. 
636 Notes of the Month on [Junn, 
for some months, has made a clear conscience of them, and at once 
attempted to vindicate himself and his Irish administration. Nothing 
could be more childish, loose, and contemptible, than his vindication, 
except his administration. But the first fault was, unquestionably, with 
those who sent such a person to Ireland. It is not a ¢rime to possess 
a weak head, but to entrust its possessor with the power of withholding 
good or committing evil, is a crime. No man ever conceived that the 
Marquis of Anglesey had any degree of understanding requisite to 
conduct public affairs of any kind. He was a good trooper, a good 
dandy, a good lounger about fashionable parties, and, possibly, a good 
judge of .a horse. But his qualifications went not a step beyond: and 
his proper place would have been the parade or the club-room. Yet 
the crime of sending this fashionable and galloping person to dispense 
government in Ireland, was, if possible, enhanced by its purpose; for 
that there was a deep purpose concealed in his mission, no doubt can 
be entertained. He was known to those who sent him, just as much as 
he could be to the public: and in a time when a loose, violent, and rash 
party, was to be suffered to assume importance, there could be no fitter 
governor than an idle nobleman, who with the air of power had none 
of the vigour; whose giddiness of character was likely to give way to 
the slightest and silliest impression of the moment ; and who leaving — 
England with the loftiest deprecation of Popery, and the sense 
pledges to Protestantism, would not be found twenty-four hours in the 
hearing of Popish harangues, without forgetting every pledge, swallow- 
ing every syllable that he had ever spoken, and with the sudden zeal 
of a ridiculous convert, launching out into absurdity, as a sort of 
revenge on himself for his having been ever betrayed into sense. The 
scheme succeeded perfectly, as might be expected from its wily con- 
triver. The bewildered Marquis had not dined out half a dozen times, 
when he convinced himself that the men against whom he had raised 
the warhoop so shortly before, were the finest fellows in the world ; 
that those whom he had called rebels and traitors, and whom he had 
only longed to charge with the chivalry of England, were patriots to 
the bone; and that Emancipation would extinguish the barrenness of 
the soil, clothe the nakedness of the population, reform. the imclemency 
of the seasons, and make the potatoe crop inexhaustible. In this foolery 
he was clearly encouraged from home, until his business was effected, 
‘and those who knew him infinitely better than he did himself, knew 
that he could not be left any longer to blunder in safety. The corre- 
spondence that followed, showed their opinion of his understanding, and 
certainly not less of his patience. We are quite satisfied that such a 
course of systematic affronts was never before put on any man bearing 
the viceregal commission. He was called to order for every thing : for his 
personal acquaintance, for those whom he casually visited, those whom 
he invited to his table, nay, for his passing nod in the street. Even his 
son’s rambles through the city, were charged, in a lecture, on ‘the 
father’s defenceless head, and he must have felt that he lived in a state 
‘of perpetual surveillance. Of this he complains, but he finishes his 
complaint, with the broadest possible hint that if he might be suffered 
to retain his government, he would be found infinitely willing to do so. 
‘ But he might as well have spared himself this humiliation, for his sen- 
tence was already passed; and a few posts after brought him as 
summary a sentence of dismissal as ever came to a disbanded groom. 
‘We must own, in justice to those who treated him with such contumely, 
