or guarantee on my part. I was informed by Mr. G. Ponsonby that the arrangement was completed; that Sir Michael was to resign, on the terms of receiving the retiring salary; and also, upon a promise by the Government, that his deputy, Mr. Ridgeway, should get a place of £600 per annum, if such place should become vacant before the 25th of March ensuing, until which time no addition could be made to the pension-list; and, if no such vacancy should occur before that day, he should then be placed on the pension establishment for £500 a year for his life, and that a provision by pension to the amount of altogether of £500 a year, was also to be made for three inferior officers of Sir Michael's Court.

"Had any idea of any stipulation whatever on my part been suggested, feeling as I did, I could not have borne it-for, see how it would have stood on my part, it would have been a purchase of a judicial office. The purchase could not be made good out of its own income, which could last only to my death or resignation: for these annuities were for the lives of four other persons, and worth at least £8000; with these £8000, therefore, I was eventually to charge my private fortune; for this sum I was to buy the disappointment of an expectation which I thought certain, and to commit a breach of the law and the constitution.

"But if I could have dispensed with the matter of purity, another question remained: Was this change between my professional and a judicial situation thus to be obtained, worth the sum of £8000? There would have been, therefore, two previous questions to decide a

question of crime and a question of prudence. If I had consulted a moralist upon the one, and a Jew upon the other, what would have been the answer? I would not, therefore, have submitted for a mo

ment; I would have snapped the thread in such a manner as would have made it impossible to splice it, and have felt pleasure in being restored to my liberty.

"Sir Michael Smith at length resigned; and five months after Mr. G. Ponsonby accepted the seals, I came into my office. Months afterwards elapsed-no place was given to Mr. Ridgeway. I should have wished that he were satisfied rather by a place than a pension: but upon this delay I made no application to Mr. G. Ponsonby, because there scarcely then subsisted between us that sort of intercourse which could make such an application agreeable to me; perhaps in those feelings I was not just to Mr. G. Ponsonby; perhaps my temper might have been too hasty or too exacting: but I certainly did think myself treated, at least, with great unkindness; and you may remember I complained of it to you, long before the close of that administration.

"So things rested until a very few days previous to the 25th of March, when Mr. Elliott requested of me to find out the names of those belonging to Sir Michael Smith, and send them to him, that their business might be settled before the Government should resign. Sir Michael happening to come to town that very day, I apprised him of Mr. Elliott's desire, and accordingly he sent him the names. I soon learned from mere rumour that the pensions were not granted, though the Government continued till towards the end of April. I learned it afterwards from G. Ponsonby himself, who spoke of it with regret, as a circumstance vexatious to Sir Michael, but without the remotest allusion to any interest or concern that he himself or that I could possibly have in the matter; nor did he say anything whatsoever as to the cause of this disappointment. As to the Duke of Bedford, I could not but think with everybody else, that the trans

action was merely between Sir Michael and the Irish Government, without any possibility of relation to the person of the viceroy; and it was under this continued conviction that, even by the necessity of vindication, I could allow myself to speak of it, even to you, so freely as I now do. After some time, I forget how many days or weeks, I met a friend of ours accidentally; he introduced the circumstance of the disappointment of Mr. Ridgeway, and the three other persons. In what passed he appeared to me to speak merely from the casual suggestion of his own mind. I had not then, nor have I now, any idea that he spoke at the instance of Mr. G. Ponsonby, or that he meant to convey any distinct proposition whatsoever. He expressed much concern at the accident, as extremely unlucky. I inquired how the disappointment could have been occasioned. Of this he seemed uninformed; but asked me if I did not think that something ought to be done by us. I answered that I was utterly ignorant upon the subject; that I considered myself, from the moment Mr. G. Ponsonby became Chancellor, as most unkindly treated by him, from whom alone I could derive any information; that I did not see what we should do on the occasion, or why we should do anything. We met a second time in the same casual way; he asked me if I had thought any more upon the subject of our last conversation. I answered that I had heard nothing more about it, and, of course, that I thought as I did before. Had he come to make any demand on me, on the part of Mr. G. Ponsonby, I should have expected to have it made frankly and distinctly; I should have expected to find him prepared to give the fullest satisfaction as to the nature of such a demand, and of the facts on which it could rest, being myself utterly ignorant of them. I should have expected to be dis

