minds. On the author's return however from London to
Dublin, (his native city) he submitted a copy of the aforesaid
work, to the inspection of an old wily politician, at the head
of n'tken very popular paper in the city ; and who (no doubt,
as it served his purpose) was a great Catholic association man
at that time; although since that period, he has been, by his
quondam associates (" all honourable men," as Anthony said)
distinguished by the delicate and lady-like cognomen of " a
134 IRELAND,
pensioned renegade from his country's cause ! " but how far
the honest man deserved this appellation, or whether he
deserved it at all, we are not casuists enough to pronounce,
and therefore leave the public to decide this question. Having
presented our books with a low bow to this able manceuvrer,
the gentleman received them with apparent politeness, and
promised that justice should be done to the work, either by
extract or review in his forthcoming numbers, (he knowing
something of its character at that time from what he had
read concerning it in the London papers.) The following
post however brought his paper to the public, and the next
post, and the post after, and many a succeeding post; until
the author of the work perceiving the elements of which
the Patriot's memory was composed, (somewhat similar to
those promises of which Patriots complain, that are spoken
to the ear and broken to the hope) he called at the office of
the journalist, and resumed the possession of his books, as a
hint to the man of letters, that although he had long travel-
led in the Moon, and spent many a painful hour in clamber-
ing over its hills and mountains, still he was not so ignorant
of the business of this present world, as not to know that a
material difference existed between meal and moonshine ;
and having given this gentle hint to the old wily politician,
he placed his books under his arm, and left the man of
veracity and letters to the undisturbed enjoyment of his
generous reflections.
SPECIMEN THE FIFTH.
The justice and liberality of the Dublin press, however,
did not end here. We had devoted much time and attention
to the collection of materials for a review of the value of
church property in Ireland, and found, from the best infor-
mation we could collect in our travels, that the value of the
lands of several sees had been greatly underrated by Mr.
Wakefield (the estimate in whose Irish tour was generally
received in England as a standard of their value), more par-
ticularly the primatical see of Armagh, put down in Mr.
THE PRESS AND THE PARTIES. 135
Wakefield's estimate at 140,000 per annum : but which, if
let without fines, like other farms, we had good authority
for asserting, would bring a much larger annual income
than the sum for which it had thus received credit in Mr.
Wakefield's Tour. Agreeably to this information, we had
an article prepared for publication in " Ireland exhibited to
England," when a pamphlet appeared in London (appa-
rently from the pen of a gentleman of extensive foreign
connections,) which embraced, in a short statistical table, a
comparison of the value of English church property, with
that of all the other Christian states in the known world,
(the value of the property of each state, with the number of
the members of each church, being given in detail) and
making the former ,44,000 per annum more than all the
other kingdoms of Christendom put together ! Regarding
this (as it was truly and laconically denominated to us, by a
popular literary character in London) as a " smasher," we
did not hesitate to make the Irish estimates of our own work
(although we believe they were grounded, in some instances
at least, upon better information than that of Mr. Wakefield,
which had been adopted as the value of Irish church pro-
perty in this universal estimate,) we did not, we say, what-
ever conviction we might entertain of their greater accuracy,
or whatever time and labour we had bestowed upon the
collection of these estimates, hesitate to make them yield to
the superior importance of that universal table, which was
so much better calculated to prove the enormity of our
church abuses, by a comparison of those abuses with the
practice of other nations, than any separate report of Irish
church property, however full or however accurate. We
saw very clearly that this pamphlet, from the comprehensive
nature of its plan, and the rare and unparallelled extent of
information which it contained, had by an irresistible coup
de main, laid prostrate that corrupt and oppressive image,
which the utmost exertion of our energies could but barely
touch. We therefore adopted it, regardless of the credit
which might be fairly due to our previous researches on the
136 IRELAND,
same subject; and 600 volumes of the work which we pub-
lished in London, (with the statistical table of the church
property of Christendom, copied into our pages, under the
head of " Tithes,") arriving- in Dublin soon after, the sta-
tistical table alluded to was obviously pirated from thence
by divers of the Dublin journals, for we never saw a single
copy of the pamphlet from which we extracted it, on sale
in Ireland. Nor should we blame the newspaper press of
Dublin for a piracy of this nature, where the object was the
public good, had they candidly acknowledged, as we did,
the name and publisher of the work in London, to which
they were indebted for the important information they had
received. But this would be giving the author of that work
the credit of his industry and love of justice ; and conse-
quently, as two advantages were derivable from the conceal-
ment of his name and books, that of robbing a heretic of
his merit, and clothing our own jackdaws with the plumes
which we had stolen from his books, we, the Dublin liberal
newspaper press, knew our business too well to introduce
his anti-priestcraft pages to the notice of the Irish public
through our columns, by any such act of justice; no, not even
although the mines of India had been conveyed, through
these vicious and heretical compositions, to the poor of Ireland !
