evil existed, it might have been very safely predicted, that Parliament would take natural and effectual measures for removing it, but that time has passed away. He would be a rash man, indeed, who, after looking at the principles which our legislators have embraced, would venture to speculate favourably on their future conduct. If Mr Hume's fatal bill had been like the New Marriage Act, unconnected with new creeds, and new systems, and merely intended to improve what seemed to be capable of improvement; all that it destroyed when it came into being, would, likely enough, have been restored in the last session. But unhappily it emanated from the new creeds and systems which are so much the rage, and what it did cannot be undone, without confessing them to be erroneous. To re-enact the Combination Laws would be to say that Political Economy is false, and that certain great political bubble-blowers are not infallible; it would shake the new creeds and systems to their centre, therefore the abolition of these Laws must doubtlessly be still called a most wise measure. Projectors and innovators are never the men to recant and go back again to them no such thing can exist as refutation. The French revolutionists could only be stopped by the guillotine; and death alone could take from Joanna Southcote the belief that she was pregnant. Ever since the beginning of the world, it has been looked upon as a thing above all question, that the servant should be obedient to his master. The Scriptures have made such obedience a religious duty; human laws have made it a civil duty; philosophers and statesmen have insisted, that not only the weal, but the very existence of society depends upon it. Lawgivers have always made its protection one of their leading objects. It has been guarded as a thing that benefitted, not merely the master and the community, but the servant himself even more than either;-as a thing essential for keeping the latter from crime and ruin, for making him moral, industrious, and skilful, for enabling him to rise from his servitude and acquire property and elevation. Has this been demonstrated to be erroneous? Have the speeches of Mr Hume and his coadjutors proved it to be false and pernicious? Have intellectual giants risen among us, and shown, by overwhelming evidence, that what has been regarded for six thousand years as unerring wisdom, is only folly and prejudice? No! It has been denied, scoffed at, trampled upon, and cast aside; but it has not been refuted. It has been abandoned for the reverse, but argument and evidence, eloquence and wisdom, have had no share in producing the change. It is now admitted, even by legislators and rulers, that servants ought to be suffered to throw off their obedience to their masters-that they ought to be equally independentthat they ought to be controlled in nothing save such work as they may deign to undertake-that they have a right to be idle two or three days in the week, if they think proper-that they have a right to organize themselves into immense bodies, and bind down the masters to any terms they please, in respect of obedience, wages, and hours of labour-this, we say, is admitted even by rulers and legislators. Has the admission been produced by reasoning and experiment -by the fascination of eloquence, and the irresistible potency of surpassing talent? No!-these have had nothing to do with it; its justification is yet hid in darkness. Mr Hume's bill was the most fatal and ruinous measure that has been sanctioned by Parliament during a very long series of years. It has caused the loss of a large number of lives it has occasioned the commission of a mass of atrocious crime-it has ruined a multitude of individuals, and grievously injured a multitude more it has occasioned the loss of millions of property-it has given a tremendous shock to the industry and trade of the empire-it has done the most terrible injury to the character of the working classes-it has arrayed servants against masters through a large part of the country-it has nearly destroyed one of the best supports of good government-it has generated strife, animosity, and turbulenceand it has sown the seeds of almost every ill that can visit a nation. If the parent of such a bill were not insensible to shame, he would never dare to show his face again in the community. Yet this bill was sanctioned by all the wisdom of Parliament! it is still cried up as a just and wise one, in respect of its leading object. So much for the new wisdom of this enlightened age-wisdom, in comparison of which, as we are told, the wisdom of former ages was but childish folly. So much for the great menthe giants-of the present day-great men, in comparison of whom, if we are to believe themselves, the great men of former times were but brainless pigmies. Time will put all this to the test, although, in doing it, it may involve the nation in horrors. It is not for us to say, in contradiction to some of our first authorities, that a nation has its birth, youth, manhood, old age, and death, like an individual. But we may say, that how ever long the life