In the absence of any real history of Ireland, the memoirs of its distinguished persons are of the first importance. They are the landmarks within which the broad and general track of historic narrative must be led. They fix character—the most necessary aid to the larger views of the historian. They disclose to us those secret springs which regulate the great social machinery; and by an especial faculty, more valuable than all, they bring us face to face with minds of acknowledged eminence, teach us the course which the known conquerors of difficulties have pursued, and exhibit the training by which the championship of nations is to be sustained. As the old lawgiver commanded that beautiful statues should be placed before the Spartan wives, to impress their infants with beauty of countenance and stateliness of form, the study of greatness has a tendency to elevate our nature; and though camps and councils may be above our course, yet the light shed from those higher spheres may guide our steps through the tangled paths of our humbler world.

The present memoir gives evidence of an additional merit in biography: it assists justice; it offers the power of clearing character, which might have been refused to the living; it brings forward means of justification, which the dignity of the injured, his contempt of calumny, or the circumstances of his time, might have locked up in his bosom. It is an appeal from the passion of the hour to the soberness of years. It has the sincerity and the sanctity of a voice from the world of the future.

The Stewarts, ancestors of the Marquis of Londonderry, came originally from Scotland, and, settling in Ireland in the reign of James I., obtained large possessions among the forfeited lands in Ulster. The family were Protestants, and distinguished themselves by Protestant loyalty in the troubled times of Ireland—a country where trouble seems to be indigenous. One of those loyalists was Colonel William Stewart, who, during the Irish war, under James II., raised a troop of horse at his own expense, and skirmished vigorously against the Popish enemy at the siege of Londonderry. For this good service he was attainted, with all the chief gentry of the kingdom, in the confiscating parliament of James. But the confiscation was not carried into effect, and the estate remained to a long line of successors.

The father of the late Marquis of Londonderry was the first of the family who was ennobled. He was an active, intelligent, and successful man. Representing his county in two parliaments, and, acting with the government, he partook of that golden shower which naturally falls from the treasury. He became in succession the possessor of office and the possessor of title—baron, viscount, earl, and marquis—and wisely allied himself with English nobility, marrying, first, a daughter of the Earl of Hertford, and, secondly, a sister of Lord Camden. The subject of this memoir was a son of the first marriage, and was born in Ireland on the 18th of June 1769. From boyhood he was remarkable for coolness and intrepidity, and was said to have exhibited both qualities in saving a young companion in the lake of Strangford. At the age of seventeen he was entered of St John's College, Cambridge, where he seems to have applied himself actively to the general studies of the place—elementary mathematics, classics, logic, and moral philosophy. This sufficiently answers the subsequent taunts at the narrowness of his education.

As his father had been a politician, his son and heir was naturally intended for political life. The first step of his ambition was a costly one. County elections in those days were formidable affairs. The Hillsborough family had formerly monopolised the county. Young Stewart was put forward, according to custom, as "the champion of independence." He gained but half the day, for the Hillsboroughs still retained one nominee. The young candidate became a member of parliament, but this step cost £60,000.

The sacrifice was enormous, and perhaps, in our day, might startle the proudest rent-roll in England: but, seventy years ago, and in Ireland, the real expenditure was probably equivalent to £100,000 in our day. And it must have been still more distressing to the family, from the circumstance, that the sum had been accumulated to build a mansion; that the expense of the election also required the sale of a fine old collection of family portraits; and that the old lord was forced to spend the remainder of his life in what the biographer states to be an old barn, with a few rooms added. But his son was now launched on public life—that stream in which so many dashing swimmers sink, but in which talent, guided by caution, seldom fails to float along, until nature or weariness finishes the effort, and the man disappears, like all who went before.

The young member, fresh from college, and flushed with triumph over "parliamentary monopoly," was, of course, a Whig. Plutarch's Lives, and the history of the classic commonwealths, make every boy at school a Whig. It is only when they emerge from the cloudy imaginations of republicanism, and the fabulous feats of Greek championship, that they acquire common sense, and act according to the realities of things. The future statesman commenced his career by the ultra-patriotism of giving a "written pledge," on the hustings, to the support of "parliamentary reform."

With this act of boyishness he was, of course, taunted in after-life by the Whigs. But his answer was natural and just: it was in substance, that he had been, in 1790, an advocate for Irish reform; and if the Irish parliament had continued under the same circumstances, he would be an advocate for its reform still. But in 1793 a measure had been carried, which made all change perilous: the Popish peasantry had been suffered to obtain the right of voting; and thenceforward he should not aid parliamentary reform.

It is to be observed, that this language was not used under the temptation of office, for he did not possess any share in administration until four years afterwards, in 1797.

The forty-shilling franchise was the monster evil of Ireland. Every measure of corruption, of conspiracy, and of public convulsion, originated in that most mischievous, factious, and false step. It put the whole parliamentary power of the country into the hands of faction; made public counsel the dictation of the populace; turned every thing into a job; and finally, by the pampering of the rabble, inflamed them into civil war, and, by swamping the constituency, rendered the extinction of the parliament a matter of necessity to the existence of the constitution.

To this measure—at once weak and ruinous, at once the triumph of faction and the deathblow of Irish tranquillity; at once paralysing all the powers of the legislature for good, and sinking the peasantry into deeper degradation—we must give a few words.

The original condition of the peasantry in Ireland was serfdom. A few hereditary chiefs, with the power of life and death, ruled the whole lower population, as the master of the herd rules his cattle. English law raised them from this condition, and gave them the rights of Englishmen. But no law of earth could give the Celt the industry, frugality, or perseverance of the Englishman. The result was, that the English artificer, husbandman, and trader, became men of property, while the Celt lingered out life in the idleness of his forefathers. Robbery was easier than work, and he robbed; rebellion was more tempting than loyalty, and he rebelled: the result was the frequent forfeiture of the lands of chiefs, who, prompted by their priests, excited by their passions, and urged by the hope of plunder, were continually rebelling, and necessarily punished for their rebellion. Portions of their lands were distributed as the pay of the soldiery who conquered them; portions were given to English colonists, transplanted for the express purpose of establishing English allegiance, arts, and feelings in Ireland; and portions devolved to the crown. But we are not to imagine that these were transfers of smiling landscapes and propitious harvests—that this was a renewal of the Goth and Vandal, invading flowery shores, and sacking the dwellings of native luxury. Ireland, in the 16th and 17th centuries, was a wilderness; the fertility of the soil wasted in swamps and thickets; no inns, no roads; the few towns, garrisons in the midst of vast solitudes; the native baron, a human brute, wallowing with his followers round a huge fire in the centre of a huge wigwam, passing from intoxication to marauding, and from beaten and broken marauding to intoxication again. A few of those barons had been educated abroad, but even they, on their return, brought back only the love of blood, the habit of political falsehood, and the hatred to the English name, taught in France and Spain. The wars of the League, the government of the Inquisition, the subtlety of the Italian courts, thus added their share of civilised atrocity, to the gross superstitions and rude revenge of Popish Ireland.

