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

c.iiwiyaL WISEMAN UPON I.R.E.L.AND
..A.YD THE IRISH.

Last night Cardinal Wisemanrelated his impres-
sions of his recent visit to Ireland before a large
public assembly convened in the Hanover-square
Rooms. 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 o'clock, but it was
half-past 8 before his Eminence presented himself
to the meeting, and the company had begun to as-
' iemble fully an hour earlier. The Roman Catholic
Bishop of Agra and Mr. Bowyer, M.P., were
-among the gentlemen on the platform, and Lord
Overstorie was among the general company.
-The reserved seats were to a large extent
occupied by ladies, most of whom were in even -
in.. 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 marked 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, and of which we
give a necessarily brief resume, by saying that he
had been requested to embody in a lecture the im-
pressions 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-
jects having the greatest interest for him. He
would say at once that he went as a Catholic, and
looked at everything he saw with the eye of a Ca-
tholic. He was sent to Ireland by no one, he asked
leave of no one to go, and he communicated his
intention to go no more than if he had been going
to Birmingham 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 hadhrought 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-
rous state to one of success and promise. In olden
tifnes trials 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 cabins in the bog ; but often
when the last spark had 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 brighter light in that miserable hut to
cheer the desolate inmates than could have been
communicated by the dazzling splendours of a
palace. That haa been the condition of Ireland for
many years, until recent times, and the g'reatest 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 a
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 circum-
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
guidance 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-
tivation of which the people so long confined their
energies, and were obliged for the most part to live,
his Eminence said that during his recent visit he
had noticed in many parts a regular rotation of
crops, and had seen fields of various kinds of agri-
cultural produce far more effectually tilled, and
in a more 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 (he 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; and 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.
Gradually 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, where many bought from
mere motives of speculation, who 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 ;
tradesmen in towns would invest their savings in
real property ; and so, in the course of a few years,
a new and respectable race of landowners would
spring up. Ireland, in fact, from the touch of that
Fatherly Hand, severe as it had appeared, had started
on a magnificent career of development which pro-
mised more even than one would venture to presage.
The people as he saw them were now healthy in
appearance as a body, and substantially clothed,
while no 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-
ancy and a poetry, which psrvaded the .whole of the
peasantry. The smile on their countenance was
bright and cheering, the light of the eye was not only
brilliant but tender, and during his stay he had often
had occasion to observe among large congregations
of the people that kind of natural gentleness of
bearing which was peculiar to them. His Emi-
nence proceeded at some length to show the predo-
minant feelings which the great development in 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 improved—
that they wore gradually emancipating themselves
from the influence of a certain great city.in Italy