But the evil did not end here; for on perceiving the
proofs of the piracy that had been committed, and the total
silence of the Dublin press as to the name of the premises
from whence the goods had been stolen, we drew up a few
lines explanatory of the casej and in some years after
presented them for publication to a swaggering mock-liberal
in the north, who declared " ''pon his honor" the home charge
should appear in his next number. The fellow, however,
forgot his honor in the hurry of his press, or in the cunning
of his policy, or perhaps in the paper battles in which he
was soon afterwards engaged, and which he pompously
exhibited under the heads of No. 1, 2, 3, 4, &c. as answers
to the messages of a brother journalist whose fire he avowed
himself ready to meet on any ground, Irish or Scotch, that
THE PRESS AND THE PARTIES. 137
was safe and tenable, when the preliminaries of war had
been fairly and finally arranged. Thus was the home charge
lost sight of in the prevalence of the printer's honor, and in
the hurry of the duelling bombast in which he was thus
pompously engaged.
SPECIMEN THE SIXTH.
We next come to a pamphlet which we published in the
spring of 1830, (and now republish in this work) in the form
of a letter to the King, on the subject of a local parliament
in Ireland for purposes of domestic improvement. Mr. Mor-
gan, of the Newry Examiner (a good judge), who read this
letter soon after it came forth, gave the substance of its facts
and doctrines to the Ulster public, in a very long article in
a succeeding number of that able and talented journal which
he conducts ; but although copies of the same letter were pre-
sented to two or three members of that called the liberal press
of Dublin, who were all strong advocates for a local parliament
in Ireland, yet we never saw a single extract from, or com-
ment upon it, in any of the journals of that city, notwith-
standing their zealous advocacy of the question which that
pamphlet espoused.
Now if any honest and independent Irishman, who is
sufficiently acquainted with the affairs of his country, and
of sufficiently masculine understanding to trample the mean
bigotries of his religion under foot, will read that letter to
the King with calm attention, and with a just consideration
of the persons, and their principles, for whom it was
intended, he will soon discover whether the effort which we
then made, to defend the rights and liberties of Irishmen
against the monopolies which oppress them, deserved to be
rejected, because Popery (as a bugbear in the Protestant
eye) had been handled with as little ceremony as any other
topic in that letter.
Through the whole course of our public labours, it has
been our constant aim to stand upon the centre of the beam
of justice, and in all we said or wrote, to preserve the equi-
138 IRELAND,
librium, and protest against a preponderance of corruption
upon either side. But this is a course that will not do in
Ireland ; where, if Aristides should rise from his grave, and
come to settle, he would vainly expect that his justice
would prove an all-powerful passport to the favour of our
leaders, or our press. Being a liberal in our politics, and in
our religion a Protestant of so determined a stamp, that we
protest against Popery and persecution in all churches, we
made it a point of duty to speak and write, as we thought
and acted. This is what we call LIBERTY; nobly granted
to the people by English law, but rejected (in practice, and
falsely professed in theory,) by a large proportion of those
Irishmen at the head of our cabals, who loudly clamour for
what they call EVEN-HANDED JUSTICE ! ! This, however,
is a species of justice, that, if we possessed the power, we
would grant to all the men, and all the nations in the world.
