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count for talents; respectability for respectability. The veriest fag that Dundas ever breeched for the South gives as efficient a vote as a Romilly or a Newport.

In the beginning of my career as minister, I sometimes wished that I could have become so and have been consistent. I have since found that inconsistency is taken for a proof of greatness in a politician. "He knows how to manage men; he sees what the times require: his great mind bends majestically to the impulse of the world." These things are said, or will be. Certain it is, when a robe is blown out by the wind, showing now the outer side, now the inner, then one colour, then another, it seems the more capacious, and the richer.

If at any time you are induced by policy, or impelled by nature, to commit an action more ungenerous or more dishonest than usual; if at anytime you shall have brought the country into worse disgrace or under more imminent danger; talk and look bravely: swear, threaten, bluster: be witty, be pious: sneer, scoff: look infirm, look gouty appeal to immortal God that you desire to remain in office so long only as you can be beneficial to your king and country: that however, at such a time as the present, you should be reluctant to leave the most flourishing of nations a prey to the wild passions of insatiate demagogues: and that nothing but the commands of your venerable sovran, and the unequivocal voice of the people that recommended you to his notice, shall ever make you desert the station to which the hand of Providence conducted you. They have keen eyes who can see through all these words: I have never found any such, and have tried thousands. The man who possesses them may read Swedenborg and Kant while he is being tossed in a blanket.

Above all things keep your friends and dependents in good humour and good condition. If they lose flesh, you lose people's confidence. My cook, two summers ago, led me to this reflection at Walmer. Finding him in the court-yard, and observing that, however round and rosy, he looked melancholy, and struck his hips with his fist very frequently as he walked along, I called to him, and when he turned round, inquired of him what had happened to discompose him. He answered that Sam Spack the butcher had failed.

"The

"Well, what then?" said I, "unless you mean that his creditors may come upon me for the last two years' bill." He shook his head, and told me that he had lent Sam Spack all he was worth, a good five hundred pounds. greater fool you!" replied I. "Why, sir!" said he, opening his hand to show the clearness of his demonstration, "who would not have lent him anything? when he swore and ate like the devil, and drank as if he was in hell, and his dog was fatter than the best calf in Kent."

It occurs to me that I owe this unfortunate cook several years' wages. Write down his name,

William Ruffhead. You must do something to help him: a diversion on the coast of France would be sufficient: order one for him: in six months he may fairly pocket his quiet twenty thousands, and have his paltry three guineas aday for life. Write above the name, " deputy commissary." Ruffhead is so honest a creature, he will only be a dogfish in a shoal of sharks.

Never consent to any reduction in the national expenditure. Consider what is voted by parliament for public services as your own property. The largest estate in England would go but a little way in procuring you partisans and adherents: these loosely counted millions purchase them. I have smiled when people in the simplicity of their hearts applauded me for neglecting the aggrandisement of my fortune. Every rood of land in the British dominions has a mine beneath it, out of which, by a vote of parliament, I oblige the proprietor to extract as much as I want, as often as I will. From every tobacco-pipe in England a dependent of mine takes a whiff; from every salt-vase a spoonful. I have given more to my family than is possessed by those of Tamerlane and Aurungzebe; and I distribute to the amount of fifty millions a-year in the manner I deem convenient. What is any man's private purse other than that into which he can put his hand at his option? Neither my pocket nor my house, neither the bank nor the treasury, neither London nor Westminster, neither England nor Europe, are capacious enough for mine: it swings between the Indies, and sweeps the whole ocean.

Canning. I am aware of it. You spend only what you have time and opportunity for spending. No man gives better dinners: few better wine..

Pitt. Canning! Canning! Canning! always blundering into some coarse compliment!

Reminding me of wine, you remind me of my death, and the cause of it. To spite the French and Bonaparte, I would not drink claret: Madeira was too heating: hock was too light and acid for me.

Canning. Seltzer water takes off this effect; the Dean of Christchurch tells me.

Pitt. It might have made my speeches windier than was expedient; and I declined to bring into action a steam-engine of such power, with Mr. Speaker in front and the treasury-bench in rear of me. The detestable beverage of Oporto is now burning my entrails.

Canning. Beverage fit for the condemned.
Pitt. If condemned for poisoning.

As you must return to London in the morning, and as I may not be disposed or able to talk much at another time, what remains to be said I will say now.

Never be persuaded to compose a mixed administration of whigs and tories: for, as you can not please them equally, each will plot eternally to supplant you by some leader of its party.

