STATE OF PARTIES IN DUBLIN.

In a Second Letter to a Friend.

My last letter concluded with the trial of the Orange rioters. While the public mind was agitated by the forensic contest, a new and more abundant source of bitterness was unsealed. The death of Mr. Hans Hamilton (of whom I know nothing except that I have seen him read his speeches from his hat) occasioned a vacancy in the representation of the county of Dublin. Sir Compton Domville, who always voted against the Catholics, but of whom it was said that he was ready to pledge himself that he would never speak against them, was persuaded to leave the retirement of private life, for the silent tranquillity of which he seems to be eminently fitted, and upon the strength of the Orange party, backed with twenty thousand pounds a year, to offer himself as an appropriate successor, which he certainly was calculated to be, to the "late lamented member." Circumstances appeared to have combined for his success. The Catholic interrest which centered among the middle-men, had seemingly been annihilated by the peace, and Protestant ascendancy was seised in fee-simple of the whole county. The political epidemic, which had broken out like a moral typhus, raged through all classes, and almost every landed proprietor had caught the infection. Calculating upon the entire subservieney of their tenantry, the gentry of the county entered into an apparently invincible combination in favour of Sir Compton, who started as the champion of Orangeism. The certainty of a triumph produced a premature intoxication, and the anticipated election of Sir Compton was held out as a test of their supremacy as unequivocal as if he were already seated in the House. This preposterous vaunt wounded the pride of the opposite party to the quick, and Luke Whyte was not slow to perceive that the moment had at last arrived for the achievement of the darling object of his ambition, in the advancement of his son to the representation of the county. You have not, perhaps, heard of Luke Whyte, but he is well worth a glance, and in this desultory outline, I propose to give you rather a sketch of the individuals engaged in the passing incidents, than a grave and formal detail of the events in which they were involved.

Luke Whyte is in Ireland a person of considerable importance, although in England he would in all likelihood have been almost unknown. So many strange and sudden productions of fortune are thrown up by the rich commercial soil of England, that they seldom attract a very peculiar notice; while in Ireland the means of acquisition are so limited, that the wealth of Luke Whyte is regarded as prodigious. The pouch and paunch of the hugest alderman of Cheapside are not beyond the emulation of the humblest tenant of a desk, who, in the nipping of his pen, casts through a dusky window an aspiring glance at the ponderous citizen, and cheered by the golden model, bends with alacrity to his work again; but when the spare figure of Luke Whyte glides like the ghost of Croesus through College-green, where is the Hibernian shopboy who ever dreamed of compassing his portentous treasures? In truth, the amazing fortune of this singularly prosperous man defeats all conjecture of the means by which it could

have been accumulated. Some forty years ago he would have furnished matter for the ecstasies of Mr. Wordsworth. If the profound author of the Excursion had seen him in one of the peregrinations incidental to his itinerant profession, he might have derived many valuable hints from so interesting a prototype, and added to the sublime beauties of that admirable poem. Its hero and Mr. Whyte were of the same craft, or, to speak more appropriately both with respect to Mr. Whyte and Mr. Wordsworth, of the same mystery. To avoid the use of an ignoble word from which the poet has studiously abstained, and express the fact with circumlocutory dignity, Mr. Whyte was no more or less than

A wandering merchant, bent beneath his load.

The latter consisted of books which he carried through various parts of the country; and I have heard old men say that they remember to have seen him with his cargo of portable literature upon his back, toiling upon a blustering day along the road, and driving a hard bargain for Cordery or Cornelius Nepos at the door of a village-school. When he had acquired a sufficient sum, through dint of his vagrant industry, to dispense with the necessity of travelling, he fixed himself in more permanent importance at a stall in a small alley called Cramptoncourt, and soon afterwards purchased a shop. Book-piracy was at that time legal in Ireland, and the buccaneers of literature drove a profitable trade. Luke Whyte accordingly became a publisher. He next engaged in speculations in the lottery, from the lottery he plunged into the funds, and turned the rebellion to good account. Farther I am unable to trace his progress to the golden summit on which he stands; but it is enough to say that he is now worth a million of money. He is largely endowed with good sense; and so far from blushing at the former inferiority of his station, he looks back from his elevation with a sentiment of honourable pride upon the road which has conducted him to such an eminence. It is not a little remarkable that his manners are wholly free from vulgarity, and not only unaffected, but highly polished, and not without a cast of the court. Strongly as he is attached to gold, he is still more fond of power, and never allows his avarice to interfere with his ambition. Previous to the Dublin election he had already secured the representation of the county of Leitrim for himself. He next aimed at putting his son in parliament for Dublin. He had failed on two occasions in a contest with Colonel Talbot, and expended an immense sum of money in the adventure. The popular feelings had been enlisted by Colonel Talbot, and bore down the thousands of his competitor, who now perceived that in opposing Sir Compton Domville, he might marshal the very means upon his side, to which his former defeat might have been attributed. Accordingly he proposed his son at the hustings-threw his coffers open, and announced himself the champion of the Papists. The popish party, seeing the treasures of Luke Whyte unclosed, took heart at the sight, and their leaders formed themselves into a committee for his support. The most efficient amongst the latter was a gentleman of the name of Murphy, commonly called Billy Murphy, in the mercantile parlance of Dublin. His history may be told in three words :he started in life without a guinea-was in the secret in 98-fled the