tinctly informed, why the arrangement made in London, in pursuance of my original compact with Mr. G. Ponsonby, had not been observed in Dublin? Why the hopes of Sir Michael had been disappointed? Why I had never been consulted upon either subject? How the non-performance to Sir Michael could throw any liability on me? If it had been a proposition to do something in concurrence with the party, I should have expected to be informed how the liability of Mr. Ponsonby's officials acts could be extended to the party, and which of the party had entertained such an opinion; and in what act it was that they required my concurrence? If I had been shown, by any explanation on these points, that any duty whatsoever, in justice or in honour, was cast upon me, I would have instantly performed it; if I thought it doubtful, I would have referred the decision confidentially to the party itself. But I considered the suggestion as the mere effusion of goodnature; the mere result of kindness, and not of reflection—because, taken in any other way, it would have come simply to this: 'Sir, you have entered many years ago into a compact; you have observed it faithfully; you suffered deeply by that observance when the time of performing was to you arrived, it was ratified in London; in Dublin, the substitution of something else, supposed to be a performance, was adopted without privity or consent; the substitution, too, was accompanied by collateral circumstances of much humiliation and disrespect towards you. By unforeseen events that substitution has been attended with some pecuniary charges; it is hoped, that. having so patiently borne this, you will take it cum onere, and not think it unreasonable to defray those incidental expenses-it is trusted you will have no objection to the mode proposed, as unconstitutional or dishonourable. You have a judicial

In

office; all that is required of you is to accept a lease of that office from the deputy and three inferior officers of your predecessor, at the small rent of £800 a year-of these four landlords there will be, the former Trainbearer, Tipstaff, and Crier of your Court. As the rent must be for their lives, and not merely for yours, you will see the necessity of insuring your own-or you may redeem the whole for the sum of £8000, if so much personal fortune has escaped the wreck to which you were exposed by your political fidelity-the entire emoluments of your office will be then generously left to your disposal. Had therefore such a claim been made, I should have viewed it exactly in this light, and refused it accordingly. some time after, I heard that Mr. G. Ponsonby had made a grant of £800 per annum to Mr. Ridgeway and those three inferior officers, and this act has been represented to the public as occasioned by want of gratitude to Mr. G. Ponsonby, my benefactor, and of personal honour as a member of the party; as to the first part of the charge, you well know how unfounded it is. Thank God, I have had many friends-I am now addressing the most valued of them; but, in the sense intended, I never had a benefactor. If I had entertained any views of ambition, I could have been lifted only by a stronger wing than my own; but my journey has been on the ground, and performed on foot, and I was able to walk without the crutches of patronage. As to the allegation of any breach of just or honourable engagement, the fact of such engagement must have been with the knowledge of the Duke of Bedford, of Mr. G. Ponsonby, and of Sir Michael Smith; and I aver that I never was required to take any part in guaranteeing to Sir Michael Smith that agreement of government, or of being liable to him in any event for the performance;

and that I never did, directly or indirectly, make any promise on the subject; and that I know not of any act whatsoever, which, to the best of my judgment, after the maturest consideration, can warrant the allega tions that have been made against me. Of these allegations, I now feel it necessary to take some farther notice: I well know how incapable Mr. G. Ponsonby must be of making them; if he had heard them, he had too much honour not to repel them with indignation; it is therefore the more necessary for me to advert to them. It is said, the substitution of which I complained was for my benefit; I answer, first, that it was a question upon which I alone was competent to decide; a question for the feelings of a gentleman, not the calculation of a notary public. Had it been referred to me, as I think it ought, I should have seen, as the public did see, and did say, that it went to sink me, by excluding me from all political confidence. Between such discredit and pecuniary compensation, no honourable mind could balance. But the assertion itself is untrue in fact. The place which I hold was as inferior to that of Attorney-general, in point of pecuniary emolument as of political consequence. The professional and official income I should have derived from the latter could not have been less than double the amount of what I now enjoy. I should have made no deduction for any precariousness of tenure, for never was there an administration less likely to be changed. That income, therefore, I should have counted upon as certain, till I passed to the chief seat on the King's Bench; a situation of equal certainty with that of the Rolls; of far more dignity; of, I believe, twice the annual value; far more congenial with my habits and temper; and which I should have filled with perhaps more advantage to the public; certainly with much greater pleasure to myself: and to that place the office of

Attorney-general would have led, by the course of ordinary usage; and to that place it must have led me, because in no other way could the compact have been finally fulfilled. I say, then, it was not for my benefit; and I say further, it was not for the benefit of Mr. G. Ponsonby himself; as, without some arrangement in which I should acquiesce, his own compact must have been an insurmountable bar to his acceptance of office. I say, also, that if the compact with me had been observed, the arrangement with Sir Michael Smith could never have existed; nor, of course, any person be called upon to compensate for its non-performance. And yet the charge against me is, that, having received a part payment of a debt, I was bound in honour, out of that part payment, to defray the expense of the disappointment which prevented my receiving the whole.

