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Alluding to Lady Byron's living with Mrs. Leigh in September, 1816, we are asked: Can the "Quarterly" prove that, at this time, Mrs. Leigh had not confessed all, and thrown herself on Lady Byron's mercy?'

Can Mrs. Beecher Stowe prove that, shortly before Mrs. Leigh's death, Lady Byron did not confess the falsehood of the charge and pray for forgiveness on her knees? It is more probable that Mrs. Leigh forgave Lady Byron than that Lady Byron forgave Mrs. Leigh, if only upon the principle suggested by the fine couplet of Dryden :

'Forgiveness to the injured doth belong,

But they ne'er pardon who have done the wrong.'

All we ask of Mrs. Beecher Stowe is to fix a date for her alleged, or rather conjectured, reform, and stick to it. In the Macmillan article she states that 'The person' (Mrs. Leigh) 'whose connexions with Lord Byron had been so disastrous, also, in the latter years of her life, felt Lady Byron's gracious and loving influence, was reformed and ennobled.' But it was precisely in the latter years of her life that Mrs. Leigh did not feel Lady Byron's gracious and loving influences. The ticket-ofleave was certainly withdrawn before 1843, and Mrs. Beecher Stowe's new theory will not hold water without antedating the confession and reform prior to the confidential letters, touching which Lady Byron had kept her completely in the dark. To make things pleasant, the confession and reform should precede the pressing call to attend the confinement, the 'Let me see you the middle of next week, not later; you will do good, I think, if any can be done.' Unluckily there is the parting scene, the rendezvous in heaven, on the fatal 15th of January; proving that, if there had been a reform, there had been a relapse; so that we must picture Mrs. Leigh as one of those frail devotes of whom we read in Catholic countries who, at given intervals, confess, receive absolution, and start fresh. Confusion worse confounded is the upshot

'Oh, what a tangled web we weave,

When once we practise to deceive!'

We will give another specimen of the argument direct:— 'Again, the evidence of this crime appears in Lord Byron's admission in a letter to Moore, that he had an illegitimate child born before he left England, and still living at the time.'

The alleged admission is in a letter dated Venice, Feb. 2nd, 1818, referring to the death of one of Moore's children:

'I know how to feel with you, because I am quite wrapped up in

my

my own children. Besides my little legitimate, I have made unto myself an illegitimate since, to say nothing of one before; and I look forward to one of them as the pillar of my old age, supposing that I ever reach, as I hope I never shall, that desolating period.'

The one before she declares to be the child of sin, suppressing the positive disproof, although (as shewn by her references) it lay open before her as she wrote. She must have read the verses 'To my Son,' alluding to the 'lowly grave' of the mother and concluding thus:

'Although so young thy heedless sire,
Youth will not damp parental fire;
And wert thou still less dear to me,
Whilst Helen's form revives in thee,
The breast, which beat to former joy,
Will ne'er desert its pledge, my boy.'*

The self-complacency with which she contemplates the mischief she has done would be amusing, if less serious interests were involved. But there is one legitimate source of self-congratulation open to her. By the discussion she has provoked she has been the blind (not humble) instrument, under Providence, of fulfilling Lord Byron's prophecy-that the time would come when full justice would be done to him. We gladly hail her an accomplice in this good work; for, if justice has been correctly defined 'truth put in action,' she has originated the action and we have supplied the truth. She might address the noble poet's shade as the Abbot (in the Lord of the Isles') addresses Bruce :

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'I rose with purpose dread To speak my curse upon thy head. O'er-mastered yet by high behest

I bless thee, and thou shalt be blest.'

There's a Divinity that shapes our ends, rough-hew them how we will.' She has canonised the sinner, intending to deify the saint.

*The Life of Byron,' by Moore, roy. 8vo. edit., p. 51; and see ‘Don Juan," cant. xvi., st. 61.

ART.

ART. X.-1. Letters on the Land Question of Ireland. By the Special Commissioner of the Times.' 1869.

2. The Irish Land. By George Campbell. 1869.

3. The Irish Land Question. By James Caird. 1869.

4. Studies of the Land and Tenantry of Ireland. By D. Samuelson, M.P. 1869.

5. Land Culture and Land Tenure in Ireland. By Peter Maclagan, M.P.

THE

HE state of Ireland is grave, sad, and shameful in no ordinary measure; and it grows graver and sadder every day. Most of the old symptoms have reappeared without any fresh cause, and some have reappeared in an aggravated form. Ireland is once again the reproach to us among nations. Its historic agitations, its chronic misery, its incurable disaffection, are pointed at with mingled scorn and exultation as proofs that Great Britain, though she can fight and trade, cannot rule. We get the credit at once of oppression and of incapacity. If the grievances of the people are real, it is said, we ought to know how to redress. them; if the disaffection is unwarranted, we ought to know how to put it down. In any case our neighbours think the Imperial Government of the most civilised and self-satisfied country in Europe ought to be able to protect life and to preserve peace. It abnegates the first functions of the State when it does neither, but stands calmly by while the first is daily sacrificed and the last daily broken. We think so too.

