This is the age of political economists and their nostrums. Every newspaper teems with projects for the amelioration of our working classes, and the land is full of farming societies, temperance unions, and a hundred other Peter Purcellisms, to improve its social condition; the charge to make us

remaining with that estimable and irreproachable individual who tumbles in Lower Abbey-street.

The Frenchman's horse would, it is said, have inevitably finished his education, and accomplished the faculty of existing without food, had he only survived another twenty-four hours. Now, the condition of Ireland is not very dissimilar, and I only hope that we may have sufficient tenacity of life to outlive the numerous schemes for our prosperity and advancement.

Nothing, indeed, can be more singular than the manner of every endeavour to benefit his country. We are poor—every man of us is only struggling; therefore, we are recommended to build expensive poorhouses, and fill them with some of ourselves. We have scarcely wherewithal to meet the ordinary demands of life, and straightway are told to subscribe to various new societies—repeal funds—agricultural clubs—O'Connell tributes—and Mathew testimonials. This, to any short-sighted person, might appear a very novel mode of filling our own pockets. There are one-idea'd people in the world, who can only take up the impression which, at first blush, any subject suggests; they, I say, might fancy that a continued system of donation, unattended by anything like receipt, is not exactly the surest element of individual prosperity. I hope to be able to controvert this plausible, but shallow theory, and to show—and what a happy thing it is for us—to show that, not only is our poverty the source of our greatest prosperity, but that if by any accident we should become rich, we must inevitably be ruined; and to begin—

Absenteeism is agreed on all hands to be the bane of Ireland. No one, whatever be his party prejudices, will venture to deny this. The high-principled and well-informed country gentleman professes this opinion in common with the illiterate and rabid follower of O'Connell; I need not, therefore, insist further on a proposition so universally acknowledged. To proceed—of all people, none are so naturally absentees as the Irish; in fact, it would seem that one great feature of our patriotism consists in the desire to display, in other lands, the ardent attachment we bear our own. How can we tell Frenchmen, Italians, Germans, Russians, Swedes, and Swiss, how devoted we are to the country of our birth, if we do not go abroad to do so? How can we shed tears as exiles, unless we become so? How can we rail about the wrongs of Ireland and English tyranny, if we do not go among people, who, being perfectly ignorant of both, may chance to believe us? These are the patriotic arguments for absenteeism; then come others, which may be classed under the head of “expediency reasons,” such as debts, duns, outlawries, &c. Thirdly, the temptations of the Continent, which, to a certain class of our countrymen, are of the very strongest description—Corn Exchange politics, vulgar associates, an air of bully, and a voice of brogue, will not form such obstacles to success in Paris, as in Dublin. A man can scarcely introduce an Irish provincialism into his French, and he would be a clever fellow who could accomplish a bull under a twelvemonth. These, then, form the social reasons; and from a short revision of all three, it will be seen that they include a very large proportion of the land—Mr. O'Connell talks of them as seven millions.

It being now proved, I hope, to my reader's satisfaction, that the bent of an Irishman is to go abroad, let us briefly inquire, what is it that ever prevents him so doing? The answer is an easy one. When Paddy was told by his priest that whenever he went into a public-house to drink, his guardian angel stood weeping at the door, his ready reply was, “that if he had a tester he'd have been in too;” so it is exactly with absenteeism; it is only poverty that checks it.

The man with five pounds in his pocket starts to spend it in England; make it ten, and he goes to Paris; fifteen, and he's up the Rhine; twenty, and Constantinople is not far enough for him! Whereas, if the sum of his wealth had been a matter of shillings, he'd have been satisfied with a trip to Kingstown, a chop at Jude's, a place in the pit, and a penny to the repeal fund; all of which would redound to his patriotism, and the “prosperity of Ireland.”

The same line of argument applies to every feature of expense. If we patronise “Irish manufacture,” it is because we cannot afford English. If we like Dublin society, it is upon the same principle; and, in fact, the cheap pleasures of home, form the sheet-anchor of our patriotism, and we are only “guardian angels,” because “we have n't a tester.”

Away then with any flimsy endeavours to introduce English capital or Scotch industry. Let us persevere in our present habits of mutual dislike, attack, and recrimination; let us interfere with the projects of English civilisation, and forward, by every means in our power, the enlightened doctrines of popery, and the patriotic pastime of parson-shooting, for even in sporting we dispense with a “game license;” let no influx of wealth offer to us the seduction of quitting home, and never let us feel with our national poet that “Ireland is a beautiful country to live out of.”