Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844

Miss Emily's satisfaction; and Miss Sophia had again and again expressed her determination to leave the house the moment Miss Hendy entered it; and both the young ladies had related

dozen time over by all parties, when the great clock in the hall-a Dutch pendule, inserted in a s

om window, she gazed down to catch a glimpse of the entrance steps. She only saw the top of a large wooden case, and the white hat of a

half-a-crown," said the former gentleman: "old father would shake his head into a reg'la

n a few minutes had the satisfaction of hearing heavy steps on the stairs, and the voice of the redoubtable Mr Bristles saying, "Gently, gently,-I have no hesitation in stating, that you were never entrusted with

key papa is always talking

tle vagabond promised the first sight of it to old father. He'll

alas! it was locked on the outside, and it was evident, from the soliloquy of Mr Bristles, that their retreat was cut off through the front room. A knock-the well

r agreement-Snooksby! Butters! Banks! Why, I am quite overpowered with the surprise! I

h-my happiness-the boast and gratification of my future days?

or no further secresy

s a masterpiece, softly sweet and beautifully f

case, as you justly observe," proceeded the critic, while he untied the cords

sted Mr Pitskiver. "I can't help

s a drawback,

s it, should be brought so prominent

t understand! A

eyes, the crooked legs-it is impossible to perceive any grace in such a wretched animal. I can't help thinking that if it had been a young girl you had brought me-say, a

d as I am, his I can truly say is the

in a moment-down fell the side of the case, and to the astonished eyes of the assembled critics, and also of the party in the back drawing-room, revealed,

bewildered Mr Pitskiver; "this isn't the jeanie-as

and the sharp eyes of Miss Hendy fixed in

come to this? Who shall doubt hereafter that it is the tas

ew open the door, and advanced with their attendant lovers to the table. The female philosopher, with the assistance of Mr Bristles, descended from her lofty pedestal, and looked unutterable basili

pa," said Miss Sophia, "if you bro

honour 'twas that scoundrel Bristle

e greatest sculptor of ancient or modern times, I managed to secure to this illustrious woman an admission to your house, which, I understood, she could not openly obtain through the opposition of your daughters. I conside

believe you talking fellows and chattering women are all in

ired Mr Bristles,

mere humbugs and blockheads! And even this foolish woman, with her femininities and re-invigorating society

ations are u

reputation; and, if possible, get hold of some silly fellow's daughters. But no painting, chiseling, writing, or sonneteering blackguard, shall ever cat

write a word of it, I assure you. Bristles is

ever wrote a line in h

y have you

ledger," modestly ob

ggles," he continue, ringing the bell, "open

le Mr Pitskiver, still panting from his exertions, related to his daughters and their enchanted partners his grounds for anger at the attempt to

st like our two mutton-chops, since they have freed the house from such sho

e modern Corinne, and of a comfortable house at Hammersmith, with an income of seven hundred a-year, to allow them to waste their sweetness on some indecent clown, unqualified by genius and education to appreciate them. The result o

cher and example of Man, by Mrs Bris

EL

blin. Could it have been foreseen or fancied, pending this sequestration, that before it should be removed by the delivery of the verdict, nay, two months before the trial should have closed in a technical sense, by the delivery of the sentence, the original interest (profound as it was) would be obliterated, effaced, practically superseded, by a new phasis of the same unparalleled movement? Yet this has happened. A debate, which (like a series of natural echoes) has awakened and revived all the political transactions of last year i

which forces us often to forget the new form of terror-a terror (from a new conspiracy) which forces us to for