We would allow them to speak for themselves in courteous
language, through every visible medium of communication
with their country ; and thus speaking, we would not con-
spire, by fraud or foul play of any kind, to drown their
voices ; no, not even although these voices might be con-
scientiously directed against the subversion and overthrow
of our own principles! And why? because if these prin-
ciples are wrong, they deserve to be overthrown ; and if
right, they are indestructible, and cannot be extinguished.
THE SEVENTH AND LAST SPECIMEN,
(being exactly a charge for every star placed as a guard
around the Moon, while passing through the hells of
Dublin.)
We now proceed to the last specimen of the spirit of the
Dublin press, with which we shall trouble the reader in this
brief outline ; and we do so the more freely, because it pre-
sents us with an opportunity of offering a tribute of respect to
the memory of one of the most amiable and liberal men that
we ever saw connected with the press of Dublin ; we mean
the late Thos. Power, Esq., Editor of the Freeman's Journal.
THE PRESS AND THE PARTIES. 139
This gentleman, when the Brunswickers of Dublin (at the
meeting already noticed) not only refused us a fair hearing,
but were on the point of proceeding to acts of personal
violence, until a peace-officer stepped up to do his duty,
spiritedly published our defence in a long article of two
columns in the Journal just noticed, although, (as Mr. H.
a gentleman of unfortunate celebrity in the newspaper his-
tory of Dublin, and then the editor of a journal in that city,
well observed) "no other newspaper in Dublin would
have published that article, even as an advertisement, for
ten guineas." ! ! If this assertion was correct, (and Mr. H.
had a good right to know the press of which he spoke,) the
inference, in reference to the character of the Dublin press,
of the factions by which it is supported, and in reference to
the dignity of that mind, which had the spirit and the virtue
to bid defiance to their corruption, is self-evident.
Power was a Catholic who thought and acted upon his
own judgment. In an article in the Freeman, evidently
directed against religious bigotry, and intended to promote
a spirit of charity among Christians, he exhibited a disposi-
tion to receive as true, the doctrine of Origen, one of the
Fathers (contrary to the creed of his own church), that future
punishment would not be eternal ! This was the man, who
when the author of this work was assailed in a bigoted and
violent assembly of the professors of his own religion, did
not fear to publish his defence in the form of an appeal to
the Protestants of Ireland. He knew that the author of this
appeal was no bigot, and that in labouring to soften down
the prejudices of the sects, and to promote a generous amal-
gamation of all parties in the state (the only foundation upon
which Irish prosperity can be built) he was discharging a
paramount duty to the state and to his country. Thus
believing, and believing so upon good ground, the editor of
the Freeman did not hesitate to publish the whole of that
appeal in the writer's own language, notwithstanding the
Pope and his religion were treated with as little ceremony in
it, as any other system and its supporters, that the writer of
140 IRKLAND,
the appeal believed to have been essentially corrupted. This
was Power's act ; it evinced what we well knew before, that
no narrow bigotry, no secret sentiment of injustice, prepon-
derated in his noble mind ; and were we to discover the
same divine spark of justice in the Jew, or in the act of the
poor Indian,
"whose untutored mind
Sees God in clouds, or hekrs him in the wind."
we would pay no attention to the form of the casket, whe-
ther rude or polished, in which the jewel was enclosed, but
would honour the diamond for its intrinsic value ; and when
dropping a tear upon the tomb where all that was earthly of
that diamond lay, we would offer an aspiration to Heaven,
that when purified from the dregs of nature with which it
had been associated in this earthly mine, that its divine
author would place it as a shining gem in the crown of that
kingdom, into which no base metal, however emblazoned
with the flowers of literature, will ever enter.
To conclude. The spirit of faction in Ireland, to which
the press of Dublin necessarily bows, has proved equally
hostile to truth and freedom. To truth, because it is arrested
in its progress by corrupt interests, and by a press, which
has been placed by its spiritual and political controllers, as
a partial eclipse upon the source of light. To freedom,
because the mind is fettered in its operations by the preva-
lence of religious bigotry, by the more than Algerine des-
potism of the civil and ecclesiastical leaders of the factions,
and by a consciousness that offence will be taken when it
is not intended to be given, and that final injustice will be
done.
