cal purposes, he does express, would burst his bonds asunder, and cast away his cords from them; yet none is hardy enough to be the first to break the ranks, and expose himself to the raking fire of persecution against character, property, and even person, which, on such occasions, a priest so well knows how to direct against him. Here, then, is one impediment." And we admit that it is a real and a serious one; but it only furnishes a stronger reason for adopting every legitimate means that offers of withdrawing the people from a tyranny which they hate, and enabling them to act with liberty; and this can be done only by affording them that protection which a closer union with their landlord or employer would confer.

With some means, too, of observing, and more of collecting, observations, we do not hesitate to assert, that, rampant and vigorous as Popery, in Ireland, now seems, it is pregnant with disease and death, and that the time is near at hand when this obstacle will be removed. We would, therefore, advise such preparatory measures as may enable the landlords of Ireland, should the country survive the shock and ruin which the fall of this mighty colossus will, probably, occasion, to avail themselves of the door which will then be thrown open to them; and to resume, in a paternal spirit, improved by experience, the place and offices, in an intercourse with their tenantry, which that important relation imperatively devolves upon them.

The elements of decomposition in the Roman Catholic church of Ireland are rapidly developing; and there can be but little doubt that they will shortly produce a convulsion which will shake it to its very centre, if not shatter it into fragments. There is, we assert it, no attachment of Roman Catholics to their religion, as a religion. The Hohenlohe miracles, and the Pastorini prophecies, which so raised, and so disappointed one, the popular pride; the other, the popular expectation-the light which religious meetings and public discussions have let in upon the darkest chambers of imagery in the Romish church-the march of intellect-the increased, though bad, intelligence of the lower orders-their concentration and self-dependence-the radical and infidel spirit and tendency of the age

the treacherous or infatuated policy of our civil government which has taught brute force its power-and that authority, if perseveringly resisted, is overcome-the transformation of the priest into the demagogue-the chapel into the political club-house, and the congregation into the political club-the utter indifference to the morals of the people evinced by the priests, unless, as with the sobriety of the Clare freeholders, morality can be made to subserve politics-in short, the utter oblivion, or blasphemous prostitution, of all that is sacred, essential, and characteristic in religion-have caused the people to view it in that aspect, in which alone the priest exhibits it, as the banner of a party, and the steppingstone to political power. In the alembic of Popery, infidelity has neutralized superstition, and left but the residuum of politics. The prophet's commission, “I have set thee over the nations, and over the kingdoms, to root out, and to pull down, and to destroy, and to throw down." This is the only text upon which the priest harangues. With this, in some pointed and personal application of it, the altar rings on every Sabbath; and, consequently, radicalism is the only creed of the people.

And to their religious profession, even in this, its most attractive aspect to the natural man, there are many, who are rather bound by authority, than attached by sympathy. The demagogues, priestly and political, have hurried on the body of the Romish clergy; some, half reluctant, until they have passed the Rubicon, and found it too late to stop, or to recede. These, again, have carried with them the people: some, no doubt, but too ready : others, and among those, the first in property, intelligence, respectability, and age, entirely disapproving of their conduct, and disgusted with their spirit: and only restrained by fear of the power which they can wield in these critical and eventful times, and against which the government can, or does, afford no protection, from publicly testifying their disgust, and from abandoning a system, which they plainly see, has any thing in view, rather than to save the souls of its members. This is not mere theory. We know this to be the state of many Roman Catholics. And does it not justify us in saying, that the authority of their priesthood,

experienced statesmen, and wisest political economists; and whose complicated causes, will, no doubt, require many and various means of cure; we would venture to suggest one of the causes, which have operated to produce the chasm between the gentry and peasantry which now subsists. And the means which we propose for removing the cause, will, in some degree, operate in removing, also, the existing effects.

It must be evident to any person at all conversant with the subject, that there is a radical defect in the present system of agricultural labour. And that the practice of hiring labourers by the day, with scarcely any advantage over the old system of farm servants, brings with it many and grievous evils. Some of these we shall proceed to state. First, then, it reduces the connexion between the landlord and this portion of his dependants, over whom he might exercise so powerful, and so salutary, a moral influence, to the simple transaction, of labour given, and cash received. It increases crime, by increasing impunity; and, by the same act, throws virtue into the shade; while in the market, where both are equally unknown, the felon, who has fled from justice, is perhaps employed; and, on account of his itinerant occupation, lives unsuspected in a strange place, while the honest and industrious labourer is perhaps rejected.

