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The former evil had been fomented avowedly, and as a matter of design, by the late Primate Boulter. "The Bishops here," says he, in one of his letters, "are the perแ sons on whom the Government must depend for doing the "public business." * It was another of Boulter's maxims to place the Irish mitres on none but English heads ** strengthen, as it was called, the English interest, a most false and suicidal policy.

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Two other peculiarities of the Irish Government at this period, though far less important, may yet deserve a passing notice. It was usual for every Lord Lieutenant to absent himself from his post during the second year of his Vice-Royalty, so as to pocket its salary without incurring its expenses.*** The choice of the Secretary depended solely on the Lord Lieutenant, instead of being, as now, a subject of care and thought to the Prime Minister; a change which indicates a far different degree and direction of responsibility in the inferior officer.t

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The Parliamentary History of Ireland, which ends with the Union of 1800, can scarcely be said to commence until 1753. Previous to that year there had been occasional and violent outbreaks, as in the case of Wood's half-j -pence, there had been little confederacies of family interests struggling for places and pensions, but no regular and systematic party combinations. It is observed by a contemporary, that up to 1753 the Opposition in the House of Commons had never been able to muster above twenty-eight steady votes against any Government++; but so rapid was the rise in im

*To the Duke of Newcastle, April 30. 1728. vol. i. p. 238.

Boulter's Letters,

** Thus, for instance, on the dangerous illness of the Archbishop of Dublin, Boulter writes, "I hope that no native will be thought of for that "place." (To the Bishop of London, December 21. 1728.) Se also Hallam's Constit. Hist., vol. iii. p. 542.

*** This is stated incidentally, and as a matter of course, in Lord Orford's Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 279.

We may trace the transition state (as a geologist would term it) between the two systems in a letter from Mr. Pitt to the Duke of Rutland, October 28. 1785. (Correspondence privately printed, 1842.) ++ Lord Orford's Memoirs, vol. i. p. 245.

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1758.

TUMULTS AT DUBLIN.

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portance of the Irish House of Commons that a borough sold in 1754 for three times as much money as was given in 1750. * The troubles of 1753 had begun by a quarrel between Lord George Sackville, the Secretary under the Vice-Royalty of Dorset, and the Speaker Boyle, both men of ambition and ability. In 1756 Boyle was quieted by the Earldom of Shannon, and a pension of 2,000l. a year; but this example of rewarded faction in the Chair was tempting, and, as we have already seen, was followed by his successor. Violent as were these altercations, many of them turned on truly trifling points. The only one of real importance was the disposal of the surplus revenue. This the House of Commons wished to apply to the liquidation of debt. The Government concurred in this mode of application, but contended that any surplus of revenue belonged of right to the Crown, and could not be disposed of without its consent and approval. It was from the looseness of practice in Ireland as to clauses of appropriation that sprung this controversy, which could never have arisen according to English forms. In the result the Castle (for so the Government was termed at Dublin) carried by narrow majorities some votes in favour of its authority; but the real victory remained with its opponents, who took care, by strict application of the revenue, to guard against the recurrence of any unapplied surplus.**

Tumults, though petty, and almost confined to Dublin, yet indicating the growth of popular ferment, kept pace with these Parliamentary discussions. Thus in 1754, an actor at the Theatre having refused to repeat some lines which appeared to reflect on men in office, and Sheridan, the Manager, not coming forward to justify the prohibition, the audience demolished the inside of the house, and reduced it to a shell. Thus also in 1759 the idea of an union with England was afloat; the English Government was supposed to entertain some such view; and one of the principal Irish

Hardy's Life of Charlemont, vol. i. p. 82. ** Hallam's Constit. Hist. vol. iii. p. 543.

