state they have fallen into.
25. King’s County election a perfect riot. All Sunday the priests were thundering from their Altars, so 70,000 ruffians assembled, regularly drilled, relieving one another and ill-using in every way Mr Bernard’s voters, who, however, make an excellent show on the poll. A small body of police and Military unable to keep the peace. This will be the last liberal struggle. The Conservative wealth must prevail over the pauper radicals in the end.
FRIDAY MARCH 5. Sort of debate in the Commons concerning Maynooth College. It is a perfect pest to the country, a plague spot whose contamination is daily spreading. If there is to be a papist college it should be upon a more liberal scale, greater funds, lay professors, men of science competent to instruct the pupils and it should be freed from the absolute controul of the priesthood. At present it is a nursery for bigots, they learn nothing there but a spirit of persecution and intolerance and political fury, the fools become enthusiasts in bigotry, the wiser become frantick for temporal power, there is no attempt made to cultivate the mind, improve the intellect, controul the temper and they have so managed that there is no one with authority to rectify this abuse of the nation’s money.
The Doctor who came to dinner talking over this said it is surprising the spirit of enquiry among the priests themselves that has latterly been springing up and he goes much among them. And for the few Roman Catholic gentry, they are protestants in all but name and conservatives too; with the exception of the troublesome tail who being all men of broken fortune and few with much character find it suit them to live in a storm. Wrote to Ellen [Lucas] with a few more commissions and to condole with her brother John on the bit he lost from his arm at the Election; coat, shirt, flesh, all were bit out together by a ruffian, who is, however in jail.
22. Sweeps here, the same pretty boy again who was sold to the business by his mother for £1. Our master sweep was sold in the same way himself and he bears a good character and seems kind to his boys who are fat and healthy though nearly naked so that they must suffer miserably from cold, but climbing boys could not wear clothes, it is well the vile system is over. After this year no boy can be bound to the trade till he be sixteen years of age.
31. Heard that good Mr. Murray died last night about nine o’clock, quietly, he had been too weak all day to speak though perfectly sensible, he fell into a gentle sleep from which he never wakened. He survived his excellent wife little more than four months, they will be missed humble as was their sphere more than all the rest of the families in the neighbourhood, kind, worthy people.
THURSDAY APRIL 1. Mr. Murray is to be buried to-morrow, there is no idea who will be the new agent, Lord Downshire not being a man of any attachments except to his purse. Tom Murray heard he meant merely to keep a common bailiff here at an inferiour salary. Ogle Moore has written to ask for the house. Will it be given? Will Mrs. Moore like coming in to play parson’s wife in the village so many miles farther from the gaieties of Dublin and nearer to clerical duties.
3. Application from Mr. Fenton for the treasurership to the roads vacant by the death of poor Mr. Murray, Hal had already promised William Murray.
5. Finished Anster’s Faust yesterday; it is a very fine poem, beautiful passages in it, too wild in its construction to please me, a great deal too much mystified for me to attempt to understand, German being beyond my range. Our taste don’t bear God Almighty sitting talking with different attendants and laying bets with the devil, so that the prologue offends; the moral was intended to be good certainly, but it is oddly developed.
6. Sent off the half yearly query sheet to the National Board and a bad account it gives of our success, eighteen pupils the average daily attendance; patience, the priest will tire them out by and bye and I will tire him. Took a drive this most lovely of days but called no where. Went round the hill and to Blesinton, which was full of the trustees of the road, Colonel Bruen, Mr. Greene, George Moore etc. etc. Mr. Fenton had few supporters. William Murray was therefore made, acting Treasurer for the present and on the 5th of May a Meeting will be held to settle the matter.
Tom Darker and John and Tom Kelly off to Baltinglass to register their votes, it was a hard matter to get them to do it, the Irish are so cowardly and have so little energy, things never can be better while people are content to sit still and look on at all the ill that is doing, the other side don’t seem so inert. The priests whip them up to mischief enough. A queer mode of management but one that seems suited to their very limited understanding. Having borne a rent in John Fitzpatrick’s coat these ten days I sent his wife a present of a needle and thread to-day. She is generally very tidy, he says her eyes are bad, she was with the Doctor about them yesterday.
15. Had all the world to see me at home, first the Miss Henry’s, next Lady Milltown, shabbily dressed looking old and not well. She was very gracious, full of gossip and for a wonder not the least ill-natured. It is quite evident from her tone that the liberals as a party are gone, the wiser among them are all turning Conservative and leaving the ultras to their deserved fate the contempt merited by their very vicious principles.
She says they are beginning to think that all this long time Mr. O’Connell has been merely making tools of the patriots to fill his own purse, that his repeal agitation and his low rate of franchise and his plan for the farmers to value each other’s land are almost signs of insanity. I really think it a mercy that he has got to this for he is now no longer formidable, these absurd flights have ruined him with all but the few vagabonds immediately belonging to himself and though they may yet keep the people for some little time in too great a state of unhappy excitement for them to attend to the business which will really improve their condition this won’t last long.
Lady Milltown thinks Sir Robert Peel the greatest man of the age!! party spirit is dying away!! Baron de Robeck really has turned Conservative they say. He dined at Colonel Acton’s and his agent having carried all his tenants down to vote for the Liberal Candidate the Baron forbade them and threatened all with ejection that did so. Lady Milltown says he has left them because they would not give him a peerage—maybe.
Then she had a great deal to tell me about the exceeding beauty, the sense, the talent, the temper of Prince Albert who is very fond of the pretty little Queen and very happy with her and has improved her greatly in every respect as is indeed very evident for we never hear of those indecorums now which were slowly but very surely undermining her character in the eyes of her people. She dotes upon him and however he may influence her in private there is no appearance of his taking the slightest concern in matters of Government or any other matters not entirely belonging to himself. She has shown great judgment in choosing such a man from out of the whole world, and how clever and how clear sighted must [her mother] the Duchess of Kent and [her uncle] Leopold [King of the Belgians] have been. Lady Milltown seems out of spirits, discontented, not happy even in the expectation of company, poor woman I do pity her, but like her I never can again.
18. Lord Downshire has come with his new agent Mr. Gore, they came very late last night, half past eleven and sent for Mr. Kilbee who was in bed, had to get up and dress so kept them waiting. My Lord don’t like to be kept waiting. ‘Hah, Mr. Kilbee—in bed, hah, you go early to bed here Mr. Kilbee’ ‘People who pay so high for their land, my Lord, had need to be early in bed and early up’, said Mr. Kilbee. Lord Downshire’s is a character intolerable to me, so weak, so vain, so pompous, so self important. Not a bad landlord if he would be quiet about it, though a hard one, nor an unkind master but so full of himself he considers no one else and requiring a degree of subserviency in all his dependants. The Doctor’s story of him was enough for me, he had given £10 to clothe the poor of his estate here which brings him in £7,000 a year. ‘Mr. Murray’ said he ‘how is this, I gave £10 to the poor here a week ago and no mention of it whatever in the papers, how was that?’ To fancy a man, a rational being, dictating those fine puffs we every now and then laugh at in the newspapers about his trees, his charities and his liberality, one
