our national
character in the spirit of this law, which, unhappily for England, and
Ireland, too, has not always dictated her enactments concerning us.
It is well known that we hate and abhor anything in the shape of a
legal debt. Few Irishmen will refuse you the loan of five pounds;
still fewer can persuade themselves to pay five shillings. The kingdom
of Galway has long been celebrated for its enlightened notions on this
subject, showing how much more conducive it is to personal
independence and domestic economy, to spend five hundred pounds in
resisting a claim, than to satisfy it by the payment of twenty.
Accordingly, had any direct taxation of considerable amount been
proposed for the support of viceregal dignity, the chances are--much
as we like show and glitter, ardently as we admire all that gives us
the semblance of a state--we should have buttoned up our pockets, and
upon the principle of those economical little tracts, that teach us to
do so much for ourselves, every man would have resolved to be "his own
Lord Lieutenant;" coming, however, in the shape of an indirect
taxation, a voluntary contribution to be withheld at pleasure, the
thing was unobjectionable.

You might not like cards, still less the company--a very possible
circumstance, the latter, in some times we wot of not long
since--Well, then, you saved your cash and your character by staying
at home; on the other hand, it was a comfort to know that you could
have your rubber of "shorts" or your game at _ecarte_, while at the
same time you were contributing to the maintenance of the crown, and
discharging the _devoirs_ of a loyal subject. It is useless, however,
to speculate upon an obsolete institution; the law has fallen into
disuse, and the more is the pity. How one would like to have seen Lord
Normanby, with that one curl of infantine simplicity that played upon
his forehead, with that eternal leer of self-satisfied loveliness that
rested on his features, playing banker at _rouge et noir_, or calling
the throws at hazard. I am not quite so sure that the concern would
have been so profitable as picturesque. The principal frequenters of
his court were "York too;" Lord Plunket was a "downy cove;" and if
Anthony Blaek took the box, most assuredly "I'd back the caster." Now
and then, to be sure, a stray, misguided country gentleman--a kind of
"wet Tory"--used to be found at that court; just as one sees some
respectable matronly woman at Ems or Baden,