To the public, however, it seemed doubtful whether the Conservatives would be in power when the Indian Viceroyalty actually demitted; and, as a matter of fact, they had resigned before that event took place. Nor had Lord Mayo's Parliamentary appearances been sufficiently commanding in the eyes of the English Press to secure him from personal criticism. With the exception of a very few speeches on India, China, and Australia, he had confined himself entirely to Irish business. He had displayed no great amount either of interest or of knowledge in the current subjects of English politics. His one speciality was Ireland, and it was a specialty which at that time neither attracted the sympathy nor won the applause of the English public. Indeed, except on rare occasions, {66} an Irish debate was then an affair of empty benches--pretty much as an Indian debate, except at moments of special excitement, is at present. The statesman who had filled the chief Parliamentary office for Ireland on each occasion that his party came into power during twenty years, was less known to the English public than many a young speaker sitting for his first time on the Treasury benches. A tempest of clamour accordingly arose in the Press, and spent its fury with equal force on Lord Mayo's colleagues and on himself. Some of the criticisms of those days read, by the light of later experience, as truly astonishing products of English party spirit. It is only fair to add, that the very papers which were most bitter against his appointment afterwards came forward most heartily in his praise. In that outburst of the English sense of justice which followed his death, our national journal of humour stood first in its generous acknowledgment of his real desert, as it had led the dropping fire of raillery three years before:-- 'We took his gauge, as did the common fool, By Report's shallow valuing appraised, When from the Irish Secretary's stool To the great Indian throne we saw him raised. 'They gauged him better, those who knew him best; They read, beneath that bright and blithesome cheer, The Statesman's wide and watchful eye, the breast Unwarped by favour and unwrung by fear. {67} 'The wit to choose, the will to do, the right; All the more potent for the cheerful mood That made the irksome yoke of duty light, Helping to smooth the rough, refine the rude. 'Nor for this cheeriness less strenuous shown, All ear, all eye, he swayed his mighty realm; Till through its length and breadth a presence known, Felt as a living hand upon the helm. 'All men spoke well of him, as most men thought, Here as in India, and his friends were proud; It seemed as if no enmity he wrought, But moved love-girt, at home or in the crowd.