Page images
PDF
EPUB
[merged small][ocr errors][merged small]

656

Now, the importance of these Irish Repealers consists in this. They invariably coalesce on every occasion with the Radicals and irreligious party in the British Parliament. A large portion of the Dissenters join them. These three parties have for many years invariably acted together. The bond of union is obvious. Hatred at England and the English Church is the tie which keeps together, and will keep together, until their designs are accomplished, this otherwise heterogeneous union. They may quarrel about the spoil when it is gained; but, till that is the case, they will never separate. As long as an acre of the ancient inheritance of the Church of England remains to that noble establishment, so long will the Catholics, the Radicals, and the Infidels league together for its spoliation.

Nor is the power of this formidable coalition confined to mere votes within Parliament. It wields at will the vast Political Unions of England, called into existence by the Whig Ministry, and vested with power by the Reform Bill. It directs the ardent and reckless Catholics of Ireland, destitute, for the most part, of property, burning with now unfettered passions, and guided by an able and ambitious priesthood; it is supported by the unprincipled, the profligate, the abandoned, and the insolvent all over the empire;-a numerous race at all times, but fearfully augmented by the dissolution of principle, and the wreck of fortune consequent on the political agitation of the last two years; and now, in almost all the great towns, rendered omnipotent. The numerous class so well described by Sallust have everywhere risen into fearful political activity." Semper in civitate quibus opes nullæ sunt, bonis invi

dent, malos extollunt; vetera odere, nova exoptant; odio suarum rerum mutari omnia student; turba atque seditionibus sine cura aluntur, quoniam egestas facile habetur sine damno. Sed urbana plebs eo vero præceps ierat multis de causis, nam qui ubique probro atque petulantia maxime præstabant, ítem alii per dedecora patrimoniis amissis, postremo omnes quos flagitium aut facinus domo expulerat, ii Romam, sicut in sentinam, confluxerant." The representatives of these men uniformly and invariably ally themselves with the Catholics and the Infidels; and it is the union of these fearful bodies, when government is in weak and feeble hands, that threatens the empire with approaching dissolution.

Every one practically acquainted with the House of Commons must know how great a preponderance a body of this description, constantly united, perfectly reckless, and careless of consequences, and always at hand, must have upon their decisions. It is not too much to say that it must soon acquire, unless firmly and resolutely resisted, an irresistible force. Let no man measure the importance of such a body in a public assembly, by the mere amount of its numbers. Its influence consists in the support it receives out of doors; in the aid of a numerous and impassioned body of supporters in the empire, who give to reckless ability in Parliament the aid of reckless physical strength out of it. By such means, in the days of a progressive popular movement, a small body of desperate characters in the Legislature soon acquire a great, at last an irresistible influence. The Jacobins in the first French Assembly were just nine in number; they rose to an hundred in the second; and although they did not amount to much more than a third of the Convention at its first opening, they gradually acquired, by the threats of physical force, and the aid of the populace, a decided command over its deliberations, and ultimately led out their opponents to the scaffold.

There never was a more mistaken idea than to suppose that demagogues will now obtain no influence in the British Parliament. This was prophesied of O'Connell before he was admitted; it was said he would

find his level; and he did find his level, and that was about the third man in point of weight and importance in the late House of Commons. The times are gone past, when vehement and vulgar mob oratory will fail within the walls of St Stephen's; they succeed now, and will succeed to all appearance still better in the new Parliament, because the composition of the body is changed, and from the larger intermixture of popular passion, the influence of popular eloquence is more strongly felt. Danton backed by the Mountain never failed to make his voice of thunder heard in the French Convention.

This powerful body of united Catholics, Radicals, and Infidels, will, we may be well assured, strain every nerve to effect the dissolution of the Irish Union. Each of them has an important object to gain by such an event. The Catholics expect to obtain a local legislature, and with it a resumption of the Catholic estates, the demolition of the Protestant Church, and an Hibernian republic in close alliance with France. The Radicals hope from such an event, such a spread of republican principles in this country as will render the farther maintenance of the monarchial institutions impossible. The Irreligionists anticipate with delight the overthrow of a great Christian establishment, and hope from it to see the march of infidelity speedily become as general in this country as it became in France upon the overthrow of its establishment. All these classes have separate interests inducing them to coalesce for this great object; and seeing as we have, what can be done by general intimidation and brutal violence, it is fearful to think of the chances which exist against the empire holding together.

