of Prussia, respects it, and is the most suave of
men, but the their connection with others,—things which you cannot instant another will is manifested differing from his or oppos- hinder, and of which you must still bear the shame. Such ing his, he under one form or another suspends the consti- are the vices of your near relatives, the misdeeds of members tation by force. He is in a minority, but he is by the will of of the same profession, the ineptitude of your fellow-country- God the "rightful centre of power," and if silly persons men. When Messrs. Roebuck and Lindsay constituted them- cannot see that they must be made to see it, or if a majority selves ambassadors to the Emperor of the French, we all had cisely the attitude of the Genevan demos. The workmen of closed. Fortunately it was ridiculous, and there has always the State being sovereign, are no worse than the ma- been good temper enough in our national character to join jority of Sovereigns, but then they are no better. They even in a laugh which is deservedly directed against ourselves. will have their will supreme, will if they cannot obtain it Bat it is impossible to laugh at the laboured appeal for sym- otherwise break up the constitution they themselves have pathy which the Irish National League has within the last octroyd, will spill blood if needful in any necessary or un- week been so ill-advised as to address to the French people necessary quantity, will in any case have it. The less the actual through the columns of a French newspaper. Certainly we occasion of the conflict the greater the need for asserting the are not disposed to exaggerate its importance, but unhappily right divine of will, the clear absolute sovereignty which in spite of the disclaimer of the National League Irishmen are needs give no explanation and cannot be legally interrogated. our fellow-countrymen, and it is impossible to read this So far as appears, the election of M. Cheneviare made no precious document, subscribed by a member of the Parliament difference of any kind whatever to any living being in Geneva, of the United Kingdom, without a certain tingling of the but then he was not M. Fazy, and the Sovereign chose to cheek and muttering of the lips. People of France, in effect have M. Fazy, and shall the Sovereign be impeded in the say Mr. John Martin and the O'Donoghue on behalf of the exercise even of his patronage? Kings have fired upon mobs Irish National League, People of France, we congratulate you for less, and the Radical party being King acted as kings act, on your happy condition. You are not the victims of " a free 1. c., considered its own will superior in right as well as power constitution." You are not cursed with a free press. If you to any amount of laws. It behaved as Czar Alexander now were to display as complete a want of dignity and self-respect behaves in Warsaw, and shot down in the interests of as we are now parading before you ; if you were openly to making calico instead of producing corn and cows which she can exchange for twice as much calico as she can make. She is to sell in the cheapest market and buy in the dearest. And this precious scheme the O'Donoghue submits to that logical people whose model Government is gradually introducing a system of free-trade ! The next grievance alleged is that Ireland bears more than her fair share of taxation. The result is stated with an appearance of circumstantiality which will deceive only those who wish to be deceived. It is sufficient to say that if Ireland can prove that, she will have no diffi- culty in obtaining redress. That at all events is an injustice which Parliament would be prompt to remedy. But the complaint has no foundation. Colonel Dunne, followed by some other Irish members, made the attempt last session, and their failure to make out anything like a case was simply ludicrous. But the best answer to the charge of over-taxa- tion to be found is this, that Ireland is notoriously a much cheaper country to live in than Great Britain, and that Englishmen who are small annuitants constantly resort to Ire- land because their incomes will give them more comforts there than in England. If they do not do so more than they do, the reason, we venture to suggest, is the same which makes Irish landlords live in England, or on the Continent, or any- where except on their estates. It is to be found in the social condition of the country, and if Frenchmen want to investi- gate the matter farther they can consult the widow of M. Thiebaut, whom they will find amongst them. But oddly enough the Irish National League say scarcely anything on the tenant-right question, unless the reflection upon the absentees points in that direction. Probably because, though something might be done by legislation, as this journal has always con- tended, to amend the relation between the landlord and his cottier tenants, there is no agreement even amongst Irishmen as to what that something is. The great advocate for a sweep- ing measure converting the cottier tenants into proprietors was an Englishman, Mr. John Stuart Mill, and in the last edition of his "Political Economy" he expressly states that while adhering to every word he has written he considers a revolutionary measure no longer necessary. The Encumbered Estates Act combined with emigration has in his judgment so raised the condition of the Irish peasantry that we may hope more from time and patience than from violent legislative measures. The existence of the Irish Established Church, —the one great injustice which Liberals admit, — Irish- men scarcely ever allude to, and certainly if the Irish members were to unite in a steady sustained Parliamentary protest against it, and were to abandon vague invective for a careful exposition of the facts of the case, they would not want English members to aid the onslaught, nor, as we think, have to wait long for success. .The moderation of the Irish National League may be gathered from the fact that Mr. MacManus, who was transported for openly preaching armed rebellion in 1848, is figuratively said to have been "loaded with chains," and that the abolition of the "national independ- ence," that is, of the separate Irish Parliament, is stated to have "produced, as everywhere else, the decay of public spirit, of genius, of the arts, of literature, and industry." The inde- pendence of the Irish Parliament lasted just twenty years, and if Sir Jonah Barrington and Mr. Whiteside may be trusted, it was simply the most corrupt and factious body that ever existed, and finally sold the independence which is to do so much for Ireland. Was this the body which preserved public spirit ? The assertion that arts, literature, or genius have decayed is a libel on their own country. The Union has opened to Irishmen a field in India, in the colonies, in England itself, of which they have not been slow to avail themselves. At this moment three Irishmen are English judges, the next Tory Chancellor will be, and the present Prime Minister is an Irishman. What is true in the com- plaint is that Irishmen of genius now display their powers not on a provincial but an imperial arena.
