He thought her a goddess, she thought him a fool (as I have no doubt she did), And I'll swear she was most in the right.'

"My hostess looked flushed and offended. 'I don't mind your laughing at me,' she said, 'but pray don't laugh at verses which came from the very heart of my husband when we first knew each other, and which I will treasure to my dying day.' I hastened to apologize for my rudeness, and got out of the scrape indifferently well."

In the early days of the Nation I had cultivated an affectionate intimacy with Charles Dumphie, an intimacy founded on the idem nolle et idem velle in literature rather than in politics. Many a delightful evening we spent with Clarence Mangan and the poets and many more tête-à-tête. But our paths diverged; he went to London, and when I entered the House of Commons he occupied a confidential position on the literary and parliamentary staff of the Morning Post. I encountered my old friend accidentally in Palace Yard, and in a short conversation discovered to my regret that his opinions were altogether in harmony with his new du ties.

He inquired why I did not speak oftener, and I laughed and said there was something in my breast which forbade me being an orator, to wit, my lungs; I did not believe my voice could fill so large a hall as the House. few days afterwards he sent me the result of his observation as something on which I could confidently act.

A

"If your health is sufficiently restored, which I sincerely hope it is, to admit of your undergoing the drudgery of Parliament next session, I hope you will not allow any morbid feeling respecting your voice to prevent you from speaking. Pardon the frankness of an old friend. You have got an excellent voice, as audible as a bell through the whole House, and the very

tion not unfavorably. Your voice is singularly distinct and articulate and, I am sure of it, a thousand times more grateful to the ear than either the cock-sparrow chatter of the Cockney or the greasy brogue of the Munster man.

"I am only in the country while Parliament is not sitting. On the opening of the session I shall return to London, for I suppose I am bound for my life to the midnight vigils."

Now, when we are both within view of the final resting-place, I cannot deny myself the pleasure of quoting another sentence from his note: "I have ever thought you the purest public man, and the most high souled that has meddled with Irish politics in my day."

When Parliament reassembled, the Leaguers urged on the appointment of the select committee, to which the Land Bills were referred. After much negotiation a committee of twenty-nine members was chosen, half of them being unequivocal landlords or landlords' friends, and on the other part Shee, Lucas, Duffy, and Colonel Greville from the League; Mr. Bright and Doctor Phillimore, as amici curiæ, and other neutrals, including Mr. James Sadleir, brother of the new lord of the treasury, and Mr. J D. Fitzgerald, a future attorney-general. During this session the labor of the Leaguers was constant and exhaustive. When the select committee sat we attended the House at noon, and only left it after midnight. Every Catholic or Irish interest in any part of the empire was referred to some of us. In the House we sat among enemies, and faced more formidable enemies on the other side of it, the representatives of the constituencies supported by the undoubted majority of the Irish bishops. And after our success against Sadleir we had no further success; as the session proceeded, whenever a candidate went to the hustings he was hamstrung from behind by episcopal friends of Doctor Cullen. But the most important deserter from the principles which had carried Crawford's Bill to a second reading was Mr. Crawford himself. He

published a letter advising the tenant farmers to accept and be thankful for a measure more moderate than his bill. He described the policy by which the Irish party had won so signal a success in the current session, and described it accurately, as a policy of "acting on their pledges." But though two members had just forfeited theirs, he was not disposed to complain. He found it impossible to doubt that they would use the position they had obtained to promote public ends. Though we all now know that he might as reasonably have given credit for good intentions to Titus Oates as to John Sadleir, it would be cruel to triumph over the mistakes of an honorable man. As he had been twenty years in Parliament without getting his bill read a second time, while the men whom he lectured carried it to a second reading in a single session, it would have been modest to recognize that they were better judges ofarliamentary policy than he was.1

The new chancellor of the exchequer was Mr. Gladstone, who signalized himself by Free Trade concessions worthy of the favorite pupil of Sir Robert Peel. But it was necessary to recoup the Treasury for relinquished taxes, and he proposed to recoup it by imposing for the first time an income-tax on Ireland. The late government had refrained from this

