there is no limit to the degradation of the value of the precious. metals, are completely chimerical. By requiring a smaller quantity for coin, a smaller quantity will indeed be annually consumed; the produce will thus be superior to the consumption; and the mass of gold and silver will be annually increasing. But the diminution of their value, which will be the consequence of their gradual increase, will lead to a less sparing use of them for other purposes: and the consumption and the produce will thus be gradually equalized; their further increase will be stopped; and their price will consequently be prevented from falling lower. If the preceding reasonings be well-founded, the produce of the American mines must have been for some time superior to the general rate of consumption throughout the world. Whe ther this is the case at present, it would no doubt be very diffi cult to determine. But we cannot doubt that the rate of produce and consumption will ultimately be very accurately adjusted. On considering the process, however, by which this must be brought about, it appears to us, that the value of gold and silver will alternately fluctuate for some time, both above and below that point at which it will finally remain fixed.

On the whole, we think Mr Wheatley's quarto considerably worse than his octavo. The wisest thing he could do, perhaps, would be to forswear the subject altogether; but if he be smitten with an indestructible love of economical speculations, we would exhort him to spend a little more time in learning, before he sets up for a teacher; and to make one vigorous attempt to understand the reasonings of his predecessors, before he gives himself the trouble of pointing out their mistakes.

ART. IV. Historical Apology for the Irish Catholics. By Wil liam Parnell, Esquire. 8vo. pp. 147. Fitzpatrick, Dublin. 1807.

IF

ever a nation exhibited symptoms of downright madness, or utter stupidity, we conceive these symptoms may be easily recognized in the conduct of this country upon the Catholic question. A man has a wound in his great toe, and a violent and perilous fever at the same time; and he refuses to take the medicines for the fever, because it will disconcert his toe! The mournful and folly-stricken blockhead forgets that his toe cannot survive him ;-that if he dies, there can be no digital life apart from him; yet he lingers and fondles over this last part of his body, soothing it madly with little plasters, and anile fomentations, while the neglected fever rages in his entrails, and burns

U 2

away

away his whole life. If the comparatively little questions of Establishment are all that this country is capable of discussing or regarding, for God's sake let us remember, that the foreign conquest, which destroys all, destroys this beloved toe also. Pass over freedom, industry and science and look upon this great empire, by which we are about to be swallowed up, only as it affects the manner of collecting tithes, and of reading the liturgystill, if all goes, these must go too; and even, for their interests, it is worth while to conciliate Ireland, to avert the hostility, and to employ the strength of the Catholic population. We plead the question as the sincerest friends to the Establishment;-as wishing to it all the prosperity and duration its warmest advocates can desire but remembering always, what these advocates seem to forget, that the Establishment cannot be threatened by any danger so great as the perdition of the kingdom in which it is established:

We are truly glad to agree so entirely with Mr Parnell upon this great question; we admire his way of thinking, and most cordially recommend his work to the attention of the public. The general conclusion which he attempts to prove is this, that religious sentiment, however perverted by bigotry or fanaticism, has always a tendency to moderation; that it seldom assumes any great portion of activity or enthusiasm, except from novelty of opinion, or from opposition, contumely and persecution when novelty ceases; that a government has little to fear from any religious seet, except while that sect is new. Give a government only time, and, provided it has the good sense to treat folly with forbearance, it must ultimately prevail. When, therefore, a sect is found, after a lapse of years, to be ill-disposed to the government, we may be certain that government has widened its separation by marked distinctions, roused its resentment by contumely, or supported its enthusiasm by persecution.

The particular conclusion Mr Parnell attempts to prove is, that the Catholic religion in Ireland had sunk into torpor and inactivity, till Government roused it with the lash that even then, from the respect and attachment which men are always inclined to show towards government, there still remained a large body of loyal Catholics: that these only decreased in number from the rapid increase of persecution; and that, after all, the effects which the resentment of the Roman Catholics had in creating rebellions, has been very much exaggerated.

In support of these two conclusions, Mr Parnell takes a survey of the history of Ireland, from the tonquest under Henry, to the rebellion under Charles the First, passing very rapidly over the period which preceded the Reformation, and dwelling principally

upon

upon the various rebellions which broke out in Ireland between the Reformation, and the grand rebellion in the reign of Charles the First. The celebrated conquest of Ireland by Henry the Second, extended only to a very few counties in Leinster; nine tenths of the whole kingdom were left, as he found them, under the dominion of their native princes. The influence of example was as strong in this, as in most other instances; and great numbers of the English settlers who came over under various adventurers, resigned their pretensions to superior civilization, cast off their lower garments, and lapsed into the nudity and barbarism of the Irish. The limit which divided the possessions of the English settler from those of the native Irish, was called the pale; and the expressions of inhabitants within the pale, and without the pale, were the terms by which the two nations were distinguished. It is almost superfluous to state, that the most bloody and pernicious warfare was carried on upon the borders-sometimes for some thing-sometimes for nothing; most commonly for cows. The Irish, over whom the severeigns of England affected a sort of nominal dominion, were entirely governed by their own laws; and so very little connexion had they with the justice of the invading country, that it was as lawful to kill an Irishman, as it was to kill a badger or a fox. The instances are innumerable, where the defendant has pleaded that the deceased was an Irishman, and that therefore defendant had a right to kill him;-and, upon the proof of Hibernicism, acquittal followed of course.

When the English army mustered in any great strength, the Irish chieftains would do exterior homage to the English Crown; and they very frequently, by this artifice, averted from their country the miseries of invasion; but they remained completely unsubdued, till the rebellion which took place in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, of which that politic woman availed herself to the complete subjugation of Ireland. In speaking of the Irish a bout the reign of Elizabeth, or James the First, we must not draw our comparisons from England, but from New Zealand; they were not civilized men, but savages; and, if we reason about their conduct, we must reason of them as savages.

