On Pitt's death, Lord Castlereagh and hended the increase of the disease, if not his colleagues in office resigned.

poor in seasons of distress-practising virtues which endeared him to the persons among whom he resided, but which are not, we trust, so rare in Ireland as to distinguish him from a thousand others. His example is described as operating on his son-our Lord Castlereagh-the second Marquess. Some improvements in the town of Castlereagh from which his title is taken, are described as Lord Castlereagh's work. He assisted in building a Roman Catholic chapel there, and he built one at Strangford. He is described by Lord Londonderry as a munificent patron of letters. He aided the Belfast Academy with his countenance and his money, and wrote papers in its praise in a magazine called the Belfast Athenæum. He helped Bunting to bring out his collection of "Irish Melodies;" and what surprises us very much, "the translations from Carolan [in Bunting's Melodies] were moulded into their present shape by his masterly hand.”

"In his house he was never heard to murmur

at anything, nor was he ever known to speak in a harsh or hasty manner to any of his servants, abstemious habits, often tasting of but few dishes, whom he had not changed for years. He was of and taking moderately of wine. He generally dressed himself without assistance. When in the country, and without company, he always retired early to his library, where he usually remained two or three hours, and retired to bed without supper. His usual hour for rising was seven in the winter, and in summer, five in the morning, never omitting to walk before breakfast when the weather admitted of it. He was fond of planting, pruning, and grafting with his own hands, and his parterre of native and exotic flowers at Crayfarm was choice, though not extensive.

"Political despatches, which daily arrived, were disposed of by him with the utmost order, exactness, and regularity, and his visitors scarcely missed his company while he attended to them. At public worship he was a regular attendant, and had prayers read in his family once every day, sometimes in the morning, but oftener in the evening. Field sports he abandoned long before his death; but he had a kennel of pointers and greyhounds. is ear for music was excellent, and though an indifferent player on the violoncello, he would often sit down and take part in a concerto, and join in any music that was going on.

"He was very tenacious of all his early friendships. The Earl of Bristol and the late Mr.

"He was the means of establishing in Dublin a 'Gaelic Society,' the object of which was to encourage writers in the ancient Erse, and translations from scarce works in verse and prose. This Society went on well for some time; and a volume of their proceedings was printed, highly creditable to all who had contributed towards it. Holford were the most dear to him. His Theophilus O'Hannegan was the secretary, a man mind was much fixed on putting upon record the who was quite a genius, and a scholar of unrival- history of the Union, and the events which immediled attainments, but who possessed not an atom ately preceded it-in fact, of his own administraof discretion. The removal of Lord Castlereagh tion in Ireland. It was a project which I know to England withdrew his attention from this local he had very much at heart, and it was often talked institution, and it was in consequence discontin- of to some gentlemen of reputation as men of letued. The last service he rendered it was releas-ters in Ireland. One of these, a particular friend ing poor O'Hannegan from the Sheriff's, where he was confined for a considerable debt."

"A munificent patron of letters." We are not quite disposed to assent to this praise, though we are glad that Lord Londonderry has recorded it. It shows ludicrously enough what great men mean when they speak of rewarding letters. Lord Londonderry thinks his brother's patronage of men of genius one of his great claims on the admiration of the public, and he produces as a proof of it that he encourages writers in the ancient Erse, and releases from the sheriff a writer whom he admires. O'Hannegan may have been a fitting object of charity, and to have paid his debts may have proved Lord Castlereagh's consideration for his creditors— for the poor fellow does not seem to have got anything for himself. That this should be solemnly recorded as a proof of a British minister's patronage of genius is too bad.

The following details of his personal habits are worth preserving:

of Lord Castlereagh's, declined the undertaking, because he could not conscientiously, and as he thought satisfactorily execute it in the sense of the minister-and yet their friendship continued uninterrupted.

"In stature he was nearly six feet high, and his manners were perfect, his features commanding. His appearance, when full-dressed, was particularly graceful; and at the coronation of George the Fourth he was remarked for the graceful dignity of his mien and manner, which, as I have heard it more than once observed, might well have caused him, when in the robes of the Garter, to be tier, yet in private life no man could be less mistaken for the Sovereign. Although a courassuming, and his affability at once dissipated that timidity which intercourse with high rank sometimes produces."

