plain of their inability to draw forth more liberal supplies from the laity, and may lament over the few examples of an open handed christian generosity in their flocks. Did they never perceive that abeunt studia in mores, that what continually occupies the thoughts is sure to affect the moral character and habits, and that it is not by preaching against an engrossing worldliness that they can correct that decent vice, but by endeavouring, under the influence of the Holy Ghost, to supersede that and every other grovelling passion, by a purer and a higher affection? What we say thus, in the spirit of sincere regard, to our United Secession brethren, we say to all. Our Free Church and the sister Church in Ulster, need only to practise a very little self-denial, not the tithe as soldiers of Christ which soldiers of our queen ungrudgingly exercise on a thousand occasions, and there will be no want of funds. Let but a few not only unnecessary but to ninety-nine out of every hundred individuals among them, positively hurtful superfluities, be given up, and there will be no want of funds. And oh, who that has children, and thinks how much of their well-being and happiness in this world and the next may depend on our instant determinations and sacrifices, will not for the sake of them and their children to all generations, proceed at once to do what so many considerations demand? As all other remedial measures for Ireland seem to depend, in the opinion of the reviewer, on the carrying of the first, it seems unnecessary to enter into any discussion of them. We shall only, therefore, state what they are, and then subjoin a few remarks suggested by the experience of Scotland. After stating that the whole annual amount that would be required for his grand panacea, including expenses of management, and an increased grant to Maynooth College, would not exceed L.320,000 a-year-being about half the annual saving to be effected by the conversion of the three and a half per cent. stock-he enters into sundry speculations for the improvement (?) of Trinity College, Dublin, and Maynooth College, the alteration of the Established Church from being a parochial into a congregational body, thus cutting up by the roots its aggressive character, and sundry other reforms, real or pretended, in that body,—the national education system, which was 'to give every parish two or three peaceful spots, in which Catholics and Protestants, Presbyterians and Episcopalians, would be brought into contact at the age when impressions are most easy and most durable; and taught to live together in the friendship which exists among the members of different sects in the more civilized parts of Europe, but which has most egregiously failed in producing this -- • We know not exactly what parts of Europe the author refers to; but this we know, that at the schools in Paris, the priests inculcate upon the Roman Catholic result, the law of tenure-a subject of extreme delicacy and difficulty, and with regard to which we note the curious fact, (p. 250), that in Ulster, use and wont have established a practice that goes to encourage the improvement of farms by the tenants, by enabling the outgoing tenant to sell what is called the good-will of the farm to his successor; a bargain in which much, of course, will depend on the state in which the farm has been left;-the Irish stamp act, -the poor laws,-laws against combinations,-the franchise, and public works, the paid and unpaid magistracy, the abolition of the Lord Lieutenancy,—annual visits by the Queen to Ireland,— the holding from time to time of a parliamentary session in Dublin. We have neither time nor patience to go into all the author's rambling speculations on these numerous points; and we are thoroughly convinced, that nothing in the way of reform on any or all of them, would really benefit Ireland, if the Roman Catholic Church is to be endowed on the one hand, and no searching reform effected in the Protestant church establishment on the other. This only we would remark, with respect to two grievous evils in Ireland. First, the extent of absenteeism; second, the incapacity of the aristocracy, when resident, to make either wise landlords, or wise and efficient magistrates. At the close of the fifteenth century in Scotland, the barons here also were neither wise landlords nor good magistrates. Their residence on their estates, and among their vassals, would probably have been dreaded rather than desired by any but a bold monarch or a sagacious and far-seeing statesman. Yet we had a monarch, and he had a councillor at that time, who were bold enough, and wise enough, to carry two measures, the happy effects of which will probably be felt in Scotland to the end of time. Instead of destroying or weakening the local aristocracy, as Louis the XI. of France, and other monarchs, had sought to do, they formed the magnificent idea of converting them from being an aristocracy of the sword, into an aristocracy of the book and pen,-from fiery spirits, illiterate and barbarous, ever ready to engage in strife with their neighbours, and either to oppress their own vassals, or to make them the instruments of oppression to others, into enlightened and peaceful men. The two acts of parliaments by which this was sought to be done, were first, that which bound all barons to send their eldest sons and heirs, first, to the grammar schools till perfect in Latin, and then to the schools of 'jure' i. e. jurisprudence, youth, at the age when impressions are most easy and most durable,' the utmost loathing for Protestant children, and that where there is most of the reviewer's vaunted liberality, there is a fearful want of real religious principle, and a consequent depravation of morals. where they were to remain two years at least; second, the act which bound all barons to reside personally or by proxy, at least nine months of the year on their estates. Of course, the operation of these acts was, and must have been very partial. Yet to them we must unquestionably ascribe, directly, that marvellous advance in literature which we find among the lay barons of Scotland during the following, that is the sixteenth century; a change which enabled so many of them to appreciate the claims and characters of the Reformed preachers, and to understand their arguments and their objects. To them, also, we must directly ascribe that popu larity of law, as a study, among our nobles, at a period when we, who usually followed France in all things, could only have seen the study of law in that country associated with the rank of roturier. To these, we must likewise directly ascribe that taste among our lesser, as well as greater barons, for residing on their properties, not as fox-hunters only, or to show themselves