asphyxiated, a tempting and easy prey, to be, unconsciously to itself, absorbed and assimilated in the capacious maw of the twin monsters, imperialism and centralisation-an imperialism, bloated and gorged but not satiated, which almost weeps because it has not more kingdoms to conquer, to impoverish, and to demoralise; and a centralisation, so tyrannically inquisitorial, so little fastidious, and so inexpressibly mean, that nothing comes amiss, from the vapid and un-idead routine of the "circumlocution office" to the humblest details of a parochial board.

We therefore appeal to Ireland's second hope-to that candid and ingenuous youth, as yet uncontaminated by contact with depravity, whether moral or political, as yet unseduced by the example or the rewards of base and profligate apostacy, as yet unsophisticated and pure-minded, destined to become, at no distant day, the future men of Ireland. And here let us be permitted to say that we do know something of the Celtic youth. We know that youth of graceful, yet sinewy physique; of gentlest emotions, yet most impassioned energy; of generous impulses, of high and holy aspirations, of quick perceptions, flashing wit, and trenchant repartee. Under Heaven we know of no tribunal to which we would more gladly see referred the adjudication of a rotten cause or a corrupt job, than to the unbiassed decision of an assembly of Celtic youth, freely chosen, no matter how, say fortuitously. Spurning alike the ponderous pedantry of the syllogistic process, and the no less ponderous and pedantic details of precedent and black-letter, their clear intelligence, with intuitive quickness, would grasp, at a glance, the real gist of the matter, the cause of truth and justice would be sure to triumph, and the caput mortuum of falsehood and corruption would be held up to public scorn with that matchless force of sarcasm, which only the Celt can adequately employ or appreciate.

But as it is far from our purpose to flatter the foibles or the prejudices of any class whatever, not even those of the highly-gifted youth of Erin, so we cannot overlook the fact that from its nature, youth is necessarily a transitory and transient phase of human existence, foreshadowing the tendencies and character of the future man of action. It is highly susceptible of impressions for good or evil, which, being once made, remain for ever uneffaceable, and powerfully unfluence the conduct of the individual to the very last stage of active life. Youth indeed is strong in its innate purity of thought and feeling, in its inherent love of virtue, in its lofty aspirations after moral grandeur; but, alas in another point of view, youth is also lamentably feeble and helpless. Of itself, that is, from its own resources, it can possess no practical experience of the prosent, for with it active life has not yet commenced; nor any reliable knowledge of the past, for some one is needed to unfold the records of that awful past, to expound its mysteries, and interpret its oracles; finally youth (per se) can have no faithful, trusted, and trustworthy guide to explore with unfaltering

step the labyrinth of the dark and mysterious future. Youth, therefore, in order worthily to fulfil its mission in the moral order of Providence, requires to become instructed, informed, educated.

Now, candid and ingenuous youth of Ireland, we ask, how fares it with your education? We care not if you have graduated at one of those favoured and costly halls, which state-craft, to subserve its own subtle, and as yet undeveloped designs, has called into existence, if not into complete activity-and where the resources of the state, no doubt for state purposes, are lavished with such unsparing profusion: or if, haply, you have sought the fountains of knowledge at institutions of humbler pretensions, and which are more easily accessible to the masses, which rejoice in the pseudonyme "National," and thus cheat the popular mind with false pretences, inasmuch as they neither are "national" in the only genuine and honest sense of the word, nor were they ever intended to be such. Youth of Ireland, we ask not, we reck not of your social grade or caste; but we repeat our first enquiry, how fares it with your education? Mistake us not-we war not against knowledge or intellectual development; on the contrary, we most humbly and reverently hope that the creative fiat, "let there be light," may be realised in a moral and intellectual sense in Ireland, even in our day, to an extent little dreamt of in the philosophy of courts and cabinets. All knowledge we accept as good and desirable, if only communicated under proper sanctions and accompanied by proper safeguards. But trust us-our inquiry is not about your progress in the "ologies," any, all, or some, nor in the manipulation of longs and shorts, so interesting to the initiated few, so utterly worthless to the toiling and bustling many, nor in the still more recondite mysteries of plus and minus and their cognate jargon. We simply ask, is there not one especial branch of knowledge which has been studiously and systematically excluded from the curriculum of your studies, no matter how extensive in other respects that may have been? Have you been ever taught that you have a country to love, to cherish, and, if necessary, to defend? Have you been taught even a slight but faithful outline of that country's history, its past struggles and vicissitudes, its fearful persecutions and cruel wrongs, its momentary gleam of prosperity and independence, its subsequent decline and final downfall, and its present deplorable degradation? Does the word "patriotism" convey any meaning to your Celtic ears? and if it do, declare what names you have recorded on your muster-roll of Irish patriots. Do you find on the list the names of Oliver Plunket, Luke Wadding, John Colgan, Hugh Ward, or the Four Masters? We pause for a reply, and hoping to renew our enquiries after the short interval of one week, we suspend them for the present.

