impossible. This, being rather a matter concerning landlords than tenants, naturally excited the observation and sympathy of the landlord commissioners far more than the paltry details of mere evictions. So their recommendations were of a practical character, upon which were based the "Encumbered Estates Acts" subsequently passed, as referred to in a later chapter.

The county cess is an expression peculiar to Ireland. It seems to be almost the same thing as what in England is known as the county rate. The chief difference is that, in Ireland, it is made to contribute to more charges, and heavier charges, than the rate has to contribute to in England, so that the pressure upon the ratepayer is greater. It appears from the Devon Report that at that time the county cess was payable in equal proportions-half by the landlord, and half by the tenant. It seems that proposals had been made to throw the whole upon the landlord, and this appeared to the commissioners to be so opposed to "ordinary notions of property" that they denounced the proposed change with something like indignation, for reasons not clearly made out, but no doubt sufficient to satisfy the consciences of the commissioners. In other respects, they fenced with the subject by demurring to the charges for constabulary, and other matters having no reference to the general principle of rating, which was hence left untouched.

A portion of the report is devoted to the inevitable Irish subject of agrarian outrages. They are admitted to arise from discontent concerning tenure, but there is nothing new either as to facts or deductions. It is worthy of note, however, that such outrages are pronounced to be then "on the increase."

The report of this Devon Commission being presented to Parliament on the 14th of February, 1845, and as there was evidently, as usual, a disposition to rest content with the report, and do nothing thereon, the Earl of Devon, on the 6th of May, expressed in the House of Lords the hope that no great delay would be allowed to occur before some of the measures recommended in the report were introduced into Parliament, for he was quite sure that it was the intention of her Majesty's

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government to carry out the recommendations contained in the report. The recommendations referred to in particular were county cess and encumbered estates, those being naturally of the first importance in the landlord estimation. To this Lord Stanley replied that his noble friend must be aware that those recommendations embraced subjects of the greatest possible difficulty.

This was the stereotyped formula with which it has always been the official custom to meet every movement for reform of any kind; the official instinct being to put off everything till the latest possible moment. Accordingly, we find the Earl of Devon, on the 14th of July, saying that he found it would be impossible to carry into a law during that session the measures which he intended to introduce on the report of the commission.

CHAPTER XXXVIII.

MAYNOOTH AND THE QUEEN'S COLLEGES.

TWITHSTANDING the evidence contained in the report of

NOTWITHS

the Devon Commission, the government, like its predecessors, seemed to continue blind to the existence of greater grievances than those of a sentimental character-grievances down in the darker material depths, far below creeds and catechisms, where sacraments and psalms are alike of little account; grievances compared to which religious differences and religious equality, are but so many idle bubbles, blown, as O'Connell said, by mere puffs and freaks of popular excitement, very different from the alternating calms and tornadoes that sustain the people in patience or stir them into fury when the fit comes on.

Peel had the labours of the Devon Commission to guide him, and many previous government papers were accessible to him; and they all told the same tale. Yet Peel was so intensely Protestant and English-so incurably Saxon, that he went on saying "Catholic, Catholic," as the be-all and end-all of Irish affairs, like the pious old lady who took such comfort from saying to herself Mesopotamia. In common with his infatuated predecessors, he stubbornly refused to see, or to confess that he saw, that land tenure was at the bottom of it all-the unstable foundation of the broad and deep Irish troubles past, present, and to come.

Failing the courage to look the truth in the face, or doubting his ability to face the truth effectually if he did look at it, he cast about in the traditional manner for some colourable pretence of remedial measures, such as former premiers had dabbled in. He was probably

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unaware that he was playing the part of a political Thomas A'Becket. His clerical prototype said "saving my order," until it came to pass that his order could not save him. Sir Robert Peel's refrain was contained in the document that appointed the Devon Commission, where it said "having due regard to the just rights of property." That always has been the stumbling-block of material reforms in Ireland. It crops up at every turn. Those who insist too much upon that proviso will do well to compare it with that of A'Becket, and to remember that the temple of property, like the chief fane of A'Becket's order, is only a refuge in its due season.

The successors of A'Becket have not forgotten the warning not to stand by their order too stiffly, and it may be worth while to consider that "having due regard to the just rights of property" may be writ too large, or too frequently. Peel could not make a move in that direction without repeating it again, and perhaps he thought it too soon to do that. He had been baffled by the breakdown of the proceedings against O'Connell, and he did not want to be baffled again in the same quarter.

The sudden convert to Catholic emancipation, desiring to improve the occasion-unable to act in the spirit of the Devon Report, and desiring to do something as a substitute for what he ought to have done-hit upon a happy thought. Instead of giving the relief really required, as so very mildly suggested by the commission, he devised a means of winning over, as he thought, the clerical classes of Catholics, and that same year brought in his memorable Maynooth College Bill. This was for the purpose of securing to that college a permanent income in place of the annual precarious one it had previously enjoyed. Perhaps there never was a bill more strenuously opposed by the people of England. Rightly or wrongly, they were aroused into an enthusiastic opposition to what they conceived to be official recognition and sanction of Roman Catholicism. Meetings were held in every town. Addresses were delivered and sermons preached against it in almost every chapel. Petitions in vast numbers-to the Commons-to the Lords-to the Queen-poured in from all quarters.

To all this Peel replied, "The more you petition, the more determined am I to carry the bill." To the House of Commons he said, "I say this without hesitation, and recollect that we have been responsible for the peace of Ireland; you must, in some way or other, break up that formidable confederacy which exists against the British government and British connection. I do not believe you can break it up by force. You can do much to break it up by acting in a spirit of kindness, and forbearance, and generosity." This premier, who had not scrupled to pack the jury to condemn O'Connell-who had been condemned himself for doing so by the judgment of the House of Lords-who had maintained his army of fifty thousand in Ireland, and the constabulary called by his name, when he had hounded down O'Connell and pretended to suppress the Repeal Association—thus openly avows that all his blundering had failed, and confesses that it was impossible to break down the repeal agitation by the force he had so unscrupulously used. Now his remedy was generosity-his generosity was thirty thousand pounds down, and six thousand a year, wherewith to bribe five hundred free scholars and the Catholic clergy; and he declared to the House that if generosity did not overflow so far he would not answer for the Union. So the bill was forced through both Houses, in defiance of strenuous opposition there as well as throughout the country. Let Peel's successors say how much it has done towards permanently conciliating Ireland.

It would appear, however, that the government conscience was smitten in that it had made such a concession to Catholics; so, as a set-off, in the same year an Act was introduced by Sir James Graham "to enable her Majesty to endow new colleges for the advancement of learning in Ireland." The colleges thus founded soon got to be called "Queen's Colleges," about which so much fuss has been from time to time made. These colleges were, from the first, and continue to be, three in number, at Belfast, Cork, and Limerick respectively. The grant for them was £100,000 down and £21,000 per annum-seven thousand to each. The annual income was expressed to be "for the support of President, Vice-President, and to such Pro