country-came back when all his associates had been hanged-engaged in the trade of a salesmaster, and is now worth 10,000l. a-year. Billy is one of the shrewdest and most energetic men in Dublin. He has been turned into an aristocrat by circumstance, but is by nature a republican, and looks so shrewd, so bold, and dark, that he may be regarded as a kind of beau ideal of Captain Rock. Among the Catholics he affects moderation, from a certain affectation of gentility, but the old leaven of 98 occasionally breaks out. He felt a just indignation at the insolence of the ascendancy faction, and embarked with honourable ardour in the cause of Popery and Whyte. With a bag of gold in one hand, and with the cross in the other, Billy Murphy was irresistible. His eloquence was of a tangible sort, and was immediately felt through the whole county. The patriotic rhetorick of Mr. O'Connel was blended with the more palpable logic of the great potentate of Smithfield. The great popular orator, not contented with an harangue to the multitude upon the hustings, went a kind of circuit through the chapels upon the sea-coast. Great numbers of the freeholders of Dublin are fishermen, who, even near the metropolis, exhibit the wildness, and almost the mood of the tempestuous element from which their livelihood is obtained. They of course had heard of the renowned O'Connel, but the real presence of the orator had never before been presented to them. He addressed them in their native tongue, and infused all the artifice of a long-practised pleader into its rude and barbarous strength. To these efforts the co-operation of the Catholic clergy was united. It was urged as a matter of reproach to them that they interfered; but it was forgotten that every Protestant clergyman in the county was enthusiastically devoted to Sir Compton Domville, with the single and signal exception of Sir Harcourt Lees, who, true to his nature, if not to his opinions, gave his vote to the Popish candidate. This union of gold, patriotism, and religion, was attended with its legitimate results; nor is it to be much wondered at, and still less perhaps is it to be deplored, that the Irish peasant should, under these combined incentives, have been debauched from that subserviency to his landlord, which, in the estimate of every petty squire, should be as uncalculating as the allegiance of the ox to the driver who goads him to the stall. So highly wrought was the enthusiasm of the people, that in the space of a few days the opulent, and hitherto absolute proprietors of the county, were left destitute of all influence, and without the power of commanding a single vote. The frieze-coated patriots, who were sent in droves to the election-booths in order to vote for Sir Compton, under the very eye and to the beard of their astounded masters, flourished their shillelahs and shouted for whisky, religion, and Colonel Whyte. The scenes exhibited at the hustings were full of ferocious drollery. The moment a freeholder appeared at them, who intimated an intention to support Sir Compton, he was assailed upon all sides with a strange confusion of appeal. A tremendous cry was sent up by the multitude -O'Connel, with a stentorian voice and brandished arms, bade him remember Ireland: Father M'Farland exclaimed, "Will you sell your religion?" while Billy Murphy, seizing him with his brawny hand, and whispering "five guineas" in his ear, completed the seduction, and set him down in triumph upon the tallies of Colonel Whyte. Vainly did the ominous landlord, a prophet who accomplishes his own predictions,

bid him remember the 25th of March-vainly did he foretell the sale of his blanket, the starvation of his children, the howling of his wife, and the freezing of the winter night. Inflamed with patriotism and whisky, and heedless of these portentous auguries, the half-emancipated enthusiast leaped heroically into the gulf. Then rose a peal of acclamation which "frighted chaos and old night," or in plainer speech, astounded Lord Norbury, and appalled the Corporation. The events of even a Westminster election can give you but little notion of the grotesque character of a Dublin one. I have often been present at an English contest, but never witnessed so fantastic a scene. The native ardour of the national temperament was roused into its wildest excitation-every countenance glowed with passion-every gesture was informed with emotion-every movement was a tumult and every sound an exclamation. They shouted, cursed, and stamped-their hands were clenched, their eyes were on fire, and their mouths in foam. The whole assembly would have looked like a great collection of maniacs to some sober English spectator, who, however, in retiring from the uproar, would have been inclined to attribute a still higher degree of delirium to the men who nurture the fatal discords which generate such calamitous results.

