He

not more than forty, and now managed the English interest. Boulter, who had for so many years occupied this position-though a narrow, intolerant, and dull man, singularly devoid of all religious enthusiasmhad at least an unimpeachable private character. was in the main honest and well-meaning; he had very justly received the thanks of Parliament for the rare munificence of his charities in a period of great distress, and he attested his sincerity by bequeathing the bulk of his fortune for the use of his Church. Of Stone we know very little, and that little has come to us through an atmosphere so charged with calumny that it must be received with great caution. It is clear that he was an abler man than Boulter, that his manners in private life were eminently seductive and insinuating, that he was much more of a politician than an ecclesiastic, and that he leaned strongly towards a toleration of the Catholics; and his name is preserved in literary history as having been one of the very few persons who recognised, on its first appearance, the merits of the history of Hume.' He was said, however, to have been selfish, wordly-minded, ambitious, and ostentatious; and he was accused, though very probably falsely, of gross private vice.

I

'I scarcely indeed heard of one man in the three kingdoms considerable for rank or letters that could endure the book. must only except the Primate of England, Dr. Herring, and the Primate of Ireland, Dr. Stone, which seem two odd exceptions. These dignified prelates separately sent me messages not to be discouraged.'-Hume's Autobiography. Of the liberality of Stone to the Catholics some instances are given in Curry's State of the

Catholics. Short notices of Stone will be found in Mant, ii. 601-603, Campbell's Philosophical Survey, and Walpole's George II. There may perhaps be unpublished family papers in Ireland that would throw a clear light on this period and on the characters of its chief men, but the accessible materials are so scanty that it is impossible, with any confidence, to give more than a bare outline of the history.

In Parliament, a formidable opposition was organised by Boyle, the Speaker of the House of Commons, supported by the Prime Sergeant, Anthony Malone, a man of great genius, and by far the foremost lawyer and orator in the assembly. The conflict was in reality little more than a question of place, and power, but of course all the legitimate elements of discontent were drawn into it. Boyle had for a long time been one of the most considerable men in the kingdom. He had sat in Parliament for forty years, had been Speaker since 1733, had been treated with great deference by Chesterfield, Devonshire, and Harrington, and he was connected with some of the chief governing families in Ireland, and possessed much borough interest and no small amount of parliamentary talents. A jealousy had sprung up between him and the Primate, and it was greatly strengthened after the appointment, for the second time, of the Duke of Dorset, in 1751, as Viceroy, and of his son, Lord George Sackville, as Secretary of State for Ireland. The latter was in close alliance with the Primate. An attempt is said to have been made, by the offer of a peerage and a pension, to induce

1 'Mr. Malone, one of the characters of 1753, was a man of the finest intellect that any country ever produced. "The three ablest men I have ever heard were Mr. Pitt (the father), Mr. Murray, and Mr. Malone; for a popular assembly I would choose Mr. Pitt; for a Privy Council, Murray; for twelve wise men, Malone." This was the opinion which Lord Sackville, the Secretary of 1753, gave of Mr. Malone to a gentleman from whom I heard it. "He is a great sea in a calm," said Mr. Gerard Hamilton, another great judge of men and talents. "Aye,"

it was replied, "but had you seen him when he was young you would have said he was a great sea in a storm." And like the sea, whether in calm or storm, he was a great production of nature.' Grattan's Pamphlet in Answer to Lord Clare. Lord Camden, in a letter written in 1767, speaks very highly of the character as well as the ability of Malone (Campbell, Chancellors, vi. 388), and a few other particulars relating to him will be found in Grattan's Life. Malone was the uncle of the wellknown editor of Shakespeare.

