"I have had a very particular conversation with Miss Hendy," he said, laying his hand confidentially on the great critic's shoulder.

"An extraordinary woman!" chimed in Bristles, "the glory of the present times."

"I must have an additional treasure to boast of in my house," resumed Mr Pitskiver, whose heart seemed more than ever set on cutting out Mr Whalley in priority of inspection of the unequaled statue. "You'll help me, I know—I may depend on you, Mr Bristles."

"You may indeed, sir—a house such as yours needed only such an addition to make it perfect."

"You'll procure me the pride, the gratification—you'll manage it for me."

"I will indeed," said Mr Bristles, seizing the offered hand of the overjoyed Pitskiver; "since your happiness depends on it, you may trust to me for every exertion."

"And you'll plead my cause—you'll speak in the proper quarter?"

"Certainly, you may consider it all arranged."

"But secretly, quietly, no blabbing—these matters are always best done without noise. I would even keep it from my daughters' knowledge, till we are quite prepared to reveal it in all its charms."

"It is indeed a masterpiece—a chef-d'oeuvre—beauty and expression unequaled."

"I flatter myself I am a bit of a judge; and when I have had it in my possession for a short time, I will let you know the result."

The party were now about to break up.

"Them's uncomming pleasant little meetings, arn't them?" said Mr Whalley to one of the middle-aged spinsters who had been present at dinner; "and I thinks this one is like to have a very favourable conclusion."

"Miss Hendy?" enquired the spinster in breathless anticipation.

"Jist so," responded the other—"there can't be no mystery no longer, and they'll be off for France in a few days."

"For France?—gracious! how do you know?"

"I hear'd Mr Bristles, which is their confidant, say something about a chay and Dover. In cooss they will go that way to Boulogne."

Oh, Maecenas! is there no difference between the chef-d'oeuvre of the great Stickleback, and the town of Dover and a post-chaise.



CHAPTER V.

In a week after these events, six or seven gentlemen were gathered round a table in a room very near the skylight in the Minerva chambers. Our former acquaintance, Mr Bristles, whose name shone in white paint above the entrance door, was evidently strongly impressed with the dignity of his position; and as in the pauses of conversation he placed the pen he was using transversely in his mouth, and turned over the pages of various books on the table before him, it will be seen that he presided not at a feast of substantial meat and drink, but at one of those regular "feasts and flows" which the great Mr Pitskiver was in the habit of alluding to, in describing the intellectual treats of which he was so prodigious a glutton.

"What success, Sidsby?" enquired Bristles with a vast appearance of interest.

"None at all," replied the successful dramatist, or, in other words, the long-backed Ticket to whom we were introduced at the commencement of the story. "I have no invitation to dinner yet, and Sophy thinks he has forgotten me."

"That's odd—very odd," mused Mr Bristles, "for I don't know that I ever praised any one half so highly before, not even Stickleback; and the first act was really superb. It took me a whole week to write it."

"But I did not understand some parts of it, and I am afraid I spoiled it in the reading. But Sophy was enchanted with the poem you made me copy."

"A sensible girl; but how to get at the father is the thing. I have mentioned a few of the perfections of our friend Miss Hendy to him in a way that I think will stick. If we could get her good word."

"Oh, she's very good!" replied Sidsby, "she says I'm far above Lord Byron and Thomas Moore."

"Why not? haven't I told you to say, wherever you go, that she is above Corinne?"

"Ah," said Sidsby, "but what's the use of all this to me? I am a wine-merchant, not a poet; my uncle will soon take me into partnership, and when they find out that I know no more about literature than a pig, what an impostor they'll think me!"

"Not more of an impostor than half the other literary men of the day, who have got praised into fame as you have, by judicious and disinterested friends. No: you must still go on. I shall have the second act ready for you next week, and you can make it six dozen of sherry instead of three. You must please the girl first, and get at the father afterwards. She's of a decidedly intellectual turn, and has four thousand pounds in her own right."

"I don't believe she is more intellectual than myself; but that silly old noodle, her father"—

"Stop!" exclaimed Bristles in great agitation, "this is against all rule. Mr Pitskiver is our friend—a man of the profoundest judgment and most capacious understanding. I doubt whether a greater judge of merit ever existed than Mr Pitskiver."

"Hear, hear!" resounded in various degrees of intensity all round the table.

"Well, all I can say is this—that if I don't get on by shamming cleverness, I'll try what open honesty will do, and follow Bill Whalley's advice."

"Bill Whalley! who is he?" asked Bristles with a sneer.

"Son of the old Tom Noddy you make such a precious fool of."

"Mr Whalley of the Boro' is our friend, Mr Sidsby—a man of the profoundest judgment and most capacious understanding. I doubt whether a greater judge of merit ever existed than Mr Whalley of the Boro'."

"Hear hear!" again resounded; and Mr Sidsby, shaking his head, said no more, but looked as sulky as his naturally good-tempered features would let him.

"And now, Stickleback," said Mr Bristles—"I am happy to tell you your fortune is made; your fame will rise higher and higher."

A little dark-complexioned man with very large mouth and very flat nose, looked a little disdainful at this speech, which to any one else would have sounded like a compliment.

"I always knew that merit such as I felt I possessed, would force its way, in spite of envy and detraction," he said.

"We have an uphill fight of it, I assure you," rejoined Mr Bristles; "but by dint of throwing it on pretty thick, we are in hopes some of it will stick."

"Now, Mr Bristles," resumed the artist, "I don't at all like the style you talk in to me. You always speak as if my reputation had been made by your praises. Now, talents such as mine"—

"Are very high, my good sir; no one who reads the Universal doubts that fact for a moment."

"Talents, I say, such as mine," pursued Mr Stickleback, "were sure to raise me to the highest honours; and it is too bad for you to claim all the merit of my success."

"Not I; but all our friends here," said Bristles. "For two years we have done nothing but praise you wherever we went. Haven't we sneered at Bailey, and laughed at the ancient statues? Who wrote the epigram on Thorwaldsen—was it not our friend now present, Mr Banks? a gentleman, I must say, perfectly unequaled in the radiance of his wit and the delicious pungency of his satire. Without us, what would you have been?"

"Exactly what I am. The only sculptor worth a sixpence since the fine arts were invented," replied the self-satisfied Mr Stickleback.

"No," said Mr Bristles; "since you force us to tell you what we have done for you, I will mention it. We have persuaded all our friends, we have even persuaded yourself, that you have some knowledge of sculpture; whereas every one who follows his own judgment, and is not led astray by our puffs, must see that you could not carve an old woman's face out of a radish; that you are fit for nothing with the chisel but to smooth gravestones, and cut crying cherubs over a churchyard door; that your donkey"—

"Well, what of my donkey, as you call it?" cried the enraged sculptor, "I have heard you praise it a thousand times."

"Of course you have; but do you think I meant it?"

"As much as I meant what I said, when I praised some of your ridiculous rubbish in the Universal."

"Oh, indeed! Then you think my writings ridiculous rubbish?"

"Yes—I do—very ridiculous rubbish."

"Then let me tell you, Mr Stickleback, you are about as good a critic as a sculptor. My writings, sir, are universally appreciated. To find fault with them shows you are unfit for our acquaintance; and with regard to Mr Pitskiver's recommendation to the city building committee, and your donkey to adorn the pediment of the Mansion-house—you have of course given up all hopes of any interest I may possess."

"Gentlemen," said a young man with small piercing eyes and a rather dirty complexion, with long hair rolling over the collar of his coat—"are you not a little premature in shivering the friendship by a blow of temper which had been consolidated by several years of mutual reciprocity?"

"Silence, Snooksby!—I have been insulted. I was ever a foe to ingratitude, and grievous shall the expiation be," replied Bristles.

"I now address myself to you, sir," continued Snooksby, turning to the wrathful sculptor, whose wrath, however, had begun to evaporate in reflecting on the diminished chance of the promotion so repeatedly promised by Mr Bristles for his donkey; "and I feel on this momintous occasion, that it is my impiritive duty to endeavour to reinimite the expiring imbers of amity, and re-knit the relaxed cords of unanimity. Mr Stickleback, you were wrong—decidedly, powerfully, undeniably wrong—in denominiting the splindid lucibritions of our illustrious friend by the name of ridiculous rubbish. Apoligise, apoligise, apoligise; and I know too well the glowing sympithies of that philinthripic heart to doubt for a moment that its vibrations will instantly beat in unisin with yours."

"I never meant to call his writings rubbish," said the subdued sculptor. "I know he's the greatest writer in England."

