THE CASTLE-BUILDER. 621 



This can only be done for Ireland by the introduction of a well- 

 digested measure, for compelling the proprietors of estates to support 

 the poor, whom want of employment or other causes prevent from 

 supporting themselves. All the evils of Ireland unconnected with 

 faction, may be not only abated, but removed by a poor law indeed 

 those evils are nearly all deducible from the absence of some such 

 enactment. A poor law would at once give the best possible secu- 

 rity for the investment of English wealth which, guided by English 

 enterprize, and expended with English forthought and sagacity, 

 would necessarily produce, among the peasantry, English notions of 

 comfort and English desires and exertions to procure it. Mr. Inglis's 

 reasonings on the Poor Law Question are among the most valuable 

 portions of his valuable work. Our dissent from some of his views, 

 is sufficiently indicative of the sincerity of our praise. A more sea- 

 sonable production could not have appeared, nor one more deserving 

 the earnest attention of all classes of political thinkers. 



THE CASTLE-BUILDER. 



Is there a happy, a truly happy, man in this world? Say, ye 

 sages, who pretend (I don't question your qualifications) to monopo- 

 lize all and every species of knowledge and experience, is there a 

 truly happy man, I repeat, in this various or contrarious globe ? If 

 so, is he to be found within the compass of a day's journey or two 

 or three? for, seriously speaking, I should not consider the expen- 

 diture of a glorious three days uselessly or unproductively adventured, 

 if crowned with the sight of such a phenomenon. The philosopher 

 of old, who went about at such an egregious and unnecessary ex- 

 pense of rushlight, to find out, if he could, an honest man, was, I 

 must be allowed to say, in my opinion, one who should have given 

 any person but little trouble, who, with or without a lanthorn, should 

 have gone in quest of an ass ; for, independent of that reprehensible 

 sacrifice of tallow-grease, of which I hope I have not captiously com- 

 plained, the very fellow, of whom he purchased his meagre luminary, 

 could have told him distinctly enough that the same Sir Honest Man 

 was all a fudge j and impressed the truth of this upon his recollec- 

 tion by cheating him out of the odd farthing of his halfpenny. A pil- 

 grimage to the shrine of human happiness would, I suspect, be equally 

 vain and valueless ; or, are we fools enough to suppose we discern 

 the traces of it in the careworn and emaciated visages of the great 

 and powerful ? Pooh ! " Uneasy is the head that wears a crown," 

 says Shakspeare, the king of poets ; and one or two of the sceptred 

 race have, since his time, we believe, ascertained the additional un- 

 easiness sustained by that body that wears not a head. May your 

 statesman be quoted as a type of happiness ? So far from that, we 

 have it upon good authority, that the profession is an insufferable 



M.M. No. 108. 4 L 