To make true reports of all public proceedings is the
obvious duty of a periodical press ; but whether its reports
are a faithful echo of what passes in review before it, and its
selections determined by the sense and soundness of speeches
and writings, or by the wealth, rank, and popularity of
speakers and writers, let the public judge.
To deceive the country with regard to what is passing, to
THE PRESS AND THE PARTIES. 141
suppress important truths, because they were written or
delivered by proscribed persons; to give false or garbled
reports, or even lying impressions of the manifestations of
public feeling; are all high crimes and misdemeanors
against the moral and intellectual interests of the common-
wealth.
If all the frauds of this kind that have b<? en committed by
the press of Dublin against the interests of free inquiry (by
which alone truth can be arrived at) could be collected
together, they would probably fill the King's library ; and
with the aid of a short piquant commentary upon each job,
would present to the friends of fun and frolic, the most copi-
ous and amusing literary treat, that perhaps any library in
the world ever exhibited. To such a task as this, we well
know that neither our time, or talents, or the measure of
our information, is at all commensurate. The Moon there-
fore must transfer this job to the Comet, its successor in the
work of fun ; but we recollect that this blazing star has been
transmuted into a Dublin periodical by the Jesuits, (who,
the poor of our country believe can work miracles ; while we,
though honouring them as learned men, are of opinion, that
at the worst they can only work miracles of private mischief;
and, in these countries, where they have been hospitably
entertained, we hope and trust they have not the will even
to do this ; although we cannot forget the object of their
grand institute, nor the reported influence of their private
miracles upon the life and health of the philanthropic Gan-
ganelli.) The Comet being thus transmuted into a Dublin
periodical, we cannot appeal to it for the execution of such
a task, however bright its talent ; as we are well aware that
its sense of honour, would prevent it from turning King's
evidence against that constellation of false lights, with which
it is now publicly and professionally associated in THE
GENERAL ECLIPSE.
As to our own personal concernment in these frauds and
follies, they are, at our present advanced age, of little
moment to us in any other point of view, than as they are
142 IRELAND,
a national evil, and tend to suppress truth, and arrest the
progress of freedom ; of which, after all that has been said
about it, there are few honest and independent advocates
connected with the press of Dublin.
No tool of faction, or victim of religious bigotry, deserves
the name of FREEMAN, or can either enjoy the mental
dignity which freedom gives, or impart that gift to others,
to which his own chain bound soul, however he may rant
and flutter, is an utter stranger. The goddess of liberty
equally abhors the baseness of the tyrant, and the darkness
of the dungeon in which his slave is imprisoned; and she
beholds with contemptuous scorn those tinsel ornaments
of literature, by which the slave is made to deceive his
country in her sacred name, that he may the more effectually
rivet the chains of her spiritual degradation ! (We know
those chains well, for we have suffered much in acts of
violent resistance to their degrading pressure,) and that
this dungeoned impostor may derive from the ignorance,
prejudices, and passions which he feeds, a rich harvest of
applause from his fellow-slaves, and a still more valuable
income of sterling treasure from their pockets.
When the press and its political leaders shall not only call
for free enquiry, but support it by their acts (not in this or
that solitary case, as a bait to catch public confidence, but
always and in every case) When they shall permit the
light of publicly expressed opinion, to pass through them to
the people, pure, as it proceeds from its individual source
When an honest man of any sect, or of no sect, may pro-
claim his opinions on any public subject, in any popular
assembly in Ireland, without forfeiting his claims to the
justice of the press, or to the confidence and affections of his
country When no mean and despicable conspiracy shall
be entered into to suppress his opinions, because they are
hostile to our own When the same veracity and strict rule
of equity shall be observed towards him, that the Irish press
and public exercise towards their own partizans, religious
and political When this shall come to be the universal
THE PRESS AND THE PARTIES. 143
practice of Ireland and her press, we shall then say, but not
until then, that OUR COUNTRY is FREE.
