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THE

SOUTHERN REVIEW,

VOL. II.

KELLY&PIET
Printers
Publishers &
IMPORTERS

7W Ball St.
BALTIMORE

BALTIMORE:

BLEDSOE AND BROWNE.

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ART. I.-1. An Historical Review of the State of Ireland, from the Invasion of that Country under Henry II, to its Union with Great Britain on the 1st January, 1801. In 5 vols. By Francis Plowden. Philadelphia Edition. 1805.

2. History of Europe, from the fall of Napoleon, in 1815, to the accession of Louis Napoleon, in 1852. In 4 vols. By Sir Archibald Alison, Bart., D. C. S., &c., &c. York Edition. Harper & Brothers. 1860.

New

One of the saddest spectacles in our world is the wholesale misery of misgoverned millions. And one of the most impressive instances of this vast evil, is the wretchedness for centuries of oppressed, unhappy Ireland; some of the lessons from whose history we propose presently to consider.

Few things, if any, are more indispensable to man, in his present condition, than government; yet is it scarcely possible to overrate the sufferings with which wicked governments burden the earth. The trite saying is no doubt true, that any government is better than none,' that any general control, however arbitrary or even monstrous, is less destructive than the license, indefinitely extended, of each individual's lawless nature. But no less true is it, that next to the dying agonies of social chaos, inseparable from universal anarchy, are the miseries which bad systems of organized power, cruelly administered, have wrought among mankind. And the apparent hopelessness of relief from such enormous evils, since the experiment of equitable self-government has so signally failed, adds incalculably to the sadness of the prospect.

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