"And you, my dear Stickleback, the greatest sculptor the world has ever seen!" exclaimed the easily propitiated critic. "Why will you doubt my respect, my admiration of your surpassing talent? Let us understand each other better—we shall both be ever indebted to the eloquent Mr Snooksby—(may he soon get on the vestry, the object of his inadequate ambition;) for a speech more refulgent in simple pathos, varied metaphor, and conclusive reasoning, it has not been my good fortune to hear. When our other friends leave me, Stickleback, I hope you will stay for half an hour. I have a most important secret to confide to you, and a favour to ask."

The hint seemed to be sufficient. The rest of the party soon retired; and Bristles and Stickleback began their confidential conclave.



CHAPTER VI.

But another confidential conclave, of rather a more interesting nature to the parties concerned, took place three days after these occurrences in the shady walk in St James's Park. Under the trees sauntered four people—equally divided—a lady and a gentleman; the ladies brilliantly dressed, stout, and handsome—the gentlemen also in the most fashionable costume: one tall and thin, the long-backed Ticket; and the other short and amazingly comfortable-looking, Mr William Whalley—for shortness called Bill. Whether, while he admired the trunks of the old elms, he calculated what would be their value in deals, this narrative disdains to mention; but it feels by no means bound to retain the same cautious reserve with regard to his sentiments while he gazed into the eyes of Emily Pitskiver. He thought them beautiful eyes; and if they had been turned upon you with the same loving, trusting expression, ten to one you would have thought them beautiful too. The other pair seemed equally happy.

"So you don't like me the worse," said Mr Sidsby, "now that you know I am not a poet?"

"I don't know how it is, but I don't think I care for poetry now at all," replied the lady. "In fact, I suppose my passion for it was never real, and I only fancied I was enchanted with it from hearing papa and Mr Bristles perpetually raving about strength and genius. Is Miss Hendy a really clever woman?"

"A genuine humbug, I should say—gooseberry champagne at two shillings a bottle," was the somewhat professional verdict on Miss Hendy's claims.

"Oh! you shouldn't talk that way of Miss Hendy—who knows but she may be my mamma soon?"

"He can never be such a confounded jackass!" said Mr Sidsby, without giving a local habitation or a name to the personal pronoun he.

"He loses his daughters, I can tell him," said Miss Sophy with a toss of her head, that set all the flowers on the top of her bonnet shaking—"Emily and I are quite resolved on that."

"But what can you do?" enquired the gentleman, who did not appear to be very nearly akin to Oedipus.

"Do? Why, don't we get possession of mamma's fortune if he marries; and can't we—oh, you've squeezed my ring into my finger!"

"My dear Sophy, I was only trying to show you how much I admired your spirit. I hope he'll marry Miss Hendy with all my heart."

When a conversation has got to this point, a chronicle of any pretensions to respectability will maintain a rigid silence; and we will therefore only observe, that by the time Mr William Whalley and Emily had come to Marlborough House, their conversation had arrived at a point where discretion becomes as indispensably a chronicler's duty as in the case of the other couple.

"We must get home," said Sophy.

"Why should you go yet? There is no chance of your father being back from the city for hours to come."

"Oh! but we must get home. We have been out a long time." And so saying, she led the way up the steps by the Duke of York's column, followed by her sister and her swain—and attended at a respectful distance by a tall gentleman with an immense gold-headed walking-stick, displaying nether integuments of the brightest red, and white silk stockings of unexampled purity. The reader, if he had heard the various whispered allusions to different dishes, such as "sheep's head," "calf's foot jelly," "rhubarb tart," and "toasted cheese," would have been at no loss to recognise the indignant Daggles, whose culinary vocabulary it seemed impossible to exhaust. He followed, watching every motion of the happy couples. "Well, if this ain't too bad!—I've a great mind to tell old Pits how them disgusting saussingers runs after his mince-pies—meets 'em in the Park; gallivants with them under the trees as if they was ortolans and beccaficas; bills and coos with 'em as if they was real turtles and punch a la Romaine. How the old cucumber would flare up! Up Regent Street, along Oxford Street, through the square, up to our own door. Well, blowed if that ain't a good one! Into the very house they goes; up stairs to the drawing-room. O Lord! that there should be such impudence in beefsteaks and ingans! They couldn't be more audacious if they was Perigord pies."



CHAPTER VII.

Half an hour passed—an hour—and yet the conversation was flowing on as briskly as ever. Mr Bill Whalley had explained the exact difference between Norway and Canada timber, greatly to Miss Emily's satisfaction; and Miss Sophia had again and again expressed her determination to leave the house the moment Miss Hendy entered it; and both the young ladies had related the energetic language in which they had expressed this resolution to their father, and threatened him with immediate desertion if he didn't cut that horrid old schoolmistress at once. The same speeches about happiness and simple cottages, with peace and contentment, had been made a dozen time over by all parties, when the great clock in the hall—a Dutch pendule, inserted in a statue of Time—struck three o'clock, and at the same moment a loud rap was heard at the front door.

"Who can it be?" exclaimed Miss Sophia. "It isn't papa's knock;"—and hiding her face in the thick hydrangia which filled the drawing-room window, she gazed down to catch a glimpse of the entrance steps. She only saw the top of a large wooden case, and the white hat of a gentleman who rested his hand on the burden, and was giving directions to the bearers to be very careful how they carried it up stairs.

Mr Whalley started up, as did Mr Sidsby, in no small alarm. "I wouldn't be found here for half-a-crown," said the former gentleman: "old father would shake his head into a reg'lar palsy if he knew I was philandering here, when the Riga brig is unloading at the wharf."

"Let us go into the back drawing-room," suggested one of the young ladies, "and you can get out quite easily when the parcel, whatever it is, is delivered." They accordingly retired to the back drawing-room, and in a few minutes had the satisfaction of hearing heavy steps on the stairs, and the voice of the redoubtable Mr Bristles saying, "Gently, gently,—I have no hesitation in stating, that you were never entrusted with so valuable a burden before. Deposit it with gentleness on the large table in the middle; and, you may now boast, that your hands have borne the noblest specimen of grace and genius that modern ages have produced."

"It's that everlasting donkey papa is always talking about!" whispered Sophia.

"If it's Stickleback's statue," said Mr William Whalley, "the little vagabond promised the first sight of it to old father. He'll be in a precious stew when he finds his rival has been beforehand!"

The porters now apparently retired, and the youthful prisoners in the back drawing-room tried to effect their escape by the door which opened on the stairs; but, alas! it was locked on the outside, and it was evident, from the soliloquy of Mr Bristles, that their retreat was cut off through the front room. A knock—the well-known rat, tat, tat, of the owner of the mansion—now completed their perplexity; and, in a moment more, they heard the steps of several persons rushing up stairs.

"Mr Pitskiver!" exclaimed Bristles in intense agitation, "you have surely forgotten our agreement—Snooksby! Butters! Banks! Why, I am quite overpowered with the surprise! It was to have been alone, without witnesses; or at most, in my presence. But so public!"

"Never mind, my dear Bristles. Why should I conceal my triumph—my happiness—the boast and gratification of my future days? Let us open the casket that enshrines such unequaled merits."

"If you really wish for no further secresy," replied Mr Bristles.

"Certainly! Don't I know that that case contains a masterpiece, softly sweet and beautifully feminine, as a talented friend of ours would say?"

"An exquisite woman, indeed!" said Bristles; "and a truly talented friend. The case, as you justly observe," proceeded the critic, while he untied the cords, "contains the most glorious manifestation of the softening influences of sex."

"It's a pity she's an ass," suggested Mr Pitskiver. "I can't help thinking that that's a drawback."

"What?—what is a drawback, my dear sir?"

"That femininity, as Miss Hendy calls it, should be brought so prominently forward in the person of an ass."

"An ass?—I don't understand! Are you serious?"

"Serious! to be sure, my dear Bristles. In spite of all efforts to assume an intellectual expression, the donkey, depend upon it, preponderates—the long visage, the dull eyes, the crooked legs—it is impossible to perceive any grace in such a wretched animal. I can't help thinking that if it had been a young girl you had brought me—say, a sleeping nymph—full of youth and beauty, 'twould have been a vast improvement on the scraggy jeanie contained in this box. But clear away, Bristles, we are all impatience."

"My dear sir—Mr Pitskiver—unaccustomed as I am, his I can truly say is the most uncomfortable moment of my life."

"Why, what's the matter with you, Bristles, can't you untie the string?"—"Here," continued Mr Pitskiver, "give me the cord," and so saying he untwisted it in a moment—down fell the side of the case, and to the astonished eyes of the assembled critics, and also of the party in the back drawing-room, revealed, not the masterpiece of the immortal Stickleback, but a female figure enveloped in a grey silk cloak, and covering its face with a white muslin handkerchief.

"Why, what the mischief is all this?" exclaimed the bewildered Mr Pitskiver; "this isn't the jeanie-ass you promised me a sight of. Who the deuce is this?"