1 It cannot be doubted that in the policy of the Northerns the example of Crawford counted for much. An unjust prejudice against Lucas as a furious bigot (which he was not; he was a zealot, not a bigot) prevailed from an early period, and some of them were persuaded that it is only men in office who can carry questions successfully through the House of Commons. But Negro Slavery had been abolished by Wilberforce, Religious Equality established by O'Connell, and Free Trade by Cobden, without any of them having held office under the crown. There were lower motives also at work. The prime minister was a Presbyterian, and the Duke of Argyll and two other colleagues belong to the same Church. If there were four Catholics in the Cabinet it could not be doubted that the Catholics who had imperilled the League on the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill would have been found hoorahing at their backs, and we were patient with this sympathy."—"League of North and South." London: Chapman & Hall.

measure on the specific ground that Ireland was already overtaxed in proportion to her resources, and Mr. Disraeli still objected to the proposal. In Ireland it was regarded as deliberately and contemptuously unfair, and a storm of resistance arose. It could not be carried without the assistance of Irish members, and it was thought impossible they could assent to it. But the dependence of Mr. Keogh's confederates on the Treasury was complete, and they believed they could defy popular resistance. On the second reading only one Irish member was absent. Of those present, seventy-two voted against the bill, but thirty-two went into the government lobby. When the measure got into committee, I ventured to tell the government that they had obtained this decisive vote by corruption as base as that employed by Walpole and the Pelhams two generations earlier. An indignant deserter moved that my words should be taken down, and after a fierce debate I was ordered to attend in my place next day that I might withdraw them or suffer the penalty of a refusal. When the House met there was an immense attendance of members, and the accommodation provided for strangers was crowded in all parts. I was assured I should be sent to prison, perhaps expelled, if I did not make a humble submission. My course was different; I declined to withdraw my words; but if a committee of inquiry were granted, I undertook to prove that the career of Messrs. Keogh, Sadleir, and some of their associates justified all I had asserted. But this was an inquiry which government. The did not suit the leader of the House objected to the investigation on the ground that his colleagues had not been corrupted, but only converted to better opinions, and the deserters sat dumb and gloomy amidst the jeers of the Opposition. It was insisted by the Irish party that a bribe was not less a bribe because it was paid quarterly at the Treasury; but as the government proposed to let the subject drop without more ado, we considered we had scored a decisive

success, and the infamy of the transaction referred to was made known to the English people for the first time. From the press gallery kindly eyes were looking down on the contest. Edward Whitty wrote me a hasty note:

"Your quiet and respectful mannerbut self-possessed and dogged-saved you, for manner is everything. Your walk out of the House was a stroll-a splendid coup. Unbounded admiration was general in the gallery. In my time no man ever went through such a scene. I am happy in thinking you have a fine adviser in Shee. Lucas behaved like a hero. The House has been idiotic-keep it in the wrong."

In Ireland the conflict created an enthusiasm which has long faded into obscurity, but the contemporary letters and journals were full of it, and a letter from Dublin, when one makes allowance for the undue kindness of the writer, will help to realize it.

"We are all proud and gratified-I cannot tell you how much-at what has happened. And Dublin has fairly forgotten the exhibition for the last two days. Passing any group on Saturday or yesterday in the streets, one was sure to hear something about Gavan Duffy. And there has been no attempt even to deny that you did the thing bravely, skilfully and successfully. The Four Courts gossip on Saturday freely admitted so much. . . . Nothing has happened that will so much damn the opposite faction. There is a great deal of dishonest twaddle that people might have listened to here, but this scene has given them an actual insight into the House. I have heard no one speak of it who did not utter himself as if it had passed under his own eyes. After Keogh's talk about men who would slink before him in London, though they ranted and wrote here, it happens well and timely. The scene makes you the most popular man in Ireland. It is high access of faith and courage to the poor country, too."

