I am astonished that the honest States I am accused of applying the epithet reof America do not draw a cordon sanitaire pudiation to States which have not repu. round their unpaying brethren—that the | diated. Perhaps so; but then these latter truly mercantile New Yorkers, and the states have not paid. But what is the difthoroughly honest people of Massachusetts, ference between a man who says, "I don't do not in their European visits wear an owe you any thing, and will not pay you," uniform with "S. S., or Solvent States," and another who says, "I do owe you a worked in gold letters upon the coat, and sum," and who, having admitted the debt, receipts in full of all demands tamboured on never pays it? There seems in the first to their waistcoats, and "our own property" be some slight colour of right; but the sefigured on their pantaloons. cond is broad, blazing, refulgent, meridian fraud. But the General seems shocked that I should say the Americans cannot go to war without money: but what do I mean by war? It may be very true that rich and educated men in Pennsylvania wish to pay the debt, and that the real objectors are the Dutch and German agriculturists, who cannot be made to understand the effect of character upon clover. All this may be very true, but it is a domestic quarrel. Their -we Not irruptions into Canada-not the embodying of militia in Oregon; but a long, tedious, maritime war of four or five years' duration. Is any man so foolish as to suppose that Rothschild has nothing to do with such wars as these? and that a bank-churchwardens of reputation must make a rupt State, without the power of borrowing private rate of infamy for themselves a shilling in the world, may not be crippled have nothing to do with this rate. The real in such a contest? We all know that the quarrel is the Unpaid World versus the Americans can fight. Nobody doubts their State of Pennsylvania. courage. I see now in my mind's eye a whole army on the plains of Pennsylvania in battle array, immense corps of insolvent light infantry, regiments of heavy horse debtors, battalions of repudiators, brigades of bankrupts, with Vivre sans payer, ou mourir, on their banners, and are alieno on their trumpets all these desperate debtors would fight to the death for their country, and probably drive into the sea their invading creditors. Of their courage, I repeat again, I have no doubt. I wish I had the same confidence in their wisdom. But I believe they will become intoxicated by the flattery of unprincipled orators; and, instead of entering with us into a noble competition in making calico (the great object for which the Anglo-Saxon race appears to have been created), they will waste their happiness and their money (if they can get any) in years of silly, bloody, foolish, and accursed war, to prove to the world that Perkins is a real fine gentleman, and that the carronades of the Washington steamer will carry further than those of the Britisher Victoria, or the Robert Peel vessel of war. And now, dear Jonathan, let me beg of you to follow the advice of a real friend, who will say to you what Wat Tyler had not the virtue to say, and what all speakers in the eleven recent Pennsylvanian elections have cautiously abstained from saying, "Make a great effort; book up at once, and pay." You have no conception of the obloquy and contempt to which you are exposing yourselves all over Europe. Bull is naturally disposed to love you, but he loves nobody who doe's not pay him. His imaginary paradise is some planet of punctual payment, where ready money prevails, and where debt and discount are unknown. As for me, as soon as I hear that the last farthing is paid to the last creditor, I will appear on my knees at the bar of the Pennsylvanian Senate in the plumeopicean robe of American controversy. Each Conscript Jonathan shall trickle over me a few drops of tar, and help to decorate me with those penal plumes in which the vanquished reasoner of the transatlantic world does homage to the physical superiority of his opponents. And now, having eased my soul of its in dignation, and sold my stock at 40 per cent. discount, I sulkily retire from the subject, with a fixed intention of lending no more money to free and enlightened republics, but of employing my money henceforth in buying up Abyssinian bonds, and purchasing into the Turkish Fours, or the Tunis Threeand-a-half per Cent, funds. SYDNEY SMITH. November 22. 1843. MODERN CHANGES. "The good of ancient times let others state, It is of some importance at what period a man is born. A young man, alive at this period, hardly knows to what improvements of human life he has been introduced; and I would bring before his notice the following eighteen changes which have taken place in England since I first began to breathe in it the breath of life-a period amounting now to nearly seventy-three years. Gas was unknown: I groped about the streets of London in all but the utter darkness of a twinkling oil lamp, under the protection of watchmen in their grand climacteric, and exposed to every species of depredation and insult. I have been nine hours in sailing from Dover to Calais before the invention of steam. It took me nine hours to go from Taunton to Bath, before the invention of railroads, and I now go in six hours from Taunton to London! In going from Taunton to Bath, I suffered between 10,000 and 12,000 severe contusions, before stone-breaking Macadam was born. I paid 15. in a single year for repairs of carriage-springs on the pavement of London; and I now glide