The Sun.
London, England, 1861-08-21 00:00:00

HER MAJESTY'S YISIT TO IRELAND.

As a convincing proof of her own firm reliance on
the cheering statements with which she dismissed
her Parliament the other day the Queen is about this
day to visit that part of her dominions which was
wont to be the source of the greatest trouble and
anxiety, and whence, if from anywhere, the Sove-
reigns of the House of Brunswick have looked for
scanty demonstrations of loyalty to themselves and
their Government. It is now just forty years since
her Majesty's uncle, King George IV., visited Ireland
on a similar errand. Little more than twenty years
before the island had been convulsed by a sangui-
nary rebellion, which had inflamed the minds of
both parties to the highest pitch of exaspera•
tion. The rebellion was crushed, but the fire still
smouldered under the deceitful ashes. Men were
still engaged in the pursuits of active life who had
taken part in scenes which the world shudders
to remember, and history would willingly omit
to record. George IV. went to Ireland, not as the
King of a whole people, but as the representative
of a small and dominant minority—the repre-
sentative of the policy of persecution and re-
striction under which Ireland had groaned for a
hundred and thirty years, and was still to groan
for several years more. /Nobody gave the King
credit for any deep-seated or high-toned principle.
The scandals of his private life were only too well
in keeping with the shabbiness of his political
career as Prince of Wales, and at the time of his
visit to Ireland he was carrying on a persecution
against his wife which raised a storm of unpopu-
larity even greater than followed the attempts of
his father in the earlier years of his reign to ex-
tend the prerogative of the Crown. George IV.
went to Ireland in her evil days, and evil were the
days that were to succeed the Royal visit. The most
dreadful agrarian outrages, fire-raising murders,
and little civil wars occasioned by the collision of
permanent political and religious organisations,
which swallowed up all other distinctions and
divided society into hostile camps ; the boon of
emancipation, granted without kindness and sym-
pathy, and received without gratitude ' • the succes-
sive agitations of O'Connell, and the final break-
down of the old state of things in Ireland through
the agency of famine and the pestilence that never
fails to wait upon it—all these things were lowering
in the future when George IV. set his foot on the
pier which from that moment dropped the Celtic
name of Dunleary and assumed the courtly appella-
tion of Kingstown. The past was sad, the pre-
sent gloomy, and the future menacing, Therefore,
though it was easy, of course, to get up to order any
amount of festivity required to greet the presence
of King George IV. in this portion of his dominions,
the thing was but a passing pageant, which faded
away without healing the bitterness of lotig de-
ferred hope, or soothing the feelings that rankled
under the consciousness of injustice. King George
came and went—came without welcome, and went
without regret.
Well, forty years have passed, and now the niece
goes to tread the same ground as her uncle, to sit
in the same seat, and to view the same objects. But
everything else has changed. ,The very route is
no longer the same. When George IV. went to
Ireland Thelford's Holyhead-road, and the Menai-
bridge, accounted one of the wonders of the world,
were not in existence. The road and the bridge
still exist, but the road and the bridge have been
virtually discarded to make room for a mightier in-
vention. Ireland, the communication with which
then still depended principally on the winds, may
now be reached in little more than three hours from
Holyhead, and when the improvements at Port-
patrick are completed will be accessible thence in
little more than an hour. Materially the two
countries have in the interval been thoroughly
united.
During a reign which is now entering on its 25th
year the destiny of Ireland has been checkered in-
deed. The turning point was reached in the abor-
tive rebellion of 1848. The famine broke down the
vast edifice of insolvent proprietorship, which
crushed the energies and degraded the character
of the country. The rebellion of Smith O'Brien
exposed and exploded the corresponding sham of
a baseless political agitation. Since that time
Ireland has been guided by reason instead of the
imagination, by reality and possibility instead of by
prejudice and poetry. She no longer believes that
" virtue and Erin" are on one side and " the Saxon
and guilt" on the other. She has set herself, with
laudable industry and splendid success, to develope
her natural resources, and to make the most of the
advantage of being an integral part of the British
Empire. She has completed a railway system
better laid out, better managed, and far more remu-
nerative than our own. Her land has been redistri-
buted among those who have capital to work it. A
generation has received the benefits of education.
Thirty years of toleration have,in spite of the efforts
of bigots of all classes, done much to allay the bit-
terness of religious differences. She possesses uni-