Thus reasons that senator of spotless honor, Mr. More O'Ferrall-who has sworn the Roman Catholic oath-thus reasons Mr. Villiers Stuart, a gentleman of English descent located on the Irish soil. Upon the propriety of such an argument, issuing from the lips of the former gentleman, we feel that comment from us would be misplaced; for gentlemen who agree in sentiment or opinion with the Protestant moralist and reformer, we shall relate an anecdote in the words of a revered authority, the late Bishop Jebb:

"The writer cannot help recording a curious fact, which he heard several years ago from Dr. Phelan's own lips. His words were nearly as follows:

When I was a very little boy, I was invited to attend a funeral. The house in which the people were assembled was within a short distance of Clonmel, on the banks of the river Suir, and commanding an extensive prospect into the county of Waterford. A friar, who hap pened to be present, drew me apart from the company, (I was then à Roman Catholic); he led me to a bay-window, took me by the hand, and said, 'Look there around you, my boy; those mountains, these valleys, as far as you can see, were once the territory of your ancestors; but they were unjustly despoiled of it.' I never can forget the impression. My young blood boiled in my veins. For the time I was in spirit a rebel; and I verily believe, if it had not been the good pleasure of Providence to lead me into other circumstances, and furnish me with better instructors, I might have terminated my life on a scaffold.

This is an interesting and an instructive anecdote. We give it in the words of Dr. Phelan's honored biographer; observing, that there is

one, and only one name in it which we would alter. We have some reason to believe that the incident which stamped so indelible an impression on young Phelan's memory, occurred on the banks, not of the Suir, but the Blackwater. Of this, however, we are certain: the most striking features in the landscape over which the friar commanded the youth to gaze, were beauties on the estates which now acknowledge the Villiers Stuarts for their masters. We remembered the anecdote when we read the notable argument from a scion of this intruded family. We remembered, too, that, although the prospect by which the descendant of a Prince of the Deasies was fired, had, among its embellishments, the steeples or spires of one or two village churches, and although more than one modest parsonage was visible, the ecclesiastical incendiary never condescended to notice them. No-the endowment of the Established Church is only an incident in the spoliation by which Roman Catholics feel aggrieved. So long as they declare themselves contented with forfeitures which have given the soil of all Ireland to the Saxon, it would be worse than absurd in them to affect impatience at the very moderate reserve made for the maintenance of the Saxon Church.

While we thus endeavour to prove that the church establishment is not what its enemies term the monster grievance of Ireland, that it is, at worst, but a natural consequence, or an integral part of a more comprehensive settlement of property, we are by no means blind or indifferent to the dangers and discontents to which the whole settlement of property in Ireland has been made to furnish occasion. Lord John Russell, we believe, has pronounced the case of our church temporalities anomalous; we merely would expand his observation into a truth. There is nothing now existing in any country, civilized or barbarous, which furnishes a parallel for the case of proprietorship in Ireland. The whole island has been confiscated, repeatedly confiscated, and good care has been taken that the descendants of the ancient proprietors shall retain a stimulating re

and less peaceful than those of law, and hold it quite possible for a parliament in College-green to exculpate itself in the judgment of Europe, while its members and its supporters have obtained all the advantages which enactments of proscription and spoliation could ensure to them.

We are not ignorant that many advocates and champions of repeal strongly disclaim the purposes which we think discernible in the tendencies and through the agencies of their movement. It is true, they say, the rights, if rights they be, of the Saxon proprietors, were founded in injusticethe forfeitures by which they benefitted were iniquitous and indefensible-but time and occupation have given them a new title better than that which they derived from acts of parliament or from the favour of the throne-marriage settlements, provision for children, have consecrated rights originally more than questionable to violate them would be now a species of injustice. This would all be very good as a plea in favour of occupancy urged by advocates of actual proprietors-but it is a plea which rival claimants who believed they had justice on their side would laugh to scorn whenever they thought the time come for enforcing their rightful claims. Arguments from prescription have weight and authority in times of settled and longsubsisting order: in a new nation, and such a nation as young Ireland is to be when its independence is proclaimed, few men will be found so dauntless or so unreflecting as to employ them.

Even now there are indications of a disposition less favourable to the existing settlement of property than prudent repealers would, in their cooler hours, acknowledge. The publication of such a work as Mr. O'Connell's "Ireland and the Irish," at such a time, cannot be regarded as an act hazarded without due deliberation. We have already exposed its indifference to truth in carrying out the enterprise to defame Protestantism and England, and we shall therefore content ourselves now with a single quotation, which may show the light in which the legal settlement of property in this country is to be looked upon by repealers :

under different auspices. The form of oppression and robbery varied-the substance was still the same. Iniquitous law took place of the bloody sword: the soldier was superseded by the judge; and for the names of booty and plunder, the words forfeiture and confiscation were substituted. The instrument used by the government was the Commission to inquire into defective titles.' The king claimed the estates of the Irish people in three provinces. This commission was instituted to enforce that claim. It was a monstrous tribunal: an attempt was made to bribe juries to find for the crown-that attempt failed. Then the jurors who hesitated to give verdicts against the people were fined, imprisoned, ruined. The judges were not so chary: they were bribed-ay, bribed with four shillings in the pound of the value of all lands recovered from the subjects of the crown before such judges. And so totally lost to all sense of justice or of shame was the perpetrator of this bribery, STRAFFORD, that he actually boasted that he had thus made the chief baron and other judges 'attend to the affair as if it were their own private business.'"-Ireland and the Irish, p. 6.