Employ men of less knowledge and perspicacity

than yourself, if you can find them. Do not let any stand too close or too much above; because in both positions they may look down into your shallows and see the weeds at the bottom. Authors may be engaged by you; but never pamper them; keep them in wind and tractability by hard work. Many of them are trusty while they are needy: enrich them only with promised lands, enjoying the most extensive prospect and most favourable exposure. For my part, I little respect any living author. The only one, ancient or modern, I ever read with attention, is Bolingbroke, who was recommended to me for a model. His principles, his heart, his style, have formed mine exclusively everything sits easy upon him: mostly I like him because he supersedes inquiry: the thing best to do and to inculcate. We should have been exterminated long ago, if the House of Commons had not thought so, and had not voted us a Bill of Indemnity: which I was certain I could obtain as often as I should find it necessary,

be the occasion what it might. Neither free governments nor arbitrary have such security: ours is constituted for evasion. I hope nobody may ever call me the Pilot of the Escape-boat. In Turkey I should have been strangled; in Algiers I should have been impaled; in America I should have mounted the gallows in the market-place; in Sweden I should have been pistoled at a public dinner or court-ball: in England I am extolled above my father.

Ah Canning! how delighted, how exultant was I, when I first heard this acclamation! When I last heard it, how sorrowful! how depressed! He was always thwarted, and always succeeded : I was always seconded, and always failed. He left the country flourishing; I leave it impoverished, exhausted, ruined. He left many able statesmen ; I leave you.

Excuse me dying men are destined to feel and privileged to say unpleasant things. Good night! I retire to rest.

ARCHBISHOP BOULTER AND PHILIP SAVAGE.*

Boulter. Heartily glad am I to see you, my brother, if, in these times of calamity and desolation, such a sentiment may be expressed or felt. My wife is impatient to embrace her sister.

Savage. My lord primate, I did not venture to bring her with me from Dublin, wishing to wait until I had explored the road, and had experienced the temper of the people.

Boulter. I much regret her absence, and yet more the cause of it: let me hope however that nothing unexpectedly unpleasant has occurred to you in your journey hither.

Savage. I came on horseback, attended by one servant. Had I been prudent, he would not have worn his livery; for hardly any object is more offensive to the poor, in seasons of distress, than a servant in livery, spruce and at his ease. They

* Boulter, primate of Ireland, and president of the council, saved that kingdom from pestilence and famine in the year 1729, by supplying the poor with bread, medicines, attendance, and every possible comfort and accommoda

tion. Again in 1740 and 1741 two hundred and fifty thousands were fed, twice a day, principally at his expense, as we find in La Biographie Universelle; an authority the least liable to suspicion. He built hospitals at Drogheda and Armagh, and endowed them richly. No private man, in any age or country, has contributed so largely to relieve the sufferings of his fellow-creatures; to

which object he and his wife devoted their ample fortunes, both during their lives and after their decease.

Boulter was certainly the most disinterested, the most humane, the most beneficent man that ever guided the thought of offering this tribute to his memory, if his connection with my family by his marriage had not often reminded me of him: for we do not always bear in mind what is due to others unless there is something at home to stimulate the recollection.

councils of Ireland. I am not certain that I should have

Philip Savage, Chancellor of the Exchequer, was like

wise so irreproachable, that even Swift, the reviler of Somers, could find in him no motive for satire and no room for discontent.

attach to it the idea of idleness and comfort, which they contrast with their own hard labour and its ill requital.

Two miles from Armagh, we were met by a multitude of work-people; they asked my groom who I was; he told them my name, and, perhaps in the pride of his heart, my office. Happily they never had heard of the one or the other. They then inclosed me, and insisted on knowing whether I came with orders from the castle, to fire upon them; as had been threatened some days before.

"For what? my honest friends!" cried I.

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For wanting bread and asking it," was the answer that ran from mouth to mouth, frequently repeated, and deepening at every repetition, till hoarseness and weakness made it drop and cease. I then assured them that no such orders were

given, or would ever be; and that the king and government were deeply afflicted at their condition, which however was only temporary.

