IT

would be impossible in dealing

with an historical subject with which are connected still living issues, to write so as to please everybody. The productions of a writer who has no back-bone, no opinions, whose mind is but a reflecting surface giving back the views of those who surround him, are likely to be worth little.

We have strong views about the subject which we are about to discuss, and we mean to speak fearlessly what we believe to be the truth, only being careful to do so courteously and so as to avoid giving legitimate offence to those whose views differ from our own.

The agita

The recent agitation for Home Rule, that is for the restoration more or less complete of the parliament at College Green, is at once the natural expression of the desire of a high-spirited nation for legislative independence in domestic concerns, and a protest against the long continued illtreatment of Ireland by England. tion may be a mistaken one, the desire may be unwise, but it deserves to be reasoned with and not, as is too often the case, to be scorned. The keeping up of bitter memories is assuredly unwise, but it is inevitable amongst a sensitive and sentimental people, and such memories will only die out under patient and long continued kindly treatment.

There is no possibility of denying the long and cruel misgovernment of Ireland by her more powerful sister; indeed it would be mischievous to ignore it, even more mischievous than for Ireland never to forgive it, for it is only so far as the Imperial Parliament is

convinced of the evil of the past that it will steadily set itself to adopt, and to persevere in, a more beneficent and just system of legislation.

never

England in the past has practised in Ireland with much success the old Roman maxim, Divide et impera;' and unhappily Ireland has wanted traitors to the national cause. The spirit of faction and the vice of venality have been poor Ireland's curse. She has never been without men of the type of that member of the House of Commons who when asked 'Did you vote for the Union?' answered Yes;' 'What! did you sell your country?' Yes, sir, and very happy that I had a country to sell.' England has never maltreated Ireland worse than when she foisted even beneficent measures on an unwilling or unprepared country by the aid of the venality and vices of her own sons. The Act of Union is a flagrant case in point. Pitt meant well by the measure; but the foul means employed to carry it have brought after them their own retribution, and have rendered Ireland ever since the despair of English Statesmen.

'Why is it that the Sovereign hath no profit from his realm of Ireland?' has often been asked wonderingly, anxiously, sadly, by those who guide the destinies of the empire. Why? Because a nation outraged, misgoverned and insulted, has a long memory; it takes tedious years to cicatrize such scars, and much persevering and beneficent legislation to convince an often wronged people of the sincerity of their rulers, and to permit the growth of kindly brotherly feelings.

has animated the British Legislature, an anxious desire has been shown to redress even sentimental grievances and to pass wise and beneficial laws. We look forward accordingly with hope to the time when the old rancours will die away, and Ireland populous, prosperous, and contented will stand by her great sister's side, an integral part of that mighty empire on which the sun never sets, participating in its progress, claiming in right of her genius a full share of Imperial honours; no longer subjected but allied, helping to carry forward into the world the battle-flag of civilization and ordered freedom, helping to build up in the broad and yet unpeopled valleys and plains of America, Canada, and Australia, new communities rich and powerful through the application of the same principles of law-abiding self-government, industrial activity, and international honesty, which have been the architects of her own political edifice so stately, so beautiful, and so enduring. With this view, we wish Irishmen would study their own past history, not in a revengeful or partizan spirit, but gravely, dispassionately, and wisely, so that seeing their mistakes in the past they may shun them in the time to come; and observing where they used to be ill-treated and oppressed, determine to let no body of men tyrannize over them any more. Let them trace out those broad and wise constitutional principles embodied in the laws which are the precious gift to them of the great English nation; for they were a precious gift, even though the English, acting like conquerors in a vanquished land, were often false to their own teaching;—and learn from them how a wise and understanding people can govern themselves better than by throwing themselves at the feet of any despot, whatever his heavenborn genius. Thus putting Irish mettle into English solidity and tempering Irish rashness with English phlegm, they may at last take their rightful

nationalities of the world. It is because we feel very strongly the need of looking back firmly but calmly on the past, that we shall venture to speak freely of some of the mistakes made by England in her attempts at governing Ireland, in matters which have left behind them burning recollections, and which are pregnant with warning for us in this new country with its grand but undeveloped destiny.

England's policy in checking and hampering the trade and manufactures of Ireland, through a too narrow and selfish regard for her own separate interests, provoked Ireland to seize the opportunity of England's distress and exhaustion consequent upon the Revolutionary and Continental wars, to demand and secure at the bayonet's point her legislative independence. But that independence from the sin of its origin survived not many years, and that which was won by the sword was stolen away by the purse. And why? because England's unfairness in the past had produced vivid resentment in the breasts of Irishmen, and they used their independence in such a way as to threaten the solidarity of the empire.

