woman would not listen to me; the whole family were by this time in loud lamentation; so all that remained for me to do was to prevent the soldiers bayoneting the man who, since our entrance, had attempted to escape.

We hasten from such harrowing details to some pleasant and amusing pictures: this of the British as contrasted with the Chinese commissioners is laughable:

We landed on a rickety bamboo pier constructed for our accommodation, and were instantly surrounded by a crowd composed of the lowest order, who appeared eager to see specimens of the formidable "barbarians ;" and the sight to men who judge by size and muscle, must have been humiliating to their self-love, as we were all of a slight build, and, moreover, had come quite unprepared for the show. Linen clean, I hope, but for weeks unacquainted with either iron or mangle; shoes that would have done good service on the moors, and coats of modest cut and old acquaintance, with the exception of the gallant Secretary's gaily braided affair (which, by the by, was most unhappily contrasted with his nether garments.) Two of the party, if not all four, were under thirty,-an age in a Chinaman's eyes undeserving of respect.

We were received at the entrance of the spacious court of the temple by a bevy of mandarins, from the blue to the brass button. Different from us, they rustled in embroidered silks and flowered muslin of a design and beauty of texture worthy even to deck the fairest of our dames. They marshalled us with many obsequious bows, and really much graceful courtesy, into the great hall of audience, where Mr. Secretary "Whang" and the Tartar General "Chin" were standing to receive us.

We should state that Capt. Loch was immediately connected with Parker, Gough, and Pottinger, and had a personal opportunity of observing the Chinese in the business of negotiation; a number of the chief incidents described belonging to the history of the Treaty of Nanking. The following notices and sketches of three principal Celestial negotiators will be read with a smiling countenance; even although a sigh may escape for poor Elipoo, the Englishman's friend, and a main pacificator at the treaty, it is understood, whose career ended t'other day:

His age may be between sixty and seventy: he is a stout, hale, goodhumoured-looking old gentleman, with a firm step, and upright carriage. At first we were prejudiced against his intellectual endowments, but when business commenced, he threw off his apparent dulness, and became all animation, and evinced considerable shrewdness and observation.

He wore a dark silk dress without embroidery, girded by a yellow belt, the indication of his high birth, and a summer cap with a red opaque ball and peacock's feather.

He was vested with the rank of Imperial Commissioner, with plenary powers-Kin-chai-peen e ping sze ta chin-literally, 'imperially appointed, convenient, proper to act business, great minister.

If Ke-ying deserves the lasting gratitude of his country, poor old Elipoo has an equal right to ours, as the preserver of the lives of Major Anstruther

and others of our countrymen, at the risk of his own popularity, besides his unvarying kindness and care for all the prisoners who fell into his hands, which humanity eventually excited the suspicions of his master, who in consequence deprived him of the government of the province of Tseen-ko.

Elipoo is a Tartar of the Imperial clan Hong-tai-tze, literally "red girdle,” a mandarin of the first rank and button, Taon-yih-ping-tang-tai, entitled to wear the peacock's feather Nwa-ling, a lieutenant-general of Chapoo, previously a viceroy, Tseen-ko-tuh-foo-tang-member of the privy council, Nuy-ko-chung-tang.

New-king is a man who from his youth upwards has been devoted to selfindulgence: at one period to such an extent of extravagance did his habits carry him, that his emoluments and large fortune were completely absorbed, and he was, it is said, reduced to a state of beggary. He now is president of the board of war, Ning-foo-shang-shoo; viceroy of the provinces of Keang-nan and Keang-see, Leang-keang-toung-tuh-foo-tang; and was beaten by us while in command of the Imperial troops at Woosung; from the field of which really well fought battle he affirms he was borne away in the arms of his faithful attendants in spite of his earnest

remonstrances.

He is certainly the least intellectual looking of the three, has an elongated face with swollen lower eye-lids, colourless, unfirm flesh, and hanging cheeks -his whole appearance strongly indicative of his mode of life. He wore the same dress and button as the other two, with the exception of the red and yellow girdles.

