and vibrated at every touch, and might at any moment re-assume its former functions. The more he reflected upon this state of things, and upon the condition of the mass of the population, the more he was persuaded of the urgent need there existed of taking means to show that a practical, and not merely a theoretical, change was to be achieved by Emancipation.

"I greatly fear," he said, "that the Government labour under the misapprehension, that if left to itself it will work its beneficial results without any active co-operation. I think quite otherwise; I think that an anti-Anglican party may be very easily created by the active spirits whose passion for distinction (perhaps I should call it notoriety) has been fed for so many years by popular commotion. Already efforts are making to substitute for the Catholic question some topic as exciting, which will call the people of this country into a confederacy more powerful than any which previously existed. This then is not the time for inertness and torpor upon the part of the executive, who will have to determine whether the men who "wielded at will the fierce democracy" are to continue the use of that formidable implement, or to become sincerely and

permanently attached to the constitutional order of things. Individuals will soon have to choose the part which they are to perform for life. Events are rapidly coming on which will supersede personal inclinations, and sweep men back again into all the whirl and eddies from which they had hoped to escape. Trust me, that the people will be alive to any marks of kind feeling which shall be exhibited towards the Catholic community in the persons of individuals; whereas if nothing be done, expectation will gradually fall back from its tiptoe elevation, and discontent, embittered by disappointment, will speedily ensue."

Two important measures he believed to be indispensable, as the necessary corollaries to that already passed. The one for the removal of discontent in the matter of education; the other for the prevention of its perennial growth out of physical suffering and destitution. The expediency of endeavouring by means of both to attach the Catholic clergy to the State, seemed to him all the more obvious because he regarded as then impossible any direct endowment of that body. Their eventual payment by the State was a measure the importance of which "he was not more strongly convinced of, than of the facility with

which it might be accomplished." When examined as a witness before the select committee of 1825, he had stated his conviction that such a provision would be accepted if Emancipation were to precede it ;* and now that the latter had been accomplished, his mind naturally reverted to the same idea. Instead of suggesting, however, any proposition of the kind, he would have had a different distribution made of the funds annually allotted by Parliament to purposes of public instruction. "There exists through all Ireland a great thirst for education. If the same sum which was originally intended to be applied in salaries to the priests, were to be placed in their hands, or vested in the bishops, to be distributed in the promotion of instruction through the medium of the priesthood, the latter would be immediately attached, by their personal interests, to the Government by which they were trusted. The parish priest who receives a salary will be connected with the Government by which it is supplied; the people, upon the other hand, who will participate in the benefits of this donation, so far from remonstrating against a stipend, will be grateful for it. Let a school, attached to the chapel, appear in every parish. The rising generation * Rep. Sel. Com., 1825. Vol. viii., p. 102.

will be obviously improved; and the parents and kindred of those who are instructed will behold that their religion and their priesthood are no longer under a ban and from the little cottage dedicated to purposes of rural learning, morality, peace and contentedness will rapidly flow. If the argu

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ments which offer themselves in support of this view required any confirmation, I might avail myself of the high authority of Dr. Doyle, who agrees with me in the opinions which I have expressed, and who, if the Government acted judiciously in his regard, would be found in all likelihood their zealous and powerful auxiliary." These views were further expanded and enforced in an article on "The Effects of Emancipation," which appeared in the New Monthly of the ensuing December.

There was another and equally pressing question on which his sentiments coincided with those of Dr. Doyle that, namely, of Poor-Laws. In a letter soon afterwards publicly addressed by that gifted prelate to Mr. Spring Rice, the expediency and duty were eloquently insisted on, of making a legal provision in Ireland for the maintenance of the poor. Looking at the social condition of things around them from different points of view, but with the same discerning

insight into causes and results, which constitutes one of the highest political qualities, both had come to the same conclusion, and both earnestly recommended that no more time should be lost in making property chargeable with the relief of those, when in extreme want, whom it had failed to employ. They were not insensible to the evils which the English Poor-Law system (then unreformed) had generated. These were enunciated with lucid precision by Dr. Doyle, in order that they might be guarded against in Ireland. Well might his friend and admirer point him out as eminently fitted to give the Government sagacious counsel and effective aid in what concerned the peace and welfare of the country.

O'Connell, who felt the necessity of some great social change in the condition of the country, objected to both the remedies thus proposed, and started the Repeal of the Union as a more popular alternative. He saw that a vast unemployed population, long accustomed to political excitement, could not be expected to subside peacefully into the state of mute degradation and despair from which the agitation had roused them. Their numbers were increasing, their misery deepening, and their intelligence quickening every year. In his first public letter in favour of