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could not possibly," said the Examiner, "have an abler or more respectable coadjutor, nor could the new regime have a more efficient supporter, or one more imbued with its spirit." "The situation of Under Secretary in Ireland is no sinecure," said the Sun. "It requires incessant vigilance and an unflinching spirit of determination, combined with a temperate and conciliatory nature. And these are qualifications which Lieutenant Drummond is well known to possess. He is not the man to fall asleep over his duties. We look on his present appointment as a great boon to Ireland, as another convincing proof that Ministers are fully in earnest in their endeavours to ameliorate the condition of that distracted country. Lieutenant Drummond's arrival in Ireland will, of course, create a sensation among the old Tory hacks of the Castle, some of whom are still to be seen with unoccupied looks and tottering frames, crawling about the scene of their departed glory." His immediate predecessor in the office was Sir William Gosset, whose dismissal the Examiner declared "was as good a piece of service as in a single act any Viceroy ever rendered to Ireland."

Drummond set out for Ireland on the 18th of July 1835. A few months later he married Miss Kinnaird, the ward and adopted daughter of Richard Sharp, Esq., well known in the literary world for his brilliant conversational powers. The lady possessed great personal attractions, and was, by mental qualities, admirably fitted to be the companion of so gifted and intellectual a husband. She had, moreover, a considerable fortune. Mr Drummond became engaged to her in the first week of June 1835, before he accepted the Irish Under Secretaryship. Having thus become independent of all salaries, he accepted the difficult and responsible post,

after due consideration, and continued to perform its arduous and fatiguing duties solely from a strong and noble wish to be useful to Ireland without any reference to his own advantage. The marriage took place on the 19th November 1835. They were married from Weston House, Warwickshire, the seat of Sir George Philips, where they first became acquainted in the autumn of 1833. After a short tour, Mr Drummond returned with his wife to the Under Secretary's delightful lodge in the Phoenix Park, which thenceforth, to the end, was to be his home. His letters to his "beloved mother," in the period preceding his marriage, are full of tenderness. The deep and sacred wells of feeling are, if ever, opened on such occasions.

The rest of this Memoir consists chiefly of a record of Mr Drummond's exertions on behalf of Ireland.

CHAPTER XIII.

A REVIEW OF IRISH HISTORY.

Το any account of the state of Ireland in modern times, a review of the history of the island is an essential introduction, inasmuch as the modern history is very intimately connected with the ancient, and cannot be understood apart from it. Accordingly, it is proper that such a review should here be attempted. The state of affairs in that country in 1835 should be set, as clearly as possible, in the light of the causes which produced it, to give the reader a chance of sympathising with Mr Drummond in his enthusiasm for Ireland and exertions on her behalf.

There are in Ireland, as it were, two nations interfused, yet distinct, with separate traditions, and differing in blood, temperament, and religion. The larger represents the tribes which occupied the country before the conquest; the smaller represents the conquerors. Their relations have been always hostile. The growth of the society which they compose has, consequently, been abnormal; its growing pains acute and prolonged beyond parallel. They have not yet ceased; they are constantly inducing popular feverishness and delirium. Ireland, let us trust, will be happy yet. But there have been times when her case has appeared to resemble

those terrible cases of which physiologists treat, in which, one body growing, or trying to grow within another, both are destined to die at a certain stage of their development.

The history of Ireland is mainly that of the larger of the two nations-the nation of the tribes. In the time of Henry the Second this consisted, according to the computation of Sir William Petty, of not more than 300,000 souls, divided into a few tribes, and sub-divided into a great number of clans or septs. The Scots, long the dominant tribe, had, some centuries before, transferred themselves from Ireland to North Britain. The Firbolgs, Milesians, Picts, Tuatha de Danaans, and Caledonians, whom they left behind, were, by the time of the conquest, much interfused, and to be found in each of the five kingdoms into which the country was divided. The interfusion, however, had not been carried to that point where it induces national unity. Indeed, the population was far from approaching a state of political maturity. One of the five kings was styled the King of Ireland, but he was king in little more than name. The provincial kings, again, had no real sovereignty. They were the chiefs of the greater tribes; and within the tribes the chiefs of the greater clans recognised no paramount authority. The tribal bond was almost as loose as the national. In the population there were Scandinavian elements, but it was mainly Keltic.

The number of clans was prodigious. In Tir Eogain (Tyrone), which comprised the counties of Tyrone, Derry, and part of Donegal, there were thirty-four clans; in Tir Conaill (the rest of Donegal), there were twenty. In Cavan and Leitrim there were thirty-three; in Fermanagh, fourteen; in North Connaught, includ

ing Sligo and Mayo, there were fifty; in South Connaught, including Roscommon and Galway, there were fifty-four. There were twenty-two in Dublin and Kildare; thirty-three in King's and Queen's counties; in Cork and Kerry, thirty-four; and forty-four in Waterford and Tipperary. They lay in like numbers over the rest of Ireland. Among the Munster Milesians there were forty-nine clans of Dalcassians, twenty of Eugenians, eight of the clan Kian (a tribal name), about ten of each of the Ithians and Degadians, and twelve of the Irians. Those enumerated were the chief clans in their respective districts; there were many others too insignificant to be counted. The division of the people into so many groups, asserting a high degree of independence, must long have prevented their becoming, politically speaking, a nation. Moreover, the obstacles to political union, which are commonly found existing in populations so divided, were unusually strong, owing to the Keltic temperament and love of fighting. The clan feuds were incessant; the tribal wars were almost incessant. Antipathies, founded on wrongs real or imaginary, divided the clans; antipathies, founded on real or assumed differences of race, divided the tribes. There were everywhere hereditary hatreds of unknown origin. The clans even contained within themselves the elements of discord, and fell into factions. It is probable that the modern faction-fights, the feuds which separate the inhabitants of adjoining hamlets, and which in some towns divide even the inhabitants of adjoining streets, though of the same religion, are the remains of those ancient antipathies, whose origin was probably no better understood at the time of the conquest than in the nineteenth century. Aytoun's humorous account of the cause of Mhic-Mac-Methusaleh's anti

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