this fact, together with the masculine energy | rages with such terrible activity, that it is conof his eloquence and character, that procured signing to the grave its daily victims. The for him the title of "the Lion of the Fold of one was the studied essay of a popular canJuda" from O'Connell. On the death of Dr. didate for the distinctions of office-the other Kelly he was promoted to the archiepiscopal was the cold and conventional language which see of Tuam. In his new position he con- was borrowed from the political ritual of pretinued to issue public pronouncements at in- ceding prime ministers. It was on the buoytervals on such questions as "church establish- ant hopes inspired by the language of the first, ment," "education," and the like. All his letters your lordship was borne to your present reup to 1847 have been collected into one volume. sponsible position; and should you persevere Some sermons which were preached in Ire- in a line of policy, towards a suffering nation, land, England, and Italy have been translated accordant with the cold-hearted sentiments into Italian by the Abate de Lucca, apostolic contained in your second letter, it requires no nuncio at Vienna. He is also the author of a extraordinary prescience to predict that it will work published in 1827 entitled Evidences and assuredly prove the precursor of your political Doctrines of the Catholic Church. Another de- fall. partment of literature to which he has devoted a large amount of time, and in which he has accomplished great things, is the attempt to revive an interest in the Irish language and literature. He has published translations into Irish of more than sixty of Moore's melodies in the same metre as the original, and in 1861 he produced a large octavo volume containing six books of the Iliad in an Irish translation. He has also published translations into the Celtic tongue of several portions of the Bible.]

By one of those awful calamities with which Providence sometimes visits states and nations, five millions of people, forming an integral portion of a flourishing and mighty empire, are entirely deprived of food, and consigned to all the horrors of famine. The prime minister is naturally and rightfully appealed to, to relieve the suffering part with an equitable application of the wealth of the entire body, and he replies to them, to look to themselves, and rely on their own resources. Selfreliance is a fine theme when sufficient for any crisis; but to tell a people to supply themselves with food, when both food and means of pro

AN IRISH PARLIAMENT AND AN IRISH curing it are gone, appears like the requisition

FAMINE.

(FROM "LETTERS."1)

of the Hebrews to make bricks without materials. And does your lordship, too, advocate, by this singular letter, the nullity of the im

TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE LORD JOHN RUSSELL. perial union? For forty-six years the people

My Lord-This sententious contrast between the hopes of the aspiring Cæsar and the disappointment inflicted by the reigning emperor, is but too applicable to those statesmen whose talents, so hopeful in opposition, seem to be blighted on their attainment of political power. Within the brief interval of twelve months, two remarkable letters have appeared, bearing your lordship's signature. The one boldly promulgated the sound doctrine of free trade, and expressed a generous sympathy with the destitution of the Irish people, which was but light, compared to the famine with which they are now afflicted. The other was so chilling, as to have filled those with despair whom it would have been wisdom to console-among whom hunger now

1 By permission of the author.

of Ireland have been feeding those of England with the choicest produce of their agriculture and pasture; and while they thus exported their wheat and their beef in profusion, their own food became gradually deteriorated in each successive year, until the mass of the peasantry was exclusively thrown on the potato. New improvements in agriculture were projected-scientific reforms in the rearing and feeding of cattle were discussed and adopted; but to the mass of the people the practical fruit of those improvements was a fresh interdict of the use of flesh-meat or of flour, and a further extension of the dominion of a less nutritive kind of that same vegetable, to the exclusive use of which they were inexorably doomed!

No matter-a cry of Irish prosperity was raised by those who were enabled to subject the growers of corn to the uniform consumption of an inferior quality of food; and the same cry was re-echoed from the shores of

it was certain, if the prudence and stock were fourfold, the millions of the people, irrevocably doomed to the potato, would be equally debarred from their participation.

At length their cries have reached to heaven; and He who has created the poor and the rich has answered: "Now I will hear; the time of retribution is come; vengeance is already sweeping the land," verifying the words of the inspired writings: "By reason of the misery of the needy, and the groans of the poor, now will I arise, saith the Lord." In a great national chastisement all must in some degree be involved; and though many of the poor are made victims, perhaps from their want of due resignation, and to teach them that there can be still deeper misery than that which they endured, the entire destruction of the potato crop reads an awful lesson of the cruelty of which that aliment has been made the instrument. It was intended by the Almighty as a valuable adjunct of human sustenance to his creatures-it has been abused by man as an instrument of rapacious wealthof dire oppression, and of national degradation. Its destruction shows what some seemed ignorant of-that the interests of all are identified; that one class cannot permanently flourish, and another be abandoned to decay, and that the people cannot be pushed to the verge of starvation, without landlords and

