IRELAND IS BANKRUPT.

IRELAND is in a state of bankruptcy; and, it is because the privileged classes are interested in keeping out of the National Insolvent Court, that we have not had the avowal made in a Parliamentary fashion. The Peerage and the Church of Ireland will not meet their creditors. The gentry, and the Anglo-Irish proprietors-we speak of the mass-delay as long as possible the day of reckoning. They will not give in a balance sheet, they cannot liquidate, and they will not sell. It is not the mass of the people alone who are paupers. It is not the native Irish, the impulsive Celts, the cotters, and the mountain men who alone are unemployed, embarrassed, and idle. The land is bankrupt from cot to castle, from the channel to the ocean, from the northern capes to the southern bays. The people do not work, not because they will not work, but because the insolvent owners of the land have no money to pay wages. The fields are untilled, not for want of men, but means. The waste lands are uncultivated, because the bankrupt proprietary cannot afford to cultivate them for themselves, and will not allow others, who might be able, to avail themselves of the soil of the earth, that they might raise a little food for their starving families. No; mountain and valley, meadow and woodland, rich marshes and fertile fields, must alike lie fallow, because, forsooth, the law of entail and his honour forbid the owner to sell, and his poverty prevents him cultivating the soil of his ancestors!

But we are ruled by minorities. The interests of property have a fatal precedence over the rights of men. The Peers are irresponsible-vast numbers of them Irish proprietors-unmitigated Tories in all that relates to land-desperate devotees to the worn but stately relics of feudalismclinging with the tenacity of drowning men to their hold upon the soil which is the birthright of a people. They have the reputation of high birth and long descent, they are the heirs of historic glories and infamies; they may be noble, their age and education, their refinement and taste make them respectable; but in the High Court where Justice presides, and Honesty counsels, the men who defraud a nation of its rights, by clinging to the wrongs of ages, and maintaining those laws which stand between the creditor and his due, between the people and their birthright, the men who, being bankrupt, evade the penalties of insolvency, cannot be absolved from their guilt, though the stars of all the orders glittered on their breasts, and the glories of all high races shed a reflected glory on their brows.

But it is not the Peers who are alone irresponsible. To the nation the Commons are equally so. They are only responsible to, at most, a million of men; and three-fifths, at least, of the six hundred and fiftyfour, are related by birth, marriage, or position to the Peers. The people however permit this state of things. They suffer a minority to rule a nation. They abet, by their non-interference, the evasion of the penalties of bankruptcy; and, as a natural consequence, they pay for their neglect, in the shape of famine-relief grants, and rates in aid.

The remedy for this state of wrong is expressed in one word-a word which occupies a prominent position in the history of Ireland-a word

which is associated throughout the period of three centuries with war and spoliation-a word by means of which the ancestors of the landlords of Ireland became seized and possessed of the land of Ireland-a word at which the timid and time-serving turn pale, but a word, nevertheless, which may yet be written in one of the fairest pages of the book of justice-Confiscation. In the past, the dividers of the spoil confiscated for the behoof of themselves and their adherents. In the future, we trust, a real and just Parliament will confiscate for the behoof of the people. But, as the confiscation of the past was effected by force, so we would have the confiscation of the future effected by law. Remove the impediments which stand in the way of the creditors. Repeal the statutes which shield the mortgagor. Make the reputed owner of real entailed estate as responsible for his debts as the owner of personal estate. Destroy the monopoly of the land. Give the population an opportunity of sharing in the fruits of their industry; and test the assertion that an Irishman is idle and a vagabond, by opening to him the avenue of employment. Confiscation! yes, we have read of confiscation, when the mailed barons of Henry, and John, and Richard confiscated at the point of the sword. Confiscation! yes, we have read of whole districts confiscated by the stroke of a monarch's pen. Confiscation! yes, the Church has fattened on it; the noble has squandered its fruits in reckless extravagance, called, in mockery, hospitality; spies and adventurers have made themselves warm nests out of the leavings of the mitre, the ermine, and the sword-but we have yet to hear of a general and peaceable confiscation for the benefit of the people. Confiscation is an ugly, unpalatable, painful fact-but it is a penalty which Nature has decreed shall follow bankruptcy and while, by arbitrary enactments, the privileged minority strive to evade the punishment, so long will they have to experience the constant horrors of insecurity; and to behold, in frightful alternation, the pangs of famine and the agonies of civil war. Well might Lord John Russell exclaim to Sir Robert Peel, you occupy, you do not govern Ireland!' but, unfortunately, that land is as much occupied now as it was in 1844.

