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ness in it, you may rely upon it, will never be forgotten by me, and I shall transmit the remembrance of it to those who are to come after me. I have now done, and have the honour to be, with the most sincere attachment and respect, my very good Lord, your Excellency's most faithful and most obedient, humble servant, LIFFORD.

To His Excellency the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland.

Notwithstanding the interview just narrated with the King, which took place on the 29th of August, 1788, Lord Lifford had not relinquished the seals on the 6th of October following. On that day John FitzGibbon, then Attorney-General for Ireland (afterwards Lord Clare), thus writes to the Marquis of Buckingham :

MR. FITZ-GIBBON TO THE MARQUIS OF
BUCKINGHAM.

No. 5, Arlington Street, October 6th, 1788. MY DEAR LORD,-Immediately after my arrival in England, I saw Mr. Pitt, and men

tioned to him that I had your Excellency's

authority to say that Lord Lifford had, a very few days before he left Ireland, intimated a wish to resign the great seal. Under the impression of the opinion you were so good to give me, I did not go further than to request of Mr. Pitt that he would apprise me of any vacancy which might happen in the first instance, that I might have a fair opportunity of stating my claims, which I

considered to be pretty strong, upon the

King's government, not to be passed by in any promotion which might take place in the line of my profession. This he has promised to do; but I have not heard from him. However, I waited upon the Chancellor (of England) a few days since, and he told me that Lord Lifford had, when he was in town, intimated his wishes to Mr. Pitt, as he had done to your Excellency, not to return to Ireland. I am confident, however, that nothing is finally arranged either with respect to accepting Lord Lifford's resignation, or appointing a successor to him, or I should have heard from Mr.

Pitt.

The Chancellor's reception of me was very flattering, as he was pleased unequivocally to declare his good opinion of me as a public and a professional man; and, from

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The health of the Chancellor improved much during the entire of the succeeding winter. On the 29th of April, 1789, he entertained many guests at a sumptuous banquet, at his residence in Upper Sackville-street. His manner was

light and airy, and on that evening he forgot, amongst his friends, the cares and weariness of old age. The next day he spoke in the House of Lords, and then, returning to his family in apparently his usual health, he was suddenly seized by his death-sickness, a malignant sorethroat, which baffled all the skill of On the 28th April, the physicians.

surrounded by his family, he expired. The following paragraph, which appeared in Walker's "Hibernian Magazine," will be read with interest :

"April 28. At his lordship's house, in Sackville-street, in the 74th year of his age, the Right Honourable James Hewitt, Lord Viscount and Baron Lifford, of Lifford, in the county of Donegal, Lord High Chancellor of Ireland, and one of his Majesty's Most Honourable Privy CounHis lordship was appointed

cil.

1 Duke of Buckingham's Memoirs of the Court and Cabinet of George III., vol. i.

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THE INFLUENCE OF EXTERNALS.

IT happened not many weeks ago, that the writer stood on a grey bridge, clad with ivy from the centuries, overspanning a fair river of most lucid water. Leaning over the coping in a deep angle of the bridge, I looked down a wide line of falling water, breaking most pleasantly both on the ear and the eye, sending up and away a continuous murmur and flashing like a white breaker. The river went down into delightfully green meadows, well touched with foliage. Afar the eye rested on a line of mountains, closing in and protecting the valley. On the left lay a clear white and grey village, snugly set on the river side, with its aspiring church overtowering (like a mother her children), and overhung by a great mountain, whereof I saw neither the height nor extent in full, grey, brown, and purple. The shadow of passing clouds over the uplands, the sleepy village, the leisurely passengers, the charm of still fields, and above all the continuous murmur of the river, wrought upon me a singular charm of quiet and reverie, as though care went out down the water, leaving my mind free to sleep, while that soothing tone kept its spell, as the song of a sister to an over-weary child.

Difficult of explanation might be the essential features of the scene producing such result, so as to discriminate clearly the power underlying external nature, and to set out into sharp definition the lineaments of the spirit of the whole. Certain it is there lay strong power in the place and time to induce that peculiar trance-like serenity of spirit, in which mental sensibility is keenest, while outward senses are less heeded and appear to grow remote: when there seems almost an effort in the

spirit to disentangle itself from its
heavy earthly companion: when we
seem to have left the body and gone
out on strong pinions.

Such occasions come very rarely,
and though doubtless the real cause
of them lies a long way beyond ex-
ternal nature, yet the power of place
seems sometimes to lead to them,
and contributes largely to the condi-
tion of mind required. How differ-
ent, for instance, a person feels.
occasionally when a few hundred
miles are placed between him and
his common round of work. Fresh
ideas come, and we look on things
differently, and our own peculiar
status in life assumes different as-
pects, from that remoter and changed
standing-point.
In Our common
walks of life we all are apt to be-
come imbued largely with the spirit
of our surroundings; so that for a
corrected view of things, and for
wider sympathies and broader ex-
perience, it is well from time to time
to stand off, and from some altered
position survey leisurely things in
general, to correct the distortion
often incident to a near view: just
as to see the dome of St Paul's Cathe-
dral aright one must go farther off
than the churchyard. One-sided
views are deceptive, and from long
familiarity, we are liable to become
acquainted but partially with the
broad reality of things and condi-
tions viewed close at.
A great
change from our beaten track clears
the mind more or less from the dust
and confusion accumulated by long
standing, so that our spiritual dis-
cernment even of our own position,
no less than of wider scenes thus
opened to view, becomes sharper
and more penetrating. Under the
power of fresh surroundings our
grasp of all the features of our lot

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but a personal and precarious one, was both unreasonable and cruel; and that a mitigation of the rigour of some penal laws already seemed to be intended, from the late determination of the Chancellor here, in the case of Hobson v. Marsh.

