voluntarily made one over to me; and I have, at your desire, appointed you to the wardship of the other: but, traitor, I ask you, where am I bound to give you your life? is that in your agreement? have you bargained in your billet for that? Ho! search me his letter of stipulation for a saving clause in favour of his life, that I may send him under as much iron as he can stand beneath, to enjoy it in the deepest dungeon of Dublin Castle. Search me the traitor's letter for a stipulation that he shall have life or liberty, till I hunt him out of the gates as I would a wild dog out of my pinfold! Take him, I say, Master Provost, and let me see his head upon the barbican within an hour." Mercy, mercy, mercy! my lord!" exclaimed the wretch, dropping on his knees: but his supplications were drowned in the shout of savage delight with which his sentence was hailed by the Irish prisoners. “Willy-na-Gun go bragh!" cried Tyrrell, springing to his feet with a sudden effort, to praise the just avenger of betrayed friendship; but the exertion was his last, and he sank fainting to the ground, never to rise again.

Sheridan, glaring on his betrayer through the dim suffusion of blood that he could not wipe from his clogged eyelids, took up the cry from Tyrrell as he fell. "Long life to you, Gunner!" he exclaimed; "and I care not, after the word that you have said, though we all go to the gallows this minute! but, Gunner, a vick, rebels though we are, don't execute us on the one tree with the traitor. Ah, villain of the world!" he cried, turning his gory face on Parez, "do you remember how you set me against poor Art-that was the true man in the gap after all—by telling me that he and Sir John Talbot were plotting to betray the castle; and you yourself, you Judas, after selling us all the same minute ?"

“Ay," cried O'Madden, stretching out his sound arm, and shaking his clenched hand at the kneeling wretch; "who was it that inveigled me into seizing that knight and his poor lady in Barnsbeg, as I did, on a forged warrant from Tomás-an-tecda? for you knew I would never lay a hand on him on the charge of Alan's murder, since the night of Nicholas Wafer's

death, when he declared with the last breath he ever drew, in your presence and in mine, that Sir John Talbot was innocent of the deed as the child unborn; and you, you traitor, did you deny it? Yet now you come forward to charge the knight with a crime that he who was its chief perpetrator has acquitted him of in your own presence, and within a gasp of being in the presence of his Maker!"

"My Lord Deputy," said Archbishop Cromer, who had been attending with marked interest to all that passed, and now spoke eagerly and firmly, “I would question yonder Irish soldier touching what he says of my late brother of Dublin's murder. I have heard enough of this knight's case already to make me anxious for a farther inquiry; and I intreat that neither he nor his lady may suffer any violence or insult till I shall have thoroughly examined both this soldier and the wretched man you have ordered to execution."

"May Heaven reward your lordship!" exclaimed Ellen, fervently, pressing forward to clasp the archbishop's robes. "Oh, my lord, if you did but know what we have suffered since that day when you sent me away despairing from Monasterboyce! But, alas, my lord, I did not mean to complain, but to thank and bless you for coming to our aid now, when our sufferings are at the worst."

The archbishop, when he looked on his suppliant, was deeply moved. "God help you, my poor daughter," he said. "Yours has been a heavy burden of sorrow since then: but time presses, and if I would be satisfied of this unhappy gentleman's innocence, I must proceed to the inquiry without delay." He motioned to O'Madden to approach. Were you present by the death-bed of Nicholas Wafer ?"

"My lord, I was, and a horrible death he died."

"Did he acknowledge his guilt of the Archbishop Alan's murder ?”

"With groans and tears, my lord, and shrieks for mercy, that were enough to make a man's hair stand on end."

"What did he then say of this knight, Sir John Talbot?"

66

He cried out, my lord, that there were two whom he would shortly meet

in hell; and when Master Parez, who was there present with me, asked him who were they, he said the earl's squire was one, but that neither he nor Teling would know their comrade till they all met face to face. Then Master Parez said, 'Wafer, why rave you? you know your comrade.' I know it was not he who bears the blame,' was Wafer's answer; for, though it was in the dark we did it, I could see enough to tell that the man who joined us at the door, as we dragged the old man in, was armed at all points, and was lower than myself by the head; whereas, the knight lay asleep on a bench within, and disrobed, with his door bolted, and stands two inches taller,' said he, 'than I myself;' and, with that, he prayed God to forgive him for bringing an innocent man into such trouble; groaning and lamenting, in a way pitiable to hear."

