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other. The principal cup of the college is of his gift, though called by the name of the founder.

We have thus discussed the publications of this Society, in order that it might appear to what objects its attention was directed, and thus show what an antiquarian society has to do. There are, of course, certain peculiar employments for such an association within the precincts of a university which would not exist in a provincial town, but some such analogous objects there must be every where in a country where almost every parish is older than the Conquest. The next question that will be asked is, "What good have such societies effected?" That of Cambridge has done much. We will not speak of the occupation it has afforded to the leisure of many under-graduates, or lay any stress on the fact that it has secured for the university a valuable and increasing collection of antiquities. These are minor points. Its chief merit is, that it has created and encouraged a proper spirit in quarters where such a spirit is peculiarly needed. The dependent members of a college are trustees for their successors, and to their care is entrusted a complete museum of bequests. The various portions of the fabric, the plate, the paintings, and the library, ought to be preserved as jealously as ground-rents or manorial rights. This duty is comprehended now with far more clearness than fifty years ago, and for this we are indebted in a great measure to such societies as these. They have produced actual fruit. Half a century ago the college libraries were most shamefully neglected, and it was well if they suffered nothing worse than neglect. Not long since, when some MSS. were missing from a college, it was found impossible to ascertain when they had last been seen in their places. Now, there is scarcely a library (at least in Cambridge) which is not in good order and condition. The books, when necessary, have been carefully repaired, the catalogues amended, the manuscripts classed, and the deficiencies ascertained and remedied. They now appear just as they should do, not trim and varnished like the library of a club, but antique and sad-looking rooms, with their old furniture in good repair, and its contents in good working order. And in most cases this has been done at the pains of some individual member of the Antiquarian Society. Old portraits of benefactors have been restored to their proper plight and position. In one instance, no less than four beautiful specimens of ancient plate were rescued from the lumber of a muniment-room, and added to the ornaments of the college. In 1773, Cole dined at Pembroke, and the founder's cup was produced. "The inscription," says he, "not a soul could read in the college, and the tradition of it was forgotten. I could not help admiring the

utter indifference of the company and fellows in the hall concerning the antiquity of the cup and its inscription." Now this state of feeling is less important among ordinary people, but it is very inexpedient in those to whose care the preservation of these memorials is entrusted. The keeper of a museum should look on its contents with very different sentiments from those of the strangers who pass through it.

A considerable portion of our readers will probably have the recollection of their own college days to revert to, and such will enter with greater facility, and perhaps more interest, into the subject to which we have given these few pages. It was for such, indeed, that we have principally written, as well as to offer some chance hints, if so it might be, to members of societies similar to that before us; but so widely fashionable is archæology just at present, that the suggestions of a review are hardly needed in its service.

ART. VII.-The Ballad Poetry of Ireland. Edited by C. G. DUFFY. Dublin. 1845.

Observations on the Present State of Ireland, and the Means most likely to give Peace and Prosperity to its Inhabitants. By G. W. BLACKER, Esq. Armagh. May, 1845.

WE fear that English readers look with some distaste on discussions upon Irish affairs; we must, however, urge them upon their notice. They will perceive their importance, if they reflect that for the last sixty years they have formed the chief difficulty of England. Irish questions broke up the government of Mr. Pitt, prevented that of Lord Grenville, separated the cabinet of Lord Liverpool, dissolved the government of the Duke of Wellington, marred Sir Robert Peel's ministry in 1835, and have undermined it in 1845. They have been the graves of successive administrations, and in them the present Government will probably be buried. What debates, what conflicts, what heats have sprung out of them! and yet there was a moment when seemed to arrive, and the horizon in the far west became at last clear.

a lull

Ireland has been convulsed for half a century with the most embarrassing questions. The franchise, the legislative union, the admission of Roman Catholics to parliament, popular education, church cess, tithes, municipal corporations, pauperism; all these points had successively arisen, and perplexed governments for the sore, whatever it was, became serious; it took the type of the country, and in that hot atmosphere, ran into a contagious disease. Whatever was the question, the fever of a hot agitation supervened; and such was the case from the end of the reign of George II. to the day which saw a new ministry in 1841, in the reign of his great grandchild. Yet many things had been tried, and for the disturbed state of Ireland many remedies had been confidently offered. Every statesman had tried his hand upon them. There was the close system and the open, the exclusive power of the Protestant, the admission of the Roman Catholic-first a parliament all Irish, then a British parliament, absorbing and neutralizing the Irish element-the Roman Catholics treated as aliens-the Roman Catholics patro

