caused him to take a deep interest; and, when he returned to Ireland, he settled at once at Old Connaught, where he passed the rest of his life surrounded by his many children and grandchildren. For several years after his retirement his mind retained its perfect vigour, and, with a few friends, who were old enough to remember the stirring events of his earlier career, he was fond of recurring to those times. It particularly pleased hin, too, to cap quotations from the great Greek and Latin authors with those who were fresh from school and college studies-a competition in which he was always successful. Gradually, however, the weight of nearly ninety years began to press heavily upon him, and the complete change from habits of busy life to those of total idleness told upon his mind, so that his last days were spent in a sad intellectual lethargy, and death came to him with a merciful release. Lord Plunket died on the 4th day of January, 1854, in his ninetieth year, and was buried in Mount Jerome cemetery, near Dublin (vol. ii., p. 346).

Justice compels us to add that the unfavourable impression with regard to his character which lurks in the minds of many who have never given it any special attention is utterly unjust. It arose, we suspect, chiefly from the invectives of Cobbett,

one of the best haters as well as most forcible writers of his day. He began to assail Plunket in 1803, after he had appeared as counsel against Emmett; in a libel for which Plunket obtained £500 damages. Of all men, he was the last to forget such a blow, and to the last day of his life it was his delight to make insulting contrasts between the speech in which Plunket had pledged himself in 1800 to bring up his children sworn, like young Hannibal, to animosity against the Union, and the care which he afterwards took to provide for the "young Hannibals" in public stations. The only rational foundation for these charges is, that he certainly intended in 1800 to strive for the immediate repeal of the Union; and, on calm consideration, gave up the idea. Grattan did the same. Having once come to this conclusion, there was nothing inconsistent or unpatriotic in his accepting office himself as he did in 1803, nor any reason why his family should not also discharge offices of whose duties they were capable. It was no disgrace to Plunket that he had six sons and five daughters; nor that, having the opportunity, he provided for them as well as he could. One was a Protestant bishop, another Chairman of a county, a third Commissioner of Bankrupts, a fourth Vicar of Bray. If it be objected that they were placed in situations for which they were not qualified, the very first step towards weighing that objection would be to settle what may really be the final cause and qualifications of a Protestant bishop placed by the Government of his country in a diocese in which there are no Protestants except

world, and laden with endowments given for the religious benefit of that population. If any man can discover what the final cause of such an official is, and what qualifications are necessary to attain it, we do not despair of proving that they were possessed in abundance by the second Lord Plunket. We have never heard any complaint as to the character of his two sons in the legal profession, of which he was better qualified to judge. The real question is whether he showed any unbecoming desire for office, and especially whether he sacrificed his principles or consistency to that desire. Upon this point Lord Brougham says:-"Plunket's public life, which only the unreflecting clamours of faction have charged with inconsistency, was peculiarly marked by uniform devotion to the principles which he had deliberately adopted and steadily maintained." This sentence is strictly just, and deserves more confidence because the cases in which it might most plausibly be maintained that his conduct was inconsistent were those in which he most strenuously opposed Lord Brougham, and those with whom he acted. These were, first the passing of the "Six Acts," by which the liberty of public meeting, the freedom of the press, and the right of possessing arms were for a time very seriously limited. In the discussion of these Acts Brougham and Plunket came more than once into direct collision. Looking back upon them "four or five years ago," Lord Brougham seems to have formed a correct judgment. He still thought Plunket "plainly in the wrong; but that it should be remembered he erred with some of our greatest statesmen, Lord Wellesley and Lord Grenville;" and, he adds, "it is certain that, after the heats of party warfare had cooled, most of us admitted that some restraint upon the right of public meetings had become necessary for the preservation of this valuable privilege to the people." On another question, when he approved the renewal of the war against Napoleon, after his return from Elba in 1815, Lord Brougham now sees that Plunket was right, although at the time of a contrary opinion. But what can hardly be doubted is, that whether mistaken upon them or not, the disciple of Burke could not fail to see these questions as he did, and that the suspicion of inconsistency or unworthy motives would more reasonably have attached to him had he acted otherwise.

