federacies, by concealing my opinions, reduced me to the condition of a villain and slave on a mock throne, and rendered me an object of ridicule and contempt to a country which would have hailed me with respect and gratitude if I had not been crushed by pretended candour at Whitehall. This letter is entirely for your most secret consideration, and in the bosom of friendship I think it right to impart to you my fixed resolution. . . which it would not be kind to conceal from so affectionate and respected a friend . . . I am indeed most unhappy here-degraded, vilified, an object of scorn and detestation without protection or even care; anxious to save the country, able to save it as far as relates to my own powers, frustrated, baffled, and betrayed by all my own agents, encompassed by traitors even at my own table, the whole machinery of my own government working to my destruction; and in England not the slightest symptom of a disposition to give me support or credit, but a contemptuous silence even of my name, and a contemptuous if not treacherous suppression of my communications on the most important affairs of government. From such a condition I pant for a release (ii. 146).

No trace of this state of feeling, or of the events which produced it, is to be found in the three volumes of the "Memoirs and Correspondence" of the Marquis Wellesley.

There are also many interesting political letters of the leaders of the Grenville party, with which Plunket was so long connected, Lord Grenville, the Marquis of Buckingham, Mr. Wynn, and others.

When William Conyngham Plunket was born, and even in the earlier years of his manhood, it seemed little likely that his name or memory should ever be mixed up with the stately titles of the leaders of aristocratic English parties. His elevation was obviously assisted by those unjust laws which he devoted his life to sweep away: for they excluded the mass of his countrymen from all competition for the prizes of a free State; but it was due to his natural talents and energy, which, we doubt not, would have raised him to the top, let the competition have been what it might.

He was born five years later than Pitt, and five earlier than Wellington, on July 1, 1764. The Peerages grace his father with an ancient and illustrious genealogy, traced through the Barons of Louth to one of the earliest followers of Strongbow. He was a Socinian preacher, during the earlier years of his children stationed at the historical little town of Enniskillen, and afterwards at the "Strand Street Chapel in Dublin, the wealthiest and most influential Dissenting congregation in Ireland." Of the old preacher, little record has been preserved beyond the fact that his society was sought by "the Dublin politicians, courtiers, and men of eminence in the learned pro-' fessions without distinction of party or creed :" and that " a

comfortable seat in the gallery of the Irish House of Commons was always by courtesy allowed to him, which long after his death was known as Dr. Plunket's stall." The success of the sons was remarkable. The youngest won his way to the Peerage and the woolsack; the eldest left to him £60,000, made by his practice as a physician in Dublin; and the second, after serving with distinction under Washington in the War of Independence, realized as a merchant in the United States above £40,000, half of which he left to Lord Plunket. But he who succeeded in making his own fortune and doing more than any one other man to clear his country, by merely constitutional means, from the taint of injustice, did not, according to Mr. Plunket, succeed in rescuing the bequest from "the knavery of an attorney employed by him to recover it."

The volumes before us give hardly any account of Plunket's private life. There is probably not a great deal preserved. The biographer was a child when his illustrious ancestor retired into private life, and later he was subject to the most humiliating of all the calamities under which a great man can suffer, a rapid and total loss of intellect, which left him far more inferior to ordinary men than he had ever risen above them. Still, one would have thought that something more might have been said on this subject. The personal character of distinguished men, the aspect they present to their family and friends, the higher aspirations of their souls, their belief (or opinions, as the case may be) as to things unseen, are so important a part of themselves, that we can hardly be said to possess a life or picture of the man if these are wholly omitted. Yet the "Life" by his grandson really gives us little insight into this whole side of Plunket's character. For instance, he resigned the seals when only seventy-five, and the biographer says that the failure of his intellectual powers came on when near ninety; yet these fifteen years are dismissed in eighteen lines. The period during which, with a short exception, he withdrew from imperial politics, between 1801 and 1813, is even more briefly treated. The biographer has evidently been prevented by high and delicate feelings from collecting whatever might still be preserved of his ancestor's private life. Beyond tracing his public career, therefore, we are obliged to content ourselves with scanty and imperfect indications.

We regret this the more, because what we have gives us a much more pleasing idea of Plunket's private character than we believe to have been common even among those who have most admired his talents and political career. He was fourteen when his father died. At that age his maternal uncle, a bene

in the eventful year 1782, in which the Irish volunteers, under the guidance of Grattan, extorted from the British Government the absolute independence of the Irish Parliament and Government; so that for eighteen years the only legal and acknowledged connection between England and Ireland was that the two crowns were held by the same Sovereign.

It seems strange that any statesmen should have imagined that England and Ireland could permanently remain prosperous and united under such a system. It may well be doubted whether any two kingdoms, large and powerful enough to have more than municipal interests and relations, can pull together in double harness of this sort, unless the reins are held in the firm grasp of a despot. In that case the duality is merely nominal; for both are ruled and directed by the same will. Such was the union of Poland and Russia from 1815 to 1830. Sweden and Norway for the last forty years have been almost or wholly without foreign relations. That Hungary and Austria may prosper under the new system we must all heartily desire; but the experiment has not yet been tried. But, leaving generalities, it is the peculiar national character of Englishmen never to rest in any country where they are established until they are masters of it. Then the Irish had so strong an antipathy to the English that they would never have worked together, even on the fairest terms; and lastly, the English feeling about the bugbear of "Popery" would alone have made impossible any hearty co-operation of the two as really independent nations. How, as a matter of fact, they did go on for eighteen years is notorious. The Parliament and Government which went side by side with those of England were not those of the Irish nation, but of the Orange faction, which, standing with its feet upon the neck of Ireland, depended upon English aid to prevent or avenge any attempt to rise or break her fetters. Besides employing the strength of England in this inglorious hangman's work, the dominant faction demanded and obtained payment for following the will of the English Minister-places, peerages, pensions, and bribes in hard cash were the price of their subjection. Mr. Plunket quotes (from Massey's History) a private report made to the English Government in 1784, showing that the English Government could reckon upon 186 votes in the Irish House of Commons. Of these 116 were nomination seats, "the owners of which had let them out in consideration of titles, offices, and pensions in possession or expectancy; twelve were Government borough seats, 44 placemen, 32 "gentlemen who had promises, or who had avowed their exectations of favours and qualifications" (? gratifications).