some inconvenience to themselves. This I heard divers of
them express in substance at that time ; and in these senti-
ments they do not appear to have been much discouraged by
their bishops, who might probably have anticipated, that
through the crevices of such a mighty machine of information,
some bitter drops of truth relative to church property might
possibly have been exuded, that as a literary morceau
selected for " a feast of fat things" would not have been
found to smack sweet on their Lordships' palates.
In the humble but laborious department it has been my lot
REVIEW OF HER POLITICAL AND MORAL STATE. 57
to fill, in the circle of Irish literary labour, I have had a very
different task to execute from that of the compiler just
noticed. I had to see the country with nay own eyes ; and
for that purpose was obliged to travel far, and to work hard
in my own person (and not by proxies) for the measure of
information which I procured. I had no splendid statesman
for my patron, and could not sit in the castle of Dublin at
my ease, while other men sowed the seed from which I was
to reap the harvest. It is true I was permitted to dedicate
a work to the Duke of Sussex ; and I believe I might have
received the same sort of compliment from one or two of the
Irish Viceroys who subscribed to my researches ; but I was
unacquainted with the ways of Courtiers, had no taste for
intrigue, and still less for dedications in which nothing
could be said ; and the manner in which my country had
been always treated by England, whose agents I regarded
as the instruments of a jealous and blasting policy, rendered
false and flattering dedications totally impossible to me. A
new era has now opened upon Ireland ; a reformed parlia-
ment (for which I myself have long laboured) is now in full
prospect; and perhaps the day is at length approaching,
when an Irishman of principle, may, without doing violence
to his honour or his conscience, dedicate a work on Ireland,
to the minister of a British King.
Lastly. No reasonable man Avill deny, that specimens of
the natural history and artificial improvements of a country
of so much importance to England as Ireland is, may prove
more or less useful, even to strangers, as exhibiting its
capabilities and comparative improvements, in connexion
with the causes of its ruin and decay. Nor will the limited
number of these specimens be objected to by English mer-
chants, who have little leisure for reading ; who, on subjects
of secondary consideration, like to receive much in a small
compass, and to whom Ireland was perhaps never more
than a second or third object of value, in the great scale of
nations which their extended commerce has embraced.
Thus reflecting on the taste and circumstances of those
58 IRELAND,
men, to whom this work is chiefly addressed, and labouring-,
as the author has always done, under the heavy disadvan-
tages, in such a country as Ireland, of being forced by a
sense of duty to exercise a hated censorship over the abuses
of the church, the law, the factions, and the press; and over
all those corporate, ecclesiastical, and popular leaders of the
people, who have risen into wealth and influence, upon the
ignorance, prejudices, and oppresions of a priest-ridden and
plundered nation. When these disadvantages are fairly
considered, and taken in connexion with the embarrassments
of a once large family, and the loss of valuable properties
unjustly alienated from the author, and for which he could
obtain no redress from an unreformed parliament, no hear-
ing from a British minister, and no decision in courts of law,
where justice is sold at a price that amounts to a prohibition !
When to these misfortunes are added, the pains and penal-
ties inseparable from a life of perpetual exertion, frequent ill
health (from damp beds and other similar accommodations),
with limited pecuniary resources to meet these evils, together
with narrow escapes from dangers by sea and laud, from
concealed enemies, from treacherous snares laid for his ruin
under fair appearances, with the absence of all co-operation
from the sects and parties, whose displeasure he had excited,
and whose corruptions he had exposed. And when still
farther to aggravate his afflictions, even his children, whom
he had nobly educated, were either called away, or became
rebels to their father in his declining years ; and all this
because he would, as a British citizen, assert his right of
private judgment, discharge his duty to his country accord-
ing to his conscience, and preserve his station and mental
independence firm to the end. W'hen these accumulated
wrongs, with the numerous and inexplicable difficulties and
embarrassments they involve, are seriously considered, in
connexion with the infirmities inseparable from his ad-
vanced years, he trusts they will prove an apology for any
accidental defects into which this work may have inevitably
fallen; but which, notwithstanding these errors, and the
REVIEW OF HER POLITICAL AND MORAL STATE. 59
light descriptions objected to by the English reader, will,
nevertheless, be found to embody a number of important
facts, from which the statesman, and the merchant too, may
derive some useful hints.
