it; let the policy of treating it as an overt-act of rebellion be conceded; although, this day that we write, 67 Repealers are announced in the Times as candidates for Irish counties and boroughs, all pledged to this treasonable project: whisper nothing of the employment of the statute conferring such monstrous powers on the Lord Lieutenant; a statute which Lord Anglesey and Mr. Stanley, (see Hansard's Parliamentary Debates for 1829,) were the most conspicuous in denouncing, for which, coupled even as it was with emancipation, Henry Brougham declined voting; and take the Ministry on the only important measure they have attempted-Tithe Reform. In this, Mr. Stanley has equally disregarded the interests and the feelings of the people. A course as remote from justice, as from policy, has been pursued. To enforce a tax upon the consciences of men-a tax, which from religious, political, and economical motives, is hateful to them,-the country has been filled with massacres and assassinations. To make law respected it has been converted into an instrument of injustice: life and property have been wasted alike under it. Let his measures speak for themselves. The simple recapitulation of the results is sufficient. The names of Newtownbarry, Carrickshough, Wallstown, Carrigeen, Dunmanway, with the assassina. tions that reply to them in such frightful numbers, pronounce the beaviest condemnation on the course he has taken. Will the country be tranquillized by the shedding of so much blood? Will peace, or morality, or law, be promoted by these dreadful measures? Will the people trust to laws and tribunals for protection, when they know the one by military executions, and the other by the vexations of legal processes in a cause they abhor? Were tithes undeniably just, and useful in their ap plication, surely it should still be considered, whether they ought to be enforced at the expense of so much life and money.

There are many scenes in this great piece of Mr. Stanley's. Not the least worthy of remark is the war against the press. Observe the dignity that marks it, and the felicitous manner in which the distinction between an Irish and English paper is made obvious to the most unreflecting. The Tipperary Free Press has had three prosecutions against it-for what?-for publishing Advertising Resolutions on the subject of tithes, those advertisements being signed by the chairman and secretary of the meeting at which they were passed! The Freeeman's Journal has been prosecuted twice-one prosecution being for copying Mr. O'Con nell's letter from the True Sun, while that journal passes free! The Kilkenny Journal has been prosecuted once; and, at the last notice we saw of the subject, two more prosecutions were understood to be in progress against it. The Dublin Comet has been prosecuted at least twice. One conviction was effected in the following ingenious manner, without the troublesome intervention of a jury:-The proprietors were brought before the Judges, on a charge of endeavouring to prejudice the public mind on some approaching tithe-trials, and were sentenced by them to fine and imprisonment forthwith. In the second case, which was for a libel on the clergy of the Established Church, the Irish Solicitor-General, a Whig, defined libel, according to Holt, thus :-"A malicious defamation, expressed in writing or signs, for the purpose of bringing an individual into hatred, contempt, or ridicule, or intended to blacken the character of the dead, or injure the reputation of the living." Not a syllable about the truth or falsehood of the charges against a pub. lic body! That is quite immaterial. The Pilot, also, has been prosecuted once at least; and even the Penny Caricature Journal (Dub

lin,) has not escaped. The miserable proprietors-poor men! were required to give enormous bail, and, in default, were committed.

The next striking feature is the cloud of attachments issued at the suit of Government, in some cases for sums incredibly small. Under these, arrests and seizures were, and are still making, through the country. The circumstances attending them are often well calculated to increase respect for law. On the 22d of October last, the persons whose names are subscribed to the following address were arrested. This masterly document will explain their feelings :

TO THE PEOPLE OF IRELAND.

We, the undersigned, now prisoners in the gaol of Carlow, under a process issued against our persons at the suit of his Majesty's Attorney General, on account of arrears of tithes alleged to be due of us, adopt this mode of protesting before Heaven and the nations of the earth against the punishment inflicted on us, and of appealing to you for sympathy in our confinement, whilst we pray you to imitate our obedience to the constituted authorities, our constancy in trial, and our legal opposition even unto chains and prisons, to those claims which our conscience, the voice of nature, and the judgment of the whole civilized world proclaim to be unjust.

We have heard, with sorrow of heart, of the blood of our countrymen shed in struggles produced by the enforcement of tithe. May we hope, that from the depth of a prison our voice may be heard, imploring our fellow-subjects and fellow-sufferers to oppose no resistance but such as is legal and constitutional, and such as we have given to those agents of power who execute against us laws which we detest. Our strength is in suffering, and not in opposing our naked breasts or excited passions to the armed force which is arrayed against us. By patiently submitting to the loss of our goods, or imprisonment of our persons, we will expose the injustice of the laws which oppress us; we will collect and strengthen the indignation of three whole nations-England, Ireland, and Scotland; and direct it through Parliament to the destruction of that old iniquity, which, in the name of Christ, deprives us of our peace and of our property, and repays us with stripes and insult.

But what fills us with affliction, and adds peculiar pain to our confinement is, that we suffer at the suit of a government to whose support we contribute some thousands of pounds sterling annually-to a government whose measures and stability we maintained with all our strength and mind against the very men who sought its overthrow, and factiously opposed, and still oppose, all their measures; but whose alleged claims this same Government have adopted, and have now enforced by the imprisonment of our persons.

