1829.] [ 413 ] 



PROTESTANT COLONIES Oi" IRELAND. 



Something must be speedily done foi- Ireland ; and is not to be done 

 by the feeble, or the factious, or the hypocritical quackeries that have 

 till now been suffered to tamper with a country most liberally endowed 

 by nature, and impoverished only by the absurdities of her superstitions 

 and the guilt of her popular disturbers. No country upon earth has ex- 

 hibited so stern an evidence of the fatal power of man to counteract tlie 

 bounties of heaven. The soil of Ireland has been proved by the 

 clearest experiments to be, aci'e for acre, superior to that of England ; 

 yet five millions of acres in Ireland are at this day as undisturbed by 

 plough or spade as if they lay under the pole. Her seas abound with 

 fish, and some of the finest fishing banks in the world are within sight 

 of her shores ; yet the Irish peasant on the first failure of his potatoe 

 dies of hunger. The summers are the most temperate in Europe, the 

 winters the mildest — cattle can remain unhoused from January to De- 

 cember — yet there are more famines in it than in Siberia. The people 

 are naturally hardy, easily subsisted, and singularly vigorous, laborious 

 and intelligent, when we consider their opportunities ; yet one fourth 

 of them are paupers, and another fourth banditti, and almost all 

 restless, insubordinate, and embittered against law and government. 

 The face of Ireland is singularly picturesque, yet eminently adapted 

 for all purposes of commerce and communication, by its general level. 

 No point of the land is a thousand feet above the plain ; and no land in 

 Europe abounds so much in chains of lakes, in rivers flowing in dif- 

 ferent directions, and in a perpetual supply of water. Ireland might be 

 made a country of water-communication through its whole length and 

 breadth ; yet it has but two canals, and those two in the most em- 

 barrassed condition. Ireland has more harbours for ships of the largest 

 size than the whole of Europe ; the single western coast containing for 

 two hundred miles but a succession of the most magnificent harbours. 

 It is the nearest coast to the whole western world, to Portugal and 

 Spain, to the Mediterranean, to the whole navigation of the immense 

 regions south of the Straights of Gibraltar. The west coast of Ireland 

 is the first made by every sail from India, Africa, and the Americas. 

 It has been ascertained that before a vessel from the port of London 

 gets out of soundings, a vessel from the west of Ireland may reach 

 America. Ireland seems, by its position, by its western harbours, and 

 by the facility of communication over every part of its surface, to have 

 been actually intended as- the great centre of intercourse between the 

 old world and the new. It is large, containing 30,000 square miles ; of 

 all this space the indentings by harbours and arms of the sea are so nu- 

 merous, that it is distinctly stated that there is not an acre above fifty 

 miles from the sea. But its eminent superiority as a centre of inter- 

 course between Europe and the western world, is shown by the fact, that 

 as if by the manifest intention of Providence to point out its purposes, 

 the narrowest portion of Ireland is exactly the line between the middle of 

 its eastern coast and its western. From Dublin to Galway is but an hun- 

 dred miles. The merchant breakfasts on the shores of the Irish Chan- 

 nel, and sups on the shores of the Atlantic ! — yet Ireland has no 

 manufactures, no trade, no intercourse Avith foreign Avcalth ; for it 

 would i)e only a burlesque to call by the name of trade its exportations 

 of bullocks and potatoes to the single port of Liverpool. The only 

 active trade of Ireland is in pauper? and members of parliament. But 