Having now made a candid communication of my views
to the English enquirer concerning Ireland, I beg to direct
his attention to the article recently noticed on the establish-
ment of a local legislature in that countiy, as he will find it,
in the form of a letter to the King, at the opening of the
next chapter.
CHAPTER II.
EMBRACING the Author's Letter to the King upon the Irish Parliamentary
Question A Review of the Press and the Parties (including a critique
upon Cobbett's Reformation, and an impartial review of the character
and capabilities of O'Connell) Poor Laws Irish Malthusian Philoso-
phy The Tithe Question The Grand Jury System Evils in the policy
by which some Irish estates are governed and General Observations on
the Soil of Ulster.
AUTHOR'S LETTER TO THE KING,
Upon the Irish Parliamentary Question.
SIRE,
As every good citizen is the guardian of his
Prince's throne, and of his country's liberties ; and as your
Majesty's interests, and those of the people who support the
State by their labours, are one and indivisible ; and as, in
an age of illumination and knowledge, nothing but just and
wise institutions (pregnant with the seeds of peace and pros-
perity to the people) can guarantee the security of the throne;
it behoves every good subject, when the public peace is
menaced, by treasonable conspiracies upon the one hand, or
by corrupt legislation and government upon the other, to
raise his warning voice, and to approach the throne, the
legitimate guardian of the people's rights, with remon-
strance and petition.
In the discharge of this duty, Sire, I approach your
Majesty not as a partizan not as a participator in the
plunder of my country's property or my country's rights
not as the bigotted or priest-ridden slave of any faction but
as an Irish Protestant Briton, anxious to see the power and
glory of your Majesty's throne and dominions perpetuated,
by just and wise institutions.
AUTHOR'S LETTER TO THE KING. 61
On this ground, Sire, I am entitled to be heard On the
ground of a perfect superiority to all religious and political
sectarianism to all party purposes and to all views of
policy, which have not for their object a consolidation of the
entire interests of the British empire And lastly, I am
entitled to be heard, as an Irish Briton who knows his
country ; who refused to place his signature to the base act
by which that country was sold ; who is anxious to see that
act repealed, that his country may be united to England by
better ties ; and who, as he speaks from knowledge, having
(at a sufficient distance to protect himself from defilement)
studied with close attention the filthy springs, by which the
machine of society has been kept moving in Ireland for the
last thirty years, is therefore a competent, an impartial, and
an experienced witness of the things whereof he speaks.
Sire, it is of importance to your Majesty's throne, and to
the peace and security of your Majesty's dominions, that
justice should be done to Ireland forthwith. That country,
even under the dominion of a corrupt Parliament, was
rapidly progressing, prior to the Act of Union. By that Act
she was deprived of her natural protectors, of her natural
income, to the amount of many millions ; her manufactures,
which were then in a flourishing state, are now nearly
extinct ; her poor, who were then fully employed, are now
perishing ; mendicity, which was then a partial evil, is now
a national curse ! These, and many other evils, which a
local Legislature (travelling with the lights of the age, and
with its own interests) would have arrested in their progress,
by the powerful arm of domestic legislative protection, have
been entailed upon this unhappy country, by that which is
falsely called " the Act of UNION ;" an Act pregnant with
the seeds of disunion which injustice generates, and there-
fore very improperly entitled, " a UNION of the sister
countries."