We must get rid of the tinsel which has been scattered by poetry over the past ages of Ireland. History shows, under the embroidered cloak, only squalidness. Common sense tells us what must be the condition of a people without arts, commerce, or agriculture; perpetually nurturing a savage prejudice, and exhibiting it in the shape of a savage revenge; ground to the dust by poverty, yet abhorring exertion; suffering under hourly tyranny, yet incapable of enjoying the freedom offered to them; and looking on the vigorous and growing prosperity of the English colonist, with only the feeling of malice, and the determination to ruin him. The insurrection of 1641, in which probably 50,000 Protestant lives were sacrificed, was only one of the broader scenes of a havoc which every age was exemplifying on a more obscure, but not less ferocious scale. The evidence of this indolent misery is given in the narrowness of the population, which, at the beginning of the last century, scarcely reckoned a million of souls: and this, too, in a country of remarkable fertility, free from all habitual disease, with a temperate climate, and a breadth of territory containing at this hour eight millions, and capable of supporting eight millions more.

The existing condition of Ireland, even with all the difficulties of its own creation, is opulence, peace, and security, compared with its wretchedness at the period of the English revolution.

The measure of giving votes for members of parliament to the Popish peasantry was the immediate offspring of faction, and, like all its offspring, exhibited the fallacy of faction. It failed in every form. It had been urged, as a means of raising the character of the peasantry—it instantly made perfidy a profession. It had been urged, as giving the landlord a stronger interest in the comforts and conciliation of his tenantry—it instantly produced the splitting of farms for the multiplication of votes, and, consequently, all the hopeless poverty of struggling to live on patches of tillage inadequate for the decent support of life. It had been urged, as a natural means of attaching the peasantry to the constitution—it instantly exhibited its effects in increased disorder, in nightly drillings and daylight outbreaks; in the assassination of landlords and clergy, and in those more daring designs which grow out of pernicious ignorance, desperate poverty, and irreconcilable superstition. The populace—beginning to believe that concession had been the result of fear; that to receive they had only to terrify; and that they had discovered the secret of power in the pusillanimity of parliament—answered the gift of privilege by the pike; and the "forty-shilling freeholder" exhibited his new sense of right in the insurrection of 1798—an insurrection which the writer of these volumes—from his intelligence and opportunities a competent authority—calculates to have cost 30,000 lives, and not less than three millions sterling!

The forty-shilling franchise has since been abolished. Its practical abominations had become too glaring for the endurance of a rational legislature, and it perished. Yet the "snake was scotched, not killed." The spirit of the measure remained in full action: it was felt in the force which it gave to Irish agitation, and in the insidiousness which it administered to English party. In Ireland it raised mobs; in England it divided cabinets. In Ireland it was felt in the erection of a rabble parliament; in England it was felt in the pernicious principle of "open questions;" until the leaders of the legislature, like all men who suffer themselves to tamper with temptation, gave way; and the second great stage of national hazard was reached, in the shape of the bill of 1829.

If the projected measure of "endowing the popery of Ireland"—in other words, of establishing the worship of images, and bowing down to the spiritual empire of the papacy—shall ever, in the fatuity of British rulers and the evil hour of England, become law; a third great stage will be reached, which may leave the country no farther room for either advance or retrogression.

In the year 1796, the father of the young member had been raised to the earldom of Londonderry, and his son became Viscount Castlereagh. In the next year his career as a statesman began; he was appointed by Lord Camden, (brother-in-law of the second Earl of Londonderry,) Keeper of the Privy Seal of Ireland.

The conduct of the Irish administration had long wanted the first quality for all governments, and the indispensable quality for the government of Ireland,—firmness. It has been said that the temper of the Irish is Oriental, and that they require an Oriental government. Their wild courage, their furious passion, their hatred of toil, and their love of luxury, certainly seem but little fitted to a country of uncertain skies and incessant labour. The Saracen, transported to the borders of the Atlantic, might have been the serf, and, instead of waving the Crescent over the diadems of Asia, might have been cowering over the turf-fire of the Celt, and been defrauded of the pomps of Bagdad and the spoils of Jerusalem. The decision of one of the magnificent despotisms of the East in Ireland might have been the true principle of individual progress and national renown. The scimitar might have been the true talisman.

But the successive British administrations took the false and the fatal step of meeting the wild hostility of Ireland by the peaceful policy of England. Judging only from the habits of a country trained to the obedience of law, they transferred its quiet formalities into the midst of a population indignant at all law; and, above all, at the law which they thought of only as associated with the swords of the soldiers of William. The government, continually changing in the person of the Viceroy, fluctuated in its measures with the fluctuation of its instruments; conceded where it ought to have commanded; bartered power, where it ought to have enforced authority; attempted to conciliate, where its duty was to have crushed; and took refuge behind partisanship, where it ought to have denounced the disturbers of their country. The result was public irritation and cabinet incapacity—a continual rise in the terms of official barter, pressing on a continual helplessness to refuse. This could not last—the voice of the country was soon an uproar. The guilt, the folly, and the ruin, had become visible to all. The money-changers were masters of the temple, until judicial vengeance came, and swept away the traffickers, and consigned the temple to ruin.

When we now hear the cry for the return of the Irish legislature, we feel a just surprise that the memory of the old legislature should have ever been forgotten, or that it should ever be recorded without national shame. We should as soon expect to see the corpse of a criminal exhumed, and placed on the judgment-seat of the court from which he was sent to the scaffold.

