not be acquainted with the constitutional question then at issue. It was this: Mr Fox held that, upon any incapacity arising in the sovereign, the regency would then settle (ipso facto of that incapacity, and, therefore, in defiance of Parliament) upon the Prince of Wales; overlooking altogether the case in which there should be no Prince of Wales, and the case in which such a prince might be as incapable, from youth, of exercising the powers attached to the office, as his father from disease. Mr Pitt denied that a Prince of Wales simply as such, and apart from any moral fitness which he might have manifested, had more of legal title to the office of regent than any lamplighter or scavenger. It was the province of Parliament exclusively to legislate for the particular case. The practical decision of the question was not called for, through the accident of the king's sudden recovery: but in Ireland, from the independence asserted by the two houses of the British councils, the question grew still more complex. The LordLieutenant refused to transmit their address,* and Lord Mornington supported him powerfully in his refusal.

Ten years after this hot collision of parties, Lord Mornington was appointed Governor-General of India; and now first he entered upon a stage worthy of his powers. I cannot myself agree with his biographer, Mr Pearce, that "the wisdom of his policy is now universally recognised;" because the same false views of our Indian position, which at that time caused his splendid services to be slighted in many quarters, still preponderates. All administrations alike have been intensely ignorant of Indian

* Which adopted neither view; for, by offering the regency of Ireland to the Prince of Wales, they negatived Mr Fox's view, who held it to be the prince's by inherent right, whether offered or not; and, on the other hand, thev still more openly opposed Mr Pitt.

politics; and for the natural reason, that the business of home politics leaves them no disposable energies for affairs so distant, and with which each man's chance of any durable connection is so exceedingly small. What Lord Mornington did was this: he looked our prospects in the face. Two great enemies were then looming upon the horizon-viz., Mysore and the Mahrattas-both brutally ignorant of our real resources, and both deluded by our imperfect use of such resources as, even in a previous war, we had possessed. That one of these enemies who first came into play was Tippoo, the Sultan of Mysore: him, by the crushing energy of his arrangements, Lord Mornington was able utterly to destroy; and to distribute his dominions with equity and moderation; yet so as to prevent any new coalition arising in that quarter against the British power. There is a portrait of Tippoo, of this very tiger, more than tiger-hearted, in the second volume of Mr Pearce's work, which expresses sufficiently the unparalleled ferocity of his nature; and it is guaranteed, by its origin, as authentic. Tippoo, from the personal interest investing him, has more fixed the attention of Europe than a much more formidable enemy: that enemy was the Mahratta confederacy, chiefly concentrated in the persons of the Peishwah, of Scindia (usually pronounced Sindy), of Holkar, and the Rajah of Berar. Had these four princes been less profoundly ignorant, had they been less inveterately treacherous, they would have cost us the only* dreadful struggle which in India we have stood. As it

* "The only dreadful struggle:"-This was written thirteen years ago, when the Sikh empire of Lahore was only beginning to be dangerous: and the Lion of Lahore, Runjeet Sing (the Romulus of the Sikhs), was but dimly appreciated by our own officers, when presented to him on their march to and from Affghanistan. Sing means lion.

was, Lord Mornington's government reduced and crippled the Mahrattas to such an extent, that in 1817 Lord Hastings found it possible to crush them for ever. Three services of a profounder nature Lord Wellesley was enabled to do for India: first, to pave the way for the propagation of Christianity—mighty service, stretching to the clouds, and which, in the hour of death, must have given him consolation; secondly, to enter upon the abolition of such Hindoo superstitions as are most shocking to humanity, particularly the practice of Suttee, and the barbarous exposure of dying persons or of first-born infants at Saugor on the Ganges; finally, to promote an enlarged system of education, which (if his splendid scheme had been adopted) would have diffused its benefits all over India. It ought also to be mentioned, that the expedition by way of the Red Sea, against the French in Egypt, was so entirely of his suggestion and his preparation, that, to the great dishonour of Messrs Pitt and Dundas, whose administration, great by its general policy, was the worst, as a war administration, that ever feebly misapplied or lazily nonapplied the resources of a mighty empire, it languished for eighteen months purely through their neglect.

In 1805, having staid about seven years in India, Lord Mornington was recalled; was created Marquess Wellesley; was sent, in 1821, as Viceroy to Ireland, where there was little to do; having previously, in 1809, been sent ambassador to the Spanish Cortes, where there was an infinity to do, but no means of doing it. The last great political act of Lord Wellesley was the smashing of the Peel ministry in 1834-viz., by the famous resolution (which he personally drew up) for appropriating to the great purpose of general education in Ireland whatever surplus might arise from the remodelled revenues of the Irish Church.

Full

of honours, he retired from public affairs at the age of seventy-five; and, for seven years more of life, dedicated his time to such literary pursuits as he had found most interesting in early youth.

Mr Pearce, who is so capable of writing vigorously and sagaciously, has too much allowed himself to rely upon public journals. For example, he reprints the whole of the attorney-general's official information against eleven obscure persons, who, from the gallery of the Dublin theatre, did "wickedly, riotously, and routously" hiss, groan, insult, and assault (to say nothing of their having caused and procured to be hissed, groaned, &c.) the Marquess Wellesley, Lord-Lieutenant General, and General Governor of Ireland. This document covers more than nine pages; and, after all, omits the only fact of the least consequence. —viz., that several missiles were thrown by the rioters into the viceregal box, and amongst them a quart-bottle, which barely missed his excellency's temples. Considering the impetus acquired by the descent from the gallery, there is little doubt that such a weapon would have killed Lord Wellesley on the spot. In default, however, of this weighty fact, the attorney-general favours us with memorialising the very best piece of doggerel that I remember to have read-viz., that upon divers (to wit, three thousand) papers the rioters had wickedly and maliciously written and printed, besides, observe, causing to be written and printed, "No Popery," as also the following traitorous couplet:— "The Protestants want Talbot, As the Papists have got all but ;" meaning "all but" that which they got some years later

* Routously:-This is not altogether lawyers' surplusage: for, let the hot-blooded reader understand, that to be routous is nothing like so criminal in law as to be riotous. I never go beyond the routous point.

by means of the Clare election, in favour of Dan O'Con nell. Yet if, in some instances like this, Mr Pearce has too largely drawn upon official papers, which he should rather have abstracted and condensed, on the other hand, his work has a special value in bringing forward private documents, to which his opportunities have gained him a confidential access. We are indebted to Mr Pearce also for two portraits of Lord Wellesley, one in middle life, and one in old age, from a sketch by the Comte d'Orsay, felicitously executed.

Something remains to be said of Lord Wellesley as a literary man; and towards such a judgment Mr Pearce has contributed some very pleasing materials. As a public speaker, Lord Wellesley had that degree of brilliancy and effectual vigour, which might have been expected in a man of great talents, possessing much native sensibility to the charms of style, but not led by any personal accidents of life into a separate cultivation of oratory, or into any profound investigation of its duties and its powers on the arena of a British senate. There is less call for speaking of Lord Wellesley in this character, where he did not seek for any eminent distinction, than in the more general character of an elegant litterateur, which furnished to him much of his recreation in all stages of his life, and much of his consolation in the last. It is interesting to see this accomplished nobleman, in advanced age, when other resources were one by one decaying, and the lights of life were successively fading into darkness, still cheering his languid hours by the culture of classical literature, and in his eighty-second year drawing solace from those same pursuits which had given grace and distinction to his twentieth.

One or two remarks I will make upon Lord Wellesley's