It is usual for masters to make their boys declaim on both sides of an argument; and as some kinds of assemblies are called the schools of politics, I confess nothing can better improve political school-boys than the art of making plausible or implausible harangues against the very opinion for which they resolve to determine.

So cardinal Perron, after having spoken for an hour, to the admiration of all his hearers, to prove the existence of God, told some of his intimates that he could have spoken another hour and much better to prove the contrary.

I have placed this reasoning in the strongest light that I think it will bear; and have nothing to answer, but that, allowing it as much weight as the reader shall please, it has constantly met with ill success in the mouth of our friend; but whether for want of good luck or good management, I suspend my judgment.

To return from this long digression: If persons in higher stations have been allowed to choose wenches without regard even to difference in religion, yet never incurred the least reflection on their loyalty or their protestantism, shall the chief governor of a great kingdom be censured for choosing a companion who may formerly have been suspected for differing from the orthodox in some speculative opinions of persons and things, which cannot affect the fundamental principles of a sound Whig?

But let me suppose a very possible case. Here is a person sent to govern Ireland, whose unfortunate weak side it happens to be, for several reasons above mentioned, that he has encouraged the attendance of one or two gentlemen distinguished for their taste, their wit, and their learning; who have taken the oaths to his Majesty, and pray heartily for him; yet, because they may perhaps be stigmatised as quondam Tories by Pistorides and his gang, his excellency must be forced to banish them under the pain and peril of displeasing the zealots of his own party; and thereby be put into a woise condition than every common good fellow, who

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be a sincere protestant and a loyal subject, and yet rather choose to drink fine ale at the Pope's Head than muddy at the King's.

Let me then return to my suppositions. It is certain the highflown loyalists, in the present sense of the word, have their thoughts, and studies, and tongues, so entirely diverted by political schemes that the zeal of their principles has eaten up their understandings; neither have they time from their employments, their hopes, and their hourly labors, for acquiring new additions of merit, to amuse themselves with philological converse or speculations, which are

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utterly ruinous to all schemes of rising in the world. What then must a great man do, whose ill stars have fatally perverted him to a love, and taste, and possession of literature, politeness, and good sense ? Our thorough-sped republic of Whigs, which contains the bulk of all hopers, pretenders, expecters, and professors, are beyond all doubt most highly useful to princes, to governors, to great ministers, and to their country; but at the same time, and by necessary consequence, the most disagreeable companions to all who have that unfortunate turn of mind peculiar to his excellency, and perhaps to five or six more in a nation.

I do not deny it possible that an original or proselyte favorite of the times might have been born to those useless talents which in former ages qualified a man to be a poet or a philosopher. All I contend for is, that where the true genius of party once enters, it sweeps the house clean and leaves room for many other spirits to take joint possession, until the last state of that man is exceedingly better than the first.

I allow it a great error in his excellency, that he adheres so obstinately to his old unfashionable academic education; yet so perverse is human nature, that the usual remedies for this evil in others have produced a contrary effect in him; to a degree, that I am credibly informed he will, as I have already hinted, in the middle of a session, quote passages out of Plato and Pindar at his own table, to some book-learned companion, without blushing, even when persons of great stations are by.

I will venture one step further, which is freely to confess that this mistaken method of educating youth in the knowledge of ancient learning and language is too apt to spoil their politics and principles; because the doctrine and examples of the books they read teach them lessons directly contrary in every point to the present practice of the world : and accordingly Hobbes most judiciously observes that the writings of the Greeks and Romans made young men imbibe opinjons against absolute power in a prince, or even in a first-minister, and embrace notions of liberty and property.

It has been therefore a great felicity in these kingdoms that the heirs to titles and large estates have a weakness in their eyes, a tenderness in their constitutions; are not able to bear the pain and indignity of whipping; and as the mother rightly expresses it, could never take to their books; yet are well enough qualified to sign a receipt for half a year's rent, to put their names (rightly spelt) to a warrant, and to read pamphlets against religion and high-flying;

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whereby they fill their niches, and carry themselves through the world with that dignity which best becomes a senator and a 'squire.

I could heartily wish his excellency would be more condescending to the genius of the kingdom he governs, to the condition of the times, and to the nature of the station he fills. Yet if it be true, what I have read in old English story-books, that one Agesilaus (no matter to the bulk of my readers whether I spell the name right or wrong) was caught by the parson of the parish riding on a hobbyhorse with his children; that Socrates, a heathen philosopher, was found dancing by himself at fourscore; that a king called Cæsar Augustus (or some such name) used to play with boys, whereof some might possibly be sons of Tories; and that two great men, called Scipio and Lælius (I forget their Christian names, and whether they were poets or generals) often played at duck and drake with smooth stones on a river: Now, I say, if these facts be true (and the book where I found them is in print) I cannot imagine why our most zealous patriots may not a little indulge his excellency in an infirmity which is not morally evil, provided he gives no public scandal, which is by all means to be avoided : I say, why he may not be indulged twice a week to converse with one or two particular persons, and let him and them con over their old exploded readings together, after mornings spent in hearing and prescribing ways and means from and to his most obedient politicians, for the welfare of the kingdom; although the said particular person or persons may not have made so public a declaration of their political faith in all its parts, as the business of the nation requires, still submitting my opinion to that happy majority which I am confident is always in the right; by whom the liberty of the subject has been so frequently, so strenuously, and so successfully asserted; who by their wise counsels have made commerce to flourish, money to abound, inhabitants to increase, the value of lands and rents to rise, and the whole island put on a new face of plenty and prosperity.

