not ours. fervent desire that he should long continue to enjoy all that it was in the power of a human being to enjoy, that he ventured to recommend some reduction of this evident "excess." Such might be the language of the eloquent Chancellor of the Exchequer. Such is We do not recommend an "appropriation" of the "surplus" revenues of the Marquess of Westminster, although we know that there is a surplus, and feel equally sure that it might be better appropriated, because we know full well that the day which saw such an interference with the rights of property would not close without anarchy and blood. But we must beg that the two facts may always be viewed together, and that our readers will please to recollect that those same men who cant about their sincere concern for the clergy of Ireland, and their fear lest they should be crushed under the weight of their enormous revenues, can see even a greater amount of wealth accumulated upon a single individual, and that without the least commiseration for his unhappy condition. The Marquess of Westminster could pay out of his own revenues the whole united incomes of all the parochial clergy of Ireland, and have 20,000l. a-year left for his own expenses! II. But if it be granted, then, that the Whigs are a little given to exaggeration and mis-statement, there is one vice, at least, of which they protest their innocence - or rather we should say, one virtue of which they boast their exclusive possession. Every thing like bribery or corruption is thoroughly abhorred by them-and the most perfect purity marks their every step! How came their followers in the city of Norwich, then, to be guilty of such a mistake as to fancy that it was consistent with Whig and "Reform principles, to carry the late municipal election in that town by means of open, barefaced, and wholesale bribery? It was of Norwich, more especially, that Lord John Russell spoke, when dilating on the benefits to be derived from his Corporation Reform - bill. "He should be told," he said, "that in many large towns, in Norwich in particular, open elections to the corporation already prevailed. This was Arrived, mar a exetam brought to the poll by bribery, or practices of a similar description," &c. With respect to Norwich, therefore, the object of Lord John Russell's measure was, not to give them a large municipal constituency, for that they had already-nor to institute frequent and open elections, for those also they already enjoyed - but the peculiar benefit that Norwich was to derive from the measure was, a thorough cleansing from bribery; a practice which Lord John, doubtless, had been informed by some person was very prevalent in it. How strange, then, that after all this, after so plain and public a declaration of his object, his lordship should have been so entirely misunderstood, that his friends and admirers in that very city could think of no better mode of signalizing the first introduction of his measure, than that of the adoption of a more audacious and profligate system of bribery than had ever before been witnessed! A canvass of the city having been completed, it was found that in all probability the return of the several ward elections would be, for the whole corporation, thirty-six Conservatives and twelve Whigs. A futile attempt was then made to induce the Conservatives to consent to an equal division, which they, knowing their own prospects, most naturally declined. Desperate, therefore, at this position of affairs, the Whig-Radical committee decided upon the most desperate remedy. Funds were by some means provided, and two or three strangers to the town were introduced on the very eve of the election, who, having their lesson well instilled into them, went into those three of the wards in which the Conservative majority was found to be the smallest, and there purchased so many votes, for about 201. or 301. each, as sufficed, in each case, to give the "Liberals a small majority. The fact, happily, is beyond denial, for one of these agents was actually apprehended, carried before a magistrate, and held to bail, on the strongest and clearest evidence of the fact. Such, then, is the purity of the Whigs-such is the hatred of bribery and corruption felt by all true “Liberals." But perhaps we shall be told that it is unfair to condemn a whole party for the indiscretion or impropriety a single town. Where, then, we ask, did these Norwich Whigs learn this lesson? How came it into their heads that it could possibly be acceptable to their patrons in Downing Street to celebrate the earliest triumphs of their so greatly lauded measure by such gambols as these? Did the Norwich Whigs, then, mistake the matter? Were they altogether at fault in their speculation? Not they! Never were any set of vagabonds better prepared to plead precedent of the bighest kind. What could provincialists of this class be expected to do, but to copy their leaders in Downing Street? And in Downing Street what was the example held up to their view? In England, the attorney-general of his majesty was Sir John Campbellthat very Sir John Campbell against whom there had been established, in the fullest and most undeniable manner, the fact of bribery so wholesale as to leave all petty Ipswich jobs immeasurably in the shade. The very agent of Sir John Campbell, in his Stafford election, unreservedly stated to a committee of the House of Commons, that on one single occasion he himself had, in Sir John's behalf, bribed above five hundred voters with his own hand. And it is after this public disclosure that Sir John Campbell is made the king's attorney-general, an office in which it would be his peculiar and