his sincerity, or his truth, seems not unlike the representative of that great body. But let us hear him speak for himself.

"I am not more given to dilation with my pen, than I am by word of mouth. I never use either but by compulsion; and if I could now conscientiously avoid the labour and the consequent discomfort, I have every inclination and every motive, but one, for consulting my ease, and indulging in that privacy, which, perhaps, may be most congenial to me. Such a course, however, consistently with what I conceive to be my duty, I cannot find it within me to pursue. I must embark in the same vessel with you, and sink or swim in our endeavour to preserve the Religion which we love -the Constitution which we reverence.

"An appeal to the nation is our only resource it must be made-and the voice of the nation must decide whether Protestantism or Popery shall prevail; whether, by treading in the footsteps of our forefathers, we will maintain the Protestant ascendency, which their practical wisdom established for us,-or whether, to our eternal shame, to our certain punishment, we will see the Jesuits triumphant, and the idolatrous worship of Papists openly displayed throughout this now Protestant land. In short, the nation must decide whether these kingdoms shall be at once the cradle and the citadel of Protestantism and real liberty, or the hot-bed of Popery, with its scarlet train of mental and political despotism.

"We are now arrived at the period when we are compelled to judge and act for ourselves; the bane and antidote are before us; our choice must be made; we must now decide whether we will range ourselves with Protestants or Papistswhether we will serve God or Mammon.'

After accounting for the extraordinary toleration of public meanness and shuffling, the general indifference to character, the amalgamation of vice and virtue to such a degree, that they appear to be held in equal value-the honours and emoluments bestowed on the most corrupt and contemptible individuals, as if for the purpose of inviting a contempt of public and moral obligation-he justly attributes the chief portion of this singular deterioNEUTRALITY" adopted by Government of late years. He then gives a rapid sketch of the Perceval Administration and its successor.

ration to the "

"In 1807, the voice of the nation rejected an Administration, strong in talent, but weak in the possession of the public

confidence. An overwhelming feeling confirmed the power of its successor, which was proudly and triumphantly favoured by popular support, because it was supposed to be purely Protestant, to be pledged to oppose Popery, and to support the national affections, the national interest. Nobly and most beneficially did this Administration execute its duty, opposing Popery, upholding Protestantism, supporting the national interests, cherishing the Established Religion, encouraging national morality, as well by its example as by its care, boldly defending the Constitution, and preserving it uninjured, in Church or State, from the united attacks of dangerous and desperate men; and, above all things, keeping this leading object in view, that it is the duty of a government to act towards a nation, as a good father of a family would act towards his family, namely, by the establishment of public virtue founded upon public principle. The admirable Perceval knew well by experience, and thus foresaw, that, because it is worthless, nothing can be lasting that is not founded on principled virtue, that no nation can endure and prosper without it, that other nations had suffered the severest retributive justice for their national crimes, and that we evidently owed our comparative exemption ftom the horrors which the Divine vengeance poured on those devoted countries, to our own comparative exemption from the vices and corruptions which prevailed in them. Taking for his motto, that honesty is the best policy, the straight-forward, intelligible, and defined policy of the Minister, gained the applause even of his opponents, whilst his friends, sure of his sup port and encouragement in their endeavours to promote his generous measures for the public welfare, acted with spirit, union, and confidence.

"Thus we continued blessed with an

administration which acted upon known principles, until in 1812 the same hand which deprived Mr Perceval of life, extinguished also the light of the administration. We lost our virtuous, exem

plary, and highly-gifted Minister, and from

that time our moral decline commenced. Then began that accursed system of liberalism, neutrality, and conciliationright and wrong, virtue and vice, the friend and the enemy of his country were to be confounded, distinctions were to be levelled, all was to bend to expediency, and principle must not stand in the way of policy.

"Could any one mistake what would be the sure consequence of such a vile system? Assuredly, as it has happened

it would follow, that the country would be gradually demoralized. What before seemed odious, or immoral, no longer disgusted; all ancient institutions began to be considered as rubbish; history as an old almanack; experience was to be cast away; all that is valuable to us was to be vilified, derided, and trampled upon; and, finally, liberality enthroned itself in the chief seat, to influence and direct the counsels of the nation. The country now found itself without guides,

although it had a Government; the high offices were filled, it is true, but not by

Governors. The executive was in other

hands; instead of resisting innovation they yielded to it,-instead of leading public opinion, they bowed to its counterfeit and thus quackery, deceit, and hollow pretension, gained so much strength, that their opposites were almost obliged

to hide their diminished heads.

Then

followed the effects of this contemptible system. The depraved, the disaffected, and the self-opinionated, are always the most noisy and turbulent; they clamoured, they made themselves heard: finding their strength, and presuming upon their acquired consequence, they artfully contrived, through the Administration, in fact, to rule the State; and the Adminis tration preferring place and irresponsible tranquillity to a noble rejection of either, when principle is at stake, suffered our constitutional excellence, and all that has been hitherto deemed most sacred or most valuable, to perish, for want of encouragement and protection; whilst the designing Liberalist gloried in his success, and chuckled at the impending misfortunes which he well knew would result from such a total revolution in the government and constitution of the country."

