Viscount Castlereagh

influence obtained for his brother-in-law promotion to a viscounty in October, 1795, and to the earldom of Londonderry in August, 1796. In the latter month he made Robert Stewart (his sister's step-son), now Viscount Castlereagh, Keeper of the Privy Seal. In May, 1798, Pelham returned to England, and owing to illness practically gave up his office. From the date of his departure Castlereagh performed the duties which should have fallen to Pelham as Chief Secretary, and on the latter's resignation in November, 1798, he definitely became Chief Secretary, and held that office till 1801. Castlereagh had now an opportunity of showing that his father's confidence in him had not been misplaced. At the age of twenty-seven he was called upon to face a crisis infinitely more dangerous and difficult to deal with than that which Pitt had encountered in 1784. England was in the throes of a war with France ; Ireland was honeycombed with disloyalty and disaffection. The grant of legislative independence to Ireland in 1782 had by no means tranquillized the island, where after the outbreak of the FrenchWOLFED TONE 11 Revolution sedition was rampant. The Presbyterians and Dissenters in the north of Ireland were republican by tradition ; the Catholics, downtrodden by the Protestant Church and Parliament, were equally discontented. In 1791 Wolfe Tone, a young Irish lawyer, had founded The Society of the United Irishmen, and advocated a close alliance between the ... --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.