The handkerchief was majestically removed, and the sharp eyes of Miss Hendy fixed in unspeakable disdain on the assembled party.

"'Tis I, base man! Are all your protestations of admiration come to this? Who shall doubt hereafter that it is the task of noble, gentle, self-denying woman to elevate society?"

A smothered but very audible laugh proceeding from the back drawing-room, interrupted the further eloquence of the regenerator of mankind; and, finding concealment useless, the two young ladies threw open the door, and advanced with their attendant lovers to the table. The female philosopher, with the assistance of Mr Bristles, descended from her lofty pedestal, and looked unutterable basilisks at the open-mouthed Maecenas, who turned his eyes from the wooden box to Miss Hendy, and from Miss Hendy to the wooden box, without trusting himself with a word of either explanation or enquiry.

"We told you of our intentions, papa," said Miss Sophia, "if you brought that old lady to your house."

"I didn't bring her; I give you my honour 'twas that scoundrel Bristles," whispered the dismayed Pitskiver.

"You told me sir," exclaimed Bristles, "that you would be for ever indebted to me if I brought this lady to your mansion—that she was the perfection of grace and innocence. By a friendly arrangement with Mr Stickleback, the greatest sculptor of ancient or modern times, I managed to secure to this illustrious woman an admission to your house, which, I understood, she could not openly obtain through the opposition of your daughters. I considered that you knew of the arrangement, sir; and I know that, with a soft and feminine trustfulness, this most gentle and intellectual ornament of her sex and species consented to meet the wish you had so ardently expressed."

"I never had a wish of the kind," cried Mr Pitskiver; "and I believe you talking fellows and chattering women are all in a plot to make me ridiculous. I won't stand it any longer."

"Stand what?" enquired Mr Bristles, knitting his brows.

"Your nonsensical praises of each other—your boastings of Sticklebacks, and Snooksbys, and Bankses; a set of mere humbugs and blockheads! And even this foolish woman, with her femininities and re-invigorating society, I believe to be a regular quack. By dad! one would think there had never been a woman in the world before."

"Your observations are uncalled for"—

"By no manner of means," continued the senior, waxing bolder from the sound of his own voice. "I believe you're in a conspiracy to puff each other into reputation; and, if possible, get hold of some silly fellow's daughters. But no painting, chiseling, writing, or sonneteering blackguard, shall ever catch a girl of mine. What the deuce brings you here, sir?" he added, fiercely turning to Mr Sidsby. "You're the impostor that read the first act of a play"—

"I read it, sir," said the youth, "but didn't write a word of it, I assure you. Bristles is the author, and I gave him six dozen of sherry."

"No indeed, papa; he never wrote a line in his life," said Sophia.

"Then he may have you if he likes."

"Nor I, except in the ledger," modestly observed Mr Bill Whalley.

"Then take Emily with all my heart. Here, Daggles," he continue, ringing the bell, "open the street-door, and show these parties out!"

Amidst muttered threats, fierce looks, and lips contorted into all modes and expression of indignation, the guests speedily disappeared. And while Mr Pitskiver, still panting from his exertions, related to his daughters and their enchanted partners his grounds for anger at the attempt to impose Miss Hendy on him instead of a statue, Mr Daggles shut the front door in great exultation as the last of the intruders vanished, and said—

"Snipe, old Pits may do after all. He ain't a bad round of beef; and I almost like our two mutton-chops, since they have freed the house from such shocking sour-crouts and watery taties as I have just flinged into the street."

But it was impossible to convert the great Mr Bristles to the belief into which his quondam follower, Mr Pitskiver, had fallen as to the qualities of Miss Hendy. That literary gentleman had too just a perception of the virtues of the modern Corinne, and of a comfortable house at Hammersmith, with an income of seven hundred a-year, to allow them to waste their sweetness on some indecent clown, unqualified by genius and education to appreciate them. The result of this resolution was seen in a very few days after the interesting scene in Harley Street; and the following announcement in the newspapers will put our readers in as full a state of knowledge as we can boast of being in ourselves:—

"Woman's value Vindicated as the teacher and example of Man, by Mrs Bristles, late Miss Hendy, Hammersmith."

* * * * *



IRELAND.

An interdict has rested, through four months, on the discussion of Irish affairs—an interdict self-imposed by the English press, in a spirit of honourable (almost of superstitious) jealousy on behalf of public justice; jealousy for the law, that it should not be biased by irresponsible statements—jealousy for the accused, that they should not be prejudiced by extra-judicial charges. At length the interdict is raised, and we are all free once more to discuss the great interests so long sealed up and sequestered by the tribunals of Dublin. Could it have been foreseen or fancied, pending this sequestration, that before it should be removed by the delivery of the verdict, nay, two months before the trial should have closed in a technical sense, by the delivery of the sentence, the original interest (profound as it was) would be obliterated, effaced, practically superseded, by a new phasis of the same unparalleled movement? Yet this has happened. A debate, which (like a series of natural echoes) has awakened and revived all the political transactions of last year in Ireland, should naturally have preserved the same relation to those transactions that any other shadow or reflection bears to the substance. And so it would: but unhappily with these rehearsals of the past, have mingled tumultuous menaces of a new plot. And these menaces, in the very act of uttering themselves, advertise for accomplices, and openly organize themselves as the principle of a new faction for refusing tranquillity once more to Ireland. Once more an opportunity is to be stifled for obtaining rest to that afflicted land.

This "monster" debate, therefore, presents us in equal proportions with grounds of disgust and terror—a disgust which forces us often to forget the new form of terror—a terror (from a new conspiracy) which forces us to forget even the late conspiracy of Repeal, and that glorious catastrophe which has trampled it under foot for ever.

It is painful to the understanding—this iteration of statements a thousand times refuted; it is painful to the heart—this eternal neglect (in exchange for a hear, hear) of what the speaker knows to be mere necessities of a poor distracted land: this folly privileged by courtesy, this treason privileged by the place. If indeed of every idle word—meaning not trivial word, but word consciously false—men shall hereafter give account, Heavens! what an arrear, in the single case of Ireland, will by this time have gathered against the House of Commons! Perfectly appalled we are when we look into the formless chaos of that nine nights' debate! Beginning with a motion which he who made it did not wish[28] to succeed—ending with a vote by which one-half of the parties to that vote meant the flattest contradiction of all that was contemplated by the rest. On this quarter, a section raging in the highest against the Protestant church—on that quarter, a section (in terror of their constituents) vowing aid to this church, and yet allying themselves with men pledged to her destruction. Here, men rampant against the Minister as having strained the laws, in what regarded Ireland, for the sake of a vigour altogether unnecessary; there, men threatening impeachment—as for a lenity in the same case altogether intolerable! To the right, "how durst you diminish the army in Ireland, leaving that country, up to March 1843, with a force lower by 2400 rank and file shall the lowest that the Whigs had maintained?" To the left, "how durst you govern Ireland by martial strength?" Question from the Minister—"Will you of the Opposition place popish bishops in the House of Lords?" Answer from a premature sponsor of Lord John's—"We will." Answer from Lord John—"I will not." Question retrospective from the Conservatives—"What is it, not being already done, that we could have done for Ireland?" Answer from the Liberals—"Oh, a thousand things!" Question prospective from the Conservatives—"What is it, then, in particular, that you, in our places, would do for Ireland? Name it." Answer from the Liberals—"Oh, nothing in particular!" Sir R. Peel ought to have done for Ireland whole worlds of new things. But the Liberals, with the very same power to do heretofore, and to propose now, neither did then, nor can propose at present. And why? partly because the privilege of acting for Ireland, so fruitful in reproaches, is barren in practice: the one thing that remained to be done,—viz. the putting down agitators—has been done; and partly because the privilege of proposing for Ireland is dangerous: first, as pledging themselves hereafter; second, because to specify, though it were in so trivial a matter as the making pounds into guineas for Maynooth, is but to put on record, and to publish their own party incapacity to agree upon any one of the merest trifles imaginable. Anarchy of anarchies, very mob of very mobs, whose internal strife is greater than your common enmity ab extra—what shall we believe? Which is your true doctrine? Where do you fasten your real charge? Amongst conflicting arguments, which is it that you adopt? Amongst self-destroying purposes, for which is it that you make your election?

