&c. &c. How neat a machinery of political corruption may thus be set to work,-how aptly the wasting strength of party warfare may thus be recruited,-how reluctant votes may thus be won over, and the public service may be shamefully abused, while large personal fortunes are unblushingly realized, can require no explanation here. As little can it be necessary to point out that this is neither a just nor a substantial development of the resources of the country, but a foul and scandalous sustainment of private advantages subversive of all public virtue and national improvement. The value of such resources in the hands of an adroit and sedulous manoeuverer may be estimated by the assertion of close observers, who do not hesitate to declare, that there are not a few estates in Ireland the rentals of which have been doubled by a cunningly contrived application of the public money to their improvement in the manner here adverted to.

These mercenary practices have not been of recent origin. The writer of the MS.* "Account of Ireland," in the British Museum, repeatedly quoted from in Chapter XII., observes, under the date of 1753, "as a redundancy in the treasury had occasioned so much discussion and dispute, it seemed now determined that the same cause of contest should never occur again. For this purpose the House of Commons now began to appropriate a considerable part of the additional duties to their own use. This was done under the pretence of encouraging public works, such as inland navigation, collieries, and manufactories of different kinds. But the truth is that most of the public works were private jobs carried on under the direction and for the advantage of some considerable gentlemen of the House of Commons. By this means the parliamentary leaders perfectly answered their own views -they gratified their friends, impoverished the treasury, and

* When this manuscript was first quoted in this work, the author's name was not given in the catalogues of the King's Library; it has since been added. The writer was Sir George, afterwards Earl Macartney, who was Irish secretary at the commencement of Lord Townshend's lieutenancy, and is better known as the author of the "Journal of an Embassy to China."

kept government under a constant necessity of asking supplies. By repeated jobbing the purpose was effected, and what is most unaccountable, government seemed to acquiesce in it without complaining." The statements made in this chapter, and the further details still to be given, will abundantly prove that the example set by the Irish parliament in this respect has been keenly followed up and excelled by an unbroken succession of Irish members in the British legislature.

Precisely the same ideas were expressed upon the subject by Lord Clare in his celebrated Union speech. "But the Commons took effectual care that the question should not occur a second time, by appropriating every future surplus to their private use under the specious pretence of local public improvements. Windmills and watermills, and canals and bridges, and spinning-jennies were provided at the public expense; and the parliamentary patrons of these great national objects were entrusted with full discretionary powers over the money granted to complete them. From this system of improvement a double advantage arose to the Irish aristocracy : it kept their followers steady in the ranks, and, by reducing the crown to the necessity of calling for supplies, made the political services of the leaders necessary for the support of of government. But the precedent was fatal, and a system has gradually been built upon it which would beat down the most powerful nation of the earth."

This system served Lord Clare with an argument for the Union, but its abuses were continued in full play long after the Union was carried. Parliamentary loans and grants, in aid of public works and for the employment of the poor, up to our own time, have either been treated as bounties to the landed interest, or have been distributed, with a very few moderate exceptions, as favours and rewards amongst the political partisans of the government of the day, or applied to the improvement of districts in which persons of that description have held large possessions.

Parliamentary jobbers, and improvers of their own properties out of the national funds have not constituted the only

noxious body thus engendered. An impudent race of unprincipled pretenders sprung up as soon as it became understood that the gleanings of this political harvest yielded large profits to those who were hired to reap it. As political influence decided the merits of almost every project, the profits of working each in its turn were dropped as prizes into the laps of adroit political agents. Whole families have thus made fortunes by nothing but trading in government grants and public works. While such plotters flourished, no measure, however beneficial, had the least chance of success, without official patronage in the first instance. The jackalls of the jobs thus fastened upon the treasury, were not slow in teaching the dependants and instruments of the Castle of Dublin how much it would be to their interest also if all undertakings of this class were to become, in one shape or other, government concerns. Mercenary combinations quickly followed; every thing was meddled with, but nothing flourished. These men and their race is not yet extinct-have eaten like locusts into the heart of the public good in Ireland. Insidious, plausible, insatiable, and ever sedulously alive to gain, they have equally been remarkable for their advocacy of the cause of national improvement, and for the large sums which they have obtained under the pretence of advancing it. Destitute of honour, and incapable of party attachment, they have marked every new administration upon its accession to office as their prey, and made it their especial policy to render themselves agreeable or serviceable to it early in its career. Once their talons are fixed, they take a firm grasp, which they never relax while there is a boon to be granted, or a shilling to be expended. They have been the creatures of all governments, and have used each in its turn to their selfish purposes. Successive administrations have decayed and broken down, while these, the parasites of their power, have clung, like ivy, to the ruin, the only green and flourishing spots upon the extending waste. They have touched everything, and nothing has prospered in their hands, or been profitable to any persons but themselves; and yet such has