The repeal, if brought forward at once, will in the first instance be thrown out by a large majority; perhaps three or four to one. But let it not be imagined that the project is at an end from such a result. Ministers have taught the revolutionists how to carry what at first appears the most hopeless objects. Agitation; pacific agitation; such agitation as sickens the heart of the nation, and ultimately makes them yield any thing to get quit of it, is the simple but infernal expedient. It was thus that

Catholic Emancipation was carried; it was thus that Reform was carried; it will be thus that the dismemberment of the empire will be carried.

Experience warrants the assertion, that a democratic society can never hold together long, if the ruling power in the state is really the popular will. An aristocracy like that of Rome or Venice, may maintain a mighty sway for a course of centuries, but a real democracy carries within itself the seeds of speedy and rapid dissolution. Athens in ancient times, and Poland in modern Europe were genuine democracies; the empire of the first, after a short and feverish existence was dissolved at Aigospotamos; the provinces of the latter melted away with every war in which they were engaged, until at last the brilliant remnant was swept from the book of nations. America is not destined to all appearance to form an exception to the general rule; already the Southern States are arrayed in fierce hostility against the Northern; manufacturing cupidity has imposed a tariff upon the Union, inconsistent with the existence of part of its provinces; and before Washington's bones are dissolved in the tomb, the sword of civil discord will be drawn in the land to which he bequeathed the fatal gift of democratic freedom.

The reason why democratic societies so speedily fall to pieces, and republican states never maintain any consistency unless they are practically subjected to the despotic authority of a few members, a Committee of Public Safety, a Cromwell or a Napoleon, is that the lower classes of mankind, when invested with power, are so intolerably overbearing and despotic in their administration; and have so little regard either in their words or their actions to any thing but their own individual interests. This is a proposition universally true; because it is founded on the principles of human nature. Look at private life, and the working of the principle will instantly be perceived. Ask any man who has experienced both, whether he would rather be governed in any particular, or do business in any department with a committee of gentlemen or a body of democratic shopkeepers. You will not find one

man in ten thousand who in private life, and unconnected with political agitators will hesitate as to the answer. The same cause which makes the sway of a body of town democrats disagreeable in a city, makes a really democratic legislature intolerable in the political world. Large bodies of mankind never can be brought to attend to the feelings or the interests of others; they are invariably actuated by their own passions, or the consideration of their own advantage.

The operation of this principle may clearly be perceived in the British empire, both in past and present times. What caused us to lose our North American Colonies? The democratic intolerance of England, which would not share with its Transatlantic provinces any part of the privileges which she herself had with so much difficulty acquired. Look at the state of public feeling in England on Irish affairs: you will there see the most resolute determination to maintain the supremacy of Great Britain to all the other parts of the empire. Look at Ireland: you will find the most ardent desire, among all the Catholics at least, for a repeal of the union, and a separate legislature. The people of all the great towns in the empire are clear for the immediate emancipation of the West India negroes, which is tantamount to the immediate burning of every West India plantation, and the instant death of every West India proprietor; the inhabitants of these colonies are resolved, before they will submit to extermination, to throw themselves into the arms of the slave states in the southern parts of America. Amidst such discordant and unruly elements, the question the statesman has to ask himself is, what chance is there that the vast and unwieldly fabric of the British empire can hold together, separated as its parts are from each other by oceans and hemispheres, and embracing as it does the world in its arms? The interests, the passions of the different parts of so vast a dominion, are as much separated as the fogs of England are from the snows of Canada, or the tornado of the West from the monsoon of the East Indies. How then are they to be held together, now that political power is

exclusively vested in the lower class of the middling orders; the very men of all others the most arrogant and presumptuous in their rule over others?

