it is called) of liberty propounded by the avowed organs of republicanism in Ireland, and demonstrated that the true nature of the creed of the sovereignty of the people is one of the most grinding tyranny.

The third tract is, in our mind, the least successful, and the reason is obvious. Menenius addresses the people, but he is not of the people; and thus the difficulty of his task is increased by the circumstances of his own position. To speak intelligibly and effectively to uninstructed intellects on subjects of such complicated interest, and yet to avoid commonplace or dulness, is always a hard matter, but particularly so unless the instructor be familiar with the modes of thinking, and the forms of speech peculiar to those he seeks to teach. Menenius is here above those whom he professes to address, and it would seem to us that he in reality applied himself to a class, higher in point of education than what is called 66 'the people."

We are not ourselves disposed to go the full length of Menenius, in his approval of all the acts of the Irish executive in their dealings with Irish disaffection, but on the general principle which formed the groundwork of that policy-the principle, namely, of securing the integrity of the empire at all risks, and of protecting property against the spreading doctrines of Communism-we believe our readers cannot entertain a second opinion. As the exponent of this principle, the author of these tracts seems to have accorded them his unqualified, earnest, and most valuable support, while cautiously abstaining from a general commendation of ministerial policy; and to this limited extent only do we commit ourselves to his views.

It would require a space beyond that now at our command, to exhibit a complete analysis of these tracts. We would gladly show, from various passages interspersed through them, the author's views respecting the political rights of a people. They appear briefly to be these that there is a maximum of liberty beyond which it is out of the power of either the sovereign or the people to force society, and that any attempt to push the democratic influence beyond that point only causes a reaction towards slavery. He holds that while this mean of

liberty has been attained, or nearly so, in England, it has, by the influence of the imperial connexion, been somewhat exceeded in this country; and he assigns this excess as one of the causes why, as he expresses it, "the handcuffs are on us" now. His views

on this subject, and on forced revolutions, are so varied, forcible, and happily illustrated, that we cannot but regret they are necessarily so scattered and disconnected through the tracts, that they do not assume the shape or distinctness of a regular theory; and we believe the author would render an acceptable service to the country, by reducing them to a regular and systematic form, so as to attract the observation, and challenge the discussion of statesmen. On the latter subject, that of forced revolutions, he is led, in his last tract, "Luck and Loyalty," into a more extended argument, and his views throughout are, upon the whole, conservative. We shall cite one passage, in which he deduces certain propositions from previous reasonings; it will afford a fair specimen of the style and power of the author ::

Secondly. That supposing she did, an armed revolution does not accomplish the objects it sets before it.

66

Thirdly. That, even if there were a reasonable prospect of attaining the benefits proposed, armed revolution is, under a constitution such as ours, criminal and unjustifiable in the highest degree, and calculated to induce the anger of God.

"The farther back we stand from a period, the better we can see its outline and true character. The ear detects the play of the national constitution more accurately by that mediate auscultation in which time is interposed between the oxaminer and the events. And it is after such comprehensive modes of investigation that the inquirer will best see in history the confirmation of the moral and Christian aphorism, that the laws prescribed to individuals are binding on communities; and as long as it is a crime as regards man, and a sin as regards God, to steal because we are hungry, or kill because we are exasperated, will forcible spoliation be indefensible under circumstances of public distress, and armed insurrection unjus

tifiable, even though public discontent should exist.

"There is a clue to all this. The true philosopher is able to discern, by an argument a posteriori, that the positive enactments of the divine codes of both Testaments are only confirmatory of the pre-existing laws of nature, which by their constitution regulate the happiness of the human race according to its obedience to, or violation of, certain immutable principles co-natural with what we call Nature herself. Those codes were given to help man to his own happiness; and obedience to them is rather recommended for his good than inculcated for his restraint. Just as a general adopts the plan of punishing soldiers who stray beyond the lines, when he apprehends that the enemy will cut off such of his men as they find straggling within their reach."