"Lord Taaffe was extremely well pleased with his visit, and went directly to court. Here the Queen took particular notice of him; she congratulated him on his recovery from the gout, told him the King had spoken to her of him, and continued for some time conversing to him in German.

"At this time he again met with Lord Lifford, by whom he was accosted in a very friendly manner. From the acquaintance with the Chancellor, which he will endeavour to improve, my lord has great expectations. He is now abroad every day from morning until night, and is determined to omit no opportunity of engaging the interest of the great while he remains here. Besides the visits he makes, he regularly attends at the levées of the court, and at the assemblies of the several ambassadors, so that I shall hereafter enjoy but very little of his company. This account of his progress here, he still positively asserts, must not be communicated by you to any except the three persons he mentioned in a former letter."

The Chancellor left, soon after this interview with Lord Taaffe, for Dublin, and yet so dismal was the feeling of prejudice, at the time, against the Catholics, that nothing was done in their favour until 1771, when an act was passed (11 and 12 George III. chap. xxi. secs. 1-5) enabling a Catholic to take a long lease of fifty acres of bog, "and one half an acre of arable land as a site for a house, or for the purpose of delving for gravel, or limestone, for manure, next adjoining to such bog, and to hold the same at such

rent as shall be agreed upon be-
tween him and the owner of such
bog, for any term of years not exceed-
ing sixty-one years, the law made to
prevent the further growth of Popery
to the contrary notwithstanding
(sec. 5,) "Provided always
that this act shall not extend to any
bog lying within one mile of a town.”

In the same year the Chancellor was appointed, by 11 and 12 George III. chap. xiii., a commissioner for the improvement of the new street called, in the whole or in part, Sackville-street (in the city of Dublin), and sometimes called, in the whole or in part, The Mall.”

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In 1773, he presided in the House of Lords, when a bill was brought into parliament for the purpose of laying a tax of two shillings in the pound on the income of Irish absentee landlords, who would not reside in Ireland at least six months in. each year. The measure was exceedingly popular, and the government, supporting it as an open question, rose greatly in public favour; but the violent opposition of the great landowners, many of whom lived altogether in England, prevailed, and the bill was rejected.' This was not the first absentee-tax attempted to be imposed in Ireland.

Lord Coke thus alludes to a statute which, though never printed, is nevertheless on the roll of the Acts of Parliament :-" There is an Act made in England, in 3rd Richard II. [nu. 42, Rot. Par.] worthy of remembrance, which never was yet printed. It is enacted, that all manner of persons whatsoever, who have lands or tenements, offices or other livings, ecclesiasticall or temporall, within Ireland, shall reside or dwell upon the same. And that all such as have there any castles or forts, shall fortifie the same, and furnish it with men able for defence, and thereupon also dwell. And if they at any time depart, then, during their absence, to

1 Haverty's History of Ireland, 704.
2 Coke's Institutes, book iv. chap. lxxvi., p. 356.

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 sums1 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

1 NOTE,-The absentee rental amounted, in 1691, to £136,018; in 1729, to £627,799; in 1782, to £2,223,222; in 1783, to £1,608,932; in 1804. to £3,000,000; in 1830, to £4,000,000; in 1838, to £5,000,000; in 1870, to £6,000,000. One of the great evils of absenteeism is said to be the consolidation of farms and the conversion of tillage-land into pasture, an evil of which Lord Coke thus speaks (Co. Lit. 85, b.) :-" Agriculture and tillage are greatly respected by the common law. Now the common law prefers arable land before all others, and it appears by 4th Henry VII., chap. 19, that six inconveniences are introduced by subversion or conversion of arable land into pasture, tending to two deplorable consequences. The first inconvenience is the increase of idleness, the root and cause of all mischief. Second-Depopulation and decrease of populous towns, and maintenance of only two or three herdsman, who keep beasts in lieu of great numbers of strong and able men. Third-Churches, for want of inhabitants, run to ruin and are destroyed. Fourth-The service of God is neglected. FifthInjury and wrong done to patrons and curates. Sixth-The defence of the land (for the want of men strong and inured to labour) against foreign enemies weakened and impaired."

2 Sir Jonah Barrington's Rise and Fall of the Irish Nation, chap. ii. p. 21.

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 marIshal 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

their speaker, were conducted to the bar with the usual ceremonies, when his Grace made a speech to both Houses of Parliament as follows:

"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.

1 General Evening Post Newspaper, of date, 28th May, 1782. Library, Trinity College, Dublin.

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

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