Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV.

Lastly, let us notice the Irish Arms' bill; which, amongst the measures framed to meet the momentary exigence of the times, stands foremost in importance. This is one of those fugitive and casual precautions, which, by intense seasonableness, takes its rank amongst the permanent means of pacification. Bridling the instant spirit of uproar, carrying the Irish nation over that transitional state of temptation, which, being once gone by, cannot, we believe, be renewed for generations, this, with other acts in the same temper, will face whatever peril still lingers in the sullen rear of Mr O'Connell's dying efforts. For that gentleman, personally, we believe him to be nearly extinct. Two months ago we expressed our conviction, so much the stronger in itself for having been adopted after some hesitation, that Sir Robert Peel had taken the true course for eventually and finally disarming him. We are thankful that we have now nothing to recant. Progress has been made in that interval towards that consummation, quite equal to any thing we could have expected in so short a lapse of weeks. Mr O'Connell is now showing the strongest symptoms of distress, and of conscious approach to the condition of "check to the king." Of these symptoms we will indicate one or two. In January 1843, he declared solemnly that an Irish Parliament should instal itself at Dublin before the year closed. Early in May, he promised that on the anniversary of that day the great change should be solemnized. On a later day in May, he proclaimed that the event would come off (according to a known nautical mode of advertising the time of sailing) not upon a settled day of that month but "in all May" of 1844. Here the matter rested until August 12, when again he shifted his day to the corresponding day of 1844. But September arrived, and then "before those shoes were old" in which he had made his promise, he declares by letter, to some correspondent, that he must have forty-three months for working out his plan. Anther symptom, yet more significant, is this: and strange to say it has been overlooked by the daily press. Originally he had advertised some pretended Parliament of 300 Irishmen, to which admission was to be had for each member by a fee of L.100. And several journals are now telling him that, under the Convention Act, he and his Parliament will be arrested on the day of assembling. Not at all. They do not attend to his harlequin motions. Already he has declared that this assembly, which was to have been a Parliament, is only to be a conciliatory committee, an old association under some new name, for deliberating on means tending to a Parliament in some future year, as yet not even suggested.

May we not say, after such facts, that the game is up? The agitation may continue, and it may propagate itself. But for any interest of Mr O'Connell's, it is now passing out of his hands.

In the joy with which we survey that winding up of the affair, we can afford to forget the infamous display of faction during the discussion of the Arms' bill. Any thing like it, in pettiness of malignity, has not been witnessed during this century: any thing like it, in impotence of effect, probably will not be witnessed again during our times. Thirteen divisions in one night—all without hope, and without even a verbal gain! This conduct the nation will not forget at the next election. But in the mean time the peaceful friends of this yet peaceful empire rejoice to know, that without war, without rigour, without an effort that could disturb or agitate—by mere silent precautions, and the sublime magnanimity of simply fixing upon the guilty conspirator one steadfast eye of vigilant preparation, the conspiracy itself is melting into air, and the relics of it which remain will soon become fearful only to him who has evoked it.

The game, therefore, is up, if we speak of the purposes originally contemplated. This appears equally from the circumstances of the case without needing the commentary of Mr O'Connell, and from the acts no less than the words of that conspirator. True it is—and this is the one thing to be feared—that the agitation, though extinct for the ends of its author, may propagate itself through the maddening passions of the people, now perhaps uncontrollably excited. Tumults may arise, at the moment when further excitement is impossible, simply through that which is already in operation. But that stage of rebellion is open at every turn to the coercion of the law: and it is not such a phasis of conspiracy that Mr O'Connell wishes to face, or can face. Speaking, therefore, of the real objects pursued in this memorable agitation, we cannot but think that as the roll of possible meetings is drawing nearer to exhaustion, as all other arts fail, and mere written addresses are renewed, (wanting the inflammatory contagion of personal meetings, and not accessible to a scattered peasantry;) but above all, as the day of instant action is once again adjourned to a period both remote and indefinite, the agitation must be drooping, and virtually we may repeat that the game is up. But the last moves have been unusually interesting. Not unlike the fascination exercised over birds by the eye of the rattlesnake, has been the impression upon Mr O'Connell from the fixed attention turned upon him by Government. What they did was silent and unostentatious; more, however, than perhaps the public is aware of in the way of preparation for an outbreak. But the capital resource of their policy was, to make Mr O'Connell deeply sensible that they were watching him. The eye that watched over Waterloo was upon him: for six months that eagle glance has searched him and nailed him: and the result, as it is now revealing itself, may at length be expressed in the two lines of Wordsworth otherwise applied—

"The vacillating bondsman of the PopeShrinks from the verdict of that steadfast eye."

