UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT LOS ANGELES THE LIFE OF THE RIGHT HONOURABLi: JOHN PHILPOT CURRAN. Printed by Walker & Greig, Edinburgh. /'iunf'-4i hv .1// /!/./, £nij7'iii'i'^ ':^^^^^^: /'iihliA-hnl Aiiri/ :'/' "•iS^^Zby. A. loii.rl.ihl,- .i' I''' Edinl'iinih . THE LIFE OF THE RIGHT HONOURABLE JOHN PHILPOT CURRAN, LATE MASTER OF THE ROLLS IN IRELAND. BY HIS SON, WILLIAM HENRY CURRAN, BARRISTER AT LAW. IN TWO VOLUMES. VOL. I. SECOND EDITION. EDINBURGH : PRINTED FOR ARCHIBALD CONSTABLE & CO. EDINBURGH ; AND HURST, ROBINSON & CO. LONDOK. • 9 • • • • A c • « r t. M • « ««* «cc cc« CI a V.I TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE VALENTINE, LORD CLONCURRY. My Lord, When the following volumes were first about to appear, I thought it more respectful to my father's memory to publish the details of his life without soliciting the sanction of any name that might be consi- dered as a lure to attract the public atten- tion. In doing this I made not an inconsi- derable sacrifice of personal and public feel- ing ; for it was my good fortune to be inti- mately acquainted with an Irishman who knew him well — who shared his constitu- tional principles, and never shrunk from the danger of avowing them — and who like 2079! 3 VI DEDICATION. him could boast of the well-earned calumny of every virulent defamer that sees a per- sonal enemy in the lover of his country. But the opportunity which I then waived has now recurred, — much sooner than I could have justly anticipated. The story of the struggles and disasters of our coun- try has not proved so unpopular a subject with English readers as I had apprehended. A second edition of this work has been de- manded, and I now gratify my original im- pulse without fearing that my motive can be misconceived. Allow me then, my Lord, to dedicate these pages to you ; which I do, not in the spirit of an author searching for a patron, but as a surviving relative of one whose public virtues you have had the manliness to approve and imi- tate in a country, where it long has been the fashion to decry every principle that is not servile and profitable. I once indulged a hope, my Lord, tliat these volumes, whenever your name should DEDICATION. VU be prefixed to them, might be rendered much more complete than they were as originally published. I felt, and I still feel, that any additional labour I could bestow upon them, w^ould be a small return to the public for the favour with which they have been received. The historical parts, in par- ticular, would require revision, and proba- bly enlargement. But I candidly confess, that I shrunk from the task. There is a novelty in the first glow of indignation ex- cited by details of crime and suffering, that for the moment may render the subject tolerable if not interesting ; but such scenes when dwelt upon (and there is little else in Irish history), bring down the mind to a sentiment of unmingled and harassing des- pondency. In reviewing our dismal annals too, it is in vain that we attempt to confine our attention and sympathy to the past. The present, and all its inglorious coinci- dences will still intrude, and we are unceas- ingly condemned to ask, " Is there never to Vlll DEDICATION. be an end to the calamities of Ireland?" We irresistibly turn to the shamefid fact, that up to the present hour the ends of society and of political institutions have never been attained in this devoted coun- try. While I write, the causes and the effects of our degradation are in as active operation as they were half a century ago. The advocates of monopoly and exclusion still cling to their selfish maxims as the per- fection of political wisdom, and the retribu- tive fury of our population is daily refuting them by acts of barbarous outrage, dis- graceful to humanity, and a scandal to the name of regular government. The spirit of discontent prevailing among our peasantry may be immediately attri- buted to the grievous distress that afflicts them ; but the frightful form their irrita- tion has assumed is the natural and inevit- able result of a system, which, by unduly preferring the interests, and sanctioning the passions of a few, has effectually annihilated DEDICATION. IX every sympathy that can attach the multi- tude to the laws. . The scenes now acting before us form a miserable sequel to the visions of concilia- tion and tranquillity in which we so recent- ly indulged. It would be unfair to say that the present excesses have been produced by a disappointment of the hopes then held out; but it may be truly asserted, that a class of persons in immediate contact with the go- vernment, and who were peculiarly bound to be forbearing, have, in defiance of their sovereign's interposition, w^antonly perse- vered in a course of conduct the most cal- culated to provoke and embitter the resent- ment of a suffering and inflammable popu- lation. But although the verbal appeal even of his Majesty may have failed to bring over those persons to the habits of a civilized community, surely, my Lord, the measures of an intrepid and uncompromis- ing viceroy, acting up to the spirit of that appeal, Mould not be equally unsuccessful. X DEDICATION. Among the last observations that my father committed to paper on the subject of Ire- land, he has shortly glanced at the character of such a viceroy, and at the description of men from whose interference his first act would be to disembarrass his administra- tion. Alluding to the projected changes in 1812 he says, " We looked to see the sword, no longer the instrument of persecution, confided by a beloved sovereign to the hand of his earliest friend, and used with justice and mercy. Under the government of such a man as Lord Moira, the humblest sufferer would have been soothed by the softness of his temper, and the most inso- lent intruder repelled and dismayed by its firmness. No despicable faction would have dared to proclaim their opinion of his feebleness by the nauseous tender of their protection. No slanderers would have found the defamation of the country a pro- fitable trade. Instead of squandering his favour upon the vile inventors of imaginary DEDICATION. xi conflagrations, his would have been the nobler task of extinguishing the incendia- ries." I have the honour to be, My Lord, Your most respectful And attached Servant, William Henry Curran. Dublin, February 6. 1822. CONTENTS TO VOL. I. CHAPTER I. Mr Curran's origin — His parents — Early education— Originally- intended for the Church— Enters Trinity College — His ardour for the Classics — Letter to Mr Stack — Anecdote of his mother — Her epitaph — While in College fixes on the Bar — Anecdote connected with the change of profession — His character in Col- lege — Addicted to Metaphysics — Anecdote on the subject — Verses to Apjohn Page 1 CHAPTER ir. Mr Cunan leaves College — Enters the Middle Temple — Letter to IMr Weston — Letter to Mr Keller — His first attempts in oratory fail — His own account of the failure, and of his first success — A regular attendant at Debating Clubs— Anecdotes — His Poem on Friendship — Dr Creagh's character of him — Mr Hudson's predictions and friendship — His early manners and habits — Subject to constitutional melancholy — Letters from Lon- don — His society in London — Anecdote of his interview with Macklin — His early application and attainments — Favourite authors — Early attachment to the Irish peasantry — His marriage — Remarks upon English Law 24 XIV CONTENTS. CHAPTEE III, Mr Curran called to the Irish Bar — Dissimilarities between that and the English Bar — Causes of the Difference Page 83 CHAPTER IV. Mr Curran's early success at the Bar — His contest with Judge Robinson — His defence of a Roman Catholic priest — His duel with Mr St Leger — Receives the dying benediction of the priest •—Lord Avonmore's friendship — His character of Lord Avon- more— Monks of St Patrick, and list of the original members — Anecdotes of Lord Avonraore — Mr Curran's entrance into Par- liament 103 CHAPTER V. The Irish House of Commons in 1783 — Sketch of the previous history of Ireland — Effects of the Revolution of 1688 — Catholic penal code — System of governing Ireland — Described by Mr Curran — Intolerance and degradation of the Irish Parliament- Change of system — Octennial bill — American Revolution — Its effects upon Ireland — The Irish Volunteers — Described by Mr Curran — Their numbers, and influence upon public measures — Irish Revolution of 1 782 — Mr Grattan's public services — Obser- vations upon the subsequent conduct of the Irish Parliament, 134 CHAPTER VL Mr Flood's plan of Pariiamentary Reform — Mr Curran's contest and duel with Mr Fitzgibbon (afterwards Lord Clare) — Speech CONTENTS. XV on pensions — His professional success — Mode of life — Occa- sional verses — Visits France— Letters from Dieppe and Rouen —Anecdote — Letter from Paris — Anecdote — Letter from Mr Boyse — Anecdote of Mr Boyse — Letters from Holland, Page 167 CHAPTER VIL His Mfljesty's illness— Communicated to the House of Commons — IVIr Curran's speech upon the address — Regency question — Formation of the Irish Whig Opposition — Mr Curran's speech and motion upon the division of the Boards of Stamps and Ac- counts — Answered by Sir Boyle Roche — Mr Curran's reply — .^Correspondence and duel with Major Hobart — Effects of Lord Clare's enmity— Alderman Howison's case 205 CHAPTER VIIL State of parties — Trial of Hamilton Rowan — Mr Cun-an's fidelity to his party — Rev. William Jackson's trial — Conviction — and Death — Remarks upon that trial— Irish infonners — Irish juries — The influence of the times upon Mr Curran's style of oratory, 255 CHAPTER IX. Mr Curran moves an address to the throne for an inquiry into the state of the poor — Other Parliamentary questions — Mr Ponson- by's plan of reform rejected — Secession of Mr Curran and his friends — Orr's trial — Finnerty's trial — Finney's trial — The in- fonner James O'Brien 298 XVi CONTENTS. CHAPTER X. Rebellion of 1798 — Its causes — Unpopular system of government — Influence of the French Revolution — Increased intelligence in Ireland — Reform societies — United Irishmen — Their views and proceedings — Apply for aid to France — Anecdote of Theobald Wolfe Tone — Numbers of the United Irishmen — Condition of the peasantry and conduct of the aristocracy — Measures of the government — Public alarm — General insurrection Page 346 APPENDIX. Fragment of a religious Essay 383 Mr Grattan's Letter to the Citizens of Dublin 389 LIFE OF THE RIGHT HONOURABLE JOHN PHILPOT CURRAN. CHAPTER I. Sir Curran's origin — His parents — Early education — Originally intended for the Church — Enters Trinity College — His ardour for tlie Classics — Letter to Mr Stack — Anecdote of his Mother —Her epitaph — While in College fixes on the Bar — Anecdote connected with the change of profession — His character in Col- lege — Addicted to Metaphysics — Anecdote on the subject — Verses to Apjohn. John Philpot Curran was born on the 24th day of July 1750, at Newmarket, an obscure town of the county of Cork, in Ireland. In several ac- counts that have been published of his origin and advancement, it has by a general consent been asserted, that the one was very low, and the other VOL. I. B 2 LIFE OF CURRAN. unassisted; — that he was the sole architect of his own fortune, and the sole collector of the materials which were to raise it ; and lovers of the marvel- lous implicitly believed and repeated the assertion. Let not, however, the admirers of what is rare be offended at being told, that no matter how much praise may be due to his personal merit (and the allowance unquestionably should not be scanty), a portion must still be given to the institutions of his country, and to those relatives and friends whose industry and protection placed him in a condition of sharing their advantages. It is of far more importance to the intellectual interests of men to diffuse a rational confidence in the efficacy of instruction, than idly to excite their wonder, and perhaps their despair, by insinuating that there are persons who by nature are above it. It is not by hearing that the subject of the following pages was a heaven-taught, unaided genius, that others can be encouraged to emulate his men- tal excellencies, but by learning the real, and to him no less creditable fact, how he studied and struggled — what models he selected — what defi- ciencies he corrected — by what steps he ascended : to tell this is the duty of his biographer, and not to amaze his readers by uninstructive panegyric. LIFE OF CURRAN. 3 The lowness * of his origin has been exagge- rated. His father, James Curran, who has been represented as an unlettered peasant, was seneschal of a manor-court at Newmarket. It is confi- dently asserted, by those who knew him, that he possessed a mind and acquirements above his sta- tion ; that he was familiar with the Greek and Roman classics, which he often cited in conver- sation ; that he delighted in disputation, and excelled in it; and, among his favourite sub- * "When Mr Curran liad risen to eminence, many tables of his |~ pedigree were sent him, all of them varying, and the most of them, he conceived, too flattering to be authentic. Among his papers is the latest of these, tendered to him while he was Master of tlie Rolls, and made out by a resident of his native place. In the pa- ternal line it ascends no higher than his grandfather, who is stated to have been " a north-countrj'man, of the county Derry, from which, having met with disappointments, he came and settled in the county Cork :" it adds, that " his only son, Mr Curran's father, was edu- cated at a school in Newmariiet, then kept by the Rev. Mr Dallis, and afterwards by the Rev. Mr Morduck, by whom he was consi- dered the best Greek and Latin scholar in their school." In the maternal line, it presents a long list of ancestors, among whom are judges, bishops, and noblemen ; but Mr Curran has marked his in- credulity or his indifference by indorsing this paper witlj " Stemmata quid faciunt." Some other pedigrees derived his descent from the EngUsli family of Curwen in Cumberland. 4 LIFE OF CURRAN. jects of discussion, it is still remembered, that, after his son's return from college, the old man was frequently to be found in ardent contention with him upon the metaphysical doctrines of Locke. His mother, whose maiden name was Philpot, belonged to a family well known and respected, and of which the descendants continue in the class of gentry. She was a woman of a strong, original understanding, and of admitted superiority in the circles where she moved. In her latter years, the celebrity of her son rendered her an object of ad- ditional attention and scrutiny ; and the favourers of the opinion that talent is hereditary, thought they could discover, in the bursts of irregular elo- quence that escaped her, the first visible gushings of the stream, which, expanding as it descended, at length attained a force and ofrandeur that incited the admirer to explore its source. This persuasion Mr Curran himself always fondly cherished : — " The only inheritance," he used to say, " that I could boast of from my poor father, was the very scanty one of an unatti'active face and person like his own ; and if the world has ever attributed to me something more valuable than face or person, or than earthly wealth, it was that another and a LIFE OF CURRAN. 5 dearer parent gave her child a portion from the treasure of her mind." He attributed much of his subsequent fortune to the early influence of such a mother ; and to his latest hour would dwell with grateful recollection upon the wise counsel, upon the lessons of honourable ambition, and of sober, masculine piety, which she enforced upon the minds of her children. She was not without her reward : she lived to see the dearest of them surpassing every presage, and accumulating public honours upon a name, which she, in her station, had adorned by her virtues. John Philpot, the eldest of their sons,* having given very early indications of an excellent capa- city, the Reverend Nathaniel Boyse, the resident c]erg}-man at Newmarket, pleased with the boy, and moved by regard for his parents, received him into his house, and by his own personal tuition initiated him in the rudiments of classical learn- ing. This, his first acquired friend and instruc- tor, had also the satisfaction of seeing all. his care repaid by the rapidity with which its object ascend- ed to distinction, and still more by the unceasing • Mr Curran had three brothers and a sister, all of whom he survived. 6 LIFE OF CURBAN. gratitude with which he ever after remembered the patron of his childhood. Many of this gen- tleman's letters to him, written at a subsequent period, remain ; and it is not unpleasing to observe in them the striking revolution that a few years had effected in the fortunes of his pupil. In some of them, the little villager, whom he had adopted, is seen exalted into a senator, and is solicited by his former protector to procure the enactment of a statute that might relieve himself and all of the clergy from the vexations of the tithe-laws. The rapid progress that he made under the in- structions of Mr Boyse, and the fond predictions of his parents, determined them to give their son, what has been always a prevailing object of paren- tal ambition in Ireland, a learned education. It was also their wish, which he did not oppose at the time, that he should eventually enter the church. With this view he was soon transferred to the free-school of Middleton, upon which occa- sion his generous friend insisted upon resigning a particular ecclesiastical emolument, (in value L. 10 a-year), for the purpose of partly defraying the expenses of his young favourite's studies. He re- mained at this school until he had attained the preparatory knowledge of the Greek and Latin LIFE OF CURRAN. 7 languages, which should capacitate him to become a student of Trinity College, Dublin. It may not be unworthy of remark, that the same seminary had a few years before sent up to the capital the late Lord Avonmore, then commencing his career in circumstances and with a success so resembling those of his future friend. The early history of eminent persons so gene- rally contains some presaging tokens of the for- tune that awaits them, that something of the kind may be expected here; yet Mr Curran's child- hood, if tradition can be credited, was not marked by much prophetic originality. At the first little school in the town of Newmarket to which he re- sorted, previous to his reception into Mr Boyse's family, he used to say that he was noted for his simplicity, and was incessantly selected as the dupe and butt of his play-fellows. This, however, it would appear that he soon laid aside; for, a puppet- show having arrived in Newmarket, and Punch's prompter being taken suddenly ill, ho, then a very little boy, volunteered to perform the sick man's duty, and seizing the opportunity, mercilessly sati- rized the reigning vices of the neighbours. This is almost the only exploit of his childhood that has been related. O LIFE OF CURRAN. He entered Trinity College as a sizer in 1 769, being then nineteen years old, an age at which the students of the present day have, for the most part, nearly completed their college course. Here he studied the classical writings of antiquity with great ardour, and with eminent success. Nor did his enthusiastic admiration of them ever after subside. Amidst the distractions of business and ambi- tion, he was all his life returning with fresh de- light to their perusal ; and in the last journey that he ever took, Horace and Virgil were his travelling companions. He obtained a scholarship ; and that his general scholastic attainments were not incon- siderable, may be inferred from his having com- menced a course of reading for a fellowship ; but deterred by the labour, or diverted by accident, he soon gave up the project. When we reflect upon the lustre of his future career, it becomes a matter of natural curiosity to inquire how far his mind now began to indicate those qualities, by which it was to be subsequently distinguished ; and upon this interesting subject there happen to be preserved some documents, principally a portion of his early correspondence and his first poetical attempts, from which a few occasional extracts shall be offered, for the pur- LIFE OF CURRAN. $ pose of giving some idea of the writer's juvenile habits and capacity. Whatever may be consider- ed to be their intrinsic merit, several of them were at least written with considerable care, and may therefore be introduced as no unfair specimens of the progress of his intellectual strength. To the student of eloquence their defects will not be with- out instruction, if they inspire him with a reliance upon that labour and cultivation, which alone con- duct to excellence. One of the most intimate friends of Mr Curran's youth, and of his riper years, was the late Rev. Richard Stack, his cotemporary at Trinity Col- lege, and since a fellow of that university. The followinc: is a formal letter of consolation to this gentleman upon the death of a brother. The writer had just completed his twentieth year, and appears to have been so pleased with his perform- ance, that no less than three transcripts of it re- main in his own hand-writing. " Dublin, August 20. 1770. " Dear Dick, " I AM sorry to find by your letter (which I have just now received), that you judge my silence for some time past with so much more severity 10 LIFE OF CURRAN. than it deserves. Can my friend suspect me of being unconcerned at his sorrows ? I would have wrote to you on hearing from Vincent of this late misfortune, but that I was unwilling to press a subject upon your thoughts which you should take every means of avoiding. To offer consolation to a man of sense, upon the first stroke of affliction, is perhaps one of the most cruel offices that friend- ship can be betrayed into. All the fine things that can be addressed to the fancy, will have but small effect in removing a distemper fixed in the heart. Time and reflection only can cure that; and happy is it for us, that in this chequered scene, where every thing feels perpetual decay, and seems created only for dissolution, our sorrows cannot boast of exemption from the common fate. Time, though he sometimes tears up our happiness by the roots, yet, to make amends for that, kindly holds out a remedy for our afflictions ; and though he violently breaks our dearest connexions, yet he is continually teaching us to be prepared for the blow. 'Tis true, nature on these occasions will weep ; but, my dear Dick, reason and reflec- tion should wipe away these tears. A few years may see us numbered with those whom we now regret, or will give us cause to congratulate those LIFE OF CURRAN. 11 whose happy lot it was, by an early retreat from this scene of misery and disappointment, to escape those troubles which their survivors are reserved to suflPer. 'Tis true, the inattention of youth will leave the great account more unsettled than might be wished ; but at this age we have every thing to plead for that defect — the violence of passions, want of reason to moderate them. Faults no doubt we have,' but they are the faults of youth, of inexperience ; not a course of wickedness rivet- ed by habit, and aggravated by obdurate perse- verance, which (Heaven help us) in a length of years they may become; but, above all, that Being who is pleased to call us so suddenly from hence, has mercy and compassion to make allow- ance for these involuntary omissions. But I find I have fallen unawares upon a theme which I had no intention to pursue so far, as I was persuaded your own good sense would suggest much stronger reasons for your consolation than I could. « J. P. C." At the date of this letter, the writer, if he looked forward to fame, expected to find it in the pulpit; but this, jind a short religious discourse,* • Vide Appendix. 12 LIFE OF CURRAN. are all that remain of his early compositions, which, from the style, would appear to be written with a view to his first destination. Mr Stack, however, entertained so very high an opinion of his talents for the solemn eloquence of the church, that being appointed a few years after (1775) to preach before the judges of assize at Cork, and being anxious that his matter should be worthy of his auditors, he entreated of his young friend, who was then upon the spot, and going his first circuit, to compose a sermon for the occasion. Mr Curran complied ; and his production ex- cited such general admiration, that his mother, in answer to the congratulations of the neighbour- hood upon so flattering a proof of her son's abi- lities, could not avoid tempering her maternal exultation with Christian regret, and exclaiming, — " Oh, yes, it was very fine ; but it breaks my heart to think what a noble preacher was lost to the church, when John disappointed us all, and insisted on becoming a lawyer." All his subse- quent success and celebrity at the bar could never completely reconcile her to the change; and in her latter years, when her friends, to gratify and console her, used to remind her that she had lived to see her favourite child one of the judges of the LIFE OF CURRAN. 13 land, she would still reply, — " Don't speak to me oi judges. John was fit for any thing; and had he but followed our advice, it might hereafter be written upon my tomb, that I had died the mother of a bishop." This excellent and pious woman died about eleven years ago, at the advanced age of eighty. It is not written upon her tomb that she died the mother of a bishop or of a judge ; but there is to be seen upon it an attestation to her worth from the son who was her pride, which, as long as vir- tue and filial gratitude are preferred to the glare of worldly dignities, will be considered as an epi- taph no less honourable both to the parent and the child.* * Her remains lie in the church-yard of Newmarket ; over tliem is the following epitaph written by Mr Curran : — Here lies the body of Sarah Curran. She was marked by many years, Many talents, Many virtues, Few failings, No crime. This frail memorial was placed here by a Son Whom she loved. 14 LIFE OF CURRAN. It was during the second year of his college studies that he fixed on the profession of the law. In his original intention of taking orders, he had been influenced by the wishes of his friends, and by the promise of a small living in the gift of a distant relative, and probably still more strongly by a habitual preference for the calling to which his early patron belonged ; but his ambition soon overruled all these motives, and he selected the bar as more suited to his temperament and talents. According to his own account it was the following incident that suggested the first idea of a change in his destination. He had committed some breach of the Collefje regulations, for which he was sentenced by the censor, Dr Patrick Duigenan, either to pay a fine of five shillings, or translate into Latin a number of the Spectator. He found it more convenient to accept the latter alternative; but on the ap- pointed day the exercise was not ready, and some unsatisfactory excuse was assigned. Against this second offence a heavier penalty was denounced — he was condemned to compose a Latin oration in laudem decori, and pronounce it from the pulpit in the college chapel. He no longer thought of evad- ing his sentence, and accordingly prepared the pa- LIFE OF CURRAN. 15 negyric ; but when he came to recite it, he had not proceeded far, before it was found to contain a mock model of ideal perfection, which the doctor instantly recognized to be a glaring satire upon himself. As soon therefore as the young orator had concluded, and descended from his station, he was summoned before the provost and fellows to account for his behaviour. Dr Duigenan was not very populai', and the provost was secretly not displeased at any circumstance that could mortify him. He therefore merely went through the form of calling upon the offender for an ex- planation, and, listening with indulgence to the ingenuity with which he attempted to soften down the libel, dismissed him with a slight reproof. When Mr Curran returned among his compa- nions, they surrounded him to hear the particu- lars of his acquittal. He reported to them all that he had said, " and all that he had not said, but that he might have said ;" and impressed them with so high an idea of his legal dexterity, that they declared, by common acclamation, that the bar, and the bar alone, was the proper profession for one possessing the talents of which he had that day given such a striking proof. He accept- 16 LIFE OF CURRAN. ed the omen, and never after repented t)f his deci- sion. In college he distinguished himself by his social powers. He had such a fund of high spirits and of popular anecdote — his ordinary conversation was so full of " wit, and fun, and fire," that in the convivial meetings of his fellow-students he was never omitted. His general reputation among them was that of being very clever, and very wild. He often joined in those schemes of extravagant frolic so prevalent in that university; and after one of the nocturnal broils to which they usually led, was left wounded and insensible from loss of blood, to pass the remainder of the night on the pavement of Dublin. He was at this time supported partly from the funds appropriated to the sizers, and partly by scanty remittances from Newmarket. But he was frequently without a shilling; for he was incorri- gibly improvident, and would often squander, in entertaining his companions, what should have been meted out to answer the demands of the coming quarter. Yet, whatever were his priva- tions, he bore them with singular good-humour ; and when he had no longer money to treat his friends, he never failed to divert them with ludi- JLIFE OF CURRAN. 1.7 crous representations of his distresses and expe- dients. . One of his sayings while he was in college has been preserved, and is a favourable instance of the felicitous use that he made of his classical knowledge in the production of comic effect. A fellow-student, in reciting a Latin theme, assigned a false quantity to the syllable mi in the word nimirum. A buzz of disapprobation succeeding, Mr Curran, to relieve his friend's confusion, ob- served, " that it was by no means surprising that an Irish student should be ignorant of what was known by only one man in Rome, according to the following testimony of Horace, " Septimius, Claudi, nimirum intelligit unus." He was at this early period remarkable for his disposition to subtle disputation and metaphysical inquiries, connected with which a circumstance may be mentioned that strikingly illustrates the speculative propensities of his young and ardent mind. A frequent topic of conversation with one of his companions was the investigation of the nature of death and eternity, and the immortality of the soul ; but finding that the farther they fol- lowed the bewildering light of reason, the more VOL. I. c 18 LIFE OF CURRAN. they were ** in wandering mazes lost," they came to the romantic agreement, that whoever of them might first receive the summons to another state, should, if permitted, for once revisit the survivor, and relieve his doubts by revealing, whatever could be revealed to him, of the eternal secret. A very few years after, the summons came to Mr Curran's friend, who, finding his end approach, caused a letter to be addressed to his former fellow- student, apprizing him of the impending event, and of his intention to perform his promise (if it should be allowed) on a particular night. This letter did not reach its destination till after the expiration of the appointed hourj but it was the first, and the only intimation, that arrived of the writer's decease. Something of the same turn of mind may be observed in a little poem that Mr Curran wrote the year before he left Trinity College. One of his cotemporaries there was a young gentleman named Apjohn, with whom he became intimately connected by a community of taste and pursuits, and who claims a passing mention as a friend from whose example and encouragement he de- rived the most important advantages at this try- ing period of his career, when hope and ardour LIFE OF CURRAN. 19 were the most precious benefits that a friend could bestow. During a temporary absence of Apjohn from college, a report reached his companions that he had died suddenly at his native place, Killaloe. It was soon discovered to have been unfounded, upon which occasion, while the others congratulated him in prose, his more ambitious friend addressed him in the following verses : — TO W. APJOHN. Peace ! whining slut, dismiss those sighs, Those epitaphs and elegies ; And throwing off those weeds of sorrow. Go laughing bid my friend good-morrow ! Go bid him welcome here again, From Charon's bark and Pluto's reign ! The doleful tale around was spread : " Hast heard the news ? Poor Apjohn's dead ! " — " Impossible ! " — " Indeed it's true — He's dead — and so is Casey too : In Limerick this, and that at Killaloe. As St Paul says, ' we all must die ! ' I'm sorry for 't." — " Faitli, so 'm I — Extremely so. — But tell me, pray. If you were on the ice to-day ? There was great skating there, ihcy say — " 20 LIFE OF CURRAN. " I couldn't go for want of shoes — In trutli, I'm sorry for the news — And yet I knew, and always said, When he had got into his head That strange abstemious resolution, 'Twould quite destroy his constitution.'* Thus careless, tearless sorrow spoke, And heav'd the sigh, or told the joke. Yet, must I own, there were a few Who gave your memory its due ; And while they dropt a friendly tear Sdd things that but you must n't hear. And now, methought, a wandering ghost. You whizz'd along the Stygian coast ; And if, perchance, you gained the wherry. And tugg'd an oar across the ferry. That sitting on the farther shore You "watch'd each boatful wafted o'er, While with impatience you attend Th' arrival of your quondam friend ; To tell his wonder where you've been, And what surprising things you've seen ; And, from experience wise, relate The various politics of fate ; And shew where hoary sages stray. And where they chance to keep their way j Then laugh to think, how light as air Our blind dogmatic guesses were ; AVhen, fancy throned, and placed on high, We sat in judgment o'er the sky. LIFE OF CUKRAN. 21 There envy too began to rise, To think that you were grown so wise ; That bursting from this shell of clay, You now enjoyed eternal day ; While I was left perplex'd and blind, In anxious ignorance behind ; Doom'd this insipid part to play In life's dull farce another day, That, bent with sorrows and with age, I late might totter off the stage : But yet my Muse, I cried, will pay The tribute of a weeping lay : And though the flowers strewn o'er his tomb May boast, perhaps, a longer bloom, The short-liv'd verse he'll still receive, Since that is all a Muse can give. The Muse, contented, took her place — I solemnly composed my face. And took the pen, prepared to write \\Tiat she sat ready to indite. When Rumour, lo ! with deaf 'ning sound, More gladsome tidings blows around, And bids her tliousand tongues to tell. That Apjohn is alive and well ! And louder now the torrent grows. Gathering new murmurs as it flows. When the poor INIuse, in sad affright. Swift to Parnassus wings her flight ; But promised, ere away she fled, That when you should indeed be dead, 22 LIFE OF CURRAN. She'd call again, and write a verse, To please your friend, and grace your hearse ; Unless that I myself ere then Should grow fatigued, and quit the scene. And yet how short a time can live Those honours that the Muses give- Soon fades the monument away. And sculptured marbles soon decay ; And every title, now defaced, Mix with the dust which once they graced : But if we wish a deathless name, Let virtue hand us down to fame. Our honours then may time defy, Since we will have, whene'er we die, For epitaph — a life well spent, And mankind for a monument. What matter then to you or me. Though none upon our grave should see A W. A. or J. P. C. William Apjohn is a name of which the world has heard nothing. He died prematurely, and « without his fame ;" but had his days been length- ened, he would probably have acted a distinguished part in the history of his country. Like his friend, he had chosen the bar as the most honourable road to fortune and celebrity, and had already given a promise of such talents for public life, that his success was looked to as undoubted. Mr Curran LIFE OF CURRAN. 23 never spoke of his capacity but in terms of the most respectful admiration. " Apjohn's mind," he used to say, " was, beyond exception, the most accomplished that I ever met : his abilities and attainments were so many and so rare, that if they could have been distributed among a dozen ordinary persons, the share of each would have promoted him to the rank of a man of talents." 24 LIFE OF CURRAN. CHAPTER II. Mr Curran leaves College — Enters the Middle Temple — Letter to Mr Weston — Letter to Mr Keller — His first attempts in Ora- tory fail — His own account of the failure, and of his first suc- cess — A regular attendant at Debating Clubs — Anecdotes — His Poem on Friendship — Dr Creagh's character of him— Mr Hud- son's predictions and friendship — His early manners and habits — Subject to constitutional melancholy — Letters from London^ His society in London — Anecdote of his interview with Macklin —His early application and attainments — Favourite Authors — Early attachment to the Irish peasantry — His Marriage— Re- marks upon English Law. Mr Curran completed his college studies in the early part of the year 1773, having qualified himself to take a master's degree, and passed over to London, where he became a student of law in the Society of the Middle Temple. During his residence in England he wrote regularly, and at considerable length, to his friends in Ireland. A collection of these letters has been preserved, and as several of them contain a more striking picture of his circumstances, and of many traits of indi- vidual character, than any description by another LIFE OF CURRAN. 25 could conve}'^, he shall in this stage of his life be occasionally made his own biographer. The following was written immediately after his arrival in the British capital. The gentleman to whom it is addressed was a resident of Newmarket, and one of the most attached of Mr Curran's early friends. TO THE REV. HENRY WESTON, KEWMARKET, CO. CORK. " London, 31. Chandos- street, Juli/ 10. 1773. " I WOULD have taken a last farewell of my dear Harry from Dublin, if I had not M'ritten so shortly before I left it ; and, indeed, I was not sorry for being exempt from a task for which a thousand causes conspired to make me at that juncture unqualified. It was not without regret that I could leave a country, which my birth, education, and connexions, had rendered dear to me, and venture alone, almost a child of fortune, into a land of strangers. In such moments of despondence, when fancy plays the self-tormentor, she commonly acquits herself to a miracle, and will not fail to collect in a single group the most hideous forms of anticipated misfortune. I con- 26 LIFE OF CURRAN. sidered myself, besides, as resigning for ever the little indulgences that youth and inexperience may claim for their errors, and passing to a period of life in which the best can scarce escape the rigid severity of censure; nor could the little trivial vanity of taking the reins of my own conduct alle- viate the pain of so dear-bought a transition from dependence to liberty. Full of these reflections as I passed the gate, I could not but turn and take a last lingering look of poor Alma-mater ; it was the scene of many a boyish folly, and of many an happy hour. I should have felt more confusion at part of the retrospect, had I not been relieved by a recollection of the valuable friendships I had formed there. Though I am far from thinking such a circumstance can justify a passed miscon- duct, yet I cannot call that time totally a blank, in which one has acquired the greatest blessing of humanity. It was with a melancholy kind of exultation I counted over the number of those I loved there, while my heart gave a sigh to each name in the catalogue; nay, even the fellows, whom I never loved, I forgave at that moment ; the parting tear blotted out every injury, and I gave them as hearty a benediction as if they had deserved it: as for my general acquaintance (for LIFE OF CURRAN. 2? I could not but go the round), I packed their re- spective little sighs into one great sigh, as I turned round on my heel. My old friend and handmaid Betty, perceiving me in motion, got her hip under the strong-hoXf with my seven shirts, which she had rested against the rails during the delay ; and screwed up her face into a most rueful caricature, that might provoke a laugh at another time ; while her young son Denny, grasping his waistband in one hand, and a basket of sea-provisions in the other, took the lead in the procession, and so we journeyed on to George's-Quay, where the ship was just ready to sail. When I entered, I found my fellow-passengers seated round a large table in the cabin ; we were fourteen in number. A young Hiffhland lord had taken the head of the table and the conversation, and with a modesty peculiar to himself, gave a history of his travels, and his inti- mate connexions with the princes of the empire. An old debauched officer was complaining of the gout, while a woman, who sat next to him, (good Heaven ! what a tongue), gave a long detail of what her father suffered from that disorder. To do them all justice, they exerted themselves most zealously for the common entertainment. As for my part, I had nothing to say ; nor, if I had, was 28 LIFE OF CURRAN. any one at leisure to listen to me ; so I took pos- session of what the captain called a bed, wonder- ing, with Partridge, « how they could play so many different tunes at the same time without putting each other out.' I was expecting that the sea-sickness would soon give those restless mouths different employment, but in that I was disappointed ; the sea was so calm that one only was sick during the passage, and it was not my good fortune that the lot should fall on that devil who never ceased chattering. There was no cure but patience; accordingly, I never stirred from my tabernacle (unless to visit my basket) till we arrived at Parkgate. Here, after the usual pillage at the custom-house, I laid my box down on the beach, seated myself upon it, and, casting my eyes westward over the Welsh mountains towards Ire- land, I began to reflect on the impossibility of ■getting back without the precarious assistance of others. " Poor Jack !" thoughtl, " thou wert never till now so far from home but thou mightest re- turn on thine own legs. Here now must thou re- main, for where here canst thou expect the assist- ance of a friend ?" Whimsical as the idea was, it had power to affect me; until, at length, I was awaked from this reverie by a figure which ap- LIFE OF CURRAN. 