avour to remove by their future conduct all
unfavourable impressions from his mind. In the wise exercise of the
discretion reposed in him, Lord Buckingham accepted this voluntary
tender of allegiance, and permitted the gentlemen who had made it to
retain their offices. The Duke of Leinster, who had been only recently
appointed to the Rolls, and Mr. Ponsonby, who held the situation of
Postmaster-General, refusing to give the required undertaking,
aggravated, in the case of the latter, by a declaration that he would
not enter into any communication with Lord Buckingham, were at once
dismissed from their offices. This dismissal was followed by that of a
few others of less note.

These energetic measures were founded, not only on the dangerous
resistance these gentlemen had carried to extremity, at a period of
anxious suspense and universal excitement, against the Government, but
upon a knowledge of the existence of an organized combination they had
embarked in with the English Opposition to supersede the authority of
the Sovereign in the person of the Regent. In order the more effectually
to accomplish their objects, they had seized upon every act of the
Administration, and held it up to obloquy. A pension which had been
granted to Mr. Orde, and the reversion of Lord Clanbrassil's office
which had been conferred on Mr. Grenville, afforded them a pretext for
charging the Government with corruption and profligacy. They opened
their impeachment at the very beginning of the session, in February,
defeated the motion for adjournment, carried their Address at the
sacrifice of their own dignity and independence, and were only arrested
at last in their headlong career by those vigorous measures which broke
up the combination, and once more gave a legitimate preponderance in the
Senate to the saving influence of the Administration. The effect of the
_coup d'etat_--for as such these dismissals may be considered--was
decisive. The hostile majority was broken down; and when Mr. Grattan,
still confident in his resources, brought forward his Pension Bill, to
disable persons who held pensions during pleasure, or offices that had
been created after a certain time, from sitting in Parliament, he was
defeated by a majority of 9. This was justly claimed as a conclusive
victory by a Government that had only just before been denounced in a
vote of censure in the same assembly by a majority of 32.

There is no doubt that the happy and unexpecte