LIFE OF THE RIGHT HON. 
 
 JOHN PHILPOT CURRAN. 
 
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 'V, 
 
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 JOME" FMI 
 
 IT 
 
 ? -^ '~>^~y' 
 
THE LIFE OF 
 
 THE RIGHT HONORABLE 
 
 JOHN PHILPOT OUERAN 
 
 LATE MASTER OF THE ROLLS IN IRELAND 
 
 BY HIS SON 
 
 WILLIAM HENRY CCRRAN 
 
 WITH ADDITIONS AND NOTES 
 
 BY R. SHELTON MACKENZIE, D.C.L, 
 
 K E D F I E L D 
 
 34 BEEKMAN STREET, NEW YORK 
 
 1855 
 
 No./, 
 

 \^5S 
 
 EicTEEED According to Act of Congress, in the year One Thousand Eight Hundred and Fifty five, by 
 J. S. REDFIELD, in the Clerk's OfiBeo of the District Court of the United SUtes, for the Southern 
 District of New York. 
 
EDITOR'S PREFACE 
 
 7X 
 
 John Philpot Curran, one of the truest patriots and greatest men 
 ever native of Irish soil, was the centre of the sparkling wits, the 
 renowned orators, the brilliant advocates, and the honored statesmen who 
 flashed upon the darkness of his country's latest hours of freedom, and 
 vainly endeavored to maintain the national independence which they had 
 achieved for her. His life is identified with the latest years of Ireland's 
 nationality. He manifested an independence as advocate for the accused, 
 during the State Trials, which endeared him to the people from whose 
 ranks he sprung. To use the words of Thomas Davis (who resembled him 
 in many things), he was '• a companion unrivalled in sympathy and wit ; 
 an orator, whose thouglits went forth like ministers of nature, with robes of 
 light and swords in their hands ; a patriot, who battled best when the flag 
 was trampled down ; and a genuine earnest man, breathing of his climate, 
 his country, and his time." 
 
 He has been fortunate in his biographers. The life by his Son (who is 
 yet living), contains materials which were inaccessible to other writers. 
 Also came a volume of Recollections by Charles Phillips, who knew him well 
 in his later years — a work which, greatly enlarged, was republished a few 
 years ago, with all the charm of novelty. Later still appeared the Memoir, 
 
VI PUEFACE. 
 
 by Thomas Davis, prefixed to his edition of Curraa's Speeches — a brilliant 
 but brief tribute by one honest and gifted man to the worth and memory 
 of another. Anterior to all these is the Memoir, by William O'Regan (the 
 friend and contemporary of Curran, and often engaged with him in the 
 same causes), written during Curran's lifetime, with his knowledge, if not 
 with his direct sanction, and published within six weeks after his death — 
 a book little known, but full of interesting personal details, and abounding 
 with anecdotal and other illustrations of Curran's wit. 
 
 It appeared to me that there was sufficient in the career and character 
 of Curran to interest not only the members of his own profession but a 
 large number of general readers in this country. I have therefore 
 taken the life by his Son, and without alterations or omissions, have 
 introduced a large quantity of new matter, principally relating to his 
 legislative and personal life. These additions will be found between 
 brackets, and, with the notes which I have occasionally found it requi- 
 site to add, have made the Memoir more full of interest than any yet 
 presented. 
 
 In the Appendix I have placed a few specimens of the wit with which 
 Curran and his friends were wont "to set the table in a roar." 
 
 The portrait which embellishes this work is a characteristic likeness, by 
 Comerford, of Dublin, now for the first time engraved in this country, and 
 little known even in Ireland, 
 
 R. Skelton Mackenzie. 
 
 JSfew Yo)'k, September 20, 1855. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 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 College— Addicted to Metaphysics — Anec- 
 dote on the subject — Verses to Apjohn 1 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 Mr. Currau leaves College — Enters the Middle Temple— Letter to Mr. AVeston — 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 
 London — His society in London — Anecdote of his interview with Macklin — His early 
 application and attainments — Favorite authors — Eai-ly attachment to the Irish peas- 
 antry — His marriage — Remarks upon the English Law 17 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 Mr, Curran called to the Irish Bar — Dissimilarities between that and the English Bar — 
 Causes of the Difference 58 
 
 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 Avonmore — Monks 
 of St. Patrick, and list of the original members — Anecdotes of Lord Avonmore — Mr. 
 Curran's entrance into Parliament 69 
 
Tin CONTEXTS. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 The Irish House of Commons, in 17S3— Sketch of the previous history of Ireland— Effects 
 of the revolution of 16SS— Catholic penal code — System of governing Ireland— Described 
 by Mr. Curran — Intolerance and degradation of the Irish parliament— Change of sys- 
 tem — Octennial bill — American revolution — Its effects upon Ireland— The Irish volun- 
 teers — Described by Mr. Curran — Their numbers, and influence upon public measures 
 — Irish revolution of 17S2 — Mr. Grattan's public services — Observations upon the sub- 
 sequent conduct of the Irish parliament ST 
 
 CHAPTER YI. 
 
 Mr. Flood's plan of Parliamentary Reform — Mr. Curran's contest and duel with Mr. Pitz- 
 gibbon (afterwards Lord Clare)— Speech on Pensions — His professional success — Mode 
 of life — Occasional verses — Visits France — Letters from Dieppe and Rouen — Anecdote 
 — Letters from Paris — Anecdote — Letter from Mr. Boyse — Anecdote of Mr. Boyse — Let- 
 ters from Holland 106 
 
 CHAPTER YII. 
 
 His Majesty's illness— Communicated to the House 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 accounts — 
 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 134 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 State of parties— Trial of Hamilton Rowan— Mr. Curran's fidelity to his party— Rev. 
 William Jackson's Trial, Conviction, and Death— Remarks upon that Trial— Irish 
 Informers— Irish Juries— The influence of the times upon Mr. Curran's style of 
 Oratory -. 166 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 Catholic Emancipation— Mr. Curran moves an address to the Throne for an inquiry into 
 the state of the poor — Other Parliamentary questions — Mr. Ponsonby's plan of Reform 
 rejected— Secession of Mr. Curran and his friends— Orr's trial— Finnerty's trial— Fin- 
 ney's Trial— The informer, James O'Brien 195 
 
CONTENTS. ix 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 Rebellion of 179S— Its causes— Unpopular system of Government— Influence of the 
 French revolution — Increased intelligence in Ireland — Reform societies — United Irish- 
 men — 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 insurrec- 
 tion 234 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 Trial of Henry and John Sheares 255 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 Trials of M'Cann, Byrne, and Oliver Bond— Reynolds the informer— Lord Edward Fitz- 
 gerald—His attainder— Mr. Curran's conduct upon the State Trials— Lord Kilwarden's 
 friendship— Lines addressed by Mr. Curran to Lady Charlotte Rawdon— Theobald 
 Wolfe Tone— His trial and death 293 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 Effects of the Legislative Union upon Mr, Curran's mind— Speech in Tandy's case— Speech 
 in behalf of Hevey— Allusion in the latter to Mr. Godwin— Mutual friendship of Mr. 
 Curran and Mr. Godwin 31S 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 Mr. Curran visits Paris— Letter to his son— Insurrection of 1S03— Defence of Kirwan— 
 Death of Lord Kilwarden— Intimacy of Mr. Robert Emmett in Mr. Curran's family, and 
 its consequences— Letter from Mr. Emmett to Mr. Curran— Letter from the same to Mr. 
 Richard Curran S38 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 Mr. Curran's domestic affairs— Forensic efforts— Appointed Master of the Rolls in Ireland 
 — His literary projects— Letter to Mr. M'Nally— Account of a visit to Scotland in a letter 
 to Miss Philpot— Letter to Mr. Leslie— Letters to Mr. Hetherington 357 
 
 CHAPTER XYI. 
 
 Mr. Curran is invited to stand for the borough of Newry— Speech to the electors— Letter 
 to Sir J. Swinburne— Letter on Irish affairs to II. R. U. the Dake of Sussex 896 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER XVi: 
 
 Mr. Cui-ran's health declines— Letters to Mr. Hetherington— Resignation of his judicial 
 office — Letters from London to Mr. Lube — Letters from Paris to the same — His last 
 illness and death 417 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII, 
 
 Observations on Mr. Curran's Eloquence— Objections to his Style considered— His hnbits 
 of preparation for Public Speaking — His Ideas of Popular Eloquence — His Pathos — 
 Variety of his powers — His Imagination — Peculiarity of his Images— His use of Ridicule 
 — Propensity to Metaphor — Irish eloquence — Its origin — Mr. Curran's and Burke's 
 eloquence compared 466 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 Mr. Curran's skill in cross-examination — His general reading — His conversation— His 
 wit — Manuscript thoughts on various subjects — His manners — Person — Personal pecu- 
 liarities — Conclusion 496 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 Anecdotes of Curran and his friends 517 
 
LIFE OF 
 
 THE 
 
 RIGHT HON. JOHN PHILPOT CUllRAN. 
 