The Marquis of Buckingham, once a popular idol, and received as viceroy with acclamation, had no sooner dared to remonstrate with this imperious parliament, than he was overwhelmed with national rebuke. The idol was plucked from its pedestal; and the Viceroy, pursued by a thousand libels, was glad to escape across the Channel. He was succeeded by the Earl of Westmoreland, a man of some talent for business, and of some determination, but by no means of the order that "rides the whirlwind, and directs the storm." He, too, was driven away. In this dilemma, the British cabinet adopted the most unfortunate of all courses—concession; and for this purpose selected the most unfitting of all conceders, the Earl Fitzwilliam—a man of no public weight, though of much private amiability; sincere, but simple; honest in his own intentions, but perfectly incapable of detecting the intentions of others. His lordship advanced to the Irish shore with conciliation embroidered on his flag. His first step was to take the chief members of Opposition into his councils; and the immediate consequence was an outrageousness of demand which startled even his simple lordship. The British cabinet were suddenly awakened to the hazard of giving away the constitution by wholesale, and recalled the Viceroy. He returned forthwith, made a valedictory complaint in parliament, to which no one responded; published an explanatory pamphlet, which explained nothing; and then sat down on the back benches of the peerage for life, and was heard of no more. The Earl was succeeded by Lord Camden, son of the celebrated chief-justice, but inheriting less of the law than the temperament of his father. Graceful in manner, and even aristocratic in person, his councils were as undecided as his mission was undefined. The aspect of the times had grown darker hour by hour, yet his lordship speculated upon perpetual serenity. Conspiracy was notorious throughout the land, yet he moved as tranquilly as if there were not a traitor in the earth; and on the very eve of a conflagration, of which the materials were already laid in every county of Ireland, he relied on the silent spell of the statute-book!

The secretary, Mr Pelham, afterwards Lord Chichester, wanted the meekness, or disdained the short-sightedness of his principal; and, on the first night of his official appearance in the House, he gave at once the strongest evidence of his own opinion, and the strongest condemnation of the past system; by boldly declaring that "concessions to the Catholics seemed only to increase their demands; that what they now sought was incompatible with the existence of a British constitution; that concession must stop somewhere; and that it had already reached its utmost limit, and could not be allowed to proceed. Here he would plant his foot, and never consent to recede an inch further."

The debate on this occasion continued during the night, and until eight in the morning. All that fury and folly, the bitterness of party and the keenness of personality, could combine with the passionate eloquence of the Irish mind, was exhibited in this memorable debate. The motion of the popish advocates was lost, but the rebellion was carried. The echo of that debate was heard in the clash of arms throughout Ireland; and Opposition, without actually putting the trumpet to their lips, and marshalling conspiracy, had the guilty honour of stimulating the people into frenzy, which the Irishman calls an appeal to the god of battles, but which, in the language of truth and feeling, is a summons to all the sanguinary resolves and satanic passions of the human mind.

The secretary, perhaps foreseeing the results of this night, and certainly indignant at the undisciplined state of the legislative council, suddenly returned to England; and Lord Castlereagh was appointed by his relative, the Viceroy, to fill the post of secretary daring his absence. The rebellion broke out on the night of the 23d of May 1798.

In the year 1757, a committee was first established for the relief of Roman Catholics from their disabilities by law. From this justifiable course more dangerous designs were suffered to follow. The success of republicanism in America, and the menaces of war with republican France, suggested the idea of overthrowing the authority of government in Ireland. In 1792, his Majesty's message directed the repeal of the whole body of anti-Romanist statutes, excepting those which prohibited admission into parliament, and into thirty great offices of state, directly connected with the confidential departments of administration. The Romish committee had already extended their views still farther. The well-known Theobald Wolfe Tone was their secretary, and he prepared an alliance with the republicanised Presbyterians of the north, who, in 1791, had organised in Belfast a club entitled "The United Irishmen."

The combination of the Romanist of the south and the dissenter of the north was rapidly effected. Their mutual hatreds were compromised, for the sake of their common hostility to Church and State. Upwards of 100,000 men in arms were promised by the north; millions, to be hereafter armed, were offered by the south; agents were despatched to urge French expeditions; correspondences were held with America for aid; the whole machinery of rebellion was in full employment, and a civil war was already contemplated by a group of villains, incapable of any one of the impulses of honourable men.

It is memorable that, in the subsequent convulsion, not one of those men of blood displayed the solitary virtue of the ruffian—courage. They lived in subterfuge, and they died in shame. Some of them perished by the rope, not one of them fell by the sword. The leaders begged their lives, betrayed their dupes, acknowledged their delinquencies, and finished their days beyond the Atlantic, inflaming the hostility of America, libelling the government by which their lives were spared, and exemplifying the notorious impossibility of reforming a rebel but by the scaffold.

Attempts have been made, of late years, to raise those men into the reputation of heroism; they might as justly have been raised into the reputation of loyalty. No sophistry can stand against the facts. Not one of them took the common hazards of the field: they left the wretched peasantry to fight, and satisfied themselves with harangues. Even the poetic painting of Moore cannot throw a halo round the head of Lord Edward Fitzgerald. This hero walked the country in woman's clothes, to be arrested in his bed, and perish in a prison. Tone cut his throat. Irishmen are naturally brave; but it is no dishonour to the nation to know that treason degrades the qualities of nature, and that conscience sinks the man of nerve into the poltroon.

It was among the singular instances of good fortune which saved Ireland in her crisis, that Lord Castlereagh assumed the duties of Irish Secretary. Uniting mildness of address with known determination, he was a favourite in the House of Commons, which in those days was proud of its character alike for manners and intrepidity. His indefatigable vigilance, and even the natural vigour of his time of life, rendered him adequate to services and labours which might have broken down the powers of an older man, and which must have been declined by the feeble health of his predecessor, Pelham, who still actually retained the office. Even his family connexion with the Viceroy may have given him a larger share than usual of the immediate confidence of government.

Under all circumstances, he was the fittest man for the time. He protected the country in the most difficult period of its existence. There was but one more service to secure Ireland against ruinous change—the rescue of her councils from the dominion of the mob; and it was his eminent fortune to effect it, by the Union.

