to themselves ; and that if any third luminary should show
itself above the horizon of their country, pretending that it
has come to shed light upon the whole body of their corrup-
tions, that they shall instantly kick that planet out of the
Heavens; or if perchance their legs should not be quite
long enough to reach it, in that distant position, that they
shall despatch Davy the Dublin tailor on his lapboard to the
Moon, in order to snuff out that planet with his shears, and



112 IRELAND,

to extinguish the seven stars with his thimble.* This being
the notorious practice, and the evidently implied agreement,
of the parties, their family relationship is clearly proved by
this single mark ; which if any man (from the apparent im-
probability of the thing) shall choose to doubt, let him only
join Owen, the Philanthropist, in an effort to provide for the
poor of Ireland independent of the Priestcraft of the countiy ;
or the Moon, in an attitude to reflect the light of Truth upon
the public mind ; or any philosopher whatever, in an effort
to disabuse that mind of its prejudices, which form the
inexhaustible material of the wealthy and profitable trade
of all its leaders, and he will soon find, by dear bought
experience, that the Moon was before him in this market.

It was thus in the days of Diana of Ephesus, that Demetrius,
the silversmith, who (in connection with his fellow crafts-
men) derived a liberal fortune from the prejudices of his fel-
low citizens. It was thus, we say, that he laboured to pre-
serve Ephesus from the irretrievable ruin that would fall
upon the men of his craft, if Christianity should be permitted
to overthrow idolatry in that city. It is exactly so in the
present day ; and hence the true foundation of the under-
standing that exists between the leaders of the parties in
Ireland, that they shall preserve a monopoly of the market
of disputation to themselves ; and that no power, hostile to
their common corruptions, shall be permitted to enter the
field with a Park of Artillery, that with one powerful and
well directed broadside of plain truth, might leave their
enchantments and flimsy fancy works in such a state of con-
fusion and disorder, that the Doctors, with their utmost
industry, and that policy of which they are such perfect
masters, might not be able to put the odds and ends of their
pretty images together for some time to come ; and even
when, with much care and labour, they had placed them
upon their former base of quiet credulity and ignorant loy-

* Davy, the Tailor, a talkative member of the Dublin corporation, who
thought to extinguish the Moon by his noisy insolence at the first Brunswick
Meeting in Dublin.



THE PRESS AND THE PARTIES. 113

alty to their leaders, in which the battle first found them, a
tendency to rock and shake when assailed by those tempests
which Truth only can withstand, would prove a source of
continual alarm to the Doctors' minds, which are peculiarly
sensitive on all these subjects.

The Moon, as we have just mentioned, having embarked
her services in the dangerous and arduous task of reflecting
the light of the Sun of Truth upon the impostures of
Ireland, was hunted so closely through all the hells of
Dublin, (and believe me, my brethren, these hells are very
rich and profitable places,) that the poor planet, after having
endured the hardship of running through the fiery circuit of
three succeeding editions, (which she gallantly performed,
notwithstanding the combined powers of all the devils in
the hells just noticed,) at length became so exhausted by
her almost preternatural exertions, as to fall, one fine sum-
mer morning, into the arms of the God of Day, in a deep
fainting fit, and has never since been heard of; the god no
doubt having taken due care of her in that position.

In the progress of her threefold race, all sorts of scouts,
Protestant, Popish, and Methodistic, were employed to hunt
her down, and to extinguish her. Brunswick men, Ca-
tholic association men, and Corporation men, even Davy
the Tailor not excepted. The numerous religionists, and
particularly the different orders of pious sisters, communi-
cating between the clergy and the people, in public collec-
tions, in visitations of the sick, the sorrowful, the super-
annuated, the schools, the convents, the confraternities, the
Bible societies, the education societies, and a hundred other
societies, were handy and convenient instruments for run-
ning down the Moon in every house, at every table, and in
every shop where curiosity might have opened a crevice of
the door to her reflections. All, all who had seen the Moon,
and who trembled for their systems, were, more or less,
embarked in this holy warfare ! Booksellers were menaced
with a loss of custom, if they dared to let the Moon shine
upon their shelves or counters. Mercers were afraid to



