IRELAND FIFTY YEARS AGO.
[TO THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR." t SIH,—The following extracts, from Maria Edgeworth's corre- spondence, published in her life by Helen Zimmern, are interest- ing, as showing the falsity of the notion, which is maintained for party purposes, that Irish agrarian and political discontent has been called into existence by the Gladstone Government for party purposes. The first bears date 1822 :—
" The minds bent on mischief are unconquered. In fact, it is almost the avowed object of the people to drive the remaining resident gentry from the country. I do not think the hatred is between Protestant and Catholic, but between landlord and tenant, —I should say, between tenant and landlord. The landlords are the greatest sufferers." (p. 162.)
The other that I shall quote bears date 1830, or thereabouts :-
" I fear we have much to go through in this country before we come to quiet, settled life and a ready obedience to the laws. There is, literally, no rein of law at this moment to hold the Irish ; and through the whole country there is what I cannot justly call a spirit of reform, but a spirit of revolution under the name of reform ; restless desire to overthrow what is, and a hope—more than a hope, an expectation—of gaining liberty or wealth, or both, in the struggle ; and if they do gain either, they will lose both again and will be worse off than ever ; they will afterwards quarrel among themselves, destroy one another, and be again enslaved with heavier chains." (p. 185.)
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