their industry at home. Would you see what Ireland might have been,' Lord Dufferin urges, go to Belfast.' The instance clearly proves, what has escaped the noble writer, that it is not only by direct legislation against its trade and manufactures that England has impeded the prosperity of Ireland, but still more by the introduction of a system of landed property designed to make land an inalienable instrument of political power in a few families, instead of the great instrument of production of a commercial society. Belfast has become what it is by passing from the hands of a prodigal noble. Settlements are intended to prevent prodigals from ruining their estates, but it is by keeping them, not by parting with them, that they really ruin them. There might have been fifty Belfasts instead of one but for settlements and other legal restrictions on the transfer of land. The first great factory in another flourishing town of Ulster was built on a bankrupt's estate. Recent statutes have attempted, with unintentional sarcasm, to mitigate the evil of feudal restrictions on the transfer of land by giving particular powers to present owners to improve their own land, or to let them to tenants for improvement but such patchwork reform always defeats itself by creating costly formalities, and other impediments to its own object. No reform will suffice short of one, in the first place, giving ownership to each owner in turn, to deal with his land according to the circum

A remarkable example of the exclusion of manufacturing enterprise in Ireland by the law of real property is instanced in Dr. Hancock's 'Impediments to the Prosperity of Ireland,' chap. xix.

stances of his own time and case; and, in the second place, freeing landed property from incumbrances by its sale on the death of each owner to the amount of all charges and debts. The industry of towns, even more than that of the country, would be promoted by such legislation. It has been most unjustly alleged that the violence of the working-classes of Ireland has prevented the investment of capital and success of trade and manufactures in Irish towns. Those who desire evidence of what the character of the Irish working-classes really was-even before a Poor-law existed, or emigration had provided an escape from destitution at home-will find it in the Report of Lord Devon's Commission in 1841. In 1865 a Government

Report showed that in all Ireland an average of only six persons per annum in the ten years preceding had been even charged with combinations to raise the rate of wages, and of this more than one-half had been acquitted; and, according to the latest information, there was not one person for trial for such an offence in 1863, 1864, or 1865. Every candid inquirer will find history, statistics, and practical experience confirm alike the testimony which Sir John Davis has borne at the beginning of his essay to the character of both the land and its people, 'endued with extraordinary abilities of nature,' and that with which his essay concludes: There is no nation under the sun that doth love equal and indifferent justice better than the Irish; or will rest better satisfied with the execution thereof, although it be against themselves; so as they may have the protection and benefit of the law when upon just

cause they do desire it.' In the close competition of modern commerce, every country has become more than ever dependent upon its natural advantages, and the two great natural advantages of Ireland are its land and its people. It remains for legislation to remove obstacles to their combination created by the law, and to enable the people of Ireland to cultivate and improve the resources of the land of their birth instead of those of lands of their exile.

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IRELAND IN 1868.*

Two economic currents are flowing in Ireland--a current of progress and a current of retrogression-of the character of each of which this article aims at furnishing some indication and some suggestions for promoting the former and arresting the latter. For both purposes something must be said of the only strong political current visible in the island at present, one rushing back to the dismemberment of the kingdom, civil war, and the dissolution of civil society. I speak here of Fenianism, not. so much in its organised and criminal form, as in that morally blameless form, so far as many of its adherents are concerned, which it takes without any definite organisation, and spreading, as it were, in the air. Organised and criminal Fenianism, though it numbers more sworn members than seems commonly supposed, is by itself, or without aid from America, a destructive, but not a formidable power. The annual chapter of accidents includes in its catalogue a thousand times more suffering and disaster, yet does nothing to shake the foundations of the State, or to endanger the safety of the nation as a nation. But another kind of Fenianism is developing itself, under no specific name

Reprinted from the 'Fortnightly Review,' of February 1868.

as yet, in declared antagonism to the integrity of the State; which would shortly leave, if it gained its point, but one of the two economic currents before spoken of flowing in Ireland, that of backwardness and ruin. Various motives and feelings are converging to form a combination of a great part of the people of Ireland to demand separation from England. Romantic and generous hopes of a great independent Ireland, old legendary Ireland resurgent in glory, derived partly from ancient tradition, and partly from the nationality movement on the Continent, blend with well-grounded discontent at the system of tenure and the consequent emigration, and with it must be added the selfish desires of some individuals or parties; but the chief source of this gathering movement is an idea that England is falling (an idea which mistakes the weakness of a Government for the weakness of a nation), coupled with a per-suasion that an English Parliament will concede anything to force or fright, nothing to justice and policy, and that even separation may be extorted by demanding it loudly in menacing numbers. What sort of legislation would follow the establishment of a separate Irish Parliament, if any legislation at all, might easily be anticipated, had it not been distinctly foreshadowed in a tentative declaration of some Catholic clergymen, drawn with great ability for its purpose, and assuredly not put forward without the private sanction of higher authority than it claims. It is enough to say it is declared that political economy will not do for Ireland, that the Irish manufacturer cannot compete with the English, and that the natural energies of the Irish