Again he says:—
The little cliques there are to me as nothing; they have never done me a favour nor an injury: but that kingdom is of great importance indeed.
Being determined to support Pitt at all hazards, he yet felt deeply the injury his misgovernment was. then doing. He exclaims in agony:—
Oh! my dear friend, I write with a sick heart and a wearied hand. If you can, pluck Ireland out of the unwise and corrupt hands that are destroying us!
He saw very clearly that those who governed on the principles of corruption and intolerance were the best friends of French Jacobinism.
I should have made a great scruple of conscience to do anything whatever for the support, directly or indirectly, of a set of men in Ireland, who, that conscience well-informed tells me, by their innumerable corruptions, frauds, oppressions, and follies, are opening a back door for Jacobinism to rush in and to take us in the rear. As surely as you and I exist, so surely this will be the consequence of their persisting in their system.[1]
Such, according to Mr. Burke, a supporter of Mr. Pitt, was the system of governing Ireland adopted by that Minister.
Let us now see Bishop Doyle's description of this same mode of administration.
There can be no doubt, he says, that till within these very few years every administration of public money or business in Ireland was most corrupt. There was no faith kept with God or man by those to whom the public interests, or any portion of them, happened to be committed. From the highest tribunals, to the lowest collector of excise, bribery,
- ↑ Diary of the Right Hon. W. Windham, pp. 326-30.
