The Sun.
London, England, 1858-11-04 00:00:00

CARDINAL WISEMAN UPON IRELAND_
AND THE IRISH. •71-V-
-e

Last night Cardinal Wisemanrelated his impres-
Mons of his recent visit to Ireland before a large
public assembly convened in the Hanover-square
BOOMS.. The audience was admitted by ticket, at
prices varying from 3s. 6d. to ls., and the proceeds
were to go in aid of the funds of certain poor
schools in the metropolis in connection with the
Society of St. Vincent de Paul. The lecture, as it
was called, was announced for 8 &clock, but it was
half-past 8 before his Eminence presented himself
to the meeting, and the company had begun to as-
semble fully an hour earlier. The Roman Catholic
Bishop of Agra and Mr. Bowyer, M.P., were
among the gentlemen on the platform, and Lord
Overstone was among the general company.
The reserved seats were to a large extent
occupied by ladies, most of whom were in even-
ing dress. It might have been expected that the
audience on such an occasion would be in a very
great part composed of Roman Catholics, and this
was manifest by the murked manner in which par-
ticular passages in the Cardinal's address were
cheered during the delivery.
His EMINENCE, on entering the room, met with
an enthusiastic reception. He began his address,
which lasted upwards, of two hours; andef which we
give a necessarily brief resume, by saying that he
had been requested to embody in a lecture the im-
,...„..mressions made on his mind by a recent tour in Ire-
land. Glancing for a few moments at the difficulties
which he said. environed the subject, he said he
would unfurl his flag at once, premising that dur-
ing his sojourn in various parts of Ireland it was
natural for him to-trace out and examine the ob-
- 4as having the grZmt'st Interest for him. He
*Uld say at once that he went as a Catholic, and
looked at everything lie saw with the eye of a Ca-
- tholic. He was sent to Ireland by no one, he e.sked,
leave of no one to -go,. and he communicated his
intention tg go no more than if he had. been going
to Birminghani or Liverpool. It was his own work;
he had no instructions; and he had nothing to do
but to preach. two -sermons and come back again,
though it pleased the people on his arriving there
to give a different form to his visit. It was not a
journey of observation; he did not make a single
memorandum of what he saw or heard ; and his ob-
servations were confined to what passed before him
as he went from place to place. Reducing to a
single point the converging impressions made on
his own mind, he would say that the thought which
he had brought back with him was that Ireland at.
this moment represented a great nationality rising
itself from a state of depression into which it had
been sunk for many years.. (Cheers.)` To illustrate
that impression he did not think it necessary to•
dwell on the evils of the past, or to say.a word be-
yond alluding to the knowledge of his audience of
certain notorious facts. There was hardly a more
interesting period in the history of any country than
that in which there was a transition, and one made
on a great scale, from an unhappy and an unprospe-
roui state to one of success and promise. In olden"
times triali of a depressing kind were long and.
affecting. Seventy years' capacity for trial was con-
sidered sufficient for a chosen people, but when they
(the audience) came to look back to a period of 300
years, how many generations did that absorb in
sorrow ! Those among them who with himself had
passed the middle stage of life could remember
Ireland when it was completely in the hands of one
party of men, who sought entirely to depress the
other. That was the condition to which it was re-
duced. In the meantime, while the poorer part of
the population were starving in the midst of plenty
and fading away in a climate that seemed capable
of bestowing the most stalwart strength, the great
body of them still clung to one thing,and that was.
hope. What was religion but hope brought back to(
the poor and afflicted? They were ridiculed because
they dwelt in. mud, cabinskin the bog ; but often
when the last spark bad died out in the turf on the
cabin floor, when the storm was beating around it,
and. the rain penetrating every chink and cranny,
there was a brightei light in that miserable hut to
cheer the desolate inmates than Could have been
communicated by the dazzling splendours of a
palace. That had been the condition of Ireland for
many years, until recent times, and the greatest of
trials was the consideration that that which formed
the religion of the mass of the people was, so far as
human power could effect such an object, swept
away. At one time not a church was left, not
place to assemble for the worship of. God : not a
college,,nor a school, nor an institution by which
religion could be supported or the functions of the
Church performed It could have been by little less_
than a miracle that their religion, under circum7
stances so adverse, was kept burning in the hearts
of the entire population. For hundreds of years
they were subject to every form of oppression and
wretchedness, and then there came a still worse and
more difficult trial than all. After so long a struggle
with the power of man, it appeared as if the power
of God had been brought suddenly to bear against
them., Famine and fever, grown almost to the di-
mensions of a pestilence, invaded the greater part of
the country, and those parts suffered most in which
there were less means of resistance or of remedy.
The bare and distant mountain regions on' which
the poor peasantry dwelt, and the small towns and
hamlets in which others of them were congregated,
those were the scenes and the subjects of that dread-
ful visitation ; and they who had so long suffered
the injustice of man were seen to bear a series of
calamities with a patience of which he doubted there
was an example in the history of nations. (Loud
cheers.) That, howeVer, was the turning point in
the history of the country, and from that time they
had to date for it the commencement of a bright
future. Three changes might be said to have occur-
red in that period. One was the emigration which
naturally took its origin in the desolation ,and po-
verty in which the great bulk of the population
was plunged; another was the change in the sys-
tem -of agriculture; and the third was the letting
loose of property to pass into the hands of those
who,. according to the laws of nature, ought to have
had their fair share of it. (Cheers.) What had been
called the Exodus began and continued until it
created alarm in the minds of those intrusted with