There is the most ample evidence, that neither parliamentary reform nor Catholic emancipation were the true objects of the United Irishmen. The one was a lure to the malcontents of the north, the other to the malcontents of the south. But the secret council of the conspiracy—determined to dupe the one, as it despised the other—had resolved on a democracy, which, in its day of triumph, following the steps of France, would, in all probability, have declared itself infidel, and abolished all religion by acclamation. Party in the north pronounced its alliance with France, by commemorating, with French pageantry, the anniversary of the Revolution. The remnants of the old volunteer corps were collected at this menacing festival, which lasted for some days, and exhibited all the pomp and all the insolence of Paris. Emblematic figures were borne on carriages drawn by horses, with republican devices and inscriptions. On one of those carriages was a figure of Hibernia, with one hand and foot in shackles, and a volunteer presenting to her a figure of Liberty, with the motto, "The releasement of the prisoners from the Bastille." On another was the motto,—"Our Gallic brethren were born July 14th, 1789. Alas! we are still in embryo." Another inscription was—"Superstitious jealousy the cause of the Irish Bastille; let us unite and destroy it." The portrait of Franklin was exhibited among them, with this inscription,—"Where Liberty is, there is my country." Gunpowder and arms were put in store, pikes were forged, and treasonous addresses were privately distributed throughout the country.

It is to be observed, that those acts occurred before the accession of Lord Castlereagh to office: their existence was the result of that most miserable of all policies—the sufferance of treason, in the hope that it may die of sufferance. If he had guided the Irish councils in 1792 instead of in 1794, the growing treason would have either shrunk from his energy, or been trampled out by his decision.

It has been the custom of party writers to charge the secretary with rashness, and even with insolence. The answer is in the fact, that, until the year in which the revolt became imminent, his conduct was limited to vigilant precaution—to sustaining the public spirit—to resisting the demands of faction in the House—and to giving the loyal that first and best creator of national courage—the proof that, if they did not betray themselves, they would not be betrayed by their government.

In 1798, the rebellion was ripe. The conspirators had been fully forewarned of their peril by the vigour of public measures. But, disgusted by the delays of France,—conscious that every hour was drawing detection closer round them; and still more, in that final frenzy which Providence suffers to take possession of men abusing its gifts of understanding,—they at last resolved on raising the flag of rebellion. A return of the rebel force was made by Lord Edward Fitzgerald, stating the number of armed men in Ulster, Leinster, and Munster, at 279,896! and the 23d of May was named as the day of the general insurrection.

Government now began to act. On the 12th of March, it arrested the whole body of the delegates of Leinster, assembled in committee in the metropolis. The seizure of their papers gave the details of the treason. Warrants were instantly issued for the arrest of the remaining leaders, Emmett, M'Nevin, Lord Edward Fitzgerald, and others. We hasten on. A second committee was formed; and again broken up by the activity of the government. The French agency was next extinguished, by the arrest of O'Connor, the priest Quigley, and others, on the point of leaving England for France. Seizures of arms were made, the yeomanry were put on duty, the loyalists were formed into corps, armed, and disciplined.

Lord Edward Fitzgerald had escaped, and a reward of £1000 was put upon his head. On the 19th of May, only four days before the outbreak, he was arrested in an obscure lodging in Dublin, stabbed one of his captors in the struggle, was himself wounded, and died in prison of his wound.

During this most anxious period, the life of every leading member of government was in imminent peril. Plots were notoriously formed for the assassination of the commander-in-chief, and the chancellor; but Lord Castlereagh was obviously the especial mark for the conspirators. In scorn of this danger, he gallantly persevered; and, on the 22d of May, the very night before the commencement of the insurrection, he brought down to the House the following message from the Lord-lieutenant:—

"That his excellency had received information, that the disaffected had been daring enough to form a plan, for the purpose of possessing themselves, in the course of the present week, of the metropolis; of seizing the seat of government, and those in authority within the city. That, in consequence of that information, he had directed every military precaution to be taken which seemed expedient; that he had made full communication to the magistrates, for the direction of their efforts; and that he had not a doubt, by the measures which would be pursued, that the designs of the rebellious would be effectually and entirely crushed."

To this message the House of Commons voted an immediate answer,—"That the intelligence thus communicated filled them with horror and indignation, while it raised in them a spirit of resolution and energy." And, for the purpose of publicly showing their confidence and their determination, the whole of the Commons, preceded by the speaker and the officers of the House, went on foot, two by two, in procession through the streets, to the castle, to carry up their address to the Viceroy.

Lord Castlereagh, during this most anxious period, was in constant activity, keeping up the correspondence of his government with the British Cabinet and the generals commanding in Ireland. But, the correspondence preserved in the Memoirs is limited to directions to the military officers—among whom were the brave and good Abercromby, and Lake, Moore, and others who, like them, were yet to gain their laurels in nobler fields.

The rebellion, after raging for six weeks in the south, and exhibiting the rude daring of the peasantry, in several desperate attacks on the principal towns garrisoned by the army, was at length subdued by Lord Cornwallis; who, at once issuing an amnesty, and acting at the head of a powerful force, restored the public tranquillity. This promptitude was fortunate; for in August a debarkation was made by General Humbert in the west, at the head of eleven hundred French troops, as the advanced guard of an army. This force, though absurdly inferior to its task, yet, by the rapidity of its marches, and the daring of its commander, revived the spirit of insurrection, and was joined by many of the peasantry. But the whole were soon compelled to lay down their arms to the troops of the Viceroy. Scarcely had they been sent to an English prison, when a French squadron, consisting of a ship of the line and eight frigates, with 5000 troops on board, appeared off the northern coast. They were not left long to dream of invasion. On the very next day, the squadron under Sir John Borlase Warren was seen entering the French anchorage. The enemy were instantly attacked. The line-of-battle ship, the Hoche, with six of the frigates, was captured after a sharp cannonade; and among the prisoners was found the original incendiary of the rebellion, Wolfe Tone, bearing the commission of a French adjutant-general. On his trial and sentence by a court-martial in Dublin, he solicited to be shot as a soldier, not hanged as a felon. But there was too much blood on his head to alter the forms of law for a villain who had returned for the express purpose of adding the blood of thousands to the past. To escape being hanged, he died by his own hand, deplorably, but suitably, closing a life which honesty and industry might have made happy and honourable, by the last and only crime which he could have added to the long list of his treasons.