After all, the chief power and the strong attraction of these tracts lie not even in their sterling and sound material so much as in the nervous brevity of style-the strong, common sense of the positions-the homethrusts of the arguments-the aptness and variety of the images (of this last, Menenius is a perfect master)— the graphic power of his portrait painting his mingled eloquence, pathos, shrewdness, and humour. It is all this which, on their very first appearance, seized on the public mind -which has raised them out of the class of mere ephemeral brochures, to become, as we believe they will, part of the permanent literature of the country. It is all this which justifies their re-publication in the present form, and explains our devoting these pages to a review of them. It is true that these tracts are in their nature "occasional," but, independent of the merit of the composition, there is in them much that is calculated to make them still useful, though the occasion of their origin has passed away. There are many current sophisms, social and governmental, not yet exploded, many false views of our relations and position, much ignorance of Ireland existing not only on the other side of the channel, but even amongst ourselves: these are exposed, corrected, and explained, with an ability and clearness that must give the tracts a permanent value.

Ere we conclude this brief notice, we shall present our readers with a

few passages in justification of the opinions we have expressed. In the endeavour to detach the "real cul prits" from the mass of their fellowcountrymen, the author takes occasion to glance at the proceedings of a state trial. The picture is a masterly onebold in the sketch, true in the colour. ing, and perfect in the grouping and details:

"Every lawyer knows the vulgar cant of a criminal court; how it is a recognised trick of the prisoner's counsel to represent his client as the object of persecution by an organized conspiracy representing the crown, and headed by the crown prosecutor; a course so well understood and invariably acted on, that the advocate who is made in one case, by the simple administration of a fee, a participator in this nefarious conspiracy, urges without a blush, in the next, the very charge which, had it any real meaning, would have hopelessly criminated himself. This is part of the stock-machinery in courts of justice, and passes at its true value; but as cases rise in importance, and will be scrutinized more keenly by a wider circle, the common expedients of the advocate are subtilized and refined by his genius, expanding with circumstances, so as to be far less easily seen through. Coloured by the eloquence of the orator, the whole proceeding presents the aspect of persecution on the one hand, and mar tyrdom on the other. The crown concentrates its tremendous powers in one arm that of the attorney-general. It clothes him in a panoply of offensive and defensive armour, and, from the mere love of tyranny, launches him, battleaxe in hand, like some giant of romance, against the persons of one or two unfortunate individuals, whose cause, probably, some chivalrous barrister takes up with disinterested warmth, from the absolute impossibility of resisting the im pulse of his feelings. This would be all very well if it was set to the account of ordinary rhetoric, to be as such admired, and dismissed. But experience has shown, on a late occasion, how easily intelligence itself is entrapped by the hackneyed stratagem. On that occasion the strong exigencies of an imperrilled country were narrowed into the vindictive malignity of a salaried officer. The powers with which the constitution has invested an honourable functionary for the discharge of duties indispensable to the maintenance of public order, and as arduous as they are important, were converted into chains of tyranny or instruments of torture; and all that represents principle, system, ethics, and Christianity

in the organisation of legal machinery, was industriously construed into the reckless exercise of power under the influence of passion. A client (one helpless individual) appeared on one side: a grim array of authorities, of judges, counsel, police, gaolers, indiscriminately massed on the other. What an unequal force! what a gratuitous onslaught ! what an apparatus of extermination! Let the attorney-general abandon his prosecution; what injury is done to him? What! And has the attorney-general, then, no clients? Is he placed there to badger, to bully, and bait the prisoner for his own amusement? Is there no one but himself interested in the issue of the trial? Are there no fainting hearts, no feeble knees, tremblingly awaiting the issue of the strife? Oh, what an array do the attorney-general's clients present in such a case! To think of them might well inspire dulness itself with eloquence, and tinge the coldest technicalities with the glowing colours of the heart. True, the prisoner also has many friends and supporters, who wish him well; they are the high hearts and strong arms of the community-men ready to do and dare, eager for action, impatient to rush on danger, with the steel of strife gleaming from under the vesture of peace. But, oh! what a different aspect does the assembled group bear, whose cause the law officer of the crown pleads, in asking justice against the promoters of insurrection! Amongst its members, it is true, there is, thank God, many a brave spirit and powerful arm, not the less brave because it quails at the thoughts of civil bloodshed; not the less powerful because it is exercised in the arts of industry, or the labours of the field, instead of the evolutions of brigand discipline. But the group is made up of other constituents.

