same time, and without the least regard to public opinion, and that at a time when the characteristic of English Government was its moderation, and the only chance of its subsisting was its candour, its integrity, and its inoffensiveness: Mr. Pelham just dead, and the Duke of Newcastle weak and incompetent, attacked on all sides by younger men of ability and vigour, who were seeking for every breath of popularity to aid them against him.
"Ireland had been governed by a few men who were called undertakers. They were commonly appointed Lords Justices in the absence of the Lord-Lieutenant, and were used on his arrival once in two years to undertake, as it was termed, to carry the business of government through the House of Commons there, upon condition of their obtaining a pretty good provision for themselves, and as hard a bargain for others as they could drive for Government; for their credit depended with the English Government upon the cheapness of it. The poor Duke of Dorset was made by his son and the Primate to commence politician and man of business at sixty. The undertakers were dismissed. Their weight, connections, and habits, which were formerly applied to keep the people ignorant, happy, and quiet, were immediately applied with all possible activity, for their existence depended on it, to instruct, to animate, and to disquiet them, in doing which they could find no great difficulty, considering that the character of the people was naturally turbulent, impetuous, and uncivilised, ten Roman Catholics without property or principle to one Protestant with or without property, new measures brought forward in a country where nothing new had been agitated since the Revolution, except the paltry business of Wood's halfpence, which might have taught them experience; and the contrivers of all this without either solid sense, natural interest, or courage to support what they had undertaken.
"It is natural to suppose under these circumstances that Government was defeated. The Primate was protected by his Primacy; Lord George Sackville escaped with difficulty from the fury of the populace. Another