nized as friends; the ascendancy of the Protestant, then the elevation of his rival; now a chevaux-de-frise of coercion bristling round the State, now the avenue thrown open to the citadel: the Roman Catholic school and its teacher discouraged, the Protestant school encouraged; then a new system offensive to the Protestant, agreeable to the priest. The government conducted on every variety of plans; now a Lord Lieutenant handing over his power to some great Irish family, and bidding them undertake to keep Ireland quiet-the Shannons, the Ponsonbys, the Beresfords: this scheme a failure, undertakers disappeared: a new plan, a vice-regal throne to charm the Irish, but the government complex, with two faces, one for the Lord Lieutenant, glowing with the Kentish-fire and toasting Protestant ascendancy amidst Orange songs; the other for the Secretary, affecting liberality-next, the faces reversed, a red-hot secretary, and a tolerant viceroy, Peel or Goulburn, Lord Wellesley or Lord Anglesea; a Liberal AttorneyGeneral and a hot Protestant Chancellor, a Plunkett with a Manners-or the reverse, the astute liberalism of Sugden, and the upright consistency of Jackson-such casting of parts, such neutralizing the acid of one party with the alkali of another, to cool down by a well-administered draught the heats of this feverish people; but in spite of all, a regular intermittent requiring new specifics. Public money lavished, taxes withdrawn, grants withheld from England bestowed on Ireland, roads, harbours, canals, commissions, millions rained upon a thirsty soil; but in vain : the hatred rancorous, the gulph of severance between the two countries boiling as black as their whirlpools! At this moment, after the craft of statesmen and the devices of Parliament, matters remain pretty nearly as they were, and having opened Parliament to the Roman Catholics and closed the grievance of tithes, we find the Irish resentment as quick as ever, and her wrongs or her passion cry impatiently for separation.

We cannot compliment the sagacity of those, who, like Mr. Baptist Noel, still imagine, after this manifold experience, that conciliation would follow if the Irish Church were removed. This is an opinion which hardly deserves exposure. That any mortal man who remembers the passionate desire for emancipation, and the assurances of peace that was to follow it, can suppose that when this concession has failed, the settlement of another question of far inferior prominence should succeed; that he should suppose that he could satisfy by selecting one item from a budget of twenty grievances; and, refusing the great question upon which all hearts are set, should grant another of less moment-argues such little reflection, that we must dismiss such reasoning as one of the fond imaginations with which it is a waste

of time to argue. There is, however, matter in the present condition of Ireland which deserves grave consideration.

There was one feature of our policy towards Ireland which was striking. It was a very petty policy, but it was easy, and therefore it was long maintained. We governed Ireland by keeping up a division between two parties of the Irish. We cherished the odious distinction between the Roman Catholic and the Protestant; to place the one against the other, to give the one power at the expense of the other, to throw into the hands of the one every favour of the State, and to heap upon the other every law which could oppress them-such was our policy, continued from the Revolution to the close of the last century. The Protestants liked the system, for they appeared to be favoured by it it was however as mischievous to them as to the Roman Catholic. Perhaps more so. It taught them to despise the millions among whom they lived. It applied to one class the corrupting influence of exclusive power. It made them selfish, arbitrary, and harsh. Read the portrait of the Irish landlord, either in history or in fiction; bold, generous, but licentious and extravagant, committing to agents the care of his peasantry, wringing through them the rent of his farmer, spending a princely income in a few years of folly, and atoning for it by a life of embarrassment: such is the portrait of the Irish Protestant gentlemen of the last century, whether given by Miss Edgeworth, in the admirable sketches of Carleton, or the pleasant stories of Lever. Then grew up the rankest evils of Irish society, absenteeism, the mortgaged estate, the bankrupt landlord, the harpy agent, the oppressed tenantry, life-leases, middle-men, a swarm of cotters, ground divided into half acres, attorneys tearing the very bowels of a peasantry whom no man befriended, and all crushed. Over-grown houses, with a mixture of splendour and dirt, near them filthy hovels, in which dwelt a wretched people, miserable as the Copts, and for the same reasons; deserted by their natural protectors, they fell as a waif to the man who seemed their only friend, who offered them the hopes of the next world for the miseries of this, and if he lived upon their scanty earnings, starved and grovelled and suffered with them. The priest thus became the only depositary of their sorrows and their resentments. He inflamed their just indignation by a more fiery passion, and added the hatred of bigotry to the sense of many wrongs. And now that these wrongs are redressed, the hatred which he has instilled remains. The Protestant may be a just and generous landlord, but he is hated as a heretic and a usurper. We may complain of the hostile sentiments of the Irish people towards us, of that hatred of the Protestant

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