 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 College — Addicted to Metaphysics — Anec- 
 dote on the subject — Verses to Apjohn. 
 
 John Philpot Curran was born on the 24th day of July, 1750, 
 at New^market, an obscure town of the county of Cork, in Ireland.* 
 In several accounts that have been published of his origin and 
 advancement, it has, by a general consent, been asserted that the 
 one w^as very low and the other unassisted ; that he was the sole 
 architect of his own fortune, and the sole collector of the mate- 
 rials which were to raise it ; and lovers of the marvellous impli- 
 citly 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 allow- 
 ance 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 
 
 * Newmarket is eight miles distant from the dismantled castle of Kilcolman, where Spen- 
 cer is said to have composed his " Faery Queen." — M. 
 
 1 
 
iJ LIFE OF CUKRAX. 
 
 efficacy of instruction, than idly to excite tlieir wonder, and per- 
 haps 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 mental excellencies, but by 
 learning the real, and to him no less creditable ffict, how he 
 studied and struggled — what models he selected — what deficien- 
 cies he corrected — by what steps he ascended ; to tell this is the 
 duty of his biographer, and not to amaze his readers by unin- 
 structive panegyric. 
 
 The lowness* of his orimn has been much exao-Q-erated. His 
 father, James Curran, who has been represented as an unlettered 
 peasant, was Seneschal of a manor court at Newmarket.f It is 
 confidently asserted, by those who knew him, that he possessed a 
 mind and acquirements above his station ; that he was familiar 
 with the Greek and Roman classics, which he often cited in con- 
 
 * When Mr. Curran had i-isen 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 the 
 Rolls, and made out by a resident of his native i>lace. In the paternal line it ascends no 
 higher than his grandfather, who is stated to have been "a north-countryman, 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 educated at a school 
 in Newmarket, then kept by the Rev. Mr. Dallis, and afterwards by the Rev. Mr. Mor- 
 duck, by whom he was considered 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 incredulity or his indifference by indors- 
 ing this paper with " Stemmata quid faciunt." Some otlier pedigrees derived his descent 
 from the English family of Curwcn in Cumberland. — C. [O'Uegan, who was Curran's con- 
 temporary, and long on the most intimate terms with him, saj's that the family was " of an 
 English stock, transplanted from one of the north.ern counties, and encouraged to settle 
 in that part of Ireland, under the protection of the highly respectable family of the All- 
 worth's, who retain considerable landed estates there to the present time, acquired after 
 the fall of the Desmonds." Phillips says, that the paternal ancestor of the Curran family 
 came over to Ireland one of Cromwell's soldiers, " and the most ardent patriot she ever 
 had owed his origin to her most merciless and cruel plunderer !" — M.] 
 
 t The emoluments of the oflBce were very small. The Aldworth estates at Newmarket 
 (formerly belonging to the Irish family or clan of the McAuliffes) consisted of 32,000 
 acres. As Seneschal, James Curran had jurisdiction to the value of forty shillings, and 
 thus was— a Judge !— M. 
 
Ills MOTHEK. 6 
 
 versation; that he delighted in disputation, and excelled in it; 
 and, among his other favorite subjects 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.f In her latter years, the celebrity of her son 
 rendered her an objecti> additional attention and scrutiny ; and 
 the favorers of the opinion that talent is hereditary, thought they 
 could discover, in the bursts of irregular eloquence that escaped 
 her, the first visible gushings of the stream, which, expanding as 
 it descended, at length attained a force and grandeur 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 unattractive 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 
 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. 
 
 * Phillips says, " old James Curran's education was pretty much in the ratio of his 
 income." Thomas Davis says that Curran's father had learned reading, writing, cypher- 
 ing, and, it is said, some Greek and Latin. — M. 
 
 t " She was of gentle blood, and what is more to our purpose, she had a deep, fresh, 
 womanly, irregular mind ; it was like the clear river [the Avendala] of her town, that 
 came gushing and flashing and discoursing from the lonely mountains — from the outlaw's 
 and the fairy's home— down to the village. She had, under an exalted piety, a waste of 
 passions and traditions lying grand and gloomy in her soul, and thence, a bright, human 
 love of her son, came pouring out on him, and making him grow green at her feet." — 
 Davis. 
 
4: LIFE OF CUREAX. 
 
 whicli she enforced upon the minds of her children. She was not 
 without her reward, she lived to see the dearest of them surpass- 
 ing every presage, and accumulating public honors upon a name, 
 wdiich she, in her station, had adorned by her virtues. 
 
 John Philpot, the eldest of their sons,* having given very 
 early indications of an excellent capacity, the Rev. Nathaniel 
 Boyse, the resident clergyman 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 learning. This, his first acquired friend 
 and instructor, had also the satisfaction of seeing all his care 
 repaid by the rapidity with which its object ascended to dis- 
 tinction, and still more by the unceasing gratitude with which 
 he ever after remembered the patron of liis childhood. Many 
 of this gentleman'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 pro- 
 tector to procure the enactment of a statute that might relieve 
 himself and all of the clergy from the vexations of the tythe- 
 laws. 
 
 The rapid progress that he made under the instructions of Mr. 
 Boyse, and the fond predictions of his parents, determined them 
 to give their son, wdiat has always been a prevailing object of 
 parental 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 trans- 
 ferred to the free-school of Middleton, upon which occasion his 
 generous friend insisted upon resigning a particular ecclesiastical 
 emolument (in value 101. a year) for the purpose of partly defray- 
 ing the expenses of his young favorite's studies.f He remained 
 
 * Mr. Curran had three brothers and a sister, all of M-hom he survived. 
 
 t O'Regan says that he was "transplanted" to the school of Middleton, by Mrs. 
 
HIS CHILDHOOD. 5 
 
 at this school until lie had attained the preparatory knowledge of 
 the Greek and Latin languages, which should capacitate him to 
 become a student of Trinity College, Dublin. It may not be un- 
 worthy 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 resemblinp- those 
 of his future friend.* 
 
 The early history of eminent persons so generally contains 
 some presaging tokens of the fortune that awaits them, that some- 
 thing of the kind may be expected here, yet Mr. Curran's child- 
 hood, if tradition can be credited, was not marked by much pro- 
 phetic originality.f At the first little school in the town of New- 
 market to which he resorted, 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-fel- 
 lows. This, however, it would appear that he soon laid aside, for 
 
 Aldworth. In mature life, speaking of this lady, Curran said, " It is not to be wondered 
 at, that she does not do all that is expected of her. To be enabled so to do, nature 
 should have supplied her with three hands. It is impossible that, stintedly furnished 
 as she is, she could accomplish the great purposes of her heart; she is not prepared for 
 so enlarged a charity. Such in truth is her benevolence, that she would have occasion 
 for the constant employment of three hands ; but having only two, and these always 
 engaged, one in holding the petition of the poor, the other in wiping away the tears 
 which flow for their distresses ; and not having a third to put into her poclcet for their 
 relief, she is thus rendered incapable of administering to tlieir wants; but still she is 
 excellent, and her heart is bountiful." — M. 
 
 * Another of Curran's schoolfellows at Middleton, was Jeremiah Keller, subsequently 
 well known as the witty and sardonic senior of the Munster bar. He presided, says 
 Shell, at their mess, " and ruled in all the autocracy of wit." Yelverton, afterwards 
 Viscount Avonmore, and, for more than twenty-one years. Lord Chief Baron of the 
 Exchequer, in Ireland, was foui-teen years older than Curran — which leads me to doubt 
 their having been at school together, though, no doubt, both had been educated by the 
 same master, Mr. Carey. Robert Day, afterwards one of the Irish Judges, and a 
 friend of Grattan's, is also said to have been Curran's schoolfellow. — M. 
 
 t Thomas Davis, who was himself from that part of Ireland, honored by Curran's 
 birth and pupilage, gathered up many recollections of his childood, which had floated 
 down to these later times, on the current of tradition. He reports, from there, that 
 Curran, at school, was " a vehement boy, fonder of fun than books." He describes him 
 as being among the hills and the streams, bis father's court, the fairs, markets, and 
 merry-makings, and his mother's lap. He learned much passion and sharpness, and 
 some vices, too.— M. 
 
