"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.

"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 "2 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 recorded3 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

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:

"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 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 charge the duties of the important trust, as to enable your Royal Highness to disfor 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,

4 Lords' Journals, 1788.

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 mem ber 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, the world. and tedious, in his intercourse with

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. at times to your Excellency, and my appreMY VERY GOOD LORD,-My complaints hensions, 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. Pitt.

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

able, his manners soft and soothing. He was a consummate dissembler, liar, and politician; sordidly avaricious, as seldom as possible gave offence, and never served any man but his own. He hated and despised this country by which he made his whole fortune; superlatively deceit ful, he knew all the arts of combining or separating people to serve his purpose. He was active, laborious, diligent, secret, a miserable speaker, and died, by cramming and stuffing, full ten years before his time was He left me £100 legacy, and

out.

recommended to his family to consult and be determined by me upon all their difficulties, more, I believe, from fear than love of me, for he hated and injured me." Again, at page 332, he says that "Lord Lifford was a declining, insincere trickster."

The decisions made by his lordship in the Court of Chancery are collected in "Wallis's Reports," which are the first or earliest continuous. reports of Irish cases in a court of equity.

OLIVER J. BURKE.

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 external nature, yet the power of place seems sometimes to lead to them, and contributes largely to the condi-tion of mind required. How different, 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 aspects, from that remoter and changed standing-point. In Our common walks of life we all are apt to become imbued largely with the spirit of our surroundings; so that for a corrected view of things, and for wider sympathies and broader experience, 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 Cathedral 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 conditions 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 discernment 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