the Government of the country ; 'but under the
guiance of Providence it found a certain level, by
which the condition of those who had gone as well
as of those who remained at home was manifestly
and permanently improved. That emigration had
not been the mere rush of desperate men to seek
better fortune in distant lands, nor had it severed
-. any of the links that ought to bind together mem-
bers of the same family ; and in that latter circum-
stance was seen the genuine soundness of the Irish
heart. After a passing expression of regret for
what he called the sad monotony of food to the cul-
tivatiott.of which the people-so long confined their
energif* and were obliged for the most part to live,
his Eminence said that during his recent visit he--
had not is in many parts a regular rotation' of
crops, attillliad seen fields Of various kinds 'of agri-
cultural produce far more effectually tilled, and
in a mare promising condition, than he had seen
in 'England before he went or since he had
returned, though it might be without that finish
which obtained in this country. Let any one (be con-
tinued) go to Ireland now who had been there be-
fore, and notice the cattle, and he would find that
-it. was not only greatly improved, but the whole
system-on which it was bred and managed totally'
changed for the better. It was well known that for
ages the land of Ireland was comparatively in the
hands of a few ; that the landlords held large tracts
• of country; add that if they endeavoured, as they
did in-many cases, to extort unreasonable prices for
its occupation froM the starving poor, it was not al-
together so 'much from avarice as from necessity
that they did so. There were 'so many outgoings
from the land that.-frequently the owners of lordly
domains were themselves little better than paupers.
Gradnally in many
_cases they sank into penury,
and that led to so much land being thrown into the
Market, which had now become the property of
smaller holders. It was not the first purchasers
under the . new system, whore many bought from
mere motives of-speculatianAvho in the end would
become the actual holders: Under a system of subdi-
vision, by means of.sale, persons with comparatively
small capital -would - become purchasers of land ;
int§nien in towns. would._ invest their sayings in,
rea Vroperty ; and-so in the'course of a few years,
a new and respectable race or landowners would
spring up. Ireland, in fact, from the touch of that
Ea therl y Rand, severe as it had appeared, had started
on :ad,gnificent career of development which pro-
raisc4Amore even than one, would ntur t presage.
The: as he saw them were nowe. healthy in
appearance as a body, and substantially Clothed,
'while ho feeling akin to abjection, the result of past
destitution, lingered among them. Wherever he
went he saw in the great bulk of the people a
warmth and an expansion of heart totally different
from what was found in other countries. (Cheers.).
There was a spontaneity of expression—a facility
of giving utterance to their thoughts, and a brilli
which p:rvaded whole ancy-and a poetry., of the
their the
-peasantry. The smile .on countenance was
the licht of the eve was not only
bright andeheering,
brilliant but tender, and during his
had occasion to observe among large congregations
of the people that kind of natural gentleness of
n •
bearing which was peculiar to them. His
His Emi-
nence proceeded 'at some length to show p,
minant feelings which the great development nn the
material condition of the Irish people had produced
in. their minds. Ridiculing the notion he occasion-
ally-found expressed- in newspapers and reviews,
that
_the Catholic portion of the-people of Ireland
had become less susceptible to the teaching of their
priests., as -their material condition had iraptoved---
;Alfa they-were gradually emancipatingtheniselves -
`from the influence - of a certain great city in Italy