mechanical contrivances of England are the glory of humanity, they owe nothing to government. They are the spontaneous product of intellect, which it has done as little to develope by circumscribing it with old university and church forms, as it has done to develope the national wealth by taxation, monopolies, and restrictions. On every new branch of society, when it has first come into existence, government has looked with distrust, and has sought rather to stifle or kill, than allow it to expand and grow.

The great improvements in the political relations of society made in modern times, such as the emancipation of the catholics, the abolition of the test acts, the reform of the House of Commons, were forced on the dominant aristocracy by the growth of knowledge, and the enlightened demands of the people. The aristocracy in possession of the government, resisted those demands as long as they could, and as long as they dared; and in the end acquiesced in them only to poison the boon. Famine and the League put an end to the corn-laws; as societies for the amelioration of the criminal code, and the abolition of slavery, are the authors of all the humanity introduced as yet into the statute-book, and the emancipation of the Negroes in our colonies. These instances are fresh in every body's recollection; but there is a leading fact in the history of all Europe, about which all modern civilization gathers itself, and from which it nearly all goes forth, not always present to the mind, that illustrates the inefficiency of government in promoting the progress and real greatness of society.

No government has provided for the growth and increase of the middle classes. There is hardly a government of Europe that did not try to prevent their increase and impede their power. For a long period they were exposed to obloquy, plunder, and oppression, from the governing, fighting, monopolizing aristocracy, but they outgrew all these, and subverted the dominion of their aristocratic masters. The increase of trade, the multiplicity of enterprise in modern Europe, the extension of division of labour, greater ingenuity and enlarged knowledge, are all the consequences of the continual growth of the town population, consisting mainly of the middle classes. They are the originators of all new industrial undertakings. To the same circumstance is due, though this is very generally overlooked or denied, the improvement of agriculture. We have been dunned continually with boastings of the patronage of kings and of great land-owning nobles, who have met and twaddled about improvement, and offered bounties on the fattest pig, and the most frugal peasant; but at present, and for several hundred years, the bulk of the produce of agriculture has been

raised to sell. The purchaser, therefore, has been the true and best patron of the agriculturist. There is no encouragement like a rising market, no discouragement like a falling one. The real demand or means of payment for agricultural produce, is the continued increase of the produce of some other industry. The town population, and their continued increase in industry, skill, and wealth, have constituted a continually rising market for the farmers' produce, the continued stimulus to agricultural industry, and been the great source of agricultural improvement. With the improvement of agriculture and the increase of trade, all civilization is closely connected; and thus the civilization of Europe dependent on the growth of the middle classes, far from having been caused by the government, has taken place in hostility to the governing aristocracies of Europe. Wholly mistaking the origin of the improvement of England, the government and many public writers have ascribed it to the peculiar manner in which land is appropriated, and to the peculiarities of the relation between landlords, tenants, and labourers in England. To the first of these classes they have ascribed all the merit of England's improved agriculture, and they hope for the improvement of Ireland, by introducing the customs of English landlords there. So far as the law is concerned, the appropriation of the land, and the relations between landlords, tenants, and labourers, are, in all essential particulars, the same in both countries. The well known difference in the condition of the two, is the consequence of the growth of a town population of the middle classes in England, of whom there are few or none in Ireland. The opulence and independence acquired by the citizens here, have spread themselves over the rural districts, have fostered the independence of the tenantry, and have bridled, and partly subdued to reason the English landed aristocracy. The influence of the industrious middle classes, not the laws, have caused the improvement in England, for which the idle, or merely law-making aristocracy have taken credit. The government may be justly accused of having caused by confiscation, by religious and political restrictions, and by numerous economical regulations, the present condition of Ireland, of having ruined its trade, and arrested its progress; but it neither foresaw, nor willed, nor promoted the improvement of England. To many portions of that, as they successively arose, the government was hostile; and almost all of them have been cramped and impeded by excise, customs, and other restrictive laws. From leading facts, such as these, we infer that our government has contributed nothing in past times, to promote civilization, and that it can now and in future do little or nothing to save or serve society.

Our government has, we admit, been skilfully conducted in relation to the late commotions in Europe and in Ireland, and has been, for the ends of government, eminently successful. Its most determined enemies cannot deny it the merit of having quietly, easily, and effectively, without any loss, and perhaps without incurring much unnecessary expense, put down all that there was of rebellion in Ireland. The work was done with a master hand. The rebellion has become a mockery, it has resolved itself into the old agragrian outrages, and the government has gained in reputation. It has increased its strength, but what can it do to remedy the social evils of Ireland? It can do no more hereafter than it has done heretofore. It has been master before, and it is only master now. It is the instrument of the landlords, and will exclusively serve their purposes. It may bribe the catholic priests to take sides with it; though, what good that can effect, as these men have ever used their influence to keep the people in ignorance of knowledge necessary for earthly salvation, we are not aware; it may, in addition to making them a moral police to serve its purposes, increase, as it is doing, the ordinary police of the country; it may enlist all ranks, all classes in support of its authority, and when it has done all this, it will not have taken one step towards making the people intelligent and skilful, moral, industrious, and wise. It may encourage a few farmers from England or Scotland, to fix themselves in Ireland; there may possibly be a consolidation of farms, and a diminution, as appears to be the case, of small holdings. By such an admixture of people, better habits may, in time, be formed; but the annual drain of food, the foundation of all capital, from Ireland, proves that capital is not required there, and reducing the number of holdings will only throw people on the workhouses, or doom them to starvation.

