a
member of the House of Peers, and, during many years, as a minister,
upon the great questions which have agitated the public mind since the
commencement of the present century.

If there are those who hold the Duke of Wellington in light estimation
as a politician, they will not continue to entertain that opinion, the
Editor believes, after having dispassionately read the extracts of which
this work is composed.

Interspersed with the Duke's more elaborate OPINIONS, will be found his
MAXIMS on public policy, which, though few and unpretending, may be said
to have sunk into the national mind.

The Editor has added a few remarkable sentences and passages from the
dispatches of the Duke; with a cursory memoir of his life, which becomes
more elaborate from the commencement of his political career; and has
also attempted to portray some of his characteristics, as a soldier and
as a civilian.

LONDON, _February_, 1845.

MEMOIR

OF

HIS GRACE THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON.

Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington, is the fourth son of Garret,
second Earl of Mornington, by Anne, the eldest daughter of Arthur Hill,
Viscount Dungannon. He was borne at Dangan Castle, in the county of
Meath, Ireland, on the 1st of May, 1769.

As in the case of many of the chief nobility and landholders in Ireland,
the ancestors of the Duke were scions of an English house--the Colleys
(afterwards Cowley), two of whom, named Walter and Robert Colley,
proceeded to Ireland in the reign of Henry VIII., and located themselves
in the County of Kilkenny. The two brothers were lawyers by profession,
and in the year 1531, were invested with the office of Clerk of the
Crown in Chancery, which they were to hold jointly during their lives.
Six years afterwards, we find the elder brother Master of the Rolls in
Ireland, and the other Solicitor-General. In 1549, Walter was made
Surveyor-General of Ireland. It was from this Walter that the immediate
ancestors of the Duke of Wellington were, by the mother's side,
descended.

His eldest son, Henry, acquired some distinction as a soldier in the
reign of Elizabeth. He was also a member of the Irish Parliament for the
borough of Thomastown. He was, moreover, a Privy Councillor, and was
knighted.

Sir Henry Sydney, who was, perhaps, the wisest and most able of all the
Lords Deputy whom Elizabeth sent over to Ireland, appears to have
entertained a very high opinion of Sir Henry Colley's abilities; for, in
reco