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of the country, the military qualities of the people were dwelt on, the difficulty of carriage, the long line of operations, the remoteness from the commissariat-all were urged in vain. Lord Auckland, and his friend and secretary, Mr. M'Naghten, neither of whom knew a platoon from a drumstick, neither of whom had ever seen a skirmish or had ever crossed the Indus, made up their minds, shut their eyes, stopped their ears, and jumped, full-cased in insolence and self-sufficiency, into this bottomless war.

(To be concluded in our next)

A PERSIAN LOVE SONG.

Wilt thou come to my home in the bright land of beauty?
"Tis, lady, the loveliest e'er thou hast seen;

And fair forms of lightness shall pay thee the duty

That warm hearts are panting to shew the heart's queen.

I will weave thee a bower such as houri ne'er dwelt in,
Where thy dreams shall be sweeter, far sweeter than those
That the happiest heaven-born peri has felt in

Her moments of calmest, serenest repose.

When thou'rt gay, there's a bulbul shall joy in thy gladness,
With a greeting, melodiously rich as the chord
With which the wild wind-harp, in ecstacy's madness,
Receives the embrace of her life-giving lord.

Or if sad, the fond note of that bulbul shall hover
Around thee, more mournfully sweet than the cry
Of that wind-harp, when, wailing the flight of her lover,
She clings to his last touch, to lose him-and die.

The breath of the jasmine shall woo thee to slumber :
Above thee shall cluster love's dark crimson rose;
And birds of all glittering hues, without number,
Fly noiselessly round thee to fan thy repose.

And light balmy zephyrs at morning shall leave thee,
And float o'er each sweet flower, each odorous tree;
Then return, richly laden, at evening to give thee
An offering, worthy, love, even of thee.

Then come, lady, come, whilst the pale moon is gleaming;
Let us go ere the sun of the desert's on high;

And to-morrow we'll watch the first blush of his beaming,
Beneath a much softer, a far distant sky.

F.

TORY PROMISES AND

PERFORMANCES.

"It is an admirable law which ordains that every man shall be tried by his peers. One half of his judges should be of his own sort, and the other of the sort of him whom he hath offended. So that all private leanings, which, in spite of ourselves, colour the aspect of things even in the eyes of the most equitable, are balanced, and no preponderance is left to turn the scale of truth and law. It is therefore just that every accused should have the liberty of excluding a certain number of his judges."

BECCARIA, on Crimes and Punishments.

'Tis scarce twelve months since Toryism regained its long forfeited ascendancy in the council chambers of Great Britain. For upwards of ten moaning years had the wolf lain crouching outside the gate of the field, where he formerly fed and fattened. The gate was barred-(with rather rotten bars, 'tis true, but still with bars) ;—and despotism, which is Toryism's proper name, lay shamming penitence there, and sought admission all that while in vain, even though it sought it carefully and with tears. And so it might have lain for ten years more, had not a device of signal guile and cunning entered its unscrupulous brain. Much to the wonder of the inhabitants of the field, Toryism rises disinterestedly and walks away. "He does not want to come in ;"*-he will not come near the gate any more "until he is sent for;" he will show the world that he is utterly indifferent as to place,-perfectly independant of the favour of "the woman"t who keeps the key of the door,-supremely regardless of provender or prey. Nay, he will never condescend to take the lives of the people any more-into his custody, "until he is called upon to do so." The flock looked wistfully at their old enemy marching off, and expected every minute to see him face about, and take a running-leap at the wall. But in this they were mistaken; and when, after watching him for a little while, they found that he made no signals of any immediate irruption, the poor stupid flock began to think that their hereditary con-servator was really in carnest, and that they might go to sleep. Poor flock they slept too soon, too soundly, and too long.