It was not alone to the hustings that the visible results of the elec tion were confined. The streets of the city were filled with uproar, and while the Orangemen were rejoicing at their victory in the Four Courts, the Papists were indulging in an equally ferocious exultation at their Kilmainham triumph. At length the friends of Sir Compton advised him to relinquish the field, and Whyte was proclaimed the member for the county, after an expense which none but his father could have sustained. But the collision of party was not destined to terminate with the contest. The populace insisted upon chairing the successful candidate. An enormous mass of people moved through the streets of Dublin with Colonel Whyte at its head. The vast procession extended as far as the eye could reach. The living body rolled like a great tide through the metropolis. No tumult or interruption occurred until the people had reached the gates of the College, and suddenly a large quantity of stones and bricks was flung from the roofs of the building upon the multitude below. Several severe wounds were inflicted in the performance of this academic exploit. The mob, infuriated at the unprovoked aggression, burst through the iron railing which divides the area before the College from the street, and seized upon certain unhappy loiterers, who would probably have been sacrificed to their fury, had not some of the more respectable persons in the crowd interfered for their preservation. This circumstance may appear trivial in itself, but it was one of the many symptoms of the inveterate detestation which was rapidly growing up, and has been since matured between the two parties in Ireland.

I

pass from the election to the Beef-steak Club-singular transition! and yet it scarcely illustrates the art of sinking. Whatever bathos may be in its title, the Beef-steak Club is not without importance in a country where the most momentous results originate from the obscurest source. This society was established in Dublin by a Mr. M'Caskey. The love of music was the ostensible object of the association, but the rites of Apollo were speedily blended with the adoration of a more ex

hilarating god. These fanatics in music soon exhibited an enthusiasm of a very opposite kind :-as was natural in Ireland, the professors of harmony became the propagators of discord. A few years ago the political feelings of the club were manifested in rather a remarkable way. A nobleman, so distinguished at the Kilkenny theatricals for the fidelity of his representations in the parts of ostlers and of grooms, that it was supposed that Nature and Fortune must have quarrelled at his nativity, proposed from the chair of this society, in the midst of one of its boisterous orgies, a toast, the malice of which can only be surpassed by its absurdity. It ran to this effect-"The Pope in the pillory, pelted by the Devil with the brains of priests," together with other concomitants, which I shall not soil the paper by inditing. The publicity given to this piece of malignant buffoonery excited great sensation, and fixed upon the club the character of an Orange lodge. The noble Earl (for he is one at present, and was selected as a person deserving to be raised to a higher grade in the powerless peerage of Ireland) was afterwards obliged to apologize to the galleries at Kilkenny, when enacting his favourite part of David in the Rivals; and by imputing to the superabundance of his potations the aforesaid effusion of constitutional sentiment, obtained permission from the gods to proceed with his faithful personation of a shoe-boy. In Dublin, the recollection of his offences did not so easily pass away, and the Beef-steak Club became an object of popular aversion. Of this society the Lord Chancellor is a zealous and conspicuous member. This nobleman is the creature of impulse, and having been educated in England in high-church principles, and surrounded upon his arrival in Ireland with the menials of the Castle, derived an unhappy confirmation in his impassioned biasses, from those whose interest it was to bring forth the seeds of Orangeism which had been originally deposited in his mind. His ardent temperament abandoned itself entirely to their seductions, and he became the chief and avowed protector of the anti-Irish party in Ireland. He is by nature and by habit an inveterate Tory; and, indeed, has so strong a cast of the Stuart family, with which he is connected, and is withal so spare and spectral, that he looks like the phantom of the departed dynasty. Upon his qualifications to fill his high judicial situation, it would be foreign to my purpose to pronounce; and to enter into any minute investigation of his character and habits were to trespass upon the rights of the author of the "Sketches of the Irish Bar," who intends, it is said, to extend his portraits to the Bench. It is enough to say, that he is an unqualified supporter of Protestant prerogative; that he has a horror of" Popery and wooden shoes," and that, while he discards the miracles of Prince Hohenloe*, he would not, for the Chancellorship of Great Britain, sit down at dinner with a party of thirteen. The meetings of the Beef-steak Club being free from this numerical omen, Lord Manners readily consented to join their political festivities at a moment when the spirit of faction raged with the utmost intensity, and virtually presided at one of the Orange fasti, which was held in the midst of all the uproar of party which I have just described. How far his asso

In a late pamphlet written upon the Miracles, and universally attributed to Baron Smith, the fact in the text, of which there is no doubt, is alluded to. Of this ingenious essay some account will, upon a future occasion, be given.