15. Read the little Temperance tract sent by Aunt Lissy. If all people kept their baptismal vows there would be no need of any human laws to govern our Commonwealths and if all people could be sufficiently educated, probably in some thousand or two of years we might reach this perfection. But in the meanwhile with the higher orders absorbed in selfishness and the lower plunged in vice and ignorance any restraint on the most degrading and most pernicious of their evil habits must operate beneficially on their morals.
18. Waked by a light in the room which made me start, it was Hannah with a candle, in a cloke, come for the pass books for Paddy who was just starting for Dublin, about five o’clock. We advised him not to go, it was so boisterous, rain and wind so violent, but he went. In the paper a violent letter of Mr. O’Connell’s and equally inflammatory speech of his son John’s threatening the English with another Irish rebellion whenever America and France declare war.
19. Interrupted all day by visitors, Mrs. Hornidge and Mrs. Finnemor, most beautifully dressed, had they been six and thirty and going to a publick breakfast, painted and made up and falsified in every way, they would have looked very well on the stage by lamplight.
20. Such a beautiful morning. Hal off in great glee for a fox hunt. No Paddy, what can the old man be about? Made ourselves miserable all the evening because Paddy had not returned. Hal began to think he had absconded altogether with cart, mare and goods for America, & as he dropt from the clouds here, whether he were a rogue or an honest man was problematical and this might have been a temptation beyond his withstanding. I absolved the poor man of all trickery but I feared he might himself have been tricked. Like other great men he has a failing—a woman can do anything with him and as in the course of these excursions he don’t always meet with the best of the sex I feared his having been inveigled into some den while his cart was pillaged and we were calculating how we should ever make up such a heavy loss—in short we were most ingenious in tormenting ourselves and we really passed a most anxious evening, I could hardly play piquet, and Tom Darker gave us no comfort for about one o’clock he began to have his misgivings and Miss Cooper’s consolation was that Paddy had broken the pledge and was lying in the ditch and that the mare would be sure to bring the cart home. At eleven we went upstairs, Hal, once more opened the window to listen along the road and heard them at the gate of the yard, it was such a relief, Paddy and the mare quite sober, all right, so we drank a glass of beer to their health!
21. Paddy came to deliver his letters looking so decent, so clean, so well dressed, my heart smote me for having doubted him. The nursery man had caused the delay.
24. East wind, stupid post. Election begun for the King’s County, dreadful excitement, Priests as busy as bees and this time they must succeed for no Conservative ever before tried to rescue the people from the degradated 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.
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