have been more brilliant had they commenced their career in England with their rivals. It remains to add, that Flood devised a noble estate to the University of Dublin, the rents to be chiefly applied to collecting and publishing manuscripts and matter which lay hid in the Irish language, and which might illustrate the antiquities, the literature, and history, so ancient and illustrious. The devise to our venerable University was successfully disputed in a court of law.

If I were asked what was the conduct of the gentlemen in the Irish House of Commons, apart from the violent party and personal disputes to which I have referred, I would answer— admirable. They applied their minds, after 1782, to measures of high value and importance, which a sensible Government would long before have undertaken. The independence of the Judges was secured; the office of Master of the Rolls was reformed; he was no longer permitted to be an absentee and pensioner, but converted into what the present Master of the Rolls is one of the most useful, learned, and indefatigable of our working judges; the criminal law was attacked for its severity in inflicting so generally the punishment of death; the prisons were criticised; freedom of election was secured; revenue officers and placemen excluded from voting; the public accounts laid open and referred for scrutiny to a well-chosen committee; the Mutiny Bill' assimilated to the English law; the absentee Irish Chancellor of the Exchequer was warned he must come home, or be abolished; and, lastly, the Recorder and members for the city had the glory of introducing a measure for conferring upon Ireland the blessings of the Habeas Corpus Act, in order to preserve public liberty against the attacks of arbitrary power. The Secretary said, "by usage the Irish Judges had acted on the doctrine of the Habeas Corpus Law," but admitted fairly it was essential to establish that fundamental right by positive law,

when it only depended on the force of custom. I mention these results with satisfaction, for it is more agreeable to praise than to censure. The conduct of the Parliament, then, after 1782, was praiseworthy.

Public events of a startling nature now succeeded. The Volunteers elected a Parliament of their own, and called it a Convention. They sat in state in the Rotunda (while the other Parliament sat in College Green); passed their resolutions in favour of parliamentary reform; and a number of their body marched down in red coats to the House, to carry the measures, as before, at the point of the bayonet. There was an uproar in the House, when the AttorneyGeneral proposed that the House should refuse to receive or listen to the Bill, on the ground that it came from an armed Convention, saying: "When the Volunteers turn aside from their honourable conduct-when they form themselves into a debating society, and with that rude instrument, the bayonet, probe and explore a constitution which requires the nicest hand to touch-I own my respect and veneration for them is departed." The House sustained its dignity, and refused to submit to the insult put upon them; and the Convention, having no root in the popular mind, speedily dissolved. This tumult occurred shortly after the constitution of Ireland had been, according to Mr. Grattan, firmly established, but before it was a twelvemonth old. A ringleader in the political disturbance was a bishop-Eari of Bristol, the vain, eccentric, and restless Bishop of Derry. He resembled, in his political ambition, Boulter and Stone, but wanted their craft to conceal his designs. Of course, he was the opposite of our apostolic Berkeley. He would be Secretary of State or Lord Lieuteuant-anything but what he ought to have been, from the sacred character he assumed. He disputed with Lord Charlemont for the leadership of the

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Volunteers. Of course, he was an English Bishop, imported into the kingdom by the political undertakers who cared nothing for religion—everything for their faction. He spent most of his time in Italy pursuing pleasure-returned to Ireland when he required political excitement, or wished to create political disturbance. He published treasonable pamphlets, for which he narrowly escaped prosecution. Mr. Hardy thus describes the progress of this prelate through the country:-"He seemed to court, and was received, with all warlike honours; and I remember seeing him pass the Parliament House in Dublin (Lords and Commons were then both sitting) escorted by a body of dragoons, full of spirits and talk, apparently enjoying the eager gaze of the surrounding multitude, and displaying altogether the selfcomplacency of a favourite Marshal of France, on his way to Versailles, rather than the grave deportment of a Prelate of the Church of England." That any rational assembly would allow itself to be dictated to by such a flighty Prelate, was out of the question. It was curious, if not comical, the Bishop was for admitting the Roman Catholics to all the privileges of the Constitution, to which the layman, Lord Charlemont, a decorous Whig, was strongly opposed.

