rage, revenge? If the African colonists, as a body, are, notwithstanding all this, less corrupted than the mass of slave-holders in some other countries, they owe it chiefly to the comparatively limited extent of their slave population, and to the early marriages, and simpler and purer manners, of the majority of the country inhabitants. I wish not to speak of them harshly. There are, I am well convinced, a great number of pious, humane, and truly worthy people at the Cape, to whom the above observations do not in any respect apply. I am also convinced, that, in spite of all their defects and disadvantages, the Cape Dutch, regarded as a body of men, possess many estimable qualities. If they have acquired many of an opposite description, it is because they have been so long doubly debased by the curse of slavery, and the deprivation of good government. Let England remove that unspeakable curse, and govern them as she should do,-and then I will venture to say with confidence of my fellow Colonists, that there is no moral or intellectual excellence, of which they will not speedily be found capable.* Y.

LONDON LYRICS.

The Shower Bath.

QUOTH Dermot (a lodger at Mrs. O'Flynn's,)
"How queerly my shower bath feels!

It shocks like a posse of needles and pins,

Or a shoal of electrical ecls."

Quoth Murphy, "Then mend it, and I'll tell you how :
It's all your own fault, my good fellow;

I used to be bother'd as you are, but now
I'm wiser-I take my umbrella."

The motive for this opposition to the dictates of nature-to his mother's dying request-and his father's solemn promise-was sordid avarice. If the children were not sold, he would lose his share of their price-of the price of his own flesh and blood! He insisted that they should be produced at the public sale. The law was on his side, and his father could not refuse his demand. But the old man's regard to his last promise to his deceased wife, and his indignation at his son's inhuman conduct, induced him to stand up at the sale, and after mentioning the above details to the whole assembly, to declare his determination to re-purchase the children himself at whatever price, and to grant them their freedom, as he had pledged himself to do. The old man's conduct was approved of, and no one offered to compete with him in bidding for the children; yet the relator of this anecdote, who was present on the occasion, heard neither surprise nor indignation expressed at the conduct of the son, nor any censure passed upon him, with the exception of a remark made by a Moravian missionary.

While this article is passing through the press, the Cape Town Gazette of June 31 has reached England, containing an Ordinance of the Lieutenant-governor in Council, regulating the future treatment of slaves in that colony. The provisions of this ordinance are of a highly important character, and well calculated, if faithfully enforced, to protect the slaves from very gross maltreatment, and to obviate some other of the most glaring abuses of the former system. But no regulations that human policy can frame, are sufficient to eradicate the worst evil of slavery that moral leprosy, which taints alike the master and the bondman. Happy will it be for the Cape colonists, if, instead of imitating the insane conduct of some of our West India planters, they have the wisdom to meet this enactment in the spitit of candour, and, by aiding and anticipating (ere it be yet too late) its beneficent provisions, gradually redeem their growing settlement, and their happier offspring, from the load, and the loss, and the degradation of slavery.

IRISH POLITICS.

In a Letter from an Irish Protestant in Dublin, to his brother-in-law in London.

To Mr. Cyril Skinner, Fleecy Hosiery and Haberdashery Warehouse, at the sign of the Sheep's-head, Ludgate-hill.

Dublin, September 29th, 1826.

MY DEAR CYRIL,-I begin my answer to your last long letter, by replying to the postscript which commissions me to send you the address of the Mr. - whom your excellent aunt at Hampstead is desirous to make the consignee of her intended contribution of tracts and flannel waistcoats for the suffering poor of this country. The individual in question, whom I recollect a distinguished member of the charitable circles here, was transported about six years ago for robbing the poor-box at St. Patrick's Cathedral. Mrs. Eustace (to whom I beg my kindest regards) will probably be able to ascertain, by inquiry at the Colonial office, whether he be still at Sydney Cove, or ordered on to try the air of Norfolk Island for the further benefit of his morals.

As to family concerns, your sister, myself, and the little ones are perfectly well. Our two little boys promise to be excellent scholars, but they are picking up, along with their learning, such an "intensely" national accent at Mr. O'Farrel's academy, that we, or rather their mother bas resolved, when the present quarter is out, to send them over to be cured at a Cumberland boarding-school. Little Caroline, for whose sake we always keep a Lancashire maid, has hitherto escaped; but your sister has been grievously alarmed of late by certain symptoms of an incipient brogue in the shoulders, which she attributes to the malign influence of Counsellor Bogberry's seven unmarried daughters, whom our little girl is sure to encounter every day, when she is taken to walk within the railings of Stephen's-green. Apart from this, Caroline is all that we could wish. She is growing up as beautiful as possible, and, what you will not be sorry to hear, the character of her beauty is perfectly English. I am thoroughly aware of the mistakes into which the partiality of parents betrays them respecting the mental capacities of their children; but our "little lady," or rather yours,. for it was you that first gave her the title, independently of being uncommonly quick and observant for her age (she was only seven, the 15th of last July) evinces a power of remembering the names of the principal capitals of Europe, of such an extraordinary kind, as to astonish even me. She has been this moment with me, to give me a "kiss for Uncle Cyril," with a request, (I give it verbatim,)" that I would express to him the profound delight she feels at understanding, that by the new arrangements at the Post-office, it will be sure to reach its destination in six-and-thirty hours." The kiss was certainly hers; but, between ourselves, I suspect that the speech was made for her above stairs. She delivered it, however, like a darling as she is, without missing a single word.

