ever went through such a scene. I am happy in thinking you have a fine adviser in Shee. Lucas behaved like a hero. The House has been idiotic—keep it in the wrong."
In Ireland the conflict created an enthusiasm which has long faded into obscurity, but the contemporary letters and journals were full of it, and a letter from Dublin, when one makes allowance for the undue kindness of the writer, will help to realise it:—
"We are all proud and gratified—I cannot tell you how much—at what has happened. And Dublin has fairly forgotten the Exhibition for the last two days. Passing any group on Saturday or yesterday in the streets one was sure to hear something about Gavan Duffy. And there has been no attempt even to deny that you did the thing bravely, skilfully, and successfully. The Four Courts gossip on Saturday freely admitted so much. … Nothing has happened that will so much damn the opposite faction. There is a great deal of dishonest twaddle that people might have listened to here, but this scene has given them an actual insight to the House. I have heard no one speak of it who did not utter himself as if it had passed under his own eyes. … After Keogh's talk about men who would slink before him in London, though they ranted and wrote here, it happens well and timely.—M.C."
Mr. Gladstone's Budget was carried, but it may be safely surmised that none of the parties to that baneful measure realised all its disastrous consequences. Mr. Gladstone must have known that he was imposing a heavy burthen upon Ireland, but he had not yet awakened from the delusion common to his class since the Norman conquest, that dependencies and colonies, partners and allies, existed mainly for the benefit of England. He was far from divining that he was inflicting a blow upon Ireland nearly as fatal as the Union. The unfortunate Irish deserters could not fail to know that they were abetting a wrong to their native country for their personal benefit. But it is probable that none of them knew that from that hour prosperity and contentment became impossible, that to every class and every man, not an official paid from the English Treasury, life would become a constant struggle, and that there would be carried out of the
