was the famous Lord Chesterfield, who, to use his own words, 'came determined to proscribe no set of persons, and to be governed by none.' His impressions are stated in a letter to Mr. Prior: I cannot help saying that, except in your claret, which you are very anxious should be two or three years old, you think of two or three years hence less than any people under the sun.’ When life and property are constantly at stake, when scarcely a generation is permitted to die out without witnessing a rebellion, a civil war, an armed convention, or an organised resistance to authority-can any one be surprised that regular industry and domestic economy are at a discount, or that the public treasury is almost universally regarded as the mart where talents and principles may be bartered without scruple? The letter which the Right Honourable Lodge Morres addressed to the Duke of Portland, July 14, 1798, is one instance of the extent to which Irish placehunters were hardened against all sensibility to shame :

I have always looked up to you for every virtue that could adorn the most exalted character, and have ever found them in your possession; and to be esteemed the attached and unalterable friend of your Grace is the highest satisfaction of my heart; in that light I offered my services to Lord Camden, and relinquished my party and broke them up; I showed the Opposition of Ireland when and where to stop, and I succeeded; the value of my friendship was so far estimated that I was desired to name my objects, which I did; they were a Commissionership of the Treasury and a Peerage, and they were acceded to.'

Eat, drink, and be merry,' has been invariably the cry in every agitated or alarmed community; whether a plague-stricken city, like the Florence of the Decameron, or a kingdom rent by factions, like the Fronde. Making every allowance for exaggeration, it is impossible to doubt that the habits of the Irish gentry during the half century preceding the Union were fatal to selfcontrol and self-respect. The most independent spirit is degraded in its own despite by pecuniary embarrassment; and any chance visitings of remorse at having bartered a conviction or profession for a place, would be speedily drowned in the intoxication of prolonged revelry amongst companions who were running the same race of profligacy. Whatever may be thought of Sir Jonah Barrington's general accuracy, the custom which he' records and illustrates of inviting a party to drink out a hogshead of claret, was notoriously prevalent. Castle Rackrent,' at all events, will be received as a true picture of manners; and the following document, the jocular production of Lord Mountjoy, suggests that Shanes Castle may have supplied Miss Edgeworth with a trait or two:

"Resolutions

"Resolutions formed to promote regularity at Shanes Castle, at the meeting for the representation of Cymbeline, Nov. 20, 1785.

"1. That no noise be made during the forenoon, for fear of wakening the company.

"2. That there shall be no breakfast made after four o'clock in the afternoon, nor tea after one in the morning.

"3. To inform any stranger who may come in at breakfast that we are not at dinner.

4. That no person be permitted to go out airing after breakfast till the moon gets up, for fear of being overturned in the dark.

5. That the respective grooms may put up their horses after four hours' parading before the hall door of the Castle.

6

6. That there shall be one complete hour between each meal. “7. That all the company must assemble at dinner before the cloth is removed.

"8. That supper may not be called for till five minutes after the last glass of claret.

9. That no gentleman be permitted to drink more than three bottles of hock at or after supper.

10. That all M.P.s shall assemble on post-days in the coffeeroom at four o'clock to frank letters."

Barrington states that, when the Union was under discussion, Lord Castlereagh invited twenty or thirty of his staunchest supporters, offighting families,' to a dinner, at which a formal proposal was made by Sir John Blaquiere, and received with acclamation, that they should make the measure a personal question, and compel the leaders of the opposition to accept the arbitrament of the pistol or the sword. Mr. H. Grattan, in his Memoirs of his father, confirms the statement, and adds, 'It was said they had singled out their men; that Lord Castlereagh should attack George Ponsonby; Corry, Mr. Grattan; Daly, Mr. Plunket; Toler, Mr. Bushe; and Martin, Mr. Goold.'

Now in what manner, according to both Mr. H. Grattan and Barrington, did the patriots prepare to baffle, defeat, and expose this nefarious conspiracy against their own lives and the independence of their beloved country? Did they rely on the soundness of their cause, on the force of reason, on the immutable principles of truth and justice? They knew their countrymen too well. They called a countermeeting at Lord Charlemont's, and resolved to employ the same weapons as their adversaries. They were to be bribed and bullied. They resolved to bribe and bully in their turn :—

'One of the plans,' continues Mr. H. Grattan, adopted and acted upon by the opposition, was to bring into Parliament members to vote against the Union; it amounted in fact, to a project to outbuy the Minister, which in itself was unwise, injudicious, and almost im

practicable,

practicable, and in which they were sure to be behind the Government. A second plan was their literary war; this, as far as it went, was good, but it came too late and was too feeble a weapon at such a crisis. The third plan was to meet the Castle Club, and fight them at their own weapons. This would have proved the most effective and deadly of the three plans, but it was hazardous, and in principle it could scarcely be sanctioned; and was acted upon but in one instance (that of Mr. Grattan and Mr. Corry), and the meeting at Charlemont House rejected it.'

He states that his father inclined towards the fighting scheme; and Barrington, who thinks that either plan, if spiritedly executed, would have defeated the Minister, owns with a sigh, that the supporters of the Union indisputably showed more personal spirit than their opponents during the ensuing session.' Mr. H. Grattan remarks: it is possible if two or three courtiers had been killed, the Union might have been prevented: unquestionably Lord Clare and Lord Castlereagh deserved to die.' This speculation is thrown out as carelessly as if the writer was merely repeating Sydney Smith's comic suggestion, that railway carriages would never be left unlocked until a bishop was burnt in one of them. Nor does either of these representatives of Irish feelings and opinion seem to know that their fighting scheme is neither more nor less than a modified version of Bobadil's. We would challenge twenty of the enemy; they could not in honour refuse. Well, we would kill them! challenge twenty more! kill them twenty more; kill them too! and so on.' The truth is, the scheme was in accordance with the manners of the period; and the Irish laws of duelling seemed framed for the express purpose of encouraging bullies and neutralising any incidental good which has been supposed to result from the practice. Any anxiety for an explanation or accommodation on the part of either seconds or principals was thought to betray a lack of courage. Challenges were given or provoked by way of mere bravado ; and what would now be considered the most indefensible irregularities, were permitted on the ground.