14

been their address, or the infatuation of almost every minister in Ireland, that they continue to enjoy constant regard, and are pluralists of the most lucrative offices and employments in the country. With them government mines, government canals, government navigations, government roads, and government railways, have always been favorite objects of praise and attachment. In this way the country has been made to bear the loss of millions; enormous prizes have been won in the great lottery of jobs, and proportionate gains have accrued to the flatterers and retainers of those through whose weak and partial hands these profuse applications of the national resources have passed. Nothing has been too high for their ambition, or too low for their avarice; they have taken £500 for working a quarry, and half a million for improving a navigation. Carefully and minutely should their professions and conduct be studied by all persons who, to borrow the words of one of the oldest and most painstaking of Irish statistical writers, "would represent the most natural causes of the poverty of the country, by discovering, not only the grand robbers of its treasure, but the lesser thieves that creep in at every window, and pilfer every house, and pick every pocket, whereby, not only the noble and wealthy, but the mean and poor are daily made poorer."*

Passing from these illustrations of the manner in which the integrity of public men has been sullied, and the national energies have been abused, and ascending to the higher considerations by which the general question is governed in other countries, we shall not find ourselves in want of evidence to confirm the reasonableness of the opinions already forced upon us. The superior efficacy of private enterprise over a government administration, as the proper medium for conducting the public works of a free people to a successful issue, is strongly sustained by almost every argument and example applicable to the subject. It seems as if it were part of the genius of a constitution like ours, that great public works * "The Interest of Ireland," by Richard Lawrence.

This, and some other passages in the present chapter, appeared in a pamphlet published by the author in 1839, on Railways and Public Works in Ireland.

should belong, not to the government, but to private parties. We may even go farther, and, extending the proposition generally, maintain, that exactly as a government is, in its form and administration, absolute and tyrannical, it is well fitted for the execution of public works on a large scale; but on the other hand, exactly as the institutions of a country are liberal and representative, the people are sure to surpass the government in all the labours of original speculation, and the prosperous conduct of undertakings which demand for their accomplishment the spirit of bold adventure, an ardent energy, and the excitement produced by calculations of considerable profit. Looking not only at the progress of public works, but also at the development of all those useful inventions by which society has been most benefitted and enriched in England and in America, we perceive that private enterprise has invariably taken the lead and obtained by far the most splendid results. The joint-stock canals, docks, and railways of England and the United States, far exceed in number and value any corresponding works projected or completed by the executive authorities in either country, while they exhibit the continental governments in a state of comparative depression and insignificance. So irresistible has been the pressure of this truth, that even in France, where the fear of democratic innovation imposes severe restrictions upon the liberty of the subject, extensive powers in the projection, support, and management of public works, are conceded to the people. Although a political crisis enforced the construction of railways upon the state in Belgium, efficient provision is made to secure to the community full permission to make and maintain at their own risk all other public works, as they may deem them to be for their advantage. But in Ireland the exercise of similar privileges has not been tolerated. There the people, however free in other respects, have never been free in this one. The government has uniformly interfered, and its interference has always embarrassed.

In manufactures, again-in gas, in steam-the world owes

There is an interesting account of the Belgian system of public works, in "Measures for Ireland," by A. H. Lynch, Esq., M.P. Lond. 1839.