universal. Right universally assured, that Duty may everywhere be done. Nothing but the Universal can satisfy us. Because no one can be excused from his duty, because we need that all be free to perform the duty for which all are required, that in the Chorus of Life no note may be missing, that the harmony may be complete.

THE PURPOSE.

We are ruled (when we are really ruled) for the progress of Humanity; ordered so that each may have sufficient room for growth, for the world's advantage. We need Universal Suffrage, that all parts may be brought within the rule, that there may be no exception to the law, that no rank disorder may prevent the perfected growth even of the weakest. As eternity counts every

hour, so needs the world that all be ordered for the world's behoof.

The careful gardener leaves not in his trim garden one corner for rank overgrowth, where vermin may hide, who would devour his tenderest plants. So in the nation should be no neglected and untutored corner, no city of refuge for a Pariah class; or be sure that they will devour your hopes and ruin the fair garden of life. One rotten sheep! One unhealthy member! The evil of one

is the evil of all; the good of the whole cannot be without the good of each. How shall the musician spare one note; how admit one false note ? more easily achieve the complicated harmony of life?

How

Woe to the People among whom false notes are not prevented; whose very leaders knowingly play false! Woe to that People among whom the vilest weeds grow rankly, where vermin live unnoticed, who devour the tenderest hopes of the Spring, and none prevent them! Woe to that People among whom their enemy soweth tares! Could each corn-plant be cared for, be free to grow on its own equal and sufficient ground, how abundant would be the harvest.

We need Universal Suffrage to upbuild the Nation. That temple of the Eternal, the sacred workshop wherein we serve the Future of Humanity, shall not be unsightly and disgraced because of its many broken and disfigured columns.

What is a Nation? Not a mere horde of savages or serfs driven by some imperious master. Not a Babel-gathering of trading thieves, held together only so long as they can find withal to exercise their calling. A nation is the free association of equals, the predestined association of men of one race, in whom tradition and history have breathed the prophecy of an identical life,- -men whose cradle songs, whose noblest memories, whose dearest hopes, echo that charmed word of COUNTRY, which links together the various families of earth, each in its special bond of harmonious tendency, whose result is national vitality, national growth, and the achievement of national purpose-the fulfilment of the Nation's work and mission in and for the world.

How shall the Nation grow except all parts in the Nation share and help its growth? How shall all grow unless they have fair room for growth,-the Equality on which their Freedom builds, rising uprightly like some well proportioned column, a pillar of Humanity?

Savages build not at all. Your traders, held together by one common interest, would sell the very foundation-stones. Serfs, at some royal bidding, may build

pyramids; but cannot build a Nation: not even though the royalty be held in commission by so many as 800,000 of the elect. A Nation can only be built by all, of all. All the People, each in his place. The individual first perfecting his own upright and rounded life; the family standing as perfectly together, a stately column-group; the parish, township, and province, the further association, for that combined work for which the family alone is not competent; and the Nation, the completed temple, built and supported by the regulated strength of all. Only from the universal suffrage of equals can such a building rise. The slave could not mount to the height of the freeman, could not reach to upbear the temple-roof.

The Nation is indeed a living temple: with multitudinous columns, many as individual natures, but which all unite together to uphold the place of worship for the Future. Infamous is he who neglects his portion of the service, who upholds no part of the sacred roof of Country, the homestead of his race!

For the vote is not a mere eight-millionth share in the election of a master of tongue-force. It is not a mere hustings delusion, the careless or considerate dropping of some name in a ballot-box. Nor is it but a pledge for higher wages, respectabilities and comforts. It is the symbol of manhood, the public acknowledgement that a man's life is his own, that all his fellow-men of that nation recognize him as a man, a free man, their equal, to be cared for, and ruled and ordered, be he never so insignificant, with the same care and in the same rule as the noblest. Nay, it is symbol of far more than that. It is not only the proclamation and fearless challenge of the man's rights, but also the open confession of the man's duties; the public homage (would once a year be too often for that homage?) of the individual man to the Nation, and through that to the collective Humanity, to which he so swears fealty and allegiance, confessing that for it he lives and moves and has his being.

