Statistical and

MR. NEWNHAM, in his Historical Enquiry into the Progress and Magnitude of the Population of Ireland, has fixed it at 5,395,436. Besides that number of residents in the island, whoever considers the multitude of Irish emigrants in every class of society throughout the British empire, will not hesitate to allow the whole Irish population fairly to exceed 5,000,000; which constitutes a full third of the computed population of the British empire in Europe. Admitting this proportion of the general population to be numerically equal to one

Published in 1805, p. 320.

third of our physical force, it is in obvious proof, that many circumstances attending the Irish portion of that force give it a preponderancy of importance, far above the other parts, in all the relations of war. Ireland is the most prolific nursery for manning our navy and army: she is the great mart of the provision trade for victualling our fleets: and her situation renders her the most vulnerable part of the empire. The interests, therefore, of Ireland most imperiously command the attention of the British government, as, particularly in the prospect of endless warfare, they most essentially involve the safety of the empire.

Every British and Scotch writer upon the affairs of Ireland, since its connection with England, has systematically represented the Irish as a foreign people, as barbarous enemies, or abject slaves. The want of faithful historians amongst themselves is with too much reason complained of; "Were we to take a view (says Harris *) of "the wretched condition, in which the his

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tory of Ireland stands, it would not be a "matter of astonishment, that we should

Har. Hibernica, svo edit. p. 274.

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"be considered as a people in a manner "unknown to the world; except what little knowledge of us is communicated by "merchants, seafaring men, and a few tra"vellers, while all other nations of Europe "have their historians to inform their own people, as well as foreigners, what they were, and what they are." Numerous in fact are the writers upon Irish matter, historical, political, statistical, commercial, physical, and critical. Yet Dr. Warner, with most of them before his eyes, in 1761, tells us, in the Preface to his own History of Ireland*, " that he was convinced of the truth of what had been said to

* Pref. ix.-Dr. Warner was a learned and zealous divine of the established church. He only wrote one quarto volume of his intended history, in which he acknowledges to have received great assistance both from the public and from private individuals : that volume comes no lower than the 12th century. Although he avow, that the difficulties did not affright him, yet he desisted from bis undertaking from disappointment in the parliamentary assistance, which his great patron, the Duke of Northumberland, had given him grounds to expect. In 1767, he published a quarto volume of the History of the Irish Rebellion in 1641. Dr. Warner has had the candour to demonstrate the falsehoods of all his predecessors: he has written with more regard to truth, and with more independence of mind, than before ever came from the pen of an English writer of Irish history. Yet is his own national bias but too plainly discoverable throughout these two volumes.

him by a person of an eminent situation in this country, that there was no one point of literature so much wanted in England, as a good Irish history."

In this work, which is a compendious general history of Ireland, from its first connection with England, to its incorporate union with Great-Britain, the sole object of the author has been to place before the eyes of an uninformed public, the real undisguised system of governing that country, and the effects and consequences of that system upon Ireland in particular, and the British empire at large. He will be here found to speak of the Union in a manner different from that, in which he treated the subject in his Historical Review of the State of Ireland. That work was undertaken with a direct view of reconciling the public mind in Ireland to the measure of Union, which after a convulsive struggle had by dint of ministerial influence and address been recently carried against the marked sense of a decided majority of the Irish people. The Historical Review was published in the summer of 1803; and about seven months after it had appeared before the public, the Author found it requisite from circum

stances, not altogether uninteresting to Ireland, to publish a postliminous preface to that work*, in which he thus spoke of that

measure.

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"He had long considered, as he still does "consider, that an incorporate union of "the two kingdoms must be the greatest blessing to the British empire, if followed by an indiscriminating adoption of all his Majesty's subjects in the assumption of "the Imperial Parliament's manifesting the same tutelary attention to the interests of "the people of Ireland, which it does to "those of the city of London, or the most "favoured portion of the British empire: "he passed in review all the intermediate "scenes exhibited on the theatre of that "ill-fated country, between the years 1792 "and 1801: he enquired into the effects produced up to that time (the end of

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August, 1801 +) by the Union and he "lamented to find, that it became daily

* It was published in quarto by Carpenter, New Bond-street, London; and in octavo, by Fitzpatrick, Capel-street, Dublin, carly in 1804.

+ That was the time at which he took that work in hand.