of the country, because the Lords-Lieutenants were too idle or too incapable to manage it themselves. They are detested by everybody but their immediate followers, and have no influence but what is founded on the grossest corruption.'

It soon became apparent that the only means by which a majority could be obtained in an Irish parliament were the wholesale and uncompromising use of every available instrument of intimidation and persuasion. Not only were ordinary placeholders and officials told that they must go all lengths with the Government, but express directions arrived from the English Home Office to deprive Saurin, the leader of the intractable portion of the Bar, of his silk gown, if he persevered in the intemperate course he was pursuing. It had been well if nothing worse had been required of the Lord-Lieutenant. In the thick of the struggle (May 20), he writes to General Ross:

The political jobbing of this country gets the better of me: it has ever been the wish of my life to avoid all this dirty business, and I am now involved in it beyond all bearing, and am consequently more wretched than ever. I trust that I shall live to get out of this most cursed of all situations, and most repugnant to my feelings. How I long to kick those whom my public duty obliges me to court! If I did not hope to get out of this country, I should most earnestly pray for immediate death. No man, I am sure, ever experienced a more wretched existence; and, after all, I doubt whether it is possible to save the country.'

And again, June 8:

My occupation is now of the most unpleasant nature, negotiating and jobbing with the most corrupt people under heaven. I despise and hate myself every hour for engaging in such dirty work, and am supported only by the reflection that without an Union the British Empire must be dissolved. When it is impossible to gratify the unreasonable demands of our politicians, I often think of two lines of Swift, speaking of the Lord-Lieutenant and the system of corruption,—

"And then at Beelzebub's great hall
Complains his budget is too small."

That the end justifies the means, is not an argument that would or should satisfy a scrupulous moralist; and the wonder to our minds is why he undertook the duty if his moral sense so vehemently revolted at it. But here, again, we have one of those cases in which his Lordship's conduct is hardly in keeping with his professions. It may have been a relief to him to contrast theory with practice in this fashion, and by dint of mental reservation to combine the self-complacency of conscious rectitude with the external advantage of impropriety-like the lady who boasted that, by thoroughly convincing herself before she did wrong

that

that it was wrong, she kept her principles intact, though the individual action might be exceptionable. We are strongly tempted to repeat a well-known exclamation of Sir Peter Teazle's touching noble sentiments which impose no sacrifice; and we prefer the course taken by Lord Chatham, who refused to participate in practices he was unable to prevent. He did not indeed, as Grattan said, make a venal age unanimous without corrupting it,' but he left the patronage, the secret-service money, and the dirty work of his administration- -as one flings bones to a dog -to the Duke of Newcastle, who had a natural turn for bribery and borough-mongering.

Lord Brougham assures us that Lord Castlereagh had certainly no direct hand in the bribery practised.' Yet in one of his letters to Mr. Wickham (dated Dublin Castle, Jan. 2, 1799, and marked' most secret') will be found this passage:

Already we feel the want, and indeed the absolute necessity, of the primum mobile. We cannot give that activity to the press which is requisite. We have good materials amongst the young barristers, but we cannot expect them to waste their time and starve into the bargain. I know the difficulties, and shall respect them as much as possible in the extent of our expenditure; but, notwithstanding every difficulty, I cannot help most earnestly requesting to receive 50007. in bank-notes by the first messenger.'

With all this machinery at work, the difficulties were great; and it still sounds strange that any amount of compensation which the ministry could offer should have induced the 'managers' to surrender their position, and, as it were, to cut up the goose that laid the golden eggs. But, in the first place, they had just undergone a severe fright; and, although they put a bold face on matters, and loudly boasted of their readiness to fight their own battle without aid from England, their ability to make good the boast was doubtful, and their ascendency was palpably on the In the second place, the proverbial improvidence of the people, combined with their ingrained love of jobbing, made the direct and immediate temptation of a title, a place, or a sum down, irresistible to the majority. We are not talking of what Irishmen may be, or of what many of them have been-gentlemen of the highest honour, patriots of the first water, statesmen of incorruptible integrity; we refer merely to the incontrovertible fact that, owing to centuries of misgovernment and its upas-like effects, their national character towards the end of the eighteenth century had become tainted to the core, and that, amongst its most marked and least repulsive qualities, was their recklessness. One of the most liberal and farsighted vicerovs they ever had

was

was the famous Lord Chesterfield, who, to use his own words, < came determined to proscribe no set of persons, and to be governed by none.' His impressions are stated in a letter to Mr. Prior:-" -I cannot help saying that, except in your claret, which you are very anxious should be two or t three years old, you think of two or three years hence less than any people under the sun.' When life and property are constantly at stake, when scarcely a generation is permitted to die out without witnessing a rebellion, a civil war, an armed convention, or an organised resistance to authority can any one be surprised that regular industry and domestic economy are at a discount, or that the public treasury is almost universally regarded as the mart where talents and principles may be bartered without scruple? The letter which the Right Honourable Lodge Morres addressed to the Duke of Portland, July 14, 1798, is one instance of the extent to which Irish placehunters were hardened against all sensibility to shame :—

'I have always looked up to you for every virtue that could adorn the most exalted character, and have ever found them in your possession; and to be esteemed the attached and unalterable friend of your Grace is the highest satisfaction of my heart; in that light I offered my services to Lord Camden, and relinquished my party and broke them up; I showed the Opposition of Ireland when and where to stop, and I succeeded; the value of my friendship was so far estimated that I was desired to name my objects, which I did; they were a Commissionership of the Treasury and a Peerage, and they were acceded to.'

