of all the country east of the river Perrot, as far as Bristol Bridge; and there is a tradition, that one of the family was standard-bearer to Henry I. in the Irish invasion. In England, the family subsequently perished; the estates passing, by a daughter, into other families.

The Irish branch survived in Sir William de Wellesley, who was summoned to Parliament as a baron, and had a grant by patent, from Edward III., of the castle of Kildare. In the fifteenth century, the family obtained the Castle of Dangan by an heiress. The de was subsequently dropped from the family name, and the name itself abridged into Wesley—an abbreviation which subsisted down to the immediate predecessor of the subject of this memoir; or, if we are to rely on the journals of the Irish Parliament, it remained later still. For in 1790 we find the late Lord Maryborough there registered as Wesley (Pole,) and even the Duke is registered, as member for the borough of Trim, as the Honourable Arthur Wesley.

Richard Colley Wesley, the grandfather of the Marquess, having succeeded to the family estate by the death of his cousin, was in 1746 created a peer. He was succeeded by his son Garret, who was advanced to the dignities of Viscount Wellesley of Dangan Castle, county Meath, and Earl of Mornington. He was a privy councillor in Ireland, and custos rotulorum of the county of Meath. He married Anne, eldest daughter of Arthur Hill Trevor, first Viscount Duncannon, by whom he had six sons and two daughters.

The Earl was a man of accomplished tastes; he had travelled, adopted dilettante habits, and expended more money in the decoration of his mansion and demesne than his fortune could well bear. But he would have been eminent if he had been compelled to make music his profession; his glee of "Here, in cool grot and mossy cell," has no rival in English composition for the exquisite feeling of the music, the fine adaptation of its harmony to the language, and the general beauty, elegance, and power of expression. He died on the 22d of May 1781.

Richard Colley Wellesley, afterwards the Marquess Wellesley, was born on the 20th of June 1760, in Ireland. At the age of eleven he was sent to Eton, under the care of the Rev. Jonathan Davis, afterwards head-master and provost of Eton. He soon distinguished himself by the facility and elegance of his Latin versification. He was sent to Oxford, and matriculated as a nobleman at Christ Church, in December 1778. In his second year at the college, he gained the Latin verse prize on the death of Captain Cook. His tutor was Dr William Jackson, afterwards Bishop of Oxford. In 1781, on the death of his father the Earl of Mornington, the young lord was called away to superintend the family affairs in Ireland, without taking his degree. On his coming of age, which was in the ensuing year, his first act was to take upon himself the debts of his father, who had left the family estates much embarrassed. His mother, Lady Mornington, survived, and was a woman of remarkable intelligence and force of understanding. To her care chiefly was entrusted the education of her children; and from the ability of the mother, as has been often remarked in the instance of eminent men, was probably derived the talent which has distinguished her memorable family. At the period of their father's death, the brothers and sisters of the young Earl were, William Wellesley Pole, (afterwards Lord Maryborough,) aged eighteen; Anne, (afterwards married to Henry, son of Lord Southampton,) aged thirteen; Arthur, (the Duke of Wellington,) aged twelve; Gerald Valerian, (prebendary of Durham,) aged ten; Mary Elizabeth, (Lady Culling Smith,) aged nine; and Henry, (Lord Cowley,) eight years old.

The period at which the young Earl took his seat in the Irish House of Lords was one of remarkable anxiety. The success of the American revolt had filled the popular mind with dreams of revolution. The success of opposition in the Irish Parliament had fixed the national eyes upon the legislature; and the power actually on foot in the volunteer force of Ireland, tempted the populace to extravagant hopes of national independence and a separation from England, equally forbidden by sound policy and by the nature of things. Ireland, one thousand miles removed into the Atlantic, might sustain a separate existence; but Ireland, lying actually within sight of England, and almost touching her coasts, was evidently designed by nature for that connexion, which is as evidently essential to her prosperity. It is utterly impossible that a small country, lying so close to a great one, could have a separate government without a perpetual war; and, disturbed as Ireland has been by the contest of two antagonist religions, that evil would be as nothing compared with the tremendous calamity of English invasion. Fortunately, the peaceful contest with the English minister in the year 1780, had concluded by recognizing the resolution, "that the King's most excellent Majesty, and the Lords and Commons of Ireland, are the only power competent to make laws to bind Ireland." It is unnecessary now to go further into this topic than to say, that this was a mere triumph of words so far as substantial advantages were regarded, while it was a triumph of evil so far as the existence of a national Parliament was a benefit. It gained no actual advantage whatever for Ireland; for all that Ireland wanted for progressive prosperity was internal quiet. On the other hand, it inflamed faction, even by its nominal success; it told the multitude that every thing might be gained by clamour, and in consequence clamour soon attempted every thing.

The orators of Opposition will never be without a topic. Public disturbance is the element in which they live. They must assault the government, or perish of inanition; and they must stimulate the mob by the novelty of their demands, and the violence of their declamation, or they must sink into oblivion. The Irish opposition now turned to another topic, and brought forward the Roman Catholics for the candidateship of the legislature.

It is not our purpose to go into the detail of a decision of which England now sees all the evil. But there can be no question whatever, that to bring into the legislature a man all whose sentiments are distinctly opposed to the Church and the State—who in the instance of the one acknowledges a foreign supremacy, and in the instance of the other anathematizes the religion—is one of the grossest acts that faction ever committed, or that feebleness in government ever complied with. Self-defence is the first instinct of nature; the defence of the constitution is the first duty of society; the defence of our religion is an essential act of obedience to Heaven. Yet the permission given to individuals, hostile to both, to make laws for either, was the second triumph at which Irish action aimed, and which English impolicy finally conceded.

As an evidence of the royal satisfaction at the arrangements adopted by the lords and commons of Ireland, the king founded an order of knighthood, by the title of the Knights of the Illustrious Order of St Patrick, of which the king and his heirs were to be sovereigns in perpetuity, and the viceroys grand masters. The patent stated as the general ground of this institution, "that it had been the custom of wise and beneficent princes of all ages to distinguish the virtue and loyalty of their subjects by marks of honour, as a testimony to their dignity, and excellency in all qualifications which render them worthy of the favour of their sovereign, and the respect of their fellow-subjects; that so their eminent merits may stand acknowledged to the world, and create a virtuous emulation in others to deserve such honourable distinctions." All this may be true, and marks of honour are undoubtedly valuable; but they can be only so in instances where distinguished services have been rendered, and where the public opinion amply