6 I.IFE OF CUERAN. 
 
 a puppet-show having arrived in Newmarket, and Punch's promp- 
 ter being taken suddenly ill, he, then a very little boy, volunteered 
 to perform the sick man's duty, and seizing the opportunity, mer- 
 cilessly satirized the reigning vices of the neighbours. This is 
 almost the only exploit of his childhood that has been related. 
 
 He entered Trinity College as a sizer, in 1769, being then nine- 
 teen 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. JSTor did his enthusiastic admira- 
 tion of them ever after subside. Amidst all the distractions of 
 business and ambition, he was all his life returning with fresh 
 dehght 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 
 inconsiderable, may be inferred from his having commenced a 
 course of reading for a fellowship,! but, deterred by the labor, or 
 diverted by accident, he soon gave up the project. 
 
 When Ave 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 subse- 
 quently so distinguished ; and upon this interesting subject there 
 happened to be preserved some documents, principally a portion 
 of his early correspondence and his first poetical attempts, from 
 Avhich a few occasional extracts shall be offered, for the purpose 
 of giving some idea of the writer's juvenile habits and capacity. 
 Whatever may be considered to be their intrinsic merit, several 
 
 * Curran entered Trinity College, Dublin, on the 16th June, 1769. The examination is a 
 severe one, but Curran's answering must have been vej-y good, as he obtained the second 
 place at entrance. His Sizarship entitled him to free rooms and commons, at College. — M. 
 
 i O'Regjin states that besides acquiring an intimate acquaintance with the Classics, 
 Curran had made considerable advance in science, particularly in metaphysics and 
 morality, while the purest modern classics in the English and French literature, became 
 equally familiar to liim. With the Bible he was familiar, and once said, "It would be a 
 reproach not to examine the merits of a work in which all mankind are so much engaged, 
 and have taken so deep an interest."—?.!. 
 
LETTER OF UR. STACK. 7 
 
 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 without instruction, if they inspire him with a 
 reliance upon that labor and cultivation, which alone conduct 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 contemporaiy 
 at Trinity College, and since a fellow of that University.^' The 
 following is a formal letter of consolation to that gentleman upon 
 the death of a brother. The writer had just completed his 20th 
 year, and appears to have been so pleased with his performance, 
 that no less than three transcripts of it remain 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 Avith so 
 much more severity 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 his 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 friendship can be betrayed into. All the fine 
 things that can be addressed to the fancy will have but small 
 eftect 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 everything 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, 
 
 * Mr. Stack wrote a Treatise on Optics, long a College Text-book. — M. 
 
8 LIFE OF CrRRAN. 
 
 kindly holds out a remedy for our afflictions; and thougli he 
 violently breaks. our dearest connexions, yet he is continually 
 teachino- us to be prepared for the blow. 'Tis true, nature on 
 these occasions will weep, but, my dear Dick, reason and reflection 
 should wipe away these tears. A few years may see us numbered 
 with those whom we now regret, or will give us cause to congra- 
 tulate those 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 suffer. 'Tis true, the inattention of 
 youth will leave the great account more unsettled than might be 
 wished ; but at this age, we have everything to plead for that 
 defect — the violence of passions, want of reason to moderate them. 
 Faults, no doubt we have, but thiey are the faults of youth, of in- 
 experience ; not a course of wickedness riveted by habit, and 
 aggravated by obdurate perseverance, 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 com- 
 passion to make allowance 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 wTiter, if he looked forward to 
 fame, expected to find it in the pulpit ; but this, and a short religious 
 discourse, are all that remain of his early compositions, which, 
 from the style, would uppear 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 (lY'ZS) 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 
 sennon for the occasion. Mr. Curran complied ; and his produc- 
 
TRIBUTE TO IIIS MOTHER. 9 
 
 tion excited such general admiration, that his mother, in answer 
 to the congratulations of the neighbourhood upon so flattering a 
 proof of her son's abilities, could not avoid tempering her mater- 
 nal 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 subsequent 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 
 favorite child one of the judges of the land, she would still reply — 
 " Don't speak to me oi judges — John w^-as fit for anything ; 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 the year 1783, 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 virtue and filial gratitude are preferred to 
 the glare of worldly dignities, will be considered as an epitaph no 
 less honorable both to the parent and the child.* 
 
 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, 
 
 * Her remains lie in the churchyard of Newmarket ; over them 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. 
 
 1* 
 
10 LITE OF CUREAN. 
 
 and by the promise of a small living in the gift of a distant rela- 
 tive, 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 college 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 num- 
 ber of the Spectator. He found it more convenient to accept the 
 latter alternative ; but, on the appointed day, the exercise was not 
 ready, and some unsatisfactory excuse was assigned. Against the 
 second oflfence a heavier penalty was denounced — he was con- 
 demned to pronounce a Latin oration in laudem decori from the 
 pulpit in the college chapel. He no longer thought of evading his 
 sentence, and accordingly prepared the panegyric ; but when he 
 came to recite it, he had not proceeded far before it was found to 
 contain a mock model of ideal perfection, Avhich 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. Doctor Duigenan was not very popu- 
 lar, and the Provost was secretly not dis])leased at any circum- 
 stance that could mortify him. He, therefore, merely went 
 through the form of calling upon the oftender for an explanation, 
 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 companions, they 
 surrounded him to hear the particulars 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 pro- 
 
HIS COLLEGE LtF'E. 11 
 
 fession for one who possessed tlie talents of which he had that day 
 given such a striking proof. He accepted the omen, and never 
 after repented of his decision. 
 
 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 
 veiy 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 appro- 
 priated to the sizers, and partly by scanty remittances from New- 
 market. But he was frequently without a shilling ; for he was 
 incorrigibly impro^'ident, and would often squander, in entertain- 
 ing his companions, what should have been meted out to answer 
 the demands of the coming quarter. Yet, Avhatever his priva- 
 t'ons were, he bore them with singular good humor, and when 
 he had no longer money to treat his friends, he never failed to 
 divert them with ludicrous representations of his distresses 
 and expedients. 
 
 One of his sayings while he was in College has been preserved, 
 and is a favorable instance of the felicitous use that he made of 
 his classical knowledge in the production of comical effect.* A 
 fellow-student in reciting a Latin theme assigned a false quantity 
 
 * Another classical application shews his readiness, if not his wit. A gentleman of 
 very ordinary countenance, whose forehead was so prominent on the one side that it 
 rose like a rugged hill, while on the other it was depressed like a valley, being charged 
 by one of his friends with an affair of gallantry, blushed exceedingly, and defended him- 
 self from the imputation by good humoredly offering his deformity as a proof of hja 
 innocence ; on which Carran observed : " On the Jlrst hlush I should think you ought to 
 be acquitted, but the maxim is stiil strong against jcu—Frpnti nulln ^des, nimiwn nt 
 erede coloi-L"--M. 
 
12 • LIFE OF CFKRAX. 
 
 to the syllable mi *n the word nimirum. A buzz of disapproba- 
 tion succeeded ; Mr. C urran, to relieve his friend's confusion 
 observed, '' 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 — 
 
 'SSeptimius. 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 illus- 
 trates the speculative propensities of his young and ardent mind. 
 A frequent topic of conversation v.'ith 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 
 follov.-ed the bewildering light of reason, the more 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 rensit 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, apprising him 
 of the impending event, and of his intention to perform his pro- 
 mise (if it should be allowed) on a particular night. The letter 
 did not reach its destination till after the expiration of the 
 appointed hour ; but it was the first, and the only intimation, that 
 arrived of the writers decease. 
 
 Something of the same turn of mind may be observed in a lit- 
 tle poem that Mr. Curran wrote the year before he left Trinity 
 College. One of his contemporaries 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 men- 
 tion as a friend from whose example and encouragement lio 
 
EARLY POETRY. 13 
 
 derived the most important advantages at this trying period of 
 his career, when hope and ardour were the most precious benefits 
 that a friend could bestov/. 
 
 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 versos : 
 
 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 I" — 
 " Impossible ! - ' — •' Indeed it 's true — 
 
 He 's dead — and so is Casey too — 
 
 In Limerick this, and that Killaloe. 
 
