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become the favourite science of the people at large. Their flotillas on the lakes completely defeated ours during the last war.

of the articles. They have built an excellent house for their founder, Rapp,

- as it might have been predicted they would have done. The Harmonites Fanaticism of every description seems profess equality, community of goods, to rage and flourish in America, which and celibacy, for the men and women has no Establishment, in about the same (let Mr. Malthus hear this) live sepadegree which it does here under the rately, and are not allowed the slightest nose of an Established Church; they intercourse. In order to keep up their have their prophets and prophetesses, numbers, they have once or twice sent their preaching encampments, female over for a supply of Germans, as they preachers, and every variety of noise, admit no Americans, of any intercourse folly, and nonsense, like ourselves. with whom they are very jealous. The Among the most singular of these Harmonites dress and live plainly. It fanatics, are the Harmonites. Rapp, is a part of their creed that they should their founder, was a dissenter from the do so. Rapp, however, and the head Lutheran Church, and therefore, of men have no such particular creed for course, the Lutheran clergy of Stut- themselves; and indulge in wine, beer, gard (near to which he lived) began to grocery, and other irreligious diet. put Mr. Rapp in white sheets, to prove Rapp is both governor and priest,him guilty of theft, parricide, treason, preaches to them in church, and directs and all the usual crimes of which men all their proceedings in their working dissenting from established churches hours. In short, Rapp seems to have are so often guilty,—and delicate hints made use of the religious propensities were given respecting faggots! Stut-of mankind, to persuade one or two gard abounds with underwood and thousand fools to dedicate their lives clergy; and-away went Mr. Rapp to to his service; and if they do not get the United States, and, with a great tired, and fling their prophet into a multitude of followers, settled about horse-pond, they will in all probability twenty-four miles from our country-disperse as soon as he dies. man Mr. Birkbeck. His people have here built a large town, and planted a vineyard, where they make very agreeable wine. They carry on also a very extensive system of husbandry, and are the masters of many flocks and herds. They have a distillery, brewery, tannery, make hats, shoes, cotton and woollen cloth, and everything neces-able. sary to the comfort of life. Every one belongs to some particular trade. But in bad weather, when there is danger of losing their crops, Rapp blows a horn, and calls them all together. Over every trade there is a head man, who receives the money, and gives a receipt, signed by Rapp, to whom all the money collected is transmitted. When any of these workmen wants a hat or a coat, Rapp signs him an order for the garment, for which he goes to the store, and is fitted. They have one large store where these manufactures are deposited. This store is much resorted to by the neighbourhood, on account of the goodness and cheapness

Unitarians are increasing very fast in the United States, not being kept down by charges from bishops and archdeacons, their natural enemies.

The author of the Excursion remarks upon the total absence of all games in America. No cricket, foot-ball, nor leap-frog--all seems solid and profit

"One thing that I could not help remarking with regard to the Americans in general, is the total want of all those games and sports that obtained for our country the appellation of Merry England.' Although from one generation to another, and alchildren usually transmit stories and sports though many of our nursery games and tales are supposed to have been imported into England in the vessels of Hengist and Horsa, yet our brethren in the United States seem entirely to have forgotten the childish amusements of our common ances

tors. In America I never saw even the

schoolboys playing at any game whatsoever. utterly unknown; and I believe that if an Cricket, foot-ball, quoits, &c. appear to be American were to see grown-up men playing at cricket, he would express as much as

tonishment as the Italians did when some more than we do, or more despise the

Englishmen played at this finest of all games in the Casina at Florence. Indeed, that joyous spirit which, in our country,

animates not only childhood, but also maturer age, can rarely or never be seen among the inhabitants of the United States."-(Excursion, pp. 502, 508.)

These are a few of the leading and prominent circumstances respecting America, mentioned in the various works before us: of which works we can recommend the Letters of Mr. Hodgson, and the Excursion into Canada, as sensible, agreeable books, written in a very fair spirit.

pitiful propensity which exists among Government runners to vent their small spite at their character; but on the subject of slavery, the conduct of America is, and has been, most reprehensible. It is impossible to speak of it with too much indignation and contempt; but for it we should look forward with unqualified pleasure to such a land of freedom, and such a magnificent spectacle of human happiness.

MEMOIRS OF CAPTAIN ROCK.

(E. REVIEW, 1824.)

