Page:The Earl of Mayo.djvu/74

66 an Irish debate was then an affair of empty benches — pretty much as an Indian debate, except at moments of special excitement, is at present. The statesman who had filled the chief Parliamentary office for Ireland on each occasion that his party came into power during twenty years, was less known to the English public than many a young speaker sitting for his first time on the Treasury benches.

A tempest of clamour accordingly arose in the Press, and spent its fury with equal force on Lord Mayo's colleagues and on himself. Some of the criticisms of those days read, by the light of later experience, as truly astonishing products of English party spirit. It is only fair to add, that the very papers which were most bitter against his appointment afterwards came forward most heartily in his praise. In that outburst of the English sense of justice which followed his death, our national journal of humour stood first in its generous acknowledgment of his real desert, as it had led the dropping fire of raillery three years before: —

'We took his gauge, as did the common fool, By Report's shallow valuing appraised, When from the Irish Secretary's stool To the great Indian throne we saw him raised.

'They gauged him. better, those who knew him best; They read, beneath that bright and blithesome cheer. The Statesman's wide and watchful eye, the breast Unwarped by favour and unwrung by fear.