1828.] Moral and Physical Force of Ireland. 485 
the world. Their moral character, from its degradation, is considered 
equally advantageous. The agricultural and manufacturing population 
of England are declared perfectly unworthy of being compared with 
them; and we have no doubt that the remarks on the misery of our 
potteries, manufactures, poor-laws, &c., will be considered as very con- 
clusive authority on the continent.. The financial strength of Ireland is 
extolled, strange to say, over that of England ; but, all wonder on this 
head will cease, when we find that he reckons the Irish debt, funded and 
unfunded, and an advance made by England of 6,300,000/., as part of her 
ordinary and annual revenue! This is, indeed, Irish financiering witha 
vengeance. 
‘ Parallels with the power of Holland, in the flourishing period of her 
stadtholders, in the seventeenth century—with Prussia, under Frederick 
the Great, and, again, when roused against Napoleon—and, of course, 
with the States of America, follow. In this latter case, he finds, how- 
ever, that the parallel does not fit, and the allusion which the passage 
contains to the heroes of the Roman Catholic Association is not un- 
amusing :— 
“ But as the differences between the conduct of America and Ireland have 
been stated, it may be right to advert to a difference of circumstances, in the 
situation of the two countries, which might have produced this difference of 
conduct. F 
* In‘Treland all officers were there immediately dependent, and removable at 
pleasure. From the proximity of Ireland, its government, although not 
domestic, was enabled to keep better watch over the conduct of its functionaries, 
than it could in America. The American colonies were remote, and the officers 
(native) generally more disposed to please the people, than the king or his 
representative. 
“Tn Ireland there was always the ultima ratio (a standing army).—The 
colonies were almost destitute of it, and the civil magistrate not prone to direct 
the use of it. Here then are differences—difference as to servility of public 
Sunctionaries ;—the cause of that servility, the advantage taken ofa difference 
in religious creeds—of supposed difference in descent of blood, to confine the 
civil magistracy to a small but ascendant class—the servility and the exagge- 
rated fears of that ascendant class, rendering it prone, even to flippancy, to 
direct the use of a standing army, which, since the union, has been doubled in 
numbers and in vigilance An army divided into above four hundred 
different stations, shows what military attention has been given, to enforce a 
civil union. 
« But there is another difference, which it is difficult to class—the differ- 
ence in individual characters, which times of commotion and change in every 
country throw forward on the public stage—the frame of such individual 
characters, often determining the fate of national contests. 
“ Among the great instruments of American independence, General Wash- 
ington was not a speech-maker. 
“ Doctor Franklin was not a speech-maker. General Gates was not a speech= 
maker—nor was General Green a speech-maker. Yet these were the men whose 
labours wrought out the American independence. 
“Since that period, and in the late (1813) attack made on American inde- 
_ pendence, by her early, and, indeed her only enemy, General Jackson was not 
a speech-maker ; nor was Commodore Mac Donough, nor one of those naval 
heroes, who, on the waters, nerved the force of America, a speech-maker. 
“Tn the talents of these men—the nature of their talents marking the nature 
of their designation—America, without theleading aid of one speech-maker, first 
achieved, and afterwards defended her independence and her happiness. 
“But as the declaration of independence produced, in America, heroes, 
statesmen and legislators ;—so, the act of union, being the reverse of the decla- 
