which was composed of men of all parties--but never, repeat with an emphasis, into which all my heart and soul are thrown. never did I express myself favourable to a bill, which I reprobated in this house, which I denounced elsewhere, in terms of equally vehement censure; and if in place of standing here, I were lying on my death-bed, and about to appear in the presence of my God, I should not dread with the utterance of these words, if they were to be my last, to appear before him."

This speech was received with loud and reiterated acclamation, and Mr. Sheil was placed in a far higher position than he had ever occupied in the House of Commons.

In May, 1834, Mr. Stanley, Sir James Graham, the Duke of Richmond, and Lord Ripon retired from the cabinet. Lord Grey soon afterwards resigned, and Lord Melbourne became Prime Minister. He was dismissed by William the Fourth on the death of Lord Spencer, and Sir Robert Peel was charged with the formation of a government. The Whigs and the Irish members met at Lichfield House soon after Sir Robert had formed his cabinet; Mr. O'Connell and Mr. Sheil concurred in recommending an amnesty-a reconciliation took place, and the Irish members formed what Mr. Sheil called "a compact alliance" with the men who had intimated a determination to re

dress the grievances of Ireland. This phrase was afterwards misrepresented, and "compact" was substituted for " compact alliance." Sir Robert Peel was defeated on the appropriation question, and went out. Lord Melbourne formed a new government, and Mr. Sheil, in a series of speeches, rendered, what Lord Melbourne admitted to be, essential services to his administration. The most striking speech made by Mr. Sheil, was one during which Lord Lyndhurst happened to be present. Mr. Sheil, in adverting to Lord Lyndhurst's famous assault on the Irish people, turned towards the learned lord with great vehemence of manner, and delivered a denunciation, which was followed by a most remarkable and almost unprecedented ex citement. So highly estimated were the exertions of Mr. Sheil by Lord Normanby and Lord Morpeth, that a vacancy having Occurred in the office of Solicitor-General for Ireland, both those noblemen recommended that Mr. Sheil should be appointed to fill it; but Lord Melbourne announced to Mr. Sheil himself, that on his coming into office, the King had expressed a strong desire that Mr. Sheil should not be employed; and Lord Melbourne stated that, although he had not made any promise to that effect. he was convinced that the existence of the govern

ment would be put to hazard. Mr. Sheil acquiesced, but saw that he must relinquish all hopes of ever obtaining preferment in his profession. He continued his efforts in parliament in favour of the government, without sny hope of remuneration. Soon after the death of William the Fourth, however, the obstacle to his advancement having been removed, he was offered the office of Chief Clerk of the Ordnance, but preferred that of Commissioner of Greenwich Hospital, which became vacant by the death of Mr. Crevey, having been led to think that the office was permanent. After having held it for a year, having been warned that it was practically as well as legally held at pleasure, he resigned an office which, indeed, he ought never to have selected, and, in the year 1839, was named Vice-President of the Board of Trade, and was the first Catholic commoner who was raised to the dignity of a Privy Counsellor in England, since the repeal of the Penal Code. His advancement to this important station created a great clamour, and was made the subject of vehement censure at several public meetings, in which the religion of Mr. Sheil was represented as a practical disqualification; but after a few weeks the matter was forgotten. Mr. Sheil continued Vice-President of the Board of Trade for two years, and a few months before the resignation of the Whig ministers, in 1841, was made Judge Advocate-General, in place of Sir George Grey On the dissolution of Parliament, in 1841, Mr. Sheil was returned for the borough of Dungarvan. The large expenditure connected with the repeated contests for the county of Tipperary, which he had undergone, induced him to retire from the costly honour of representing that fine district of Ireland. Mr. Sheil continued to attend parliament as assiduously when out of office, as he had previously done, and took part in most of the impor tant debates which arose upon the measures proposed by Si Robert Peel. His speech upon the Income Tax was regarded as eminently successful. The impression produced by it was so great, that Lord Stanley having risen to reply to it, Sir Robert Peel pulled him back, and insisted on his right of taking the lead.

When Peel retired from office, bearing with him the contempt of the nation, Sheil was nominated to the Mastership of the Mint. After this appointment he seldom took part in the debates in the House of Commons, as his health was very much shaken by his former close attention, and he was harrassed by repeated attacks of gout.

