treasures of those English laws that now condemn them to barrenness and uselessness."

Once the noble island of Sicily was the granary of Rome, and was administered as a province of the Roman empire, under a Prætor (so the Lord Lieutenant was called,) whose duty was to see that Sicily sent her tribute of corn, and wine, and oil, punctually to her masters' gates. For many generations this process went on; but the end came; the richest island in the world began to be desolated by a perennial famine; and at last the eyes of CICERO Saw it thus :-"Those very fields and hills, which I had once seen in all their verdant pride and beauty, look now squalid and forsaken, and appear as if mourning for the absence of the husbandman. The fields of Herbita, of Enna, of Murgantium, of Machara, of Assorium, of Agyra, are mostly deserted; and we looked in vain for the owners of so many fertile jugera of land. The vast fields around Etna,-once the best cultivated, and those of Leontini, the pride of corn countries, which, when sown, seemed to defy scarcity, have become so degenerated and wasted, that we in vain looked for Sicily in the most fertile part of Sicily."

Such was the fate of Sicily. Such is precisely the fate of Ireland. Only Ireland has a worse misery than the steady drain of her resources, in the endless distraction of her population. A people staring at each other with mutual distrust and horrormade enemies to one another by every artifice and falsehood which the prolific mind of England could devise-that is the crowning misery of Ireland. This has been a never resting labor of both the religion and law of England to sow Ireland with fire-brands, and distract with mutual hatred and jealousies her population.

The following paper from "The Nation" of July 1st, will give the American reader some idea of Ireland's capabilities for self-support, if the late intended rebellion could have succeeded.

"There is growing to-day on Irish soil 80,000,000l. worth of produce, by the reckoning of the best accountants. There are begging to-day between the hedge rows that fence in these treasures two millions of the Irish people; there dwell next door to beggary and bankruptcy in the towns and ports through which this vast hoard of wealth, it is said, must be smuggled away before Christmas next-another miserable million.

To our minds, if these 80,000,000l. were boldly taken advantage of, a new foundation for life might be laid in Ireland. Let us suppose the thing about to be tried-let us suppose a thousand Clubs, of 300 men, spread over Ireland--their Club-rooms over against every barrack in town and country-their scouts spying through every pass-their thousands battalioned in every city-their Irish League or Council of Three Hundred honest,

clear-headed, and brave-what great purposes might not a regeneration fund of 80,000,000l. be turned to?

Less than one-half of it would feed the people till another harvest had forced its way into the light.

It is the opinion, even of English economists, that one year's produce in Ireland is two years' food. Upon the appropriation of this first part there could be no quibble, and should be tolerated no argument. If any man said nay, and put forth his hand upon the people's food, their answer should be the pike point or the bullet.

The use of the surplus produce is a legitimate subject for deliberation, and will indeed challenge all our economic knowledge, seeing the Statistical Society and Dr. WHATELY will lend us no light in its distribution. To direct the expenditure of 40,000,000l. of money to an Irish Government just come to power, must be a task of great perplexity and anxiety. How much of it shall be diverted into the long dried channels of native trade, and how-what portion of it shall be appropriated by the state and for what purposes-what balance of it may go to pay a fair rent to resident proprietors and buy out those who wish to be quit of Ireland—all these will be very vital and primary considerations. But, whereas the rental of the country is but 13,000,0007., and its usual imports of manufactures not very much more, this surplus might well be made to cover all our actual requirements from harvest to harvest, though, of course, the Mortgagees, Jews, and Absentees would suffer by the new courses our expenditures would take."

The right and the true policy of an Irish Republic, undoubtedly would be to seize not only the 80,000,000l. worth of produce said to be growing on Irish soil, but to seize also every foot of the land held by absentee landlords. This land belongs to Ireland. A rood of it was never bought, but stolen from the Irish. Let them enter again upon their own land. Let a Republic divide those immense landed estates into small parcels, break up the parks and subdue the waste places for farms, to be possessed only by actual settlers-to be worked again by the nation to whom God gave that soil-and Ireland has every means of being the richest and happiest nation in Europe. This small culture system alone would make the Irish land-workers the happiest peasantry in Europe. The best cultivated portions of Europe are precisely those where the large estates have been long divided into these small occupancies. We see it in Belgium, Switzerland, Tuscany, Baden, Wurtemberg, and other parts of Germany. This system has given a tolerable agriculture to even the wretched climate of Norway. We have also seen how this system surmounts the greatest obstacles, in the present rich and prosperous condition of Flanders. The whole desert country

extending from Ghent to Antwerp, the Pays de Waes, has become a vast garden of the most abundant produce. Even the Alps of France and Savoy give us the same beneficent results from the same system. All that Ireland need do to become a rich and glorious Republic, is just to take what is her own. Even in her present miserably cultivated, miserably governed, English bedeviled condition, she supplies "merry England" with an abundance of "pudding and beef." It is a fact that should not be overlooked that, while-to use the language of the English Chancellor of the Exchequer-the "people and working classes (of England) are steadily growing more comfortable," the Irish people are faster sinking into starvation and death. In the same ratio that England improves the condition of her own peasantry she kills that of Ireland. The Chancellor of the Exchequer in speaking of the greatly increased consumption of "luxuries" in England, says "Recollect that this consumption cannot be accounted for by attributing it to the higher and wealthier classes, but must have arisen from the consumption of the large body of the people and working classes." Oh, to be sure not. We must not expect the "higher and wealthy classes" to retrench an iota of their "luxuries," even while their Irish "fellow citizens" go off at the merry tune of two millions a year by starvation. Nor must we expect that the "increased consumption of luxuries" is among the higher classes of England. Oh, no; the higher classes are already stuffed out like a Bologna sausage with all possible luxuries. And now the good Chancellor tells us, that "the people and working classes" are beginning to get large mouthfuls of these good things. He shows us that in 46 they consumed seven million of pounds more of coffee than in '43. Of tea, the consumption has increased since '43 by five million four hundred thousand pounds. And even in the article of currants, (for currants it seems are getting to be a necessary of life" to the English peasants,) the increase has gone on for three years, from two hundred and fifty-four thousand cwt., to three hundred and fifty-nine thousand cwt. by the year.

