ciencies and weaknesses which they were now to exhibit, the most fatal, and one of the most inexcusable, was in regard to Ireland. It required no miraculous wisdom to see that Catholic emancipation would not tranquillise Ireland while she suffered under the burden of what the Times called 'too much Church.' In the most orderly state of society in any country, it could not be expected that between six and seven millions of inhabitants of one religious faith would pay a portion of their produce to support a Church which included only a few hundred thousands a Church which they conscientiously disapproved, and whose funds they saw to be ample, while their own priesthood had nothing to depend on but the precarious contributions of their flocks. On the one hand was a Church numbering 853,000, with four archbishops, eighteen bishops, and a law which authorised its clergy to derive an essential part of their incomes from tithes; and this in a country where tillage was the almost universal means of subsistence, and the division of the land was so minute that the tithe-collectors seemed never to have done making their demands of shillings and half-pence. On the other hand, there was a Church including six millions and a half of members, without aid from government, without countenance from the law; with a multitudinous priesthood who lived with the poor and like the poor; and from these poor was the tithe extorted by perpetually recurring applications-applications backed by soldiery and armed police, who carried off the pig, or the sack of potatoes, or the money-fee which the peasant desired to offer to his own priest. It required no miraculous wisdom to see that the long-exasperated Irish must consider this management as religious persecution, and feel that Catholic emancipation was not yet complete. A very ordinary foresight would have shown that it would soon be found impossible to collect tithe in Ireland; and further, that it must soon be acknowledged by the whole world at home, as it had long been declared by the whole world abroad, that the maintenance of the establishment in Ireland was an insult and injury which no nation could be expected to endure, and which must preclude all chance of peace till it should be abolished in its form of a dominant Church. The Whig

ministers were not only without the miraculous wisdom, but they were without the ordinary foresight. They, Whigs as they were, were blinded by that same superstitious dread of changing the law which had, time after time, been the destruction of their opponents. They, Whigs as they were, seemed to have forgotten that no human law can be made for eternity-that no age or generation can bind down a future age or generation to its own arrangements, or legislate in a spirit of prophecy. They whose ancestors had declared these truths in 1688, and as often since as any great reform had been neededthey, who had dissolved the laws which gave seats in parliament as a property to individuals, and the negro as a property to his white fellow-man, pleaded now, while Ireland was convulsed from end to end with the Church question, that the Church in Ireland could never be touched, because its establishment and revenues were guaranteed by law. If it was asked to whom were this establishment and these revenues guaranteed, it was necessary to dismiss the abstraction called the Church, and to reply, either the worshippers or their clergy; and the question then was, whether means of worship could not be provided for the one, and an honourable subsistence for the other, by some method less objectionable than taking by force the tenth potato and the tenth peat from the Catholic peasant, and parading the Church of the small minority before the eyes of the vast majority as the pensioned favourite of the state. If the Whig ministers had had sagacity to see the untenable nature of the Irish establishment, and courage to propose its reduction to the proper condition of a Protestant denomination, they would have gained honours even nobler than those which they won by parliamentary reform. It is highly probable that Ireland would have been by this time comparatively at ease; for the ministers might apparently have carried such a measure at the outset of their legislation for Ireland, when their power was at its height, and the question of Church reform in England was discussed with a freedom and boldness which soon disappeared. If not, however -if they had failed and gone out upon this question -they would have entitled themselves to the eternal

gratitude of the nation, and of so much of the world at large as is interested in the interior peace and prosperity of the British Empire. But they did not see nor understand their opportunity. The phantom of the impersonal Church, and its shadowy train of legal guarantees, was before them, so as to shut out the realities of the case-the substantial interests of the Protestant religion, and the weighty facts that many of the churches were empty, the numbers of Protestants stationary or decreasing, and the working clergy actually living upon alms. The administration tried this and that and the other small method of dealing with the difficulty; at what expense of delay, contention, and ultimate partial yielding, we shall hereafter see. 'Of this,' said their friends at the time, by the most calm and moderate of their organs, there can be no doubt the only way to afford her [the Irish Church] the least chance of a permanent existence, is to abolish tithes entirely, and to cut down her other emoluments very low indeed; that is to say, to reduce them until they amount to no more than a fair equivalent for the services which she can render in return for them.'

