AN OLLA PODRIDA, &c. ADDRESS TO HER MAJESTY, IN 1849. • WHEN Her Majesty's intended visit to Cork was announced, every public and scientific body felt it equally a duty and a privilege to prepare to address their Sovereign; but it was subsequently feared that this might be trespassing too largely on the royal time in Cork. So the Minors retired, and quietly added the ripple of their duty and loyalty to the streams of the Majors. This Address, consequently, is now most deferentially laid at the Queen's feet as that only of the writer, a humble, yet proud unit (155.000.000) of Her Majesty's magnificent empire. R. S. Cork, 3rd August, 1849. To Her Most Excellent Majesty, Victoria, Queen of the United The humble Address of the Cork * Most Gracious Sovereign, ** Society. We, your Majesty's dutiful and loyal subjects, most joyfully address your Majesty with our congratulations on your happy arrival in your Kingdom of Ireland; the grateful sense we entertain of your Majesty's auspicious visit; and the pride and pleasure we locally feel that Cork has the honour of being the first part of your Irish dominions favoured by your Majesty's presence. Aware that your Majesty's arrangements allow of this your first visit to Ireland to be of but a brief (and felt by your Majesty's Irish subjects to be indeed a very brief) period, we thankfully accept it as the expression of your Majesty's regard for Ireland; and we trust it is nevertheless a commencement of the free and happy intercourse that your Majesty has extended to other portions of your empire; and which, by bringing the Sovereign and the subject to a personal knowledge of each other, creates an increased interest on your side, and a more affectionate loyalty on ours, than can arise where the Crown and the People are matters known only as existing facts, but not felt as living realities. We trust that we may not be deemed nationally conceited in humbly expressing our hope and belief that, when leisure may allow your Majesty to pay a longer visit to this Island, you will find in its natural scenery, in our shores, harbours, lakes, mountains, round towers, and other antiquities, subjects gratifying to a mind deeply imbued, as your Majesty's is, to appreciate the sublime and the beautiful; the useful and ornamental; the records and reminiscences of past ages; and the energy and enterprise of the present, guided and invigorated by the skill and discoveries of modern science. of Nor can we forbear dwelling with joyful satisfaction on the contrast which your Majesty's visit to Ireland presents, accompanied only by your excellent and illustrious Consort, and the infant pledges your domestic happiness (those future hopes, those living bonds, connecting the Throne and the State in a still closer and more enduring union), with other visits and in other times, when the greatness of the Sovereign was proclaimed by the extent and its variety of warlike accompaniments; and when, where peace was the object, it had to be summoned by the trumpet and acquired by the sword. Happily for us, and (we feel assured no one feels more so than our revered Queen) happily for your Majesty, your mission to Ireland is in the pure spirit of a Sovereign affectionately interested for all Her subjects, whose welfare Heaven has been pleased to commit to Her keeping; and to whom the many millions of Her mighty dominions look up with confiding security, that the happiness of every class and of every individual is the one great and sole object of Her equal, just, and maternal solicitude. R. S. Cork, 16th July, 1849. |