side in the same level, and no lower; if she would grant to the Irish all the rights of citizens, as she hath done to the Canadians-"

LORD EDWARD. "Which renders it the more galling, the more iniquitous, the more intolerable."

MOUNTJOY. "Then, indeed, the priesthood could make no further appeals to the passions of the ignorant, and the contest for mastery would shortly lic between the people and it. Popery would lose her hold on the latter's ignorance; for among the Irish, if the acutest sense is that of injustice, the quickest is that of ridicule-the expression of which two feelings can never exist together. Ireland will grow more Catholic every day she continues to be oppressed; less Catholic every day after she is relieved from oppression. Faction will cease within the first century of this real Reformation, which it seems wonderful that the Protestant clergy should be reluctant to bring about."

LORD EDWARD. "Not at all; the Protestant clergy leap from the goat-fold to the sheep-fold; from the sheep-fold to the ox-stall, and being there, grow too lazy to budge. Who among them would not abandon parishioners for a vicarage for a deanery, a bishopric for an archbishopric, and the house of God for the House of Lords? The government-be the party what it may, Whig or Tory-never wished our pacification; a state of discontent, of discord, and of turbulence, kept up artificially and sedulously by them, is necessary as a plea to keep up likewise a large establishment here, both military and civil, and the people of England are induced to pay taxes for it, on which many hundred dependents of every administration rear their families. Were Ireland flourishing, as she must be under any other system, the rival oligarchies would lose a large portion of their patronage; England wavers perpetually in every branch of her policy, excepting this. The Horatii and Curatii, who contend for supremacy, instead of three, are about nine on a side, and in the families of these we are to look for the secret. Why, by their consent we are never to meliorate our condition: the people of England would gain some millions yearly by our freedom, by our mere equality with the French-Canadians. The means of keeping them in subjection to these ruling families would be lost by leaving us unbound."

MOUNTJOY. "The English would benefit in wealth by it quite as much as we should, and greatly more in the reduction of taxes; all that they would lose would be the sentiment of contempt for the generality of us, and of hatred for the remainder."

LORD EDWARD. "If they persist, my life for it, they shall lose one of these sentiments, and very soon."

MOUNTJOY. "I see nothing but a divided people and a corrupt Parliament." LORD EDWARD. "You shall see neither much longer. Those who separate themselves from the people are no part of it, and what is corrupt will drop off, or must be cut off: who could regret it? Was there ever an association, even an assemblage in any lane of the worst city, or in any forest of the wildest

country, so profligate and shameless, so barbarous and rapacious as our Irish peers ?"

MOUNTJOY. "Little better, I confess it, than the Poles."

LORD EDWARD. 66

In Poland, every thing is noble that is not a slave; in Ireland, every thing that is-"

MOUNTJOY. “Our peerage, with the exception of six or seven." LORD EDWARD. "Take the six, give me the seventh, and I pay you down his weight in rubies: such scrapings from sugar-casks and tobacco-wrappers never was flung among the muscle-shells and skate-tails of Kelvoc slugs of Flushing-so disorderly a gang of cut-throats and cut-purses never sat on the same benches in any galley of Tripoli or Marseilles. The poor are sent back to their parishes; it were greater equity to send back the rich, who, without some gross injustice, some intolerable grievance, ought not to live away. Have we no cart to carry, no constable to escort our packed peddlery? Wonderful it must appear, that England, as a residence, is preferable to Ireland among those who, in the London gaming-houses, are liable to be mistaken for the candle-snuffers whenever, in the hurry of their rapacity, they forgot to put a star before them for a light to steer by."

MOUNTJOY. "Your estimation of our peerage is pretty correct, and you are as little to be accused of envy as of ambition; you yourself are likely to be, one day, the first nobleman in the empire; for where there is only one duke, surely that one is above any, where there is fifteen or twenty."

LORD EDWARD. "I have never permitted the contingency to enter into my calculations. Were I a duke to-morrow, and every thing went on well and prosperously both with me and with our country, I declare, before you and before God, I could throw my dukedom off my back, if by so doing I could run the quicker to raise up one honest and brave fellow from oppression."

