98 THE FREETEINKLE'S MAGAZINE. May Fair at E.; L. sated t tea and tables, and de It is the first of Varrenes of the aristocracy of talk and the mur But now these time-killers of St. Stephen's have departed, we can sumų the worth of the work they have done-look backwards for those foot-prints which great men are said to leave upon the sands of time, and take the measure of what vestiges there may be. Four years the Whigs have been in power. During this period they have tried and failed to emancipate the Jews in three successive sessions; and during this very session now just closed, terrified by the House of Lords, they have ignominiously withdrawn their Bill without even sending it up to their noble lordships. Outraged by the insolent indifference of Lord John, the citizens of London have deemed it incumbent on them to take the matter into their own hands, though at the eleventh hour, though in the mildest and politest manner. to present himself at the table to take the oaths and his seat-a course A public meeting authorised Baron Rothschild which should have been adopted at first. But the citizens of London are a patient and comfortable race, wise in their generation, rich in abuses which need the besom of Hercules-afraid to stir above their breath in any matter, lest the noble lord, in whom they put their faith, should turn upon them, and threaten to carry a sanitary Bill to purify the municipal atmosphere in and about the Guildhall. They have played at emancipating the Jews, as the premier has played with public opinion. They have lacked earnestness as he has lacked sincerity. The baron presented himself in obedience to their decision, and demanded to take the oaths on the Old Testament. The House agreed, on a division, by a large majority, to permit that course; and the baron was accordingly sworn, omitting the words 'on the true faith of a Christian.' When he was so sworn, the Speaker ordered him to withdraw; and he, amidst much uproar, did withdraw. The oath was held to invalid, and justly so, by the lawyers; and Sir F. Thesiger moved imme ately for the issue of a new writ for the City of London. Whereupon [r. Page Wood moved that the seat was full. The motion for the writ as negatived without a division, and the resolution of Mr. Wood was Iso negatived by a considerable majority. Consequently the seat was leclared, by a vote of the wise men of Westminster, to be neither full nor Empty-the baron was affirmed to be and not to be member for the city. But this was not the end of the farce. As if to crown the whole with Fridicule, the Attorney-General shortly after moved that the House should s agree to think upon the subject next session. And although Mr. Hume proposed two weak counter resolutions, the Government proposal of procrastination was carried. There have been, of late years, few such exhibitions of imbecility and indolence. This emancipating of the Jews has been before parliament for four years. Whig sincerity has been tested. Whig sincerity has been found hollow and worthless insincerity. Now, when money is to be voted away, and royalty pampered, and Lord John desires to play that part for which he is so well fitted by birth and nature-the first-rate flunkey-it is quite a different thing. When a Duke of Cambridge is to be pensioned out of the earnings of the poor, the Whig movements are very rapid. It has taken four years to fail in passing the Jew Bill. It did not take four days to succeed in granting £12,000 per annum to the son of the 'good Duke of Cambridge.' The Landlord and Tenant (Ireland) Bill—a poor measure on a very important subject, but still better than none at all-was brought in on the 18th of February, and has been shelved since. The premier tells us, in a tone which implies that he thinks we ought to be grateful for so much condescending attention, that eight cabinet meetings have been consumed in debating this Bill-without effect. Now here was a matter which lies at the roots of Irish misery, on which ministerial timidity and general incompetence can arrive at no conclusion. Here is a fundamental social wrong which has been crying for remedy for half a century. Ministers fear to touch it. Why? Because ministers are Irish landlords themselves. Here is a measure which might have been so framed as to conciliate distracted Ireland-and eight cabinet meetings have pondered on it in vain. Whig sagacity could make nothing of it, for want, probably, of a guiding principle, or a strong sense of justice. But who so fleet as a Whig to pension a prince of the blood? Justice to Ireland is an affair of management. The Whigs have not had time-four years!