Having despatched these important matters, I pass on to the views and suggestions upon Irish affairs with which your letter abounds. I know that of all things you like frankness in a friend. I shall, therefore, be as frank as possible, even to pointing out with as little cere2 к

Dec. 1826.-VOL. XVII. NO. LXXII.

mony as if I were addressing an abstract Englishman, the occasional
mistakes and contradictions into which you have fallen in your obser-
vations upon the recent occurrences in this country. You say that
you had almost brought yourself to be a friend to the Catholic claims,
but that their proceedings at the late elections have alarmed and dis-
gusted you. You speak of the elective franchise, as the most impor-
tant privilege conceded to them, but accuse them of ingratitude in
having exercised it against their landlords. Here, my dear Cyril, you
do not reason with your usual accuracy; and one of the causes is, that
you know little or nothing upon the subject. Permit me to assist you
with a fact or two. In the year 1791, the Catholic cause was in such
disrepute, that a member of the Irish House of Commons could not be
found to present their petition. In the following year, alarms of reform
at home, and symptoms of an impending war with France, produced
the bill, giving the right of admission to the bar, and to the profession
of attorneys, and establishing the right of intermarriage with Protes-
tants. The latter provision, by the way, was a relief to us-for pre-
viously, if any one of us should take to wife "the heretic girl of his
soul," no matter how he might curse the Pope, or swallow beef-steaks
on a Friday, he was by a process of Parliamentary conversion, held
and taken to be to all intents and purposes a Papist. In 1793, came
the war with France, and along with it the further privileges which the
Catholics now enjoy. Among them was the elective franchise. Now,
with respect to this, if you look into the historical documents of the
period, it will there appear to have been the right of all others the
most vehemently desired by the Irish Catholics, and one which
nothing but fear, or a tardy sense of justice, could have extorted from
the Irish parliament. But in Ireland, as elsewhere, there are two
kinds of history-one compiled from state-papers and Parliamentary
debates, and similar materials, upon which no man of sense that ever
made a speech himself, or assisted in the getting up of a parish peti-
tion, can depend;-the other, and by far the nearest the truth, that
comes out over a bottle of wine from the living witnesses of the trans-
actions they record. Now this latter class of historians are in the
babit of relating, that the framers of the Catholic petition in 1793
were secretly stimulated to put forward the elective franchise, as a right
without which they would not be satisfied, by a body of Protestants
who were still more anxious on the subject than the petitioners; and who
do you
think these were?-Why men who hated the Catholics and their
religion as much as ever Doctor Duigenan did-the Protestant aris-
tocracy of Ireland. This sounds very oddly; but the secret historian
says they reasoned thus: "We have hitherto secured our seats for
the counties through the present Protestant freeholders; but a spirit
of reform is making way among them, and their number is very limited,
so much so, that Catholic wealth and influence, increased as they will
be by the new rights about to be given by this bill, may in a little time
detach them from us. How then are we to retain our present supre-
macy in the House of Commons, and to neutralise, as far as may be, the
intended concessions? By granting the Catholics the elective fran-
chise upon a scale of qualification as low as possible. With this provi-
sion, the counties must continue ours; for ours are forty-nine fiftieths
of the landed property of the island, and upon the land we can at all

