been long received as such into the mind, and their importance acknowledged, our understandings refuse to rest upon them, and it virtually comes to the same thing as if they were never known at all. Their strength and significancy become worn out, as it were they get blown upon in the mirror of the mind; and when we look for them, in order to illustrate or enforce an argument, we find them indeed, but, as if they had lain in a damp place, they moulder away in use. Such is the frame of the human constitution, that impressions, however well founded, under which we are passive, are weakened and diminished. We therefore beg our readers will obviate this tendency of their nature, by setting themselves expressly to resist it. They have long been cognizant of the characteristic feature of Irishmen; still we beg they will lend us their distinct attention to a few remarks we deem it our duty to submit for their consideration. It is not an idle psychological speculation that we have in view; what we shall offer will be brought to elucidate the present condition of things in Ireland, and especially to illustrate our statement of the anomalous and perilous position of the Established Church in that kingdom.

The bane, the distemper of Irishmen,—that organized particle of ill, which would seem to set at defiance every project for Ireland's welfare,-is hereditary; it boiled in the blood of their ancestry, and bids fair to rankle in the veins of their descendants. It is at the same time a cause and a consequence, deeply indented in the habitudes, we had almost said instincts, of the people. From a Sheridan in the senate to the veriest serf that reels through life in the recesses of Connaught, every Irishman would appear more or less to be infected by its epidemic touch. It is, in truth, a moral malediction, which, to a certain degree, may have been nourished by a series of misrule-may have been generated ages since by the foam of hard-mouthed insolence, and have acquired its malignancy in the malaria of despotism;may, we are readily inclined to believe, have been grafted by human imperfections upon the best and kindest of human sympathies. The malady, however, in the long lapse of ages, has insensibly become so inveterate, and so incorporated, as it were, with every condition of society,-cankering at the core, and corroding the extremities, that we fear there lurks no panacea within the wide laboratory of political empiricism, that can do more for the present than alleviate the symptoms.

As it is not every people that are in a condition to receive unlimited freedom, so it may sometimes happen that they are not susceptible of tranquillity and order. The sweet air of heaven, which is the very source of life, may prove mortal to the puny inhabitant of the mines of Golconda. The bulk of the inhabitants of Ireland are nearly in a savage state, having moreover

superinduced on their natural habits the factitious license of a fatal superstition. In our judgment their civilization is hardly comparable to that of the North American Indian. What instinct is with the brute, mere impulse is ordinarily with the Irish peasant. It is to all intents his temperament, his deity; the pivot on which revolves every thing that happens to be right or wrong in his moral conduct. He is the creature of impulse. His conduct is determined upon no principle, whether good or bad; and reflection is an attribute of humanity, which hardly can be said to belong to him. His thoughts are all sensations, or at least thence only have their origin; and his feeling and thinking are so indefinitely blended, that, like the warmth and light of heaven's luminary, they are literally one. The wildest and the lightest imagery is generally bewildering his brain; which, evanescent and dazzling as the haze of summer on the dry heath, flits between him and thought. He has too little of the ballast of a substantial understanding, and so is carried away by the stream of party, or tossed to and fro on the waves of passion. He flourishes his shillelah or sports his repartee with the same hilarity that a Frenchman kicks his heels, and fights or frolics through the wide world in a state of mental inebriety.

What marvel that the government of such a race of beings should imply a task of equal delicacy and difficulty? It would be absurd to subject to a standard of municipal rule, which might be admirable on this side of the water, the exercise of a dominion of such a character: a dominion moreover which is already embarrassed by the encroachments of that exclusive close corporation, the Roman-catholic hierarchy, every priest of which is enrolled a member of the National Association. It should be known, and iterated again and again until it passed into an axiom, that the Roman-catholic laity would not be possessed of free agency merely because the legislature were mad enough to confer on them the nominal privilege of self-government. "The wild Irish" (the preponderating population) would only seem to wanton in their saturnalia. They would remain after all under the eye of their ghostly keepers. They would still be overawed by that authority, whose fasces are the keys of heaven and of hell, and which would soon reclaim every Protestant acre and every Protestant church. The fall of the Establishment on this side of the water would follow in natural course. It is the national character, directed by art to forward the policy of the church of Rome, which, in our opinion, is the malady of Ireland, and which incapacitates her for bona fide municipal government. That a Romish hierarchy, stripped of wealth and jurisdiction, having at their absolute beck millions of such a gallant headlong race of men as we have described, should fail to make use of every advantage, or ever cease to struggle till they had shaken off

a protestant king, and protestant ascendency, would be, indeed, a practical anomaly-a moral impossibility.

Βακχᾶ πρὸς ἀλκὴν, Θυιὰς ὡς, φόβον βλέπων.