It would be ridiculous, after what has been said, to express any surprise at the resolves and legislation of Parliament. They will not, we cannot expect them to proclaim the real state of the case, and apply the only remedies. We cannot expect them to see what their position, birth, prejudices, and apparent interests hide from their gaze. We do not believe that the Lords and Commons are wilfully blind, perversely selfish, or maliciously unjust. But the fact remains the same, that their Irish legislation, both in omission and commission, in too much neglect, and in a one-sided activity, is blind, selfish, and unjust. Personally we do not censure them. They are in a false position. They are privil ged -they are an exclusive body, uncontrolled except by public opinion, and they are an interested minority. What we do condemn is the system which permits a minority of interested persons to rule the state; and though we do not condemn them for their legislation, in their private capacity as men, yet we do condemn them, in their public capacity as Peers and Commoners, because they withhold from their fellow-citizens those political rights which may be suspended by despotic enactments,

but to which every man has a just and irrefragable claim. There will be no sound legislation for Ireland until either the Imperial Parliament is truly national, or Ireland has a National Assembly in her own capital.

Meanwhile the Government may, beneficially, do what they can to promote the sale of incumbered estates, certain that the Lords will do all they can to emasculate the Act under whose provisions the work is to go

They may pass and amend poor relief bills, for the same gentlemen to cut up and disfigure. They may send the Queen to Ireland to pacify and amuse the middle classes and dazzle the mob. They may try to plant Connaught as James I. planted Ulster. They may teach the people to catch fish, cotters how to grow maize, and the farmers how to crop their acres. But until a new, takes the place of the present, race of proprietors, until the Church Establishment is abolished, until the landlord law is radically reformed, we may rest assured that Ireland will continue to be a garrison of British soldiers, a workhouse on a large scale for a pauper population, nominally owned by bankrupt landlords, drained by exacting mortgagees, a land without capital, without commerce, and scourged alternately by insult, eviction, and famine, from agrarian outrages, to rebellion. EUGENE.

COBDENISM AND COMMUNISM.

THERE are 10,000 journeymen-bakers in London. Owing to the competition of trade they are very much overworked. Some 2,500 masterbakers acknowledge the evil; 'would put an end to it, if possible;' but cannot, since other master-bakers would take advantage of them. So the journeymen and their masters petition-utterly powerless and remediless else for the interference of Parliament. Mr. Cobden denounces any such interference as Communism.

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I pass by the paltriness of that stale trick of endeavouring to frighten an opponent with a distasteful word. I will presume that Mr. Cobden really believed what he said; and I proceed with such comment as seems called for.

I hold that it is fairly the business of Parliament to take cognisance of all those broad wrongs inflicted by one class of society upon another, in order that an end may be put to unjust or tyrannical conduct; that it is properly the business of Parliament to mediate between the disagreements of different classes of society, in all matters beyond the range of the ordinary tribunals. So the case of the journeymen-bakers comes legitimately before Parliament, with the advantage that both classes affected pray for interference. But with the bugbear of Communism' Parliament is to be frighted from its duty.

When, not long since, women far advanced in pregnancy were compelled to work nearly naked in coal mines, to draw heavy coal-trucks through narrow underground passages, on their hands and knees, with a chain passing between their legs, pressing upon the womb,-when at length the Legislature was shamed into interfering, since there was no other means of preventing the horrible wrong, that interference, according to Mr. Cobden, was Communism.

When the hours of infant labour were abridged,-when mill-owners

were no longer allowed to grind the 'little children' as of old, the alleviation, according to Mr. Cobden, was Communism.

The Ten Hours' Act, according to Mr. Cobden, was Communism.

Suppose that he speaks correctly. Is this a reason why Parliament should be deterred from following its few wholesome precedents? Was there no man in the House to reply-'Let it be Communism. And if it be so, if to alleviate the unnecessary sufferings of society, if to step between the class of the oppressed and the class of the oppressor and with strong hand to hold back the demon Trade, who has no mercy, for men, women, or children, or even for the babe in the womb,-if this be Communism, then may Communists be as rife in the land as sordid and greedy and unprincipled tradesmen are now.'

