Note 38 — ENTRANCE INTO PARLIAMENT.

Perhaps this may be considered rather too egotistical and highly coloured; but I must observe that at that time the importance of a member of the Irish Parliament was much greater in his country, than that of an English member at present in his. The Irish parliament was formerly almost wholly composed of gentlemen of family and high respectability: there was neither an attorney nor a usurer in it; on the contrary, there were no two professions in the world to which the Irish gentlemen had so great an aversion; to the one from experience, the other from anticipation.