1829.] Has England misgoverned Ireland ? 629 
There is but one alternative: that, provoked by some sudden popish 
insolence, the Protestants may take the alarm, may retort, and, 
with a new spirit of combination and resistance, commence a civil war. 
A fearful result, but speedier, and less fatal than the final and inevitable 
amalgamation which a more cautious policy on the papist side, and the 
continued contempt and neglect of the British cabinet, might produce in 
the Protestant mind. 
But are we to lose Ireland because the system of governing her has in 
one great respect been changed? Certainly not. Yet she may give us 
the trouble of another conquest—be again the scene of war and _spolia- 
tion, and her fields again change hands: pass from those of the Butlers, 
the Fitz-Geralds, the Fitz-Maurices, the De Burghs, the Cavendishes, 
the Fitz-Williams, cum multis aliis of English breed, into those of a new 
race of British adventurers. Nor will those great families have any 
right to complain of any but their ancestors of the present day. 
One word, in parting, of Irish landed proprietors. These personages, 
whether old Irish, old English, or English of a century or two old, all 
look upon the people after the old “cutting and coshering” fashion—the 
first from the inherent vice of their character, and the two latter from 
being heirs of conquest, and of a distinct race from their serfs. If these 
_ persons are allowed to legislate for Ireland, they will do nothing for the 
‘amelioration of the people. It is to English legislators that the Irish 
peasant must look for succour. The Irish landlord—especially the resi- 
dent landlord, for he is often more arbitrary than the absentee, particularly 
when the latter has an Englishman managing his Irish estates—will, 
without ruth, turn adrift the poor who are no longer necessary to his 
political power. English legislators hearken not to Irish senators when 
they deprecate poor laws to the unhappy wretches whom they turn 
adrift from their cabins, their potatoe gardens, and two or three acres of 
land, to perish in the neighbouring bogs :—but, as nature is not so 
accommodating as parliament, it would be well to consider, that if Ireland 
is to be tranquil, the people must be fed. 
One remark I would make, and then have done. Henry VII. created 
the middle classes of England, by enabling the barons to break the entails 
of their estates. Our modern nobility have risen on their ruins. Would 
it not be well done to enable the Cavendishes, Fitz-Williams, Pettys, 
&ec. &c. &c., to break the entails of their Irish estates, and limit the 
sale of them ; not on the plan of the Swan River, but on something 
like that of James I., in Ulster. By this process a number of resident 
gentry would be created, whose fortunes would be too moderate to 
tempt them to St. James’s, and yet their protection be amply sufficient 
for the growth of a repectable peasantry. The great English landed 
proprietors, who have large estates in Ireland, add not by them an iota 
to the power of the English crown in that country—but they take 
vastly from its popularity. The same means, in the hands of a new race 
of intelligent residents, might work wonders : example is worth precept at 
any time ; and in this middle order, law, religion, and civilization would 
find their strong hold. 
S. 