Memoirs of Captain Rock, the celebrated Irish Chieftain; with some Account of his Ancestors. Written by Himself. Fourth Edition. 12mo. London. 1824. THIS agreeable and witty book is generally supposed to have been written by Mr. Thomas Moore, a gentleman of small stature, but full of genius, and a steady friend of all that is honour

America seems, on the whole, to be a country possessing vast advantages, and little inconveniences; they have a cheap government, and bad roads ; they pay no tithes, and have stage coaches without springs. They have no poor-laws, and no monopolies but their inns are inconvenient, and travellers are teased with questions. They have no collections in the fine arts; but they have no Lord Chancellor, and they can go to law with-able and just. He has here borrowed out absolute ruin. They cannot make Latin verses, but they expend immense sums in the education of the poor. In all this the balance is prodigiously in their favour: but then comes the great disgrace and danger of America—the existence of slavery, which, if not timously corrected, will one day entail (and ought to entail) a bloody servile war upon the Americans-which will separate America into slave States and States disclaiming slavery, and which remains at present as the foulest blot in the moral character of that people. A high-spirited nation, who cannot endure the slightest act of foreign aggression, and who revolt at the very shadow of domestic tyranny, beat with cart-whips, and bind with chains, and murder for the merest trifles, wretched human beings, who are of a more dusky colour than themselves; and have recently admitted in their Union a new State, with the express permission of ingrafting this atrocious wickedness into their constitution! No one can admire the simple wisdom and manly firmness of the Americans

the name of a celebrated Irish leader, to typify that spirit of violence and insurrection which is necessarily generated by systematic oppression, and rudely avenges its crimes; and the picture he has drawn of its prevalence in that unhappy country is at once piteous and frightful. Its effect in exciting our horror and indignation is in the long run increased, we think,though at first it may seem counteracted, by the tone of levity, and even jocularity, under which he has chosen to veil the deep sarcasm and substantial terrors of his story. We smile at first, and are amused-and wonder, as we proceed, that the humorous narrative should produce conviction and pity-shame, abhorrence, and despair!

England seems to have treated Ireland much in the same way as Mrs. Brownrigg treated her apprentice for which Mrs. Brownrigg is hanged in the first volume of the Newgate Calendar. Upon the whole, we think the apprentice is better off than the Irishman: as Mrs. Brownrigg merely starves and beats her, without any

attempt to prohibit her from going to be all reacted in the same order, is, on a any shop, or praying at any church, miniature scale, represented in the history her apprentice might select; and once of the English Government in Irelandor twice, if we remember rightly, revolution of the same follies, the same every succeeding century being but a new Brownrigg appears to have felt some crimes, and the same turbulence that discompassion. Not so Old England, graced the former. But Vive l'ennemi!' who indulges rather in a steady base- say I: whoever may suffer by such meaness, uniform brutality, and unrelent-sures, Captain Rock, at least, will prosper. ing oppression. "And such was the result at the period

Let us select from this entertaining of which I am speaking. The rejection of a little book a short history of dear Ire-petition, so humble and so reasonable, was land, such as even some profligate idle member of the House of Commons, voting as his master bids him, may perchance throw his eye upon, and reflect for a moment upon the iniquity to which he lends his support.

For some centuries after the reign of Henry II. the Irish were killed like game, by persons qualified or unqualified. Whether dogs were used does not appear quite certain, though it is probable they were, spaniels as well as pointers; and that, after a regular point by Basto, well backed by Ponto and Cæsar, Mr. O'Donnel or Mr. O'Leary bolted from the thicket, and were bagged by the English sportsman. With Henry II. came in tithes, to which, in all probability, about one million of lives may have been sacrificed in Ireland. In the reign of Edward I. the Irish who were settled near the English requested that the benefit of the English laws might be extended to them; but the remonstrance of the barons with the hesitating king was in substance this:"You have made us a present of these wild gentlemen, and we particularly request that no measures may be adopted to check us in that full range of tyranny and oppression in which we consider the value of such gift to consist. You might as well give us sheep, and prevent us from shearing the wool, or roasting the meat.' This reasoning prevailed, and the Irish were kept to their barbarism, and the barons preserved their live stock.