Our pain in this respect is no way alleviated by the specious but uncandid allegation, that a government is obliged to uphold existing laws: for the law under which we suffer was introduced into Farliament by the Government itself, and instead of being called for by the country, was denounced, in and out of Parliament, as injurious to all the feelings and interests of the people of Ireland. From our prison we protest against this law; we blame the Government which introduced it, and we believe that no friend to Ireland consented to its enactment, or shares in its execution.

*

We therefore conjure our countrymen who are fellow-bondsmen with us, or likely to become so, to submit patiently, as we have done, to the loss of goods, and even to incarceration of their persons; and to protest aloud and unceasingly, but at the same time constitutionally, legally, and peaceably, against the injustice exercised against us to deprecate the Government from warring against their own subjects-from oppressing those who would be their friends; and to petition, with one voice, the Legislature utterly to abolish tithes, and apply the residue of what is called churchproperty to those purposes of religion and charity which the wisdom of Parliament can so easily discover.

The Very Rev. Dr. FITZGERALD, President of Carlow College.
Mr. J. HANLON, Proprietor, Coffey's Hotel.

Mr. J. COFFEY, 80 years of age, and the richest trader in Carlow.

Mr. J. HAUGHTON, of the Society of Friends, and Distiller in Carlow.
Mr. R. PAUL, Brewer.

Mr. R. IVERS, Shopkeeper.

Mr. J. LENNON, Farmer.

Mr. Js. BEEHAN, Farmer.

Mr. Js. D'ARCY, Farmer.

The third great party is the people; and it is manifest to all that they are for repeal. In the fourth number of this magazine it was stated that six out of eight millions support it; and there are few who will not now feel that this view was perfectly correct. This is the first year that a repeal pledge has been demanded; and sixty-seven have given it already! In the cities and boroughs (speaking generally) the question is triumphant. The recorder, with the power of the corporation at his back, and extensive personal interest, has fled from the city of Dublin. Mr. Wise has lost Tipperary. Mr. Wallace, a very popular member, has lost Drogheda, and Lord Killeen is jeopardied in Meath, because they refused the pledge. In Limerick, it is notorious that two repealers can be returned unless the popular strength be mismanaged: For Galway two repealers are candidates; but perhaps the most remarkable sign of the times, and the prodigious progress the question has made, is to be found in the adhesion of a man of such splendid and various abilities as Mr. Shiel. In the enjoyment of a plentiful fortune, and other tenderer requisites to domestic happiness, he stood aloof from agitation, determined to try the Government by its actions. The last year, the complete surrender of Ireland to Mr. Stanley, the rigid policy pursued by that gentleman, in contempt of the feelings and interests of the country, and the apathy of English members, or their worse readiness to vote for any measure proposed by Ministers, have convinced him "that the people of Ireland can never be happy or prosperous until the repeal of the union is passed into a law." In fact, as has been elsewhere observed, there are not repealers enough. It is not constituencies but candidates that are wanting. The mass of the people is devoted to repeal. The trunk of the kingdom, the middle and lower classes, are entirely for it ;-the rich are next to be tried, for it is there the opposition is centred.

It behoves men to prepare themselves for the consideration of this question of repeal. Whether the number of repealers returned be small or large, considering the mere infancy of the subject, is a matter of little consequence, the extraordinary number of candidates who rest their pretensions on the advocacy of it, is the circumstance that compels reflection. And in examining it this caution should be strictly im pressed-not to confound repeal with separation. To do so, in policy, is unwise, in fact, is erroneous, in argument is sophistical. The union is but thirty-two years old. It was resisted by Mr. Fox, Lord Grey, Lord Plunket, the present Irish Chief Justice-they were not rebels, they did not desire the dismemberment of the empire:-let not, therefore, such designs be now imputed to the persons who would merely restore things to the state in which those able men struggled to keep them. Whether a repeal of the union would, in remote consequences, lead to separation, is a subject for parliamentary and national discussion; but to attribute the direct design to men, to treat them, therefore, as little better than rebels, and let loose a pack of ferocious laws upon them, is imprudent and unjust. Such conduct has contributed in the degree next to Mr. Stanley's policy, to give repeal that mighty impulse we see it has received.

The writer has heard certain Irish members, men whose gentle manners gave an additional charm to the firmness of their political principles, complain that English members who had not heard a word of the debate used to crowd in before the divisions on the tithe bills, and vote for Mr. Stanley on every thing.

