When the fatal moment arrived, Dublin was agog. The influence of the lords, so dearly purchased, was brought to bear with all its force upon the members, for whose return to parliament they were responsible. Jupiter was showering gold on Danæ, resolved to consummate the sacrifice of her virtue. Debate followed debate with unequal success. First one side considered that the day was theirs; then the other triumphed; then the pistol-heroes rushed forth, and howled and swaggered, and pinked their men, and returned to go on with the argument which had been dropped in their excitement. In fact, both parties seemed agreed as to one point only, viz., their determination to behave in as undignified a manner as might be. It was the old story of physical bullying doing its best to conceal moral cowardice and turpitude--a scene of hectoring and license and vulgar abuse and uproar, which shamed both parties in equal measure. Lord Cornwallis had done his best. In the course of the year which elapsed between the two attempts to carry the union he made two state progresses--one in the southern counties and the other in the north, and preached the millennium according to St. Pitt. Clare and Castlereagh both laboured on in town as sure no negro slaves ever laboured; and yet when the time came all was still provokingly uncertain. This Irish senate was unutterably vile. Having surrendered its scrap of virtue, it repudiated, like an irreclaimable strumpet, even the maxim of honour amongst thieves. It was clear that further. delay would only make matters worse by inducing senators to open their mouths yet wider. Portentous debates occupied the Commons; the House frequently sat all night, breaking up only at midday. Members declared that they must give up the ghost or have a holiday; some sought refuge among pillows and boluses from the Herculean labours of the House, while others dragged themselves, like martyrs to the stake, through the dense masses of the populace that had taken possession of College Green, to cheer non-unionists with vociferous shouts, and hurl mud and putrid eggs at unpopular legislators. On Lord Castlereagh fell the onus of wielding the thunderbolts of Jove, and he acquitted himself of the task most excellently. Like the chancellor, he had the 'gift of the gab;' was not particular as to the language he employed; was well versed in forensic Billingsgate; could return anyone, in sledge-hammer fashion, a Roland for his Oliver. The modest were overwhelmed by flights of astounding rhapsody; the patriotic silenced by brazen lies; the uncertain routed by bewildering irony. As the dogmatic chancellor (now that he no longer feared the Viceroy) trampled the peerage under his feet, so did the clever chief secretary discomfit the Commons. Money was poured forth lavishly; threats and promises were distributed with profuse hands. The tussle was sharp, but none could doubt which side would in the end prove victorious. Concerning Grattan (the man of