doxical and mysterious. The spirit it is impossible not to admire ; but the old Parisian ferocity has broken out in a shocking manner. It is true, that this may be no more than a sudden explosion; if so, no indication can be taken from it; but if it should be character, rather than accident, then that people are not fit for liberty, and must have a strong hand, like that of their former masters, to coerce them. Men must have a certain fund of natural moderation to qualify them for freedom, else it becomes noxious to themselves, and a perfect nuisance to every body else. What will be the event, it is hard, I think, still to say. To form a solid constitution, requires wisdom as well as spirit; and whether the French have wise heads among them, or, if they possess such, whether they have authority equal to their wisdom, is yet to be seen. In the mean time, the progress of this whole affair is one of the most curious matters of speculation that ever was exhibited. ' p. 321, 322.

We cannot resist adding another paragraph from the same hand,-upon a subject which must ever be interesting and painful to all the admirers of genius and lovers of goodness. It forms part of the last letter that Mr Hardy has alluded to, as addressed by Mr Burke to Lord Charlemont.

Your Lordship is very good, in lamenting the difference which politics had made between Mr Fox and me. Your condolence was truly kind; for my loss has been truly great, in the cessation of the partiality of a man of his wonderful abilities and amiable dispositions. Your Lordship is a little angry at politics that can dissolve friendships. If it should please God to lend me a little longer life, they will not, I hope, cause me to lose the few friends I have left; for I have left all politics, I think, for ever. '

p. 336.

Of Lord Fitzwilliam's conciliating administration, and miserable recal, we cannot bring ourselves to say any thing. Sir Lawrence Parsons (now Earl of Ross), though by no means the devoted followers of that nobleman, made use, upon among that occasion, of the following prophetic expression. • Never was infatuation like that by which the minister is led. persevere, the army must be increased to myriads; and every man must have five or six dragoons in his house.' Lord Charlemont's opinion upon this fatal measure was not less decided.

If he

He often, and in terms the least measured, declared that it was utterly ruinous. His opinion was not influenced by the sudden dereliction of the Catholic question. But he well knew, that, to the discontents of the Catholics, and the mortification of the hopes of every constitutional man throughout the kingdom, would be added the malign joy of each agitator and fomenter of discord, to whom such an event as this would, of all others, convey the most untoward satisfaction. He well knew that the cry would soon be raised, and louder than ever, against British influence; and he had less now to oppose to that cry, than he had two months before.

1

To Mr Forbes and Mr Ponsonby he said-" In spite of every wicked machination, we had the mass of the people with us last New Year's Day; and, if we do not make some exertion, next Christmas day may see them in the hands of the United Irishmen. " That Lord Fitzwilliam's viceroyalty would have banished all discontent, I cannot suppose; but that, if the Catholic claims had then been settled, or some parliamentary reform taken place, rebellion would not have reared its head, I am willing to believe.'

p. 377. Of that rebellion we cannot, and we will not say any thing. The subject is sickening and humiliating, beyond any that is furnished, by the page even of recent history; and, guilty as many of those were, on whom the heavy vengeance of the government descended, it is melancholy to think that they were not the most guilty. We give the following paragraph, as containing a striking picture of the temper of the predominating party in Ireland in 1797, and a favourable specimen of those liberal sentiments by which Mr Hardy is always distinguished.