Two distinct, organised, open agitations are now convulsing the country from end to end, the one political, the other socialthe one directed against Government, the other against property. Neither of them think it necessary to mask their full designs or to throw any disguising drapery around their language. The first insists on separation, independence, and a republic, demanding indemnity for rebellion in the past, and proclaiming rebellion as its future means and its early intention. Self-Government, Ireland for the Irish,' emancipation from the hated rule of England, the country to be wrested by force from its foreign foe, such are the watchwords on its banners. Its convicted leaders, now for the most part luckily in gaol, are to be given up to it for the avowed purpose of reassuming their leadership. In a word, the insurrection which was suppressed a year or two ago is proclaimed afresh to-day. The other agitation is headed by a very different set of men, and is of a far more practical and formidable character. It has some sanity in its objects, and some real mischiefs and wrongs as its groundwork

and

and excuse. But, like its colleague, it demands nothing less than a social revolution, a wholesale transfer of property from one class to another-a measure which even its advocates admit to be justly designated as confiscation,'-the abolition of landlordism,' in a word. Both these two aims are preached and recommended at public meetings, not merely by obscure lunatics, but by reverend priests, Queen's Counsel, even country gentlemen, respectively, and have widely circulated newspapers, not only to advocate their projects, but to point out and particularise the means, however lawless, violent and criminal, by which those projects can be furthered.

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Meanwhile, following the invariable course in Ireland, these two distinct movements are not only assailing each other, but are each dividing into separate lines of agitation. As in the days of Repeal the 'moral force' and the 'physical force' men quarrelled and broke each others' heads under the respective leadership of O'Connell and Smith O'Brien, so now the 'Amnesty Committee are disturbing the meetings of the Amnesty Association,' putting their more timid co-operators to flight, denouncing the sham of petitioning a hostile Government, and insisting on immediate action. Both join, with yet greater zest, in dispersing tenant-right assemblies, in scouting fixity of tenure' as a half measure and a red-herring drawn across the true scent, and in declaring that the tenant-leaguers shall do nothing till the imprisoned Fenians are liberated. The most tried and faithful advocates of popular rights, the most zealous defenders of seditious malefactors, are hooted and pelted at the poll, and ignominiously discarded in favour of convicted felons. No one else can now come up to the mark. The daring forlorn hope of yesterday has become the timid reactionary already. The unhappy tenant-leaguers,' again, who only wanted to make every man secure for ever in his holding, and to transfer the virtual ownership of the soil from the landlords to the farmers, and to evict 5000 proprietors in favour of 500,000 tenants, have been attacked from another quarter, have had the mask rudely torn from their faces, and found their narrow schemes and selfish purposes exposed and denounced by the million or so of labourers who were to have been left out in the cold; and who now absolutely refuse to allow the most respected noblemen and occupiers of the most advanced opinions even to be heard at meetings called by themselves,* and reasonably enough cry

out,

The meeting referred to was held at Dundalk, November 29, under the presidency of the tolerably 'advanced' Lord Bellew. The following passage from the Express' report will convey the nature of the dialogue:

'The

out, 'First give the labourers an acre of ground and a free cottage, and then we'll talk about the tenant-farmers.' Meanwhile, amid all this sedition and these cross-fires of popular violence and excitement, the authorities, assailed in front and in flank, look on tranquilly and make no sign.

In the mean time, too, while some are preaching rebellion, and others confiscation, and none are interfered with, individual Irishmen have gone further and are quietly in their own way reducing theory to practice. While law is denounced as oppression, government as a cruelty, and property as a theft, every man who thinks he has a grievance against his neighbour is redressing it according to his own rude conception of justice. Assassination has become literally the law of the land;-and no wonder, when it meets with the same absolute impunity as sedition. Thirty unpunished agrarian murders within two years testify that we speak without exaggeration. A change, too, and a very notable one, has come over the spirit of even this dream. Formerly, agrarian outrages were commited by some rule, irregular enough, but still pretty well understood. A landlord or agent was rarely shot unless he had violated some Ribbon edict and had been formally condemned by an organised Ribbon Lodge. Now each man judges his own cause and executes his own decree. Gentlemen are assassinated not only for evicting a tenant, but for dismissing

The Rev. Mr. Kearns (dejectedly).-Do listen just to one word. (Cries of "No, no.") Who wrote the letter to have the lives of Allen, Larkin, and O'Brien spared? Lord Bellew. (Loud cheers.) Lord Bellew (triumphantly).-Will you hear me now? ("No, no," and a voice-"This is a meeting to oppose that.") The Rev. Mr. Kearns (authoritatively).-Hear Lord Bellew now-Lord Bellew who wrote the letter for the martyred men. (Cries of "No," and "Sit down.") Mr. Goodman.-Let us have unconditional amnesty first-a labourers' Bill afterwards, and then we will talk about a Tenant-right Bill. (A voice-"We won't hear any one speak." Another-"Let them all go to," and sensation.) How many hundreds of them (labourers) have been sent wandering through the land? (Hear.) What subsistence can a man get on five bob a day? (Cheers.) The Rev. Mr. Kearns (as if by way of farewell).-You ought to be ashamed of yourselves, boys. A Voice.-I am not ashamed of myself, Father. (Cheers). Release the prisoners, and we will assist you to get tenant-right. Mr. Goodman.-No, no. We want a labourers' measure first, in preference to a farmers' measure. (Hear.) Mr. Callan at this point invited Mr. Goodman to join his party on the bench, and having done so, Lord Bellew remarked in a confidential tone-We are not going to hold the meeting; it is all over. Mr. Goodman.-I know it is over. Lord Bellew (amid great uproar, the multitude having become rather jealous at seeing one of their chiefs in such close communication with the opposition party).-Then tell the people that. Tell them that we are not hostile to them. Mr. Goodman (patronizingly).-I respect you as an Irishman to the heart's core, my Lord, butMr. Callan.-Get us a hearing, then; we are going to speak about the political prisoners. Mr. Goodman.-It is impossible, Sir. It could not be done.'

'At length all attempts to obtain a hearing were abandoned in despair, and the gentlemen retired, while the crowd amused themselves by singing the Fenian song, "Tramp, tramp, tramp, the boys are marching." They then quietly dispersed, satisfied at the success of their exertions.'

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