IRELAND AND HER COMMENTATORS. 609 



ligion sacrificed at the shrine of the most unchristian fanaticism, has 

 been rendered subservient to the promotion of prejudice among those 

 who, because of their distance from the scene of polemical machina- 

 tions, could not detect the motives of the plotters ; and hence it is, 

 that the evils of Ireland, so far from being removed, because of their 

 publicity, have been rather augmented by being referred by England 

 to Catholic and Protestant squabbles. Agitators and ascendancy 

 men have thus succeeded in victimizing the country with impunity 

 one inflaming to madness the passions of the people, already more 

 than sufficiently excited by the spoliations of the other 



An indifference, amounting to positive repugnance, has naturally 

 been engendered towards Ireland from the causes we have just as- 

 signed. This distaste has been increased tenfold by the abortive 

 schemes of the countless visionaries of both countries who have mus- 

 tered sufficient effrontery to obtrude their little nostrums on the at- 

 tention of the public. Every jejune perpetrator of print feels war- 

 ranted to suggest his pet panacea for the ills of Ireland. Mr. Fusbos 

 Boaden, the blundering play write, half-a-dozen years ago, in his Life 

 of Mrs. Siddons, took occasion, in retailing green-room gossip, to 

 make a demi-heroic transit to the political stage of the neighbouring 

 country, and his temerity met the approbation of certain sages 

 of the London press. His example stimulated a host of similarly 

 well-qualified personages to descant on so prolific a theme ; and the 

 consequence has been, that while there is no country about which so 

 much has been written in a given time, there is none about which so 

 little is accurately known. The topography of Kamtschatka or of 

 Borneo is comparatively familiar to the majority of English ; and 

 whether Cunnemara be a district on the coast of Labrador or of Con- 

 naught, is a question which we believe would nonplus many a prize- 

 essayist. All things, political as well as geographical, partook of the 

 evil of impressions founded in error ; and the people of Great Britain 

 naturally arise at conclusions respecting their Hibernian brethren the 

 antithesis of truth. 



Were correct knowledge of the true position of Irish affairs and the 

 real state of that fine, but unfortunate country, placed before England, 

 we have no hesitation in saying, that a marked improvement would 

 speedily be achieved in her favour, and eventually an emancipation 

 from all the evils that now oppress her. Mr. Cobbett has drawn pic- 

 tures of Irish life in his recent peregrinations among the repealers, 

 harrowing! y vivid, and as painfully faithful. But though no man 

 can convey a more lively impression of what immediately comes 

 under his own observation, the member for Oldham has unfortunately 

 his previous reputation to contend with, which at once stamps his 

 statements with suspicion. The plain repetition of the most notorious 

 fact coming from Mr. Cobbett, is sufficient to excite the incredulity 

 of men not unusually scrupulous ; so that the fidelity of his portraits 

 is at once neutralized and forgotten amid the heap of ornate drapery 

 with which he clothes the most ordinary subject. Irishmen suffi- 

 ciently intelligent to investigate the causes of their country's misfor- 

 tunes without being at all influenced by those causes themselves, have 

 not yet been found ; or if they do exist, they have not succeeded 