official duty to bring to the bar of public justice every person clearly denoted to him, by evidence given before a committee of the House, to have been guilty of bribing even a single elector! In this post, above all others, is Sir John placed; and to shew still farther the entire confidence and satisfaction of the Whigs in this their pure and reforming law officer, the most unusual honour of a peerage for his wife is conferred by special patent upon Lady Campbell! But the attorney-general is well supported, for who is his learned and equally honourable colleague? Who but Sir Robert Mounsey Rolfe, reeking from the vote-market of Penryn, whose seat was only saved by the determination of a Whig committee not to oblige the witnesses called before it to give answers? Well matched, Messieurs Attorney and Solicitor General! But the same system holds throughout. Pass over into the sister-country, and what meets us there? Who is go the especial favourite of the Irish vernment? Who but Mr. Hudson? And who and what is Mr. Hudson, that the choicest appointments in the gift of the crown should be singled out for his acceptance. He is just that single and most remarkable individual, who was especially pointed out by the Election Committee of 1831 as the leading agent in the wholesale bribery carried on in behalf of the Whig candidates at the Dublin election of that year! For the good service rendered on that occasion, for the adroitness and success, in short, which he then displayed in buying votes and corrupting voters, he has been ever since held in especial honour and regard by the Whigs of Dublin Castle. Need we ask, then, how the "Liberals of Norwich came to imagine that bribery and corruption could be consistent with their duty to a Whig administration? Or can we sufficiently admire the coolness with which the Chronicle assures its readers that "the Tories are nothing without corruption;" that "their ranks are, for the most part, filled with mercenaries ;"— and that "they must suffer from whatever protects the honest and industrious from their depredations!" III. Lastly, however, we must remark, that as it is only the Tories that are "mercenary,”—only the Conservatives that "seek to live by the plunder of the people," we are sure to find among Whigs the most perfect disregard of all pecuniary considerations-the greatest dislike to be loaded with place or profit from the public purse. How truly this is the case was well seen when Earl Grey, decidedly the most respectable man of his party, did not scruple to confer among his own and his wife's relations, within the space of two years, as many as twenty appointments, with salaries amounting in the whole to more than fifty thousand a-year! And if the most decent of the whole clique felt no shame at such conduct, what might be reasonably expected from the underlings and refuse of the party? The whole system pursued, ever since these gentry first ensconced themselves in Downing Street, has just been consistent with this beginning. Retrenchment, perpetual retrenchment, has been unceasingly going on, meaning, thereby, the suppression of old and efficient boards of experienced public officers, and the setting up new contrivances in their room; such new births being filled, of course, not by the discharged officers, but by “gentlemen of liberal opinions." But besides this continual course of oppression and mischief, we have had, within the last four years, no one knows how many boards of" Commissioners" set up, for no earthly purpose but to create patronage, and make a show of doing business. We say, for no earthly purpose but this, for we have the plain testimony of Factory Commissioners, and Corporation Commissioners, and of divers others, that, after being sent out to gather information whereon bills were to be founded, they learned, on their return, that the measures to be taken were already decided upon, without even waiting for the information they had been paid to gather in! But enough of this. Time would fail us to tell of the hundred and one jobs in patronage which have chased each other across our view within the last four years. A single instance, and of very late perpetration, may suffice as a specimen of the whole. Be it known, then, that there is, or, rather, was, a month since-for it is of a month since that we are speaking, and since then the cards of the Courts of Equity have been shuffled and cut in a most edifying manner-there was, then, a few weeks since, an officer called "the Secretary in Chief to the Lords Commissioners." Also, an officer called "the Private Secretary of the Master of the Rolls." Also, an officer called "the Secretary of Lunatics." Also, an officer called "the AttorneyGeneral of the Duchy of Lancaster." Also, an officer called "the Counsel to the Woods and Forests." Also, an officer called "the Counsel to the Commissioners of Charities." Be it also premised that it is not in the memory of man that any two, or at most any three, of these appointments were ever before held, at one time, by the same individual. Yet so it is, gentle reader, that, within the last few weeks, the whole of these six offices were concentrated in a single person! We dare say we shall be told, that this or that point in this statement is not strictly accurate. It will doubtless be easy, amidst all the puss-in-the-corner work of the last six weeks, to mystify the matter in some trifling degree. The facts, however, we believe to be exactly as we have stated them. But who is this favoured man, who has thus contrived to sweep into his own pocket the salaries which should have maintained five or six respectable persons? His emoluments are