popular agitation a school of great qualities, balanced, though not counter-balanced, by some disadvantages, as Butler observes, in his Analogy of Religion, with regard to the virtues of fortitude and generosity; which could not belong to a more perfect state, and yet find their place in the economy of creation as a necessary consequence of its imperfections. The proprietary of a railway company may be vehement, abusive, and sarcastic; the members of a literary association may be smart, vigorous, and even slashing in style; the May meetings, so pleasantly called religious, may furnish every variety of uncharitableness that can acidulate meek tempers, and the most intense bitterness that can dash a Christian speech with gall; but these are not the schools where the youth of the empire are to learn virtue, statesmanship, or eloquence. The House of Commons itself requires some wholesome agitation to make it a sufficiently close approximation to the country without, to obtain for it the confidence of those it is supposed to represent. "It must," says Burke, " be made to bear some stamp of the people at large, for it would be a more natural and tolerable evil that the House should be infected with every epidemical frenzy of the people, as this would indicate some consanguinity and sympathy of nature with their constituents, than that they should in all cases be wholly untouched by the opinions and feelings of the people out of doors."

According to the well known aphorism of Sir Robert Peel, the registries are the battle field of the Constitution, but it is when the people are appealed to, whether by ministers or opposition, that the peer and commoner are made to stand on equal ground, and take their trial before that public opinion which is more ostentatiously worshipped, if not better obeyed, in this country than in any other; and to put forth the full strength and ingenuity of trained and developed minds to set themselves right before the country, and secure the fortunes of their friends. Great principles will often require to be vindicated perhaps at great risk-accounts due in praise will often be paid in obloquy-the enmity of the powerful must often be provoked, the defamation of the press must be encountered and set under foot, the most corrupt passions must be probed and exposed, and interests at once the meanest and most powerful be destroyed or subjugated. The man who attempts this with all his strength, of whatever party or whatever rank, is noble, while he who by his energy of spirit and breadth of

shoulder can achieve it, is prince of nobles,* but to do this his sinews must have lost their delicacy and his arm be yellow with the sand of the arena. These very struggles are the life of party, as it is understood by those who regret the alleged dissolution of party by Sir Robert Peel, for it is not the less fit that party should exist because it may occasionally be necessary for great minds to break loose from its associations when they impose restraints upon duty. And if, as in the instance under notice, circumstances lead to the breaking up of a political connexion, it is not necessarily destroyed, although it must of course be recast. If its principles have degenerated into watch words, it must be right to give them up and trust to time for new ones that are likely to wear as well. We are bound to advance not guided or deterred by old enmities, however faithfully we may adhere to old attach ments; always remembering that our highest duty is to the people; and well convinced that wherever the future of the country requires our presence, there, and not elsewhere, we are obliged to take our stand." Quod si idem sum in Republicâ qui semper fui, tu libertatem requires meam quam tu ponis in eo si semper cum iis quibuscum aliquando contendimus depugnemus: quod longe est secus stare enim debemus tanquam in orbe aliquo Reipublicæ qui quoniam versetur eam deligere partem debemus ad quam nos illius utilitas et salus converterint.†

And to return to Ireland; Sir Robert Peel long spoke of the measure of 1829, as a compact, and as a final settlement, but he had ceased, as we know, to regard it in that light long before his death. We too, although far from desiring a renewal of the agitations that have convulsed this part of the empire for so many years, look forward to the adjustment of the questions which he left unsettled. Nay more, we should augur ill for the country if we thought, its acquiescence in the existing order of things could be of long duration. Without entering minutely into the degrees of inequality which constitute the difference between Ireland and the other members of the British Confederation, we shall only say that it is sound policy as well as mere justice to elevate Ireland to an equality in every particular with England and Scotland. The tranquillity and the industrial tendencies of the latter country have been often contrasted unfa

Hæc qui pro virili parte defendunt optimates sunt cujuscunque sint ordinis qui autem præcipue suis servicibus tanta munia atque rempublicam sustinent ii semper habiti sunt optimatum principes. Cic. pro P.Sextio. † Cic pro Cncio Plancio.

vorably with the turbulence and misery of Ireland, but it has been left or been kept out of sight, that the honour of Scotland, the national pride and the national prejudices have been respected, have been even fostered; that it was her fortune to be governed in her independence by a line of princes whose descendants yet hold the sceptre; and that all her virtue is derived from that same independence which merged but was not lost in the union of the crowns. It is a mistake to humble the pride and to destroy the self respect of a nation without destroying even the vestiges of freedom. The vices of the individual are often meritorious in the people. What is selfishness in the one, is patriotism in the other; what is vanity in the man, is well-becoming pride in the nation. We would accept of tenfold the wrong to be rid of the dishonour of inequality, and we predict that until the perfect, the substantial equality of which Sir Robert Peel spoke be established between the members of the British family, men's minds will not be permanently turned to indifferent pursuits, or the welfare of the empire at large. We protest against the doctrine that man or nation is to live by bread alone, although made from corn at sixty shillings a barrel. If our blessing be only in the fatness of the earth and the dew from heaven above, it is the portion of the disinherited, and Lord Elgin felt and said that it might one day fare ill with England to have intercepted or refused to share the more honourable part of our common inheritance. Appended to the poorer blessing that fell to the lot of Esau, was a prophecy something like the realization of which in the case of Ireland, Lord Elgin seems to have had before his mind in uttering the memorable words ascribed to him some months ago.