But, in the speech to which my remarks have reference, Mr. Cobden defines his objection to legislative interference, as an objection to the principle of undertaking to manage the affairs of adult males through the intervention of the Legislature.' Then what is Parliament for? When the adult males cannot manage their affairs for themselves. Is Mr. Cobden the advocate of strikes,' and trade combinations? Even if so, it can be only because he knows them to be powerless against the better combination of the masters. The law can be appealed to for the sake of

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the trader shall it never be appealed to against the trader? Mr. Cobden is false even to his own creed of 'free trade.' His 'free trade' is about as universal as his peace.' As he would have 'universal peace,' but only between governments, so he would have 'free trade everywhere' only for the governing capitalists For the labourer he will allow neither free trade, nor even a chance of legislative interference to maintain some approach to fair trade.

For there is no free trade between the masters who may combine and the journeymen who must not; between the master who has capital and the day-labourer who has no capital, but children crying to him for food. 'Let there be no legislative interference in the labour-market! Let the capitalist be at liberty to trade in labourers, the labourers free to starve at the bidding of their masters. This is free trade.' It is the creed of the Member for the West-Riding. It is not free trade, we answer; but a frightfully iniquitous monopoly. There has been no monopoly so intolerable as the monopoly of capital.

It must cease. That, too, shall pass into the grave of all injustice, however Communistic may be the sentence. This labour-question will force its way. The right to labour, to a fair proportion of labour, and to protection from the rapacity of the taskmaster, this must be recognised; but it will not be recognised efficiently till there shall be, not only 'legislative interference in the affairs of adult males,' but an interference provided by those who now form the great helot-class themselves, in a Parliament in which they as well as their masters shall be represented.

It is because Mr. Cobden and his party know that if the masses of the working-class are enfranchised, this labour-question must then be dealt. with by a Parliament that will not be scared by a name, that they are so anxious to carry their limited suffrage measure, in order to admit, if possible, only those who may be disposed to prevent the solution of this question.

For the same game is being played here as in France. The traders in men, the men of counters, the sticklers for 'Order' to keep up the market, seek to divide the nation into two classes. On the one side the freemen, the bourgeoisie, the respectable shop-keepers and dealers, and so many-or so few-workmen as can be bribed by being kept comfortable, and on the other side a helot class (the villeins, the slaves of old feudal times) to do their work at starvation price. In France they think they are about to accomplish this; in England they feel sure of doing so. There are no steps here to retrace.

And when they think themselves safe, then the much-dreaded Communism will indeed come. Their triumph will be the herald of their destroyer. Always does excess bring forth reaction.

I too fear the approach of Communism. I fear it because it is but a reaction; because, without faith or power of organising, it will be but an extreme in opposition to an extreme. Communism is the revenge of the proletarian.

I fear it because it too will be an injustice. Its forced equality will be inequality. Equality is not an end but a means. Not equality of being, but equal right to means and opportunity of growth is what should be desired. I fear the levelling equality of Communism as a terrible negation of progress.

Yet under the present system of misery on one side and mischief on the other, the reactionary phase of Communism seems certain. Were there, indeed, but a few brave men to stand between the Wrongers and the Wronged, and to make the true on either side understand the higher lessons of republican progress, it might be otherwise. But now there is no lesson learned but that of poverty, every way a poor teacher.

So Communism seems certain. Men will not always endure the misery of ill-paid toil, though the masters be never so complimentary. If private property is to mean nothing but great houses for the Cobdens and the Hudsons, and cellars and holes for their labourers,-if trade is to be nothing but rapacious fraud for the benefit only of the trader,-and if 'society' and 'order' are to be the cant litany chaunted over the grave of the poor man, then be sure that the oppressed will take their turn; that property and trade shall be 'no more,' and that for 'society,' and 'order' the world shall read Communism, till the onward growth of human life burst that also.

So will come this mischief of Communism, mischievous because it will be not a cure, but a failure. As yet Communism is not answerable for the evils charged to its account. Mr. Cobden is not even correct in his history. Paris was not in the hands of the Communists in the spring of last year.' The outbreak in June was not because the Communists could not realise their promises.' Even in the Provisional Government the Communists were thwarted; nay, not only the Communists, but the real Republicans also. The 'national workshops' were not the project of the Communists, but of their antagonists, who hoped to prove a Communist failure by working the sum themselves. It was not the Communists, but the anti-Communist tradesmen, who did not realise their promises; and who so caused, prepared, and prepared to take advantage of, the June outbreak. From the first of the Revolution the