to induce us to inquire rigidly into the consequences which have flowed from our new system of governing Ireland.

In advocating this extended Inquiry, sir, I am not calling on this House to adopt the opinions of any writer, or the policy of any party. I am not asking it to wander into speculation, to institute experiments, or to abandon any principle or system. I am merely craving it to discharge a plain and obvious duty, which has not the most remote connexion with party interests. Its own interests call for compliance, as a matter of imperious necessity. If we, sir, have been acting wisely and justly, the Inquiry will supply us with ample proofs to silence our opponents, sanction us in proceeding farther, and regain public confidence.

We may refuse to inquire, and persevere in the conduct we have of late displayed; but if we do, we shall not escape the penalties. The spell, through which we were wont to lead the community, is broken; and it will never more be known to the present generation. So long, sir, as our labours were confined to foreign policy, and the making of laws which were obviously necessary, our infallibility escaped suspicion; the bulk of the nation was compelled to take our words on trust, or it saw that we did, what it was our duty to do. But when we began to make speculative changes in agriculture, manufactures, trade, currency, and the relations of society; we enabled the country to take exact measure of our qualifications. Then, alas! it discovered that we were, not only imperfect, erring men, but that we displayed more imperfection and error, than the generality of men. The humble member of the community perceived, to his inexpressible astonishment, that individuals who were leaders in this House and the country -that individuals who were even the rulers of the empire-were grossly ignorant on matters perfectly familiar to himself. He heard them assert that to be truth, which he knew from ocular demonstration to be fiction; and he saw them enact laws on principles and assumptions, which had been proved to him to be erroneous by the daily experience of his whole life. The charm of names vanished, and the reign of trust ceased.

Let not our leaders and this House hope that mere opinions, no matter from whom they may emanate, will again lead the country. Mr Huskisson will utter his opinions on trade in vain-Mr Peel will utter his opinions on currency in vain-Mr Brougham will utter his opinions on education and the relations between master and servant in vain-this House will utter its opinions on all manner of subjects in vain; for the domination of opinions, I devoutly thank Heaven for it! is no more. We may perseverewe may vaunt of our omniscience and infallibility-we may cover all who oppose us with slander and obloquywe may worship our "liberal principles" and "enlightened views"may be puffed to our hearts' content by the newspapers-but the issue will be, the loss of all that in our public character we ought to value; and the production of all that in our public duty we ought to prevent.

-we

I have said, sir, that this Inquiry has nothing to do with party creeds; and I will now say, that I am not advocating it for the sake of any party of public men. My party bonds extend not beyond principles; they have nothing to do with persons. I oppose those who hold principles which I oppose; and I support those who hold principles which I support, without looking at name and condition. The principles and policy which I steadily withstood in Mr Canning and Mr Huskisson, I will as steadily withstand in any other Minister; the iniquity of acting otherwise shall not stain my forehead. In respect of mere persons, I care no more for the Duke of Wellington than for the Marquis of Lansdown or Lord King-for Mr Peel than for Mr Brougham or Mr Huskisson. Personal politics have been too long the shame and scourge of my country, for me to have any further connexion with them. From the humiliation of combating for one knot of public men against another; when, after their quarrelling and resigning, their treachery, and vituperations of each other, they shake hands, and protest that they have never differed in principle, and have only had a tem◄ porary squabble from dirty personal pique and interest;-from such humiliation I will be careful in future to preserve myself. With the coalitions and alliances, which are the scandal

The strangers prove to be Phryxus, the well-known importer of the Fleece into Colchis-here, indeed, accomplishing the adventure, with aid but of the wings of a ship, not, as in the pure fable, on the back of a flying ram, and the companions of his voyage, driven by storm of the past night upon the Colchian coast. Of the noblest Grecian blood, (thus he relates of himself to Aietes,) Jove-descended, but a fugitive from his father's house, and from envy and hate of the second marriage-bed, seeking his fortune among strangers, he came, his father's spies dodging his flight, to Del phos. In the Temple, in which he stood in the light of the evening sun, weary with the burden of his way, and with gazing on the rich wonders of the place, statues and offerings-he had sunk down in sleep. In his dreams appeared the figure of a man, surrounded with light, in naked strength, bearing in his right hand a club, with bushy beard and hair, and on his shoulders a golden ram's fleece, the very "PERONTO," in a word, whom we saw lately, and whom, for the scene does not change, we still see, guarding from his altar the Colchian shores. This illustrious personage graciously inclined himself towards the sleeper, and smiling, bade him "take with him Victory and Revenge," and, unfastening the Fleece from his shoulders, tendered it to him. Awaking at this instant, he perceived standing before him, amidst the glitter of morning sunshine, the same Form in marble, mantled with even such a Golden Fleece, and, on examination, the name "Colchis," graven on the pedestal, an ancient offering, though, it appears afterwards, not directly from the country, of the Statue of this Deity. Boldly construing the vision, or what was but the wonted fairy-work of fancy and the senses blending their play into a human dream-too small wellhead of the stream of ineffable calamity and acting his interpretationhe took off the Fleece from the shoulders of the God, and, lifting it as a banner on his spear, hastened through the temple gates, through the midst of his father's pursuers awaiting him without, the priests and the people all suddenly awe-struck, and yielding him open way to the sea. It seems his vessel and comrades lay expecting him there, for he embarked, he tells us, forthwith,

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and, with the Fleece flying high, golden streamer" from his mast-head, stemmed the raging flood under wrathful skies, to Colchis.