without noise or fracture, on wooden pavements. I can walk, by the assistance of the police, from one end of London to the other, without molestation; or, if tired, get into a cheap and active cab, instead of those cottages on wheels, which the hackney coaches were at the beginning of my life. I had no umbrella! They were little used, and very dear. There were no waterproof hats, and my hat has often been reduced by rains into its primitive pulp. I could not keep my smallclothes in their proper place, for braces were unknown. If I had the gout, there was no colchicum. If I was bilious, there was no calomel. If I was attacked by ague, there was no quinine. There were filthy coffee-houses instead of elegant clubs. Game could not be bought. Quarrels about uncommuted tithes were endless. The corruption of Parliament, before Reform, infamous. There were no banks to receive the savings of the poor. The Poor Laws were gradually sapping the vitals of the country; and whatever miseries I suffered, I had no post to whisk my complaints for a single penny to the remotest corners of the empire; and yet, in spite of all these privations, I lived on quietly, and am now ashamed that I was not more discontented, and utterly surprised that all these changes and inventions did not occur two centuries ago. Z. I forgot to add, that as the basket of stage coaches, in which luggage was then carried, had no springs, your clothes were rubbed all to pieces; and that even in the best society one third of the gentlemen at least were always drunk. Private Memoranda of Subjects intended to have been introduced in the Pamphlet, &c. Debates in the House of Commons in 1825, on the motion of Lord F. Egerton, for the support of the Roman Catholic clergy. Printed separately, I believe, in Ireland. Evidence before the House of Commons in 1824 A speech of Charles Grant's in 1819, on a motion *Send ambassadors to Constantinople, and refuse to England should cast off its connexion with the Lord F. Egerton's plan for paying the Roman *Old mode of governing by Protestants at an end. *Vast improvements since the Union, and fully specified in Martin, page 35. *Priests dare not thwart the people for fear of losing money. *Dreadful oppression of the people. Provision offered by Pitt and Castlereagh, and *Bishops dare not enforce their rules. They must accepted by the hierarchy. have money. * These subjects are treated of in the Fragment. THE revenue of the Irish Roman Catholic | religion is the religion of three-fourths of Church is made up of half-pence, potatoes, rags, bones, and fragments of old clothes; and those, Irish old clothes. They worship often in hovels, or in the open air, from the want of any place of worship. Their the population! Not far off, in a wellwindowed and well-roofed house, is a wellpaid Protestant clergyman, preaching to stools and hassocks, and crying in the wilderness; near him the clerk, near him the sexton, near him the sexton's wife-furious against the errors of Popery, and willing to lay down their lives for the great truths established at the Diet of Augsburg. There is a story in the Leinster family which passes under the name of "She is not well.” A Protestant clergyman, whose church was in the neighbourhood, was a guest at the house of that upright and excellent man the Duke of Leinster. He had been staying there three or four days; and on Saturday night, as they were all retiring to their rooms, the Duke said, "We shall meet to-morrow at breakfast.”—"Not so (said our Milesian Protestant); your hour, my lord, is a little too late for me; I am very particular in the discharge of my duty, and your breakfast will interfere with my Church." The Duke was pleased with the very proper excuses of his guest, and they separated for the night; his Grace perhaps deeming his palace more safe from all the evils of life for containing in its bosom such an exemplary son of the Church. The first person, however, whom the Duke saw in the morning upon entering the breakfast-room was our punctual Protestant, deep in rolls and butter, his finger in an egg, and a large slice of the best Tipperary ham secured on his plate. 'Delighted to see you, my dear Vicar," said the Duke, "but I must say as much surprised as delighted."- Oh, don't you know what has happened?" said the sacred breakfaster, "She is not well."-"Who is not well?" said the Duke: "you are not married -you have no sister living-I'm quite uneasy; tell me who is not well."—"Why the fact is, my lord Duke, that my congregation consists of the clerk, the sexton, and the sexton's wife. Now the sexton's wife is in very delicate health: when she cannot attend, we cannot muster the number mentioned in the rubric; and we have, therefore, no service on that day. The good woman had a cold and sore throat this morning, and, as I had breakfasted but slightly, I thought I might as well hurry back to the regular family dejeuner." I don't know that the clergyman 66 behaved improperly; but such a church is hardly worth an insurrection and civil war every ten years. Sir Robert did well in fighting it out with O'Connell. He was too late; but when he began he did it boldly and sensibly, and I. for one, am heartily glad O'Connell has been found guilty and imprisoned. He was either in earnest about Repeal, or he was not. If he were in earnest, I entirely agree with Lord Grey and Lord Spencer, that civil war is preferable to Repeal. Much as I hate wounds, dangers, privations, and explosions much as I love regular hours of dinnerfoolish as I think men covered with the