23 SEPTEMBER 1865, Page 4

TOPICS OF THE DAY.

THE TOY-REVOLUTION IN IRELAND.

THERE is, as well as folly, something almost pathetic in the ohildishness of the treason which the Government of Ireland is now putting down so promptly and efficiently. It is kindness and not severity indeed to seize and punish the mischief-makers, however humble, in Ireland, just as it is kindness and not severity to punish Tommy and Billy pretty smartly for playing at lighting straws in the nursery. But the punishment should be given without any of the sort of indignation and resentment which we feel towards incen- diaries. Goethe at eight years of age made a little sacrifice in his bed-room with pastilles and a burning glass in imitation of patriarchal sacrifices, and he was much in need of severe dis- cipline for the freak, but in punishing him it would have been very absurd to assume the judicial air of an offended judge to- wards a guilty criminal. These Fenians are really children who need bringing to their senses with hard labour and spare diet, but after all there is something pathetic about their wild dream. They are really no worse than Goethe in his childhood, playing at making little private sacrifices to liberty in their own infantine way. Think only of the vari- ous grotesqueries which are involved in their conception. In the first place, the real disaffected of Ireland are thoroughly divided amongst themselves about their true patrons. The Fenians in America send them word that the North is their Mend, and will support them against England, because Eng- land has been so notoriously Southern in her sympathies. But then unfortunately the North has just been putting down seces- sion, and a secession of precisely the same kind as the Irish rebellion would be,—a secession for which there was no excuse, —for Ireland can obtain, whenever she will, a remedy for any real political grievance through her representatives in theBritish Parliament. It is not likely the North will support on this side of the water what they have so bitterly condemned on that,— even out of resentment,—and if they would, it is still less possible that they will succeed in reaching across the Atlantic to effect in a foreign country, all whose power is concentrated and well in hand, what it has taken them four years and a great national debt to effect against a very inferior enemy to Great Britain, whose resources were small and widely scattered. Then there is another great difficulty. The more sensible among the Irish malcontents, or rather the least destitute of sense, rightly conceive that their true friend should have been the South, and not the North. The boiling Celtic blood has always shown, in its original state, a natural antipathy to the tame industry of the Northern American, and a glow of sympathy with such rude society as that of the South, with its strong social distinctions, its wild authority over man, its oligarchy, and its slavery. Hence it takes a generation to make the Irishman of the North a genuine Northerner ;—at first he is almost always an ally of slavery and the South. John Mitchel, the most bitter of the Irish rebels, has been the strongest of Southern sympathizers and the best apologist of slavery. The Nation, savagely as it de- tests England, cannot conceal its abhorrence of the North and its disgust at the dream of Northern help. So here are the Irish dreamers not even united as to where they ought to look for help. France has long been hopeless. The most powerful section of the Americans are not likely to help them, and the most intelligent or least frenzied of the Irish rebels do not choose to have help from them. If Mr. Jefferson Davis had succeeded, then indeed what might not John Mitchel have attempted for Ireland? As it is, where are they to turn for help ? Add to this little petulant difference among the children at play as to where they shall borrow the light from which to light their straws, the amazing frankness and candour with which they reveal their mischievous game to their parents and guardians, and the surprise they show when after being told all about it the latter use that knowledge to interfere with their tricks,—and the humorous pathos of the situation is complete. It is just like Tommy telling his mamma that Billy's brother has promised to lend them some lueifers and ,a little gun- powder, and that then they are going to get together a great heap of straw in the back kitchen, and pile a lot of wood upon it, and set it all on fire, "and then the whole house will be in a blaze, you know, mamma,"—after which ingenuous confession Tommy is quite aghast to find the footman despatched to confiscate the lucifers and gun- powder, Billy put to bed by order, and himself in the corner for naughty and mischievous designs. "Our brothers at home," write the. Fenians candidly, "are organized in a manner far superior to any oppressed people we have read of. The day of provisional government is established—an army of 200,000 men is sworn to sustain it. Officers, American and Trish, who have served with distinction in your service,. are silently moving into Ireland, to assume control of the active operations to be inaugurated in a few months—sooner„ much sooner, than any of you can believe. All they require now is arms, to enable them to meet the enemy on something like equality." And then the "brothers at home" are struck with amazement to find their little drills interrupted, their- revolvers wanted, and their correspondence seized. It is all just like infants telling their little plots aloud, and then won- dering at the marvellous knowledge displayed by their parents. in counteracting them.

