the Prince Regent to form a Coalition Government, and negotiated for some days with Lord Grenville and Lord Grey for that desirable object. The Regent's sincerity was more than doubtful. So Lord Wellesley soon found, and gave up the task as hopeless.

In

Upon Lord Liverpool's accession to the vacant premiership, he continued to discharge his parliamentary duty, guided by the independent and enlightened principles which he had ever professed. He brought forward the Catholic Question in 1812, and only lost it by a majority of one, in a House where the cause was deemed the most hopeless. 1819 he made a magnificent speech in support of the Government, when he deemed the peace of the country, and the safety of her institutions, threatened by the proceedings of the demagogue party. But while I acknowledge the ability he now displayed, and admired the youthful vigour which so many years, and years partly spent in Eastern climes, had not been able to impair, I could not avoid feeling that his old anti-jacobin fervour had been revived by sounds rather than substance, and that he had shaped his conduct unconstitutionally, by assuming that the bad times of 1793 and 1794 were renewed in our later day. Lord Grenville's conduct was on this occasion liable to the same remark. Not, however, that even we, who most strenuously opposed the coercive measures, had any doubt of the perils attending the abuse of unlimited public meetings. We felt that it must lead to evil, and that, if unrestrained, it would end either in changing or in shaking the constitution. Lord Hutchinson, I well remember, openly avowed his satisfaction that measures which had become of pressing necessity had been taken rather by a Tory than a Whig Government; and declared that public meetings must either be regulated or forbidden. But we disapproved the course taken by the Ministers, and we were per

suaded that the accounts of treasonable conspiracies were greatly exaggerated, holding it certain that, how dangerous soever the very large meetings might be, the plots sought to be connected with them were hatched in the brains of spies and other Government emissaries.*

In 1825 Lord Wellesley accepted the high office of Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. His government was signalized by persevering attempts to obtain the emancipation of the Catholics, and he was of course the object of bitter hatred and unsparing attack from the more violent of the Orange party. His recall took place upon the formation of the Wellington Ministry in 1828. When at the end of 1830 the Whigs came into office, he was appointed Lord Steward of the Household, and in 1833 he resumed the Viceroyalty of Ireland, which he held until the change of Government in 1834. He then resigned at once his high office, not waiting till he should be pressed by the new Government to retain it, as in all probability he would have been. He held himself bound in honour to the Whig party to retire upon their very unceremonious dismissal by King William. Steady to his party, he was actively engaged in preparing the opposition to the Peel Ministry; arranged the important measure of the speakership, the first blow which that Ministry received; and with his own hand drew the resolution which on the 8th of Aprilbrought it to a close. It cannot be affirmed that the Whig party was equally steady to him. On their

Mention having been made in the text of Lord Wellesley's early anti-jacobin prejudices giving a bias to his conduct in 1819, it is only fair to add that these prejudices in no wise warped his judgment in spring 1815. He at that critical moment was against a renewal of the war, and friendly to continuing at peace with France, though under Napoleon. He was intimately persuaded that both the French people and their ruler were entirely changed in their feelings and views, and that we had no right to burthen ourselves with all the heavy costs of a new war, independent of its risk, in order to restore the Bourbons a second time against the people's will.

accession to power, I have heard him say, he received the first intimation that he was not to return to Ireland from one of the door-keepers at the House of Lords, whom he overheard, as he passed, telling another person of my friend Lord Mulgrave's appointment.

The secret history of this transaction is not yet known; and we are bound to disbelieve all reports which the gossip of the idle, or the malice of the spiteful, or the mistaken zeal of friends may propagate. Two things, however, are certain: first, Lord Wellesley's removal from among the Whigs—that is, his not being re-appointed in April, 1835-could not by possibility be owing to any the least doubt of his great capacity for affairs continuing as vigorous as ever, because I have before me a despatch in which the head of the Government, as late as the end of August, 1834, declares "the solving of the problem of Irish government to be a task every way worthy of Lord Wellesley's powerful and comprehensive understanding;" adding, "You will not suspect me of flattery when I say that in my conscience I believe there is no man alive more equal to such a work, and more capable of effecting it than your Excellency"-secondly, falsehood never assumed a more foul or audacious form than in the eulogies lavished upon the new Government at the expense of Lord Wellesley's Irish administration. That Government, it was said, never would have passed the Coercion Act of 1833! Indeed! But that Coercion Act came from Lord Melbourne's own office, when as Home Secretary he presided over the Irish department; the only mitigation of the Act having been effected by the Government of 1834 on Lord Wellesley's suggestion. The successor of Lord Wellesley, it was also said, for the first time administered the Government fairly and favourably towards the Catholics. Indeed! But Lord Wellesley first brought forward Catholics for the higher offices in the law, and continually propounded measures in their favour,

which for some reason or other were never carried into effect. There are two classes of persons who must be covered with shame upon reading such passages as the following, extracted from his Lordship's despatch of September, 1834; the vile calumniators of Lord Wellesley as never having given the Catholics fair play, and those who suffered their supporters to varnish over their weakness by an invidious contrast of their doings with his, profiting by the constantly repeated falsehood that they were the first who ever treated with justice the professors of a religion to which the bulk of the people belonged. "I think it would be people_belonged. advisable (says his Excellency) to open three seats on the judicial bench, and to take one of the judges from the Roman Catholic bar. This would give the greatest satisfaction to the whole Roman Catholic body. Your lordship, I am convinced, will concur with me in opinion that the Roman Catholics of Ireland have never yet been admitted to the full benefit of the laws passed for their relief. Entitled by law to admission into almost any office in the state, they have been, and are still, practically excluded from almost every branch of the executive administration of the Government. The few admitted into the station of assistant-barristers, or into the police, only serve to mark the right to admission, without any approach to an equitable distribution of official benefit. It is impossible to suppose that a whole nation can repose confidence, or act cordially with a Government when so large a portion of the people are practically excluded from all share in the higher offices of the state, while their right to admission is established by law. I therefore conceive that one of the first steps towards the pacification of Ireland should be the correction of this defect; and for this purpose I submit to your lordship's judgment that it is expedient to admit a certain proportion of Roman Catholics into the privy council, to the bench, to the higher stations of the law, to other efficient civil

offices, and to increase their numbers in the police and in other establishments. This system should be commenced at the same time with the new legal appointments, which would form a main part of it. I would also appoint some Roman Catholics of distinction to the privy council. This would be a commencement which I can venture to assure your lordship would be safe and most satisfactory to the whole Roman Catholic body of Ireland." He then encloses a list of those Roman Catholics whom he recommends, and requests an affirmative answer, that he "may immediately make the necessary official applications to the Home Secretary."

In making public this remarkable document, I violate no official confidence; for though I held the Great Seal at the time when this important correspondence passed, I was not, owing to some accident, made acquainted with any part of it until the present time (1843*). I am therefore wholly free from the responsibility of having neglected so material a communication. When the ministers met in Cabinet at the end of October, they had hardly time left, before their dismissal, to mature any plan such as that which Lord Wellesley so earnestly recommended; but some of those Ministers, aware of that plan, must have felt that they received a strange piece of good fortune, if not of very strict justice, when they found themselves all of a sudden, in May, 1835, zealously supported by the traducers of Lord Wellesley, and upon the express ground of their being just to the Catholics, whom he had never thought of relieving. I have repeatedly, in my place, while these Ministers were present and in power, denounced the gross injustice and the scandalous falsehood of those their supporters, who professed to prefer them to Lord Grey's Government and mine, because we had passed a Coercion Bill which had the entire concurrence and the cordial

*This was written in that year.