114 IRELAND,

admit the planet that was " every where spoken against ;"
and even the Dublin Library, (of which the late Dr. Hamell,
R. C. Vicar-general of the Archdiocese of Dublin, was a Vice-
president, and many of the same persuasion among its ruling
members,) though professing to be a liberal institution,
would not receive it, although moved for admission (as Mr.
Wright, the Rev. Protestant secretary of that institution
informed the Editor) by a member of its own body. The
periodical press, with the exception of the Freeman's Jour-
nal, when edited by the late Mr. Power, and one very good-
natured and humorous critique by the weekly Warder, acted
the same part ; and thus, as over the benevolent purposes
of Mr. Owen for the relief of the poor in Ireland, priestcraft
and party obtained over the Moon also, a complete triumph,
although this planet had no other public object in view save
the good of Ireland, by the emancipation of the public mind
from the prejudices which enthral it.*

Here then is a true picture of the state of Ireland, her
parties, and her press ; and should any honest man, (we do
not mean an honest fool, for of these we believe we have
some hundreds of thousands in Ireland, our country ;) but a
man of enlightened judgment, seeing things as they are, and
determined, at all hazards, in his voyage of reform, to stick
close to the plank of his integrity; should such a man as
this embark his vessel on the sea of Irish politics, and attempt
to steer her steadily towards the port of Truth and the public
welfare, he would soon find that he was mistaken in his
calculations, if he entertained the vain expectation of being
able to arrive there. He would not have sailed fifty knots
in this course, until he would find himself assailed by con-
trary winds, and by frigates under false colours, pretending
to sail in the same direction, but the sole end of whose

* Mr. Maud, a bookseller, then residing on Ormond quay, Dublin, shewed
the Editor of the Moon a menacing letter to the effect above-mentioned ;
Mr. Curry, an eminent bookseller in Sackville street, to whom the Moon
paid her pointed compliments in a humorous epigram; and an eminent silk-
mercer, whose shop was then the resort of almost all the pious ladies of
Dublin, are among the persons alluded to in the above paragraph.



THE PRESS AND THE PARTIES. 115

voyage was the plunder of the seas, and the ruin of every
expedition that had for its object the triumph of truth and
liberty over slavery and falsehood. If finding himself
baffled on the seas, he should srat himself in the Moon, in
order to shed light upon his benighted country, a little
experience would prove that he had only shifted his position ;
for the Moon would not have performed three of her monthly
revolutions, until a thousand scouts would be despatched
from the schools and conventicles of Dublin, to hunt down
the planet that was shedding light upon the church pro-
perty, the trade of priestcraft, the abuses of the law system,
of the parties and the press ; and, in a word, all the humbugs
and monopolies by which (in the plain and vulgar language
of a distich with which we bearded a mock meeting for the
relief of the poor Dublin weavers in 1826)

The millions perish, while the ciphers eat,
The mutton's juicy and nutritious meat ;
The bee collects the honey, but the drone,
Comes in and calls the property his own.*

* In reference to the aforesaid meeting, it may be observed, that several
of the gentlemen (trustees to divers dormant funds) who attended this and
other public meetings at the Dublin Exchange, (professedly for the purpose
of relieving the liberty weavers, thrown out of employment by a stagnation
of trade) could very easily at that time have restored these poor people to their
looms, by appropriating the dormant funds over which they exercised a con-
trol (and some of which had lain sleeping for a course of years,) to the
payment of any loss which their employers might happen to sustain by the
sale of their stock on hand, at whatever price could be procured for it in the
public market This course, however, though urged with strong argument and
evidence, in favour of our trade and weavers, was rejected ; (a conspiracy, we
have good reason to believe, against Irish manufacturers, being then in active
operation ; for confirmation of which opinion, see the report of the Dublin
Trades' Union, and the historical facts embodied in Mr. Dalton's letter upon
the state of Irish trade, at the commencement of this volume,) and as a
natural consequence of this rejection of our trade, the public subscriptions
were applied to the payment of the weavers, first at the rate of Is. per day to
each man, which was soon after reduced to sixpence, and finally to fourpence,
for breaking stones for the repairs of the streets, &c. for which the citizens
pay a heavy tax to the paving corporation ; and a number of these unfortu-
nate men, with their families, soon after perished in the hospitals of the city,
and were buried under cover of the night, in the hospital fields of Dublin.



