appoint some able to supply his room, otherwise the governor to dispose of half their living. See the Act at large, necessary to be put in execution in these days." After the lapse of one hundred and sixty years, the Absentee Act of 28th Henry VIII., chapter 3 (reciting the mischiefs occasioned by the absence of persons having lands in Ireland), was passed, and thereby the estates of many absentees were entirely confiscated. The amount of money annually drawn by absentee proprietors from England, and spent elsewhere, from the Revolution to the present day, has never been more than a mere fraction of the annual rental of the country landlords, while from Ireland, during the same time, enormous sums' have been annually withdrawn.

In 1777, the Chancellor was in his place, in the House of Lords, when the Lord Lieutenant, the Earl of Buckingham, announced that an alliance had just been formed between the rebellious American colonies and the French government; and made an unsuccessful appeal for support to his Majesty's faithful people of Ireland. In the month of January, 1778, American independence was acknowledged by France, and this acknowledgment was immediately followed by a relaxation of the penal laws, and by the raising of an army of " volunteers." These, enrolled for the first time in Belfast,

and next throughout the whole of Ireland, amounted to over forty thousand men, unpaid, self-clothed, selforganised, and instructed in military discipline by their own countrymen who had returned from the American war.

In 1780, the armies of France, aided by the American patriots, prevailed over those of England, and the independence of the United States was the result."

The journals of the Upper House in those times, as well as the reports of the speeches of the peers, are meagre and few, and the Chancellor, though voted a thousand a-year extra, appears to have done little to merit this acknowledgment of his services and labours. Of those times, the most brilliant in Irish history; of the Volunteers of '82; of the struggles in the House of Commons; of Gratton, of Flood, of Hussey Burgh, of Saurin, of FitzGibbon, and of a host of others who took part for and against in that struggle for Irish independence, we shall have occasion, when writing the Life of the next Chancellor (Lord Clare), more fully to speak. Suffice it here to say, that both Houses met on Monday, the 27th of May, 1782. The people were entirely ignorant of the decision which the government of Great Britain had arrived at respecting their claims.

On the morning of that memorable day, writes Sir Jonah Barring

ton, the volunteers were under arms at an early hour. Their artillery, under the orders of James Napper Tandy, were stationed along the quays and commanded all the bridges, while the regular troops in treble file lined the streets for the passage of the Lord Lieutenant, from the Castle to the entrance of the House of Lords. At length His Excellency," accompanied in his state-coach by the Earl of Charlemont and Westmeath," proceeded to deliver the anxiously expected speech. The ceremonial was gorgeous. The peers in their robes, the bishops in their rochets and white surplices, and the peeresses sparkling with diamonds, each filled the places assigned for them. At length, after a long suspense, the sound of marshal music and the cheers of the multitude from without, informed those within the House that His Excellency had arrived." "The doors were then flung open, and his Grace entered, the Earl of Clanricarde carrying the cap of maintenance, the Earl of Westmeath the sword of state, and two noblemen's sons bearing the train of the royal obe. His Grace, making his congé to the throne, ascended the same, and seated himself in the chair of state under the canopy, all the lords, spiritual and temporal, standing in their places uncovered, until their lordships took their seats.

"The Lord Chancellor, kneeling, conferred with his Grace the Lord Lieutenant, and then, standing on the right hand of the chair of state, commanded the yeoman usher of the black rod to repair to the House of Commons, and acquaint the Commons that it was his Grace's, the Lord Lieutenant's, pleasure that they attend him immediately in the House of Peers. And the Commons being come, they, with

"My Lords and Gentlemen,-It. gives me the utmost satisfaction that the first time I have occasion to address you, I find myself enabled,. by the magnanimity of the King, and the wisdom of the Parliament of Great Britain, to assure you that immediate attention has been paid to your representations, and that the British Legislature have concurred in a resolution to remove the causes of your discontents and. jealousies, and are united in a desire to gratify every wish expressed in your late address to the throne." Having congratulated the House on some successes of the British navy in the West Indies, in Ceylon, and on the distant shores of the Coromandel, he thus proceeds :-" By the papers which, in obedience to His Majesty's commands, I have directed to be laid before you, you will receive the most convincing testimony of the cordial reception which your representations have met with from the legislature of Great Britain; but His Majesty, whose first and most anxious wish is to exercise his royal prerogative in such a manner as may be most conductive to the welfare of his faithful subjects, has further commanded me to assure you of his gracious disposition to give his. royal assent to Acts to prevent the suppression of Bills in the Privy Council of this kingdom, and the alteration of them anywhere." "These benevolent intentions of his Majesty and the willingness of the Parliament of Great Britain to second his gracious purposes are unaccompanied by any stipulation whatever.

Lords' Journals, Irish, vol. v. p. 537.

