correct idea of the extent to which they can profit by the enlarged extension of the Irish franchise, they may become patrons and protectors of a ministry, and may enjoin upon the servants they keep in place such labours as it shall please their ambition to assign them. Here, it is manifest, we are too much in the dark to pronounce on the future they may be agents to shape out for the country and the empire. But it would appear to us, that, whatever doubt there may be as to the issues of the synodal experiment, it has disclosed two great characteristics of Romanism, upon which it becomes wise men to meditate and statesmen to act.

The first of these is, its intense and absorbing passion for power-its earnestness of purpose to subject to its influence and authority the understanding, imagination, and conscience; the whole world of man, his thoughts, acts, and feelings. The second is, that in its submission to civil laws, where they are not coincident with its own, it is governed by purely prudential considerations-conscience has no concern in its obedience. Absolute Russia, revolutionary France, Protestant England, in their several degrees, could insure outward respect to laws which it was known would be enforced; but let there be a prospect that resistance to such laws may be successful, and no "compunctious visiting of nature" will discourage the resistance by setting forth the mass of misery and crime that may be attendant on the struggle. What waters of strife may be let loose by the Synod of Thurles, history will have to tell the encouragement it has afforded to disaffection, we have had laid upon us the responsibility to witness, We have seen the emissary of a foreign potentate exercising almost a sovereign authority in our land; inhibiting masses of people upon whom our constitution bestows the privileges of British subjects, from accepting the instruction which the State regards as a guarantee for the honest and safe exercise of these high privileges; prohibiting this educational system, not because he proves it to be evil, but because the Papal See condemns it. We have seen persons under this authority defy the State, by a daring assumption of titles (in correspondence with Government officials, and in pastoral addresses), which the laws of the country pronounce a crime.

Such things will be judged of as indications of purpose by the peoplethey should serve as admonitory lessons to the State. The careless wayfarer who is stung or bitten to death, after having heard the notice of danger which provident nature compels the venomous beast to afford, has but himself to blame for the destruction which has come, not unawares, upon him.

If the government, and its leading organ in the Irish press, are moved by the same spirit, we must conjecture that the "rattle" has given warning in vain. The Dublin Evening Post, which proclaims that "the Synodical Address will be read with attention and respect," publishes a "Memorandum" fully entitled, we frankly admit, to the grave consideration claimed for it:

"THE SYNODICAL ADDRESS.

"The following most important meinorandum, which may be considered an authoritative statement, is most worthy of all attention at the present moment:

Memorandum.

"It is known that the acts of the late Synod can have no effect until they shall have obtained the sanction of the Holy See. On this account its decrees are kept secret, until the final decision of his Holiness regarding them shall have been declared. With respect, however, to the Synodical Address-which was to obtain immediate publicity without having been submitted to the Pope the same reserve is not required; and it is no longer a secret that it contains a passage of which many of the prelates have disapproved. A large number of that body (though not a majority) were adverse to any publication from the Synod regarding the Queen's Colleges, except the Rescripts themselves, until certain points not yet decided by the Holy See should have been submitted to the final judgment of his Holiness; and if, when the Address, which had been already voted by a majority, was read at the last sitting of the Synod, it was not deemed expedient to waste the small remaining time of the Synod in the renewal of what would be then a useless contest, it by no means follows that any one of those several prelates alluded to had changed his previously expressed opinion.

"It is even asserted, by persons who ought to know the fact, that on certain points not yet decided regarding the Colleges, the opinions of the bishops are so nearly balanced as to admit of a majority of one only. All will, however, submit to the final decision of the Holy See.

"The letter which refers to the deans of residence, &c., was not considered by all the prelates as an authoritative Papal document.'"-Evening Post, 17th Sept., 1850.

It is, we repeat, difficult to overestimate the importance of a publication like this. Some short time since it was vaunted by the Times that, because of the publicity of its proceedings, and the presence of reporters exercising their office during the discussion of its measures, there could be nothing alarming in the Synod of Thurles. It is now intimated, with authority, by an organ of the Govern ment, that the Synod was a secret society, that it has published an address, which is to be read "with attention and respect," and that it has passed decrees which are to be kept secret" until the decision (not of the government but) of a foreign potentate, direct their publication. If the secret decrees are to be judged of by the Address which the Synod was not afraid to publish, there was certainly much to justify suspicion, if not alarm, in the synodical proceedings. When an assembly, in which every individual was bound by an oath of feudal, or more than feudal, obedience to a foreign power, regarded an Address condemnatory of such a scheme as that which the bishops denounced, a document which it was wise to make public, and when they appended to the Address signatures by which they openly and deliberately violated the law of the land, it would not be marvellous if the deliberations which they felt it expedient to conceal, occasioned some feelings of distrust in the government they opposed and insulted.

