to the numerous subordinate stations in which our countrymen have distinguished themselves in every quarter of the globe, we may justly point with triumph to the positions, in which they have been recently placed as chiefs in command. The most brilliant military successes in India were achieved whilst our countryman, Lord Keane, was commander of the army. The Mediterranean fleet was twice, in succession, under the command of Irish admirals, Sir Josias Rowley and Sir Robert Stopford; and the extraordinary glories of Acre, Sydon, and Beyrout, took place under the direction of the latter. During the recent operations in China, the British naval and military forces were, at the same time, led by two southern Irish officers, Admiral Sir Thomas Herbert and General Sir Hugh Gough; whilst the civil authority was confided to another Irishman from the north, Sir Henry Pottinger, as sole plenipotentiary.

Time was, when, "in their aspirations to be great," Mr. O'Connell and the Catholic leaders appealed with conscious pride to the glorious deeds in arms of their countrymen. We turn from the foul and ungrateful abuse now lavished on the Duke of Wellington, to the resolutions moved by Mr. O'Connell at the great meeting which took place on the 6th of May, 1829, when it was resolved-" That to his Grace the Duke of Wellington national gratitude is eminently due, for accomplishing, as prime minister under our gracious Sovereign, the invaluable work of religious peace." "That in order to perpetuate to the remotest generations, these feelings of just acknowledgment, and at the same time to record, that religious freedom was won by the same great captain who restored national independence, and gave security to the empire; a voluntary subscription be now entered into for the purpose of erecting a statue of his Grace the Duke of Wellington, commemorative of this the most glorious of his public services." We find Mr. O'Connell one of the committee appointed for effecting that object, and a handsome subscription affixed to his name.

With what mingled feelings of pride and pleasure do we appeal from the disgusting epithets of "chance victor," "stunted corporal," "blood-stained sepoy," and "buccaneering duke," to the dignified language contained in the pastoral letter of the Roman Catholic prelates of Ireland, assembled in synod, on the passing of the Relief Bill: "The great boon," said they, "became the more acceptable to this country, because among the counsellors of His Majesty there appeared conspicuous, the most distinguished of Ireland's own sons-a

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hero and a legislator-a man selected by the Almighty to break the rod, which had scourged Europe-a man raised up by Providence to confirm thrones and establish altars-to direct the councils of England, at a crisis the most difficult, and to staunch the blood, and heal the wounds of the country that gave him birth." When posterity shall in after times, compare these declarations with the disreputable ribaldry now heaped upon that name, by incendiaries, clerical as well as lay; we may well predict an universal expression of astonishment, and cry of Shame! Could this have been Ireland?

CHAPTER VI.

His assumed, or be it, his conceded success in one measure, has floated Mr. O'Connell over so many follies, that his vanity prompted him to think, that he had only to attempt, in order to achieve. In his "dreamy state of imagination," he fancied that he perceived a similitude between the position of 1829, in respect of Emancipation, and that of 1843, in respect of Repeal. No two cases can be more dissimilar. The Catholic claims were sustained by the great principle of religious toleration, and rested upon the broad basis of freedom of conscience. They ranked amongst their advocates many great statesmen, then no more, many of the influential members of the British cabinet, many of the great leaders in both Houses of Parliament, a vast portion of the Protestant intelligence of the empire, and their justice had been affirmed by repeated majorities of the representatives of the people. There is no point of parallel between the two cases, save one that Mr. O'Connell was an agitator for both. In the one instance, he was sustained and surrounded by great alliances; in the other, he stands isolated upon the pedestal of folly, destined ultimately to prove the stool of repentance. Never was any observation more true, than that of the Earl of Shrewsbury: "Were it not for Mr. O'Connell, we never should hear of Repeal."

The present agitation was heralded by the publication of a work entitled, "A Memoir on Ireland, Native and Saxon,' of which Mr. O'Connell claims the credit of being the author,

and which, it is presumed, was intended by him as a prologue to his future performances. His kindly assistance was not required to verify the pointed observation of Lord Chesterfield, "that an history of Ireland could be nothing but a continuation of Rapin, (rapine.)" As a literary composition, the production is despicable; as the ebullition of frantic disappointment and rabid hate, it is disgusting; as the reservoir of all that is foul and polluted in our annals, it is execrable. "Statesmen," said Burke, "ought not to call from the dead, all the discussions and litigations which formerly inflamed the furious passions which had torn their countrymen; they ought not to rake into the hidcous and abominable things there." "In the wars which occurred in Ireland," said the able and amiable Dr. Doyle, "there is nothing but anomalies; they cannot serve to illustrate any position; they can no more be reduced to rule or principle, than the wanderings of an Arab. I WISH THEY WERE BURIED IN ETERNAL OBLIVION !"