Wages, respectabilities, and comforts :-Freedom has better growths than these. Let the respectable stalled ox take his due wage of fodder, and be comfortable! The aim of human life is higher than that. Not for the mere material; not only for some better arrangement of land and labour (though these things wait on Freedom), not by any means to supersede the necessity for work, is the place and dignity of manhood to be desired. But to take the yoke from off thy neck, that thou mayest work freely and healthfully, that all thy powers and сараcities may be employed and perfected, that Universal Life may be better served,— that thou mayest bear thy heavy sheaves of corn, thy full rich fruit, any way thy worthy and acceptable sacrifice, to the mighty Spirit of the Future.

Rough the path of life; toilsome the ascent; and heavy the burthen that must be carried to the distant heights. We need the help even of the least; there is no strength to be spared. The slave may stumble and faint by the wayside. Let him seek his rest, his comforts, his own 'well-being"! What is the general good to him? what to him the aspiration toward the Excellent and the Eternal? But the freemen faint not, nor stumble. Singing, they journey onward, hand linked with hand, and hopeful eyes consoling hope; so each upholds the other. Come, my brother!-my sister!-cry the equal voices;-aid us in the work which is neither thine nor ours, but the Eternal's; bow down with us in worship of the

Inevitable; raise thy proud head toward heaven, thy life aspiring as the altar's flame soars skyward! Wreathe with us the crown of future triumph; help us to upbuild the moving temple of Humanity;

It is for this that we would be ruled; for this that we need Universal Suffrage. That every human life may have its healthy growth, its perfect bloom, or pleasant store of fruit, and so the Garden of the World be well-arranged and beautiful. That every columned life may be firmly built and finished to its utmost grace, that the National Temple in which we would worship the Eternal Spirit of Growth and Freedom may be worthy of its purpose, of the service to which it is dedicate, well-proportioned in all its parts, and the whole a perfect beauty, an increasing loveliness and 'a joy for ever.'

REPUBLICANISM IN IRELAND.

'In the Union of Ennistymon, from the 8th to the 22nd of March, a period of two weeks, out of 3,893 persons there were 253 deaths.'

Mr. Monsell in the House of Commons, April 14.

'In eight Poor-Law Unions alone, sixty times in the seven days the Contractor's Coffin leaves each of them, freighted with the Corpse of a pauper :-at the rate of five hundred a week, twenty-six thousand a year.'

'Nation' of April 19.

Among the other murrains engendered this Opthalmia is at present the most There were 2068 cases of it within ten

"The people are going blind in the workhouses, among them by the damnable Poor-Law system, remarkable,—as a distinct Workhouse disease. months in the Tipperary Union. The Athlone Union had 470 cases within the same period. Since last June, there were upwards of 2000 cases in the Limerick Workhouses. In Galway Workhouse, during the month of September, 102 cases occurred. It has spread extensively through the South and West before and since. It is known to have prevailed at Kerry, Tralee, Dingle, Kenmare, Kilmallock, Loughrea, and Ballinasloe. It has got so close to Dublin as Naas and Loughlinstown. We dare say, it has occurred in fifty other Unions we have not heard of. And, mark—it blinds, of both eyes, one in every hundred cases it attacks, of one eye, two in every hundred cases,—it blemishes, so as seriously "to impair, but not altogether destroy" vision, two and a fraction per cent.; and many of those blemished cases become slowly blind afterwards. In Tipperary, Dr. WILDE saw eighty-seven cases where the sight was permanently damaged. Eighteen were irrecoverably blinded; thirty-two had lost an eye each; thirty-nine were purblind. He heard that, before he went there, twelve paupers who did not come under his inspection had gone stone blind. How many besides lost an eye each-how many will be, to all intents and purposes, blind unless they get spectacles-(and a trough-feeding Board would, we

dare say, stare at the idea of a contract for pauper spectacles)—how many were left with shrivelled eye-balls, or festering eye-lids, in the blemished state, Dr. WILDE had no direct means of ascertaining. But the averages above are his own words or deducible from them. 'Our countrymen are aware that it was the Athlone Board of Guardians which first devised the system, since introduced at Mullingar, of feeding the paupers from troughs in batches of six at a time. Of course, the Ophthalmia was bad in Athlone. Where the paupers are styed together on the Athlone system, it is just the complaint to run through them like the scab in a flock of sheep. And the Athlone Board omit no means to help it.' 'Nation' of April 19.