One single example will suffice to shew the imminent danger in this respect which threatens the stability of the empire. Every body knows the fierce and intolerant demands for the instant emancipation of the negro slaves, which have been raised by the reckless and impassioned populace of the great cities in every part of the empire. Are the West India proprietors to submit quietly to be massacred, to give over their houses to the flames, and their children to the tomahawk, as they did in St Domingo? No-warned by the dreadful example to which, with the usual recklessness of revolutionists, the fanatical party in this country shut their eyes, they are resolved to resist, and they have openly avowed their intention to the governor, through the medium of their Assembly.

"This House was no party to the measure by which an enquiry was obtained in the Commons' House of the British Parliament, by the West India proprietors residing out of this island'; nor do we admit that the House of Commons can institute any effectual enquiry in relation to the institutions of this island, or its internal affairs. To understand the laws of any society, and the influence of customs and habits over those laws, a personal residence among the inhabitants of the country is indispensable. No evidence can convey over 4500 miles, those circumstances which most materially affect the welfare of a people, and which, to be appreciated, must be seen. Countries might be mentioned where the laws, in theory, have been considered perfect; but where, after centuries of legislation, the people are starving and wretched. This, we are proud to say, is not the case in Jamaica, notwithstanding all the defects incident to the state of slavery, originally forced on us by Great Britain.

"As the House never did recognise the resolutions of Parliament in 1823-as this House never did admit the right of the House of Commons to legislate on the internal af

fairs of Jamaica, even when the West Indies were indirectly represented in Parliament, we never can concede that a House of Commons, which is to exist upon the principle that actual representation should be the foundation of legislation, can justly claim to legislate over us, their free fellow-countrymen, in all respects their equals, but who have not, and cannot have, any voice whatever at their election, by whom, in consequence, we are not represented-who are strangers to our condition and interest, and whose attempt to dictate to us would consequently, upon their own principles, or their own existence as a legislative body, be tyranny, and not legislation.

"Experience prevents us from deluding ourselves with the hope of a dispassionate and impartial result from the proceedings of any Committee of the Commons' House, in relation to the West Indies; nor are we strangers to the fact, that pledges are now being exacted from candidates for seats in the new Imperial Parliament, to vote, in respect of the colonies, according to popular dictation, and not after ample and patient examination.

sighted Protestants, in the cause. The deluded shopkeepers of Dublin think that if they get a Parliament in College Green, they will have unheard-of days of prosperity for Ireland. They little dream of the consequences; extinction of the Church, revolution in the estates, misery, anarchy, and wretchedness for their country, such as never before was felt even in that land of woe.

"This House has always declared that they will constantly and readily adopt every measure for substantially benefiting the condition of the slave population, which our own local experience convinces us would really conduce to their welfare, and not injure those rights of property which our constituents were forced by the British Government to acquire."

Nor is it only in the West Indies that the empire is threatened with dismemberment. Ireland is all but in arms to obtain it. Ministers, after having sedulously nursed the sacred flame of democracy in that country, by unbounded concessions, and the most lavish gift of honours to the Great Agitator, now find their precepts turned against themselves. The machinery they invented for Catholic emancipation, which they raised to perfection for the Reform bill, is now brought to bear upon the repeal of the Union. O'Connell has contrived, by the aid of this popular and delusive cry, to unite not only all the Catholics, but a portion also of the selfish and short

The organization which, fostered by the Whigs, and by them directed to other purposes, has sprung up in Ireland, and is now brought to bear upon the general fabric of the empire, is to the last degree formidable. Upwards of 5,000,000 of Catholics are united in the cause-men all actuated by the strongest, though the most unfounded resentment against this country, perfectly reckless of consequences, without any thing to lose, and accustomed to follow with blind obedience the dictates of their priests. To direct this immense mass of physical strength, is the bigoted and ambitious priesthood, actuated alike by religious fervour and civil ambition-burning to regain possession of the lost estates of the clergy, and to restore to the Roman Pontiff the long-lost province of the British isles. To regulate the movements of the whole, are a few able and resolute leaders, perfectly acquainted with the means of exciting popular passion; adepts in the infernal art of agitation; careless of character, who live on public agitation, and would droop into insignificance under a resolute and stable government. Such is the force arrayed against this country, and such the power which is wielded at will by a party which has never scrupled to league with its enemies for its destruction.

