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ployed by them, in his professional capacity, in the management of their affairs. In effectuating various arrangements with their creditors, he displayed so much practical dexterity that his financial reputation was gradually diffused among the nobility :-through the medium of these useful accomplishments he was introduced to Lord Wellesley. Mr. Blake ingratiated himself into his favour, and was soon intrusted with his bosom thoughts. These circumstances, combined with his professional talents, which are considerable, accelerated his progress at the Bar. Lord Eldon could not but smile upon the prosperous associate of the nobles of the land; and he rose into full business. In Ireland, however, little had been heard of him; and when the approaching arrival of Lord Wellesley was announced, the paragraphs in the London papers which mentioned that his Lordship was accompanied by his friend Mr. Blake, and that he had set off from his house to prosecute his journey to this country excited a general curiosity. It was soon ascertained that he was among the dispensers of fortune. He furnished an early evidence of his influence over the new viceroy, in the instance which I have already specified; and succeeded to a certain extent in allaying the resentment of the people, at the distinction, conferred upon the person who had been the first to impinge the injunctions of the King. The marked civilities which were paid him by Mr. Plunket, confirmed the general notion of his importance. The obsequious assiduity with which that learned gentleman courted the favourite of Lord Wellesley, stood in strong contrast with his habitual coldness and reserve. It was understood that Mr. Blake was consulted upon measures and upon men: he was known to be a puller of the wires in the political puppet-show. Another remarkable proof of his sway with the Lord Lieutenant occurred soon after his arrival: Lord Wellesley was invited by the Corporation to a public dinner. Mr. Blake was, of course, among the guests, and his health was proposed in compliment to the Marquis. The representative of the King started up to return thanks. This excited universal astonishment. Mr. Blake sat beside him, and, interposing between his friendship and his dignity, superseded his viceregal proxy, and expressed his gratitude himself. I have dwelt upon the merits and good fortune of this prosperous barrister, because the distinction conferred upon him by Lord Wellesley made him a conspicuous feature in the political picture, and because the strength of friendship entertained for him by so illustrious an individual, throws a light upon the character of the latter, as it reflects honour upon the object of his regard. Lord Wellesley disclosed other traits of a peculiar mind at the civic banquet. He made many speeches, and in every one of them gave indications of a love for oratorical exhibition. He indulged in encomiastic expatiations upon the achievements of his family, which, in a man of questionable merit, would have excited something like a smile, and which, with all his talents, could not fail to produce amongst his most sincere admirers a feeling of mingled surprise and regret. The fire and nobleness of his manner, and the power of his diction, were thrown away upon such an audience. He flung his fine thoughts, like pearls, upon a porcine herd; while a certain peculiarity of character, and an overweening self-complacency, struck the dullest observer of them all. Of one fact, however, he apprised the assembly, which was not

wholly unimportant-namely, that his illustrious relative was not ashamed of his country. This disclosure produced a strong concussion of tables, and large libations were offered up in celebration of the newly disclosed patriotism of his Grace. Upon the succeeding day, the orations of the Lord Lieutenant were the subject of general comment. It was admitted that he was a splendid luminary, but it was also observed that he had a rotation upon himself. There were some, however, who divined much policy in the indulgence of these egotistical propensities. By talking of himself he successfully avoided any treading upon topics which were full of smouldering fire. Whatever may have been his purpose, whether his praises of his family were the pourings out of natural vanity, or the glossing over and evasion of delicate and dangerous subjects, he escaped for some time any direct collision with the Orange party: and even when Mr. Saurin-the head of that party-was removed from the office of attorney-general, to make room for Mr. Plunket, Lord Wellesley was not so much the object of their indignation as the successor to their fallen and extinguished cynosure.

This change in the law department was the first measure of a decisive character which distinguished Lord Wellesley's administration. Mr. Plunket was the chief advocate of the Catholics; and his promotion was, in some degree, an intimation of a sentiment in the British cabinet favourable to that body. The High-Churchmen, however, suppressed their vexation; and when the first levee was held at the Castle, it was attended by both parties. The concourse of Roman Catholics was considerable. Until Lord Wellesley's arrival, they had studiously avoided the gates of the Irish palace. They had been ill-used at court; and Lord Fingal himself, with all his disarming gentleness of demeanour, had been insulted by a cold and repulsive formality, which even his meek spirit could not calmly brook. A fungous trader or two might be seen there exhibiting their daughters in the vulgar sentimentality of a minuet, through which they were conducted by Sir Charles Vernon, with a mixture of official mockery and nonchalance; but, with such exceptions, scarcely a single Roman Catholic debased himself by the unrequited servility of attending the provincial court. Upon the arrival of Lord Wellesley, however, both parties thronged at his levee, and seemed to vie with each other in the proffer of their emulative respect. He received the different factions with cordiality, and paid particular attention to Mr. O'Connel, who made his first appearance upon this occasion in the character of a courtier. It was said that Lord Wellesley requested his cooperation in his efforts to tranquillize Ireland. The flattery had a momentary operation. The infusion of oil allayed his turbulence for a little while; but Mr. O'Connel was too shrewd to be long deceived. He soon became aware that this was the mere language of courtesy, in the strict etymology of the word. He was never once invited to dine" with his Excellency;" and what was much more important, he, and every other Catholic, perceived that the patronage of the government, instead of being equally and indiscriminately distributed among the members of both religions, was confined to its former channels, and flowed exclusively among the professors of the opposite creed. The government of Lord Wellesley did not advance in popularity. The country was desolated by famine and insurgency. The measures adopted for the suppression of both were judicious, but lost