OWEN ROE.

TORTURE IN INDIA.

"Govern leniently, and send more money; practise strict justice and moderation towards neighbouring powers, and send more money."—T. B. MACAULAY. England's most fascinating essayist has well defined in the above sentence the instructions sent from England to the governors of India. It is upon every body's lips, and all who read know that the natives of India are a sadly oppressed race, and that the wealth of their land and the industry of their hands are the sources of aggrandizement to a knot of British merchants, heartless and rapacious in straining after gain. But all do not know the vile and inhuman means resorted to, to extract Indian gold from the wretched land serfs in part of the East. That to obtain money from the miserable peasantry in one of the presidencies of that unfortunate country, the British government employ a class of subordinates who for long years have been using upon their victims a variety of torture, repulsive to humanity, startling to all common decency, and utterly at variance with civilization and Christianity. Torture such as may have disgraced the dark ages, or been practised by barbarous nations, amongst whom the word of God had been never preached and letters were unknown. Whoever wishes to study this loathsome subject will find the startling information he looks for in a remarkable "blue book" laid before Parliament in 1855, and entitled, "Report of the Commissioners for the investigation of alleged cases of torture in the Madras presidency."

In Madras the land is the property of the government, who let it out to peasantry. The land-tenure there is known as the "Ryotwarry" system, and the tenants are called "Ryots." It differs from the Zemindarry" system prevailing in other parts of India, in this that the Ryots hold directly from the government, there being no intermediate landlord, the government itself standing in that capacity, and collecting its rents by its own officers. In the other parts of India there is an intermediate landlord, but in Madras the government itself is the party directly dealing with the tenant, and to make this state of things worse, the unfortunate "Ryot" is a mere tenant at will, having no lease and no fixed rent, it being liable to vary with the judgment or opinion of the revenue officer who collects it. Under such a state of things there will be always great difficulties in collecting the rents, especially if the season has been unpropitious or the annual assessment excessive or unreasonable, At times, too, no doubt bad tenants may be met with unable or unwilling to pay, but the mode of extracting the money from these wretches is, almost invariably, by the direct application of torture to their persons,

The varieties of torture thus brought into play would do credit to the ingenuity of demons. We shall enumerate most of them, but there are two principal ones in general use by the "peons" or police, one is called the "kittee" or "cheerate," the other the "amcadal" or gingeri.

The "kittee," which is in shape and power like a lemon squeezer, is a variety of the thumb-screw used in olden times. This is used forcibly upon the hands and thighs of the defaulters, and will it

21

be credited, upon the breasts of women! The application of this instrument causes intense pain, and not unfrequently produces fainting, and often permanent injury to the limbs or parts compressed.

The "amendal" is a torture by means of constrained position. Thus the sufferer is tied, bent forward by a rope passing from his neck and shoulders to his feet, so that he is doubled forward, or one leg is tied up to his body, and he is compelled to stand for hours upon the other, or his legs and arms are interlaced and he is tied up in that constrained position. Frequently too while the wretch is bent forward a stone or weight is placed upon his back, or some savage "peon" sits on his shoulders and jests with his sufferings, and these abominations will be practised out in the open air under an Indian sun, close by the "cutcherry" or revenue office, and under the eyes of the Tubsilder" or native collector, and in the presence of the whole assembled inhabitants of the neighbourhood.

