts-ofsteel appeared. This fatal insurrection was likewise excited by the cruelty of the same class, exercised through the medium of their subordinate agents, the middle-men, who demanded excessive fines, and racked the old tenants to an extent utterly beyond their power to pay. They were CLEARED. "The hapless peasants being thus abandoned, gave way to the impulse of their 2 Gordon, Hist. of Ireland, vol. ii. pp. 240, 241. Campbell, Phil. Survey of Ireland, p. 304. Wakefield's Account of Ireland, vol. ii. p. 9. ungovernable passions, and vented their fury on those whom they considered as their oppressors. These commotions"--(I am quoting Mr. Wakefield at present) "afford a striking and melancholy proof of the country at the time they took place: and as they arose from causes unconnected with public measures, may convince those who ascribe every evil they experience to the government, that national misfortunes depend more on the conduct of individuals than is generally believed or admitted." To pass over many minor: disturbances, the Right-Boys appeared in about 1786, and marched in hostile bodies of hundreds, and sometimes thousands. The real origin of this insurrection may be best given in the words of the then attorneygeneral of Ireland, the Right Honourable John Fitzgibbon, who declared in his place in the Irish. commons house on that occasion, that though tithes had been mentioned as the cause of it, yet such was not the fact, but that it arose from "the peasants being ground down to powder by exorbitant rents, who were so far from being able to pay their dues to the clergy, that they possessed not food or raiment for themselves." In a word, he boldly threw the wretchedness, misery, and guilt he described, at the door of their inexorable landlords 2. These were again CLEARED and put down. I shall not attempt to enumerate the whole of these events; but will only mention another case of a public nature; the private and individual sufferings inflicted by this system are of course never heard of or recorded. The manner in which the 1 Wakefield, Account of Ireland, vol. ii. pp. 9, 10. tenantry on the estates of a great Irish absentee in the county of Limerick have been recently treated, caused those disturbances which have but lately terminated. We may judge how widely "the peace of a county would be affected, when a body of twenty thousand tenantry were thrown into a state of furious agitation'." The eminent statesman I quote, who was for a considerable time officially connected with the country, fully sanctions me in all I have said. Speaking of "the commotions which for the last sixty years have tormented and desolated Ireland," he pronounces that "they all sprung immediately from local oppressions." Finally, then, who can doubt but that the elements of the late Irish rebellion, whatever might be the motives of the prime agitators, were that neglect, and cruelty, and oppression, and consequent poverty and distress, under which the peasantry of Ireland had groaned for so many generations; when, in addition to many public and political wrongs, fancied or real, so vast a number were smarting under the severer inflictions of private injuries, or treasuring up the remembrance of such as had been perpetrated upon others dear to them, their parents, their families, their friends. I have heard many, who, maintaining most strongly the evident superiority of the protestant faith and form of worship, as well as the unrivalled privi 1 Speech of the Right Hon. Charles Grant, in the House of Commons, April 22, 1822. Hansard's Parl. Debates, vol. vi. p. 1504. 2 Ibid. P. 1505. For further proofs that absenteeism is the remote cause of these outrages, and invariably impedes their cure, see all the recent reports on that country.-(State of Ireland, 4th Report, pp. 550, 551, 573. Minutes of Evidence before the Lords, 1824; pp. 8, 207, 376, &c.) leges of the British constitution, have expressed their astonishment that the belief in the one, and attachment to the other, have not spread more generally, and, indeed, become universal. A moment's consideration, however, may abate their surprise: it is quite sufficient to explain, that such are the religion and government, supported by nine-tenths, perhaps, of the great proprietors of Ireland. Not another word is necessary. (5.) But it abundantly suffices to plead, not only in extenuation, but in full justification of this conduct, and all its fatal consequences, that the proprietors of Ireland, in driving the little tenantry from their farms, and clearing the country of as many inhabitants as possible, are only acting on the plainest principles of political economy; which would have the country possessed, if it had its way, in some such manner as a master of the ceremonies would people a ball-room, that is, by a select few; though it is not quite clear how, in either case, the many could be dispensed with. Agriculture was the first to imbibe this palatable doctrine, and will, I fear, be the first to suffer by it. Its short-sighted friends have invariably admitted, that a minute system of cultivation is by far the most productive; but they hold, that what they call the "surplus produce" is greater, the larger the farms, or, in other words, the fewer persons are employed upon the same extent of land. Even supposing this were the fact, which, however, I entirely disbelieve, do they think the question is to be thus speedily decided, on a mere principle of self-interest? Supposing they can make it out clearly that one half |