—to arrange it. They cannot contrive justice. But they can, in as many hours as they have consumed years in deliberating on Ireland, pander to royalty at the expense of economy, and vote Marlborough House to the Prince of Wales when he is nine years of age; and, in addition to this, they can vote some thousands to build stables for the juvenile royal highness! The Bill to effect this precious piece of flunkeyism was only brought in on the 30th of July. Of course, in a House whose chief ability lies in voting the supplies, to vote this Bill was an easy task. A few days afterwards, the Irish Arms Bill-or, as it is very properly entitled in parliamentary language, the Crime and Outrage Act (Ireland) Continuance Bill-was read a third time, and passed by a majority of 75 to 21. It is nearly identical with the famous Arms Bill, which, in 1846, the Whigs refused to pass when they ousted Sir Robert Peel! Then Ireland was to be governed on totally new principles. Sir Robert had uttered the word 'equality,' while he demanded coercion, with much more reason than the Whigs demand it now, Lord John was not to be outdone. He was for fraternity, and with great fuss and pother threw dust in the eyes of a patient public by declaring against coercion. But then he was 'out,' and now he is 'in.' How much longer will the people of England submit to this stultifying'game of politics,' which costs it at least thirty millions a year in cash, and an incalculable amount in temper, morals, and honour ? On another Irish question the Whigs have behaved with the same shamelessness-the Irish Franchise Bill. The only measures which they do not compromise are measures of coercion. They proposed no modifications in the Arms Bill-they have accepted a compromise of the Franchise Bill. The Lords raised the proposed qualification from £8 to £15. The sapient Whigs, splitting the difference a trifle in favour of the Lords, made the sum £12. On the whole the session has not disappointed us, for where there is no expectation there can be no disappointment. We have never believed in the Whigs-neither in their sincerity when out of office, neither in their ability when in power. That the game of parties should produce a premier like Lord John is its sufficient condemnation. We have never had the slightest trust in the House of Commons, nor the least particle of belief in its rightful existence. It is a usurpation, 'a solemnly-constituted impostor' -and the people of England will be miserably deluded if they expect anything above class-legislation from that House. It is idle to talk of principles when its conduct is in question-they only recognise expediency there." The session stands on record as one of futilities, extravagance, and busy idleness, and Bills which have not passed. And if the Whigs have as quiet a time of it next session as they have had this, 1851 will be the fitting counterpart in legislative nullity to 1850. II. There are two movements proceeding side by side in Ireland of vast importance. Full long has that unhappy country been subjected to the outrages of rampant landlordism, protected and encouraged by law. Subjected to an alien proprietary, insulted and plundered by the professors of an alien religion, remorselessly persecuted from the beginning of British rule by Anglo-Norman, Anglo-Scottish, and Anglo-Saxon rulers, after the lapse of six hundred years, each century stained, nay saturated, with blood, Ireland at length begins to receive some show of justice, and to stand some chance of regeneration. Whatever may have been the faults and crimes of O'Con ell, he conferred one inestimable blessing on his country. He, in his own person, and with his unmatched perseverance and eloquence, brought the subject of Irish wrong, we might say dragged it bodily, into the House of Cominons, and forced it on the attention of the British people. With her beggared and bankrupt race of landlords, and her peasantry living in forced idleness and ignorance, Ireland had suffered many famines equal to that of '45 and '46. But they were unknown to all except the few and to the sufferers. Every ten years, with an almost mathematical regularity, plague and hunger decimated the peasantry. These gigantic evils, occurring in our day, could not be hidden in the blaze of publicity which lights up almost every corner of the world. The voice of O'Connell rang them through the nations. The pen of the traveller made them known to the thinkers. The columns of the journal gave them a notoriety which could not but impress the public mind with the fact that Ireland was enduring enormous and infamous wrongs; and feelings of horror and indignation, of sympathy with the poor sufferers, and wrath against their oppressors, necessarily took possession of the public. Once aroused to the existence of an evil and the perpetration of an injustice, the British people looked narrowly for their causes. They were soon perceived. No management could conceal them; no art