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"Read 'Orange faction' (says Captain Rock) here, and you have the wisdom of our rulers, at the end of near six centuries, in statu quo.-The grand periodic year of the stoics, at the close of which everything was to begin again, and the same events to

followed, as a matter of course, by one of
revenge of an insulted people naturally
those daring rebellions into which the
breaks forth. The M'Cartys, the O'Briens,
and all the other Macs and O's, who have
been kept on the alert by similar causes
ever since, flew to arms under the command
of a chieftain of my family; and, as the
proffered handle of the sword had been
least feel its edye.”—(pp. 23—25.)
rejected, made their inexorable masters at

Fifty years afterwards the same
request was renewed and refused. Up
again rose Mac and O,-
-a just and
necessary war ensued; and after the
usual murders, the usual chains were re-
placed upon the Irishry. All Irishmen
were excluded from every species of
office. It was high treason to marry
with the Irish blood, and highly penal
to receive the Irish into religious
houses. War was waged also against
their Thomas Moores, Samuel Rogerses,
and Walter Scotts, who went about
the country harping and singing against
English oppression. No such turbulent
guests were to be received. The plan
of making them poets-laureate, or con-
verting them to loyalty by pensions
of 100l. per annum, had not then
been thought of. They debarred the
Irish even from the pleasure of run-
ning away, and fixed them to the soil
like
negroes.

"I have thus selected," says the historian of Rock, "cursorily and at random, a few features of the reigns preceding the Reformation, in order to show what good use was made of those three or four hundred years in attaching the Irish people to their English governors; and by what a gentle course of alteratives they were prepared for the inoculation of a new religion, which was now about to be attempted upon them by the same skilful and friendly hands.

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Henry the Seventh appears to have been the first monarch to whom it occurred

that matters were not managed exactly as they ought in this part of his dominions; and we find him-with a simplicity which is still fresh and youthful among our rulers -expressing his surprise that his subjects of this land should be so prone to faction and rebellion, and that so little advantage had been hitherto derived from the acquisitions of his predecessors, notwithstanding the fruitfulness and natural advantages of Ireland.'-Surprising, indeed, that a policy, such as we have been describing, should not have converted the whole country into a perfect Atlantis of happiness - should not have made it like the imaginary island of Sir Thomas More, where' tota insula velut una familia est!'-most stubborn, truly, and ungrateful, must that people be, upon whom, up to the very hour in which I write, such a long and unvarying course of penal laws, confiscations, and Insurrection

Acts has been tried, without making them

in the least degree in love with their rulers. "Heloise tells her tutor Abelard, that the correction which he inflicted upon her only served to increase the ardour of her affection for him; but bayonets and hemp are no such amoris stimuli.'-One more characteristic anecdote of those times, and I have done. At the battle of Knocktow, in the reign of Henry VII., when that remarkable man, the Earl of Kildare, assisted by the great O'Neal and other Irish chiefs, gained a victory over Clanricard of Connaught, most important to the English Government, Lord Gormanstown, after the battle, in the first insolence of success, said, turning to the Earl of Kildare, 'We have now slaughtered our enemies, but, to complete the good deed, we must proceed yet further,

and-cut the throats of those Irish of our own party!' * Who can wonder that the Rock family were active in those times p" -(pp. 33-35.)

Henry VIII. persisted in all these outrages, and aggravated them by insulting the prejudices of the people. England is almost the only country in the world (even at present) where there is not some favourite religious spot, where absurd lies, little bits of cloth, feathers, rusty nails, splinters, and other invaluable relics, are treasured up, and in defence of which the whole population are willing to turn out and perish as one man. Such was the shrine of St. Kieran, the whole treasures of which the satellites of that

Leland gives this anecdote on the authority of an Englishman.

corpulent tyrant turned out into the street, pillaged the sacred church of Clonmacnoise, scattered the holy nonsense of the priests to the winds, and burnt the real and venerable crosier of St. Patrick, fresh from the silversmith's shop, and formed of the most costly materials. Modern princes change the uniform of regiments : Henry changed the religion of kingdoms, and was determined that the belief of the Irish should undergo a radical and Protestant conversion. With what success this attempt was made, the present state of Ireland is sufficient evidence.

"Be not dismayed," said Elizabeth, on hearing that O'Neal meditated some designs against her government; "tell my friends, if he arise, it will turn to their advantage-there will be estates for those who want." Soon after this prophetic speech, Munster was destroyed by famine and the sword, and near 600,000 acres forfeited to the Crown, and distributed among Englishmen.