"The good faith, the generosity, and the honour of this nation afford them the surest pledge of a corresponding disposition on your part to promote and perpetuate the harmony, the stability, and the glory of the empire.

66 On my own part, I entertain not the least doubt but that the same spirit which urged you to share the freedom of Great Britain will confirm you in your determination to share her fate also, standing or falling with the British empire."

His Excellency then withdrew and the house adjourned. On their reassembling, after the space, as it were, of an hour," the Lord Chancellor reported his Grace's speech, and the same being read, it was ordered to be printed. Of what further occurred on that day in the House of Lords no record now remains; not even in the "Life of Lord Charlemont" is there to be found a solitary line on the dull debates of the hereditary legislators.

Lord Lifford, as speaker, remained until the house rose, late on the evening of that day; he saw that the English interest could no longer be maintained. His feelings, we are informed, could not be restrained, and he is recorded as "the only individual who, in that moment of national exultation, dared to raise his voice against the rights of Ireland. He seemed to apprehend that the total abandonment of the old rules of Irish promotion was unavoidable, and to foresee the invasion even of his own office (for ages the fortress of the English interest) by ambitious Irishmen, an event which actually took place shortly afterwards, when Lord Clare succeeded as Lord High Chancellor of Ireland."

From 1782 to 1788, the Lord Chancellor's name is seldom met with, save as presiding in the House of Lords. In the autumn of this last

1 Lords' Journals,

mentioned year, George III. was attacked by insanity, and the Regency was conferred in England, clogged with many restrictions, on the Prince of Wales. The Irish parliament, however, refused to be dictated to either by the English Parliament or by the Minister.

Great were the debates on this occasion in both Houses. An address was adopted in the House of Commons, offering the Vice-Royalty absolutely to the Prince of Wales during the illness of George III. On its being brought up to the Lords, the Chancellor not only voted but spoke against its adoption. The address runs as follows:1

"We, his Majesty's dutiful and loyal subjects, the Lords spiritual and temporal, and the Commons of Ireland, beg leave to approach your Highness with hearts full of the most loyal and affectionate attachment royal father, and to express the deepest to the person and government of your and most grateful sense of the numerous blessings we have enjoyed under that illustrious House, whose accession to the throne of these realms has established civil and

commercial liberty on a basis which we trust will never be shaken, and to condole with with your Royal Highness upon the grievous malady with which it has pleased Heaven to afflict the best of sovereigns.

"We have, however, the consolation of reflecting that the severe calamity hath not been visited upon us until the virtues of your Royal Highness have been so matured as to enable your Royal Highness to discharge the duties of the important trust, for the performance whereof the eyes of his Majesty's subjects are directed to your Royal Highness.

quest that you will be pleased to take upon "We therefore beg leave humbly to reyou the Government of these realms during the continuance of his Majesty's present indisposition, and no longer, and under the in the name and on behalf of his Majesty, to style and title of Prince Regent of Ireland, exercise and administer, according to the laws and constitution of the Kingdom, all royal powers, jurisdictions, and prerogatives, to the crown and government thereof belonging.'

From the adoption of this address there were several dissentients,

headed by the Lord Chancellor, and their ground of dissent was,

Because the address or requisition to his Royal Highness the Prince of Wales is an address requesting that he will be pleased to take upon him the government of these realms in such manner as therein is mentioned, and to exercise and administer, according to the laws and constitution of this kingdom, all royal powers, jurisdictions, and prerogatives, to the Crown and Government thereof belonging, without any law or authority whatsoever that we know of authorising him so to do.

2nd. Because we are apprehensive that the said address may be so construed to be a measure tending to disturb and weaken that great constitutional union whereby, as fully declared, specified, and enacted, in sundry Acts of Parliament, this realm of Ireland is for ever united and knit to the imperial Crown of England, and is a member appendant and rightfully belonging

thereto.

determination to deprive Ireland of her legislature."

Lord Lifford had now, in 1788, held the seals for a space of over twenty years, and he began to feel that the time was approaching for him to resign them into younger and abler hands. "Possessed of small capacity, and singular simplicity of character, he was formal, credulous, and tedious, in his intercourse with the world. His letters to Lord Buckingham, written in a good, round, clerkly hand, are full of solemn platitudes and ceremonious civilities; and whatever other qualities he possessed, it cannot be inferred that he was a man of much mental vigour. Obsolete in manners and ideas, and living in the modes of a past age, he was respected for the sincerity of his disposition and the rectitude of his character, rather than for the strength and activity of his intellect. In his seventy-fourth year he came over to London to resign the seals to his Majesty, laden with the burden of years and hypocondriacal infirmities; yet, up to the last vacillating in his resolution. Lord Mornington, who met him at dinner at Pitt's, during this visit, says, 'I met old Lifford at dinner, at Pitt's, and never saw him look in better health and spirits. He is, as you may well believe, most generally quizzed in London.' The letter, characteristic of the man, in which he announces his intention of resigning the seals, is as follows:3

LORD LIFFORD TO THE MARQUIS OF
BUCKINGHAM.