But we ask pardon, not of England so much of as Ireland, for answering what in reality calls for no answer. After all these specific complaints find no echo in Ireland, at least among that class of the community whose education and intelligence make their judgment on such points of any value. If they .
did they would not be addressed to France. It is not, we again repeat, that there is nothing left to do in Ireland. Alas! there is only too much. To effect this we need, need only too deeply, the co-operation of Irishmen. What they might effect if they would but be practical and reasonable is best proved by what they did effect in the matter of the Galway eteampaeket subsidy, in which as the event proves they certainly were neither. What so profoundly discourages us in this manifesto is that it seems to us to be the extreme ex- pression of a• feeling which is, we believe, the great obstacle to the welfare of Ireland. If she has lost her independence, so did Scotland. If she is poor, so was Scotland. Her soil is better, her ports as good. Yet Scotland has made the union with England the source of vast wealth, simply because her people had industry and self-reliance; and made use of freedom to make themselves rich instead of waiting for Government to do it for them. Government did not make Glasgow nor Paisley. Government did not make Scotch farming the pattern for Englishmen. We know that Irishmen in general would shrink from sacrificing English liberty, that is to say, self-government, for French liberty ; but the O'Donoghue and his faction are perhaps more logical than the nobler spirits of his country. May it not be after all that an enlightened, vigorous despotism, that the Napoleonic system of "everything for the people, nothing. through them," is better suited to the Celtic genius than the freedom which we proffer them. It would not be necessary to copy the faults of the French regime in all their extravagance. But might not Ireland be happier under a system of heavy taxa- tion expended on public works and an army just sufficiently large to sternly repress at once the smallest indication of popular dissatisfaction,—money spent, not as in England, where the people raise and apply it themselves, in the richest and most populous districts, but in the poorest and most back- ward,—a parliament which has no initiative, but which simply accepts or refuses the Government propositions ? Is that fervid Irish genius so much the slave of its imagination, so apt to be hurried into extremes, and so prone, whatever party may have the ascendancy for the hour, to trample on the minority, really capable of using self-government for its own profit ? If such doubts at times intrude on one, if this is the form of politics which allures the Celtic race, we believe that at least in a country where the upper classes are really almost all of English blood, and where the incorporation with England imposes moderation on both sides alike, it is not so. The English notion of liberty is after all a higher one than the French. The terrible legacy of the past still hinders and embarrasses Ireland, but the poison is slowly working out of her veins. Irishmen can be prudent, and self-reliant, and thrifty, and enterprising abroad, and they will become so at home, and become so all the quicker for the alliance with Great Britain. Nor need any rational Irishman be ashamed to confess the obligation, for they can give us, nay, they do give us, as much as we can give them. They can add to our patience of thought a quicker fancy—to our pertinacity a warmer enthusiasm—to our practical enter- prise a loftier ambition.
On the whole we have little fear that Irishmen will ever adopt the theory of liberty which finds favour with the Due de Per- signy, or the notion of national independence which takes pro- gress from the hand of a master and finds compensation for the loss of self-government in military power. Whatever may be the indecency of this appeal to French sympathy, this self- prostration at the throne of Napoleon, it is not dangerous. If the O'Donoghue can reconcile his conduct with his duty to his Sovereign and his self-respect as a member of the legisla- ture, he will find no imitators. We have no need to make martyrs on account of the Irish National League. If indeed Parliament were sitting he might be made to comprehend more clearly what sort of figure he presents, but he would have nothing else to dread even from the House of Commons..
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