It is not difficult to perceive that the repeal party possesses in itself
a principle of growth which is not to be found in the others. It is the
people; and whatever has once taken root there is not easily eradi-
cated:-Creeds of all kinds, by a wise and noble dispensation, spread
upwards from it. Besides, the cause is congenial to the spirit of the
nation it rests on the glory of the past and the hopes of the fu..
ture the most splendid period in Irish history is associated with it;
and the nation, which, under a superficial levity, possesses a wild un-
tameable obstinacy of character, is led on by men conscious of great
powers, and flushed by recent victories. From this party there will be
no defections. From the other they are unavoidable. It is in the na-
ture of things. There is contagion in the consent of a people-there is
a magic in national honour. No Irishman speaks of eighty-two without
faltering in his voice, and what many will think of equal conse-
quence with the sentiment of national honour, there is a strong bond
in national distress. Men are forced together by its advancing waves,
and new combinations of party are produced. The dreams of the Con-
servatives must have an end. The idea of Ascendency is obselete by a
full century already. A gulf yawns between it and the spirit of men
and the policy of nations. The prejudices, the haughty superiority, the
misconceptions that keep them aloof from the people, will be washed
away in a short time. They must perceive that it is only as Irishmen
they can be known; and that they will grow great and dignified in the
eyes of the world, only as Ireland is elevated by her children. Were
their abilities and wisdom doubled, they could not still raise themselves
to eminence. They are not the people ;-but nothing can supply the
place of the corpus regni, the body of the nation. No, no expedient
whatever. This cessation of party spirit is not far distant; and what-
ever brings it-whatever be the merits or demerits of Repeal-is a
blessing.

The other party, viz. the declarationists, have been much shaken by the
conduct of Government. The conditions of their adhesion have not
been fulfilled. The tithe war is not the change of system they desired.
The prosecutions of the press, the attachments, descending like clouds
of locusts on the country,-the vexatious arrests of respectable men at
midnight, and the hauling them from their homes at that hour to jail
-the converting the country into a huge monster between a prison
and a barrack-these make them reflect, and doubt the wisdom of their
support. There is still a fourth party, which has hitherto been unde
termined the Presbyterians of the North,-Mr. Stanley has probably
gone some length in convincing them. This, a numerous, intelligent,
powerful party, slow to move, and slow to leave off,-has not, as a body,
been enemies to repeal, but rather to the time of agitating it. They
thought the question was premature by three years; that men should
have been allowed to rest after emancipation, and the country to
forget its feuds, defeats, and victories. Mr. O'Connell, who is dis-
posed to think as well of his own notions as any other man's, entertained
a different opinion; and would probably refer to the formidable catalogue
of repealing candidates as proof of its soundness: but it is evident that
the junction of such a party, differing only as to time, is not very re-

mote.

We have now shewn the real magnitude of this question-its present and probable supporters-and the only wish we express is, that it be fairly discussed, that its merits and demerits be stated, and the ultimate decision be according to the preponderance of one or the other.

THE ANNUALS.

IT is to the ANNUALS that we are mainly indebted for those delightful works of graphic art, which monthly, almost weekly, spring into birth; and for this we owe to them a debt of deep gratitude. The beautiful prints, which, year after year, have been scattered among their pages, are, it is well understood, the great, indeed the only attraction, the "letter-press" being too insignificant, in a literary point of view, to provoke much notice, and received only with much the same feeling, that prompts a tolerating smile to the pompous and vapid chaperone, who in troduces to us some fair creature of surpassing brightness. The original speculation was a bold, and for the first two or three years, a highly profitable adventure; but, unluckily, the returns have been diminishing with each succeeding year; and we sincerely grieve to say, that for "success," we must now write "succiduous." It is not, however, of the Annuals we are about to speak. We allude to them only as a noble origin, and to express our regret at the termination, that, in another year or two, will, in all probability, be put to publications from which such valuable results have followed.

To those who remember the pitiable productions that figured away illustratively, in the volumes of our literature thirty years ago,-the change that has been wrought, seems more like the mighty work of enchantment, than the effects of plodding labour, the drudgery of manual employment. In those days, engraving, as an art, was confined to exalted limits only; the labourers were few, their productions expensive, and the circulation restricted to the wealthy. Not that the same appe. tite, and as much real taste did not then as now generally exist; but the commodity chanced to be of too sorry, or too costly a nature to produce a demand;—and the modern science of political economy cannot have a neater illustration of one of its most striking principles than this fact. The well-directed application of human industry, as certainly ensures a profitable return, as the natural objects of its employment are inex-haustible; and he who out of the abundance of such materials can create a want, may make a fortune. Another among the many wants of cultivated life-and one more innocent, more delightful, it were difficult to conceive-has, by the efforts of industry and talent, been thus luckily created; and while a class of artificers in head and hand, which then scarcely had existence, are now called into activity, a means of honourable and lucrative employment devised for numbers, who else might have rejoiced in the calling of insolvent cheese-mongers, or half starved haber. dashers, and the development of genius effected, which else had been hidden in the obscurity of neglect,-society at large has been benefited, a new enjoyment opened up, and the great moral good which ever results to a civilized community from the cultivation, diffusion, and encouragement of the arts and sciences, is silently but surely spreading its blessings "about us, and about us."

The very excellence of any work of art tends to give to it an immense circulation; and this circulation in return, reflects back a retributive ad vantage. Such an amount of remuneration to the labourers is afforded, in the first instance, as repays them for the expenditure of their industry and the exercise of their talent; a goodly crop of competitors is then in consequence raised, by which the article becomes reduced to a just and marketable sale price; and what primarily was a luxury, which wealth