owledged it for
performance. These were weaknesses not likely to escape the shrewd
perception of party, and to the utmost were they profited by. The great
game of the government was to sow, if not dissension, at least distrust,
in the ranks of the national party,--to chill the ardor of patriotism,
and, wherever possible, to excite different views, and different roads
to success, amongst the popular leaders of the time. There came a day
when corruption only asked to see a man's rent-roll and the list of his
mortgages, when his price could be estimated as easily as an actuary
can calculate an annuity when given the age and the circumstances of
the individual. Then, however, the investigation demanded nicer and
more delicate treatment, for the question was the more subtle one of the
mixed and often discordant motives of the human heart.

The Duke of Portland was well calculated to carry out a policy of this
kind; but I am far from suspecting that he was himself fully aware of
the drama in which he acted. He was a plain, straightforward man, of
average good sense, but more than average firmness and determination.
He came over to Ireland thoroughly impressed with the favorite English
maxim that whatever Irishmen wish is assuredly bad for them, and
thought, like the old physicians of the sixteenth century, that a
patient's benefit was in the exact proportion to his repugnance for the
remedy. I am not quite sure that this pleasant theory is not even yet
the favorite one as regards Ireland, which, perhaps, after all, might be
permitted the privilege so generally accorded to the incurable, to
take a little medicine of her own prescribing. Be this as it may, I
am convinced that the Duke of Portland was no hypocrite, but firmly
believed in the efficacy of the system he advocated, and only made use
of the blandishments and hospitalities of his station to facilitate
connections which he trusted would at last be concurred in on the
unerring grounds of reason and judgment. Whatever people may say or
think to the contrary, hypocrisy--that is, a really well-sustained and
long-maintained hypocrisy--is one of the rarest things to be met with,
and might even be suspected never to exist at all, since the qualities
and gifts necessary, or indeed indispensable, to its attainment are
exactly of an order which bespeaks some of the first and greatest
traits of human nature, and for that reason would make the game of
dissimulation impossible; and