of National Convention, dubious in its nature and perilous in its example, nosed Parliament in the very seat of its authority,—­sat with a sort of superintendence over it,—­and little less than dictated to it, not only laws, but the very form and essence of legislature itself.  In Ireland things ran in a still more eccentric course.  Government was unnerved, confounded, and in a manner suspended.  Its equipoise was totally gone.  I do not mean to speak disrespectfully of Lord North.  He was a man of admirable parts, of general knowledge, of a versatile understanding fitted for every sort of business, of infinite wit and pleasantry, of a delightful temper, and with a mind most perfectly disinterested.  But it would be only to degrade myself by a weak adulation, and not to honor the memory of a great man, to deny that he wanted something of the vigilance and spirit of command that the time required.  Indeed, a darkness next to the fog of this awful day lowered over the whole region.  For a little time the helm appeared abandoned.

    Ipse diem noctemque negat discernere coelo,
    Nec meminisse viae media Palinurus in unda.

At that time I was connected with men of high place in the community.  They loved liberty as much as the Duke of Bedford can do; and they understood it at least as well.  Perhaps their politics, as usual, took a tincture from their character, and they cultivated what they loved.  The liberty they pursued was a liberty inseparable from order, from virtue, from morals, and from religion,—­and was neither hypocritically nor fanatically followed.  They did not wish that liberty, in itself one of the first of blessings, should in its perversion become the greatest curse which could fall upon mankind.  To preserve the Constitution entire, and practically equal to all the great ends of its formation, not in one single part, but in all its parts, was to them the first object.  Popularity and power they regarded alike.  These were with them only different means of obtaining that object, and had no preference over each other in their minds, but as one or the other might afford a surer or a less certain prospect of arriving at that end.  It is some consolation to me, in the cheerless gloom which darkens the evening of my life, that with them I commenced my political career, and never for a moment, in reality nor in appearance, for any length of time, was separated from their good wishes and good opinion.

By what accident it matters not, nor upon what desert, but just then, and in the midst of that hunt of obloquy which ever has pursued me with a full cry through life, I had obtained a very considerable degree of public confidence.  I know well enough how equivocal a test this kind of popular opinion forms of the merit that obtained it.  I am no stranger to the insecurity of its tenure.  I do not boast of it.  It is mentioned to show, not how highly I prize the thing, but my right to value the use I made of it.  I