J830.] The Year 1830. 123 



rather, what new triumph have not the agents of that frightful com- 

 pound of superstition and blood, found in the baffling of that commis- 

 sion, and the impunity of the criminals ? Open rebellion does not yet 

 rage through Ireland, cities are not set in flames, and provinces ploughed 

 with the ploughshare of destruction. But is government to be good for 

 nothing but to keep off the last extremities of civil war ? Is a country 

 to be pronounced prosperous, on the sole strength of its not being swept 

 with the torch and the sword ; or is a peasantry to be declared " amelio- 

 rated" because it does not stand in open arms against the King's banner ? 

 Are the papists to be declared loyally won over to subordination, because 

 they are hitherto satisfied with shouting their applause for Mr. O'Connell's 

 promise to repeal the union? or is the Irish church tobe pronounced secure, 

 because the payers of its dues are hitherto contented with cursing the 

 receivers to their face, or shooting them from time to time at their own 

 doors ? Or is the government to be pronounced secure, because the green 

 ribbon of the Order of Liberators is yet suspended only from the neck, 

 and not from the pike of those new-found loyalists, whose motto is, 



" Hereditary bondsmen, know ye not 



Who would be free, themselves must strike the blow ?" 



Or is the supremacy of England to be declared beyond all conspiracy ; 

 because hitherto there has only been summoned an " assemblage of those 

 glowing patriots who long to emulate the glories of 1780, and remember 

 America ?" 



But let us come to the test of this amelioration. The grand, con- 

 ciliatory, conscience-calming, sorrow-balming measure has passed six 

 months ; and still there is an army of 30,000 troops of the line in Ire- 

 land. Between the constabulary force, which is in all senses military, 

 the militia depots, the regimental depots, and the remainder of the yeo- 

 manry, every man of them available and employed, the force that 

 keeps " ameliorated" Ireland in a state of tranquillity ! such tran- 

 quillity as would be called outrage and bloodshed in an Arabian desert, 

 or on a Turkish frontier, is little short of 60,000 men. 



Is there any proposition to reduce that force, to thin the garrison that 

 holds Ireland for England, or rather to lessen the number of the gaolers 

 that coerce the furious and sanguinary disaffection of the whole popish 

 population ? Not the slightest ; not a brigade, not a company, not a 

 platoon has been suffered to leave the sacred soil in which the spirit of 

 amelioration has been so busy under the miraculous auspices of the 

 " atrocious Bill." 



The foreign policy of the Administration must look for its defenders in 

 the same quarter with those of its " ameliorating" system. What" has 

 been that policy, judging from its effects, for no man can hope to judge 

 from its principles, one of the grand boasts of the Administration being 

 to suffer no knowledge of its principles, upon this or any other point of 

 government, to escape ; but time and facts, surer guides than any specious- 

 ness of harangue, have decided the question. If perpetual failure is to 

 be deemed a proof of wisdom, then have the foreign measures of 

 this administration been pre-eminently wise. 



First let us look to the movements of France. On the first mention 

 of sending French troops to the Morea, the British Cabinet was under- 

 stood to make the most angry remonstrances imaginable : for the measure 

 was presumed to menace our possession of the Ionian Isles, and wat 



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