from the fact that the most humane and intelligent Natives,
each as Mr. O'Connell or Mr.Smith O'Brien do not appear to see any- thing peculiar in it : the murder is deprecated; but the harbour- ing of the assassin, the act most significant of evil, is passed over as unimportant if not venial : and murders in England are mentioned by way of set-off,—as if there were no distinction between individual crime, where the murderer is obliged to skulk like a hunted beast, and the universal misprision of murder. Some impute the propensity to the fact that the Irish are a starving people. It might be asked, why are they so ? It cannot be the sending away of rent and taxes, for Scotland does as much in proportion, without being a starving nation. And even where the Scotch are starving, they do not become a population of accomplices in murder. Nor were the Irish always a starving race : so that murder cannot be -Strictly imputable to starvation. Are we then to despair of amend- ment? By no means ; although the remedy is not so obvious as to be glibly recommended in half a dozen sentences. It is evi- dent that mere material improvements, either making big farms or feeding the people, will not cure the homicidal epidemic. The Standard talks of exterminating or disarming the people ; ad- mitting that extermination would not do, and force not at present. Coercion Bills and Arms Bills, indeed, do but aggravate the evil at all times. Mere laws can do nothing; because laws subsist on public .opinion, and public opinion in Ireland—always excepting the few "who derive their language, information, and tone of understand- ing, from "the Saxon"—is not averse from murder. If neither Material satisfaction, force, nor law will do, what remains ? The Irish are most impressible on the score of their feelings—they May be coaxed into anything, from murdering an agent or Flay- ing Repeal rent to,playing a dilettante police and being inclus- limns : the policy which would work a change in Ireland must appeal to the feelings. On such an appeal Lord Normanby rests his fame : but he addressed the Irish through gaol-prisoners : let some statesman try in good earnest how it would do to use as the medium of appeal the greatest moral engine existing in Ire- land, the priesthood.