1

A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive; being a connected view of the Principles of Evidence, and the Methods of Scientific Investigation. By John Stuart Mill. In two volumes. London: Parker.

2

Necessary truths multiply on us very fast. "We maintain," says Mr Whewell, "that this equality of mechanical action and reaction is one of the principles which do not flow from, but regulate, our experience. A mechanical pressure, not accompanied by an equal and opposite pressure, can no more be given by experience than two unequal right angles. With the supposition of such inequalities, space ceases to be space, form ceases to be form, matter ceases to be matter." And again he says, "That the parallelogram of forces is a necessary truth;" a law of motion of which we surely can conceive its opposite to be true. In some of these instances Mr Whewell appears, by a confusion of thought, to have given to the physical fact the character of necessity which resides in the mathematical formula employed for its expression. Whether a moving body would communicate motion to another body—whether it would lose its own motion by so doing—or what would be the result if a body were struck by two other bodies moving in different directions—are questions which, if they could be asked us prior to experience, we could give no answer whatever to—which we can easily conceive to admit of a quite different answer to that which experience has taught us to give.

3

Travels of Kerim Khan; being a narrative of his Journey from Delhi to Calcutta, and thence by Sea to England: containing his remarks upon the manners, customs, laws, constitutions, literature, arts, manufactures, &c., of the people of the British Isles. Translated from the original Oordu—(MS.)

4

Shalwarlek—"tight trousers"—was a phrase used, under the old Turkish régime, as equivalent to a blackguard.

5

The Moslems, and other natives of India descended from foreign races, are properly called Hindustanis, while the aborigines are the Hindus—a distinction not well understood in Europe. The former take their name from the country, as natives of Hindustan, which has derived its own name from the latter, as being the country of the Hindus.

6

Journal of a Residence of Two Years and a Half in Great Britain, by Jehangeer Nowrojee and Hirjeebhoy Merwanjee of Bombay, Naval Architects. London: 1841.

7

Many of our readers must have seen the beautiful ivory model of this far-famed edifice, lately exhibited in Regent Street, and now, we believe, in the Cambridge University museum. It is fortunate that so faithful a miniature transcript of the beauties of the Taj is in existence, since the original is doomed, as we are informed, to inevitable ruin at no distant period, from the ravages of the white ants on the woodwork.

8

These sacred footmarks are more numerous among the Buddhists than the Moslems—the most celebrated is that on the summit of Adam's Peak, in Ceylon.

9

Most of the principal cities of India, in addition to the ancient name by which they are popularly known, have another imposed by the Moslems:—thus Agra is Akbarabad, the residence of Akbar—Delhi, Shahjehanabad; and Patna, Azimabad. In some instances, as Dowlutabad in the Dekkan, the Hindu name of which is Deogiri, the Mohammedan appellation has superseded the ancient name; but, generally speaking, the latter is that in common use.

10

"So called from Kali, the Hindu goddess, and kata, laughter; because human victims were formerly here sacrificed to her."

11

From the sanctity attached by Oriental ideas to the privacy of the harem, it is a high crime and misdemeanour, punishable by law in all Moslem countries, to erect buildings overlooking the residence of a neighbour. At Constantinople, there is an officer called the Minar Aga, or superintendent of edifices, whose especial duty it is to prevent this.

12

"Almost immediately on leaving Allahabad," (on his way from Calcutta to the Upper Provinces,) "I was struck with the appearance of the men, as tall and muscular as the largest stature of Europeans; and with the fields of wheat, almost the only cultivation."—Heber's Journal, vol. iii. "Some of our boatmen passing through a field of Indian corn, plucked two or three ears, certainly not enough to constitute a theft, or even a trespass. Two of the men, however, who were watching, ran after them, not as the Bengalis would have done, to complain with joined hands, but with stout bamboos, prepared to do themselves justice par voye de faict. The men saved themselves by swimming off to the boat; but my servants called out to them—'Ah! dandee folk, beware, you are now in Hindustan; the people here know well how to fight, and are not afraid.'"