29 proached me with the utmost aiFabihty ; me- thought his looks seemed to say, ' why is thy spirit troubled?' He pressed me to go into his house, and to ' eat of his bread,' and to ' drink of his drink.' There was so much good-natured so- hcitude in the invitation, 'twas irresistible. I rose, therefore, and followed him, ashamed of my uncha- ritable despondence. " Surely," thought I, " there is still humanity left amongst us," as I raised my eyes to the golden letters over his door, that offer- ed entertainment and repose to the wearied travel- ler. Here I resolved to stay for the night, and agreed for a place in his coach next morning to Chester ; but finding my loquacious fellow-passen- ger had agreed for one in the same vehicle, I re- tracted my bargain, and agreed for my box only. I perceived, however, when I ai'ose next morning, that my box was not sent, though the coach was gone. I was thinking how I should remedy this unlucky disappointment, when my friendly host told me that he could furnish me with a chaise ! Confusion light upon him ! what a stroke was this ! It was not the few paltry shillings that vexed me, but to have my philanthropy till that moment running cheerily through my veins, and to have the current turned back suddenly by the detection so LitE OF CURRAN'. of his knavery. Verily, Yorick, even thy gentle spirit, so meekly accustomed to bear and forbear, would have been roused on such an occasion. I paid hastily for my entertainment, and shaking the dust from my feet at his gate, I marched with my box on my shoulder to a waggoner's at the other end of the town, where I entered it for Lon- don, and sallied forth toward Chester on foot. I was so nettled at being the dupe of my own cre- dulity, that I was almost tem.pted to pass an excommunication on all mankind, and resolved never more to trust my own skill in physiognomy. Wrapt up in my speculations, I never perceived at what a rate I was striding away, till I found myself in the suburbs of Chester, quite out of breath, and completely covered with dust and dirt. From Chester I set out that evening in the stage : I slept about four hours next day at Co- ventry, and the following evening, at five o'clock, was in view of near a hundred and twenty spires^ that are scattered from one side of the horizon to the other, and seem almost bewildered in the mist that perpetually covers this prodigious capital. 'Twould be impossible for description to give any idea of the various objects that fill a stranger, on his first arrival, M^ith surprise and astonishment. LIFE OF CURRAN. 31 The magnificence of the churches, hospitals, and other pubhc buildings, which every-where present themselves, would alone be ample subject of admi- ration to a spectator, though he were not distract- ed by the gaudy display of wealth and dissipation continually shifting before his eyes in the most extravagant forms of pride and ostentation, or by a hurry of business that might make you think this the source from which life and motion are conveyed to the world beside. There are many places here not unworthy of particular inspection, but as my illness prevented me from seeing them on my first arrival, I shall suspend my curiosity till some future time, as I am determined to apply to reading this vacation with the utmost diligence, in order to attend the courts next winter with more advantage. If I should happen to visit Ire- land next summer, I shall spend a week before I go in seeing the curiosities here, (the king and queen, and the lions) ; and, if I continue in my present mood, you will see a strange alteration in your poor friend. That cursed fever brought me down so much, and my spirits are so reduced, that, faith ! I don't remember to have laughed these feix weeks. Indeed, I never thought solitude could lean so heavily on me as I find it does : I rise, 32 LIFE OF CURRAN. most commonly, in the morning between five and six, and read as much as my eyes will permit me till dinner-time ; I then go out and dine, and from that till bed-time I mope about between my lodg- ings and the Park. For Heaven's sake send me some news or other (for, surely, Newmarket can- not be barren in such things), that will teach me once more to laugh. I never received a single line from any one since I came here. Tell me if you know any thing about Keller : I wrote twice to that gentleman without being favoured with any answer. You will give my best respects to Mrs Aldworth and her family; to Doctor Creagh's; and don't forget my good friends Peter and Will Connel. " Yours sincerely, « J. P. C." " P. S. — I will cover this blank edge with en- treating you to write closer than you commonly do when you sit down to answer this, and don't make me pay tenpence for a halfpenny-worth of white paper." In a letter of nearly the same date to another friend,* he says, " By the time you receive this I * Jeremiah Keller, Esq. a member of the Irish Bar. LIFE OF CURRAN. 33 shall have relapsed into the same monastic life that I led before. I do not expect, however, that it will lean so heavily on me, as I am now tolerably recovered, and shall continue to read with unabat- ed application ; indeed, that is the only means of making solitude supportable : yet, it must be owned, a man of a speculative turn will find am- ple matter in that way without stirring from his window. It is here that every vice and folly climb to their meridian, and that mortality seems pro- perly to understand her business. If j'ou cast your eyes on the thousand gilded chariots that are dancing the hayes in an eternal round of foppery, you would think the world assembled to play the fool in London, unless you believe the report of the passing-bells and hearses, which would seem to intimate that they all made a point of dying here. It is amazing, that even custom should make death a matter of so much unconcern as you will here find it. Even in the house where I lodge, there has been a being dead these two days : I did not hear a word of it till this evening, though he is divided from me only by a partition. They visit him once a-day, and so lock him up till the next, (for they seldom bury till the seventh day), and there he lies without the smallest attention VOL. I. u 3* LIFE OF CURRAN. paid to him, except a dirge each night on the Jew's-harp, which I shall not omit while he con- tinues to be my neighbour." It was during his attendance at the Temple that Mr Curran made the first trial of his rhetorical powers. He frequented a debating society that was composed of his fellow-students. His first attempt was unsuccessful, and for the moment quite disheartened him. He had had from his boyhood a considerable precipitation and confu- sion of utterance, from which he was denominated by his school-fellows " stuttering Jack Curran." This defect he had laboured to remove, but the cure was not yet complete. From the agitation of a first effort he was unable to pronounce a syllable ; and so little promise did there appear of his shining as a speaker, that his friend Apjohn said to him, " I have a high opinion of your ca- pacity ; confine yourself to the study of law, and you will to a certainty become an eminent cham- ber-counsel, but, depend upon it, nature never intended you for an orator." Fortunately for his fame, this advice was disregarded : he continued to attend the above and other debating clubs, at one of which, during a discussion, some personal and irritating expressions having been levelled at LIFE OF CURRAN. 35 him, his indignation, and along with it his talent, was roused. Forgetting all his timidity and hesi- tation, he rose against his assailant, and, for the first time, revealed to his hearers and to himself that style of original and impetuous oratory, which he afterwards improved into such perfection, and which now bids fair to preserve his name. He used often to entertain his friends by detailing this event of his mind's having " burst the shell." The following was the manner in which he once related it ; for one of the great charms of his collo- quial powers was the novelty that he could give to the same facts upon every repetition : — he adorned a favourite anecdote, as a skilful musician would a favourite air, by an endless variety of unpreme- ditated ad libitwn graces. One day after dinner, an acquaintance, in speak- ino- of his eloquence, happened to observe, that it must have been born with him. " Indeed, my dear sir," replied Mr Curran, " it was not; it was born three-and-twenty years and some months after me ; and, if you are satisfied to listen to a dull historian, you shall have the history of its nativity. " When I was at the Temple, a few of us formed a little debating club — poor Apjohn, and '-./ 1 36 LIFE OF CURRAN. Duhigg,* and the rest of them ! they have all dis- appeared from the stage : but my own busy hour will soon be fretted through, and then we may meet again behind the scenes. Poor fellows I they are now at rest; but I still can see them, and the glow of honest bustle on their looks, as they arranged their little plan of honourable as- sociation, (or, as Pope would say, « gave their little senate laws,') where all the great questions in ethics and politics (there were no gagging-bills in those days) were to be discussed and irrevoc- ably settled. Upon the first night of our assem- bling, I attended, my foolish heart throbbing with the anticipated honour of being styled ' the learn- ed member that opened the debate,' or ' the vety eloquent gentleman who has just sat down.' All day the coming scene had been flitting before my fancy, and cajoling it ; my ear already caught the glorious melody of * hear him, hear him !' Al- ready I was practising how to steal a cunning side-long glance at the tear of generous approba- tion bubbling in the eyes of my little auditory; never suspecting, alas ! that a modern eye may have so little affinity with moisture that the finest » The kte B. T. Duhigg, Esq. of the Irish Bar, LIFE OF CURRAN. 37 gtmpowder may be dried upon it. I stood up — the question was Catholic claims or the'slave-trade, I protest I now forget which, but the difference, you know, was never very obvious — my mind was stored with about a folio volume of matter, but I wanted a preface, and for want of a preface the volume was never published. I stood up, trem- bling through every fibre ; but remembering that in this I was but imitating Tully, I took courage, and had actually proceeded almost as far as * Mr Chairman,' when, to my astonishment and terror, I perceived that every eye was riveted upon me. There were only six or seven present, and the little room could not have contained as many more ; yet was it, to my panic-sti'uck imagination, as if I were the central object in nature, and as- sembled millions were gazing upon me in breath- less expectation. I became dismayed and dumb ; my friends cried * hear him !' but there was no- thing to hear. My lips, indeed, went through the pantomime of articulation, but I was like the unfortunate fiddler at the fair, who, upon coming to strike up the solo that was to ravish every car, discovered that an enemy had maliciously soaped his bow ; or rather like poor Punch, as 1 once saw him, (and how many like him have I seen in our 38 LIFE OF CURRAN. old house of commons ! but it is dead, and let us not disturb its ashes), grimacing a soliloquy, of which his prompter behind had most indiscreetly neglected to administer the words. So you see, sir, it was not born with me. However, though my friends, even Apjohn, the most sanguine of them, despaired of me, the cacoethes loquendi was not to be subdued without a strucjele. I was for the present silenced, but I still attended our meet- ings with the most laudable regularity, and even ventured to accompany the others to a more am- bitious theatre, * the Devils of Temple Bar ;' where truly may I say, that many a time the Devil's own work was going forward. Here, warned by fatal experience that a man's powers may be overstrained, I at first confined myself to a simple * ay or no,' and, by dint of practice and encouragement, brought my tongue to recite these magical elements of parliamentary eloquence with * such sound emphasis and good discretion,' that in a fortnight's time I had completed my education for the Irish senate. " Such was my state, the popular throb just beginning to revisit my heart, when a long ex- pected remittance arrived from Newmarket : Ap- john dined with me that day, and when the leg LIFE OF CURRAN. 39 of mutton, or rather the bone, was removed, we offered up the hbation of an additional glass of punch for the health and length of days (and Hea- ven heard the prayer) of the kind mother that had remembered the necessities of her absent child. In the evening we repaired to « the Devils.' One of them was upon his legs ; a fellow of whom it was impossible to decide, whether he was most distinguished by the filth of his person or by the flippancy of his tongue ; just such another as Harry Flood would have called ' the highly gift- ed gentleman with the dirty cravat and greasy pantaloons.' * I found this learned personage in the act of calumniating chronology by the most preposterous anachronisms, and (as I believe I shoi'tly after told him) traducing the illustrious dead, by affecting a confidential intercourse with them, as he would with some nobleman, his very dear friend, behind his back, who, if present, would indignantly repel the imputation of so in- sulting an intimacy. He descanted upon Dcmos- * Mr Curran here alluded to the celebrated Mr Flood's custom of distinguishing the speakers at the London debating societies by such ludicrous descriptions of their dress, as " the eloquent friend to reform in the thread-bare coat," " the able supporter of the pre- sent ministry with the new pair of boots," &c. 40 LIFE OF CURRAN. thenius, the glory of the Roman forum ; spoke of Tully as the famous cotemporary and rival of Cicero; and in the short space of one half-hour, transported the Straits of Marathon three several times to the plains of Thermopylae. Thinking that I had a right to know something of these matters, I looked at him with surprise ; and whe- ther it was the money in my pocket, or my classi- cal chivalry, or most probably the supplemental tumbler of punch, that gave my face a smirk of saucy confidence, when our eyes met there was something like wager of battle in mine; upon which the erudite gentleman instantly changed his invective against antiquity into an invective against me, and concluded by a few words of friendly counsel [horresco referens) to ' orator mum,' who he doubted not possessed wonderful talents for eloquence, although he would recommend him to shew it in future b}' some more popular method than his silence. I followed his advice, and I be- lieve not entirely without effect ; for when, upon sitting down, I whispered my friend, that I hoped he did not think my dirty antagonist had come ' quite clean off?' * On the contrary, my dear fel- low,' said he, ' every one around me is declaring that it is the first time they ever saw him so well LIFE OF CURRAN. 41 dressed.' So, sir, you see that to try the bird, the spur must touch his blood. Yet, after all, if it had not been for the inspiration of the punch, I might have continued a mute to this hour ; so for the honour of the art, let us have another glass." The speech which Mr Curran made upon this occasion was immediately followed by a more sub- stantial reward than the applauses of his hearers : the debate was no sooner closed than the Presi- dent of the society dispatched his Secretary to the eloquent stranger, to solicit the honour of his company to partake of a cold collations which proved to consist of bread and cheese and porter ; but the public motives of the invitation rendered it to the guest the most delicious supper that he had ever tasted. From this time till his final departure from London, he was a regular attendant and speaker at debating clubs ; an exercise which he always strongly recommended to every student of elo- quence, and to which he attributed much of his own skill and facility in extemporaneous debate. He never adopted or approved of the practice of committuig to memory intended speeches; but he was in the habit of assisting his mind with an)ple 42 LIFE OF CURRAN. notes of the leading topics, and trusted to the oc- casion for expression. The society that he latterly most frequented was the well-known Robin Hood. He also some- times attended a meeting for the discussion of re- ligious questions, which was held on Sunday even- ings, at the Brown Bear in the Strand, and re- sorted to by persons of every persuasion, and by many who were " honorary members of all faiths." Whenever the claims of the Roman Catholics were the subject of debate, he uniformly supported them. From his zeal in their cause, and from his dress, (a brown surtout over black) he was supposed by strangers to be a young Priest of that order, and was known in the club by the name of " the little Jesuit from St Omers." * Among Mr Curran's juvenile productions was a poem of some length, written whilst he was at * The same zeal for the emancipation of the Roman Catholics whicli distinguished him for the rest of his life, produced similar mistakes among strangers upon the subject of his religion. When he was at Paris in 1814, he accompanied some friends to see Car- dinal Fesch's gallery of paintings. The Frenchman in attendance there was a good deal struck by j\Tr Curran's observations, and upon the latter's retiring before the others, asked with some curio- LIFE OF CURRAN. 43 the Temple; it is entitled, " On Friendship," and addressed to Mr Weston of Newmarket. When we consider the character of Mr Curran's oratory, to which an excess of fervour and imagination has been by some imputed as its imperfection, we should naturally expect to see those qualities pre- dominating when he found himself engaged in subjects to which they so peculiarly belong ; but this is not the case. From his youth to his old age he was fond of writing poetry, and produced a considerable quantity ; but in little of it do we meet with that sustained ardour, with those fear- less conceptions, and that diction teeming with imagery, which distinguish his other productions. When he occupied himself with poetry, he ap- pears to have considered it rather as a recreation to sooth himself, than as a means of excitinof others. With the exception of a very few in- stances, (which however prove his poetic capacity, had he anxiously cultivated it), his verses are in general placid, familiar, and unaspiring ; seldom venturing beyond expressions of established form, sity who he was. As soon as he heard his name, " Ah ! (said he, with great surprise), je voyois bien qu'il avoit beaucoup d'esprit ; mais, mon Dieu ! je n'aurois jamais soupfonnc que ce petit mon- sieur fut Ic grand Calholique Irlaiidois." 44- LIFE OF CURRAN. and for the most part contented with those senti- ments of obvious tenderness to which no mind of any sensibility is a stranger. The opening of the poem on Friendship is here inserted, for the sake of the concluding image, which the late Mr Fox (among others) particularly admired. Here, on these banks, where many a bard has sung, While Thames in listening silence flow'd along, Where friendship's flame inspir'd the glowing verse. To hail the triumph, or to mourn the hearse ; On the same spot where weeping Thomson paid . The last sad tribute to his Talbot's shade, An humbler muse, by fond remembrance led, Bewails the absent, where he mourn'd the dead. Nor differ much the subjects of the strain. Whether of death or distance we complain ; Whether we're sunder'd by the final scene, Or envious seas disjoining roll between ; Absence, the dire effect, is still the same, And death and distance differ but in name : Yet sure they're different, if the peaceful grave From haunting thoughts the low-laid tenant save. While in this breathing death reflection lives, And o'er the wreck of happiness survives. Alas ! my friend, were Providence inclin'd (Tn unrelenting wrath to human kind) To take back every blessing that she gave, From the wide ruin, she would Memory save. LIFE OF CURRAN. 45 Else would severest ills be soon o'erpast, Or kind oblivion bury them at last : But Memory, with more than Egypt's art. Embalming every grief that wounds the heart, Sits at the altar she hath rais'd to Woe, And feeds the source whence tears for ever flow. In the course of this poem allusions are made to the writer's future career in public life; and those who have not yet learned to sneer at the mention of political integrity, will be gratified to observe how completely in the present instance the visions of the poet were realized by the subse- quent conduct of the man. But in his country's cause, if patriot zeal Excite him, ardent for the public weal, With generous warmth to stem corruption's rage, And prop the fall of an abandon'd age, Bold in the senate he confronts the band Of willing slaves that sell their native land ; And, when the mitred hireling would persuade That chains for man by Heaven's high will were made. Or hoary jurist, in perversion wise, Would sap the laws, and on their ruin rise. While the mute 'squire and star-enamour'd bean Are base in all they can — an " ay" or " no ! " With equal scorn he views the venal train, And sordid bribe that such a tribe can gain. 4'6 LIFE OF CURRAN. And a little further on : But if oppression lord it o'er the land, And force alone can lawless force withstand, Fearless he follows where his country calls, And lives with freedom, or with glory falls ; He gives that shackle he disdains to wear, For endless fame, nor thinks the purchase dear. This may not be very good poetry, but it evin- ces, what is more honourable to the writer, and what was in those days of more value to Ireland than good poetry, an indignant sense of her con- dition, and an impatience to redress it. It will hereafter appear how far he fulfilled the engage- ments of his youth. From the above and similar productions,* and from the indications of talent that his ordinary conversation afforded, great hopes were now en- tertained of him. According to all the accounts of those who knew him at this time, his colloquial * During the two years that preceded his admission to the Bar, he wrote, besides the poem on Friendship, " Lines upon visiting the Cave of Pope," and " Lines upon the poisoning a stream at Frenchay," (where he had been driven by foul winds in one of his passages from England to Ireland), which he composed for the purpose of expressing his gratitude to a family of tiiat place, who had given him a very hospitable reception. LIFE OF CURRAN. 47 powers were, even then, of a very high order. Hav- ing no hereditary fortune or powerful connexions on which to depend, and having embraced an am- bitious and hazardous profession, where, without the reputation of superior abihty, there was httle prospect of success, he appears to have habitually exerted himself upon every occasion to substantiate his claims, and justify his choice. The following judgment was passed upon him at this period by his future father-in-law, Dr Richard Creagh, of Newmarket, a scholar and a man of cultivated taste, whose prediction, in the present instance, has been so completely verified. After mention- ing, in one of his letters, the future ornament of the Irish Bar, as " a young man of this town, (one Jack Curran)," he proceeds, " take his cha- racter from me. He possesses a good understand- ing; is an excellent scholar; has some taste, and, for his years, I think, a tolerable judgment; has uncommon abilities ; is a proficient in music ; has received an university education ; is now prepar- ing for the Bar, for which profession he possesses extraoi'dinary talents, and will disappoint all his friends if he does not distinguish himself there. As far as I can observe, he seems to be extremely 48 LIFE OF CURRAN. cheerful and good-natured, and is remarkably pleasant in conversation."* In a letter of about the same date, from one of Mr Curran's earliest friends, Mr Hudson,f we find similar expectations prevail : alluding to the melancholy that ran through a letter he had just received from the other, he says, " Consider now • Doctor Creagh was a physician, and a member of the very- respectable family of that name in the county of Cork. Much of the earlier part of his life had been passed on the continent, where he had mixed in the society of the most celebrated men of talent ; but he used often to declare, that neither abroad nor at home had he ever met so delightful a companion as " young Jack Curran." Yet the conversation of the latter was not, at this time, what it subsequently became. It was full of vivacity, and of anecdotes to which he could give an extraordinary degree of dramatic effect ; but it bad not, as at a later period, those incessant and magical transitions from the most comic trains of thought to the deepest pathos, which were for ever bringing a tear into the eye before the smile was off the lip ; nor that surprising controul over all the mys- teries of language, which he acquired by his subsequent habits of extemporaneous speaking. Dr Creagh was a determined Whig, and had (no doubt) an in- fluence in confirming the political inclinations of bis son-in-law. It was also from Dr Creagh, who bad spent several years in France, and was an excellent French scholar, that Mr Curran derived much of his early taste for the language and literature of that country. f Mr Edward Hudson, for a long course of years the most emi- nent dentist in Ireland. LIFE OF CURRAN. 49 and then, Jack, what you ai'e destined for ; and never, even in your distresses, draw consolation from so mean a thought, as that your abilities may one day render your circumstances easy or afflu- ent; but that you may one day have it in your power to do justice to the wronged — to wipe the tear from the widow or orphan, will afFoi^d the satisfaction that is worthy of a man." It would be injustice to suppress another pas- sage. Having: a little before chided his friend for neglecting to inform him of the state of his finan- ces, Mr Hudson goes on, " I think I shall be a man of no small fame to-morrow or next day, and though 'tis but the fame of a dentist, yet if that of an honest man is added to it, I shall not be unhap- py. Write speedily to me, and if you are in want, think I shall be not satisfied with my fortunes- believe me I shall never think I make a better use of my possessions than when such a friend as Jack can assist me in their uses." The amiable and respectable writer still lives, and if the union of the two characters, to which in his youth he aspir- ed, could confer happiness, he has been complete- ly happy. Many other proofs might be added (were it ne- cessary) to show that Mr Curran was, even at this VOL. I. E 50 LIFE OF CURHAN. period, considered as much more than an ordinary man ; that he had already obtained a very high degree of estimation in the opinions of every per- son of discernment who knew him. To be regard- ed as an object of admiration and of hope by the immediate circle of his friends, is, indeed, no more than happens to every young man of any intellec- tual pretensions; but to Mr Curran's honour it should not be overlooked, that the friends who entertained such sentiments towards him were, all of them, those whose zeal and approbation he had won for himself by his own character and talents. Nor was a mere general respect for the latter the only feeling that united them with him — they all appear to have been animated by the most anxious and affectionate attachment to his person. Their letters to him abound with expressions of more than usual endearment, with offers of pecuniary supplies, and many other unequivocal demon- strations of the extreme value in which they held him. At this period of his life he used to pass considerable intervals of time at his native village, where he entered, with the most good- natured vivacity, into all the little parties and interests of the place. He whose lofty and in- dependent spirit was a few years after to bring LIFE OF CUllRAN. 51 upon him the charge of " lectiu'ing the privy- council,"* was in his social intercourse so little fastidious or assuming, that he could find abun- dant amusement among the harmless wits and po- liticians of an obscure little town. Nor were these mere temporary feelings, adopted for convenience, and as evanescent as the occasions that excited them — all his impulses were intensely social, and, whether present or absent, his heart was still in the midst of the friends and companions that he loved. His letters from the Temple abound with proofs of these amiable propensities : in none of them is the Newmarket circle omitted ; he dedi- cates a portion of every day to thinking of them, and of every letter to inquiries after their health and fortunes. This unpretending facility of man- ners, showing how little natural the alliance be- tween superiority of intellect and austereness of demeanour, continued ever after prominent in his character ; and from the event we may learn, that such cheerful, conciliating, and sympathizing ha- bits, are the surest road to lasting friendships. Of these few persons ever enjoyed more — the greater * An expression of Lord Clare's. — The whole scene is given li€reaflcr. 52 LIFE OF CURRAN. number have gone where he has followed — still a few, and among them some of his earliest friends, survive ; and it is no less honourable to their con- stancy than to his memory, that the same men, who, more than forty years ago, were cheering his efforts, and admitting him to their affections, are at this day, with unabated ardour, mourning his loss and cherishing his fame. The despondency which Mr Curran's generous correspondent has just been seen so anxious to al- leviate, was not merely casual. Notwithstanding the liveliness of his conversation, from which a stranger would have supposed that his spirits never knew depression, he was all his life subject to visitations of constitutional melancholy, which the most ordinary accidents excited and imbitter- ed; even at this early time it may be observed constantly breaking out in his communications to his friends. After having passed the long vaca- tion of 1774 with his family in Ireland, he thus writes to one of them upon his return to London. " Apjohn and I arrived in London about eight o'clock on Thursday. When I was set down, and threw myself into a box in the next coffee- house to me, 1 think I never felt so strangely in LIFE OF CURRAN. 53 my life. The struggle it cost me to leave Ireland, and the pain of leaving it as I did, had been hur- ried into a sort of numbness by the exertion of such an effort, and a certain exclusion of thought, which is often the consequence of a strong agita- tion of mind: the hurry also of the journey might in some measure have contributed to sooth for a moment these uneasy sensations. But the exer- tion was now over, the hurry was past; the bar- riers between me and reflection now gave way, and left me to be overwhelmed in the torrent. All the difficulties I had encountered, the happy mo- ments I had lately passed, all now rushed in upon my mind, in melancholy succession, and engross- ed the pang in their turn. Revolving in his alter'd soul The various turns of chance below, And now and then a sigh he stole, And tears began to flow. " At length I roused myself from this mournful reverie, and after writing a few words to New- market, set out in search of some of my old ac- quaintance. I sought them sorrowing, but there was not even one to be found ; they had either changed their abodes, or were in the country. 54- LIFE OF CURRAN. How trivial a vexation can wound a mind that is once depressed ! Even this Httle disappointment, though it was of no consequence, though it could not surprise me, yet had the power to afflict me, at least to add to my other mortifications. I could not help being grieved at considering how much more important changes may happen even in a shorter time; how the dearest hopes and most favourite projects of the heart may flourish, and flatter us with gaudy expectations for a moment, and then, suddenly disappearing, leave us to la- ment over our wretchedness and our credulity. Pleased with the novelty of the world, we fasten eagerly on the bauble, till satiated with enjoy- ment, or disgusted with disappointment, we re- sign it with contempt. The world in general fol- lows our example, and we are soon thrown aside, like baubles, in our turn. And yet, dreary as the prospect is, it is no small consolation to be attach- ed to, and to be assured of the attachment of some worthy affectionate souls, where we may find a friendly refuge from the rigours of our destiny; to have even one cono;enial bosom on which the poor afflicted spirit may repose, which will feel- ingly participate our joys or our sorrows, and with equal readiness catch pleasure from our sue- LIFE OF CURRAN. 55 cesses, or strive to alleviate the anguish of disap- pointment." In another letter, written a few weeks after, the same unfortunate sensibility is more strikingly ex- empMed, and more vigorously expressed. In one passage we clearly recognize the peculiarities of his subsequent style. " I this day left my lodgings; the people were so very unruly that I could stay no longer : I am now at No. 4. in St Martin's-street, Leicester- fields, not far from my former residence. You will perhaps smile at the weakness, yet I must confess it; never did I feel myself so spiritless, so woe-begone, as when I was preparing for the re- moval. I had settled myself with an expectation of remaining till I should finally depart for Ire- land; I was now leaving it before that period, and my spirits sunk into a mixture of peevishness and despondence at the disappointment. I had emptied the desk belonging to the lodgings of my few moveables, which I collected in a heap on the floor, and prepared to dispose of in my little trunk. Good Heavens ! in how many various parts, and by how many various ways, may the poor human heart be wounded ! Is it that even Philosophy cannot so completely plunge her chil- 56 LIFE OF CURRAN. dren in the waters of wisdom, that an heel, at least, will not be left vulnerable, and exposed to the danger of an arrow ? Is the fable equally ap- plicable to the mind as to the body? And is all our firmness and intrepidity founded ultimately on our weakness and our foibles? May all our giant fortitude be so lulled into slumber, as, ere it awakes, to be chained to the ground by a few Lilliputian grievances, and held immoveably by such slender fetters ? Why else shall we be unac- countably depressed? To leave the friends of my heart, to tear myself from their last aflPecting fare- well, to turn my face to a distant region, separat- ed from them by mountains and oceans and tem- pests; — to endure all this with something like calmness, and yet to feel pain at changing from one street to another ! Strange inconsistence I and yet so it was. I proceeded very slowly to fill the trunk. I could not please myself in the pack- ing. Some letters now presented themselves; I could not put them in without reading. At lenffth I made an end of the work, and fell into another reverie. I called to mind my first ac- quaintance with my little trunk ; I industriously hunted my memory for every thing that any way related to it, and gave my recollection a great LIFE OF CUnilAN. 57 deal of credit for being so successful in makinc: me miserable. At length I got it behind Tom Gess, and saw poor Tom edging forward to avoid its jolting, and longing to be relieved from his durance. I saw it embark : over how many bil- lows was it wafted from Cork to Bristol, over how many miles from Bristol to London ! And how small a portion of that distance must it mea- sure back to-day 1 And must I be equally slow in my return ? With such sensations I left Mrs Turner's, perhaps as completely miserable as any man in London." Of some of his occupations he gives the follow- ing account. " As to my amusements, they are very few. Since I wrote last, I went to one play. I com- monly spend even more time at home, than I can employ in reading of an improving or amusing kind.* As I live near the Park, I walk there • INIr Curran's cotemporaries at the Temple have confirmed his own aicount of his habits at that period. He rose very early, studied till he was exhausted, and then went out in search of his fellow-students, with whom he passed the interval till the evening, when they all generally repaired to any debating society that was open. During his second year at the Temple, he spent a consider- able portion of his time in the courts of law. 5&, LIFE OF CURRAN. some time every day. I sometimes find entertain- ment in visiting the diversity of eating places with which this town abounds. Here every coal-por- ter is a politician, and vends his maxims in public with all the importance of a man who thinks he is exerting himself for the public service : he claims the privilege of looking as wise as possible, and of talking as loud, of damning the ministry and abus- inff the kinsr, with less reserve than he would his own equal. Yet, little as these poor people un- derstand of the liberty they contend so warmly for, or of the measures they rail against, it reconciles one to their absurdity, by considering that they are happy at so small an expense as being ridi- culous ; and they certainly receive more pleasure from the power of abusing, than they would from the reformation of what they condemn. I take the more satisfaction in this kind of company, as, while it diverts me, it has the additional recom- mendation of reconciling economy with amuse- ment. " Another portion of time I have set apart every day for thinking of my absent friends. Though this is a duty that does not give much trouble to jnany, I have been obliged to confine it, or endea- vour to confine it, within proper bounds : I have LIFE OF CURBAN. 59 therefore made a resolution to avoid any reflec- tions of this sort, except in their allotted season, that is, immediately after dinner. I am then in a tranquil, happy humour, and I increase that hap- piness by presenting to my fancy those I love in the most advantageous point of view : so that how- ever severely I treat them when they intrude in the morning, I make them ample amends in the evening ; I then assure myself that they are twice as agreeable, and as wise and as good as they really are." The conclusion of this letter shall be given, if not for the sake of the incidents, at least to shew the writer's sensibility to any pathetic occurrence that fell in his way. " I have lately made two acquaintances ; one a Frenchman, Dr Du Garreau ; the other is a Ger- man, Mr Skell, for whom I am indebted to the doctor. With this latter I am not yet much ac- quainted ; the former is really a man of under- standing, and I believe of worth : he is the son of an advocate in Paris, and practised there himself as a physician for some time. He had conceived an affection for a lady with whom the difference of their religion prevented his union at home; but, alas ! I believe love is of no particular sect ; 60 LIFE OF CURRAN. at least eo the lady seemed to think, for she quitted France with him, and took his honour as the se- curity for his adhering to a ceremony performed between them in Holland. After three or four years residence in Amsterdam, where I suppose his practice was not considerable, he brought his wife and child to England last November. She survived the journey but a few weeks, and left the poor man surrounded by every distress. His friends have pressed him to return; but he is determined at all events to remain in England, rather than carry his daughter to a country where she would not be considered as legitimate. Rouelle had hinted to me that there was something singular in his fortune, but I did not know the particulars till a few days since, that I breakfasted with him. He had taken his little child on his knee, and after trifling with her for a few moments, burst into tears. Such an emotion could not but excite, as well as justify, some share of curiosity. The poor doctor looked as if he were conscious I felt for him, and his heart was too full to conceal its affliction. He kissed his little orphan, as he called her, and then endeavoured to acquaint me with the lamentable detail. It was the hardest story in the world to be told by a man of delicacy. He LIFE OF CURRAN. 61 felt all the difficulties of it; he had many things to palliate, some that wanted to be justified : he seemed fully sensible of this, yet checked himself when he slided into any thing like defence. I could perceive the conflict shifting the colours on his cheek, and I could not but pity him, and ad- mire him for such an embarrassment. Yet, not- withstanding all his distresses, he sometimes as- sumes all the gaiety of a Frenchman, and is a very entertaining fellow. These are the occasions on which we are almost justified in repining at the want of affluence; to relieve such an heart from part of its affliction, surely for such a purpose it is not ambitious to wish for riches." One more of his letters in this year shall be in- troduced as characteristic of his mind. The per- son to whom it is addressed, a gentleman of the most amiable and respected character, has sur- vived the writer, but his name is at his own re- quest reluctantly omitted. The friendship of which the commencement of this letter contains a proof, continued without diminution to the day of Mr Curran's death. " My dear Dick, " Your packet was one of the most season- able, on every account. As I think I mentioned 62 LIFE OF CUllRAN. to you when I should repay this kindness, in my last, I need not repeat it here. I hope you don't expect any news from me; if you did, I would be under a necessity of disappointing you. Unfor* tunately I have no gratification in seeing high houses or tall steeples, no ear to be ravished by barrel-organs, no public anxiety or private im- portance by which vanity might lay hold on me, no fine clothes, no abundance of money, to re- commend me to the deity of pleasure. What then can a poor devil like me either see or hear that is worth communicating to a friend ? In truth, I think I am nearly the same man I ever was ; affecting to look wise, and to talk wise, and exhausting most lavishly on looking and talking, the wisdom that a better economist would reserve for acting. And yet, Dick, perhaps this is na- tural ; perhaps we are mistaken when we wonder at finding frugality, or even avarice, on such good terms with affluence, and extravagance inseparable from poverty. In both cases they are effects that flow naturally from their causes. They are the genuine issue of their respective parents; who, to own the truth, cherish and preserve their offspring with a care truly parental, and unfailingly suc- cessful. 'Tis just so in wisdom, and on the same LIFE OF CURRAN. 63 principle the man who has but a very small share of wisdom, (like him whose purse is equally shal- low), squanders it away on every silly occasion ; he thinks it too trifling to be worth hoarding against emergencies of moment ; but a very wise man, or a very rich man, acts in a manner dia- metrically opposite to this. When the one has ranged his sentiments and marshalled his maxims, and the other computed his tens of thousands, the symmetry of their labours would be destroyed should a single dogma escape to the banners of unwiseness, or a single guinea take its flight to supply an extravagance. Each atom of the ag- gregate is held fast by its gravitation to the whole mass : hence the fool is prodigal of his little wis- dom, and the sixpence departs in peace from the pocket, where it is not troubled with the ceremony of bidding adieu to another. If any chance shoidd make me master of some enormous treasure, I would not despair of finding out its value ; and if experience, and the industry of my own folly, shall reap a harvest of prudence, I will make you wonder at my care in drying it for use. I will regale myself in my old age with the spirit of it, and dispense the small tea to those who may have occasion for it." 64 LIFE OF curran; ' During Mr Curran's attendance at the Temple, the society in which he mixed was almost exclu- sively that of his Irish fellow-students. He was at that time too unknown to have access to the circles of literature or fashion, and it was perhaps fortunate for him that his obscurity saved him from those scenes, where he might have contract- ed the dangerous ambition of soaring when he should have been learning to fly. Of the cele- brated persons then in London, he used to men- tion that he had seen Goldsmith once at a coffee- house, Garrick (whom he recollected with enthu- siasm) two or three times upon the stage, and Lord Mansfield, whose dignified appearance made a very solemn impression upon him, upon the bench. The only man of any eminence that he came into personal contact with was Macklin, the actor; and the origin of their acquaintance was rather singular. After Mr Curran had concluded his terms, he was detained for some time in London in expecta- tion of a remittance from Ireland, without which he could neither discharge his arrears at his lodg- ings, nor return to his own country. At length, just as his purse had attained " the last stage of inanition," he received a bill of exchange upon a LIFE OF CURRAN.' 