Further, it is announced in the "memorandum," that of the bishops assembled in synod at Thurles, "there was a majority of one only," but that "all will submit to the decision of the Holy See." The assembly was divided— there was a majority of one, we may

collect, adverse to the Government and law of Great Britain; in a few weeks more there will be unanimity in the synodal decision; the large minority will, in all probability, adopt the resolutions of what is now the smallest possible majority, and all the bishops of the Church of Rome in Ireland will be arrayed against the Government and the laws; or, if the less unfavourable alternative be chosen, the British Government will owe the miti. gation of contumely to the commands of a foreign potentate. A pitiable estate this for a mighty empire-England abased to a dependance on the probability that Pio Nono may have learned, from the contingencies of his own life, wisdom enough to discourage disaffection in his Irish episcopal vassals—

"Mirandusque cliens sedet ad præteria reges
Donec Bythino libeat vigilare tyranno."

Her Majesty's ministers are guardians of their own honour. To them the indignity may be of light account

"To show their miseries in foreign lands, Condemned, as needy suppliants, to wait The tyrant's sentence and the slaves' debate."

But there are interests and duties not their own, upon which their conduct must have an influence, and which it will be baseness unparalleled if they wantonly abandon. The glory of the British crown is at their mercy-is it to be made a sport for the Vatican ? Subjects of their royal mistress, if protected in the righteous exercise of their own judgment, will continue well-affected to the laws and to their Queen; and are the Queen's ministers to deny them protection, and tamely stand by while the Pope, if it so pleases "His Holiness," indoctrinates them in treason?

bring forward and establish, by argu ment and illustration, every sound proposition; to grapple with and expose every delusive sophism; to note well the exceptions to every general principle, and the reasons why it should be so qualified, and to do all this so conclusively as to overbear the strongest prejudices, would be entirely out of our power. To have done less than this to have attempted the task and failed-would have been most injurious. We rejoice to know that the true principles of political economy have been steadily advancing in the country. They have advanced, as all truth has ever done, and, from the nature of things, must ever continue to do, impeded by much unjust obloquy, by much misapprehension, and by some mistaken support. Yet, notwithstanding the indiscretion of friends, and the rancour and prejudice of opponents, the truths of political economy have daily gained ground, and are now not

merely acknowledged by those who have studied the subject for themselves, but have begun to be generally received and adopted by the great mass of mankind who are content to take their opinions from others.

The

It would be most unjust thus to no. tice the rapid diffusion of correct views on the great subjects of national and social interests without acknowledging the source to which it is owing. Ireland owes the diffusion of economical knowledge to the public spirit and liberality of an individual, and he a stranger. The first impetus to the study of political economy in this country was given by Archbishop Whateley. It is now nearly twenty years since he founded, in Trinity College, the professorship of political economy which bears his name. University, adopting the spirit of the founder of the professorship, shortly afterwards instituted annual prizes to encourage the cultivation of the science. The circumstances connected with this professorship, the periodical lectures, the annual examinations, and the competition for the professorship itself (which being tenable but for five years, continually attracts a number of aspirants for the distinction) have mainly occasioned that improved tone of public opinion on this important subject which every one of us must recognise. We observe that the University has recently introduced portions of Adam

1849.

VOL. XXXVI.—NO. CCAY.

21

Smith's celebrated treatise into the course for ethical moderatorship. We see, too, that each of the newly established Queen's Colleges has its professor of political economy; and we feel confident that, in the course of a very few years, the leading truths of this science will be so generally diffused, that men will forget how first they learned them, and will come to regard them as self-evident.

We feel that we are not over-sanguine in our anticipations, for we know of no subject the leading doctrines of which are so simple, of none in which the application of these principles to the social phenomena with which it is concerned is more easy. Collateral subjects no doubt there aresubjects like banking, currency, and some others that we could enumerate -of which the facts are not as yet sufficiently well established, or understood, to enable us to feel that our conclusions are necessarily true. With regard to such subjects we must be content for some time to acquiesce in results which approach no closer to certainty than a very high degree of probability; we must wait until statistics, the handmaid of political science, shall have given us some surer footing as the basis of our reasoning. But for the greater number of questions with which political economy has to deal, statistics are in no degree requisite. We can determine the bearing of almost every measure, which directly affects the condition of any class of society, whether landlords, capitalists, or labourers, either without the aid of statistics at all, or with such a general knowledge of their results as every one is familiar with. In fact, in so small a compass can the principles of political economy be contained, that if we take up the works of many distinguished political economists, we will find that by much a larger portion of them is devoted to exposing former errors, than to expounding or investigating truth. False notions had sprung up, under the influence of classlegislation; the interests of a section of the community had long been regarded as identical with, or paramount to, that of the whole, and various clumsy devices were adopted by governments to promote the interests of these favourite classes. In a state of society so perverted and unnatural, it was not to be expected that any just views on economical subjects could

present themselves. How, for example, while the ruling classes were all idlers, and the working classes all slaves, is it possible that right notions of the value and dignity of labour could ever have occurred to mankind? When the institutions of society became more in accordance with the principles of human nature, and more favourable to the progress of truth, the influence of a few powerful minds dispelled the mists of former error; and so simple and obvious are the true economical interests of mankind, that we defy any candid mind, on giving any reasonable attention to the subject, to fail in discerning them.

