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became so exorbitant in their demands, that it was necessary to recruit others into the corps of corruption. Lord Townshend bought over as many patriots as were necessary, and the names of Loftus, Beresford, &c. showed the old stipendiaries, the Leinsters, Ponsonbys, and Shannons, that business might be done without them. The pension list was accordingly swollen 65000l. a year beyond the sum vested in the discretion of the crown. It would be tedious, if not endless, to enumerate all the artifices by which talent was corrupted, and corruption strengthened, but some slight idea of it may be formed from the fact, that "under. the administration of Lord Harcourt, for the purpose of recruiting the treasury bench against the meeting of parliament, five earls, seven viscounts, and eighteen baronets, were all made in one day!" Let the annals of parliamentary management match that if they can. We cannot wonder that "the venality, peculation, and extravagance exhibited in the higher departments of the state soon spread through the lower. A concordat of mutual connivance was established throughout-and clerks, with a salary of 100l. a year, entertained their principals with fine dinners and claret, out of the perquisites. In the ordnance department, it was found in Lord Buckingham's time, that the arms, ammunition, and military accoutrements, condemned as useless, were stolen out at one gate, brought in at the other, aud charged anew to the public account!!!" The time, how ever, was at last come when Ireland was to exhibit something of the port and show of freedom- while the American struggle was in progress, England, who had been strong in oppressing Ireland, found out that she was too weak to defend her the fleets of France and Spain rode in the channel, and the British cabinet were obliged to concede to the Irish volunteers the task of defending their country from invasion. The danger was averted-but a warning voice arose amongst the people, and, under the guidance of Grattan, the volunteers held their arms in their hands till they extorted for their country a free trade, and an independent legislature. The Irish people naturally hailed this æra as the birth-day of

their glory-but, alas, it only gleamed and vanished, and in the words of its creator, he who "sat by the cradle of that independence, followed its hearse." The reflections excited at this period in the bosom of Captain Rock are thus feelingly and beautifully described. "And hereas 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 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 castlebuilding 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

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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 freedomher 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 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 from the mission of discord which I had undertaken, but made me se cretly 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!" These visions, however, were soon dispelled by old Rock, the father, who thus in prophetic language drew aside the curtain which hung between him and futurity, and showed the actual features of the country in its hour of national jubilee and triumph. The sketch is indeed given with the hand of a master. "A parliament emancipated, it is true, from Poyning's law, but rotten to the heart with long habits of corruption, and ready to fall at the first touch of the tempter-a conspiracy against the very existence of this parliament, meditated even now in the birth-hour of her independence, and only reserved, like Meleager's billet, till the fit moment of her extinction arrives-an aristocracy left free by this measure, without the restraints of an appellate jurisdic tion, to give the fullest swing to their tyranny and caprice-five-sixths of the population still shut out from that boasted constitution, whose blessings, like the sealed fountain' of Solomon kept exclusively for his own private drinking, are still reserved for a small privileged caste alone-a spirit of intolerance even among those self-styled patriots, who think it freedom when themselves are free,' and who, though standing in the fullest sunshine of the constitution, would not believe in the substance of their liberty if they did not see it cast a shadow of slavery over others-an established church rising rapidly into power and wealth, and wringing her wealth from the very vitals of those whom her power is employed in oppressing and persecuting: such are the principal ingredients of which this happy country is composed at present, and such the materials of future discord on which the dynasty

of the Rocks may confidently calcu➡ late, for the long continuance, if not perpetuation, of their reign." Soon after this speech, which proved his last, old Rock departed this life, having been wounded in a skirmish with some parish officers, who had seized the cow of a poor woman for church rates, and were driving it off in triumph to the pound, amid the lamentations of her little ones. The description of old Rock must, by no means, be omitted. It is a painting for which every individual peasant of the old Milesian race may have sat, and is given with infinite truth and humour. "My father's character was an assemblage of all those various ingredients that meet and ferment in the heads and hearts of Irishmen. Though brave as a lion, his courage was always observed to be in the inverse proportion of the numbers he had to assist him; and though ready to attempt even the impossible when alone, an adequate force was sure to diminish his confidence, and superiority in numbers over the enemy was downright fatal to him. The pride which he took in his ancestry was the more grand and lofty, from being founded altogether on fancy-a well authenticated pedigree, however noble, would have destroyed the illusion. I was indeed indebted for my first glimmering knowledge of the history and antiquities of Ireland, to those evening conversaziones round our small turf fire, where, after a frugal repast upon that imaginative dish potatoes and point,' my father used to talk of the traditions of other timeş

of the first coming of the Saxon strangers among us-of the wars that have been ever since waged between them, and the real Irish, who, by a blessed miracle, though exterminated under every succeeding Lord Lieutenant, are still as good as new, and ready to be exterminated again

of the great deeds done by the Rocks in former days, and the prophecy which foretells to them a long race of glory to come-all which the grandams of the family would wind up with such stories of the massacres committed by Black Tom (Lord Strafford), and Old Oliver, as have often sent me to bed with the dark faces of these terrible persons flitting before my eyes. His hospitality was