In the duel between Lord Clare, then Attorney-General, and Curran, the parties were left to fire when they chose. I never,' said Curran, saw any one whose determination seemed more malignant than Fitzgibbon's. After I had fired, he took aim at me for at least half a minute; and on its proving ineffectual, I could not help exclaiming to him, It was not your fault, Mr. Attorney-you were deliberate enough.'

In the duel between Corry and Grattan, Corry was wounded at the first fire, yet they went on covering each with their second pistols, each wishing to reserve his fire, until it was arranged that both should fire at a signal, which they did, and missed.

The

The duel between Alcock and Coldclough, which took place in the presence of several hundred freeholders and eight or ten county magistrates, was preceded by a discussion whether, one of the combatants being near sighted, neither should wear spectacles or both. 'Without my glasses!' exclaimed the near-sighted combatant; I could not see to shoot a man at twelve paces,

my own father.'

if it was

Martin tried the temper of George Robert Fitzgerald's concealed armour by discharging two holster pistols pointblank against his ribs. Notwithstanding the repeated detection and exposure of this notorious bully's cowardly and treacherous mode of fighting, he retained a footing in society till he was hanged.

The climax of unreason was reached in Curran's affair with Major Hobart, then Secretary for Ireland. Curran, having been affronted by a man named Gifford, declared 'he would rather do without fighting all his life than fight such a fellow; but as Gifford was a revenue officer, maintained that Major Hobart should dismiss him for his impertinence, or fight in his place. The Secretary demurred, and on Curran's insisting, referred the question to Lord Carhampton, the commander-in-chief, who decided it thus: A secretary of state fighting for an exciseman would be rather a bad precedent, but a major in the King's service is pugnacious by profession, and must fight anybody that asks him.' They exchanged shots without harm to either. In one remarkable instance, Lord Carhampton, the Colonel Luttrell of Middlesex celebrity, did not abide by his own maxim; for he refused to fight his father, not because he was his father, but because he was not a gentleman.

Station, however grave, was not claimed or accepted as a bar. The Provost of the College, Hutchinson, fought Doyle, a Master in Chancery; and when a pupil asked his advice about a course of legal study, replied, Buy a case of good pistols, learn the use of them, and they will get you on faster than Fearne or Blackstone.' Toler (Lord Norbury) followed this method so successfully that he was said to have shot up into preferment. A curious specimen of his language has been preserved, along with many other curious traits of Irish manners, by Mr. Charles, Phillips : 'Had I (said Toler) heard a man out of doors using such language as that by which the honourable member (George Ponsonby) has violated the decorum of Parliament, I would have seized the ruffian by the throat and dragged him to the ground.' The only gleam of good sense in their code of honour was the common understanding that no affront was implied in a joke, as when, in a debate on the Sinecure Bill, Curran declared he was the guardian of his own honour; and Sir Boyle Roche reVol. 105.-No. 209. torted,

D

torted, Then the Honourable Gentleman holds a very pretty sinecure, and has taken the wrong side.'

It was consequently not grossly improbable that some such scheme as that mentioned by Grattan and Barrington should have been meditated; but it was absurd to father it on Lord Castlereagh, who combined a polished calmness of demeanour with imperturbable courage. He coolly and almost contemptuously replied to an unparliamentary provocation from Grattan:

'Every one must be sensible that if any personal quarrel were desired, any insulting language used publicly where it could not be met as it deserved, was the way to prevent and not to produce such a rencounter.'

One story currently related, and generally believed amongst his ill-wishers, was, that a member of the Irish Parliament who had stood out for higher terms fell ill, and was visited in his sick-room by his Lordship, who announced that he had made up his mind to accede to them. It is too late, my Lord,' said the invalid; I have been at the point of death, and I made a vow that, if ever I got well, I would lay all that has passed between us before the House of Commons.' And if you do,' replied Lord Castlereagh, I will give you the lie direct first, and shoot you afterwards." Most of our readers will recollect a somewhat similar anecdote traditionally recorded of Wilkes, on Luttrell's threatening to expose him from the hustings.

The Irish Parliament met on January 22, 1799, and the question of the Union, already broached in the British Parliament by Mr. Pitt, was made the subject of an animated discussion in the House of Commons. It arose on an amendment to the address moved by Mr. Ponsonby, That the House would be ready to enter into any measure short of surrendering their free, resident, and independent Legislature, as established in 1782.' The point on which the Opposition principally relied was the incompetency of Parliament to entertain the question. The debate continued without intermission twenty-one hours,* from Tuesday, January 22, 4 P.M., to Wednesday, January 23, 1 P.M., when the division took place, and the numbers were 105 for the amendment and 106 against, giving the Government a majority of one.

All sorts of stories were afloat as to the manner in which this majority was obtained. The Opposition organs asserted that,

* The longest debates, says Mr. Ross, ever known in the Imperial Parliament were those on the Walcheren expedition in 1810; on the committal of Sir F. Burdett to the Tower in the same year; and on the Reform Bill in 1831. In the first the fourth division took place about 8 A.M. on the following day; the second also lasted fifteen hours; and in the last Mr. Fergusson found the House still sitting between seven and eight in the morning, when he came down to take his seat for the debate of the ensuing night.

whilst