Political characters can hope for no quarter in such publications. We are but too naturally disposed in these dissensions to confound the lines which separate us from each other in political opinion with the grand distinctions which divide right from wrong in morality. In lashing a public man, pride and envy and vanity come in for a large share of gratification; and he who is railing in "good set terms" against the obnoxious statesman of the day works himself up into an imaginary greatness of mind; and fancies, whilst he is pouring out the effusions of spleen, that he is speaking the honest language of indignant virtue. Least of all do we wish to see the fame, and the honor, and the genius of contemporary authors worried by their living competitors. Jostling against each other in the same race, they are the worst arbiters of the merits of each other that could be chosen. However, it is not likely that writings of this description should endure long enough to pollute the streams of history, or to bias the judgments of posterity. They are fortunately not likely to be enrolled amongst the

"Quæcumque Palatinus recepit Apollo."

They may gratify the gossips of the day, but they will not, we trust, obtain a place among those works, from which future critics will appreciate the literary genius of our age, or future historians estimate the character of our politicians and statesmen.

ART. II. A Compendium of the History of Ireland, from the earliest Period to the Reign of George the First. By John Lawless, Esq., Proprietor and Editor of "The Irishman," published in Belfast. Svo. 2 Vols. 18s. Wilson, London. 1824.

THE

HE author of this abridgment of the History of Ireland has long and honorably distinguished himself for his enthusiasm in the cause of civil and religious freedom: his exertions in behalf of Catholic emancipation, and the honest indignation which he habitually expresses in his Journal against those whom he conceives to have, at any time, betrayed the interests of his country, are well known.

Ireland has had her full share of antiquaries and historians, as well as of orators and poets; deeply and indelibly are her annals engraven on the tablet of British history: but Mr. Lawless complains, that, instead of drawing a faithful portraiture of his countrymen, most historians have taken delight in representing them in the darkest colors and with the most odious features. Mr. Hume is arraigned in this charge: but

much

much more heavily so is Leland, who was himself an Irishman, though it must be confessed a Protestant Irishman.

While the English historians,' says Mr. Lawless, feel gratification in relating those circumstances which are calculated to humble the Irish character, and anxiously seize the pen to paint those scenes in which Irish vengeance gained ascendancy over the benignity of the Irish heart, be it my office to set down those anecdotes which elevate my countrymen, and record those characters who command the veneration of posterity.'

This is a right feeling. Again:

The book, which I now have the honour to present to my countrymen, has been written in the hope that it will contribute, in some degree, to the promotion of that liberal, enlightened, and benevolent feeling, which has been making such rapid strides for the last thirty years of our history. If the author has been guilty of any exaggeration in description, or in commentary (which he has industriously struggled to avoid), let the Irishman reflect that his errors are on the side of the honour of his country; that his feelings, if too warm, are heated by an anxious desire to vindicate the insulted character of a people who have been eternally the victims of calumny, the prey to every speculator on their fame and their glory, the devoted sacrifice to insatiable avarice, to dishonourable ambition, and a sanguinary foreign ascendancy."

We are the last persons in the world who would measure with rule, line, and compass any expressions of complaint which a man utters when he is mourning over the miseries of his country, and writhing under a painful sense of the injuries inflicted on her. Disposed, however, as we really are to make every allowance which the excited feelings of an Irishman and a Catholic are intitled to, we are, nevertheless, constrained to say, that the tone and temper occasionally displayed in these pages are ill calculated to allay existing irritation, and to promote that liberal, enlightened, and benevolent feeling,' the professed object for which they are composed. Orange ascendancy is one thing, the question of English ascendancy is another. It would gratify us to see Catholic Ireland emancipated from the yoke of an oligarchy of Protestant Orangemen but it would afford us any thing rather than gratification to see Catholic Ireland severed from Protestant England; to become inevitably the prey of some foreign power, some member of the holy conspiracy of continental despots, who would take the first opportunity of turning her arms against us.

If the language of Mr. Lawless does not directly express the wish, or suggest the expediency of a separation of Ireland from England, it has, in many places, we fear, a tendency to

inflame

inflame and exasperate that portion of the empire which requires to be soothed and conciliated. From the paragraph we have just quoted, it is evident that he is well aware of the intemperate comment and invective in which he has so freely and injudiciously indulged. There is, indeed, abundant encomium bestowed on the great benefits of toleration; and frequent eulogies are scattered on the growing liberality of the present day. It may be difficult, perhaps it is impossible, to exaggerate the oppression and injustice which, for centuries, were inflicted on Ireland: but Mr. Lawless is guilty of the inconsistency of insinuating in one page, that things are very little better now than they were formerly; while, in the next, he expatiates elaborately and more justly on the better feeling which he acknowleges has at length arisen among us.

'In Ireland,' says he, we have hitherto found that revolutions terminated in the forging of new chains and the multiplication of new tortures. The liberty of England and the slavery of Ireland have invariably proceeded together; Ireland going down as England ascended. Posterity have justly concluded that the rights of Irishmen and the prosperity of England cannot exist together-a melancholy truth, which the events of the present day only contribute to confirm, and which is still left to the enlightened English government of future days to refute.'