r destruction. Here, men rampant against the Minister as having strained the laws, in what regarded Ireland, for the sake of a vigour altogether unnecessary; there, men threatening impeachment-as for a lenity in the same case altogether intolerable! To the right, "how durst you diminish the army in Ireland, leaving that country, up to March 1843, with a force lower by 2400 rank and file shall the lowest that the Whigs had maintained?" To the left, "how durst you govern Ireland by martial strength?" Question from the Minister-"Will you of the Opposition place popish bishops in the House of Lords?" Answer from a premature sponsor of Lord John's-"We will." Answer from Lord John-"I will not." Question retrospective from the Conservatives-"What is it, not being already done, that we could have done for Ireland?" Answer from the Liberals-"Oh, a thousand things!" Question prospective from the Conservatives-"What is it, then, in particular, that you, in our places, would do for Ireland? Name it." Answer from the Liberals-"Oh, nothing in particular!" Sir R. Peel

y prosperous body of native prejudice against British influence, are now throwing themselves, as by a forlorn hope, into this rearmost of their batteries, (but also the strongest)-a deadly and combined struggle to pull down the Irish Protestant establishment. And why? because nothing else is left to them as a hopeful subject of conspiracy, now that the Repeal conspiracy is crushed; and because in its own nature an assault upon Protestantism has always been a promising speculation-sure to draw support from England, whilst Repeal drew none; and because such an assault strikes at the citadel of our strength. For the established church of Ireland is the one main lever by which Great Britain carries out the machinery of her power over the Irish people. The Protestant church is by analogy the umbilical cord through which England connects herself materially with Ireland; through that she propagates her milder influence; that gone, the rest would offer only coercive influence. Without going diffusively into such a point, two vast advantages to the civil administration, from the predominance of a Protestant church in Ireland, meet us at the threshold: 1st, that it moulds by the gentlest of all possible agencies the recusant part of this Irish nation into a growing conformity with the two other limbs of the empire. The Irish population is usually assumed at about one fourth part of the total imperial population. Now, the gradual absorption of so large a section amongst our resources into the temper, sympathies, and moral habits of the rest, is an object to be kept in view by every successive government, let their politics otherwise be what they may; and therefore to be kept in view by all Irish institutions. In Canada everybody is now aware how much this country has been wanting to herself, (that is, wanting to the united interests equally of England and Canada,) in not having operated from the first upon the political dispositions of the old French population by the powerful machinery of her own language, and in some cases of her institutions. Her neglect in this instance she now feels to have been at her own cost, and therefore politically to have been her crime. Granting to her population a certain degree of education, and of familiarity with the English language, certa

atest-they are the least; or, at any rate, they are so with reference to the highest interests-but for their immediate results upon the purposes common to all governments; and there they would be fatal, for any Roman Catholic church, where it happens also (like the Irish) to be a Papal church, neither will nor can confide privileges of this nature to the state. A Papal church, not modified (as the Gallican church) by original limitations of the Papal authority, not modified (as even the bigoted churches of Portugal and Austria) by modern conventional limitations of that alien authority, gloomily refuses and must refuse, to accept any thing from the state, for the simple reason that she is incapacitated for giving any thing. Wisely, according to the wisdom of this world, she cuts away from below the footing of the state all ground on which a pretence could ever be advanced for interfering with herself. Consequently, whosoever, and by whatsoever organs, would suffer from the overthrow of the Irish church as now established by law, the adminis

n, as a fact beyond all doubt, that O'Connell's Repeal conspiracy is for ever shattered; let it now be proposed, as a thing worthy of the combined parties in opposition, to find out some vicarious or supplementary matter for sedition. A new agitation must be found, gentlemen-a new grievance must be had, or Ireland is tranquillized, and we are lost. Was there ever a case illustrating so strongly the maxim, that no man can be effectually ruined except by himself? Here is Lord John Russell, taxed a thousand times with having not merely used Mr O'Connell as an ally, but actually as having lent himself to Mr O'Connell as an instrument. Is that true? A wise man, kind-hearted, and liberal in the construction of motives, will have found himself hitherto unwilling to suppose a thing so full of disgrace; he will have fancied arguments for scepticism. But just at this moment of critical suspense, forth steps Lord John himself, and by his own act dissipates all doubts, frankly subscribing the whole charge against himself; for his own motion reveals and publishes his wrath against the ministers for having extinguished the only man, viz. a piratical conspirator, by whose private license there was any safety for navigating the sea of Irish politics. The exact relation in which Lord John had hitherto stood to Mr O'Connell, was that of a land-owner paying black-mail to the cateran who guaranteed his flocks from molestation: how naturally must the grazier turn with fury on the man who, by suppressing his guardian, has made it hopeless for the future to gain private ease by trafficking in public wrongs! The real grievance was, the lopping Dagon of all power to stand erect, and thus laying the Whig-radical under the necessity of "walking in the light of the constitution" without aid from Irish crutches. The realonus imposed on Lord John's party is, where to

