d overseers, and
inspectors, and parish rate-books conclusive, if against any
voter--that is to say, if his name is not there.

Our second dinner of the Constitutional Club, on Wednesday, went
off exceedingly well, and may prove a good political net to
catch young men just launching into the world from College. Such
use hath been made of the Whig Club, and something was wanting
to counteract. Other good effects, not merely confined to a
Westminster election, may too have place. In short, the late
business seems to have awakened us all to our good cause and
just political interests, as well as to have drilled us against
the period of our being called out to the general election.

I shall not leave town till the 1st of September, and ere I quit
it shall again make my remittance of such news as occurs.

My last boy is a fine fellow, and my wife is as well as
possible. She desires in the best manner to be kindly remembered
to the Marchioness, with, my dear Lord, your ever affectionately
faithful, and obliged friend and servant,

W. Young.

If we did not know that matters of higher import engaged the attention
of the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, it might almost appear that his chief
business consisted in controlling the pretensions of a variety of
persons to every office that fell vacant, and of keeping a host of
disappointed expectants in check and good-humour, so large a space does
this matter of patronage occupy in the semi-official correspondence of
the period. Amongst the most urgent of them was the appointment of
Fitzgibbon (afterwards Earl of Clare) to the Chancellorship of Ireland,
which Lord Lifford was daily expected to resign.

Lord Lifford seems to have been a man of limited capacity and singular
simplicity of character, formal and credulous, and tedious in his
intercourse with the world. His letters to Lord Buckingham, written in a
great clerkly hand, are full of solemn platitudes and ceremonious
civilities; and whatever other excellent qualities he possessed, it
cannot be inferred that he was a man of much mental reach or vigour.
Obsolete in manners and ideas, and living in the modes of a past age, he
was respected for the sincerity of his disposition and the rectitude of
his character, rather than for the strength or activity of his
intellect. In his seventy-fourth year he came over to London to resign
the Seals to His Majesty, lad