This reflection, it is true, occurs in the course of his comments on the Revolution of 1688: but it is not true that posterity have justly concluded, it is not true that posterity have concluded at all, whatever Mr. Lawless himself may have done, that the rights of Irishmen are incompatible with the prosperity of England. Compare the Catholic code now with the Catholic code as it existed a hundred years back: will any one say that its most disgusting and frightful features were not smoothed down under the latter years of George the Third? We despair not of seeing them entirely removed: but cannot help fearing that this desirable consummation will rather be retarded than accelerated by such provocatives as are urged, and such threatenings as are shadowed out in passages like the following. Speaking of the lieutenancy of Lord Capel in 1695, and the Irish parliament of that day, Mr. Lawless says,

They therefore began, with a pious and loyal ardour, the glorious work of that penal code which now strikes mankind with horror; which would justify any resistance, however violent, any vengeance, however dreadful.. This penal code, for the repeal of which Ireland has had the unexampled patience to petition, would have armed every hand in England. Englishmen would have again appealed to the spirits of their iron barons. Their REV. MAY, 1825.

C

Russells,

Russells, their Hampdens, and their Sydneys would have rallied whatever of honour or patriotism was in the land; and the blood of the persecutors, who could have enacted such laws, should have washed out the odious record, and thus have atoned for their crimes against justice and humanity; yet Ireland has carried her chains year after year, she has manifested more than Christian fortitude, under somewhat more than Christian suffering,-she has served the hand which so often plunged the dagger in her bosom, and she has been insulted, during the dreadful scene, with the title of rebel to her king and constitution. The Catholics of Ireland have petitioned, the people of England would have rebelled. The reward of the Irish nation has been partial freedom, that of England has been the first constitution in the world. The tyrants of Ireland were the champions of British liberty, who have so often refused to the humility of the Irish petitioners what they extorted from their kings by the terror of their swords. Those historical facts require no comment. The mind of the reader will draw its own conclusions; and whether Protestant or Catholic, or Presbyterian, he will ask himself how a people should speak or act, when they are about seeking the restoration of their rights, the mere performance of a contract which has been infamously violated. Is it in the tones of lady-like meekness that Englishmen assert the rights of their country? Is it in the language of hollow, hypocritical sycophancy, the people of England address their rulers, when they complain of their privileges violated, or their freedom impaired? Do they measure their words, or do they ever suppose that words can be too strong to give expression to their honest indignation? This, then, should ever be the tone and language of the Irish nation: no other is either audible or intelligible in the parliament of England; you are heard because you are respected, and you are respected because you are not afraid to express your resentment.'

This is by no means a solitary specimen of the intemperate and feverish patriotism of Mr. Lawless: there are a great many others of an equally indiscreet, not to say mischievous tendency. Nothing certainly can be imagined more revolting and barbarous than what is termed the "Statute of Kilkenny," passed in the reign of Edward III. It enacted, among other inflictions, "That marriage, nurture of infants, and gossipred, with the Irish, should be punished as high treason; that if any man of English race shall use an Irish name, the Irish language, the Irish apparel, or any mode or custom of the Irish, he shall forfeit lands, tenements," &c. (vol. i. p. 136.) To reflect on the folly and barbarity of such a statute is undoubtedly the proper province of an historian, but it is the bitterness, and, we are almost inclined to add, the implacable bitterness, of a schismatic, to exclaim, in narrating a transaction which took place almost five hundred years ago.

• To

< To England alone should our eyes be perpetually turned, the prolific source of all our sorrows, and the indefatigable corrupter of our people. A Catholic or a Protestant parliament, under its malignant influence, is equally blasting of the energies, and torturing to the feelings of our country. The Catholic is a blockhead who condemns the Protestant as the enemy of Irish freedom. The Catholic, under the burning heat of an English treasury, would be equally malleable to English purposes. We should therefore learn to look to the first cause of Ireland's treachery to herself.'

Again: after speaking in terms of rapture concerning the measures of the general synod which was held at Kilkenny in May, 1642, Mr. Lawless goes on thus:

A supreme council, composed of the chief nobility and gentry, assembled, and Lord Montgarret was named as their president. A general assembly of the whole nation was then determined upon, whose first sittings were to take place in the ensuing month of October. It is impossible for an Irishman to contemplate this great and glorious scene, which elevates the humblest mind, and animates the coldest bosom, without indulging in those reflections which must embitter the days that Ireland is doomed to experience, stripped as she is of her purest robe of honour, thrown down from that station which she once occupied, and reduced, as she now is, to the humiliating and insulting vassalage of a tributary to the pride and strength and riches of another country. Fancy may in vain delineate the picture of an independent nation, making her own laws, commanding her own armies and navies, and bringing into action, at once honourable and productive to her people, her boundless resources in genius, industry, and strength. In vain, we fear, may Ireland anticipate the blessings which flow to a nation from the enjoyment of equal rights; whose laws are administered by those who are interested in the impartial dispensation of justice; whose elevation and whose fortune go hand in hand with the honour and character of their country.'

Once more, the insurrection which broke out in Ireland in 1641 is recorded by all historians to have been accompanied with an inhuman and remorseless massacre of the English, almost unparalleled in the bloodiest page to which history can point. No age, no sex, no condition was spared. The old, the young, the vigorous, the infirm, underwent a like fate and were confounded in one common ruin. "In vain did flight save from the first assault: destruction was every where let loose, and met the hunted victims at every turn. In vain was recourse had to relations, to companions, to friends. All connections were dissolved, and death was dealt by that hand from which protection was implored and expected. Without provocation, without opposition, the astonished English, living in profound peace and full security, were massacred by their C 2

nearest