"I think the comparison of the results which have attended the connexion of England and Scotland and England and Ireland, will go very far to show how little a nation gains which succeeds in forcing its foreign laws, foreign institutions, and foreign religion, upon a reluctant and high-spirited people. Oh, gentlemen, I fear, I greatly fear, that we havenot yet read that most valuable but most painful lesson to its close, for rely upon it, that if ever a collision takes place between those two great branches of the Anglo Saxon family, which dwell on the opposite shores of the Atlantic, that calamity, the most grievous that can befall either country, will be attributable to the humiliations which in bye-gone times England has sought to impose upon Ireland.'

Ireland has doubtless, in the words of inspiration, lived by the

sword and been the servant of her sister, and although never did the period seem more remote when the prophecy to which we have alluded might have its fulfilment, it would be wisdom in England to defeat its very possibility by obliterating every trace of legal inequality—every distinction of privilege between classes of Irish citizens, beyond that which their own deserts and the favour of the sovereign legitimately conferred might establish. We hope we may yet live to see the time when all vain pretensions upon this score shall be silenced, and all jealous heats allayed; when we shall have no insolent superiority upon the one side, or angry retort upon the other; when doctrines will be suffered to try title on the merits, when Catholics will have no cause of complaint, or Protestants of alarm; and when the grand characteristic of Christianity, so often missing in both, the love of each other, may be expected to appear. It is not probable that any statesman of the present time can have reached the height of this argument-nor even had he done so, is there likelihood of his being able to carry out so grand a scheme, but the career of Sir Robert Peel has taught us, and it is a lesson well worthy of note, that a great man who has made himself necessary tothe people of England, can do anything. We cannot think that the man will always be wanting. Some one, encouraged by the example of Sir Robert Peel, and reassured by the justice now rendered to his policy, and to his motives, will be found to undertake the cause of the future, whether unpleaded and unprotected, or aided by the not unwelcome pressure of existing necessity; who, without neglecting the claims of friendship and the duties of political connexion, will set the interests of the country in the highest place; who will save the character of parliament from the pettiness of faction, though the faction be his own; who will relinquish small though immediate, profit for future and enduring gain; who doing what is right will be confident he has done best; hopeful of means but abiding consequences; and most valuing his mortal greatness as the title to immortal though it may be tardy gratitude. imitemur nostros Brutos, Camillos, Ahalas, Decios amemus patriam, pareamus Senatui, consulamus bonis, præsentes fructus negligamus, posteritati et gloriæ serviamus; id esse optimum putemus quod erit rectissimum; speremus quæ volumus sed quod acciderit feramus; cogitemus deniqne corpus virorum fortium magnorumque hominum esse mortale; animi vero motus et virtutis gloriam sempiternum.'

• Cic. pro P. Sextio.

"Quare

*

*

ART. IX. THE SMITHFIELD (DUBLIN) REFUGE. Captain Crofton's Letter to the Recorder of Birmingham.

In our paper in the present number of this REVIEW, we have entered at considerable length into a disquisition on the merits of the admirable Refuge for Exemplary Prisoners, founded by Captain Crofton, the Chairman of the Directors of Convict Prisons in Ireland; but we cannot allow the present opportunity to pass, of at once placing before our readers Captain Crofton's excellent and thoughtful Letter, addressed to the Recorder of Birmingham, and read by him at the Bristol Meeting of The National Reformatory Union, a full report of which we have inserted in our QUARTERLY RECORD.

Captain Crofton was, from pressure of public business, unable to attend the Meeting, and thus placed his views of Reformation before the members of the Union :

My dear Sir,

The Castle, Dublin, August 16, 1856.

I regret very much that a pressure of public business precludes the possibility of my attending the approaching meeting of the Reformatory Union at Bristol. I was anxious to have stated the success which has attended the application of the Reformatory system in this country previous to the discharge of Government Prisoners; this subject is so intimately connected with the one the Union are met to discuss (the majority of the convicts of to-day being the juveniles who acted "sans discernement" yesterday) that I cannot refrain from mentioning by letter a few circumstances and details which, unimportant as they may appear at first sight, conduce to establish the soundness of a principle big with important results as affecting our colonies and ourselves, and at the present moment calling for no ordinary exertion on the part of those interested in adult and juvenile Reformation. First, our plan is, for some months previous to the release of a well conducted Prisoner on License or otherwise, to train and prepare him for the world with which he is about to mix. This is effected, by removing him from the Prison to a Government Establishment, where by means of lectures on useful subjects; religious, moral, and industrial training; and placing him in situations of trust, likely to engender self-respect, such as the duties of messengers, &c., and I am glad to state, that although