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Now we do not grudge the English laborer his coffee, tea, or his currants: but this horrible fact stares us in the face, that during those three years of increased consumption of luxuries in England, the Irish working classes were sinking in starvation.

As an English farmer, artisan, or laborer began to insist on tea in the morning as well as in the evening, an Irish farmer, artisan, or laborer, found it necessary to live on one meal a-day; for every Englishman who added to his domestic expenditure by a pudding thrice a week, an Irishman had to retrench his to cabbage leaves and turnip tops; as dyspepsia creeps into England, dysentery ravages Ireland; and the exact correlative of a Sunday dinner in England is a coroner's inquest in Ireland.

This then is the kind of protection that Ireland gets of England. If Ireland were free, her "working classes" might have coffee, tea, and currants. While the tables would likely turn, and the English working classes would go back to turnip tops and cabbages, oatmeal and buttermilk. In fact, England could not possibly, with her present system, keep her "working people" alive but for this draining of Ireland. Their lordships know it too well. The independence of Ireland would prove, in the end, the entire destruction of the present iniquitous aristocracy of England. It would not only cut off her supplies, but it would lay her open to the port-holes of France, of America, or of any other nation that should take into its head to whip "merry England" for its long list of impertinence and piracy in the civilized and savage world. This is what England would be without Ireland. It would be to lose the shield that covers her heart— the basket that feeds her people. Nor may Ireland hope for independence, except by a terrible and bloody conflict. The "Black Sea borders" must be driven back by the same means with which they possessed themselves of the island, the cannon's blaze and the bayonet's point.

That Ireland has not already done this, is no fault of her people. The Irish people are strong enough and brave enough to drive the bloody Saxon from their soil at a "month's notice." The PEOPLE, I say. The fault and the only fault is with the clergy. Protestant and Catholic clergy are the sole causes of Irish apathy. Let the clergy hold their peace but six months— let them leave the PEOPLE to follow after the impulses of their own hearts-to work out, in their own way, their righteous and long cherished, and invincible hatred of England, and if they had no other weapon but the "sprig of shelaly," the English soldiers would lie battered like pumice on the soil.

England understands this. She knows that by her policy of schools, or rather by her policy of no schools, the Irish clergy are compelled to be the only teachers and guides of the youth. She knows that the result is a complete ascendency of clerical influence over the minds of the young especially. She knows that the Irish clergy are generally anti-republican. That, however much they may hate England-they are still more afraid of democracy. Here is her only hope of retaining Ireland. Hence, she now proposes to "endow the Catholic clergy of Ireland." But let the clergy accept that endowment, knowing that it is only offered as a bribe-knowing that it is from no repentance on England's part, from no sense of justice whatever, but only given as the price of Irish freedom, as the purchase-money of Irish slavery-let them accept it if they dare. Well, then, execration and endless hatred will be their doom. Their very names will hiss round the world, in company with Judas Iscariot,

as the accursed hirelings and slaves of the most bloody and abominable tyranny on the face of the earth. History will write down such shepherds of the flock, as so many hungry wolve set on by the English to help devour the people's rights. The good and just will still pity the Irish people-will continue working for them--will never cease their labors for Irish freedombut the clergy must fall under the ban of universal contempt, if they dare to accept any "endowment" from the nefarious hand of England. The only endowment which an Irishman can accept of England is-Freedom or a Patriot's grave.

It is certain that there are many patriot clergymen, especially among the Catholics, in Ireland. But it is true that the great body of the Irish clergy are enemies to Irish freedom. That is, they fear freedom. They are good enough haters of English tyranny, but they are frightened at that insurrectionary spirit which is the genius of revolution. But for this class, Ireland would this day be free. No power but that of God could have arrested and quelled the progress of the late rebellion, had the clergy remained silent, and left the brave people to follow after that voice of revolution which found such a welcome in every Irish peasant's heart. The English and Irish press well enough understand this matter. The Cork Examiner says

"The Government can now afford to be magnanimous. They have fully asserted their authority and power; they have for the present held the country down, but not by their unassisted power-for the Clergymen of the Roman Catholic Church have done more to disband rebel armies than police or military; they have captured the leader of the insurrectionary movement, without bloodshed or sacrifice of life-and, we repeat it, the Government can afford to be magnanimous. More than that, they cannot afford to be vindictive and revengeful."

The Queen's organ in Dublin, the Evening Post, says it has accounts from "all quarters" of the "admirable conduct" of the Catholic Clergy in the late emergency. The Rt. Rev. Dr. Ryan, Roman Catholic Bishop of the Diocese of Limerick, in addressing a numerous congregation from the altar of St. John's chapel on Sunday last, adverted in the strongest terms of reprobation of the efforts of the patriot leaders; pointed out the awful consequences that would ensue by their joining in a warfare which he declared "would assuredly bring ruin on their families, and desolation to their homes." He warned his flock against joining in what he was pleased to designate "a futile struggle against the constituted powers of the realm." They were bound to submit to the laws as loyal subjects of the Queen.

Rev. Dr. Coll, of Newcastle, also from the altar, alluding to the physical force movements, and the symptoms of revolution now so apparent, cautioned the people against participating in the movement; spoke of the idea of the soldiers fraternizing with the people as a vile act of degeneracy.