Sir Walter Raleigh (the virtuous and good) butchered the garrison of Limerick in cold blood, after Lord Deputy Gray had selected 700 to be hanged. There were, during the reign of Elizabeth, three invasions of Ireland by the Spaniards, produced principally by the absurd measures of this princess, for the reformation of its religion. The Catholic clergy, in consequence of these measures, abandoned their cures, the churches fell to ruin, and the people were left without any means of instruction. Add to these circumstances the murder of M'Mahon, the imprisonment of M'Toole* and O'Dogherty, and the kidnapping of O'Donnel-all truly Anglo-Hibernian proceedings. The execution of the laws was rendered detestable and intolerable by the queen's officers of jus

*There are not a few of the best and most who, when under the influence of fear or humane Englishmen of the present day, anger, would think it no great crime to put to death people whose names begin with O or Mac. The violent death of Smith, Green, or Thomson, would throw the neighbourhood into convulsions, and the regular forms would be adhered to- but little would be really thought of the death of anybody called O'Dogherty or O'Toole.

tice. The spirit raised by these trans- Charles I. took a bribe of 120,000/. actions, besides innumerable smaller from his Irish subjects, to grant them insurrections, gave rise to the great what in those days were called Graces, wars of Desmond and Hugh O'Neal; but in these days would be denomiwhich, after they had worn out the nated the Elements of Justice. The ablest generals, discomfited the choicest money was paid, but the graces troops, exhausted the treasure, and em- were never granted. One of these barrassed the operations of Elizabeth, graces is curious enough: "That the were terminated by the destruction of clergy were not to be permitted to these two ancient families, and by the keep henceforward any private priconfiscation of more than half the ter- sons of their own, but delinquents ritorial surface of the island. The two were to be committed to the public last years of O'Neal's wars cost Eliza- jails." The idea of a rector, with his beth 140,000l. per annum, though the own private jail full of dissenters, is whole revenue of England at that pe- the most ludicrous piece of tyranny riod fell considerably short of 500,000l. we ever heard of. The troops in the Essex, after the destruction of Norris, beginning of Charles's reign were supled into Ireland an army of above ported by the weekly fines levied upon 20,000 men, which was totally baffled the Catholics for non-attendance upon and destroyed by Tyrone within two established worship. The Archbishop years of their landing. Such was the of Dublin went himself, at the head of importance of Irish rebellions two cen- a file of musketeers, to disperse a turies before the time in which we Catholic congregation in Dublin live. Sir G. Carew attempted to assas- which object he effected, after a consinate the Lugan Earl-Mountjoy siderable skirmish with the priests. compelled the Irish rebels to massacre "The favourite object" (says Dr. each other. In the course of a few Leland, a Protestant clergyman, and months, 3000 men were starved to dignitary of the Irish church)" of the death in Tyrone. Sir Arthur Chiches- Irish Government and the English ter, Sir Richard Manson, and other Parliament, was the utter extermination commanders, saw three children feed- of all the Catholic inhabitants of Ireing on the flesh of their dead mother. land." The great rebellion took place Such were the golden days of good in this reign, and Ireland was one Queen Bess! scene of blood and cruelty and confiscation.

By the rebellions of Dogherty in the reign of James I. six northern counties were confiscated, amounting to 500,000 acres. In the same manner, 64,000 acres were confiscated in Athlone. The whole of his confiscations amount to nearly a million acres; and if Leland means plantation acres, they constitute a twelfth of the whole kingdom according to Newenham, and a tenth according to Sir W. Petty. The most shocking and scandalous action in the reign of James, was his attack upon the whole property of the province of Connaught, which he would have effected, if he had not been bought off by a sum greater than he hoped to gain by his iniquity, besides the luxury of confiscation. The Irish, during the reign of James I., suffered under the double evils of a licentious soldiery, and a religious persecution.

Cromwell began his career in Ireland by massacring for five days the garrison of Drogheda, to whom quarter had been promised. Two millions and a half of acres were confiscated. Whole towns were put up in lots, and sold. The Catholics were banished from three-fourths of the kingdom, and confined to Connaught. After a certain day, every Catholic found out of Connaught was to be punished with death. Fleetwood complains peevishly "that the people do not transport readily," but adds, "it is doubtless a work in which the Lord will appear." Ten thousand Irish were sent as recruits to the Spanish army.

"Such was Cromwell's way of settling the affairs of Ireland-and if a nation is to be ruined, this method is, perhaps, as good as any. It is, at least, more humane than the

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