15 FEBRUARY 1845, Page 13

A VISION OF •REPEAL.

THE Irish Repealers are strange people. Talk of Ireland's disor- dered state, and you are angrily told that no country. is so quiet : say that it is quiet, and you are more angrily assured that it is agitated. Ireland, says the Queen's Speech, is tranquil: the Town- Council of Limerick "resolves " that Ireland is agitated Some little time back, Mr. O'Connell thought that Federalism was not so very bad a thing ; andisstraightway Young Ireland was open- mouthed against him for abandoning simple Repeal." He has reverted to his old assurance that Repeal is certain and .swift : now, Young Ireland, speaking through the Nation, speaks of Repeal as a thing which is to happen in some indefinite future. There is wonderful naivete in these passages---

" The task undertaken by the Repealers is to regain their country from its foreign rulers. It is a great and difficult task.' In 1843 there seemed a possi- bility of carrying Repeal bj the hurrah of agitation. - That is proved impossible. We mast pow win by the gldW and "ceaseless Ctillivalick of our strength till it is able to cope with our enemy. We cannot succeed by surprise now. Peel is side awake. Were the monster meetings to reassemble, he would not fear them. He dreaded them as the preliminaries of insurrection. He would be (as be was) indifferent to them as expressions of public opinion. He fears no power save that which can outvote him in the Senate, or oppress his exchequer by the costs of war. Nor can we longer rely on the accident of an European quarrel. That may come, or rather, will come ; but ere it come, the people of Ireland are prostrate, 'how will it save us? To trust to it were unsafe and unworthy. We must free ourselves. The Repealers must cultivate their strength till they are able for their great work. They must conciliate the Protestants; proving to i them, not by empty words, but by their whole lives and acts, that there is no Catholic bigotry in Ireland, and that religious liberty is as dear to one Church as the other. • * • Next in value to Protestant conciliation is the improve- ment of the Repealers themselves, both individually and as a league. Erre we can take Ireland from the English, we must know more than they do—we must be their superiors in wisdom and virtue. The sons of the Repealers are learning those elements of thought, which, guided as they are to patriotic ends 11 th! rounding agitation, will make them the terror of England, if England a rnisru should survive their boyhood. In the district reading-rooms the people can study the state and history of their country."

"Much virtue in if" ! Here Repeal is put as a mere contin- gency, with such vast conditions, that sceptics as to the perfecti- bility of human nature would accept the whole statement as a periphrastic form of saying that repeal of the Union is impos- sible ; just as Acis describes the impossibility of repealing his union with 'Galatea-

" The flocks shall leave the mountains,

The woods the turtle-dove, The nymphs forsake the fountains, Ere I forsake my love."

Hossever, there is a great deal of sound advice involved in this curious statement by the Nation. It reminds us of the dying farmer who told his sons to dig for a treasure in his field ; the profit from thoroughly digging the soil and rendering it fertile being the real treasure, which alone they actually discovered, The Nation tells its countrymen to do such things as a means of attaining Repeal, that Ireland must benefit though it never find its promised object. If the country were to fulfil the injunction, it would indeed. grasp power : if it were really to know more than' England, not London but Dublin would be the capital of the United Kingdom : if it were to become a nation of Humes and Hallams, a people of thinkers, it might defy misrule of any sort. We only dissent from the supposition that it would then be " the terror of England ": on the contrary, it would be a safeguard and refuge for us. And as we do not see under what engagement England will lie to stand still in this process of study in wisdom and virtue, we trust that she too will not suffer Ireland to " take her down" in class, but will also make such progress that both will jointly constitute the deem of tutamen of the civilized world. The Nation says that Repeal is impossible until some such time : we say that it would be more impossible then than ever ; for union' would then be as dear to both as "showers to larks" or " sunshine to the bee."