 As St. Paul says, ' we all must die ! ' 
 
 I 'm sorry for 't," — " Faith so 'm I — 
 
 Extremely so — But tell me, pray, "] 
 
 If you were on the ice to-day ? y 
 
 There was great skating there, they say — " j 
 
 " I could n't go for want of shoes — 
 
 In truth 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 heaved the sigh, or told the joke, 
 
 Yet, must I own, there were a few 
 
 Who gave your memory its due ; 
 
14 LIFE OF CURRAN. 
 
 And while they dropt a friendly tear 
 
 Said 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 further shore, 
 
 You w^atch'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 show where hoary sages stray, 
 
 And where they chance to keep their way ; 
 
 Then laugh to think, how light as air. 
 
 Our blind dogmatic guesses were ; 
 
 When, fancy throned and placed on high 
 
 We sat in judgment o'er the sky. 
 
 There envy too began to rise. 
 
 To think that you were grown so wise ; 
 
 That bursting from this shell of clay. 
 
 You now enjoy'd 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 '11 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 
 
 What she sat ready to indite, 
 
WIIJ.IAM APJOHN. 15 
 
 When Rmnor, lo! with deafning sound, 
 
 More gladsome tidings blows around, 
 
 And bid.s her thousand tongues to tell, 
 
 That Apjohn is alive and well ! 
 
 And louder now the torrent grows, 
 
 Gathering new murmurs as it flows, 
 
 "When the poor Muse, in sad affright. 
 
 Swift to Parnassus wings her flight ; 
 
 But promised, ere away she fled, 
 
 That when you should indeed be dead, 
 
 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 honors 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 honors 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 for you and me. 
 
 Though none upon our graves 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 lengthened, 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 honorable 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 never spoke of his capacity but in terms of the most 
 
16 '■ LIFE OF CUERAN. 
 
 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." 
 
LEAVES COLLEGE. l7 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 Mr. Curran leaves College— Enters the Middle Temple— Letter to Mr. 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 
 London— His society in London — Anecdote of his interview with Macklin— His early 
 application and attainments — Favorite authors — Early attachment to the Lish peas- 
 antry — His marriage — Remarks upon the English Law. 
 
 Mr. Curran completed his college studies in the early part of 
 the year ITYS, having qualified himself to a Master's degree, and 
 passed over to London, where he became a student of law in 
 the Society of the Middle Temple.* Dm*ing his residence in 
 England he Avrote regularly, and at considerable length to his 
 friends in Ireland. A collection of these letters has been pre- 
 served, and as several of them contain a more striking picture of 
 his circumstances, and of many traits of individual character, than 
 any description by another could convey, 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. 
 
 * It is indispensable that every person who seeks admission to the Irish bar, shall 
 have " studied " {i. e., eaten a certain number of dinners during two years) at one of the 
 Inns of the Court, in London, as well as at the Queen's Inn of law, in Dublin ! — M. 
 
18 LIFE OF CURRAN. 
 
 "LoxDOX, 31 Chandos-street, July 10, 1773. 
 "THE REV. HENRY AVESTON, 
 
 * NEWMARKET, CO. CORK. 
 
 "I would have taken a last farewell of my dear Harry from 
 Dublin, if I had not written 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 connections 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 phiys the self-tormentor, she 
 commonly acquits herself to a miracle, and v^'ill not ftul to collect 
 in a single group the most hideous forms of anticipated misfor- 
 tune. I considered myself, besides, as resigning for ever the little 
 indulgences that youth and inexperience may claim for their 
 errors, and passing 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 alleviate 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 Alraa-mater ; it was the scene 
 of many a boyish folly, and of many a happy hour. I should 
 have felt more confusion at a part of the retrospect, had I not 
 been relieved by a recollection of the valuable friendship I had 
 formed there. Thouo^li I am far from thinkino- such a circumx- 
 stance can justify a passed misconduct, 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 tlie catalogue; nay, even \\iq 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 I could 
 
LETTER TO MH. WESTON. 19 
 
 not but go the round), I packed their respective 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 box with my seven shirts, which she had rested against the 
 rails during the delay, and screwed up her fece 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-provision in the other, took the lead in the proces- 
 sion ; and so we journeyed on to George's Quay,* where the ship 
 was just ready to sail. When I entered, I found my fellow-pas- 
 seno-ers seated round a laro-e table in the cabin : we Avere fourteen 
 in number. A young Highland lord had taken the head of the 
 table and the conversation, and, with a modesty peculiar to him- 
 self, gave a history of his travels, and his intimate connections 
 with the princes of the empire. An old debauched officer w^as 
 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 l^id, was any one 
 at leisure to listen to me ; so I took possession of what the captain 
 called a bed, wondering 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 disap- 
 pointed ; 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.f Here, 
 after the usual pillage at the custom-house, I laid my box down 
 
 * In Cork.— M. 
 
 t Parkgate, in Cheshire, was the usual port of debarcation, for Irish voyagers to Eng- 
 land, in the last century. — M. 
 
ZU LIFE OF CUERAN. 
 
 on the beacli, seated myself upon it, and, casting my eyes west- 
 ward over the Welsh mountains towards Ireland, I began to 
 reflect on the impossibility of getting back without the precarious 
 assistance of others. Poor Jack ! thought I, thou wert never till 
 now so far from home but thou mightest return on thine own legs. 
 Here now must thou remain, for where here canst thou expect the 
 assistance of a friend ? Whimsical as the idea was, it had power 
 to affect me ; until, at length, I was awakened from this reverie 
 by a figure which approached me with the utmost aftability ; 
 methought his looks seemed to say, ' Why is thy spirit troubled V 
 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 solici- 
 tude in the invitation, 'twas irresistible. I arose, therefore, and 
 followed him, ashamed of my uncharitable despondence. Surely, 
 thought I, ' there is still humanity left among us,' as I raised my 
 eyes to the golden letters over his door, that oifered entertainment 
 and repose to the wearied traveller. 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-passenger had agreed 
 for one in the same vehicle, I retracted my bargain, and agreed 
 for my box only. I perceived, however, when I arose next morn- 
 ing, 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 philan- 
 thropy till that moment running cheerily through my veins, and 
 to have the current turned back suddenly by the detection of his 
 knavery ! Verily, Yorick, even thy gentle spirit, so meekly accus- 
 tomed 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 London, and sallied forth towards Chester on foot. 
 
LETTER TO MR. WESTOX. 21 
 
 I was so nettled at being the dupe of my own credulity, that I was 
 almost tempted 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 Coventry, 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 prodi- 
 gious capital. 'T would be impossible for description to give any 
 idea of the various objects that fill a stranger, on his first arrival, 
 with surprise and astonishment. The magnificence of the churches, 
 hospitals, and other public building, which everywhere present 
 themselves, would alone be ample subject of admiration to a spec- 
 tator, though he were not distracted 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 tlie 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 som.e future time, as I am deter- 
 mined 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 Ireland next summer, I shall spend a 
 week, before I go, in seeing the curiosities here (the king and 
 queen, and the Hons) ; and, if I continue in my present mood, you 
 will see a strange alteration in your poor friend. That cursed fever 
 ever brought me down so much, and my spirits are so reduced, 
 that, faith, I don't remember to have laughed these six weeks. 
 Indeed, I never thought solitude could lean so heavily on me as I 
 find it does : I rise, most commonly, in the morning between five 
 
22 LIFE OF CURE AX. 
 
 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 lodgings and the Park. For heaven's sake, 
 send me some news or other (for, surely, Newmarket cannot 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 anything about Keller ; I wrote twice to that 
 gentleman without being favored with any answer. You will give 
 my best respects to Mrs. Aldworth and her family; to Doctor 
 Creagh's ; and do n't forget my good friends Peter and Will 
 
 Connel. 
 
 " Yours sincerely, 
 
 "J. P. C. 
 
 " P.S. — I will cover this blank edge with intreating 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." 
 