65 banking-house in Lombard-street : without stop- ping to examine the bill minutely, he flew to pre- sent it ; but the banker soon discovered that a necessary indorsement was omitted, and of course refused to pay it. Of the scene upon this occa- sion, as it took place across the counter, his own consternation at the dreadful tidings, and the banker's insensibility to his distress, his solemn and repeated protestations that the bill came from a most respectable merchant in the butter trade at Cork, and the wary citizen's marked distrust of all that was Irish, Mr Curran used to give a most dramatic and ludicrous description. Having left the banker's, and being without a shilling in his pocket, he strolled into St James's Park, where he remained during his usual dinner hour, con- sidering the means of relieving himself from his present necessity; but after long reflection, he could only come to one certain conclusion, that the misfortune could never have happened more inopportunely, every one of his Irish friends, to whom alone he could have applied, having quitted London, leaving him behind, awaiting this remit- tance. As he sat upon one of the benches, exhausted with devising expedients, he began to whistle a VOL. I. F 66 LIFE OF CURnAN. melancholy old Irish air. An old gentleman seat- ed at the other end, (it was Macklin), started at the well-known sounds. " Pray, sir," said the stranger, " may I venture to ask where you learned that tune ?" " Indeed, sir," replied the whistler, in the meek and courteous tone of a spirit which affliction had softened, " indeed you may, sir ; I learned it in my native country, — in Ireland." " But how comes it, sir, that at this hour, while other people are dining, you continue here, whist- ling old Irish airs ?" " Alas ! sir, I too have been in the habit of dining of late ; but to-day, my money being all gone, and my credit not yet arrived, I am even forced to come and dine upon a whistle in the park." Struck by the mingled despondence and play- fulness of this confession, the benevolent veteran exclaimed, " Courage, young man ! I think I can see that you deserve better fare : come along with me, and you shall have it." - About ten years after this interview, Macklin came to Dubhn : Mr Curran, who in the inter- val had risen to eminence, was invited one even- ing to a party where the actor was one of the LIFE OF CURRAN. 67 company. They were presented to each other, but JVIacklui failed to recojjnize in the now celebrated advocate and orator, the distressed student in St James's Park. Mr Curran, perceiving this, ab- stained for the moment from claiming any ac- quaintance; but he contrived in a little time to introduce a conversation upon the acts of kindness and hospitality which Irishmen so generally re- ceive abroad from such of their countrymen as they may chance to meet ; as a proof of which, he began to relate what had happened to himself, and proceeded to give a vivid picture of the scene, and (suppressing the name) of the generous old man who had befriended him in a land of strangers. A glow of recollection was soon observed upon the player's countenance; he started, and fixing his eyes upon the speaker, " If my memory fails me not, sir," said he, « we have met before ?" " Yes, Mr Macklin," replied Mr Curran, taking his hand, " indeed we have met ; and though upon that oc- casion you were only performing upon a private theatre, let me assure you, that (to adopt the words of a high judicial personage, which you have heard before), you never acted better.''''* * These words were addressed from the bench by Lord Mans* field to Mr Macklin, to mark his approbation of (he liberal con- <&8 LIFE OF CURRAN. Before dismissing this period of Mr Curran's Listory, a few words may be added upon the sub- ject of the studies and intellectual habits of his early days ; for in consequence of his not having devoted much time in his later years to books, and still more from the great predominance of imagination over learning to be observed in all the productions of his mind, an opinion has ge- nerally prevailed that his reading was extremely circumscribed, and that he was from taste, or by constitution, intolerant of any regular application. If such were the fact, notwithstanding the dangei' of the example, it still would not be denied ; the indolent should have all the benefit or all the mischief of such a precedent ; but, in truth, Mr Curran never was a mere gifted idler. He might not, indeed, have been always found with a book • before him, he might not have been nominally a severe student; but for the course of forty years he kept his faculties in perpetual exercise ; and if all that he created in public, or in the society of his friends, had been composed in the retirement duct of the latter in a cause to which he was a party, and which was tried before his Lordship in 1774. The proceedings in that interesting case are given at length in Kirkman's Life of Macklia. LIFE OF CURRAN. 69 of the closet, it would have scarcely been asserted that idleness was the habit of his mind. In his youth he was a formal student, to a greater extent than is generally supposed. Be- fore he had attained the age of twenty-five, when he was called to the bar, independent of his classi- cal acquirements, which have never been doubted, his acquaintance with general literature was far from inconsiderable. He was perfectly familiar with all the most popular of the English poets, his- torians, and speculative writers. He had at the same age, with little assistance but that of books, acquired more than a common knowledge of the French language. If he did not pursue a long consecutive course of legal reading, he was yet perpetually making a vigorous plunge, from which he seldom returned without some proof that he had reached the bottom. For several years after his admission to the bar, he devoted more of his mornings and evenings to the study of his pro- fession than his most intimate friends at the time could have believed to be compatible with his convivial habits and public avocations. His frame was never robust, but it was extremely patient of fatigue ; and no matter how great the exhaustion of the day, or the evening, a very few hours sleep 70 LIFE OF CURRAN. completely restored it: this natural felicity of con-' stitution he confirmed by early rising, constant exercise, the daily practice of cold bathing, and simiLar methods of invigorating the system. Indeed when it is recollected that, at the pe- I'iod of his life at present under consideration, he was looking to the bar alone for the means of future subsistence, and for the gratification of his ambition, it is utterly incredible that he should have neglected the ordinary arts by which success was to be attained. According to the concur- ring accounts of himself and his cotemporaries, he neglected none of them. Eloquence was at that time not only the most popular, but one of the shortest roads to eminence at the Irish bar; and from the moment of the discovery of his powers as a speaker, he began, and continued, to cultivate them with the utmost assiduity. His enunciation (as has been already observed) was naturally impeded, his voice shrill, and his accent strongly provincial, or (to use his own expres- sion) " in a state of nature:" to remove these de- fects, he adopted the practice of daily reading aloud, slowly and distinctly, and of studiously ob- serving and imitating the tones and manner of more skilful speakers. The success of this exer- LIFE OF CURRAN. 71 cise and study was so complete, that among his most unrivalled excellencies as an orator, were the clearness of his articulation, and a peculiar, uninterrupted, graduated intonation ; which, what- ever was the subject, whether tender or impassion- ed, melodized every period. His person was with- out dignity or grace — short, slender, and inele- gantly proportioned. To attain an action, that might conceal as much as possible these deficien- cies, he recited perpetually before a mirror, and selected the gesticulation that he thought best adapted to his imperfect stature. To habituate his mind to extemporaneous fluency, he not only regularly attended the debating clubs of London, but, both before and after his admission to the bar, resorted to a system of solitary exercise, of which the irksomeness cannot be well appreciated by those who have never practised it. ' He either extracted a case from his books, or proposed to himself some original question; and this he used to debate alone, with the same anxious attention to argument and to diction, as if he were discuss- ing it in open court. There is nothing in all this to excite any wonder; but certainly the per- son who early submitted to these modes of labour, "72 LIFE OF CURRAN. and frequently resumed them, cannot be consider- ed as careless or incapable of application. It may be a matter of curiosity with some, to know the writers, that, having been Mr Curran's early favourites, may be supposed to have had an influence in forming bis style. Some of his let- ters, already given, discover in different passages a preference for the manner of Sterne; a similar resemblance appears more frequently, and more strongly, in several others of about the same date, which have not been introduced. It was from the "Letters of Junius," that he generally de- claimed before a glass.* Junius and Lord Bo- lingbroke were the English prose writers, whom he at that time studied as the most perfect models of the declamatory style. Among the English poets, he was passionately fond of " Thomson's • The single exercise that lie most frequently repeated for the purpose of improving his action and intonation, was the speech of Antony over Caesar's body, from Shakespeare's Julius Ca;sar. This he considered to be a masterpiece of eloquence, comprising in itself, and involving in its delivery, the whole compass of the art. He studied it incessantly, and pronounced it with great skill, but though he delighted his auditors, he never entirely satisfied himself: he uniformly recommended it as a lesson to his youne fiiends at the bar. LIFE OF CURRAN. 73 Seasons." He often selected exercises of deliverj from " Paradise Lost," which he then admired, but subsequently (and it is hoped that few will at- tempt to justify the change), his sensibility to the beauties of that noble poem greatlj'- subsided.* In this list the sacred writings must not be omitted : independent of their more solemn titles to his re- spect, Mr Curran was from his childhood exqui- sitely alive to their mere literary excellencies; and in his maturcr years seldom failed to resort to them, as to a source of the most splendid and aw- ful topics of persuasion. f Before quitting the subject of Mr Curran's youthful habits, it is proper to mention the plea- * In criticising I\Iilton, Mr Curran always dwelt upon what others have considered among the most splendid and attractive parts of his work, the scenes in Paradise ; in objecting to which, he contended that the human characters introduced are detached and solitary beings, whose peculiar situation precluded them from displaying the various social feelings and passions, vi'hich are the proper subjects of poetic emotion. For a vigorous and eloquent answer to this objection, see Hazlitt's observations on Paradise Lost, in his Lectures upon the English Poets. f Of all the profane writers, Virgil, whom he considered " the prince of sensitive poets," was his favourite. For a considerable part of bis life, he made it a rule to read Homer once a-year ; but the more congenial tenderness of Virgil attracted him every day. ^ .74- LIFE OF CURRAN. sure that he took in occasionally mingling in the society of the lower orders of his countrymen; he was a frequent attendant at the weddings and wakes in his neighbourhood. Being from his infancy familiar with the native Irish language, he lost nothing of whatever interest such meetings could afford. They appear to have had considerable influence on his mind : he used to say himself, that he derived his fiist notions of poetry and eloquence from the compositions of the hired mourner over the dead.* It was probably amidst those scenes • It may be necessary to inform some English readers, that the practice of formal lamentations over the dead is one of the ancient customs of the Irish, which is continued among the lower orders to the present day. In the last century, it was not unusual upon the death of persons of the highest condition. The ceremony is gene- rally performed by women, who receive a remuneration for com- posing and reciting a " Coronach" at the wake of the departed. In some parts of Ireland, these women used formerly to go about the country, to " look in" upon such elderly persons as might soon re- quire their attendance ; and to remind them, tliat whenever the hour might arrive, a noble Coronach should be ready. Mr Cur- ran's father-in-law, Dr Creagh, was so molested by one of these dispiriting visitors, and had such an aversion to the usage, that in the first will he ever made he thus begins, after the usual preamble, " requesting it as a favour of my executors, that neither at my wake, nor at my funeral, they will suffer any of the savage howl- LIFE OF CURRAN. 75 that he acquired the rudiments of that thorough knowledire of the Irish character, of which he afterwards made so amusing an use in enlivening a company, and so important a one in confound- ing a perjured witness. It may have been, too, in this humble intercourse, that some even of his finer tastes and feelings originated or were con- firmed. Out of Ireland the genius of its natives is in general but partly known. They are, for the most part, represented as comical and impetuous, qualities which, lying upon the surface, strike the stranger and superficial observer ; but with these they unite the deepest sensibility. It is the latter that prevails; and if their pathetic sayings had been as sedulously recorded as their lively sallies, it would be seen that they can be as eloquent in their lamentations as they are original in their humour. Of these almost national peculiarities, so opposite, yet so constantly associated, Mr Cur- ran's mind strongly partook ; and in his, as in his country's character, melancholy predominated. In his earliest, as well as his latest speculations, he ings, and insincere l3mentation<:, that are usually practised upon tliese serious and melancholy occasions, but to see the whole of iny burial conducted with silence and Christian decency." 76 LIFE OF CURRAN. inclined to take a desponding view of human af- fairs — he appeared, indeed, more frequently in smiles to relax his mind, or to entertain his com-, panions ; but when left entirely to his original propensities, he seems to have ever wept from choice. One conjecture more shall be hazarded, and so pleasing a one, that few can wish it to be unfound- ed. It was probably from this early intercourse with the peasantry of his country, and from the consequent conviction of their unmerited degra- dation, that sprang that unaffected, soul-felt sym- pathy for their condition, so conspicuous in his political career. Upon this subject it was evi- dent that his heart was deeply involved. From them^ notwithstanding much temptation and many dangers, his affections never wavered. From the first dawn of political obligation upon his mind to his latest hour, (an interval of more than half a century), he never thought or spoke of them but with tenderness, pity, and indigna- tion. At the bar, in the senate,* on the bench,. • Upon one occasion, alluding in parliament to the general apa- thy of the ministry to the condition of the great body of the Irish people, he observed, " I am sorry to see that the rays of the ho- LIFE OF CURRAN. 77 amidst his family and friends, or in the society of the most illustrious personages of the empire, the sufferings of the Irish peasant were remember- ed, and their cause pleaded with an energy and reality that proved how well he knew, and how deeply he felt for that class whose calamities he deplored. " At any time of my life," said he, " I might, to a certain degree, as well as others, have tied up my countrymen in bundles, and sold them at the filthy market of corruption, and have raised myself to wealth and station, and remorse — to the envy of the foolish, and the contempt of the wise ; but I thought it more becoming to remain below among them, to mourn over and console them ; or, where my duty called upon me, to reprimand and rebuke them, when they were acting against them- selves." In some of the published accounts of Mr Cur- ran's life it has been stated, that when at the Tem- ple, and afterwards while struggling into notice at nourablc member's panegyric were not vertical ; like the beams of the morning, they courted the mountain-tops, and left the valleys unilluminated — they fell only upon the great, while the miserable poor were left ia the shade." — Debates in Irish House of Conv- mona, 1787. 78 LIFE OF CURRAN. the bar, lie derived part of his subsistence from contributions to literaiy works ; but for this there is no foundation. During the first year of his re- sidence in London his means were supplied partly by his relatives in Ireland, and partly by some of his more affluent companions, who considered his talents a sufficient security for their advances. In the second year he married a daughter of the Doctor Creagh already mentioned; her portion was not considerable, but it was so carefully managed, and his success at the bar was so rapid, that he was ever after a stranger to pecuniary difficulties. It may, too, be here observed, that had he been originally more favoured by fortune, his prospect of distinguished success in his profession might not have been so great. There is, perhaps, fully as much truth as humour in the assertion of an English judge, that a barrister's first requisite for attaining eminence is " 7iot to be worth a s/iillin":^^* The attractions of the bar, when viewed from a distance, will dazzle and seduce for a while. To • The learned judge alluded to, upon being asked " What con- duced most to a barrister's success?" is said to have replied, " that barristers succeeded by many methods ; some by great talents, some by high connexions, some by a miracle, but the inajoritif h\j com- mencing without a shiliing." LIFE OF CURRAN. 79 a voung and generous spirit it seems, no doubt, a proud thing to mix in a scene where merit and talent alone are honoured, where he can emulate the example, and perhaps reach the distinctions of our Hales, and Holts, and Mansfields. But all this fancied loveliness of the prospect vanishes the moment you approach and attempt to ascend. As a calling, the bar is perhaps the most difficulty and after the first glow of enthusiasm has gone by, the most repelling. To say nothing of the vio- lence of the competition, which alone renders it the most hazardous of professions, the intellectual labour and the unintellectual drudgery that it involves, are such as few have the capacity, or, without the strongest incitements, the patience to endure. To an active and philosophic mind the mei-e art of reasoning, the simple perception of relations, whatever the subject matter may be, is an exercise in which a mind so constituted may delight ; but to such a one the study of the law has but little to offer. If the body of Eng- lish law be a scientific system, it is a long time a secret to the student ; it has few immutable truths, few master-maxims, few regular scries of necessary and nicely adapted inferences. In vain will the student look for a few general prin- so LIFE OF CUHRAN* ciples, to whose friendly guidance he may trust, to conduct him unerringly to his object : to him it is all- perplexity, caprice, and contradiction* -^arbitrary and mysterious rules, of which to trace and comprehend the reasons is the work of years — forced constructions, to which no equity of intention can reconcile — logical evasions, from which the mind's pride indignantly revolts — of all these the young lawyer meets abundance in his books ; and to encounter and tolerate them, he must have some stronger inducement than a mere liberal ambition of learning or of fame. We con- sequently find, that there is no other profession supplying so many members who never advance a sino-le step ; no other which so many abandon, disousted and disheartened by the sacrifices that it exacts. * This was at least wliat Mr Curran found it. In his poem on Friendship, already mentioned, he says, ' " Oft, when condemn'd 'midst Gothic tomes to pore, And, dubious, con th' embarrass'd sentence o'er. While meteor meaning sheds a sickly ray Through the thick gloom, then vanishes away. With the dull toil tired out, th' indignant mind Burste from the yoke, and wanders unconfined." LIPE OF CURRAN. 81 To these fearful pursuits Mr Curran brought every requisite of mind, character, and educa- tion, besides the above grand requisite of want of fortune. Instead of being surprised at his emi- nent success, the wonder would have been if such a man had failed. Having acquirements and hopes, and a station, above his circumstances, to hold his ground, he could not allow his powers to slumber for a moment. His poverty, his pride, a secret consciousness of his value, an innate superstitious dread of obscurity, " that last infirmity of noble minds," kept him for ever in motion, and impa- tient to realize his own expectations, and the pre- dictions of those friends by whom his efforts were applauded and assisted. It appears in a passage of one of his letters from the Temple, that he had, for a while, an idea of trying his fortune at the American bar. " Mrs W." says he, " concludes her letter with men- tioning her purpose of revisiting America, and repeating her former advice to me on that subject. As for my part, I am totally undetermined. I may well say, with Sir Roger de Coverley, that * much may be said on both sides.' The scheme might be attended with advantage; yet I fear my mother, especially, would not be easily reconciled VOL. I. G 82 LIFE OF CURRAN. to such a step." But he soon abandoned the idea ; for in a letter dated a few weeks after, he says : — *' As to the American project, I presume it is unnecessary to tell you that the motives are now no more, and that the design has expired of con- sequence. 1 have been ui'ged to be called to that bar, and my chief inducement was my friendship for Mrs W., to whom I might be useful in that way; but there is so little likelihood of her going, that I shall scarcely have an opportunity of sacri- ficing that motive to my attachment for Ireland." I-IFE OF CURRAN. 83 CHAPTER III. Mr Curran called to the Irish bar — Dissimilarities between tliat and the English bar — Causes of the difference. Mr Curran was called in Michaelmas term^ 1775, to the Irish bar, which was to occupy so distinguished a portion of his future life ; but as the genius and habits of that bar, during the whole of his career, differed in many particulars essen- tially from that of England, it will be necessary to make a passing allusion to those distinctions, without which English readers might find it diffi- cult to reconcile the specimens of his eloquence that occur in the following pages, with their pre- vious ideas of forensic oratory. No person who has attended to the course of forensic proceedings in the two countries can have failed to observe, that, while in England they are (with a very few exceptions) carried on with cold and rigorous formality, in Ireland they have not unfrequently been marked by the utmost vivacity and eloquence. The English barrister, even in 84 LIFE OF CURRAN. cases of the deepest interest, where powerful emo- tions are to be excited, seldom ventures to exer- cise his imagination, if, indeed, long habits of re- straint have left him the capacity to do so : yet in the Irish courts, not only are such subjects dis- cussed in a style of the most impassioned oratory, but many examples might be produced, where questions more strictly technical, and apparently the most inappropriate themes of eloquence, have still been made the occasion of very fervid appeals to the feelings or the fancy. This latitude of orna- ment and digression, once so usual at the Irish bar, has been never known, and would never have beeir tolerated in Westminster-Hall. It would there be deemed no less new than extravagant, to hear a counsel pathetically reminding the presiding judge of the convivial meetings of their early days,* or enlivening his arguments on a grave question of law by humorous illustration.f Yet was all this * See Mr Curran's apostrophe to Lord Avonmore, chap. iv. f Of these, examples without number might be produced from. Mr Curran's law arguments. His published speech in the Court of Exchequer, on Mr Justice Johnson's case, is full of them. Equally striking instances occur in his argument on the same question before the Court of King's Bench. " The minister going to the House of Commons might be arrested upon the information of an LIFE OF CURRAN. 85 listened to in Ireland with favour and admiration. It had, indeed, little influence upon the decisions of the bench. The advocate mio-ht have excited the smiles or tears of his hearers, but no legal concessions followed. The judges, who showed the most indulgence and sensibility to these epi- sodes of fancy, were ever the most conscientious in preserving the sacred stability of law. Into the counsel's mirth or tenderness, no matter how di- gressive, they entered for the moment, more pleased Irish chairman, and the warrant of a trading justice. Mr Pitt might be brought over here in vinculis. What to do ? to see whe- ther he can be bailed or not. I remember Mr Fox was once here — during the lifetime of this country — so might he be brought over. It may facilitate the intercourse between the countries, for jny man may travel at the public expense ; as, suppose I gave an Irish- man in London a small assault in trust ; when the vacation comes, he knocks at the door of a trading justice, and tells him he wants a warrant against the counsellor. — What counsellor? — Oh, sure every body knows the counsellor.— Well, friend, and what is your name? — Thady O'Flannigan, please your honour. — WTiat country- man are you? — An Englishman by construction. — Very well, I'll draw upon my correspondent in Ireland for the body of the coun- sellor." For a more modern example of eloquence and humour upon such questions, the Irish reader is referred to the argument of the pre- sent Solicitor-general (Mr C. K. Bushe), in the case of the King against O' Grady. 86 LIFE OF CURRAN. than otherwise with irregularities that gratified their taste, and relieved their labour; but with them the triumph of eloquence was evanescent — the oration over, they resumed their gravity and firmness, and proved by their ultimate decision, that if they relaxed for an instant, it was from ur- banity, and not from any oblivion of the para- mount duties of their station. The effects, how- ever, which such appeals to the passions produced (as they still continue to do) upon juries, was very different ; and when the advocate transferred the same style into his addresses to the bench, it was not that his judgment had selected it as the most appropriate, but because he found it impossible to avoid relapsing into those modes of influencing the mind, which he had been long habituated to employ with so much success in another quarter. In accounting for this adoption at the Irish bar of a style of eloquence so much more fervid and poetical than the severer notions of the English courts would approve, something must be attri- buted to the influence of the national character. From whatever cause it has arisen, the Irish are by temperament confessedly more warm and im- petuous than their neighbours : their passions ly- ing nearer the surface, their actions are more go- LIFE OF CURRAN. 87 verned by impulse, and their diction more adorn- ed by imagination, than it would be reasonable to expect in a colder and a more advanced and phi- losophic people. In addressing persons so con- stituted, the methods most likely to prevail are sufficiently obvious. The orator, who knows any thing of his art, must be aware, that frigid de- monstration alone is not the best adapted to men, who take a kind of pride in regulating their de- cisions by their emotions, and that a far more certain artifice of persuasion must be, to fill their minds with those glowing topics, by which they habitually persuade themselves. It may be observed too, that although the ha- bits of mind which must be cultivated, in order to succeed in such a style of eloquence, arc altoge- ther different from those involved in the study of the law; yet in Ireland they have never been deemed incompatible with legal occupations. The preparation for the bar there, has never been so entirely technical as it usually is in England : a very general taste for polite literature and popular acquirements has been united with the more stern and laborious attainments of professional know- ledge, and it is to this combination of pursuits, that invigorate tiie understanding with those 88 LIFE OF CUBRAN. which exercise the imagination and improve the taste, that must be attributed that mass of varied and effective talent, which has so long existed anions the members of the Irish bar. But the immediate cause of that animated stvle of eloquence that has of late years prevailed there, appears to have been the influence of the Irish House of Commons. It was principally in the productions of the eminent leaders in that house, that the modern school of Irish oratory originated. In Ireland, this popular style made its way from the senate to the bar; though at first view such a transition may not seem either necessary or natural. In England it has not taken place. At the time that the first Mr Pitt, the pride of the English senate, was exalting and delighting his auditors by the majesty of his conceptions and the intrepid origi- nality of his diction, Westminster- Hall remained inaccessible to any contagious inspiration. At a later period, upon the memorable trial of Warren Hastings, the contrast is brought more palpably to view. While the celebrated prosecutors in that cause were soaring as high as imagination could find language to sustain it, while they were " shak- ing the walls that surrounded them with those LIFE OF CURRAN. 89 anathemas of super-human eloquence," * which remain among the recorded models of British oratory, the lawyers who conducted the defence were in general content to retaliate with tranquil argument and uninspired refutation. The intro- duction, therefore, of the parliamentary manner into the courts of Ireland, is to be accounted for by some circumstances peculiar to that country. During the period when eloquence flourished most in the Irish parliament, that is, for the last forty years of its existence, the number of barris- ters in the House of Commons bore a much * Erskine's defence of Stockdale. This celebrated advocate may be adduced in refutation of some of the above opinions, and it must be admitted that in some degree he forms an exception ; yet, without inquiring now, whether his was a style of eloquence peculiar to tlie individual, or characteristic of the English bar, it may be observed, that it differed essentially from that which pre- vailed at this time in the British Parliament, and to a still greater extent in the Irish senate and at the Irish bar. If he had produc- ed many such passages as that of the American savage, it would have been otherwise ; but his general strength did not lie in the fervour' of his imagination : it was by the vigour of his ethics and his logic, enforced by illustrations rather felicitous than impassion- ed, that he brought over the judgment to his side. It is not in- tended by these remarks to assign a superiority to either style — it is to be supposed that the eminent advocates of the two bars adopt- ed the manner best suited to their respective countries. 90! LIFE OF CURRAN. greater proportion to the whole, than has been at any time usual in England.* In those days, the policy by which Ireland was governed being in the utmost degree unpopular, the whole pa- tronage of the Irish administration was necessarily expended in alluring supporters of the measures against which the nation exclaimed. A majority of numbers in the House of Commons could then be easily procured, and for a long time such a majority had been sufficient for every purpose of the government ; but at the period in question, the increasing influence and talent of the minority rendered it necessary to adopt every method of opposing them (if possible) with a predominance of intellect. The means of doinff this, it would appear, were not to be found in that body which ruled the country, and recourse was had to the expedient of inlisting the rising men at the bar iri the service of the administration.-j- Accord- * See the biographical sketches of the eminent Irish senators in Hardy's Life of Lord Charlemont. See also note, chap. iv. f Such was the commencement of (among others) the late Lord Clonmel's fortune. " The Marquis of Townshend had expressed his wishes to Lord Chancellor Lifiord, for the assistance of some young gentleman of the bar, on whose talent and fidelity he might rely, in the severe parliamentary campaigns then (1769) likely to LIFE OF CURRAN. 91 ingly, every barrister, who had popular abilities enough to render his support of any moment, found a ready admission into parliament, upon the condition of his declaring for the viceroy ; and in the event of his displaying sufficient talent and constancy, was certain of being rewarded with the highest honours of his profession. But independent of those who were thus intro- duced to the senate, the bar was the profession most generally resorted to by the members or de- pendents of the highest families, as one in which, without any claim of merit, they could, through the influence of their patrons, obtain situations of take place. Lord Liftbrd recommended Mr Scott, -vvho was ac- cordingly returned to parliament, to oppose the party led on by the celebrated Flood." — Hardy's Life of Lord Charlemont. The necessity of calling in such aid gives us but a poor idea of the education and talents of the Irish aristocracy of the time. Mr Grattan, in 1797, thus mentions the great improvement in the in- tellect of his country that he had witnessed. " The progress of the human mind in the course of the last twenty-five years has been prodigious in Ireland ; I remember when there scarcely ap- peared a publication in a newspaper of any degree of merit, which was not traced to some person of note, on the part of government or the opposition ; but now a multitude of very powerful publica- tions appear, from authors entirely unknown, of profound and spirited investigation." — Letter to the Citizens of Dublin. 92 LIFE OF CURRAN. professional emolument, and where, if they pos- sessed such a claim, the road was open to legal preferment and to political distinction ; and con- sequently all of the latter description, recommend- ed by their talents, and supported by the power of their connexions, found access to the House of Commons, long before that period of standing and of professional reputation, at which the suc- cessful English barrister is accustomed, or deems it prudent, to become a senator. These circumstances alone would in a great degree account for the number of lawyers in the Irish parliament; but it should be farther observed, that it was not any particular class that looked to or obtained a seat in that assembly. The ambi- tion of appearing there was very general at the Irish bar ; it was the grand object upon which every enterprizing barrister fixed his eye and his heart. This was the age of political speculation ; it was " Ireland's life-time." Great original ques- tions were daily agitated in her parliament. The struggle between popular claims and ancient pre- rogatives was a scene where much seemed likely to be gained, — by the venal, for themselves, — by the honest, for their country ; but whether con- sidered as a post of honour or of profit, it was LIFE OF CURRAN. 95 one to which men of colder temperaments than the Irish might be easily moved to aspire. The consequence of this intermixture of politi- cal with legal pursuits was, that the talents most suited to advance the former were much cultivated and constantly exercised ; and from this difference in the objects and habits of the bars of the two countries, appear to have principally resulted the different styles of oratory displayed by the mem- bers of each, both in their parliamentary and for- ensic exertions. The English barrister, long dis- ciplined to technical observances, having passed the vin-our of his intellect in submissive reverence to rules and authorities, brings into the House of Commons the same subtle propensities, and the same dread of expanded investigation, and of rhe- torical ornament that his professional duties im- posed; but in Ireland the leading counsel were also from an early age distinguished members of the senate. If in the morning their horizon was bounded by their briefs, in a few hours their minds were free to rise, and extend it as far as the statesman's eye could reach ; they had the daily excitation and tumult of popular debate to clear away any momentary stagnations of i'ancy or enterprise; the lawyer became enlarged into 94; LIFE OF CURRAN. the legislator, and instead of introducing into the efforts of the latter the coldness and constraint of his professional manner, he rather delighted to carry back with him to the forum all the fervour, and pomp, and copiousness of the deliberative style. The parliament of Ireland, the nurse of the genius and ambition of its bar, is now extinct; but the impulse that it gave is not yet spent. The old have not yet forgotten the inspiration of the scene, where they beheld so many accomplished orators pass their most glorious hours; the young cannot hear without a throb of emulation the many wondrous things of that proud work of their fathers, which was levelled for having tower- ed too high ; nor is the general regret of the bar for its fall unincreased by their possession and daily admiration of two noble and still perfect relics, attesting the magnificence of the structure they have survived.* Another peculiarity of the Irish bar that is now passing away, but which prevailed to a great exr * Messrs Bushe and Plunkett, two of the members of the Irish House of Commons tlie most distinguished for eloquence, con- tinue at the Irish bar. LIFE OF CURRAN. 95 tent during Mr Curran's forensic career, was the frequency of collisions between the bar and the bench. It was often his fate to be involved in them, and many are the instances of the prompt- ness of repartee, and of the indignant intrepidity with which, on such occasions, he defended the privileges of the advocate. It will be presently seen that he had scarcely appeared at the bar, when he shewed how he could encounter and triumph over the taunts and menaces of a hostile judge. The same spirit of resistance and retalia- tion will be found in his contests with Lord Clare ; and at a much subsequent period, when he was exerting himself in a cause with his characteristic firmness, the presiding judge having called to the sheriff to be ready to take into custody any one who should disturb the decorum of his court: " Do, Mr Sheriff^" replied Mr Curran, " go and get ready my dungeon ; prepare a bed of straw for me; and upon that bed I shall to-night re- pose with more tranquillity than I should enjoy f were I sitting upon that bench with a conscious- ness that I disgraced it."* * A celebrated periodical publication, to which, in all matters of taste, nouch deference is due, observing upon this passage, characterizes the advocate's feelings -as unjustifiably sensitive, and 8 96 LtFfi of CURRAN. The same political causes that have been already alluded to as influencing the oratory of the Ii'ish his language as an " incredible apostrophe." A different opinion would probably have been passed upon both, had the particulars of the scene been more minutely detailed. The transaction took place at the Limerick assizes, towards the conclusion of a cause which Mr Curran had been specially brought down to conduct. It being an important case, he remained in Court till the Judge had charged, and the jury retired. He then went away to join his friends of the bar at dinner; but he had scarcely sat down, when he received an intimation from the junior Counsel on his side, whom he had left in Court, announcing, that the Judge was giving a farther charge to the jury, and requesting that Mr C. would hurry back without delay. Upon his return he found his Lordship in communication with the jury ; but he was speaking in so low a tone of voice, that, although from the particular construction of the Court-house the jury could hear him, he was almost inaudi- ble at the bar. Mr Curran rose to mention this, and requested to know the purport of the observations his Lordship was addressing to the jury. The Judge paying no attention to this request, con- tinued as before. The Counsel again interfered. The Judge rebuked him for the interruption ; and, as understood by those present, denied that, after the jury had once retired. Counsel had the right to hear any thing farther that might pass between the bench and them. To this Mr C. was replying, " that a Judge was not, in any stage of a cause, to hold private conversations with a jury ; that it was the constitutional privilege of the parties to hear distinctly every syllable addressed in the way of a charge by the Court, in order that they might take legal exceptions thereto, if any LIFE OF CURRAN. 