land at the eleventh hour did the just She has Church to which, in their island at least, | rous feelings of modern Europe. Engit was entitled. Both opinions appear to be erroneous. Keeping in view what were the real causes of Irish suffering, and which had prepared the soil everywhere so plentifully for the seed of the agitators, it is impossible to maintain that they would have been removed, or in the slightest degree mitigated, by either or both of those much-motives, and the consequences of the vaunted measures. Suppose emancipation had been conceded in 1801, when Mr Pitt left office on the subject, and fifty Irish Catholics had ever since sat in Parliament; suppose that the Church property had been wholly transferred to the Romish Church, and high mass celebrated in every cathedral of Ireland ever since that time, would these changes have either alleviated the suffering or eradicated the seeds of evil in that unhappy country? Unquestionably they would not. Still would a million of squalid cultivators have vegetated in listless indolence on the soil, and overspread the land with their descendants; still would self-government have proved the bane of a people incapable of selfdirection; still would the concession of English privileges to a nation unfitted for their reception have left the door perpetually open to withering and ruinous agitation. The vantageground gained in Ireland would have proved the greatest of all incitements to the See of Rome to press upon its adversaries, until they had regained the inestimable jewel of Great Britain for the tiara of the Roman Pontiff; and what could have been expected from that but increased exasperation, and still more ulcerated feelings, between the two countries? Emancipation has not failed because it came either too late or was incomplete, but because the real evils of Ireland arose from an entirely different set of causes, which that measure had no tendency to diminish, but rather to increase. fault have already been amply experienced. The great precedent of yielding, not to justice, but to coercion, has not been lost upon the agitators within her own bosoni. The Reform movement was the child of the Catholic agitation; the Anti-Corn-Law League of the triumph of Reform. The helm has passed out of the hands that used to hold it; the vessel, when a storm arises, has ceased to obey the helm, and drifts before the wind. It has been discovered, that if a question can be brought forward, touching the interests and inflaming the passions of a numerical majority of the people, the Government can be constrained, and measures forced upon it at variance with its best interests, most settled convictions, and fixed determination. This penalty has England incurred for yielding, not to justice, but intimidation. But this punishment is as nothing to what Ireland has experienced, or the Romish agitators have incurred; nor is there to be found in the whole history of human affairs a more memorable instance of righteous retribution than has overtaken them, in the unforeseen but now apparent and natural consequence of their transgressions. 168. That Catholic emancipation was the parent of the Reform Bill is now universally acknowledged, and will be abundantly proved in the very next chapter. It added fifty votes to the movement party in Ireland, and took as many, by the heartburning which it excited in this island, from the Conservative majority in Great Britain. 167. But still emancipation was a This change, one hundred in all, wise measure, because it was a just and two hundred on a division, enone. "Fiat justitia, ruat cœlum," tirely altered the balance of parties was the noblest maxim of antiquity; in the Imperial Parliament. For the "Fais ce que tu dois, avienne ce que first time since Mr Pitt's defeat of the pourra," the expression of the chival- | Coalition in 1784, it gave a majority But being under a foreign influence, and directed by the Court of Rome, whose policy was to embarrass and weaken the English aristocracy, which it regarded as its most formidable enemy, they did just the reverse. They coalesced with the Liberal and movement party in England, and supported all the measures tending, by its unrestrained admission from foreign countries, to lessen the cost of agricul in the House of Commons to the Lib- | tain. eral and movement party, and with the impulse given to their opinions by the French Revolution, first overturned the Duke of Wellington's administration, and then carried through the Reform Bill. Immense was the triumph of the united Catholics and Liberals at this great victory, which in its immediate results gave them a majority of five to one in the House of Commons, and seemed to have pros-tural produce in the United Kingdom. trated the House of Lords beneath their feet. Yet in the consequences of this very triumph, and the measures pursued amidst shouts of victory by the conquerors, were preparing the greatest of all rewards to the vanquished, and a natural but deserved retribution for their ingratitude to the victors. The Catholic religion has not, since the Reformation, experienced such a blow as it has done in both hemispheres from the consequences of Catholic emancipation and the measures of its supporters. To be convinced of this, we have only to consider what is the social situation of Ireland, what measures its material interests require, and what those were which the majority of its representatives concurred in introducing. At the same time they put themselves at the head of the repeal agitation in Ireland, and shook the country to its centre by the monster meetings, which occupied every thought and engaged every arm in the Catholic population of Ireland. The result is well known. Agriculture, neglected for political agitation, fell into decay; a famine of the thirteenth fell upon the population of the nineteenth century; free trade in grain was introduced as a remedy for insupportable evils; and Ireland, which hitherto had enjoyed the monopoly, was exposed to the competition of the world in the supply of the English market. 