moments, and here I am writing two pages to bring you back to it. Your grateful and affectionate "GUSTAVE DE BEAUMONT." THE SAME TO THE SAME. "CHATEAU DE LA GRANGE, "October 14, 1838. "MY DEAR SIR,-I profit by the occasion which offers itself to recall myself to your kind memory. "Mr Daniel O'Connor, my friend and neighbour in the country, son of General Arthur O'Connor, whom you must certainly know by reputation, has been passing two days with us at the Grange, and tells me that he is just about to go to Ireland, whither he is called by private business. I will therefore beg him to take these few words for you. "I duly received your letter from Mannheim, and I trust that that which I wrote to you to Munich reached you. In it I gave you a thousand thanks for all the kindnesses you have showered on me, and the immense services you have rendered me. . . . "Thanks to all your good introductions, I work, if not well, at least much, and I see that my work is getting on pretty well, so that I am sure of finishing it this year. At this moment I am engaged on a chapter in which I undertake to explain what the Whigs are doing and can do for Ireland, and I arrive at the conclusion that the Whigs are carrying out, and have carried out, considerable reforms in Ireland, although they seem to me placed by English passion and English interests, under the impossibility of doing all that the interests of Ireland require. I assure you that it is very pleasant to be able, in my modest. sphere of an obscure writer, to render justice to all that is genuine and elevated in the administration of Lord Mulgrave, whose right arm you have been for three years. Moreover, disinterested as I am in the questions of policy, I bring to it views which are quite free from a spirit of party. My judgment is, as much as possible, that of a philosopher, and I try to put aside passions of the moment to look at the future. I wish, above all, not to make a book for the present occasion only. "I shall wait your judgment with much impatience and anxiety, but we have not got to that point, and, unfortunately for me, I have great difficulties to get over before I finish. "Mr Daniel O'Connor takes charge all the more willingly of my letter to you, because he is anxious to make your acquaintance and that of Mrs Drummond. He will be some time in Dublin this winter, and though he is half Irish, he knows fewer people in Ireland than in France. His mother is the daughter of the celebrated French philosopher Condorcet. His relations are people of very good society in Paris, and I venture, dear Sir, to recommend him to you. "Pray give my best compliments and those of Madame de Beaumont to Mrs Drummond, and, believe me, your grateful and affectionate "GUSTAVE DE BEAUMONT." "P.S.—I saw in the Dublin Evening Post the publication of your famous answer to the magistrates of Tipperary. This letter does you great honour." In November Drummond was again at Dublin Castle. But his holiday had done little to restore him to health. Prior to his return from the Continent, his mother had urged him to fling up the Irish office altogether, and seek prolonged rest. He replied: "If on my return I feel the work oppressive, I shall give the office up. But I do not anticipate anything like the labour I have had. Things are now better organised." Things were indeed "better organised," but Drummond's "labour" was not ended. He had yet to pass through the most trying year of his whole administration. At the beginning of 1839, the Tory Orange party opened fire on the Government, and the attack was sustained to the day of Drummond's death. When the battle had once commenced it was hopeless to expect that Drummond would leave the field. He stood his ground manfully, repelling assault after assault with a vigour and success that astonished his friends; but the constant strain exhausted him. He died at his post. CHAPTER XI. 1839. ON the first of January 1839, Lord Norbury, the son of the notorious judge, was shot while speaking to his steward in his own demesne. The bullet pierced the left breast, and the unfortunate nobleman died on January 3. The assassin escaped, and was never brought to justice. To this day the affair is shrouded in mystery. Lord Norbury was not an unpopular man. He took no part in politics. He does not seem to have had any quarrels with his tenantry; and there is no proof that the murder was agrarian. Yet the landlord party seized the opportunity given by this tragical affair to denounce Drummond, and assail the Government. The murder of Lord Norbury, they declared, was the direct result of the letter to the Tipperary magistrates. On January 10 a meeting of landlords was held at Tullamore, and these resolutions were passed: "1. That it appears to this meeting that the answer conveyed to the magistrates of Tipperary by Mr Under Secretary Drummond, has had the unfortunate effect of increasing the animosities entertained against the owners of the soil, and has emboldened the disturbers of the public peace. "2. That finding from the circumstances mentioned in the former resolution, that there is little room to hope for a 1 Lord Normanby said in the House of Lords on March 21, 1839, "I must say as yet there is no evidence that the crime was the result of any extensive conspiracy. Like the murder of Mr Wayland and others, I believe it arose out of a local conspiracy connected with the possession of land." But evidence was never given to prove this. successful appeal to the Irish Executive, we feel it a duty to appeal to the people of England, the Legislature, and the throne for protection." The Times denounced Drummond with even more directness. Writing on January 15, it said: "A meeting of the Lord Lieutenant and magistrates of the King's County has been held to pass resolutions expressive of the sense entertained by the magistracy of the horrible crime which has been committed [the murder of Lord Norbury],-declaratory of their anxious willingness to co-operate with the Executive Government in whatever efforts it might be induced to make for detecting the murderers, and bring them to condign punishment -acknowledging, however, their strong reprobation of the insolence displayed by Mr Drummond, Under Secretary, at the Castle, in his treatment on a former occasion of the Tipperary magistrates, when, instead of heartily assisting them to discover and punish the authors of murderous atrocities perpetrated within their county, and to preserve the peace thereof, this Jack-in-office had taken upon himself to lecture the vast body of its landed proprietors in the discharge of their duties as landlords, and to more than insinuate that all the evils they complained of had been caused by their own misconduct." Writing again on January 25, it added:— "Mr Drummond's famous letter to the magistrates of the county Tipperary had the merit of holding up [the landlords] to the popish multitude as offenders against the most important obligations of society, and as justly amenable to whatever punishment or persecution the vengeance of that multitude might dictate. Whatever acts of violence or outrage-whatever attacks on life or dwelling whatever robberies or ferocious murders have been perpetrated since the publication of that letter, it is not too much to say, have been abetted, encouraged, |