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Upon this there came forward one from among them; and laying his hand upon the mane of my horse, he laughed till he staggered. I looked at him in amaze. When he had recovered himself a little from his transport, he said, " I hope you are honest, my friend ! for you talk like a fool, which in people of your sort is a token of it, though sometimes one no weightier than Will Wood's for a halfpenny. But prythee now, my jewel, how can you in your conscience take upon yourself to say, that the king and his ministers care a flea's rotten tooth, whether or not we crack with emptiness and thirst, so long as our arms fill their bellies, and drive away troublesome neighbours is it deeply afflicted! O' my soul, one would think while they are napping afterward? Deeply afflicted! there was as much pleasure in deep affliction as in deep drinking, or even more: for many have

washed away their lands with claret, and have then given over drinking; but where is the good fellow who has done anything in this quarter by way of raising his head above such a deep affliction? Has the king or his lord-lieutenant sent us the value of a mangy sow's bristle? I may be mistaken, but I am apt to think that, shallow as we are bound to believe we are in other things, our affliction is as deep as theirs, or near upon it; and yet we never said a word about the matter. We only said we were naked and starving, and quitted our cabins that we may leave to our fathers and mothers our own beds to die on, and that we may hear no longer the cries of our wives and little ones, which, let me tell you, are very different in those who are famishing from any we ever heard before. Deeply afflicted! Now afore God! what miseries have they suffered, or have they seen? I hear of rich people in Dublin with such a relish for deep affliction, they will give eighteen pence for a book to read of it."

Partly in hopes of proceeding, and partly in commiseration, I slipped a guinea into the fellow's hand. He took it, and did not thank me, but continuing to hold it together with my horse's mane, he said, "Come along with me." I thought it prudent to comply. At the distance of about a mile, on the right hand, is the cabin to which I was conducted. A wretched horse was standing half within it and half without, and exhibiting in his belly and ribs the clearest signs of famine and weariness. "Let us hear," said my guide, "what

is going on."

I dismounted and stood with him. Looking round about the tenement, I found no article of furniture; for the inhabitant was lying on the floor, covered with his clothes only. Against the wall of the doorway was hanging from a nail a broken tin tobacco-box, kept open by a ring, which had formerly been the ornament of a pig's snout. Its more recent service was to make a hole in a piece of paper, on which I read, "Notice to quit." There was a priest in the cabin, who spoke, as nearly as I can recollect, these words: "You are the only catholic in the parish, and ought to set an example to the rest of them about you."

Father!" said a weak voice, "you told me I might go to the archbishop's when I grew stouter, and get what I could; it being the spoil of an enemy. Such was my hunger on first recovering from the fever, and the worse perhaps from having had nothing to eat for a couple of days, that, when the servants gave me a basin of broth, I swallowed it. None of them had the charity to warn me that it was a piece of beef which was lying at the bottom, or to tell me that (for what they knew) it might be a turnip; so, without thinking at all about it, I just let it take its own way! There was no more of it than the size of a good potato : a healthy man would have made but four bites of it: I had a bitch that would have swallowed it at one, when she had whelps. I have seen a man who would make so little of it, he would let his wife eat it all, at a meal or two: it was next to

nothing. In my mind, I have a doubt whether, as there might be some fever left upon me, it was not rather the show of beef rising out of the broth, than real beef. For sure enough I might mistake, as I might in thinking I was well again, when I had still the fever; which could scarcely come back upon me for eating, when it had come upon me the week before for not eating. Howsoever, I went home and laid myself down and slept, and dreamt of angels with ladles of soup in their hands, some looking ugly enough, and others laughing, and one of them led that very horse of yours into the cabin: I should know him again anywhere: we looked in each other's face for ten minutes.. then down he threw himself on me, as though I were no better than ling and fern. There he would have staid, I warrant, till sunrise, if it had not been Sunday morning."

"How!" cried the priest. "What then! all this iniquity was committed upon the Saturday!" "This day week," answered the sick man, humbled as much, I suspect, by blundering into the confession, as he was by the reproof.

"I

"And now, by my soul! our Lady calls you to an account, sinner!" said the priest angrily. would not wonder if the arch-heretic, you call archbishop, gave out so many thousand bowls of soup a day, for the sake of drowning that soul of yours, swiller and swine! Hither have I been riding a matter of thirteen miles, to see that every thing is going on as it ought, and not an ounce of oatmeal or a potato in the house."

The poor inhabitant of the cabin sighed aloud. My conductor strode softly toward the priest, and, twitching him by the sleeve, asked him softly what he thought of the man's health. The poor creature heard the question, and much more distinctly the answer, which was, that he could not live out another day. He requested the holy man to hear his confession: the most grievous part of it had been made already: but now the piece of beef had its real size and weight given to it: he had eaten it with pleasure, with knowledge: he had gone to bed upon it: he had tried to sleep: he had slept: he had said no more ave-maries than ordinarily. A soul labouring under such a mountain of sin required (God knows how many) masses for its purgation and acquittance.

"Be aisy!" said my conductor. "He shall sup with our blessed Lord in Paradise by seven o'clock to-morrow night, if masses can mash potatoes, or there is buttermilk above."