But in order to clear his excellency more fully from this accusation of showing his favors to high-flyers, Tories, and jacobites, it will be necessary to come to particulars.

The first person of a Tory denomination to whom his excellency gave any marks of his favor was doctor Thomas Sheridan. It is to be observed that this happened so early in his excellency's government, as it may be justly supposed he had not been informed of that gentleman's character upon so dangerous an article. The doctor being well known and distinguished for his skill and success in the

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education of youth, beyond most of his profession for many years past, ,-was recommended to his excellency on the score of his learning, and particularly for his knowledge in the Greek tongue; whereof, it seems, his excellency is a great admirer, although for what reasons I could never imagine. However, it is agreed on all hands that his lordship was too easily prevailed on by the doctor's request, or indeed rather from the bias of his own nature, to hear a tragedy acted in that unknown language by the doctor's lads, which was written by some heathen author; but whether it contained any Tory or high-church principles must be left to the consciences of the boys, the doctor, and his excellency, the only witnesses in this case whose testimonies can be depended upon.

It seems his excellency (a thing never to be sufficiently wondered at) was so pleased with his entertainment, that some time after he gave the doctor a church living to the value of almost 1001. ayear, and made him one of his chaplains; from an antiquated notion,

, that good schoolmasters ought to be encouraged in every nation professing civility and religion. Yet his excellency did not venture to make this bold step without strong recommendations from persons of undoubted principles fitted to the times ; who thought themselves bound in justice, honor, and gratitude, to do the doctor a good office, in return for the care he had taken of their children or of those of their friends. Yet the catastrophe was terrible; for the doctor, in the height of his felicity and gratitude, going down to take possession of his parish, and furnished with a few led sermons, whereof as it is to be supposed the number was very small, having never served a cure in the church, he stopped at Cork to attend on his bishop; and going to church on the Sunday following, was, according to the usual civility of country clergymen, invited by the minister of the parish to supply the pulpit. It happened to be the 1st of August; and the 1st of August happened that year to light upon a Sunday; and it happened that the doctor's text was in these words, “ Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof:"l and lastly, it happened that some one person of the congregation, whose loyalty made him watchful upon every appearance of danger to his majesty's person and government, when service was over gave the alarm. Notice was immediately sent up to town; and by the zeal of one man of no large dimensions of body or mind, such a clamor was raised that we in Dublin could apprehend no less than an invasion

The first of August is the anniversary of the Hanoverian family's accession to the crown of Great Britain.

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1.RA by the pretender, who must be landed in the south. --The result was that the doctor must be struck out of the chaplain's list and appear no more at the castle; yet whether he were then, or be at this day, a Whig or a Tory, I think is a secret; only it is manifest that he is a zealous Hanoverian, at least in poetry,' and a great admirer of the present royal family through all its branches. His friends likewise assert that he had preached this sermon often under the same text; that not having observed the words till he was in the pulpit and had opened his notes, as he is a person a little abstracted he wanted presence of mind to change them : and that in the whole sermon there was not a syllable relating to government or party, or to the subject of the day.

In this incident there seems to have been a union of events that will probably never happen again to the end of the world, or is at least like the grand conjunction in the heavens, which I think they say can arrive but once in twenty thousand

years. The second gentleman (if I am right in my chronology), who under the suspicion of a Tory received some favor from his excellency, is Mr. James Stopford; very strongly recommended by the most eminent Whig in England, on the account of his learning and virtue and other accomplishments. He had passed the greatest part of his youth in close study or in travelling, and was either not at home or not at leisure to trouble his thoughts about party, which I allow to be a great omission, although I cannot honestly place him in the list of Tories; and therefore think his excellency may be fairly acquitted for making him vicar of Finglass, worth about

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1001. a-year.

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The third is doctor Patrick Delany. This divine lies under some disadvantage, having in his youth received many civilities from a certain person,” then in a very high station here, for which reason I doubt the doctor never drank his confusion since; and what makes the matter desperate it is now too late, unless our inquisitors will be content with drinking confusion to his memory. The aforesaid eminent person, who was a judge of all merit except that of party, distinguished the doctor among other juniors in our university for his learning, virtue, discretion, and good sense. But the doctor was then in too good a situation at his college to hope or endeavor at a better establishment from one who had no power to give it to him.