mails behind hand, by the packet-boats being all on this fide, I had not received the letter your grace referred to, but that upon the recommendations your lordship gave of him, I should afford him all the protection I could; and I directed him to call upon me after the arrival of the next packets.

As he acquainted me with the bufinefs he came about, I took occafion to found the lords juftices the next day on the fubject of his errand, and found there would be a neceffity of laying before them what commands I received from your grace, to be able to do any thing in the affair.

And as the mails arrived yesterday morning, by which I received the honour of your grace's other letter of the 26th paft, with the other papers you was pleased to fend me, I have fince difcourfed with the other lords juftices on the fubjet, and find they apprehend there will be greater difficulties in this affair than at first offered.

If we encourage the French officers to fet about raifing their recruits, upon affurances that we will take no notice of it, they will be liable to great moleftations, fince every juftice. can take examinations against them and commit them, nor can we release them, but by due courfe of law, or by granting them a pardon. And whether they may not be the more buty in difturbing thofe levies, if they find them rather countenanced by the government, we cannot answer.

What has happened to feveral of them formerly, when they were raising recruits here in a clandeftine way (though as we knew his majesty's intentions, we flighted, and, as far as we well could, difcouraged complaints on that head) your grace very well knows from the feveral applications made to your lordship from the French embaffador. And what spirit may by artful men be raifed among his majefty's fubjects when they hear fome hundred recruits are raifing in this kingdom for France, and how it may fet magiftrates every where on distresfing the officers employed in this fervice, no one can tell.

To what exceffes of heat people are capable of running here, when they once take a thing right or wrong into their heads, the ferments raised here about Wood's half pence is too plain demonftration.

And I must beg leave to bint to your grace that all recruits raifed here for France or Spain, are generally confidered as perfons that may fome time or other pay a visit to this country as enemies. That all who are lifted here in thofe fervices, hope and wish to do fo, there is no doubt.

There is without controverfy a power in his majesty to grant leave to any perfons to levy men bere under his fign manual, by an act paffed 8 Georg. I. c. 9. and by the fame at the

C 4

govern

government here can grant fuch a licenfe under their hands; but I find that without his majesty's express orders for it, nobody here dares venture to grant a license to the French officers to raise the intended recruits, fince no one can answer what heats that may poffibly occafion at prefent as well as at the next meeting of parliament.

I fhould be very glad if I knew how to manage this affair to his majesty's fatisfaction, and am very much obliged to his majefty for having fo good an opinion of me as your grace is pleafed to affure me in your letter.

I am fure it will always be my greatest ambition to promote his majesty's fervice. But I am forry I cannot give a more promifing account of the fuccefs of this affair, fince I perceive nothing will be done in it till his majesty is pleafed directly to fignify his pleasure. However, effectual care fhall be taken that none of the officers who are come hither, fuffer on this account.

Lieutenant colonel Hennecy called on me this morning, and I directed him and his officers to appear as little as may be in publick, and to wait till we are further inftructed in his majefly's pleasure, fince at prefent there were fome difficulties in the way.

I have communicated your grace's letter to none but the lords juftices, to whom I found it neceffary fo to do, and shall take all the care I can, that no other perfon knows any thing of it. But I find by fome of the prints publifhed here this day, that fome accounts are come from England, that a number of recruits for the Irish regiments in the French service is to be raised here by his majefty's leave, and that the French officers employed in that fervice are arrived here, I am, &c.'

By this time the adminiftration in England began to reflect on the fcandalous and unconftitutional manner in which they had proceeded, which produced the following letter to the duke of Dorfet.

• My Lord,

Dublin, Dec. 8, 1730.

I yesterday received the honour of your grace's of the first inft. and it is with great pleasure I find by your lordship's that the French officers will foon be recalled from hence: fince that affair of the recruits makes a great noife here, and as far as I understand, a much greater at London. They have met with no rudeness here, and I believe will meet with none at their going off. They fhould be treated more civilly than they have been, if I had not found myself clamoured at here, and fallen upon in the papers of England, for a civility I did not fhew

them :

them and if there fhould be any apprehenfions of their being infulted, we shall take what care we can to prevent it.' I am, My Lord, &c.

Some other dispatches were fent by his grace, but of no great importance, on the fame head. The oppofition in Ireland, however, had intereft enough, fupported by their friends in England, not to let the matter drop, which produced the following letter.

'My Lord,

< To the Duke of Newcastle.

Dublin, Mar. 1. 1730.

The affair of the French recruits is blown over without any thing farther than uncertain rumours here of fome letter from fomebody to encourage the officers in their levies.

But as there are two or three perfons likely to be tried the approaching affize in the country, I thought proper to write to your grace, to know what his majefty will please to have done, if they should happen to be convicted; I rather fancy it will happen, as it has happened on moft of the like occafions. that the evidence on which they have been committed will fall fhort at the trial, fo that they may be acquitted. But for fear of the worst, I should be glad to know what is to be done, if it fhould prove otherwise. For I find on account of the noise that has been made in England and here about that affair, the lords juftices will not interpofe without his majesty's commands.

