THE 
MONTHLY MAGAZINE. 
Pew Series. 
Vou. Il. DECEMBER, 1826. [No. 12. 
IRELAND 1N 1826; 
Arie time par wis TH bore ig Exel, nat Ti TolovoW ev TH TOAEL.—LUCIAN. 
IRELAND, it has been said, is an anomaly among nations, in morals, 
policy, and political economy; and its social aspects partake largely of 
the same singularity. There is no epithet in the dictionary that so 
qualifies and (if I may so speak) disfigures its substantive, as this same 
word ‘ Trish ;”" and when we say “ Irish justice,” “ Irish gentleman,” 
* Trish lawyer,” << Irish literature,” “ Irish religion,” &c. &c., we mean 
something toto ccelo different from the same classes and predicaments in 
other countries. Never, perhaps, in the history of the country, were 
these differences more strongly marked, than at the present moment; 
and never was it more difficult to make the condition of the people 
intelligible to other nations. Every term that can be employed requires 
anew definition, to prevent mistake; and after all that can be done, 
analogy will mislead the reader, and hurry him into false conclusions, 
from identity of words, to identity of things. If, for example, inferences 
be drawn from the English Catholic to the Irish, how totally false will 
be the conception! How infinitely different their condition ! How varioug 
the ways in which exclusion operates, in the several departments of their 
social life! An English Catholic gentleman is a person who cannot 
hold certain places, from which he is shut out by oaths; but in all 
other respects he is like any other individual of the same rank. He 
has the same measure of justice in the courts, the same access to 
fashionable society, the same respect and attention from all the subaltern 
and superior departments of office; and the odds are considerable, that 
even the fact of his belonging to the forbidden creed is scarcely known 
beyond the circle of his domestic hearth. An Irish Catholic, on the 
contrary; let his fortune and personal pretensions be what they may, is 
driven from what is called genteel company. He can rarely, and with 
iaiticpley, et himself put upon the Commission of the Peace. He is 
diligently kept at a distance from all corporate privileges. He is bullied 
by the mayor, preached at by the parson, distrusted in the grand j 
room, excluded from the vestry, except when he can be charged with 
‘an onerous and unprofitable office; and he is insulted by every little 
“MLM. New Serios.—Vov. II. No. 12. AE 
