The forty-shilling franchise has since been abolished. Its practical abominations had become too glaring for the endurance of a rational legislature, and it perished. Yet the "snake was scotched, not killed." The spirit of the measure remained in full action: it was felt in the force which it gave to Irish agitation, and in the insidiousness which it administered to English party. In Ireland it raised mobs; in England it divided cabinets. In Ireland it was felt in the erection of a rabble parliament; in England it was felt in the pernicious principle of "open questions;" until the leaders of the legislature, like all men who suffer themselves to tamper with temptation, gave way; and the second great stage of national hazard was reached, in the shape of the bill of 1829. If the projected measure of "endowing the popery of Ireland"--in other words, of establishing the worship of images, and bowing down to the spiritual empire of the papacy--shall ever, in the fatuity of British rulers and the evil hour of England, become law; a third great stage will be reached, which may leave the country no farther room for either advance or retrogression. * * * * * In the year 1796, the father of the young member had been raised to the earldom of Londonderry, and his son became Viscount Castlereagh. In the next year his career as a statesman began; he was appointed by Lord Camden, (brother-in-law of the second Earl of Londonderry,) Keeper of the Privy Seal of Ireland. The conduct of the Irish administration had long wanted the first quality for all governments, and the indispensable quality for the government of Ireland,--firmness. It has been said that the temper of the Irish is Oriental, and that they require an Oriental government. Their wild courage, their furious passion, their hatred of toil, and their love of luxury, certainly seem but little fitted to a country of uncertain skies and incessant labour. The Saracen, transported to the borders of the Atlantic, might have been the serf, and, instead of waving the Crescent over the diadems of Asia, might have been cowering over the turf-fire of the Celt, and been defrauded of the pomps of Bagdad and the spoils of Jerusalem. The _decision_ of one of the magnificent despotisms of the East in Ireland might have been the true principle of individual progress and national renown. The scimitar might have been the true talisman.