realized all its disastrous consequences. Mr. Gladstone must have known that he was imposing a heavy burthen upon Ireland, but he had not yet awakened from the delusion common to his class since the Norman conquest, that dependencies and colonies, partners and allies, existed mainly for the benefit of England. He was far from divining that he was inflicting a blow upon Ireland nearly as fatal as the Union. The unfortunate Irish deserters could not fail to know that they were abetting a wrong to their nauve country for their personal benefit. But it is probable that none of them knew that from that hour prosperity and contentment became impossible, that to every class and every man, not an official paid from the English treasury, life would become a constant struggle, and that there would be carried out of the country yearly the profits of industry on which States thrive, and that public tranquillity, which is the balsam of life, would become impossible. The reader is invited to note that that popular Budget originated the most serious part of the injustice disclosed by the royal commission on the financial relations of Great Britain and Ireland which is occupying Parliament and the press while these pages are being written. The wrong it discloses is not a sentimental grievance which may be dismissed with other forgotten wrongs belonging to the dead past, but a practical one altogether outside of party, and which will largely determine the future fortune of the country.

The vote of the Irish members on the income-tax satisfied the government they had nothing to fear from those gentlemen; the result was prompt and decisive. Lord Palmerston told the select committee on the land bills that he saw no necessity for any legislation on the question. Next day Crawford's Bill was set aside by nineteen to nine. Mr. Napier's Bills were next taken in hand and carefully pruned. The Tenants' Compensation Bill, as it left the committee, ignored Ulster tenant-right and denied compensation for the class of improvements most commonly made

in Ireland. The country had been rendered habitable by an industry like that which raised Venice on a quagmire or Holland on a sandbank; yet all improvements more than twenty years in existence were confiscated. Inordinate rents had, as we know, created habitual arrears; in former measures a landlord ejecting a tenant was enabled to set off these arrears against any claims for compensation, but the modified bill went a step farther, and declared that if a tenant was ejected for non-payment of rent or arrears he should not be entitled to compensation for any improvements whatever.

Half-a-dozen by-elections occurred shortly afterwards; three seats were vacated on petition by election committees. In two of them the late members who had deserted with Mr. Keogh presented themselves for re-election and were chosen. At Sligo, where an English gentleman had lost his seat on petition, Mr. John Sadleir presented himself, was proposed by the parish priest and supported by the bishop, and got elected. In every constituency there was a group of manly, resolute priests and farmers who stood by the League, but they were warned that the hand of episcopal authority would fall heavy upon them.

Let me relieve the painful monotony of these disasters by some social details from my diary:

"I dined at John Brady's, to meet Sheridan Knowles, and had a long talk with the poet. He has a brow somewhat retreating, but expressive eyes and a sweet pleasant mouth. He was accompanied by his wife, a lady who is too aggressively pious for social enjoy. ment, and constantly whips the poor man up to his Thirty-nine Articles, When the ladies vanished, Knowles talked in the most frank and cordial

manner. He was a professor of rhetoric in the Belfast Institution twenty years ago, and had had Emerson Tennant, Thomas O'Hagan, and Joseph Napier, all now eminent men, for pupils, and they profited by his teaching. He had trained them, he said, in effective elocution, an art without which

Law

good speaking and good reading were impossible, but which any man might learn at any age. His dearest friend in Belfast was John Lawless-Jack Lawless, the Catholic agitator. less was the soul of honor, always interesting and exhilarating, and sometimes exhibiting unexpectedly sound judgment. But the Athens of Ireland was an exile for a man of literary tastes. In London his best friend was William Hazlitt. He owed Hazlitt than he could express for early But for counsel and encouragement. him he would probably never have been a dramatist. But it would not have much mattered. Marston's 'Patrician's Daughter' contained more poetry than all his own dramas. Hazlitt's one weakness was that he would

