regiments. If they wished the rebels to succeed, they were making themselves parties to high treason. Yet Lord William Russell was not ashamed to say that English troops should not be sent to subjugate a neighboring people to a Government which nine tenths of them abhorred. Sheridan said "the Irish had been duped, insulted, fooled, disappointed in their dearest hopes. No wonder they were discontented, no wonder they were indignant." "If," said Tierney, "I could be convinced that the Irish leaders had invited the French into the island, I would consent to send troops to resist them, but I deny that they have invited the French. Lord Fitzwilliam says it is untrue, and I believe Lord Fitzwilliam more than I believe the Government. The Irish people are in arms - no doubt of it. After having been scourged, burnt, and massacred, they are not likely to be in love with their rulers. But I for one will not agree to place the militia of England at the disposition of a desperate Irish faction. The cure for Irish rebellion is to gain the affections of the people. I will vote neither a man nor a guinea till the cause of the rebellion is known."

Wilberforce came to the help of the Cabinet. To refuse troops, he said justly, would but increase the misery of the people. The force at present in Ireland might subdue the rebellion at last, but only after a bloody and furious struggle. Humanity as well as policy required that the insurgents should perceive the hopelessness of prolonged resistance in arms. The rebellion was not created by Lord Camden's Administration, it was the consequence of long-standing and varied misconduct and neglect. "I cannot help," he said, with a bitter glance at the motives of the Liberal

faction, "protesting against the kind of sensibility I see in some gentlemen, who seem not to begin to feel for the wretched condition of the lower Irish until it becomes for party purposes a convenient subject of lamentation in this House."

Wilberforcec ould not be suspected of sympathy with tyranny or indifference to human suffering. Leave was given for the militia to go, and regiment after regiment was poured across the Channel as fast as they could be moved to the coast. But the Oppo

sition speeches had their effect notwithstanding. The public did not choose to obstruct the Government in measures necessary to restore peace, but they shared the suspicions which the inexplicable reserve of the Ministers could not fail to generate; and in sending the troops the Cabinet felt compelled to show a certain deference to the general misgiving, and to place a nobleman at the head of the Irish Administration in whose rectitude the nation had confidence. To recall Camden was to admit, at least in appearance, that the charges against his Administration were just, and the Cabinet knew well that he acted throughout with their fullest approbation; but the outcry was too strong to be resisted. Camden's position had long been intolerable to him, and only the highest principle had induced him to endure so long the ungrateful and dangerous burden. An excuse was found to cover the change in the probability of a French invasion, and in the desirableness at such a crisis of the presence of a soldier at the Castle. In justice to a nobleman who had carried himself in his high position with signal uprightness, Mr. Pitt ought to have assumed the responsibility for the parts of Lord Camden's conduct which the public condemned, but which

Pitt knew to have been necessary. Portland ought to have confessed that he had recommended the acceptance of the services of the Orangemen, and that Camden had refused on grounds supremely honorable to him. But Cabinet Ministers dependent on Parliamentary majorities are rarely capable of acts of heroic virtue. Enough that Camden was removed, that Cornwallis reconsidered his refusal of the past year and consented to be named as his successor.

SECTION II.

THE nomination of Lord Cornwallis to the Viceroyalty of Ireland was generally approved in England, as well on account of his reputation as a soldier and a statesman, as because he was known to have disapproved the coercive policy of Lord Camden's Government. He was a nobleman of stainless honor, excellent intention, and commonplace intelligence. He had shared the popular impression that Ireland ought to be conciliated by Catholic Emancipation and Reform. The secret information which the Cabinet laid before him on entering upon his office satisfied him that it was vain to attempt to remodel the existing Irish Legislature. If the Catholics were to be emancipated he saw that the Irish Parliament must come to an end. But Emancipation itself, he was as much convinced as ever, would recall the Catholic population to its allegiance; and he disapproved the existing Constitution, not because it was incompatible with a firm and honest Government, but because it was the instrument and the representative of Protestant ascendency.

Lord Cornwallis's Irish dispatches are characteristic of the attitude which English common sense assumes instinctively towards the Irish problem. They betray a total ignorance of Irish history—an ignorance almost as complete of the country and of the temper of its inhabitants; and at the same time a confidence no less remarkable, which no experience of his mistakes appeared to affect, that the problem

itself was perfectly simple, and that the Irish statesmen by whom the Viceroy found himself surrounded, were blinded by prejudice and passion.

The combination of unacquaintance with the facts and unhesitating trust in his own judgment revealed themselves in a series of errors, which, inasmuch as Lord Cornwallis's opinions affected so materially the subsequent policy of England, it is worth while to notice more particularly.

First, he misunderstood the nature of the rebellion. He found on his arrival that it was generally spoken of as Catholic. He called this account of it "folly." He insisted that it was Jacobin. Cornwallis might call it Jacobin, but could not make it so. Jacobin doctrines had been industriously sown among the Irish Catholic peasantry, but the soil was unfavorable to their growth. The taint was confined to the clubs at Dublin and Belfast, and had but a faint existence among the rebel bands of Wexford and Kildare. The rebellion was neither Jacobin nor Catholic; it was the revival of Irish nationality: and because the religion of the Irish was connected so closely with the national spirit, the rebellion, like every other Irish rising since the Reformation, assumed a Catholic aspect, and was regarded as a holy war. The aspirations of the native race had been quickened into life by the fantastic pretensions of the Protestant colony to independence. The English Cabinet had played with them in an ignorant dream that they might form a check on the revolutionary temper of the Northern reformers. They had been led on from concession to concession till they had believed, as in Tyrconnell's time, that Ireland was to be their own again restored to them by the forms of the Con

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