Such was Prussia in the immediate neighbourhood of immense warlike empires, with whose great superiority in territorial extent, military numbers, and financial capabilities, HER resources, especially in their original state, were, to all appearance, so completely unable to cope. A due reflection, then, upon such historical information, and the large number of soldiers and seamen PROVED to have been contributed by Ireland to the military and naval defence of the empire, will evince what such a nation may be made FOR or AGAINST England, and show how ridiculous as well as unsafe must be any system of policy, based on the Lyndhurst principle of treating the Irish people as "aliens in blood, aliens in religion, and aliens in language,' and relying, for the support of such injustice, on what has been demonstrated to be the very questionable competency of the British heart and the British arm." 66 In fact, before the Union can be said to be maintainea by "the British heart and the British arm," or by any other power that Toryism may choose to boast of, the terms of that act must first be fulfilled. And, bad as it was, originating as it did in what the present Chief Justice Bushe styled, an intolerance of Irish prosperity," its most important provision, or that as to the amount which Ireland was to contribute to the imperial national debt, has, even according to English testimony, been most flagrantly violated. By a parliamentary return, moved for by Mr. Finn, ordered to be printed August 13th, 1833, and marked No. 659, the British national debt in 1800, the year of the Union, was £420,305,944, while the public debt of Ireland was but £26,841,219. By the Union, Ireland had a separate Exchequer, and, unless the English debt should be reduced to an equality with her's, she was only to be taxed, for the future, in the proportion which her £26,841,219 bore to the £420,305,944 of Great Britain. But, in 1816,—when, to prevent Ireland from perceiving any longer the robbery committed against her, the Irish and British exchequers were united, in direct violation of the Union,—the national debt of Ireland had been raised, by a British or Union parliament, from £26,841,219 to £110,730,519, the British debt of £420,305,944, having been augmented, during the same period, only to £705,581,420. In other words, the British debt wanted about £135,000,000 of being doubled, while the Irish debt was some millions more than quadrupled! To bear only the same ratio of increase as the debt of Great Britain, from £420,305,944 in 1800 to £705,581,420 in 1816, the Irish debt, instead of having been swelled up, in the same period, from £26,841,219 to £110,730,519, should only have been £45,059,237. On the same principle that, in round numbers, the £26,000,000 of Ireland were made £110,000,000, the £420,000,000 of Great Britain ought to have been £1,734,000,000. Thus, in addition to the "embrace of swords," embodied in the arbitrary measure for crushing the fair expression of Irish opinion with respect to the Union, and, indeed, exemplified in the general tenor of English policy to this country, here is a 66 gripe of robbery" demonstrated, which no sophistry can ever mystify. Yet the same provincializing measure, which has led to this manifest injustice, likewise subjects us to the abstraction of the far greater portion of our national revenue, of at least £5,000,000 a year, an annual absentee drain of about £5,000,000 more, and, in fine, the existence of a state of things, that every day more and more "cries to heaven for vengeance," by "defrauding the labourer of his hire," or diverting, from a native to a foreign expenditure and employment, a greater sum than has ever been derived by any one civilized country from the impoverishment and misery of another. For these evils there may be many palliatives, though there can be but one radical remedy, a REPEAL of the UNION, which, unless Irishmen are both morally and physically inferior to the rest of the human species, I think it is pretty clear, from the foregoing historical facts, that we can attain, if we only will to do so. And, should the restoration of such an equally just and natural connexion between the two islands be too long deferred, the necessarily intolerable increase amongst us of so many serious evils, with a proportionably increasing population, is calculated to put a reflecting disposition in mind of the curious, and perhaps prophetic, observations of the poet Spencer, in the reign of Elizabeth. "There have bin," says he, "divers good plottes devised, and wise councels cast already about reformation of that realme, but they say, it is the fatall destiny of that land, that no purposes whatsoever which are meant for her good, will prosper or take good effect, which, whether it proceed from the very genius of the soyle, or influence of the starres, or that Almighty God hath not yet appointed the time of her reformation, or that he reserveth her in this unquiet state still for some SECRET SCOURGE, which shall by her come unto ENGLAND, it is hard to be knowne, but yet MUCH to be FEARED !"'! 1 View of the State of Ireland, p. 1. 