When Lord Mulgrave was appointed Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland in 1835, he was regarded as the best man for the position. O'Connell expressed public approval of him, and the numerous religious and political associations added their testimonials. The Irish leader's compact with the ministry was well known, and although Lord Mulgrave was regarded as O'Connell's puppet, he was not without opinions of his own. Lord Anglesey had expressed the opinion that O'Connell was the real ruler of Ireland, and Mulgrave, in showing his sympathy with the Catholics, became as popular with the majority as he was unpopular with the powerful Protestant minority. He was considered to have the best opportunity to bring peace to Ireland, and English Liberal members of Parliament, in their enthusiasm for their leader, Lord Melbourne, were continually pointing out how peaceful Ireland had become under a Whig administration. When a constable in the county of Clare appealed to Dublin Castle to remove him to the metropolis because the country had become so quiet that he had no chance of gaining promotion or distinguishing himself, the Whig Press and politicians went wild with delight. The enterprising constable was written about in scores of pamphlets, and three-fourths of England got the impression—and retained it for many years, too!—that Ireland was most law-abiding, as well as one of the most prosperous countries in the world.
William IV. and Lord Mulgrave
The fatal weakness of Lord Mulgrave was his partisanship. He could look at nothing except through the spectacles of well-grounded opinions of his own. At a time when he should have exercised discretion, he rushed into the arms of the Catholic party, and thereby mortally offended the Orangemen and their not-to-be-despised co-religionists. The result was that at a Protestant meeting the mention of the viceroy's name was sufficient to fill the building with cries of derision, while at a gathering of the Catholics Lord Mulgrave was cheered to the echo. It was an undignified reputation for a man supposed to hold the scales of justice evenly, and William IV. protested to Melbourne about the conduct of his viceroy.
An examination of the crime returns of the period shows that the compact between O'Connell and Lord Melbourne caused no appreciative diminution of violence in the country. Protestants declared that Lord Mulgrave was encouraging political criminals by his leniency, the culmination of which was his decision in the case of the brutal murder of the second Earl of Norbury. The earl was the younger son of the notorious Chief Justice Toler, who had received honours from a grateful government because of his anti-Irish and anti-Catholic policy. On his deathbed Toler, hearing that his neighbour, Lord Erne, was also dying, sent a servant to assure his lordship that it would be a dead heat between them! The anecdote is characteristic of the man and his times, but his children were of a different calibre. The elder son died a lunatic, and the second was murdered because he evicted one of his tenants, a rogue who objected to paying rent. The country cried out for the severe punishment of the murderers, but the viceroy more than tempered justice with mercy, and every landowner instantly became alarmed. If murderers were permitted to escape the hangman because a Whig viceroy was at Dublin Castle, then assuredly no Tory landlord was safe. Private and public appeals were made to the king and Lord Melbourne. The premier was compelled to 'promote' him, and in 1839, shortly after he had been created Marquis of Normanby, the viceroy resigned in order to take up the post of Secretary for the Colonies.
Lord Mulgrave
Lord Normanby's subsequent career was quite in keeping with his conduct in Ireland. No matter in what capacity he acted, he always took sides, and during his diplomatic career, the Foreign Office experienced too much Normanby for its liking. His wife was one of the two women of the bedchamber to Queen Victoria to whom Peel objected when called upon to form a Government in 1841. Normanby had been asked to take charge of affairs, but there were not half a dozen men willing to serve under him, and he soon abandoned his attempt to become Prime Minister. Thenceforward his public life was spent abroad in the diplomatic service, and a list of his diplomatic indiscretions would fill a volume. From 1846 to 1852 he was Ambassador at Paris, and Palmerston's sudden recognition of Louis Napoleon exasperated him to an extent that he never forgot. Normanby was not the man for Paris, and when given a chance to represent the English nation at the Court of Tuscany in Florence, his partisanship, when he ought to have been neutral, was such that Lord Malmesbury had to recall him by telegraph! He returned to England, and until his death in 1863, at the age of sixty-six, he acted with the Tories against the Whigs. His conduct was due entirely to his personal detestation of Lord Palmerston. He was not in sympathy with a single act of the Whig, or Liberal, party, but he exerted himself to thwart Palmerston. He shed tears when 'Pam' became premier for the second time, and he died while the Liberal statesman was half-way through his historic ministry.