IRISH AFFAIRS.
The spirit of disaffection was still rife in Ireland. The Earl of Harcourt having been appointed to the government, was at first received with great joy, but he soon found that his popularity was not sufficient to ensure obedience to the dictates of the British cabinet, or to repress the overflowings of human passion. The White Boys, and the Hearts of Steel, still exhibited a turbulent spirit, which nothing could allay or soothe. Nor was it among the populace alone that ill-feeling was displayed. When the Irish parliament met, the spirit of liberty was discerned in that assembly likewise. The speaker of the house of commons, in a speech to his excellency before the lords, expressed the inability of the country to endure any additional taxation, by reason of those commercial restrictions, which, he said, had fettered all its energies. The claim of commercial freedom was, indeed, warmly repeated in the official addresses of the speaker during the continuance of the government of this viceroy, and a spirit of jealousy also appeared in a refusal to admit foreign mercenaries, when the British troops were withdrawn to America, although the English government offered to defray all the expenses. A relaxation of the penal code, however, by which the condition of the Roman Catholics was improved, had the effect of lowering the angry feelings of the nation, and on the whole the government of the Earl of Harcourt is looked upon as having produced beneficial results to the country. Dr. Miller says, “The government of Lord Townshend had termininated the oligarchical administration: that of Lord Harcourt unfolded those germs of political energy, which were soon to expand themselves into national prosperity and importance.”