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Such is the history of Ireland–for we are now at our own times; and the only remaining question is, whether the system of improvement and conciliation begun in the reign of George III. shall be pursued, and the remaining incapacities of the Catholics removed, or all these concessions be made insignificant by an adherence to that spirit of proscription which they professed to abolish? Looking to the sense and reason of the thing, and to the ordinary working of humanity and justice, when assisted, as they are here, by self- interest and worldly policy, it might seem absurd to doubt of the result. But looking to the facts and the persons by which we are now surrounded, we are constrained to say that we greatly fear that these incapacities never will be removed till they are removed by fear. What else, indeed, can we expect when we see them opposed by such enlightened men as Mr. Peel–faintly assisted by men of such admirable genius as Mr. Canning–when Royal Dukes consider it as a compliment to the memory of their father to continue this miserable system of bigotry and exclusion, when men act ignominiously and contemptibly on this question, who do so on no other question, when almost the only persons zealously opposed to this general baseness and fatuity are a few Whigs and Reviewers, or here and there a virtuous poet like Mr. Moore? We repeat again, that the measure never will be effected but by fear. In the midst of one of our just and necessary wars, the Irish Catholics will compel this country to grant them a great deal more than they at present require or even contemplate. We regret most severely the protraction of the disease, and the danger of the remedy; but in this way it is that human affairs are carried on!

We are sorry we have nothing for which to praise Administration on the subject of the Catholic question, but it is but justice to say, that they have been very zealous and active in detecting fiscal abuses in Ireland, in improving mercantile regulations, and in detecting Irish jobs. The commission on which Mr. Wallace presided has been of the greatest possible utility, and does infinite credit to the Government. The name of Mr. Wallace in any commission has now become a pledge to the public that there is a real intention to investigate and correct abuse. He stands in the singular predicament of being equally trusted by the rulers and the ruled. It is a new era in Government when such men are called into action; and if there were not proclaimed and fatal limits to that ministerial liberality, which, so far as it goes, we welcome without a grudge and praise without a sneer, we might yet hope that, for the sake of mere consistency, they might be led to falsify our forebodings. But alas! there are motives more immediate, and therefore irresistible; and the time is not yet come when it will be believed easier to govern Ireland by the love of the many than by the power of the few, when the paltry and dangerous machinery of bigoted faction and prostituted patronage may be dispensed with, and the vessel of the State be propelled by the natural current of popular interests and the breath of popular applause. In the meantime, we cannot resist the temptation of gracing our conclusion with the following beautiful passage, in which the author alludes to the hopes that were raised at another great era of partial concession and liberality, that of the revolution of 1782, when, also, benefits were conferred which proved abortive because they were incomplete, and balm poured into the wound, where the envenomed shaft was yet left to rankle.

“And here,” says the gallant Captain Rock, “as the free confession of weakness constitutes the chief charm and use of biography, I will candidly own that the dawn of prosperity and concord which I now saw breaking over the fortunes of my country, so dazzled and deceived my youthful eyes, and so unsettled every hereditary notion of what I owed to my name and family, that–shall I confess it–I even hailed with pleasure the prospects of peace and freedom that seemed opening around me; nay, was ready, in the boyish enthusiasm of the moment, to sacrifice all my own personal interest in all future riots and rebellions to the one bright, seducing object of my country’s liberty and repose.