 [Curran's correspondence with Mr. Weston was collected and 
 published in 1819, but is only slightly known. It extends over 
 only a year and a half (17*73-4), when Curran was yet very young, 
 but contains some passages too characteristic not to be added to 
 this life of him. Here is a lively bit of description : 
 
 '- No doubt Keller has informed you of Schoole's exploit In the matri- 
 monial way, with the daughter of the widow Craigan iu Limerick. It 
 seems the whole posse comitatus was hunting the fugitives for three or 
 four days ; but Schoole made a valiant running fight of it, and has the 
 dear creature here in London. I have the honor of being introduced as a 
 particular friend of Mr. Schoole's, though I fancy the desire of showing 
 me the prize was the chief ground of the particularity. She is a curious 
 little puppet, smart and chattering, and looks upon her good man as 
 an oracle of taste and erudition. By her means I have got acquainted 
 with a Miss Hume, who is also an original in her way. She is a relation 
 of the celebrated David Hume ; and, I suppose, on the strength of the 
 kindred, sets up for a politician as well as a sceptic ; she has heard his 
 
THE IRISH CHAKACTEK. 23 
 
 Essays recommended, and shews her own discernment by pronouncing 
 them unanswerable ; and talks of the famous Burke, by the familiar 
 appellation of Ned. Then she is so romantic and so sentimental — nothing 
 for her but grots, and purling streams, and piping shepherds ; and to 
 crown all, it sings like a nightingale. As I have not the best command 
 of my muscles, I always propose putting out the candles, before the song 
 begins, for the greater romanticality of the thing. This is an expedient 
 I used to have recourse to in the college, when I had the honor of teach- 
 ing Nixon to sing. 'T is a miserable thing when a poor girl is so mis- 
 taken in her qualifications, as to display only her absurdities, and stu- 
 diously conceal everything that she ought not to be ashamed of. Even 
 this being wants not common sense, if she would but use it. But what 
 have you or I to do with the text or comment?'' 
 
 Here, after an unfavorable character of the English hoor^ is Ciir- 
 ran's panegyric on his own countrymen : 
 
 •' Their fondness for genealogy, so much despised here, and not without 
 reason, yet gives them an advantage they could derive from no other 
 source. When each poor individual is supposed to contain in his own 
 person the accumulated honors of many generations, they are led to treat 
 each other with a politeness and respect proportioned to this imaginary 
 merit, and to cultivate a friendly intercourse that contributes not a little 
 to reclaim, and even to refine the sentiments of the illiterate ; and I have 
 often thought, their manner of lamenting over their dead, co-operates 
 strongly to preserve and improve this untutored sort of politeness, by 
 keeping alive something like a taste for composition in a language, that 
 wants neither expression nor extent, and by preventing that language 
 from a decay, into which it must otherwise have fallen : and to these you 
 add the severe political grievances, and the still more cruel miserable 
 Inducement to a strict association, the community of aflGiction and 
 wretchedness, more than can be found in either France or Germany, 
 and yet fostered in the bosom of a constitution boasted to be free. You 
 will smile, no doubt, at these observations as being unseasonable as well 
 as exaggerated. To the first I must plead guilty : but for the latter, 
 there certainly is some truth in it ; would to Heaven there was not so 
 much !" 
 
 There is life, spirit and vivacity in this account of his visit to 
 
24: . LIFE OF CURRAN. 
 
 Hampton Court, one of the Royal Palaces near London, to whicli 
 the public at large, as its true proprietors, have free admission now : 
 
 '' The servant who showed us the apartments, which were very splen- 
 did, gave us a circumstantial detail of the pictures, and the judgments 
 passed upon them by different connoisseurs : he seemed to be a good deal 
 pleased with his manner of explaining a suite of tapestry, representing 
 the Persian war of Alexander : though a simple fellow, he had his lesson 
 well by rote, and ran over the battles of Issus and Arbela, &c., with a 
 surprising flippancy. ' But where is Alexander ?' cries Apjohn. ' There 
 sir, at the door of Darius's tent, with the ladies at his feet.' ' Surely^' 
 said I, * that must be Hephestion, for he was mistaken by the Queen for 
 Alexander.' ' Pardon me, sir : I hope I know Alexander better than 
 that ;' and he shook his head in confirmation of his opinion, while I paid 
 myself the same compliment. ' But which of the two do you really think 
 the greater man ?' ' Greater ! Bless your soul, sir, they are both dead 
 this hundred years.' Harry ! what a comment on human vanity ! By 
 my soul, there was the marrow of a thousand folios in the answer. I 
 could not help thinking, at the instant, what a puzzle that mighty man 
 would be in, should he appear before a committee from the Temple of 
 Fame, to claim those laurels he thought so much of, and be opposed in 
 his demand, though his competitors were Thersites, or the fellow who 
 rubbed Bucephalus's heels. How would his identity be ascertained ? 
 Chaerilus, stand forth ; but should Masvius contest the bays with Chaerilus, 
 would a million of critics decide the difference ? What then must be the 
 sentence ? Why, since the conqueror cannot be distinguished from the 
 slave, let the chaplet be divided between them, et curru servus portetur 
 eodem. Thus, in a few years, may my dear Harry be a Tillotson, and his 
 friend as much Cicero as Cicero himself." 
 
 The following extract shows how Curran spent his time in London. 
 What a happy kind of life, what a blessed flashing of mirth and 
 meditation — sport and study — fun and philosophy — purl and poli- 
 tics — shaded, as it must have been, with the constitutional melan- 
 choly which pressed on him through life, and at length wrapped 
 his mind in the darkest folds of despondency and hopelessness, 
 such a way of living must have had charms for one who liked 
 variety, and could accommodate himself to all phases of society. 
 
EARLY CORRESPONDENCE. 25 
 
 "I happened at first to be rather unlucky in my lodgings; I was not 
 aware of their being situated exactly under the bells of St. Martin, and 
 that I was to be eternally stunned with the noise of praying bells, rejoin- 
 ing bells, and passing bells. I had the additional ineonveuience of being 
 exposed to the conversation of a man, no ways agreeable to me, a dull, 
 good-natured, generous, unexperienced, opinionated, deep-read, unlearned, 
 disputative sort of a character, still more offensive to me than my other 
 neighbour, the steeple ; for I had learned to endure unpleasing sounds, but 
 I never had an opportunity of learning to bear with a troublesome com- 
 panion. So I changed my tabernacle not a little to my satisfaction 
 Besides being disengaged from the nuisances that infected me before, I 
 have procured much better accommodations, on more reasonable terms. 
 For the future, you will direct to me, No. 9 Orange Street, Leicester 
 Fields. 
 
 " Notwithstanding a fit of illness, which somewhat retarded my applica- 
 tion in the beginning, I have exerted a degree of assiduity, of which I 
 once thought myself incapable. For the first five months I was almost 
 totally a recluse, indeed, too much so. When we seclude ourselves entirely 
 from all intercourse with the world, our affections will soon grow impa- 
 tient of the restraint, and strongly convince us that much of our happi 
 ness must be drawn from society ; and if we exert too much rigour, how- 
 ever philosophical it may appear at the time, to suppress these struggles, 
 the temper is apt to fall into a gloomy kind of apathy. This I found to 
 be my case, and I accordingly resolved to soften the severity of the dis- 
 cipline I had overzealously adopted, and to that end made some additions 
 to my wardrobe, and purchased a fiddle, which I had till then denied 
 myself. Do not think, however, from my mentioning those indulgences, 
 that I have diminished my hours of reading ; all I have done by the 
 change is, employing the time that must otherwise be vacant, in amuse- 
 ment instead of solitude, I still continue to read ten hours every day, 
 seven at law, and three at history, or the general principles of politics ; 
 and that I may have time enough, I rise at half after four. I have con- 
 trived a machine after the manner of an hour-glass, which, perhaps, you 
 may be curious to know, which wakens me regularly at that hour. Exactly 
 over my head I have suspended two vessels of tin, one above the other ; 
 when I go to bed, which is always at ten, I pour a bottle of water into 
 the upper vessel, in the bottom of which is a hole of such a size, as to let 
 the water pass through, so as to make the inferior reservoir overflow in 
 six hours and a half. I have had no small trouble in proportioning those 
 
 9 
 
26 LIFE OF CUKE AN. 
 
 vessels ; aud I was still more puzzled for a while bow to couQne my head, 
 BO as to receive the drop, but I have at length succeeded. 
 
