tempt to fetter Ireland once more. Not our peace only, but the peace of the whole world would it risk without remorse. The life's blood of toryism is the tyranny of opinion, and for this no hazard is deemed too great. Germany asked but for liberty of religion; toryism refused, and for thirty years, desolation reigned over half the continent. France demanded political freedom; toryism refused, and the world was consigned to carnage and to misery, for near a quarter of a century. And we are we not paying at this very hour-will not our children's children be irredeemably compelled to pay, the national forfeit of our having suffered toryism to abuse our influence and our name?

In discharge of the merest duty of self-preservation, it is essential that England preclude the possibility of Ireland's being handed back into the custody of toryism. Ireland demands, and hitherto in vain, adequate guarantees for the enjoyment of religious and political freedom: in vain-for Emancipation was, and would again be found to be but a statuteable mockery, when administered by men not ashamed of treating three-fourths of the Irish people as aliens in lineage, dialect, and faith in vain-for within the last session we have seen every shade and hue of toryism blended, in the almost successful attempt to annul the Irish franchise. There is not even a plausible pretence held forth of a desire to govern in any other than the ancient way. From pulpit and from hustings-from the right reverend bench of the Lords, and the crowded opposition seats of the Commons, every species of insult and imputation are incessantly directed against the creed, and the conduct of the vast majority of our people.

of a sect. Power has been tasted by the middle classes, just sufficiently to render the desire of a more satisfying draught intense, and its concession unavoidable. Let the cup be dashed away from the longing lip, and it will soon be seen how great a difference the having been permitted once to taste of it, must cause. Twenty years ago, the people knew not what just government was; twenty years ago, they knew not their own power. They had not then been organized successfully to assert their rights; their notions were those of hearsay and belief as to what those rights really were. They know them now. The result of the mighty struggle for Emancipation, has created new feelings and convictions in their hearts; did new convictions ever ripen without shedding the seed of further hopes? The administrations of Lord Normanby and Ebrington have practically shown us the difference, between a government in unison with the popular will, and a government subsisting by its repression;-between the government of opinion, and the government of artillery;-between the organic utterance of the national desire, and the deafening trump of domination.

Many of these truths, if not all of them, lying as they do upon the surface, have been appreciated by foreign writers, who have visited Ireland; but there are other truths which have naturally escaped them; and of these, there are several of deep meaning and import for the people of England to learn. A traveller, be he ever so inquisitive, and apt to receive impressions, can at best hope to apprehend those facts which to a certain extent have become developed, or to use the vivid phrase of the French-are faits accompli Those silent workings of society which are

cannot gather up for record. How should he? How few living in the midst of them, possess at once that power of appreciating the present and keeping vividly in their minds the contrasting past, so as to be able to see what way society is making, in what direction it is tending, and at what rate? Few, truly few. No sudden application of acuteness or sympathy, can get at one fact that has not come upon the surface previously. To estimate the relative position of the present, and its tendency, we must thoroughly have known the past.

It is no longer possible to neglect these considerations: time was, when Ireland-in progress of accomplishment, a stranger to use the phrase of Grattan-was "but a squabbling sectary,"-her whole population bearing a much less than its present proportion to that of Gt. Britain; and even that divided into two nearly balanced parties-the one possessing all the property, intelligence, and prestige of rank in the country, the other, ill-compensating by its numerical superiority for the want of these political requisites. Ireland might then be neglected with impunity; but the days of such impunity are passed away. The entire fabric of society is changed or changing. For several years the Catholics have been made to feel that they are citizens in their own land. They are rapidly acquiring property and station, and with them the feelings which they necessarily bring. There is no longer a monopoly of social inflence in the hands

The foremost of these inchoate results, if we may be allowed the phrase, is the change that is fast arising in political organization. While the penal laws existed, and the bulk of the nation were outlaws in their own land, their every effort at moral combination

was contraband.

trious sanction, by the ill disciplined combatants for power; and if the loudness of their war cry were a test of their prowess, they have done vast execution. But with the best intentions, they have most elaborately proved the weakness and falsity of their own attempts. The elections under the Poor Law Act in Ireland, we fearlessly assert, furnish the most triumphant case ever made by a people in their own behalf, in justification of the trust reposed in them, and in favour of further confidence.