The administration of Lord Castlereagh was now to be distinguished by another national service of the highest order. The British government had been awakened, by the rebellion, to the necessity of a union. The object of the rebels was to separate the two islands by violence: the danger pointed out the remedy, and the object of government was to join them indissolubly by law. The measure had been proposed nearly a century before, by the peerage of Ireland themselves, then shrinking from a repetition of the war of James II., and the sweeping confiscations of the popish parliament. The measure was twice proposed to the British cabinet, in 1703 and 1707. But the restless intrigues of party in the reign of Anne occupied all the anxieties of a tottering government; and the men who found it difficult to float upon the surge, thought themselves fortunate to escape the additional gusts, which might come ruffling the waters from Ireland. The Volunteer armament, with the example of America, if not actually inflaming Ireland to revolution, yet kindling a beacon to every eye which sought the way to republicanism, again awoke the cabinet to the necessity of a union. The regency question, in which the Irish parliament attempted to divide, not only the countries, but the crown—placing one half on the head of the Prince of Wales, and the other half on the head of the King—again startled the cabinet. But, as the peril abated, the means of protection were thrown by. The hurricane of France then came, and dashed against every throne of Europe, sinking some, shattering others, and throwing clouds, still pregnant with storm and flame, over the horizon of the civilised world. But the vices of France suddenly extinguished the European perils of Revolution. The democracy which, proclaiming universal peace and freedom, had summoned all nations to be present at the erection of a government of philosophy, was seen exulting in the naked display of cruelty and crime. In place of a demigod, Europe saw a fiend, and shrank from the altar on which nothing was to be accepted but the spoil and agonies of man.

Those facts are alluded to, simply to extinguish the gross and common charge, that the British cabinet fostered the rebellion, only to compel the country to take refuge in the Union. It is unquestionable, that the wisdom of its policy had been a maxim for a hundred years; that the plan was to be found in the portfolio of every cabinet; that all administrative foresight acknowledged that the time must come when it would be inevitable, yet put off the hour of action; that it haunted successive cabinets like a ghost, in every hour of national darkness, and that they all rejoiced at its disappearance at the return of day. But when rebellion broke out in Ireland itself—when it was no longer the reflection from the glare of American democracy, nor the echo from the howl of France; when the demand of separation was made by the subjects of the British crown, in the sight of England—the necessity was irresistible. There was no longer any alternative between binding in fetters, and binding in law. Then the resolve of Pitt was made, and its performance was committed to the hands of a fearless and faithful man. Ireland was relieved from the burden of a riotous and impoverished independence, and England was relieved from the contemptible policy of acting by party, which she despised, and paying a parliament to protect a constitution.

But we must hasten to other things. There was, of course, an infinite outcry among all the tribes who lived upon popular corruption. In closing the gates of the Irish parliament, they had been shut out from the mart where they had flocked night and day to sell their influence, their artifices, and themselves. The voluntary slave-trade was broken up; and the great dealers in political conscience regarded themselves as robbed of a right of nature. The kings of Benin and Congo could not be more indignant at the sight of a British cruiser blockading one of their rivers. The calamity was universal; the whole body of parliamentary pauperism was compelled to work or starve. The barrister was forced to learn law; the merchant to turn to his ledger; the country gentleman, who had so long consoled himself for his weedy fallows, by the reflection that, if they grew nothing else, they could at least grow forty-shilling voters, found "Othello's occupation gone." The whole flight of carrion-crows, whom the most distant scent of corruption brought upon the wing; all the locust race, which never alighted, but to strip the soil; the whole army of sinecurism, the countless generation of laziness and license, who, as in the monkish days, looked to receiving their daily meal at the doors of the treasury, felt the sudden sentence of starvation.

But this, too, passed away. Jobbery, a more than equivalent for the exemption of the land from the viper, became no longer a trade; faction itself, of all existing things the most tenacious of life, gradually dropped off; the natural vitality of the land, no longer drained away by its blood-suckers, began to show itself in the vigour of the public mind; peace did its office in the renewal of public wealth, and perhaps the happiest years of Ireland were those which immediately followed the Union. If Ireland was afterwards overshadowed, the cause was to be found in that sullen influence which had thrown Europe into darkness for a thousand years.

Lord Castlereagh was now advanced an important step in public life. Mr Pelham, who from ill health had long been an absentee, resigned his office. The services of his manly and intelligent substitute had been too prominent to be overlooked. A not less trying scene of ministerial courage and ability was about to open, in the proposal of the Union; and no man could compete with him who had extinguished the rebellion.

A letter from his friend Lord Camden (November 1798) thus announced the appointment:—"Dear Castlereagh,—I am extremely happy to be informed by Mr Pitt that the wish of the Lord-lieutenant that you should succeed Mr Pelham (since he has relinquished the situation of secretary) has been acceded to by the King and his ministers; and that the consent of the English government has been communicated to Lord Cornwallis."

On the 22d of January, a message to the English House of Commons was brought down, recommending the Union, on the ground of "the unremitting industry with which the enemies of the country persevered in their avowed design of separating Ireland from England." On the 31st, Pitt moved eight resolutions as the basis of the measure. Sheridan moved an amendment, which was negatived by one hundred and forty to fifteen votes. In the Lords, the address in answer to the message was carried without a division. It was clear that the question in England was decided.

In Ireland the discussion was more vehement, and more protracted; but the decision was ultimately the same. Parliament went the way of all criminals. It must be allowed, that its scaffold was surrounded with popular clamour, to an extraordinary extent. It faced its fate with national haughtiness, and vigorously proclaimed its own virtues to the last. But, when the confusion of the scene was over, and the scaffold was moved away, none lingered near the spot to wring their hands over the grave.

The unquestionable fact is, that there was a national sense of the unfitness of separate legislatures for two countries, whose closeness of connexion was essential to the existence of both. The Protestant felt that, by the fatal folly of conceding votes to the popish peasantry—votes amounting to universal suffrage—parliament must, in a few years, become popish in all but the name. The landlords felt that, the constant operation of party on the peasantry must rapidly overthrow all property. The still more enlightened portion of society felt that every hour exposed the country more perilously to civil commotion. And even the narrowest capacity of judging must have seen, in the smoking harvest, ruined mansions, and slaughtered population of the revolted counties, the hazard of trusting to a native parliament; which, though it might punish, could not protect; and which, in the hour of danger, could not stir hand or foot but by the help of their mighty neighbour and fast friend.

If, in the rebellion, a wall of iron had been drawn round Ireland, and her constitution had been left to the defence furnished by her parliament alone, that constitution would have been but a cobweb; parliament would have been torn down like a condemned building; and out of the ruins would have been instantly compiled some grim and yet grotesque fabric of popular power—some fearful and uncouth mixture of legislation and vengeance: a republic erected on the principles of a despotism; a temple to anarchy, with the passions of the rabble for its priesthood, and the fallen heads of all the noble, brave, and intellectual in the land, for the decorations of the shrine.

