Sketches of the Scottish Bar.-No. III. Mr. Forsythe The French Ministry and the New Chamber Gossipings, Gay and Grave. By a retired Londoner The Month in Parliament. County-Division Clause, and Lord Chandos's The Irish Yeomanry, the Irish Members, and Lord Grey The Knowledge of the World in Men and Books. By the Author of "Conversations with an Ambitious Student" The Cholera Morbus. On hearing it said that this disease only attacked THE NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE. JULY 1, 1831. ORIGINAL PAPERS. THE IRISH ELECTIONS. In reviewing the most remarkable of the Irish elections, and giving some account of their parliamentary products, I shall begin with Dublin. There the Corporation has sustained, not only a signal, but extraordinary defeat. Mr. George Moore, the hereditary champion of ascendancy, and Mr. Frederic Shaw, the Recorder, have been overthrown by the combined forces of the Government and the people, and the genius of Orangeism has been vanquished in its loftiest and strongest hold. It was imagined that the position in which they stood was impregnable; but Reform has scaled the fortress, and planted the green flag on the proudest tower on which the standard of the Williamites ever waved! Of George Moore a brief account ought to be given. He derives his main title to the predilections of his party from the recollections of George Ogle. The latter was his uncle by marriage, and left him his principles and his estate. He was a man once well known in the circles of fashion and politics in Dublin, and having a turn for literature as well as for faction, alternately presided over the orgies of ascendancy and "consorted with the small poets of the time." Of his compositions, two or three songs remain. The memory of his political intemperance is not yet passed away. He was wont to say that a Catholic would swallow an oath as soon as a poached egg. Mr. Bernard Coyne, once known in the annals of Popery, called him out for reflection on the veracity of the nation. They discharged their pistols ten or twelve times. The arms had not been loaded, and the people, aware of the fact (of which the combatants were ignorant), gathered to witness the scene in a wide circle of derision. This is all I remember of George Ogle. Mr. Moore, his successor, was a man distinguished at the Irish Bar for the urbanity of his manners, set off by a sweet smile-a look of ruddy juvenility at forty-eight-a formidable flow of tautology, and a great charm and gentleness of demeanour, which rendered him an agreeable companion, and endeared him to all those who mixed with him in the intercourse of private life. He was known to be a strong politician, but his aspect, his intonations, and his address, made those who differed from him pay little regard to any acerbity in his opinions. He took little active part in politics. William Saurin, the ex-Attorney-General, perceived July, 1831.-VOL. XXXII. NO. CXXVII. B that the recollections which were associated with him might be turned to a good account, and brought him into public life. Being in want of a candidate, he selected Mr. Moore, and threw him into the deepest vortex of Corporation animosities. Mr. Moore was received with acclamation by the "good Protestants" of Dublin, and returned by a vast majority. He was thenceforward the great Corypheus of orthodoxy he became inflamed and heated by his contact with the fiery mass of faction, and reflected all the intemperance of his constituents with fidelity, although his tranquil manner and natural suavity did not depart. It was pleasant to see him in the House of Commons delivering himself of the most ferocious conceptions in the gentlest and most simpering fashion. He was happily called Sir Forcible Feeble. John Doherty having noted that he commenced, progressed, and ended in every speech with "the glorious Revolution of 1688," took advantage of it, in order to produce, in a piece of ridicule, one of those "impromptus faits à loisir," which sometimes make a man's fortune in the House of Commons. Mr. Moore might have suffered in the House from the happy laughter of the present Lord Chief Justice, but was only exalted by the martyrdom of ridicule into greater favour with the Corporation. He was deemed invincible, and yet has been overthrown! Mr. Shaw, his co-partner in the representation of Dublin, was less an object of political partiality, but had many advantages to second him. His father's bank was a tower of strength, and the coffers, it is supposed, of the Master of the Rolls were thrown open-their ponderous lids creaked on their rusty hinges in his behalf. Sir W. M'Mahon is his uncle. Mr. Shaw had, besides, the recommendation arising from very considerable ability, which he had displayed in his reply to O'Gorman Mahon, in which he gave a description of that gentleman by exhibiting a picture of another, and was accounted not only one of the sustainments, but, what is far more rare, one of the ornaments of the Corporation. He was altogether a most creditable representative. His solemnity of aspect-his full, large black and brilliant eye -his handsome countenance, overspread with an air of evangelical as well as judicial solemnity-his grave judicial walk, and his Recorder emphasis on every word, constituted an assemblage of imposing circumstance, which rendered Mr. Shaw an object of pride to the body which had delegated him to Parliament. It was imagined, on the dissolution, that no attempt would be made to resist him and Mr. Moore. Two candidates, however, were produced by the people, in the persons of Mr. Perrin and Sir Robert Harty. The Government, laying aside the quiescence which had neutralised the power of the Irish administration in so many instances, interfered in their behalf. Orders were issued, or hints, which are equivalent to injunctions, were given, which were perfectly intelligible in the Police offices and the Paving Board, and a phenomenon in political conversion was presented in the person of the famous (famous at least in the world of provinciality called Ireland) Major Sirr. Sirr had been the Fouché of the Rebellion. He was a renowned traitor-catcher, and has been commended to immortality in one of Curran's speeches. He was a loyalist of the first zeal and acrimony, and lately superadded sanctimony to the spirit of allegiance, which, among the ascendancy party, |