To these two ordinary tortures a multitude of others are superadded according to the tastes of the " Tabsilder,"-the " Chora," a whip made of leather so dried and hardened that it is more like something wrought from iron than a weapon made from animal tissue. We have one in our custody, and would give it cheerfully to any one who would use it in Leadenhall-street; and while this whip, or those made from the strong fibre of the tamarind tree is being used, the victim is tied up by his extended arm to a tree or the beam of a house. The variety of the modes of torture practised are so numerous that their name is legion, and some of them are of so foul and indecent a nature that we durst not pollute paper with a description of them. Common punishments are burning with hot iron, blows directed specially against the naked ankles and shin bones, tying several defaulters together by the hair of the head, so that every movement becomes an agony, lifting men up by the ears, tearing out the moustache by the roots; tying human beings by the hair of the head to the tail of a buffalo or other animal or hanging them head downwards, putting pepper and powdered chillies into the eyes and nostrils, and other unnameable recesses of the human body. Shall we add to this fearful catalogue the application of the "Poollah" or carpenter's beetle, or some other biting insect enclosed in a cloth or cocoa nut shell, and placed upon the most secret and sensitive parts of the sufferer's frame, there to eat and gnaw his subdued and broken spirit into perfect compliance with the tax or rent gatherer's notion of the amount of money he should pay. Gracious heaven! is this the civilization British arms carries into foreign lands! Just Providence! how long, oh how long, must downtrodden human nature endure such crimes?

1

ORIGIN OF THE MOSS ROSE.

One day, the Angel of the Odours slept
Beneath a rose-tree, pillowed on a flower,
An atmosphere of fragrance round him crept
And curtained deeply o'er his ruby bower,

A golden bee, poised on an opening bud,
Stood sentinel, with murmurry-dreamy
tune,

As when the willow-leaf just tips the flood,
And harps a sound, in sultry listening June.

2

He slept his ivory form tinged all o'er
With crimson shadows from the roses' tips,
Which swaying in the zephyrs, more and

more,

Made amorous visits to his breathing lips.

3

He slept-crushing his pillow-rose the more As beauteous dreams seem deepening his repose

The sky above was one blue lucent floor,
The sun was panting with those lustrous
throes

That make the earth a fairy land of light,
Lulling the children of the cloud and air
To pause and love, and tarry in their flight,
As did the angel 'neath the rose-tree there.
4

At length a mine of dew-drops hid within,
The inmost core of one young budding gem,
A little hidden diamond mere or linn,
Burst o'er the leaf-lips, down along the stem,

Dripping in bell-like drops from spine to
spine,

Close by the dreamer's pearly open ear,
Which woke him from his visions all divine
To his still loved and lovely mission here.

5

The Odour-Angel woke, all smiles and light,
And from his crimson pillow raised his head,
Then shook his clustery pinions snowy
white,

And to the blushing tree, arising, said :—
"Delicious rose-tree! sweetest shade of all
The myriad flowers beneath my royal sway!
Soft was my rest within thy ruby hall,
And for thy hostel rich take princely pay !"

6

Then, with a garment all of green and gold,
He robed each rose-bud, with his radiant
hand,

An emerald mantle such as bards of old
Gave to the spirit of our motherland!

CAROLAN.

CARNOT'S LETTER TO NAPOLEON.

The following letter, which was sent by Carnot to Napoleon in January, 1814, reflects immortal honour on that staunch and incorruptable patriot :—

"Sire, So long as victory crowned your eagles, I kept myself to my studies in the closet and employed myself in the education of my children. Now that she appears to abandon them, and that you have need of devotion, I hasten to offer my services. Do not disdain them, though they are those of an old soldier, above sixty years of age. He can rally round your eagles many Frenchmen, undecided as to the part which they ought to take. It is yet time, Sire, to obtain an honourable peace, and to regain the love of the people, which you have lost.

"January, 1814."

(Signed)

"CARNOT."

In forwarding this letter, Carnot said to a friend to whom he showed it, that it would either send him to the Chateau de Vincennes, or give him a mark of the Emperor's confidence, which would be auspicious to the return of moderation and freedom for France. The latter being the case, he was accordingly entrusted with the defence of Antwerp, and from that time until the period of the downfall of Napoleon, the friends of freedom ceased not to plan the establishment of a representative government in France.