included within our pages more numerous and varied facts of a political nature than have ever before been brought within the like compass in any book relating to Ireland. These facts are derived from undisputed chronicles and official records, and we confidently invite a thorough examination of the bearings of the facts upon the questions at issue. Broadly speaking, it may be said that English statesmen have long since admitted that the facts disclose a course of government that has been exceedingly oppressive towards Ireland. No one entirely denies this. The most conservative men of all classes admit that there is much to remedy in the government of Ireland, and many influential and leading statesmen have admitted the extreme gravity of Irish grievances and have earnestly endeavoured to remove them by legislation. The important question to decide and act upon is, whether the legislation that has been accomplished has conferred the advantages upon the Irish people it was professedly designed to confer, and, if not, then to decide what the reasons of the failure have been, and the course future legislation should take in order to achieve the success that has been wanting in the past. With this object in view we refer to the collective facts as a whole, and to the deductions progressively arising out of them. X. Corrupt Prosecutions-Justices Fox and Johnson, Cobbett, etc., 90 XII. Catholic Revivalism-Dawn of O'Connell-Maynooth Col- XIV. Renewed Catholic Struggles-Government Prosecutions— Parliamentary Proceedings-The Assassination of Mr. XV. The Outrage Period initiated-O'Connell in the Ascendant -The First Dash of Concession-Grattan's Triumph XVIII. Famine and Renewed Outrages-Death of George III., XX. After the Feast-The Whiteboys-Increasing Outrages, 143 XXI. The Famine of 1822-The Death of Castlereagh, Marquis XXII. Catholic Achievements-Tithe Commutations-Protestant Resistance-Riot and Denunciation—The Catholic Association-First Institution of the People's "Rent" XXIII. Official Recognition of Grievances—Death of the Duke of York-Death of Lord Liverpool-Canning's Ministry XXIV. What it was all about-The Oaths of Exclusion, XXV. Modification of the Test and Corporation Acts, XXVI. Election of O'Connell for Clare-Its Immediate Results, XXIX. Extinguishment of the "Forty-Shilling" Voters, XXX. O'Connell at the Bar of the House-His Exclusion-His XXXI. Death of George the Fourth-O'Connell Elected for the Third XXXIII. The Tithe War-Death of William the Fourth, XXXIV. Accession of Queen Victoria-Poor Law Act and Conver- XXXV. The First Victim-The Assassination of Lord Norbury- XXXVI. The Repeal Agitation-O'Connell's Supreme Effort-Father Mathew's Crusade-Conciliation Hall-Military Sup- XXXVIII. Maynooth, and the Queen's Colleges, XXXVIII., Responsibility for the Famine-An Abortive Cocrcion Bill -Peel's Resignation, Retirement, and Death, XXXIX. Young Ireland-O'Brien's Defiance of Parliament-His Im- prisonment for Contempt-His Great Speech-Panic XLIII. Legislative Agonies-Vain Coercion Acts-The Reform Struggle The Disestablishment Resolutions-The Ap- XLV. The Irish Land Act of 1870-Its Provisions and Defects, 322 XLVI. Practical Consequences-More Coercion-The Westmeath THE IRISH PROBLEM. IN CHAPTER I. A CONQUEST AND A COLONY. N a book entitled De Salute Populi, the author of which, an Irishman, who styled himself " Panderus," lived in the early part of the sixteenth century, it is related that the good St. Brigetta, or Bridget, was told by "her holy angel,” that there was a land in the west part of the world where most souls were lost, "for there is most continual war, root of hate and envy, and of vices contrary to charity, and without charity the souls cannot be saved." The opinion of the author of the book was that Ireland was the land that the angel meant, "for there is no land in the world of so continual war; nor of so great shedding of Christian blood; nor of so great robbery, spoiling, preying, and burning; nor of so great wrongful extortion continually, as Ireland.” When these words were written, Ireland had been for more than three centuries nominally subject to the kings of England, the dominant landholders were of English descent, and the common law of England was presumably the law of the Green Island. Mr. Froude, referring to the passage quoted above, says, with apparent justice, "The Pander's satire upon the English enterprise is a heavy one." Augustin Thierry, the historian of the Norman Conquest of England, traced by the aid of extensive knowledge, and with a strong sympathy, the story of the Norman-English conquest of Ireland. He says, "The conquest of Ireland by the Anglo-Normans is perhaps the only one that, after the first disasters which all conquests necessarily entail, has not, in the slow and imperceptible progress of events, been succeeded by a gradual amelioration in the social condition of the conquered people. The sad and singular fate which weighs alike upon the old and the new inhabitants of the isle of Erin, has for its cause the vicinity of England, and the influence which its government has continually exercised, since the conquest, over the internal affairs of that country." Ireland, like England, had struggled bravely, and in the end successfully, against the invasions of the Scandinavian sea-kings, before the Norsemen, the Normans of history, established a sovereignty in England. There was friendship between some of the famous Saxon leaders and the Irish princes. When the sons of the great Earl Godwin unsuccessfully rebelled against Edward the Confessor, Harold, the second son, took refuge in Ireland, with his brother-in-law, Donough, King of Munster, who had married Driella, sister of Harold. This Donough was the son of Brian Boru, the warrior king celebrated in song and history in connection with the defeat of the Danes at Clontarf; and after the death of Malachy, who wore, as Tom Moore reminds us, "the collar of gold," and was the last crowned King of Ireland, Donough assumed the title and claimed to exercise the power of Ard-righ, or King of all Ireland, having, in accordance with a policy not limited to those days, brought about the murder of his brother, Teigue, who had a superior claim. The island was then divided into five kingdoms, Ulster, Leinster, Meath, Connaught, and Munster. The Ard-righ, or chief monarch, possessed the central district of Meath, and usually resided at a place which has served as the rallying-point of Irish nationality even in our own times-Tara, or the hill of Teamhair, where in the great hall of the palace of King Cormac, the semi-legendary monarch of the fourth century, a hundred and fifty warriors stood in the King's presence when he feasted, and a hundred and fifty cupbearers handed the guests cups of silver and gold; and where, too, bards of marvellous poetic powers played on "the harp which once in Tara's halls its soul of music shed." For twenty years after the death of Malachy, the kingdom of |