After reading every account of Irifh hiftory,' (fays Mr Parnell) one great perplexity appears to remain: How does it happen, that from the first invafion of the English till the reign of James I., Ireland feems not to have made the smallest progrefs in civilization or wealth?

'That it was divided into a number of fmall principalities, which waged conftant war on each other; or that the appointment of the chieftains was elective, do not appear fufficient reafons, although these are the only ones affigned by those who have been at the trouble of confidering the fubject: neither are the confifcations of property quite fufficient to account for the effect. There have been great confifcations

in other countries, and ftill they have flourished: the petty ftates of Greece were quite analogous to the chiefries (as they were called) in Ireland; and yet they feemed to flourish almost in proportion to their diffenfions, Poland felt the bad effects of an elective monarchy more than any other country; and yet, in point of civilization, it maintained a very refpectable rank among the nations of Europe; but Ireland never, for an inftant, made any progrefs in improvement till the reign of James I,

It is fcarcely credible, that in a climate like that of Ireland, and at a period fo far advanced in civilization as the end of Elizabeth's reign, the greater part of the natives fhould go naked. Yet this is rendered certain by the teftimony of an eye-witnefs, Fynes Moryfon. "In the remote parts, he fays, where the English laws and manners are unknown, the very chief of the Irish, as well men as women, go naked in the winter time, only having their privy parts covered with a rag of linen, and their bodies with a loose mantle. This I speak of my own experience; yet remember that a Bohemian Baron, coming out of Scotland to us by the north parts of the wild Irish, told me in great earneftness, that he, coming to the houfe of O'Kane, a great lord amongst them, was met at the door by fixteen women all naked, excepting their loofe mantles, whereof eight or ten were very fair; with which ftrange fight his eyes being dazzled, they led him into the houfe, and then fitting down by the fire with croffed legs, like tailors, and fo low as could not but offend chafte eyes, defired him to fit down with them. Soon after O'Kane, the lord of the country, came in all naked, except a loose mantle and shoes, which he put off as foon as he came in; and entertaining the Baron after his best manner in the Latin tongue, defired him to put off his apparel, which he thought to be a burden to him, and to fit naked.

"To conclude, men and women at night going to fleep, lye thus naked in a round circle about the fire, with their feet towards it. They fold their heads and their upper parts in woollen mantles, first steeped in water to keep them warm; for they say, that woollen cloth, wetted, preferves heat, (as linen, wetted, preferves cold), when the fmoke of their bodies has warmed the woollen cloth."

The cause of this extreme poverty, and of its long continuance, we must conclude, arofe from the peculiar laws of property, which were in force under the Irish dynafties. Thefe laws have been defcribed by moft writers as fimilar to the Kentish cuftom of gavel-kind; and indeed fo little attention was paid to the fubject, that were it not for the re fearches of Sir J. Davis, the knowledge of this fingular ufage would have been entirely loft.

The Brehon law of property, he tells us, was fimilar to the custom (as the English lawyers term it) of hodge podge. When any one of the fept died, his lands did not defcend to his fons, but were divided among the whole fept; and, for this purpose, the chief of the fept made a new divifion of the whole lands belonging to the fept, and gave every

one

one his part according to feniority. So that no man had a property which could defcend to his children; and even during his own life, his poffeffion of any particular spot was quite uncertain, being liable to be conftantly fhuffled and changed by new partitions. The confequence of this was, that there was not a house of brick or flone among the Irish, down to the reign of Henry VII.; not even a garden or orchard, or well fenced or improved field, neither village or town, or in any refpect the leaft provifion for pofterity. This monftrous cuftom, fo opposite to the natural feelings of mankind, was probably perpetuated by the policy of the chiefs. In the firft place, the power of partitioning being lodged in their hands, made them the most abfolute of tyrants, being the difpenfers of their property, as well as of the liberty of their fubjects. In the second place, it had the appearance of adding to the number of their favage armies; for, where there was no improvement or tillage, war was pursued as an occupation.

In the early hiftory of Ireland, we find several inftances of chieftains discountenancing tillage; and, fo late as Elizabeth's reign, Mory. fon fays, that "Sir Neal Garve reftrained his people from ploughing, that they might affift him to do any mischief." p. 98-102.

. These quotations and observations will enable us to state a few plain facts for the recollection of our English readers. 1st, Ireland was never subdued till the rebellion in the reign of Queen Elizabeth. 2d, For four hundred years before that period, the two nations had been almost constantly at war; and, in consequence of this, a deep and irreconcileable hatred existed between the people within and without the pale. 3d, The Irish, at the accession of Queen Elizabeth, were unquestionably the most barbarous people in Europe. So much for what had happened previous to the reign of Queen Elizabeth: and let any man, who has the most superficial knowledge of human affairs, determine, whether national hatred, proceeding from such powerful causes, could possibly have been kept under by the defeat of one single rebellion; whether it would not have been easy to have foreseen, at that period, that a proud, brave, half savage people, would cherish the memory of their wrongs for centuries to come, and break forth into arms at every period when they were particu larly exasperated by oppression, or invited by opportunity. If the Protestant religion had spread in Ireland as it did in Eng land; and if there never had been any difference of faith be tween the two countries,--can it be believed that the Irish, ill treated, and infamously governed as they have been, would never have made any efforts to shake off the yoke of England? Surely there are causes enough to account for their impatience of that yoke, without endeavouring to inflame the zeal of ig◄ norant people against the Catholic religion, and to make that mode of faith responsible for all the butchery which the Irish and

English,