,310 Montesquieu Bellew and Lawyer Shell : [^Sept. 



and that the procrastination of dangerous objects was better than their 

 precipitation. Evil as were the whole gang with whom he associated, 

 he still preserved his moral purity : he cannot be accused of any of those 

 meannesses and abominations which his companions perpetrated ! he is 

 bad for being of them, but the choice was scarcely of his election. It is said 

 that he once breathed the air of official favour, and grew ashamed of the 

 men in whom he had been accustomed to confide. One always revolts 

 at low company after enjoying liigher and more intellectual society. 

 Certain it is that should he once emancipate himself from the trammels 

 of his plebeian party, he will never return to their earthly communion. 

 One of his relatives, we believe his uncle, is in the enjoyment of a 

 pension from the Government. This is some guarantee for the conduct 

 of the nephew. He will not wantonly vituperate men in authority, 

 merely because they are so ; but feel disposed, with Lord Chesterfield, to 

 thmk twice, before he speak once. After all, there is some assurance of 

 propriety and good faith in high birth, or even association with the 

 upper classes. Men of rank, and those who are habitually in their 

 company, carry into public life, generally, the nobility of carriage 

 which marks them in private ; they are above the use of slander and 

 petty expedients; they are usually honourable and elevated in their 

 feelings; and can no more descend to the base subterfuges than 

 to the degrading customs of the ccwaille. Witness the examples of 

 both in our own ministry. Contrast Peel and Lyndhurst even with 

 Wellington, the prime innovator. Does not the mind feel almost respect 

 for the haughty bearing of the one, compared with the shrinking 

 and adaptive tenacity of the others ? Does not the aboriginal pettiness 

 stick to the sons of the painter and the weaver, which, \dth all his faults, 

 we can no where discern in the victor of Waterloo ? We condemn 

 Wellington for his ambition — it will lead him and his country into great 

 peril ; but we abhor his compeers for the want of that very temperament 

 the excess of which we censure in him. Had they nobler aspirations, 

 and he juster, perhaps we might have forgotten the distinctions of birth, 

 and left them to fix their own rank in their proper circles. 



]\Ir. Bellew's uncle was a lawyer of some consideration, and during 

 the period when Scully was insulting the common sense of his profession 

 by one of the most monstrous fictions that ever escaped from the pen of 

 a legal Avriter — when Keogh was heading a band of mercurial shop- 

 keepers in the metropolis — and sundry other wild freaks were perpetrat- 

 ing by the excited Catholics in various parts of the country — he kept 

 aloof from their drunken brawls and inflammatory meetings, and satisfied 

 his patriotism by occasionally advising both the administration and the 

 people against the consequences likely to ensue from the atrocious appeals 

 of the fanatical champions of equal rights to the corfstituency of the 

 country. One of the favourite schemes of reform in those days was the 

 annihilation of the obnoxious members of the government ; an effective 

 recipe, no doubt, for a change of heads as well as hands. Physical re- 

 volution was the dai'Ung theory ; the moral purpose was left unconsidered. 

 In expressing his dissent from doctrines and designs so flagitious, Mr. 

 BeUew exposed himself to hazards in various shapes. The worst of all 

 was the imputation of being a bad Catholic ; which, however, he had 

 courage to bear without repining. He could afford to be thought an in- 

 different disciple of the mother church, while he advanced the true 

 interests of his native land, and upheld the legitimate authority of the 



