single movement of the Opposition upon this or any other question, domestic or foreign, which may not be detected to be a masked manœuvre against Reform.

The incident to which we allude is this. The public is aware that about twenty Irish members waited in a body on Lord Grey, and submitted to him, if not as the condition of their support, at least as a friendly suggestion, the disarming of the Irish Yeomanry. It is also known that the Minister declined adopting their advice, but informed them that the matter should be considered. They separated amicably, and a second meeting between the same Members and the Irish Secretary at Lord Althorp's took place soon after. On this occasion the Secretary stated a plan contemplated for the modification of the Yeomanry in a less dangerous and obnoxious form. The confederated Members, however, rejected all compromise, and demanded the unqualified disembodying of the Yeomanry. Lord Grey was offended, and justly, at the tone of the letter in which he had been requested to grant the interview. The Irish Secretary and other Members of the Government were revolted by the unaccommodating and exacting temper of the Irish Commoners; the idea suggested itself, that though Lord Killean was the ostensible chief, Mr. O'Connell was the secret getter up behind the scenes; that, in fact, though the Catholic Lord was the mouth-piece, the Catholic demagogue was the head-piece of the party, and the Government in its pique resolved to abandon even the modification of the Irish Yeomanry. The Opposition of course got wind, of what, indeed, was no secret to any body, in the course of the same evening. A schism between the Minister and at least twenty Irish Members returned by the popular interest would shake the Administration to its centre. To confirm and perpetuate this schism, Lord Wicklow put his questions, and with success; he drew from Lord Grey certain expressions if not pledges on the subject of the Irish Yeomanry which put to the utmost hazard his relations of confidence with the popular representatives and the people of Ireland. The cheers and eulogies of the Borough Lords should alone have satisfied Lord Grey that he had compromised his own cause, and was playing into the hands of the adversary.

What one claim of justice or policy have the Irish Yeomanry, we ask, upon an enlightened and independent Minister? We have shown not their inefficiency but absolute maleficence, in provoking not putting down insurrection in 1798. No proof is wanting, for the facts are notorious, that, ever since, their factious ascendancy and armed organization has produced outrage, bloodshed, and permanent party rancour. But it is a point of honour, forsooth, that they shall not be disembodied. The honour of many other corps-barristers, attorneys, merchants, and country gentlemen, was not tarnished when they were disembodied and disarmed. What, then, is there so very sacred in the mere raggamuffins of the Dublin corporation and their fellows in other towns?

Their past services, their future uses, and their honour thus disposed of, another question remains: Are the Yeomanry, it is asked, to be placed at the mercy of the Catholics?-No surely. In the East, West, and South of Ireland, the Catholics so immensely outnumber them, that they are not at this moment with their few muskets and bayonets a whit less at the mercy of those whom they call their ene

mies than they would be if disbanded. In the North, their being disembodied would only deprive them of the stimulants to provoke party affrays and bloodshed.

1

The Catholics certainly regard the Orangemen with hostile and vindictive feelings. But is there no power in the Government to control their passions or punish their offences? What a state that of a people so divided by religious or political party spirit, that the minority is safe from the majority only by having arms in their hands! The supposition is most unfounded, and the lesson it may be added most pernicious. The abolition of the Yeomanry would only place those who compose it on a level with their other fellow subjects, under the common protection of the laws and public authorities. They would be deprived not of security but of a factious insulting ascendancy.

