Page images
PDF
EPUB

the description of worshippers which surrounded it. The cheering of the populace bespoke the passage of the Viceroy. The undoubted popu larity which he beheld surprised him: "What a change," said he, " in this people! the Duke of Rutland* was popular because he loved a bottle this man is popular although he hates one!" "He hates only an empty one!" exclaimed a figure, which swept by at the moment in a forensic dress, the tails of his wig over his forehead, and his robe tucked up under his right arm. "If that man knew me, quoth the devil, "he'd have paid me a compliment, and just with as much sincerity as he ever exhibited." The crowd now increased so rapidly that it became a mob; and, to say the truth, the persons composing it scarcely belied the epithet. Corporators and clergy, attorneys and tax-gatherers, lean curates and briefless barristers, merchants without credit, and shopkeepers who gave it, rushed into the presence of a statesman and a scholar, who seemed, as he surveyed the scene before him, to sigh at once over the memory of the past and the pros pect of the future, and to say in sorrow, "Is this my native land?" Two very well-fed and very ill-bred worthies now disturbed the presence by their scramble for precedence, and attracted the attention of every one around them. The scowl with which they surveyed each other showed a hate too deadly for even the atmosphere of a court to mitigate-indeed royalty had already attempted it and failed. These rival courtiers were, in fact, representatives of the two factions which divide the country; and indeed of their disinterested object also a selfish struggle for intolerant ascendancy. The first was a corporator, vain, ignorant, and prejudiced, a mixture of the sot and the harpy, whose nights had been spent in toasting the Church he never entered, and his days in extolling the State which he impoverished a bloated emblem of that Juggernaut idolatry, which was the object of his worship only because it was the engine of his rapacity; habitual insolence was on his brow as he ascended those steps

which, in better days, had been almost indented by the feet of his predecessors; those days, alas! were gone-he was obliged now to share his wages with heterodox servility, and the stupid sullenness of his demeanour showed that his presence at court arose merely from the force of habit-he came no longer in the confidence of gain, but from the fear of deprivation, and knelt (like the Indians at the shrine of their demon) from timidity, rather than affection. The other was a dignitary of the ancient church: a full-grown child of the Sorbonne, matured before the starved theology of Maynooth had an existence, and of course exhibiting a judicious medley of Irish vulgarism and French vivacity; he fed his flock with the hopes of the next world, and only took in return the realities of this, assuming at once its sins and its superfluities. Orthodoxy itself might have envied him a paunch which seemed formed for pluralities, but with his own fraternity it was an evidence of the mortifications which the flesh' always proportionably engenders. He was the first of his creed that, since the battle of the Boyne, had found himself in the

real presence' of royalty; and its effect was visible in the heavy alacrity with which he waddled into the anti-chamber; but the glance must have been superficial which did not trace in his exultation more than the effects of mere gratified vanity-the days gone by rolled back upon his vision-the martyred glories of his church re-ascended-his eye seemed to reflect the rekindled torch in which heresy was to perish, and all his affected humility had well nigh evaporated before its time, when the pious corporator hiccoughed out a curse upon "Pope and popery, James and slavery, wooden shoes and brass money.'

[ocr errors]

It would be utterly impossible even to shadow out the characters which now crowded to inflict their accumulated visitation on the Viceroy. One thing, however, strongly struck the spectator-almost all of them had the look of creditors, though in reality most of them were debtors-each of them in fact had

"The Duke of Rutland," says Mr. Hardy in his Life of Lord Charlemont, " was sent over to Ireland to drink the Irish into good humour." He died of the experiment.

bled his tailor for the court-dress, and seemed as if come to court to claim the cost of it. The Viceroy paid them all with promises, and did so as if he had been accustomed to it-the only wonder was, how even his proverbial urbanity sustained itself through such an ordeal; insensibility itself must have shrunk from the rankness of their adulation, and insincerity blushed at the lying insult of their loyalty. The devil himself turned upon his heel, half indignant at the spectacle-his interest in its continuance barely sufficed to console him-the whole affair seemed a burlesque upon sovereignty, and he could not forget that he was the truest and the oldest legitimate under the sun.