[28] The reader may suppose that Lord John Russell had no motive for wishing his motion to fail, because (as he was truly admonished by Sir Robert Peel) that motion pledged him to nothing, and was "an exercise in political fluxions on the problem of combining the maximum of damage to his opponents with the minimum of prospective engagement to himself." True: but for all that Lord John would have cursed the hour in which he resolved on such a motion, had it succeeded. What would have followed? Ministers would have gone out: Sir Robert Peel has repeatedly said they would in the event of parliament condemning their Irish policy. This would bring in Lord John, and then would be revealed the distraction of his party, the chicanery of his late motion, and the mere incapacity of moving at all upon Irish questions, either to the right or to the left, for any government which at this moment the Whig-radicals could form. Doubtless, Lord John cherishes hopes of future power; but not at present. "Wait a little," is his secret caution to friends: let us see Ireland settled; let the turn be taken; let the policy of Sir Robert Peel (at length able to operate through the last assertion of the law) have once taken root; and then, having the benefit of measures which past declarations would not permit him personally to initiate, nor his party even to propose, Lord John might return to power securely—saying of the Peel policy, "Fieri non debuit, factum valet."

It might seem almost unnecessary to answer those who thus answer themselves, or to expose the ruinous architecture of politicians, who thus with mutual hands tear down their own walls as they advance, were it not for the other aspect of the debate. But the times are agitated; the crisis of Ireland is upon us; now, or not at all, there is an opening for a new dawn to arise upon the distracted land; and when a public necessity calls for a contradiction of the enemy, it is a providential bounty that we are able to plead his self-contradiction. In the hurry of the public mind, there is always a danger that many great advantages for the truth should be overlooked: even things seen steadily, yet seen but once and amongst alien objects, are seen to little purpose. Lowered also in their apparent value by the prejudice, that what passes in parliament is but the harmless skirmishing of partisanship, dazzling the eye, but innocuous as the aurora borealis, demonstrations only too certain of coming evils receive but little attention in their earlier stages. Yet undoubtedly, if the laws applicable to conspiracy can in any way be evaded, we may see by the extensive cabal now organizing itself in England for aiding the Irish conspiracy to overthrow the Irish Protestant church, that we have but exchanged one form of agitation for a worse. Worse in what respect? Not as measured simply by the ruin it would cause—between ruin and ruin, there is little reason for choice; but worse, as having all the old supporters that Repeal ever counted, and many others beside. Especially with Repeal agitation recommending itself to the Irish priesthood, and to those whom the priesthood can put in motion, it will recommend itself also and separately to vast multitudes amongst ourselves. It is worse also—not because in the event more ruinous, but because in its means less desperate. All the factious in politics and the schismatic in religion—all those who, caring little or nothing about religion as a spiritual interest, seek to overthrow the present Ministers—all those who (caring little or nothing about politics as a trading interest) seek to overthrow the Church of England—all, again, who are distressed in point of patriotism, as in Ireland many are, hoping to establish a foreign influence upon any prosperous body of native prejudice against British influence, are now throwing themselves, as by a forlorn hope, into this rearmost of their batteries, (but also the strongest)—a deadly and combined struggle to pull down the Irish Protestant establishment. And why? because nothing else is left to them as a hopeful subject of conspiracy, now that the Repeal conspiracy is crushed; and because in its own nature an assault upon Protestantism has always been a promising speculation—sure to draw support from England, whilst Repeal drew none; and because such an assault strikes at the citadel of our strength. For the established church of Ireland is the one main lever by which Great Britain carries out the machinery of her power over the Irish people. The Protestant church is by analogy the umbilical cord through which England connects herself materially with Ireland; through that she propagates her milder influence; that gone, the rest would offer only coercive influence. Without going diffusively into such a point, two vast advantages to the civil administration, from the predominance of a Protestant church in Ireland, meet us at the threshold: 1st, that it moulds by the gentlest of all possible agencies the recusant part of this Irish nation into a growing conformity with the two other limbs of the empire. The Irish population is usually assumed at about one fourth part of the total imperial population. Now, the gradual absorption of so large a section amongst our resources into the temper, sympathies, and moral habits of the rest, is an object to be kept in view by every successive government, let their politics otherwise be what they may; and therefore to be kept in view by all Irish institutions. In Canada everybody is now aware how much this country has been wanting to herself, (that is, wanting to the united interests equally of England and Canada,) in not having operated from the first upon the political dispositions of the old French population by the powerful machinery of her own language, and in some cases of her institutions. Her neglect in this instance she now feels to have been at her own cost, and therefore politically to have been her crime. Granting to her population a certain degree of education, and of familiarity with the English language, certain civic privileges, (as those of voting at political elections, of holding offices, profitable or honorary, &c.,) under such reasonable latitude as to time as might have made the transition easy, England would have prevented the late wicked insurrection in Canada, and gradually have obliterated the external monuments of French remembrances, which have served only to nurse a senseless (because a hopeless) enmity. Now, in Ireland, the Protestant predominance has long since trained and moulded the channels through which flows the ordinary ambition of her national aristocracy. The Popery of Ireland settles and roots itself chiefly in the peasantry of three provinces. The bias of the gentry, and of the aspiring in all ranks, is towards Protestantism. Activity of mind and honourable ambition in every land, where the two forms of Christianity are politically in equilibrium, move in that same line of direction. Undoubtedly the Emancipation bill of 1829 was calculated, or might have seemed calculated, to disturb this old order of tendencies. But against that disturbance, and in defiance of the unexampled liberality shown to Papists upon every mode of national competition, there is still in action (and judging by the condition of the Irish bar, in undiminished action) the old spontaneous tendency of Protestantism to 'go ahead;' the fact being that the original independency and freedom of the Protestant principle not only create this tendency, but also meet and favour it wherever nature has already created it, so as to operate in the way of a perpetual bounty upon Protestant leanings. Here, therefore, is one of the great advantages to every English government from upholding and fostering, in all modes left open by the Emancipation bill, the Protestant principle—viz. as a principle which is the pledge of a continual tendency to union; since, as no prejudice can flatter itself with seeing the twenty-one millions of our Protestant population pass over to Popery, it remains that we encourage a tendency in the adverse direction, long since established and annually increasing amongst the six and a half Irish Papists. Thus only can our total population be fused; and without that fusion, it will scarcely be hoped that we can enjoy the whole unmutilated use of our own latent power.

Towards such a purpose therefore, as tending to union by its political effects, the Protestant predominancy is useful; and secondly, were it no otherwise useful, it is so to every possible administration by means of its patronage. This function of a government—which, being withdrawn, no government could have the means of sustaining itself for a year—connects the collateral channels of Irish honours and remunerations with the great national current of similar distributions at home. We see that the Scottish establishment, although differing essentially by church government, yet on the ground that doctrinally it is almost in alliance with the Church of England, has not (except by a transient caprice) refused to the crown a portion of its patronage. On the other hand, if the Roman Catholic church were installed as the ruling church, every avenue and access for the government to the administration of national resources so great, would be closed at once. These evils from the overthrow of the Protestant church, we mention in limine, not as the greatest—they are the least; or, at any rate, they are so with reference to the highest interests—but for their immediate results upon the purposes common to all governments; and there they would be fatal, for any Roman Catholic church, where it happens also (like the Irish) to be a Papal church, neither will nor can confide privileges of this nature to the state. A Papal church, not modified (as the Gallican church) by original limitations of the Papal authority, not modified (as even the bigoted churches of Portugal and Austria) by modern conventional limitations of that alien authority, gloomily refuses and must refuse, to accept any thing from the state, for the simple reason that she is incapacitated for giving any thing. Wisely, according to the wisdom of this world, she cuts away from below the footing of the state all ground on which a pretence could ever be advanced for interfering with herself. Consequently, whosoever, and by whatsoever organs, would suffer from the overthrow of the Irish church as now established by law, the administration of the land would feel the effects from such a change, first and instantly. Let us not mistake the case. Mr O'Connell did not seriously aim at Repeal—that he knew too well to be an enterprise which could not surmount its earliest stages without coming into collision with the armed forces of the land; and no man will ever believe that he dreamed of prevailing there. What was it, then, that he did aim at? It was the establishment in supremacy of the Papal church. His meaning was, in case he had been left quietly to build up his aspiring purpose so high as seriously to alarm the government, then suddenly to halt, to propose by way of compromise some step in advance for his own church. Suppose that some arrangement which should have the effect of placing that church on a footing of equality, as a privileged (not as an endowed) church, with the present establishment; this gained, he might have safely left the church herself thenceforwards, from such a position of advantage, to fight her way onwards, to the utter destruction of her rival.