'The Galway Vindicator, remarking upon the fact of £10,000 being due by the ex officio guardians of the Castlebar Union, says :- -"The first on the list of defaulters is the Earl of Lucan, whose cattle are grazing over the whole surface of Mayo, over the levelled homesteads of his exterminated serfs."" 'Nation' of April 19. 'The Galway Mercury says, "Connemara is become almost a desert from Emigration."' 'Nation' of April 19.

'Cursed be the Law, the State, and the Empire, that shed the blood of our People!' Amen!

But not Amen to this: Stealthily, systematically, remorselessly, ENGLAND is slaying the Irish enemy;-This England is a murderer.'

Cursed be the murderer of Ireland! But England, the English People, is not the murderer.

They who ought to lead the mind of Ireland know this. Their abominable charge against England is as foolish as it is false. They should not allow their indignation against wrong to drag them into a heinous injustice.

We can share their indignation. Never in savagest land, never in heathenest times, have the 'rulers' of a country so barbarously misruled a land, as England's Government has misruled Ireland.

But England's Government is not England. Else Ireland's Government is also Ireland. And by such showing Ireland is herself guilty of all the wrongs of Ireland.

What means this holding up of England to the scorn and execration of Irishmen ?

Is there no sympathy here for Irish suffering?

Among the English 'People,' the working-classes, were there none to sympathize with him who proclaimed war to the Tyrants? To be sure we did not take the lead in any rising for Irish liberties. Had we done so, how many Irish bayonets had guarded 'the Law, the State, and the Empire' which are now so cheaply cursed?

Have we forgotten O'Connell's threat against the Chartists in 1839: 'I will raise a legion and lead it myself to the field of battle.' And this Daniel O'Connell was one of the originators of the Charter; and these English Chartists to a man have ever sympathized with the Irish People.

English middle-classes, parlour patriots, financial reformers, they have not sympathized with Irish wrongs. They, we must needs own, have stood by the

respectabilities of 'Murder,' applauding it even as Irishmen of the same class applauded, when the Queen of the Murderers trampled upon the graves of Ireland. It is true the English People have not prevented the wrongs of Ireland. Nay, but have the Irish People prevented them, or striven to prevent them? Is England the murderer? Is it England that slays the Irish enemy? Was Castlereagh an Englishman?

Is Wellington an Englishman?

Are the Lucans and the Exterminators Englishmen?

Are the Athlone Guardians Englishmen ?

Were they Englishmen who did not rescue Mitchel?

Were those Englishmen who did not rally to O'Brien ?

Is Shiel an Englishman, or is John O'Connell, or More O'Ferral?

The patriots of Dungarvan, Longford, and Cork,-are they too Englishmen ? Have you none but Englishmen among the priests and police who persuade you to remain slaves?

Are there none but Englishmen in the Imperial army which overawes both you and us?

Or is it an Englishman who mocks your need with proposals for an Irish Charter to guarantee the exclusive use of British and Irish Whiskey in the navy'; the residence of the Sovereign for at least six months in every three years in her faithful kingdom of Ireland'; and 'an increase in the number of Irish representatives (of voters rated at £6) to Parliament, so that they may amount to the number of 150 in the aggregate'?

If your tyrants, and your 'patriots', and your exterminators, and your guardians, and your constabulary, and your respectable betrayers, and your clerical persuaders to peace and patience,-if these are all English, then indeed this England is your murderer.

If not, then not only accursed be the Murderer, but accursed also be the Fool or the Knave, who cannot or will not distinguish between the accomplice and the fellow-victim, who dares to slander a People desirous only of making common cause with their brethren against a murderous Misgovernment!

Accursed be he who sows dissensions between the Oppressed for the profit of the common Oppressor!

Is it well done, when the galley-slaves sit chained together, for one to curse his fellow, because he is too weak to do the work of both?

Yet, Irishmen! we will acknowledge one wrong toward you. We Englishmen have not riven our own chains. Had we done so, we should not have been

powerless to assist you.

But will you reproach us with this? You, like us, enslaved, whose enfranchisement also might have aided us?

No! our miseries have been common, their causes similar; the resurrection must be of both together.

If it be right indeed that England ought to lead you to Freedom, then let an Englishman who may boast of some service done to Ireland atone for English

* In the Nation of April 19.