Of course it would, as the Northern Whig reminds us, be as absurd to confound these Irish political children with the whole people of Ireland, as to confound the rick-burners of Yorkshire with the people of England. And it is equally true, as the same able contemporary remarks, that the Irish peasant, in spite of his treason and his folly, shows much less brutal stupidity than the English agricultural labourer. Yet that is precisely the political misfortune of the Irish. peasant,—that he is such a lively child, taking in so much to such little practical purpose, and estimating the liabilities around him as if he were living in a fairy tale rather than in a world of constant forces and permanent laws. He has bright, childish perceptions, and supposes them to be as good as mature experience. The English agricultural labourer is far- stupider and far denser no doubt, but he makes no such mis- take as to his own powers. He says to himself; in his black moods, "I'm starving and miserable, and it's a shame ; Squire ought to help me, he ought, and he doant ; I'll be even with him, and burn down his ricks for him." Ile really can do thus much; and he does it. He probably expects to be caught and punished, but doesn't care. He knows what is within his power, and knows it is wicked and a mere act of rage, and he does it. He is far more brutal, far wickeder than the Irish peasant who drills and watches for the Fenian fleet. But he is a politician compared to him. He has few false hopes, and no false estimates of his own powers. The Irish rebel, on the -other hand, will live in a fool's paradise, will shed far more blood if he can, and shed it more ruthlessly, but he has a vision before his eyes of all sorts of impossible glories,—of an Irish republic and perhaps a few kings to brighten its. monotony, a division of the land and a landed aristocracy, rich commerce and high duties on the goods of all the rest. of the world, large capital and no capitalists, an end to bad harvests, abolition of the excise on spirits, but all the joy of illicit distilleries, perfect liberty and an immense stand- ing army, finally, a brilliant career of conquest with all the blessings of peace. It may be—perhaps it is—not only a much more imaginative and elastic mind, but a mind higher in the rank of humanity than that of the vindictive English drudge, but assuredly it is a mind far less fitted for political stability. It confuses its half-knowledge, its fancies, its dreams, with realities, and the English boor never does this. A stealthy, dull resolve to burn your neighbour's rick is not a noble qualification for political life ; but the race which is thus stupid and limited in its crimes is not in danger of taking fire at the mere mention of a secret society and the sight of a revolver. The Irish traitors have been very properly and decisively put down, but it is unfortunately far easier to crush their toy- revolutions than to crush the wild and imaginative spirit which n makes belief" so very much that toy-revolutions are to succeed. We have a sensation both of sadness and hopeless- ness in punishing these hairbrained fellows for their dangerous folly. It is like whipping schoolboys for plundering orchards and tying tin kettles to a dog's tail,—a sort of penalty which keeps the practice down a little, but has no tendency to pre- vent it altogether, rather enhancing the excitement when once the soreness of the stripes has faded away. Let us pity the Irish malcontents while we punish them, for it is in the blood, and rather a hopeless affair. They are not per- haps the lower in the general scale of humanity for a little political idiocy. They have many fine gifts, though, as Father Newman said of the Irish beggar-woman, "I do not say, my dear brethren, that she is perfection." Even he had to plead that the "political state of Catholic Ireland was no prejudice to the sanctity of the Church," and assuredly a little more balance, and power to measure the strength of their own capacities, would make them much easier to govern than they are likely to be during otr time or that of our children.