The uncertainty, too, of employment, with its consequent misery, which belongs to this system, often leads to the commission of crime, for the purpose of obtaining the common necessaries of life. It produces a thorough recklessness of character, one of whose worst fruits, is the early and thoughtless marriages, which are so general among our poor, and which, in the very beginning of life, encumber two persons with the charge of a family, who have no certain means of supporting themselves. That an increase of wretchedness produces an increase of marriages, and so, of population, is one of those paradoxes which not only facts amply support, but whose theory a little consideration will justify. Those only, who have some comfort and independence to lose, will be restrained from marriage by prudential considerations. Others stand on no eminence, and fear no fall. They have nothing to lose, and are therefore ready for any change which offers present

gratification. And, in point of fact, there is scarcely a labouring man, who lives to the age of thirty, unmarried. These marriages often occur, under the most destitute and discouraging circumstances. We know the fact, that after the banns had been duly published for two Roman Catholics, whom the priest refused to marry, from their want of a sufficient fee; the man requested to be married the following morning at six o'clock. The clergyman refused to perform the ceremony at any but canonical hours; and suspecting something wrong in the man's anxiety to have the service over before day light, pressed for his reason. He found, that it was a desire to attend the market, for employment as a labourer, after the ceremony was over, lest he should miss his day's hire; which, he confessed, was all he had to look to, on that, his wedding day, for subsistence. We may add, that it is common for women, in order that they may make a decent appearance at their wedding, to borrow shoes and a cloak. We mention these, because the want of them marks the Zero of poverty, in Ireland, much more accurately than the want, even of a blanket; for which, the cloak by day, is, in but too many instances, the substitute by night : Nor are the parents less reckless. Instead of interfering to check, they bestow the sanction of age, and the form of business, upon marriages, in which it were impossible to discern one ray of common sense or forethought. facts, alone, can give any adequate conception of that blendure of inconsistencies, which is the peculiar of Irish character. We will state one, in point. Last shrovetide, the gate-keeper at K-, called upon his mistress; and after some blessings and compliments, the insinuating exordium, which, usually opens a story that is to close with a request, begged "that she would ask the master to advance him five pounds, to marry his daughter." Observe, these five pounds were not intended for a marriage portion. They were to be forthwith expended, in a fee to the priest, and other costs of a dacent, that is, a drunken wedding. Mrs. C-, interested for the family, asked, to whom Mary was about to be married: and was answer'd, "to a boy of the Hurly's." The Hurly's? I know but one family of Hurly's, that at the bog."

66

But

The very same, your honour, Jim Hurly, a nate, clane boy." "Is it the family that, at Christmas, could not pay me half price for blankets: and were in such want of them too-ten people without covering in a wretched hut that I was obliged to give them a pair without any payment?" Tim scratched his head. And what are you to do with them, when married?" "O, your honour, I'm not to do for them. She's to live with her people in law." "And are you sending the poor child to be the eleventh in a wretched hovel, where they are in want of blankets, and cannot purchase them, even at half price?" Tim, again, scratched his head. "Indeed Tim, I will not speak to your master. I am sure he would not give you five pounds, for such a purpose. And I certainly will not ask him to lend it, that you may be kept in wretchedness, while you are working it out. And all this, only to send poor Mary into wretchedness also." Tim, who, though one of the comfortable, was, as must ever be the case, infected by the epidemic feeling, never thought of this. He and his family, Mary not excepted, were very thankful to the mistress for her advice, which they thought both wise and kind, but which had never occurred to any of them. Shrovetide the Irish May-passed; and Mary is safe from being settled, or unsettled, until next Shrovetide. Beyond this most critical and eventful epoch in an Irish year, and an Irish life, few would pretend to speculate. Three successive Shrovetides, has Tim endeavour'd, according to Irish phrase and practice, "to come round" his master, to whom he had free and daily access, by beguiling him, as the serpent beguiled Adam, through the medium of his beloved Eve. Three successive Shrovetides, he has preferred to Mrs. C-, a similar request, only with a different party. For, in these matters of business, wiser heads, it might be supposed, than lovers were, usually make the selection, as well as the arrangements. And in all probability, the principals, if, in an Irish wedding, the bride and bridegroom may be so denominated, have little share in the arrangement, and no anxious solicitude about its issue. Extremes meet. In no Moravian settlement, where the sexes are kept strictly apart-scarcely see each other, except in the house of