An exceedingly interesting part of Lord Londonderry's work is that in which he replies to Lord Brougham's account of Lord Castlereagh in his "Statesmen of the reign of George the Third." Among the many infelicitous sketches in that very amusing book perhaps that which is of least value is that

ty of Ireland. He was thoroughly conversant with every circumstance relating to Irish affairs, and he was most sincerely and faithfully attached

to the cause of Ireland."

Sir Walter Scott and Alison are quoted, and each expresses that high admiration of Lord Castlereagh which will soon become the fixed conviction of all sober-judging men, of whatever party. A sentence of Croker's describes him well:

"Of Lord Londonderry [Castlereagh] Mr. Wilberforce seemed at first to have formed a very low, and we need not add, a very erroneous opinion; but when his Lordship's situation became more prominent, and his character better defined, that polished benevolence,

of Lord Castlereagh. By him Castlereagh is represented as a man of the meanest powers, of the most vulgar and arrogant pretensions. The passages which Moore and Byron have hitched into rhyme as specimens of his oratory are put forward with all the gravity of a witness. We suppose there was ground enough for such jokes, and the ground being once laid jokes enough would be perpetrated; but Lord Castlereagh was, on the whole, a graceful and effective speaker; and it is to be remembered that the task of inculpation is always an easy one, and even where the means of defence are most perfect there must be often reasons for silence that can scarcely be fittingly assigned, and that this often places a Cabinet Minister in a situation of such per- that high and calm sense of honor, that conplexity that it may be even a dexterous escape from worse dangers to expose himself to the summate address, that inflexible firmness, and arrows of the witlings. In Brougham's that profound and yet unostentatious sagacity, sketch there is one important acknowledg-won the respect and confidence of Wilberforce, ment-that all the personal imputations of as they did of reluctant senates at home, and cruelty against Lord Castlereagh in Ireland of suspicious cabinets abroad." were mere calumny. Lord Londonderry has published a number of very interesting letters, to show the estimate in which Lord Castlereagh was held by the greatest men of his time. We wish we could abridge these letters, but so much depends on the very words in which they are written, that could even the facts recorded be preserved, the impression which they leave of the affection with which this great statesman was regarded by his friends would be lost.

In one letter of Lord Wellesley, he dwells on the aid given by Lord Castlereagh to sustain him in his Indian policy, and refers to his despatches from India in support of this

statement.

6: one circumstance

"But I must add," he says, which does not appear in these despatches. During the whole of my administration he never interfered in the slightest degree in the vast patronage of our Indian empire, and he took especial care to signify this determination to the expectants by whom he was surrounded and to me. In his published despatches many examples occur of great abilities and statesman-like views,

and they are all written in a style more worthy

of imitation than of censure.

"From the year 1812 I had no intercouse with your brother until the close of the year 1821, when I was called to undertake the arduous charge of Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland. On that occasion I had repeated private interviews with your brother, whose sentiments on the subject of Ireland were of the most liberal description, most favorable to all the just views and interests of our Roman Catholic fellow-subjects, and most practically beneficial to the general welfare, happiness, and prosperi

A letter of Lord Ripon's-too long for us to quote-gives a very striking proof of Lord Castlereagh's presence of mind and instant decision, in a case of considerable difficulty. To his insisting on reinforcing Blücher after his first march to Paris, with two corps of Russians and Prussians, belonging to Bernadotte's army, without a communication with Bernadotte, Lord Ripon attributes the success of the battle of Laon. The difficulty was regarded as insurmountable. "He was at the council when the matter was discussed. The moment he understood that militarily speaking, the proposed plan was indispensable to success, he took his line. He stated that, in that case, the plan must be adopted, and the necessary orders immediately given; that England had a right to expect that her allies would not be deterred from a decisive course by any such difficulties as had been urged; and he boldly took upon himself the responsibility of any consequences as regarded the Crown Prince of Sweden. His advice prevailed; Blücher's army was reinforced in time; the battle of Laon was fought successfully; and no further efforts of Buonaparte could oppose the march of the Allies on Paris, and their triumphant occupation of that city."

