52 Lord Wellesley's Administration in Ireland. ~JAN. 



influence depended upon a perseverance in the principles of exclusion 

 and monopoly, feeling dissatisfied with the innovation which Lord 

 Wellesley's new system introduced into the castle coteries, and secretly 

 hating the man to whom they cringed at the levee, privately suborned 

 the editor of a government newspaper to establish a journal which should 

 be open to the scandal of the vice-regal court, and the libels of the vice- 

 regal household. The editor, a man as unprincipled as his employers, 

 yielded to the temptations which their promises held out, and, betraying 

 the confidence reposed in his integrity, announced a new paper, devoted 

 to the private views and personal malignity of the lord lieutenant's 

 servants. This paper was a manifesto of war it was a declaration of hos- 

 tilities ; and, although it was known to be supported by the contributions, 

 literary and financial, of the paid officers of the government, a mistaken 

 magnanimity, which pardoned great offences and punished insignificant 

 trespasses, permitted it to vomit forth a series of obscene and disgusting 

 tirades, as offensive to good taste as they were revolting to truth. 

 Irritated into reprisals, and alarmed at the apparent indolence of the 

 administration, the Catholics formed themselves into an association for the 

 purpose of repelling the nauseous calumnies of the new organ, and of 

 neutralizing its efforts to corrupt public opinion. Violence begat violence, 

 and the gratuitous braggadocia of one party was repaid in kind by the 

 ferocious replication of the other. They stood armed at either side, 

 and there wanted but little incitement to fire them into open contest. 



This state of things was evidently forced by the energy manifested by 

 the administration, in the first instance, to check the insolence of the 

 Orangemen, and its subsequent supineness in submitting to their taunts 

 and insults. Had Lord Wellesley exhibited less zeal for one party, at 

 the onset of his government, he might have been enabled, with a greater 

 show of justice, and power of effect, to have subdued, at any period, the 

 occasional indiscretions of both ; he should either have persevered as he 

 began, or began as he intended to persevere; but commencing on a 

 system of decision, the Catholics expected that extent of protection which 

 he found it inconvenient or impolitic to afford ; and, disappointed in their 

 expectation, endeavoured to create, out of their own body, the means of 

 redress which the viceroy either would not or could not extend. 



Take a picture of the state of parties and politics in Ireland at this 

 juncture. 



Lord Wellesley stood at the head of affairs, aiming at the establish- - 

 ment of liberal principles, and laboriously working to make all parties 

 equally amenable to the law, and to administer the law equally to all. Then 

 came Mr. Goulburn, the puppet of a faction, labouring in his vocation 

 to overturn all Lord Wellesley's doctrines of government, and to sustain 

 that which Lord Wellesley wanted to remove. Then an attorney- 

 general, treading in the path of the lord-lieutenant, and illuminating it 

 with a genius and an intellect that would redeem any other country from 

 degradation; then a solicitor-general, following in the wake of the 

 secretary, and diametrically opposed to the views of his legal brother ; 

 and all the other departments, civil, legal, and fiscal, similarly divided into 

 a perfect system of checks and balances. Then witness the fantastic 

 violence and irregular vituperation of the Catholic Association, opposed 

 by the domineering bravado and drunken anathemas of the Orange 

 lodges ; then look at the two education societies, Protestant and Catholic, 

 disseminating tracts and treason over the face of the country ; then look 