13

"I told his (Pertab Chund's) father, that it was wrong to keep him where he then was, and he told me to take him down to the river. He was lifted up on his bedding; his speech was not very distinct at that time, but sufficiently so to call on the name of his T'hakoor, (spiritual guide,) which he did as desired; he then began to shiver, and complained of being very cold. I was one of those who went with the rajah to the river side. Jago Mohun Dobee pressed his legs under the water, and kept them so; and about 10 p.m. his soul quitted the body. When he died, his knees were under water, but the rest of his body above." Evidence of Radha Sircar and Sham Chum Baboo, before the Mofussil Court of Hoogly, September 1838, in the enquiry on the impostor Kistololl, who personated the deceased Pertab.

14

Tazîya, literally grief, is an ornamental shrine erected in Moslem houses during the Mohurrum, and intended to represent the mausoleum of Hassan and Hussein, at Kerbelah in Persia. On the 10th and last day of the mourning, the tazîyas are carried in procession to the outside of the city, and finally deposited with funeral rites in the burying-grounds.—See Mrs Meer Hassan Ali's Observations on the Mussulmans of India. Letter I.

15

Reminiscences of Syria. By Colonel E. Napier.

16

Modern Painters—their Superiority in the Art of Landscape Painting to all the Ancient Masters, &c. &c. By a Graduate of Oxford.

17

From a rough calculation taken from the returns of those left dead on the fields of battle in which Napoleon commanded, from Montenotte to Waterloo, we make the amount 1,811,500; and if we add those who died subsequently of their wounds in the petty skirmishes, the losses in which are not reported, and in the naval fights, of which, though Napoleon was not present, he was the cause, the number given in the text will be far under the mark. A picture of the fathers, mothers, wives, children, and relatives of these victims, receiving the news of their death, would give a lively idea of the benefits conferred upon the world by Napoleon.

18

Nov. Org. Aph. 29.

19

Impetus Philosophici, p. 681.

20

In any thing we have above said, we trust it is unnecessary to disclaim the slightest intention of discouraging those whose want of conventional advantages only renders their merit more conspicuous; we find fault not with the uneducated for cultivating science, but with the educated for neglecting it.

21

Cours de Philosophie Positive, vol. ii. p. 409.

22

Each Fellow can, indeed, by express permission of the Society, take with him two friends.

23

An anonymous author, who has attracted some attention in France, in commenting on the rejection of Victor Hugo, and the election of a physician, says—that nothing could be more natural or proper, as the senility and feebleness of the Académie made it more in want of a physician than a poet.

24

Edin. Rev. No. 159.

25

Brewster's Life of Newton, p. 35.

26

Carlyle on Hero Worship.

27

Commentaries, vol. i. p. 277.

28

A hammil sconce, or light of the hamlet, is the picturesque expression in secluded parts of Lancashire for the local wise man, or village counsellor.

29

Those who fancy a possible evasion of the case supposed above, by saying, that if a failure, extensive as to England, should coincide with a failure extensive as to Poland, remedies might be found in importing from many other countries combined, forget one objection, which is decisive—these supplementary countries must be many, and they must be distant. For no country could singly supply a defect of great extent, unless it were a defect annually and regularly anticipated. A surplus never designed as a fixed surplus for England, but called for only now and then, could never be more than small. Therefore the surplus, which could not be yielded by one country, must be yielded by many. In that proportion increase the probabilities that a number will have no surplus. And, secondly, from the widening distances, in that proportion increases the extent of shipping required. But now, even from Mr Porter, a most prejudiced writer on this question, and not capable of impartiality in speaking upon any measure which he supposes hostile to the principle of free trade, the reader may learn how certainly any great hiatus in our domestic growth of corn is placed beyond all hope of relief. For how is this grain, this relief, to be brought? In ships, you reply. Ay, but in what ships? Do you imagine that an extra navy can lie rotting in docks, and an extra fifty thousand of sailors can be held in reserve, and borne upon the books of some colossal establishment, waiting for the casual seventh, ninth, or twelfth year in which they may be wanted—kept and paid against an "in case," like the extra supper, so called by Louis XIV., which waited all night on the chance that it might be wanted? That, you say, is impossible. It is so; and yet without such a reserve, all the navies of Europe would not suffice to make up such a failure of our home crops as is likely enough to follow redundant years under the system of unlimited competition.—See Porter.