In spite of the anxieties about the potato dearth, Ireland
finds time and money for unremitting assiduity in political agitation : the Orange Society is reorganized, and the" O'Connell Tribute," collected on Sunday last, is estimated as exceeding the amount which it yielded last year. The Orangemen, by their chief leaders, adopt a new name, and call themselves henceforward " the Protestant Alliance." It is to be presumed that with their old name they will seek to relinquish what there was of illegal in the old Society. It is not to be expected, indeed, that the Alliance will differ very greatly from the Society ; for Orangeism is but one form of Inshism- merely the national propensity to illicit agitation, adapted to a Protestant form, for the descendants of those Irishmen who adhered to the Reformation. Nevertheless, with the name of Orange, the Society not only abandons some odious traditions, but signifies such a concession to the spirit of the day as indicates a less troublesome obstinacy. The O'Connell Tribute was more than twenty thousand pounds last year, and this year, when Ireland is threatened with a greater pressure of want than has visited it in the present gene- ration, the amount is expected to be greater than ever. blame 'will receive the fact as a test of national gratitude : to us it appears no more than a remarkable proof of Ireland's unfailing perseverance in certain practical inconsistencies : the greater the Want, the more the marriages and the children ; the greater the dearth, the more the money spent on organized agitation. And while we see this growing want among the people and this grow- ing wealth to the agitator by trade, the Times Commissioner op- portunely revives the accounts of O'Connell's peculiar position in respect of land: he is a very small landowner and a very exten- sive middleman. This completeness of the national characteristics in the Irishman is wonderful. View Irish society as you may, its main features seem to be preserved with a curious fiaelity. The
coincident characteristics might be tabulated somewhat thus, if moral criticism may be allowed to take a quasi-statistical form—
Abuse. Organized Agitation. Money waste.
Supineness, Faction-tights, Domestic unthrlft, Land subdivision, R lbandism, Assassin-keep, had fanning, Repeal, Repeal rent, Ejectments, Oraugelsm, Subscriptions, (Pro- testant Operative,) Over-marriage, Catholicism, Priest's money, Church sinecures, Protestantism, Tithe-charge, Conacre, Absenteeism, High rents, Middlemen, O'Connell, Tribute.
It is true that some of the abuses and some of the burdens here inflicted on the Irish people are not self-imposed ; but how well do they lit into the general system, and how much more ex- traordinary do they show the self-imposition of the burdens to be ! Never was there a nation so helpless and so agitated, so poor and so self-taxing ; but the self-taxation always has for its end the gratification of some passion—Orangeism, Repealism, Ribandism, Thug,gism, Catholicism, Protestantism, O'Connellism. And these proofs of practical " enthusiasm" are all furnished by the people— the people support these dilettanti organizations. In England, where perhaps the Charter has scarcely formed a transient ex- ception to the rule, the people voluntarily contribute to no or- ganized scheme : how remarkable the difference ! In excuse for O'Connell, it must be borne in mind that he is not the creator but the creature of the system: to him the abuses under which Ireland groans—the unthrift, the supineness, the restlessness, the misdi- rected activity—are not abuses so intolerable as they appear to the stranger. He wishes Ireland substantially more comfort- able ; but he is reconciled to her customs. On the other hand, the review shows how little Ireland can expect from Irishmen—the children that prey upon their parent.
Want. Destitution, Yearly famine, Beggary, Insolvent tenantry, Pauperism, Penury, Starvation, Potato dearth,
