ay be done again; and as it was England that kept
Irish society so long rocking on its smaller end, it is her duty
now to lend all her strength to help to seat it on its own broad
foundations. Giving up the Viceroy's dreams that the glorious mission
of Ireland was to be a kitchen garden, a dairy, a larder for England,
we must come frankly to the conclusion that the national life of the
Irish people, without distinction of creed or party, increases
in vigour with their intelligence, and is now invincible. Let the
imperial legislature put an end for ever to such an unnatural state of
things--thus only can they secure the harmonious working and cordial
Union of the two nations united together in one State--thus only can
they insure for the landlords themselves all the power and all
the influence that can be retained by them in consistency with the
industrial rights and political freedom of the cultivators of the
soil. These now complain of their abject dependence, and hopeless
bondage, under grinding injustice. They are alleged to be full of
discontent, which must grow with the intelligence and manhood of the
people who writhe under the system. Their advocates affirm that their
discontent must increase in volume and angry force every year, and
that, owing to the connection of Ireland with the United States,
it may at any time be suddenly swollen with the fury of a mountain
torrent, deeply discoloured by a Republican element.

It must be granted, I fear, that the Celts of Ireland feel pretty much
as the Britons felt under the ascendency of the Saxons, and as the
Saxons in their turn felt under the ascendency of the Normans. In
the estimation of the Christian Britons, their Saxon conquerors,
even after the conversion of the latter, were 'an accursed race, the
children of robbers and murderers, possessing the fruits of their
fathers' crimes.' 'With them,' says Dr. Lingard, 'the Saxon was no
better than a pagan bearing the name of a Christian. They refused to
return his salutation, to join in prayer with him in the church, to
sit with him at the same table, to abide with him under the same roof.
The remnant of his meals and the food over which he had made the sign
of the cross they threw to their dogs or swine; the cup out of
which he had drunk they scoured with sand, as if it had contracted
defilement from his lips.'

It is not the Celtic memory only that is tenacious of national wrong.
The Saxon was doomed to drink to the