The cry of Repeal has revived the recollection of the parliament; but the country has refused to recognise that cry as national, and even the echo has perished. It was notoriously adopted, not for its chance of success, but for its certainty of failure. It was meant to give faction a perpetual pretext for mendicancy. But the mendicant and the pretext are now gone together. A few childish people, forgetting its uselessness and its errors, alone continue to whine over it—as a weak parent laments the loss of a son whose life was a burden to him, and whose death was a relief. The Union was one of the highest services of Lord Castlereagh.

In corroboration of those sentiments, if they could require any, it is observable how rapidly the loudest opponents of the measure lowered their voices, and adopted the tone of government. Plunket, the ablest rhetorician of the party—who had made his opposition conspicuous by the ultra-poetic extravagance, of pledging himself to swear his sons at the altar, as Hamilcar swore Hannibal to Roman hostility—took the first opportunity of reconciling his wrath to office, and settled down into a chancellor. Foster, the speaker, who had led the opposition, received his salary for life without a pang, and filled the office of chancellor of the Irish exchequer. Bushe, the Cicero of the house, glowing with oratorical indignation, condescended to be chief-justice. All the leaders, when the battle was over, quietly slipped off their armour, hung up sword and shield on their walls, put on the peace costume of handsome salary, and subsided into title and pension.

No one blamed them then, nor need blame them now. They had all been actors—and who shall reproach the actor, when the lamps are put out and the audience gone, for thinking of his domestic meal, and dropping into his bed? Nature, like truth, is powerful, and the instinct of the lawyer must prevail.

One man alone "refused to be comforted." Grattan, the Demosthenes of Ireland, for years kept, without swearing it, the Carthaginian oath, which had slipped out of the mind of Plunket. He talked of the past with the rapt anguish of a visionary, and eschewed human occupation with the rigid inutility of a member of La Trappe. Grattan long continued to linger in Ireland, until he was hissed out of his patriotic romance, and laughed into England. There, he found, that he had lost the better part of his life in dreams, and that the world demanded evidence that he had not lived in vain. Fortunately for his own fame, he listened to the demand; forgot his sorrows over the dead in the claims of the living; threw in his share to the general contribution of the national heart against the tyranny of Napoleon; and by some noble speeches vindicated the character of his national eloquence, and left an honourable recollection of himself in that greatest temple of fame and free minds which the world has ever seen—the parliament of England.

Lord Castlereagh, on the final dissolution of the Irish legislature, transferred his residence to London, where (in July 1802) he took office under the Addington ministry as President of the Board of Control—an appointment which, on the return of Pitt, he retained, until (in 1805) he was placed by the great minister in the office of secretary for the war and colonial department.

The death of Pitt (1806) surrendered the cabinet to the Whigs, and Lord Castlereagh retired with his colleagues. The death of Fox soon shook the new administration, and their own imprudence broke it up, (1807.) The Grey and Grenville party were superseded by Perceval; and Lord Castlereagh returned to the secretaryship at war, which he held until 1809, when his duel with Canning caused the retirement of both.

In the Memoir, the circumstances of this painful transaction are scarcely more than referred to; but the reply to a letter from Lord Castlereagh to the King, distinctly shows the sense of his conduct entertained in the highest quarter.

"The King has no hesitation in assuring Lord Castlereagh that he has, at all times, been satisfied with the zeal and assiduity with which he has discharged the duties of the various situations which he has filled, and with the exertions which, under every difficulty, he has made for the support of his Majesty's and the country's interest.

"His Majesty must ever approve of the principle which shall secure the support and protection of government to officers exposing their reputation, as well as their lives, in his service; when their characters and conduct are attacked, and aspersed on loose and insufficient grounds, without adverting to embarrassments and local difficulties, of which those on the spot alone can form an adequate judgment." This, of course, settled the royal opinion; and the ministerial confidence shortly after reposed in Lord Castlereagh, in the most conspicuous manner, fully clears his reputation from every stain.

But the letter confirms one fact, hitherto not much known, yet which would alone entitle him to the lasting gratitude of the empire. In allusion to the campaign of Portugal under Moore, and the appointment of a successor, it adds,—"It was also this impression which prompted the King to acquiesce in the appointment of so young a lieutenant-general as Lord Wellington to the command of the troops in Portugal." Thus, it is to Lord Castlereagh's sense of talent, and to his public zeal, that we ministerially owe the liberation of the Peninsula. His selection of the great duke, in defiance of the claims of seniority, and probably of parliamentary connexion, gave England seven years of victory, and finally gave Europe the crowning triumph of Waterloo.

But a still more extensive field of statesmanship was now opened to him. Canning had left the Foreign Office vacant; before the close of the year it was given to Lord Castlereagh. Another distinction followed. The unhappy assassination of Perceval left the premiership vacant; and Lord Castlereagh, though nominally under Lord Liverpool, virtually became, by his position in the House of Commons, prime minister.

There never was a moment of European history, when higher interests were suspended on the intrepidity, the firmness, and the wisdom of British council. The Spanish war, difficult, though glorious, was at all risks to be sustained; Austria had taken up arms, (in 1809,) was defeated, and was forced to make the bitter peace that follows disaster. Napoleon, at Erfurth, sat on a throne which looked over Europe, and saw none but vassals. At home, Opposition flung its old predictions of evil in the face of the minister, and incessantly charged him with their realisation. An infirm minister in England at that crisis would have humiliated her by a treaty; that treaty would have been but a truce, and that truce would have been followed by an invasion. But the Secretary never swerved, and his confidence in the courage of England was rewarded by the restoration of liberty to Europe.

The fortunes of Napoleon were at length on the wane. France had been stripped of her veterans by the retreat from Moscow, and the Russian and German armies had hunted the wreck of the French across the Rhine. But, in sight of final victory, the councils of the Allies became divided, and it was of the first importance to reunite them. An interesting letter of the late Lord Harrowby, to the present Marquis of Londonderry, gives the narrative of this diplomatic mission.

"I cannot recollect dates, but it was at the time when you, Lord Aberdeen, and Lord Cathcart, were accredited to the three sovereigns. It was mooted in Cabinet, I think, by Lord Castlereagh, whether it would not be desirable, in order to carry the full weight of the British Government to bear upon the counsels of the assembled sovereigns, that some one person should be appointed who might speak in its name to them all.