Boyle to relinquish the Speakership, and he went with bitter resentment into opposition. In 1749, under the administration of Lord Harrington, there had been a very unusual gleam of prosperity; the Peace of Aixla-Chapelle had been followed by a sudden increase of Irish commerce, a surplus of over 200,000l. appeared in the Exchequer, and it was resolved to appropriate 120,000l. towards the payment of the national debt. Heads of a Bill for this purpose were sent over to England; but the English authorities maintained that the surplus belonged to the Crown, and that the Irish Parliament could not even discuss its disposition without the previous consent of the King. To establish this principle, the Duke of Dorset opened the Session of 1751 by a speech signifying the royal consent to the appropriation of a portion of the surplus to the liquidation of the national debt. The House, on the other hand, passed such a Bill, but carefully omitted taking any notice of this consent. The Bill, when it was carried in Ireland, was sent over to England, and returned, with an alteration in the preamble, signifying that the royal consent had been given, thus establishing the principle. The House succumbed, and passed the Bill in its altered form. In 1753 the contest was renewed. The speech from the Throne again announced the consent of the Sovereign to the appropriation of the new surplus towards the payment of the national debt. The opposition, however, was now stronger. The reply to the address took no notice of the consent of the Sovereign. The Bill was sent over, as in the previous Session, omitting to notice it. It was returned, with the same alteration as before, and this time, after an excited debate, the House, by a majority of five, rejected the Bill on account of the alteration. The Government dealt with the subject with a very high hand. All the servants of the Crown who voted with the majority were

dismissed, and a portion of the surplus was applied, by royal authority, to the payment of the debt.

These proceedings, though not in themselves very interesting, had some important consequences. In the first place, a serious parliamentary Opposition was at last organised. It has been noticed that, before this struggle, the Opposition in the House of Commons, though it had gained two or three isolated victories, could never count upon more than twenty-eight steady votes against any Government. Now, however, a

formidable and organised party had arisen. Lord Kildare, though he had shortly before received a British peerage, took a prominent part with the Opposition, and even presented a memorial to the King complaining of the proceedings of his ministers; and the lines of the party division had become evident. It had grown to be a contest for pre-eminence between the great Irish families and the English ministers. To describe the

former as disinterested patriots, or to describe them as mere selfish place-hunters, is alike an exaggeration. Their motives were extremely chequered. They were men among whom, owing to a long series of unfavourable causes, the standard of public duty was very low. They were an ascendant class, still standing aloof from the great body of their fellow-countrymen, and with many of their leaders the monopoly of place and power was the only object. They were, however, a class among whom there existed some real patriotism and abilitya class who, from their residence and interests in the country, knew its wants and cared for its prosperity— a class, above all, who were struggling against ruinous misgovernment. However corrupt, selfish, or mingled was their policy, they at least sought to make parliamentary control a reality in Ireland, to put an end to

'Horace Walpole's Memoir of George II. i. 281. VOL. I.

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a system under which Irish interests were habitually sacrificed, and Irish patronage was regarded simply as a reward for the most questionable services to the English minister.

The consequences were by no means uniformly good. The conduct of the Government in dealing with the surplus was such that the Opposition resolved that no further surplus should exist, and began accordingly to appropriate public money largely to local improvements. The system of bounties had long existed in Ireland, as in England; and in a country where the mass of the people are sunk in torpor, poverty, and ignorance, where there are neither the material means nor the moral requisites of industrial progress, and where industrial habits are very rare, there is, I think, more to be said for it than is now generally admitted.' It is, however, most essential that it should be restricted within narrow limits, and that it should be really intended to help industry. In Ireland, though many useful public works were unquestionably assisted, the excessive expenditure in this field led undoubtedly to great private peculation and political jobbery, and weakened the spirit of self-reliance. As long as Parliament lasted for a whole reign, as long as it represented only a fraction of a fraction of the nation, as long, in a word, as there was virtually no external restraint upon the corruption of its members, it was inevitable that this should be the case. As political parties became more balanced, the system of corrup

1 The very able writer on Irish trade in the first half of the eighteenth century, thus states his views on the subject: Premiums are only to be given to encourage manufactures or other improvements in their infancy, to usher them into the world, and

to give an encouragement to begin a commerce abroad; and if, after their improvement, they cannot push their own way by being wrought so cheap as to sell at par with others of the same kind, it is vain to force it.'Dobbs' Essay on Trade, ii. 65.