England, gladdened with the abundance with which its inhabitants were supplied, careless of the misery of which that abundance was productive in Ireland, and losing sight altogether of the dietary destitution which, during the spring and summer months, its people were uniformly fated to endure. The English legislature was not ungrateful to the Irish landlords for those exporting services, so beneficial to the English population, and in return for the increased quantity of the nobler food, which alone they would condescend to make use of, it furnished them with facilities of seizure of crops and ejectment of tenantry never known before the Union; so that if any of the peasantry should become too fastidious for the use of potatoes, or aspire to the interdicted food of flesh-meat or flour, destined to swell the rent-rolls of the one, and feed the petted population of the other, they were sure to be summarily driven from their tenements, for not raising further food for export, and reproached with utter ignorance of the very elements of agriculture. On the expulsion of the tenantry to the skirtings of the moor, cattleshows became all the rage in Ireland, and meetings were held to witness and applaud the successful zeal with which Irish graziers could supply with still larger quantities of beef, and pork, and mutton, the increasing demands of the English people. The animals were exhibited-not such an exhibition, how-rulers sharing in all the perils of their posiever, as when the animals passed in review before him, who was constituted by their common Creator, the owner of the earth, as well as all its animal productions. In these exhibitions this order appeared reversed, and whilst the neglected condition of the poor peasantry showed the estimation in which they were held, the unnatural dimensions of those pampered brutes would indicate that they were looked on as the beings which shared, to the greatest extent, the kindred sympathies of their owners. Such, with a few benevolent exceptions, was the spirit that guided those cattle exhibitions.

tion. The perishing potato is the most formidable agitator, the oppressors of the people had ever yet to wrestle with. But though the transition to the full harvest will be severe, it will become in the hands of Providence, that caused the decay, the fructifying seed of our national regeneration.

Such is now the frightful state of this country, brought on, as it were, by a systematic collusion between the Irish landlords and the English legislature, and to which Ireland never would have been reduced, had she the protection of a native parliament. The famine has not, it is true, directly sprung from the As long as the people of Ireland were thus Union. But severe as it is, it would not be so draining it of its necessary food into England, fatal, if Ireland had not been rendered too and enriching the landed proprietors with its feeble to cope with the calamity, by the emaprice, the blessings of the Union became a theme ciating process to which it had been previously of their joint commendation. Any allusion to subjected. In the year 1800, the first year the solicitude which an Irish parliament would of the disastrous Union, the potatoes sold for naturally exhibit for the Irish people, was 18d. a stone, and meal brought even a larger treated as a topic that indicated folly or sedi- price than it is now sold for. Yet there was tion. More produce and finer stock, accord- no starvation in Ireland, nor any necessity to ing to these speculators in money, were the appeal for relief to the imperial exchequer. only wants of Ireland; at the same time that | No; because the constitution of the country

unprecedented plenty and prosperity? Where are their fruits now to meet the present exigency? The temperate habits of the people refute the slander that they were improvidently wasted. No: the fruits of the first seasons were forced from the tenantry in lieu of the arrears which preceding years of dis

was yet sound. It was not exhausted by the drainage of near half a century; and the vitality and vigour which it received from the free-trade of 1782, not only sustained it through that trying crisis, but were felt to a far remoter period. Let any dispassionate person contrast those two years-the people during the former calamity sustaining themselves, notwithstand-tress had accumulated; and allow me to tell ing the pressure of higher prices-and the you, that though, in all equity, the loss of a people now as feeble and powerless as children, crop should be proportionably sustained by faltering on the public ways, and many of the proprietor and the tenant, there is not a them sinking beneath a lighter scourge-and farthing of arrears which might grow during he must come to the conclusion, that the only the famine, that would not hang over the safety for the Irish people is the restoration poor tenants, even for ten years, to be rigorof their own legislature. Had we not, pre-ously exacted, when Heaven might bless them ceding this disaster, three or four seasons of with a more plentiful harvest.

SIR JOSEPH NAPIER.

the resignation of Sir Frederick in the following year. For a long period he took a prominent part in discussing the more important questions before the House of Commons, always supporting the Conservative party. This support received recognition on Lord Derby's accession to office in 1852, when he was appointed attorney-general for Ireland, and held the office until the fall of his chief. When Lord Derby came into power a second time in 1858, Mr. Napier received still higher distinction, being promoted to the post of Irish lord-chancellor, which he held till his party left office the following year. In 1867 Lord Derby again showed his appreciation of Mr. Napier's abilities and public services by creating him a baronet. In the same year he became vicechancellor of Trinity College, Dublin, and in 1868 was made privy-councillor of Great Britain, being shortly afterwards constituted a member of the judicial committee of the privycouncil. He also bears the honorary degrees of LL.D. of Dublin University and D.C.L. of Oxford.