"The notion was approved of; and after the Cabinet was over, Castlereagh called me into his private room, and proposed the mission to me. I was, of course, highly flattered by such a proposal from such a person; but I had not a moment's hesitation in telling him, that I had tried my hand unsuccessfully on a somewhat similar mission to Berlin, where I had also been accredited to the two Emperors; that I had found myself quite incompetent to the task, which had half-killed me; that I thought the measure highly advisable, but that there was one person only who could execute it, and that person was himself. He started at first. How could he, as Secretary of State, undertake it? The thing was unheard of. I then told him, that it was not strictly true that it had never been done: that Lord Bolingbroke went to Paris in a diplomatic capacity when Secretary of State; and that, though in that case the precedent was not a good one, it was still a precedent, and I believed there were more. The conclusion to which this conversation led was, that 'he would talk it over with Liverpool;' and the consequence was that, the next day, or the day after, his mission was decided."

A letter, not less interesting, from Lord Ripon, gives some striking particulars of this mission. Lord Ripon had accompanied him to the Congress. "I allude to his first mission to the Continent, at the close of 1813. I travelled with him from the Hague to BÂle, where he first came in contact with any of the ministers of the Allied powers; and thence we proceeded to Langres, where the headquarters of the Grand Army were established, and where the allied sovereigns, the Emperors of Austria and Russia and the King of Prussia, with their respective ministers, were assembled."

The letter proceeds to state the views of the mission, much of whose success it attributes to the combined suavity and firmness of Lord Castlereagh's conduct. But, an instance of his prompt and sagacious decision suddenly occurred. Blucher's impetuous advance had been checked, with serious loss, by a desperate assault of Napoleon, who, availing himself of this success, had fallen upon all the advanced forces of the Allies. There was wavering at headquarters, and there were even proposals of retiring beyond the Rhine. It was essential to reinforce Blucher, but there were no troops at hand. Lord Castlereagh demanded, "Where were any to be found?" He was answered, that there were two strong corps of Russians and Prussians under the command of Bernadotte; but that he was "very tenacious of his command," and they could not be withdrawn without a tedious negotiation,—in other words, we presume, without fear of giving that clever but tardy commander a pretext for abandoning the alliance altogether. The difficulty was, by a high authority, pronounced insurmountable. Lord Castlereagh, who was present at the council, simply demanded, "whether the reinforcement was necessary;" and, on being answered in the affirmative, declared that the order must be given; that England had a right to expect that her allies should not be deterred from a decisive course by any such difficulties; and that he would take upon himself all the responsibility that might arise, regarding the Crown-Prince of Sweden.

The order was issued: Blucher was reinforced; Napoleon was beaten at Laon; and the campaign rapidly approached its close. Still, formidable difficulties arose. Napoleon, though he had at last found that he could not face the army of the Allies, conceived the daring manoeuvre of throwing himself in their rear—thus alarming them for their communications, and forcing them to follow him back through France. The consequences of a desultory war might have been the revival of French resistance, and the ruin of the campaign. The manoeuvre became the subject of extreme anxiety in the Allied camp, and some of the chief authorities were of opinion, that he ought to be pursued. It is said (though the Memoir has not yet reached that part of the subject,) that the decision of leaving him behind, and marching direct on Paris, was chiefly owing to Lord Castlereagh; who pointed out the weakness of taking counsel from an enemy, the advantage of finding the road to Paris open at last, and the measureless political importance of having the capital in their possession.

This advice prevailed: a few thousand cavalry were sent in the track of Napoleon, to entrap him into the idea that he was followed by the Grand Army, while Schwartzenberg marched in the opposite direction; and the first intelligence which reached the French army was in the thunderclap which announced the fall of the Empire!

Lord Harrowby's letter, in referring to a subsequent period, gives a curious instance of the chances on which the highest events may turn.

"Now for my other service in the dark. After the attempt to assassinate the Duke of Wellington at Paris, the Government was naturally most anxious to get him away. But how? Under whatever pretext it might be veiled, he would still call it running away, to which he was not partial. But, when Castlereagh was obliged to leave Vienna, in order to attend his duty in parliament, I was fortunate enough to suggest that the Duke should be sent to replace him; and that would be a command which he could not refuse to obey.

"When I mentioned this to the Duke, just after I left you—for I was then quite full of the memory of my little exploits—he quite agreed that, if he had been at Paris, on the return of Buonaparte to France, it would have been highly probable that they would have seized him.

"Small events are great to little men; and it is not nothing, to have contributed in the smallest degree to the success of the Congress at Vienna, (nor was it then so called,) and of the subsequent campaign, and to the saving of the Duke for Waterloo!"

After this triumphant course of political life, with every gift of fortune around him, and perhaps the still higher consciousness of having achieved a historic name, how can we account for the closing of such a career in suicide?

The only probable cause was the intolerable burden of public business, by his having in charge the chief weight of the home department as well as the foreign. His leadership of the House of Commons was enough to have worn him out. Canning once said—"that no vigour of mind or body can stand the wear and tear of a minister, above ten years." Castlereagh had been immersed in indefatigable toil since 1794. He had stood "the wear and tear" for thirty years. His life was wholly devoted to business. During the summer he rose at five, in winter at seven, and frequently laboured for twelve or fourteen hours in succession.

In person he was tall, with a mild and very handsome countenance in early life, of which we must regret that the portrait in the first volume of the Memoir gives but an unfavourable resemblance. The most faithful likeness is that by Sir Thomas Lawrence, in the Windsor Gallery of Statesmen, though it has the effeminate air which that admirable painter had the unlucky habit of giving to his men.

The death of Lord Castlereagh seems to have been justly attributed to mental exhaustion, with the addition of a fit of the gout, for which he had taken some depressing medicines. The state of his spirits was marked by the King, on his Majesty's departure for Scotland. At the Cabinet Council, he had been observed to remain helplessly silent, and his signature to public papers had become suddenly almost illegible. On those symptoms, he was expressly put into the hands of his physician, and sent to Foot's Cray, his villa in Kent. The physician attended him until the Monday following. Early on that day he was hastily summoned, and found his Lordship dead in his dressing-room.

A letter from the Duke of Wellington conveyed the lamentable intelligence to the present Marquis, who was then at Vienna. After some prefatory remarks, the Duke says—"You will have seen, that I witnessed the melancholy state of mind which was the cause of the catastrophe. I saw him after he had been with the King on the 9th instant, to whom he had likewise exposed it. But, fearing that he would not send for his physician, I considered it my duty to go to him; and not finding him, to write to him, which, considering what has since happened, was a fortunate circumstance.