66

Passing rapidly across Essex-bridge he was accosted by a person who proved afterwards to be a felicitous combination of the Orangeman and the attorney-it was a congenial meeting, and they soon became acquaintances. "As you seem a stranger in our city, sir," quoth the attorney, perhaps you would just step in and see the lawyers."-"It is a profession for which I have ever had a great affection," was the reply, when, at the moment, the hall of the four courts opened on them. It was a scene to fix and sadden the attention. There was youth, from out whose features Hope was breathing; and manhood, with its beam decaying from his brow; and age, whence it was scared entirely by the imps of fraud and avarice, that had changed its bloom to parchment, and its beauty into wrinkles. This place seemed the very palace of interest; the grave of virtue; the den whence scarce a light appeared that was not born of rottenness: there were barristers with little in their bags and less in their purses; denuded suitors, dragging the reluctant solicitor to taxation; sheriffs with a 'non est inventus' out of their pockets; and politicians with the purchase-money of their country in them! The din was deafening; just such as might have been expected from an assemblage where but few having any business of their own, each was discussing the business of somebody else. "How

do all these gentry live," inquired Satan, "I have counted above five hundred? *”—“Most of them starve," answered the attorney, "but those who really live have places; there are two places, at least, to every practising barrister, who prays according to law, and who will fall down and worship the molten idol of the day! It was quite necessary:when the property of the country became absentee by act of parliament, of course the business of the country followed it, and left the law hungry and vociferous: the echo might have grown too loud amid the emptiness of the island, and so the mouth was stuffed merely that the voice might be stifled." What! are they all mute-all purchaseable? Is there not one tongue to articulate the name of Ireland?”. "No, not one: some speak for themselves; some for their sect; some for the new light; and some for the old darkness-not one for Ireland." "Mammon be praised!" exclaimed Satan, "but is Curran dead?"-"Aye," answered the attorney, "and an example to any romantic fool who may survive him: he spoke for the country, he thought for the country, he dreamed of the country, and would willingly have died for the country; and the country has not raised a stone to his memory! They even suffer his bones to moulder in a foreign churchyard: yet the infuriate brawlers, who toast him in their cups, and slander him in their sobriety, would fain persuade us they are the heirs of his patriotism, and baptize their odious and their selfish bigotry with the name of his enlarged and universal benevolence!" "Are and -, and

66

[ocr errors]

dead also?" was the next inquiry. "No, no; not dead, but promoted." The very devil started. 'Aye," said the attorney, you may well distrust me, but yet the fact is so; there are many worthies walking now around you, who denounced the Union as the ruin of their country, and its author as a patricide-who raved and ranted through the whole vocabulary of indignant patriotism, and yet who-when their prophecies were completed, when their country sunk into a pauper province, and the

"There are, it is said, five hundred and thirty practising barristers in Dublin !!" Irish Paper.

man who they said made her so, rose upon her ruins,-knelt down before that very man, and begged the sportula of office from him, and live this instant on the gifts of his forgiveness-if, indeed, I should not rather call them of his vengeance!" Satan asked no more; he looked around the hall with the air of one who seemed to feel he was in the centre of his own property, or at least who had a strong reversionary interest therein, and he left it, laughing heartily at a Common Pleas pun, which preceded a judgment, and would have followed

an execution.

The scene which he had witnessed left himself satisfied; he felt that his empire would endure, and for ever; for he felt that in this body alone had Ireland a chance of relief or vindication-this was the cradle of all the country valued: Grattan, Curran, Burgh, and Flood, and Daly, had lisped within these walls the infant speech of freedom-they were gone; caught up again into the heaven from whence they came, and not a rag from their mantles had fallen upon the survivors their very names were perishing by a traitorous convention; hateful to the foreign junta they defeated, and equally reproachful to a native faction, unable or unwilling to imitate their virtues. They were gone; they who had breathed a fire into the forms of Ireland, and taught them they were men; but the lights of their creation died along with them, and others have arisen to warm intestine discord into life, or relume the faggot and the torch of bigotry! Unhappy country! when the torrents of the sky shall have descended on thee, and the fury of the ocean risen round thee, and the meteors that mislead, and the locusts that devour, and the fiends that afflict thee shall have perished in the deluge, then, and then only, shall the receding waters leave the olive a place amid thy vallies, or the dove of peace an asylum in thy bosom !

