wisdom of their English rulers in the nineteenth century? First, Englishmen opened the Union Era by treachery and falsehood. England promised emancipation to the Catholics as the price of the Union, and that promise was shamefully broken. Twenty-eight years passed before the Catholics were emancipated, and then how was emancipation carried? The wrong-doer may obliterate the memory of the wrong by some act of generosity, or even of tardy justice, magnanimously done. But was there anything generous, anything magnanimous, in the concession of Catholic Emancipation? "I am one of those,' said the Duke of Wellington, in introducing the Emancipation Bill in the House of Lords, "who have probably spent a longer period of my life engaged

in war than most men, and principally in civil war, and I must say this, that if I could avoid by any sacrifice whatever, even one month of civil war in the country to which I was attached, I would sacrifice my life in order to do it, yet, my lords, this is the resource to which we must have looked-these are the means we must have applied to put an end to this state of things, if we had not made the option of bringing forward the measure for which I say I am responsible." But when we say that England did tardy justice, and did it grudgingly, did it in a mean and craven spirit, we have not disposed of the case. Having passed some measure of justice-some inadequate measure of justice-she proceeded immediately to make it a dead-letter. Most important in this respect are the

words you quote from Mr. Lecky-so important, indeed, are these words, as showing the character of the English rule of Ireland during the past century, and as showing the bad faith of the English Government, that I cannot help transcribing them here.

"In 1833-four years after Catholic Emancipation-there was not in Ireland a single Catholic judge or stipendiary magistrate. All the high sheriffs, with one exception, the overwhelming majority of the unpaid magistrates, and of the grand jurors, the four inspectors-general, and the thirty-two sub-inspectors of police, were Protestant. The chief towns were in the hands of narrow, corrupt, and, for the most part, intensely bigoted corporations. Even in a Whig Government not a single Irishman had a seat

in the Cabinet. For many years promotion had been steadily withheld from those who advocated Catholic Emancipation, and the majority of the people thus found their bitterest enemies in the foremost places."

"and

"Trust us," Englishmen say, all will be right." The answer to this is, "What have you done in Ireland ?"

You have conceded through fear,

marred your concessions in the granting, and refused to carry them out in a fair and generous spirit.

What a ghastly story is the story of the Tithe War. Cromwell was a ruthless conqueror. His massacres at Drogheda and Wexford are among the infamies of history; and yet those infamies almost pale before this mean, petty, squalid struggle. I think it was Grattan who

said, "To find a worse Government than the Government of the English in Ireland, you must go to Hell for your policy, and to Bedlam for your discretion." It must be confessed that a more perfect illustration of the policy of Hell and Bedlam combined, than the Tithe War affords, can scarcely be conceived. The excuse given for Cromwell is that his were rough times. But what are we to say of the Tithe War which took place in the years of grace 1830-1835 ?

And what a miserable compromise ended this ghastly conflict. Bad faith, foolish legislation, criminal legislation, are, in the main, the marks of English rule in Ireland during almost the whole of the nineteenth century. The English people have no conception that between 1829 and 1869 no great measure of justice