Communion of thought and purpose was sedition; union, for any avowed or ostensible object, was absolute treason. Hence all attempts at reform of abuses, were conspiracies against the laws of the land; and the soul of conspiracy is secrecy. In evil hour for the policy of exclusion, it suffered opinion to come forth into the market place, and openly declare itself. That was a capital blunder of the intolerants. No sooner had the right been acquired, than the people came together, beheld their multitude and might; felt in each bosom the reverberated thrill of countless sympathy, and asked one another, wherefore are ye slaves? The Catholic association was formed, grew, called on the people already in this frame of mind, was answered-and it became the government of the country. With the accomplishment of the great act of 1829, that wonderful improvisation of government naturally dissolved: wonderful as it was, its strength was essentially that of antagonism; -it gave the utterance which there was no other way of giving, to the national rage, and resolution to endure the bondage of sect no more; and with the legislative concession of justice it vanished like a dream. But as political organization is the means of gaining, so it is the only means of keeping freedom. In Ireland, every institution previous to emancipation was a hostile fortress for over-will no longer do. Threats and coercion awing the mass of the nation. A popular force, self-organized, and unacknowledged by the law, was the only one therefore that could be resorted to.

We are not about to say one word touching the theoretic principles of the Poor Law, or in anticipation of its politico-economical effects. Be it sound or be it not, be it eventually adequate or be it not, it has accomplished silently a great moral fact, one whose importance it is impossible to over estimate. For the first time it has shown the people of every rural district in Ireland, their real power to act effectually, without excitement or commotion; it has given them an organization subject to popular opinion, and yet according to law. In every district throughout the country, the election of guardians has taught this memorable lesson; is it too much to say that this is in itself a moral revolution ?

But Toryism is untaught and unteachable. Though the magic of its power is gone, never to return in Ireland, it is as eager as in its revel days, to provoke by frantic and wanton insult, the might of the popular power, blind to the one all changing fact, that the Hercules has outgrown his cradle, and now walks erect, emancipated, and irresistible. Well may a generous stranger like Feuillide, or an impartial theorist like De Beaumont, or a remembrancer of the lessons of history like Von Raumer, say, the aristocracy of Ireland are selfdoomed. The world is wending rapidly onward, and the country, which unhappily for them has never been their country, has begun to learn the marching time of the world's progress, and will not be stayed by their dullard cursings. Threats and coercion

wielded in the betrayed and duped authority of England, may render national distrust and aversion greater than it is; but threats and coercion can govern Ireland no more. The will of the many must be heard, and with zealous and judicious care consulted,―aye, and substantially obeyed, though orange squires and municipal peculators out of employment gnash their teeth thereat. It must be done; for Ireland can in no other way be governed.

To a few men among the Tories this is already beginning to be manifest. Several expressions fell from certain eminent individuals in parliament, in the course of the last session, of anxious import, and full of an unconcealed conviction that the old grounds of rule in Ireland were no longer tenable. On a motion of Mr. O'Brien respecting emigration, Sir R. Peel went out of his way to denounce the system of wholesale ejectment of tenantry, which is the keystone of the entire edifice of agrarian tyranny in Ireland.

The enemies of Ireland are beginning to perceive this, and with their usual perversity and shortsightedness, they are setting But he seemed themselves anxiously about their favourite unto them as one that mocked. Were work of defamation. But happily the adder he to come into power to-morrow never blunted tooth upon a harder file. A the head of a successful Tory party, guerilla warfare has all through the two last he dare not repeat such expressions; sessions been carried on, under certain illus or if he did venture to do so, they would

as

once again?" They have been indeed betrayed fatally, and miserably betrayed, not by the tardy acknowledgment of free and true principles, but by the abortive attempt their leaders have been making during the last two years, to go back to the principles they never heartily or honestly abandoned in 1829. Another and more influential journal commenting on Lord Ellenborough's speech, did not scruple to declare that it was "superb as

avail nothing. That he is heartily sick and ashamed of his orange followers, is no longer doubtful; but Sir Robert is not the man who will ever be able to hold them in check, or change their nature; nor is there any means whereby they could with safety to the common weal, be permitted to re-enter their ancient posts of power. If their chains of "wise and eleborate contrivance" hardly sufficed, when unbroken, to keep down a blindfolded and uneducated multi-a specimen of liberal cant; that the penal tude, who had never known the joy or the pride of freedom, what must be the fate of any attempt to manacle and hold the disenthralled, awakened, taught, and self-respecting spirit of a great and growing nation ?