nothing in the description which was given of his generalship and benevolence in the despatches which were transmitted to the British cabinet. Ireland was represented as the theatre of regular warfare; and the evolutions of a few regiments of dragoons were recorded with all the minuteness of specification with which an historian would have commemorated the events of an illustrious campaign. Lord Wellesley appeared to have mistaken Captain Rock for Tippoo Saib. The pigsties of Ballynasmuck were transmuted, in his visions of military renown, into the battlements of Seringapatam. A horde of savages, maddened by hunger, were magnified into Mahratta myriads; and their inglorious slaughter was swelled, with "bombast circumstance," into rivalry with the viceroy's Oriental triumphs. The fact was, that Lord Wellesley was fitted for a greater theatre, and was like a fine actor in a village, who wastes the same energy of genius upon the wretchedness of a contracted scene, which he had before displayed upon a wider and more exalted stage. The mock-rebellion was easily repressed, and the exigencies of the peasantry were gradually removed by the generosity of the English nation, aided by the summer-sun, whose glorious bounty it resembled. The political surface was not agitated by any strong collision of parties, and the machinery of government went on in noiseless regularity through the stagnation of the public mind. The Orangemen were restored to a perfect security, that the system had only nominally changed; and the liberal party, habituated as they were to disappointment, sunk back into the quiet of despair. As, however, the 11th of July approached, a revived solicitude arose respecting the steps which would be adopted by Lord Wellesley with regard to the commemoration of the national dishonour, in which the Orangemen were in the habit of indulging upon that day, with the annexation of every irritating circumstance that their perverse ingenuity could devise. It was asked, "Will Lord Wellesley tolerate this insult? Will he permit the reenactment of the annual outrage, and shew us by proof, what we had before been only taught by conjecture, that his mission is a mere delusion, and that he will now throw away the very forms of that conciliatory purpose for which we were told that he was sent amongst us?" The Orangemen, on the other hand, looked forward with an equal anxiety to the result, as they considered the investment of their idol in his symbolic trappings, the irrefragable test of their authority. On the day immediately previous to that of this factious celebration, Mr. O'Connel addressed a letter to Lord Wellesley, couched in phrases of affected respect, but insinuating a suspicion of his sincerity, and an anticipation of the recurrence of the insult, with the connivance, if not with the actual sanction, of the Irish Council. This letter attracted general notice. It was said to have galled Lord Wellesley, and threw him into a practical dilemma. If he prevented the dressing of the statue by the forcible exercise of his authority, it would be said that he had been terrified into energy by the leading demagogue of Ireland; and if he did not interfere, the popular feeling would be fired into additional exasperation, by the previous excitement produced by the passionate appeal of the Catholic barrister. I am inclined to think that Mr. O'Connel foresaw these consequences when he addressed the viceroy, and retaliated upon him for the hollowness of his professions. To himself, Lord Wellesley endeavoured to escape from this embarrassing condition, by

