this moment, to look back on the family group of children collected at
Dangan Castle. The young earl was within a month of his majority: his
younger brothers and sisters were, William Wellesley Pole (since dead,
under the title of Lord Maryborough), then aged eighteen; Anne, since
married to Henry, son of Lord Southampton, aged thirteen; Arthur, aged
twelve; Gerald Valerian, now in the church, aged ten; Mary Elizabeth
(since Lady Culling Smith), aged nine; Henry, since Lord Cowley, and
British ambassador to Spain, France, &c. aged eight. The new Lord
Mornington showed his conscientious nature, by assuming his father's
debts, and by superintending the education of his brothers. He had
distinguished himself at Oxford as a scholar; but he returned thither no
more, and took no degree. As Earl of Mornington, he sat in the Irish House
of Lords; but not being a British peer, he was able to sit also in the
English House of Commons; and of this opening for a more national career,
he availed himself at the age of twenty-four. Except that he favored the
claims of the Irish Catholics, his policy was pretty uniformly that of Mr.
Pitt. He supported that minister throughout the contests on the French
Revolution; and a little earlier, on the Regency question. This came
forward in 1788, on occasion of the first insanity which attacked George
III. The reader, who is likely to have been born since that era, will
perhaps not be acquainted with the constitutional question then at issue.
It was this: Mr. Fox held that, upon any incapacity arising in the
sovereign, the regency would then settle (_ipso facto_ of that incapacity)
upon the Prince of Wales; overlooking altogether the case in which there
should _be_ no Prince of Wales, and the case in which such a Prince might
be as incapable, from youth, of exercising the powers attached to the
office, as his father from disease. Mr. Pitt denied that a Prince of Wales
simply _as_ such, and apart from any moral fitness which he might possess,
had more title to the office of regent than any lamp-lighter or scavenger.
It was the province of Parliament exclusively to legislate for the