PONSONBY. 473 exertions: and the whole stock of his professional know ledge, previously acquired at leisure hours, now daily increased by study and experience, was brought into play with rapidly increasing eminence and emolument. Thus proving what may be effected by a man of parts, who has the firmness to surmount the indolence of a disposition wholly averse to toil and constraint, and to exert those qualities with which nature and education have endowed him. In a very short time, Mr. Ponsonby not only acquired the reputation of a first-rate lawyer, which his extensive family connexion, and his rising popularity, enabled him to render extensively productive; but his political know ledge, and commanding eloquence, rendered him equally conspicuous in the senate, and not less a popular favourite with his country, than a formidable antagonist to the ministers whom he opposed. Never, perhaps, in the history of free nations, was a more ample field displayed for the eloquence of a popular orator, than by the state of Ireland from the period of which we now speak, down to that of the Union. The fetters of the country, it is true, were somewhat lightened, and the trammels which paralysed her exertions rather relaxed, by the recent exemption from external domina tion, by the freedom of commerce, and by the national independence, acquired by the eloquence and firmness of Mr. Grattan and his compatriot orators. But still the vitals of the nation were consumed by the .infection of many a hidden malady. Wes' might it be said of Ireland, “casco carpitur igni,” for, exclusive of religious animosi ties, cherished for party views and political machinations, the nation was like a fertile garden overrun with the rankest weeds and brambles of corruption; and the House of Commons an Augean stable, that required more than Herculean labour to cleanse it from the accu mulated filth of job, and place, and pension, and sinecure, and rapacity, and public profusion. It rarely met but for some public mischief, and little, if any, public good could be expected from i t . I t was the arena where conflicting