MOUNTJOY. "I believe you, and you are the only man I could believe who should make me a similar protestation."

LORD EDWARD. "The better of the lords are very hostile to me, not for what I think about the rest, but for what I would do in regard to all." MOUNTJOY. "No wonder."

LORD EDWARD. "And yet, Mountjoy, such men as yourself, for instance, ought to rejoice at being no longer confounded with brokers, and bankers, and bullock-drivers-ought to rejoice at that personal distinctness which alone is true distinction-ought to rejoice at that superiority as gentleman which is seen more advantageously when people are not standing upon stilts about you. Is it not a shame to hold by favor from another what we can take to ourselves by right? Reason has a long time lain fermenting in the canker of society, and must soon cast off the froth. The generous juice, I swear by

* Lord Edward Fitzgerald may be imagined to have formed this erroneous opinion on the Irish peers, whom (equally erroneous) he deemed actuated by corruption in the business of the Union; he spoke unguardedly of all whom he thought rogues, and it would have been well for him if he had been more suspicious than he was.-W. S. L.

God and my country! shall be distributed by a hand both steady and unsparing."

MOUNTJOY. "I will not irritate you nor myself by discussing the views of a political body so universally hated and despised, yet I hope, Lord Edward, you do not believe the invidious and spiteful story raised about them by the factions, that Mr. Pitt intends a union of the two nations, by means of their giving each member of the peerage a thousand pounds a year, and other indemnities for loss of privilege."

LORD EDWARD. " No, no, my lord, what I have said of them I think is pretty near enough the truth. The Irish would tear them in pieces as betrayers; the English would feed the eels of the Thames with them, rather than endure such bloodsuckers on their shoulders. I am no visionary in evil; I see enough of it. I know its proximity and magnitude; I distinguish its form and color. I want neither telescope nor darkened glass."

MOUNTJOY. "Let us attempt to allay the passions of the multitude, and to enlighten the prejudices of the rest."

LORD EDWARD. "The only chance of assuaging the multitude is in their being used to suffer. Weak as a hope, and weaker as an argument; and what are the prejudices of the rest? and where do they exist? Take from them the prospect of living on the plunder of their country, and what you call prejudices vanish. I came to your house, my dear Mountjoy, with intentions which I ardently wish may not be quite so fruitless. The people are more angry with those whom they know to be patriotic, and yet who will not join them when they are with the old stagers on the king's highway of oppression and speculation. Hence their love for you, which was unrivaled, is converted into acrimony!"

MOUNTJOY. "Whatever I could do, constitutionally and conscientiously, I have always done for them, and will do always. It would not become me to throw up my commission in the hour of danger; would you yourself commend me if I did? Your silence shows me that, if any thing were necessary to show it, my resolution is right."

LORD EDWARD. "There are questions that might involve my security, my life itself, which I could answer you at the first appeal; this I can not. Let me guard as warmly as I wish, and as effectually as I can, the safety of a citizen and a soldier more widely and more worthily esteemed than any other in Ireland. I need not inform you of armed bands in every part of the kingdom-I have already told you of their exasperation against you. Let me now come to that point which pains me, and warn you that I have heard your life threatened should you appear in any array against them. Why do you laugh?"

MOUNTJOY. "What man's life is not threatened who appears in arms, and in the face of an enemy?"

LORD EDWARD. "Faith, I did not think about life or danger in the common accidents of war; but in America there began a custom which nothing short

of national independence can ever authorize-the custom of singling out officers!"

MOUNTJOY. "A high compliment, if hand to hand!”

LORD EDWARD. .6

But the rifleman is rude at compliments, and I should be grieved to the heart at your falling, be the cause what it may."

MOUNTJOY. "I have little inclination to die just at present, and less to desert my station. If you heard any threats against my life, individually, you ought to have seized the threatener by the collar, and to have delivered him over to the laws."

