1828.] Lord Wellesley's Administration in Ireland. 49 



Catholics that full and perfect disenthralment from all bonds, civil, 

 military, and ecclesiastical, was inevitably to follow. Nor was it unna- 

 tural to conclude, that when they were, both negatively and alternatively 

 protected against insult, they would at last be redeemed from injury. 



This appointment was accompanied by other circumstances of equal 

 promise. Mr. Saurin, the attorney-general, who for fifteen years had 

 filled the office of public prosecutor, and in that capacity had zealously 

 laboured to concentrate the odium of the Irish Catholics, was removed 

 from office, and Mr. Plunkett, who was made attorney-general in 1805, 

 and had resigned in 1807, was nominated his successor. Mr. Plunkett, 

 from the period of the Whigs coming into office in 1806, had linked 

 himself to the Grenville party, and, although on the death of Mr. Fox, 

 the ministry signified a desire that he should continue in office, he stead- 

 fastly sacrificed his personal ambition to his political principles, and 

 tendered his resignation, openly avowing by the act his attachment to 

 that party, of which he has ever since continued a distinguished and un- 

 compromising adherent. His firmness upon that occasion, and his ener- 

 getic resistance in the Irish parliament to the measure of the union, and 

 the means by which it was carried, were claims upon the gratitude and 

 affection of his country, which rendered him one of the most popular 

 public men of the day. His appointment, therefore, to the office of 

 attorney-general, and Mr. Saurin's deposition from that high and (in 

 Ireland) supreme station, strengthened the general presage, that the reign 

 of faction was about to terminate for ever. 



Lord Wellesley's political character preceded him. It was arrayed in 

 the most gorgeous exaggeration, and the results of his former life were 

 assumed as evidences of his future. He was considered as a practical 

 statesman, whose wisdom was the deliberate harvest of experience, and 

 who had preserved to his country the possession of the vast empire of the 

 East, and effected by his genius the tranquillization of Spain. It was said 

 that his comprehensive intellect had enlarged the sphere of oriental 

 commerce, had overthrown the Mithridates of the East, and the con- 

 federate Mahratta powers, and established in that enormous and distant 

 territory, the permanent sovereignty of Great Britain. The statue 

 erected to his glory at Calcutta, was adduced as a witness to the splendour 

 of his achievements, and he was trumpeted into Ireland as the Pacificator 

 of India. His mission to Spain, at a period when that nation was 

 paralyzed and almost prostrate, was said to have influenced the changes 

 that followed ; and the Duke of Wellington's successes in the Peninsula 

 were only spoken of as glorious instances of Lord Wellesley's pervading 

 spirit and ascendant policy. With a character so illuminated, and drawn 

 by the ardent eloquence of a country anticipating regeneration, Lord 

 Wellesley assumed the government of Ireland. 



Perceiving, perhaps, that the people had over-acted the panegyric, or 

 that they did not sufficiently distinguish the difference between the 

 executive and the legislative, his lordship's first declaration was, that he 

 came " not to alter the laws, but to administer them with impartiality." 

 The wisdom of such a declaration would have been felt in any other 

 country, and public opinion would have made the representative of 

 Majesty responsible only for the functions of his office, and not for the 

 condition of the laws under which he derived his authority, and over 

 which he possessed no control. But in Ireland the case was different. 

 Some few, indeed, saw the difficulty of Lord Wellesley's situation ; they 

 M.JVf. New Series. -VoL.V. No. 25. H 