The

pious, and the patient, and the peaceful, the true philosopher, and the true Christian, are there. The humble in heart as well as in position; the philanthropist, who carries his love to man forth into life, and acts up to the lofty designation he bears; the patriot, who sees in his country, not a shapeless, aggregate of incoherent units, but a society bound together by equitable laws, systematized by political, social, and moral organization, dignified by liberal and enlightened institutions, and ennobled by magnanimity, virtue, and Christianity: such are among them. There, too, may be seen the manly labourer in each of the various fields of human cultivation; from the glebe which is so without a metaphor, to that which can only be designated as such in its most exalted and sublime sense-science, literature, poetry: the student who scorns the idea of attempt

ing to control masses of his fellow-men before he has learned to know himself, and toiled up the ascent which is the only legitimate way to true eminence. There, less prominently seen, stand the helpless and hapless families of the half-implicated peasant-the terrified children, the miserable parents, the distracted wife whose agony concentrates in a single groan the full power of that language which the genius and fluency of the advocate can only imperfectly embody in words-which eloquence itself can but paint at second-hand: there they are, mutely pleading in the person of one legal functionary. Yes, and more than these. The fair speculator, whose honest calculations have failed him, and left him to ruin, in the darkness of a crisis which baffled all anticipation; the beggared artist, with the elaborate creations of his chisel or pencil thrust aside in scorn or indifference in the ferocity of epidemic excitement; the versatile genius, who combines the triumphs of art with those of archæology and literature, and wears excellence in all with the amiable and most diffident bearing of a true philosopher, yet whose gentle pursuits, although they must confer immortal fame upon him hereafter, are, in the rage and roar of the strife, unable to make their modest claim for present support heard or recognized: such, too, are amongst the clients of the attorneygeneral. But it is the fashion to say (and of late the custom to believe) that the "right honourable gentleman" is a Goliah, stalking forth from the ranks of the Philistines in harness of brass to defy the armies of Israel, and make each innocent stripling who takes up a stone out of the brook, food for the fowls of the air."

Of

The allusion to our gifted fellowcitizen, Dr. Petrie, is too evident to be mistaken. The tribute, expressively as it is rendered, is no exagge rated one; and happy would we feel should the appeal, put forward with such a force, and yet with such delicacy, be heard and recognised. such characters a nation may be justly proud. This panegyric is not flattery, but justice; and we know no act of the viceroy, which would be at once more popular and more just, than thus, by recognising the claims of literature and genius, to conciliate the feelings of that class in Ireland, which is ever the bulwark and safeguard of loyalty and order-we mean the educated and the literary.

The mention of the present move. ment for an international league of

amity, leads to some observations upon the natural obstacles to a repeal of the Union, and on the fallacies of those who contend that the repeal is a move in the direction of nature:

"God forbid that we should see the Union repealed! That, indeed, would be a step in the wrong direction. I consider the new theory of the ultimate 'union of races' a complete fallacy, even if it applied to the case of these countries. The fact of the natural tendency of civilisation and intercommunication being to break down national clanship, itself overthrows it. No barrier is stronger in savage life than that of race; no division less perceptible, and more in the way, in cultivated communities. Here, at all events, such a reversion is impossible. As the English are mixed up of Britons, Saxons, Danes, and Normans, so are the Irish a compound of races, some of them separate at the time of the English invasion, and some of English and Scotch origin; so much so, that in few parts of the country does the pure blood now remain, and is scarcely ever found in the veins of those who clamour most loudly for its claims. The vast majority of the men who cry out for a distinctive nationality founded on race, are either thoroughbred Englishmen if you go back a few generations, or a mongrel breed, in which the wilder part may claim a Milesian origin, but the superior portion holds undeniable relation to the Saxon. I consider no folly more daring or more mischievous than this of attempting to lay at Nature's door the dissociability of jealousy, prejudice, and barbarism. It is a folly akin to impiety, for it impliedly contravenes the sacred oracles, which declare the genealogical as well as social brotherhood of the whole human race. And besides it is unphilosophical. Nobody can assert, as a principle, the impossibility of the union of races, who does not also assert the impossibility of their common origin; and the student knows that the whole tendency of ethnology, as a modern science, is to confirm the popular and scriptural belief on such original unity.