97 bar, will in a great measure account for these con- flicts in the courts, and for that tone of sarcasm and defiance assumed by the barrister on such occasions. It was one of the public calamities of the period when such scenes were most frequent, that, in the selection of persons to fill the judicial seat, more attention was often paid to family interest and political services, than to the claims of merit, or the benefit of tlie community. No doubt it some- times happened that this important office was be- stowed upon men, to whom the appointment to situations of honour and of trust was less a gift than the payment of the justest debt. What dig- nity could be too exalted for the learned and ac- such could avail them ; and that this privilege would be an utter nullity if a Judge could, when he pleased, so muffle his voice as to be audible to none but the jury ;" when his Lordship called out to the Sheriff, as related in the text. The most perfect order had pre- vailed in the Court. Several gentlemen of the bar were present ; and none of them doubted, any more than Mr Curran, that the Judge's language and manner amounted to a threat to commit him. On Uie following day the Munster bar held a meeting, and passed a resolution of thanks to Mr Curran, for the spirit with which he had on this occasion supported the privileges and dignity of his profession. A deputation was also appointed to wait upon the Judge, and deliver him a copy of the resolution. VOL. I. H 98 Life of curran. complished Lord Avonmore? What trust too sacred for Lord Kilwarden, the most conscien- tious, and pacific, and merciful of men ? But if Ireland beheld such persons adorning their sta- tion, she had the anguish and humiliation to see others degrading it by their political fury, or by the more indecent gratification of their particular animosities. Influenced by such unworthy feelings of party or of private hostility, the Judges in those days were too prone to consider it a branch of their official duty to discountenance any symptoms of independence in their court ; and though at times they may have succeeded, yet at others, indignant and exemplary was the retaliation to which such a departure from their dignity exposed them ; for it was not unusual, that the persons who made these experiments upon the spirit of the bar, and whose politics and connexions had raised them to a place of nominal superiority, were in public considera- tion, and in every intellectual respect, the inferiors of the men that they undertook to chide. It some- times happened too that the parties, whose powers might be less unequal, had been old parliamentary antagonists ; and when the imputed crimes of the oppositionist came to be visited upon the advocate, it is not surprising that he should have retorted LIFE OF CURRAN. 99 with pride, acrimony, and contempt. Hence arose in the Irish courts those scenes of personal contention, which the different chai'acter of the bench in later times precludes, and which (what- ever side gain the victory) must ever be deprecated ,as ruinous to the client, and disgraceful to that spot, within whose precincts faction and passion should never be permitted to intrude. But though the solemnity of judicial proceed- ings in Ireland might have been often disturbed by the preceding causes, they have been more frequently enlivened by others of a less unamiable description. Notwithstanding the existence there of that religious and political bigotry which tends to check every cheerful impulse, and in their place to substitute general distrust and gloom, these baneful effects have been powerfully coun- teracted by the more prevailing influence of the national character. The honest, kindly affections of nature, though impeded, have still kept on their course. In spite of all the sufferings and convulsions of the last century, the social vivacity, of the Irish was proverbial. It subsisted, as it still subsists, in an eminent degree in their private intercourse ; it may be also seen constantly break- ing forth in their public discussions. At the bar, 100 LIFE OF CURRAN. where the occasions of jocularity so frequently occur, it is, as might be expected, most strikingly displayed. The Irish Judges have not disdained to resign themselves to the favourite propensity of their country. The humorous sally or classical allusion, which would have pleased at the table, has not been frowned upon from the bench : their habits of social intimacy with the bar, and their own tastes as scholars and companions, Ijave ra- ther prepared them to tolerate and even join in those lively irregularities, which the more severe decorum of Westminster-Hall might condemn. This urbanity and indulgence still remains ; and scarcely a term passes over without many addi- tions, either from the bar or the bench, to the large fund of Irish forensic humour. A more frequent and less dignified description of mirth, of which so much may be observed in the legal proceedings of Ireland, is that which originates in the particular character of the lower orders of that country. They abound in sagacity and repartee; qualities to which, when appearing as unwilling witnesses, or when struggling under the difficulties of a cross-examination, they seldom fail to fly for shelter. Their answers on such oc- LIFE OF CURRAN. 101 casions are singularly adroit and evasive,* and the advocate is consequently obliged to adopt every artifice of humour and ridicule, as more effectual than seriousness or menace, to extract the truth and expose their equivocations. The necessity of employing such methods of confounding the knavish ingenuity of a witness, perpetually occa- sions the most striking contrasts between the so- lemnity of the subjects, and the levity of the lan- guage in which they are investigated. It is par- ticularly in the Irish criminal courts that scenes of this complicated interest most constantly occur. In the front appear the counsel and the evidence engaged in a dramatic contest, at which the audi- tors cannot refrain from bursts of laughtei-, and at a little distance" behind, the prisoner under trial, gazing upon them with agonized attention, and catching at a presage of his fate in the alter- nating dexterity or fortune of the combatants. This intrusion of levity into proceedings that should be marked by jiomp and dignity, may be indecent, but it is inevitable. Without this lati- tude of examination no right would be secure, and when exerted, no gravity can resist its influence ; • See Mr Curran's cross-examination of O'Brien inserted here- after. 102 LIFE OF CURRAN. even the felon's visase is often roused from its expression of torpid dispair by the sallies that ac- company the disclosure of his crimes. As long, therefore, as the Irish populace retain their pre- sent character of vivacity and acuteness, the Irish advocate must cultivate and display his powers of humour, often, perhaps, to a greater extent than his better taste would desire ; and the courts, aware of the necessity of such an instrument for eliciting the truth, will not consider it incumbent on them to interfere with its use. LIFE OF CURRAN. 103 CHAPTER IV. Mr Curran's early success at the Bar — His contest with Judge Robinson — His defence of a Roman Catholic priest — His duel Tvilh Mr St Leger — Receives the dying benediction of the priest — Lord Avonmore's friendship — His character of Lord Avon- more — Monks of St Patrick, and list of the original members- Anecdotes of Lord Avonmore — Mr Curran's entrance into Par- liament. Mr Curran has been often alluded to as one of the many examples in the history of the bar, of the highest talents remaining for a long time un- known and unrewarded. This, however, was not the fact : so general was the reputation of his abi- lities, and so numerous his personal friends, that he became employed immediately, and to an ex- tent that is very unusual with those who, like him, have solely depended upon their own exertions, and upon accidental support.* • The fact of his early practice appears from his fee-book, in which the receipts commence from the day after he was called to the bar. The first year produced eighty-two guineas, the se- cond between one and two hundred, and so on in a regularly in- creasing proportion. 104j life or curran. The failure of his fust attempt at speaking has been mentioned : a more singular instance of that nervousness which so frequently accom- panies the highest capacity, occurred to him upon his debut in the courts. The first brief that he held was in the Court of Chancery ; he had only to read a short sentence from his instructions, but he did it so precipitately and inaudibly, that the chancellor. Lord LifFord, requested of him to repeat the words, and to raise his voice : upon this, his agitation became extreme ; he was unable to articulate a syllable; the brief drojpjped from his hands, and a friend who sat beside him was oblig- ed to take it up, and read the necessary passage. This diffidence, however, totally vanished when- ever he had to repel what he conceived an unwar- rantable attack. It was by giving proofs of the proud and indignant spirit with which he could chastise aggression, that he first distinguished him- self at the bar :* of this his contest with Judge * His first occasion of displaying that high spirit which was afterwards so prominent in his character, was at the election of Tallagh, where he was engaged as counsel, a few months after his admission to the bar. One of tlie candidates, presuming upon his own rank, and upon the young advocate's unostentatious appear- LIFE OF CURRAN. 105 Robinson is recorded as a very early and memo- rable instance. Mr Curran having observed in some case before that Judge, " That he had never met the law as laid down by his lordship in any book in his library," — " That may be, sir," said the Judge, in an acrid, contemptuous tone ; " but I suspect that your library is very small." His lord- ship, who, like too many of that time, was a party zealot, was known to be the author of several ano- nymous political pamphlets, which were chiefly conspicuous for their despotic principles and ex- cessive violence. The young barrister, roused by the sneer at his circumstances, replied, that true it was that his library might be small, but he thanked Heaven, that among his books there were none of the wretched productions of the frantic pamphleteers of the day. " I find it more instruc- tive, my lord, to study good works than to com- pose bad ones ; my books may be few, but the title-pages give me the writers' names : my shelf is not disgraced by any of such rank absurdity, that their very authors are ashamed to own them." ancc, indulged in some rude language towards him ; but was in- stantly silenced by a burst of impetuous and eloquent invective, which at that time required an in!^ult to awaken. 106 LIFE OF CUBRAN. He was here interrupted by the Judge, who said, " Sir, you are forgetting the respect which you owe to the dignity of the judicial character." " Dignity !" exclaimed Mr Curran ; " my lord, upon that point I shall cite you a case from a book of some authority, with which you are perhaps not unacquainted. A poor Scotchman,* upon his arrival in London, thinking himself insulted by a stranger, and imagining that he was the stronger man, resolved to resent the affront, and taking off his coat, delivered it to a bystander to hold; but havina lost the battle, he turned to resume his garment, when he discovered that he had unfor- tunately lost that also ; that the trustee of his habi- liments had decamped during the affray. So, my lord, when the person, who is invested with the dignity of the judgment-seat, lays it aside for a .moment, to enter into a disgraceful personal con- test, it is vain, when he has been worsted in the encounter, that he seeks to resume it — it is in vain that he endeavours to shelter himself behind an •authority which he has abandoned." * Perhaps it is unnecessary to remind most readers, that the Scotchman alluded to is Strap, in Smollett's Roderick Random. LIFE OF CURRAN. 107 Judge Robinson. — " If you say another word, sir, I'll commit you." Mr Curran. — » If your lordship should do so, we shall, both of us, have the consolation of reflecting, that I am not the worst thing your Lordship has committed." The Judsfe did not commit him ; but he was understood to have solicited the bench to interfere, and make an example of the advocate, by depriving him of his gown, and to have received so little en- couragement, that he thought it prudent to pro- ceed no further in the aiFair. From this, and many other specimens of spirit and ability, Mr Curran's reputation rapidly in- creased ; but it was not till he had been four or five years at the bar that his powers as an advo- cate became fully known. His first opportunity of displaying them was in a cause at the Cork assizes, in which a Roman catholic priest, the Rev. Mr Neale, brought an action against a no- bleman of that county (Lord Doneraile), for an assault and battery. The circumstances attending this case mark the. melancholy condition of the times. They aflbrd a single, but a very striking example of those scenes of local despotism and individual suffering, 108 LIFE OF CURRAN. of which, at this degraded period, Ireland was daily the witness and the victim. The nobleman in question had contracted an intimacy with a young woman, whose family re- sided in the parish of which the plaintiff in this action was the priest. This woman's brother hav- ing committed some offence asrainst religion, for which the Roman catholic bishop of the diocese had directed that the censures of the church should be passed upon him, she solicited Lord Doneraile to interfere, and to exert his influence and autho- rity for the remission of the offender's sentence. His lordship, without hesitation, undertook to interpose his authority. For this purpose he pro- ceeded, accompanied by one of his relatives, to the house, or rather the cabin, of the priest. As soon as he arrived there, disdaining to dismount from his horse, he called, in a loud and imperious tone, upon the inhabitant to come forth. The latter happened at that moment to be in the act of prayer ; but hearing a voice, which it would have been perilous to disregard, he discontinued his devotions to attend upon the peer. The mi- nister of religion appeared before him (an affecting spectacle, to a feeling mind, of infirmity and hu- mility), bending under years, his head uncovered. LIFE OF CURRAN. 109 and holding in his hand the book, which was now his only source of hope and consolation. His lordship ordered him to take off the sentence lately passed upon his favourite's brother. The priest, struggling between his temporal fears and the solemn obligations of his church, could only reply, with respect and humbleness, " that he would gladly comply with any injunction of his lordship, but that to do so in the present in- stance was beyond his power ; that he was only a parish priest, and, as such, had no authority to remit an ecclesiastical penalty imposed by his su- perior ; that the bishop alone could do it." To a second and more angry mandate, a similar answer was returned ; upon which the nobleman, forget- ting what he owed to his own dignity, and the pity and forbearance due to age, and the reverence due to religion, raised his hand against the unof- fending old man, who could only escape the blows directed against his person by tottering back into his habitation, and securing its door against his merciless assailant. For this disgraceful outrage, to which the suf- ferer was exposed, because he would not violate the sanctity of his character and the ordinances of his church, for the gratification of a profligate 110 LIFE OF CURRAN. woman who chanced to be the mistress of a peer, he for some time despaired of obtaining redress. So great was the provincial power of this noble- man, and such the political degradation of the Roman catholic clergy, that the injured priest found a difficulty in procuring an advocate to plead his cause. At length, several to whom he applied having (according to general report) de- clined to be concerned for so unpopular a client,* Mr Curran, justly conceiving that it would be a stain upon his profession if such scenes of lawless violence were allowed to pass without investigation, took a step which many considered as most roman- tic and imprudent, and only calculated to baffle all his prospects upon his circuit; he tendered his services to the unfriended plaintiff, and, the un- expected offer being gratefully accepted, laid the story of his unmerited wrongs before a jury of his country. * In 1735, a catholic nobleman (Lord Clancarty) brought an ejectment to recover his family estates that had been confiscated, but by a resolution of the Irish House of Commons, all barristers, solicitors, attorneys, or proctors, that should be concerned for him, were voted public enemies (O'Connor's Hist, of the Irish Catholics, p. 218.) ; and in Ireland the prejudices, which had dictated so ini- quitous a measure, were not extinct in 1780. LIFE OF CURRAN. Ill No printed report of this trial has been pre- served, but all the accounts of it agree that the plaintiff's counsel acquitted himself with eminent ability. And it is only by adverting to the state of those times, that we can appreciate the ability that could obtain success. This was not, as an ordinary case, between man and man, where each may be certain of an equitable hearing. The ad- vocate had to address a class of men who were full of furious and inveterate prejudices against his client. The very appearance of a Roman catholic clergy- man, obtruding his wrongs upon a court of justice, was regarded as a presumptuous novelty. To the minds of the bigoted jurors of that day, his de- mand of redress was an act of rebellion against the protestant ascendancy — a daring effort to re- store a deposed religion to its throne. The cause had also, from the characters of the parties, ex- cited the greatest public interest, and the sympathy of the public, as is always the case where no epi- demic passions intervene, was upon the side of the oppressed ; but the general expression of such a feeling was rather detrimental to its object. The crowds that filled, and surrounded the court upon the day of trial, v.'ere Roman catholics, and were supposed, by a very obvious construction, to have 112 LIFE OF CURRAN. assembled not so much to witness a triumph of justice, as to share in a triumph of their religion. Upon such an occasion, the advo- cate had not merely to state the facts, and apply the law ; before he could convince or persuade, he had to pacify — to allure his hearers into a pa- tient attention, and into a reversal of the hostile verdict, which, before they were sworn, they had tacitly pronounced. These were the difficulties against which Mr Curran had to contend, and which he overcame. The jury granted a verdict to his client, with thirty guineas damages. So small a sum would now be deemed a very paltry remuneration for such an injury ; but in Ireland, about forty years ago, to have wrung even so much from a protestant jury, in favour of a ca- tholic priest, against a protestant nobleman, was held to be such a triumph of forensic eloquence, and to be in itself so extraordinary a circumstance, that the verdict was received by the people at large as an important political event.* In a part of his address to the jury in this case, the plaintiiF's counsel animadverted, with the ut- • In one of O'Leary's tracts dedicated to the " Monks of the Screw," a particular allusion is made to JNIr Curran's eloquence and conduct on this trial. LIFE OF CURRAN. IIS most severity of invective, upon the unworthy conduct of the defendant's relative (Mr St Leger), who had been present, and countenancing the outrage upon the priest. At length, his zeal and indignation hurrying him beyond his instructions, he proceeded to describe that gentleman (who had lately left a regiment that had been ordered on actual service), as " a renegado soldier, a drummed-out dragoon, who wanted the courage to meet the enemies of his country in battle, but had the heroism to redeem the io-nominv of his flight from danger, by raising his arm against an aged and unoffending minister of religion, who had just risen from putting up before the throne of God a prayer of general intercession, in which his heartless insulter was included." As soon as the trial was over, he was summon- ed to make a public apology for those expressions, or to meet Mr St Leger in the field.* He was • There was another circumstance during this trial, .which had given equal ofTencc, and which, whatever judgment may be passed upon it now, was well calculated to influence the juty. Mr Curran knew that Mr St Leger was to be produced as one of the defend- ant's witnesses, and it was in order to diminish the weight of his testimony, that he had described him as above. He had however mentioned no name, but merely apprised the jury, that such a cha- VOL. I. 1 114 LIFE OF CURRAN. fully sensible that his language had not been strictly warrantable, and that a barrister had no right to take shelter under his gown from the re- sentment of those, whose feelings and character he might have unjustifiably attacked ; but per- ceiving that an apology would, in the eyes of his countrymen, have tarnished the lustre of his re- cent victory, and that it might have the effect of inviting future challenges whenever he should perform his duty with the necessary boldness, he deemed it more eligible to risk his life than his racter might be brought to impose upon them. When Mr St Leger came upon the table,* and took the testament in his hand, the plaintiff's counsel, in a tone of affected respect, addressed him, saying, " Oh, Mr St Leger, the jury will, I am sure, believe yoa without the ceremony of swearing you ; you are a man of honour, and of high moral principle ; your character will justify us from insisting on your oath." The witness, deceived by this mild and complimentary language, replied with mingled surprise and irrita- tion, " I am happy, sir, to see you have changed the opinion you entertained of me when you were describing me a while ago." " What, sir! then you confess it was a description of yourself! Gentlemen, act as you please, but I leave it to you to say, whether a thousand oalhs could bind the conscience of such a man as I have just described." * It may be requisite to inform the English reader, that in the Irish courts there is no box for the witnesses ; they are examined upon the table that stand* on the floor of the court, between the bar and the bench. LIFE OF CURRAN. 115 reputation. A duel accordingly followed ; upon which occasion, Mr Curran not only established for himself a character for personal intrepidity (an acquisition of no small moment in a country where the point of honour has always been so sacredly observed), but afforded infinite entertainment to the by-standers, by a series of those sportive sal- lies, which, when the impulse was on him, no time or place could repress.* He declined re- turning Mr St Lcgcr's fire; so that the affair^ after a single shot, was terminated. A more solemn and interestina; scene soon fol- ' lowed. The poor priest was shortly after called away to another world. When he found that the hour of death was at hand, he earnestly requested that his counsel, to whom he had something of importance to communicate, might be brought into his presence. Mr Curran complied, and was * When each had taken his ground, Mr St Lcger called out to his adversary to fire : " No, sir," replied he, " I am here by your invitation, and you must open the ball." A little after, Mr (Curran, observing the other's pistol to be aim- ed wide of its mark, called out in a loud voice, " Fire !" St Lcger, who was a nervous man, started, and fired. He died not long after, and was reputed in Munster to have been '• killed by the report of his own pistol." 116 LIFE OF CURRAN. conducted to the bed-side of his expiring client. The humble servant of God had neither gold nor silver to bestow ; but what he had, and what with him was above all price, he gave, — the blessing of a dying Christian upon him who had employed his talents, and risked his life, in redressing the , wrongs of the minister of a proscribed religion. He caused himself to be raised for the last time from his pillow, and, placing his hands on the head of his young advocate, pronounced over him the formal benediction of the Roman catholic church, as the reward of his eloquence and intre- pidity. Mr Curran had also the satisfaction of being assured by the lower orders of his country- men, that he might 7zotcj fight as many duels as he pleased, without apprehending any danger to his person ; an assurance, which subsequently became a prophecy, as far as the event could render it one. Shortly after this trial, the successful orator was given to understand, that his late triumph should cost him dear. As he was standing amidst a circle of his friends in one of the public streets of Cork, he v/as called aside by a person who brought him an intimation from Lord Doneraile, that in consequence of his late unprecedented conduct, LIFE OF CURRAN. 117 he might expect nevei' to be employed in future in any cause, where his lordship, or his extensive connexions, should have the power to exclude him. The young barrister answered with contemptuous playfulness, and in a voice to be overheard by every one ; " My good sir, you may tell his lord- ship, that it is in vain for him to be proposing terms of accommodation ; for after what has hap- pened, I protest I think, while I live, I shall never hold a brief for him or one of his family." The introduction of these particulars may almost de- mand an apology ; yet it is often by little things that the characters of times and individuals are best displayed, as (according to an eminent English writer) " throwing up little straws best shews which way the wind lies." Previous to this trial, Mr Curran's fame and practice had been unusual for his standing ; but after his display of eloquence and conduct upon this occasion, they increased with unprecedented rapidity. It was probably too with this event that originated his great popularity among the lower orders of the Irish, a feeling which a little time matured into an unbounded venei'ation for his capacity, combined with a most devoted attach- ment to his person. Their enthusiasm in this 118 LIFE OF CURIIAN. instance can be scarcely conceived by such as have only witnessed the common mai'ks of respect paid to ordinary favourites of the people. So much of his life, and so many of its proudest moments were passed in their presence, in the courts of Dublin, and on the circuit towns ; his manners were so unaffectedly familiar and accessible, his ■ genius and habits were so purely national, that the humblest of his countrymen, forgetting the differ- ence of rank in their many common sympathies, fondly considered him as one of themselves, and cherished his reputation not more as a debt of gratitude to him, than as a kind of peculiar tri- umph of their own. These sentiments, which he never descended to any artifices to cultivate, con- tinued unimpaired to his death, and will probably survive him many years. In relating the steps by which Mr Curran ad- vanced to professional distinction, it would be an injustice to omit the support which he found in the friendship of the late learned and respected Lord Avonmore, then Mr Yelverton, a leading counsel at the Irish bar. This excellent and rarely gifted man hadhimself risen from an humble station, and know- ing, by experience, " how hard it is to climb,'* was ever most prompt in encouraging and assist- LIFE OF CURUAN. 119 ing those whom he saw imitating his own honour- able example. His friendship for Mr Curran commenced in 1775, (through the father-in-law of the latter, Dr Creagh, between whom and Mr Yelverton an old and tender intimacy had subsist- ed), and, with the exception of a few intervals of temporary alienation from political differences, continued unimpaired to his death. In one of Mr Curran's latest efforts at the bar,* we find him fondly turning aside for a moment to indulge his respect for the Judge and the scholar, and his gratitude to the friend of his younger years. The following is the character that he has drawn of Lord Avonmore. To strangers it may appear overwrought, but those who were familiar with the simple, antique grandeur of mind that dignified the original, recognize the fidelity of the likeness. " I am not ignorant that this extraordinary construction has received the sanction of another court, nor of the surprise and dismay with which it smote upon the general heart of the bar. I am aware that I may have the mortification of being * Speech in llie case of Mr Justice Johnson, in the Court of Exchequer, where Lord Avonmore presided. 120 LIFE OF CURRAN* told in another country of that unhappy decision, and I foresee in what confusion 1 shall hang down my head when I anx told it. But I cherish, too, the consolatory hope, that I shall be able to tell them, that I had an old and learned friend, whom I would put above all the sweepings of their Hall, who was of a different opinion — who had derived his ideas of civil liberty from the purest fountains of Athens and of Rome — who had fed the youth- ful vigour of his studious mind with the theoretic knowledge of their wisest philosophers and states- men — and who had refined that theorj^ into the quick and exquisite sensibility of moral instinct, by contemplating the practice of their most illus- trious examples — by dwelling on the sweet-souled piety of Cimon — on the anticipated Christianity of Socrates — on the gallant and pathetic patriotism of Epaminondas — on that pure austerity of Fabri- cius, whom to move from his integrity would have been more difficult than to have pushed the sun from his course. 1 vv'ould add, that if he had seemed to hesitate, it was but for a moment — that his hesitation was like the passing cloud that floats across the morning sun, and hides it from the view, and does so for a moment hide it, by involv- LIFE OF CURRAN. 121 lug the spectator without even approaching the face of the luminary." Lord Avonmore was the person under whose auspices was formed, in the year 1779, a patriotic and convivial society, " The Monks of the Order of St Patrick,"* which was in those days suffi- * Of this society, so interesting as connected with the most splendid era of Ireland's history, Mr Hudson has kindly supplied the following notice and list of the original members. — " This celebrated society was partly political and partly convi- vial ; it consisted of two parts, professed, and lay brothers. As the latter had no privileges, except that of commons in the refectory, they are unnoticed here. " The professed (by the constitution) consisted of members of either house of parliament, and barristers, with the addition from the other learned professions of any number not exceeding one- third of the whole. They assembled every Saturday in Convent, during term-time ; and commonly held a chapter before commons, at whicli the abbot presided, or in his (very rare) absence, the prior, or senior of the officers present. Upon such occasions, all the members appeared in the habit of the order, a black tabinet domino. Temperance and sobriety always prevailed. A short Latin grace, ' Benedictus benedicat,' and ' Eenedicto benedica- tur,' • was regularly and gravely pronounced by the praecentor or chaplain, before and after commons. " It will be seen by the following list, that there were many learned men and men of genius in their number, and I may ven- * Since adopted as the grace of the King's Inns Society, in Dublin. 122 LIFE OF CURRAN. ciently celebrated, and composed of men such as Ireland could not easily assemble now. It was a ture to say, that few productions (either in pamphlets or periodical publications*) of any celebrity, during the arduous struggle for Irish emancipation, appeared, which did not proceed from the pen of one of the brethren. Nor did they forego their labours, till by their prayers and exertions they attained emancipation for their country. The sad change which has taken place since their dis- persion need not be related. THE MONKS OF THE ORDER OF ST PATRICK, COMMONLT CALLED THE MONKS OF THE SCREW. Assembled at their Convent in St Kevin-street, Dublin, on and after September the 3d, 1779. members' names. 1. Founder. Barry Yelverton, Barrister, M. P. since Lord Viscount Avonmore, Lord Chief Baron. 2. Abbot, William Doyle, Barrister, Master in Chancery. S. Prior. John Philpot Curran, Barrister, since M. P. Privy Counsellor, and Master of the Rolls. 4. PrcBccntor. Rev. Wm. Day, S. F. T. C. D. 5. Bursar. Edward Hudson, M. D.f * The principal of these were the " Letters of Guatimozin," written by Dr JebtT; and the " Letters of Juridicus," attributed to a surviving member of Uie society. f Surviving. LIFE or CURRAN. 123 collection of the wit, the genius, and public virtue of the country: and though the name of the so- 6. Sacristan. Robt. Johnson, Barr. M. P. and since a Judge,* 7. Arran, the Earl of. 8. Barry, James, (painter), elected an honorary member, never joined. 9. Brown, Arthur, Barr. M. P. and F. T. C. D. 10. Burgh, Walter Ilussey, Barr. Rt. Hon. and M. P. and since Chief Baron, 1 1 . Burston, Beresford, Barr. and K. C* 12. Carhampton, Earl of. 15. Caldbeck, William, Barr. and K. C. 14. Chamberlayne, W. Tankerville, Barr. M. P. and since a Judge. 1 5. Charlemont, Earl of. 16. Corry, Rt. Hon. Isaac, M. P. and since Chancellor of the Exchequer. 17. Daly, Rt. Hon. Dennis, M. P. 1 S. Day, Robert, Barr. M. P. and since a Judge. * 19. Dobbs, Robert, Barr. 20. Doyle, John, M. P. and since a General in the army, and Bart* 21. Dunkin, James, Barr. 22. Duquery, Henry, Barr. and M. P. 23. Emmet, Temple, Barr. 24. I'inucane, Matthew, Barr. and since a Judge. 25. Fitton, Richard, Barr. 26. Forbes, Jolin, Barr. M. P. * Surviving. 124f LIFE OF CURRAN. ciety itself is not embodied in any of the national records, the names of many of its members are to 27. Frankland, Richard, Barr. and K. C. 28. Grattan, Rt. Hon. Henry, Barr. and M. P. 29. Hacket, Thomas, Barr. 30. Hardy, Francis, Barr. and M. P. (Lord Charlemont's bio- grapher). 3L Harstonge, Sir Henry, Bart, and M. P. 32. Herbert, Richard, Barr. and M. P. 33. Hunt, John, Barr. 34. Hussey, Dudley, Barr. M. P. and recorder of Dublin. 35. Jebb, Frederic, M. D. 36. Kingsborougli, Lord Viscount, M. P. 37. Mocawen, ^^——^ Barr. 38. Martin, Ricliard, Barr. and M. P.* 39. Melge, Peter, Barr. M. P. and since a Judge. 40. Mornington, Earl of. 41. Muloch, Thomas, Barr. 42. Newenham, Sir Edward, M. P. 43. Ogle, Rt. Hon. George, M. P. 44. O'Leary, Rev. Arthur, honorary. 45. O'Neil, Charles, Barr. K. C. and M. P. 4G. Palliser, the Rev. Doctor, Chaplain. 47. Pollock, Joseph, Barr. 48. Ponsonby, Rt. Hon. George, Barr. M, P. and since Chan- cellor of Ireland. 49. Preston, William, Barr. 50. Ross, Lieut. Col. M. P. * Surviving. LIFE OF CURRAN. 125 be found in every page, and will be remembered, while Ireland has a memory, with gratitude and 51. Sheridan, Charles Francis, Barr. M. P. and Secretary at War. 52. Smith, Sir Michael, Bart. Barr. M. P. and since Master of the Rolls. 53. Stawel, AVilliam, Barr. 54. Stack, Rev. Richard, F.T.C.D. 55. Townshend, Marquis of.* 56. Woolfe, Arthur, Barr. M. P. and since Lord Viscount Kil- warden. Chief Justice King's-Bench, The society dwindled away towards the end of the year 1795." Shortly after the formation of this club, Mr Curran, having been one evening called upon for a song, gave one of his own composi- tion, which was immediately adopted as the charter song of the order. The following are all the verses of it that have been recol- lected : When St Patrick this order established. He called us the " Monks of the Screw ;" Good rules he revealed to our Abbot To guide us in what we should do. But first he replenished our fountain With liquor, the best in the sky ; And he swore, on the word of a saint. That the fountain should never run dry. « Elected, professed, and joined on his visit to Dublin, after his viceroyalty. 126 LIFE OF CURRAN. pride. The primary object of tlieir association was to give her a constitution, and to nourish Each year, when your octaves approach, In full chapter convened let me find you ; And, when to the Convent you come, Leave your fav'rite temptation behind you. And be not a glass in your Convent, Unless on a festival, found ; And, this rule to enforce, I ordain it One festival all the year round. My brethren, be chaste, till you're tempted ; Whilst sober, be grave and discreet ; And humble your bodies with fasting, , As oft as you've nothing to eat. >» Yet, in honour of fasting, one lean fai'C Among you I'll always require ; If he pleases, the Abbot may wear it. If not, let it come to the Prior. * * « « » « Come, let each take his chalice, my brethren, And with due devotion prepare, With hands and with voices uplifted Our hymn to conclude with a prayer. May this chapter oft joyously meet. And this gladsome libation renew, To the Saint, and the Founder, and Abbot, And Prior, and Monks of the Screw ! * Mr Doyle, the Abbot, had a remarkably large full face ; Mr Ciirran's w«9 the very reverse. LIFE OF CURRAN. 12T and diffuse among her people the spirit and intel- ligence which should render them worthy of the gift; and when the day arrived, as it shortly did, when the rights to which they aspired were not to be gained without a struggle, the leading mem- bers of the " Order of St Patrick" may be seen conspicuous in the post of honour and of danger, Mr Curran always bore a distinguished part in their meetings: it was to them, and to the many happy and instructive hours he had passed there, that he pathetically alluded in the burst of social enthusiasm which immediately follows the passage above cited : " And this soothing hope I draw from the dearest and tenderest recollections of my life — from the remembrance of those attic nights, and those refections of the gods, which we have spent with those admired, and respected, and be- loved companions, who have gone before us; over whose ashes the most precious tears of Ireland have been shed. [Here Lord Avonmore could not re- frain from bursting into tears.] Yes, my good Lord, I see you do not forget them. J see their sacred forms passing in sad review before your memory. I see your pained and softened fancy recalling those happy meetings, where the innocent enjoyment of 128 LIFE or CURRAN. social mirth became expanded into the nobler warmth of social virtue, and the horizon of the board became enlarged into the horizon of man — where the swelling heart conceived and communi- cated the pure and generous purpose — where my slenderer and younger taper imbibed its borrow- ed light from the more matured and redundant fountain of yours. Yes, my Lord, we can remem- ber those nights without any other regret than that they can never more return, for " We spent them not in toys, or lust, or wine, But search of deep philosophy, Wit, eloquence, and poesy. Arts which I loved, for they, my friend, were thine."* Cowley. • Lord Avonmore, in whose breast political resentment was easily subdued by the same noble tenderness of feeling which distinguish- ed the late Mr Fox upon a more celebrated occasion, could not withstand this appeal to his heart. At this period (1804) there was a suspension of intercourse between him and !Mr Curran ; but the moment the court rose, his lordship sent for his friend, and threw himself into his arms, declaring that unworthy artifices had been used to separate itiem, and that they should never succeed in future. The passage of Mr Curran's speech, above cited, has been condemned in various quarters, as introducing topics utterly inap- propriate to the matter in discussion, which is represented to have LIFE OF CURRAN. 129 Lord Avonmore was one of those men in whom a rare intellect and vast acquirements are found been a mere point of law. It would be impossible to comprise within the limits of a note all the peculiarities of Mr Justice John- son's case. For the present purpose, it may be sufficient to observe, that tlie main question before the Court was, whether, by the con- struction of a particulai- act of Parliament, Mr Johnson could be legally apprehended and transported to another kingdom, there to stand his trial, for an alleged misdemeanor, before a tribunal, which had not the power to compel the attendance of a single wit- ness from Ireland in his behalf. The reader will perceive at a glance, that here, along with the legal point, there was involved a most important question of constitution — and the great object of Mr Johnson's counsel was to induce the Court to rise above the rules of technical interpretation, and to give his client all the bene- fit that a constitutional construction could afford him. One of the Judges, Mr Baron Smith, (it was previously understood), intended to view the question in this liberal spirit— and if Lord Avonmore (the chief of the Court) could have been awakened to a similar ex- ertion of judicial courage, the prosecutors would have been de- feated. Lord Avonmore was a man of acute sensibility — an ac- complished classical scholar — a fervent admirer of the characters of antiquity ; during the best part of his life, he had thought and acted upon popular principles. In his latter years he was timid — but Mr Curran could remember, and remind him of the time, when he was a stranger to fear in the cause of freedom. When all these circumstances are considered, the advocate's personal appeal to him (however a correct taste may disapprove of some of the images), cannot fairly be pronounced to have been beside the subject, or VOL. I. K 130 LIFE OF CURRAN. united with the most artless unsuspecting inno- ccncy of nature. Whatever the person in whom he confided asserted, he considered to be as un- doubted as if he had uttered it himself. His younger friend, aware of this amiable imperfection, used often to trifle with it, and, in moments of playful relaxation, to practise harmless impositions upon his lordship's credulity. His ordinary arti- fice was to touch his sensibility, and thus excite his attention by relating in his presence some af- unskilful in the selection of topics. Upon the latter point Lord Avonmore, at least, said otherwise. He prefaced his judgment by observing, — " very little remains to be said by him who comes last —and to say any thing at all requires no small degree of strength of mind ; for before I can apply myself to the subject, I must dis- engage myself from the effects of that fascinating eloquence which still vibrates upon my ear — has touched, and still acts upon the finest feelings of my heart, and which has renewed some of the pleasantest recollections of my life." So Mr Baron Smith, who could be no stranger to the secret his- tory of this trial : — " If on the present occasion I support the con- stitution with becoming warmtli, it may be that I yet retain the ex- citation of a speech, which did honour even to the eloquence of Mr Curran, and gave additional lustre to the importance, however trauscendant, of the present subject — a speech, which those would be worse than bad critics, who could mistake for merely brilliant declamation." LIFE OF CURRAN. 