454 RESULTS OF THE RECORD COMMISSIONS. 



were sent in under another person's name, thus barring against me the road 



to favour. 



#**#**** 



" Q. If they had remunerated you by giving you 400/. a year, you would 

 have had no reason to complain ? A. Yes I should, though I never should 

 have complained solely for a pecuniary loss ; but first of all it is a very fair 

 ground for entering into inquiries about public mismanagement." 



Here we have a man, who, according to his own confession, to 

 revenge himself for private disappointments, makes use of the public 

 wrong of which he had long been cognizant, and which, but for the 

 check put upon his mercenary longings, might have remained un- 

 noticed by him to the present day. But although he thus freed 

 himself from the authority of the board as regarded his future en- 

 gagements, he contrived most ingeniously, apparently by playing off 

 against the commissioners a dread of exposure, to retain his office 

 so far as concerned the reception of the same or a higher salary.* In 

 the petition presented to parliament in 1822, he stated " that the 

 accumulation of extraordinary commissions on the great law and state 

 officers in Ireland, requiring from them technical duties which those 

 high persons are unable to discharge ; whereby such duties devolve 

 on obscure agents, incompetent and not trust-worthy (using still their 

 authority under the name and seal of the high persons above-men- 

 tioned), is the occasion of much abuse and oppression, accompanied 

 with various illusory representations to parliament from time to time." 

 " But," says the same gentleman, in 1829, with regard to the record 

 commission, " there has been a reform; both general, as to what I 

 conceived a public wrong, and particularly, as to my own private 

 grievance." With the nature of the first reform we are totally unac- 

 quainted ; but the latter, it appears, consisted in Mr. Lascelles being 

 appointed, with a salary of 500/. a year, to compile something to bear 

 the title of the two cumbrous volumes since produced, but without 

 limit as to time or plan of execution. By whose authority was such 

 a work commenced ? It was not under the direction of the Irish 

 Record Commissioners, who, we are given to understand, repudiate 

 any connexion with it, although the very title page assumes it to have 

 been executed under the powers granted by the commission of 1810; 

 and yet these commissioners, it appears, have allowed 500/. a year 

 of the money granted to them for specific services, performed under 

 their direction, to be paid to one who had thrown off their authority, 

 under which he was originally employed, and who had publicly 

 charged them with a betrayal of their trust; while the services which 



* Mr. Lascelles, on coming to England, brought his papers with him, and re- 

 tained them as a lien until his claims were satisfied. " A person," says he 

 " came, or was sent over, to seize them, but I sent them to my banker's. I was 

 offered by that other person 200/. or 300/., or less, I forget the sum exactly, in 

 London." By whom ? on whose account ? to be paid from what fund ? was 

 this'offer of hundreds for what the gentleman either had or had not a distinct 

 right to the possession of? As for claims, it does not appear that there were 

 any arrearsof salary due by the commissioners ; and for what other claims could 

 he justify the lien ? ..rus-teisfaiui orfw enoaieq ov/J to 