[Sir Joseph Napier is the youngest son of Frederick Shaw the seat for Dublin UniverWilliam Napier, a descendant of the Merchis-sity. He was defeated, but was elected on ton branch of the Napier family, and was born at Belfast in December, 1804. In youth he had the advantage of several able teachers, one of these being the afterwards famous dramatist J. Sheridan Knowles. He entered Trinity College in 1820, and his undergraduate career was remarkable for proficiency in classics. In 1825 he graduated B.A., and at first intended to read for a fellowship, but he afterwards resolved to devote himself to the profession of the law. During his stay at college he took part in reviving the old Historical Society, one of his colleagues in this work being Chief-justice Whiteside. Many years after (in 1856) Mr. Napier was chosen president of the society. After a time spent in London qualifying himself more fully for his profession, he returned to his native country and became a member of the Irish bar. In 1831 he was called, and before long became one of the most sought-after juniors. In 1843 he made his appearance before the House of Lords, in the once celebrated appeal case of Samuel Gray, which involved the accused's right of challenging a juror, and he succeeded in having the conviction of his client reversed. On his return to Ireland he was made a Q.C., and for many years afterwards was employed in most of the cases of importance that were appealed for final decision to the House of Lords.

The labours of his profession have not prevented Sir Joseph Napier from taking a large share in various important public movements. He has been twice elected president of the jurisprudence section of the Social Science Association, and in connection therewith has published several able addresses on law re

In 1847 Mr. Napier contested with Sir form. After the Irish disestablishment act

VOL. IV.

65

was passed he took an active part in the re- | property in England to make him the most

Let us then endeavour to get rid of the pernicious delusions about race and religion in dealing with this Irish land question. Identity of race and substantial agreement in religion did not prevent the Ulster landlords from uprooting their tenants when they fancied it was their interest to banish them-to substitute grazing for tillage, and cattle for a most industrious and orderly peasantry.

[This gentleman, who holds a pension for | tomed to regard as the prosperous North was "literary merit" from the state, was born in really the poorest part of Ireland. It will be the year 1806, at Gorey, county Wexford. He also observed that the perpetual struggle bebegan life as a Dissenting minister in Armagh, tween the landlord and the tenant went on at and was a missionary in connection with the that period quite as fiercely when the two Irish Evangelical Society. In consequence of classes were of the same, as when they were having written a prize essay on Federalism, of different creeds.] entitled "The Rights of Ireland," this connection ceased, and he then turned his attention to journalism. In the year 1847 he found himself in London, and became the correspondent of several Irish and Scotch papers, besides contributing to several magazines. Returning to Ireland he established in Belfast the Christian Patriot. He afterwards became editor of the Derry Standard, and then removing to the capital, he for several years held the chief post on the Daily Express. While engaged on this paper he acted as the Dublin correspondent of the Times. It may here be remarked that his letters to this journal were remarkable for their keen and comprehensive knowledge of Irish affairs. He is the author of Ireland and her Churches, The Land- War in Ireland, The Religious History of Ireland, &c. The second of these works is a most interesting compilation of all that has been written on the much-vexed question of the relations between the owners and the tillers of the soil in Ireland. Some of his writings on ecclesiastical and land questions had a large influence in bringing about the disestablishment of the Irish Church and the new Lands Acts. We may also mention that early in life Mr. Godkin wrote several controversial works.]

ULSTER IN EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.

(FROM "THE LAND-WAR IN IRELAND."1) [Mr. Godkin's book, The Land-war in Ireland, gives several most interesting pictures of the social condition of the country at different periods. Many of his descriptions will convey information that will be novel even to Irishmen. From the extract, for instance, which follows, it will be seen that during part of the eighteenth century what we are accus

1 By permission of Messrs. Macmillan & Co.

The letters of Primate Boulter contain much valuable information on the state of Ulster in the last century, and furnish apt illustrations of the land question, which, I fancy, will be new and startling to many readers. Boulter was Lord-primate of Ireland from 1724 to 1738. He was thirteen times one of the lords justices. As an Englishman and a good churchman he took care of the English interests and of the Establishment. The letters were written in confidence to Sir Robert Walpole and other ministers of state, and were evidently not intended for publication. An address "to the reader" from some friend states truly that they give among other things an impartial account of "the distressed state of the kingdom for want of tillage, the vast sums of money sent out of the nation for corn, flour, &c., the dismal calamities thereon, the want of trade, and the regulation of the English and other coins to the very great distress of all the manufacturers, &c. They show that he was a man of sound judgment, public-spirited, and very moderate and impartial for the times in which he lived. His evidence with regard to the relations of landlord and tenant in Ulster is exceedingly valuable at the present moment.

Primate Boulter repeatedly complained to Walpole, the Duke of Newcastle, and other ministers, that the Ulster farmers were deserting the country in large numbers, emigrating to the United States, then British colonies, to the West Indies, or to any country where they hoped to get the means of living, in many cases binding themselves to work for a number of years as slaves in payment of