the time when the long-enjoyed sport of hunting Catholics with Penal statutes was given up, a new pack of laws was put into training, of the very same blood-hound breed of legislation—which, under names as various as those of Actæon's kennel in Ovid (Whiteboy Acts, Riot Acts, etc. etc.), have kept the same game full in view ever since-thus contriving, with a care equal to that of the Game Laws in England, to preserve to our Orange country-gentlemen their right of a Catholic chasse, uninterruptedly, though under different forms, down to the present day.

*

* From the following circumstance, related by the Bishop of Cloyne, as having occurred at this period, we see that a talent for flagellation is not new among Irish magistrates:

"In the County of Waterford, Sir Richard Musgrave, Bart. (High Sheriff for the last year) a gentleman of large property, of extensive and honourable connections, was reduced to the necessity of inflicting the punishment of whipping on a Whiteboy with his own hand."

CHAPTER VII.

1782.

Irish Revolution of 1782.-Symptoms of Degeneracy in the Captain. - Confession of his Weakness. Wise Speech of Old Rock-His Death and Character.

I WAS in my twentieth year at that memorable period, when the light that had arisen in America found its way to the shores of Ireland-when the Irish Parliament, in the very grave of its corruption, for the first time heard the sacred voice of Liberty, saying, "Come forth;" and the same warning voice said to England, "Loose him, and let him go."

Powerful as England had always been in oppressing, she was now too weak to protect us, when menaced with invasion by France; and the Volunteers of Ireland took the defence of our coasts upon themselves. From being the defenders of their country's shores, they soon rose to be the assertors of her rights; and with swords in their hands and the voice of Grattan sounding in their van"my lightning thou, and thou my thunder"achieved that bloodless conquest over the policy of

VOL. IX.

9

England, whose results were Freedom to our Trade and Independence to our Parliament.

And here as a free confession of weaknesses constitutes the chief charm and use of biography ---I will candidly own that the dawn of prosperity and concord, which I now saw breaking over the fortunes of my country, so dazzled and deceived my youthful eyes, and so unsettled every hereditary notion of what I owed to my name and family, that—shall I confess it? I even hailed with pleasure the prospects of peace and freedom that seemed opening around me; nay, was ready, in the boyish enthusiasm of the moment, to sacrifice all my own personal interest in all future riots and rebellions, to the one bright, seducing object of my country's liberty and repose.

This, I own, was weakness-but it was a weakness plus fort que moi." I ought to have learned better from the example of my revered father, who, too proud and shrewd to cheat himself with hope, had resolved to make the best of his only inheritance, despair. I might have learned better, too, even from the example of our rulers-who not only have never indulged in any castle-building for Ireland themselves, but have done their best to dispel, as soon as formed, the bright "dreams into the future" of others.

But

I was young and enthusiastic, and this must be my

excuse.

When I contemplated such a man as the venerable Charlemont, whose nobility was to the people, like a fort over a valley-elevated above them solely for their defence; who introduced the polish of the courtier into the camp of the freeman, and served his country with all that pure, Platonic devotion, which a true knight in the times of chivalry proffered to his mistress ;-when I listened to the eloquence of Grattan, the very music of Freedom-her first, fresh matin song, after a long night of slavery, degradation and sorrow ;—when I saw the bright offerings which he brought to the shrine of his country, wisdom, genius, courage, and patience, invigorated and embellished by all those social and domestic virtues, without which the loftiest talents stand isolated in the moral waste around them, like the pillars of Palmyra towering in a wilderness ;-when I reflected on all this, it not only disheartened me for the mission of discord which I had undertaken, but made me secretly hope that it might be rendered unnecessary; and that a country, which could produce such men and achieve such a revolution, might yet, in spite of the joint efforts of the Government and my family, take her rank in the scale of nations, and be happy!

My father, however, who saw the momentary dazzle by which I was affected, soon drew me out of this false light of hope in which I lay basking, and set the truth before me in a way but too convincing and ominous.

"Be not deceived, boy," he would say, “by the fallacious appearances before you. Eminently great and good as is the man to whom Ireland owes this short era of glory, and long as his name will live among her most cherished recollections, yet is all that he hath now done but a baseless vision of the moment-like one of those structures raised by the genii of fable, to show the power of the spirit that called it up, and vanish!

"Our work, believe me, will last longer than his. We have a Power on our side that 'will not willingly let us die;' and, long after Grattan shall have disappeared from earth,-like that arrow shot into the clouds by Acestes-effecting nothing, but leaving a long train of light behind him, the family of the Rocks will continue to flourish in all their native glory, upheld by the ever-watchful care of the Legislature, and fostered by that nursing-mother of Liberty, The Church.'*

"Let me draw aside, for a moment, the curtain that hangs between us and reality, and show you

* So called by Lord Eldon.