How he was appreciated by his colleagues in the Cabinet, we learn from a letter of Sir Charles Wetherall:

Eldon the morning when the despatches "I remember as well as yesterday meeting came over giving an account of the battle of Laon. I met him in the passage near the Chancellor of the Exchequer's house in

Downing Street, going into the Park. We walked together through the Park; he was in the highest spirits, and said, 'I have been in the Foreign Office, on purpose to read over the Despatches at my leisure.' He then said, with the energy which you will recollect he used when his mind was intent on any idea, We are indebted to Castlereagh for everything. I verily believe that no man in England, but Castlereagh, could have done what he has.'"

called the management of Ireland, was farmed out to some great families, who divided among themselves the whole patronage of the kingdom; who intercepted from the people every good which they could not render profitable to themselves, and who, like other agents, did all they could to render it impossible that their employers should be able to dispense with their services, or even learn the principles on which their administration was conducted. If there ever was a system reWe cannot omit the words of Sir Robert quiring entire change, it was that by which Peel-"I doubt whether any public man, Ireland was ruled. It was impossible that it (with the exception of the Duke of Welling should be, allowed to continue, and its exton,) within the last half century, possessed tinction was at the same moment the object the combination of qualities, intellectual and of two parties earnestly at work, each to remoral, which would have enabled him to ef- alize its own project of improvement—each fect, under the same circumstances, what seeking as much as possible to conceal its ulLord Londonderry did effect in regard to the timate purpose, the one contemplating the union with Ireland, and to the great political union of the kingdoms, the other their entire transactions of 1813, 1814, and 1815. To separation. Had the first more distinctly do these things required a rare union of high made their object known, it is not impossible and generous feelings, courteous and prepos- that it might have more perfectly succeeded; sessing manners, a warm heart, and a cool for a reform in Parliament was, we believe, in head, great temper, great industry, great for- the first period of their association, the limit titude, great courage-moral and personal- of the objects which Addis Emmet, and the that command and influence which makes others who acted with him, had in view. other men willing instruments, and all these This and the measure of Catholic emanciqualities combined with disdain for low ob-pation would have been shown as more jects of ambition, and with spotless integrity." The great measure of Lord Castlereagh, and that on which his fame with posterity will chiefly rest, is the Legislative Union between Great Britain and Ireland. Of that great measure the advantages are not yet fully felt. It was impossible, absolutely impossible, when the independence of the Irish Parliament was established, and the Constitution of 1782 obtained, that the alternative, of union with England or absolute separation, could be avoided. The inconvenient fiction of an Irish Parliament was attended with difficulties enough. The reality was a thing utterly unmanageable. Till 1782, the conclave called a Parliament bore as near a resemblance to the Parliament at Westminster as did the Parliaments of Rouen or Gascony. The members of what was called the House of Commons being once elected, or more often nominated, sate for the life of the monarch. They had no power of originating any measure, and could do little more than delay fiating the orders of England. Once in two years the Lord-Lieutenant went over to Ireland, resided for a few months at the Castle; struggled, often in vain, to give a few places and pensions among his friends, and disappeared. The sittings of the Parliament were also biennial: the King's business, as they

The

attainable by means of the union of the Legislatures than by any other course. desperate one of civil war was certainly not contemplated when the Society of United Irishmen was first formed.

The theory of Ireland's legislative independence was likely to have produced singular inconvenience, when, on George the Third's illness, different views were taken by the two Legislatures on the question of the regency, and this incident almost compelled the more powerful nation to save herself from the recurrence of an embarrassment which went to the very root of the monarchical principle. The thought of a legislative union had been long familiar to thinking minds. The Irish Privy Council, in 1676, and the Irish House of Lords, in the reign of Anne, proposed an incorporate union of the Legislatures as the only means of improving the commerce of Ireland. Sir William Petty saw it in the same light. "There are," says he, "three legislative powers, in England, Scotland, and Ireland, which, instead of uniting together, do often cross upon each other's trade, not only as if they were foreigners to each other, but sometimes as enemies."