On saying this, he pulled open the priest's hand, slapped it with some violence, left the guinea in it, and wished me a pleasant ride. I could not bear to let him quit me so abruptly, glad as I should have been before at his departure. I asked him whether the dying man was his relative. He said, "No." I wished to replace his generosity somewhat more largely.

"Sir!" said he, "I have enough for several days yet: when it is gone, the archbishop will give me what he gives the rest. As for that massmonger, he shall eat this rasher of bacon with me

this blessed night, or I'll be damned." So saying, | What can be expected from the humanity of men, he drew a thin slice from his pocket, neither habituated to see death inflicted on their fellowwrapt in paper nor in bread.

Boulter. I hope soon to find out this worthy man, the warmth of whose heart may well atone for that of his expressions: but, lest he should be too urgent in his invitation, I will immediately send one to my brother clergyman, entreating him to dine with us. We have always fish on Fridays and Saturdays from the lake near us, in case we may be favoured by any Roman Catholic visiter.

This slight displeasure is, I hope, the only one you have met with.

Philip Savage. I must confess it grieved me to see the sheriff's officers erecting the gallows at the entrance of the city: it must exasperate the populace. Men in the extremity of suffering lose sooner the sense of fear than the excitability to indignation: the people of Ireland have endured enough already.

Boulter. Indeed have they. It was thought the excess of hard-heartedness, when men asked for bread, to give a stone; but better a stone than a halter.

Philip Savage. As our country-gentlemen, in this part of Ireland particularly, are rather worse than semi-barbarous, and hear nothing from their cradles but threats and defiance, they may deem it requisite and becoming to erect this formidable signal of regular government against the advances of insurrection.

Boulter. More are made insurgents by firing on them than by feeding them; and men are more dangerous in the field than in the kitchen.

Philip Savage. In critical times, such as these, some coercion and some intimidation may be necessary. We must be vigilant and resolute against the ill-intentioned.

Boulter. My dear brother! would it not be wiser to give other intentions to the ill-intentioned? Cruelty is no more the cure of crimes than it is the cure of sufferings: compassion, in the first instance, is good for both: I have known it bring compunction when nothing else would. I forbear to enlarge on the enormous inhumanity of inflicting the punishment of death for small offences: yet I must remind you to ask yourself, whether, in your belief, ten years ever elapsed in Ireland, or even in England, without some capital sentence wrongfully pronounced. If this be the case, and most men think it is, does it not occur to you that such a penalty should for ever be expunged from our statute-book? Severe as another may be, reparation of some kind may be made, on the detection of its injustice. But what reparation can reach the dead from the living? What reparation can even reach the judge who condemned him? for he too must be almost as much a sufferer. In vain will the jurymen split and subdivide the responsibility: in vain will they lament that nothing now can mitigate the verdict. Release then the innocent from this long suffering, if you will not release the guilty from a shorter.

men, for offences which scarcely bring an inconvenience on the prosecutor? And what can be expected from the judgment of those above them, who denounce vengeance to preserve peace, and take away life to show respect for property? More ferocity hath issued from under English scarlet than from under American ochre. Violent resentments are the natural propensities of untamed man: the protection of our property does not require them.

Philip Savage. The legislator and judge feel

none.

Boulter. Why then imitate them in voice and action? Is there anything lovely or dignified in such an imitation?

Philip Savage. Our judges in these days are not often guilty of the like unseemliness, which was | common fifty years ago.

Boulter. Certainly they are less boisterous and blustering than under the first James and the first Charles, and have wiped away much of that rudeness and effrontery which is chastened in other professions by civiler company and more salutary awe : nevertheless, at the commencement of the disturbances which this famine brought about, many poor wretches were condemned to death, after much intemperate language from the judges, who declined to present petitions on their behalf to the lord-lieutenant, as I told you in my letter. Probably they are little pleased that his flexibility of temper hath yielded to our remonstrances and authority. Painful would be my situation as president of the council, and yours as chancellor of the exchequer, if such people as are usually sent hither for lords-lieutenants were as refractory as they are remiss. I trust it will ever be found convenient to appoint men of clemency to the first station, and that I shall never be forced to exercise on them the powers entrusted to me of coercion and control.

It is well when people can believe that their misfortunes are temporary. How can we apply such a term to pestilence and famine?

Philip Savage. Surely the violence of the evil eats away the substance of it speedily. Pestilence and famine are, and always have been, temporary and brief.

