132 Ireland, the Orangemen, and the Papists. [Aug. 



swann round the bee-hive of the court. Dublin is the Sidney, and Ireland is 

 the Botany-bay of England. Is Ireland to stand ybr finer thus? Is Ireland 

 eternally to wear the livery, and to stand behind the chair of England ? 

 These are the questions O'Connell and Macdonnell should be putting to the 

 Irish people, and not the wretched calculation o{ profit and loss which has so 

 disgusted every community in the British Empire." 



This is but a sorry tribute to the wisdom of those peace-makers who 

 pledged themselves that Catholic emancipation would satisfy the whole 

 popish body, whatever it might do to the Protestants. The repeal of the 

 Union is in the back ground of the picture drawn by this great political 

 limner. The extinction of the Irish church, which will be the extinction 

 of the last connexion between the countries, will follow with patriotic 

 ease ; and though ]\Ir. Lawless may be disappointed of the estate after 

 all, we can assure him that the Catholic bill is as complete a security as 

 any man could desire for every other consequence that the most glowing 

 amor patriee, and the most craving love of plunder can imagine. 



Another agitator comes to complete the list, though, in this instance, 

 the fault is in the party, and not in the individual. The papists are 

 furious with Mr. Shiel for taking a retaining fee from Lord George 

 Beresford on his Waterford election, and the barrister has written a 

 letter of unanswerable length to prove that he was quite right, and the 

 populace quite absurd. Such are the brains of popery on both sides. 



But setting apart the Iiopelessness of attempting to convince a mob of 

 their own folly, and making the attempt in a declaration that would 

 puzzle a professor of contingent remainder's, the writer was perfectly 

 authorized in taking his fee, wherever he could get it, and if the spoils 

 were to be raised on the enemy, so much the better. To I\Ir. Shiel and 

 his party the whole intrigue was a palpable triumph. What was it but 

 a plain acknowledgment by the Beresfords, that they either dreaded 

 popish influence, or required it ; and, in either case, that they could not 

 advance a step without it ? And what more could party vengeance ask 

 of the proud Beresfords ? The lawyer was perfectly right in taking his 

 fee, or twenty fees if he could get them ; but what is to be said of the 

 man who offered the fee ? We are told that no less than nine of the 

 family rafted; that, in short, all its members voted for the popish 

 question, excepting one, the venerable Irish primate. If such be the 

 case, no tears of ours shall weep for the worst popish contumely that can 

 be rained on their heads ; let them be forced to truckle to ]\Ir. O'Con- 

 nell down to their last hour ; let I\Ir. Lawless trample on them ; let ]Mr. 

 Macdonnell offer them the humiliation of his help ; and Mr. Shiel, like 

 the devil and the Santon, take their last shilling, and, in the bitterness 

 of their political death, salute them with the gibe, the scoff, and the 

 sneer. 



We had looked on Lord George Beresford as a person of manly feeling, 

 narrating, with the natural indignation of a high-spirited noble, the inso- 

 lent encroachments of fsction on the constitution of his country. We had 

 heard him fiercely reprobate the supineness of government : yet, while 

 the words were scarcely out of his lips, at the first moment when he 

 could turn the agents of this faction to his purpose, he allies himself 

 with them, and talks the miserable and exploded cant of " conciliation." 

 The cant is echoed on the opposite side, and all mouths are equally filled 

 with this paltry pretence. But do such men think that the world is 

 blind ? Does not every man know that Lord George Beresford means, 

 by " conciliation," his getting a seat in parliament on as easy terms as he 

 can; that his emploj'ment of the popish lawyers — the last thing that- 

 would have been done by any man of common spirit, in any instance — 



