Ireland is in a curious pbrensy of reasonableness. The Protec-
tionists are making great exertions to "demonstrate "their strength ; and if in some cases they have got up effectual parades of numbers, in others their active efforts have realized a proportionate failure. Thus the county meetings of Wexford and Longford proved to be no meetings at all—all leaders and no followers, or not enough to constitute a county meeting. At Wexford, the Protectionists were summoned, but the Free-traders attended ; so that if the meet. ing had been constituted it would have spoken in an unexpected strain : the Protectionists, therefore, who called the meeting, may be said to have been successful in preventing it. At Galway, a meeting underwent still stranger vicissitudes : the Protectionist gentleman who took the lead made a speech, but then, paralyzed by some doubt, he sat down without making any motion ; the Free- traders made a motion • the Protectionists then remembered their moving duties ; and after a storm of Ubidisposed motions, the meet-' ing broke up in confusion.
The priests are active, against the landlord interest, perhaps be- cause the landlord policy has turned so much upon evictions and other depopulating processes, to the immense loss of the priest.. For in those irregular kinds of emigration he is not carried out with his flock, as he might be by systematic colonization. At Templemore, Father O'Sullivan entertained his auditory with an oration on the magnanimous munificence of England and the bles- sing of cheap corn to the starving Irish ; and he spoke with an eloquence to the full as fervid as any tirade about setting the green above the red," or any denunciation of improving landlords. And at Coleraine, a meeting passed a resolution calling for cheap capital, &c., by cheapening the law processes for getting at capital. As the Chinese contrive by a sort of quaint pettiness to carry common sense to a reductso ad absurdum, so the Irish take up common sense- with the heated excitement of nonsense, and check one's satisfaction at noting the improved view by suggesting a fear that it may be only a spasmodic paroxysm—delirium deviating , into reason: which would be very frightful!
Previous page
