'
So, down the centuries, the effect being that sympathy was involuntarily
drawn to all this rank, wealth, and ease. Similarly, by an unconscious
process of mind, there disappeared from the public eye the gaunt faces,
the bent bodies, of those who gave to rank the means of wealth and ease.
Contemplating the plight, to which the people of Ireland had fallen in
his soldiering days, Sir George Grey exclaimed, 'What intellect and power
were lost to the nation! What must have been the yearnings and agonies
undergone by many noble minds, feeling capable of great things, perhaps
even of rescuing their country from the misery in which it was sunk!'
Remove such people to a new atmosphere in the Colonies, where their
natural attainments could have just scope, and behold a fairy change!
They would yield leaders of citizenship, men capable of shaping nations
and legislatures, the laws of which the Old World would be glad to copy.
Sir George could place the fruit of history, what had come about, in the
remote basket of his hopes.
From it there dated a reminiscence of Sir Hussey Vivian, his Commander-
in-Chief in Dublin. Sir Hussey, who, with his dragoons, covered Moore's
retreat on Corunna, knew Sir George's father in the Spanish Peninsula.
Viewing the troublous Irish times, he had ordered that military officers
should wear their uniform, whether on duty or not.
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