The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1838-07-31 00:00:00

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WHAT HAS AGITATION DONE FOR IRELAND?

(From a Correspondent.)
There never was a time when an interrogatory, so pregnant
with meaning as this, may be put with more effect than at
the present. Agitation is the bludgeon upon which the Irish
incendiary leans, while he dictates to a British ministry,
swaggers to a British senate, and seeks to overtop, in the al-
titude of his ambition, the prerogative of a British crown.
Agitation is the essence of his power and the success of his
extortion. It has made him mighty in the exercise of mis-
chief, because it has placed a people at his beck. But what
has agitation done for Ireland ? We would not hesitate to
meet the noisiest of Mr. O'Connell's brawlers, and dare him
to give a satisfactory answer to this question. We would
defy him to point out, in one single instance, what benefit
has accrued to any one class of the population,, by all the
turmoil, confusion, and excitement, in which the country
has been plunged for the last five and thirty years ? We
would bid him look to the metropolis of the wretched coun-
try, with its bankrupt traders and its tottering merchants;
its commerce a bye-word; and the meagre exhibition of busi-
ness or circulation of capital it can boast, but the hectic and
forced effects of unnatural expedients. What then have Ca-
tholic, National, Trades' Union, or Registration Societies
or Associations done to remove so miserable a state of things
—to relieve the wants and miseries of the superabundant and
growing population —to clear out an over-stocked mendicity
of its ragged tenants; and bring into the deserted shops and
warehouses of its tottering traders, the wealth and security
they should possess? And is it not the same revolting and
melancholy story if we turn to the provincial towns of Ireland
where O'Connellism and Popery have any predominance ?
Are not beggary, bankruptcy, and perennial starvation their
sole and unvarying features ?
But when we turn to the applauder of Mr. O'Connell, and
bidding him look at the poor, afflicted, and deluded peasantry,
and ask him, what has agitation done for them? What an-
swer has he to give to the interrogatory ? Can we be contra-
dicted when we assert, that the peasantry of Ireland are a set
of wretches, from whose very bowels a guilty opulence has
been wrung to feed and pamper a gross political swindler
and his clutch of stupid and ignorant parvenus ;—that they
have been goaded, maddened into midnight murdererers, de-
predators, and incendiaries, by poverty and hunger; and
that to the unholy designs of individual aggrandisement in a
mendicant demagogue and a rapacious priesthood, they have
been made the most guilty, reckless, and unhappy people on
the face of the created globe ? Oh! if we had no other answer
to the interrogatory with which we have commenced these ob-
servations than a description of the present state of the Irish
peasantry, it would be an unanswerable and a heart-sickening
one! It is impossible to imagine anything more deplorably
miserable than their condition. They are steeped to the very
throats in iniquity and suffering. Human degradation has
scarce a parallel for that of the peasant population of Ireland.
And at the threshold of Mr. O'Connell and his underlings,
the surpliced incendiaries and disturbers of the public peace,
do we lay the blame and the reproach of all this calamity.
It is in truth what agitation has done for Ireland. Agitation
has filled O'Connell's wallet. Agitation has foisted Mr.
Shiel and his two brothers on the country. Agitation has
made a'popish Chief-Baron and Master of the Rolls,e-has
taxed the Assistant-Barrister's bench with hungry and brief-
less lawyers.—has thrust upon each county, Deputy-Crown
Solicitors,—has filled the Police with needy and expectant
adventurers ; but for the great bulk of the population what
has it done ? we wish we could answer nothing, for the curse
of it is, that it has made them murderers and outlaws. Yes,
Daniel O'Connell, and ye priests of Ireland, we arraign you
at the bar of that humanity you have so cruelly dealt by, and
that justice you have mocked at, as the authors and abettors
of all the wrongs and sufferings of this peculiarly miserable
country. You have made its inhabitants your victims. You
have trafficked upon their ignorance, and traded upon their
credulity; you bartered them for your gain with snore com-
posure than the Algerine slave pirate. In fact, you made a
percentage upon their sufferings, like those inhuman mon-
sters who flay animals alive for the additional value it gives
the skin; you have, with the most cold-blooded ferocity, en-
dured the agonised writhings and pangs of the misguided
people, for the profit which they yielded you. Yes, we have
often thought there must be something terribly hardened and
obdurate in the hearts and feelings of the men who have set
themselves up as the leaders of the Irish people, when they
can thus so composedly and so recklessly view the pains and
penalties of the system of which they have been the origina-
tors. Hear them mouthing about patriotism, the good of the
people, and liberty, and right; and one would swear they
were philanthropic and honest men—look to their acts and
and their results, and you must brand them, as impostors.
We defy contradiction to the assertion, that there was never
yet any enlarged, comprehensive, or really beneficial plan
for the benefit of Ireland which had the sanction or the assist-
ance, in its prombtion, of O'Connell or his priesthood. Pub-
lic-works, the reclamation of waste lands, the introduction of
English capital, and the employment of the many great na-
tional resourceS of the county have been the cry of every po-
litical economist who has given the most cursory glance to
the condition of so vital a portion of the empire. And yet,
let us look back with what scrutiny we may, when or in what
instance do we find the name of O'Connell or their Reveren-
ces to any such project?
It is idle to discuss the matter. In his whole thirty years
of agitation the profligate and unprincipled villain who enjoys
the dictatorship of a time-serving and humiliated English cabi-
net and Irish people, never was himself, nor allowed one of his
understrappers, to be an advocate for any one plan, system
or measure which had for its object the real intrinsic benefit
of the people.
Have not we then, have not all who differ from such poli-
tical swindlers a right to ask the question—" Who has agita-
tion done for Ireland?" Would to God the people would put
the same to their own hearts and consciences ! Let them
but look on their naked and shivering children, their wretched
wives and mothers; let those wives and mothers who have so
often followed their heart's treasures to the foot of the gal-
lows; look upon their desolate homes and fire-sides; and let
all-who mourn and weep over what they so loved and lost,
pause and investigate the sources of their sufferings and de-
privation, and then might the political arch-fiend and his in-
feriors tremble at the answer to the question —" WHAT tins
AGITATION DONE FOR IRELAND ?"

LONGEVITY.—There are two females residing on Low-hill,
whose united ages amount to 193 years; the elder, aged 110
•years, has inhabited the same tenement about 90 years.