[8] Observe, _for a time_! We shall see anon what the price of sugar will be when the English colonies are destroyed and the slave plantations have the monopoly of the market in their hands. It had been the constant policy of the British government, under all administrations, for above a century and a half, to endeavour to reclaim the Irish population by introducing among them colonies of English who might teach them industry, and Protestant missionaries who might reclaim them from barbarism. The Irish landlords and boroughs were the outposts of civilisation among a race of savages; the Irish Church the station of Christianity amidst the darkness of Romish slavery. So effectual was this system, and so perfectly adapted to the character of the Celtic race--capable of great things when led by others, but utterly unfit for self-government, and incapable of improvement when left to itself,--that even in the ruthless hands of Cromwell, yet reeking with the slaughter of stormed cities, it soon spread a degree of prosperity through the country then unknown, and rarely if ever since equalled in that ill-starred land.[9] But the experience of the utter futility of all attempts, during a century and a half, to leave the native Irish Celts to themselves or their own direction, had no effect whatever in convincing our modern liberals that they were incapable of self-direction, and would only be ruined by Saxon institutions. On the contrary, it left no doubt in their minds that the absence of self-government was the sole cause of the wretchedness of the country, and that nothing was wanting but an entire participation in the privileges of British subjects, to render them as industrious, prosperous, and loyal as the yeomen of Kent or Surrey. In pursuance of those principles, Catholic Emancipation was granted: the Whigs had effected one revolution in 1688, by coalescing with the whole Tories to exclude the Catholics from the government; they brought about another revolution, in 1829, by coalescing with a section of the Tories to bring them in. In furtherance of the new system, so plausible in theory, so dangerous in practice, of extending to all men, of all races, and in all stages of political advancement, the same privileges, the liberals successively gave the Irish the command of their boroughs, the abridgment of the Protestant Church, and the abolition of tithes as a burden on the tenant. They encouraged agitation, allowed treason to be openly spoken in every part of the country, and winked at monster meetings, till the community was wellnigh thrown into convulsions. Meanwhile, agriculture was neglected--industry disappeared--capital was scared away. The land was run out, and became unfit for anything but lazy-beds of potatoes. The people became agitators, not cultivators: they were always running about to meetings--not frequenting fairs. The potato-blight fell on a country thus prepared