• If I am not much mistaken, when Mr. Weft, Mr. Conolly, and myself were in the government in his late majesty's reign, his majesty was pleased to order us not to permit any to be executed for lifting in foreign fervice, till we knew the king's pleasure.

• The officers who are fuppofed to have enlisted them are got off. I am, My Lord, &c.'

Great part of this volume relates to the coinage, with which we do not intend to trouble our readers. It is remarkable that his grace, though a bitter enemy to Dr. Delany's tory principles, recommends him to the bishop of London's patronage as a man of letters, and the author of Revelation examined with Candour.

In the year 1732, the primate, who had had the honour formerly, while at Hanover, to teach the late prince of Wales English, obtained leave to come to England; but his intention. feems to have been prevented by the difficulties ftill attending the coinage. Towards the end of the year 1733, he gives the duke of Newcastle and the bishop of London an account of a

fresh

fresh disappointment the diffenters had met with in the affair of repealing the teft; and we find him no warm friend to Dr. Rundle, who had been opposed by the bishop of London and the high flyers in England in his nomination to the bishopric of Gloucefter. The lord chancellor Talbot made so strong a point of it, that the Irifh nomination took place.

The primate was fo much of a man of business, that he feems to have very little regard to the productions of genius, and treated dean Swift, on all occafions, with great indiffer ence. That celebrated wit, in this collection, is reprefented to have been no match for his grace in the affair of the coinage, the carrying of which, fays the editor, was looked upon by the primate and his friends, as the most useful, and therefore the most important, act of his life.

The editor has the following note upon a difpatch fent to the duke of Newcastle on the fubje&t of the coinage, in which he was oppofed by dean Swift: Such a malignant spirit had been raised on this occafion by dean Swift and the bankers, that it was thought proper to lodge at the primate's house an extraordinary guard of foldiers; but truth foon got the better of this delufion, and the people returned again to their fenfes. Dean Swift not long after this cruel, though feeble effort, this telum imbelle fine idu, became one of his own meer doting Struldbrugs; an event which fome people fay he used to be appre hensive of in his more melancholy moments, and this way of thinking perhaps was the first motive to that noble charity, which to his great honour he founded in Dublin for lunatics and idiots.' We cannot help thinking this note to be an infult upon the memory and misfortunes of that great genius.

Upon the whole, few characters have been found equal to that of primate Boulter. Though he was a determined whig, yet he fupported his principles by great force of argument. His administration was strong, without being violent. No man was too inconfiderable for his notice, if he could be of fervice to his party. His attachments, though numerous, were not diffipated; and an honeft warmth appears in all his friendships. That he ruled by a party is indifputable; but it can scarcely be doubted, that his doing so preferved the Englifh intereft in Ireland, in very ticklish times. The ftile of his letters is fuch as fuits an active minifter. It has great force of expreflion, without violating, and, indeed, without cultivating, any graces, either of elegance or delicacy.We fincerely agree with his editor, who fays, that thefe letters, as they now are, and in all probability will ever re main, the most authentic hiftory of Ireland for that space of time in which they were written.'

It

It must not be forgotten, that the original letters are depofited in the library of Chrift Church, in Oxford; that they were collected by the late Ambrofe Phillips, already mentioned, his grace's fecretary; and that his grace had the rare and peculiar felicity of growing ftill more and more into the favour both of the king and of the people, until the very last day of his life, which happened, he being then, for the thirteenth time, one of the lord's juftices of Ireland, on the 27th of September, 1742.

VI. Phocion's Conversations: or, the Relation between Morality and Politics. Originally tranflated by Abbe Mably, from a Greek Manufcript of Nicocles; with Notes by William Macbean, A. M. 8vo. Pr. 6s. DodЛley.

'HE manufcript, of which this is a tranflation, is faid to have been discovered in the valuable library belonging to the monastery at Monte Caffini in Italy. That a work, bearing the name of fo celebrated a perfon as Phocion, should not be fo much as mentioned by any writer of antiquity, is a circumftance which would naturally fuggeft fone fufpicion of its authenticity. Accordingly, we are informed, that fome of the Abbé Mably's friends, men of learning whom he had confulted, entertained doubts on the fubject. They thought it furprising, that Cicero, who was fo converfant in the writings of all the Grecian philofophers, and has exhibited their various doctrines, fhould not once mention the names either of Nicocles or Phocion; and likewife that Plutarch, who is remarkably explicit in delineating the character of his heroes, fhould, in his life of Phocion, have been entirely filent on thefe Conversations, had he known that they existed.-To thefe objections Abbe Mably replies.

Though I entertain the higheft efteem for the critics who made these objections to me, yet have they not convinced me. Whether this is owing to felf-love, as tranflator of the work, or whether I am really in the right, let the public judge. Cicero's filence cannot, in my opinion, be admitted as an invincible argument against the book, of which I now publish a tranflation. I canuot fee that the order of the points difcuffed in his Offices, his Tufculans, his Dialogues on the Nature of the Gods, &c. led him to speak of Phocion's Converfations: on what account should he have quoted them? It is only in his Treatife on Laws, and more especially in his books on the Republic, that he would have had occafion to introduce a work of this nature and if I fay that probably he actually has, I do

not