It is upon this principle, or rather upon these principles, and for
these reasons, that the industry, the moral feeling, the independence,
and the strength of the country have been passing out of it for
years--leaving it, season after season, weaker, more impoverished, and
less capable of meeting those periodical disasters which, we may almost
say, are generated by the social disorder and political misrule of the
country.
The fact is, and no reasonable or honest man capable of disencumbering
himself of political prejudices can deny it, that up until a recent
period the great body of the Irish people--the whole people--were mainly
looked upon and used as political instruments in the hands of the
higher classes, but not at all entitled to the possession of separate or
independent interests in their own right. It is true they were allowed
the possession of the forty-shilling franchise; but will any man say
that the existence of that civil right was a benefit to the country? So
far from that, it was a mere engine of corruption, and became, in
the hands of the Irish landlords, one of the most oppressive and
demoralizing curses that ever degraded a people. Perjury, fraud,
falsehood, and dishonesty, were its fruits, and the only legacy it
left to the country was an enormous mass of pauperism, and a national
morality comparatively vitiated and depraved, in spite of all religious
influence and of domestic affections that are both strong and tender.
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