prayer and are, perhaps, introduced, for the first time, by the marriage ceremony; is marriage transacted more as a cold matter of business, by a passionless and spiritualized people, than it is by our wild, warm blooded Irish, all sense and recklessness. In a society, too, where, as to the daily habits and delicacies of life, there is no discrimination of sex ; but male and female, eat, and drink too, labour, and sleep, together. No fashionable couple, who have been made the passive instrument of a union, between two families, estates, or political parties, could have less entanglement of sensibilities, and more diplomacy of arrangement, than sometimes attends the marriage of two Irish paupers; who both think it time to marry, but who never dreamed that they were to take each other, "for better, for worse," until the business was arranged, by mutual friends, at the wake or wedding, those cabinet dinners, immediately preceding. This is the regular order. There are, no doubt, exceptions, of a pure and strong attachment: but they are rare indeed. This order is far more frequently interrupted, and the matter hastily adjusted, without any preliminaries, by a misfortune: as Irish morality teaches our degraded people to designate, what Christian morality denounces, as a damning sin. In Mary's three affairs of the heart, Mrs. C's influence alone, prevented a marriage. Had her father not been in Mr. C―'s employment; and, consequenty under the eye and influence of his family; in other words, had they been more destitute, a marriage would, assuredly, have taken place. And thus would another have been added to the many streams, which are mingling their muddy waters, to inundate the land with overpopulation, wretchedness, and rebellion. For, moralize, or legislate, as we may, the hopelessly wretched, by an instinct of nature, must be rebels.

As Irish habits and character are our subject, it may not be amiss to observe, in passing, that national, or should we not rather call it, religious trait, which Tim's request to his mistress, to request of his master, exhibits. Our religious creed operates insensibly upon character, and imparts to the whole stream of conduct, its own rectitude, or peculiar obliquity. In the character, therefore, of the Irish peasant, that is, in unsophisticated Irish Popery, there is no open

ness and straightforwardness. All is circuitous and mysterious, inaccurate and false. Every thing is arranged by intervention and deputy. Whether salvation is to be purchased, or a quarter of meadow, or potato land. Whether a daughter is to be married, or a pig sold, there is a host of mediators engaged. Each, priest or peasant, consuming his quota of the native Irish poison, whiskey; and, in return, contributing to the transaction his full quota of confusion, litigiousness, and ferocity. This system of mediatorship is not the finesse of a polished people, which would prevent the rude collision of principals; for the principals are never missed from the argumentum baculinum, or the strife of tongues. No; it is the servile spirit of his religion, with its "Gods many, and Lords many," which has wrapt the whole character of the Papist peasant, in mystery, vagueness, suspicion, and imbecile dependence. Popery brings down the gospel to a level with merely natural feeling; and, thus, carnalizes what, else, were spiritual in the affections of its votary. "Why would'nt he obey the mother that bore, and reared him?" was the gross and only reply of an aged devotee, to all the arguments we could produce against the intercession, indeed, paramour authority of the virgin, over the one mediator, Jesus glorified. What is wise for eternity, cannot be foolish for time. If it is safe to help out, even the Saviour's merits and intercessions, with those of saints and angels, an additional mediator cannot, at any time, be amiss. Tim's request to Mr. C, must pass through Mrs. C. Had he a request to make of the mistress, it would have been made through the master.

Another remarkable feature in the character of the Irish labourer, and which the present system tends to perpetuate, is his stupid ignorance of the very simplest processes in that business, from which he looks to derive subsistence throughout his life. Two labourers are able to mow, plough, sow, thrash, &c. and scarcely any one of them is acquainted with all these branches. And yet, surely none of them requires either intelligence or adroitness beyond his compass, if but training and stimulus were applied. The great mass of our labourers have but brute force to apply to their work. A favorable season for getting in the seed may be

lost, or the hay crop may perish, for want of suitable hands, while numbers are standing idle and hungry in the market, waiting for some employment which asks from them mere labour, and can scarcely be said to contemplate them as rational and intelligent beings. Agricultural labourers may be divided into two classes. Some very few, who have been ancient settlers on the estate, and in the immediate neighbourhood of a resident landlord, rent from him a cottage and potato garden, and, perhaps, the grazing of a cow, at the usual rates of the country, and which they are enabled to pay, by the constant employment he affords them, at a hire of eight pence to ten pence a day. These are to be considered as under the immediate patronage of the landlord, and as having attained the maximum of a labourer's prosperity. And though the balance of cash which appears in their favour on the steward's books, can be but small, yet if other members of the family are industrious, and if all are sober and thrifty, they may live in comfort and independence. And certainly, if the moral link between the landlord and this portion of his dependents had been drawn closer, by a vigilant and affectionate superintendence, and to this their circumstances were highly favourable; they would present a far different aspect, both in a physical, and moral, and, we may add, in a religious point of view, from that which they now exhibit. These few, however, be their moral state what it may, while strength to labour is continued to them, have an assured livelihood. But there is another, and a far more numerous portion, wholly dependent upon the fluctuating demand for labour of the public market; and, which is still worse, upon its fluctuating prices. At seed time and harvest they obtain daily employment; and, in threatening seasons, perhaps, for a few days, so high wages, as two shillings a day, or even more, with their diet, about which at such times they are very difficult to please. This becomes a heavy tax to the small farmer, who is compelled to employ them on any terms rather than risk the safety of his crop. And it does not, in any way, benefit them; for such seasons present an uninterrupted scene of riot and intoxication. At other times, and particularly in