There is no doubt that revolutions abroad and dangers at home have been the greatest inducements to England to relax her grasp and change her tyrannical policy toward Ireland. The success of the revolt of the North American colonies was the main cause of the volunteer movement of 1782, and of the concessions then temporarily granted. The fearful upheaval of revolutionary France, which filled the English heart with a wholesome dread, was also a great means of obtaining for Ireland the concession of being no longer treated as though it were a lair of wild beasts or a nest of outlaws. The act of Catholic Emancipation in 1829 was certainly granted in view of immediate revolutions ready to burst forth, one of which did explode in France in the year following. But, in all those outbursts of popular fury, Ireland never joined; and if she found in them new ground for hope, if she awaited anxiously the anticipated result turning in her favor, she never took any active part whatever in them. She only relied on God, who always knows how to draw good from evil; she, however, profited by them, and saw her shackles fall off of themselves, and herself brought back, step by step, to liberty.
But so soon as any body of Irishmen entered into a scheme of a similar nature, imitating the secret plottings and deeds of European revolutionists, Ireland never gained a single inch of ground, nor reaped the slightest advantage from such attempts. On the contrary, ridicule, contempt, increase of burdens, penalties, and harsh treatment, were the only result which ever came from them, and, worst of all, no one pitied the victims of all those foolish enterprises. There is no need of entering here into details. The first of those attempts failed long ago; the last is still on record, and cannot be yet said to belong to past history.
CHAPTER XIV.
RESURRECTION.-EMIGRATION.
To the eye of a keen beholder, Ireland to-day presents the appearance of a nation entering upon a new career. She is emerging from a long darkness, and opening again to the free light of heaven. Whoever compares her present position with that she occupied a century ago, cannot fail to be struck with wonder no less at the change in her than at the agencies which brought that change about. And when to this is added the further reflection that she is still young, though sprung from so old-an- origin-young in feeling, in buoyancy, in aspirations, in purity and simplicity-the conclusion forces itself upon the mind that a high destiny is in store for her, and that God proposes a long era of prosperity and active life to an ancient nation which is only now beginning to live.
In such cases, whether it be a people or an individual, which is entering upon its life, crowds of advisers are ever to be found ready to display their wisdom and lay down the plans whose adoption will infallibly bring prosperity and happiness to the individual or people in question.
Ireland, to-day, suffers from no lack of wise counsellors and ardent well-wishers. Unfortunately, their various projects do not always harmonize; indeed, they are sometimes contradictory, and, as their number is by no means small, the only difficulty is where to choose which road the nation should take in order to march in the right direction.
In entering upon this portion of our work, where we have to deal with actual questions of the day, and if not to draw the horoscope of the future, at least to give utterance to our ideas for the promotion of the welfare of the nation, we shall appear to come under the same catalogue of advisers, fully persuaded, with the rest, that our advice is the right, our voice the only one worthy of attention.
Our purpose is far humbler; our reflections take another shape; we merely say
During the last hundred years, Ireland has changed wonderfully for the better; and although the old wounds are not yet quite healed up, though they still smart, though she is still poor and disconsolate, and her trials and afflictions far from being ended; nevertheless, though sorely tried, Providence has been kind to her. Many of her rights have been restored, and she is no longer the slave of hard task-masters. When she now speaks, her voice is no longer met by the gibe and sneer, but with a kind of awe akin to respect, her enemies seeming to feel instinctively that it is the voice of a nation which no longer may be safely despised.