This story, cast in good classical form, graced with something of a voluble and picturesque Greek eloquence, and very apt to the impressible and unwary speaker, is liable to this censure, that it supposes no deeper origin than the chance-illusion of sleep, to an Act, namely, this earliest Abreption of this famous Fleece, that carried consequences which to Greek thought involved heavenly leading and peculiar dispensations of wrath, first, an expe dition of heroes and demigods for its recovery, and, finally, the overthrow of princely houses. The story little avails the young adventurer who relates it; for it moves in the breast of his royal auditor no singular favour to himself, who is self-convicted, unless a God gave his dream, of double sacrilegeno belief, anxiously solicited, in the protection of Peronto-no misgiving of the murderous purposes, touching himself and his companions, which had found their way into the heart of Aietes, with the intelligence of their arrival. The strangers are all killed, off the stage, at the King's table; and their leader, Phryxus, who, on noticing as his friends dropped one by one into strange sleep, the ominous looks, whispers, and gestures of the attendants, has quitted the house in alarm, is slain by the King's own hand, at the foot of his God's Altar.

The Barbarian has flattered himself, that from this slaughter and spoliation of unoffending strangers, he has removed all criminality and all violation of hospitable right, when, by having neither offered nor refused Phryxus his house's shelter and welcome, he had entangled his victim into inviting himself. But the unfortunate Greek, in the instant of his fate, re-annexes, if one may so speak, to the act this much inseparable guilt, by placing in the hands, and therewith in the custody, of the for one moment incautious Aietes, his property, the Fleece; thus constituting him, it appears, his Host. The poet's private faith as to the efficacy of one or the other remarkable manoeuvre, is not, indeed, as he does not speak in his own person, easily put past doubt. Yet, that he does not judge the last to have been wholly unsuccessful, and if so, then neither

wholly unrequired, we might seem left to guess, from the ingenious, if we should not almost say excessive pains which he ever afterwards takes to attach the mischiefs successively arising,

and every turn almost of his drama's varying fable, to what the reader, no doubt, will own to be now enough weighted with blood and retributionthe Golden Fleece.

The Second Part renews the history, after an interval, apparently, of years. Medea, stricken, if this can be said, with remorse of her father's crime, (in which, however in a degree minister ing to it, the poet does not consider her as participating,) bowed with agony of the deed-still more, perhaps, with the terrific foresight which haunts her of its consequences-the vision glaring in the prophetess's soul, and refusing to be dispelled, of wrath disturbed out of darkness, inexorable, inexpia ble-has fled from human commerce, and shut up in an old desolate tower amongst woods, there mixing past and future in her ceaseless miserable dream, she broods over woe. Hither, by night, Aietes, with his son Absyrtus, now first introduced, comes, seek ing her counsel and succour; for the Revengers, the ARGONAUTS, claiming the spoils of the murdered Phryxus, and above all, the splendid and fatal Fleece, are on his land. Absyrtus, whose innocence of extreme youth, joined with the aspirations of dawning heroism, and with much manly tenderness of filial and brotherly affection, is very happily thought and depicted, leads, with the sprightly pride of a boy, making their way through the thicket with his newly given sword. The old King follows, full of irritation and apprehensions, incensed by the approach of his enemies, trembling at once with belief of their power, and with reflections that rise and are not to be kept down on the cause of their coming, and seeing listeners or spectres, in stones and trees. After some words which explain the posture of affairs, Medea's altered temper, and her manner of life made available by her, it appears, for the prosecution of her magical studies, Absyrtus, at the King's bidding, summons her to descend. She hesitates, till compelled by her father's will and

voice, which, either from an habitual irresistible ascendancy, parental and kingly, held by him over her-or from the sense of duty, she does not disobey. She bears a torch, which the king, whom light offends, desires her to extinguish. He then asks, by what leave, forsaking the protection of the paternal roof, and holding fellowship but with the desert and her own wild mood, she has refused compliance with a message from him, calling her to him. Her answer is in a strain, meant, doubtless, as more deeply tinged with imagination, to be the expression of a mind acting upon itself in long solitude, with vehement and extraor dinary thought. It well expresses, though perhaps too apparently in the forms of a later and different age of thought, one distinguishing constitu ent in our author's invention of his heroine's character-boldly assigned and well applied, for the most part, to support the interest of his poem-and not often much taken out of its dramatic propriety-the Moral Sensibili ty with which he has endowed herand to which, if the reader will add passion measureless in depth and force

self-reliance indestructible-and an understanding in comprehensiveness, insight, and clearness, of the highest order he will possess the outline of Grillparzer's Medea. Need we observe to him, that the impressions which she appears here as suffering, the consternation, from retrospect and prospect, fallen upon her spirit, evidenced indubitably in the manner we have described, and seeking utterance in her words, all tell in tragic effect, far be yond the moment of the drama in which they are made present to sight and hearing, that the gloom thus loaded upon its opening scenes, passes not along with these from the spectator's heart.

Thine house is hateful to me