uld never return to a country where they
could find neither bread, wine, nor discipline, and where the people
lived on roots, whisky, and lying.'

Maria ends this exciting chapter of the Memoirs with these moral
reflections: 'At all times it is disadvantageous to those who have
the reputation of being men of superior abilities, to seclude
themselves from the world. It raises a belief that they despise
those with whom they do not associate; and this supposed contempt
creates real aversion. The being accused of pride or singularity may
not, perhaps, in the estimation of some lofty spirits and
independent characters, appear too great a price to pay for liberty
and leisure; they will care little if they be misunderstood or
misrepresented by the vulgar; they will trust to truth and time to
do them justice. This may be all well in ordinary life, and in
peaceable days; but in civil commotions the best and the wisest, if
he have not made himself publicly known, so as to connect himself
with the interests and feelings of his neighbours, will find none to
answer for his character if it be attacked, or to warn him of the
secret machinations of his enemies; none who on any sudden emergency
will risk their own safety in his defence: he may fall and be
trampled upon by numbers, simply because it is nobody's business or
pleasure to rally to his aid. Time and reason right his character,
and may bring all who have injured, or all who have mistaken him, to
repentance and shame, but in the interval he must suffer--he may
perish.'

Chapter 9.

The British Government seem to have thought it best at this time to
pursue a laissez faire policy in Ireland, in order to convince the
Irish of their weakness, and to show them that, although a bundle
of sticks when loosened allows each stick to be used for beating,
and it may therefore be argued that sticks, being meant for
fighting, should never be bound in a bundle, yet each single stick
may easily get broken. Of course the Government intended to
intervene before it was too late, and to suggest to the Irish that
it was time to think of a union with their stronger neighbours.

On this subject, Maria remarks: 'It is certain that the combinations
of the disaffected at home and the advance of foreign invaders, were
not checked till the peril became imminent, and till the purpose of
creating universal alarm had been fully effected. As soon as the
Commander-in-Chief and the Lord-Lieutenant (at