Then came the horrors of the Rebellion of 1798, daughter of French Jacobinism, and the Irish Parliament, paralyzed with horror and fear, let slip, from its nerveless fingers, the reins of power, and at last, committing suicide, its members retired into private life, consoled for the loss of their honour by the distension of their breeches pockets with English gold. The English Statesmen, with unfaltering tenacity of purpose and far-seeing wisdom, carried, by foul means, a measure which they felt to be for the safety and welfare of Imperial interests. But so carrying it, it is only now, after the lapse of more than three-quarters of a century, beginning to bear good fruit. The lesson should make Canadians wise, and teach them not to display in their commercial legislation a parochial

and peddling spirit; but to take large and statesmanlike views; not ignoring the special circumstances of their country; but regardful of the interests of the whole empire, and of the world at large. Forced to protect their own interests in consequence of being met by hostile tariffs, they should look upon such action as at best an expedient thrust upon them by the backward education of others, and be unwearied in striving to win them to a better way. But it was not only in her commercial legislation that England sinned grievously against Ireland in the past. If we go back to the time of the Reformation, we cannot but be astonished and grieved at the way in which the English Government endeavoured to plant the Protestant religion in the country. Prelates and priests of an alien race, often absentees, the Bible and Prayer Book concealed in a foreign tongue, partly as a device for imposing that language on the native population; tithes collected from a submissive but sullen peasantry; churches without congregations; the priest a state official appointed by the dominant race, yet paid by but rejected by his assigned flock; such a method as this of thrusting a religion down a people's throat, as castor oil is forced on a reluctant child, who is told, as he screams and struggles, that it is for his good, can meet with the approval of no honest man. We may regret that the Reformation failed to convert the Irish people, but we are in no way surprised at it. The English Government and the Irish Protestant Parliament proscribed the religion of the people; shut the Catholics out of office; slammed the doors of the Senate House in the faces of the Catholic nobility and gentry and people; forbad a priest to own a horse or an acre of land; forbad a Catholic to sit on a jury; discredited the testimony of the Papists, disarmed and kept them under heel; and with what result? They gave to Roman Catholicism the grandest position that any Church can covet, for they enshrined

it in the heart of the nation. That religion became identified in the national mind with patriotism; that Church became the champion of a down-trodden nationality; and on her altars burned the sacred fire of a people's love. The barely tolerated priest, as he sprang from the ranks, so became the friend and counsellor of the despised and poor. Protestantism was, and re

same

mains to this day, the religion of the invaders. Protestantism has never had till recently a fair chance in Ireland, owing to the blindness and folly of the English Government and of the English settlers. Two hostile races, two hostile or at any rate competing-religions were camped on the soil; and then again and again, as a natural consequence, there were uprisings of the weaker and subject race, hideous massacres, brutal retaliations; then the exhaustion of despair, and then once more frantic and fruitless rebellion, the mutterings of which have not yet entirely died out.

We use plain and strong language, and we do so boldly because the English nation has at last acknowledged these things to be true. At last, for a high spirited nation cannot be kept for ever in bondage, the British Legislature admitted the Roman Catholics of Ireland first to the franchise and then to Parliament; at last, with generous solicitude for the removal of Irish grievances, they passed a bill to abolish the tithes paid to the Protestant clergy. We have lived to hear an English Premier talk of that Protestant Establishment, so fondly cherished and to some so dear, as a Upas tree which had to be cut down. At his bidding they cut it down, they have disestablished and disendowed, not, however, too greedily, the Protestant Churchto the great satisfaction of Ireland, and not at all to the detriment of the Church itself.

True, the establishment had ceased to be to the Roman Catholics more than

a sentimental grievance ; but it was a relic of conquest, and as such was wisely swept away. The idea of a religious establishment is a noble one; in the alliance of Church with State, the State has perhaps most to gain; but an establishment is only justifiable when the established church embodies the views of the majority of the nation; when it ceases to do that, it must be cut adrift and live by virtue of what inherent energy it has. The English Church is still established because it fairly fulfils this condition; the Irish Church had ceased to fulfil it, or rather had never fulfilled it; and now she has to show what virtue is in her, and convert the Irish nation to Protestantism if she can, unhampered by State connection.

Yet it is interesting to observe that the disestablishment of the Protestant Church was received by the Irish Catholics with but slight applause; and so long enduring are the effects of wrong-doing that the representatives of Ireland in the Imperial Legislature have not yet learned to join heartily in working for the interests of the empire as a whole. Thus we see them banded together to agitate for measures dictated by the Church, or when they break loose from priestly control deluding the people with the cry of Home Rule, demanding a kind of parliamentary vestry to sit in College Green, and to emulate the fame of the remarkable corporation of the Irish Metropolis, or degrading themselves into mere obstructives like Parnell and Biggar, throwing rails across the parliamentary track like mischievous boys, but performing no useful legislative function whatever.

