for the English mind,—­his choicest specimen of the political generality he reserved for Ireland.  “Our recent discussions,” he writes, “have laid bare the misery, the discontent, and outrages of Ireland; they are too clearly authenticated to be denied—­too extensive to be treated by any but the most comprehensive measures.”  No doubt the miseries of poor Ireland were laid bare enough; whatever other charges she had to bring against her English governors, she had not the shadow of a complaint to make on the score of inquiry,—­of the laying-bare system.  Countless volumes of blue books, ponderous with Irish grievances, lay dusty and moth-eaten on the shelves of Government offices for years; comprehensive measures to be founded on them were on the lips of statesmen in power, and expectant statesmen, who were climbing to it—­but that was all.

The new Chief Secretary threw the Irish portion of his speech into a pretty antithesis.  “I go to Ireland,” he said, to support the law—­that it may be respected, and to amend the law—­that it may be beloved.”

Lord Palmerston, of course, was a man not to be beaten in the vague-generalities line.  In fact it was a line in which he quite surpassed his chief.  When speaking of Ireland to the electors of Tiverton, the new Foreign Secretary said, with a dignified and generous philosophy,—­“Ireland must present itself to the mind of all men as a subject which required an enlarged, an enlightened view; the most anxious and sincere desire to do equal justice to all; which requires energy of purpose, firmness of spirit, and zealous co-operation on the part of those upon whose support the Government must found its existence.”

Thomas Babington Macaulay, in his speech at Edinburgh, showed a more real anxiety for the welfare of this country than any of his colleagues.  In his peroration he said:  “If the present Government did not exert itself to elevate the condition of the people of Ireland socially as well as politically, and above all, if it did not endeavour to ameliorate the relations between landlord and tenant, that Government will deserve to be expelled from office with public contempt.”  These manly words were uttered in the presence of an audience hostile to Ireland, and hostile to himself, on account of his sympathy for her:  an audience, which at a former election, drove him from the representation of their city, because he had supported the endowment of Maynooth in Parliament.

Ireland is generally regarded as one of the chief difficulties of English Cabinets, but at no period was it a greater difficulty than on the day Lord John Russell accepted the seals of office, as First Minister of the Crown.  Nine millions of people were passing through the terrible ordeal of a famine year; a far more awful year of famine was before them; the Repeal of the Union was still regarded by them as the only true remedy for their grievances; the hopes awakened by the great public meetings of Clifden, Mullaghmast,