ought to have entered when a mere boy, before the manly feelings expand, otherwise the severity of the discipline, and the treatment I should in nine cases out of ten be subject to, would imbitter my life. I repeatedly thanked the good knight for his advice, and promised to follow it. I had still, however, a hankering for the noble profession with all its drawbacks; but the thoughts of the gruff Lord Charles, and that old demon of the Deptford hulk, kept my mind in a constant state of suspense for several days. At length I decided, and forthwith resigned my berth. 107440 CHAPTER X. "O Westmoreland, thou art a summer bird, Ir may be necessary to refer to the state of Ireland at this period. The year 1792 was distinguished for the suppression of that dangerous political society, "THE UNITED IRISHMEN;" and the following year, the boon of the elective franchise was conceded to the Roman Catholic freeholders, as a measure of conciliation to the members of that church; and this, too, in the very zenith of the power of that political faction, which assumed to itself the right, or, at least, exercised the power, of dictating to the representative of Majesty, and whose partisans, with all their distinctive sagacity, saw but too clearly to what farther encroachment this partial concession would eventually lead. The government of the country was then vested in John, Earl of Westmoreland, who was himself in the hands of such men as the Chancellor Clare, Chief Justice Clonmell, the Beresfords, and their powerful adherents. Lord Westmoreland was then at thirty-three, what he still continues at seventy, a lover of pleasure as well as powerapparently tenacious of both; but if the sacrifice of one for the preservation of the other became an indispensable condition of his existence, he would have resigned the latter. He had, the year before, lost his amiable countess, the daughter and coheiress of the wealthy Mr. Child, the banker; and at the period I now refer to, was endeavouring to cheer his hours of widowhood in the fascinating society of the celebrated Mrs. Stratford, since Countess of Aldborough, wife to Colonel the Honourable John Stratford, then nicknamed "the goat;" for what reason I never presumed to inquire; and can only guess that it might be from his attachment to the mountains of Wicklow, where he had so constantly rusticated and browsed, that it was almost forgotten that Mrs. Stratford had such a thing as a husband, until the decease of his brother, the earl, who, from certain well-known circumstances, was nicknamed "Otium sine dignitate," raised him to a title and a new place in society. The Lord Lieutenant, relieved from much of the cares of state by the dominion exercised over his government by the party referred to, had little more to do in state affairs than wade through the tedious minutes of a council, affix his signature, and so conclude his public duties. His lordship may be truly said to have lived in the saddle one-third part of his life. Age has not controlled or crippled his habits of locomotion: his greatest enjoyment seems, even now, to be to move with rapidity, without, apparently, any given object but the mere pleasure which velocity of motion conveys to him. In his chariot, no pace under twelve miles an hour will keep a coachman in his place for one month. On the breaking up of a council, his lordship was to be seen issuing in full pace from the gate of the castle-yard, followed, or rather pursued, by a vice-regal staff: his dress a plain brown coat, (hence the name Westmoreland brown, long known in Dublin,) white leathers, as now, brown top-boots, a cocked hat, worn, as was then the fashion, parade-ways, (not fore and aft;) with a suite comprising all the dashing men of the day. Amongst the number was the illustrious Wellington, then Major Arthur Wellesley, aide-de-camp to his Excellency; Colonel Cradock, (now Lord Howden ;) Colonel Freemantle, who died in 1799, on his passage from the West Indies, after the reduction of the French islands; an officer of distinguished gallantry, whose name and military character find an honourable representative in the person of his son, Colonel· John Freemantle, Coldstream Guards, who served as aide-decamp to the great Wellington during the whole of his peninsular campaign. The vice-regal court was never at any period more gaydare I say licentious? The care of the nation was left to those whom long habit and the pleasure and profits of dominion reconciled to the drudgery and corruption, the great and only power of government, which stalked uncontrolled through every office and department of the state. Supreme in pride, in talent, and authority, stood the Lord Chancellor Clare, a man whose daring mind admitted of no dictation. No pedant ever exercised a more complete mastery over his submissive scholars than did this modern Wolsey over an obsequious House of Peers, although opposed by a Leinster, a Charlemont, and other tried patriots; while in the Commons, the Beresfords, Fosters, Hutchinsons, Dawsons, and Tolers, held their sway against the talents of Grattan, Ponsonby, Connolly, and Curran. It may appear a puerile observation, but it will at the same time be admitted as an extraordinary circumstance, that the period alluded to, was that of the power of the JOHNS; take, for example, the following names, drawn from the tablet of memory. CHAPTER XI. "THREE to thine-THREE to thine- THE REIGN OF THE JOHNS. John, Earl of Westmoreland, was Lord Lieutenant. John Scott, Earl Clonmell, Lord Chief Justice. John Hutchinson, Provost, Trinity College, with two sons in Parliament. John Beresford, chief commissioner of the revenue. John Foster, (Lord Oriel,) Speaker of the House of Com mons. John Toler, (Earl Norbury,) Solicitor-General. John P. Curran, his great political antagonist. Sir John Blaquiere, (afterwards Lord de Blaquiere,) chief