stated at between 3000l. and 4000l. a-year, and the only point which makes his promotion to a mastership in chancery questionable, is the doubt whether he could accept this high and lucrative post without loss. This fortunate youth, gentle reader, is one whose name might be guessed without much difficulty. He is a RUSSELL! Noble name! famous equally for the Bloomsbury fagots and the "forty thieves" of the county of Huntingdon. William Russell, Esq. son of Lord William Russell, and firstcousin of our inestimable Lord John, is the gentleman so much in request in our courts of law and equity. And thus it is that the country pays for Lord John's studies in arithmetic ! When he wants a lesson in Division, he takes a field at Hartford or a street in Bloomsbury, and discovers, according to Hutton's most approved method, how many forty-shilling freeholders can be made out of a paddock which will hardly keep a couple of cows. For practice in Addition he goes into Chancery Lane, and consults Sir C. Pepys as to how many secretaryships it is lawful to cram upon one firstcousin. Meanwhile the rule of Multiplication comes in, in its turn, and is cultivated, alike, under each of the former problems. THE CONQUEST OF IRELAND BY THE ANGLO-NORMANS." Ir has long been known that there existed, among the manuscripts of the archiespiscopal palace at Lambeth, a most valuable document, though unfortunately imperfect, on the English conquest of Ireland, written apparently at the end of the twelfth or beginning of the thirteenth century, and therefore not long after the important event which it commemorates, in NormanFrench verse, by a poet or historian we may call him which we will -who had received the history from the mouth of one who had himself been intimately engaged in the expedition; and who was no less a person than Maurice Regan, interpreter to Dermod Mac Murrough, the king of Leinster. Bound up in the same volume with the manuscript of which we speak, is a prose abstract of this poem by Sir George Carew, who was lord president of Munster in the reign of Elizabeth, and who was himself a descendant of the Robert Fitz-Stephen who acts so prominent a part in the history. Of the original manuscript, which is apparently a somewhat later transcript of the poem, no use has hitherto been made by our historians; probably, because it was difficult of access and of translation. But Walter Harris, in 1747, published in his Hibernica the abstract which had been made by Carew; and this has been ever since quoted in place of the original, and all its errors and misrepresentations repeated: and no wonder if it be full of them, for we are sure that its author could seldom translate the words of his original. The story which our poet gives us confirms, most remarkably, the relation of Giraldus, which had been written previously; although, as independent histories, each contains many circumstances not mentioned by the other. We are inclined to suppose that Maurice Regan was not the bard's sole authority, and it is probable that from him the recital was obtained in his old age; for, in confirmation of what he says, he commonly appeals to the authority of old people who witnessed it. Thus, after speaking of the death of Robert de Quency, he says: "Une fille pur vers aveit And again, speaking of the Irish barons who, in their way through England to Normandy, had joined in putting down the rebellion of the earl of Leicester with the Scots: "Et de Leycestre lors li quens, Solum li dist des anciens, Norman-French Metrical History of the Conquest of Ireland in the Twelfth Century, edited from a Manuscript in the Archiepiscopal Library at Lambeth. By Francisque Michel. London, Pickering. Nearly ready. VOL. XIII. NO. LXXV. We should, probably, have known more of the poet and of his authorities had we the whole of his proeme, the earlier part of which is unfortunately lost, with a leaf of the manuscript; yet what remains is far from authorising the assertion of all those who have quoted it through Sir George Carew's abstract, that the history was originally written by Maurice Regan himself. For the sake of shewing how Sir George Carew's Text and Version. "Parsoen demande Latinner Ici lirrai del bacheller Del rei Dermod, vous voil conter. At his own desire, the Interpreter And of himself shewed me this history. To the king, King Murcher. These things this batchellor We see at once in this translation ་ ill Sir George read and interpreted his The Text from the MS., with our Version. "Par soen demeine latinier, Lestorie de lui me mostra. Al rei Dermot, ke mult lout cher. Del rei Dermod vus voil conter. * - By his own interpreter, Who related to me the history of him, I spoke mouth to mouth with him, [Who] shewed me the history of him. To King Dermod, who loved him much. Of King Dermod I will tell you." rials he had collected for his history. The testimony of the Irishman is delivered with too much simplicity to allow us to suspect him of intentional misrepresentation. It happens, unfortunately, that the rolls of the reign of the second Henry are nearly all lost. In the reign of John they first begin to be numerous, and they then throw great light upon Irish history. The charter-rolls of this reign contain the confirmations of most of the grants of land made to the first conquerors. We give little weight to the arguments by which Moore has endea voured to shew that the Irish were, in former times, a civilised people. As far as we can understand them, his arguments amount to this: in all ages, all writers who were not Irishmen describe the Irish as barbarians; but it is not likely that they should know about the matter: therefore, |