SOME days since a proof-sheet was sent us for correction, in which Lord Althorp's bill for the commutation of English tithes, was ingeniously printed Lord Althorp's BILK. The letter was wrong, but the spirit so exquisitely correct, that there was reluctance to turn the honest word into what his Lordship intended the public should read it. It has been a complete Session of Bilks, where everybody has been bilking everybody-bilker or bilkee in turn. First, we had the great Bilk, by which the Irish nation, long alternately praying and fighting for justice, got the Coercion Bill. Then there was the bilk of retrenchment; the bilk of the abolition of pensions and sinecure places; the bilk of the assessed taxes' abolition, when so many pledged members openly and barefacedly bilked their constituents, and will try it again, if they give them opportunity. We have since had the Bank Charter Bilk, and the Corn Laws' Bilk. The nation has been bilked out of a million to the Irish parsons, and of twenty millions to the West Indian slaveholders. But the grand bilk of the session, juggle and bilk together, and deeper villany, a mystery of iniquity we may yet unfold, is the Irish Church Bill bilk, where Tories bilked Whigs, and Whigs bilked Tories; and where Tory and Tory, and Whig and Whig tried in the dark to bilk each other; Sir R. Peel, Tory, conniving with Mr. E. Stanley, Whig, handy dandy, to bubble and bilk such simple good men as Lord Althorp, Whig, and Sir Robert Inglis, Tory. The Irish Church Bill is indeed the grand bilk of bilks, the crowning bilk of the first Bilking Session of a reformed Parliament.

Whether Tories or Whigs shall be the successful bilkers before Christmas day is yet a puzzle. The latter have, with all their might, worked hard and sweated, rising ere it was morning, to make smooth and easy the way of return to the sweets of office to their opponents, and trusting to accompany them in single file or by small divisions. Latterly, the Whigs have appeared rather desirous of leaving some small obstructions—a few Macadam bars across the path; but if the West India bilk is completed before the prorogation, the Tories will not strain hard at any thing else. Unless the people are "wide awake," the second Bilking Session will be triumphantly opened by the Tories.

NOTICE TO CORRESPONDENTS.

WE acknowledge the receipt of the curious and diverting history of Mr. Richmond's services and adventures in the parish of St. Luke's. That public-spirited person seems doomed to experience the ingratitude of base mankind, go where he will. The parishioners of St. Luke's are harder to come down with the ready than even Lord Sidmouth or Mr. K. Finlay.

We intended to devote a little space to remarks on the Anthem, "Turn thee again, Lord," by Mr. Pye of Exeter, which gained the Graham Prize, No. 2; on Mr. Finlay Dun's Musical Scrap Book ;" and several other musical compositions lately sent us, not forgetting the Musical Cyclopædia, just published, by Allan, Bell & Co., London; but must defer our musical notices till next month.

The following contributions have been received too late for insertion in this month's number:-Rhymes of Romance; The Debt, and other Poems; "Bentham ;" Greece;" Upper Chambers of Legislation; Free Trade; and some others.

In our next, or in some early number, will probably be given, The Note of Detestation ; &c.; The Infirmities of Genius Illustrated; Hymn to Night; Let there be light! The Drama; The Moray Floods, &c., by J. C.; Willie Millar o' the Glen, &c., by R. Gilfillan; Remarks on an Emendation of Niebhur; The Night, a poem; Euthanasia of the British Constitution; A Letter from Mr. Moggridge on Poor Laws; A Review of Howitt's able and fearless History of Priestcraft in all ages; Bulwer's England and the English, and several other works.

Regner Lodbrog is requested to send an Address, as the Printer requires his instructions.

TAIT'S

EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.

PARLIAMENTARY REPORT ON THE STATE OF IRELAND.

"Almighty God hath reserved Ireland in her unquiet state, for some secret scourge which shall by her come to England."-SPENSER.

The

This prophecy, now three centuries nearer the accomplishment than when delivered, falls into the common error of charging Providence with evils of man's commission. The "unquiet state" of the unhappy country to which the Poet was the first to draw unavailing sympathy, remains to the present day; with this mighty difference, that the perils of impending retribution are augmented a hundred-fold. Scourge is ready to be applied. In relation to Ireland, Britain has ever acted the part of a harsh and weak step-dame to a froward but hopeful child. She has neither had energy to subdue its will to the obedience of fear, nor yet shewn the kindness which might have gained its affections; and it has grown up from a childhood, rendered petulant and capricious by mismanagement, into a headstrong maturity, eager to punish early neglect, and to retaliate cruelty; and to prove, indeed, the long-prepared "secret scourge" of its spoiler. As Britain has trained Ireland, so she has her.

