Chesterfield, however, was not of that opinion.  He did more in one year than the duke would have accomplished in five.  He began by instituting a principle of impartial justice.  Formerly, Protestants had alone been employed as ‘managers;’ the Lieutenant was to see with Protestant eyes, to hear with Protestant ears.

‘I have determined to proscribe no set of persons whatever,’ says Chesterfield, ’and determined to be governed by none.  Had the Papists made any attempt to put themselves above the law, I should have taken good care to have quelled them again.  It was said my lenity to the Papists had wrought no alteration either in their religious or their political sentiments.  I did not expect that it would:  but surely that was no reason for cruelty towards them.’

Often by a timely jest Chesterfield conveyed a hint, or even shrouded a reproof.  One of the ultra-zealous informed him that his coachman was a Papist, and went every Sunday to mass.  ’Does he indeed?  I will take care he never drives me there,’ was Chesterfield’s cool reply.

It was at this critical period, when the Hanoverian dynasty was shaken almost to its downfall by the insurrection in Scotland of 1745, that Ireland was imperilled:  ’With a weak or wavering, or a fierce and headlong Lord-Lieutenant—­with a Grafton or a Strafford,’ remarks Lord Mahon, ’there would soon have been a simultaneous rising in the Emerald Isle.’  But Chesterfield’s energy, his lenity, his wise and just administration saved the Irish from being excited into rebellion by the emissaries of Charles Edward, or slaughtered, when conquered, by the ‘Butcher,’ and his tiger-like dragoons.  When all was over, and that sad page of history in which the deaths of so many faithful adherents of the exiled family are recorded, had been held up to the gaze of bleeding Caledonia, Chesterfield recommended mild measures, and advised the establishment of schools in the Highlands; but the age was too narrow-minded to adopt his views.  In January, 1748, Chesterfield retired from public life.  ‘Could I do any good,’ he wrote to a friend, ’I would sacrifice some more quiet to it; but convinced as I am that I can do none, I will indulge my ease, and preserve my character.  I have gone through pleasures while my constitution and my spirits would allow me.  Business succeeded them; and I have now gone through every part of it without liking it at all the better for being acquainted with it.  Like many other things, it is most admired by those who know it least....  I have been behind the scenes both of pleasure and business; I have seen all the coarse pulleys and dirty ropes which exhibit and move all the gaudy machines; and I have seen and smelt the tallow candles which illuminate the whole decoration, to the astonishment and admiration of the ignorant multitude....  My horse, my books, and my friends will divide my time pretty equally.’