commissioner of the paving and lighting board, and job-mastergeneral to His Majesty's government! Of the first on the list, it might be said that, as he thought by proxy, and acted under control, he ought not to be deemed responsible for the evils of his administration. This is the most charitable view that can be taken of his government of the Irish nation, which he found agitated and left convulsed. The second, JOHN FITZGIBBON, EARL CLARE, was a man formed by nature for deeds of daring: on him the gownsman's robes unseemly sat; in his hands, the sceptre would not have proved a bauble, nor the marshal's truncheon a mere badge of office. He had a mind capable of ruling the destinies of nations, and bending them to his purpose; but, fortunately for mankind, the opinions of his ambition were professionally fettered in his early life; the sole object of which seemed to be to crush the liberties and subdue the spirit of the land of his fathers. It has been said, I know not how truly, that he was educated at a Jesuit's college on the continent; and certainly his sophistical arguments in all political discussion in which he made "the worse appear the better reason,” would incline me to believe he owed his manner of thinking to the lessons inculcated by the disciples of Loyola: as I have not yet done with him, I shall dismiss his name for the present, and turn to that of JOHN SCOTT, BARON EARLSFORT, VISCOUNT and EARL of CLONMELL, was one who, from the humblest beginning, rose to the highest professional dignity, and to a political consequence not easily conceivable by Englishmen, accustomed to see the judges of the land, with the exception of the Chancellor, confine their powers to the sphere of their respective courts. John Scott, known in his own county, Tipperary, by the soubrique of Shawn Bwee, "yellow (or brazen-faced) Jack," was contemporary with the amiable Yelverton (Chief Baron, and afterwards Lord Avonmore;) with Wolfe, of Kildare (Lord Kilwarden ;) James Fitzgerald, prime-sergeant, father of the Right Honourable Vesey Fitzgerald; with Burke, Flood, Grattan, Curran, and a host of luminaries of those days. He had early distinguished himself at college, by a haughty, unbending temper, which poverty could not subdue, nor kindness conciliate. He semed to feel that he possessed within his own powerful mind the germ of future greatness; and bore himself with corresponding dignity. I have heard that he originally entered college as sizer, or servitor, in which capacity it was a portion of his duty to place the dishes on the dining table of the fellows; but this was no degradation when shared by a Yelverton and others, who in after life put fortune to the blush for her capricious neglect of youthful genius. To the honour of the fellows, also, let it be recorded that the most marked respect was invariably shown by them personally to those gentlemen, who, in the discharge of an ancient duty, more honoured in the breach than the observance, had a task to perform so humiliating to a high-minded youth. Having passed through college with credit, Scott proceeded to England to eat his terms, and, having gone through that routine, was called to the bar. In the unsettled state of Irish politics, and with a strong opposition in the Commons, government watched the rising talent exhibited at the bar as a source of future support. Scott, with ambitious foresight, saw the path to fame, to wealth, and rank open to him; he did not scruple to embrace the means of advancing his claims to them. He tendered his services to the crown party, was accepted, and immediately returned for a government borough. In 1774, when scarcely thirty-five years of age, he became solicitor-general; and having been successively promoted to the offices of attorney-general and prime-sergeant, he was, in 1784, elevated to the chief justiceship of the King's Bench, with the honours of a peerage. Whether in the senate, or at the bar, he was equally decided and overbearing. Courageous by constitution, and pugnacious by policy, he not only talked, but fought his way to professional and political distinction; indeed, there was that honourable, or, as some may term it, barbarous, understanding in the members of both houses, that they were liable at any moment to be called to an account for personalities, and, consequently, in almost every warm debate, the seeds of a personal rencontre were laid. Scott's impetuous and domineering style of declamation exposed him, both in town and on circuit, to the trial of the trigger; and having perfectly established his character as a man of unflinching courage, he could the better afford those proofs of moderation and concession, which, in a few years, he judged it prudent to exhibit. Professional honours fell thick upon his brow. He was borne on a tide of success from his first appearance in public life, while his fortune received a considerable and splendid increase by his second marriage with Miss Lawless, daughter of an opulent citizen of Dublin, a remarkably fine woman, who survived her lord thirty years, and continued in the enjoyment of health and the daily practice of piety and benevolence to an advanced age. The government found in the courtly judge all the spirit and fire of the daring advocate. We have had but one man in our latter days to whom as a judge we can compare him, and whose admission to a seat in the cabinet did more to bring the name of British justice into discredit and contempt than even the intemperate judgments of that modern Rhadamanthus. Scott, when raised to the peerage, became one of the chief props of that corrupt, tottering fabric, the Westmoreland administration, and sustained his powerful position during the remainder of his active life. JOHN HELY HUTCHINSON, having been the father of ministerial jobs for the preceding thirty years, in the year 1793, yield |