Therefore a reformed establishment need not think themselves secure because this Titan foe seems crushed and prostrate on the earth, unless the Government chain him there, like another Typhoeus, by the superincumbent weight of physical necessity. To return: O'Connell's "finest peasantry on the face of the earth" love insurrection; and they care little what may be the cause, so that they do but find a straw to fight about. They invariably feel with Sir Lucius O'Trigger, "it is a very pretty quarrel as it is," and they have no wish in the world it should be stanched— save in blood. Still, to answer their own ends, no people are more expert in getting up a superficial appearance of tranquillity. They have always shown themselves exceedingly obedient to the tactics of their leaders. As is boasted in these days in the House of Commons, so for many months preceding the outbreak of the last rebellion, there was a strange stillness in the political atmosphere, like one of those portentous pauses of nature which precede some dreadful convulsion of the elements. In the rebellion we allude to, there were engaged at least 200,000 of these men, well organized, resolute, and till the word of command was given, "hushed in grim repose." Lord Edward Fitzgerald, a man of unquestionable military talents, determined courage and unbounded zeal, planned the campaign, and directed the preparations. With revolutionary France the closest connexion existed. Her squadrons, armies, arms were all ready. Three of the former reached the Irish shores, once at Killibeg and twice at Killala. They returned safely to France. Hoche's invasion took place before the organization of the whole was complete. That fleet also, unespied by our winged cruisers, came to anchor in the harbour of Toulon, and NOT OF PORTSMOUTH. Can Englishmen at this day, while every great institution of the State is tottering, reflect upon these things without trembling? Since the times we speak of, an awful discovery has been made, which must prove a most important agent in all future warfare, and affect the principal arm of Great Britain,her marine. Had the portentous effects of STEAM been known in that internal state of Ireland to which we have alluded, nothing human could have prevented the loss of that kingdom and the destruction of the empire. To what end do we refer to these details of past difficulties and dangers, now despised, and perhaps forgotten? To impress upon the minds of thinking men, that what has been once may occur again; and to advise them that we cannot calculate upon another providential deliverance. The well-contrived system of what is called the Irish Rebellion failed (and failed solely) by those mischances to which

all human affairs which require combination are liable. Hoche's invasion was premature. To adopt a metaphor of Napoleon, the pear was not then ripe; and when the French landed at Killala, the pear had been shaken from the tree. The arrest of Lord Edward Fitzgerald, and the events which accompanied that arrest, together with the partial excesses of the soldiers, precipitated the acts of rebellion before its preparations were complete. The explosion was tremendous, but happily the mine was sprung too soon. The leaders who succeeded Fitzgerald, Emmet, Machnevin, Sampson, possessed neither their enterprise nor ability. The great machine of which they had held the key could not work without them. These fortuitous occurrences concurred with the errors and imbecilities of the French directory to preserve Ireland, at the time we speak of, to the British realm. But we cannot reckon upon double sixes at every cast. We should have our wits about us. A blow, fatal and irremediable at the connexion of these islands is aimed through the municipal corporations and the English Protestant Church in Ireland. That connexion, for the sake of Ireland herself, must not be suffered to be broken. The insidious advocates for repeal must not be allowed to go on strengthening themselves, until there will be no dislodging them from their position. Protestant interests and institutions, the outposts of the British throne, must no longer be sacrificed by piecemeal, till the Protestant religion, together with all who profess it, be pushed into the ocean. The union between England and Ireland must (please God) subsist, though England have to spend her last shilling, and shed her last drop of blood for the integrity of the empire.

SOCIETY FOR PROMOTING THE EMPLOYMENT OF ADDITIONAL CURATES IN POPULOUS PLACES.

In our previous Numbers we sincerely deprecated the employment of lay agents by the Pastoral Aid Society, and their assumption of the episcopal functions in determining the qualifications of candidates. Whilst we feared that the abuse would be overlooked in the otherwise high character and meritorious objects of the society, there was already a power set in motion, which in the end must correct the evil, or at least leave no excuse to the subscribers and patrons of the society for not discerning it, in all its native deformity. In what we have submitted on that subject, we cannot indeed take upon us to say, that we have had the honour to suggest the formation of a rival society, but the truth is, it hath met us on the way, while we were meditating such a consummation according to our own ideas. We are happy beyond expression to find that our views so far coincide with those of the Society for Promoting the Employment of Additional Curates in Populous Places, as laid

before the public, that we have no cause in this instance to be in the least scrupulous to promise our humble advocacy of the society, and of the object which it is intended to effect. It has been formed for the purpose of providing additional clergymen for our populous parishes within the several dioceses of England and Wales. The society may depend upon the cooperation and applause of the CHURCH OF ENGLAND QUARTERLY REVIEW. We conceive their rules and regulations to signify our own notions of what is fitting in such a case, as nearly as general arrangements can correspond with particular opinions. We found ourselves obliged, very much against our inclination, to oppose the Pastoral Aid Society, because of the vicious principle we have adverted to. The present and rival institution is not liable to the like reprobation. The object is perfectly similar, but the mechanism is the very reverse; and we certainly do not intend to fall with the same severity on a scheme where circumstances will not bear us out. In the latter undertaking the fabric would seem to be laid in the rational and solid foundation of Church of England principles, and to be compatible with the jurisdiction of the Establishment. We did most seriously put it to those individuals who had the direction of the Pastoral Aid Society, to consider the wisdom of a timely reform; but they chose to chicane with their situation, rather than be instructed by it. In answer to strong facts and fair reasoning, they produced nothing but vague disclaimers, and justified their adherence to a pernicious abuse, such as that of lay agency, that the nomination of the assistant rested with the incumbent to whom aid is given. But difference of opinion between these parties cannot by any human means be prevented in the long run. It were labour in vain to attempt it. Besides, they never fairly met the point at issue. What was the preventive check upon the subsequent proceedings of their coadjutor? on what principle might the authority of the Church be securely maintained. over him? or how, in the course of time, were they to hinder their society being made the nursery of dissent? are we not taught by the history of all ages, that religion (so called) in the hands of half-informed, selfish, and factious men, is a very dangerous instrument? might not that "ill-will to Zion," which generates equivocally "all monstrous, all prodigious things," cuckoo like, adulterously lay eggs in the nest of the Pastoral Aid Society, and leave the Church herself, as it were, to brood over and hatch them, till, like foul and ravenous birds, they come to pollute her with their touch? Of course it could not be expected that the evil would show itself in the infancy of the society. But the germs are in the constitution, which sooner or later must make themselves evident, when probably it were vain to hope to eradicate the distemper. This was what the public strongly felt, an apprehension in which we participated,