XXXIX. CHAP. termine him to undertake the painful trust imposed upon him by that melancholy necessity, which of all the king's subjects he deplored the most." That the regent, appointed by the British parliament for Britain, should by that very act be recognized, with the same limitations, as regent of Ireland by the Irish parliament, was the plan of the British cabinet, which the viceroy exerted his utmost power to accomplish. But, as the appointment of a new British ministry, involving that of a new chief governor for Ireland, was expected as a certain event, many placemen and pensioners considered a coalition with the party rising into power as more prudent than an adherence to those whose interest was expiring; whence they were ludicrously denominated rats by their opponents, as these animals are observed always to forsake a sinking vessel. On the third of February 1789, two days before the meeting of the parliament, the members, in opposition to the lord-lieutenant's plan, assembled at the earl. of Charlemont's house in Dublin, to concert their measures. On the eleventh of that month, after a most vigorous resistance made by Fitzgibbon, an address was voted by the commons to the prince of Wales, "requesting his royal highness to take upon him the government of this kingdom, during his Majesty's present indisposition, under the title of prince-regent of Ireland, with all regal prerogatives. belonging to the crown thereof." On the nineteenth * XXXIX. nineteenth both houses, as the lords had concurred, CHAP. waited on the viceroy with a request for the transmission of their address to the prince. As this was refused, the two houses appointed five commissioners, among whom were the duke of Leinster and the earl of Charlemont, to attend the prince with their application. The unexpected conyalescence of the king, who was declared perfectly recovered on the tenth of March, superseded the object of this commission, but the prince, in his reply to the commissioners, expressed his "gratitude and affection to the loyal and generous people of Ireland, which he felt indelibly imprinted on his heart." How far the British parliament, at the instigation of the ministry, was justifiable in framing so restricted a scheme of regency, I cannot pretend to judge; but the experiment might have been dangerous. If the prince had refused the office under humiliating circumstances, the queen might have been constituted regent of Britain by the British parliament, and the prince by the Irish parliament regent of Ireland with the plenitude of royal prerogative. How then would be defined the connexion of the two kingdoms, or the dependence of Ireland on the executive government established in Britain? transac 1789. On the re-establishment of affairs in Britain in Parliamenttheir former state by the king's recovery, most oftions. the placemen and pensioners, who had joined the opposition in the question of the regency, returned to their posts, on a promise of amnesty, and formed VOL. II. X a majority CHAP. a majority for the court in every division of the house. XXXIX. Some were deprived of their places, and some pro moted for their services. A promotion in some reFitzgibbon. spects fortunate for the public was that of John Fitzgibbon, the attorney-general, to the place of lordchancellor, the first Irishman entrusted with that office by the English cabinet, and far superior, as a judge, to all his predecessors, insomuch that by his activity, attention, and discernment, his condu& in that department, though not exempt from partialities of a very blameable nature, was justly regarded as a national blessing. A multitude of law-suits, depending so many years as to seem interminable, were with indefatigable application brought to decision in liis court, and none afterwards permitted to remain undecided longer than the time absolutely required from the necessity imposed by the forms of law. In the character of landlord, a character on which very materially depend the prosperity and peace of the kingdom, he was just and humane. As a statesman and senator he rested his merit on grounds more disputable; destitute of popularity, which he rather spurned than courted; an uniformly determined partizan of British influence; an adviser of all the strong measures adopted by government; a firm opposer of indulgence to catholics; and too apt to tarnish his powerful oratory by a mixture of sarcastic and arrogant expressions. Proceedings As the marquis, whose administration had com of the oppo sition. menced under favourable expectations, pursued with 1789. perseverance the established system of governing by pecuniary XXXIX. pecuniary influence; and, for that purpose, beside CHAP. the creation of new places, added thirteen thousand pounds a year to the list of pensions: a most vigorous, but unavailing opposition was unremittingly maintained by the patriots, among whom the chief speaker, Henry Grattan, in one of his numerous orations against the ministry, alluded to the viceroy in the following words: "You remember his entry into the capital, trampling on the hearse of the duke of Rutland, and seated on a triumphal car drawn by public credulity; on one side fallacious hope, and on the other many-mouthed profession; a figure with two faces, one turned to the treasury, and the other presented to the people; and with a double tongue speaking contradictory languages." To support their parliamentary warfare systematically, in a manner most conducive to success, they formed an assembly termed the whig-club, similar to an institution of the same appellation in London. In their meetings were their plans arranged, and to each member was assigned his part in every successive attack on administration. By their publications also in the newspapers, calculated as well to enflame the passions, as to convince the judgments, of the people, they kept alive in the nation a spirit of discontent against the measures pursued by government. Among the declared objects of their endeavours for the public benefit, which they brought before parliament successively and repeatedly as subjects of strenuous debate, were bills for a limitation of pensions and CHAP. places; a repeal of the police-bill of Dublin; a bill XXXIX. Parliamentary transactions. 1790. of responsibility, requiring the acts of the executive power to be signed by certain officers resident in Ireland, who should with their lives and fortunes be responsible to this kingdom in the measures and expences of government; a disqualification of the officers of revenue to vote in the election of members of parliament; and a total demolition of the new charges created by the marquis. Disgusted with his unpopular situation, the marquis retired from Ireland in the June of 1789, leaving the government in the hands of two lords justices, the lord-chancellor and the speaker of the commons, till the arrival of his successor, the earl of Westmoreland, who met the parliament on the twentyfirst of January 1790. The same systems continued of influence on one side, and opposition on the other, with unabated violence. Of this violence the reader may be more enabled to conceive an idea from a specimen of the language used by the great and uniform oppositionist, Grattan. In a reply to some observations made on the subject of party he said: "I will state to you a description of a party which I conceive to be the public curse; if party it can be called which is worse than a faction, and nothing more than an impudent phalanx of political mercenaries, coming from their little respective offices to vote for their bribe and vapour for their character, who have neither the principles of patriotism, nor ambition, nor party, nor honour: who are go verned |