"You will readily believe what a consternation this deplorable event has occasioned here. The funeral was attended by every person in London of any mark or distinction, of all parties; and the crowd in the streets behaved respectfully and creditably."

The Duke's remarks on "the fortunate circumstance" of applying to the physician, we presume to have meant, the vindication of the Marquis's character from the guilt of conscious suicide. For the same reason, we have given the details. They relieve the mind of the Christian and the Englishman from the conception, that the most accomplished intellect, and the highest sense of duty, may not be protective against the mingled crime and folly of self-murder.

We have now given a general glance at the matÉriel of those volumes. They contain a great variety of public documents, valuable to the future historian, though too official for the general reader. One, however, is too curious to be altogether passed by: it is from Lord Brougham, (dated 1812,) offering himself for employment in American affairs:—

"My Lord,—I am confident that the step which I am now taking cannot be misconstrued by your lordship. Under the present circumstances, I beg to make a tender of my services to his Majesty's government in the conduct of the negotiation with the United States, wheresoever the same may be carried on.

"I am induced to think that I might be of use as a negotiator in this affair. I trust it is unnecessary to add, that I can have no motive of a private or personal nature in making this offer. Should it be accepted, I must necessarily sustain a considerable injury in my professional pursuits," &c.

We think that, in giving these volumes to the country, the present Marquis of Londonderry has not merely fulfilled an honourable fraternal duty, but has rendered a service to public character. Faction had calumniated Lord Castlereagh throughout a large portion of his career. The man who breaks down a fierce rebellion, and who extinguishes a worthless legislature, must be prepared to encounter the hostility of all whose crimes he has punished, or whose traffic he has put to shame. The felon naturally hates the hand which holds the scales of justice, and, if he cannot strike, is sure to malign. The contemptuous dignity with which Lord Castlereagh looked down upon his libellers, and his equally contemptuous disregard of defence, of course only rendered libel more inveterate; and every low artifice of falsehood was exerted against the administration of a man who was an honour to Ireland.

His course in England was in a higher region, and he escaped the mosquitoes which infest the swamps of Irish political life. Among the leaders of English party he had to contend with men of honour, and on the Continent his task was to sustain the cause of Europe. There, mingling with monarchs in the simplicity of a British gentleman, he carried with him all the influence of a great British minister, and entitled himself to that influence by the value of his services. Yet, among the highest distinctions of his statesmanship, we have but slight hesitation in naming the rapid overthrow of the rebellion. The scene was new, the struggle singularly perplexing. Political artifice was mingled with brute violence. If the spirit of revolt raged in the superstition, the fears, and the rude memories of peasant life, it was still more hazardously spread among the professional ranks, whose ambition was frenzied by the prospect of a republic, or whose guilt was to be screened by its establishment. He has been charged with tyranny and torture in its suppression; his correspondence in these volumes shows the manly view which he took of the true condition of Ireland.

The question of the safety of Ireland has now come before the legislature once again, in all its breadth. Is Ireland to be a perpetual seat of rebellion? is every ruffian to find there only an armoury? is every faction to find there only a parade-ground? Is its soil to be a perpetual fount of waters, that can flow only to poison the healthful channels of society? Is the power of government to be employed only in the hideous duties of the gaoler and the executioner? Is the noblest constitution that man has ever seen to be utterly paralysed, from the moment when it touches a soil containing millions of our fellow subjects?—and to be paralysed by the act of these millions?

These are the questions which well may disturb the pillow of the statesmen of England. We have no hesitation in answering them. As the ruin of Ireland has been the act of a false religion, its renovation must be the act of the true. This is no time for tardiness in this experiment. Revolt has thrown aside its arms, but its antipathy remains. We shall have revolt upon revolt, until the country is turned into a field of battle or a sepulchre. If the rude, vulgar, and cowardly conspirators of the present hour have found followers, what might not be the national hazard if some valorous hand and vivid intellect—some one of those mighty men who are born to take the lead of nations, should marshal the willing multitudes at a time when England was once again struggling for the liberties of Europe? Are we to leave Ireland, with all its natural advantages, to the unchecked progress of superstition, until, like the Roman Campagna, under the same auspices, it exhibits nothing but a desert, where man by daylight should put on his swiftest speed, and where he should not sleep by night, unless he had already taken measure of his grave?

The Memoir prefixed to the official papers in these volumes touches with singular brevity on the personal characteristics of the late Marquis of Londonderry.

But the true biography of a public man is to be found in his public career. There flattery can deceive no longer, and panegyric is brought to the test of posterity. It fell to the lot of Lord Castlereagh to take a lead in the four most memorable transactions of his time;—in the overthrow of the Irish Rebellion; in the establishment of the Union; in the downfall of the French empire; and in the settlement of the peace of Europe at the Congress of Vienna. Those four are his claims on the living gratitude of his country, and on the homage of the generations to come. The mind which was equal to those tasks must have been a mind of power; the determination which could have sustained him, in defiance of all personal and public danger, must have been of the highest order of personal and public intrepidity; and the patriotism which, in every advance of his official distinctions, and every act of his ministerial duty, directed his steps, as it then raised him above all the imputations of party, now retains his memory in that elevation, which partisanship can no more reach than it can comprehend. Estimable in all the relations of private life, and honourable in all the trusts of statesmanship, the bitterness of Opposition has never dared to touch his personal character; and even faction has shown its sense of his services, by never venturing to insult his tomb. If the enemies of Ireland remember him with hatred, the historian of Ireland must record him with honour. If faction in England cannot yet be reconciled to the man who kept it at bay, it must remember him as the statesman who was neither to be bought nor baffled; whose life was a security to the constitution, and whose conduct formed the most prominent contrast to that of those subsequent possessors of office, whom it found the means alternately to corrupt and to control.

It is not our wish to offer a rash and groundless panegyric to any man. We refer simply to the facts—to the eminence of England under his policy, and to its sudden difficulties under the abandonment of his principles. We think Lord Castlereagh entitled to the full tribute which can be paid by national respect to the memory of a statesman distinguished by courage and conduct, by unblemished honesty, and by unfailing honour. We think him fully entitled to bear upon his monument the name of—A Great British Minister.

The most passionate avidity for renown cannot desire a nobler name.