1828.] Lord Wdlesley's Adminui rattan in Ireland. 53 



at the Bible Societies, providing the hungry with Testaments, and de- 

 nouncing a religion to make converts of its professors and the secular 

 Catholic clergy arraigning the Bible Societies from the altar, and undoing 

 on the Sunday what the evangelicals had been weaving the whole week. 

 Then the anomaly of poverty in one spot, and plethora in the next; 

 fanatical declamations upon loyalty under the very ban of martial law, 

 and remonstrances against the expense of a police in districts overrun 

 with midnight murder, pillage, and rebellion. Then came in the press 

 to represent this turbulent scene; the press, chaotic and clamorous, 

 whose writers must express an opinion by a libel, and support it by a 

 duel ; divided upon every question of national policy and public good ; 

 ebbing and flowing with every village vicissitude ; and taking the colour 

 of the last event, orange or green, that chance happened to fling upon 

 its unhappy columns, until the whole boiled up like a cauldron with its 

 unnatural and ever-conflicting ingredients. Then, lastly, came the Castle 

 Press, two papers considered to be the organs of the administration, that 

 held their armed conference, like the chiefs of old, across a boundary 

 stream ; one, ferociously liberal, denouncing the fanaticism and the tur- 

 bulence of the Orangemen, and the other, extravagantly repelling the 

 malediction, and anathematizing in its turn. This was the state of 

 Ireland when the principles of Lord Wellesley's administration, reviled 

 by one party, began to be distrusted by the other, and openly canvassed 

 by both. 



When Lord Wellesley was appointed Lord Lieutenant, eleven counties 

 were in a state of insurrection, or disturbance ; judging wisely that such 

 discontent arose from local as well as general causes, he applied prompt 

 and decisive remedies ; he organized an effective police, one half of whose 

 expense was levied on the county, and one half granted by government : 

 and this police gradually subdued the spirit of insubordination that pre- 

 vailed. The policy of the Lord Lieutenant was to make the most of the 

 laws as they stood, and, tempering justice with humanity, to correct the 

 effects of existing oppressions by such means as the existing laws afforded, 

 without appealing to the legislature for further enactments of a rigorous 

 and penal nature. Such, at least, we are justified in attributing as his 

 policy ; but other systems had a higher influence, and Mr. Goulburn 

 became the willing instrument of a measure, that, in the name of allaying 

 the causes of discontent, generalized and increased them. 



The Catholic Association sprung, literally, from irritation and disap- 

 pointment : irritation towards the Orangemen, and disappointment in the 

 government. It did not arise from any causes, either sought for or 

 created by the catholics themselves : it was the inevitable refuge of a 

 people who thought themselves deceived, and who felt they were insulted. 

 It might, or it might not have been a prudent resource, but it was an 

 excusable and a natural one ; and, however it might have been viewed 

 by the legislature, as a body unconstitutional and dangerous, it was, at 

 all events, entitled to its justification, as being the result of misgovern- 

 ment, rather than the exciter of disaffection. To subdue this association, 

 which he ought to have prevented, Mr. Goulbourn brought a bill into 

 parliament, which, putting expediency and the immediate application of 

 its provisions out of the question, was a direct abridgement of the liberty 

 of the subject. In England such an act would not have been borne, 

 in Ireland it was violated. 



The natural effect of this measure, homourously designated, by Mr. 