Nothing can be more forcible, melancholy, or true than all this. The death of Lord Liverpool has now removed him from all sterner remark; but it is not to be denied, that to his distrust of himself and of the nation, a vast share of the singular and calamitous system which characterised his later years is to be assigned. An excellent man in all the private relations of life, he palpably wanted the moral intrepidity essential to the conduct of the British empire. His whole career was good intention, but good intention under guidance. In the early portions of his premiership he had the advice of a man of vigorous mind, and still loftier principle, the late Marquis

The death of that noble person, exhausted by the perpetual labours of his station, left Lord Liverpool to seek another guide. He, unhappily, soon found one, the direct reverse of his predecessor. The grave too has closed upon him; and we will not violate the sacredness due to that spot where all earthly passions sink to rest, by dwelling upon the errors of that remarkable individual. But nothing in his career was more remarkable than the fatal facility with which he plunged from the elevation of his principles into the pool of Liberalism. From the first moment of his influence on the Premier's mind, the colour of the government was darkened. The old lofty principles to which the people of England looked in all times of danger, as the seaman in the battle looks to his flag, with the feeling that whatever may be the scenes of dismay or death round him, while that flag floated, the ship triumphed still; the generous pride in our ancient institu tions, the resolute scorn of popular intrigue, the firm adherence to the religious laws and privileges that were bought by many a day of heroic sacrifice, were honoured by our forefathers as the noblest reward of their blood; principles that it had taken ages to bring to their maturity, and which were given to form the impenetrable defence of the constitution, the armour, "tempered from the armoury of God," were utterly cast away-turned into a jest by the most accomplished master of ridicule of his time-flung out to the scoff of the enemies alike of the Church and the Constitution; and by them received with answering

jest on their lips; but with other feelings in their hearts, with the fierce and gloomy joy of evil tempters that saw their temptation complete, their victim in their grasp, and the gates of their long exile flung open for a gene ral ascent into the full enjoyment of rapine and revenge. Then came those monstrous coalitions, those strange intercourses from which nothing but perverse repulsive births could follow. From the councils where the Royalist and the Jacobin sat in sudden amnity; where the worshipper of a God, and the bold faced atheist embraced; where the man who honoured his King, and the miscreant who cursed him with the basest name that the memory of man has for the tyrant and the parricide, mingled their souls to gether, came forth the true fruits in the true shape; popular beggary and riot through the ruin of trade and manufactures; furious disaffection in Ireland, and war threatening every ally of England in the Old and New Worlds.

But a delay has been suddenly interposed; and, sir, I am not afraid of the scoff of irreligious men, nor in expectation of the dissent of religious, when I say, that I fully believe this delay to have been given for our preservation, if we have the surviving virtue to avail ourselves of the interposition. The Radical Cabinet has been broken into fragments-its very dust has been scattered to the winds; a man of great fame and great abilities, all whose early habits and later experience must have made him the hater of the Radical tribe, has been placed at the head of affairs.

The Duke of Newcastle's Letter spcaks of this eminent person in language which has been misinterpreted into defiance, or distrust. But it is neither; abounding in high testimony to the Premier's faculties of public good, a tribute the more valuable from its being so seldom offered by the noble writer, the Letter merely lays open those views in which the nation have so long coincided with him; and declares, that there is infinite hazard in suffering the violence and intrigues of the public disturbers to grow to a head, for the mere convenience of more compendious extinction. He exclaims, and justly, against giving up the care of interests on which every privilege and life in England may de

pend, to the wisdom of any one human being, while we can protect them for ourselves; and unquestionably, while inquiries and demands of this nature must have been among the Minister's expectations, when he determined on the course of reserve, which, however he may feel it essential to success, is, in a country of balanced and sensi tive interests like ours, a perfectly jus tifiable source of anxiety; the Peer, who, on the first day of going down to the House, may find himself met by a proposition for invading his rights by an influx of popish strangers; the man of property, who may meet a proposition changing the whole course of that law on which property depends; the friend of the Constitution, who may see the pen in the hand ready to blot out the Constitution; and, above all, the man of religion, who may see, in act, the desperate folly and guilty ingratitude of bringing popery into the very temple where Protestantism had been enthroned by the spirit of the Constitution, and had given evidence of its high descent in the freedom and prosperity of three hundred years; may well shrink from the unquestioning reliance which would surrender the future to any man. I, sir, will not believe that the Duke of Wellington is suddenly so fantastic as to think of carrying the popish question. A man whose sagacity has been hitherto so little at fault, cannot be blind to what all the world beside see as plain as the sun at noon. He knows that the question cannot be carried; that it would overthrow ten Ministries; that there are thousands, and hundreds of thousands, of high-principled and loyalhearted men within the borders of the realm, who would meet the most stern extremities before a Papist foot should pollute the floor of parliament; and, knowing all this, the Duke of Wellington will honour and obey the command of his country. But his measures must not be confined to negation; he must do more than tell the Irish and English vassals of the Pope, that they cannot he suffered to betray the British empire to their Italian master and his allies. He must extinguish their means of disturbance by the activity and courage that belong to his character. In the eloquent and true words of the letter