No words can more vividly express all we would desire to say upon this subject, than those which fell from Lord Ellenborough, in the debate in the house of lords, upon the Canada bill, now almost twelve months ago. Whatever may be thought of the pertinency or justice of their application, to the measure regarding which they were spoken, we cannot but congratulate the noble lord and his friends, be they few or none, at arriving, however late, at such unexceptionable principles of policy as

these :

"He must caution their lordships against the policy in which he thought the bill then under their consideration had been conceived, the spirit which dictated the penal laws of the eighteenth century against the Catholics of Ireland. The object was to deprive as much as possible, those who were not of English origin, of any power whatever in their own country. It had not been found advantageous, where it had been put in force; and it would not be advantageous now, because it was a principle unjust in itself. Unless they gave the mass of the people of Canada, a very strong feeling of nationality in the legislature, he feared it would be impossible to preserve the connection of that colony with England." What a commentary on the alien declaration and alien policy of the same party, to which the noble lord belongs, whereupon they have acted towards Ireland! Mortified at such wholesale repudiation of the fundamental principles of their party, their daily organs broke forth in absolute fury and denunciation. Referring to the remarkable expressions already quoted and to the mysterious silence of Sir Robert Peel on church extension, about the same time, one of these journals asked indignantly,are we again betrayed? Is 1829 come

laws were not a failure; that Ireland was rendered the happiest country of Europe by their operation, notwithstanding that some of their provisions were clumsy and impolitic, serving to irritate without crippling the power of disaffection: but that still, subject to many disadvantages, the Irish penal laws served the purpose for which they were designed, and held the island in submission for nearly a century, in a higher degree of happiness than it ever enjoyed before or since, -a higher degree of happiness than commonly falls to the lot of mankind!"*-Said we not well that toryism is untaught and unteachable?

A few men among the Tory leaders are beginning at last to see what it is that constitutes their true disqualification for office. They are beginning to discern that no party, however talented or reputable, can claim the direction of imperial affairs, merely because it has a slight preponderance for the time being in England. Ireland is one third of that which is to be governed; and, thanks to the past misrule of this fine country, it requires more of the daily attention of government, than the remaining two thirds taken together. Sir Robert Peel and Lord Ellenborough are getting tired of opposition, and the principles that have kept them out of office for ten futile years. They see at length that an administration based on avowedly Anti-Irish principles, though equal in talent and other influence to one wherein the people of this kingdom confide, could not for a moment compete with it in strength or efficiency. They would be palsied from the outset by the consciousness of the distrust, wherewith their best endeavours would be regarded. Resentment for a thousand wrongs and insults, would leave them no alternative but the old expedient of force; and their cabinet must be constructed on the principle, of the business of the Home department being intrusted to the Secretary at War.

* Standard, 10th of July, 1840.

MARCELLA.

A TALE OF THE SEVENTH CENTURY OF ROME.

CHAPTER I.

"And what the sorrow, then I asked,

Can thus the warrior move

To scorn his meed of victory?"—L. E. L.

"SEXTIUS would be just now a fair mark | proud towers upon the heads of their defor an arrow from yonder tower," said a fenders; wherever Rome most wants an arm solemn and friendly voice to a young centu- or a life, there will Sextius stand, and offer to rion of Sylla's third legion, who was keep-his country that which he neither values nor ing a remote station of the Roman camp can enjoy." before the walls of Comana, and had wandered away from the centinels under his command, to indulge alone those saddening contemplations and fond reminiscences, which must often intrude upon the listless hours of the soldier, serving a dangerous campaign far from those whose affections form the strongest, the only link that binds him to existence, whose thoughts are, with his heart, far away with those whom he may perhaps never again behold.

Sextius turned, and looking in the direction of the voice, perceived his old friend, the veteran Marcellus, issuing from the deep shadow of the walls into the bright and clear moonshine in which he stood: replying to the remark of the tribune, he said, "I care little for the arrows of the tinselled barbarians."

"There spoke the Roman again," said his friend, "whose spirit rises with danger and excitement. But, my Sextius, why so womanish, or rather, what woman has done this?-you are in love,-I know the symptoms; who is the cause of all this sighing and moon-gazing? Has some soft Asiatic bent the high Roman to a slave ?"

"Marcellus," said the centurion gravely, pardon me if I do not answer you, to whom, last of all men, I would dissemble; you sneer at emotion which you have long forgotten to feel-whether it be happiness to outlive them I know not, and perhaps shall never know; but now there can be between us no community of feeling; for your anxiety, since it cannot be sympathy, I am ever grateful-farewell!"

