Public Characters Volume 5 - Softcover

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated.1803 Excerpt: ... House of Commons, at St. Margaret's, which discourse is since published. As a pulpit orator, the Doctor is distinguished by great animation, a clear and sonorous articulation, and a graceful dignity of manner. His sermons are the compositions of a mind richly embued with divine and human learning, elegant in their language, yet sufficiently levelled to the plainest understandings. W. THE EARL OF MACARTNEY. GEORGE Earl of Macartney, the representative of an ancient branch of a family once possessed of independent princely power in Ireland, has been ennobled in reward for eminent political services to his sovereign and his country, and has passed with honour through a greater variety of high diplomatic and vice-regal employments, than have been confided to almost any contemporary stateman of this or any neighbouring nation. The great Irish family of Macarthy More was one of the most zealous to resist, in early times, the invasions and conquests of the English. As the inhabitants of the north-west parts of Scotland and those of the north of Ireland were originally one people, whose primitive connections were preserved by frequency of intercourse, affinity, and alliance; it was natural for them to co-operate against the English, their common enemies, at the time when these strove to add Scotland as well as Ireland to the the dominions of the English crown. Robert Bruce round occasional refuge in Ireland, at those times when there remained scarcely a spot of Scottish ground where he might elude the vigilance of the English, or withstand their power. And the Bruces, after Scotland was, by their persevering and intrepid valour, ultimately freed from English oppression, readily went, at the invitation of the native Irish, on an expedition to drive the English also ...