LORD EDWARD. "I chose to do what I believe to be more efficacious. The apprehension of one would excite a thousand to avenge him, by doing what he left undone. Should you be ordered to quell any disturbance, vain as I know it is to request you not to be the foremost, let me entreat you rather to be heard and known among your own men than by those opposite." MOUNTJOY. "Lord Edward! both sides shall hear and know me. ice that is imposed on me is indeed most painful, and, for this very reason, the discharge of it shall be complete and prompt. We are lost when our af fections glide in between us and our duties; and I perceive you do not like a moralizer, and look graver than one yourself."

The serv

LORD EDWARD. "If all moralizers were Mountjoys, I could listen in the thickest of a sermon. In general, men are given to moralizing when their most ravenous desires are crop-full, and when they are determined to sit quiet and enjoy their sunny side of life; you take to it, for the first time, when you are resolved on more activity than ever, and are as ready to die as to live."

MOUNTJOY. "Lord Edward! in this I am confident we agree that a glorious death is the best gift of heaven, and that an early one is not the heaviest of its dispensations."

LORD EDWARD. "True, true; God bless you, Mountjoy (going). I must not falter; but are all the rest in the kingdom worth this man?"

No. XIV.

LETTERS TO AND FROM LORD BLESSINGTON.

Letters from the late Duke of Richmond to Lord Mountjoy :

"Dublin Castle, March 24th, 1810. "MY DEAR MOUNTJOY,—I perfectly remember your speaking to me on the subject of an earldom, which I understood from you the Duke of Portland had given you hopes of when any promotion to that dignity should take place, and am glad to find it is recognized by Mr. Perceval.

"With respect to the next vacancy in the order of St. Patrick, I can assure you that it is not promised, and that I shall be glad to take your wishes into consideration with other claims; at the same time, I must say that there are several stanch supporters of the present administration who have not, so lately at least as yourself, received a mark of their good wishes. I am sure I

need not say that I shall, on many accounts, be glad to attend to your wishes when I conceive I can, with fairness to the general good of the country and of other well-wishers to government. Yours, dear Mountjoy, very sincerely, "RICHMOND."

"Phoenix Park, January 12th, 1811.

"I will take a note of your wishes respecting your chaplain, Mr. Ellison, and also Humphries.

Formerly the supporters of govern-
Those are nearly done away, so that

"The difficulties are, however, great. ment claimed sinecures for themselves. they now ask for livings for their relatives and friends. By this means the claims for Church preferment have increased enormously.

"As for Humphries, I do not exactly see what can be done for him. Few things are compatible with the situation he holds.

"If any thing should occur that would answer for him, and which, consistent with necessary arrangements, I could appoint him to, I shall have much pleasure in so doing.* RICHMOND."

"Phoenix Park, June 30th, 1811.

"I am sorry it so happens that you will not be in Ireland at the time I shall be in your part of it. The reasons, however, are good; I hope we shall yet meet before your return to England.

"I am very much obliged to you for the bust of Charles the Second. "Charles Gardiner and one of the 7th have hired a cottage at Clontarf; it is generally called 'Rattletrap.' RICHMOND."

"Phoenix Park, August 3d, 1811.

"At present it is impossible for me to settle about the winter shooting; but if I remain in Ireland, and can manage it, I shall be happy to accept your invitation and that of Mr. Browne.

"As for a room, I care not one farthing about it, and can sleep quite as well on a floor as in a bed. I am obliged to him for his offer of the Tyrone mountain. RICHMOND."

Letter from Mrs. Siddons to Lord Mountjoy :

"Westbourne House, Paddington, July 1st, 1812. "MY DEAR LORD,-It is impossible to express the vexation which I have felt from being deprived of the honor of your presence at the theatre on the 29th; and it is more, much more grievous to me, that you, to whom I feel indebted for so many polite and gratifying attentions, should be the only per

In a letter of a previous date, October 28th, 1809, the following passage relating to the major above-mentioned occurs: "I have appointed Brigadier Major Humphries to your district. He is an active, jolly man, and will, I am convinced, give you satisfaction. Pray let me recommend him to your notice."-RICHMOND.

VOL. II.-X