He then turned hastily, leaving the tribune immoveable in silent amazement; who, following with his eyes the retiring figure of Sextius, thus resumed with himself,"there goes one who was as true a Roman as ever wore a helmet; what he may be now and henceforth I know not. A stronger arm and steadier eye never dealt death among the enemies of the republic. I have never seen such dejection as lies upon his heart to-night, but followed by calamity'tis an omen-I may not lose him from my sight to-morrow."

Thus soliloquizing, he returned to his tent. Marcellus had ever loved the young and gallant centurion as a son; he loved him for qualities like his own,―a dauntless valour and a quick sense of Roman honour; and sorrowed now to see him overcome by a weakness of which he could but conjecture

sion.

the cause, and which the hardening influences in shadow and distance, asperities with which of twenty-five campaigns had incapacitated a near approach only brings us into collihim from understanding. As men advance in years, and as they cease to feel, so do they begin to think; the head usurps gradually the place of the heart, which was in youth the ruling principle of his conduct; and though men grown old in the world may be wise counsellors, they can be but unsympathizing confidants.

Notwithstanding "the muddy vesture of decay" which dims our spiritual vision, night, more than any other season of the diurnal circle, appears to be suited to the energetic and unimpeded action of the mind; in this effect, its silence, generally believed to be the principal cause, is the least considerable agent. During the day we are in rude contact with the actual and common,

Meanwhile, Sextius had wandered on, frequently tempted to return, and acquaint Marcellus with circumstances which must-with the world; the equability of our temsoon be known to many; but the time was not yet come; considerations hereafter to be laid before the reader interposed. The scene and the hour were both suited to his thoughts were both suited to encourage and quicken that morbid sensibility, which takes a sickly pleasure in brooding over and exaggerating its own miseries; that imaginative pessimism which looks upon every thing around, beneath, and above, as worthless. The moonlight fell unimpeded in a clear flood upon the landscape, which in turn sent up a silvery vapour; to look abroad into such a scene is like peering into futurity; both views are beautiful and indistinct; both wear the semblance of peace never to be enjoyed, and both conceal

pers, and our consequent happiness, are at the mercy of the littleness, the meanness, the obtrusive selfishness of our human brethren. At midnight, they whose souls are not like their bodies of clay, withdraw themselves to haunted solitude, and resign themselves, thought, word, and deed, to the up-conjured genii of the hour-imagination! then to enjoy, with nervous avidity, the few fleet hours hallowed to dreamy thought or poetic reverie, and tabooed from the world and man. It is the contrast between these two states of existence-liberty and servitudebetween the predominance of mind and matter, the internal and the external, that constitutes the romantic charm of night.

CHAPTER II.

"With myrtle my sword I will wreathe."
Song of Armodius and Aristogeiton.

Within the prætorium or general's tent, rium contained two other occupants, younger over which glittered the Roman eagle, and officers, Lentulus and Claudius, scions of the which was furnished with all the barbarian two proudest houses of Roman nobility, the magnificence and contempt of expenditure, Cornelian and Claudian. Of these, the forwhich, beginning at this period to constitute mer slept within view of his companions, the favourite indulgence of Roman vanity, on a couch overlaid with a lion's skin; the was the first innovation upon that rigid latter reclined opposite his commander, and and simple frugality, which had been their shared at the same time his wine and his characteristic virtue during the preceding conversation. The table which stood beages of the republic,-within this tent sate tween them, for the tent presented a temCaius Muræna, the worthy representative porary triclinium, or dinner-saloon, bore of Rome's first tyrant-Cornelius Sylla. two richly chased, silver-gilt, goblets conThe trumpets had just announced the begin- taining the rich wine of Rhodes, beside ning of the fourth watch of the night; the which lay a rude ground-plan of the fortifiguards were relieved, and all was again si- cations of Comana. Around the walls were lent. The noisy spirits and boisterous pas- suspended, in all varieties of arrangement sions of thousands of untameable warriors, tu- and material, weapons offensive and defentored into unmurmuring subordination by the sive of every denomination, from the commasterly discipline of the republican armies, modious equipment of the African cavalry were waiting like a sleeping giant, without a to the cumbrous accoutrements of the lesingle throb or apprehension, (collectively gionaries; and at a distance, partly concealed speaking), a repetition of their frequently by the drapery that partitioned the paviacted scenes of assault, victory and rapine. lion, stood a Greek slave, tired to the very Besides the lieutenant-general, the præto-heart of his night's attendance, and endea