all this long time Mr. O’Connell has been merely making tools of the patriots to fill his own purse, that his repeal agitation and his low rate of franchise and his plan for the farmers to value each other’s land are almost signs of insanity. I really think it a mercy that he has got to this for he is now no longer formidable, these absurd flights have ruined him with all but the few vagabonds immediately belonging to himself and though they may yet keep the people for some little time in too great a state of unhappy excitement for them to attend to the business which will really improve their condition this won’t last long.
Lady Milltown thinks Sir Robert Peel the greatest man of the age!! party spirit is dying away!! Baron de Robeck really has turned Conservative they say. He dined at Colonel Acton’s and his agent having carried all his tenants down to vote for the Liberal Candidate the Baron forbade them and threatened all with ejection that did so. Lady Milltown says he has left them because they would not give him a peerage—maybe.
Then she had a great deal to tell me about the exceeding beauty, the sense, the talent, the temper of Prince Albert who is very fond of the pretty little Queen and very happy with her and has improved her greatly in every respect as is indeed very evident for we never hear of those indecorums now which were slowly but very surely undermining her character in the eyes of her people. She dotes upon him and however he may influence her in private there is no appearance of his taking the slightest concern in matters of Government or any other matters not entirely belonging to himself. She has shown great judgment in choosing such a man from out of the whole world, and how clever and how clear sighted must [her mother] the Duchess of Kent and [her uncle] Leopold [King of the Belgians] have been. Lady Milltown seems out of spirits, discontented, not happy even in the expectation of company, poor woman I do pity her, but like her I never can again.
18. Lord Downshire has come with his new agent Mr. Gore, they came very late last night, half past eleven and sent for Mr. Kilbee who was in bed, had to get up and dress so kept them waiting. My Lord don’t like to be kept waiting. ‘Hah, Mr. Kilbee—in bed, hah, you go early to bed here Mr. Kilbee’ ‘People who pay so high for their land, my Lord, had need to be early in bed and early up’, said Mr. Kilbee. Lord Downshire’s is a character intolerable to me, so weak, so vain, so pompous, so self important. Not a bad landlord if he would be quiet about it, though a hard one, nor an unkind master but so full of himself he considers no one else and requiring a degree of subserviency in all his dependants. The Doctor’s story of him was enough for me, he had given £10 to clothe the poor of his estate here which brings him in £7,000 a year. ‘Mr. Murray’ said he ‘how is this, I gave £10 to the poor here a week ago and no mention of it whatever in the papers, how was that?’ To fancy a man, a rational being, dictating those fine puffs we every now and then laugh at in the newspapers about his trees, his charities and his liberality, one can hardly suppose such a lamentable degree of silliness.
20. Red cow calved yesterday, brown mare had a colt foal last night the image of Major; four young horses and four old, a nice stud and not one of them fit for use,—if I managed my department in like manner I wonder what would be said to me, my dear Colonel, eh. Sold all our lumpers2 at two pounds a ton, the produce of the old orchard, not an acre, value upwards of fourteen pounds, set that against the horses, Mrs. Smith!
21. All our cattle sick with this distemper everyone of them, it is not now fatal, nobody has lost an animal of late but they suffer a good deal and are very much reduced and thrown back by it; for fear the pigs should take it and so all our feeding be thrown away, we ordered both porker and baconer to be killed.
23. The Doctor brought the post down in the morning with a note from John regarding tenants in arrear which I answered by return of post. Now don’t owe a shilling in the world except this thousand pounds to George [Robinson]. By living quietly for a while we have got over all our perplexities and shall certainly on settling accounts in May have a balance in hand, the beginning of comfort. I don’t think we shall ever live up to our income again, all heavy expenses being over and the more land we get into our own hands the richer we shall be and the more valuable the property will become. So all looks very bright towards the future.
There was a little scrap too from Aunt Mary [Bourne] enclosing Jane’s extracts from the India letters. All perfectly well, [brother] John off at last by long sea to sail early last month, March, in the Walmer Castle. He is bent on living entirely in the highlands with his wife and children, determined upon it and very rightly. If his boys are to live on their inheritance hereafter they must learn to love their Duchus’ in childhood, and his wife will better bear a Highland winter in her old age by recollecting how many most happy summer days she passed with her young husband in the beautiful woodland scenes of Rothiemurchus. He wishes my mother and Jane to live with him, but this my mother will not do. She has no love for the Highlands and she will never return there without my father.
25. Heard of Pat Farrell being nearly thumped to pieces by the priest the little Roman Catholic Curate, Mr. Rickard, a perfect little fury.
27. Had Pat Farrell with us in the morning. The Colonel had gone to him last night to see what state he was in and to insist on some steps being taken to put an end to these proceedings of this reverend firebrand who not content with beating almost everyone he has anything to do with, maligns those he is offended with from the altar and has kept the parish in perpetual disquiet ever since he entered it. So several of the people who have been themselves ill-used have determined they say to sign a petition explaining their grievances and to send Pat Farrell and another man up with it to their Bishop. The Colonel wrote him a note to back them which I think a very proper one though it did not meet with the approbation of the Doctor with whom we sat an hour before going into the poor Murrays’ auction. We looked at the plate and several other things and got Tom Darker to stay and bid for them but this day nothing we wanted was sold.
28. The Doctor came to breakfast and brought the post with him. We showed him the copy of the letter to Doctor Murray3 of which he could not help highly approving, his objection is against interfering with their squabbles at all. The more tyrannical the priests become the sooner he says the people will tire of them, the more the priests beat and abuse and extort the sooner will the William Tell arise who is to prove to the poor ignorant terrified multitude that these furies are but men and may be resisted with impunity. There is much truth in this and the fact is that the people generally are beginning to feel towards their priests and to speak of them in a way they would not have dared to think of two years ago. Farrell told most injurious tales yesterday of them. At the same time the landlord interfering to protect his people never can be injudicious. What we want to lead them to is to consider him as their friend, the natural guardian of their rights and their comforts.
I heard some complaints of Miss Gardiner I must enquire into, such as her sending the children into Blesinton for messages and to gather sticks for her fire and asking higher fees than I had settled on, these were Mrs. Hugh Kelly’s reasons for taking her children from school. Very likely quite explainable but still I must look after it all. I shall have time next week to set affairs to rights. Now while the Colonel and Doctor are at their piquet I must go and make my preparations for Dublin. I don’t somehow think that Pat Farrell and his petition will get there.
SUNDAY MAY 2. A rainy day the very best thing possible for the country, too wet however for church so I have time to set down that there was a very proper note to the Colonel from Bishop Murray saying he should in about a fortnight come to this neighbourhood when he should enquire into the very painful subject of the complaint against Mr. Richard.
9. Hal and I are reading at night Whateley4 on the ‘The Errours of Romanism’, so far most admirable, shewing that the spirit of superstition or misdirected religious zeal is inherent in human nature, as rife among the members of the reformed church as ever it was among the papists, taking different disguises in different sects, hurtful in all and to all and quite adverse to the purity