"And what answer made Parez to that ?"

My lord, he flung out of the room, saying, that he would not hear the church's judgment called in question.”

"Where lies he now?"

"My lord," replied Brereton, "we are only awaiting a priest and an exccutioner to put him out of temporal pain. He is in the guard-room of the barbican, quite distraught for terror. There is some great sin on his conscience. I have seen many men, my lord, afraid to die; but any man in this despairing agony I never saw before."

"How is that, Sir William ?"

"My lord. he sits on the ground, with his head sunk between his knees, muttering the most fearful curses I ever heard from the mouth of man. Where he can have learned them, God knows; but it seems to me as if they were some awful imprecations of the church which he thinks are now fulfilling on him."

"Lead me to him, Sir William," said the Archbishop; "I begin to see my way through these mists of error at last." So saying, he proceeded to the barbican, where Parez was confined. The unhappy man was alone in the wide dungeon, sitting, as Brereton had described, in all the nerveless prostration of despair, on the bare floor where he sank when first thrust in by the guards. He was shuddering, and muttering, in the monotonous tone

of a man unconscious that he spoke aloud-"The waters of vengeance are in my inner parts! Ah! Wafer, I will see you soon now: you shook like a dry husk in the leprosy; but mine is the girdle and the waters of vengeance-for what was it they said? be they girded with the girdle of malediction, and made partakers with Pharaoh, Nero, Herod, and Judas the proditor.' Ah, hell, hell! I too, am the proditor! The waters of vengeance are within me, as marrow in my bones. They are the words of the curse, and to the word it is fulfilling in me. With Dathan and Abiram I shall descend into hell quick! Teling and Wafer, we shall descend into hell quick! Horrible! horrible!— you will know your comrade then, Wafer! you said you would know me when we met face to face at the judg ment. That was the word; and you shook in your leprosy like a dry husk. For what was it they said?- Good Lord, send them hunger and thirst, and strike them with the pestilence, that they be consumed and their generation clean eradicate.' The bells are tinkling-faugh! how the candles stink!→→→ Ah, sons of Belial, our souls shall be so extinguished, and so shall stink in the nostrils of the Divine vengeance.— Great God, I heard it but once, and I remember every word!" He shuddered, and raised his head, as if to dispel the tremendous recollection by gazing on the objects present, but cast himself forward on his knees the moment he lifted his eyes from the ground, for the archbishop was standing in his robes before him, his hands uplifted in horror and amazement. "Mercy, merey, mercy!" cried the wretched man, and flung himself forward to clasp the prelate's feet in all the abjectness of prostrate supplication. The archbishop motioned to be left alone with him, and the guards withdrew out of earshot.

In less than a quarter of an hour after, Archbishop Cromer came forth into the courtyard, where the Lord Deputy, with his attendants, was still engaged. "Let Sir John Talbot and his lady come forward," caid Cromer. The knight and Eilen advanced into the circle before the Lord Deputy. "My lord and gentlemen," continued Cromer, "it is known to all of you how this knight has been attainted of the murder of my late brother of Dublin, the

Archbishop Alan. The nature of the evidence which seemed to convict him is also known to you, as well as the tremendous sentence pronounced by the church against him. My lord and gentlemen, in the perpetration of that murder there were three persons concerned; two of them, called Teling and Wafer, of whose guilt there is no doubt, and the third, as has till now been generally supposed, this much wronged gentleman, Sir John Talbot. My lord and gentlemen, I shall ever count this an auspicious day, in such returning years as God may vouchsafe me, which has seen the truth of this matter at length brought to light. The true murderer, my lord, is discovered: Sir William Brereton is witness of his voluntary confession of the crime: Christopher Parez did the murder, and has confessed it. May I pray you to restrain the louder expression of your amazement, till I shall have done justice, so far as now can be rendered, to this innocent and much-wronged gentleman. Kneel down, Sir John Talbot; and, my lord and gentlemen, I pray you silence. In the name and by the authority of that Heavenly Host, invoked to sanction

the misplaced imprecations of the church, I hereby absolve, exonerate, and clearly free you, John Talbot, knight, from the sentence of excommunication erewhile pronounced against you, for the murder of John Alan, late Archbishop of Dublin, of which crime you have been shown to be manifestly innocent: I restore you to all the rights, honours, and immunities where of you have been by that misplaced malediction deprived; and I declare your marriage with this lady, Mistress Ellen Dudley, to have been true, binding, and honourable wedlock, from the first. Rise up, Sir John Talbot; you are a free man, by the bounty of his Majesty, whose general act of pardon, for such as have laid down their arms previous to the taking of this castle, is hereby extended to you, if you think fit to avail yourself of its provisions."