Not thus, however, would any one have deemed of Ireland, who cast but a passing glance on her beautiful metropolis; its streets, its squares, its quays, its public buildings, gave token of a city which should have been the seat of legislation and residence of royalty! All that was inanimate looked grand

and opulent; but search beyond externals, and, like Lucian's statue, the interior was all poverty; yet thus it was; the eye that now feasted on all the magnificence of architecture, glanced the next moment upon rags and wretchedness. The mind that contemplated the stately colonnade shrunk at the houseless creature that shivered under its portico; and the passenger, when scrutinizing the statuary's skill, had only to look around and compare it with nature's genuine and unveiled proportions! The still-life of this metropolis is picturesque and beautiful-its animation wretched and revolting. Erase the buildings, and you would say. the people were paupers: on the other hand, blot out the people, and the architecture would tell you its inhabitants had been princes. Satan paused in wonder at the noble simplicity of the Provincial Bank-more guilty spirits had been there before him-spirits who, like him, had fallen from a height of greatness, not through ambition, his sublime though fatal error, but through avarice, the most mean and unredeemed of vices! Within these walls, ere now, wisdom deliberated, and eloquence thundered, and patriotism dared-there also speculation calculated, and dulness traded, and corruption triumphedthere a people's liberty was bornand,

Just beloved and lost, admired and

[merged small][merged small][ocr errors]

"By the bye," observed Satan, "this place reminds me that I ought to take a peep at my own little Hohenlohe parliament," and off he set, post haste, to the Catholic Association. They were in full divan-all speaking together de omnibus rebus et quibusdam aliis-it was in vain that the President declared he could not possibly hear more than two members at once, and appealed to the Secretary pro tempore, the regular officer being absent on his circuitthe learned deputy declared that there was a standing order on the books against more than one gentleman speaking at a time, but that there was nothing to prevent his discussing three subjects together. The

din was dreadful-broken metaphors and broken heads joined issue on the moment, and Old Nick, for the first time, felt inward gratitude that this people had established a half-wayhouse for themselves, between earth and his dominions. At length, a young barrister of about fifty observed, that as gratitude to their Protestant brethren had ever been the grand characteristic of the Catholics, and ought never to be lost sight of so long as the aforesaid Protestant brethren could be of any use to them, he had a proposal to make concerning the late discussion of their claims in the House of Commons. Mr. Plunket had urged their petition with his usual ability, and Sir Francis Burdett had, with equal ability, walked out of the house before the debate on it-he meant therefore to propose a vote of thanks to each of these gentlemen-the one for discussing, and the other for not discussing. It was agreed upon all hands that the motion was manly, rational, and consistent, as 'it gave a triumph to neither party,' and it was carried accordingly. A long discussion then took place as to the person to whom they were to entrust their grievances during the ensuing session: this was at last terminated by a member's declaring that he had studied the whole Opposition physiognomically, and that certainly Mr. Brougham looked a grievance better than any man in the House of Commons-this was decisive-the grievances were then flatteringly committed to that gentleman; and a roving committee was at the same time appointed, to accumulate calamities throughout the country. A very animated debate next ensued upon the propriety of holding their future sittings during the evening. One gentleman observed that a debate after dinner + might possibly not be conducted with all the coolness requisite on such an occasion, and the society ought to recollect that every man's affairs in the country were in their keeping, as it was a standing rule that they should attend to other people's business quite as much as their own. Another member, in reply, remarked that for his own individual part he rather wished

* A fact.

the sittings should be held after dinher, because he had an impediment in his speech, which generally went off after that meal; and besides there was no absolute necessity for any person being entirely compos, except the Secretary, who had to read the orders-every one knew the President might stand sitting. The Secretary very indignantly declared that if any stipulation of the kind were attached to the office he would immediately both resign himself, and report it to his principal, and he was firmly persuaded that no Irish gentleman would accept it on such a condition-there could be no reason why their officer should be branded as the only sober man in the society-it was by no means his wish to be so particular. A visitor from the British Catholic Board here ventured jocularly to propose that each member should pledge his honour not to take more than a couple of bottles of wine until after the adjournment. This proposal caused an universal commotion; it was instantly voted a most shameful national reflection, and a regulation was passed excluding all strangers for the future. The confusion which this little incident occasioned caused a premature adjourn ment-not however before the Secretary had given notice that he would relinquish even his temporary trust; and it was very generally expected that the person who had proposed him as an exception would hear

more of it.

