feelings.  Sunderland was able; he was useful; he was unprincipled indeed; but so were all the English politicians of the generation which had learned, under the sullen tyranny of the Saints, to disbelieve in virtue, and which had, during the wild jubilee of the Restoration, been utterly dissolved in vice.  He was a fair specimen of his class, a little worse, perhaps, than Leeds or Godolphin, and about as bad as Russell or Marlborough.  Why he was to be hunted from the herd the King could not imagine.

Notwithstanding the discontent which was caused by Sunderland’s elevation, England was, during this summer, perfectly quiet and in excellent temper.  All but the fanatical Jacobites were elated by the rapid revival of trade and by the near prospect of peace.  Nor were Ireland and Scotland less tranquil.

In Ireland nothing deserving to be minutely related had taken place since Sidney had ceased to be Lord Lieutenant.  The government had suffered the colonists to domineer unchecked over the native population; and the colonists had in return been profoundly obsequious to the government.  The proceedings of the local legislature which sate at Dublin had been in no respect more important or more interesting than the proceedings of the Assembly of Barbadoes.  Perhaps the most momentous event in the parliamentary history of Ireland at this time was a dispute between the two Houses which was caused by a collision between the coach of the Speaker and the coach of the Chancellor.  There were, indeed, factions, but factions which sprang merely from personal pretensions and animosities.  The names of Whig and Tory had been carried across Saint George’s Channel, but had in the passage lost all their meaning.  A man who was called a Tory at Dublin would have passed at Westminster for as stanch a Whig as Wharton.  The highest Churchmen in Ireland abhorred and dreaded Popery so much that they were disposed to consider every Protestant as a brother.  They remembered the tyranny of James, the robberies, the burnings, the confiscations, the brass money, the Act of Attainder, with bitter resentment.  They honoured William as their deliverer and preserver.  Nay, they could not help feeling a certain respect even for the memory of Cromwell; for, whatever else he might have been, he had been the champion and the avenger of their race.  Between the divisions of England, therefore, and the divisions of Ireland, there was scarcely any thing in common.  In England there were two parties, of the same race and religion, contending with each other.  In Ireland there were two castes, of different races and religions, one trampling on the other.

Scotland too was quiet.  The harvest of the last year had indeed been scanty; and there was consequently much suffering.  But the spirit of the nation was buoyed up by wild hopes, destined to end in cruel disappointment.  A magnificent daydream of wealth and empire so completely occupied the minds of men that they hardly felt the present distress.  How that dream originated, and by how terrible an awakening it was broken, will be related hereafter.