Meanwhile the bars of the gate began to rot, and one after another they gave way; and all this time the rough hairs of Toryism were getting woolly and curly, and he brushed his teeth till they began to look as white as the courtliest Whig's. He had taken, he said, for the rest of his life to the simplest vegetable diet. Bloodshed, and war, and all kinds of violence were become unto him an abomination. He was shocked at the throat-cutting of chickens or Chinese; and the inhumanities shown to the poor, by the friends of the lady who kept the gate, moved him to tears of pity and to pledges of Poor-law Amendment. He now saw the sins of his

* See the Times and Standard newspapers of 1840,-passim.

†The chivalrous epithet with which the Queen is usually honoured by her loyal aidescamps and clergy.

past ways, and only desired a re-entrance into the fold, that he might convince the sheep how anxious he was for their immortal welfare; how better, by much, he could take care of all they had in this world, than the disreputable fellows of whom they were almost tired; and what a brotherly feeling had grown up within him, towards the much injured and half-starved sheep. "Let them but open their eyes, and see who were their true friends ;" let them but force the "woman" to throw him the key again, and they would soon behold what an altered being he was in thought, word, and deed.

As for the goats, that wild Irish breed, he could not in justice to their superiors the sheep, say much to flatter them. They had been, he said, rather too highly favoured of late, and 'twas time that the real old thoroughbred race, that anciently browsed the whole field themselves, should have all to themselves again. Thus he strove to make enemies of the two races. In heart, he had ever a rooted aversion to the said Irish breed. The Saxon flesh was better to feed on, no doubt; but the Irish were far more restless and troublesome. 'Twas they, with their damnable Celtic horns, that had pucked him out of the door at first; and whenever he tried to get back they rallied in line, about seventy strong, with a horribly wicked old one at their head,-" oh! the Irish were fearful to see!" So he owed them a grudge, and a deep one; and he cunningly thought that the very best way to wreak his vengeance upon them, was by setting English and Irish at loggerheads; for thus he judged, and he reasoned well, I will keep both busy abusing each other, until I am fairly in; and then (in a whisper, he said to himself,) "mutton and kid by turns."

Well, wise flock, you have him in now, and where is the sheep's clothing gone? You slumbered and slept; you bargained and squabbled; you left the gate open; you let Toryism in; English or Irish, which of you credit his pretences of penitence now?

The session of 1842 is for all legislative purposes over, and which of the pledges of Toryism have been redeemed? The general election of July, 1841, was a national verdict in favour of Conservatism, whereby its inventor professed to mean a Tory government acting on anti-Tory principles. "Shuffle and cut" was the Peel motto ;-a "government for no particular party, but for the whole people," the expletive comment put forward thereon to the very Land's End. He has shuffled and cut, 'tis true. He has tried to play the farmer against the manufacturer-the landlord against the operative-the pauper against the rate-payer; but how has he succeeded? Already the note of desertion is raised by the hot blood of Vyvyan and Buckingham, and the agriculturists cry, "we have been betrayed." Already despair has seized hold of the operative industry of England, and it is gone in its blind frenzy to gather the faggots that any chance spark may kindle into a funeral pyre. Already has the delusion practised on the poor, by the sham hostility affected by by the Tories towards the Workhouse Rich-law, been scattered to the

winds: it is no longer the "Whig Amendment Act," tried as an experiment, and as an antidote to confessedly great abuses in a former system, but the "Peel perpetual imprisonment bill."

In Ireland we have perhaps been less extensively deceived, because we were less confiding. No man, however, who witnessed the non-excitement evinced, with one or two exceptions, at the contested elections of Ireland last year, and who is old enough to contrast it with the unselfish and untainted enthusiasm of previous epochs, when Emancipation, or Reform, or Tithe-abolition, or Self-government was the watchword and rallying cry, can deny the force of contrast which the latter so palpably presented. Zeal for the Whigs there was and could be expected none. They had outlived their reputation; they had-but no matter; they are dead as a party now, and "being dead, so is our enmity." As an aristocratic and exclusive clique, they can never come into power again. No recklessness of Toryism will call them back to save us. We must look steadily and undeviatingly henceforth to saving ourselves. The formation of a great onward party, upon great principles of popular advancement, is at hand. It, and it alone, is worth forming, worth joining, worth fighting for. The Whigs may take their place as an element in such a host; but a host it must be, and not a handful.

