TOPICS OF THE DAY.
IRISH REPEAL.
REPEAL the Union, and what will be the consequence? The circumstance that renders it almost impossible for an Im- perial Government to improve the condition of Ireland, is the moral gulf that yawns between the British and Irish people. The popu- lations of the two islands may be said to belong to different cen- turies. The civilization of the mass of the Irish people is such as pervaded Europe previous to the great ecclesiastical schism or Reformation. The civilization of the mass of the British people is such as has existed in the greater part of Europe since that event. The difference is not merely a difference of religious sect : the predominance of the Roman Catholic faith among those of the old civilization, and of the Protestant among those of the new, is merely one of the consequences or external symptoms of the more radical diversity at bottom. The incompatibility would exist even though both professed the same creed. The national faith of France is Roman Catholic, but the intellect of France is post- Reformation or anti-Tridentine : the Irish and French could no more harmonize and get on peaceably together than the Irish and British.
All persons residing in Ireland are not distinguished from all persons residing in Great Britain by this difference of civilization : the distinction is between the Irish and British races residing in both islands. They coexist but do not commingle. The hordes of Irish labourers which annually pour into our manufactu- ring districts in search of employment (the agricultural labourers from Ireland are birds of passage) do not amalgamate with the population among whom they settle. They retain their native habits and peculiarities ; they affect living in the same streets and lanes ; they support and are guided by their own priests ; they marry and are given in marriage among themselves ; they remain as completely a distinct race as the Jews. On the other hand, there is a numerous British colonization in Ireland : in Ulster it predominates.
If the two distinct populations, Irish and British, were confined each to its own island, Repeal might give a kind of peace to Ire- land. It would leave the country astern of the civilization of the greater part of Europe, but it would leave an united people—a peo- ple belonging to the same age, whose very prejudices and errors harmonized after a sort. But as matters really are, Repeal would only leave the two hostile and incompatible portions of the population to do battle on the champ- dos of their own soil. In all the ferocious and sanguinary civil conflicts of Ireland, the bitterest animosity has been between the British and Irish natives of the island. In the mas- sacres under CHARLES the First—at the sieges of Derry and Lime- rick, and the battle of the Boyne—at the battles of the Diamond and Vinegar Hill—the savage hatred which vented itself in war to the knife was not between Englishmen and Irishmen, but between the Irish of the old civilization and the Irish of the new. In ge- neral, the interposition:of English authority has been for the pur- pose of mitigating the intense hatred of Rapparee and Crom- wellian, of Orangeman and Defender. Even the seeming excep- tions—as in the case of the iron rule of CaomwELL—were the con- sequence, it may have been of a mistaken, but still of a con- scientious belief, that neither one nor other of the contending par- ties would listen to reason until one or both were effectually put down.
The Repeal of the Union would be the signal for civil war in Ireland. The first Volunteers in Ireland were the Protestants, and Protestants and Catholics remained in apparent union till the independence of the Irish Parliament was wrested from the Eng- lish Government. But even before that end was attained, jea- lousies were rife between the two races, which broke out into open wrangling immediately after. The Orangemen of our day were in not a few instances originally Protestant Volunteers ; and the change was a natural and necessary one in the state of Irish society. Neither the Catholic nor the Protestant need be blamed—the change was the effect of a social necessity stronger than the indi- vidual will. And even though Catholic and Protestant—the re- presentatives of the old civilization and the new—were to Com- bine for Repeal, the result would be the same ; the united Re- peelers would, in the course of a few months after their wish had been granted, be flying at each other's throats.
There are only two ways of putting an end to the hereditary feud which divides Ireland into two irreconcileable factions. The one is tedious and harrassing, the other expeditious and less trou- blesome. The one is to preserve the Union, and, as we suggested last week, to make it more complete by converting a mere legislative union into a union of executive government also. If this course were adopted, a strong government, that knew its own mind, would by a judicious alternation of firmness and indulgence, by education and other means, inevitably bring the two races in time to coalesce. But the task would be a thankless one, and might require the efforts of more than one generation. The other way of putting an end to the hereditary feud is to grant Repeal at once, and what is synonymous, an entirely independent government to Ireland. The impossibility of preserving peace without the mediating authority of the Imperial Government would soon bring the Irish to sue to be readmitted into the Empire. This would be a brief but a cruel process. It would, however, require on the part of the Imperial Government nothing but a strict neutrality. There would be no danger of any other state interfering : the only state in a con- dition to interfere is France ; and France, not to say that she has her hands full in Algiers, has not yet forgotten how bootless an attempt it was to organize Ireland as a French dependency during the Re- volutionary war. The parties in Ireland are too equally matched to admit of the one terminating the civil strife by conquering the other. Those of the old civilization are too numerous to be en- tirely subdued by those of the new, and the latter are too much the superiors of the former in intelligence and discipline to be beaten by them. The interference of the Imperial Government could alone put a stop to a bloody and interminable civil strife, and that interference would be courted.
A MACHFAVEL might recommend such a mode of solving the perplexing problem of Irish government ; but no man with the sentiments of humanity which characterize our age can listen to it.
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