1829.] Affairs in General. 187 
three thousand ecclesiastics were lately charged, in the course of a few 
years, with the attempted seduction of women at the confessional !—— 
Can we wonder at the general degradation of the female character in 
Spain, at the gross habits of popular life, or the horrid abominations that, 
from time to time, transpire in the monkish annals? Or can our surprise 
be any longer excited at the feebleness of those once mighty nations— 
at their failure in all attempts at rational freedom—at their intestine 
wars, and bloody and fruitless revolutions—at the whole long train of 
national evils, which, rooted in domestic impurity, irreligion, and blind 
confidence in the dark and vitiating doctrines of popery, overrun and 
strangle every bud and branch of national prosperity ? 
The Irish papists treat their English great-folks in a very pleasant 
style of radicalism. The poor old, and very imbecile, Duke of Norfolk, 
lately having ventured to exhibit at a papist meeting here, unluckily for 
himself uttered the sentiment that he and his compatriots might, by pos- 
sibility, condescend to give protestantism some pledge, that the first 
act of popish admission into parliament would not be an attempt to 
break down the constitution. Upon this, Mr. O’Connel, naturally indig- 
nant at such a humiliation of the glorious cause of papal supremacy, and 
scorning any terms with a nation of heretics like the English, attacked 
the unlucky old man with his best language, and covered him, from 
head to foot, with oratorical mire. That the poor old duke deserved this 
recompence, nobody will deny but himself. The act of mixing his name 
with the cause of that rabble, who, in the presence of such men as Lord 
Anglesey, fearlessly laugh at all common sense, discretion, and sub- 
ordination, is an offence that deserves a deeper punishment than can be 
inflicted by the tongue of any brawler of them all. Let his pride digest 
what his folly has brought upon its stomach ; and let this weak old man 
_ learn to be satisfied with the discovery in time, that if the faction once 
came into power, they would trample upon him, and that stick of office, 
which he holds with such burlesque dignity in the Lords. 
The next subject of castigation is the unfortunate Lord Shrewsbury, 
a simpleton who, by the decease of the late lord ~without issue, suc- 
ceeded to the title a year or two since. In England, money does much ; 
_ and the Shrewsbury money lifted this innocent and easy-souled young 
man into a little importance. In an evil moment for his quiet, he tried 
the career of a popish champion. But he was not made for such things. 
He was too much of a gentleman, and too little of a knave. The ruffians 
of patriotism did not like him, and he did not like them. He had lived 
a good deal abroad, where, even to the poor, society is accessible ; and, 
in his poor days, he had been suffered to ramble through such society as 
is to be found cheap on the Continent. But his first contact with papistry 
at home disgusted him. He shrank from suffering every dirty fellow 
who called himself a “Catholic” to rub against the skirts of his good 
breeding—declined the readily thrust-out hand of the descendant of 
Trish kings, as if it had been thrust out by a Highlander—and closed 
his ears and his pocket alike to the rough requisitions of the rent. Day 
by day he began, more and more, to feel that the scene was not made for 
him. He loved to whistle and sing, play upon the guitar, and lounge 
about in the train of the old, supper-giving marchesas, that make life 
sweet at Rome. He loved to pore over prints, and prose on sculptures, 
and spend his day, rambling and gossiping, from oue artist's studio to 
2B 2 