"To tear Ireland from England now would be to cause a hemorrhage fatal to the very existence of both. Who shall undertake to mark off the portions to be assigned to each? What Shylock shall cut the pound of flesh from the heart of the empire? The geographical boundaries have long ceased to represent any ethnical ones. Why should they, the most arbitrary and obsolete of all, be had recourse to to designate the political ones? You are seven hun

dred years too late. The imaginary line must now pass beneath every house, over every field, through every churchyard. It must wind from the remotest provinces of the one country to the inmost centre of the other, and become entangled in the wheels of institutions and the ties of families. It is a demarcation which must be disputed inch by inch. To accomplish it, you must not only cut through the most solid materials, but lacerate the most sensitive. The blood which would flow from the bodies of those who would have to fight the matter out would be nothing compared to that wrung from the hearts of the millions implicated in the issue of the strife."

Menenius might have added, where he speaks of the union of races, that the only instance of a race remaining distinct in the midst of sur rounding civilisation, from any canse except political ones, is precisely that which is admitted on all hands to be out of the course of nature, or miracu lous-namely, that of the Jews.

We cannot more fittingly close our quotations than with one to which we willingly give all the publicity in our power the invitation which our author diffidently ventures to lay at the feet of the sovereign on behalf of his country. He expresses himself with a becoming displeasure at the cold response which certain parties in Ireland made to the contemplated honour of last year, and professes himself ready "to cast his cloak (mine inky cloak, good madam) upon the discourteous mire which caused the royal foot to hesitate in stepping on our shores."

"It is not for me to constitute myself the ambassador of my countrymen before that throne. But that if indeed our gracious Queen were cordially and confidently to throw herself upon the honour and loyalty of Irishmen, and come amongst us, her progress through the length and breadth of the land would be one long triumphal procession, I feel as confident as I do of my existence. Every feeling of my heart assures me of the rapturous welcome she would receive; every conviction of my mind satisfies me that her presence would exalt loyalty from a principle into a passion in the breasts of Irishmen; every trait in her Majesty's character tells me that she would understand, appreciate, and love us, when she came to know us in our own land."

We have now, with greater brevity than we could wish, and than their merits demand, noticed these "Political Tracts." They are, indeed, the most remarkable productions of the kind which it has been our chance to meet with. Without name, introduction, puffing, or forced sale, they commended themselves instantly to the public, to an extent not often equalled. They have, we are convinced, been signally beneficial and timely. Evidently the production of a man of genius, of comprehensive views and profound thinking, they win their way by the spirit of truth, candour, philanthropy, and independence, which

pervades every page and line. It is true that Menenius is a powerful vindicator of the ministerial policy in Ireland in its main features during the late crisis, but he is plainly so not as a partisan. And though for ourselves we are not prepared to go with him in many of his commendations to the full length-in some of them not at all— still we are free to confess that he has enabled us, as no doubt he has enabled all who read his tracts, to accord full credit to many acts of the Irish executive, which his reasoning and his eloquence have placed in their proper light.

Ir was scarcely to be expected that the poet Campbell should be allowed to pass away without his monument and his biography. His Polish friends are determined that the pedestal of a monument, to be erected to him in Westminster Abbey, shall be of Polish marble. Delays and difficulties have, however, hitherto interfered with the execution of the design. No stone that would answer the purpose exists in the vicinity of the Baltic or the Black seas. The rich marble quarries in the districts of Galicia and Cracow are difficult of access for the purpose, as they have been lately the seat of a sanguinary insurrection. In fact, the only branch of business carried on there is the murder of landowners by the peasantry. To purchase a block of marble there would excite the suspicion of the government, and subject the agent in the transaction to heavy penalties. In the neighbourhood of the Baltic or Black seas there could be no great difficulty in shipping an article of the bulk to London, without attracting the attention of the police; but anywhere else it could not escape

detection, as it would have to be examined at all the frontiers, Russian, Austrian, and Prussian. At some future time they hope to transmit Sarmatian marble of suitable quality to London, and to have it inscribed with the words

"CARPATHIA THOME CAMPBELL

BRITANNIA POETE
POLONIE AMICO

IMMORTALI."

Let us hope that these delays and difficulties may lead both to the selection of the best marble, and also to the Latin inscription being something better than the words we have quoted.

Would that there had been some similar interruption to the breathless haste of the biographer.* Dr. Beattie is plainly a man influenced by the strongest feeling of affection to the poet, and in some respects we could not wish the work in better hands; still we wish that, like the Poles, he had waited till he had procured somewhat better marble. The materials of his book are not created by himself, and we have little fault to find with

1849.

VOL. XXXIII.-NO. CXCIV.

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