_per se_, such a
simple prescription may seem as "AEsop Smith" suggests, his advice
contains at least one very obvious and easy cure for Irish disaffection;
and I am not aware that either by pamphlet or in Parliament it has yet
been seriously mooted. The Celts are a folk of essentially loyal
instincts; but (much as Americans often are heard to complain in their
own behalf) they have, as an independent nation, no seen and known
object for their loyalty. Since the days of Brian Boroime at his mythic
court of Tara, the Irish people have hardly set eyes upon the monarch of
their country: perhaps (if we except the conquering William of the
Boyne) our elderly Adonis, George the Fourth, was the sole specimen of
English Majesty that has illuminated Ireland; until our gracious Queen
herself made two very short but notable visitations in 1849 and 1853:
yet even in the Georgian instance, unfavourable as personally it must
have been, the enthusiastic reception he met with some sixty years ago
at the hands of his Irish subjects is still remembered after two
generations with a grateful and effusive loyalty. Imagine, if only from
such an example as this, what might be the beneficent effect of our good
Queen periodically visiting her kingdom of Ireland, and permanently
having there some such happy homestead as Osborne or Balmoral; if also,
in her absence, one of the princes of our Royal house represented his
Imperial mother as Viceroy; and if in their train the tide of
aristocracy, wealth, and fashion flowed in upon impoverished Ireland. It
is not easy to calculate the advantages of such a social revolution as
this; and surely, in spite of many obvious objections, such an
experiment might be worth the trial.

A beginning might avowedly be made in the right direction, by building
or purchasing some suitable castle as a permanent palace for Ireland's
Queen; say, for old association's sake, at Tara, if anyhow
adaptable,--or any other picturesque neighbourhood connected with some
ancient chieftain of the Irish quasi-heptarchy; wherein a Royal
Establishment might be commenced, in present proof of the serious
intention as to an early future residence: the mind of the people might
be thus prepared for the speedy coming of their Sovereign and her Court,
and would be softened and gratified by the evident confidence and
good-feeling thus shown; as well as their condition materially benefited
by the necessary expenditure that must be laid out loc