feathers of the male Pullus domesticus, and covered with lace in the course of the ischiatic nerve-much as I detest all these follies and ferocities, I would rather turn soldier myself than acquiesce quietly in such a separation of the Empire. It is such a piece of nonsense, that no man can have any reverence for himself who would stop to discuss such a question. It is such a piece of anti-British villany, that none but the bitterest enemy of our blood and people could entertain such a project! It is to be met only with round and grape-to be answered by Shrapnel and Congreve; to be discussed in hollow squares, and refuted by battalions four deep; to be put down by the ultima ratio of that armed Aristotle the Duke of Wellington. O'Connell is released; and released I have no doubt by the conscientious decision of the Law Lords. If he were unjustly (even from some technical defect) imprisoned, I rejoice in his liberation. England is, I believe, the only country in the world, where such an event could have happened, and a wise Irishman (if there be a wise Irishman) should be slow in separating from a country whose spirit can produce, and whose institutions can admit, of such a result. Of his guilt no one doubts, but guilty men must be hung technically and according to established rules; upon a statutable gibbet, with parliament rope, and a legal hangman, sheriff, and chaplain on the scaffold, and the mob in the foreground. -- But, after all, I have no desire my dear Daniel should come to any harm, for I believe there is a great deal of virtue and excellent meaning in him, and I must now beg a few minutes' conversation with him. "After all, my dear Daniel, what is it you want?- a separation of the two countries ? - for what purpose?-for your own aggrandisement? - for the gratification of your personal vanity? You don't know yourself; you are much too honourable and moral a man, and too clear-sighted a person for such a business as this: the empire will be twisted out of your hands by a set of cut-throat villains, and you will die secretly by a poisoned potato, or be pistoled in the streets. You have too much sense and taste and openness to endure for a session the stupid and audacious wickedness and nonsense of your associates. If you want fame, you must be insatiable! Who is so much known in all Europe, or so much admired by honest men for the real good you had done to your country, before this insane cry of Repeal? And don't imagine you can intimidate this Government; whatever be their faults or merits, you may take my word for it, you will not intimidate them. They will prosecute you again, and put down your Clontarf meetings, and they will be quite right in doing so. They may make concessions, and I think they will; but they would fall into utter contempt if they allowed themselves to be terrified into a dissolution of the Union. They know full well that the English nation are unanimous and resolute upon this point, and that they would prefer war to a Repeal. And now, dear Daniel, sit down quietly at Derrynane, and tell me, when the bodily frame is refreshed with the wine of Bordeaux, whether all this be worth while. What is the object of all government? The object of all government is roast mutton, potatoes, claret, a stout constable, an honest justice, a clear highway, a free chapel. What trash to be bawling in the streets about the Green Isle, the Isle of the Ocean; the bold anthem of Erin go bragh! A far better anthem would be Erin go bread and cheese, Erin go cabins that will keep out the rain, Erin go pantaloons without holes in them! What folly to be making eternal declamations about governing yourselves! If laws are good and well administered, is it worth while to rush into war and rebellion in order that no better laws may be made in another place? Are you an Eton boy, who has just come out, full of Plutarch's Lives, and considering in every case how Epaminondas or Philopomen would have acted, or are you our own dear Daniel, drilled in all the business and bustle of life? I am with you heart and soul in my detestation of all injustice done to Ireland. Your priests shall be fed and paid, the liberties of your Church be scrupulously guarded, and in civil affairs the most even justice be preserved between Catholic and Protestant. Thus far I am a thorough rebel as well as yourself; but when you come to the perilous nonsense of Repeal, in common with every honest man who has five grains of common sense, I take my leave." It is entertaining enough, that although the Irish are beginning to be so clamorous about making their own laws, the wisest and the best statutes in the books have been made since their union with England. All Catholic disabilities have been abolished; a good police has been established all over the kingdom; public courts of petty sessions have been instituted; free trade between Great Britain and Ireland has been completely carried into effect; lord lieutenants are placed in every county; church rates are taken off Catholic shoulders; the County Grand Jury Rooms are flung open to the public; county surveyors are of great service; a noble provision is made for educating the people. I never saw a man who had returned to Ireland after four or five years' absence, who did not say how much it had improved, and how fast it was improving: and this is the country which is to be Erin-go-bragh'd by this shallow, vain, and irritable people into bloodshed and rebellion! The first thing to be done is to pay the priests, and after a little time they will take |