ischief against mischief, Repeal against Anti-protestantism, certain it is, that one most important advantage has accrued to Government from the change. Fighting against Repeal, they had to rely upon one sole resource of doubtful issue; for, after all, the law stood on the interpretation of a jury, and therefore too much on the soundness of individual minds; whereas in meeting the assaults of Anti-protestantism, backed as it is by six millions of combatants, ministers will find themselves reposing on the whole strength of two nations, and of that section, even amongst the Irish, which is socially the strongest. An old enemy is thus replaced by a new one many hundred-fold more naturally malignant; true, but immediately the new one will call forth a natural antagonism many thousand-fold more determined. Such is the result; and, though alarming in itself, for ministers it remains an advantage and a trophy. How was this result accomplished? By a Fabian policy of watching, waiting, warding, and assaulting at the right moment. Three times within the last twelve months have the Government been thrown upon their energies of attack and defence; three times have they been summoned to the most trying exercise of skill-vigilantly to parry, and seasonably to strike: first, when their duty was to watch and to arrest agitation; secondly, when their duty was, by process of law, to crush agitation; thirdly, when their duty was to explain and justify before Parliament whatsoever they had done through the two for

ting bondsma

verdict of that

he ripening of the Repeal frenzy. Upon the same principle, a criminal may have a right to complain that her Majesty, when extending mercy to a first crime, or a crime palliated by its circumstances, and that a merciful prosecutor who intercedes effectually on his behalf with the court, have both been laying a trap for his future conduct; since, assuredly, there is one motive the less to a base nature for abstaining from evil in the mitigated consequences which the evil drew after it. On the same principle the Repealers, having found Sir R. Peel so anxious, in the first stages of their career, to spare them altogether, were seduced into thinking that surely he never would strike so hard when at length he had made ready to strike. Still, with submission, we think that to found false expectations upon a spirit of lenity, and upon that mistake to found an abuse of goodness that was really sincere, was not the fault of Sir R. Peel, but of the Repealers. Any man's goodness becomes a trap to him who is capable of making it such; since the most noble forbearance, misinterpreted as fear, will probably enough operate as a snare for such a person by tempting him into excesses calculated to rouse that courage with which all genuine forbearance is associated. If the early moderation of Government did really entrap any man, that man has himself, and his own meanness of heart, to thank for his delusion. But were it otherwise, and the Government became properly responsible for any possible misinterpretation of their own lenity-even in that case, it will remain to be enquired whether Government could have acted otherwise than it did. For else, though Government could owe little enough to the conspirator; yet with respect to the ill-educated and misled labouring man, whose honest sensibilities were so grievously played upon

, the proper channel through which the directions travel is the lord-lieutenant of the particular county in which the district lies. He is the direct representative of the sovereign-he stands at the head of the county magistrates, and is officially the organ between the executive and his own rural province. To this officer in every county, Sir R. Peel addressed a letter of instructions; and the principle on which these instructions turned was-that for the present he was to exercise a jealous neutrality; not interfering without further directions in ordinary cases, that is, where simply Repeal was advocated, or individuals were abused; but that, on the first suggestion of local outr

f having echoed them, in an ambiguous way, at one point of the trials; not exactly assuming them for true, and resting any other truth upon their credit, but repeating them as parts inter alia of current popular hearsay. Now this, though probably the act of some subordinate officer, does a double indignity to Government; it is discreditable to the understanding, if such palpable nursery tales are adopted for any purpose; and openly to adulterate with falsehood, even in those cases where the falsehood is not associated with folly, still more deeply wounds the character of an honourable government. But, besides, had the numerical estimates stood upon any footing of truth, mere numbers could not have been ple

