The Duke of Portland was well calculated to carry out a policy of this kind; but I am far from suspecting that he was himself fully aware of the drama in which he acted. He was a plain, straightforward man, of average good sense, but more than average firmness and determination. He came over to Ireland thoroughly impressed with the favorite English maxim that whatever Irishmen wish is assuredly bad for them, and thought, like the old physicians of the sixteenth century, that a patient's benefit was in the exact proportion to his repugnance for the remedy. I am not quite sure that this pleasant theory is not even yet the favorite one as regards Ireland, which, perhaps, after all, might be permitted the privilege so generally accorded to the incurable, to take a little medicine of her own prescribing. Be this as it may, I am convinced that the Duke of Portland was no hypocrite, but firmly believed in the efficacy of the system he advocated, and only made use of the blandishments and hospitalities of his station to facilitate connections which he trusted would at last be concurred in on the unerring grounds of reason and judgment. Whatever people may say or think to the contrary, hypocrisy--that is, a really well-sustained and long-maintained hypocrisy--is one of the rarest things to be met with, and might even be suspected never to exist at all, since the qualities and gifts necessary, or indeed indispensable, to its attainment are exactly of an order which bespeaks some of the first and greatest traits of human nature, and for that reason would make the game of dissimulation impossible; and I would be as slow to believe that a man could search the heart, study the passions, weigh the motives, and balance the impulses of his fellow-men, for mere purposes of trick or deception, as that a doctor would devote years of toil and labor in his art for the sole aim of poisoning and destroying his patients.