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Notwithstanding these wise and pious recommendations, we have Mr. O'Connell reviving and gloating with delight over the recollection of every atrocity, of every scene of blood, which disgraced even those days, when, in the words of Sir William Temple, "Ireland was divided between the vested and the divested." With the unworthy littleness of a vulgar mind, he has stooped to become a chronicler of horrors, a collector of curiosities in crime; and this is the composition which he magnanimously trumpets in his van. As an historical record, its misrepresentations, suppressions, and perversions of truth, are so egregious and so glaring, that they can only be charitably accounted for by the supposition, that the author, in collecting the materials, was imposed upon by some impudent cheat. So blind has been the credulity of his rancour, that fables are displayed as facts.* Wherever truth

even glimmers, the compiler, with mischievous ingenuity, drags from the shrouds, in which they had mouldered for ages, every blood-stained record of murderous rebellion and indiscriminate massacre; and to make the treat more acceptable to modern refinement, he assures us, that he " has arranged them chronologically in masses.

The design of such, his literary labours, he proclaims to have been," that the sovereign and statesmen of England should understand that the Irish people feel and know, that there cannot happen a more heavy misfortune than the prosperity and power of Great Britain:" and, "that they should be apprised, that the people of Ireland know and feel, that

• Note 11,-Appendix.

they have a deep and vital interest in the weakness and adversity of England." With brutal indelicacy he has dared to inscribe this foetid compilation, dictated by such irrational and unchristian feelings, to the Queen. His model seems to have been the notorious Sir Richard Musgrave, who designated his abominations, " Memoirs of the different Rebellions in Ireland." If it were not beneath the dignity of the illustrious Lady, upon whom he has had the audacity to intrude, the rebuke conveyed by Lord Cornwallis, in the letter of the 24th of March, 1801, to his historical prototype, for a similar insult, would be appropriate" Had his Excellency been apprised of the contents and nature of the work, he never would have lent the sanction of his name to a book which tends so strongly to revive the dreadful animosities which have so long distracted this country, and which it is the duty of every good subject to endeavour to compose.

What constitutes Mr. O'Connell's pride, is to his country its calamity. Eaton Stannard, the brother of" my dear Barrett," observed of him years ago,-" The ignorant fancy, that where there is neither refinement nor polish, there cannot be artifice or deception, that one so insolent must necessarily be very brave, and that one so vulgar must necessarily be very honest." The discontent he has engendered is not the expression of national intelligence; the influence he possesses is produced by the action of craft upon ignorance and credulity. In his progress through the country, dressed in Fortunatus' wishing-cap, and attended, in the words of Grattan, " by fallacious hope on the one hand, and many-mouthed profession on the other," he has stimulated, by his sedition, that ignorance into disaffection. That distress he augments by the idleness he creates, and the subsidies, certainly not the overflowings, of an affluent and contented people, which he levies. He boasts triumphantly of the multitudes subservient to his sway; but here again, the almost superhuman wisdom of our great countryman upbraids him. Frenzy," said Burke, "does not become a slighter distemper, on account of the number of those who may be infected with it; delusion and weakness do not produce one mischief the less, because they are universal.' "Novelty," said Johnson, "captivates the superficial and thoughtless. Vehemence delights the discontented and turbulent. He who contradicts acknowledged truth, will always have an audience. He that villifies established authority, will always find abettors. He draws the rabble after him, as a monster makes a show." We read in Bourrienne, that when he once remarked to

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Napoleon, "You must, Sire, be gratified to be followed by the admiration and acclamations of your fellow-citizens;" the Emperor replied: "The same crowd would run after me were I marching to the gallows."

In the frantic impatience of his sedition, Mr. O'Connell ventured to hint at the corruption of the soldiery. "Tampering," said Burke, " is the odious vice of restless minds." Although a more " perturbed spirit" does not walk this earth, the terror of such a display as that alluded to by Napoleon, atoned for the absence of honor. "Such a man,' said Grattan," seduces the people into unmeant mischief, and then abandons them through fear."

To excite amongst his countrymen a merciless and unrelenting hatred against the people, with whom we are linked in a common allegiance, was the avowed aim of his writings and his harangues; and he has succceded in enlisting in this pious crusade, some of the dignitaries and pastors of a Christian faith. Whilst recklessly flinging as firebrands, amidst an excitable people, the irritating designations of "stranger," "alien," and "Saxon," he forgot the admonitions of the honest but enthusiastic M Nevin, in his examination before a committee of the Lords, on the 7th of August, 1798:-" It has been the misfortune," said he, " of this country, scarcely ever to have known the English natives or settlers, otherwise than as enemies; and, in his language, the Irish peasant has but one name for a Protestant and an Englishman, and confounds them. He calls both by the name of Sassanagh, or Saxon; his conversation is, therefore, less against a religionist than against a foe; his prejudice is the effect of ignorance, and the treatment he receives; how can we be surprised at it, when such pains are taken to brutalise him! !”

It has been alleged, that the penal laws produced in Ireland, not two distinct classes, but two distinct species of men. To revive and perpetuate those unnatural distinctions, Mr. O'Connell has selected a period, when Ireland, enjoying an equalisation of civil rights, a few years repose would have enabled the blood of the settler to be fully transfused into the veins of the native. Who in England inquires whether the blood of the Dane or the Norman, glow in the colour of his neighbour or his landlord? Who in Scotland recalls the days of the Covenanters, or revives the recollection of the more recent massacre of Glencoe? Is Ireland to be the only country in which centuries cannot teach us Christianity to forgive; in which wrongs, imaginary or real, are never to be