"In 1851 Mr. Sheil was appointed her Majesty's Plenipot

liary at the Court of Tuscany. He died at Florence of a sudden attack of gout, on Sunday, 25th of May, and was interred on Wednesday the 28th in the Church of San Michele. He left

no family; his son by his first we lea a few years ago. The managing committee of Glasnevin Cemetery proposed to Sheil's friends to place his remains beside those of O'Connell; the offer was not accepted, as Mrs. Sheil wished that his grave might be where she could in death sleep beside him.”*

* Irish Quarterly Review, vol. I, p. 907

SELECT SPEECHES

OF THE

RIGHT HONOURABLE

RICHARD LALOR SHEIL.

SPEECH UPON THE MEMOIRS OF THEOBALD WOLFE TONE, MADE AT THE CATHOLIC ASSOCIATION.

THIS book-the life of Theobald Wolfe Tone, who was guilty of a distempered love of Ireland (he had great talents, and with an adventurous spirit combined an undaunted determination)-contains much matter, in which a Catholic can find instruction, from which a British minister ought to derive a warning, while to a Protestant proprietor it cannot fail to afford a theme, on which, if he shall often reflect, his frequent meditation will not be misapplied. I introduce the subject with some abruptness; but it is as well that any preliminary expatiation should be avoided, and that I should proceed at once to the topics to which it is my intention to direct your notice. I shall advert in the first instance to the observations made by Wolfe Tone upon the policy which he conceived it to be wise, on the part of the Catholics of Ireland, to pursue. He states in a diary kept by him in Paris, that General Clarke, the son of an Irishman, and who was afterwards created Duke de Feltre, expressed to him an opinion, that the system which was called Chouannerie in France, and which is analogous in many respects to the Rockism of this country, might be usefully resorted to in Ireland, and that the people, through such means, might be familiarised with arms, and prepared for a general co-operation, with an invading force. This suggestion was indignantly repudiated by Wolfe Tone, who justly cbserves, that agrarian combinations lead to crimes as unavailing for

any political purpose as they are morally odious, and produce a barbarous and irregular disturbance, which the government regard without alarm, and which affords an opportunity for the enactment of coercive laws, whenever it suits their purpose to resort to them. Tone alludes to another important topic, the disunion of the Catholics amongst themselves, and the secession of the Catholic gentry from the people. He laments these unfortunate incidents, and inveighs against the unhappy spirit of pusillanimous compliance, which characterized the Catholic leaders in the bargain which they were induced to strike with the government in 1793. He states himself to be fully convinced that if, in the midst of the embarrassments of the ministry, with war without, and disaffection within, the men who negotiated on the part of the Catholics of Ireland had adopted the peremptory tone which the condition of the country would have enabled them to assume, the minister would have been compelled to yield, and a measure of complete and unqualified enfranchisement would have been extorted from him. This remark is well founded; I am sure that our interests as well as our honour will be always most effectually consulted by a bold, uncompromising course; that the men at the head of the people must rely upon the people, and nothing but the people, for the accomplishment of every national purpose, and that whenever they shall be weak enough to listen to the false blandishments of power, they will discover that a sacrifice of principle is sure to be followed by a relinquishment of their real interests, and that of their own unwise cunning, as well as of the craft of their antagonists, they will infallibly prove the victims. Sc much for that portion of this book, which relates more immediately to the course which it befitted the leaders of the Irish Catholics in 1793, in the opinion of Theobald Wolfe Tone, to have adopted. I turn to a topic of deeper interest-to a portion of the narrative contained in these memoirs, calculated to awaken in the mind of an English statesman reflections of a very serious kind, and in which I ventured to say, that practical admonition was to be found. In 1795, Theobald Wolfe Tone was compelled to retire from Ireland to the United States, where he had at first an intention of settling; there in the bosom of his family, with a wife whom he adored, and children who shared in his idolatry for their incomparable mother, he might have led a long and prosperous life, if he knew how to form a just estimate of felicity, and could have appreciated the opportunities of happiness with which he wa encompassed. But ambition, or perverted patriotism, was among many passions paramount to every other: he was pursued by the recollections of Ireland: the memory of his country became a malady of his heart: and in the idealism of exile the scenes of oppression which he had witnessed, and at which his blood had boiled, rose with all the distinctness of unimpaired reality before him. The phantasms with which men condemned to leave their country are disastrously haunted, are, to men like Tone, prompters of great enterprise. There gradually grew up in his mind a design as adventurous as any of which the romance of history has left us an example. He formed the determination to strike a blow at England, where he knew that she was most vulnerable, and to