Sire It is not in the nature of things, that a Union pro-
cured by bribery and corruption upon the one hand, by an
act of political suicide upon the other, and by a compact
62 IRELAND,
which left the weaker country undefended, (for how could
its rights be protected in an assembly of six hundred, in
which Ireland could not count upon the support of twenty
unpurchased advocates ?) How, in the name of Heaven,
could such a Union as this produce an equality of rights, or
indeed any other fruits than those which it has produced;
the alienation of the natural protectors of the land, an
expenditure of their income near the seat of power; the
establishment on their properties of cold and unfeeling
agents, a total silence of the loom in many districts, a total
absence of all useful public works, a total neglect of four
millions of acres of waste lands, with very little attention to
the mineral wealth and other great commercial resources of
one of the finest countries in the world, a total neglect of
her impoverished and perishing peasantry, and who, as if
this were not enough, have been hunted out of house and
home, by the unfeeling and relentless provisions of a British
Act of Parliament? Sire, your Majesty will pause and
consider, whether these are visitations of affliction, under
which seven millions of oppressed Irishmen can maintain
the silence of a Quakers' meeting ! And if, in addition to
all these various sources of suffering, their exist various
unproductive classes, pressing with a destructive and deadly
weight upon the industry of the people, shall the deep and
dying groans of a nation, labouring under these accumulated
oppressions, be deemed an offence against the State? and
must their peaceful and constitutional advocates be perse-
cuted with state prosecutions, and with fine and imprison-
ment, for daring to complain ?
Sire, This is not a state of things to be endured much
longer. In the name of God, interpose your Majesty's
authority to arrest its course. Look at the mendicity insti-
tutions of this country. Look at an assembly of your Ma-
jesty's ragged and half-starved subjects in the capital of
Ireland (and not merely at the carriages and liveries in
Grafton-street and Stephen's-green,) and your Majesty will
AUTHOR'S LETTER TO THE KING. 63
perceive a living exemplification of the blessed fruits of the
union of the two countries !
That Union was founded in crimes, to which no Govern-
ment could lend itself without being tainted by guilt ; no
Constitution acknowledge without blushing for its baseness;
no countiy subscribe to without suicide or oppression ; and
no Law sanction without treason against Justice ! Sire
before I close these pages, I shall point out to your Majesty
a better mode of uniting Ireland to England, than by an act
of Union, on one side of which lies all the power to do good
or evil, and on the other all the disadvantages which result
from criminal neglect and corrupt legislation! I trust I
shall be able to convince your Majesty, that not Ireland only,
but every branch of your Majesty's dominions, may be so
incorporated with the state, as to contribute the full measure
of their resources to the wealth and grandeur of the British
Empire ; an effect that can never be produced by a partial
system of legislation, and while every country is groaning
under abuses, which reformed local legislatures, acting under
your Majesty's authority, and that of an enlightened con-
gress, would infallibly remove. This panacea for the evils
of a widely extended and variously circumstanced empire,
may yield for a season to military government (necessary,
and only necessary, to maintain the progress of civilization,
and to secure the final establishment of liberal institutions)
or to coercive restraints upon free enquiry, unknown to the
constitution and to common law ; but the glorious cause of
equal representation will finally prevail, for it corresponds
with experience, with the reason of the age, and with the
lights which God is daily pouring upon the eye-ball of the
nations.
The scriptures abound with proofs of God's hatred of
oppression ; of the mighty miracles he has wrought to deli-
ver his people from the authority of tyrants ; of the phials
of his indignation poured out upon whole nations, on account
of their wicked systems of religion, and their oppressive
64 IRELAND,
systems of civil policy. Religion, alas ! that which is falsely
so called, exhibits the Almighty to the poor and the op-
pressed as an object of terror but although he hates deeds
of wickedness, and will punish them, he is a Being of per-
fect love, and the operations of his Providence clearly prove
that, however long he may bear with the powers of darkness
which oppose the manifestations of his mercy to mankind,
he will finally make them the trophies of his victory, both
in the kingdoms of this world, and in the life which is to
come
Sire, the fiat of political regeneration has gone forth
from a higher court than that of your Majesty's dominions
It was echoed from heaven when the new world was founded
by European persecutions. It reached England when Penn
pleaded in its courts of justice, against the monstrous wick-
edness of the English penal code. It reached France, when
the philosophers of that country first laid their hand upon
the ecclesiastical impostures which oppressed it (I plead not
for the infidelity of these philosophers ; God permitted it,
but he made their intelligence and their love of liberty his
instruments ; and still more, he gave them intelligence and
the love of liberty for that special purpose.) It reached
America, when Britain overstepped the legitimate boundaries
of her power, and Washington and La Fayette first fought
in the ranks of liberty. It has reached various states of
Europe, and it will finally reach them all. Every good man ;
every lover of his species, wishes that this salvation may be
wrought out by moral and not by military means. Every
Christian prays for its peaceful celebration ; but its achieve-
ment is in higher hands, and we may rest assured that a
God of mercy and goodness will not resort to the last extre-
mity, until all the means of conviction with which he has
supplied tyrants, have been trampled under foot. Happy are
those princes, and they only, w r ho, having carefully studied
their duty in the school of Providence, are resolved to con-
form their practice to the lessons which they have there
received.