The Captain's first sight of Hong Kong, and his account of its hot-bed growth will gratify John Bull, and perhaps invite sundry of Albion's sons. The spot bids fair to offer a spectacle that will rival the wondrous upstartings that occur in brother Jonathan's land.

We anchored in the midst of men-of-war and transports, in a part where, a few short months before, ships were scarcely ever seen. Along the shore, and scattered over the breast of mountains rising to the height of 1,500 feet, were wharfs and extensive stores, forts and magazines, streets of huts and commodious houses, a bazaar and a market place, besides some comfortable bungelows and handsome country-houses, belonging to the public functionaries, built at considerable elevations, to command fresh air and a fine view. Ten months before, when Sir Henry Pottinger first landed, he lived in a pitched tent!

Then three small villages contained the entire population, amounting to about 4,000; now there are upwards of 12,000 souls in our new town alone, and the great difficulty is, to restrain the rapid increase in proportion to the gradual advancement of the colony. As much as 6,000l. has been already received during the last year from the sale and lease of lands, and hundreds of desirable lots are marked out, which will be eagerly purchased at a high price when people become fully aware that government will guarantee its powerful protection.

368

ART. XV.

1. The United Irishmen, their Lives and Times. Second Series. By R. R. MADDEN, M. D. 2 vols. Madden.

2. The Scenery and Antiquities of Ireland Illustrated. The Literary Department by M. P. WILLIS, Esq. Virtue.

SERIES the second of this work appears at a moment when the volumes are sure to command unusual attention, were it merely because of the comparisons that will be instituted between the circumstances of the civil war which is the subject of Dr. Madden's book, and those which at this very moment are arresting the thoughts of all men with regard to the condition and prospects of Ireland. But independently of the accidental interest alluded to, these volumes would at any period have been welcomed by a host of readers; being, in respect of painstaking, candour, and ability, quite adequate to the Lives and Times of the United Irishmen-strangely wild and patriotic as these were; and therefore it could not require anything of a fortuitous nature to hearten Dr. Madden to his task, or any foresight of a mighty commotion in the summer of 1843, to induce him to prepare a publication that will be of permanent value, and become a standard authority relative to Ireland's history as developed

in 1798.

The story of the United Irishmen is one that, viewed as a revolt, without regard to the very peculiar circumstances of the sister isle, abounds with lessons to governments; but when taken in immediate connexion with the entire fortunes of that island, and the feelings of the great mass of the people,-with what had long preceded the outbreak, as well as with what has been illustrated by the nation down to the hour at which we write, the book must be admitted to abound with facts that need only to be fairly stated, in order to enable every reflecting and tolerably informed person to arrive at truths, maxims, and sentiments of intense interest, incalculable importance, and plain practical applicability.

Nothing is more common than to hear people use suchphrases as, the English misgovernment of Ireland, the Protestant ascendancy of the few over the Catholicism of the many,-Orange tyranny, --the mal-administration of the law by a faction small in number,and such like terms, whenever the sister kingdom is the topic. For a long stretch of years no doubt language and assertion of the kind mentioned has been so fully warranted, that one could run no risk of meeting with contradiction, however often it might be reiterated. But still it would be well did every man who volunteers his opinion, or is desirous of having at hand a reason for the faith that is within him relative to the political history of Ireland, make himself acquainted with its epochs and its fortunes, or rather misfortunes, since

the period that a handful of Normans set foot upon its soil, after leaving the coasts of England, and made good their hold; and then there would accompany the utterance of the generalities we have quoted such a strong and ardent conviction of wrong-doing, and such an earnestness to see justice and equal dealing accorded with a graceful cordiality, that ere long England would be constrained to rid herself of the foulest brand that has ever touched her honour. Then too, we believe, the distracted people of the green isle would speedily begin to set themselves to the cultivation of amity with this country, of the arts of profitable industry at home, and give out the gratifying evidence that they were susceptible of that civilization which has never yet been exhibited by them, and never can, while the existing elements of discord and discontent continue to have life.

