SECTION III.

Two courses were now open to the Cabinet, and two only. The behavior of the House of Commons, notoriously consequent as it was on the rejection of the first overtures of Lord Shannon and Mr. Ponsonby to the Viceroy, must have satisfied the most obstinate believer in Parliamentary Government that Ireland in the existing circumstances was not fit for it. Free constitutions presuppose in the leading citizens of a country at least some degree of probity and patriotism. When the ambition of individuals never reaches beyond personal interest, when their consciences recognize no obligation beyond duty to themselves and their friends, the forms of liberty are travestied, and the sooner the truth is recognized and acted on the better for all parties concerned. Townshend had been sent to Ireland to put an end to jobbery, to clear away the scandals of generations, and to begin a new era. He had been foiled by the inveterate dishonesty of the principal Irish politicians, nor was there the slightest hope of finding in the Irish representatives the materials of an honorable party on whose support he could rely. The facts of the case being undeniably thus, the Viceroy might have been left to select a council from the many honest and loyal men who had held aloof hitherto from the unwholesome atmosphere of Parliament; and with their help, and with economic management

of the hereditary revenue, he might have enforced order, punished fraud and swindling, and opened the way by a just administration towards a future union with Great Britain. The honest course would in the end have proved the safest. It would have involved sacrifices, however, on the part of England. If integrity and justice were to be the rule of Government, precept would have to be attended by example. The Cabinet could not any longer abuse Irish patronage to purchase Parliamentary support at home, or quarter favorites on the Irish establishment whom elsewhere they dared not recommend. The English statesmen of the eighteenth century, the Graftons, the Weymouths, the Norths, the Shelburnes, had learnt in official routine to regard these resources as indispensable for the public service. They were incapable, perhaps, from habit and training, of breaking in upon established precedent. There was another way of governing Ireland: it was also possible to fall in with the national ideas, and to maintain the Parliament as a form; but since corrupt it was, to manage, it through and by the corruptions which it loved; to dissolve the old parties, and to form instead a new combination which should be held together by dependence upon the Castle.

Of the alternative policies this unhappily was the one on which the Cabinet resolved, and Townshend remained in Ireland to become the most unwilling instrument in carrying it out. He set himself to the work of seduction with all the arts which he possessed. The Dublin tradesmen had suffered by the premature dispersion of the Lords and Commons. The Viceroy restored them to good humor by the magnificence of the Castle hospitalities. He gave

masquerades; he gave fancy balls, in which the costumes, with a skilful compliment to Ireland, were made only of Irish manufacture. The members of the Opposition sneered, and would have stayed away; the wives and daughters refused to exclude themselves from assemblies of which the capital of Ireland had never seen the equal, and forced their husbands and fathers into submission. The gentlemen could not resist the fascination of the Castle dinner parties where the wit was as sparkling as the champagne. Townshend laughed at everything - laughed at the Opposition, laughed at the friends of Government, laughed most of all at himself. With his light good humor he conquered popularity, while more subtly he secured important friends by working substantially upon them below the surface. Hely Hutchinson was attached by a pension 1 which was added to his salary as Prime Sergeant. Pery was disarmed by similar methods, and the links of the chain were strengthened which held Tisdall. Thus by the time March came, the Viceroy felt himself strong enough to begin the serious part of his business. To gentle seduction, terrors were to be added. The Cabinet had given him the permission which he desired, to deprive the Shannon party of their offices; he had watched his opportunity to deliver the blow, and now it fell. They had believed that finding themselves in difficulties with America, the Cabinet would not venture to punish them. On the 6th of March, Shan

1 Townshend insisted very strongly on the necessity of this pension. "Nothing," he said, "but the unrivalled application and abilities of this gentleman, who is so necessary for the King's service, and to be detached from the great interests in opposition to Government, could prevail on me to recommend this affair so strongly, by which I think the most useful man in this Parliament will be fully secured." -"To Weymouth, March 7. Secret."

non, Lanesborough, and Ponsonby were undeceived by learning from the Viceroy that the King had no longer occasion for their services. With the chiefs of the Ordnance Board and the Revenue Board were to follow all the subordinates and dependents. The entire departments were to be changed completely to the very last man. The effect was ludicrous. Lord Loftus, another, though less inveterate delinquent, and himself the possessor of a lucrative office, waited in consternation on Townshend, and endeavored to make his peace. Townshend put him on his good behavior. If he tripped again into opposition, he was informed that he and all who belonged to him would have to make way for trustier men. All offices at the disposition of the Crown from highest to lowest were to be held thenceforward by persons who would place their votes at the disposition of the Viceroy, and by no others.

The revenue commission had been the scene of the grossest frauds; not only was the whole staff to be replaced, but the number of commissioners was to be increased: Townshend had significantly said that he must have Englishmen among them, men of integrity, ability, and experience unconnected with Ireland.1 The patriots looked for an outbreak of indignation at the dismissal of their champions. They were astonished to find that Dublin cared nothing after all for the oligarchy with whom they had identified themselves. The Opposition majority dis

1 The addition to the number of revenue commissioners in Ireland by Townshend, striking as it did at the root of an established and lucrative form of speculation, was the subject for many years of the most passionate declamation in the Irish Parliament. . By allowing the new commissioners to sit in the House of Commons, he laid himself open to the charge of adding to the number of placemen. . . . But his private letters leave no doubt of the real motive for the increase.

integrated so rapidly, that the Viceroy almost contemplated the recall of the Parliament. "No servants of the Crown," he said, "had ever fallen less regretted." But he preferred to prolong the suspense to make sure of his ground. "The consequences of the late measures had not had time to operate fully." Loftus had promised to behave well. Others would follow if not pressed too hastily. Prorogation, therefore, followed prorogation. The submission of the same Parliament which had been so audaciously defiant would be a greater triumph than the election of another by a dissolution. The noble lords and their friends, seeing the game go against them, lost their tempers. Flood's eloquence continued to stream through the press, but it fell flat upon Dublin society, which was basking in the sunshine of the Castle; and his invectives read by the light of Townshend's correspondence are absurd to childishness. Sir William Mayne, a favorite of the Duke of Leinster, was among those who had been removed from the Council. He had been one of the most violent of the Opposition members, entirely in consequence of what he had regarded as a personal affront. On Townshend's arrival in Ireland "Mayne honored him with his wishes to be chief secretary," his qualifications being "that he was one of the most florid, perpetual, and inept orators that ever performed on the Irish or any other stage." 1 He had not the success which he expected. He then offered to vacate his seat, giving the Viceroy the nomination, if the Viceroy would recommend him for a peerage. "I own to your lordship," the Viceroy said in a letter to Weymouth, "the proposition rather shocked me; it was a long 1 "Townshend to Weymouth, April 28."