Thus it was that the conspirators hoped to terrify the minister into secret negotiation and compromise. But that hope failed. The minister was firm. He watched and waited his opportunity; he kept his eye settled upon them, to profit by the first opening which their folly should offer to the dreadful artillery of law. At last, said the minister, we will put to proof this vaunt of yours. We dare not bring you to trial, is your boast. Now, we will see that settled; and, at the same time, we will try whether we cannot put you down for ever. That trial was made, and with what perfection of success the reader knows; for let us remind him, that the perfection we speak of lay as much in the manner of the trial as in its result—in the sanctities of abstinence, in the holy forbearance to use any one of many decent advantages, in the reverence for the sublime equities of law. Oh, mightiest of spectacles which human grandeur can unfold to the gaze of less civilized nations, when the ermine of the judge and the judgment-seat, belted by no swords, bristling with no bayonets—when the shadowy power of conscience, citing, as it were, into the immediate presence of God twelve upright men, accomplishing for great kingdoms, by one day's memorable verdict, that solemn revolution which elsewhere would have caused torrents of blood to flow, and would perhaps have unsealed the tears of generations. Since the trial of the seven bishops[29]—which inaugurated for England the certainty that for her the "bloody writing" was torn which would have consigned her children to the mercies of despotism—there has been no such crisis, no such agitation, no such almighty triumph. Here was the second chapter of the history; and lastly, that the nine nights' debate attached itself as the third, is evident from its real purpose, which may be expressed strictly in this problem: Given, as a fact beyond all doubt, that O'Connell's Repeal conspiracy is for ever shattered; let it now be proposed, as a thing worthy of the combined parties in opposition, to find out some vicarious or supplementary matter for sedition. A new agitation must be found, gentlemen—a new grievance must be had, or Ireland is tranquillized, and we are lost. Was there ever a case illustrating so strongly the maxim, that no man can be effectually ruined except by himself? Here is Lord John Russell, taxed a thousand times with having not merely used Mr O'Connell as an ally, but actually as having lent himself to Mr O'Connell as an instrument. Is that true? A wise man, kind-hearted, and liberal in the construction of motives, will have found himself hitherto unwilling to suppose a thing so full of disgrace; he will have fancied arguments for scepticism. But just at this moment of critical suspense, forth steps Lord John himself, and by his own act dissipates all doubts, frankly subscribing the whole charge against himself; for his own motion reveals and publishes his wrath against the ministers for having extinguished the only man, viz. a piratical conspirator, by whose private license there was any safety for navigating the sea of Irish politics. The exact relation in which Lord John had hitherto stood to Mr O'Connell, was that of a land-owner paying black-mail to the cateran who guaranteed his flocks from molestation: how naturally must the grazier turn with fury on the man who, by suppressing his guardian, has made it hopeless for the future to gain private ease by trafficking in public wrongs! The real grievance was, the lopping Dagon of all power to stand erect, and thus laying the Whig-radical under the necessity of "walking in the light of the constitution" without aid from Irish crutches. The real onus imposed on Lord John's party is, where to look for, and how to suborn, some new idol and some fresh idolatry. Still to dispense with the laws in Ireland in the event of their own return to power, still to banish tranquillity from Ireland in the event of Sir Robert's power continuing, required that some new conspiracy should be cited to the public service, possibly (after the 15th of April) some new conspirator. The new seditious movement could not be doubtful: by many degrees of preference, the war upon the Irish church had the "call." This is to be the war now pursued, and with advantages (as we have already said) never possessed by the Repeal cause. The chief advantage of that lay in the utter darkness to the Irish peasantry of the word "Repeal." What it meant no wizard could guess; and merely as a subject to allure by uncertain hopes, on the old maxim of "omne ignotum pro magnifico," the choice of that word had considerable merit. But the cause of Popery has another kind of merit, and (again we remind the reader) reposes upon another kind of support. In that cause the Irish peasantry will be unaffectedly and spontaneously zealous; in that cause there will be a confluence from many quarters of English aid. Far other phenomena will now come forward. Meetings, even of the kind convened by Mr O'Connell, are not, we must remember, found to be unlawful by the issue of the late trials. Had certain melodramatic features been as cautiously banished from Mr O'Connell's parades as latterly they were affectedly sought, it is certain that, to this hour, he and his pretended myriads would have been untouched by the petrific mace of the policeman. Lay aside this theatrical costuming of cavalry, of military step, &c., and it will be found that these meetings were lawful. Most certainly a meeting for the purpose of petitioning is not, and (unless by its own folly) never can be, found unlawful.

[29] The trial of the seven bishops for declining to obey the king's order in council against what, in conscience, they believed to be the law of the land, is the more strictly a parallel case, because, as in Ireland, the whole Popish part of the population—in effect, therefore, the whole physical strength of the land—seemed to have arrayed itself on the side of the conspiracy; so in England, the only armed force, and that close to London, was supposed to have been bought over by the systematic indulgence of the king. Himself and the queen (Mary of Modena) had courted them through the summer. But all was fruitless against the overwhelming sympathy of the troops with an universal popular feeling. Bishop Burnet mentions that this army (about 10,000 men, and then encamped beyond Hounslow) broke into tremendous cheers at the moment when the news of the acquittal reached them. Whilst lauding their Creator his majesty was present. But a far more picturesque account of the case is given by an ancestor of the present Lord Lonsdale's, whose memoirs (still in MS.) are alluded to in one of his Ecclesiastic Sonnets by Mr Wordsworth, our present illustrious laureate. One trait is of a nature so fine, and so inevitable under similar circumstances of interest, that, but for the intervention of the sea, we should certainly have witnessed its repetition on the termination of the Dublin trials. Lord Lowther (such was the title at that time) mentions that, as the bishops came down the Thames in their boat after their acquittal, a perpetual series of men, linked knee to knee, knelt down along the shore. The blessing given, up rose a continuous thunder of huzzas; and these, by a kind of natural telegraph, ran along the streets and the river, through Brentford, and so on to Hounslow. According to the illustration of Lord L., this voice of a nation rolled like a feu-de-joie, or running fire, the whole ten miles from London to Hounslow, within a few minutes; or, like a train of gunpowder laid from London to the camp, this irresistible sentiment finally involved in its torrent evenits professional and hired enemies. Caesar mentions that such a transmission, telegraphically propagated from mouth to mouth, of a Roman victory, reached himself, at a distance of 160 miles, within about four hours.

But may not this new conspiracy, which is now mustering and organizing itself, be put down summarily by force? We may judge of that by what has happened to the old conspiracy. Put down by martial violence, or by the police, Repeal would have retired for the moment only to come forward and reconstruct itself in successive shapes of mischief not provided for by law, or not shaped to meet the grasp of an executive so limited as, in these days, any English executive must find itself. On the other hand, once brought under the cognizance of law, it has been crushed in its fraudulent form, and compelled to transmigrate at once into that sincere, substantial, and final form, towards which it was always tending. Whatever of extra peril is connected with a movement so much more intelligible than Repeal, and so much more in alliance with the natural prepossessions of the Irish mind—better it is, after all, that this peril should be forced to show itself in open daylight, than that it should be lurking in ambush or mining underground; ready for a burst when other mischief might be abroad, or evading the clue of our public guardians. Besides that, Repeal also had its own peculiar terrors, notwithstanding that it did not grow up originally upon any stock of popular wishes, but had been an artificial growth propagated by an artificial inoculation. That flame also could burn fiercely when fanned by incendiaries, although it did not supply its own combustibles. And, think as we may of the two evils, valued as mischief against mischief, Repeal against Anti-protestantism, certain it is, that one most important advantage has accrued to Government from the change. Fighting against Repeal, they had to rely upon one sole resource of doubtful issue; for, after all, the law stood on the interpretation of a jury, and therefore too much on the soundness of individual minds; whereas in meeting the assaults of Anti-protestantism, backed as it is by six millions of combatants, ministers will find themselves reposing on the whole strength of two nations, and of that section, even amongst the Irish, which is socially the strongest. An old enemy is thus replaced by a new one many hundred-fold more naturally malignant; true, but immediately the new one will call forth a natural antagonism many thousand-fold more determined. Such is the result; and, though alarming in itself, for ministers it remains an advantage and a trophy. How was this result accomplished? By a Fabian policy of watching, waiting, warding, and assaulting at the right moment. Three times within the last twelve months have the Government been thrown upon their energies of attack and defence; three times have they been summoned to the most trying exercise of skill—vigilantly to parry, and seasonably to strike: first, when their duty was to watch and to arrest agitation; secondly, when their duty was, by process of law, to crush agitation; thirdly, when their duty was to explain and justify before Parliament whatsoever they had done through the two former stages. Now, then, let us rapidly pursue the steps of our ministers through each severally of these three stages; and by seasonable resume or recapitulation, however brief, let us claim the public praise for what merits praise, and apply our vindication to what has been most misrepresented. The first charge preferred against the Government was, that it did not instantly attack the Repealers on their earliest appearance. We must all recollect this charge, and the bitterness with which it was urged during the whole of last summer; for, in fact, the difference of opinion upon this question led to a schism even amongst the Conservative party and press. The majority, headed by the leading morning paper, have treated it to this day as a ground of suspicion against Government, or at least as an impeachment of their courage, that they should have lingered or hesitated upon the proper policy. Our Journal was amongst the few which, after considerable reflection and perhaps doubt, defended the course adopted; and specifically upon the following suggestion, inter alia, viz. that Peel and the Wellesley were assuredly at that moment watching Mr O'Connell, not at all, therefore, hesitating as to the general character of the policy to be observed, but only waiting for the best mode (best in effect, best in popularity) of enforcing that policy. And we may remind our readers, that on that occasion we applied to the situation of the two parties, as they stood watching and watched, the passage from Wordsworth—

"The vacillating bondsman of the Pope Shrinks from the verdict of that steadfast eye."

