t may annoy our Scottish
friends[1] to have the energetic and intelligent Celt sunk in the "slow
and unimpressible" Saxon, such is the tendency of English centralization,
everywhere destructive of that national feeling which is essential to
progress in civilization.

[Footnote 1: See Blackwood's Magazine, Sept. 1853, art. "Scotland since
the Union."]

Looking to Ireland, we find a similar state of things. Seventy years
since, that country was able to insist upon and to establish its claim for
an independent government, and, by aid of the measures then adopted, was
rapidly advancing. From that period to the close of the century the demand
for books for Ireland was so great as to warrant the republication of a
large portion of those produced in England. The _kingdom_ of Ireland of
that day gave to the world such men as Burke and Grattan, Moore and
Edgeworth, Curran, Sheridan, and Wellington. Centralization, however,
demanded that Ireland should become a province of England, and from that
time famines and pestilences have been of frequent occurrence, and the
whole population is now being expelled to make room for the "slow and
unimpressible" Saxon race. Under these circumstances, it is matter of
small surprise that Ireland not only produces no books, but that she
furnishes no market for those produced by others. Half a century of
international copyright has almost annihilated both the producers and the
consumers of books.

Passing towards England we may for a moment look to Wales, and then, if we
desire to find the effects of centralization and its consequent
absenteeism, in neglected schools, ignorant teachers, decaying and decayed
churches, and drunken clergymen with immoral flocks, our object will be
accomplished by studying the pages of the "Edinburgh Review" [2] In such a
state of things as is there described there can be little tendency to the
development of intellect, and little of either ability or inclination to
reward the authors of books. In my next, I will look to England herself.

[Footnote 2: April, 1853, art. "The Church in the Mountains."]

LETTER IV.

Arrived in England, we find there everywhere the same tendency towards
centralization. Of the 200,000 small landed proprietors of the days of
Adam Smith but few remain, and of even those the number is gradually
diminishing. Great landed estates have everywhere absentees for owners,
agents for managers, and day laborers for workmen. The