Lord Chesterfield

We are all apt to think of Chesterfield merely as the brilliant and unprincipled author of the celebrated letters to his son, but it is certain that in his government of Ireland he showed himself a genuine statesman and a true friend to Ireland as well as to England. Chesterfield saw that the system of government which prevailed was destined to become a wasting disease alike for those who carried it on and for those who were made to suffer directly by it. He saw that it was not in his power to obtain any important mitigation of the penal laws through the instrumentality either of the English or the Irish Parliament.