118 The Year 1830. [FEB. 



pacification with all the world ; that our interposition has extinguished 

 continental war ; that our commerce has improved infinitely that our 

 revenue is magnificent j that Ireland has already exhibited the most 

 abundant fruits of the " emancipatory policy ;" and that the universal 

 prosperity of the empire justifies the fullest congratulations of its gover- 

 nors. If all this be so, why the deuce should we not sing lo paeans, and 

 play Bacchanals in the procession of the most matchless of ministers ? 



But who is to move the Address ? The report goes, that it has been 

 offered to Brougham, and that he returned for answer, that he was not 

 Master of the Rolls yet ; and that, if ministers did not, within one calen- 

 dar month, accomplish their promise of persuading Leach to die, he 

 would open his mouth for the first time these two years, and speak his 

 mind. Mackintosh has, by anticipation, rejected the offer, saying that he 

 is an old man ; and, by the course of nature, Goulburn must outlive him, 

 unless the right honourable Chancellor of the Exchequer should take 

 orders as a Methodist preacher, and forswear the Treasury Mammon. 

 The young maiden-speech tribe are, unluckily, younger than they were 

 ever known ; and, from their specimens of abortive eloquence, too sure 

 to break down. But those are difficulties that the practised dealings of 

 the Home Secretary with mediocrity of all kinds, will soon remedy. 

 He proverbially loves blockheadism ; selects his associates out of the 

 thickest crania of the clubs ; shrinks at the contact of a man of 

 talents, with the instinct that nature provides for every animal in the 

 presence of its peril ; would no more take an able man into his office or 

 his association, than he would put a lighted candle into his pocket ; and 

 now feels the benefit of his prudence, in enjoying the full tranquillity of 

 a driver of asses. 



Yet we cannot flatter ourselves that the race of the grumblers is yet 

 in " the tomb of all the Capulets." They will probably have the 

 effrontery to ask, whether the grand measure of conciliation has con- 

 ciliated any thing ? Whether it is not just as perilous an enter- 

 prize for Parson Abraham to collect his dues in the year 1830, as it was 

 in any year of the " six hundred" of chains and sorrows ? whether old 

 Admiral Evans was not as near going out of the world at a tangent from 

 the muzzle of a musket, in 1829, as any country gentleman in the cen- 

 tury before ? and whether there has been the diminution of a single 

 policeman in the whole multitude of the Irish gendarmerie, or any symp- 

 tom of the safety of leaving Ireland, happy and free as she is, to her 

 own guardianship ? Thirty thousand of the best troops of the empire 

 are at present her " sponsors" for good behaviour ; and it is no compliment 

 to the notorious " economy" of the Premier to suppose that they are a 

 regiment too many. 



Others, in the same unconscionable spirit, may ask, whether the 

 murders, burnings, hangings, and houghings do not proceed with the same 

 patriotic energy among what the patriots call the finest " pisantry on 

 earth ?" whether Captain Rock is not in a state of as vigorous legislation 

 as at any hour since the writing of his history ? whether the Papists 

 have not declared themselves injured and insulted, tricked by the word 

 of promise to the ear, and determined to pursue the patriot means of 

 clamour, turbulence, and intimidation, until they break the Union ? 

 What the result of breaking the Union must be, is no equivocal matter. 



There will even be men heard to say (such is the infatuation of party), 

 that Ireland is at this hour in a state of pauperism ; that England is in 