6

Eat, drink, and be merry,' has been invariably the cry in every agitated or alarmed community; whether a plague-stricken city, like the Florence of the Decameron, or a kingdom rent by factions, like the Fronde. Making every allowance for exaggeration, it is impossible to doubt that the habits of the Irish gentry during the half century preceding the Union were fatal to selfcontrol and self-respect. The most independent spirit is degraded in its own despite by pecuniary embarrassment; and any chance visitings of remorse at having bartered a conviction or profession for a place, would be speedily drowned in the intoxication of prolonged revelry amongst companions who were running the same race of profligacy. Whatever may be thought of Sir Jonah Barrington's general accuracy, the custom which he records and illustrates of inviting a party to drink out a hogshead of claret, was notoriously prevalent. Castle Rackrent,' at all events, will be received as a true picture of manners; and the following document, the jocular production of Lord Mountjoy, suggests that Shanes Castle may have supplied Miss Edgeworth with a trait or two:

"Resolutions

""Resolutions formed to promote regularity at Shanes Castle, at the meeting for the representation of Cymbeline, Nov. 20, 1785.

"1. That no noise be made during the forenoon, for fear of wakening the company.

"2. That there shall be no breakfast made after four o'clock in the afternoon, nor tea after one in the morning.

"3. To inform any stranger who may come in at breakfast that we are not at dinner.

"4. That no person be permitted to go out airing after breakfast till the moon gets up, for fear of being overturned in the dark.

"5. That the respective grooms may put up their horses after four hours' parading before the hall door of the Castle.

""6. That there shall be one complete hour between each meal. ""7. That all the company must assemble at dinner before the cloth is removed.

8. That supper may not be called for till five minutes after the last glass of claret.

9. That no gentleman be permitted to drink more than three bottles of hock at or after supper.

"10. That all M.P.s shall assemble on post-days in the coffeeroom at four o'clock to frank letters.'

Barrington states that, when the Union was under discussion, Lord Castlereagh invited twenty or thirty of his staunchest supporters, of fighting families,' to a dinner, at which a formal proposal was made by Sir John Blaquiere, and received with acclamation, that they should make the measure a personal question, and compel the leaders of the opposition to accept the arbitrament of the pistol or the sword. Mr. H. Grattan, in his Memoirs of his father, confirms the statement, and adds, 'It was said they had singled out their men; that Lord Castlereagh should attack George Ponsonby; Corry, Mr. Grattan; Daly, Mr. Plunket; Toler, Mr. Bushe; and Martin, Mr. Goold.'

Now in what manner, according to both Mr. H. Grattan and Barrington, did the patriots prepare to baffle, defeat, and expose this nefarious conspiracy against their own lives and the independence of their beloved country? Did they rely on the soundness of their cause, on the force of reason, on the immutable principles of truth and justice? They knew their countrymen too well. They called a countermeeting at Lord Charlemont's, and resolved to employ the same weapons as their adversaries. They were to be bribed and bullied. They resolved to bribe and bully in their turn :

'One of the plans,' continues Mr. H. Grattan, adopted and acted upon by the opposition, was to bring into Parliament members to vote against the Union; it amounted in fact, to a project to outbuy the Minister, which in itself was unwise, injudicious, and almost im

practicable,

practicable, and in which they were sure to be behind the Government. A second plan was their literary war; this, as far as it went, was good, but it came too late and was too feeble a weapon at such a crisis. The third plan was to meet the Castle Club, and fight them at their own weapons. This would have proved the most effective and deadly of the three plans, but it was hazardous, and in principle it could scarcely be sanctioned; and was acted upon but in one instance (that of Mr. Grattan and Mr. Corry), and the meeting at Charlemont House rejected it.'

He states that his father inclined towards the fighting scheme; and Barrington, who thinks that either plan, if spiritedly executed, would have defeated the Minister, owns with a sigh, that the supporters of the Union indisputably showed more personal spirit than their opponents during the ensuing session.' Mr. H. Grattan remarks: 'it is possible if two or three courtiers had been killed, the Union might have been prevented: unquestionably Lord Clare and Lord Castlereagh deserved to die.' This speculation is thrown out as carelessly as if the writer was merely repeating Sydney Smith's comic suggestion, that railway carriages would never be left unlocked until a bishop was burnt in one of them. Nor does either of these representatives of Irish feelings and opinion seem to know that their fighting scheme is neither more nor less than a modified version of Bobadil's. • We would challenge twenty of the enemy; they could not in honour refuse. Well, we would kill them! challenge twenty more! kill them! twenty more; kill them too! and so on.' The truth is, the scheme was in accordance with the manners of the period; and the Irish laws of duelling seemed framed for the express purpose of encouraging bullies and neutralising any incidental good which has been supposed to result from the practice. Any anxiety for an explanation or accommodation on the part of either seconds or principals was thought to betray a lack of courage. Challenges were given or provoked by way of mere bravado ; and what would now be considered the most indefensible irregularities, were permitted on the ground.

In the duel between Lord Clare, then Attorney-General, and Curran, the parties were left to fire when they chose. I never,' said Curran, saw any one whose determination seemed more malignant than Fitzgibbon's. After I had fired, he took aim at me for at least half a minute; and on its proving ineffectual, I could not help exclaiming to him, It was not your fault, Mr. Attorney-you were deliberate enough.'

In the duel between Corry and Grattan, Corry was wounded at the first fire, yet they went on covering each with their second pistols, each wishing to reserve his fire, until it was arranged that both should fire at a signal, which they did, and missed.

The