116 IRELAND,

Lest, however, the Moon should come to the full, and
shed too much light upon the "' form and pressure" of the
impostures by which the millions perish, the scouts just
noticed were actually despatched in all directions by the
Protestant traders in metaphysics ; and the Jesuits perhaps
apprehending that if the thing went on, their trade in
Irish credulity might be extinguished, despatched a <; Comet"
from the college of Clongowes, to burn up all the com-
bustibles of the system that had been seen by Moon-light,
(their own system of priestcraft save and excepted) and
this Comet has continued passing through and around
our part of the solar system ever since, burning up the
church and corporations without mercy, and sparing no
abuse whatever upon which the Moon had previously shed
her beam, save that of the Rosary, the litany of St. Mary of
Mount Carmel, and the bones of St. John the Baptist,
reserved as an antidote to those infidel impurities with which
the Reformation has so sensibly impregnated the Protestant
atmosphere of the British Islands ! and to the infallibility
of this antidote every Protestant head must bow, as its
efficacy is self-evident.*

The trade of that part of the city called " the liberty," once the principal seat
of its manufactures, perished also. Houses that would let for 60, or perhaps
80, a-year, prior to the Act of Union, and even after it, would not now bring
20, and some not more than 10. That once eminently flourishing section
of the city, and the streets approximating with it, soon assumed the appear-
ance of a spacious lazaretto ; and with the appearance, the general spread of
misery and mendicity, of filth, famine, and infection, (including a perpetual
succession of endemic diseases,) perfectly correspond, as any one may see
who will read the letter of Dr. Orpen, the medical inspector of the poor, on
that subject. And finally, the Royal Exchange, at which the mock meetings
alluded to were held, is now the residence of an auctioneer ; and was the
seat of a dancing-school when this work was preparing for the press ; two
very appropriate employments, it is true, for an Irish Exchange, as the
auctioneer can be called upon at any moment to bring the last expiring
remnant of our manufactures to the hammer ; and when the blow has been
struck, the merry andrew would prove useful in dancing the remnant down
to the water edge for exportation to the foreign market. (Vide America and
Flanders, in Mr. Dalton's letter in the Trades' Report just noticed.)
* The above is in allusion to the Comet, weekly newspaper, which appeared



THE PRESS AND THE PARTIES. 117

Having now touched upon the circumstances by which
the Moon was finally extinguished, (and which, during her
brief and rapid revolutions, shed equal and impartial light
upon the saints and sinners of every sect and party) we must
next apologise to the reader for being compelled, in the
discharge of our duty to our country, to introduce divers of
our own personal concerns into our picture of the press; as by
these, more eminently than by any other means, the author of
this work was brought into close contact with that immense
machine, and his attention forcibly attracted to its secret
springs of action. And although long before he had any
professional connection with the press, the glaring contra-
dictions of the newspaper department had caught his eye,
(as they must have caught the eye of every intelligent reader)
still he did not feel it his business, when a very young man,
to assume the office of a censor; and his numerous and
embarrassing avocations in after life, rendered it totally
impossible to devote his time and faculties to an examina-
tion of those perpetually multiplying documents, upon which
alone the truth of its corruption could be established. This
will prove his apology to the reader for the smallness of the
number of examples of corrupt partiality and injustice which
he shall presently charge home upon the press of Dublin,
and for his own personal concernment in the greater part
of these transactions. The more full and effectual discharge
of the great public duty of placing the press of Dublin upon
a sounder base, must fall upon the conductors of a national
newspaper review ; but for the faithful and effectual main-
tenance of such an institution as this, no man, or body of
men, can be fit, however rich, or however learned, who
have any intimate connection with, or personal interest in, the
corruptions of the law, the church property, or the priestly

soon after the Moon expired ; took a similarly bold and eccentric course (with
the exception of a saving clause in favour of Popish impostures,) and being
edited, and we believe chiefly supported in the literary department, by
gentlemen connected with, or educated at the Jesuitical college of Clongowes,
the force of the above allusion is self-evident.