The elements of distraction referred to, the failure or inefficacy of all the attempts that have been made by the British government and by British legistation to pacify Ireland, with the thousands of animosities that have sprung up, and of violences that have been enacted in the country, require no very lengthened inquiry in order to understand their nature, provided that inquiry be prosecuted honestly and without outrageous bigotry. We may indeed safely say that a glance at the leading matters and points of view contained in Dr. Madden's work alone will guide to a comprehension of such monstrous anomalies, that though reducible to a few in number, if distinctness be sought for and observed, yet that these few are so rife with mischief, so fertile of faction, conflict, and revenge, as to have given birth to legions of evils and an almost inextricable complexity of wrongs; so that the wonder is not less, how our statesmen should have so long clung to a policy that produced such local injuries and misery, and war so perilous to the empire, than that Ireland should have made the progress that she has really achieved amid the wild distraction.

A perusal of the present work cannot be supposed to carry the reader fully through the period of Elizabeth, when a Protestant priesthood was forced upon the Irish people,-nor that of Cromwell, when Presbyterianism took a firm footing,-nor that of the Revolution, with its invasion, conquest, and forfeitures,-nor that of Anne, with its penal statutes, its completed supremacy, its viceroy and parliament, when every thing came to be done according to Protestant feeling and English form.

The case of Ireland presents a variety of other epochs, that need to be looked into, such as that when the Irish Parliament endeavoured to become independent, and so declared itself. A vast deal of political intrigue and corruption attended this movement, which was thereby in a great measure turned to an English account. Again, agrarian grievances were a frequent source of outrage and outbreak

ing; and these revolts were set down by the ascendancy party to political and popish motives, and consequently made a handle of, just in the way that best might serve the purpose of the powerful. Nor was there anything but what was to be looked for either in the conduct of the landholders, or that of the tenants. Our author has forcibly pointed out what must, according to the nature of things and of the human mind, be the result when the people of a country are so divided, as those of the sister island have been, and when authority is placed only in the hands of a section. In the same passage he also proclaims a well established truth that has solemnity in it and foreboding. We must quote him!

Let us not be accused of libelling the Protestants of Ireland; every ascendancy, wherever and however established, must, of necessity, exhibit the came course of evil action, whether the distinction of class be founded on creed, race, or colour. The Turks and the Greeks, the Normans and the Saxons, the Franks and the Gauls, the Moors and the Goths, the whites and the black of the United States of America,-are, or were, ascendancies of essentially the same nature as that which existed among the Protestants and Catholics of Ireland; they all exhibited equally strong proof that in such a state of things the demoralization of the dominant class is equally extensive with the degradation of the oppressed; they have shown that unjust superiority is always attended by that feeling of insecurity which generates savage cruelty and barbarous contempt for the restraints of Divine and human law; and they all point to a period when the ascendancy must sink under the weight of its own iniquities, unless its fall be averted by timely concessions. Ever since the day that the Egyptian Pharaoh established an ascendancy over the Hebrews, a law of nature has begun to ensure the final deliverance of the servile class-"The more they afflicted them, the more they multiplied and grew." The masters do not keep up their numbers; the serfs increase with a rapidity which it is impossible to check. In spite of penal laws, and bribes, and all species of honourable and dishonourable legislative contrivances, the Catholics of Ireland have increased in a far more rapid ratio than the Protestants; and had these laws continued, the latter must have been reduced to a minority so inconsiderable, that the reins of government must have fallen out of their hands, from sheer inability to retain them any longer. But though this system was iniquitous in its principle, destructive in its operations, and most ruinous to the very party it was designed to serve, yet all history, and all experience show us that men will cling to the banner of ascendancy, so long as any of its rags can be held together; and even when they fall to pieces from their own rottenness, multitudes of bigots and blockheads will be found offering an idolatrous veneration to the naked staff.

Could it be expected that a sensitive and inflammable peasantry would uniformly submit to oppression and an unequal distribution of law, right, and property, without rash efforts to obtain redress, or if they failed in this, to be revenged? They had not the means and