Such conduct is utterly undeserved by a legislature which has passed a liberal and well intentioned land bill, striking at the root of those evils of landlordism from which Ireland has suffered so terribly in the past, and holding out to the Irish peasant a prospect of owning his own potato garden,

-perhaps the most passionate desire that agitates the Celtic breast. For an Irishman loves his native soil with a vehemence which may seem to a political economist absurd; but which is from another point of view most pathetic, we might almost add, sacred. At last then England shows a desire to be just to Ireland, and we look into the future with brightening hope for that fair but often unhappy country.

Perchance the time may come when sectarian animosities and national jealousies will only be remembered with a smile; when England will no longer be contemptuous, nor Ireland discontented; when the great Jupiter Tonans of the press will not dare to recommend that singular panacea for Irish troubles, that Ireland should be towed out into mid-Atlantic and submerged for twenty-four hours, and then be fished up clean and bare for Saxon settlers; when a Prime Minister will not humorously ascribe Irish sadness to the neighbourhood of the melancholy ocean; when that terrible condition shall cease to be appended to advertisements in English papers 'No Irish need apply;' and when, on the other side, an O'Donovan Rossa will no longer find any market for his nitro-glycerine explosives because the Irish will no longer want to blow into smithereens the English capitalist who will then be a familiar object in their cities; when in a land prosperous, contented and happy, Croppies will no longer be ordered to lie down, but to rise and go about their honest work; when the sturdy Orange mastiff will be too busy guarding the farmyard to have time to bite the legs of the farmers' sons, and when the good old gentleman who rules the Papal Church will be allowed cheerfully to fulfil the years of Peter without being desired to go down to a warmer climate than that of Rome. If the action of the Imperial Parliament shall be so just and beneficent as to hasten this millennium, then however much, on sentimental grounds, Irishmen may regret

the merging of the native parliament into the greater body at St. Stephen's, they will imitate the canny Scots and make the British connection profitable to their country, and begin to take a pride in the Union Jack, and in the wide empire over which it floats; and those in this new country will endeavour to avoid the mistakes of the old, and joining hand-in-hand with Englishmen, Scotchmen, and French Canadians, reserve all their wrath and bitterness for the Mackenzies, Blakes, and Macdonalds, according to which of them is 'in,' for they can follow their ineradicable propensity to fight by keeping perpetually in opposition, and being agin the government anyhow.'

6

Let us now before describing the closing scenes of the Irish Parliament, rapidly review its origin, the achievement of its short-lived independence, and perhaps dispel some illusions with regard to its dignity and power. No one can have even a superficial acquaintance with the City of Dublin without discovering that it has been the seat of a court and a legislature, the centre of a national life, the capital and metropolis of a country. Its venerable Castle speaks of royalty, its Exchange and Custom House of commerce, its Mint and Post-office of national trade and intercourse, its Cathedrals of a stately religious establishment, its Courts of Law of wealth and a vigorous life, its University of a keen appreciation of learning. shops tell in their signs of a resident nobility and gentry; whilst a somewhat frayed and faded splendour betrays the fact that these glories are, some of them at least, of the past. Issuing from the gates of Trinity College, that dear and venerable alma mater, from whose bounteous breast the present writer has sucked whatever milk of learning he possesses, we see before us a wide open space. To the right stretches D'Olier Street, and the eye wanders across Carlisle Bridge down Sackville Street, the finest thoroughfare in the world,' to Nelson's

Its

Pillar. To the left we see the end of the once fashionable Grafton Street. Away in front stretches Dame Street, handsome and broad, in the foreground the much gilded equestrian statue of William III., of glorious, pious and immortal memory.' That cold and sagacious sovereign, clad in very frigid Roman armour boldly faces the setting sun, and supporting his truncheon on his muscular thigh, sits serenely regardless that he has on, like an Irishman, only the brim of a hat made of leaves, and bestrides one of Guinness' brewery horses. That noble animal has apparently just trodden on a broken porter bottle, and is holding up the wounded foot with a snort of pain. Behind us in the College enclosure two noble statues, one of Burke, blandest and most dignified of statesmen, the other of Goldsmith, sweetest of poets and dearest of men, regard his Majesty as with an air of tireless

amusement.

Away to the right, stands, or used to stand, an outrageous caricature of Tommy Moore, which looks as if swollen by death out of all recognition, and enveloped in a horse-blanket, apostrophizes the Parliament House opposite in one of his own melodies, 'Believe me if all those endearing young charms,' or is perhaps shouting to King William, 'Go where glory waits thee' -in the Castle beyond, or perchance it may be further off, in the Province of Ontario.

Now let us take a good look at the building opposite. Yes, that was the Irish Parliament House; those walls echoed its wit, rang with its eloquence, shook with its denunciations, witnessed its State, and beheld its dying agonies. Sweeping round from East to West, in stately curves, with rich semi-Corinthian pilasters, topped by an exceedingly graceful balustrade, on the east front is a noble portico of six Corinthian columns crowned by a tympanum and pediment, on which stands a statue of Fortitude, with Justice on her right and Liberty on her left hand.