131 fecting incident, and then, pretending to be un- conscious that his lordship was listening, to pro- ceed with a detail of many strange and improbable particulars, until he should be interrupted, as he regularly was, by the good Judge's exclaiming, " Gracious Heaven ! sir, is it possible? I have overheard all those most truly amazing circum- stances, which I could never have believed, if they did not come from such good authority." His lordship at length discovered the deception, and passing into the opposite extreme, became (often ludicrously) wary and incredulous as to every thing that Mr Curran stated. Still, how- ever, the latter persisted, and, quickening his invention as the difficulties increased, continued from year to year to gain many a humorous tri- umph over all the defensive caution of his friend. Even upon the bench Lord Avonmore evinced the same superstitious apprehension of the advo- cate's ingenuity, whom he would frequently inter- rupt, sometimes in a tone of endearment, some- times of impatience, saying, " Mr Curran, I know your cleverness ; but it's quite in vain for you to go on. I see the drift of it all, and you are only giving yourself and me unnecessary trouble." Upon one of these occasions, the Judge having 132 LIFE OF CURRAN. frequently interposed to prevent the counsel's put- ting forward some topic that was really relative and necessary to his case, declaring, as often as it was attempted, that the tendency of his argument was quite obvious, and that he was totally straying from the question, Mr Curran addressed him thus: " Perhaps, my lord, I am straying ; but you must impute it to the extreme agitation of my mind. I have just witnessed so dreadful a circumstance, that my imagination has not yet recovered from the shock." His lordship was now all attention. — " On my way to court, my lord, as I passed by one of the markets, I observed a butcher proceed- ing to slaughter a calf. Just as his hand was raised, a lovely little child approached him un- perceived, and, terrible to relate — 1 still see the life-blood gushing out — the poor child's bosom was under his hand, when he plunged his knife into — into" " Into the bosom of the child 1" cried out the Judge, with much emotion — " Into the neck of the calf my lord ; but your lordship sometimes anticipates." There are no reports of Mr Curran's early speeches at the bar ; but the celerity of his ascent to distinction in his profession, and in the public estimation, may be inferred from the date of his LIFE OF CURRAN. 133 entrance into parliament. He had been only seven years at the bar, when Mr Longfield (after- wards Lord Longueville) had him returned for a borough in his disposal.* At this time boroughs wsre the subject of notorious traffic, and it seldom happened that the members returned for them did not bind themselves to remunerate the patrons in money or in services. There was no such stipu- lation in the present instance : the seat was given to Mr Curran upon the express condition of per- fect freedom on his part ; but having soon differ- ed from Mr Longfield on political subjects, and there being then no way of vacating, he insisted upon purchasing a seat, to be filled by any per- son whom that gentleman should appoint ; an ar- rangement against which, it is but justice to add, that Mr Longfield anxiously endeavoured to dis- suade him.f • The borough of Kilbeggan, for which the other member was the celebrated Mr Flood. It was also about this period that Mr Curran obtained a silk gown. + In the succeeding parliament Mr Curran also came in, at his own expense, for the borough of llathcormack. 134' LIFE OF CURRAN. CHAPTER V. The Irish House of Commons in 1783 — Sketch of the previous history of Ireland — Effects of the Revolution of 1688— Catho- lic penal code — System of governing Ireland — Described by Mr Curran — Intolerance and degradation of the Irish Parliament- Change of system — Octennial bill — American Revolution — Its effects upon Ireland — The Irish Volunteers — Described by Mr Curran — Their numbers and influence upon public measures — Irish Revolution of 1782 — Mr Grattan's public services — Ob- servations upon the subsequent conduct of the Irish Parliament. It was at the eventful era of 1783, that Mr Curran became a member of the Irish House of Commons, an assembly at that day thronged with groups of original historic characters,* the vigorous product * Of some of these, Mr Grattan (in his Answer to Lord Clare's pamphlet, 1801) has given the following masterly sketches, over which he has perhaps unconsciously distributed the noble traits, which, if collected, would form the portrait of himself. " I follow the author through the graves of these honourable dead men, for most of them are so, and I beg to raise up their tombstones as he throws them down ; I feel it more instructive to converse with their ashes than with his compositions. LIFE OF CURllAN. 135 oY unsettled times ; great public benefactors, great public delinquents, but both of rare capacity and Mr Malone,* one of the characteis of 1753, was a man of flio finest intellect tliat any country ever produced. ' The three ablest men I have ever heard, \'i'ere Mr Pitt, (the father), Mr Murray, and Mr Malone. For a popular assembly I would choose Mr Pitt; for a privy council, Murray; for twelve wise men, Malone.* This was the opinion which Lord Sackville, the secretary of 1 755, gave to a gentleman from whom I heard it. * He is a great sea in a calm,' said Mr Gerrard Hamilton, another great judge of men and talents: * Ay,' it was replied, ' but had you seen him when he was young, you would have said he was a great sea in a storm. ' And like the sea, whether in calm or storm, he was a great produc- tion ofnaiure. " Lord Pery.— He is not yet canonized by death ; but he, like the rest, has been canonized by slander. He was more or less a party in all those measures which the pamphlet condemns, and in- deed in every great statute and measure that took place in Ireland for the last fifty years. A man of the most legislative capacity I ever knew, and the most comprehensive reach of understanding I ever saw ; with a deep engraven impression of public care, accom- panied by a temper which was adamant. In his train is every private virtue that can adorn human nature. " Mr Brownlow ; Sir William Osborne. — I wish we had more of these criminals. The former seconded the address of 1782, and in tlie latter, and in both, there was a station of mind that would have become the proudest senate in Europe. ♦ Mr Malone was no more in 1783, but his portrait is preserved tliat llie group might not be dieturbcd. 136 LIFE OF CURRAN. enterprise, and exhibiting in their virtues or their crimes all the turbulent energy of the storms that " Mr Flood ; my rival, as the pamphlet calls him ; and I should be unworthy the character of his rival, if in his grave I did not do him justice. He had his faults ; but he had great powers, great public effect : he persuaded the old, he inspired the young ; the Castle vanished before him. On a small subject he was miserable : put into his hand a distaff", and, like Hercules, he made sad work of it ; but give him the thunderbolt, and he had the arm of a Ju- piter. He misjudged when he transferred himself to the English parliament; he forgot that he was a tree of the forest, too old and too great to be transplanted at fifty ; and his fate in the British parliament is a caution to the friends of union to stay at home, and make the country of their birth the seat of their action. " Mr Burgh. — Another great person in those scenes which it is not in the little quill of this author to depreciate. He was a man singularly gifted, with great talent, great variety — wit, oratory, and logic. He too had his weakness; but he had the pride of genius also, and strove to raise his country along with himself, and never sought to build his elevation on the degradation of Ireland. " I moved an amendment for a free export; he moved a better amendment, and he lost his place. 1 moved a declaration of right; * With my last breath will I support the right of the Irish parlia- ment,' was his note to me when I applied to him for his support ; he lost the chance of recovering his place and his way to the seals, for which he might have bartered. The gates of promotion were shut on him as those of glory opened. " Mr Daly ; my beloved friend. He in a gieat measure drew the address of 1779 in favour of our trade, that ' ungracious mea- LIFE OF CURRAN. 137 were agitating their country. The Irish Revolu- tion of 1782, with the memorable acts and deli- berations of which period the political history of Ireland commences, had just taken place; and al- though it preceded by a little time Mr Curran's entrance into parliament, it still cannot but be adverted to as an event which had a powerful in- fluence upon the fortune and conduct of his future life. He was of too ardent a temper not to be deeply moved by the circumstances which accom- panied that measure : he was the familiar friend of the eminent parliamentary leaders who had been most instrumental in achieving it ; he had witnessed the virtuous struggles and the scenes of sure;' and he saw, read, and approved of the address of 1782 in favour of our constitution, that ' address of separation.' He visited me in my illness at that moment, and I had communication on those suhjccts with that man whose powers of oratory were next to perfection, and whose powers of understanding I might say, from what has lately happened, bordered on the spirit of prophecy. " IMr Forbes. — A name I shall ever regard, and a death I shall ever deplore. Enlightened, sensible, laborious, and useful ; proud in poverty, and patriotic : he preferred exile to apostasy, and met his death. I speak of the dead — I say nothing of the living ; but that I attribute to this constellation of great men, in 3 great measure, the privileges of your country ; and 1 attribute such a generation of men to the residence of your parliament. 138 LIFE OF CURRAN. civic heroism displayed by them and by the na- tion at this arduous crisis ; and the impression that they made upon his imagination and his convic- tion was never after effaced. In order therefore fully to comprehend the feelings with which he entered upon his duties as an Irish senator, it will be necessary to make a few observations upon the condition in which he found his country, and upon that from which she had recently emerged. The fervour of his political opinions, and his de- voted adherence to the popular cause, exposed him at different periods of his life to no little ca- lumny and reproach : but those who impartially consider the past and cotemporary history of Ire- land will find in every page of it his excuse, if not his most ample justification. For centuries Ireland had been in a state of miserable bondage. Her history is but the dis- gusting catalogue of her sufferings, exciting to unprofitable retaliation, from which she regularly sunk, subdued but untranquillized, into a condi- tion of more imbittered wretchedness,* with the * " The slave, that struggles without breaking his chain, pro- vokes the tyrant to double it, and gives him the plea of self-de- fence for extinguishing what at first he only intended to subdue." — Mr Curran's speech in Howison's case. LIFE OF CURHAN. 139 penalties of rebellion superadded to the calamities of oppression. From the period of her annexa- tion to England in the twelfth century, down to the close of the seventeenth, she had thus continu- ed, barbarous and restless ; too feeble and disunited to succeed, too strong, and proud, and irritated, to despair ; alternating in dreary succession be- tween wild exertions of delirious strength and the troubled sleep of exhausted fury. It would be foreign to the present purpose to enter into the merits of these melancholy conflicts ; to grope amidst uninteresting records, to ascertain whe- ther Ireland as an unruly province deserved her fate, or whether her condition was attributable to an inveterate spirit of vindictive domination in the English governments. But as we approach more modern times, all obscurity on the subject ceases : we find the ruling country adopting a formal, avowed design of humiliation, which, how- ever applauded (as it still continues to be by some) under the imposing phrase of the " wisdom of our ancestors," was, in reality, founded in much in- justice, and if effects be any test, in as much folly ; and after agitating and afflicting the kingdom for the last century, seems likely to visit in its conse- quences the next. 140 LIFE OF CUR RAN. It was immediately after the Revolution of 1688, that era of glory and freedom to England, that Ireland became the victim of this systematic plan of debasement. Her adherence to the deposed monarch and its result are familiar to all. James's party having been crushed, Ireland was treated as a conquered country, that merited nothing but chastisement and scorn. This was not the policy of the English king ; it was that of the English whigs,* the framers of the Bill of Rights, the boasted champions of liberty at home. By these • " I am sorry to reflect, that since the late revolution in these kingdoms, when the subjects of England have more strenuously than ever asserted their own rights and the liberty of parliaments, it has pleased them to bear harder on their poor neighbours than has ever yet been done in many ages {oTegoing,"—Moli/neux^8 Cause of Ireland. This little volume, written throughout with a modesty and ability worthy of the friend of Locke, was formally censured by the Eng- lish House of Commons. A circumstance that preceded its publica- tion is not without interest The author, apprehensive of any uncon- scious bias upon his mind, wrote to his friend for his opinion of some of the arguments ; Locke replied by inviting him to pass over to England, and confer with him in person upon the subject. Molyneux complied, and after spending, as the account states, and as may be well believed, the five most delightful weeks of his life in the society of his illustrious friend, returned to Dublin and pub- lislied bis work. LIFE OF CURRAN. HI men, and by their successors (who, of whatever political denomination, agreed with them in their intolerance), was Ireland, without shame or pity, dismantled of her most precious rights. Laws were made to bind her, without consulting the Irish parliament, which, when it remonstrated, was charged with riot and sedition.* Her com- merce was openly discouraged. A code more furious than bigotry had hitherto penned, was levelled against the mass of the nation, the Roman Catholics.f They were successively excluded from the right to sit in parliament, to acquire land, to hold any employment under the crown, to vote in elections of members of parliament, to inter- marry with protestants, to exercise religious wor- ship ; in short, by a kind of constructive annihi- * When the Irish commons in 1792 claimed tlie right of origi- nating money bills, they were told by the viceroy, Lord Sidney, that " they might go to England, and beg their Majesties' pardon for their riotous and seditious assemblies." f " You abhorred it, as I did, for its vicious perfection ; for I must do it justice, it was a complete system, full of coherence and consistency, well digested and well composed in all its parts. It was a machine of wise and elaborate contrivance, and as well fit- ted for the oppression, impoverishment, and degradation of a peo- ple, and the debasement in them of human nature itself, as ever proceeded from the perverted ingenuity of man,"— JBurke^s Letter to Sir H. Lavip-ishe. 142 LIFE OF CURRAN. lation, " the laws did not presume a papist to exist in the kingdom, nor could they breathe without the connivance of government." f This state of national humiliation lasted almost a century. Viceroy succeeded viceroy with no other rule of government than to continue the system as he found it. A race of subordinate ministers sprang up within the land, of no public virtue, no expanded thought, utterly unconscious that man can be improved ; exhibiting in their heartless measures that practical ferocity for which jailors or keepers would be selected, rather than those mild and sanative qualities that might have soothed the distempers of the times. " Hence it is," said Mr Curran, speaking of this period, " that the administration of Ireland so often pre-' sents to the reader of her history, not the view of a legitimate government, but rather of an en- campment in the country of a barbarous enemy, where the object of an invader is not government but conquest; where he is of course obliged to resort to the corrupting of clans, or of single in- dividuals, pointed out to his notice by public ab- horrence, and recommended to his confidence only f Such was the declaration from the bench of the Irish chan« ccllor in 1 759. LIFE OF CURRAN. 14-3 by a treachery so rank and consummate as precludes all possibility of their return to private virtue or to public reliance, and therefore only put into authority over a wretched country, condemned to the torture of all that petulant unfeeling asperity with which a narrow and malignant mind will brisr- tie in unmerited elevation ; condemned to be be- trayed, and disgraced, and exhausted by the little traitors that have been suffered to nestle and o-row within it; who make it at once the source of their grandeur and the victim of their vices ; reducing it to the melancholy necessity of supporting their consequence and of sinking under their crimes, like the lion perishing by the poison of a reptile that finds shelter in the mane of the noble animal, while it is stinging him to death." f - Ireland was in those times in as stranj^e and disastrous a situation as can well be imagined; her own legislature hating and trampling upon her people, and the English government suspect- ing and despising both. There may have been sufficient intricacy in the minor details of the policy of the time, but the leading maxims appear in all the clearness of despotic simplicity. They were to awe the real or imputed disaffection of the f Mr Curran's speech in Howison's case. 144' LIFE OF CURRAN. natives by means of a harsh domestic administra- tion, and to check any more general exercise of power assumed by that administration, as an in- trusion upon the legislative supremacy of England. As far as respected internal concerns, the Irish lords and commons were a triumphant faction, despoiling and insulting the remains of a fallen enemy : in their relation with England they were miserable instruments, without confidence or dig- nity; armed by their employers with the fullest authority to molest or to crush, but instantly and contemptuously reminded of their own degrada- tion, if ever they evinced any presumptuous desire to redress. Against so unnatural a system, it is no wonder that the claims of freedom should have no avail. If a transient scream was heard among the people, it excited immediate alarm at home, as ominous of an approaching storm;* if her voice issued. * Upon the trial of the printer of Swift's celebrated Letters of a Drapier, the lord chief-justice, Whitshed, declared that the author's intention was to bring in the Pretender. — Plowden's History of Ireland, vol. ii. p. SI. Dr Lucas, who ventured in his writings to vindicate the rights of the Irish commons, was declared by that house an enemy to his country, and obliged to seek for safety in exile (1747). LIFE OF CURRAN. Ii5 as it sometimes did, from the Irish commons, it was considered a daring invasion of the rights of of a higher power.* If the spirit of that house became too unruly for provincial purposes, the patriotic murmur was quickly hushed by lengthen- ing the pension list : a given number of oppres- sors was required, and while a venal heart was to he had in the market, no matter how high the price, the price was paid, and the nation called on (in addition to its other burdens) to defray the expenses of its own wrongs. Thus it continued for many years, with all the miseries of despotism without its repose: commerce extinguished, the public spirit broken, public ho- nour and private confidence banished, bigotry and faction alone triumphant. Sentiments of wisdom and pity at length oc- curred to the English cabinet. It began to doubt if the Irish people were so incurably furious as their tormentors had represented. It resolved to inquire, and, if necessary, to redress. A very little investigation proved that never was some merciful interposition more opportune ; it was like a visit to some secret cell to rescue the victims of imputed frenzy from their inhuman immurers, who had • Vide question of the appropriation of the surplus, in 1755. VOL. I. L 146 LIFE OF CUEHAN. chained their persons and traduced their intellects,: that they might prey upon their inheritance. The subject of the first healing measure was the parliament. There was no representation of the people in Ireland : there was a House of Com- mons, which, having no limits to its duration, had become a banditti of perpetual dictators.*: The octennial bill was passed, and the hardened veterans disbanded.f This was not for the pur- pose of making even a nominal appeal to the sense of the nation : it was to give the crown an oppor- tunity of dispersing that provincial oligarchy, whose maxims had been so ruinous to their coun- ; try, and of substituting in their place a class of more pliant dependants, who might readily ac- cord with the purposed lenity of the new system. As a right, or a security for a right, which no- thing can give a people if they give it not them- . selves, this act effected little. As a diminution of calamity, as a transfer from the barbarous domi- nion of their domestic tyrants to the more consi- derate and enlightened controul of the English * And four-fifths of the people were excluded from the elective franchise by the 1st Geo. II. c. 9. + 1767, under the admimstration of Lord Townshend. LIFE OF CURRAN. H'7 ministry, it had its value. It was received by the nation, who have ever been as precipitate in their gratitude as in their resentments, with transports of enthusiastic and unaccustomed joy; a signal proof, if such were wanting, of their loyalty and their debasement. The Irish House of Commons, however, began now to wear in some degree the appearance of a constitutional assembly. Notwithstanding the po" litical ignominy into which the nation had fallen, there still existed in that house a small band of able and upright men, who entertained more manly and charitable notions of a people's claims than their ungenerous opponents; and who, though they might not possess the power of redressing the immediate wrongs, were still ever at hand to refute the baneful doctrines that would have sanctioned their continuance. In the British senate, too, (it should be gratefully remembered) Ireland had her advocates; whose expanded minds, superior to the paltry ambition of domination, would have made the noblest use of their own privileges, that of liberally imparting them. The consequences of these better opinions occasionally appeared ; the viceroy was defeated upon some constitutional ♦ 148 LIFE OF CUllRAN. questions ;* the commons were reprimanded and prorogued ; measures full of honour to them, and of hope to their country. But these were only transitory visitations of spirit; the effects rather of the negligence than the weakness of the viceroy. The ranks of the opposition were soon thinned by the never-failing expedient, and whatever relief was meditated for the Irish, was to come in the form of a gift, and not a concession. Relief was certainly in the con- templation of the English minister ;f to what ex- tent it is now immaterial to inquire; he was anti- cipated by events that were above his controul. Ireland was now upon the eve of " a great ori- ginal transaction." The American colonies had revolted; the Irish linen trade with those pro- vinces, which had been the principal of Ireland's few sources of commercial wealth, instantly va- nished; to this was added a general embargo upon the exportation of provisions, lest they might circuitously reach the insurgents. Univer- sal distress ensued. The Commons for the first • Among other instances of the increasing spirit of the House of Commons, was their repeated rejections of money bills, because they did not take their rise in that house. 1769. f Lord North, LIFE OF CURRAN. 149 time assumed the attitude of representatives of" the nation : they addressed the viceroy upon the pub- lic emergencies with dignity and firmness, and were dissolved.* Strenuous measui'es were taken by the government to secure a majority in the parliament that followed ; but the crisis soon ar- rived when the destinies of the country were trans- ferred to other hands. The internal wretchedness of Ireland had been great; it was now aggi'avated by the dangers of war. The regular forces in the kingdom exceeded not five thousand men, the remainder having been call- ed off to recruit the army in America. The ene- my's fleets, superior to that of Great Britain, were careering in triumph through the channel, and daily expected upon Ireland's unprotected coasts. In this emergency, the town of Belfast, having applied to government for a military reinforce- ment, and its requisition having been answered by an offer of supply that cannot be related with gravity,! had the honour of first raising that warning voice, which, hushing every baser mur- • 1777. + The ansxver of the government was, that all the assistance it could afibrd was half a troop of dismounted horse, and half a com- pany of invalids. 150 LIFE OF CURRAN. mur, awoke the nation to confidence and strength. She called upon her citizens to arm in their de- fence. A corps of volunteers was immediately established. The noble example was ardently followed by the country at large, and Ireland soon beheld starting up, with a scenic rapidity, a self-collected, self-disciplined body of forty thou- sand volunteers.f " You cannot but remember," f Since the first publication of this Work the writer has been favoured with information that he regards as authentic, from which it would appear that the plan of the volunteer associations emanated from the " Monks of the Screw." The chief object of that socie- ty was to prepare the public mind, by means of the press, for 3 constitutional resistance to the usurpation of the English parlia- ment. A few members of bolder views frequently discussed the practicability of arming Ireland. One of these was Lord Car- hampton, who, on hearing the answer of the government to the re- quisition from Belfast, exclaimed to Dr Jebb, " Now is our time." Dr Jebb replied, " that the country was ripe for the proposal, and that, if supplied with a small sum to defray the incidental expenses, he would undertake to ensure its success." He named L.40, and that sum was handed to him from the funds of the society. He was asked no questions — and he never mentioned himself in what particular manner he had employed it. In a few days after, Bel- fast and other towns, both in the North and South of Ireland, declared themselves. Doctor Jebb had established a political correspondence with all the considerable places in the kingdom —and his friends who had been present at the preceding conver- sation, attributed the rapid and simultaneous formation of Volun- LIFE OF CURRAN. 151 said Mr Curran, describing this scene, of which he had been a witness, " that at a time when we had scarcely a regular soldier for our defence, when the old and young were alarmed and ter- rified with apprehensions of descent upon our coasts, that Providence seemed to have worked a sort of miracle in our favour. You saw a band of armed men come forth at the great call of na- ture, of honour, and their country. You saw men of the greatest wealth and rank ; you saw every class of the community give up its members, and send them armed into the field, to protect the public and private tranquillity of Ireland. It is impossible for any man to turn back to that pe- riod, without reviving those sentiments of tender- ness and gratitude which then beat in the public bosom ; to recollect amidst what applause, what tears, what prayers, what benedictions, they walk- ed forth amongst spectators agitated by the min- gled sensations of terror and of reliance, of dan- ger and of protection, imploring the blessings of Heaven upon their heads, and its conquest upon their swords. That illustrious, and adored, and abused body of men, stood forward and assumed teer corps in disiaiU districts, to the impulse given by him through agents or written communications. 152 LIFE OF CURRAN. the title which I trust the ingratitude of their country will never blot from its history, ' The volunteers of Ireland.' " * The original object of these associations had been to defend the country from foreign invasion. The administration, forgetting the loyalty of the proceeding in their affright at so unexpected an exhibition of strength and enterprise, beheld an enemy already in possession of the land ; but affect- ing to countenance what they could not controul, they supplied the volunteers with several thousand stands of arms, and looked to the return of more tranquil and servile times, to disarm and defame them. The volunteers soon swelled into an army of 80,000 men. In their ranks appeared the most admired characters in the kingdom, animating them with the enthusiasm, and tempering the ge- neral ardour by all the courtesy, and the high moral discipline, that the presence of so many noblemen, and senators, and gentlemen could in- spire. They had armed to protect the crown — no invader appeared ; another and a more pre- cious object of protection remained. Ireland * Speech in Hamilton Rowan's case. LIFE OF CUIIRAN. 153 was at their disposal, and they unanimously de- termined that, to consummate their work, they should continue under arms until they saw her free. They resolved " to shew, that if man de- scends, it is not in his proper motion ; that it is with labour and with pain, and that he can continue to sink only until, by the force and pressure of the descent, the spring of his immortal faculties ac- quires that recuperative energy and effort, that hurries him as many miles aloft." * The demands of the volunteers were altogether unlike a mere sudden ebullition of popular discon- tent. They were the result of deep convictions, the splendid signs of the improved opinions of the age. The example of America was before them, and the cry for redress in Ireland was but the echo of that " voice which shouted to liberty " f there. The mode of their constitution, too, was peculiarly fortunate and authoritative. They were not a regular military force, mutinously dictating measures to the state. They were not a band of in- surgents, illegal in their origin and objects. The circumstances of the times had invested the volun- teers with a constitutional character. The go- • Mr Curran's speech in Finnerty's case, f An expression of Mr Flood's. 154: LIFE OF CURRAN. vernment had recognized them, and aided their formation ; the House of Commons voted them a formal declaration of thanks for their public ser- vices : the people looked up to them with admira- tion and respect, as a brave, united, and zealous body, combining the intelligence and moderation of loyal citizens, with the influence and resources of a powerful army. . The effects of the firmness and wisdom of their proceedings were soon apparent. The demand of the nation for a free trade, and the memorable declaration in parliament, " that no power on eart/i, save the King, Lords, and Commons of Ireland, had a right to make laxosfor Ireland"* were no longer disregarded. The case of America had just shewn how a struggle for principle might terminate. *' British supremacy had fallen there like a spent thunderbolt."f The bigotry, servility, and dis- union, which so long supported it in Ireland, had for the moment disappeared. Ireland declared, and England felt, that no other policy remain- ed, " but to do justice to a people, who were otherwise determined to do justice to themselves. ":f * The words of Mr Grattan's motion, April 19. 1780. f Mr Grattan's speech, Nov. 13. 1781. I Mr Grattan's speech, April 19. 1780. LIFE OP CURRAN. 155 The British ministry, whose infatuated counsels had lost America, and whose tardiness and insin- cerity with respect to Ireland had been encourag- ing the spirit of resistance there, were removed, and successors appointed, with instructions to make such honourable concessions as were due to the services, the strength, and the just pretensions of the Irish people. The principal restrictions upon the trade of Ireland had been previously taken off. Under the Marquis of Rockingham's administration, the great leading grievance, that included in its principle so many more, was re- dressed. England resigned her legislative preten- sions, and recognized Ireland to be 2ifree nation* This signal event, so justly denominated by Mr Burke the Irish Revolution, was the work of the Irish volunteers. Their efforts were powerfully aided by the momentary spirit which they infused into the Irish House of Commons. In many of its members, the enthusiasm vanished with the occasion ; but there remained a few, whose better t 1782. Several important constitutional acts were passed in Ireland during this short administration. A habeas corpus act, the repeal of the perpetual mutiny bill, the act for the inde- pendence of the judges, an act in favour of dissenting protcstants. A slight relaxation of the penal code had taken place in 1778. 156 LIFE OF CURRAN. natures, superior to the controul of accident, con- tinued to struggle for the public good with a con- stancy, ability, and zeal, which sprang from with- in themselves. Their merits have been long since recorded : the pre-eminent merits of their illustri- ous leader, now associated with the proudest re- collections of his country, require no new attesta- tion. Mr Grattan's most splendid panegyric, for the only one truly worthy of him, we are to look in what he has himself pronounced. His public exertions, the monuments of his genius and his worth, are preserved: his historian will have but to collect and refer to them, justly confiding, that as long as eloquence, patriotism, intrepidity, and uncompromising honour are valued in public men, the example of Mr Grattan will remain the sub- ject of lasting gratitude and praise.* • Mr Grattan, like other men of original genius and character, has been many times in the course of his memorable career mis- represented and reviled. The following spirited defence of him against such attacks was made in the Irish House of Commons, by his friend Mr Peter Burroughs, a gentleman who has been long distinguished for his eloquence in the senate, and at the bar, and for the unsuspected purity of his public and private life. " I cannot repress my indignation, at the audacious boldness of the calumny, which would asperse one of the most exalted characters which any nation ever produced ; and that in a country which LIFE OF CURRAN. 157 The triumph which Ireland gained in the de- claration of her independence, was the triumph of a principle, which, however glorious it might have been to those who achieved it, failed to con- fer upon the nation the benefit and repose that the political philanthropist fondly anticipated. The spirit of the parliament was exhausted in the single effort — they had emancipated them- selves from the controul of another legislature ; but no sooner was the victory obtained, than it be- owes its liberty, and its greatness, to the energy of his exertions, and in the very house which has so often been the theatre of his "lorious labours, and splendid achievements. I remember that man the theme of universal panegyric — the wonder and the boast of Ireland, for his genius and his virtue. His name silenced the sceptic, upon the reality of genuine patriotism. To doubt the purity of his motives was a heresy which no tongue dared to utter. Envy was lost in admiration ; and even those whose crimes he scourged, blended extorted praises with the murmurs of resentment. He covered our {then) unfledged constitution with the ample wings of his talents, as an eagle covers her young ; like her he soared, and like her he could behold the rays, whether of royal favour or royal anger, with undazzled, unintimidated eye. If, according to Demosthenes, to grow with the growth, and decay with the decline of our country, be the true criterion of a good citizen, how infinite- ly did this man, even in the moment of his lowest depression, sur- pass those upstart patriots who only become visible when their coun- try vanishes!" iS8 LIFE OF CURRAN. came evident that very few of its fruits were to be shared among the people. Great domestic abuses still prevailed; the corrupt state of the legisla- ture ; * its consequence, an enormous and increas- ing pension list ; and, above all, the exclusion of the Roman catholics from the most valuable pri- vileges of the constitution. There were many others of subordinate importance. From Mr Curran's entrance into parliament, he joined those whose opinion it was that these abuses should be corrected. The result of the exertions of himself and the party with which, for the fourteen years that he was a senator, he acted, is shortly told. They almost uniformly failed in every measure that they brought forward or opposed. It would far exceed the limits and the objects of this Work to discuss at any length the merits of these several measures, some of which continue to this day the subject of anxious controversy upon another and a greater theatre. Yet it may be observed, that the ♦ According to a table of the state of the representation of Ire- land, published in 1783, out of the 300 members of the House of Commons, (viz. for 32 counties, 64 knights; for seven cities, 14 citizens; for one university, 2 representatives; for 110 boroughs, 220 burgesses), the people returned 81, including the 64 for coun- ties, and the patrons the remaining 219. LIFE OF CUBUAN. 159 acts of the Irish legislature, during the period in- question, afford matter, if not of a very attractive kind, at least of very solemn and important in- struction. Whoever takes the pains to examine them will find how transitory, and almost value- less to a nation the glory of asserting nominal rights, if there be not diffused throughout its va- rious classes that fund of conservative virtue and spirit, which alone can give dignity and stability to its independence, by operating as a perpetual renewal of its claims. He will find one practical and terrible example (illustrated by continued dis- ' contents and disturbances, and finally by a rebel- lion), of the folly of expecting that human beings, in whom the political passions have been once awakened, can be attached, or even reconciled, ; to the most admired form of government, by any other means, than by a I'eal and conscientious ; communication of those privileges, for which they would deem it dishonourable not to thirst. For the last eighteen years of her separate existence, Ireland was in the theoretic enjoyment of the same constitution which has long made Great Britain the wonder of other nations ; but in Ire- land, however boasted the acquisition, it soon appeared to be but a lifeless copy, minutely exact 160 LIFE OF CURRAN. in external form, but wanting all the vigour, and warmth, and imparting spirit of the glorious ori- ginal. The Irish legislature, seduced by their fa- tal ardour for monopoly, would not see that their own emancipation had sent abroad a general taste for freedom, which it was most perilous to disap- point. Unwisely and ungenerously separating their interests and pride from those of their coun- try, they preferred taking a weak and hostile po- sition upon the narrow ground of exclusive privi- lege, instead of taking their stand, where there Was ample space for the parliament and people, and for all, upon the base of the British constitu- tion.* They affected to think that the time had not arrived when the Catholic could be trusted ; as if the enjoyment of rights and confidence for a single year would not prove a more instructive school of fidelity than centuries of suspicion and * " I have read," (said Mr Curran, speaking of these unpopular maxims of the Irish Parliament), " I have read the history of other nations. I have read the history of yours. I have seen how hap- pily you emerged from insignificance, and obtained a constitution." But when you washed this constitution with the waters which were to render it invulnerable, you forgot that the part by whicli you held it was untouched in the immersion; it was benumbed, and not rendered invulnerable, and should therefore attract your nicest care."— Irish Far. Deb. 1787. LIFE OF CURRA>:. 161 exclusion. But in reality, it does not appear from the transactions of those times, that the minds of the excluded catholics were less matured for all the responsibilities of independence than those of the Irish aristocracy, upon whom alone the recent revolution had conferred it. The 80,000 volun- teers, who had been the instruments of that inde- pendence, were not a protestant association. The depreciated catholic was in their ranks, adding the authority of his strength, his zeal, and his mode- ration, to the cause of the Irish parliament, and not unreasonably confiding, that in the hour of victory his services would be remembered. These services and claims were however forgotten ; and here it is that the Irish legislature will be found utterly unworthy of that controlling power, which they had lately acquired over the destinies of their countr}', — in abandoning, as they did, a proud, iiTitated, and robust population, to all the sug- gestions and resources of their indignation — in not having " interposed the constitution," to save the state. But the point of view, in which a regular his- tory of the latter conduct and character of the Irish House of Commons would supply matter of no ordinaiy interest to a lover of the British con- VOL. I. M 162 LIFE OF CURRAN. stitution, is in the example which it would afford, of an assembly, founded upon the model of that constitution, exhibiting itself in its stage of final deterioration. In Ireland the prediction of Mon- tesquieu* has been verified — not in all its dismal extent, for Irish independence has found an eutha- nasia peculiar and accidental ; but still the spec- tacle of legislative immorality, and its instructive warnings, are the same. The corrupted Com- mons of Ireland surrendered all that was demand- ed — all that a few years before they had gloried in having acquired ; and if a valuable portion of their country's rights and hopes was not included in the sale, the praise of having respected them is due to the wisdom and mercy of the purchasers, and not to any honourable reluctance on the side of the mercenary sellers. In whatever light the act of Union be viewed in its ultimate consequences to the empire, the assembly which perpetrated it must be considered as having reached the farthest limits of degeneracy ; because the terras on which they insisted have stamped upon them a character of political dishonour, that disdained every con- * " That the British constitution would not survive the event of the legislative power becoming more corrupt than the executive." —Spirit of Laius. LIFE OF CURRAN. 163 troul of compunction or of pride. For if the sur- render to which they consented was regarded by them as a sacrifice of Ireland's rights, how enor- mous and unmitigated the dehnquency ! — or if, on the other hand, they imagined it to be essen- tial to the welfare of the empire, how vile and fallen that spirit which could degrade a necessary act of state into a sordid contract ! The pailia- ment that could do this had no longer any morals to lose, — and therefore it is that the constitutional Englishman, who is labouring to procrastinate the fulfilment of the prophecy that impends over his own hitherto more fortunate country, is referred for abundant illustrations of the apprehended crisis to the decline and fall of the Irish legisla- ture. In contemplating that scene, he will have an opportunity of observing the great leading symptoms, and (which may equally deserve his attention) of discerning the minute, but no less unerring signs which portend that the spirit which gives it life is about to depart from the represen- tative body : and should it ever be his calamity to witness, what he will find Ireland was condemned to see, the members of that body betraying, by their conduct and language, that they held their station as a portion of their private property, 16^ LIFE OF CURRAN. rather than as a temporary public trust — should he observe a general and insatiate appetite for power, for the sake of its emoluments and not its honours — should he see, as Ireland did, grave and authenticated charges of public delinquency answered by personal menaces, or by most inde- cent ridicule, — skilful duellists and jesters held in peculiar honour, — public virtue systematically discountenanced, by imputing its profession to a factious disappointed spirit — should he see, within the walls of the Commons' assembly, a standing brigade of mercenaries, recognizing no duty be- yond fidelity to their employers, the Swiss de- fenders of any minister or any principle — should he, lastly, observe a marked predilection for penal restraints, an unseemly propensity to tamper with the constitution, by experimental suspensions of its established usages — should Englishmen ever find all, or many of these to be the characteristics of the depositaries of their rights, let them remem- ber the prediction of the philosopher, and the fate of Ireland, and be assured that their boasted se- curities are becomins: but a name. But to record at length the progress of that fate, to dwell in any detail upon the various char- acters, and the various inducements (whether of LIFE OF CURRAN. 