more to

not bear contradiction. I said Hazlitt was one of my earliest masters in literature, a man of wide and strikingly original powers; but what a fate he had endured!-slandered by the Blackwood gang, patronized by his inferiors among his usual associates, and recognized for what he really was by scarcely any compeer except Charles Lamb. 'Yes,' Knowles said, 'and Lamb was a Tory who did not share any of his opinions.' I mentioned that Horne, the author of 'Orion,' told me that, having a strong desire to see Hazlitt after his death, as he had not been fortunate enough to see him before, he visited the house where he died. The body was lying on an old piano, covered with a sheet pas trop propre, and there was not a human being in attendance on a man who had done more for popular liberty and the personal freedom which is the cream of liberty than any of the Broughams or Jeffreys who had been swathed in patrician robes or seated in some high fauteuil. 'Yes,' Knowles said, 'one thing a man had better make up his mind to the rewards in public life rarely fall to the generous workers, and what he said about elocution, I said I never to the pioneers.' Recurring to could not help thinking that it was useless to teach elocution to any man whom nature had not equipped with the necessary organization. I had taken lessons from a friend of his, Moore Stack, who had played in John of Procida' and

some other of Knowles's dramas, but all I learned was to enjoy dramatic poetry more keenly. Moore, he said-for that was the name he was known by on the stage-would have been one of the finest actors in England if he had persisted. But one must respect his motives; he had religious scruples, because the Catholic Church censured the stage. Knowles told us that he himself had latterly taken to preaching (under the influence of madame, we may surmise) in a Baptist chapel, and was to hold forth that night. Our host proposed that we should adjourn from the table to the tabernacle and bring back Knowles to supper. The service was startling, stretching to the very borders of melodrama; in the prayer, the preacher held a colloquy with his Creator which was probably unique in pulpit oratory. 'O God,' he said, 'who hast graciously selected Thy servant to do Thy work, and peremptorily drawn him away from the fascinating pleasures of this world for Thy service, be pleased to ordain,' etc. I never heard Mr. Knowles again!"

I shall not obtrude into this sketch of transactions in the House of Commons the proceedings which in Ireland undermine the authority of the party of independent opposition. All the landed gentry, the coalition government, the majority of the Irish bishops under the influence of Dr. Cullen, Archbishop of Dublin and papal delegate, were opposed to them at every point, and, under the influence of the latter, priests who had given an active assistance to the League were directed to abstain from politics. As this order was considered ultra vires, an appeal to the pope against the archbishop was carried to Rome by Frederick Lucas, but the appeal was not successful; the Irish party were beaten at every point by those upon whom they were entitled to rely. To win the Irish constituencies without the help of the local clergy was as hopeless as it would have been for the Stuart pretenders to raise the Highlands without the help of the local chiefs.

When Parliament met the natural consequences followed. The government were asked, on behalf of Mr. Napier, what they had done with his bills, of which they had taken possesVOL. XV. 796

LIVING AGE.

sion. Lord John Russell, in the slow and discontented drawl which was his ordinary method, declared that nothing had been done because it was not desirable to do anything. The lord lieutenant and other persons in Ireland, with the best information, assured him that there was no longer need for legislation; there was a good harvest; a friendly feeling existed between landlord and tenant; and the question was settling itself. On the face of God's earth there was not a country so miserable and hopeless as Ireland at that time. The population were flowing out of it like water from a vessel which had been staved. The workhouses were crammed with inmates stricken with the diseases that spring from want and neglect; the landlords were still levelling homesteads and rooting out the native race; and nothing was to be done for remedy or alleviation. Nothing was to be done, and three-fourths of the representatives elected by the stricken people assented in silence, and threefourths of the bishops, born and bred among them, sanctioned the perfidy.

Against all these reverses fortune supplied one signal set-off. In Mr. Sadleir's contest for Carlow, Mr. Dowling, an elector who refused to support him, and threatened to canvass his tenants against him, was arrested by one of Sadleir's election agents on his way to the hustings and carried to the local office of the Tipperary Bank. There were bills of his in the bank which had not come to maturity, and he had given to a friend who endorsed them a bond as a counter-security. On this unripe bond he was arrested. As no attorney could sign the certificate in such a transaction without risk of being struck off the roll, the name of a dying attorney was forged to the instrument. In these proceedings it was proved that Mr. Sadleir had intervened, not merely through agents, but personally by direction and assistance. When he came to be examined, however, he denied everything and repudiated everybody, but the jury disbelieved him, and found a verdict for the plaintiff. When the news was flashed throughout the empire the sensation was intense. One of the queen's government directing a fraudulent arrest, supported by deliberate