The laborious efforts of Mr. Stanley "to make out a case" against Ireland, and the character of the measure clearly indicated before the close of the last Session of Parliament, both by the Lord Chancellor of England and the Irish Chief Secretary, and now brought forward by the Whig Government,—have turned the attention of many persons to Ireland, who rarely think of that country, save, as a semi-barbarous, shocking region lying beyond seas; abounding in intriguing Jesuit Priests, riotous murdering peasantry, and blundering convivial squires; whither many regiments are sent, and which Britain encourages and patronizes, to the serious detriment of her own agricultural interests, by consuming its corn, cattle, and butter; whence, in war, she also kindly draws off much of the surplus population for the raw human matériel of her army and navy; and from which she obtains hewers of wood and drawers of water at all times. Such enlightened persons are not a little indignant at the ungrateful presumption of Ireland in seeking to withdraw herself from the patronage and tender protection of Great Britain; and

VOL. III.NO, XIII.

A

they might fancy her sufficiently punished by granting her wish for Repeal, and cry, "Let her go in God's name," if it were not that Sir Robert Peel and Mr. Stanley assure them this would be rather inconvenient, and, besides, just what O'Connell wants; which is, of itself, a sufficient reason for refusal. So these persons conclude that Ireland is seized with one of her periodical paroxysms, and must, as a matter of course, be once more subjected to coercion; must see her people imprisoned, transported, gibbeted, and subjected to all the tender mercies of military law; (for how can Tory, or even Whig humanity, endure the idea of a land where murder stalks abroad, &c. &c.-See any of Sir Robert Peel's late "admirable" speeches)—and then, all will be quiet again. Exquisite reasoners! Nothing stands against you but common sense, backed by the experience of seven centuries! Your measure is to restore order, and bring tranquillity; but this, to ordinary apprehension, is the fruit of internal peace and contentment, and can only be obtained through the removal of every reasonable ground of disaffection. Not tranquillity, then, can follow your measure, but sullen submission; reluctant, enforced obedience, which may bend the scowling eye, and compress the writhing lip, but can never reach the heart, in which it will nurse deeper rancour and more implacable and fierce resentment. Before coming to the present state of Ireland, and Mr. Stanley's remedies, we may cast one glance backward upon the history of a country with whose weal or woe the peace, and perhaps political independence of Britain are indissolubly bound up; a country which is depicted by its present rulers as in the most anarchical and demoralized condition, and for which, after the hopeless experience of ages, nothing better can be found than the old system under a new set of men, and in a far worse form than before. Having long tried the efficacy of penal statutes, and civil disabilities, recourse is to be had once more to the Castlereagh and Sidmouth panacea,—to the suspension of all the safeguards of liberty, to arbitrary power, military tribunals, and the whole machinery of despotism. These, it seems, are still the only remedies which the wisdom and benevolence of the British Legislature can devise to eradicate the discontents, cure the poverty, and redress the grievances of that unhappy country, which is become a terror to herself, and to all around her.

In six sentences as many centuries of Irish history may be dismissed. Conquered by the Anglo-Normans, trampled upon by the Plantagenets, oppressed by the Tudors, misgoverned by the Stuarts, and rent by the continual intestine struggles and intrigues of her native chiefs and factions, the self-same events which favoured the growth of regulated freedom, and the prosperity and moral strength of England, have contributed to grind Ireland to the dust. In Cromwell she found the most despotic of her conquerors; in King William, the most jealous and selfish of her iron rulers, and the one who, in compliance with the narrow excluding policy of the English nation, the most determinedly repressed her young energies, cramped her industry, and sacrificed her rising commercial interests to those of the more powerful state. Passing over the intermediate reigns, distinguished chiefly by the enactment of new penal laws, under the terror or the pretext of the Pope and the Pretender, we find Ireland, at the accession of George III., in the worst social condition a country can exhibit,-like one recently overrun, and neither fully subdued, nor in any degree conciliated. To one or two statesmen, who cared very little about "the Protestant Ascendency," save as a political tool, it seems to have occurred at different periods, that policy, if not enlightened humanity