ever ready at the call of the stranger; and it was usual with us at meal time (a custom still preserved among the cottiers of the south) for each member of the family to put by a potatoe and a drop of milk, as a contribution for the first hungry wanderer that should present himself at the door. Strangers, however, to be thus well received, must come to pass through our neighbourhood, not to settle in it; for, in the latter case, the fear of their dispossessing any of the actual occupants by offering more to the agent or middle man, for the few acres each held of him at will, made them objects, far more of jealousy than of hospitality-and summary means were always taken to quicken their transit from among us. When oppression is up to the brim, every little accident that may cause it to overflow is watched with apprehension; but where this feeling did not interfere, hospitality had its full course, and a face never seen before, and never to be seen again, was always sure of the most cordial welcome. Of my father's happy talent for wit and humour, I could fill my page with innumerable specimens all seasoned with that indescribable sort of vernacular relish which Cicero attributes to the old Roman pleasantry. But half the effect would be lost unless I could print his face with the joke;' besides, the charm of that Irish tone would be wanting, which gives such rich effect to the enunciation of Irish humour, and which almost inclines us to think, while we listen to it, that a brogue is almost the only music to which wit should be set. That sort of confused eddy, too, which the back-water of wit's current often makes, and which in common parlance is called a bull, very frequently, of course, occurred in my father's conversation. It is well known, however, that this sort of blunder among the Irish is as different from the blunders of duller nations, as the bull Serapis was from all other animals of the same name; and that, like him, if they do not quite owe their origin to celestial fire, they have, at least, a large infusion of lunar rays in them." We are sorry we cannot give the entire of this description, but the length to which our analysis has gone renders it impossible. Much of this

volume is devoted to a detail of the privations which the Irish Catholics endure, and into this discussion we do not mean to follow it. The Roman Catholics themselves seem inclined, as far as they can, to rivet their fetters still closer. The port which they have of late assumed seems to savour far more of defiance than supplication; they really force even their friends to inquire, if, prostrate as they pretend to be, they can get up a mock parliament of their own, institute inquiries into the courts of justice, levy taxes in the shape of Catholic rent, vote most insulting and almost libellous addresses, and frame memorials vituperating the heir apparent to the throne-what would they not do in their hour of prosperity and triumph? The truth is, such conduct goes far to justify the assertion made some nights since in parliament, that their emancipation would drive Protestantism totally out of Ireland. If a man insults you when on his knees, it is not very difficult to guess what he will do if you suffer him to get upon his legs. Advocates as we are for the concession of any boon consistent with the safety of the constitution, we would not yield it to those, who, like the beggar in Gil Blas, second their petition with a blunderbuss at our breast. There is not any difference between the sullen bigot of adversity, and the sanguinary tyrant of prosperity, except that of situation. In saying thus much, however, upon this important subject, we cannot avoid adding, that the details here given of the tithe system, the conduct of the church itself, and of some of its apostles in particular, are but little likely to uphold the credit of the Protestant establishment. Prominent amongst these, are the insults which the Protestant clergy are too frequent in flinging upon their Roman Catholic brethren. Alluding, upon this subject, to an unfortunate member of an antithesis used in his first charge by the present archbishop of Dublin, Captain Rock indignantly exclaims, "But what will those haughty ecclesiastics, who pronounce Catholicism to be a church without a religion' what will they say, when, by the operation of causes which seem as progressive as time itself, this people of Catholics whom they

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insult so wantonly-whose number is at this moment as great as that of the Protestants of England in 1688, and who are, in spite of misery and Malthus, every hour increasing shall, like the disloyal waves dashing round the feet of Canute, encroach still further on their sacred precincts when this church without a religion,' shall have left them a church without a laity, and when one who inquires where is the Protestant people of Ireland,' may receive nearly the same answer as that inspecting Colonel, who, on asking where is the Donegal light troop,' was answered by a solitary voice Here I am, your honour!'

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Some very curious instances are given of the determination of the Irish clergy not to divulge by any of ficial document the enormous wealth of their church, and, among these, not the least amusing, is the pleasant "second thought" of Doctor Beaufort. This gentleman, it seems, had intended in his Ecclesiastical Map of the Church to mark the church lands with a particular colour, but finding the space through which this sacred line meandered, so vast, "he thought it wiser, like Dogberry, to give God thanks and make no boast,' and published the map without its betraying accompaniment!" On the tithe system the Captain is most eloquent,

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and after giving a detail of its atrocities enough to make one's hair, like Sir Thomas Lethbridge's wig, stand on end with horror, he breaks forth into the following joyous apostrophe, "All hail, most ancient and venerable tithes, by whatever name ye delight to be called, prædial, mixed, or personal! Long may ye flourish with your attendant blessings of valuators, tithe-farmers, and bishops' courts, to the honour and glory of parsons Morritt, Morgan, &c. and to the maintenance for ever of the church militant, as by law (and constables) established in Ireland!"

Having now given our readers some general idea of this volume, our limits warn us to conclude. It is full of instruction and amusement-an entertaining and melancholy volume, which Englishmen ought to be ashamed and Irishmen afraid to read, but which the enemies of both will dwell on with pleasure, and (it may be, if things change not) with profit also. Di avertite!-Although the work is published anonymously its author is understood to be Mr. Moore the poet-he may now add to his name the title of historian, and certainly deserves the credit of having preserved "in amber" not merely the worms, but the more noxious political reptiles of his country.

THE PIRATE'S SONG.

1.

O LADY Come to the Indies with me,
And reign and rule on the sunny sea;
My ship's a palace, my deck's a throne-
And all shall be thine the sun shines on.

2.

A gallant ship and a boundless sea,
A piping wind and the foe on our lee;
My pennon streaming so gay from the mast,
My cannon flashing all bright and fast.

3.

The Bourbon lilies wax wan as I sail,
America's stars I strike them pale;
Let kings rule earth by a right divine,
Thou shalt be queen of the fathomless brine.

4.

Thy shining locks are worth Java's isle,
Can the spices of Saba buy thy smile;
The glories of sea, and the grandeur of land,
All shall be thine for the wave of thy hand.

C.

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You will not print your book, but mine abuse:
Print yours-and say of mine whate'er you chuse.

Rammler.

Send you my works? Nay, hang me if I do-
You'll sell them, but you'll never read them through.

Was it my book you read? You had the skill
To make it seem your own, you read so ill.

Rammler.

Rammler.

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