373 APPENDIX. IS THE SCOTCH UNION AN ARGUMENT FOR THE IRISH UNION? John Bull fleeces Sawny, and Paddy, his brother, THE unforeseen length to which the observations on Irish military history have run, and the circumstance of the other compositions alluded to in page 111 having been before in print, oblige the author, contrary to his original intention, to limit his APPENDIX to the subjoined compendium of the able article on Repeal in Tait's Magazine for December, 1838, adverted to and promised in note 1, page 141. Coming, as the article does, from such a good judge of the wants of his own country as Tait-proving, as it does, in connexion with the unanswerable financial fact in the last-mentioned note and page of this volume, that Scotland WOULD be better off with a domestic legislature than without one-and thus completely refuting the superficial assertions of those, who attempt to argue, from the supposed benefits of a Union to Scotland, that such a measure should also be beneficial to Ireland-the importance of the production entitles it to a degree of attention far above that generally afforded to the effusions of mere periodical literature. Having remarked, in a previous portion of his honest and spirited periodical, upon the little attention given to Scotch affairs in the London legislature, (for such only it should be considered and entitled,) Tait writes thus: 66 Repeal of the Union.-Necessity of Local Legislation.—The preceding notice of the legislation affecting Scotland at a most important period, shows how little of the time of Parliament is dedicated to our peculiar concerns. Out of a huge folio, there are not more than 5 act, not exceeding 20 pages in all, in which the name of old Scotland is to be found, or its existence recognised....In the statute-book of Scotland, the old Scotch acts-in 3 small octo-decimo volumes of 500 or 600 pages each-we find from 40 to 50 of printed, or, as they would now be called, public acts, besides local and personal, passed in a session which lasted a month or 6 weeks only. And, if we look to these acts, we shall find that they are, at least, as important, in every point of view, to Scotch men, as the modern legislation of the three kingdoms. To take for example the first year that turns up to us-1696—when the kingdom was in a state of quiet......we find that the Scotch Parliament met at Edinburgh on the 8th September, and adjourned on the 12th of October, during which 46 acts were passed'......What is not the least remarkable part of the matter is, that the whole 46 acts are contained in 48 small octodecimo pages. Nearly the whole of those relating to the law are, to this day, in force,......the experience of a century and a half having been able to add little or nothing to the efficacy of the provisions...... And all of them have not given as much trouble in their interpretation to our courts of law, short as they are, as the Judicature Act, the Cessio Act, or any act relative to the law which has been passed within the last quarter of a century. No one, we imagine, will be so absurd as to pretend, that the affairs of Scotland can be as efficiently managed by a legislative body sitting hundreds of miles from her territory, and having the interests of an empire dispersed over the whole face of the earth, and containing more than 100,000,000 of human beings, to attend to, as by a Parliament meeting in Edinburgh. The Imperial Parliament is, in truth, unfitted for that department of legislation, called local and personal. Such legislation is best conducted on the spot, or as near as possible to the spot, which is to be affected. Witnesses are then at hand, information can be got with expedition and with little expense; the members of a local parliament can be dismissed and called together with little inconvenience. The expense at present necessarily incurred for a Road, a Harbour, or a Railway Bill for Scotland is intolerable. One thousand pounds a mile, even in long lines, is not an exaggerated estimate for the mere parlia mentary expenses of obtaining the bill. The members of an Imperial Parliament, the great majority of whom must naturally feel indifferent regarding the failure or success of any such measure, can with the utmost difficulty be got to attend, or even to remain in the house, when the matter is under discussion; and it is even not easily accomplished to get a quorum of the committee, to whom the Bill is remitted, to go through their routine duties. Then, all matters relative to Scotland are slurred over in the reports of the debates-first, because the reporters think a Scotch bill, though vitally affecting Scotland, is of no public importance; secondly, because they cannot intelligibly report what they, in general, do not understand; and, third, because Scotch' business is generally put off till past midnight, an hour at which, except on extraordinary occasions, the reporters, by a well-organized combination-Whig, Tory, and Radical reporters agreeing in this point-retire from their labour. The consequence is, that there is hardly a measure, however important, affecting Scotland, of the grounds for passing which her population are duly informed. All that they see of a long debate, on a subject in which they perhaps take the most intense interest, is a line or two, in which The detail of several of those acts, though of the highest legal consequence to Scotland, and of other useful measures on matters of commerce, finance, &c., specified by Tait as having been passed in this native "parliament of four weeks' duration," is left out, as uninteresting to a general reader. |