"Let the nation look to the future;

let it consider what must very shortly be the inevitable consequence of the present frightful state of things; it will then see the danger which stares us in the face; and if it is desirous of preserving our glorious constitution, of upholding religion, of maintaining the laws, rights, and liberties of our country, so as in some measure to merit the favour of God and man, then, I would say, let the nation arouse from its lethargy; let it stand forth in the panoply of its natural excellence; let it declare its intentions; let it demand that the Popish Association shall be instantly annihilated; let it demand that the voice of treason shall be stifled; let it demand that all Popish establishments, of whatever nature, whether Jesuits' Colleges, or Monasteries, &c. &c., shall be immediately abolished; let it demand that no Roman Catholics shall vote at elections; and, finally, let it require a full and undisputed Protestant ascendency within these realms.

"This, however, must not be delayed; time presses, and the enemy is at the gate; the unanimous voice of the nation should be heard in a tone which cannot be mistaken, and our invaluable Constitution will be safe against her most inveterate enemies, whether secret or avowed.

"I have thus endeavoured, very imper fectly I admit, to describe my notions on this momentous subject. I have written freely; why should I not? Some one must speak out; my duty and my interest compel me to conceal nothing, and in this respect I acquit myself of any

deficiency. I have extenuated where I could do so with propriety; I have set down nought in malice or hostility, for I entertain none. Perilous times require strong remedies and home truths; you will perceive that I have not flinched from recommending the one, and stating the other. I am well aware that in doing this I am subjecting myself to severe animadversions; but I am heedless of consequences to myself, if I may ever so slightly benefit the great cause which is at stake. My anxiety also to prove my gratitude to you by answering to your appeal, has been an additional incitement, and thus I have been doubly urged forward to the completion of my unpleasant task."

Thus, in the modesty and graceful feeling in which it was begun, finishes this letter; eloquent without the affectation of studied language-singularly impressive, and direct in its appeal to the understanding-and stamped throughout with the evidence of a true patriot's heart. If I had met such a letter in history, I should have said, that the country in which such feelings existed and found an utterance could not perish ignobly; and that the class of society in which its writer was to be found, must have deserved to be the leaders and the hope of their country. I have the honour to be, SIR,

A PROTESTANT.

the sea. PEREGRINE WILTON,

HAVING spoken in our last chapter of the Landed Proprietors, the Merchants, and the Manufacturers of Ireland, we now return to the Peasantry, concerning whose habits and character we made some observations already; but as the most marked distinction be tween the people of this, and the sister country, lies in this portion of the population, we find it necessary, in order to accomplish our intention with respect to this series of papers, to go somewhat farther into a description of their present state, and to glance rapidly at some circumstances which have an immediate connexion with it.

And, first, we have to speak of their habitual insubordination to the law, from the benefit of which they were so long excluded by the pernicious system of government adopted by England in former times, and which, now that it is proffered to them, they too often reject, like the savage who refuses convenient clothing, thinking only of the restraint which it would be upon the wild freedom of his limbs.

We set out upon our observations, assuming that, which we of our own knowledge assert to be true, namely, that whatever irregularities there may occasionally be in the minor details of the administration of justice in Ire land, yet in the final resort of a trial by jury before the King's judges, it is as purely and as fairly administered as in England. There is less order perhaps, and more occasional levity of manner, but there is not less integrity. or more partiality. We know that Mr Sheil lately said at a public dinner in London, that an injured Roman Catholic could not obtain justice in the North of Ireland, and the Morning Chronicle asserted the same thing with considerable sturdiness; but we also know, that both Mr Sheil and the Morning Chronicle asserted in this regard, what was not true-the newspaper possibly because it knew no better, and the orator because he studies effect, and not truth, in his speeches,

9

and in certain compositions published by his direction, and purporting to have been spoken, but which in reality and truth have never been uttered. Assuming, then, that all the people of Ireland may have the benefit of the law, the same as in England, we proceed with a description of the actual state of the matter.

In England the common people have a sturdy confidence in the law of the land-they may grumble at its expense, but still they feel it to be their birth-right, and their security. They know it is a restraint, but they feel a pride in the consciousness that this restraint is equally binding upon the greatest man in the country, as upon themselves. They therefore feel, that any infraction of the law, is a breach of a system, in the preservation of which they have a direct interest, and, consequently, they are the less apt to commit such a breach themselves, and the more willing to assist in the de tection and punishment of it in others. But in Ireland, such a feeling does not, or does only very partially, exist. They have a notion that the law is merely a system of organized vengeance, sup ported by the powerful, and with which they have no connexion, except as its victims. Their naturally impatient and headlong spirit gives them a distaste to the slow process of justice which the law supplies; and even when this is not the case, the same vivacity of temper, combined with a certain confusion, which commonly pervades their statements, frequently makes it impracticable for the law to decide between them, and they go away resolved by violent means to obtain satisfaction for the injury, which they understand very well, though they can make the Justice comprehend no more, than that all parties arc wrong. Thus it happens, that in disputes among themselves, they have been little accustomed hitherto to make use of the law, and their acquaintance with it arises chiefly from those cases in which their superiors