165 hope, or terror, or avarice, or ambition, or public duty), of the men who accelerated, and of those who would have averted the catastrophe, might well be the subject of a separate and a very con- siderable work. It will be sufficient for the pur- poses of Mr Curran's history to have made these cursory allusions to the spirit of the times in which he acted, leaving more ample developments of it to himself, in the specimens of his eloquence that will be found in the following pages. Mr Curran's parliamentary speeches have been always and justly considered as inferior to his dis- plays at the bar. To this deficiency many cir- cumstances contributed. Depending solely upon his profession for support, he not only was seldom able to give an undivided attention to the ques- tions brought before the senate, but he perpetual- ly came to the discussion of them, exhausted by the professional labours of the day. The greater number of the important questions that emanated from the opposition were naturally introduced by the older leaders of that party; while he, whose talents were most powerful in reply, was reserved to combat the arguments of the other side. The debates, upon these occasions, were in general protracted to a very late hour; so that it often 166 LIFE OF CURRAN. happened, when Mr Curran rose to speak, that the note-takers were sleeping over their task, or had actually quitted the gallery. But, most of all, the same carelessness of fame, which has left his speeches at the bar in their present uncorrect- ed state, has irretrievably injured his parliamen- tary reputation. While other members sat up whole nights retouching their speeches for publi- cation, he almost invariably abandoned his to their fate, satisfied with having made the exertion that his sense of duty dictated ; and deeming it of little moment that what had failed of success within the house, should circulate and be applauded with- out.* Notwithstanding these disadvantages, however, his career in parliament supplies much that is in the highest degree honourable to his talents, and spirit, and public integrity ; of which the leading examples shall be adverted to, as they occur in the order of time. • Another circumstance contributed greatly to the inaccuracy of the reported speeches of such opposition members as would not take the pains of correcting them. The most skilful note-takers, of whom the number was very small, were in the service of the government, and considered it a part of their duty to suppress whatever it might not be agreeable to the administration to see published. JAFE OF CURRAN. 167 CHAPTER VI. Mr Flood's plan of Parliamentary Reform — Mr Curran's contest and Duel with Mr Fitzgibbon (afterwards Lord Clare) — Speech on Pensions — His Professional Success — Mode of Life — Occa- sional Verses — Visits France — Letters from Dieppe and Rouen — Anecdote — Letter from Paris — Anecdote — Letter from Mr Boyse — Anecdote of Mr Boyse — Letters from Holland. The first occasion upon which Mr Curran's name appears in the parliamentary register, is in the tempestuous debate of November 29. 1783, upon Mr Flood's proposition for a reform in parliament. The convention of volunteers, by whom Mr Flood's plan had been approved, was still sitting in Dublin. About four o'clock in the afternoon of the 29th of November, that gentleman rose in the convention, and proposed that he, accompanied by such mem- bers of parliament as were then present, should immediately go down to the House of Commons, and move for leave to bring in a bill exactly cor- responding with the plan of reform approved of by them, and that the convention should not ad- journ till the fote of his motion was ascertained. Lord Charlemont's biographer, who, apparently i68 LIFE OF CURIIAN. with much reason, condemns the violence of this proceeding, describes the scene in the House of Commons as terrific : several of the minority, and all the delegates from the convention, appeared in their military uniforms. As to the debate, " it was uproai% it was clamour, violent menace, and furious recrimination." * In the little that Mr Curran said, he supported Mr Flood's motion. In the following month he spoke at more length in prefacing a motion on the right of the House of Commons to originate money bills ; but as neither this, nor any of his parliamentary speeches during the sessions of 1783 and 1784, contain much that is remarkable, it would be unnecessarily swelling these pages to dwell upon them in detail. In the year 1785 took place his quarrel with the late Lord Clare (then Mr Fitzgibbon, the attorney-general), an event which deeply affected his future fortunes. During Mr Curran's first years at the bar they had been on terms of polite and even familiar intercourse ;t but the dissimi- larity of their public characters, the high aristo- * Hardy s Life of Lord Charlemont, page 270; where the par- ticulars of this interesting scene are very strikingly detailed. f The first bag that Mr Curran ever carried was presented to him by Mr Fitzgibbon, for good luck sake. J.1FE OF CURRAN. 169 cratic arrogance of the one, and the popular tenets of the other, soon separated them. Even their private tastes and habits would have forbidden a lasting friendship. Lord Clare despised literature, in vkhieh Mr Curran so delighted. The one in private as in public disdained all the arts of win- ning ; he was sullen or overbearing, and, when lie condescended to be jocular, was generally of- fensive. The other was in all companies the reverse ; playful, communicative, and conciliating. Mr Curran nerer, like his more haughty rival, regulated his urbanity by the rank of his compa- nions ; or if he did, it was by a diametrically opposite rule ; the more humble the person, the more cautiously did he abstain from inflicting pain. For all those lighter talents of wit and fancy which Mr Curran was incessantly and almost involun- tarily displaying. Lord Clare had a real or an affected contempt, and would fain persuade him- self that they were incompatible with those higher powers which he considered could alone raise the possessor to an equality with himself. Mr Curran was perhaps equally hasty in underrating the abi- lities of his antagonist. Detesting his arbitrary principles, and disgusted with his unpopular man- ners, he would sec nothing in him but the petty 170 LIFE OF CURRAN. despot, ascending to a bad eminence by obvious and unworthy methods, and therefore meriting his unqualified hatred and invective. With such elements of personal dislike and po- litical hostility, it is not surprising that when they met they should clash, and that the conflict should be violent and lasting. The very destinies of the two men seemed to have placed them where their contrasted qualities and peculiar force might be most strikingly displayed. Lord Clare was fitted by nature to attain power and to abuse it. Many men of inferior capacity might have attained as much ; but without his resources and perseverance, few could have continued so long to abuse it with impunity. Mr Curran was either ignorant of, or despised, the arts which led to station : his talent lay not in defending doubtful measures or selecting political expedients, but in exposing violated trust, in braving and denouncing public delinquents, in pathetic or indignant appeals to those natural ele- mentary principles of human rights, against which political expedients are too frequently directed. He could never, like Lord Clare, have managed a venal, restless aristocracy, so as to command their concurrence in a long system of unpopular encroachments ; nor like him have continued for LIFE OF CURRAN. 171 years to face the public reprobation of such con- duct : as little could the latter, had he sided with the people, have brought to their cause such va- ried stores of wit and ridicule, and persuasive eloquence, as the harangues of his more gifted rival display. In a debate on attachments* in the Irish House of Commons (1785), as Mr Curran rose to speak against them, perceiving that Mr Fitzgibbon had fallen asleep on his seat, he thus commenced : " I hope I may say a few words on this great subject without disturbing the sleep of any right honour- able member ; and yet perhaps I ought rather to envy than blame the tranquillity of the right ho- nourable gentleman. I do not feel myself so hap- pily tempered as to be lulled to repose by the storms that shake the land. If they invite rest to any, that rest ought not to be lavished on the * This debate arose out of one of the most arbitrary measures of Mr Fitzgibbon. The High-Sheriff of the county of Dublin had convened and presided at a meeting of liis county, in which resolu- tions of a seditious tendency were passed. The Sherifl's conduct appears to have amounted to an Indictable misdemeanor; but the attorney-general, instead of proceeding against him by Indict- ment or Information, adopted the more summary mode of attach- ment. The SherifT was accordingly fined and imprisoned. 172 LIFE OF CURBAN. guilty spirit."* Provoked by these expressions, and by the general tenor of the observations that followed, Mr Fitzgibbon replied to Mr Curran with much personality, and, among other things, denominated him a puny babbler. The latter re- torted by the following description of his oppo- nent: " I am not a man whose respect in person and character depends upon the importance of his office ; I am not a young man who thrusts himself into the fore-ground of a picture, which ought to be occupied by a better figure ; I am not one who replies with invective when sinking under the weight of argument ; I am not a man who denies the necessity of a parliamentary reform at the time that he proves its expediency by reviling his own constituents, the parish-clerk, the sexton, and grave-digger ; and if there be any man who can apply what I am not to himself, I leave him to think of it in the committee, and contemplate upon * Although Mr Curran appears here to have commenced hosti- lities, it should be mentioned, that he was apprized of Mr Fitzgib- bon's having given out in the ministerial circles that he should take an opportunity during this debate, in which he knew that Mr Cur- ran would take a part, of putting down the young patriot. The Duchess of Rutland and all the ladies of the Castle were present in the gallery to witness what Mr Curran called, in the course of the debate^ " this exhibition by command." LIFE OF CURRAN. 173 it when he goes home." The result of this nio;ht's debate was a duel between Mr Curran and Mr Fitzgibbon : after exchanging shots they separat- ed, only confirmed in their feelings of mutual aver- sion, of which some of the consequences will here- after appear. One of the public grievances, which the Irish opposition frequently but vainly attempted to re- dress, was the enormity of the pension list. On the 13th of May in this year (1786), Mr Forbes brought forward a motion upon the subject, which, as usual, failed. A part of Mr Curran's speech upon that occasion may be given as a specimen of the lighter mode of attack to which he sometimes resorted where he saw that gravity would have been unavailing ; and it may be observed, that this, like many more of the same kind, are histo- rical documents, which arc perhaps the most de- scriptive of the times. The very absence of seri- ous remonstrance shews that serious remonstrance had been exhausted, and that nothing remained but that ridicule should take its vengeance upon those whom argument could not reform.* • Upon tills occasion, Mr Grattnn caused the pension list to he read aloud by the clerk, and concluded his speech by saying, " If I should vote that pensions are not a grievance, I sliould vote an in^ pudtnt, an insolent, and a public lie." 1 74 LIFE OF CURRAN. " I am surprised that gentlemen have taken up such a foolish opinion as that our constitution is maintained by its different component parts mu- tually checking and controlling each other. They seem to think, with Hobbes, that a state of nature is a state of warfare, and that, like Mahomet's coffin, the constitution is suspended, by the at- traction of different powers. My friends seem to think that the crown should be restrained from doing wrong by a physical necessity, forgetting that if you take away from a man all power to do wrong, you at the same time take away from him all merit of doing right; and by making it impos- sible for men to run into slavery, you enslave them most effectually. But if, instead of the three diffe- rent parts of our constitution drawing forcibly in right lines at opposite directions, they were to unite their power and draw all one way, in one right line, how great would be the effect of their force, how happy the direction of this union ! The present system is not only contrary to mathe- matical rectitude, but to public harmony : but if, instead of Privilege setting up his back to oppose Pi'erogative, he was to saddle his back and invite Prerogative to ride, hov/ comfortably might they both jog along ; and therefore it deliglits me to LIFE OF CURRAN. 175 hear the advocates for the royal bounty flowing freely, and spontaneously, and abundantly as Holywell in Wales. If the crown grants double the amount of the revenue in pensions, they ap- prove of their royal master, for he is the breath of their nostrils, *' But we will find that this complaisance, this gentleness between the crown and its true servants, is not confined at home ; it extends its influence to foreign powers. Our merchants have been in- sulted in Portugal, our commerce interdicted. What did the British lion do? Did he whet his tusks ? Did he bristle up and shake his mane ? Did he roar ? No, no such thing ; the gentle creature wagged his tail for six years at the court of Lisbon; and now we hear from the Delphic oracle on the treasury bench, that he is wagging his tail in London to Chevalier Pinto, who he hopes soon to be able to tell us will allow his lady to entertain him as a lap-dog; and when she does, no doubt the British flactory will furnish some of their softest woollens to make a cushion for him to lie upon. But though the gentle beast has continued so long fawning and couching, I believe his vengeance will be great as it is slow, and that 176 LIFE OF CURRAN. that posterity whose ancestors are yet unborn will be surprised at the vengeance he will take. " This polyglot of wealth, this museum of curi- osities, the pension list, embraces every link in the human chain, every description of men, women, and children, from the exalted excellence of a Havvke or a Rodney, to the debased situation of a lady who humbleth herself that she may be ex- alted. But the lessons it inculcates form its great- est perfection. It teacheth that sloth and vice may eat that bread which virtue and honesty may starve for after they have earned it : it teaches the idle and dissolute to look up for that support which they are too proud to stoop and earn : it directs the minds of men to an entire reliance upon the ruling power of the state, who feeds the ravens of the royal aviary that cry continually for food : it teaches them to imitate those saints on the pension list that are like the lilies of the field, they toil not, neither do they spin, and yet are arrayed like Solomon in his glory: in fine, it teaches a lesson, which indeed they might have learned from Epictetus, that it is sometimes good not to be over virtuous ; it shews that in propor- tion as our distresses increase, the munificence of the crown increases also ; in proportion as our LIFE OF CURRAN. 177 clothes are rent, the royal mantle is extended over us. " But notwithstanding the pension list, like charity, covers a multitude of sins, give me leave to consider it as coming home to the members of this liouse ; give me leave to say, that the crown, in extending its charity, its liberality, its profu- sion, is laying a foundation for the independence of parliament ; for hereafter, instead of orators or patriots accounting for their conduct to such mean and unworthy persons as freeholders, they will learn to despise them, and look to the first man in the state ; and they will by so doing have this security for their independence, that while any man in the kingdom has a shilling they will not want one. " Suppose at any future period of time the boroughs of Ireland should decline from their present flourishing and prosperous state, — suppose they should fall into the hands of men who would wish to drive a profitable commerce by having members of parliament to hire or let; in such a case a secretary would find a great difficulty, if the proprietors of members should enter into a combination to form a monopoly. To prevent which in time, the wisest way is to purchase up VOL. I. N 178 LIFE OF CURRAN. the raw material, young members of parliament just rough from the grass ; and when they are a little bitted, and he has got a pretty stud, perhaps of seventy, he may laugh at the slave merchant. Some of them he may teach to sound through the nose like a barrel-organ ; some in the course of a few months might be taught to cry, Hear ! hear ! some, Chair ! chair ! upon occasion ; though these latter might create a little confusion if they were to forget whether they were calling inside or out- side of these doors.* Again, he might have some so trained, that he need only pull a string, and up gets a repeating member ; and if they were so dull that they could neither speak nor make orations (for they are diiferent things), he might have them taught to dance, pedibus ire in sententiam. This improvement might be extended ; he might have them dressed in coats and shirts all of one colour, and of a Sunday he might march them to church, two and two, to the great edification of the people, and the honour of the Christian religion. After- wards, like the ancient Spartans, or the fraternity at Kilmainham, they might dine all together in a * The principal stand of sedan chairs, a conveyance at that time in common use, was outside the Parliament-House. LIFE OF CURRAN. 179 large hall. Good Heaven ! what a sight to see them feeding in public, upon public viands, and talking of public subjects, for the benefit of the public ! It is a pity they are not immortal ; but I hope they will flourish as a corporation, and that pensioners will beget pensioners to the end of the chapter." Mr Curran was now (1786) in full practice at the bar. It may be acceptable to hear the man- ner in w^hich he spoke himself of his increasing celebrity. The following is an extract from one of his private letters of this period. " Patterson, Chief-justice of the common pleas, has been given over many days, but still holds out. My good friend Carleton* succeeds him. Had he got this promotion some time ago, it might have been of use to me, for I know he has a friendship for me ; but at present his partiality can add little to whatever advantage I can derive from his leaving about four thousand a-year at the bar. " I understajid they have been puffing me off to you from this (Dublin). I have been indeed very much employed this term, and I find I have * The present Lord Carleton. 180 LIFE OF CURRAN. the merit imputed to me of changing a determi- nation which the Chancellor had formed against Burroughs,* a few days ago. He has really been uncommonly kind and polite to me. This, I believe, is the first time I ever became my own panegyrist, therefore excuse it : I should scarce- ly mention it for any vanity of mine, if it were not of some little value to others ; tot it up there- fore on the table of pence, not on the scale of vain-glory." . His life at this time was passed in a uniform succession of the same occupations, his profes- sional and parliamentary duties. The intervals of business he generally spent at Newmarket, where he had taken a few acres of land, and built a house, to which he gave the name of the Priory, as the residence of the Prior of the Order of St Patrick. In Dublin the reputation of his talents and his convivial powers introduced him to every circle to which he could desire to have access : in the country he entered into all the sports and * The present Sir William Burroughs, Bart, lately one of the Judges of the supreme court of judicature at Calcutta. The cause to which Mr Curran's letter alludes was that of Newberg and Bur- roughs ; by his exertions in which he had acquired a considerable accession of fame. LIFE OF CURRAN. 181 manners of his less polished neighbours, with as much ardour as if it was with them alone that he had passed, and was to pass, his days. The or- dinary routine of his profession took him twice every year to Munster;* and among the many * Upon one of these journeys, and about this period, as Mr Curran was travelling upon an unfrequented road, he perceived a man in a soldier's dress, sitting by the road- side, and apparently much exhausted by fatigue and agitation. He invited him to take a seat in his chaise, and soon discovered that he veas a deserter. Having stopt at a small inn for refreshment, Mr Curran observed to the soldier, that he had committed an offence of which the penalty was death, and that his chance of escaping was but small : " Tell me then, (continued he), whether you feel disposed to pass the little remnant of life that is left you in penitence and fasting, or whether you would prefer to drown your sorrow in a merry glass?" The following is the deserter's answer, which Mr Curran, in com- posing it, adapted to a plaintive Irish air. 1. If sadly thinking, and spirits sinking, Could more than drinking my cares compose, A cure for sorrow from sighs I'd borrow, And hope to-morrow would end my woes. But since in wailing there's nought availing. And fate unfailing will strike the blow. Then for that reason, and for a season, Let us be merry before wc go ! 182 LIFE OF CURRAN. attractions of that circuit, he always considered as one of the greatest, the frequent opportunities it gave him of visiting and spending some happy hours with two of his oldest and dearest friends, (once his college fellow-students), the Rev. Tho- mas Crawford, of Lismore, and the Rev. Richard Carey, of Clonmel ; both of them persons un- known to fame, but both so estimable, as men, and scholars, and companions, that his taste and affections were perpetually recalling him to the charms of their society. It may not be a very dignified circumstance in his history, yet it must be mentioned, that his arrival at Newmarket was always considered there as a most important event. Gibbon somewhere observes, that one of the liveliest pleasures which the pride of a man can enjoy, is to reappear in a 2. To joy a stranger, a way-worn ranger. In every danger my course I've run ; Now hope all ending, and Death befriending, His last aid lending, my cares are done : No more a rover, or hapless lover. Those cares are over, and my glass runs low ; Then for that reason, and for a season, Let us be merry before we go ! LIFE OF CURRAN. 183 more splendid condition among those who had known him in his obscurity. If Mr Curran had been proud, he might have enjoyed this pleasure to the full. Upon the occasion of every return to the scene of his childhood, visits and congratula- tions upon his increasing fame poured in upon " the counsellor" from every side. " His visi- tors," (according to his own description), " were of each sex and of every rank, and their greetings were of as many kinds. Some were delivered in English, some in Irish, and some in a language that was a sort of compromise between the two — some w'ere communicated verbally — some by letter or by deputy, the absentees being just at that moment * in trouble,' which generally nieaned, having been lately committed for isorae ' unintentional' mis- demeanor, from the consequences of which, who could extricate them so successfully as ' the coun- sellor?' — some came in prose — some in all the pomp of verse; for Mr O'Connor, the roving bard, (of whom Mr Curran used to say, that if his imagination could have carried him as far as his legs did, he would have been the most asto- nishing poet of the age), was never absent; at whatever stage of their poetical circuit he and his itinerant muse might be, the moment certain in- 184< LIFE OF CURKAN. telligence reached them that the master of the Priory had arrived, they instantly took a short cut across the country, and laid their periodical offering at the feet of him whose high fortune they had of course been the first to predict." All these petty honours gratified his heart if not his pride, and he never fastidiously rejected them. Those who came from the mere ambition of a personal interview he sent away glorying in their reception, and delighted with his condescen- sion and urbanity ; to those who seemed inclined " to carry away any thing rather than an appe- tite," he gave a dinner. The village disturber of the peace had once more a promise that his rescue should be effected at the ensuing assizes, while the needy laureate seldom failed to receive the " crotwn," which he had " long preferred to the freshest laurels." * * The poetry of the roving bard has by some accident perished ; but his name is preserved in a short and unambitious specimen of his favourite art. His muse at one time became so importunate, that Mr Curran found it necessary to discourage her addresses ; in- stead, therefore, of rewarding one of her efiFusions with the expected donation, he sent the bard the following impromptu : A collier once, in days of yore, From fam'd Newcastle's mines, a store LIFE OF CURRA-N. 185 In the year 1787 Mr Curran visited France, a country for whose literature and manners he had Of coals had rais'd, and with the load He straightway took Whitehaven road ; When thither come, he look'd around, And soon a ready chap he found ; But after all his toil and pain. He measur'd out his coals in vain, For he got nought but coals again. Thus Curran takes O'Connor's lays, And with a verse the verse repays ; Not verse indeed as good as thine, Nor rais'd from such a genuine mine ; But were it better, 'twere i|ftjVMn To emulate O'Connor's strain. Then take, my friend — and freely take, The verseB for the poet's sake : Yet one advice from me receive, 'Twill many vain vexations save; Should, by strange chance, your muse grow poor, Bid her ne'er seek a poet's door. The disappointed bard retorted ; and his concluding verse, If you're paid such coin for your law. You'll ne'er be worth a single straw, was felt to contain so important and undeniable a truth, that his solicitations could be no longer resisted. These are trifles ; but the subject of these pages gladly souglit relief in thcni, when satiated with more splendid cares. 186 LIFE OF CURRAN. had a very early predilection. The following let- ters give an account of its first impressions on him ; Mr Curran composed two other little poems, of a different de- scription, about this time. The first of the following has been praised, as possessing peculiar delicacy of thought, by the most ad- mired poet that Ireland has produced. ON RETURNING A RING TO A LADY. Thou emblem of faith — thou sweet pledge of a passion. By Heaven reserved for a happier than me, — On the hand of my fair go resume thy lov'd station, Go bask in the beam that is lavish'd on thee ! And if, some past scene thy remembrance recalling. Her bosom shall rise to the tear that is falling. With the transport of love may no anguish combine. But be hers all the bless— and the suffering all mine ! Yet say, (to thy mistress ere yet I restore thee), Oh say why thy charm so indifferent to me ? To her thou art dear, — then should I not adore thee ? Can the heart that is hers be regardless of thee ? But the eyes of a lover, a friend, or a brother. Can see nought in thee, but the flame of another ; On me then thou'rt lost ; as thou never couldst prove The emblem of faith or the token of love. But, ah ! had the ringlet thou lov'st to surround — Had it e'er kiss'd the rose on the cheek of my dear, What ransom to buy thee could ever be found. Or what force from my breast thy possession could tear ? LIFE OF CURRAN. 187 and, however carelessly written, their insertion will be at least some relief to the harsher scenes of political contention, which occupy so much of his future history. A mourner, a suff'rer, a wand'rer, a stranger — In sickness, in sadness, in pain, and in danger, Next my heart thou shouldst dwell till its last sigh were o'er,— . Then together we'd sink — and I'd part thee no more. ON MRS BILLINGTON'S BIRTH-DAY. 1. The wTeath of love and friendship twine, And deck it round with flo^v'rets gay, — Paint the lip with rosy wine, 'Tis fair Eliza's natal day ! 2. Old Time restrains his ruthless liand, And learns one fav'rite form to spare : Light o'er her tread, by his command, The Hours, nor print a footstep there. 3. In amorous sport the purple Spring Salutes her cheek, in roses drest ; And Winter laughs, and loves to fling A flake of snow upon her breast. 188 LIFE OF CURRAN. " Diej^pe, Friday, August 51. 1787. " My last from Brighton told you I was setting sail, — I did so about eight o'clock yesterday even- ing, and, after a pleasant voyage, landed here this day at twelve. To-morrow I set out for Rouen, where 1 shall probably remain two or three days. " I cannot say the first view of France has made a very favourable impression on me. I am now writing in the best lodging-room in the best inn of Dieppe, I'Hotel de la Ville de Londres. Monsieur de la Rue, the host, danced up to me on board the packet, did every thing I wanted, and oifered a thousand services that I had no occasion for. I mounted to my present apartment by a flight of very awkward stairs ; the steps, some of brick, some of wood, but most of both. The room con- tains two old fantastical chests of drawers, — a table, on which I now write, — four chairs with cane backs and bottoms, and a bed five feet from the bricks that compose the floor (the first floor) ; 4. So may thy days, in happiest pace, Divine Eliza, glide along ! Unclouded as thy angel face, And sweet as thy celestial song ! LIFE OF CURRAN. 189 the walls half covered with lime and half with a miserable tapestry. I dined very well, however, on a small fish like a trout, a beef-steak, and a bottle of Burgundy, which the maid that attended me would not admit to be ' chevalier.' " I then walked out to see the town, and, God knows, a sad sight it is : it seems to have been once better, but it is now strength fallen into ruin, and finery sunk into decay. It smote me with a natural sentiment of the mortality of all human things ; and I was led by an easy transition to inquii'e for the churches. I inquired of a decent looking man, who sat at a door knitting stockings, and he with great civility stopped his needles, and directed me to the church of St Jacques, having first told me how fine it was, and how many years it was built. It has a profusion of sculpture in it, and I suspect not of the best kind ; however, the solemnity of the whole made amends, and indeed I think well might, for that deficiency, to me who am so little a connoisseur in the matter. I could not but respect the disinterestedness and piety of our ancestors, who laboured so much to teach posterity the mortality of man ; and yet, on turn- ing the idea a little, I could not but suspect that the vain-glory of the builders of pyramids and 190 LIFE OF CURRAN. temples was no small incentive to their labours : why else engrave the lesson of mortality in cha- racters intended to endure for ever, and thus be- come an exception to the rule they would esta- blish ? But I am turning preacher instead of traveller. " I reserved the view of the inhabitants for the last. Every nation, 'tis said, has a peculiar fea- ture. I trust poor France shall not be judged of in that point by Dieppe. I had expected to see some- thing odd on my arrival, but I own I was unpre- pared for what I met ; the day was warm, and per- haps the better sort of people were all within. Many hundreds were busy on the quays and streets, but any thing so squalid, so dirty, and so ugly, I really never saw. At some little distance I mis- took the women for sailors, with long boddices, and petticoats not completely covering their knees, which I really took for trowsers ; however, on a nearer view, I saw their heads covered with linen caps, their beards unshaved, and perceived they wore slippers with rather high heels ; by which, notwithstanding the robust shape of their legs, and their unusual strut, I ascertained their sex sufficiently for a traveller. LIFE OF CURRAN. 191 " I may say truly, I did not see a being this day between the ages of fifteen and fifty. I own I was therefore surprised to find that there were children, for such I found to be a parcel of strange little figures ; the female ones with velvet hoods, and the male with their little curled heads covered with woollen night-caps, regardless of the example of their hardy old fathers, if they were not their grandsires, who carried about heads without a hair or a hat to protect them. " In truth, 1 am at a loss to reconcile so many contradictions as I have met with here even in a few hours. Even though I should not mention the height of their beds, nor the unwieldiness of their carriages, as if the benefit of rest was reserv- ed for vaulters and rope-dancers, and the indolent and helpless only were intended to change their place ; but perhaps those impressions are only the first and the mistaken views of a traveller, that ought to see more and reflect more before he forms his opinions. I believe so too, antl, if I change or correct them, the French nation shall have the benefit of my change of opinion. If not, I hope my mistake will not do much injury to the power, or riches, or vanity of his most Christian Majesty. " Yours ever, « J. P. C." 192 LIFE OF CURRAN. A few days after, in a letter from Rouen, he says, " I still find myself confirmed every day in a preference for my own poor country. The so- cial turn of this people certainly has the advan- tage: their manners are wonderfully open and pleasant ; but still, in every thing I have yet seen, I have observed a strange medley of squalid finery and beggarly ostentation, with a want of finishing in every article of building and manufacture, that marks them at least a century behind us. Yet have they their pleasant points ; gay, courteous, temperate, ill clothed, and ill accommodated, they seem to have been negligent only in what regard- ed themselves, and generously to have laboured in what may render them agreeable to their visi- tors." r; As Mr Curran travelled on towards Paris, he received a mark of public attention, for which he was in a great measure indebted to his eloquent defence of the Roman catholic priest already men- tioned. His friend, the Rev. Arthur O'Leary, (more generally called Father O'Leary), knowing that he was to pass through a particular town, wrote to the superior of a convent in the neigh- bourhood, describing the traveller that was shortly to arrive there, and requesting that so ardent a LIFE OF CURUAN. 193 friend of tlicir religion should be welcomed and entertained with all courtesy and honour. Mr Curran no sooner reached the place, than he re- ceived a pressing invitation to take up his abode at the convent. He accordingly proceeded thither, and was met at the gates by the abbot and his brethren in procession. The keys of the convent were presented to him, and his arrival hailed in a Latin oration, setting forth his praises, and their gratitude for his noble protection of a suffering brother of their church. Their Latin was so bad, that the stranger with- out hesitation replied in the same language. After expressing his general acknowledgments for their hospitality, he assured them, " that nothing could be more gratifying to him than to reside for a few days among them ; that he should feel him- self perfectly at home in their society; for that he was by no means a stranger to the lij^bits of a mo- nastic life, being himself no less than the Prior of an order in his own country, the order of St Pa- trick, or the Monks of the Screw. Their fame, he added, might never have reached the Abbot's ears, but he would undertake to assert for them, that, though the brethren of other orders might be more celebrated for learning how to die, the VOL. 1. o J 94 LIFE OF CURRAN. * Monks of the Screw' were as yet unequalled for knowing how to live. As, however, humility was their great tenet and uniform practice, he would give an example of it upon the present oc- casion, and instead of accepting all the keys which the Abbot had so liberally offered, would merely take charge, while he stayed, of the key of the wine-cellar." This little playful sally was accepted in the same spirit of good humour with which it was offered; and the traveller, after passing two or three days with the Abbot, and pleasing every one by his vivacity and conciliating manners, proceed- ed on his journey, not without a most pressing invitation to take advantage of any future occa- sion of revisiting his friends at the convent. The following is extracted from one of his let- ters from Paris. " Paris, Septemba- 15. 1787. " I HAVE been all about the world with the Carletons, visiting churches, libraries, pictures, operas, &c. Yesterday we went to Versailles, and, though a week-day, had the good luck to see his Majesty at chapel, after which he went out hunting; after which we viewed the palace, the ilFE OF CURRAN. 195 gardens, statues, &c. bought two pair of garters at a pedlar's stall in an ante-chamber adjoining the great gallery, and so returned to town. All that could be seen even on a Sunday, besides, would be the Queen, who would probably take very little notice of her visitors ; so I shall pro- bably, I think, go no more to Versailles. Mr Boyse is perfectly well ; I have written to him this day. My health, thank God, has been per- fectly good since 1 came here, to which I suppose the great temperance of this country has contri- buted not a little. I am early as usual ; read, write, dine, go to the coffee-house, the play, as usual; one day now seems to be the former, and I begin to be vexed at its beina* the model of the next. Perhaps upon earth there cannot be found in one city such a variety of amusements : if you walk the Boulevards in the evening, you see at least ten thousand persons employed in picking the pockets of as many millions, reckoning players, rope-dancers, jugglers, buffoons, bird-sellers, bear- dancers, learned beasts, &c. Yet I begin to grow satiated, and often wish for a more tranquil habi- tation." 196 LIFE OF CURRAN. Among the traits of French manners, whicfi Mr Curran upon his return related as having greatly entertained him, was the following little incident, which will be also found to be perfectly characteristic of his own. He was one evening sitting in a box at the French Opera, between an Irish noblewoman whom he had accompanied there, and a very young Parisian female. Both the ladies were pe- culiarly interesting in their appearance, and very soon discovered a strong inclination to converse, but unluckily each was ignorant of the other's language. To relieve their anxiety, Mr Curran volunteered to be their interpreter, or in his own words, " to be the carrier of their thoughts, and accountable for their safe delivery." They ac- cepted the offer with delight, and immediately commenced a vigorous course of observations and inquiries upon dress and fashion, and such com- mon-place subjects; but the interpreter, betray- ing his trust, changed and interpolated so much, that the dialogue soon became purely his own invention. He managed it however with so much dexterity, transmitting between the parties so many finely turned compliments, and elegant repartees, that the unsusjDccting ladies became LIFE OF CURRAN. 197 fascinated with each other. The Parisian demoi- selle was in raptures with the wit and colloquial eloquence of milady, whom she declared to be jparfaitement aimahle ; while the latter protested that she now for the first time felt the full charm of French vivacity. At length, when their mu- tual admiration was raised to its most ecstatic height, the wily interpreter, in conveying some very innocent question from his countrywoman, converted it into an anxious demand, if she might be favoured with a kiss. " Mais oui, mon Dieu, oui !" cried out the animated French girl, " j'al- lois le proposer moi-meme," and springing across Mr Curran, imprinted an emphatic salutation, according to the custom of her country, upon each cheek of his fair companion ; and then turn- ing to him, added, " vraiment, monsieur, madame votre amie est un veritable ange." The latter never discovered the deception, but after her re- turn to Ireland used often to remind Mr Curran of the circumstance, and ask, " what in the world the young lady could have meant by such strange conduct ?" to which he would only archly reply, " Come, come, your ladyship must know that there is but one thing in the world that it coidd 198 LIFE OF CURRAN. have meancd, and the meaning of that is so lite- ral, that it does not require a commentator." The name of Mr Boyse occm-red in his last let- ter; the friend of his childhood, between whom and Mr Curran the most cordial intercourse continu- ed until death dissolved it.* The delicacy of that gentleman's health had obliged him to reside for several years past upon the Continent, from which he regularly corresponded with his former pupil. One of his letters, written in this year, shall be in- serted, as an example of the kind and confidential feeling that pervades them all. "TO J. P. CURRAN, Esq. ELY-PLACE, DUBLIN. " Bruxalks, Feb. 7. 1 787. " Dear Jack, " I HOPE my friend's affairs are going well, and flourishing as when I left him ; mine, I sup- pose, are in the last stage of consumption, so that I almost dread to make inquiry about them. My health has been so good this winter, that I came from Aix here to escort a Mr Low and family, my relations, who are on their road to England * Mr Boyse died a few years after tlie present period. LIFE OF CURRAN. 