THE COUNSELLOR.

I was talking yesterday to a gentleman of the birth, parentage, and education, of Mr. Canning; all of which have been for ever misrepresented by the political enemies of that eminent man. “He was the grandson,” said my informant, “of the well known Counsellor Canning of Garva, who, as an Irishman, of ancient birth, large possessions, and as a member of the Irish legislature, was a person of the very highest consideration.”

“Then why do you call him counsellor, as a title of distinction.”

“Because in Counsellor Canning’s day, it was a distinction. A papist might have a noble descent, a large property, and an historical name, but he could not be a counsellor.”

Whatever marked the distinctive privileges of the Protestant ascendancy, was a grade in itself, a dignity guarded by the laws of the land, and an assurance of personal gentility. Up to the middle of the last century, all the liberal professions were closed against the Catholic gentry of Ireland; but it was a dignity to belong to the bar, even among protestants; for the candidate for its honours was obliged to study in London, which at that time was an affair of no inconsiderable enterprize and effort. The uncertain sea voyage, and long land journey, were attended with a heavy expense, some risk, and considerable labour. Wales being then inaccessible to carriages, that part of the journey was made on hired horses; and not less than three weeks were occasionally passed in the transit from Dublin to London. To be a counsellor, therefore, was in itself the mark of a certain considerable wealth and respectability.

“Counsellor,” is still prefixed as a title of distinction by the common people, and by all the second-rate Catholics, to the names of barristers; and even the feudal cognomen of “the O’Connell” loses nothing by the professional dignity of counsellor, which the Kerry clients of that gentleman, the ex-subjects of his dynasty, never fail to give him.

A short time before the death of Grattan, “our husband and ourself” drove from the house of our old friend General C——, to pay a visit at Tenahinch. We had taken a wrong road, within a mile or two of that beautiful spot; and we stopped to inquire our way of an old woman, who sat spinning at a cabin door. “Pray, which is the road to Mr. Grattan’s?”

“Misther Grattan! Och, sorrow know myself knows, no, in troth, Mar’m.”

“What! not know where Tenahinch is?”

“Tinnyhinch, agrah! Och, it’s the counsellor’s yez are looking for; well, turn here, just to the right, and any body will tell yez where the counsellor’s is; just a stone’s throw from the Dargle. Sorrow one in the country but knows the counsellor’s.”

The counsellor, then, was the distinctive epithet by which the poor neighbours of Tenahinch best knew “the father of his country.” It was the title of his ascendancy; and power is always uppermost in the Irish mind.

How deeply has the iron of oppression entered into the soul of the Irish nation, and how much has a long misrule deteriorated the national intellect; substituting the conventional for the true, and rendering moral dignity and honesty of conduct almost physically impossible. Aristides himself, to say nothing of St. Anthony, could scarcely resist the temptations to corruption which arise from a divided population, and which are unknown in the worst governments of the continent. The protestant ascendancy, from the peer to the coal porter, form the true aristocracy of the land, and all else are serfs. The protestants are in Ireland, what the Normans were in England; only they have not seen the policy of a social fusion, which the more genial temperament of the French conquerors submitted to, in their intercourse with the Saxons. Oh! with how many warm Irish hearts and ardent Irish spirits I began life, who have since yielded to the baneful influence of this state of things, and cooled down to a more prudent consideration of their country’s wrongs, in relation to their own private interests. Yielding to a paltry and ephemeral ambition, they have looked down from the height of their official dignities upon the romance of patriotism, and condemned the expression of feelings, which it was once their pride to avow. How many who once shared such illusions, have afterwards shunned my sight, lest they should involve their interests in the proscription of one who loved their country, “not wisely but too well.” This is one of the severest penalties of life: death itself inflicts none so bitter. The penalties of nature bring their solace in their necessity: but what consoles for the terrible conviction of the frailty, and falling off from principle, of genius and sensibility; for perceiving, ere half our course is run, or, while we are maintaining ourselves a direct course, “steering right onward,”