 '• You will, perhaps, be at some loss to guess what kind of amusement 
 I allow myself : why, I'll tell you. I spend a couple of hours every night 
 at a coffee-house, where I am not a little entertained with a group of old 
 politicians, who meet in order to debate on the reports of the day, or to 
 invent some for the next, with the other business of the nation. Though 
 I don't know that sociability is the characteristic of this people, yet poli- 
 tics is a certain introduction to the closest intimacy of coffee-house 
 acquaintance. One meets with a great deal of amusement from this sort 
 of conversation, and I think it can scarcely be devoid of improvement. 
 Six or seven old fellows who have spent the early part of their lives in a 
 variety of adventures, and are united at last by no other principle than a 
 common vacancy, which makes it necessary for them to fill up their time 
 by meddling in other people's business, since they have none of their own, 
 is certainly a miscellany not unworthy a perusal ; it gives a facility at 
 least of discerning characters, and what is no less useful, enures us to a 
 toleration that must make our passage through life more easy. I also 
 visit a variety of ordinaries aud eating-houses, and they are equally fer- 
 tile in game for a character-hunter. I think I have found out the cellar 
 where Roderick Random ate shin of beef for three-pence, and actually 
 drank out of the identical quart, which the drummer squeezed together 
 when poor Strap spilt the broth on his legs.'' 
 
 From the last letter in this collection I qnote a passage, a little too 
 formal, perhaps, for the off-hand style of friendly letters, but show- 
 ing vigour of thought, feeling and expression : 
 
 *'My not writing to you since I came to England, proceeding wholly 
 from a scarcity of any thing worth communicating, I might justify a 
 continuance of silence from the same cause. But yet I know not well 
 how it happens, there is something in the first day of the new year that 
 seems peculiarly to demand the tribute of remembrance : I could not let 
 it pass without apprizing you that I am still in the land of the living : 
 ^'vivo eguidem." These anniversary days serve as light-houses on the 
 great ocean of time, by which we direct and compute our courses. They 
 alarm us to a momentary recollection of the tempests we have weathered, 
 
EAELY CORRESPONDENCE. 27 
 
 the quicksands we have escaped, or the fortunate gales we have enjoyed. 
 If any of the stars of heaven have shone with propitious influence, we 
 adore them for their benevolent regards, and endeavour to engage their 
 superintendence for the remainder of our voyage. 
 '' As Young says — 
 
 ' We take no heed of time but by its loss ;' 
 
 the moments slide unperceived away, we think it still in our possession, still 
 in being, till the knell of our departed hours startles us into a perception of 
 its decease. These returning periods are not then without their advantage. 
 They admonish us, at least, to dedicate one day in the year to a little reflec- 
 tion. The incidents of our life crowd in upon our thoughts, the pleasures 
 we have found, the anxious moments we have spent — and Reason, elated 
 with the temporary submission of her authority, makes a merit of passing 
 an impartial sentence, and of changing, for an instant, from the venal 
 advocate to the upright judge of our passions or our follies. Then, too, 
 the heart counts over its attachments ; and if Fate has blotted out any 
 name of the catalogue, we fix our expectation with a more anxious solici- 
 tude on the survivors. When any of our fortresses against the outrages 
 of fortune have sunk into ruin, we are doubly bound to attend to the pre- 
 servation of those that remain, lest we should be found totally defence- 
 less in the day of danger. 
 
 " Thus have I in some sort accounted for my troubling you with a let- 
 ter at this particular time, as well as for the melancholy mood in which 
 I sit down to write : in truth I do not remember to have been much more 
 dejected. To you, my dear Harry, I hope this merry season has been 
 more favourable. And yet, situated as you are, you can scarcely avoid 
 sometimes feeling the heaviness of time, especially now v.'hen Newmarket 
 has lost so many who might contribute to enliven it. As for my part, 
 you can neither envy nor congratulate my situation with half the reason 
 that I may yours. I once thought that solitude amidst thousands was no 
 better than a paradox ; but now I find it effectually verified. It is, 
 indeed, the most dreary of all solitudes to walk abroad amongst millions, 
 to read the most legible of all characters, those written by fortune or 
 affliction, in every face you meet ; to feel your heart elated or depressed 
 by every story, and with the most disinterested solicitude, acknowledging 
 the object for its fellow-creature ; to have all these exquisitely respond- 
 ent sympathies for which nature has so finely formed the bosoms of her 
 children, unobserved and unavailing, * * * *] 
 
28 LIFE OF CUEEAN. 
 
 In a letter of nearly the same date, to another friend,* he says : 
 " By the time you receive this I 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 recov- 
 ered, and shall continue to read with unabated application; 
 indeed, that is the only means of making solitude supportable ; 
 yet, it must be owned, a man of speculative turn will find ample 
 matter in that way without stirring fi-om his window. It is here 
 that every vice and folly climb to their meridian, and that mor- 
 tality seems properly to understand her business. If you 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 inti- 
 mate that they all made a point of dying here. It is amazing, 
 that even custom should make death a matter of so much uncon- 
 cern 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 
 Avord of it till this evening, though he is divided from me only by 
 a partition. They \isit 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 paid to him, except a dirge 
 each night on the Jew's-harp, which I sliall 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 dis- 
 heartened him. He had had from his boyhood a considerable 
 precipitation and confusion of utterance, fi-om which he was 
 denominated by his school-fellows "stuttering Jack Curran." 
 This defect he had labored to remove, but the cure was not yet 
 
 * Jeremiah Keller, Esq., a member of the Irish bar.~C. 
 
BURSTING THE SHELL. 29 
 
 complete. From the agitation of a first effort lie 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 capacity ; confine yourself to the 
 study of law, and you will, to a certainty, become an eminent 
 chamber counsel ; but, depend upon it, nature never intended you 
 for an orator." Fortunately for his fame, this advice was disre- 
 garded: 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 him, his indignation, 
 and along with it his talent, was roused. Forgetting all his 
 timidity and hesitation, he rose against his assailants, 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 colloquial powers was the novelty that he 
 could give to the same flicts upon every repetition : he adorned a 
 favorite anecdote, as a skilful nmsician would a favorite air, by an 
 endless variety of unpremeditated ad libitum graces. 
 
 One day after dinner, an acquaintance, in speaking of his 
 eloquence, happened to observe that it must have been born 
 with him. " Indeed, my dear sir," replied Mr. Curran, " it w^as 
 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 debat- 
 ing club — poor Apjohn, and Duhigg,"^ and the rest of them! 
 they have all disappeared from the stage ; but my own busy hour 
 will soon be fretted through, and then w^e may meet again behind 
 the scenes. Poor fellows ! they are now at rest ; but I still can 
 
 * The late B. T. Duhigg, Esq., of the Irish Bar.— C. 
 
30 LIFE OF CUREAIT. 
 
 see tliem, and tlie glow of lionest bustle on their looks, as they 
 arranged, their little plan of honourable association (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 irrevocably settled. Upon 
 the first night of our assembling, I attended, my foolish heart 
 throbbing with the anticipated honour of being styled ' the learned 
 member that opened the debate,' or ' the very eloquent gentle- 
 man who has just sat down.' All day the coming scene had 
 been ilitting before my fancy, and cajoling it ; my ear already 
 caught the glorious melody of 'hear him, hear him!' Already I 
 was practising how to steal a cunning side-long glance at the 
 tear of generous approbation bubbling in the eyes of my Kttle 
 auditory ; never suspecting, alas ! that a modern eye may have so 
 little aflinity with moisture that the finest gunpowder may bo 
 dried upon it. I stood up — the question was Catholic claims or 
 the slave trade, I protest I now forget which, but the diff"erence, 
 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 jiublished. I stood up, 
 trembling through every fibre ; but remembering that in tliis I 
 was but imitating Tally, I took courage, and had actually pro- 
 ceeded almost as far as ' Mr. Chairman,' when to my astonish- 
 ment and terror, I perceived that every eye was riveted upon me. 
 There were only six or seven prcvsent, and the little room could 
 not have contained as many more; yet was it, to my panic- 
 struck imagination, as if I were the central object in nature, and 
 assembled millions were gazing upon me in breathless expecta- 
 tion. I became dismayed and dumb; my friends cried 'hear 
 him!' but there was nothing to hear. My lips, indeed, went 
 through the pantomime of articulation, but I was like the unfor- 
 timate fiddler at the fair, who, upon coming to strike up the solo 
 that was to ravish every ear, discovered that an enemy had mali- 
 ciously soaped his bow ; or rather Hke poor Punch as I once saw 
 
THE DEBATING CLUB. 31 
 
 him (and how many like him have I seen in our old House of 
 Commons ! but it is dead, and let us not disturb its ashes) grimac- 
 ing a soliloquy, of which his prompter behind had most indis- 
 creetly 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 struggle. I was for 
 the present silenced, but I still attended our meetings with the 
 most laudable regularity, and even ventured to accompany the 
 'others to a more ambitious 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 parlia- 
 mentary eloquence with ' such sound emphasis and good discre- 
 tion,' 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 expected remittance arrived from 
 Newmarket ; Apjohn dined with me that day, and when the leg 
 of mutton, or rather the bone, was removed, we offered up the 
 libation of an additional glass of punch for the health and length 
 of days (and heaven heard the prayer) of the kind mother that 
 had remembered the necessities of her absent child. In the 
 evening we had repaired to ' the Devils.' One of them v/as 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 gifted gentleman with the dirty 
 cravat and greasy pantaloons.''^ I found this learned personage 
 
 * 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 threadbare coat," " the able supporter of the 
 present ministry with the new pair of boots," &c. — C. 
 