199 and Ireland. To-morrow, I return to Aix-la- Chapelle for the remainder of the winter. I hope you were paid the money I drew on you for, as I must soon draw on you again for £.60. If I have no funds at Newmarket, I shall write to Dick Boyse to pay you, and shall always take care that you shall be no sufferer by me. " Let me hear how you go on, and what chance you have of the bench. I wish you had realized seven or eight hundred a-year for your family. Is your health good, and your life regular ? I saw Grattan and Fitzgibbon at Spa ; the former friend- ly and agreeable, the latter disagreeable to every one. I dined with him and Mr Orde, at a club where we are members, but he was solemn and displeasing to us all. My compliments to Grat- tan, and his wife, and ask him for her on my part ; she is very amiable. What is to become of us with the White Boys ? If I am not an absolute beggar, 1 will go home the latter end of the sum- mer. How go on all your children ? An account of yourself and them will give me pleasure. Witli best wishes to you all, " I am, dear Jack, " Yours sincerely, " Nat. BoysE." 200 LIFE OF CURRAN. Mr Boyse came over to Ireland in the follow- ing year. Upon the morning of his arrival in Dublin, as he was on his way to Ely-Place, he was met by his friend, who was proceeding in great haste to the courts, and had only time to welcome him, and bid him defer his visit till the hour of dinner. Mr Curran invited a number of the eminent men at the bar to meet Mr Boyse ; and on returning home at a late hour from court, with some of his guests, found the clergyman, still in his travelling dress, seated in a familiar posture at the fire, with a foot resting upon each side of the grate. " Well, Jack," said he, turning round his head, but never altering his position, " here have I been for this hour past, admiring all the fine things that I see around me, and wondering where you could have got them all." " You would not dare," returned Mr Curran, deeply affected by the recollections which the observa- tion called up, " to assume such an attitude, or use so little ceremony, if you were not conscious that every thing you see is your own. Yes, my first and best of friends, it is to you that I am in- debted for it all. The little boy whose mind you formed, and whose hopes you animated, profiting by your instructions, has risen to eminence and LIFE OF CURRAN. 201 affluence : but the work is yours ; what you see is but the paltry stucco upon the building of which you laid the foundation." This year (1788) Mr Curran visited Holland, from which he writes as follows. " Helvoetsluys, August 1. 1788. " Just landed, after a voyage of forty-two hours, having left Harwich, Wednesday at six in the evening. We are just setting out in a treckscuit for Rotterdam. " I can say little, even if I had time, of the first impression that Holland makes on a travel- ler. The country seems as if it were swimming for its life, so miserably low does it appear ; and from the little I have seen of its inhabitants, I should not feel myself much interested in the event of the struggle. We were obliged to put up an orange cockade on our entrance. We have just dined, and I am so disturbed by the settling of the bill, and the disputes about guilders and sti- vers, &c. that I must conclude. " Yours ever, " J. P. C." 202 LIFE OF CURRAN. " Amsterdam, August B. ll&Z. « You can't expect to find much entertainment in any letter from Holland. The subject must naturally be as flat as the country, in which, lite- rally, there is not a single eminence three inches above the level of the water, the greater part lying much below it. We met Mr Hannay, a Scotch- man, on the passage, who had set out on a similar errand. We joined accordingly. A few moments after my letter from Helvoetsluys was written, we set out in a treckscuit for Rotterdam, where, af- ter a voyage of twenty-four hours easy sail, we arrived without any accident, notwithstanding some struffele between an adverse wind and the horse that drew us. We staid there only one day, and next day set out for the Hague, a most beautiful village, the seat of the Prince of Orange, and the residence of most of the principal Dutch. Yesterday we left it, and on going aboard found four inhabitants of Rouen, and acquaintances of my old friend Du Pont. We were extremely amused with one of them, a little thing about four feet long, and for the first time in his life a tra- veller. He admired the abundance of the waters, the beauty of the windmills, and the great opu- LIFE OF CURBAN. 203' lencc of Holland, which he thought easy to be accounted for, considering that strangers paid a penny a mile for travelling, which was double what a French gentleman was obliged to pay a:t home ; nor could it otherwise be possible for so many individuals to indulge in the splendour of so many country villas as we saw ranged along the banks of the canals, almost every one of which had a garden and menagerie annexed. The idea of the menagerie he cauffht at the instant from a large poultry coop, which he spied at the front of one of those little boxes, and which contained half a dozen of turkeys and as many hens. " The evening, yesterday, brought us to Am- sterdam. We had an interpreter who spoke no language. We knew not, under heaven, where to go; spoke in vain to every fellow passenger, but got nothing in return but Dutch ; among the rest to a person in whom, notwithstanding the smoke, I thought I saw something of English. At length he came up to me, and said he could hold out no longer. He directed us to an inn; said he sometimes amused himself with concealing his country, and that once at Rotterdam he car- ried on the joke for five days, to the great annoy- ance of some unfortunate Englishmen, who knew 204? LIFE OF CURRAN. . nobody, and dined every day at the table d'hote he frequented. Last night we saw a French co- medy and opera tolerably performed. This day we spent in viewing the port, stadt-house, &c. and shall depart to-morrow for Rotterdam or Utrecht, on our way to Antwerp. " You cannot expect much observation from a visitor of a day : the impression, however, of a stranger, cannot be favourable to the people. They have a strange appearance of the cleanli- ness for which they are famous, and of the dirt that makes it necessary : their outsides only have I seen, and I am satisfied abundantly with that. Never shall I wish to return to a country, that is at best dreary and unhealthy, and is no longer the seat of freedom ; yet of its arbitrariness I have felt nothing more than the necessity of wearing an orange riband in my hat. My next will be from Spa, where I hope to be in six or seven days : till then farewell. " Yours ever, « J. P. C." LIFE OF CURRAN. 20i CHAPTER VII. His Majesty's illness — Communicated to the Housa of Commons — Mr Curran's speech upon the address— Regency question- Formation of the Irish Whig opposition — Mr Curran's speech and motion upon the division of the boards of stamps and ac- counts — Answered by Sir Boyle Roche^Mr Curran's reply — Correspondence and duel with Major Hobart — EflFects of Lord Clare's enmity — Alderman Howison's case. The year 1789 was in many respects one of the most interesting and important in Mr Curran's life. From his entrance into parliament he had hitherto been chiefly engaged in an occasional desultory resistance to the Irish administration, rather acting with, than belonging to the party in opposition ; but in this year a momentous ques- tion arose, in the progress and consequences of which, there was such a development of the sys- tem by which Ireland was in future to be govern- ed, that he did not hesitate to fix his political destiny for ever, by irrevocably connecting him- self with those whose efforts alone he thought could save their country. His late Majesty's afflicting indisposition had taken place towards .£06 .LIFE OF eURRAN. the close of the year 1788. It is known to all, that upon the announcement of that melan- choly event, the British parliament proceeded to nominate His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales regent, under particular limitations and ■restrictions ; a mode of proceeding which the Irish 'ministry were peculiarly anxious that the Irish parliament should studiously imitate. For this purpose great exertions were made to secure a majority. To Mr Curran it was communicated, that his support of the government would be re- warded with a judge's place, and with the even- tual prospect of a peerage ; but he was among those who considered it essential to the dignity of the parliament, and the interests of Ireland, that the heir apparent should be invited by address to assume the full and unrestricted exercise of the regal functions ; and fortunately for his fame, he had too much respect for his duties and his cha)- racter, to sacrifice them to any considerations of personal advancement. The Irish administration had been anxious to defer the meeting of the legislature until the whole proceedings respecting the regency should be com- pleted in England, in the hope that the conduct pursued by the British parliament might be fol- LIFE OF CURRAN. 207 lowed as a precedent in Ireland ; but the urgen- cies of the public business not admitting so long a delay, the session was opened on the 5th of February 1789, by the viceroy (the Marquis of Buckingham), when the king's illness was for the first time foi'mally announced to the country. On the following day, in the debate on the address of thanks, his excellency's late conduct was made the subject of much severe animadversion. Upon that occasion Mr Curran spoke as follows : *' I oppose the address,* as an address of delay. I deeply lament the public calamity of the king's indisposition : it is not so welcome a tale to me as to call for any thanks to the messenger that brings it. Instead of thanks for communicating it now, it should be resented as an outrage upon us that he did not communicate it before. As to thanks for his wishes for Ireland, it is a strange time for the noble marquis to call for it. I do not wish * One of the paragraphs of the address upon which the debate arose was the following : — " We return your excellency our sincere thanks (however we must lament the necessity of such a circum- stance) for ordering the communication of such documents as you have received respecting his Majesty's health ; as well as for your intention of laying before us such further information as may assist our deliberations upon that melancholy event" 208 LIFE OF CURRAN. that an untimely vote of approbation should mix with the voice of a people's lamentation : it is a picture of general mourning, in which no man's vanity ought to be thrust in as a figure. But if it is pressed, what are his pretensions ? One gen- tleman (Mr Boyd) has lost hundreds a-year by his arts, and defends him on that ground ; another (Mr Corry) praises his economy for increasing sa- laries in the ordnance — the economy of the noble lord is then to be proved only by public or by private losses. Another right honourable gentle- man (the attorney-general) has painted him as a man of uncouth manners, much addicted to vulgar arithmetic, and therefore entitled to praise. But what have his calculations done ? They have discovered that a dismounted trooper may be stript of his boots, as a public saving, or that a mutilated veteran might be plundered of half the pittance of his coals, as a stoppage for that wooden leg, which perhaps the humane marquis might consider as the most proper fuel to keep others warm. " But a learned gentleman (Mr Wolfe) has defended the paragraph, as in fact meaning no- thing at all. I confess I find the a2)peal to the compassion of the public stronger than that to LIFE OF CURRAN. 209 tlvcir justice. I feel for the reverses of human fate. I remember this very supplicant for a com- pliment, to which he pretends only because it is no compHment, drawn into this city by the people, harnessed to his chariot, through streets blazinnr with illuminations ; and now, after more than a year's labour at computation, he has hazarded on a paragraph stating no one act of private or of pubHc good ; supported by no man that says he loves him ; defended, not by an assertion of his merit, but by an extenuation of his delinquency. " For my part, I am but little averse to ac- cede to the sentiment of an honourable friend who observed, that he was soon to leave us, and that it was harsh to refuse him even a smaller civility than every predecessor for a cen- tury had got. As for me, 1 do not oppose his being borne away from us in the common hearse of his political ancestors ; I do not wish to pluck a single faded plume from the canopy, nor a single rag of velvet that might flutter on the pall. Let us excuse his manners, if he could not help them ; let us pass by a little pecu- lation, since, as an honourable member says, it was for his brother; and let us I'ejoice tliat his kiudrcd were not more numerous. But I cannot VOL. I. p 210 LIFE OF CURRAN. agree with my learned friend who defends the conduct of the noble lord, on the present occasion. The viceroy here, under a party that had taken a peculiar line in Great Britain, should not have availed himself of his trust to forward any of their measures: he should have considered himself bound by duty and by delicacy to give the people the ear- liest notice of their situation, and to have religi- ously abstained from any act that could add to the power of his party, or embarrass any administra- tion that might succeed him. Instead of that, he abused his trust by proroguing the two Houses, and has disposed of every office that became vacant in the interval, besides reviving others that had been dormant for years. Yet the honourable mem- ber says he acted the part of a faithful steward. I know not what the honourable member's idea of a good steward is ; I will tell him mine. A good steward, if his master was visited by infirmity or by death, would secure every article of his effects for his heir ; he would enter into no conspiracy with his tenants ; he would remember his bene- factor, and not forget his interest. 1 will also tell him my idea of a faithless, unprincipled stew- ard. He would avail himself of the moment of family distraction ; while the filial piety of the son LIFE OF CURRAN. 211. was attending the sick-bed of the father, or mourn- ing over his grave, the faithless steward would turn the melancholy interval to his private profit ; he would remember his own interest, and forget his benefactor; he would endeavour to oblite- rate or conceal the title-deeds ; to promote cabals among the tenants of the estate, he would load it with fictitious encumbrances ; he would reduce it to a wreck, in order to leave the plundered heir no resource from beggary except continuing him in a trust which he had been vile enough to betray. I shall not appropriate either of these portraits to any man : I hope most earnestly that no man may bo found in the community, whose con- science would acknowledge the resemblance of the latter. *' I do not think the pitiful compliment in the address worthy a debate or a division : if any gen- tleman has a mind to stigmatize the object of it by a poor, hereditary, unmeaning, unmerited pane- gyric, let it pass; but I cannot consent to a delay at once so dangerous and so disgraceful." The opj)Osition proved upon this occasion the stronger party : Mr Grattan's proposal, that the 11th of February should be fixed for taking into consideration the state of the nation was carried, 212 LIFE OF CURRAN. against the exertions of the ministry to postpone that important discussion to a more distant day. On the 11th accordingly both Houses met; when, upon the motion of Mr Grattan in the one, and of Lord Charlemont in the other, the address to the Prince of Wales, requesting his royal high- ness to take upon himself the government of Ire- land, with the style and title of prince regent, and in the name and behalf of his majesty to exercise all regal functions during his majesty's indispo- sition, was carried by large majorities in both Houses. The particulars of the debate in the House of Commons upon this interesting subject, in which Mr Curran bore a distinguished part, would be superfluous in this place, as the legislative union has for ever prevented the recurrence of such a question ; it will be suflicient merely to observe, that the Whig majority who planned and carried the measure of an address were influenced by two leading considerations. In the first place, it seem- ed to them that the proceeding by address was the only one which would not compromise the inde- Jiendence of the Irish parliament. They con- ceived the present situation of Ireland as similar in many respects to that of England at the period LIFE OF CUnRAN. 213 of the Revolution : the throne, indeed, was not actually vacant, but an efficient executive was wanting; and upon the same principle that the two Houses in England had, of their own authority, proceeded to supply the vacancy by the form of an address to the Prince of Orange, so it ap- peared should those of Ireland (an equally in- dependent legislature) pi'ovide for the deficiency of their third estate in the present instance. This line of conduct was strenuously opposed by the attorney-general (Mr Fitzgibbon) ; but the strong- est of his arguments were rather startling than con- vincing, and made but little impression upon the majority, who justly felt that a great constitutional proceeding upon an unforeseen emergency should not be impeded by any narrow, technical objec- tions, even though they had been more unanswer- able than those adduced upon this occasion,* • The following was one of Mr Fitzgibbon's arguments : " Let me now for a moment suppose, that we, in the dignity of our in- dependence, appoint a regent for Ireland, being a different person from the regent of England, a case not utterly impossible, if the gentlemen insist upon our appointing the Prince of Wales before it shall be known whether he will accept tlie regency of England ; and suppose we should go farther, and desire him to give the royal assent to bills, he would say, ♦ My good people of Ireland, you 214' LIFE OF CURRAN. Next to supporting the dignity of the Irish par- liament, the Whig leaders of 1789 were actuated by the prospects of advantage to Ireland, which they anticipated from the change of administra- tion and of system that were expected to follow their exertions. They were anxious to invest the heir-apparent with the most unrestrained regal authority, in the fullest confidence that the bene- have, by your own law, made the great seal of England absolutely and essentially necessary to be affixed to each bill before it passes in Ireland ; that seal is in the hands of the chancellor of England, who is a very sturdy fellow ; that chancellor is an officer under the regent of England ; I have no manner of authority over him ; and so, my very good people of Ireland, you had better apply to the regent of England, and request that he will order the chancel- lor of England to affix the great seal of England to your bills; otherwise, my very good people of Ireland, I cannot pass them.' " *' This," said Mr Curran, in his observations upon this argu- ment, *' is taking seals for crowns, and baubles for sceptres ; it is worshipping wafers and wax in the place of a king ; it is substi- tuting the mechanical quibble of a practising lawyer, for the sound deduction of a philosopher standing on the vantage ground of science; it is more like the language of an attorney particular than an attorney-general ; it is that kind of silly fatuity that on any other subject I should leave to be answered by silence and con- tempt; but when blasphemy is uttered against tlie constitution, it shall not pass under its insignificance, because the essence should be reprehended, though the dortrinc cannot make a proselyte." LIFE OF CURRAN. 215 fits on which they calculated would be commen- surate with the power to confer them. How far these sanguine hopes would have been realized, how far the measures of a ministry listening to the counsel of Mr Fox could have healed the existin» nary instance of his bounty, may become the source of affliction to mankind. Nor should this reflection diminish our gratitude for the blessing, when we consider how the best things, if perverted to other . purposes than they were intended to answer, degenerate into the most pernicious ; and when we also consider how much it is in our power to avoid this perversion in the present case. The object of man's pursuit is happiness. His Maker and his reason inform him tliat he can acquire it only by following the rules prescribed to him by both. But man's will is free ; he is therefore at liberty to neglect or to pursue these means, and of consequence to fail or to succeed in the end. He may also choose not to be virtuous; and should he so deprave himself, he must submit to unhappiness, not only as the punishment incurred by disobeying his Maker, who perhaps may suspend his vengeance over the ungrateful oflTender, or defer it till some future state of existence, but also as the inevitable conse- quence of violating the rules necessary to the preservation and per- fection of his nature, which, as being a natural effect, cannot pos- sibly be remote, but must flow immediately from its cause." i APPENDIX. 389 MR GRATTAN'S LETTER.* Dublin, July 1. 1797. To MY Fellow-citizens of Dublik, " I THANK you for past favours : I have found in you a kind and a gracious master ; you have found in me an unprofitable servant : under that impression, I beg to assure you, that so long as the present state of representation in the commons' house conti- nues, so long must I respectfully decline the honour of soliciting at your hands a seat in that assembly. " On this principle it was I withdrew from parliament, together with those with whom I act ; and I now exercise my privilege, and discharge my duty in communicating with my constituents, at the eve of a general election, some say an immediate dissolution, when I am to render back a trust, which, until parliament shall be re- formed, I do not aspire to reassume. The account of the most material parts of my conduct, together with the reason of my reso- lution, will be the subject of this letter. " When I speak of my conduct, I mean that adopted in com- mon and in concert with the other gentlemen. We should have felt ourselves deficient in duty if we had not made one effort before the close of the parliament, for the restoration of domestic peace, by the only means by which it seemed attainable — conciliation ; and if we had not submitted our opinions, however fallible, and our anxieties, however insignificant, on a subject which in its ex- istence sliook your state, and in its consequences must shake the ♦ Referred to in the note to page 307, 390 APPENDIX. empire. Our opinion was, that the origin of the evil, the source of the discontent, and the parent of the disturbance, was to be traced to an ill-starred and destructive endeavour on the part of the mini- ster of the crown, to give to the monarch a power which the con- stitution never intended ; to render the king in parliament every thing, and the people nothing; and to work the people completely out of the house of commons, and in their place to seat and esta- blish the chief magistrate absolute and irresistible. It appeared to us that a minister guilty of such a crime is as much a traitor to the constitution, as the people would be to the king if they shoiJd ad- vance in arms, and place their leader on the throne: more guilty of treason in equity and justice, because in them it would be only rebellion against their creature — the king ; but in the other it would be rebellion against his creator — the people. It occurred to us that in this country the offence would be still higher, because in this country it would be the introduction not only of a despotic, but of a foreign yoke, and the revival of that great question which in 1782 agitated this country, and which, till your parliament shall be reformed, must agitate this country for ever. We thought no Irishman — we were sure no honest Irishman — would ever be in heart with government, so long as the parliament of this country shall be influenced by the cabinet of England; and were convinced that the people would not be the more reconciled to a foreign yoke, because re-imposed by the help of their own countrymen : as long as they think this to be the case, we were convinced they will hate the administration, and the administration will hate them. On this principle we recollected the parliament of this country pledged their lives and fortunes in 1 782, though some seem to have thought better of it since, and are ready to pledge their lives and fortunes against this principle. We could not seriously believe that the people of Ireland were ready to resist the legislative usurpation of APPENDIX. 391 the British parliament, in whose station the greatness of the tyrant would have qualified the condition of the slave, and that the same people were now ready to prostrate themselves to the legislative usurpation of another body — a British cabinet — a humiliated, and a tame tyrant. We recollected to have heard that the friends of ministry had lamented that England had not acceded to the Ameri- can claim of exclusive legislature, and afterward attempted to re- establish British dominion by influencing the American assembly- We saw the ministry pursue that very plan toward Ireland, which they regretted they had not resorted to in the case of America. We need not repeat the particulars ; but we saw the result to be on the mind of the people a deep-rooted and established discontent and jealousy; and we conceived that whatever conspiracies existed, ia any extent or degree, proceeded from that original and parent con- spiracy in the minister to subvert the parliamentary constitution by the influence of the crown. It appeared to us that the discontent and disturbance so created was greatly increased by another cause — the treatment of his majesty's catholic subjects. It is the busi- ness of the minister to observe the changes in the national spirit, as much as the changes of foreign combinations. It was the mis- fortune of our ministry that they never attended to those changes ; Ihey did not perceive that the religious principle and temper, as well as the political, had undergone on the Continent, in America, and in Ireland, a fundamental alteration ; that the example of America had had prodigious effect on Europe ; the example and doctrine of Europe had had no effect on America ; they did not see that in consequence of that cause, (there were other causes also), the Irish Catholic of 1792 did not bear the smallest resemblance to the Irish Catholic of 1692; that the influence of pope, priest, and pretender, were at an end. Other dangers and other influences uiight have arisen, new objccU and new pas;iions; the mind of the 392 APPENDIX. people is never stationary — the mind of courts is often stagnant; but those new dangers were to be provided against in a manner very different from the provisions made against the old. Indeed, the continuation of the old system of safety approximated and se- cured the new^ danger : unfortunately our ministers did not think so ; they thought, they said, that the Irish Catholic, notwithstand- ing the American revolution, notwithstanding the French revolu- tion, religious as well as political, was. still the bigot of the last century ; that with respect to him the age had stood still ; that he was not impressed with the new spirit of liberty, but still moped under the old spirit of bigotry, and ruminated on the triumph of the cross, the power of catholic hierarchy, the riches of the catholic clergy, and the splendour of the catholic church. You will find the speeches of the catholic opponents, particularly the ministerial declaimers, dream on in this manner; and you will find from the publications of those speeches and of the Catholics, that the latter had laid aside their prejudices, but that the ministers had not : and one of the causes why those ministers alleged that the catholic mind had not advanced, was, that their own mind had stood still ; the state was the bigot, and the people the philosopher. The pro- gress of the hum.an mind in the course of the last twenty-five years has been prodigious in Ireland. I remember when there scarcely appeared a publication in a newspaper of any degree of merit, which was not traced to some person of note on the part of govern- ment or the opposition ; but now a multitude of very powerful pub- lications appear from authors entirely unknown, of profound and spirited investigation. There was a time when all learning in Europe was confined to tlie clergy ; it then advanced among the higher orders of the laity, and now it has gone among the people ; and when once the powers of intellect are possessed by the great body of the nation, 'tis madness to hope to impose on that nation APPENDIX. 393 civil or religious oppression, particularly in those whose understand- iDgs have been stationary, though their power and riches have been progressive. The politics of the Castle, with the religious feuds of Ireland, had occupied and engrossed their mind; the eye of that mind, or their intellectual vision, had become, of course, subtle in- deed, but extremely little : on the other hand, the politics of Eu- rope and America had occupied the mind of the people, and there- fore the mind of the people had become comprehensive ; and when the former complained of the press, they complained of the supe- riority of the popular understanding. It appeared to us that the best remedy vras to raise the understanding of the great, by enlarg- ing the sphere of its actions; viz. reforming the parliament. But to return. The ministry, however, thought proper to persist in hostility to the catholic body, on a false supposition of its bigotry : the consequence of such an attempt was, that the great body of the Catholics, I mean that part the most popular and energetic, disap- pointed, suspected, reviled, and wearied, united with that other great body of the reformers, and formed a Catholic, Presbyterian, and Protestant league, for the freedom of the religion, and the free and full representation of the people. Out of this league a new political religion arose, superseding in political matter all influence of priest and parson, and burying for ever theological discord in the love of civil and political liberty. This is at present in all poli- tical matters the Irish religion. What is the Irish religion? Un- animity against despotism. Viewing the state of the country in this light, it appeared to us that the unconstitutional influence of tlie crown, and the proscription of the Catholics, were the funda- mental causes of our discontent and jealousy : with these there ex- isted other discontents, distinct from these causes; without these causes insignificant, but with these causes creating great agitation and disturbance. Two remedies occurred— coercion and concilia- 394? APPENDIX. tion : we opposed the former, and we proposed the latter. I will trouble you with our reasons : we considered the system of coercion would in the first instance destroy the liberty of the people, and in the second instance would subvert the authority and powers of •Government. Here I beg to recur to what I have just observed on the necessity for those who administer a country, to advert to the changes that take place in the temper and understanding of the people. Unfortunately, the ministry provided for the purpose of making the people quiet and contented, a system of laws and pro- clamations which, had they been quiet before, would have rendered them distracted. I need not repeat them ; we all know them ; we had the barren office of giving fruitless opposition ; we saw a spirit ' of reform had gone forth ; it had conquered in America ; it had conquered in France ; both here and in England it existed, and was chiefly nourished and propagated by the abuses of our govern- ment. It appeared to us that the best way of starving that spirit, was to remove its food : far otherwise the proposers of the plan of coercion ; they thought it better to feed that spirit, and to cherish the abuses and increase them ; they hoped to fortify their constitu- tion against an epidemic distemper, by preserving uncured the old gouts and rheumatisms, and a host of other disorders. The power of limited monarchy was not to be preserved by constitutional power, which is its natural ally, but by despotic power, which is its natural death and dissolution. Instead of correcting the abuses of the state, they invented laws which were themselves an abuse, and proclamations which were an abuse also; and which greatly, though silently, propagated the new principle. There are two ways by which a new principle spreads ; one is by anus, and by martyrdom the other. The Mahomedan religion was propagated by arms ; it pleased Providence that the Christian religion should have been propagated by the latter. See whether the unfortunate choice of APPENDIX. 395 our ministers has not given to the new principle the benefit of both : they have fled before it abroad, and they have trampled on it at home, and given it the double recommendation of conquest and martyrdom. This consideration was one of my objections to persist in the war with France on account of Brabant, and it is one of my objections to persist in a war with the Irish on account of venal boroughs. Had the government, instead of aggravating, restrained abuses, they would have put the state at the head of a spirit of reform, which they could no longer resist, and could only hope to moderate ; it was to such a policy adopted by Queen Eli- zabeth, that the Church of England owes principally what it re- tains of power and splendour, preserved by the government of the country who took the lead in the reformation ; but ours fell into a different project, they armed cnp-ii-pie against a spirit which they could not confine by arms abroad nor by executions at home ; and, therefore, instead of being at the head of popular measures, they ■were at the tail of them ; in the Catholic question, in the place bill, in the pension bill, in every bill of a popular tendency, they resisted at first, they yielded at last, reluctantly and imperfectly, and then opposed, condemned, and betrayed the principle of their own acquiescence ; they agreed to a place bill, for instance, and then they multiplied places manifold. What is the bar bill, or the bill that creates thirty new places for the gentlemen of the law ? They agreed to the first Catholic bill, and then proscribed the per- son of the Catholic, and oppose his freedom in corporations ; they had before agreed to the establishment of the independency of the Irish parliament, and then had created a multitude of officers to make that independency a name. It is reported to have been said by some of the ministers of England, that his majesty's reign has been to Ireland a course of concession, and it was much a subject of wonder that tlic people of Ireland should persist in their dissatis- 396 APPENDIX. faction ; the answer to those ministers is obvious — the concessions ■were extorted from ministers by the perseverance of opposition, and they were rendered abortive by the treachery of ministers. The .recognition of our parliamentary rights has been rendered abortive by unexampled exertions of bribery and corruption ; the freedom of our trade by debt and war ; and the elective privileges of our Catholics by a course of personal persecution and corporate in- fluence ; and, on the whole, the benefit of constitutional laws by the administration of an unconstitutional government. When the ministers talk of their concessions to Ireland, do they know the concessions of Ireland to them? Do they know the debt of the war? Continue that rate of expense, and the English wars of the next century will have the same effect as the English prohibition of the last — they will annihilate the trade of Ireland. But to re- turn to the administration. They relapsed into their violence when they recovered from tlieir fears, and their system has been there- fore occasionally violent and weak, never strong and uniform. It is an observation of Lord Bacon, that the fall of one of the Roman emperors was due not to his tyranny nor his relaxation, but to both, and that the fluctuating system is ever fatal ; it is an observation of the same, that the way to resist the progress of a new sect is to correct the abuses of the old ones. Unhappily our ministers dif- fered from Bacon ; their system was faithful to no one principle, either of violence or concession. We objected that it could not now resort to unqualified violence without incurring all the objec- tions belonging to a policy of submission coupled with a policy of violence, and that it could not hope to obtain the advantages ap- pertaining to either. In pursuit of such a system the ministers seemed to us to have lost not only their discretion but their tem- per ; they seemed vexed with themselves for being angry ; they seemed to become in a passion with themselves, because they had APPENDIX. 397 lost tlieir temper with the people; in its struggle with popular rights, the state, like a furious wrestler, lost its hreath as well as its dignity ; as if an angry father should lose his temper with his child, in which case the old fool is the most incorrigible. In the mean time the enemy seemed to understand our situation perfectly well, and relied on our expenses for dissolving our credit, and our intemperance for dissolving our authority ; and at the very time when we were precipitating on such measures at home, we were receiving the most melancholy communications from abroad ; we saw the minister retreating from the enemy with as rapid a step as he advanced upon the people, going back, and back, and back, while the democratic principle in Europe was getting on and on, like a mist at the heels of the countryman, small at ilrst and lowly, but soon ascending to the hills and overcasting the hemisphere. Like the government we wished to provide against this storm, like the government we wish to disarm the people ; as the best means of safety, we wished to disarm the people ; but it was by the only me- thod by which a free people can be disarmed — we wished to disarm the people of their grievances, and then their other arms, their less dangerous arms, the bayonet and even the pike, would be retained for no other use but the use of the government. A naked man oj>- pressed by the state is an armed host. A few decent bishops sent to the tower against law, produced the revolution. Mr Hampden, with the four other innocent persons, arraigned by Charles I. for high treason, produced the civil war : that grey-coated man or the green man sent on board a tender, or detained in prison without trial ; he, too, will have his political consequence. Sensible acts of violence have an epidemic force ; they operate by sympathy, tlicy possess the air, as it were, by certain tender influences, and spread the kindred passion through the wliole of the community. No wonder the difficulties have increased on the government. Sad ex- 398 APrENDIX. periment ! to blood the magistracy with the poor man's liberty, and employ the rich, lilie a pack of government blood-hounds, to hunt down the poor ! Acts of violence like these put an end to all law as well as liberty, or the affectation and appearance of either. In tlie course of the session we asked to what end all this ? and ac- companied our question by stating the enfeebled resources of the country. We had mentioned at the beginning that the debt of the war had been about L. 5,000,000, we were told it was an error. I wish it had been so ; but on examination that sum appeared some- what about the debt of the war. And it will appear, if the present loans are filled, that the debt of the war will be near L. 8,000,000. We submitted the effects of the war on the resources of the country, and here again it was said we were in error. I wish we had been so ; but at what interest does the state borrow money ? — an inte- rest which, between man and man, would be usury, and nearly double the former rate. We mentioned the state of the revenue to have declined ; again were we contradicted, but what was the fact ? what business is now done on the quay ? We did not wish to re- veal the arcana imperii, we stated nothing more than appeared from the terms proposed in the Gazette, from the returns of your custom- house, and the printed resolutions touching the state of your manu- factures ; and we stated those public facts, not to damp the public confidence in the defence of the country, but to abate a little of that frantic confidence manifested in a determination, at the hazard of her safety, to go on with a system of domestic coercion till the minister should conquer the people — and of foreign war till the same minister should achieve another conquest, at the risk of gene- ral ruin till he should, sword in hand, recover Brabant. That minister has found it a more pressing experiment to defend Cork than to take Flanders, as the Emperor has found it a safer experi- ment to abandon Flanders and Italy to save Vienna. We men- APPENDIX. 399 tioned those our objections to such folly then, and I repeat them now, not to damp your zeal against a foreign enemy, but to confme the zeal of srovernment to one enemy, and to deprecate a second enemy-^our own people, and a civil war added to a foreign one. Such was the system of coercion. To oppose a remedy is easy, to propose one is difficult and anxious; it appeared to us that we should fail in duty and in candour, if, when we resisted the project of government, we did not submit a plan of our own — and the only plan that appeared to us to promise peace or prosperity was conci- liation ; we proposed, accordingly, the emancipation of the Catho- lics, and a reform in the commons' house of parliament. To tlie first it was objected, that such a measure was irreconcil cable with the safety of the king or the connexion with England. To the first objection we answered, that the capacities of three-fourths of the people should not be made a personal compliment to his majes- ty, and that the pretence for taking away those capacities should not be the religion of his majesty's allies, of his present subjects of Ca- nada, of his late subjects of Corsica, of a considerable part of his fleet, and of a great part of his army ; that the principles that placed his family on the throne were those of liberty; and that his Irish subjects, if not convicted of felony, were entitled to the benefit of those principles ; and that the Catholics have, in justice and reason, at least as good a right to liberty as his majesty has to the crown. We observed, that the only impediment to the Catholic claim, as the law now stands, was the oath requiring the abjuration of the worship of the Virgin Mary, and of the doctrine of the real pre- sence ;' that to make these points, at such a time as this, matter of alarm to the safety of the king, was to give an air of ridicule to the serious calamities in which those his ministers had involved him ; that such opinions, now abstracted from foreign politics, it was be- yond the right or the power of the state to settle or punish ; that 400 APPENDIX. kings had no right to enter into the tabernacle of the humanmind, and hang up there the images of their own orthodoxy ; that the Catholics did not insist his majesty should be of their religion ; that his majesty had no right to exact that the Catholics should be of his; that we knew of no royal rule either for religion or mathema- tics ; and indeed the distance between divine and human nature being infinite, the proportion in that reference between the king and the subject k lost, and therefore, in matters of religion, they both are equally dark, and should be equally humble; and whea courts or kings assume a dictation on that subject, they assume a familiarity with the Almighty, which is excess of blasphemy as well as of blindness. Our contemplation, the most profound, on divine nature, can only lead us to one great conclusion, our own immea- surab'e inanity; from whence we should learn, that we can never serve God but in serving his creature, and to think we serve God by a profusion of prayer, when we degrade and proscribe his crea- ture and our fellow-creature, was to suppose heaven, like the court of princes, a region of flattery, and that man can there procure a holy connivance at bis inhumanity, on the personal application of luxurious and complimentary devotion. Or, if the argument were to descend from religious to moral study, surely, surely ministers should have remembered that the Catholics had contributed greatly to the expenses of the war, and had bled profusely therein : that they themselves were much in debt to human nature, and should not lose that one opportunity of paying a very small part of it, merely by a restoration of loyal subjects to their own inheritance, their liberty. We suggested such a step as a measure of policy as well as justice, with a view to the strength and power of his ma- jesty, who was most improperly made a bar to such a concession. We suggested that his situation with regard to America, to Europe, to his allies and enemies, was critical ; and tliat it was a mockery of APPENDIX. 