The last effort in favour of a parliamentary reform, was made in the House of Commons by Mr Ponsonby. The opposition insisted, that, if even then adopted, it might be the means of draw. ing off and reconciling numbers. The ministers, on the contrary, alleged, that the report precluded all expectations of that sort, which, in the North, might possibly be true; and some gentlemen add, ed," that the people should be subdued, before they were relieved. " Idle and inconsiderate words! The mass of the people could not be called traitors; and, though Parliamentary reform could not tranquillize, as far as might be wished, such language was calculated to throw all conciliation to an immeasurable distance. That some reform, or some effort towards conciliation, was not made, is surely to be deplored; but a stranger to the history of these countries might, from the language now held in both Houses, be led to imagine, that a parliamentary reform was never before heard of, except from traitors, when, in truth, a defect in the representation had already engaged the attention of the most enlightened men in the country. From his academic chair at Oxford, Blackstone had pointed it out to the rising youth of the country. It had been glanced at by the resistless eloquence of Lord Chatham; and, after a long interval, given the richest colouring to the dawn of his son's political life. Mr Fox had uniformly supported it,-Sir George Savile, and some of the best and wisest men in Great Britain and Ireland. If a measure, good in itself, is to be for ever exiled from Parliament, and frowned out of society, because it may be perverted by mischievous and designing men, what is to become of us? The conduct of some potentates and legislatures was at this time not a little singular. The coalesced powers went forth, as they said, to combat for order, good government, and to extirpate usurp ation. As a proof of their sincerity, some of them massacred the

Poles

Poles, and divided Poland among themselves, utterly extinguishing it as a kingdom. The legislature of Ireland went forth very properly in defence, of the constitution against the United Irishmen ; and almost constantly talked, and too often acted, as if there was no constitution whatever.' p. 395-6.

Of the Union, also, which closed the turbulent scene of Irish parliamentary contention, we shall say but little. We can make allowance for the nationality of an Irishman, and for the sanguine hopes of one, in whose time, and by whose aid, so much had been gained for that country ;-but we imagine the time is almost come, when no rational man will allow himself to doubt of the policy of that great measure; and when it will be as easy to find advocates for dividing England again into its antient Heptarchy, as persons who seriously think that it would be for the benefit of the two kingdoms to be put under the dominion of separate and independent legislatures. Laying out of view the hazard of opposite determinations as to the succession of the common Sovereign, or as to fundamental points in the foreign policy or internal constitution of the two countries, all of which we regard as very distant and unlikely contingencies,-we own that it appears to us, that there was no human probability of making the Irish Parliament independent of the English cabinet, or of preventing it from exhibiting a more disgusting scene of profligacy and violence than can ever be displayed by a legislature that is really and substantially supreme. Till the Catholics were admitted to the full benefit of the constitution, there could be nothing like a fair representation of the people; and it was more perhaps than could have been expected from any Protestant legislature, to admit the Catholics to a numerical ascendancy over their own body. One great argument, indeed, for the Union was, that it took away all pretext for the dread of such an ascendancy; and it was obvious, at the same time, that by identifying the two countries, it put an end to all that partiality, or love of domineering, which must always have been kept alive in the stronger, by the assertion of independence. The laws made in the Imperial Parliament may sometimes press more bewily upon Ireland than upon England-in the same way as they may sometimes press heavier upon the West of England than upon the North; but, in general, and upon a large scale, they can scarcely fail to be equitable; and, at all events, are much more likely to be so, than when the power of dictating them was substantially vested in a delegation of the English cabinet, at the same time that the English Parliament held itself dispensed from taking into fair consideration the interests of IreLand, and sometimes even allowed itself to regard them as rival interests

interests to its own. It is a bad sign of Ireland, we think, if the Union be really unpopular in that country: for there are only two descriptions of persons with whose interests it is really inconsistent; the one, the profligate and jobbing proprietors of boroughs and seats in Parliament, whom it has deprived of their market, and of all the consequence they derived from the command of it; and the other, the desperate and designing men who wish to shake off all connexion with England, and to erect Ireland into a separate and independent kingdoma project which would begin with a civil and religious war of unexampled ferocity, and end most probably in the subjugation of both countries by the exterminating sword of France. The sentiments of Mr Hardy are not quite so decided as ours; but they are conceived in a right temper; and are well entitled to regard, as the sentiments of one who has ever been zealous for the honour and independence of his country.