Boulter. Temporary they are, indeed: brief are they, very brief. But why? because life is so under them. To the world they are extremely short: but can we say they are short to him who bears them? And of such there are thousands, tens of thousands, in this most afflicted, most neglected country. The whole of a life, be it what it may be, is not inconsiderable to him who leaves it; any more than the whole of a property, be it but an acre, is inconsiderable to him who possesses it. Whether want and wretchedness last for a month or for half a century, if they last as long as the sufferer, they are to him of very long duration. Let us try then rather to remove the evils of Ireland, than to persuade those who undergo them

that there are none. For, if they could be thus persuaded, we should have brutalised them first to such a degree, as would render them more dangerous than they were in the reigns of Elizabeth or Charles.

There will never be a want of money, or a want of confidence, in any well-governed state that has been long at peace, and without the danger of its interruption. But a want of the necessaries of life, in peasants or artisans, when the seasons have been favourable, is a certain sign of defect in the constitution, or of criminality in the administration. It may not be advisable or safe to tell every one this truth: yet it is needful to inculcate it on the minds of governors, and to repeat it until they find the remedy: else the people, one day or other, will send those out to look for it who may trample down more in the search than suits good husbandry.

God be praised! we have no such exclamation to make as that of Ecclesiastes. "Woe to thee, O land! whose king is a child:" An evil that may afflict a land under the same king, for years indefinite. Our gracious sovran, ever mindful of his humble origin, and ever grateful to the people who raised him from it to the most exalted throne in the universe, a throne hung round with the trophies of Cressy, Agincourt, Poictiers, and Blenheim, has little inclination to imitate the ruinous pride of Louis the Fourteenth to expend his revenues, much less those of his people, in the excavation of rivers, the elevation of mountains, and the transplantation of Asia, with all her gauds and vanities, under the gilded domes of faery palaces.

Philip Sarage. Versailles is a monument, raised by the king of one country for the benefit of kings in all others, warning each in successive genera tions, not to exhaust the labour and patience of his people, by the indulgence of his profusion and sensuality.

Boulter. Let us hope, my brother, that the poverty this structure has entailed on the French, may not hereafter serve for the foundation of more extensive evils, and exacerbate a heartless race, ever disposed to wanton cruelties, until they at last strike down the virtuous for standing too near, and for warning them where their blows should fall. In which case they will become even worse slaves than they are, from the beating they must, sooner or later, undergo.

If I could leave the country in its present state, and if I possessed the same advantage of daily access to the king, as when I attended him from Germany, I should take the liberty of representing to him, that his own moderation of expenditure might well be copied in the public, and that some offices and some pensions in this country might be lopped off, without national dishonour or popular discontent.

cry against places and pensions, whether the country was flourishing or otherwise. We may lop until we cut our fingers and disable ourselves for harder work. Surely a man of your grace's discernment would look well to it first, and remember that, where the sun is let in, the wind too may let in itself.

Boulter. A want of caution is not among my defects; nor is an unsteady deference to the clamours of the multitude. It is necessary to ask sometimes even well-dressed men, have not the judges places? is not every office of trust a place! and can any government be conducted without its functionaries? I do not follow the public cry, nor run before it. Pensions too, occasionally, are just and requisite. What man of either party will deny, that a Marlborough and a Peterborough deserved such a token of esteem, from the country they served so gloriously? or that the payment of even a large annuity, to such illustrious men, is not in the end the best economy? These rewards stimulate exertion and create merit. They likewise display to other nations our justice, our generosity, our power, our wealth; and are the best monuments we can erect to Victory. Do not be alarmed lest the people should insist on too rigorous a defalcation. The British people, and still more the Irish, would resent, as a private wrong, the tearing one leaf from the brow of a brave defender. On the contrary, to say nothing of clerks and commissaries, the grant of pensions to ambassadors and envoys, who can not act from their own judgment, and who only execute the orders of others, without the necessity of genius, of learning, of discernment, or of courage, is superfluous to a nation in its prosperity, and insulting to one in its distress. They are always chosen out of private friendship; and their stipends, while they act, are only presents made to them by their patrons. To pay them afterward for having taken the trouble to receive these presents, is less needful than to send a Christmas-box to my wigmaker, because I had preferred him already, and had paid him handsomely for making me a wig at Midsummer. Should we not think him a foolish man if he expected it, and an impudent one if he asked it?

We are so fortunate as to have few pensions to discharge, and little debt: nevertheless, in times disastrous like these, when many thousands, I might say millions, are starving, and when persons once in affluence have neither bread nor work, it behoves us, who wish security and respectability to the government, to deduct from waste and riot that which was not given originally for distinguished merit, and which may now save the lives of generations, and scarcely take the garnish off one dish in the second courses of a few.

At my table you will find only ordinary fare: and I hardly know whether I am not sinning

Philip Sarage. There has always been an out- while I thank my God that it is plentiful.

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