NEWS OF THE WEEK.
ROPE dawns for Ireland in the new temper of moderation and candour which many circumstances indicate. Journals of an ex- treme colour, on both sides, give marked signs of this improved temper. The Fermanagh Reporter, an Orange paper, discovers the folly of the anti-national spirit which used to make the Orange- man boast that he was "a Britoner " and hated everything Celtic--a spirit which made the Anglo-Irishman an alien in the land. And the Nation, resuscitated, although not abandoning the hope of Irish independence as an ultimate aim, sees the folly of insurrectionary agitations. Not that we construe what we observe to be any stage-play reformation, perfect in an instant : Dr. M'Hale still continues to pour from the altar the fire of his canonical Billingsgate on Protestantism and Englandisin, even when England appears as an almoner to relieve the starving Irish from death. But better times have set in. The Queen's visit has been an example of Ireland's accessibility. The intellect Of Eng- land and Ireland had before been making a clinical study of the country and its condition ; the new_Colleges, which will open in a month or so, will not only be sources of higher education, but in the gathering of the Professors, who are drawn from all quar- ters, they are occasioning an immigration of intellect which must have a happy influence—not because Ireland wants mind, but because a certain intellectual as well as material absenteeism has left the fields of study too much to classes of thinkers with ex- clusive views and interests. The most "national" of her writers will unite with us in that observation, and not accuse it of any disparaging purpose. The opening paper in the first number of the revived Nation is remarkable both for its admissions and its unabated resolution. Ireland, the writer declares, "has submitted to misery and dis- honour which no nation ever endured without resistance before." Supposing it were so, what a wonderful extent of debility is im- plied in the fact! what wonderful self-ignorance in the boastful threats of all the Repeal agitation ! Mr. Duffy scarcely makes account enough of the terrible difficulty which is implied in the assertion. Ireland, he says, remains,—which is true of the land, but, if his description is correct, the assurance is hardly true of the nation. It is true that Ireland cannot go back either to 1848 or to 1782; and there is hope when one who has been a leader among the wandering agitators distinctly recognizes the neces- sity of basing any new effort on "the actual facts of their condi- tion." Mr. Duffy's plan of renewed activity is not yet developed : It involves some sort of fixity of tenure, and some inroad on "sectarian ascendancx"; but it also counts upon a combined ac- tion of minds in England and Ireland. The first object is to be the land. This may be a troublesome movement to official pacifi- cators, who love stagnation even more than concord ; but English sympathy would not be refused to Irish effort, even though Eng- lish opinion might differ on special points. Any nation, to be well governed and easily governed, should be powerful: as bodily examples of comparative comfort and safety in troublous times, and the reverse, we may point to England and Ireland.
