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the owner and the occupier of the soil of which such evictions have been the natural fruit. But further, the part taken by Irish landlords in connection with the Irish emigration is a portion of history, and one of which the due recognition is, I hold, quite indispensable to the right understanding of present events.

Not a few public writers feel much difficulty in accounting for the persistent hatred manifested by a portion of the Irish people for the English name. Such a state of feeling is regarded as incomprehensible, in presence of the many and great benefits conferred on their country by modern legislation, and of the good disposition towards Irishmen which is known to animate most English statesmen; and, as generally happens in like cases, the phenomenon is therefore commonly referred to some ineradicable vice or flaw in the Celtic character. It might help those writers to a solution of their difficulty, if they would reflect on the condition of mind in which the victims of the violent expulsions just described must have crossed the Atlantic. Is it strange if, in after years, the picture of the sheriff and his posse, with crowbar and torch, and the smoking ruins of their hovels tumbling to pieces over their heads,—if the nights spent in the ditch by the wayside, and all the wretchedness of the tramp to the port,—if these things should find a more permanent place in their imagination than the advantages of Catholic Emancipation, Corporate Reform, the National Schools, or the Encumbered Estates Court? Men leaving their country full of such bitter recollections would naturally not be forward to disseminate the most amiable ideas respecting Irish landlordism

and the power which upholds it. I own I cannot wonder that a thirst for revenge should spring from such calamities; that hatred, even undying hatred, for what they could not but regard as the cause and symbol of their misfortunes-English rule in Irelandshould possess the sufferers; the sufferers; that it should grow into a passion, into a religion, to be preached with fanatic zeal to their kindred, and bequeathed to their posterity -perhaps not the less effectually that it happened to be their only legacy. The disaffection now so widely diffused throughout Ireland may possibly in some degree be fed from historical traditions, and have its remote origin in the confiscations of the seventeenth century; but all that gives it energy, all that renders it dangerous, may, I believe, be traced to exasperation produced by recent transactions, and more especially to the bitter memories left by that most flagrant abuse of the rights of property, and most scandalous disregard of the claims of humanity-the wholesale clearances of the period following the famine.

V.

OUR DEFENCES: A NATIONAL OR A STANDING ARMY? *

THE war of 1870, which has already unmade and made emperors, which has shaken one nation to its centre and consolidated another, has also brought some wellworn platitudes to the proof. What have become of our peace-at-any-price principles? of the doctrine of non-intervention, as interpreted by Manchester? How completely do we now miss in able leaders the customary assurance winding up all discussion on foreign topics, that, come what might, under no circumstances could England be drawn into war. The common form has disappeared, and has given place to an entirely different refrain. The picture of the secure watcher gazing from his serene height on the tempest-tossed bark below is less familiar than it was some six months ago. In early July England's interest in European politics was that of the gods of Epicurus in human affairs. Before the month passed, indeed, the revelation of the Benedetti treaty showed that anger could find a place even in the placid bosoms of

* Fortnightly Review, February 1871.

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Englishmen. But the unwonted emotion was appeased by the new Belgian treaty. The course of the war, removing all danger on the side of that Power from which danger was most apprehended, reassured us, and by October we had begun to settle down into the comfortable conviction, that, behind our "streak of silver sea," the rôle for us in Europe could only be a moral one. Let others maintain armies and seek aggrandizement or glory in barbarous warfare; ours the purer ambition, sitting aloof from the distractions of less favoured lands, to weigh the merits of our neighbours' quarrels, award by our verdict the meed of honour or disgrace, and shape that opinion which rules the world. Happy England!" which thus, safe from the dangers of Continental neighbourhood, may yet share in all the honours of the grand drama! We had begun, I say, to settle down into this conviction, when the Gortchakoff circular rudely disturbed our self-gratulations, and showed us the sort of paradise we were living in. We, whose interest in European affairs was either none at all, or that of the impartial and disinterested spectator, were suddenly discovered to be the principal, if not the sole, guardians of European public law. Having pronounced judgment, it belonged to us also, it seemed, to carry the sentence into effect. Nor-so strictly were our obligations interpreted— was it permitted to go behind the form in order to look at the substance, nor yet to take account of the joint nature of our responsibilities, shared as they were by others equally or more interested and equally bound with ourselves. It was sufficient that the law

was so, that our signature was to the bond. Such, or nearly such, was the language very generally held by the London press in the end of November under the stimulus given to our national self-respect by the Russian manifesto; and it would seem in the main to have correctly reflected the passing mood of the public. To this complexion have our peace-at-anyprice professions come, and such is the practical issue from our oft-repeated resolves to withdraw wholly from the Continental scene. I say such is the practical issue from those professions; for who does not see that the present overwrought susceptibility of the nation is but the natural and inevitable reaction from past ignoble avowals? No doubt we meant but a small portion of what we said, or what was said on our behalf; but professions of faith are not necessarily without practical consequences because they are insincere. They may be believed by others; and those who uttered the platitudes, or who suffered them to pass, thinking them, perhaps, a graceful homage to becoming aspirations, may find themselves forced into courses such as they would never have dreamed of entering on, were it not for the real or supposed necessity of dissipating delusions they have themselves sedulously built up.

But, not to enter now on controverted ground, one truth, at all events, comes out with sufficient distinctness from the heated utterances and more or less wild pretensions of the last month. England is not going to retire from the field of European politics. She means to take part in the controversies of nations; a part other than that of impartial spectator and

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