of a nation may endure, it must, like that of an individual, consist of alternations of prosperity and adversity, gain and loss, happiness and affliction, enjoyment and suffering. In both cases, the sun and the cloud, the calm and the tempest, will keep continually replacing each other. According to the history of this and other countries, a period of prosperity has always been followed by one of adversity; and, in proportion as the one has been resplendent, the other has been terrible. Europe was in a more flourishing and happy condition than it had perhaps ever previously been in, just before the French Revolution; we need not describe what followed. This country enjoyed unexampled prosperity just before the Revolution in the time of the first Charles; all know what succeeded. That the sunshine in which we are now basking will have to give place to the storm, is a matter which the na ture of things renders abundantly certain; and that the storm will be of a very awful character, is a matter which a variety of circumstances renders almost equally certain. One part of the community sighs for a complete change in our form of government; another part sighs for the destruction of our church establishment; the existence of almost every component part of the constitution is made matter of question in one way or another. The shape and proportions of society escape not, and a wish is largely prevalent to make in them the most sweeping alterations. Our laws and systems are undergoing a course of hazardous experiments. One great interest is placed in opposition to another. The town working classes, those whose character for the last ten years may be found in the history of Radicalism, the Queen Caroline madness, and the Combinations, have formed themselves into a stupendous confederacy for objects which can fail only by miracle, in plunging the country into distress, and in making them the enemies of our laws and institutions. The most powerful engines are at work to provide them with the worst teachers, to fill them with the worst principles, and to make them scorn and hate the upper classes. To look at all this, and not to expect a fearful future, is an impossibility. History shows that the fiend of revolution will walk the earth till the end of time; what country this fiend will next ravage, is not to be revealed by us; but we fear that the things necessary for tempting it, and enabling it to triumph, will soon be far more abundant in our own, than in any other. THE CATHOLICS. We must not lose sight of the Catholics altogether, although their new Association does not yield everything that they expected from it. Certain parts of the conduct of themselves and their friends, demand from us a few brief observations. We have already stated in a former Number of this Magazine, that when the bill for putting down their late Association was before Parliament, the Catholics pledged themselves to yield unconditional obedience to it, if it should become law. It became law, and then the Catholics-the very men who gave the pledge-assembled in public to devise how they might disobey it to the utmost point possible, without bringing upon themselves its penalties. The new Association was expressly intended to be in effect all that the old one was. The same men were to lead it, and it was to do precisely the same things. It has failed, but those who formed it are still as guilty as they would have been if it had been perfectly successful. They made the same seditious and inflammatory speeches to the ignorant and passionate multitude-they attempted to collect the rent-they endeavoured to create the same public convulsions -they sought to do everything that the old Association had done. must obey the laws," cried Mr O'Connell, and his confederates, at every meeting; “Oh, yes, we must obey the laws-we must show our enemies that the Catholic religion compels its votaries to yield implicit obedience to the laws!" They grossly violated the laws in the very next moment. Perhaps-we are by no means sure of it -they spared the letter, and small credit was due to them for not doing what would have brought upon them bodily punishment; but that they did everything which the laws, to which they alluded, were formed to prohibit, is a thing which can be doubted by no one. & We The country of these people was comparatively tranquil, party rage was subsiding, English capitalists were attempting to give bread to their starving countrymen, agriculture and trade were advancing, the laws were gaining respect and influence. The Association saw all this, and they intentionally turned their arms against it. They attempted to wrest from Ireland the benefits which she was gathering, and to drive from her everything that could ameliorate her condition. Their motives were self-interest-self-aggrandisement. They sought to do the most mighty injuries to their country, solely that they might bring profit into their own coffers; and while they were thus occupied, they uttered the most sickening boasts touching their patriotism. Their visit to this country amply proved who were the real