Peers, Lord Hillsborough, had let fall an expression in its favour. Immediately all Dublin caught the alarm; the quiet citizens protested; the mob rose in arms. The rioters possessed themselves of the principal streets leading to the Houses of Parliament, stopped the Members as they passed along, and obliged them to take an oath that they would vote against an Union. This oath they administered, amongst others, to the Lord Chancellor and to the Bishop of Killala. Several persons were still more roughly handled. They stripped of his clothes one Rowley, a rich Presbyterian, and were proceeding to drown him in the Liffey, when they were, though with difficulty, dissuaded. Lord Inchiquin was despoiled of his periwig and red riband before the oath was proposed to him for repetition. His Lordship had an impediment in his speech; the rioters mistook his stammering for doubt and hesitation, and they would probably have torn him to pieces had not some one in the crowd called out that his name was O'Brien, upon which their fury was turned to acclamation. They next forced their way into the House of Lords, where they found Lord Farnham taking the legal oaths on the death of his father, instead of which they made him take their's. Their recklessness, as usual, growing with its own indulgence, they proceeded to various other acts of gross outrage in the Upper House, placed an old woman on the Royal Throne, and brought her pipes and tobacco. Meanwhile the Privy Council had been hastily called together, and advised the summoning a troop of horse to the rescue. This was done accordingly, though the troopers were ordered not to fire; but, riding in among the mob with their swords drawn, and cutting and slashing, they did not quell the tumult until after the loss of fifteen or sixteen lives.*

It is one among the evils of long-continued misrule, that any departure from it seems at first almost as hurtful and as hateful as itself. Scarce ever in the early periods of national release do we find a just mean between servitude and tur* Lord Orford's Memoirs, vol. i. p. 338., vol. ii. p. 401-407.

1758.

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MISGOVERNMENT OF IRELAND.

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bulence. The rising aspirations of the Irish for freedom were manifested at this time by the rankest faction in their Parliament, by the most wanton riots out of doors. Nor is it less remarkable how seldom these throes and struggles of the infant Opposition were aimed against any of the true points of their misgovernment. For the misgovernment of Ireland at that period was undoubtedly great and grievous, from whatever aspect we may choose to view it. If we feel any sympathy or relenting towards the great mass of the population, the Roman Catholics, if we detest oppression even where it profits us, if we deem it unwise to exasperate by ill-treatment their, or any other, creed into a party-symbol, if we think that their peaceable conduct during the two insurrections of 1715 and 1745 might have inspired some confidence or deserved some favour, shall mourn to find that they were still denied by law the education of their children, that no Papist was allowed

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to keep a school, or to send his family for instruction in his tenets beyond seas, that a lady holding such tenets, and left a widow, could not be guardian to any child, not even to her own, that on suspicion as to any of these things the burden of proving the negative was thrown on the accused, - that conversion to the Protestant faith was rewarded as a merit, and conversion from it punished as a crime, — that among the holders of real property a Protestant son was enabled in a manner to disinherit a Papist father, that no new lands could be acquired by the proscribed party, except on short terms and rents not less than two thirds of the full value, that two Justices might at any time search any of their houses for arms. Blackstone himself could only excuse such statutes on the plea that they were seldom exerted to their utmost rigour. * But if, on the contrary, we incline to think that such severities were justified, either by the duty of religious eonversion or by the danger

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* Comment., vol. iv. p. 56. ed. 1825. According to Montesquieu: "Ces loix sont si réprimantes qu'elles font tout le mal qui peut se faire de "sang-froid." (Esprit des Loix, livre xix. ch. 27.)

of Stuart Pretenders, we shall, even from that point of view, find abundant cause to condemn the slackness of the ruling powers towards accomplishing their own designs. We shall concur with the excellent Bishop Berkeley in lamenting the neglect of the Irish language, the absence of all missionary zeal, the frequency of pluralities and nonresidence at that time among the Clergy. * We shall join

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a most accomplished Lord Lieutenant in desiring measures for the education, on right principles, of Connaught and Kerry. "Let us make them know," he says, "that there "is a God, a King, and a Government, three things to "which they are at present utter strangers." We shall grieve to behold the Protestant Charter-Schools, intended by Primate Boulter as the most powerful engine of national conversion, so often dwindling into mere petty instruments for personal advantage. We shall inveigh against those factious schisms and selfish aims which so long divided and disgraced the dominant party, and which at length have opened an ever-widening inlet to the vanquished. How dark a shadow have such bygone abuses cast forward, even over our own times! How large a share of the furious animosities which still prevail in Ireland are clearly owing, not to any actual pressure felt at present, but only to the bitter recollections of the past!

Berkeley's Works, vol. ii. p. 381, &c. ed. 1784.

** Earl of Chesterfield to Bishop Chenevix, October 8. 1755.

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