308 Montesquieu Bellew and Lawyer Shell : f Sept. 



Finding the veto unpopular, his next line of acting was a violent 

 opposition to it. Nobody heeded, or cared about, his unexplained apos- 

 ■tacy. He was too insignificant to excite attention, and too heartless to feel 

 contumely if he had been sufficiently prominent to be honoured with it. 

 This course was pursued with unabated perseverance until the period of 

 the deputation to London, and the proposition of those auxiliary measures 

 absurdly entitled the Wings. Imagining he saw another crisis, which 

 might be dextrously turned to advantage, he went back to Ireland to 

 defend once more the payment of the priests, and to suggest a new Whig- 

 like remedy for the troubles of the people— the abolition of tlie forty- 

 shilling freeholds. He was tlie first who publicly announced these 

 adjuncts to the Catholics; and the sophistry by which he sought to vin- 

 dicate them, affords a characteristic specimen of the shallowness of hi« 

 mind and the insincerity of his heart. His reception was precisely such 

 as he merited. Even the stolid peasantry detected the lurking hypo- 

 crite, and they hooted him into his old guilt of swallowing his words, 

 and abandoning his opinions. In a Aveek he reviled liis new code 

 of liberty, and was as suppliant as before. He could not be firm, for 

 two reasons — first, because he could not afford it ; and second, because 

 it is his nature to vacillate and intrigue. 



At this period IMr. IMontesquieu Bellew appeared in public. His connec- 

 tion with a respectable Catholic family, v/hich had long maintained an 

 xniostentatious place in the Popish aristocracy, his youth, his abilities, 

 and his judgment obtained him at once hearing and respect in the 

 assembly of demagogues. It was a pity to see a young man, well- 

 dressed, well looking, with a fluency of tongue, and a gentlemanly 

 demeanour, enter as a performer into a theatre where the audience, 

 like the folks in our upper gallery, were admitted at a shilling 

 a-head. But he was carried away in the stream, which had now grown 

 too strong even for those who had embarked at its source, and were 

 experienced in the navigation of the rapids. Mr. Bellew, having still 

 an unpolluted mind, and being zealous and unsophisticated, exhibited on 

 all occasions a just contempt for the tergiversations of the moral hypo- 

 crites by whom he was surrounded. He could not justify to his school 

 understanding, the defamation of all that was great and good in the 

 country — he could not reconcile to his natural sense of right and wrong, 

 the helpless opprobrium that was daily cast vipon the highest official 

 authorities and the resident gentry, with many of whom he was on terms 

 of personal intimacy ; and he accordingly did not hesitate to expound 

 liis notions of good breeding and honourable discussion for the benefit 

 of the impiulent and senseless round him. This species of remon- 

 strance was quite new to the self-elected representatives of all the Catho- 

 lics ; they were astonished to find themselves bearded by a beardless 

 boy ; they murmured, insinuated sunchy malevolent charges, and at 

 last endeavoured to drown his expostulations by the most daring repeti- 

 tions of their offences against society. Among the foremost of the 

 crew was Shell, who always tried to make up by violence what he 

 wanted in power. The chief points of his puny satire were directed 

 against the Beresfords — Avhom he abused collectively and individually. 

 Many believed that he must have had more than ordinary grounds of 

 hatred to the race of Curraghmore, and referred less to his political pre- 

 dilections than his personal ire, as the cause. That he had good reason to 

 detest them, may be drawn from the fact — and the more the fact because 