There was a second motion in favour of Parliamentary Reform, which, being rejected, led to a serious tumult, when some rioters broke into the House of Commons, and were apprehended by the sergeant-at-arms. The mania for reform subsided; it had never been felt by the Roman Catholics, who, according to the plans of the most vehement reformers, were to be excluded. The pressure of distress was now trying amongst the manufacturers and traders of the kingdom. This distress was aggravated by the effects of the non-importation agreement which had been most absurdly taken up against England, and which now punished its

authors. There was also a well-founded complaint on the part of the Irish traders, upon the score of the high duties which England imposed upon the traffic between the two countries, and which the political revolution had only relieved in the smallest degree. The result was disturbance and confusion over the kingdom. Politics, depressed trade, reform, consumption of home-made articles, Whiteboys, Lord Bristol, and Napper Tandy, made up a scene described partially by the Duke of Rutland to Mr. Pitt, in August, 1785:

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"This City of Dublin is in a great measure under the dominion and tyranny of the mob. Persons are daily marked for the operation of tarring and feathering; the magistrates neglect their duty, and none of the rioters-till to-day, when one man was seized in the fact-have been taken, while the corps of Volunteers in the neighbourhood, seemed, as it were, to countenance these outrages. In short, the state of Dublin calls loudly for an immediate and vigorous interposition of Government." The writer of the above letter was the Duke of Rutland, Viceroy of Ireland-brilliant, gay, chivalrouswhose court was celebrated for hospitality and splendour. His despatches or letters to Mr. Pitt, and the replies of the great statesman, throw much light on the Parliamentary life of Ireland at that epoch. During the period covered by these unconstitutional proceedings, a question arose of considerable importance, and even now deserving notice and investigation. A bustling, presuming dabbler in sedition, named Napper Tandy, thrust himself forward as a political reformer; his great soul was touched by the oppression of his country (according to Mr. Grattan and the patriots, just set free by two revolutions)-and his big understanding and profound learning suggested or approved the holding of a National Congress in Dublin, in order to unsettle the old Constitution and settle a new one, contrived, fashioned, and

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polished by Napper Tandy and his fellow-townsmen. Sheriff of the County of Dublin, one Reilly, misled by this vain pretender, while his duty was to hold an election for members of Parliament only, thought it convenient to issue his own writ of summons to the county to choose members to sit in a Congress, which was, to despatch the old Parliament, and coin a new one out of the mint of Napper Tandy's brain. On this occasion, I am happy to say, Mr. Grattan took the wise and constitutional course of disapproving of the movement towards a National Congress, as irreconcilable with any settled form of government whatever. Meanwhile, the Attorney-General, a vigorous man, Fitzgibbon, afterwards Lord Clare, walked into the Queen's Bench, and upon an authenticated statement of Mr. Sheriff Reilly's pranks, had him at once attached for gross breach of duty in his office. The attachment was not only issued against Reilly, but the Attorney-General threatened to attach every Sheriff in Ireland who would presume to issue a summons, or to convene a county to choose members to sit in a National Congress, in order to overawe Parliament, and overthrow the Constitution. The disaffected and seditious always complain of the law which they intend to upset being put into force against them. Accordingly, a loud complaint was made of the unconstitutional conduct of the Attorney-General, for his very successful and summary assertion of the law against Reilly, who contended he should have been tried by a jury to be returned by himself. The subject was brought before the House of Commons, and debated with great ability and learning, both by the country gentlemen and the lawyers. Many sensible men did not relish this mode of setting aside trial by jury, and one eminent individual, Mr. Michael Smith, afterwards Master of the Rolls, and from whom our present distinguished judge is descended, argued ably and learnedly against this use of the process of attachment.