But according to Lord Wicklow, "The Yeomanry of the North of Ireland would meet the project with contempt, and organize themselves into an irresponsible armed body." We have already stated, and probably overstated, the actual numerical force of the Orange Yeomanry. The Government which they could treat with contempt would not stand, and would not deserve to stand an hour. The liberal Protestants, the whole of the Catholics, and the law of the land are opposed to them, and would crush them as "a butterfly upon a wheel." Even those Tory Anti-reform Lords, who affect to patronize them at present, only use them as tools against the Government and the Reform Bill. They know well that public tranquillity and the security of property in Ireland have been not promoted but brought in peril by the Yeomanry. Lord Wicklow himself, after threatening the Government with " the contempt of the Irish Yeomanry," changed his ground and held out the menace of their emigrating to some distant land. The first line of his poetical and pathetic quotation might be aptly retorted upon him as a motto for his clients. They will emigrate forsooth, because they are not allowed to retain arms which they have so often and so recently stained with the blood of their fellow subjects, and which they will again stain with it if not deprived of them. The Irish Yeomanry have all the insolence and turbulence of Janizaries, without their force or numbers, and are as odious and mischievous.

It is strange that Lord Grey should so soon have forgotten the evidence respecting them, given before the Committee of the House of Lords. Major Warburton, an active and experienced stipendiary magistrate, declared that the employment of the Yeomanry in the preservation of the peace, had an injurious effect, and would be discontinued with advantage. General Egerton declared in his evidence, that the Yeomanry in the North of Ireland were the chief authors of disorder and animosity. Doctor Elmore, an Englishman, resident in Ireland, also ascribes to them mischievous effects. Doctor Church describes them as propagating Orangeism, alarm, and animosity in the South of Ireland. The Yeomanry, it has been said, comprise Catholics as well Protestants. Colonel Verner, the head of

Gaudent perfusi sanguine fratrum,

Exilioque domos et dulcia limina mutant,
Atque alio patriam quærunt sub Sole jacentem."

the Irish Orangemen, declares that a Catholic would not be admitted into any corps, in that part of the country with which he is acquainted.

But this, is only combatting shadows. The shield thrown over the Irish Yeomanry, both by the Ministry and Opposition, is a mere delusion. The latter have put forward the Yeomanry, we repeat, as a stalking horse against the advance of Reform, and the former have now taken them under their protection from a secretly working and unworthy jealousy of being dictated to by a demagogue.

The recent combination of Irish Members was not, we believe, a manœuvre of Mr. O'Connell's; but even if it were, should such a consideration make a truly high-minded Minister swerve from the career of his public duty, or his views of policy?

Mr. O'Connell has been long yearning after the leadership of an Irish party within the walls of Parliament. Among the Irish Catholic Members he has not a friend. They know too well his intolerant, voracious vanity to be such, that he would wish himself the only Irish Catholic Member of the House of Commons. One or two Protestant Members, who have their secret views, combined with a boisterous exaggeration of Irish patriotism and liberalism, may support him with the express assurance, or secret hope, that this united force" would be applicable to their political jobs.

A compact Irish party in the House of Commons may do good, but Mr. O'Connell must be excluded from it. He will be the open dictator or the secret manager of those about him as mere puppets, or he will introduce confusion and discord. He will drag them through mire and mischief at his tail, or turn round and revile them with all the powers of his rhetoric and ribaldry. He cannot be trusted for a day-not, perhaps, for an hour. In the savageness of his impulses, his interests or his caprices, he spurns the ties of good faith, gratitude, or his pledge, with reckless effrontery. He does not acknowledge or respect the conventional decencies or moral obligations which bind other men. Perhaps the greatest proof of his innate energy and talents is, that he has maintained himself in spite of a career so marked as his by the grossest compromises and tergiIversations. He owes much, however, to the facility with which the multitude in Ireland can be besotted and deluded.

But this combination of Irish Members, which had within itself the elements of discord and dissolution, and which most likely is broken up at the moment when we write these lines, has given a wound to the Administration. Lord Grey may yet retrace his steps and recover his position. It is certainly a mortification to be dicbtated to by a cabal or a demagogue, but it is even apparently still more mortifying to be thought afraid of a faction, or duped by insidious arts and hollow commendations.

