In the year 1821 he was appointed Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, and we avail ourselves of his authority to cor. rect an error which has been very generally entertained, respecting the sentiment with which the Duke of Wellington was supposed to have regarded Ireland. Upon his grace's health being proposed, the noble marquess rose and said :

My Lord Mayor-It would be disrespectful towards your lordship-disrespectful to this company, if I presumed to offer you thanks for this toast. I offer you no thanks for it; but I must express the lively satisfaction I feel, that you recognize so sensibly the services rendered to your country by the Duke of Wellington--services rendered to it less by him, than the heroes who were his instruments in the performance of those great and transcendant services. If I had not the honour of being nearly allied to him, I should dwell upon all those actions of his life which shed such lustre on the name of our country. Do not suppose that I conceive you drink the duke's health as a mere compliment to him or me. No. I take it, that in drinking it in the manner you have done you do more honour to yourselves than to either of us. I take it as an evidence of your warm, strong, deep, unalienable attachment to your sovereign and the government. I take it as a generous expression of your approbation of the wise and glorious system of policy which has been pursued; and believe me, so far as the Duke of Wellington has been concerned, as one of the agents of that policy, he ascribes the principal share in his successes to the gallant heroes who fought with him. He ascribes least to himself, most to the government, and the officers and men who have been the glorious instruments of his victories. I took the opportunity of rising, that I might assure you, with all the fervency of truth, that there does not exist on the face of the earth a man more warmly and firmly attached to, and proud of, his country, than the Duke of Wellington. All that has been said on that subject to the prejudice of the duke-all the tales that have been whispered-all the statements that have been made, are calumnious, slanderous, and base. He knows he feels that the greater part of his achievements have been accomplished by Irishmen and he glories in the feeling. It is his peculiar pride to be an Irishman; and it is his proudest boast, that, in common with the brave of the other countries of the empire, his victories have been won by Irishmen--by heroes of this country. Let not the cha

racter of the Duke of Wellington be misconceived by a single man let not one of his countrymen hold any other impression of him than those which I pledge my word to all around me he holds towards them."

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Upon his Irish administration we cannot dwell; and Mr. Pearce, who writes like a virulent partizan of the popish faction, is very superficially informed respecting the leading events by which it was. distinguished. understand the state of Ireland, and the good or ill which resulted from the course of policy which was then pursued, it would be necessary to be thoroughly informed of the state of public opinion, and the strong reaction which was beginning to be felt by multitudes within the Roman Catholic communion against the errors and abuses of the Church of Rome. Had such an inquiry been instituted as would have laid bare the dogmas of that system of spiritual despotism, it would soon have appeared that its sincere adoption was clearly incompatible with undivided allegiance; and, either its intelligent members would have abandoned a profession by which their loyalty would be compromised, or the justice of their exclusion from political power would be vindicated in the eyes of Europe. But this was not done. The religious was confounded with the political question.

The exclusion, it was taken for granted, was groundless and unjust; and the removal of the disabilities was advocated, chiefly, as the best, if not the only, means of giving security to the Established Church, and consolidating and rendering immortal the legislative union! Such was the wisdom par excellence of that day; and all who ventured to hint any doubts that such effects would not follow from such remedies, but that concession would lead to demand, and that oaths and pledges which were at variance with the instincts and principles of those by whom they were proffered, would be observed no longer than suited their convenience, were regarded as blinded bigots, with whom it would be absurd to reason, and who should be put down with a strong hand, if they continued to oppose any factious opposition to "the great measure," which was to be the harbinger of halcyon days to Ireland! The reader may now judge for himself how far the predic

tions of the one party, or the apprehensions of the other, have been realized; and how far a policy which has pandered to sedition and to error, has been productive of contentment and tranquillity.

Had emancipation been carried at the period of the union, there are many reasons for supposing that it might have been attended with advantage. Into these reasons we cannot at present enter; but they were such as influenced the highest minds. And a strong conviction having been entertained at one period, under circumstances which bestow upon it the air of truth, will often continue to maintain its ground, when the circumstances have totally changed from which it derived all its plausibility. There is in the constitution of the human mind a sort of "vis inertia," which causes it to go on in the course which it has commenced-and a measure for which men have combated, with chivalrous ardour, through years of difficulty and peril, will have acquired a hold upon their affections which will not suffer them to abandon it, even when upon every ground of justice and of policy, it should lose its hold upon their reason. It is, as it were, the child of their hopes, the bantling of their fondest regards, and no obliquity or imperfection which its conduct or character may develope in advancing years, will cause them to visit it with disinheritance or desertion. So it was, in the case of its most enlightened advocates, with what was called Catholic Emancipation. The convictions which may have been just as applied to one stage of that much contested measure, were retained and acted upon in another, to which it bore not the most remote resemblance. In the first case the question was, "is there any good reason why loyal Romanists should be disqualified?" In the other it was, or rather ought to have been," is there any good reason why seditious Romanists should be patronized?" And the grounds upon which advocacy was justified in the first instance, were the very grounds, and no other, upon which it was continued in the second, when true policy would have required a reversal of opinion, corresponding to the alteration in character and in attitude, of those who, under the guise of petitioners, affronted the dignity of