32 LIFE OF CURRAN. 
 
 in the act of calumniating chronology by the most preposterous 
 anachronisms (and as I believe, I shortly after told him) traduc- 
 ing 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 insulting an intimacy. He descanted upon 
 Demosthenius, the glory of the Roman forum ; sj^oke 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 Thermopyloe. Thinking that I 
 had a right to know something of these matters, I looked at him 
 with surprise ; and whether it was the money in my pocket, or 
 my classical 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 invec- 
 tives against antiquity into an invective against me, and con- 
 cluded by a few words of friendly counsel (hoj-resco referens) to 
 ' Orator Mum,' who he doubted not possessed wonderful talents 
 for eloquence, although he would recommend him to show it in 
 future by some more popular method than his silence. I followed 
 his advice, and I believe not entirely without eSect ; for when 
 sitting down, I whimpered my friend, that I hoped he did not 
 think that my dirty antagonist had come ' quite clean off?' ' On 
 the contrary, my dear fellow,' said he, ' every one around me is 
 declaring that it is the first time they ever saw him so well 
 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 honor of the art, let ns have another glass." 
 
 The speech which Mr. Curran made upon this occasion was 
 immediately followed by a more substantial reward than the 
 applauses of his hearers ; the debate was no sooner closed than 
 the president of the society dispatched his secretary to the eloquent 
 
THE ROBIN HOOD. 33 
 
 stranger, to solicit the honor of his company to partake of a cold 
 collation, which proved to consist of bread and cheese and por- 
 ter; but the piibHc 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, Le 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 committing to memory intended speeches, but 
 he was 'in the habit of assisting his mind with ample notes of the 
 leading topics, and trusted to the occasion for expression. 
 
 The society that he latterly most frequented was the well-known 
 Robin Hood. He also sometimes attended a meeting for the dis- 
 cussion of religious questions, which was held on Sunday evenings 
 at the Brown Bear in the Strand, and resorted 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 while he v/as at 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 
 
 * The same zeal foi- the emancipation of the Roman Catliolics which 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 1S14, he accompanied some friends to see Cardinal 
 Fesch's gallery of paintings. The Frenchman in attendance there was a good deal 
 struck by Mr. Curran's observations, and, upon the latter's retiring before the others, 
 asked, with some curiosity, who he was. As soon as he heard his name, "Ah !" said he, 
 with great surprise, "je Yoyois bien qu'il avoit beaucoup d'esprit, mais, mon Dicu ! je 
 n'aurois jamais Boupconne que ce petit monsieur fut le grand Catholique Irlan- 
 dou."~C. 
 
 2* 
 
34: LIFE OF CUKRAN. 
 
 excess of fervor and imagination lias been by some imputed as 
 its imperfection, we sliould naturally expect to see those qualities 
 predominating 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 pro- 
 duced a considerable quantity; but in little of it do we meet with 
 that sustained ardour, Avith those fearless conceptions, and that 
 diction teeming with im.agery, which distinguish his other produc- 
 tions. When he occupied himself with poetry, he appears to have 
 considered it rather as a recreation to soothe himself, than as a 
 means of exciting others. With the exception of a very few 
 instances (which, however, prove his poetic capacity, had he anxi- 
 ously cultivated it), his verses are, in general, placid, familiar, and 
 unaspiring, seldom venturing beyond expressions of established 
 form, and, for the most part, contented with those sentiments 
 of obdous 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, fiow'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 Thompson paid - 
 The last sad tribute to his Talbot's shade, 
 A humbler muse, by fond remembrance led, 
 Bewails the absent, where he mourned the dead. 
 Nor differ much the subjects of the strain, 
 "Whether of death or distance we complain ; 
 Vfhether we're sundered 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, 
 
EAKLY POETEY. 35 
 
 While in this breathing death reflection lives, 
 
 And o'er the wreck of happiness survives. 
 
 Alas ! my friend, were Providence inclined 
 
 (In unrelenting wrath to human kind) 
 
 To take back every blessing that she gave, 
 
 From the wide ruin, she would memory save, 
 
 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 Wo, 
 
 And feeds the source lohence 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 w^ere realized by the subsequent 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 beau 
 
 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. 
 
 And a httle further on : 
 
 But if oppression lord it o'er the land, 
 
 And force alone can lawless force withstand. 
 
36 LIFE OF CURKAN. 
 
 Fearless lie follows where bis country calls, 
 And lives with freedom, or with glory falls ; 
 He gives that shackle he disdains to v/ear, 
 For endless fame, nor thinks the purchase dear. 
 
 This may not be very good poetry, Lut it evinces, what is more 
 honorable to the writer, and what was in those days of more value 
 to Ireland than good poetry, an indignant sense of her condition, 
 and an impatience to redress it. It will hereafter appear how far 
 he fulfilled the engagements of his youth. 
 
 From the above and similar productions,'^ and from the indica- 
 tions of talent that his ordinary conversation afforded, great hopes 
 were now entertained of him. According to all the accounts of 
 those who knew him at this time, his colloquial powers were even 
 then of a very high order. Having no hereditary fortune or 
 powerful connections on which to depend, and having embraced 
 an ambitious and hazardous profession, where, without the reputa- 
 tion of superior ability, there was little 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 mentioning, 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 character 
 from me. He possesses a good understanding; 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 preparing for the bar, for 
 
 * During the two years that preceded his admission to the bar, he wrote, besides the 
 poem of " Friendsliip," "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 that place, who had given him a very hospitable recep- 
 tion.— C. 
 
HIS EAKLY FRIENDS. 37 
 
 whicli profession lie possesses extraordinary talents, and will disap- 
 point all liis friends if lie does not distinguish himself there. As 
 far as I can observe, he seems to be extremely cheerful and good- 
 natured, and is remarkable pleasant in conversation.'"^ 
 
 In a letter of about the same date from one of Mr. Curran's 
 earliest friends, Mr. IIudson,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 and then. Jack, 
 what you are 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 affluent ; 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, Avill alford the satisfac- 
 tion that is Avorthy of a man." 
 
 It would be injustice to suppress another passage. Having a 
 little before chided his friend for neglecting to inform him of the 
 state of his finances, Mr. Hudson goes on, " I think I shall be a 
 man of no small fiime to-morrow or next day, and though 'tis but 
 
 * Doctor Ci'eagh waa a physician, anil a member of a very respectable family of that 
 name in the county of Cork. Much of tlie 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 abroa.d nor at home, had he ever met so delightful a 
 companion as " young Jacli Curran ;" yet, the conversation of tlie 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 had 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 to the eye, before the smile was off 
 the lip ; nor that surprising control over all the mysteries of language, which he acquired 
 by his subsequent habits of extemporaneous speaking. Dr. Creagh was a determined 
 •Whig, and had, no doubt, an influence in confirming the political inclinations of his son- 
 in-law. It was also from Dr. Creagh, who had 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. — C. 
 
 tMr. Edward Hudson, for a long course of years the most eminent dentist in Ireland. — C. 
 He built a beautiful mansion near Dublin, and asked Curran what order of architec- 
 ture he should adopt. Gaily smiling at the dentist, the wit replied, " The Task-&n, of 
 course." In allusion to this, Hudson was commonly spoken of, familiarly, as The Grand 
 Duke of Tusk-any ;" and when his nephew entered the military service of a foreign coun- 
 try, Curran said that the young man's first engagement would naturally be the Battle of 
 Pul-tusk.— M. 
 
38 LIFE OF CFEEAN. 
 
 the fame of a dentist, yet if that of an honest man is added to it, 
 T shall not be unhappy. Write speedily to me, and if you are in 
 want, think I shall not be satisfied with my fortunes — believe mie 
 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 of the above still lives [1819], and 
 if the union of the two characters, to which, in his youth, he 
 aspired, could confer happiness, he has been completely happy. 
 