"I have always," said the late Duke of Richmond to the volunteers, when asked for his

|

even in 1782; no, not even in 1792. It is one of the monster delusions of the day to dream that Ireland ever had a Parliament, in the sense in which the party now uses the word. It possessed a council, selected exclusively from an ascendant minority, and on which England conferred greater or less powers of legislation from time to time. The very circumstance of England having previous to its extinction enlarged those powers, is evidence of its having the power of diminishing or annihilating them; and this is not a Parliament. I, for my part, look upon the whole

advice on the subject of constitutional reform, "I have always thought it for the interest of the two islands to be incorporated and form one and the same kingdom, with the same Legislature, meeting sometimes in Ireland as well as England." In 1785, Mr. Foster, Chancellor of the Irish Exchequer, said, in the Irish House of Commons, "Things cannot remain as they are. Commercial jealousy is roused, and it will increase with two independent Legislatures. Without an united interest in commerce, in a commercial empire, political union will receive many shocks, and separation of interest must threaten separa-carriage of the Union' as a solemn mockery, tion of connection, which every honest Irishman must shudder to look to as a possible event." "Mr. Grattan declared, even after the boasted settlement of 1782, that the Legislature of Ireland neither possessed the substance nor the shadow of independence; and on the 26th of February, 1790, he asked, What has our renewed constitution as yet produced? A place bill? No. A pension bill? No. Any great or good measure? No. But a city police bill-a press bill-a riot act great increase of pensions-fourteen new places for Members of Parliament, and a most notorious and corrupt sale of peerages.'

In the very first letter of the Castlereagh Papers, Lord Camden-within two years after sent over as Lord-Lieutenant to Ireland -writes to Lord Castlereagh, then (it was 1793) of unfixed politics, and one of what Horace Walpole calls "the flying squadron of patriots," in the following words:-" I have no conception in these times, when rights are pushed to the utmost extremity, and reform knows no bounds, of giving to any nation, and less to one of the description of yours, whose characteristic is certainly not moderation, the sort of latitude which the questions about to take place in Ireland will give them. I inherit, and, upon consideration, am clearly of my father's opinion, that Ireland must be our province if she will not be persuaded to a union, and if she would, she ought and would enjoy reciprocal benefits with this country. This is my opinion; but in the present state of your politics there, it would be dangerous to maintain that opinion or to act in consequence of it." The non-existence of an Irish Parliament, in any true sense, is well described by the author of a pamphlet, entitled, "The Game's Up," published in Dublin a few months ago :

"Ireland NEVER had a Parliament; no, not

*Martin's Ireland before and after the Union.

got up to conceal the fact, which was, that the British Parliament willed the extinction of the local legislature, and preferred having its own consent to openly exercising the power it possessed. The pompous declaration of this Irish Council, that none but the king, Lords, and Commons of Ireland had power to make laws for Ireland,' was of as much significance as the 'for ever' so frequently adopted in solemn acts of legislation, and as frequently violated. The Irish Parliament' was a council, introduced by the English into a conquered country, for certain limited purposes, and extinguishable at pleasure. Of what avail was the declaration of independence of the Irish Parliament by the British, if it was independent already? And if it was not, was not the independence resumable, notwithstanding the formal 'for ever?'

“No-a PARLIAMENT a self-existing, paramount, constitutional council of the nation never existed in Ireland ;-or, if it did, it was the magnum concilium we have heard of lately. If it did, it never could have had its powers limited or enlarged by another council, once they were settled; it never could have annihilated itself, or been annihilated, except by the conquest of the nation. We were, up to 1800, a colony, not a kingdom; and as such our true Constitution' lay within the Constitution of the parent State. The fatal mistake was allowing the country to be mistaken in its true position. This was policy, but it is an exploded and a past policy; and we are now, since the Union, for the first time, a free portion of a free empire.

"Ireland prospered under her parliament,' (so called.) So it did to a certain extent, for its agricultural produce, imperfectly developed as such resources were, obtained the advantage of a high market in war time, --and the industry of the North was as conspicuous as it is now. Dublin was a brilliant city; though facts show that the beggary and destitution of the operative classes were