AUTHOR'S LETTER TO THE KING. 65
Sire, in addressing this letter to your Majesty, I make no
apology for the humility of my rank, nor for the obscurity of
my name ; more particularly as I am much more indebted
to the corruptions of British law for these misfortunes (if
misfortunes they are) than to the accidents of my birth, or
the poverty of my genius. Poor as these have been, they
would have proved sufficient for the purposes of a patriot,
long and ardently devoted to the interests of his country and
kind, had the fortunes of my family, now partly, as I have
heard, in the possession of your Majesty, descended to their
rightful heir but having been defrauded of these in early
life, and finding no tribunal in these countries to which
injured innocence can obtain a free and unpurchased access,
I have been compelled to give vent to the zeal of my
heart for the improvement of my country, in those lowly
walks of moral and political literature, which the magna-
nimity of British ministers has left open to the neglected or
pillaged sons of genius, very justly concluding that, under
the operations of the stamp act, the poison of these vermin
can scarcely touch the colossal statue of corruption, and that
it would be utterly beneath the dignity of a great power to
trample them under foot, (as in the cases of Cobbett, Hone,
and Wooller, under the pious administration of the late
Castlereagh) or even to cast a look upon their weak and
innoxious ebullitions.
Thus tolerated, by the obscurity of my name and rank, to
publish TRUTHS, from which the powerful literary tribunals
of the empire would be restrained by a due attention to their
interests ; and being peculiarly well qualified by my know-
ledge of my own country, and by my total disconnection with
its sects and factions, to submit to your Majesty a few plain
practical reflections upon the great question of a Repeal of
the legislative Union between the two countries, which is
now pending ; I trust if this letter should have the honour of
meeting your Majesty's eye, that it may prove the humble
instrument of placing that great question fairly before it
pure from the dregs of faction, upon the one hand and
F
60 IRELAND,
free from all those artificial embellishments of human learn-
in f, by which truth is too frequently obscured, upon the
other.
In entering upon a review of this great question, I shall
first briefly notice the broad political foundations upon which
the temple of British prosperity should be built, in the pre-
sent extended and diversified circumstances of the British
empire. Secondly, point out a few of the leading objections
that have been urged against the re-establishment of a
parliament in Ireland. Thirdly, endeavour to meet those
objections. Fourthly, I shall endeavour to prove, that an
Irish parliament, upon reformed principles, would promote
the prosperity of both countries, and tend to a consolidation
of the interests of the empire and shall conclude the whole
of my reflections with an important fact, namely, that the
most powerful obstacle to the regeneration of nations, is to
be found in those legions of corruption which surround the
thrones of princes, and who, by multiplying amusements for
the royal eye, and dazzling it with brilliant deceptions, divert
its attention from the miseries produced by their own cor-
rupt measures, or criminal negligence of duty; until at
length the heavings of discontent produced by their accu-
mulated oppressions, becoming stronger and stronger, those
political convulsions are produced which shake the founda-
tions of their power, and sometimes terminate in bloody
conflicts, in the overthrow oi dynasties, and in great moral
and political revolutions !