employing the influence of government to induce the Orangemen by gentle remonstrance to discontinue the offensive practice; and at his instance, Master Ellis and Sir Abraham Bradley King exerted themselves in the Orange lodges to persuade their associates to comply with the desire of the Lord Lieutenant. But the Orangemen rejected the proposition with disdain, and in the morning the statue stood arrayed with more than its usual tawdriness of decoration. The popular party were aghast. The Orangemen exulted with an increased ferocity of triumph; and the mutual animosity of both was proportionably augmented. The political rancour created by these unhappy causes hardly needed the interposition of a churchman, to lift it to an overflowing height. Doctor Magee had been raised to the archiepiscopal see, through the patronage of his college friend Mr. Plunket. He had, when a fellow of the University of Dublin, been distinguished by the liberality of his sentiments, which put him into strong contrast with that learned body. His book on the Atonement was indeed embittered by a good deal of the odium theologicum, but allowance was made for the almost unavoidable necessity of seasoning so unpalatable a topic with the stimulants of invective. It was supposed, that as soon as he had obtained the archiepiscopal throne, he would revert to his former opinions, and, having no farther object of ambition to prosecute, would profess the sentiments which a peculiarity of situation had induced him to suppress. But the Dublin public little understood the real character of this successful prelate, in supposing that he would limit his aspirations to a provincial see. He had risen from a sizarship in the University to this singular elevation, in which another would have reposed. But in the Alpine progress of such a mind (if I may use the expression) new and more glittering heights arose at every step in his ascent; and York and Canterbury gleamed on him in their holy loftiness, the moment he had reached the exalted station which opened a wider and more heavenly horizon to his views. Lord Sidmouth was understood to have said, when he attended the King to Dublin, that during all his intercourse with political life, he had never seen a man of a more ambitious temperament than this pious divine, and that he had realized all that he had imagined of the political passion in its most exclusive and engrossing force. Just after his promotion, he exhibited a most fantastic aspect. There was a mixture of Wolsey and Doctor Syntax about him. Great talents seemed to be combined in a strange confederacy with the pedantry of the college. I should proceed in my description of this person, but that it would lead me beyond my limits; and I must reserve him for a future delineation. This humble successor of the first propagators of Christianity contributed, in the effervescent state of the public mind, to swell its fermentation. He delivered an address to his clergy, which contained an invective against the creed of six millions of his fellow-subjects; and lest his satire should not adhere where it was directed, it was barbed with an antithesis. The Dissenters, he said, had a religion without a church, and the Papists had a church without a religion. This single phrase threw the Catholic clergy into a paroxysm of indignation; and pamphlet upon pamphlet was volleyed from the theological press at the head of the mitred heretic. The Catholic Bishop of Carlow, Doctor Doyle, was the ablest among the many antagonists who entered the briary field of controversy against

the Protestant prelate. The effects upon the two parties were fatal to the restoration of public amity between them. The streets were placarded with religious tracts, and all the monstrosities of sectarian hate were exhibited in every corner of the city. The Harlot of Babylon was carted, upon one hand, in all her scarlet gorgeousness and impurity; and hell was opened, with all its flames, for the misbelieving heretic upon the other. It was impossible to pass through the most sequestered lane without being stunned with reciprocal denunciations of the devil. You were assailed by clamorous boys in every quarter, who importuned you with their shrill cries to purchase their twopenny confutations.

In the midst of this confusion, two personages of great polemical renown precipitated themselves among the combatants, and the fight was suspended by all others to witness their matchless prowess. Doctors Magee and Doyle fell into insignificance in the shock between Sir Harcourt Lees and the Reverend Mr. Hayes, the worthy representatives of the ferocious factions to which they respectively belonged, and whose achievements surpass the most glorious feats of the heroes of the Lutrin. Mr. Hayes is already known to the English public, through the medium of a court of justice, in which he instituted proceedings for the injury sustained by his virgin reputation, which was estimated at five pounds. The former is a parson, who had been long notorious as an eminent lover of the chace, and had recently become a sort of Nimrod in controversy, and hunted down the unfortunate Papists through the dens and forests of their obscure and bewildering creed. Father Hayes averred in the pulpit that he had witnessed an exorcism in Rome (from which he had himself been just exorcised by the Pope), and that Beelzebub had been vomited by a young lady of fifteen in the shape of a brass button. These were his claims to the public credit. Sir Harcourt saw an assassin in every Papist, and imagined that his valuable life was the great stay of the established church, and the object of universal conspiracy in Ireland. His fancy was bespattered with blood, and, as he was vain of his powers of authorship, the visions of his religious malady acquired new horror in their transmission from his brain to paper. The better class of both religions laughed at these champions of orthodoxy; but, unhappily, the lower orders were inflamed by their insane malevolence. They infected ignorant readers with the distemper of the head and heart under which they reciprocally laboured. The public mind was in this unhappy condition when the fourth of November arrived. This is one of the days on which the statue of William is dressed; and, to the astonishment of Dublin, in place of being attired with its Orange memorials, it was surrounded by a body of troops, who effectually prevented all access to the obnoxious emblem. Its forlorn idolaters beheld it from a distance, with a heavy heart, unadorned by a single ribbon, and reft of the gaudy pageantry with which it was wont to be festooned. Lord Wellesley had recovered the energy of his character. His mind had started from its oblivion of what was due to the country and to himself. abused of all idle hope of being able to tame the hyena, he resolved to inclose it in its den. The measure to which he resorted was advised by Mr. Plunket, and approved of by the British Cabinet. But Lord Chancellor Manners, and the ex-attorney-general, Mr. Saurin, (the Gog and Magog of the Orange party) declared the step to be ille

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