In 1831, the state of Ireland seemed to be growing daily worse in regard to violence. There was a conflict of forces between the lord-lieutenant and Mr. O'Connell. The lord-lieutenant issued proclamations against a certain order of public meetings. O'Connell and his friends disobeyed the proclamation, and were brought to trial. Delays and difficulties were introduced into the_legal process, as is usual in Ireland; but the matter ended in O'Connell and his comrades pleading guilty to the first fourteen counts in the indictment, which charged them with holding meetings in violation of various proclamations. The attorney-general was satisfied, and withdrew the remaining counts. Mr. O'Connell denied in the newspapers that he had pleaded guilty; and declared that he had allowed judgment to go by default, in order to plead before the House of Lords, through the twelve judgesbefore which time, he hoped, the act under which he was prosecuted would expire. As it was asserted and proved in the House of Commons that he had actually pleaded guilty, and that nothing remained but for sentence to be

pronounced against him, his followers, in their amazement at such a fall, resorted to the supposition that some kind of compromise had taken place between himself and the government and that the liberator had humbled himself in order to obtain some boon for Ireland. The supposition grew to a rumour; and the rumour spread to the friends and opponents of the ministers in parliament; and, though it was promptly met, it was never again extinguished. Whether it was through indolence, carelessness, timidity, or temporary convenience, certain it was that the Whig government brought on itself, for a course of years, the charge of compromise with O'Connell, after repeated proofs of his utter unworthiness of all trust, and therefore of all countenance as the representative of his country. On the present occasion, Mr. Stanley, secretary for Ireland, was questioned in the House about the transactions of government with Mr. O'Connell; and his reply was express and clear. He would not say that Mr. O'Connell's friends had not endeavoured to make terms for him; but the reply of government had been that Mr. O'Connell's conduct had not entitled him to any consideration, and the law must take its course-judgment should be pressed against him;' the crown had 'procured a verdict against Mr. O'Connell, and it would, undoubtedly, call him up to receive judgment upon it.' Within a fortnight after, a ridiculous scene took place in the House. Mr. O'Connell asked the secretary for Ireland on what ground he had asserted that friends of his had endeavoured to make terms for him. There could be no delicacy in disclosing their names, because if they were accredited agents, he-on the supposition the principalasked for publicity; and if they were not his agents, it was but common justice to hold them up as impostors.' Again Mr. Stanley's answer was express and clear. letter had been laid before him which proposed terms, to induce the Irish government to forego the prosecution; the letter being dictated by Mr. O'Connell himself to his sonin-law, and enclosed in one from his son. The House received this explanation with shouts of laughter; and the shouts were renewed when Mr. O'Connell said that 'he could not but admit that his question had been answered most satisfactorily by the right honourable gentleman.'

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The terms proposed were, as Mr. O'Connell now declared, that he should forego his agitation for the repeal of the union, which he regarded only as means to an end, if the government would, in the first place, drop the prosecution, and next propose good measures for Ireland. The answer was, that no such compromise would be for a moment entertained by the Irish government, and that the law must take its course.' It is difficult to account for a self-exposure so audacious as this of O'Connell, on any other supposition than that he wished to advertise his readiness to be negotiated with, and to surrender his repeal agitation on sufficient inducement. He had long before so surrendered all pretensions to honour, and shown himself so incapable of conceiving of honour, that he could go through a scene like this of the 28th of February 1831, with less embarrassment than any other man. The misfortune of the case to the government was, that it did not redeem the pledge given by Mr. Stanley. The law did not take its course; Mr. O'Connell was not brought up for judgment. Time passed on; the act under which he was convicted expired; and when it was defunct, the ministers considered that it would be ungracious to inflict the penalties it decreed.

From week to week of this session, the outrages in Ireland grew worse. Tithe-collectors were murdered in some places; in others, they were dragged from their beds, and laid in a ditch to have their ears cut off. Five of the police were shot dead at once by a party in ambush. The peasantry declared against pastures, and broke up grass-lands in broad day. Cattle were driven off, lest the owners should pay tithe upon them. A committee of Roman Catholic priests, assembled at Ennis for the promotion of order and peace, broke up with expressions of despair. O'Connell attended some of the trials in May, before a special commission issued for the purpose; and he took the opportunity of making matters worse by addressing the people in speeches, in which he told them that many of the convicted peasants would have been acquitted if fairly tried, but that the juries were afraid to acquit. He charged his hearers with-not crime, butindiscretion, and advised them to deliver up their arms,