"It has been said, that the attacks made upon me by my enemies threw difficulties upon my friends in the course of that arrangement; and that, under all the circumstances, though the compact was not fully performed, I might have been content. But what were those who at tached slanders upon me in common with themselves-slanders provoked by a conduct of which my friends, as well as myself, have reason to be proud; slanders cast upon me by the very men whose want of wisdom or humanity threw upon me the necessity of adopting and pursuing that conduct which provoked their vengeance and their misrepresentation? Thank God, I did adopt and pursue it, under the pressure of uninterrupted attacks upon my character and fortune, and frequently at the hazard of my life: I trust, that while I have memory, that conduct will remain indelibly engraven upon it; because it will there be a record of the most valuable of all claims-a claim upon the gratitude of my own conscience. But, at most, what

could the supposed difficulties be? Was it more than to say, "a friend cannot be less dear, or a compact less sacred, because that friend has been falsely aspersed ?" I know that malice against me was then most active, because it was then most interested; but I can scarcely imagine any distillation of slander so highly rectified as to dissolve a compact. And here, surely, it is not very necessary for me to say, that had such difficulty really arisen, I would not have permitted for a moment any consideration personal to myself to stand in the way of an arrangement from which the friends of Ireland expected so much advantage.

"It has been said, that at all events, I have been a gainer by my connexion with the party; a despicable reproach, if true; but it is not true. I came into parliament at a very early period; having no hereditary fortune, I could have little property. During the whole time of my sitting there, I never deviated from those principles which have bound us together; I continued, from parliament to parliament, to come in at my own expense. It is apparent how heavy such a burthen must have been; I was not like other men, who came into Parliament without any expense; who had great family interest to support them; I had not the same means nor the same inducements. To this, perhaps, it might be objected, that at my first coming into the House of Commons I did accept a seat from a particular friend; and the fact is so. also true, that having soon differed on political subjects with that gentleman, I purchased a seat for a friend of his, there being then no way of vacating; though, to do him justice, he endeavoured to dissuade me from it; having given me the seat on the express condition of perfect freedom on my part. From the first, I adopted your principles, and on those we acted until the

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forming of our party, 1789. In the mere personal compact between Mr. G. Ponsonby and me, you could have no interest; for it was known that you would not accept any emolument of office. The compact itself was not a stipulation for gain, but simply a bond of cohesion in the faithful discharge of that agreement. I made no compromise with power; I had the merit of provoking and despising the personal malice of every man in Ireland who was the known enemy of the country. Without the walls of the courts of justice my character was pursued by the most persevering slander; and within those walls, though I was too strong to be beaten down by any judicial malignity, it was not so with my clients; and my consequent losses in mere professional income, have never been estimated at less, as you must have often heard, than 30,000l.; and yet for these losses, it seems, I am to be considered as compensated. It is with no little pain that I descend to such paltry topics, but when accusation is vile and grovelling, what dignity can be expected in defence? It seems the privilege of vulgar calumny, that the victim must be humbled by the one, if he be not disgraced by the other.

"Lastly, it has been said, that it would have have been a good-natured thing to take an accidental loss upon myself, instead of letting itf all on Mr. Ponsonby. Strange goodna-ture, indeed!-to make myself chargeable with a loss that could have been occasioned solely by what I consider the reverse of an act of kindness. Strange good-nature, as it appears to me, to apply £8000 of my fortune in the purchase of an imputation on my character, by which I should have falsely admitted myself to have been a corrupt trafficker for a judicial office! But supposing, however, that there could Subsist such liability, should it not appear that every thing possible had been done to prevent its arising?

And here, what has been done? In the variety of places which must have fallen from June to March, was any offer made to Mr. Ridgeway? But when in March the names were required to be sent in, as I have stated, with the express intent of performing the engagements, and which requisition was, of itself, an acknowledgment of the power to perform, why was it not performed? And in this latter view, I am not surprised to have heard it said, that Sir Michael Smith conceived the failure to Mr. Ridgeway as an indignity to himself.

"I know your friendship will excuse the painful trouble I have given you, but you are the person to whom alone I could address this letter. I consider myself still, and shall, whilst I live, a member of our party, and bound by its principles; you have a peculiar interest in the honour of those with whom you have thought it right to act; and none of us can be humbled in looking to you as the patron of us all. I feel I have trespassed too long upon you in justifying my conduct; this justification is, in truth, but one of the objects of this letter, and this I trust is accomplished. As to these facts, however, on which I have placed my justification, I may be utterly mistaken; I reason upon them as they appeared: Mr. G. Ponsonby may think they have been entirely misconceived by me; or he may know of other facts, of which I know nothing, that would show his conduct to me perfectly as it ought to have been, and that I, on the contrary, have been in error. never could I be undeceived with more pleasure to myself. The other object of my letter, therefore, is, to request you will communicate with Mr. G. Ponsonby on this subject: that you will learn from him if there be any claim which he conceives himself to have upon me, in justice or in honour; and the grounds upon which he conceives such claim to

If so,