118 IRELAND,

establishments of the country, as their own personal con-
cernment in such institutions, or their educational prejudices
in their favour, would always act as a bar to the faithful
discharge of their duty, as impartial and independent
reviewers; and even without a consciousness of crime,
would so frequently ascend to the surface of their labours,
as completely to defile the current of their writings, and
finally render them useless as a correction of the abuses of
the press.

A Dublin newspaper review must therefore, if it should
ever be formed in that city upon just principles, be placed
under the direction of men of independent minds, totally
unconnected with the parties of the country, as by such
men, and by such only, the dignified castigatiou of a corrupt
press, can be effectually executed.

Nor should this humble effort of the author to procure for
his country such a new and useful institution, be rejected,
because the reformer who stands forward to procure this
protection for the people against the impostures which sur-
round them, has not the same claims to popularity as those
of a Daniel O'Connell, supported by the Catholic church,
in whose bosom he was born ; or those of a Lord Mande-
ville, distributing arms to the orange lodges of the North of
Ireland. Let those who look for splendid claims to public
attention, remember the honest and persecuted people, who
laid the foundations of American liberty and prosperity in
the sound morality of their institutions, and who, in their
native country, were not permitted to enjoy the indulgence
that was freely granted to the dogs in the kennels of their
oppressors, and to the proud and lofty coursers in their stalls !
Let the Catholics of Ireland, who were themselves an
oppressed people, be the last to object to the nature of his
claims to the honest approbation of his country, because he
could not in conscience travel with the factions, and because
he rendered the duties which he owed to his country, sub-
servient to those (and to those only) which he owed to his
conscience and his God. Let them remember that an act



THE PRESS AND THE PARTIES. 119

of injustice committed against the lowest citizen, will soon
be committed against the highest, when it can be done with
similar impunity ; and that to stifle any portion of public
opinion by a contemptuous silence, or by a factious or
sectarian conspiracy, or to give false impressions to the
public, of speeches and writings, or of the feeling exhi-
bited in public assemblies, when that feeling happens to
be hostile to the sinister purposes of the press and its con-
federates, is not an offence committed merely against the
individuals who are misrepresented, but against a nation
that is deceived. And although, in the corrupt exercise
of its freedom, the press may take shelter under the wing
of legal protection, and a generous liberty of choice upon
the one hand, and that of the ignorance which it deceives,
and the prejudice which it feeds, upon the other; still the
effluvia issuing from its internal rottenness is not lessened
by the absence of the sense of smelling on the part of its
supporters, nor by the similar rottenness with which their
constitutions may be infected, nor by the pity and indul-
gence of the laws, nor by that generous sense of liberty
which a Protestant state derives from nature and the Refor-
mation. Rather its crimes are augmented, and rendered
more odious, by its gross and scandalous abuses of that
liberty, which a generous age and country have deposited
in its hands, and which (to the glory of the Reformation)
is so fully enjoyed in the Protestant Islands of Great Bri-
tain, that an humble caricaturist, who has his bread to earn
by his art, may procure his beef-steak and his bottle, even
by a joke upon the King.

Has it not been frequently asserted, by that (falsely) called
the liberal press of Dublin, that the speeches made by Mr.
O'Connell in the House of Commons, in his efforts to obtain
justice for his country, have sometimes been totally over-
looked ; and at other times shamefully garbled by the press
of England ; and if these accusations of the Dublin press
(of the truth or falsehood of which we know nothing) were
in reality well founded ; was not this conduct of the English