POOR LAWS.
Ireland is not in a capacity to receive poor laws upon the
English principle; for upon that principle the intended
charity would eat up the whole rental of the land. The
principle of those laws in England is also partial and
unjust. It throws the whole weight of a hurthen upon one
order (the landed interest,) which should be equally borne
by all the property of the country. The mode of administer-
ing those laws in England, does also, to a very great extent,
defeat the moral improvement to which alms-giving should
be rendered subservient ; namely, the administration of the
legal alms by the hands (in many instances) of cold and
unfeeling overseers, who (if report is to be credited) hate the
objects of their care, regard them as a curse to the country,
and have no feeling of humanity or sentiment of pity, to
warm their hearts or regulate their conduct in the discharge
of their official duties.
These are evils in the English poor law system that are
deeply felt, and loudly complained of, in the sister country ;
and if parliament feel it necessary to enact poor laws for
Ireland, as a check to the rapid march of mendicity in that
country, they should give us a code for the maintenance of
our poor, less liable to objection, than that by which the
poor of England are provided for under the existing system.
The outline of such a code having frequently presented
itself to our view, we here present it to the public, and
trust, that brevity, competency, and union of freedom with
simplicity, by which the plan is distinguished, may recom-
mend it to the notice of some advocate of Irish poor laws in
the House of Commons, who can re-touch or re-model it,
for the purpose of making it his own, (a thing by no means
uncommon in that honourable house) and thus, introducing
it to the notice of his brother legislators, procure for it that
support, which the rapid progress of mendicity in Ireland,
144 IRELAND,
and the rapid influx of Irish labourers into England, appear
to call for.
A plan for the prevention of Mendicity in Ireland.
We shall introduce this plan to the notice of the public,
by an assumption of two obvious truths.
First. That in every civilized community, all who are able
to labour should be provided with employment, (if they
cannot procure it by their own exertions) and through fair
compensation for that labour, be enabled to support them-
selves.*
Secondly. That all who are destitute and unable to labour,
should be supported by the community at large.
These we regard as two Christian axioms of moral duty ;
and upon these axioms we shall erect our temple of political
charity, (some would say justice, and we believe they are
right) which, like the axioms themselves, is simple, and
composed of two parts.
The first part embraces employment for the healthy poor;
and in Ireland that employment could be easily procured
for unemployed labourers and their families, if the proprie-
tors of waste lands (for the purpose of protecting their more
valuable properties from an overwhelming taxation) would
allocate a part of these lands (of which it is said there are
four millions of acres in the country,) to the purposes of poor
law colonies, giving the country a perpetual interest in them
as an equivalent for the proprietor's proportion of the Irish
Poor Law Tax. In the cultivation of these colonies, a large
* Under the head of " fair compensation for labour," \re beg 1 to observe,
that in order to preserve Irish labourers and their families from sinking into
the mendicant classes, and thus becoming burthensome and even dangerous
to the country, every Irish labourer should be empowered, by act of Parlia-
ment, to recover one shilling per day for the labour of every day, from the
first day of March to the first day of November, and ten pence for each day
in the four remaining months j and to the same end he should be protected
against land jobbing extortion, by rendering it illegal for any farmer to
charge any labourer or his family, more than at the rate of six pounds per
acre (the ordinary rent of four acres of good land) for any con acre of
potatoe ground, manured, or in the lea.
POOR LAWS. 145
proportion of the labouring poor might be usefully engaged,
and if any surplus of unemployed labourers remained, they
should be employed by the grand juries of the counties,
to repair the roads and bridges, and in such other public
works as the several counties required ; and in all these the
labourers should receive good wages, and be left without any
apology for that system of strolling mendicity, by which the
families of absentee labourers are now supported in this
country.
Secondly. In relation to the indigent poor in the several
parishes who are unable to labour ; or who (as widows and
orphans) have been deprived of their natural protectors by
death ; if the law would give a power to twelve householders