It was the sad misfortune of Ireland to be conquered after the downfall of the feudal system, and to be at once inducted—with sanguinary and therefore ineffective restrictions on their use—into free forms of government. The feudal system, in its original integrity—without its on-grafted abuses, as fines, heriots, &c. &c.—is almost the only system on which a naturally high-class but barbarous race can be held down, while they are being elevated in the scale of humanity; and if for three or four generations Ireland could be subjected to pure and beneficent feudality—whereby every man would be linked to a superior, and be compelled to exert himself to retain his feud—together with the Alfredic tithing-man system—to prevent or detect and punish crime—it might be gradually placed on such an equality with England, as to enable it to be safely governed on the same constitutional principles. Perhaps, however, it is rather to be wished that this had been done in past times, than to attempt it now: it might be dangerous to the liberties of England to retrograde; for it must be admitted that a return to feudality is retrogression, and the state of external peace to which it would bring Ireland might afford an argument to future English Legislatures, to tie down the turbulent liberties of England with the same bonds—which God forbid! better live in a storm than rot in a calm. It is the unhappy fate of Ireland that its evils are past remedy. Her woes are the executioners of God’s judgments against England for the latter’s crimes towards her. Ireland suffers that she may be a sharp thorn in the side—perhaps a dagger in the heart—of England. No nation sins without retribution from the quarter against which the crime has been committed, and much more evil must England suffer from Ireland ere an equivalent punishment has been inflicted. Nevertheless Ireland is not wretched only because England must suffer; she is wretched for her own crimes, and her wretchedness is over-ruled to be the punishment of her oppressor likewise. This is by no means an isolated instance of the duality of purposes in the Divine judgments. The crimes of a nation have ofttimes been made the punishment of itself and another; so likewise, among individuals, the visitation of one man’s sins frequently extends to punish the faults, or try the virtue, of his friends and relations.