times raise any number of abject freeholders amenable to our purposes, and through them baffle all the efforts of Protestant reform and Catholic influence." Thus they are said to have argued; and though it was confidently urged at the time, that the measure in question would place the representation of the country in the hands of the Catholic priests, experience has proved, that the lords of the soil were the better prophets. For three and thirty years (no short tenure for a feat of political jockeyship) the priests were quiescent, and the Catholic electors without a will, and for nearly the same period, some of the most important rights restored by the Bill of 1793 were nothing but a name. You may take a single example, as illustrating the genuine spirit of the entire system. By that act, Catholic barristers were rendered eligible to chairmanships of counties, an office not of much emolument, but of considerable responsibility in many ways, and with regard to which, as the party filling it becomes more immediately the poor man's judge, a just policy should anxiously select those in whom the lower classes may be expected to have a personal confidence. Some time after the Union, a Catholic barrister was appointed a chairman of a county-but mark the sequel. A body of the magistrates of the county transmitted a remonstrance to the Viceroy, intimating their determination not to sit upon the bench with the individual nominated. It was not pretended that, personally, he was in any respect obnoxious to them. He was a gentleman of mild manners, of an ancient and opulent family, and of known ability in his profession; and as to his politics, it was notorious that the consideration of his appointment had been services rendered by his family in support of the Union; but the answer to all this was, that he was a Catholic, and therefore, though eligible, not to be elected. The miserable Government of the day was too timid, and too bereft of the support of public opinion, to feel the insult. The appointment was recalled; and, from that time to the coming of Lord Wellesley, the experiment was not repeated. And yet this is the system which the Farnhams, and Rodens, and Beresfords have the front to call upon the Catholic electors of Ireland, on principles of gratitude, to restore; and, because the present Viceroy has had the courage and mercy to soften its rigour, it is to be held to be an extremely right and proper thing, that his government, person, and family should be hourly assailed by every slanderous insinuation that inventive vulgarity can devise. As I have incidentally mentioned the Catholic bar, I may just add, that the first practical extension of the Act of 1793 to them took place under the present administration, in the appointment of Mr. Farrel to a county-chairmanship; and the result has shown, that though an Irish country-gentleman, when he has abstract ideas to deal with, makes miserable work of them; yet, when tangible matters are submitted to his senses, he is occasionally as acute as other men in soundly distinguishing between right and wrong. Mr. Farrel no sooner appeared among the magistrates of Clare without a single stake or faggot, or other emblem of bloody-Maryism, but, on the contrary, breathing nothing but established courtesy, and disseminating no doctrines but those of settled law, and looking (when he had his wig and gown on) almost like a Protestant, than they unanimously acquiesced in the propriety of the appointment. And, as far as I have heard, not a Protestant landlord of the county has felt scandalized at

obtaining relief against a knavish tenant under the decree of a Popish barrister; not an orthodox magistrate has yet complained, in a private letter to Mr. Saurin or Lord Norbury, that the gentleman in question lays down the law of a misdemeanour-case with an eye to the Vatican or to Captain Rock.

But to resume. Whatever may have been the policy that dictated the restoration of the elective franchise to the Catholics, the practical effect of the measure for many a long year was to confirm the dominion of their enemies. If a liberal Protestant refrained from contesting a county with any of its old hereditary autocrats, what hostile power did he apprehend?-The Orangemen ?-the Presbyterians?-the influence of the Government? No- their united strength would never keep him out: but he knew right well that he should be overpowered by the Catholic electors. This was to be sure a curious spectacle-Catholic rights impeding the Catholic cause, It was still more degrading; but such was the mental prostration of those wretched freeholders. That their spirit at this day can be very little more exalted is proved by the fact, that at the recent elections it required all the adventitious stimulus of religious adjuration to rouse, or, if you will, alarm them, into a sense of their political interest and duties. For having listened to such an appeal you accuse them of ingratitude to their landlords. My dear friend, this is a very high, Great-British way of talking; but, to my poor provincial understanding, it seems that men cannot be guilty of ingratitude without having something to be grateful for. You know little of the worldly condition of the persons against whom you make this charge. You are a substantial Englishman, and will sit down to-day at five o'clock precisely to your comfortable Michaelmas goose, with sage and onion stuffing. Your stomach never troubles you, except when it has more than it can carry. You may sometimes have the fear of apoplexy before your eyes; but as to a sudden attack of inanition-from that you feel that you are perfectly secure. Not so the ungrateful culprits, whom you join their landlords in denouncing. You should see them in their hovels, in their diet, in their apparel, in their habits, in their every thing, in order to appreciate the true extent of the boasted benefits for which their gratitude is exacted. You may in some degree judge of it from this :-The landlords are now punishing them for their late defection, by distraining and ejecting for arrears of rent. Why are there arrears of rent? Simply because the rent reserved is so exorbitant, that the produce of the soil, after deducting the minimum of subsistence for the occupant, is insufficient to pay it. So that the injured landlord is thus expressing his sense of the tenant's breach of moral duty:-" I made a contract with you so little to your advantage, that I knew at the time you could never fulfil it. That being the case, you were bound by gratitude to throw your conscience into the bargain. But I find you are a wretch, whom no benefits can bind; and, therefore, I shall not only brand you as a monster of ingratitude, but furthermore insist upon keeping you to the last farthing of your bargain, although the thing I sold you was intrinsically worth little more than half the money."

A very common semblance of argument by which these persons attempt to justify their resentment, is by putting the matter thus: They say," We are far from insisting that in all cases a tenant, as such, is