There was no great merit in being right; but it is proper to remind our readers that we were right. And there is considerable merit, more merit than appears, in not having been wrong; for in that we should have followed not only a vast leading majority amongst public authorities, but we should have followed an instinct of impassioned justice, which cannot endure to witness the triumph, though known to be but fugitive, of insolence and hyperbolical audacity. Not as partisans, which was proved by the caution of our manner, but after some deliberation, we expressed our conviction that Government was not slumbering, but surveying its ground, taking up its position, and trying the range of its artillery, in order to strike surely, to strike once, but so that no second blow should be needed. All this has been done; so far our predictions have been realized; and to that extent the Government has vindicated itself. But still it may be asked, to what extent? Doubtless the thing has been done, and done completely. Yet that will not necessarily excuse the Government. To be well done is, in many cases, all that we require; but in questions of civil policy often there is even more importance that it should be soon done, done maturely, (that is, seasonably done with a view to certain evils growing up concurrently with the evil,) done even prematurely with respect to immediate bad consequences open to instant arrest. At this moment amongst the parliamentary opponents of ministers, though some are taxing them with unconstitutional harshness, (or at least with that summum jus which the Roman proverb denounces as summa injuria,) in having ever interfered at all with Mr O'Connell, others of the same faction are roundly imputing to them a system of decoy, a "laying of traps," (that was the word,) in waiting so patiently for the ripening of the Repeal frenzy. Upon the same principle, a criminal may have a right to complain that her Majesty, when extending mercy to a first crime, or a crime palliated by its circumstances, and that a merciful prosecutor who intercedes effectually on his behalf with the court, have both been laying a trap for his future conduct; since, assuredly, there is one motive the less to a base nature for abstaining from evil in the mitigated consequences which the evil drew after it. On the same principle the Repealers, having found Sir R. Peel so anxious, in the first stages of their career, to spare them altogether, were seduced into thinking that surely he never would strike so hard when at length he had made ready to strike. Still, with submission, we think that to found false expectations upon a spirit of lenity, and upon that mistake to found an abuse of goodness that was really sincere, was not the fault of Sir R. Peel, but of the Repealers. Any man's goodness becomes a trap to him who is capable of making it such; since the most noble forbearance, misinterpreted as fear, will probably enough operate as a snare for such a person by tempting him into excesses calculated to rouse that courage with which all genuine forbearance is associated. If the early moderation of Government did really entrap any man, that man has himself, and his own meanness of heart, to thank for his delusion. But were it otherwise, and the Government became properly responsible for any possible misinterpretation of their own lenity—even in that case, it will remain to be enquired whether Government could have acted otherwise than it did. For else, though Government could owe little enough to the conspirator; yet with respect to the ill-educated and misled labouring man, whose honest sensibilities were so grievously played upon by traitors, we do ourselves conceive that Government had a clamorous duty. If such men by thousands believed that the cause of Repeal was patriotic, that we consider a delusion not of a kind or a class to challenge exposure from Government; they have neither such functions assigned to them, nor could they assume any office of teaching without suspicion. But when the credulity of the poor was shown also in anticipating impunity for the leader of Repeal, and upon the ground that ministers feared him, when for this belief there was really much plausible sanction in the behaviour of the Whig ministers—too plainly it became a marked duty of Sir Robert Peel to warn them how matters stood; to let them know that sedition tended to dangerous results, and that his Government was bound by no secret understanding, with sedition for averting its natural penalties. So much, we all agree, was due from the present Government to the poorer classes; and exactly because former governments had practically taken another view of sedition. If, therefore, Sir R. Peel had left unpaid this great debt, he failed grievously in the duties of his high office; but we are of opinion that he did not. We have an obscure remembrance that the Queen's speech uttered a voice on this point—a solemn, a monitory, a parental voice. We seem to recollect also, that in his own parliamentary place he warned the deluded followers of Repeal—that they were engaged in a chase that must be fruitless, and might easily become criminal. What was open to him, therefore, Sir Robert did. He applied motives, such as there were within his power, to lure men away from this seditious service. The "traps" he laid were all in that direction. If more is required of him by people arguing the case at present, it remains to ask whether more was at that time in his power.

The present administration came into power in September 1841. Why the Repealers did not go to work instantly, is more than we can explain; but so it was. In March of 1843, and not sooner, Mr O'Connell opened a new shop of mercenary agitation, and probably for the last time that he will ever do so. The surveillance of Government, it now appears, commenced almost simultaneously; why not the reaction of Government? Upon that it is worth spending a few words. It is now made known to the public, that from the very first Sir R. Peel had taken such measures of precaution as were really open to him. In communicating, officially with any district whatsoever, in any one of the three kingdoms, the proper channel through which the directions travel is the lord-lieutenant of the particular county in which the district lies. He is the direct representative of the sovereign—he stands at the head of the county magistrates, and is officially the organ between the executive and his own rural province. To this officer in every county, Sir R. Peel addressed a letter of instructions; and the principle on which these instructions turned was—that for the present he was to exercise a jealous neutrality; not interfering without further directions in ordinary cases, that is, where simply Repeal was advocated, or individuals were abused; but that, on the first suggestion of local outrages, the first incitement to mischief, arrests and other precautionary measures were to take place. Not much more than twenty years are gone by, since magistrates moved on principles so wholly different, that now, and to the youthful of this generation, they would seem monstrous. In those days, let any man be found to swear that he apprehended danger to his property, or violence to his person, from the assembling of a mob in a place assigned, and the magistrate would have held it his duty to disperse or prevent that meeting. But now on a change tout cela; and as easily might a magistrate of this day commit Fanny Elssler as a vagabond. Yet even in these days we have heard it mooted—

1. On the mere ground of numerical amount, and as for that reason alone an uncontrollable mass, might not such a meeting have been liable to dispersion? Answer—this allegation of monstrous numbers was uniformly a falsehood; and a falsehood gross and childish. Was it for the dignity of Government to assume, as grounds of action, fables so absurd as these? Not to have assumed them, will never be made an argument of blame against the Executive; and, indeed, it was not possible to do so, since Government had employed qualified persons to estimate the numbers, and in some instances to measure the ground. The only real charge against Government, in connexion with these fables, is (and we grieve to say it) that of having echoed them, in an ambiguous way, at one point of the trials; not exactly assuming them for true, and resting any other truth upon their credit, but repeating them as parts inter alia of current popular hearsay. Now this, though probably the act of some subordinate officer, does a double indignity to Government; it is discreditable to the understanding, if such palpable nursery tales are adopted for any purpose; and openly to adulterate with falsehood, even in those cases where the falsehood is not associated with folly, still more deeply wounds the character of an honourable government. But, besides, had the numerical estimates stood upon any footing of truth, mere numbers could not have been pleaded as an argument for reasonable alarm. The false estimate was not pleaded by the Repealers until after the meetings, and as an inference from facts. But the use of the argument was before the meeting, and to prevent the meeting. And if the experience of past meetings were urged as an argument for presuming that the coming one would be not less numerous, concurrently would be urged this same experience as a demonstration that no danger was to be apprehended. Dangerous the meetings certainly were in another sense; but, in the police sense, so little dangerous, that each successive meeting squared, cubed, &c., in geometrical progression the guarantee in point of safety for all meetings that were to follow.

