Page:Life of William Shelburne (vol 1).djvu/363



the moment that the new division of the business of the Secretary of State's department was made, the affairs of Ireland, which remained under the Southern Secretary, were promising to give Shelburne as much employment as those of America.

By birth, by education, and by property, Shelburne was intimately connected with Ireland. In his own early years he had had abundant opportunities of becoming acquainted with the strange society of the County Kerry, where the gentry conspired with the peasantry to defeat the law which they both abhorred; where magistrates and clergy connived at robbery and murder; and throughout the whole district ignorance and prejudice reigned supreme. Nine years before his birth, the attack made at Ballyhige on the wrecked Danish treasure had taken place; it remained unpunished; when he was seventeen years of age John Puxley the Exciseman had been murdered at Glengariff for not assisting in the violation of the law, and his death had been avenged, but not by the arm of justice. There were indeed many peculiarities in the position of the County Kerry, which rendered the defiance of the law more easy within its limits than elsewhere. The coast indented with numerous bays, the inaccessible mountains running down to the sea, were the natural resort of smugglers, and had been from time immemorial a sure hiding-place for robbers and the best starting-point for conspirators. The first Earl of Kerry Rh