revent the
introduction of tithes, magistracy, the Catholic question itself?'[29]

Whatever might be the case in the future, he believed that in the
present it was impossible for the Irish Government to receive adequate
support unless it made up its mind to purchase it. 'It would be good
policy,' he says in one of his letters, 'to direct the channel of
patronage as plentifully as we can towards those who are adhering to
us on these pressing questions of army establishments and property
tax.' He refused in very lofty tones applications for peerages as
rewards for political support; but the merit of this refusal belongs
mainly to Lord Liverpool, who, at the beginning of the Chief
Secretaryship, took on this subject a very firm and honourable line,
both in England and Ireland, and maintained it at the sacrifice of
many votes. For Irish honours unaccompanied by endowments there appear
to have been few applicants. Peel disliked the bestowal of
ecclesiastical dignities as rewards for political services; but if he
did not practise it quite as much as his predecessors, this appears to
have been much more due to nature than to policy.

'There is nothing so extraordinary,' he wrote, 'in natural history as
the longevity of all bishops, priests, and deacons in Ireland. During
the last five years there has been literally no Church preferment to
dispose of, to the infinite disappointment of many expectants.'

In the higher legal appointments, however, while insisting that
'attachment to the Government on principle' was very material, Peel
cordially agreed with Saurin that it was vitally necessary to select
men 'for character, and not for politics or connection'; and he added,
that those were not likely to be the least fit for high office who
were too proud to solicit it. 'It is a species of pride which
occasions very little practical inconvenience in Ireland.'

His letters show clearly the terrible evils of Irish life. He speaks
of 'the enormous and overgrown population,' with no employment except
agriculture; of a poverty so extreme that in many districts widespread
starvation was averted only by prompt Government intervention; of
'that infernal curse, the forty shilling freeholds'; of the evil
system of employing the military in distraining for rent and in the
collection of tithes; of juries, through fear or sympathy, acquitting
prisoners in the face of the clearest evidence; of the gross perjury
in the law courts; of the almos