"Now," said Turlogh, that things begin to look somewhat better, I can leave our hero and heroine with a tolerable grace till tomorrow night, when, God willing, I shall tell you whatever else I know about them or their's."

"It is very pretty, but what is the use of it is the observation of a sensible child when he is shown a fine piece of mechanism. "What is the use of the House of Lords?" is the question put by the self-sufficient radical to the halfthinking Whig, and the half-thinking Whig replies, " Oh fie! what a shocking thing to say; but, after all, what is the use of the House of Lords?" The said radical will now exclaim, "Ah! well, this is an honest kind of Tory; you see he compares us to sensible children." We disclaim all the honours to be derived from this approbation. We make no such comparison, or at least only a comparison of contrast. The child asks to be informed, because he expects to be informed; he seeks to know the use, because he takes for granted that there is an use: he looks on what has cost time, and labour, and the power of man's wisdom, to complete,

So

as by its existence entitled to the supposition that it is useful until the contrary is proved. He does not think that all that has been done without consulting him must be wrong. He asks and he is rewarded by an explanation. shall our friend, the Radical; but whether he will be gratified by the explanation, we do not know, nor indeed do we very anxiously care. We shall proceed then to answer this question; not for the benefit of either of the worthies we have named, but to satisfy the mind of the timid but devout lover of the constitution, who would wish to win the democrat by reason: who would try to charm away the Laodicean fit from a Whig, and who would not even suffer a maniac to be confined until he was persuaded that he was not fit to be at liberty.

The question to which it is our object to furnish an answer, may seem

difficult, because it is new. It is new because it is the result of a state of society hitherto unprecedented; a state wherein the end is forgotten in the means, and man imagines his glory to consist in the creation of the instrument, not in the use to which he applies it. In a state of society like this, it is not surprising than ancient institutions should be despised, and every thing should be decried as useless, and therefore denounced as baneful, which does not produce such a variety of visible effects as to meet the contracted intellects of a class of society, every member of which has a distinct idea of usefulness, compounded of the experience of his own peculiar branch, and the wild theories of his favourite village demagogue. The tailor does not, it is true, demand what is the use of the cobbler; not be cause he is checked by the recollection that the latter has as good a right to retort the question, but because he feels and sees the benefit he derives from the cobbler. Every thing and every person, however, to whom he cannot apply, or rather is not compelled to apply this latter test, he condeinns without hesitation as useless.

Upon this principle the numerical majority of the nation will perhaps exclaim, What is the use of the House

of Lords ?"

If we were called on to reply to this question, as asked by the irreverent, short-sighted, and unprincipled Radical, or his dupe and instrument, the self-sufficient and inconsistent Whig, we would merely say, that as we do not conceive ourselves bound to prove our individual utility in order to entitle us to retain our existence, or even our possessions and privileges; so we do not conceive our selves or any other person entitled to put a question to the peers of England which we world not tolerate to be put to us. This would be our reply to those whom we do not think sufficiently rational to receive conviction from argument, or sufficiently candid to acknowledge that conviction, if received. But we know that there are many really well-disposed and sincere persons who have been annoyed and puzzled by this question. We apprehend the question not to apply to the peers in their individual capacity, rank, or privileges, but to be confined to the effects on the welfare of the nation produced by their

influence as a legislative body and court of judicature.

It is asked, then, "What is the use of the House of Lords ?" We reply by another question, "What is the use of Parliament ?"

If we can establish the point that the influence of the House of Lords does not injure the operations of the legislature, or the comfort and happiness of the subject, it is amply sufficient to silence all pretence of right to interfere with that influence. But we do not intend to rest here; and we think we may with safety pledge ourselves to demonstrate to our readers, both by the principles of reason, by the opinion of the wisest men, and by practical experience, the bold position which we here put forward, that in every thing in which the use and value of parliament consists, the House of Lords have been, and must always be, more useful and more valuable than the House of Commons.