. And by what? By an act of Parliament. But could there be any harm in seeking the repeal of a parliamentary act? Is not that done in every session of the two Houses? And as to the more or less importance of an act, that is a matter of opinion. But we contended, that the sanctity of an act is to be deduced from the sanctity of the subjects for which it legislates. And in proof of this, we alleged the Act of Settlement. Were it so, that simply the term Act of Parliament implied a license universally for undoing and canceling it, then how came the Act of Settlement to enjoy so peculiar a consecration? We take upon us to say-that, in any year since the Revolution of 1688-9, to have called a meeting for the purpose of framing a petition against this act, would have been treason. Might not Parliament itself entertain a motion for repealing it, or for modifying it? Certainly; for we have no laws resembling those Athenian laws, which made it capitally punishable to propose their repeal. And secondly,-no body external to the two Houses, however venerable, can have power to take cognizance of words uttered in either of those Houses. Every Parliament, of necessity, must be invested with a discretionary power over every arrangement made by their predecessors. Each several Parliament must have the same power to undo, which former Parliaments had to do. The two Houses have the keys of St Peter-to unloose in the nineteenth century w

t civil support. Possibly it will be replied-"Supposing the revolutionary doctrines followed by overt acts, then the true redress is by attacking these acts." Yet every body feels that, if the doctrine and the acts continued to propagate themselves, very soon both would be punished. In the case where missionaries incited negro slaves to outrages on property, or were said to do so, nobody proposed to punish only the overt outrages. So, again, in the event of those doctrines being revived which denounce

eneral pronounced his views; Blackwood's Magazine in August or September 1843. A fact which we mention-not as imputing to that learned gentleman any obligation to ourselves; for, on the contrary, it strengthens

ing an inert body in relation to any separate interests of its own, and chiefly from the obscurity of these interests, cannot be supposed to combine; and therefore cannot combine even to prevent combinations. Government is the perpetual guardian and organ of society in relation to its interests. Government, therefore, prosecutes. This, however, left the original question as to the Repeal of the Irish Union act, whether a lawful attempt or not lawful, untouched. And necessary it was to do so. Had the prosecutor even been satisfied on that point, no jury would have regarded it as other than a delicate question in the casuistry of political metaphysics. But the offence of combining, by means of tumultuous meetings, and by means of connecting with this obs

would have been ruinous. We have seen how hardly the furious Opposition have submitted to the Government measure, under its present principle of simple confidence in the law as it is: had new laws, or suspension of old ones, been found

like any moderate man, hoped that his warnings might meet with attention. They did not. So far from that, the Repealers kindled into more frenzy through their own violence, irritated no doubt by public sympathy with their worst counsels in America and elsewhere. At length the case indicated in the minister's instructions to the lords-lieutenant of counties, the casus f?deris, actually occurred. One meeting was f

naturally devolved upon the law-officers. In the admirable balance of firmness and forbearance it is hardly possible to imagine the minister exceeded. And here, where chiefly he stood between a double fire of attacks, irreconcilable in themselves, and proceeding not less on friends than foes, it is now found by official exposures that Sir Robert's conduct is not open to a trivial demur. He ma