170. Immense beyond all precedent have been the consequences of these changes, but upon none have they 169. As Ireland is almost entirely fallen with such force and severity as an agricultural country, and nineteen- upon the agitators and Catholics of twentieths of its inhabitants are main- Ireland. From a statistical paper retained by, and its wealth derived from, cently published by the Census Comthe cultivation of the soil, it is evident missioners of Dublin, it appears that that what its interests required was the population of the island, which in such a protective policy as might se- 1846- the year of the famine, and cure for its cultivators the monopoly when Free Trade was introduced-had in some degree of the English market. been 8,386,940, had sunk in 1851 to There was much to be said in favour 6,551,970; and in 1861 was only of free trade in grain so far as the 5,764,543! At least two millions manufacturers of Manchester, Glas- and three-quarters of persons have gow, and Birmingham were concerned, disappeared from Ireland during fifwhose interest was to buy grain cheap; teen years, and of these above two but nothing at all in so far as the agri- millions are Roman Catholics. The culturists of Ireland were concerned, consequence is, that the disproportion whose interest was to sell it dear. If, between the Protestants and Catholics therefore, the members, whether for has been materially changed; already counties or boroughs of Ireland, had it has become 4,490,583 Catholics to been directed by the interests of their 1,273,968 Protestants-or as 44 to 127 constituents, they would have done nearly.* The priests in the country everything in their power to secure the have sunk to one-half their former English market for them, by support* Census 1861; or as 33 to 1, instead of 4 to ing the protective system of Great Bri-1, which was the former proportion. number- they have declined from | ings are unknown-the undiminished nearly 5000 to 2600.* At the same time the embarrassments of the landed proprietors, arising from the depression of agriculture, consequent upon Free Trade and the fall in the value of rural produce, have come to such a climax that a rigorous measure became indispensable. The land was in a great measure wrested from the old insolvent proprietors, and the sales of the Encumbered Estates Commission have transferred it to new, and for the most part Irish, capitalists. 171. These changes which have come on so suddenly that we are scarcely able even now to appreciate their full effects, have already produced a visible and most salutary attention on the condition of the whole empire. Ireland has ceased to be, what for about a century past it had been, a thorn in the side of England, a source of weakness instead of strength to the United Kingdom. It is no longer necessary to retain thirty thousand soldiers in the country to keep down its inhabitants. The barracks are in many places empty, or tenanted only by the police monster meet* A return has been issued from the Census Office in Dublin, showing the population of Ireland from the year 1805 to 1851, both inclu sive, as far as the same could be ascertained from various sources. forth: The result is thus set 7,847,285 8,009,527 strength of the empire can be sent to the Baltic or the Euxine. Agitation has disappeared — the repeal of the Union is no longer heard of-all thoughts and desires are turned to the promised land on the other side of the Atlantic. England was punished, and justly punished, for her religious intolerance and political selfishness by a century of vexation and weakness, consequent on the connection with Ireland-she is now reaping the reward of a more generous policy, and a great act of justice, in the comparative comfort of that connection, and the bright dawn of prosperity visible in the sister isle. But it is not to the gratitude or loyalty of those to whom this act of justice was done that she is indebted for this blessed consummation; she owes it to their ingratitude and blind submission to a foreign potentate, which, by inducing a policy which deprived the rural Catholics of the remuneration for their industry, has driven them headlong across the Atlantic. That which all the wisdom of man had failed to effect has resulted from the unforeseen and not intended consequences of his passions. Thus does the wisdom of the Almighty cause even the wrath of man to praise Him. 172. Nor have the consequences of emancipation been less decisive against Population. the spread of the Catholic faith in 7,767,401 Great Britain. It was natural that 7,807,241 the Romish hierarchy, seeing this great 7,887,534 victory gained by the effects of agita7,927,989 tion in Ireland, and many persons of 7,968,655 distinction of both sexes in England 8,050,609 embracing their faith, should have 8,091,902 thought that the time had come when 8,133,408 the work of the Reformation was to be 8,175,124 8,217,055 undone, and the British Isles were to 8,259,200 be wholly regained by the Holy See. 8,301,563 They openly announced the project accordingly. Great Britain was divided into ecclesiastical districts; bishops were appointed, and the cardinal-legate assumed the long-forgotten title of Catholic times. The effect was decisive. A burst of Protestant enthusiasm ensued unparalleled since the Reformation, and the Prime Minister of the Crown, a leading supporter 8,344,142 8,386,940 7,172,748 1851, 6,551,970 7,464,156 1861, of emancipation, took the initiative in | priest was swallowed up in the gulf calling it forth. The aggressive and of democracy. The ascendant which ambitious spirit of the Church of the Romish clergy had acquired amidst Rome which is recorded in every the ignorance and solitude of the Irish page of modern history, but had come wilds, was speedily lost when surroundto be forgotten during the tolerant