It is, Sire, to protect your Majesty's throne and dominions
from these final effects of mislegislation and misgovermnent,
(and the heavings of the political terraquea that surrounds
us, are not altogether destitute of moral admonition) that
the humble writer of this letter presumes to suggest to your
Majesty, that circumstanced as the British empire now is, it
is totally impossible that any partial system of legislation
should be able to meet its numerous and varied wants ; and
that, in order to preserve the unity of the empire, by an
effectual purgation of every province from the evils which
AUTHOR'S LETTER TO THE KING. 67
peculiarly oppress it, it is necessary that each such province
should have its own local parliament, and that an imperial
congress, composed of deputies from all these local legisla-
tures, should meet every third or fourth year in London, to
transact the general business of the state, and to correct the
abuses of the local parliaments, when, by any accident or
oversight, they had abused their functions, and overstepped
the proper boundaries of their power.
Having thus briefly noticed the broad foundation, upon
which alone the temple of moral and political prosperity
can be built and perpetuated, in an empire so widely
extended, and so variously circumstanced as that of Great
Britain, (a principle partially recognized by the British
Government, in the local parliaments of Canada and
Jamaica,) I shall not enter deeply (however it might pro-
mote my object) into the abuses complained of in divers
colonies, and particularly those under which one hundred
millions of British subjects are groaning in India, (where, if
public report is to be credited, the East India Company
derive no mean revenue, from the murders and idolatrous
sacrifices of the Hindoo superstition, to which divers of
their officers contribute, in the character of Priests, or
attendants upon the annual exhibitions ,of the idol Jugger-
naut !) but shall proceed to the more immediate object of
this letter, that of a closer union of Ireland with England,
by the establishment of a domestic parliament in the former
country, upon true British foundations.
And first, I am to notice a few of the leading objections
that have been urged against this measure, by the advocates
of the act of Union, among which, a question affecting the
succession to the throne has been started, and by the writer
of this objection, was, no doubt, supposed to be unanswer-
able. " If the Princess Victoria," said the objector, " were
to embrace the Roman Catholic religion, while seated on
the throne of England, this offence, according to the law of
England, would be punished by deposition. In such a
circumstance as this, would an Irish parliament, composed
68 IRELAND,
|
of a majority of Catholics, confirm the deposition, or dis-
annul it ? Undoubtedly they would do the latter ; for they
had sworn allegiance to the Queen, and would not violate
that allegiance for an offence against the law, which they
would deem to he a duty paramount to all law. Their
allegiance to the Queen, would therefore he confirmed and
proclaimed, and in consequence thereof, a war would he
declared between the two countries."
To all this I have merely to reply, that in the system of
representation which I advocate, no change could take place
in the fundamental laws of the empire, without the con-
currence of the three estates; and no local parliament, in
common sense, could have jurisdiction in such a question
as that which the objector has mooted; neither in any
question of foreign policy, nqr in any other affecting the
general interests of the empire. To the entertainment of
any question, affecting the fundamental laws of the empire
and its general interests, the Imperial Congress (composed
of deputies from all the local legislatures) would alone be
competent; and as this Congress, notwithstanding Catholic
Canada and Catholic Ireland, would have a large majority
of Protestant deputies, neither the law of succession as it
now stands, nor the unity of the empire, would be in the
least endangered. The Times, therefore, may pull down his
cap, for cunning as that serpent is, he will find an Irishman
to answer him. Pleading, as I do, the cause of Ireland, in
the unity of the British empire, every such objection as
that which the Times has mooted, vanishes into thin air.
Justice to Ireland is compatible with the paramount duty
of justice to the empire ; and in attempting to promote the
interests of the whole, that man must be a wretched poli-
tician, and miserably devoid of intellect, who finds it neces-
sary to sacrifice a part ! As well might he think of sacrificing
Coventry to Lichfield, or Liverpool to London, as Ireland
to England. Their interests are one and indivisible nature
has determined their connexion, and Providence has con-
firmed it by a thousand ties. There is no necessity, there-
AUTHOR'S LETTER TO THE KING. 69
fore, for the doctrine of separation, nor for starting fanciful
questions, calculated to generate a bad feeling between the
two countries. The policy that stabs Ireland endangers
England, and if persevered in, will finally pierce her to the
heart. Let England, therefore, look to this in due time, and