The want of great principles to contend for on the liberal side, did much to unnerve the antagonists of Toryism at the late elections; but it cannot be denied that the sheep's clothing it had so elaborately assumed, disarmed the austerity of many a poor man's virtue, and gained an entrance for its golden lures. With us upon this side of the channel, the question of Free Trade weighed but little. We believe we might without impeachment say, that the Whig budget neither lost or won a single seat in Ireland. It was a mere struggle between two sets of men; measures there were none, bid by either Whigs or Tories, to catch the wavering, or rouse the apathetic among our electors. "I will vote with my party, of course; but they say Whigs and Tories are much the same now," was a sentiment uttered by many a man in Ireland, who would at heart have been exceedingly obliged to any one, who could have discovered a flaw in his registry certificate the day before the election, in order that he might be saved the trouble of presenting himself at the poll. And the mask was worn so well, and the motives to abstain from voting were so palpable,—the Whig banners had become so faded, and so little of the inflammatory hue of Orangeism was suffered to appear, that many a well-meaning and thick-headed man really came at last to the belief, that Whigs and Tories were very much the same.

But the delusion of a Tory government capable of governing Ireland on any other principles than those of Toryism, is already at an end. The men who figure in the front of state may be Whiggish Conservatives, or Conservative Whigs, or what you will. They may have the wit to perceive that the idea of making good the old buttress of tyranny is vain,that sooner or later all attempts at reverting to ascendancy tactics, must

rouse to irresistible fury the emancipated, educated, temperate, and freehearted spirit of the nation,-that the only chance for the maintenance of Tory power in Ireland is the adoption of the system of the late administration. Fain would Lord Eliot be, we have no doubt, to redeem that memorable pledge which he ventured to give at the outset of his government, that pledge which he has been forced to break through in every mood and tense by the turbulent and untameable mob under his windows, by whose shouts he has suffered himself to be bullied and overawed. By them that pledge was received with a shout of scorn, stifled at the time only to burst forth with deadlier hate and triumph, on the evening when young M'Ardle fell.

That brutal yell awoke, perhaps, no deeper feeling in the mind of our diplomatic secretary than contempt mingled with disgust,-contempt for the impolicy of such betrayals of unpopular sentiment, and disgust at being obliged to conciliate and court a faction so degraded. But in the memory of the people those accursed sounds found another and far different echo. Old times rose up again in pale and spectral recollection. The wounds, that some few years of lenient rule and even-handed justice had done much to close, opened and gushed again. The people awoke as from a dream of false security; they heard indistinctly and doubtfully the groan of the dying youth, and the laugh of the idiot father; but they turned in silence on their lowly bed, and said within themselves, "surely our dream was true; the morning will come with justice; we shall see the guilty judged and punished, and then we may sleep again." Well had it been for those who bear rule in the land, had they the heart or the head to comprehend the silent and patient forbearance of the multitude; well had it been for the future peace and progress of the country, had the reiterated warnings of the popular press been then heeded, and the course which the circumstances so imperatively demanded been honestly and vigorously entered on.

But Lord Eliot is a stranger amongst us, and knows not whom he has to deal with, or what he ought to do: his duty, as doubtless he now remorsefully perceives, was to see that instant and irresistible justice should be done in Ulster. Since then he has sent a Special Commission to Tipperary to make an example of half a dozen Rockites, by whose offences the tranquillity of that part of the country was disturbed. Far more becoming, far more politic, far more just had it been, to have issued a Special Commission to the county of Down to try the murderers of M'Ardle. Such a measure, whatever the event of any particular trial might have been, would have gone far in confirming the feelings of the many, in that belief that there was justice to be had for all and upon all sects and classes in the land, which of recent years had been steadily growing in the popular mind. It would have literally been a fulfilment of the pledge, that the existing government would govern not with a view of propitiating any particular party, but of doing justice

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