parliament by menace and intimidation. There is now no doubt in any reasonable mind, that emancipation, as it was carried, was a great bounty upon seditious agitation, and a sort of earnest to all demagogues, that in every instance, popular clamour, if only persevered in, must eventually be successful. And what was the consequence? The great good which Lord Wellesley and others so ardently longed for, was purchased at the expense of a still greater evil, which they would, if they could, have averted. "Reform was carried by the back water of emancipation." Such was the language of one whose eloquence is only exceeded by his honesty and his wisdom. reform far more extensive than that against which Lord Wellesley contended with so much power, at a period when it was pressed upon parliament, not by ministerial cajolery or intrigue, but by an insurgent mass of national discontent, under the guidance of the ablest leaders, and which could only be perilously resisted. What would Canning have said, had he lived to witness the humiliation of his gifted friend, when he followed in the train of Lord John Russell and Earl Grey, and under pretence of redressing the defects of age, consented to metamorphose the constitution?

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We pass over his second viceroyalty, when he came to administer the government of Ireland under the reform act, and found a tribunician power, which more than counteracted all his efforts for the public tranquillity. The coercion act, which he knew to be necessary, he was compelled to disclaim; and the turbulent faction whom he hoped to conciliate, were only rendered more audacious and intractable by all that had been done to secure their favour. Then it was that Mr. O'Connell applied to the whig cabinet the epithets, "base, brutal, and bloody," because they made some feeble and ineffective efforts to counteract the system of sedition and of murder, by which the country was then, as it is now, afflicted. Alas! had they better merited the reproach of the demagogue, we would not now have to deplore the frightful condition to which some of our fairest provinces are reduced, by a system of unpunished miscreancy, which mocks at law, and tramples upon humanity!

With a great respect for the Christian religion, and we believe, a general conviction of its truth, we look in vain, in his life and conversation, for any proof that he entertained more than a speculative belief in the mysteries of redemption; and what is most painful, as he advanced into the shade of a long evening, there seems to us to be less and less evidence, that faith, in the evangelical sense of the word, was realized. We remember well, that when the Association for Discountenancing Vice waited upon him with their complimentary address, his answer, which was extemporaneous, was one of the most beautiful panegyrics upon the Church of England, that could be delivered; and the then Archbishop of Dublin, Dr. Magee, was so struck by it, that he requested him, if possible, to give them a copy of the effusion of eloquence and wisdom, by which they were so much delighted. But he could not do so-the copy which was furnished, bore no comparison with the original. And yet, this was the same Lord Wellesley, who afterwards, we are told, drew up the celebrated appropriation clause, by which the Peel ministry, in 1834, were thrown out of office, and which was intended as the "coup de grace" to the Church of Ireland! Such was the value of his religious sentiments, when they stood in the way of his party predilections!

It was happily said, by Sir James Mackintosh, that by his habits of governing in the east, he became "Sultanized." There was, undoubtedly, an assumption of state about him, which some men find it difficult to put on during hours of office, but which it cost him an effort, which indeed he very seldom made, to put off during hours of social relaxation. In this he was strikingly different from his illustrious brother, whose soldier-like simplicity is one of his most striking characteristics. There is another difference not less remarkable. The marquess's temperament influenced, and very often determined his opinions. The duke's opinions always overruled his temperament. In the one, genius, in alliance with party spirit, was not unfrequently found waring against true patriotism and common sense. In the other, duty to his country has ever been paramount to all other

considerations, and common sense may often be seen acting with the inspiration of genius. The duke's mind is essentially practical. His convictions are always based upon a just, or at least an honest appreciation of the facts of the case; and once formed, are followed out with an energy proportioned to their importance. In the marquess, the same is true as regards his statesmanlike policy in India. There he saw, intuitively, the difficulties by which he was surrounded, and acted with a boldness and a vigour by which alone the British interest could be maintained. But the very habits of command which he then contracted, and the very loftiness of the eminence to which he thus attained, in some measure disqualified him for acting as an ordinary politician after his return to Europe. The very field of view which his mind could command, was often adverse to the simple and direct pursuit of the real end which should be aimed at; and as personal power was wholly separated in his thoughts from the prosecution of any enterprise in which he engaged, the singleness of eye was wanting, which has uniformly characterized his illustrious brother, in every situation in which he has been placed, and by which, not to speak it profanely, in the midst of difficulties that might well perplex the most sagacious, "his whole body has been filled with light." We are not insensible to errors into which the noble duke has been betrayed; but the present generation has yet to learn, posterity alone will fully understand, how much more the world is indebted to his wisdom in council, than even to his achievements in war.

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But we must hasten to a conclusion. When forsaken by his party, with whose rapid advance upon the road to destruction he could not well keep pace, the noble marquess had, in his old age, the satisfaction of finding that a grateful return awaited him for services but tardily acknowledged, and scantily requited at the time when they were rendered. The reform ministry had laid him aside. His circumstances were far from easy; and then it was, and not until then, that the East India directors nobly came forward, and proffered to his acceptance a sum of twenty thousand pounds,