enemies of Ireland. They left it, and it ceased to be convulsed; it began to prosper. Happy, thrice happy would it be for Ireland, if they were banished from it for ever! We do not say this merely to hold up this gross violation of integrity and good faith to public abhorrence. We have other reasons for saying it, than to point the scorn of all honourable men upon those, who, while they call themselves an Aristocracy, wear titles, and boast of the purity and richness of their blood, adopt the dishonest and despicable quirking of pettifogging lawyers, trample upon laws with cowardly cunning and trickery, worthy of the robber, and endeavour to sacrifice their country to their ambition. We say it to throw light upon the character of the Catholics as a party. Could the professions of the Catholics be depended on? Would they faithfully observe their oaths? Would they respect such of the general laws of the realm as they might not approve of? Would they prefer the good of the state to their party interests? These questions comprehend no slight portion of what is called the Catholic Question, and the Catholics are assuredly answering them, by their conduct, with a flat negative. Who could trust those who thus violate a solemn pledge? Who could believe that those who thus evade the obligations of the law, would not evade the obligations of an oath? Who could think that those, who thus wantonly disregard such statutes as do not please them, would spare either statute or in stitution that might stand in the way of their party interests? Who could imagine that those, who thus strive to sacrifice their country for party gain, would hesitate in thus sacrificing the empire? No one. The personal character of the Catholics must be looked at as narrowly, as the nature of their religious creed and discipline. What renders this conduct the more unpardonable, is, it was totally unnecessary for the promotion of the Catholic cause; it was only calculated to do this cause injury. The Catholics had the full sanction of the law for holding as many public meetings as they might wish, for the purpose of discussing their grievances and petitioning; and their cause needed nothing more. What occasion had they for a regular collection of money from the whole of their body? To what honest purposes could this money be applied? Was it likely that their avowed intention of using it for bribing the press, interfering with the administration of the laws, and influencing elections, would benefit them? Was there any probability that they would derive advantage from the abusive, seditious, and inflammatory speeches of Shiel and O'Connell ? When these speeches were of necessity held to speak the sentiments of the whole body-of the Aristocracy and Clergy, as well as the lower orders-and when they were calculated to recall the Rockites to their work of desolation, was it at all likely that they would have any other effect than to strengthen the hostility of England? Could such men as Lord Killeen imagine that they would gain the friendship of this country, by array ing themselves to the farthest point against the laws, by addressing the most outrageous appeals to the worst passions of the Irish people, and by sowing the seeds of tumult and atrocity? If the Catholic Aristocracy and Clergy cannot act without such men as Shiel and O'Connell-if they cannot keep the feelings of their body alive without such speeches as these men make-if they are compelled to be the followers and instruments of these men, cannot they discover that all this forms an unanswerable reason for continuing the disabilities? gressed as well as the Catholics, and with even less to justify them. The new Catholic Association has been joined, actually or practically, by various Protestant nobles and gentlemen, by members of the House of Commons-by English Peers. Certain of these are intimately connected, in one way or another, with certain members of the Ministry. Law-makers and law-administrators-men who ought to possess the intelligence and honour of gentlemen-have not scrupled to become prominent and active adherents of a body which was ostentatiously formed to defy, and trample upon, the laws, which evidently violates the spirit of the laws in the grossest manner, which scatters throughout Ireland the most libellous and seditious appeals, and which is demonstrably calculated to incite the people to despise the laws, and resort to the most illegal and criminal conduct. That no means exist for preventing these shameless men from having any further share in the making of laws, is a matter to be deeply lamented; we hope, however, that the government will do its duty, and deprive every one of them of his commission as a magistrate. If they be countenanced by any members of the Ministry, we trust that his Majesty will remember the obligations that rest upon him, and dismiss such members from the service of the country. Mr Martin-the individual who so laboriously and honourably superintends the execution of laws of his own framing-has made himself a member of this body, which exists to resist the laws framed by others, and