XXI. 1829. for self-government or direction. These evils could not CHAP. in any degree be alleviated by the admission of forty or fifty zealous Catholics into Parliament, some of them gifted with considerable natural talents, but for the most part destitute of property, without a cultivated education or business habits, and entirely devoted, one and all, to the interests of the See of Rome. On the contrary, they were most seriously. aggravated by the introduction of a body of men of this description into the legislature; because agitation, the bane of the country, was increased by the knowledge that so powerful a phalanx was always ready to support it in Parliament; and the phalanx itself, being entirely directed by foreign ecclesiastical influence, pursued on every occasion measures calculated to embarrass the English government and weaken the English aristocracy, without any regard to their effect in augmenting the difficulties and increasing the sufferings of their own constituents. 165. cial effects lish govern ment. If, however, Catholic emancipation has failed in realising any of the benefits predicted from it in the sister Its benefiisle, it has removed one great stumbling-block in the way on the Engof good government in Great Britain. The difficulty which Mr Peel so strongly felt and so feelingly deplored, arising from the divided state of the Cabinet on this vital question, has disappeared. Subsequent times have seen weak governments and embarrassed cabinets in abundance, but never to such an extent on Irish affairs. On them unanimity has almost constantly pervaded both the Government and the Legislature. The ingratitude with which the gift was received, the increased agitation which followed it, the turmoil in which the country was constantly kept by the efforts of the agitators, and the ready acquiescence of the people in their measures, have united all classes in Great Britain against them. The cry for the repeal of the Union was met in a very different spirit from that for Catholic emancipation. Such is the effect and the reward of just measures; they detach the XXI. CHAP. generous and noble-hearted from the side by whom they have been abused, and unite them in support of that by which the injustice has been removed. 1829. 166. tion would failed if granted earlier, or if it had complete. It is commonly said by the Liberals in England, that Emancipa emancipation has failed because it was conceded too late; have equally by the Catholics in Ireland, because it was incomplete, and did not give that entire ascendancy to their church to which, in Ireland at least, it was entitled. Both opibeen more nions 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-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 selfgovernment have proved the bane of a people incapable of self-direction; 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 vantage-ground 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 XXI. because the real evils of Ireland arose from an entirely CHAP. different set of causes, which that measure had no tendency to diminish, but rather to increase, 1830. 167. tion has retribution ties. But still emancipation was a wise measure, because it was a just one. "Fiat justitia ruat cœlum," was the Emancipanoblest maxim of antiquity; "Fais ce que tu dois, avi- brought a enne ce que pourra," the expression of the chivalrous feel- righteous ings of modern Europe. England at the eleventh hour to both pardid the just act, but she did it, not from the influence of equitable or tolerant feelings, but in obedience to the fierce demands of the agitators, and to avert the dreaded evils of civil war. She has been punished, and justly punished, for doing a right thing from wrong motives, and the consequences of the 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 bosom. The Reform movement was the child of the Catholic agitation; the Anti-CornLaw 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. That Catholic emancipation was the parent of the Reform Bill is now universally acknowledged, and will VOL. IV. N XXI. 1830. 168. of emancipation in inducing reform. CHAP. 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 First effect this island, from the Conservative majority in Great Britain. This change, one hundred in all, and two hundred on a division, entirely altered the balance of parties in the Imperial Parliament. For the first time since Mr Pitt's defeat of the Coalition in 1784, it gave a majority in the House of Commons to the liberal 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 first results gave them a majority of five to one in the House of Commons, and seemed to have prostrated 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 which the majority of its representatives have concurred in introducing. 169. As Ireland is almost entirely an agricultural country, Effects of and nineteen-twentieths of its inhabitants are maintained inducing by, and its wealth derived from, the cultivation of the soil, Free Trade. it is evident that what its interests required was such a reform in protective policy as might secure for its cultivators the monopoly in some degree of the English market. There was much to be said in favour of free trade in grain so far as the manufacturers of Manchester, Glasgow, and XXI. 1830. Birmingham were concerned, whose interest was to buy CHAP. grain cheap; but nothing at all in so far as the agriculturists of Ireland were concerned, whose interest was to sell it dear. If, therefore, the members, whether for counties or boroughs of Ireland, had been directed by the interests of their constituents, they would have done everything in their power to secure the English market for them, by supporting the protective system of Great Britain. 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 to lessen the cost of agricultural produce in the United Kingdom. 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. paper recently 170. these and Catho lics of Ire Immense beyond all precedent have been the consequences of these changes, but upon none have they fallen Effects of with such force and severity as upon the agitators and Catholics of Ireland. From a statistical paper published by the Census Commissioners of Dublin, it appears that the population of the island, which in land. 1846-the year of the famine, and when Free Trade was introduced-had been 8,386,940, had sunk in 1851 to 6,551,970; and as the emigration from the island has been about 250,000 a-year, it cannot now (1854) exceed |