igible as jurors has been reduced by the unobjectionable process of balloting to forty-eight, from that amount they are further reduced by ultimate challenges; and the necessity resting upon each party to make these challenges is not discretional, but peremptory. It happened that the officer who challenged on behalf of the crown, struck off about ten Roman Catholics. The public are weary of hearing it explained-that these names were not challenged as Catholics, but as Repealers. Some persons have gone so far as to maintain-that even Repealers ought not to have been challenged. This, however, has been found rather too strong a doctrine for the House of Commons-to have asked for a verdict of guilty from men glorying in the very name which expresses the offence. Did any man ever suggest a special jury of smugglers in a suit of our lady the Queen, for the offence of "running" goods? Yet certainly they are well qualified as respects professional knowledge of the case. We on our part maintain, that not merely Repealers were inadmissible on the Dublin jury, but generally Roman Catholics; and we say this without disrespect to that body, as will appear from what follows. It will often happen that men are challenged as labouring under prejudices which disqualify them for an impartial discharge of a juror's duty. But these prejudices may be of two kinds. First, they may be the natural product of a certain birth, education, and connexion; and these are cases in which it will almost be a duty for one so biased to have contracted something of a permanent inability to judge fairly under circumstances which interest his prejudices. But secondly, there are other prejudices, as, for instance, of passions, of blind anger, or of selfish interest. Such cases of prejudice are less honourable; and yet no man scruples to tell another, under circumstances of this nature, that he cannot place confidence in his impartiality. No offence is either meant or taken. A trial is transferred from Radnorshire to Warwickshire in order to secure justice: yet Radnorshire is not offended. And every day a witness is told to stand down, when he is acknowledged to have the slightest pecuniary interest in the case, without feeling himself insulted. Yet the insinuation is a most gross one-that, because he might be ten guineas richer or poorer by the event of the trial, he is not capable of giving a fair testimony. This would be humiliating, were it not seen that keen interests compel men to speak bluntly and plainly: men cannot sacrifice their prospects of justice to ceremony and form. Now, when a Roman Catholic is challenged as a juryman, it is under the first and comparatively inoffensive mode of imputation. It is not said-you are under a cloud of passion, or under a bias of gr

e accomplished, finally (as we then understood it) he was to take himself off in the direction pointed out by the judges. But we find that he has not yet reconciled himself to that. Intimations come out at intervals that the judges will never dare to pass any but a nominal sentence upon him. We conclude that all these endless conflicts with the legal necessities of his case are the mere gasconades of Irish newspapers, addressing themselves to provincial readers. Were there reason to suppose them authorized by the Repealers, there would be still higher argument for what we are going to say. But under any circumstances, we agree with the opinion expressed dispassionately and seasonably by the Times newspaper-that judgment must be executed in this case. We agree with that journal-that the nation requires it as a homage rendered necessary to the violated majesty of law. Nobody wishes that, at Mr O'Connell's age, any severe punishment should be inflicted. Nobody will misunderstand, in such a case, the mitigation of the sentence. The very absence of all claim to mitigation, makes it impossible to mistake the motive to lenity in his case. But jud

would have followed? Ministers would have gone out: Sir Robert Peel has repeatedly said they would in the event of parliament condemning their Irish policy. This would bring in Lord John, and then would be revealed the distraction of his party, the chicanery of his late motion, and the mere incapacity of moving at all upon Irish questions, either to the right or to the left, for any government which at this moment the Whig-radicals could form. Doubtless, Lord John cherishes hopes of futur

en, and then encamped beyond Hounslow) broke into tremendous cheers at the moment when the news of the acquittal reached them. Whilst lauding their Creator his majesty was present. But a far more picturesque account of the case is given by an ancestor of the present Lord Lonsdale's, whose memoirs (still in MS.) are alluded to in one of his Ecclesiastic Sonnets by Mr Wordsworth, our present illustrious laureate. One trait is of a nature so fine, and so inevitable under similar circumstances of interest, that, but for the intervention of the sea, we should certainly have witnessed its repetition on the termination of the Dublin trials. Lord Lowther (such was the title at that time) mentions that, as the bishops came down the Thames in their boat after their acquitta

by Ballantyne and