• Many a novel scene, and many a change, must take place, before the durability of this new legislative fabric can be said to be fairly tried. Would that the mode, by which that fabric was raised, could be for ever effaced from the memory! But as that cannot be, let us endeavour to hope the best. Let us, in many instances, aspire to a higher policy than has hitherto fallen to the lot or the wisdom of both countries to pursue; that policy which alone merits such an epithet, the melioration of the condition of our peasantry; the eternal exile of all proscribing systems from this country; the union, not of legislatures merely, which would be found only in the statute book, but of hearts, of men, of Britons, of Irishmen, under whatever denomination, civil or religious, they may be now distinguished. So acting, the spirit of that good man, whose memory I have endeavoured, though with no cunning hand, to embalm, may be said to walk abroad, and live among us still; so acting, we shall prosper; so shall "pale invasion come with half a heart, " and the well-ordered motto of the knighthood of St Patrick extend beyond the shield of that chivalry, and for ever encircle both countries, Quis separa, p. 427, 428.

bit?

We should now take our leave of Mr Hardy;-and yet it would not be fair to dismiss him from the scene entirely, without giving our readers one or two specimens of his gift of drawing characters; in the exercise of which he generally rises to a sort of quaint and brilliant conciseness, and displays a degree of acuteness and fine observation that are not to be found in the other parts of his writing. His greatest fault is, that he does not abuse any body,-even where the dignity of history and of virtue call loudly for such an infliction. Yet there is something in the tone of all his delineations, that satisfies us that there is nothing worse than extreme good nature at the bottom

of

of this forbearance. Of Philip Tisdall, who was Attorneygeneral when Lord Charlemont first came into Parliament, he says,

• Hehad an admirable and most superior understanding; an understanding matured by years-by long experience-by habits with the best company from his youth-with the bar, with Parliament, with the State. To this strength of intellect was added a constitutional philosophy, or apathy, which never suffered him to be carried away by attachment to any party, even his own. He saw men and things so clearly; he understood so well the whole farce and fallacy of life, that it passed before him like a scenic representation; and, till almost the close of his days, he went through the world with a constant sunshine of soul, and an inexorable gravity of feature. His countenance was never gay, and his mind was never gloomy. He was an able speaker, as well at the bar as in the House of Commons, though his diction was very indifferent. He did not speak so much at length as many of his parliamentary coadjutors, though he knew the whole of the subject much better than they did. He was not only a good speaker in Parliament, but an excellent manager of the House of Commons. He never said too much. He had great merit in what he did not say; for Government was never committed by him. He plunged into no difficulty; nor did he ever suffer his antagonist to escape from one. p. 78, 79.

Of Hussey Burgh, afterwards Lord Chief Baron, he observes, His speeches, when he first entered the House of Commons, were very brilliant, very figurative, and far more remarkable for that elegant, poetic taste, which had highly distinguished him when a member of the university, than any logical illustration, or depth of argument. But as he was blessed with great endowments, every session took away somewhat from the unnecessary splendour and redundancy of his harangues. To make use of a phrase of Cicero, in speaking of his own improvement in eloquence, his orations were gradually deprived of all fever. To those who never heard him, as the fashion of this world, in eloquence as in all things, soon passes away, it may be no easy matter to convey a just idea of his style of speaking. It differed totally from the models which have been pre. sented to us by some of the great masters of rhetoric in later days. It was sustained by great ingenuity, great rapidity of intellect, luminous and piercing satire; in refinement abundant, in simplicity sterile. The classical allusions of this orator, for he was most truly one, were so apposite, they followed each other in such bright and varied succession, and, at times, spread such an unexpected and triumphant blaze around his subject, that all persons, who were in the least tinged with literature, could never be tired of listening to him; and when Hussey Burgh, in the splendid days of the Volunteer Association, alluding to some coercive English laws, and to that institution, then in its proudest array, said in the House of Commons, "That such laws were sown like dragons' teeth, and sprung up in

armed