We have asserted that such questions originate in that diseased state of society, which has disposed man, even beyond his natural want, to look rather to the means than to the end. We conceive that this question arises from a certain irrational, but most common, idea, that the use of parliament, or of what they in consequence, denominate the useful part of parliament, the House of Commons, is to represent the people. Now, though we were to admit this preposterous theory, we would fearlessly undertake to show, that, even in this sense, the House of Lords is more useful, and more effectually represents the feelings and wishes of that body of the nation in whom the strength of the nation consists, than the House of Commons. But we flatly assert, that to represent the people is not only not the chief use of parliament, but that it may reasonably be doubted, if it forms any the least portion of the utility of that great body; and that it is merely, and comparatively recently, considered requisite as a means, by which that body may be better enabled to legislate for the benefit of the people, as being more acquainted with their wants.

We shall, in the first place, consider the House of Lords merely in their legislative capacity.

The only use and object of parlia ment is to make beneficial laws. The

enactment.

making of statutes for purposes only declaratory of the law, or explanatory of other statutes, (a branch which has of late years become one of its most necessary functions,) I include under this general head. If this were effected by Babbage's calculating engino, or by pounding up in a mortar, certain proportions of paper, types, and ink, the whole object of parliament would obviously be at least as well attained as at present. Inasmuch as the only use of laws is to restrain and to protect the only reason for placing any portion of the legislative power in the hands of persons elected to represent any class of the community, must be the supposition that the laws will be thus rendered more likely to be judiciously adapt ed to the benefit of the whole. It is merely a plausible error to suppose that laws will be better obeyed when the people suppose that they have by representation had a share in their When a man is called on to obey a law against his interest, he never thinks, at least with any degree of affection, of the body whence it has emanated; and when he is called on to enforce a law, visibly for his own advantage, he in general regards the wisdom of the legislature with equal admiration, whether that wisdom be resident in a house of Lords or Commons, a Sultan or Babbage's engine. If the people of England obey the law better than those of Austria or Turkey, it is not owing to their esteem for their representatives, or love for the abstract idea of parliament, but merely to the greater uniformity of that law, its being more founded on reason, and being more generally known and understood; as well as because the tenor of that law has, at least hitherto, been, to give to every individual a right and interest in his property and person, which has rendered the sanction of the law, or, in other words, its power of enforcing its will, more extensive and more formidable. We cannot refrain here from

quoting an admirable passage on this subject from one of the most judicious writers on the constitution, himself a citizen of a foreign republic

:-

"A man who contributes by his vote to the passing of a law, has himself made the law; in obeying it, he obeys himself:

he, therefore, is free. A play on words, and nothing more.

The individual who

has voted in a popular legislative assembly, has not made the law that has passed in it; he has only contributed, or seemed to contribute, towards enacting it, for his thousandth or ten thousandth share; he has had no opportunity of making his objections to the proposed law, or of canvassing it, or of proposing restrictions to it; and he has only been allowed to express his assent or dissent. When a law passes agreeably to his vote, it is not in consequence of this, his vote, that his will happens to take place; it is because a number of other men have accidentally thrown themselves on the same side with him. When a law contrary to his intentions is enacted, he must, nevertheless, submit to it. What, then, is liberty? Liberty, I would answer, as far as it is possible for it to exist in a society of beings whose interests are almost perpetually opposed to each other, consists in this, that every man, while he respects the persons of others, and allows them quietly to enjoy the produce of their own industry, be certain himself likewise to enjoy the produce of his own industry; and that his person be also secure. to contribute by one's suffrage to produce those advantages to the community, to have a share in establishing that order, that general arrangement of things, by the means of which an individual, lost as it were in the crowd, is effectually protected, to lay down the rules observed by those who, being invested with a considerable power, are charged with the defence of individuals, and to provide, that

But

they never should transgress them. These

are functions, are acts of government, but

by no means constituent parts of liberty. To express the whole in two words :- To concur by one's suffrage in enacting laws is to enjoy a share, whatever it may be, of power-to live in a state where the laws are equal for all, and sure to be executed, (whatever are the means by which these advantages are attained,) is to be free."*

Let us now briefly examine whether the House of Lords is not at least as well qualified for the office of legislation as the House of Commons. The requisites for an able legislative body are chiefly such a course of education and habits of life as are most likely to render them acquainted with the sentiments of able men in the present and former ages,