dictated that something should be done for a country rapidly waxing powerful, by increasing wealth and population, and intimately allied with Britain. The writings of Swift had early in the century created something like a public spirit. The Union of the Irish Volunteers,* a half century later, wrested, wrung forth, conquered, sundry concessions and acts of justice to their degraded country. But events arose which left English Statesmen little leisure to bestow upon Ireland. It was easier, in the meantime, to corrupt the dominant, powerful faction, than to redress the grievances of the nation; and when matters came to the extreme issue, a Coercion Bill, or a dozen of them, were found the ready resource. The frantic patient, driven mad by ill treatment, irritation, and insult, became alarming to his keepers. To manacle and scourge his person, and debase and brutalize his mind, was an easier process for present safety, than by steady, patient, and gentle treatment, to restore him to sanity and health, and sound mental feeling. A more humane and enlightened system of discipline is forcing its way into mad-houses: Wisdom knocks in vain at the doors of cabinets. But, with all its political degradation and suffering, Ireland might have remained tranquil, had it not been placed and forcibly held in a condition perfectly anomalous in the history of civilized nations. With a population fourfifths Catholic, and nine-tenths either Catholics or Dissenters, it was ordained to support a splendid, an arrogant, and a hated alien and sinecure Establishment; and with no legal provision for its own famishing, neglected, and ignorant poor, was doomed to send the fruits of its labour and industry to enrich the foreign lords of the soil; absentee Irish, or unknown English proprietors. This alien, useless, detested church, the most richly endowed of any in the world, neither contributed in any way to the instruction of the people, nor yet returned one farthing of what it wrung forth from the grasp of famishing labour to allay their physical sufferings; while the absentee proprietors uniformly shewed their sympathy by seconding the demand of the successive Messieurs Stanley for more power to coerce, more arbitrary laws, more bastiles, more barracks, more military, paid by the industry of the English and Scotch people, to administer bullets to the Irish nation as often as they demanded bread, and the same degree of religious freedom which England had always enjoyed, and which Scotland had conquered by resistance precisely similar to that which Mr. Stanley has vowed to put down in Ireland. We cannot here advert to the penal laws,--the most fiend-like ever contrived by the hell-born spirit of persecution,-under which Ireland long groaned; nor to the arbitrary and capricious restrictions on her trade, to the iniquitous tithe-laws,-to the oppressive excise-laws,—to the insolent and rapacious faction which, upheld by British bayonets, insulted and domineered over a high-spirited people, impatiently crouch. ing beneath the yoke, and seizing every chance that offered to shake it off; or, if this might not be, trying, as they do still, to shift the galling pressure from one irritated and inflamed spot to another, though at the peril of producing deeper laceration. This may be unwise; but how natural is it to suffering men?

Before coming to the actual condition of Ireland, and Mr. Stanley's remedy, we wish to remove one erroneous impression. The disturbances

Those who compare the present Irish Volunteer Associations to that of 1782, should at least be aware that, with every true lover of freedom, this is to give these bands the hallowed character of patriots.

which have prevailed in that vexed and tortured country, for the last
sixty years, have seldom been political. The objects of the Volunteer
Association countenanced by Grattan, and Flood, and Charlemont, were
so, and political feeling mingled in the rebellion of 1798; but the dis-
turbances which have never ceased to distract Ireland, have been gen-
erally predial, cunningly fomented into religious animosity by those
whose game of governing was, to play off factions against each other.

Agrarian associations, and predial combinations, have for sixty years
been known in Ireland, under the names of Hearts of Steel, Hearts of Oak,
Whiteboys, Rockites, Terry Alts Men, and now Whitefeet, and Blackfeet.
They have arisen east and west, south and north; they have been Catho-
lic, Episcopalian, and Presbyterian, springing from a common root, the
oppression of landlords, whom there was no compulsory provision for the
poor to hold in check; from the tithe-laws, and other iniquitous imposts,
the consequences of absenteeism, the rapacity of the squirearchy, the in-
tolerable arrogance of the Orange Yeomanry, and of the "Ascendency"
faction, and that partial and most unequal administration of justice,
which withdrew the confidence of the people, of the Catholics especially,
from the established tribunals, and made them trust to their secret com-
binations alone for "wild justice." That this is correct, may be shewn in
few words. Among the first of those hydra-headed predial bands, of which
the Whitefeet are the present successors, were the Hearts-of-Steel Men,
the sturdy Protestant resisters of Ulster, probably of Scottish ancestry;
and at all events, men determined to oppose what they conceived
oppression. They banded sixty years ago in consequence of the rapacity
of the agent of the absentee Marquis of Donegal; resolved not to pay the
high rents, feudal dues, and fines exacted from them, nor to allow others
to take lands over their head. It was a league of the vassals against
the lord of the soil, offensive and defensive; and as the exact prototype
of a hundred more formed subsequently. Military were sent out. Several
of the Hearts of Steel were captured, and brought to trial at Carrick-
fergus, and acquitted, from what Mr. Stanley might call intimidation;
but what the Irish nation called the sympathy of the witnesses and the
jury with oppressed men, to whom law afforded no protection. The
squirearchy, disappointed and enraged at failing in the meditated ven-
geance against their revolted vassals, obtained the passing of a law simi-
lar to the mildest of Earl Grey's present Bills. The insurgents of Done-
gal were tried for their offence a second time in Dublin-but even a
Dublin jury acquitted them; and the precedent for Earl Grey's Bill for
changing the Venue, was repealed with shame to its framers. Thou-
sands of the Hearts of Steel found shelter in America; and from turbu-
lent associators, became, once more, industrious agriculturists, and valu-
able citizens. The Hearts of Oak were another Protestant and northern
association. They were driven into insurrection by a law ordaining that
the vassals should make roads, for the convenience of their lords, as often
as a mandate to that effect was issued. The oppressive Road Act, after this
open resistance, was repealed; the Oak Boys were quieted; and Irish-
men practically taught the dangerous lesson, they have never since for-
gotten, that it was from their own right hands they were to expect redress.
Of Whiteboyism, the most formidable of the earlier factions, we have this
account from Arthur Young: "The Whiteboys being labouring Catholics,

They were thus named from wearing shirts over their clothes, as Whitefeet were from wearing white stockings.