prevent them from having any effect. Now, if we, and all right-thinking men, concede that Mr Martin's laws ought to be obeyed, we cannot possibly concede that those of other people ought to be disregarded. We can never admit, that Mr Martin ought, in the same moment, to bring men to punishment for violating his own laws, and to practically violate laws which he has not brought into being. We say no man has a right to punish a carman, or drover, for cruelty to a brute, and then join in that which is evidently calculated to incite men to rob, burn, and assassinate each other;-to bring each other to ruin and the gallows. The Member for Other men have, however, trans- Galway's Association has brought the Rockites again into the field, and until we see him exert himself against their cruelty, we shall think very poorly of his humanity. Lord Darnley always professes in Parliament to be particularly anxious for the welfare of Ireland. Although it is impossible for us to compliment him on his talents and wisdom, we will say that his parliamentary conduct is, upon the whole, moderate and respectable. His lordship is likewise a legislator. Of this new Catholic Association Lord Darnley has become an active adherent. Did he think that the people of Ireland were too obedient to the laws and the government, and that they needed the example of men like himself to teach them to despise them? Did he believe, that he had a right to trample upon laws, merely because he voted against them in the legislature? Did he think that factious and seditious associations were likely to remove Ireland's evils? Did he imagine, that by identifying himself with the demagogues, and giving currency and weight to their slanderous and abominable speeches, he would correct the feelings of his Irish tenantry, and benefit the peace of Ireland? Did he suppose that the renewal of party war, and of the outrages of the Rockites, would ameliorate the sufferings of the Irish peasant ry? Did he deem it meet and proper for a peer of England to become the colleague of the Shiels, O'Connells, and Lawlesses of agitators and radicals of Papists and reformers? When we see men thus belie their words by their conduct, what are we to think of them? We gave some evidence, in our last Number, of our being the friends of the Nobility; but when we see Nobles thus striving to debauch the minds of their tenantry-thus arraying themselves against the laws and government-thus feeding turbulence, disorder, and crime-thus linking themselves with democratic level lers, to produce the most grievous public evils-we will not spare them on account of their titles. We will hold them up to public scorn and indignation, and we will invoke upon them a double portion of these because they belong to the Nobility. Lord Darnley, as we have already intimated, stands not alone. Various other Protestant Nobles, English and VOL. XVIII. Irish, belong actually, or in effect, to the Association. The case is the same with various members of the House of Commons, and others who rank as gentlemen. On looking over the list, we find among them individuals who are reputed to be some of the worst landlords in Ireland-men who are constantly absentees-who never see their estates-who leave their tenants to the rapacity of blood-sucking agents and middle-men-who will not make the smallest sacrifice, or stir a finger, to purge their lands of men of the worst character. These individuals, who are thus insensible to duty and shame, can yet listen to the voice of faction; and while they will do nothing to benefit the tenants, they can be active to render them still more depraved and miserable. We find likewise in the list, the names of Mr Spring Rice, and others who call themselves patriots-who cant of their love of, and their readiness to sacrifice themselves for, their country. These people, it seems, imagine that they will benefit their country, by filling it with party strife and madness-by blasting almost everything that was taking root in it for good-and by teaching their countrymen to disdain yet more heartily the laws and the government, and to be yet more disorderly and ungovernable. Because they cannot give their country what they wish, they are resolved that it shall have nothing-because they cannot remove the Catholic disabilities, which every one knows would not have the least effect on the worst of Ireland's evils, they are resolved to prevent, as far as possible, the removal of any of these evils-because they cannot bring O'Connell and his confederates into the executive and the legislative, they are determined to keep the peasantry in barbarism, crime, and misery. Patriotism? The blackest traitor abounds with such patriotism. Out upon such patriots! they are a disgrace to both Ireland and Britain. A blessed day will that be for the world, which shall see their native dust cover the last of them. These persons may say, that as the laws cannot reach them, they are not acting against the laws; but do they think, that any reflecting man in the empire will be duped by such pitiful sophistry? The Association to which 3 Q |