120 IRELAND,

press a gross offence against the Irish nation, and even
against the English public itself, who had a right to be
accurately informed of all that was passing in the Legisla-
tive Assembly of the nation ; as otherwise how could they
form a just opinion of our rights, and of the claims which we
have to the sympathy and co-operation of our English
brethren in the pursuit of justice ? If the Catholic press of
Dublin believej that this conduct of their London contem-
poraries, proceeded from a deeply rooted prejudice against
O'Connell and his country, why do they exhibit the same
mean and unmanly antipathy themselves, towards Protest-
ants of unquestioned patriotism, honestly contending for
the right of Ireland to a just and generous participation in
all the benefits of the state ? Is it because these Protestants
have written and spoken against Popery, that their patriotic
efforts to promote the interests of their country, have been
studiously cushioned ? And if so, with what shew of con-
sistency can these bigoted journalists, calling themselves
liberal! talk or write (as the hypocrites frequently have
the effrontery to do) about the religious or political bigotry
of an English or Irish Protestant press, with such stains as
these resting upon their acts, and written in conspicuous
characters upon their foreheads ?

If they deny this charge, we ask them how it happened,
that in their report of the proceedings of the Trades political
union in Dublin, they should totally overlook one of the most
important questions for a revival of the trade of Ireland,
(a co-operation for that purpose, proposed to be commenced
in the Trades union of Dublin, and gradually extended from
that city to all the counties of the coast) that was ever brought
before the consideration of any Irish association whatsoever?
Was it because the mover of this measure was a writer
against Popery ? (This question, we fear, is a nail in a sure
place, and we leave it to the hammer of their hypocrisy to
force it from their plank.) Important ? yes, the most impor-
tant ever brought before any Irish association for the revival
of Irish trade. And why ? First, because the plan, if carried



THE PRESS AND THE PARTIES. 121

into effect, would have given more or less employment,
through all the co-operative societies planted in the country,
to unemployed operatives and their families in every district;
(it being a regular rule of all such societies to consume their
own productions, in addition to all which they can sell to
others, and that would be a great deal.) Secondly. Because
as these societies increased, (and they would rapidly increase)
the means of employment would increase with them.
Thirdly. Because, in a regular ratio with the march of
these societies, the manufactures of Ireland, of every descrip-
tion, would march with them. Fourthly. Because these
societies (if conducted by wholesome laws) would not only
prove useful to themselves and to the whole country, in the
department of trade, but in the equally important depart-
ments of intelligence and moral order, without which they
could not be successfully conducted : and for proof of this
truth, we have only to refer to the institutions of this nature,
established in England, and at Belfast, in Ireland, where
the intelligence and industry of the members will bear to be
examined ; and the books and newspapers introduced into
their meeting rooms, as the societies have advanced in
wealth, are sufficient evidence of the useful influence of these
institutions upon the public mind; but as they are not
exactly the element for briefless lawyers and other orators, to
bring themselves into public notoriety under the condescend-
ing patronage of some great leader, (a mode of trading upon
the feelings and passions of the people, peculiarly suited to the
meridian of Dublin) this modest and unpretending plan for
reviving the trade of Ireland, and giving employment to the
bulk of her artizans, was, as might be expected, very coldly
received, even by that which calls itself the " National trades
union" of a ruined country ! Fifthly. Because the means
of originating and universally extending these most impor-
tant institutions to the trade of Ireland, and the comfort of
her artizans, had no impediment to encounter in the laws,
and very little in the amount of the funds essential for the
commencement of a co-operative society in any county ; as a



122 IRELAND,

subscription of sixpence per week from a thousand inhabi-
tants, would, in twelve months, form a sufficient capital to
commence with, (and poor as Ireland is, we are almost cer-
tain that we underrate the average number of subscribers
that would be found in all her counties) and thus the nucleus
of a great home trade would be at once formed ; and Ireland,
by the cheapness of her labour, and her constantly accumu-
lating capital, would soon rise independent of foreign manu-
factures ; and not only so, but in due time she would give
England enough to do, with all her superior advantages of
capital, system, and science, to beat her sister island out of
the foreign market.

Lastly. As it is a universal rule of these institutions, (if
our information be correct) that the profits of trade shall be
added to the thus constantly accumulating capital of the
companies, (unless in such cases of absolute necessity as shall
oblige a member to withdraw his name and his property
altogether from the society to which he had belonged) only