Such are the absurdities which intolerance begets upon endurance; and such are the freaks into which, when bigotry gains the ascendant, it delights to torture poor human nature. The men, who compose this motley mimickry, are some of them learned, some of them eloquent, most of them naturally honest and benevolent; but the persecution of ages has turned their heads-they have become almost mad through oppres sion, and wise authority justifies such a result. It is at once ludicrous and melancholy, however, to observe the fancied consequence into which their insanity bewilders them. There is scarcely a Roman Catholic rag-merchant, in the city of Dublin, who has not, in his own opinion, argued him

A fact.

self into a legislator-despair glves him courage, and ignorance gives him confidence-the orders of his trade are postponed to standing ordershe answers his customers with the previous question-his house becomes the scene of a perpetual division, and he takes his revenge upon the English law by incessant depredations on the English language. The Irish are naturally a comic people-natio comada est-and one would really imagine that an establishment like this was a sort of sly posthumous revenge upon their parliament-the grave burlesque is perfect and irre sistible--the House of Commons, for their own sake, should extinguish it by emancipation, and the blessings of the rescued Priscian would reward them. Unhappily, however, for the great cause in which these people profess to labour, their individual absurdities extend themselves to it, and operate as a ban upon the general body of the people-one of their last acts was a studied, written, vulgar insult on the heir apparent to the throne-a national mode of conciliation certainly.

A few moments unfolded to the visitor another, though not much different scene in the Kildare-street Association. The one displayed bigotry struggling for ascendancy, the other bigotry after having gained it.

was

It is wonderful, however, to observe what a mild aspect intolerance can assume. The member who speaking seemed demureness personified-his very face was pastoral. The hands were meekly crossed upon his bosom-the whites of his eyes alone were visible-the voice "piped and trebled" in the utterance as it whined out condemnation on every dissenting creed-the views and arguments were all of another worldand the speech ended with a petition to parliament for more money! A laudatory moan from the very hearts of the faithful seconded the proposition, and the speaker's countenance relapsed once more into its earthly expression. It proved to be an old acquaintance-an hour before, Satan had seen it in the courts when it was unmasqueraded-the world was upon it-sophistry sat in its contracted brow a legal quibble nestled in every wrinkle-its tongue was clamourous in a wrong cause, and every nerve was strained, and every energy exerted to ensure its triumph-and all for a fee of five guineas! It is a strange fact, and one which goes far in proof of human disinterestedness, that this heavenly society is almost exclusively composed of lawyers.

Every doubt as to dominion was now satisfied-at least, so far as the

* This association is one of the great sources of jealousy at present in Ireland; its founders allege that it has no other object than the diffusion of education and morality -its opponents, amongst whom the most furious are the Roman Catholic clergy, declare that its real purpose is proselytism. It must be confessed, that those who conduct it are not the most favourable to the claims of the Catholics, and certainly the zeal professed for their moral improvement does not quite correspond with the bigoted anxiety for their political degradation. While upon this subject, however, we cannot but lament the culpable negligence evinced, until very lately, by the Roman Catholic priesthood towards the intellectual instruction of the laity. They are now, it appears, in a state of actual fever in consequence of a declaration by Mr. North in Parliament, that such books as "Moll Flanders" formed manuals for the children of the peasantry in their hedge schools-it appears also, however, fortunately for the assertion, that the able and patriotic Captain Rock himself gives the very same list of hornbooks, including the disclaimed Moll Flanders, as the library of the Roman Catholic children. Such authority as Captain Rock's upon any Irish question is not to be disputed. The present Chief Justice of Ireland is fond of relating a characteristic story upon this subject. A boy about ten years old, of whose moral capability of appreciating the value of an oath he had some doubt, came before him to give evidence; upon which the following dialogue occurred"My little boy, do you go to church?" "No-I am a Roman."-" Well, do you go to chapel?" "Yes-I play ball against the gable."-" Do you know your creed ?" "No."-" Or the commandments?""No."-" Or the Lord's Prayer?". “No.”—“Do you know your priest?". "Yes, I heard tell of Father Phelim.""Did you ever speak to him?", "Yes, once."-"What did you say to him ?"_ "I axed him to give me a penny for houlding his horse, and he bid me go be damned." It must be confessed, however, that many Catholic schools are now established, and the priesthood are fast redeeming themselves from a hitherto too just reproach.

« PreviousContinue »