It does not concern us here to expose the want of truth in this passage (for such exposure we refer the reader to former numbers of the magazine); we cite it to show the tendency of the work, and ask is it likely that titles to landed possession, whose origin and foundation is thus described, will be respected, if a time arrive when the descendants of the "wronged and plundered proprietors" shall have acquired the power to annul them?

The Nation of May 27, publishes the following advice from a correspondent:

"Another correspondent refers to the often-quoted axiom of Fletcher of Saltoun that it mattered little who made the laws, if the patriots made the ballads of a people,' and suggesting that the association should adopt means for circulating bold, patriotic, and animating songs among the peasantry," &c. &c.

The same number of the journal publishes, in a column of "answers to correspondents," a song, from which, after citing the preface which introduces it, we shall copy the second and the concluding stanza :—

"We complained in our last number of the exaggerated spirit of ferocity in many of the songs sent to us every

appends to the reference the following

note:

Every effort has been used by us to discover the book in which are contained the names of the proprietors, in order to introduce them here, in favour of their descendants, many of whom are still living, but our efforts to find it have been in vain."

Similar efforts made in England and Ireland have probably been successful. If they have failed, the map of Ortelius Redivivus (a map which caused alarm and suspicion when it appeared in the last century, and which we have heard has been recently reprinted) will well supply the deficiency—not so completely, indeed, as to designate the heirs expectant or apparent, but, with as much accuracy as is really desirable, showing the name or family from which, in each instance, the heir is to be chosen. Uncertainty to this extent rather stimulates than allays expectation, encouraging very many to provide themselves with tickets in the repeal lottery, although its high prizes may light only on the favoured

few.

It is unnecessary, and would prove tedious, to enumerate the many proofs, presumptive and direct, that the settlement of property in Ireland is not regarded with those feelings which indicate acquiescence in the dispositions made by law. One or two testimonies, however, are deserving of notice. Of all the disclaimers on behalf of Roman Catholics of any hope or purpose to resume their lost estates, none were stronger or more direct than those of Mr. O'Connell-yet his language was scarcely less forcible when he condemned the system on which England had acted towards this country. We have already extracted a remarkable passage from the work which he published as a history-we subjoin a passage similar in character, which is found in the Reports of Evidence taken before the Orange Committee of 1835:*

"There is no property in this world which is circumstanced in a manner similar to Irish property. At the time of the union, Lord Clare gave it as his opinion, and as an undoubted historical fact, that the land of all Ireland had

a loss to this country that she was never treated as a conquered nation. If such had been the case, the rights of private property would have been respected."

Such, according to Mr. O'Connell, is the perilous estate of property in Ireland. Lord Clare, a wise politician, founded upon it an argument for assenting to a legislative union with Great Britain: Mr. O'Connell, whose sagacity is not inferior but whose condition is different, inveighs against it, and contends energetically for repeal. We leave it to the reader to fill up the argument on each side, and to determine what were the considerations which influenced two wise men, looking at the same premises, to arrive at directly opposite conclusions respecting the remedial measures which the anomalous state of this country rendered necessary.

But Mr. O'Connell has not only disavowed for his party any purpose of seeking a resumption of the forfeited estates, but has gone the further length of strengthening the disavowal by argument. His reasoning, which will be found in the Reports of the Lords Committee on Ireland in 1825, and in the Digest of Evidence, vol. i. pp. 416, 417, &c., is to this effect: The titles which Roman Catholics have purchased since the year 1778 are principally to estates which had been forfeited; and it would be difficult to a degree amounting almost to impossibility, to trace out parties who, in the event of a re-assumption, could prove a legitimate title to their ancestral possessions.

"The forfeited estates are of two natures: estates which belonged to the church, when it was a Roman Catholic church and estates which belonged to individuals who were Catholics, and who forfeited. Now, I know that in practice the more recent forfeitures, which would be of course the most exposed to danger of re-assumption, are considered now the best titles to be purchased by Catholics. I know that there is an impossibility at present in tracing out the persons who, if there were a re-assumption, would have what would be considered legitimate title to those forfeited estates, even the most recent, or so great a difficulty as to amount in any one case, in my judgment, to an impossibility; bot