401 that situation to suppose that the worship of the Virgin INIar}-, or the doctrine of real presence, constituted any part of the royal difficulties; that there was no spectre to disturb the royal imagination, but an existing substance ; a gigantic form walked the earth at this moment who smote crowns with a hundred hands, and opened for the se- duction of their subjects a hundred arms — democracy ; and we im- plored ministers against such an enemy, to ally and identify the king with all his people, without distinction of religion, and not to detach him from any part of them to make a miserable alliance with priestcraft, which was a failing cause and a superannuated folly. With regard to the danger offered to the connexion with England from the emancipation of the Catholics, we observed that the argu- ment was of a most dangerous and insulting nature, for it amount- ed to a declaration that tlie privileges of a vast portion of a nadon should be sacrificed to another country ; that it was not the old in- ternal question, whether the privileges of one part of Ireland should be sacrificed to the ambition of the other, but whether ' a vast de- scription of the people of Ireland should be sacrificed to England ; we observed that in this part of the argument we need not recur to justice, we might rely on policy ; and we asked, was it the policy of England, for the purity of Irish faith, to make experiments on Irish allegiance? We did not wish to exaggerate, but were justi- fied in making this supposition — suppose Ireland the seat of go- vernment, and that for the better securing the safety of the king, here resident, and for the connexion of Great Britain with Ireland, that the Irish should incapacitate all the Protestants of England ? The same affection which England, on that supposition, would af- ford to the Irish, the same affection has she now a right to expect from Ireland. When England had conquered France, possessed America, guided tlio councils of Prussia, directed Holland, and in- timidated Spain ; when she was the great western oracle to vvhiili VOL. I. I) J 402 APPENDIX. the nations of the earth repaired, from whence to draw eternal ora- cles of policy and freedom ; when her root extended from conti- nent to continent, and the dew of the two hemispheres watered her branches; then, indeed, we allowed with less danger, but never with justice, she might have made sacrifices of the claims of the Irish. I do not mean, we did not mean, to press a sense of the change which has taken place in the power of England, further than to prevent further changes more mortifying and decisive, and to impress on Great Britain this important conviction, that as Ire- land is necessary to her, so is complete and perfect liberty necessary to Ireland, and that both islands must be drawn much closer to a free constitution, that they may be drawn closer to one another. The second part of our plan of conciliation was the reform of par- liament. The object of the plan was to restore the House of Com- mons to the people. If the plan do not accomplish that, it is not the idea of the framers; but no plan could satisfy those persons who wished to retain the credit of reformers and the influence of boroughs ; no plan could satisfy those who complained when any vestige of borough influence was continued, that the parliament was not reformed, and when the vestiges were swept away, that the constitution was demolished ; no plan could satisfy those who de- sired that the boroughs should be destroyed and preserved, and were willing to let the people sit in the House of Commons, provid- ed the aristocracy sat in their lap. It is in favour of the plan sub- mitted, that, without any communication whatever with the other side of the water, it bears a strong and close resemblance to the plan proposed in the parliament of Great Britain, and in that re- semblance carries with it a presumption that it has a foundation in common sense and common interest ; the objections to it, founded on the presumed antiquity of the borough system, hardly ventured to make their appearance ; examination into the subject had shewn APPENDIX. 403 that tlie greater part of the Irish boroughs were creations bv the house of Stuart for the avowed purpose of modelling and subvert- ing the parliamentary constitution of Ireland ; that these were un- derstated when called abuses in the constitution, that tliey were gross and monstrous violations, recent and wicked innovations, and the fatal usurpations on the constitution, by kings whose family lost the throne for crimes less deadly to freedom, and who in their star chamber tyranny, in their court of high commission, in their ship money, or in their dispensing power, did not commit an act so diabolical in intention, so mortal in principle, or so radically sub- versive of the fundamental rights of the realm, as the fabrication of boroughs, which is the fabrication of a court parliament, and the exclusion of a constitutional commons, and which is a subversion, not of the fundamental laws, but of the constitutional lawgiver; you banish that family for the other acts, and you retain that act by which they have banished the commons, " It was objected with more success, that the constitution of boroughs, however in theory defective, has worked well in fact ; but it appeared to us that this was an historic error — we stated in answer to that objection, that the birth of the borough inundation was the destruction of liberty and property — that James I. tlie king who made that inundation, by that means destroyed the titles of his Irish subjects to tlieir lands, without the least ceiemony— the robbery of his liberty was immediately followed by the robbery of bis property ; for, rely on it, the king that takes liberty will very soon take away property— he will rob the subject of his liberty and influence, and then he may plunder him of his property by statute. There were at that time, the historian adds, inferior grievances. What were they ? Martial law and extortion by the soldiers, in levying the king's duties; — a criminal jurisdiction exer- cised by the Castle chamber, and a judicial power by the council. 4,04 APPENDIX. These inferior and those superior grievances amounted to no law at all. How could it happen, says the historian, that the king could do all this with so small an army; seize the properties of the sub- jects, and transport the inhabitants? I will presume to conjecture; the king had another instrument, more subtle and more pliable than the sword, and against the liberty of the subject more cold and deadly, a court instrument, that murders freedom without the mark of blood, palls itself in the covering of the constitution, and in her own colours, and in her name, plants the dagger — a borough parliament. Under this borough system, the reign of James was bad, but the next was worse ; the grievances which England complained of, under Charles the First, were committed in Ireland also. Those measures, I mean, called the new coun- cils ; they had been aggravated here by an attempt to confiscate the province of Connaught. There is extant a correspondence on the subject of Ireland, between the king and his deputy. Lord Strafford, of a most criminal and disgusting nature : his majesty begins by professing his general horrors of the constitution ; he proceeds to acknowledge his particular injuries to the Irish ; he owned that he had defrauded the Irish of their promised graces, and he expresses his fears that they have a right, in justice, to ask what it was his in- terest, as it appeared to be his determination to refuse. His deputy — what does he do ? He exceeds his royal master in his zeal against the pretensions of Ireland. A judicious court sycophant will often flatter the court of St James, by Irish sacrifices, whether it is the constitution, or the fair name of the country. He, the deputy, had, said the historian, two great objects — one was to fleece the people of Ireland, and the other was to cheat them — to get the money, and to elude the graces. He succeeded — why ? Because there was another — a third instrument, worse than himself — a borough parliament: that borough parliament met — it voted six APPENDIX. 405 subsidies, and redressed nothing: — tliis is virtue and public spirit, in comparison to what it did after. After committing these crimes, for which the deputy justly lost his head — after having seized part of the province of Connaught — after the inflicting martial law, mo- nopolies^ raising an anny against law, and money to pay that army against law — after fining and confining against law — the borough parliament vote that deputy an extraordinary supply ; and in the preamble of the act they pass on that deputy an extraordinary panegyric, with such a thorough conviction of his iniquity and their own, that they after impeach that very minister for those very acts, and record a protestation against the record of their panegyric, to give way to the meanness of another borough parliament, who, on the return of his family, cancels the record of the protestation to restore the force of the panegyric. Massacre, confusion, civil war, religious fury, followed naturally and of course. Here you see batched and matured the egg that produced the massacre, and all that brood of mortal consequences. " The principles of right were rooted out of the land by govern- ment, and they were amazed at anarchy— the barriers against inun- dation were removed by the government, and they were astonished to be overwhelmed by a popular torrent — the prhiciples of robbery were planted by the deputy, and the government were surprised at the growth of popular pillage. Had the country been left to a state of a barbarous nature, she could not have been so shattered and convulsed as when thus reduced to a state of barbarous art • where the government had vitiated that parliamentary constitution it professed to introduce, and had introduced without professing it, influence, not civilization — had set one order of the nation in feud against the other — had tainted the gentry with the itch of venality, (there was bribery in those days as well as violence) and had given them ideas of vice but not days of refinement. I pass over a bun- 406 APPENDIX. dred and thirty years, a horrid vacuum in your history of borough parliaments, save only as it has been filled with four horrid images in the four-fold proscription of the religion, trade, of the judicative and legislative authority of the country, by the commercial restric- tions of William, the penal laws of William and Anne, and the de- claratory act of the 6th of George ; and I come to the boundary of the gulf, where the constitution begins to stir and live in an octen- nial bill, accompanied, however, with, and corrected by, a court project of new parliamentary influence and degradation. This ob- ject may be called a court plan for reforming borough parliaments ; but Informing them not on the principle of popular representation, but of a more complete and perfect exclusion and banishment of the commons. The people had begun to form certain combina- tions with the oligarchy, and, like weeds, began to grow a little about the doors and courts of their own houses of parliament, and like weeds it was thought proper to banish them ; and as govern- ment had before resorted to the creation of boroughs, to overwhelm the commons, so now they resorted to a new host of places and pensions to overwhelm the oligarchy. This is the famous half mil. lion, or the experiment of the castle, to secure the dependance of parliament, and to prevent the formation of an Irish party against the domination of a British cabinet. The court could not then, like the first James and the first Charles, command to rise up a new fabric of boroughs, like a real pandemonium, to constitute a regal house of commons; it therefore engendered a young and numerous family of places and pensions, to bribe and to buy, and to split and shatter, and to corrupt the oligarchy. Thus were the people once more excluded from the chance of influence in parlia- ment, and, as it were, shouldered from the threshold of their own house by a host of placemen and pensioners, who had left the cause of the country to follow the fortunes of the aristocracy, and now APPENDIX. 107 left the aristocracy to follow the fortunes of the court, and then voted new loans and new taxes to furnish wages for the double apostasy. You had now but little to give up, and that little you surrendered ; you gave your provision trade by an embargo of 76 to the contractors, and you surrendered, by new loans and taxes, your revenues to the minister. You accompanied these sacrifices with the unvarying felicitations of borough parliaments, on the vir- tues of government, on the great and growing prosperity of your country, and her commerce, which bring the poor progress of the country, your borough history and that of your chief governors, ' a continuation of rapine,' they have been wittily called, to the catas- trophe of 79, which found your state a bankrupt, and your commu- nity a beggar, and which induced parliament to declare that such has been the working of your borough system, and such the sense of that parliament respecting it, that nothing but a free trade could save the country from impending ruin. I wish to speak with all honour of the parliament at that moment, but must recollect the circumstances of that moment. Why did parliament express itself in that manner at that time, and demand its rights a short time after? Because parliament was at those moments in contact with the people, and it is the object of the reform that she should con- tinue in contact with the people always, and with the minister never, except the people should be in contact with him ; that par- liament declared that nothing could save this country from im- pending ruin, except a free trade ; but in declaring that, it declar- ed much more ; it protested against these borough parliaments of a century, who had acquiesced in the loss of a free trade, who had suffered the country to be reduced to that state of impending ruin for want of that free trade, and who had beheld the approaches of that ruin with a profusion of thanks and a regular felicitation on the growing prosperity and flourishing commerce of a ruined coun- 4"08 APPENDIX. try J and that parliament did, by necessary inference, declare that, to save the country from returning to that state of ruin, it was ab- solutely necessary to reform the state and model of those borough parliaments, and therefore is an authority for a popular representa- tion, as well as for a free trade : indeed, it not only proclaimed the necessity, but constituted it ; for in a short time after it gave this country a new political situation, wherein she ceased to be a pro- vince, and became a nation; and of course it rendered those borough parliaments, that were adequate to the management of a province, absurd and inapplicaljle when that province became a na- tion. A province must be governed with a view to the interest of another country — a nation with a view to her own interest; a borough parliament was therefore not only competent to govern a province, but the only kind of parliament fit for the degradation of such a service, and for that very reason it was the most unfit and inadmissible instrument in the government of a nation ; for the principle of its birth being in that case opposed to the principle of its duty — the principle of its birth being court intrigue, with touched and tainted contractors, and the principle of its duty being the defence of the nation against such intrigue and such contractor — the nature of parliament being opposed to its duty» or its duty to its parent being in contradiction with its duty to its country — it follows that the nation in such a case must be reprovincialized, and the independency supposed to have been then obtained, at that period would have been only a transfer of dependency from the parliament of Great Britain to the court of St James's, in covin and in couple with the borough brokers of Ireland; therefore the independency of your parliament, and the full and free representation of your people, are terms synonymous and commensurate. In opposition to this history, and these arguments submitted in difl'erent shapes to the house, in sup. APPENDIX. 409 port of parliamentary reform, it was replied, that the borough constitution had worked well at least since 1782 — for before, no man will contend for it — and that the country had greatly advanced in commerce and in tillage ; and indeed, as far as the ploughman and the weaver are concerned, too much cannot be said to justify, against every charge of sloth, the character of tlie Irishman, and to vindicate against a vulgar error the native energy of a strong, hardy, bold, brave, laborious, warm-hearted, and faithful race of men. Eut as far as that boast goes to political measures, we cannot so well express our detestation of them as by recital ; the propositions — the new taxes without the trade — the new debt, notwithstandino- o the new taxes — the sale of the peerage — the surrender of the East India trade for the re-export trade — the refusal of the re-export trade, without such barter — the inequality of the channel trade, and the present provincial tariff suffered still to obtain between the two countries — 8,000,000/. of loan voted on account of the war, with- out commercial compensation, liberality, or equality — the increase of offices, for the professed purposes of procuring a majority — ano- ther increase of offices since the place bill — the bar bill — the con- vention bill — the gunpowder bill — the indemnity bill — the second indemnity bill — the insurrection bill — the suspension of the habeas corpus — General Lake's proclamation by order of government — the approbation afforded to that proclamation— the subsequent pro- clamation of government, more military and decisive — the order to the military to act without waiting for the civil power — the im- prisonment of the middle orders without law — the detaining them in prison without bringing them to trial — the transporting them without law — burning their houses— burning their villages — mur- dering them ; crimes, many of which are public, and many com- mitted which are concealed by the suppression of a htic press by military force ; the preventing the legal meetings of counties to pc- 410 APPENDIX. tition his majesty, by orders acknowledged to be given to the mili- tary to disperse them ; subverting the subject's right to petition ; and, finally, the introduction of practices not only unknown to law, but unknown to civilized and christian countries. Such has been the working of the borough system ; nor could such measures have taken place but for that system. Such practices, however, have in part been defended as acts of power necessary to prevent insurrec- tion, and punish conspiracy. But it appeared to us that in these practices government was combating eSects, not causes ; and that those practices increase these causes, and therefore will increase those effects ; that admitting every charge of conspiracy and dis- affection in its fullest extent — that conspiracy and disaffection are only effects of that great fundamental cause — that parent conspiracy formed some years ago, to procure by corruption despotic power. That is the cause, and that cause acts according to the reception of its matter, and the tempers and constitutions to which it applies ; and therefore produces on some men disloyalty, in some republi- canism, in some the spirit of reform ; but in all, deep, great, and growing discontent. That is the cause and the poison which has made some men jnad, and all men sick; and though the govern- ment may not be able to restore reason to the mad, or loyalty to the republican, yet if they mean to restore health to the sick, if they mean to restore content and confidence to all, to most, or to any considerable portion of the people, they must take away the poison, they must remove the cause, they must reform the parlia- ment. They have told us at some times, and at other times they have said the contrary, that it is a spirit of plunder, not politics, that is abroad ; idle talk — whatever be the crime of the present spirit, it is not the crime of theft— if so, it were easily put down ; no, it is a political, not a predatory spirit ; it is the spirit of politi- cal reformation, carried to different degrees— to liberty in some in- APPENDIX. 411 stances, to ambition in others, and to power in others. And even in these'cases, where charged to be carried to confiscation, it is evi- dent from tlie charge itself that confiscation looks to political ven- geance, not private plunder; and therefore the best way of laying that spirit, of whatever designs or intents, is to lay the pre-existing spirit of unlawful power and unconstitutional influence that haa frighted the people from parliament, and has called to our world that other potent and uncircumscribed apparition. The way to defend your property is to defend your liberty ; and the best metliod to secure your house against a defender, is to secure the Com- mons' House against a minister. ' There was ambition, there was sedition, there was violence, mixing in the public cause,' said Lord Chatham to Mr Flood, in a private conversation, as he told me, on the civil war between Charles I. and his people. * lliere was,' said he, ' ambition, there was sedition, there was violence ; but no man will persuade me that it was not the cause of liberty on one side, and tyranny on the other.' So here there may be con- spiracy, there may be republicanism, there may be a spirit of plunder mixing in the public cause ; but it is a public cause, and let no man persuade you that it is not the cause of liberty on one side and tyranny on the other. The historian of these melancholy and alarming times, censuring perhaps both the minister and the oppo- sition, and censuring us more for our relaxation than violence, will, if a candid man, close the sad account by observing, ' tliat on the whole, the cause of the Irish distraction of 97 was the conduct of the servants of government, endeavouring to establish, by unlimit- ed bribery, absolute power ; that the system of coercion was a ne- cessary consequence, and part of the system of corruption ; and that the two systems, in their success, would have established a ruthless and horrid tyranny, tremendous and intolerable, imposed on the senate by influence, and the people by arms.' Agaiubt such ex- 413 APPENDIX. cess of degradation, against any excess whatsoever, we moved the middle, and, as we thought, the composing and the salutary mea- sure — a reform of parliament, ^vhich should give a. constitution to the people — and the Catholic emancipation, which should give a people to the constitution. We supported that measure by the ar- guments herein advanced, and we defended ourselves by such, against a deluge of abuse conveyed in the public prints against us on account of that measure ; and I re-state those arguments, that however the majority of the House of Commons might have been affected, your understanding may not be carried away by such a torrent of invective. We urged those considerations j we might have added, in our defence, the dangers of invasion and in- surrection, panics most likely to incline the minister to concur in such a measure, which measure seems to be our best, I might say our only, defence against those dangers and those panics: we might have added considerations of the immense expense atten- dant on the working, as it is called, of this borough constitu- tion ; which expense may be called the prodigality of misrepre- sentation, or the huge and gigantic profusion which the people supply for turning themselves out of parliament. It is well known that the price of boroughs is from 1 4 to 1 6,000^. and has in the course of not many years increased one-third : a proof at once of the extravagance and audacity of this abuse, which thus looks to immortality, and proceeds unawed by the times, and unin- structed by example ; and, in moments which are held alarming, entertains no fear, conceives no panic, and feels no remorse, which prevents the chapman and dealer to go on at any risk with his vil- lanous little barter in the very rockings and frownings of the ele- ments, and makes him tremble indeed at liberty, but not at crimes. ' Suspend the habeas corpus act — take away the poor man— send the reformer to Newgate— imprison the North j but for the trade of APPENDIX. 4-13 parliament, for tlie I)oroiigh-brokcr of that trade, do not aflecl liim : give him a gunpowder act, give him a convention bill, give liim an insurrection bill, give him an indemnity bill, and, having satu- rated him with the liberty of his country, give him all tlie plunder of the state.' Such is the practical language of that great noim of multitude — the borough- broker, demurring on the troubles of the times, which he himself has principally caused, and lying at the door of a secretary full of sores and exactions. This sum I speak of, this 14 or 16,000^. must ultimately be paid by you: it is this increase of the price of boroughs which has produced the increase of the expense of your establishments, and this increase of the ex- pense of your establishment which has produced this increase for the price of your boroughs : they operate alternately like cause and effect, and have within themselves the double principle of rapid ruin ; so that the people pay their members as formerly, but pay them more, and pay tliem for representing others, not themselves, and giving the public purse, full and open, to the minister, and rendering it back empty to the people. Oh, unthrifty people ! who ever surrendered tliat inTaluable right of paying your own repre- sentatives ; rely on it, the people must be the prey if they are not the paymasters. To this public expense we are to add the mon- strous and bankrupt waste of private property, becoming now so great that honest men cannot in any number afford to come into parliament; the expense amounts to a child's portion, and tliat child must be wronged, or the father sold or excluded. Thus, in the borough constitution, is private virtue and public set at vari- ance, and men must renounce the service of Uieir country or tiie interest of their family ; from this evil, the loss of private fortune, a much greater loss is likely hereafter to take place, the loss of talent in the public service; for this great expense must in the end work out of parliament all unstipeiuliary talent that acts for 414- APPENDIX. the people, and supply it by stipendiary talent that acts against them. Wliat man of small fortune, what man of great fortune, can now afford to come into the House of Commons, or sustain the ex- pense of a seat in parliament, or of a contested election? And what open place, except in a very few instances, (the city is one of them), where the electors return without cost to their representa- tives ? I know some who have great talents, and have exercised them in the public service, are disposed to decline situations, to the honest individual so expensive, and to the public now so unprofita- ble. To this I am to add a greater evil than those already stated, the expenditure of morals. What shall we say for the morals of a country, how many years purchase would you give for her virtue, whose ministry founded its authority on moral depravity, and formed a league and covenant with an oligarchy to transfer for hire, virtually and substantially, the powers of legislation to tlie cabinet of another kingdom? We inveigh against other combina- tions; what sort of a combination is this? This, I know not by what name to approach it, shoots its virus into the heart and mar- row of the higher orders oV the country. ' Make your people honest,' says the court — ' make your court honest,' say the people. It is the higher classes that introduce corruption ; thieving may be learned from poverty, but corruption is learned from riches ; it is a venal court that makes a venal country j that vice descends from above ; the peasant does not go to the Castle for the bribe, but the Castle candidate goes to the peasant, and the Castle candidate offers the bribe to the peasant, because he expects in a much greater bribe to be repaid by the minister. Thus things go on ; it is impossible they can last. The trade of parliament ruins every thing ; your ministers rested their authority entirely on that trade, till now they call in the aid of military power to enforce corruption by the sword. The laws did, in my judgment, afford the crown sufficient power APPENDIX. 415 to administer the country, and preserve the connexion with Great Britain ; but our ministers have despised tlic ordinary tract, and plain, obvious, legitimate, and vulgar bonds between the king and the subject ; they have resorted to the guinea and the gallows, as to the only true and faithful friends of government, and try to hang where they cannot corrupt ; they have extended the venal sti- pendiary principle to all constituted authorities ; they have given the taint to the grave corporator as well as the senator, and have gone into the halls and streets to communicate the evil to the mid- dling and orderly part of the society; they have attempted the in- dependency of the bar. I have great objections to the bar bill, and my objections are great in proportion to my regards for the profession, whose signal services to the cause of liberty must prove to every man's conviction, how valuable the acquisition, and how inestimable the loss of that profound and acute profession must be to the cause of a country such as tliis was formerly, where the rule of government was the law of the land. We have heard of complaints against systems of disorganization. What is ^is system? Is not the corruption of organized bodies their dissolution? Is not their perversion %vorse than their dissolu- tion ? What shall we say of the attempts of ministers on sherifls, and the appointment of tliat magistrate, with a view to parlia- mentary influence only, and to the prevention of legal aggregate meetings, and the suppression of the public sentiment. These things must have an end ; tliis disorganization of constituted au- thorities by court influence must have an end. I am not super- stitious ; but I know that states, like individuals, are punished ; it is to prevent their punishment we essayed their reformation ; they are punished collectively, and they are punished slowly, but tliey are [)unished ; where tlic people are generally or universally cor- rupt, the society comes to a state of dissolution ; where that cor- 416 APPENDIX. riiption is confined to those who administer the counUy, that power must come to a state of dissolution ; but in order to prevent the society from partaking of that corruption, and by consequence of that dissolution, it is necessary that the power that administers the country should be brought speedily and radically to a state of re- formation. The best systems are not immortal ; — are the worst ? Is the trade of parliament immortal? Have the best systems pe- rished ? And shall this be impassable and everlasting, infinite in its duration, as it is unbounded in its profligacy ? What was the case of Carthage, of Rome, and of the court of France ? What is the case of the court of England ?. — Sitting under the stroke of justice for the American war, paying pains and penalties in aug- mented burdens and diminished glory; that influence which has depressed her liberty has destroyed her energy, and rendered her as unfit to preserve her empire as her freedom. As long as the battle was between the court and the constitution, the former was perfectly equal to subdue her own people ; but when she was to combat another people, she was unequal to the task, and for the very reason, because she had seduced and debased her own. The corruption of the court has rendered England vincible, and has endued her, in her present state of national degradation, with an insensibility of glory, the result and evidence of mental degene- racy. I remember to have heard Lord Chatham, in one of his speeches on the Middlesex election, observe, that in his ministry the object of the court of England was the conquest of the French, and that now it was tlie conquest of Mr Wilkes. The pursuing such like conquests as those over Mr Wilkes, has enabled the French to establish a conquest over the English. The king who is advised to conquer the liberty of his subjects, prepares those subjects for a foreign yoke. The Romans were conquered at Cannte, first by ^'arro, and afterwards by Hannibal. The Eng- APPENDIX. 417 Ksli liave been conquered, first by the minister, and afterwards by ihe French. Those Romans were finally conquered by the bar- barians of the north, because they had been previously conquered by the princes of the empire; and then the half-armed savage, \\ ith the pike and the pole, came down on the frontiers, and dis- posed of the masters of the world as of the stock of tlie land : the gouty stock of the rich, and the mute stock of the people. " It is now sixty years since the adoption of the project to sup- ply in corruption what the chief magistrate lost in prerogative — the loss of thirteen provinces — of L. 120,000,000; to lose these provinces, the loss of our station in Europe, the loss of 150 millions, — to lose that station, to place the crown of England as low in Europe as in America, and to put France at the head of Europe instead of Great Britain, while her people crouch under a load of debt and taxes, without an empire to console, or a constitution to cover them, has been the working of that project : it has worked so well as to have worked the people out of their liberty, and his ma- jesty out of his empire ; to leave him as little authority in Europe as his people in parliament ; and to put the king at the feet of France, as the people are put at the feet of the king : Public credit has also fallen a victim to this its success, its last great conquest after liberty and empire. In this rapid decline no one minister has been punished or even questioned ; and an empire and a constitu- tion have been lost without one penal example ; and in a war un- paralleled in expense and disgrace, and attended with the grossest and rankest errors, closing the account of blood with proclamations of insolvency, no murmur from the parliament of either countries no murmur. Far from inquiry or complaint, confidence has uniformly attended defeat and dishonour. The minister's majo- rities are become as numerous as his disgraces ; and so gigantic have been his encroachments on the independency of the constitu- VOL. I. EC 418 APPENDIX. tlon, that they can only be matched by the gigantic encroachment of the enemy on the empire. In short, so perfectly do the people appear to be driven out of all footing in the constitution, that when his majesty is driven out of almost all footing in Europe, and a question is made by the people, whether the ministers of these dis- graces and dishonours shall be dismissed, they have their majority at hand to support them. Against this inundation of evil we in- terposed reform ; we were convinced of its necessity from the con- sideration of corruption at home ; we were confirmed in that con- viction from the consideration of revolutions abroad. We saw the regal power of France destroyed by debts, by expense, and by abuses; we saw the nobility interpose for those abuses only to encumber the throne with their ruins, and to add revolution of pro- perty to revolution of government; we saw in the American revo- lution that a people determined to be free cannot be enslaved ; that British government was not equal to the task, even in plenitude of empire, supported by the different governments of the provinces, and by the sad apostasy of the hapless loyalist : that loyalist is a lesson to the rich and great to stand by their country in all situa- tions; and that in a contest with a remote court, the first post of safety is to stand by the country, and the second post of safety is to stand by the country, and the third post of safety is to stand by the country ; in that American contest we saw that reform, which had been born in England and banished to America, advanced like the shepherd lad in holy writ, and ovexthrew Goliath. He returned riding on the wave of the Atlantic, and his spirit moved on the waters of Europe. The royal ship of France went down — the British man of war labours — your vessel is affected — ' throw your people overboard,' say your ministers, ' and ballast with your abuses' — ' throw your abuses overboard,' we said, ' and ballast with your people.' We recollected thcKe islands were formerly placed in a APPENDIX. 4.19 sea of despotism ; we saw they were now two kingdoms in a re- publican ocean, situated between two great revolutions, with a cer- tainty of being influenced more or less by one or by botli. We asked ourselves, was it possible that the American revolution could have had such effects ou France, and that the American and the French revolutions would have no effect on these countries? The ques- tions that afiect the world are decided on the theatre of tlie world. The great question of popular liberty was fought on the great rivers of Europe and America. It remained to moderate what we could not govern : and what method so safe to moderate popular power as by limited monarchy? — and what method remains to limit the monarchy of these kingdoms (it has now no limits) as by reforming parliament? What method, I say, to prevent a revolution but a reformation? — and what is that i-eforraation of parliament but the restoration to the people of self-legislation, without which there is no liberty, as without reforan no self- legislation ?— So we reasoned. The government of a country may be placed in the hands of one man, and that one man may reside in another kingdom, and yet the people may be free and satisfied ; but to have the legislature of the country, or, what is the same thing, tlie influencing and direct- ing spirit of the legislature placed out of the country — to have not only the king but the legislature an absentee — to have not only the head but the heart disposed of in another country — such a condi- tion may be a disguised, but it is unqualified and perfect despotism. Self-legislation is life, and has been fought for as for being. It was that principle that called forth resistance to the house of Stuart, and baptized witli royalty the house of Hanover, when the people stood sponsors for their allegiance to the liberty of the subjects j for kings are but satellites, and your freedom is the luminary Uiat has called them to the skies. It was with a view tliercforc to restore liberty, and with a view also to secure and immortalize royalty, by 420 APPENDIX. restoring to the people self-legislation, we proposed reform; — a principle of attraction about which the king and people would spin on quietly and insensibly in regular movements, and in a system common to them both. ' No, no, no ; the half million, said the minister, that is my principle of attraction. Among the rich I send my half million, and I dispatch my coercion among the people.' His devil went forth — he destroyed liberty and property — he con- sumed the press — he burned houses and villages — he murdered and he failed. ' Recall your murderer,' we said, ' and in his place dis- patch our messenger — try conciliation. You have declared you wish the people should rebel, to which we answer — God forbid ! rather let them weary the royal ear with petitions, and let the dove be again sent to the king; it may bring back the olive. And as to you, thou mad minister, who pour in regiment after regiment to dragoon the Irish, because you have forfeited their affections, we beseech, we supplicate, we admonish, reconcile the people; combat revolution by reform, let blood be your last experiment. Combat the spirit of democracy by the spirit of liberty ; the wild spirit of democratic liberty by the regulated spirit of organized liberty, such as may be found in a limited monarchy with a free parliament. ' But how accomplish that but by reforming the pre- sent parliament, whose narrow and contracted formation, in both countries, excludes popular representation, i.e. excludes self-legisla- tion, i. e. excludes liberty, and whose fatal compliances, the result of that defective representation, have caused, or countenanced, or sanctioned, or suffered for a course of years, a succession of mea- sures which have collected upon us such an accumulation of cala- mity ; and which have finally, at an immense expense, and through a sea of blood, stranded these kingdoms on a solitary shore, naked of empire, naked of liberty, and naked of innocence, to ponder on APPENDIX. 421 an abyss which has swallowed up one part of their fortunes, and yawns for the remainder. " May the kingly power that forms one estate in our constitution continue for ever; but let it be as it professes to be, and as by the principles and laws of these countries it should be, one estate only, and not a power constituting one estate, creating another, and in- fluencing a third. " May the parliamentary constitution prosper ; but let it be an operative, independent, and integral part of the constitution, advis- ing, confining, and sometimes directing the kingly power. " May the House of Commons flourish ; but let the people be the sole author of its existence, as they should be the great object of its care. " May the connexion with Great Britain continue ; but let the result of that connexion be the perfect freedom, in the fairest and fullest sense, of all descriptions of men, without distinction of reli- gion. " To this purpose we spoke ; and, speaking this to no puipose, withdrew. It now remains to add tliis supplication : — However it may please the Almighty to dispose of princes or of parliaments, may the liberties of the people be iiimortal ! " Henry Grattan." END OF THE FIRST VOLUME. IVinted by Walker & CJriig, Kdinburgli. 9 This book is DUE on the last date stamped below discharge-url f', f>i . !h7 iR iAY0?J990 Form L-9-15m-7,'32 3 1158 00392 3413 '^^ UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY illi'l' llllllll' AA 000 394 052 5 Or^IVJT??^ " < TirORNiA II BRAKY