2. On the ground of sedition, and disaffection to the Government, might not these assemblages have been lawfully dispersed or prevented? Unfortunately, not under our modern atmosphere of political liberality. In time of war, when it may again become necessary, for the very salvation of the land, to suspend the habeas corpus act, sedition would revive into a new meaning. But, at all times, sedition is of too unlimited a nature to form the basis of an affidavit sworn before a police magistrate; and it is an idea which very much sympathizes with the general principles of political rights. When these are unusually licentious, sedition is interpreted liberally and laxly. Where danger tightens the restraints upon popular liberty, the idea of sedition is more narrowly defined. Sedition, besides, very much depends upon overt acts as expounding it. And to take any controversial ground for the basis of restraint upon personal liberty, would probably end in disappointment. At the same time, we must make one remark. Some months ago, in considering what offence was committed by the public avowal of the Repeal doctrine, we contended, that it amounted constructively to treason; and on the following argument—Why had any body supposed it lawful to entertain or to propagate such a doctrine? Simply, on the reflexion that, up to the summer of 1800, there was no union with Ireland: since August of that 1800, this great change had been made. And by what? By an act of Parliament. But could there be any harm in seeking the repeal of a parliamentary act? Is not that done in every session of the two Houses? And as to the more or less importance of an act, that is a matter of opinion. But we contended, that the sanctity of an act is to be deduced from the sanctity of the subjects for which it legislates. And in proof of this, we alleged the Act of Settlement. Were it so, that simply the term Act of Parliament implied a license universally for undoing and canceling it, then how came the Act of Settlement to enjoy so peculiar a consecration? We take upon us to say—that, in any year since the Revolution of 1688-9, to have called a meeting for the purpose of framing a petition against this act, would have been treason. Might not Parliament itself entertain a motion for repealing it, or for modifying it? Certainly; for we have no laws resembling those Athenian laws, which made it capitally punishable to propose their repeal. And secondly,—no body external to the two Houses, however venerable, can have power to take cognizance of words uttered in either of those Houses. Every Parliament, of necessity, must be invested with a discretionary power over every arrangement made by their predecessors. Each several Parliament must have the same power to undo, which former Parliaments had to do. The two Houses have the keys of St Peter—to unloose in the nineteenth century whatever the earliest Parliament in the twelfth century could bind. But this privilege is proper and exclusive to the two Houses acting in conjunction. Outside their walls, no man has power to do more than to propose as a petitioner some lawful change. But how could that be a lawful change which must begin by proposing to shift the allegiance into some other channel than that in which it now flows? The line of succession, as limited in the act, is composed of persons all interested. As against them, merely contingent and reversionary heirs, no treason could exist. But we have supposed the attempt to be against the individual family then occupying the throne. And it is clear that no pretence, drawn from the repealable nature of an English law, can avail to make it less, or other than treason, for a person outside of Parliament to propose the repeal of this act as to any point affecting the existing royal family, or at least, so many of that family as are privileged persons known to the constitution. Now, then, this remark instantly points to two classes of acts; one upon which to all men is open the right of calling for Repeal; another upon which no such right is open. But if this be so, then to urge the legality of calling for a Repeal of the Union, on the ground that this union rests only upon an act of Parliament, is absurd; because that leaves it still doubtful whether this act falls under the one class or the other.

Why do we mention this? Because we think it exceedingly important that the attention of parliament should be called to the subject, and to the necessity of holding certain points in our constitution as absolutely sacred. If a man or party should go about proclaiming the unlawfulness, in a religious sense, of property, and agitating for that doctrine amongst the lower classes by appropriate arguments—it would soon be found necessary to check them, and the sanctity of property would soon be felt to merit civil support. Possibly it will be replied—"Supposing the revolutionary doctrines followed by overt acts, then the true redress is by attacking these acts." Yet every body feels that, if the doctrine and the acts continued to propagate themselves, very soon both would be punished. In the case where missionaries incited negro slaves to outrages on property, or were said to do so, nobody proposed to punish only the overt outrages. So, again, in the event of those doctrines being revived which denounced all differences of rank, and the official distinctions of civil government, it would be too late to punish the results after the bonds of society were generally relaxed. Ministers are placed in a very false position, continually taxing a man with proposing the repeal of a law as if that were an admitted crime, and yet also pronouncing the proposed repeal of any law to be a privilege of every citizen. They will soon find it necessary to make their election for one or other of these incompatible views.

Meantime, in direct opposition to this uncertainty of the ministers, the Irish Attorney-General has drawn the same argument from the Act of Settlement which we have drawn. In February 1844, the Irish Attorney-General pronounced his views; Blackwood's Magazine in August or September 1843. A fact which we mention—not as imputing to that learned gentleman any obligation to ourselves; for, on the contrary, it strengthens the opinion to have been independently adopted by different minds, but in order to acquit ourselves from the natural suspicion of having, in a legal question, derived our own views from a high legal authority.

3. Might not the Repeal Association have been arrested and prosecuted at first, viz. in March 1843, as six months afterwards they were, on a charge of conspiracy? That was a happy thought, by whomsoever suggested; and strange that an idea, so often applied to minor offences as well as to political offences, should not at once have been seen to press with crushing effect upon these disturbers of the public peace. Since the great change in the combination laws, this doctrine of conspiracy is the only means by which masters retain any power at all. Wheresoever there are reciprocal rights, for one of the two antagonist interests to combine in defence of their own, presupposes in very many cases an unfair disturbance of the legal equilibrium. Society, as being an inert body in relation to any separate interests of its own, and chiefly from the obscurity of these interests, cannot be supposed to combine; and therefore cannot combine even to prevent combinations. Government is the perpetual guardian and organ of society in relation to its interests. Government, therefore, prosecutes. This, however, left the original question as to the Repeal of the Irish Union act, whether a lawful attempt or not lawful, untouched. And necessary it was to do so. Had the prosecutor even been satisfied on that point, no jury would have regarded it as other than a delicate question in the casuistry of political metaphysics. But the offence of combining, by means of tumultuous meetings, and by means of connecting with this obscure question rancorous nationalities or personalities, so as to make that a matter of agitating interest to poor men, which else they would have regarded as a pure scholastic abstraction—this was a crime well understood by the jury; and thence flowed the verdict. But could not the same verdict have been obtained in the month of March? Certainly not. For the act of conspiracy must prove itself by collusion between speeches and speeches, between speeches and newspapers, between reporters and newspapers, between newspaper and newspaper. But in the infancy of such a concern, these links of concert and mutual reverberation are few, hard to collect, and unless carelessly diffused, (as in the palmy days of the Repeal Association they were,) difficult to prove.

In short, no indictment could have availed that was not founded on the offence of conspiracy; and that would not have been available with certainty much before the autumn, when in fact the conspirators were held to bail. To have failed would have been ruinous. We have seen how hardly the furious Opposition have submitted to the Government measure, under its present principle of simple confidence in the law as it is: had new laws, or suspension of old ones, been found requisite—the desperate resistance of the Liberals would have reacted contagiously on the excitement in Ireland, so as to cause more mischief in a secondary way, than any measure of restraint upon the Repealers could have healed directly.

It is certain, meantime, that Sir R. Peel did not wish to provoke a struggle with the Repealers. Feeling, probably, considerable doubts upon the issue of any trial, moving upon whatsoever principle—because in any case the composition of the jury must depend a good deal upon chance, and one recusant juror, or one juror falling ill at a critical moment, might have reduced the whole process to a nihility—Sir Robert, like any moderate man, hoped that his warnings might meet with attention. They did not. So far from that, the Repealers kindled into more frenzy through their own violence, irritated no doubt by public sympathy with their worst counsels in America and elsewhere. At length the case indicated in the minister's instructions to the lords-lieutenant of counties, the casus faederis, actually occurred. One meeting was fixed ostentatiously on the anniversary of the rebellion in 1798; and against the intended meeting at Clontarf, large displays of cavalry and of military discipline were publicly advertised. These things were decisive: the viceroy returned suddenly to Ireland: the Privy Council of Ireland assembled: a proclamation issued from government: the conspirators were arrested: and in the regular course the trials came on.

Such is our account of the first stage in this great political transaction; and this first stage it is which most concerns the reputation of Government. For though the merit of the trials, or second stage, must also belong to Government, so far as regards the resolution to adopt this course, and the general principle of their movement; yet in the particular conduct of their parts, these trials naturally devolved upon the law-officers. In the admirable balance of firmness and forbearance it is hardly possible to imagine the minister exceeded. And here, where chiefly he stood between a double fire of attacks, irreconcilable in themselves, and proceeding not less on friends than foes, it is now found by official exposures that Sir Robert's conduct is not open to a trivial demur. He made his preparations for vindicating the laws in such a spirit of energy, as though he had resolved upon allowing no escape for the enemy; he opened a locus penitentiae, noiseless and indulgent to the feelings of the offenders, with so constant an overture of placability as if he had resolved upon letting them all escape. The kindness of the manner was as perfect as the brilliancy of the success.

