THE GREAT CONSPIRATOR IN IRELAND. A raw enemy threatens Ministers
in Ireland ; one not created by themselves, though his worst terrors are their creation. It is the Potato Blight. Again ! that ghost of Famine!
Many changes have taken place in Ireland since that scourge ravaged the country : numbers were killed off; still larger num- bers have emigrated ; and the crowds contending for conacre are not so numerous as they used to be. The agriculture of the coun- try has made some advance towards improvement, though it has not yet had time to make very great way. On the whole, how- ever, in its material condition, Ireland will be easier to deal with than it was during the famine which commenced in 1847. But politically? In this respect too the natural course of events has favoured the responsible public servants. O'Connell has long been removed from the scene ; " Young Ireland " has been carried off, bodily, in the persons of its most active leaders ; the Repeal organization has quite broken up. With smaller numbers to be set to the task of providing for themselves, with the old political agitations subdued and the leading men out of the way, with more hopeful circumstances, Ministers ought to encounter the old enemy, the Blighted Potato, on his resuscitation, with far less apprehen- sion than before.
But the Papal Aggression—the Durham Letter—the Anti-Ca- tholic Bill, which Mr. Walpole, Sir Frederick Thesiger, and their coadjutors in Opposition, have forced into the hands of Lord John Russell ? The Anti-Papal agitation looked very like a cunning device to divert political embarrassments in England. Ministers never intended to apply it to Ireland. But here comes the moral of all tortuous expedients. With the same weakness that sug- gested the device, they were not able to keep the framing of the measure in their own hands. They would have omitted Ireland ; they were not allowed to do so. They would have kept to them- selves the power of enforcing the measure ; they were not allowed to do so. They were forced to exempt ths Episcopal Church of Scotland, most invidiously. Their measure is Anti-Irish, except in so far as its administration may render it an Orange in- strument.
Many pious persons declared the potato disease of 1847 to be a "judgment" for the indulgence shown to the Roman Catholics, especially in the Maynooth grant: are not the priest- hood of Ireland likely to turn that weapon against their Protestant " oppressors ' ? The farmers' Tenant Leam°ue only languishing for want of a little more " distress "—the landlords made angry by the first excisive operation of the Encumbered Estates Act—both these parties, however manageable in them- selves, derive strength from anything which rouses the country against the Government The Government has appeared as the friend of the peasant : but if the peasant be starving under the potato scourge, will not the priest be able to " prove ' to the pea- sant that Government is his worst enemy ? Ay, most logically.
Would not Ministers be pleased to arrest this newly resurgent conspirator? Undoubtedly ; but he is too strong for them. They have taken up a position which makes them too weak to encounter the rotten potato !
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