nto a
policy of mere obstruction. The genuine national enthusiasm never flows
in the channel of imperial politics. With great multitudes sectarian
considerations have entirely superseded national ones, and their
representatives are accustomed systematically to subordinate all party
and all political questions to ecclesiastical interests; and while
calling themselves Liberals, they make it the main object of their home
politics to separate the different classes of their fellow-countrymen
during the period of their education, and the main object of their
foreign policy to support the temporal power of the Pope. With another
and a still larger class the prevailing feeling seems to be an
indifference to all Parliamentary proceedings; an utter scepticism about
constitutional means of realizing their ends; a blind, persistent hatred
of England. Every cause is taken up with an enthusiasm exactly
proportioned to the degree in which it is supposed to be injurious to
English interests. An amount of energy and enthusiasm which if rightly
directed would suffice for the political regeneration of Ireland is
wasted in the most insane projects of disloyalty; while the diversion of
so much public feeling from Parliamentary politics leaves the
Parliamentary arena more and more open to corruption, to place-hunting,
and to imposture.

"This picture is in itself a very melancholy one, but there are other
circumstances which greatly heighten the effect. In a very ignorant or a
very wretched population it is natural that there should be much vague,
unreasoning discontent; but the Irish people are at present neither
wretched nor ignorant. Their economical condition before the famine was,
indeed, such that it might well have made reasonable men despair. With
the land divided into almost microscopic farms, with a population
multiplying rapidly to the extreme limits of subsistence, accustomed to
the very lowest standard of comfort, and marrying earlier than in any
other northern country in Europe, it was idle to look for habits of
independence or self-reliance, or for the culture which follows in the
train of leisure and comfort. But all this has been changed. A fearful
famine and the long-continued strain of emigration have reduced the
nation from eight millions to less than five, and have effected, at the
price of almost intolerable suffering, a complete economical revolution.
The population is now in no degree in excess of the means of
subsis