Next, as regards the trials, there is so very much diffused through the speeches or the incidents of what is noticeable on one ground or other—that we shall confine ourselves to those points which are chiefly concerned in the one great factious (let us add fraudulent) attempt within the House of Commons to disparage the justice of the trial. In all history, we remember nothing that ever issued from a baffled and mortified party more audacious than this. As, on the other hand, in all history we remember nothing more anxiously or sublimely conscientious than the whole conduct of the trial. More conspicuously are these qualities displayed, as it was inevitable they should, in the verdict. Never yet has there been a document of this nature more elaborate and fervent in the energy of its distinctions, than this most memorable verdict; and the immortal twelve will send down their names to posterity as the roll-call of those upright citizens, who, in defiance of menaces, purchased peace to their afflicted country at the price of peril to themselves. With partisans, of course, all this goes for nothing; and no cry was more steadily raised in the House of Commons than the revolting falsehood—that the conspirators had not obtained a fair trial. Upon the three pretences by which this monstrous allegation endeavoured to sustain itself, we will say a word. Two quarrels have been raised with incidents occurring at separate stages in the striking of the jury. What happened first of all was supposed to be a mere casual effect of hurry. Good reason there has since appeared, to suspect in this affair no such excusable accident, but a very fraudulent result of a plan for vitiating the whole proceedings. Such things are likely enough to be attempted by obscure partisans. But at all events any trick that may have been practised, is traced decisively to the party of the defendants. But the whole effect of the trick, if such it were, was to diminish the original fund from which the names of the second list were to be drawn, by about one twenty-ninth part. But this inconsiderable loss was as likely to serve the defendants as not; for the object, as we have said, was—simply by vitiating the proceeding to protract the trial, and thus to benefit by a larger range of favourable accidents. But why not cure this irregularity, however caused, by the means open to the court? Simply for these reasons, explained by the Attorney-General:—1st, that such a proceeding would operate injuriously upon many other trials; and 2d, as to this particular trial, that it would delay it until the year 1845. The next incident is still more illustrative of the determination, taken beforehand, to quarrel with the arrangements, on whatever principle conducted. When the list of persons eligible as jurors has been reduced by the unobjectionable process of balloting to forty-eight, from that amount they are further reduced by ultimate challenges; and the necessity resting upon each party to make these challenges is not discretional, but peremptory. It happened that the officer who challenged on behalf of the crown, struck off about ten Roman Catholics. The public are weary of hearing it explained—that these names were not challenged as Catholics, but as Repealers. Some persons have gone so far as to maintain—that even Repealers ought not to have been challenged. This, however, has been found rather too strong a doctrine for the House of Commons—to have asked for a verdict of guilty from men glorying in the very name which expresses the offence. Did any man ever suggest a special jury of smugglers in a suit of our lady the Queen, for the offence of "running" goods? Yet certainly they are well qualified as respects professional knowledge of the case. We on our part maintain, that not merely Repealers were inadmissible on the Dublin jury, but generally Roman Catholics; and we say this without disrespect to that body, as will appear from what follows. It will often happen that men are challenged as labouring under prejudices which disqualify them for an impartial discharge of a juror's duty. But these prejudices may be of two kinds. First, they may be the natural product of a certain birth, education, and connexion; and these are cases in which it will almost be a duty for one so biased to have contracted something of a permanent inability to judge fairly under circumstances which interest his prejudices. But secondly, there are other prejudices, as, for instance, of passions, of blind anger, or of selfish interest. Such cases of prejudice are less honourable; and yet no man scruples to tell another, under circumstances of this nature, that he cannot place confidence in his impartiality. No offence is either meant or taken. A trial is transferred from Radnorshire to Warwickshire in order to secure justice: yet Radnorshire is not offended. And every day a witness is told to stand down, when he is acknowledged to have the slightest pecuniary interest in the case, without feeling himself insulted. Yet the insinuation is a most gross one—that, because he might be ten guineas richer or poorer by the event of the trial, he is not capable of giving a fair testimony. This would be humiliating, were it not seen that keen interests compel men to speak bluntly and plainly: men cannot sacrifice their prospects of justice to ceremony and form. Now, when a Roman Catholic is challenged as a juryman, it is under the first and comparatively inoffensive mode of imputation. It is not said—you are under a cloud of passion, or under a bias of gross self-interest. But simply—you have certain religious opinions: no imputation is made on your integrity. On the contrary, it is honourable to you that you should be alive to the interests of your class. Some think, and so may you, that separation from England would elevate the Catholics; since, in such a case, undoubtedly your religion would become predominant in Ireland. It is but natural, therefore, that you should lean to the cause of those who favour yours. In setting aside a Catholic as a juryman on the trial of Repealers, this is the imputation made upon him. Now, what is there in that to wound any man's feelings? Lastly, it is alleged that the presiding judge summed up in terms unfavourable to the Repealers. Of course he did; and, as an upright judge, how could he have done otherwise? Let us for one moment consider this point also. It is often said that the judge is counsel for the prisoner. But this is a gross misconception. The judge, properly speaking, is counsel for the law, and for every thing which can effect the right understanding of the evidence. Consequently he sometimes appears to be advocating the prisoner's cause, merely because the point which he is clearing up happens to make for the prisoner. But equally he would have appeared to be against the prisoner, if he found it necessary to dissipate perplexities that would have benefited the prisoner. His business is with no personal interest, but generally with the interest of truth and equity—whichever way those may point. Upon this principle, in summing up, it is the judge's duty to appraise the entire evidence; and if any argument lurks obscurely in the evidence, he must strip it of its obscurity, and bring it forward with fuller advantage. That may happen to favour the prisoner, or it may weigh against him. But the judge cannot have any regard to these consequences. His concern is simply with the pressure and incidence of the testimony. If, therefore, a prisoner has brought forward witnesses who were able to depose any thing in his favour, be assured that the judge will not overlook that deposition. But, if no such deposition were made, is it meant that the judge is to invent it? The whole notion has grown out of the original conceit—that a defendant in relation to the judge is in the relation of a client to an advocate. But this is no otherwise true than as it is true of every party and interest connected with the case. All these alike the judge is to uphold in their true equitable position and rights. In summing up, the judge used such facts as had been furnished to him. All these happened to be against the Repealers; and therefore the judge appeared to be against then. But the same impression would have resulted, if he had simply read his notes of the evidence.

Such are the desperate attempts to fasten charges of unfairness on this fairest of all recorded trials. And with an interest so keen in promoting the belief of some unfairness, was there ever yet a trial that could have satisfied the losing party? Losers have a proverbial privilege for being out of temper. But in this case more is sought than the mere gratification of wrath. Fresh hopes spring up in every stage of this protracted contest, and they are all equally groundless. First, Mr O'Connell was not to be arrested: it was impossible and absurd to suppose it. Next, being arrested, he was not to be tried. We must all remember the many assurances in Dublin papers—that all was done to save appearances, but that no trial would take place. Then, when it was past denial that the trial had really begun, it was to break down on grounds past numbering. Finally, the jury would never dare to record a verdict of guilty. This, however, being actually done, then was Mr O'Connell to bring writs of error; he was to "take the sense" of the whole Irish bench; and, having taken all that, he was to take the sense of the Lords. And after all these things were accomplished, finally (as we then understood it) he was to take himself off in the direction pointed out by the judges. But we find that he has not yet reconciled himself to that. Intimations come out at intervals that the judges will never dare to pass any but a nominal sentence upon him. We conclude that all these endless conflicts with the legal necessities of his case are the mere gasconades of Irish newspapers, addressing themselves to provincial readers. Were there reason to suppose them authorized by the Repealers, there would be still higher argument for what we are going to say. But under any circumstances, we agree with the opinion expressed dispassionately and seasonably by the Times newspaper—that judgment must be executed in this case. We agree with that journal—that the nation requires it as a homage rendered necessary to the violated majesty of law. Nobody wishes that, at Mr O'Connell's age, any severe punishment should be inflicted. Nobody will misunderstand, in such a case, the mitigation of the sentence. The very absence of all claim to mitigation, makes it impossible to mistake the motive to lenity in his case. But judgment must be done on Cawdor. Two aggravations, and heavy ones, of the offence have occurred even since the trial. One is the tone of defiance still maintained by newspapers under his control. Already, with one voice, they are ready to assure the country, in case of the sentence being incommensurate to the case, that Government wished to be severe, but had not courage for the effort; and that Government dares not enforce the sentence. The other aggravation lies in this—that he, a convicted conspirator, has presumed to take his seat amongst the senators of the land—"Venit in senatum, fit particeps consilii." Yet Catiline, here denounced to the public rage, was not a convicted conspirator; and even his conspiracy rests very much on the word of an enemy. It is true that, in some formal sense, a man's conviction is not complete in our law until sentence has been pronounced. But this makes no real difference as to the scandalous affront which Mr O'Connell has thus put upon the laws of the land. And in that view it is, viz. as an atonement for the many outrages offered to the laws, that the nation waits for the consummation of this public example.

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Edinburgh: Printed by Ballantyne and Hughes, Paul's Work_

THE END