The internal state to which great part of Ireland has been brought by the agitation so long and sedulously fostered by the Whigs in that country, is such as almost to exceed belief, and certainly to be without a parallel in any European nation. It is not going too far to say, that in three-fourths of the country hardly a shadow of government remains. Murders, conflagrations, robberies, are perpetrated at noonday by bands of armed peasants well organized, who set all justice at defiance. Pay

ment of tithes has in most places totally ceased; payments of every kind are in many suspended. The persons of property are, in the South, flocking into the towns with such little property as they can save out of the general wreck; the clergy are in most places literally reduced to starvation. Are some of the murderers seized by a sudden irruption of the armed force in their vicinity?an infuriated rabble immediately collect for their rescue, and dozens are shot before they can be conveyed to prison. If brought to trial, a mere mockery of justice ensues; the jury, the witnesses, are all served with notices, that if they either convict or swear against the people's friends, they will forthwith be shot, or roasted alive in their houses; and if any courageous men venture to do so, they are soon consigned with their families to the flames. The prisoners are acquitted, and the judge, in despair at obtaining justice, breaks up the assizes. Such is the state to which Ireland has been brought by Whig agitation, and the most complete application of the principles of Whig government.

To shew that we do not exaggerate the distraction, we extract at hazard from one of the last Ministerial papers.

"Under the usual head of Irish outrages," says the Courier, "will be found the accustomed list of murders and atrocities of daily occurrence in that distracted country. It would be impossible to present to our readers within the limits of a newspaper a full account of the cruelties, amounting to ferocity-of the disorders, bordering on rebellion, which now characterise the breaking up of the bonds of society in Ireland. Foreign Governments look on with wonder and amazement at the extraordinary aspect of this third part of the British Empire; and are almost inclined to doubt the value of that political liberty_under whose garb the agitators of Ireland carry on their successful machina

tions.

dwelling, and the hearth made desolate-the letting loose of a spirit of fury that spares neither age nor infancy, sex nor station; unexampled as it is in any age or in any country, are not yet enough. These isolated acts of outrage are but the drilling of agitation to prepare the population of Irelaud for deeper crimes and greater horrors; man has been set against man; but now country is to be leagued against country; an Irish Convention is to complete what Irish agitation has begun.

"But is there no majesty in the law, no power in the government, that can awe or control these desperate proceedings? Is agitation to be allowed to ripen into mischief, mischief into sedition, and sedition into civil war; without one vigorous attempt on the part of the guardians of the public safety to protect the commonwealth from the disasters impending over it? With the certainty that the present Cabinet must feel of being backed by the support of every friend to peace and order in the empire, surely there can be no fear to grapple with the difficulty, great though that difficulty be? Wherefore is the hesitation? The Right Honourable Secretary for Ireland is not wont to be daunted in the execution of his duty; neither is he supposed to be deficient in the ability to devise, or the energy to exert the means of asserting the authority of the Government and of the law. What is the avowed object of the agitators of Ireland? Separation;-separation from the British empire; with the liberty, we must suppose, to form foreign alliances against England! Why, what an absurdity is this?

"But enough, it appears, is not yet done to satisfy the designs of those who seek to profit by the excesses of their misguided fellow-countrymen. The open murder, and the midnight assassination-the ravaged

"It will hardly be believed in after ages, that a proposition so monstrous that impudence so consummate-that a confidence in the ignorance of the Irish people so greatexisted in the nineteenth century. Still greater will be the wonder that it existed so long unchecked-that society allowed itself to be outraged -that the law allowed itself to be insulted that the government allowed itself to be braved, day after day, week after week, and month af ter month, by a band of selfish agitators, whose very insignificance in numbers, wealth, and station, was

« PreviousContinue »