What is now needed is, to disseminate a general knowledge of these interests widely throughout the mass of the population. It is hardly pos sible to do better service to the country, than is done by the publi cation of such a work as Mr. Burton's. The subject is within the capacity of every intelligent man in the community-the size and price of the volume make it available to all; and the topics on which it treats are those with which we are most intimately concerned, and upon which we are called upon to speak and to act every day of our lives. It is thus only, by the circulation of such works as these, that not only will the evils which might be apprehended from the wide diffusion of political power be obviated, but this increase of power will be converted into positive blessings to society. Educate the people-such should be the watch-word of every one who wishes well to his country; qualify them to judge rightly, and to act. temperately but resolutely in all matters of social interest. They have now acquired power-it is for the educated and influential classes to determine whether this shall become a blessing or a curse to themselves and to the community. By diligent culture it must be converted into the one; neglect it, and it will most certainly degenerate into the other. One thing at least is certainit never can be recalled. The waters were long pent up, and exhibited all the offensive symptoms of stagnation; but now that they have burst their barriers, "riven their concealing continents," they are gone beyond recall, and it is for us to determine whether they shall course madly over the land, or be guided into peaceful fertilising channels.

The great impression which is left by the perusal of Mr. Burton's book is, a high sense of the value and the dignity of labour. This is a most valuable feature in his work. Labour, whether of body or of mind, is the unavoidable lot of man. If, then, for no higher consideration than because it is a condition from which we cannot escape, it is well to be reconciled to it. But to look on labour as a necessary evil, merely as a state of things which is to be endured, and to which we should try to reconcile ourselves, is, in our judgment, to take a very perverse view of the dispensations of the Almighty. We are inclined to take a very opposite view of the conditions of our being. We look upon the necessity for labour, and the capacity for toil, as being the main ingredients of our temporal happiness. Without labour no faculty of our nature would be developed. It provokes our energy, it kindles our courage, it calls forth every mental and bodily capability, and gives us that invaluable spirit of self-reliance, without which nothing great or good was ever yet accomplished. Place any portion of mankind in circumstances in which they must necessarily work, and the effort will invariably call forth an amount of exertion much greater than is needed for overcoming the difficulties which are presented to it. This is universally true, and hardly needs illustration. The difficulties of his position have placed the Hollander in the foremost rank among the nations of the earth-the teeming ferti lity which surround him has debased the Hindoo. Are we without a lesson derived from our own country on this very subject ?-Can we say that the degraded condition of our peasantry is not in a great measure owing to the facility with which they raised the main article of their food? No one can question but that when a people are far advanced in civilisation, the cheapness of their food must be the greatest blessing. It would be a rebelling against Providence to dispute it. But if a difficulty in procuring the necessaries of life be, as we believe it to be, the main agency for starting a people in their industrial career, if labour be a necessary condition to the advancement of a nation, we cannot but feel that the exclusive cultivation of the potato, the constant

dependence on a food which it requires neither skill, nor capital, nor industry to cultivate, has acted most prejudi cially on the character and condition of the Irish people. When we look to this universal necessity for labour, to the blessings which flow from it, to its influence on the character of a people and their capacity for happiness, we conceive that we are entitled to regard it as appointed for higher purposes than any of a mere temporal character. On such a subject it becomes us to speak with diffidence and with reverence; but it is impossible not to feel that the blessings of labour may be extended beyond the present world, and that the high qualities of our nature-zeal, courage, energy, which are developed by its influence in the little theatre of action on which we are now placed, may possibly be designed to form the basis of that nobler character with which we shall hereafter be clothed, and may influence our position in the more expanded sphere to which we trust to attain.

It is, of course, more with the economical than with the moral considerations connected with labour that Mr. Burton's book is concerned, although these latter are by no means overlooked. It is with the former, however, that he has chiefly to deal, and the remarkably just economical views which pervade his entire work, are mainly to be referred to the sound basis on which he starts in determining the circumstances which regulate the wages of the labourer.

The history of opinion on this very subject, forcibly illustrates the necessity of cultivating the study of Political Economy. It was for many centuries a received maxim in English legislation, that the rate of the labourer's wages ought to be regulated by statutory enactment. The notion originated in that system of legislating for the interests of a class only of the community, of which we have already spoken, and which more than anything else retarded the development of sound views on economical subjects. The first and most important of these legal enactments was that known as the "Statute of Labourers." This Act was passed in the twenty-third year of the reign of Edward III., and under these circumstances. The oriental plague had then recently ravaged the land; some accounts tell us that one