varnish them out of sight, or gloss the hardness and hideousness of their colouring. People soon saw that Irish landlordism, the most despicable thing under the sun, was at the root of the social curse. It was landlord bankruptcy which was revealed. For long ages Ireland had been but a mine whence rent was dug, remorselessly, without shame, and when acquired squandered with extravagance in the indulgences of caprices, in reckless and barbarous hospitality, in luxury, in gaming, in debauchery. It was and is the relation between landlord and tenant' which involves all things in Ireland. That relation was and still, to a great extent, is an unparalleled infamy. You cannot match it in the annals of the world. There was not one single law to protect the tenant, still less the peasant, while there were scores legalising their absolute dependence and authorising their oppression. From this arose agrarian outrage and noonday murder-horrible, yes very horrible to contemplate; but the necessary and logical consequence of landlord outrage and the slow murder caused by neglect, famine, and pestilence. Execrate Irish crime, you may, nay, must, if you be human, in spite of its manifold provocations-but if you be human and good, you must not, you cannot absolve Irish landlordism of the sin. To remedy and eradicate this state of suffering on all sides, to prevent the landlords from inflicting, and save the people from enduring, injustice, great exertions are being made. We now see the fruits of O'Connell's giant labours to popularise Irish misery. The two movements we mentioned in our first sentence are two of those fruits. They are the official progress of ejecting bankrupt landlords made in the court, constituted by the En cumbered Estates Act, and the unofficial agitation of the Tenant-Right Leaguers. The great Dublin conference, at which the Black North and the fiery South, the stern Presbyterian and the impulsive Catholic met and shook hands in friendship, has surprised all by its marvellous unanimity. Let there be an end of disunion was the rallying cry. Stalwart Fathers and gallant reverends sat side by side. The resolutions were passed unanimously. In the main they declared that the rackrent system, insecure tenure, and landlord oppression, are the leading causes of Irish misery; and that the remedy must be sought in a rent valuation, a secure tenure so long as the rent is paid, right of the tenant to sell his interest, and the legalisation of tenant right in Ulster. Further, they proposed to make every candidate pledge himself to support the demand for Tenant Right, asserted the determination to employ all the means within the law to carry out the object of the League, and recommended the collection of a fund for that purpose, by means of a general and voluntary assessment on the poor law valuation, of such an amount as may be required. This ought to awaken the Whigs. Its bold originality and distinctness as a policy, can only be paralleled in the annals of the anti-corn-law assault on the county franchise, by means of the forty shilling freeholds. And when we reflect that this policy has the assent and active co-operation both of the Presbyterian and Catholic clergy, numbers of whom were present, we cannot doubt the result. The land of Ireland must be emancipated and won back as a heritage for the Irish people. III. The French Assembly has been prorogued for a short time, and a committee of reactionists appointed to watch over the safety of the republic. For a season an end is put to the course of the destructive and despotic majority, who have done absolutely nothing but pass coercive laws, grant royal pensions, sow France from end to end with the fertile seeds of hatred, and violate the constitution day by day. Intent on saving society, they have outraged humanity. The pretended champions of progress, the friends of order, they have delivered over the youth of France to the priests, and sought to re-enthrone superstition by the conservation of ignorance, and endeavoured to ensure servility by debasing and brutifying the masses. They have re-established the censorship and the stamp on newspapers. They have hung free-thought in chains; they have had recourse to the most revolting spy system of Fouché and Napoleon. Universal suffrage has been destroyed, and by one act more than half the electors of France have been erased from the lists. And, as a complement to these political iniquities, they have reimposed some of the most hateful taxes affecting the poor. Elected upon false pretences, elected after saturating France with calumnies against their opponents-elected by the influence of the clergy, the greater proprietors, and the prefects,-they knew that three years' experience would enlighten the people; and, to counteract the effects of that |