off to the rest of Europe, in the character Bishop Burnet gives of the English squire-archy in his days,-but as men of business and magistrates. Indirectly, these laws seem to have introduced the fashion of the eldest son, of our barons taking a degree in law, either at a Scotch or at some foreign university, being called to the bar, and of seeking preferment as crown lawyers and judges. And indirectly too, we may trace to them another most happy peculiarity of the Scottish aristocracy, which we hope they never will lose, and that is, their taste for agriculture, which no expectant of a landed estate could fail to acquire from the study of the Roman classics and jurisprudence, and which, in our eyes, must always make that study far superior to that of Greek and mathematics, for a landed aristocracy. Now, without pretending to be very wise in the affairs of Ireland, we shrewdly suspect that James the Fourth's two short acts outweigh, in solid wisdom, and have proved pregnant with greater and better effects to Scotland, than all the legislative measures of all the wise heads of England, have proved with respect to Ireland, from the conquest of the island down to this day. Nor do we think that the United Parliament could do better, in this department, at the present day, than simply follow, as closely as possible, the legislation of Scotland, three hundred and fifty years ago. To conclude, we are threatened with two distinct evils, the one tending to produce the other, but likely at length to be swallowed up by it. First, we are more than threatened-we already feel the evil effects of that sceptical philosophy in politics, which, under pretence of dealing impartially by all the component parts of the population, transfers our liberties from the guardianship of purely Christian principles and sanctions, to that of others infinitely less stable and less secure. Ancient and modern history alike prove this to be a retrogression of a most serious kind. It carries us back to the policy of Rome, when its government affected to receive all religions equally under its protection, except the religion which would not come down from its divine elevation to a place among the many false creeds and worships thus patronised. It throws us back from the tribunal of revealed truth, to that of what is called natural religion. But this forms only the beginning of the end. For the worldly principle once in the ascendant, becomes, as a matter of course, and from its very nature, the friend and ally of the worldly religions, or rather religion, for modern Popery is the representative of all the old idolatries, and that in its turn will swallow it up. Sceptical governments will then appeal in vain for protection to the pure Christianity whose ascendancy they now destroy. The congeniality between the worldly and sceptical statesman, and the no less worldly but either sceptical or superstitious priest, will soon begin to operate. They are not long of working into each other's hands, and all their compacts prove inevitably detrimental to the cause of evangelical truth and vital godliness. To-day they may understand each other about objects that do not very vitally affect us, such as the mere external quiet of the country, and the payment of taxes and of rents. But what sacrifices will ever content the lust of empire in a hierarchy, which has but one giant passion to gratify, and that passion the lust of empire? Any man," said Lord Liverpool, in 1825, speaking upon the Catholic_association, "who looked at what had been done, would admit that more had been done, and properly done, for securing the peace and promoting the prosperity of Ireland, within these last few years, than had been done for centuries by preceding governments:-the whole system of revenue had been reformed -taxes had been removed to an unparalleled degree;-direct taxes had been swept away-Ireland had fewer imposts than any other country in Europeat the same time she had an equal benefit in the market of England, the country which had taken upon it the burden of the whole Irish debt. The administration of justice had been reformed, the magistracy had been reformed, petty sessions had been instituted as the best security against legal wrongs, and every disposition had been shown by government to suppress those societies which had a tendency to produce dissensions among the people." Yet all this had not prevented the formation of the Catholic association. That again was to have entirely disappeared when emancipation was granted; but being merely the temporary embodiment of the never-dying spirit of aggrandisement which everywhere animates the Papacy, it has since appeared in the Precursor and the Repeal associations. Lord Liverpool is not now alive to relate the events which proclaim the sagacity with which he foretold nineteen years ago that Catholic emancipation would not satisfy the agitators of that time, they would never be satisfied,' said his lordship; but when object after object had been accomplished, they would still continue their exertions for other and indefinite objects.' But in the subsequent debate of that year on the Catholic question,' he described by anticipation what we have lived to see, both parties left by that measure, just where they were, with the exception of granting new powers to the Roman Catholics,' with fresh occasion of discord-new opportunities, and many additional points to contend for. And thus must it ever be, until, through the constant accession of new power to the one party, and the no less constant abstraction of it from the other, the sceptical statesmen of the nineteenth century will find themselves, like statesmen of equally false and feeble principles, in the centuries that have gone before, the mere tools of a firm and powerful, though most corrupt religious dogmatism. Then will the Papacy again, fairly under weigh, and with the breath of State patronage and popular favour filling its sails, advance through all the obstacles that scepticism can oppose to it, with all the ease and security of a stout ship, through the yielding and refluent waters. Let us timeously, then, take our own measures. These we have already indicated. Ten years ago, we referred to three words of Cicero, as expressing the three grand elements of national character,-Mens, mos, disciplina,-mind, morals, discipline. But as the two first must ever mainly depend upon the last, let us mainly look to our national discipline. As for all public measures that come short of our principles,-all the political maxims, fitter for the age of the Roman emperor Tiberius than for our Queen,-let us address those who would recommend them, in the beautiful language of Paulinus to the friend who wanted to seduce him back to heathen studies: |