Royal Hotel, Pall-Mall,

Saturday, August 30th, 1788. MY VERY GOOD LORD,-My complaints

at times to your Excellency, and my apprehensions, expressed to you, that bodily weakness and the infirmities of old age were

coming on me apace, will prevent your ExI tell you that my journey hither, which at cellency from being much surprised when first I thought would have relieved me,

2 Haverty's History of Ireland, 724.

hath served only to confirm me in the apprehensions I had conceived, that the hour of infirmity, which is an enemy to all exertion, and first slackens the course of business, was not far off.

I now grow so clumsy and weak in my limbs, and so soon grow tired and fatigued to a degree painful to me, that although my mind seems as well as ever, yet I am sure that I cannot long do my duty; and there is nothing I dread so much as sitting upon a great seat of justice as a kind of ruin, and in a state of decay. In my seventy-fourth year I am not sure that avarice may not lay hold of me, and tempt me to stay where I am, until I feel or am made to feel, by being told that I have stayed too long, and that peevishness, too, an attendant on old age, may not put an end to that command of temper which I have ever endeavoured to preserve; and that with such enemies to fair fame, I may soon impair and sully the character and esteem which I may at present have.

Under these impressions, my wishes to retire become divided, which they were not until a few days past. I should have been happy in first declaring this to you, wishing in everything to do that which best expresses my sincere duty and regard for your Excellency. But being going into the royal presence, I resolved to lay myself at His Majesty's feet, and express to him my apprehensions and my wishes to retire, if I could do so in a manner honourable and convenient to myself, when His Majesty's service would admit of it. Accordingly, yesterday, in the closet, I did as I had resolved. His Majesty's kindness and goodness to me was beyond what I can express. Retirement, before decay actually comes on, meets his ideas perfectly, and I have every reason to think that I am lucky in the choice I have made in the present opportunity.

I have also communicated my wishes to Mr. Pitt, who received me with attention and kindness. He said he would confer with His Majesty on the subject, and forthwith communicate the matter to you, without whose participation and concurrence I cannot be at ease and happy. Upon a measure of such importance as this to me, I exceedingly wish that you should be possessed of the motives and principles upon which I act, and I will state them to you without reserve. But permit me first to say that I hope and think that avarice cannot be imputed to me; for, parting with £10,000 per annum, for what must be greatly below it, excludes the imputation. Ambition must be equally out of the question, for I want no advancement in the peerage.

Now as to my motives and principles at this time. I am in my seventy-fourth year; and although my mind, assisted by

experience for a number of years, that makes few things new to me, may be as good as ever, yet the weakness of my limbs, my inability to go through any bodily fatigue, and many other monitions that tell me the day of great infirmity is at hand, ought not to be unattended to by any man who hath sound sense or any religion about him.

I stand well, as I flatter myself, with the people of Ireland, to whom I have administered justice for more than twenty years, with both Houses of Parliament, and with the bar of Ireland, with all of whom I have lived without a quarrel with any man, but I hope without forgetting what belonged to me to be mindful of.

The country of Ireland is quiet beyond what I have known it at any time: a circumstance corresponding and consisting with my declarations, at all times, that I would not ever be found to act like a man who leaves a ship in a storm. And to these I hope I may add, that I have friends in the administration, that, in particular, I have a friend in your Excellency, and that although in one of your last conversations you concluded your expressions of great kindness with something that threatened reluctance to my retirement, yet it was done with a countenance and in a manner that flattered me with hopes that there was a friendship under it, that would afford me your assistance whenever the occasion should direct me to look up to and solicit your Excellency for it.

All these circumstances concurring (and so many concurring together, I cannot, according to a reasonable calculation of human affairs, much expect) determined me to do as I have done. I have struggled to overcome my passion for my office in Ireland, but I submit because I am worn out, or, rather, am as near being worn out as I think a man who wishes to preserve a dignity of character should approach to. I have exceedingly wished to afford your Excellency every assistance in my power during your administration; and if I retire from the great Seal, I shall most certainly retain that wish, and display it by such proof as you can desire, and as I can with the warmest attachment afford you. Your Excellency will be a gainer by a change, as you will have the exertions of a younger and more vigorous man, and my best help added to it.

I did not come out of the King's closet until between six and seven yesterday evening, and I was then so fatigued that I could not set pen to paper. I have not said anything upon this subject to anybody here, save only to the King and Mr.

Pitc.

Permit me to beg your Excellency's friendship in this matter, that so much concerns me and my family. Your kind