Of all men, Plunket should have been one of the last to suffer under the charge of sacrificing his principles to office, for it was belied by his deliberate acts. He resigned the office of Attorney-General for Ireland in 1807, when the English ministers went out on the Catholic question. He

when the success of that measure seemed to hang upon the part taken with It is also certain that the regard to it by the leaders of the Catholics. Irish opposition were prepared to go great lengths to secure the assistance of that body; on the other hand, the friends of Government, by effectually encouraging their hopes, produced a favourable impression in some parts of the country. This, no doubt, seemed to imply a promise that if at the critical moment the Catholics assisted the Government to carry the Union, the latter would not be found wanting to their friends when their claims should become a question of Imperial policy. Lord Cornwallis evidently felt the responsibility which such conduct must impose upon him. He had been forbidden to pledge the Government directly to support emancipation, and yet he found that unless he "flattered the hopes of the Roman Catholics the great measure of the Union might miscarry."

Mr. Plunket does not hesitate to speak of the "indirect bargain struck by the Roman Catholic prelates with the "English Government," and the common sense of posterity will confirm his judgment. We do not say this as any imputation upon Pitt. He allowed no expectation to be raised which he did not sincerely and honourably intend to fulfil. The difficulty in which he subsequently found himself was, that he must either disappoint the hopes he had allowed to be raised, or urge the king in a manner which experience had already shown would probably make him a confirmed lunatic, or else abandon, altogether and permanently, the service of his country at the very moment when her danger was greater than at any former period of her history. Perhaps a highminded statesman never before found himself face to face with alternatives so heartrending. Mr. Wilberforce (one of the most intimate as well as earliest of his friends) has left on record his conviction that Pitt died of "a broken heart." We are convinced that the question in which Ireland was on one side and the king on the other, contributed to that end, as well as the battle of Austerlitz, on the news of which he bade his friends roll up the map of Europe as a thing gone by.

It is impossible not to feel how strange and how much beyond calculation was the misfortune which brought matters to this pass. Upon a question no less momentous than the civil rights and good government of the Irish nation-a question upon which the existence of the British empire seemed more than once to depend, and by the consequences of which it is even at this moment threatened,-the ordinary working of the British constitution was suspended for many years together, and that not by the vices, but it must be said by the virtues, of George III. Had his conscience only been as accommodating as that of his son, or had his head been susceptible of an argument, the strange scruple which by

some unlucky chance had got stuck in it would at once have been removed, either by argument or necessity, and the unjust laws against the Catholics would have been repealed as soon as the Union was carried. Thirty years of misery and struggle would then have been spared to Ireland; thirty years of injus tice to England. Above all, justice would not have been obtained by intimidation, after having been long refused to petitions urged by unequalled reasoning and eloquence. There is but one thing to set against this. Pitt, no doubt, would have wished to make the Catholic clergy pensioners of the State, and to have secured for the civil Government the veto upon the appointment of bishops. Who can say that Ireland might not have lost in religion as much as she gained in prosperity? Even if the clergy had retained their independence of mind, which we doubt not they would; and if the veto had never been used to deprive her of worthy prelates, which we do very greatly doubt; would not the confidence of the people in one and the other have been shaken ? Dis aliter visum. Many years followed, in which the Ministers were divided among themselves; debates in which the ablest members of the Cabinet were in vain urging the claims of justice upon their own colleagues, nay, upon their own subordinates, and solemnly warning them of dangers which, however deeply and justly they felt them, they were, as a Cabinet, bound by a distinct promise to the king never even to represent to him. At last things became so fixed, that neither the long incapacity of the king, nor even his death, enabled any Minister to do what, but for the king's obstinate and senseless scruples, Pitt would have done without difficulty; and all the eloquence of Grattan and Plunket was only bringing the matter more and more into the almost hopeless condition of a party question between the Whigs and the Tories; from which it was in fact rescued, not by argument or eloquence, but by the agitation of O'Connell, the Catholic Association, the Clare election, and the imminent danger of civil war.

It is worth mentioning at the present moment that the symptom which is now the most unpleasant in Ireland, had already begun to show itself in 1828. Money had begun to come in from abroad. "Subscriptions in aid of the Catholic cause," says Mr. Plunket, "were gathered in France, Belgium, Spain, and Italy, and were sent to the Catholic Association in Dublin. In America the feeling of sympathy was, of course, stronger. From all the great cities of the United States addresses were forwarded, together with liberal subsidies." What would have been the state of things, years before