ed by the turmoil of American interests, slumber of the close of the nineteenth the conflict of American sects. So sigcentury-was again brought to light, nally has the influence of the Church and the contest of the Protestants of Rome declined in the United States, with the Catholics was renewed, but that, notwithstanding the immense inwithout the withering alliance with flux of Irish Catholics in the last ten political distinction which had so long years, there are only now 1,200,000 detached the generous from the side members of Romish churches in the of the former. Men saw that the Union, out of 13,000,000 embraced in Church of Rome was unchanged and the whole divisions of the Christian unchangeable, and must be combated communion. It is a common comwith vigour as in the first fervour of plaint, accordingly, of the Catholic the Reformation; but the contest came clergy in America, that they have lost to be carried on, not by pains, penal- all influence over their flocks; that ties, and disabilities, but by reason, their followers live altogether without argument, and, intelligence, and above God in the world; and that, without all, by raising the intellectual charac- embracing any new faith, they have ter of women, among whom its prin- simply renounced the old. This, it is cipal votaries are always to be found. to be feared, is too often the case. The whole vantage-ground gained by From superstition to infidelity is but the Catholics during the struggle for a step. It is by the torch of knowemancipation was lost by its acquisi- ledge, and it alone, that the flame of tion. a pure and lasting piety is, in an enlightened age, to be kindled. But that torch is not awanting in America; and, without anticipating the march of events that yet lie buried in the womb of time, it may with confidence be predicted that, however strongly the Catholic tenets may be rooted amidst the traditions and corruptions of the Old World, it will never make head against the energy and intelligence of the New; and that still less will infidelity permanently retain any hold of a people open to the influences and blessed by the choicest gifts of Nature. 173. Nor have the consequences of that concession been less injurious to the cause of Catholicism on the other side of the Atlantic. The pastors in vain followed their flocks to the New World; their ascendant was at an end when the indigent multitude left the shores of the Emerald Isle. Vast was the difference between the dark night| of Celtic ignorance, lighted only by the feeble rays of superstition, and the bright aurora of Transatlantic energy, illuminated by the effulgence of knowledge, intelligence, and intellect. The CHAPTER XXII. DOMESTIC HISTORY OF ENGLAND FROM THE PASSING OF THE CATHOLIC RELIEF BILL IN 1829 TO THE FALL OF THE WELLINGTON ADMINISTRATION IN 1830. 1. THE English nation can never have more than one object of interest or ambition at one time; and thence it is that internal discord has so often been appeased by the advent of foreign war. Accordingly, the three years which elapsed between the passing of the Catholic Relief Bill in 1829, and the Reform Bill in 1832, presented but one feature-the preparation for or approach of reform. As the Hundred Days were nothing but the eve before the battle of Waterloo, so these three years were nothing but the eve before the Reform Revolution. All interests were wound up in it, all desires centred in it, all heads occupied with it. The indifference which had so long prevailed on this subject had passed away, and been succeeded by an intense passion, which gradually went on accumulating in violence, until at length it became altogether irresistible. Various causes conspired at that time to feed and strengthen this passion which had never before come into operation, and by their combined action brought about the great and all-important, though happily bloodless, revolution of 1832. 2. (1.) The first of these was the immense increase of manufacturing and commercial wealth and industry which had taken place during and since the war, and the great number of considerable places, abounding in riches and teeming with energy, which were wholly unrepresented in Parliament. If it is true that knowledge is power, still more is it true that wealth is power; and in the great commercial cities of Britain both these were combined, without the constitution giving their inhabitants any channel by which they might make their influence felt by the Government. This was a serious defect, and was felt as a very great grievance. In early times it had been obviated by the practice which prevailed of sending writs to each borough or village which had become considerable, commanding them to send burgesses to Parliament. But this practice, which was entirely in harmony with the spirit of the constitution, had long fallen into desuetude, since it had been discovered that a majority in the House of Commons gave the party possessing it the command of the State; and now the great towns, many of which had quadrupled in population and wealth during the preceding quarter of a century, remained without representation; while vast numbers of little boroughs, which had declined with the changes of time to a mere fraction of their former inhabitants, still sent members to Parliament, many of them at the dictation, or in pursuance of the sale, of a neighbouring magnate. So far had this gone, that it was the constant asseveration of the movement party that a majority of the House of Commons was returned by two hundred and fifty individuals, most of them members of the Upper House, who had thus come to engross in their own persons the whole power of the State, by having got the command of both Houses of Parliament. 3. (2.) This system, which had come to be styled the indirect representation, had worked well, and given rise to no serious complaints, as long as the interests of those who got into the boroughs, either by purchase or the |