A thaw-wind came from the southern sea,
And moist through Italy it blew;
As 'fore the wolf the scared herds flee,
So the wild clouds before it flew :
It drench'd the fields, the frost unlock'd,
And the swoln streams with freed ice block'd.
The mountain snows thaw'd suddenly ;

Down were a thousand floods impell'd;
The meadow-vale became a sea,

And the great river swell'd and swell'd;
High roll'd its waves along their course
Huge blocks of ice with mighty force.

The river, spann'd from side to side
A bridge, well built of freestone good,
On pillars and strong arches wide;

And on it a small toll-house stood, Where dwelt, with wife and child, a man— "Fly, Tollman, quickly, while you can!" The threat'ning ruin o'er them hung,

And storm and waves howl'd round about; Up to the roof the Tollman sprung,

And wildly through the rock look'd out.
"Merciful Heaven! O pity thou!
Lost are we!-who can save us now?"
On roll'd the ice-flood's furious course,
Now here now there, from shore to shore,
And from both shores, with rushing force,
The pillars and the arches tore.
The active man, with wife and child,
Than stream or wind cried yet more wild.
On roll'd the ice flood, shock on shock,
'Gainst both ends of the bridge it dash'd,
And pillar after pillar shook;

One moment shook, and then down crash'd.
Against the middle strikes it now-
Merciful Heaven! O pity thou!

High on the farther shore there stands
A crowd of people, great and small,
And each one cries and wrings his hands,
And yet no succour brings at all;
The while the Tollman wildly made,
Through stream and wind, demand for aid.
Song of the Brave, when soundest thou
Like organ-tone and pealing bell?
Go to!-so name him, name him now!

Sweet song, his name when wilt thou tell? The flood strikes 'gainst the middle nowOh! brave man, brave man, where art thou?

Quick gallop'd then unto the strand

An Earl-on a proud horse rode he; What held that good Earl in his hand? A purse, as full as it could be: "Two hundred pistoles," spoke he clear, "For him who saves the three, are here!"

Brave man! brave man, let's look on thee-
For ruin now comes frightfully!

And higher, higher rose the swell,

And louder, louder howl'd the storm,
Yet lower still men's courage fell.-
O saviour, saviour! quickly come;
For gone is every pillar's stay,
And next the mid-arch must give way!
"Hollo! hollo! Up, boldly dare!"

High held the Earl that purse of worth,
And all men heard, yet all forbear—

Out of the thousands none stepp'd forth; Vainly, through stream and wind, yet made The Tollman his lorn cry for aid!

See, see a simple countryman

With walking-staff in hand comes now;
Coarse was the garment he had on,

Yet noble was his form and brow:
He heard the Earl, he took his word,
And the poor Tollman's cry he heard.
Then boldly, in God's name, he sprang
Into the nearest fishing-boat;
Spite whirlpool, storm, and tempest-clang,
Safely the light bark kept afloat-
Yet woe! the boat was all too small
From death, at once, to rescue all!

And three times, spite of tempest's rack,
The small boat flood and whirlpool braved,
And three times happily came back—
And thus they all were nobly saved:
Yet scarce the last safe port had won,
When, crash! the latest arch came down.
Who is the brave man-who is he?
Say on, my noble song, say on-
He risk'd his life most generously;
Yet for reward was it not done;
Since, had the Earl his pistoles spared,
Perchance, his life he had not dared.
"Here," said the Earl, "my valiant friend,
Is thy reward-'tis thine-come forth!"
Say now, could aught that act amend?-

By God! his was a heart of worth!-
Yet beat for a far nobler part,
Beneath his cloak, that peasant's heart.
"My life," said he, "may not be sold;
I want not, though my wealth be small;
To the poor Tollman give thy gold,

Who in the flood has lost his all."
Thus, with a kind voice, did he say,-
Then turn'd his steps, and went his way.

Of the brave man high sounds the praise,
As organ-tone or pealing bell;
Whom gold repays not, song repays;
High courage, song repays it well!
Thank God, I sing! so I can raise
Immortal songs, brave men to praise !

M. H.