The change in Ireland, to be accomplished by the united agencies of the government, the landlords, and the catholic priesthood, can only be the continued debasement, ending in the annihilation of a large portion of the population. The augmentation of the police will not increase the supply of food. The payment of the Roman catholic priests will give the labourers neither worldly knowledge, skill, nor industry. They know nothing of the arts of life, and cannot teach them. The influence of the Romish church, combined with the power of the government, has brought the country into its present condition; and the wonderful panacea now proposed, is to strengthen the causes of the misery. The utmost that the government can do, is to enforce justice betwixt man and man; but its mode of appropriating the land, and upholding the rights of the landlords, of administering the laws made for the benefit of a class

by the hands of that class, of taxing the people to provide the double guard of a religions and a civil police, is a violation of justice, and can only, by its example, teach that violation to others.

The triumphs of the government in Ireland, prove distinctly that it cannot help the people out of their social difficulties. It can kill them by the slow agencies of hunger and regulations, restrictions and taxation; probably it will kill them, but judges, armies, police, and priests, are impotent to feed and to save. All these are perfect under the Czar, they were perfect. under Louis Philippe, they are perfect under the Sultan; and under all those rulers, degradation leading to commotion, and ending in revolution and death, have prevailed. The imperfections of these governments spring from themselves; there is not or was not any popular resistance to impede their action; but, just in proportion as that element is wanting, in proportion as governments are not kept in check by wholesome fear of the people, they become mischievous and ruinous. To the much-admired condition of unopposed, unmitigated, unbridled power, is the military government of England now raised in Ireland, by the success of its police and its armies; and for the promotion of social reform-for the salvation of society there, government will henceforth be quite as efficacious, and no more, than the Czar or the Sultan in his own dominions.

Mr. D'Israeli lately made a long speech, to show that parliament was falling into contempt; and all the journals in the empire have, for months back, echoed the same opinion. The fact is undoubted, though the cause lies deeper than parliamentary orators and journalists suspect. The re-establishing of party warfare, or placing the whole authority of parliament in the hands of ministers, as Mr. D'Israeli and others propose, will only make its proceedings more offensive, or more puerile and worthless, than at present, and hasten the fate to which, in common with other forms of government, it is doomed. The stern despotism of Russia, the mock fraternity of Prussia, the avowed selfishness of the Metternich bureaucracy, the careful bourgeoisie of Louis Philippe, are all condemned; the new constitutional systems, founded on their ruins, are already in decay, and our own system, like the rest, is obeying the same general law. There seems to remain for mankind, as yet untried, only the government of M. Caussidiere, or Mr. Feargus O'Connor, or the government of the mere mob; and from that nobody expects greater benefits, than from the government of Prince Metternich or Louis Philippe.

The continual disappointment suffered from government, does not put an end to hope. Every autumn the parliament is

prorogued amidst general satisfaction, at the termination of its worthless labours. Every spring, however, its re-assembling is hailed with renewed expectations. Men tell each other what great things are to be done by their representatives. Each journalist gets possession of some secret, and intimates some great work its friends are to perform. Ireland is to be at once regenerated or healed, railway accidents are for ever to be put a stop to, no public nuisance of any kind is any longer to be suffered, commerce and banking are to be made as certain and safe as the return of day and night, and social perfection is to be the result of the labours of the legislature. Parliament rises a true phoenix from its ashes, glowing with a many-coloured plumage, redolent of life and vigour, and exciting the joy of the beholders.

The old lingering disease of prurient talk, the cold, clammy, autumnal death, the stifling of all useful work and personal honour are forgotten, and salvation is expected from parliament, as if it had not, year after year, been tried, and failed. The public is cheated by its own fancies. The youth of journalism, when hope is unchecked by experience, seems to revive with every spring. Four or six months' abstinence suffice to produce complete oblivion, and the loudly-expressed contempt of August becomes something like sneaking reverence in January or February. Perhaps the dull sale of the journals about Christmas, and the quicker circulation caused by the assembling of parliament, has some influence over this psychological phenomenon. The greater the disappointment in the fall of the year, the more room there is for hope in the spring; and journalism, annually deluded by its own interest, helps to delude the public. By their own unfounded fancies both are tricked, year after year, into a renewed reverence for the multifarious talk they have ascertained to be worthless. Between the sabbath-day sermons of the ministers of the established church, which are said, numerous though they be, not to yield twenty sentences worth remembering, and the gabble of parliament, there is not much to choose; but the difference is, that people have long ceased to expect anything except habitual humdrum from the former, while from the latter they yet hope for earthly salvation.

If religion can do nothing for society, and government can do nothing, must we say that there is no hope, that all the aspirations of men after great social improvement, when so much has already taken place, are without foundation, and that society is doomed to oscillate between commercial bankruptcy and a plethora of extravagance; between riotous, licentious abundance, and inactive, shrivelling, dying, penury; between