 Many other proofs might be added (were it necessary) to show 
 that Mr. Curran was, even at this 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 person of discern- 
 ment who knew him. To be regarded 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 intellectual jDre- 
 tensions; 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 life he used to pass considerable intervals of time at his 
 native village, where he always entered, with the most good- 
 natured \dvacity, into all the little .parties and interests of the 
 place. He, whose lofty and independent spirit was a few years 
 after to bring upon him the charge of " lecturing the Privy Coun- 
 cil,"* was in his social intercourse so little fastidious or assuming, 
 that he could find abundant amusement amono; the harmless wits 
 and politicians of an obscure little town. Nor were these mere 
 
 * An expression of Lord Clare's. The ^hole scene is given hereafter.— C. 
 
LETTER FROM LOXDOX. 39 
 
 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 
 fi'om the Temple abound with proofs of these amiable propensi- 
 ties ; 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. Tliis unpretend- 
 ing facility of manners, showing how little natural the alliance 
 between 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 sympa- 
 thising habits are the surest road to lasting friendships. Of these, 
 few persons ever enjoyed more — the greater 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 alleviate was not merely casual. 
 Notwithstanding the liveliness of his conversation, from which a 
 stranger would have supposed that his spirits never knew depres- 
 sion, he was all his life subject to visitations of constitutional 
 melancholy, which the most ordinary accidents excited and embit- 
 tered; even at this early time it may be observed constantly 
 breaking out in his communications to his friends. After having 
 passed the long vacation 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, I think I never felt so strangely in 
 mv hfe. The struggle it cost me to leave Ireland, and the pain 
 
4:0 LIFE OF curaiAX. 
 
 of leaving it as I did, had been hurried 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 agitation of 
 mind: the hurry also of the journey miglit in some measure 
 have contributed to soothe for a moment these uneasy sensations. 
 But the exertion was now over, the hurry was past ; the barriers 
 between me and reflection now gave way, and left me to be over- 
 whelmed in the torrent ; all the difficulties I had encountered, 
 the happy moments I had lately passed, all now rushed in upon 
 my mind, in melancholy succession, and engrossed 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 Newmarket, set out in search of some 
 of my old acquaintance. I sought them sorrowing, but there was 
 not even one to be found ; they had either changed their abodes 
 or were in the country. How trivial a vexation can wound a 
 mind that is once depressed ! Even this little 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 ni}^ 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 favorite projects of the 
 heart may flourish, and flatter us with gaudy expectations for a 
 moment, and then, suddenly disappearing, leave us to lament over 
 our w^-etchedness. and our credulity. Pleased with the novelty 
 of the word, we fasten eagerly on the bauble, till satiated with 
 enjoyment, or disgusted with disappointment, we resign it with 
 contempt. The world, in general, follows 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 attached to, 
 
TECULIAKITIES OF STYLE. 41 
 
 and to be assured of the attacliment of some worthy affectionate 
 souls, where we may find a friendly refuge from the rigours of our 
 destiny ; to have even one congenial bosom on which the poor 
 afflicted spirit may repose, v/hich will feelingly participate our 
 jojs or our sorrows, and with equal readiness catch pleasure from 
 our successes, or strive to alleviate the anguish of disappoint- 
 ment." 
 
 In another letter, written a few weeks after, the same unfortu- 
 nate sensibility is more strikingly exemplified, and more vigor- 
 ously expressed. In one passage we clearly recognise the pecu- 
 liarities 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 pre- 
 paring for the removal. I had settled myself with an expectation 
 of remaining till I should finally depart for Ii-eland ; 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, 
 Avhich 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 children 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 applicable to the mind as to the 
 body ? And is all our firmness and intrepidity founded ulti- 
 mately on our weakness and our foibles ? May all our giant for- 
 titude 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 unaccountably 
 depressed ? To leave the friends of my heart, to tear myself 
 
42 I^IFE OF CUKRAN. 
 
 from their last aftecting farewell, to turn my face to a distant 
 region, separated from tliem 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 incon- 
 sistence ! and yet so it was. I proceeded very slowly to fill the 
 trunk. I could not please myself in the packing. Some letters 
 now presented themselves ; I could not put them in Avithout read- 
 ino". At leno-th I made an end to the work, and fell into another 
 reverie ; I called to mind my first acquaintance with my little 
 trunk ; I industriously hunted my memory for every thing that 
 any way related to it, and gave my recollection a great deal of 
 credit for being so successful in making 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 billows was it wafted, from Cork to Bris- 
 tol, over how many miles from Bristol to London ! And how 
 small a portion of that distance must it measure back to-day ! And 
 must I be equally slow in my return ? With such sensations I left 
 Mr. Turner's, perhaps as completely miserable as any man in London." 
 Of some of his occupations, he gives the following account : 
 " As to my amusements, they are very few. Since I wrote last, 
 I went to one play. I commonly spend even more time at home, 
 than I can employ in reading of an improAing and amusing kind.* 
 As I live near the Park, I walk there some time every day. I 
 sometimes find entertainment in visiting the diversity of eating- 
 places with which this town abounds. Here every coal-porter is 
 a politician, and vends his maxims in public with all the impor- 
 tance of a man w^ho thinks he is exerting himself for the public 
 service : he claims the privilege of looking as wise as possible, and 
 
 * Mr. Curran's cotemporaries at the Temple have confirmed his own account 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 hi3 
 second year at the Temple, he spent a considerable portion of his time in the courts of 
 law.— C. 
 
ROMANCE OF REAL LIFE. 43 
 
 of talking as loud, of damning the ministry, and abusing tlie king, 
 with less reserve tlian he would his own equal. Yet, little as these 
 poor people understand 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 ridiculous; 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 addi- 
 tional recommendation of reconciling economy with amusement. 
 
 " Another portion of time I have set apart every day for think- 
 ing of my absent friends. Though this is a duty that does not 
 give much trouble to many, I have been obliged to confine it, or 
 endeavour to confine it, within proper bounds : I have, therefore, 
 made a resolution to avoid any reflections 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 happiness by 
 presenting to my fancy those I love in the most advantageous 
 point of view : so that however severely I treat them when they 
 intrude in the morning, I make them ample amends in the even- 
 ing ; 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 show 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 German, Mr. Skell, for whom I 
 am indebted to the doctor. With this latter I am not yet much 
 acquainted ; the former is really a man of understanding, and, I 
 believe, of worth : he is the son of an advocate in Paris, and prac- 
 tised there himself, as a physician, for some time. He had con- 
 ceived an affection for a young lady with whom the difference of 
 their religion prevented his union at home ; but, alas ! I believe 
 love is of no particular sect ; at least so the lady seemed to think, 
 
44: LIFE OF CUKEAN. 
 
 for she quitted France Avith liim, and took his honour as the 
 security for his adhering to a ceremony performed between them 
 in Holland. After three or four years' residence in Amsterdam, 
 Avhere 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 
 leo-itimate. Rouelle had hinted to me that there was somethino; 
 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 his affliction. He kissed his Httle 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 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 anything like defence. I could perceive the conflict shifting 
 the colours on his cheek, and I could not but pity him and admire 
 him for such an embarrassment. Yet, notwithstanding all his dis- 
 tresses, he sometimes assumes 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 introduced, as 
 characteristic of his mind. The person to whom it is addressed, 
 a gentleman of the most amiable and respected character, has sur- 
 nved the waiter, but his name is, at his own request, reluctantly 
 
CHARACTERISTIC LETTER. 45 
 
 omitted. The friendship of which the commencement of tins 
 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 seasonable, on every 
 account. As I think I mentioned to you when I should repay this 
 kindness, in m}' last, I need not repeat it here. I hope you do n't 
 expect any news from me ; if you did, I would be under a neces- 
 sity of disappointing you. Unfortunately, I have no gratification 
 in seeing high houses or tall steeples, no ear to be ravished by 
 barrel-organs, no public anxiety or private importance by which 
 vanity might lay hold on me, no fine clothes, no abundance of 
 money, to recommend me to the deity of pleasure. What, then, 
 can a poor devil like me either see or hear that is worth commu- 
 nicating 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 exhaust- 
 ing most lavishly on looking and talking, the wisdom that a better 
 economist would reserve for acting. And yet, Dick, perhaps this 
 is natural ; perhaps we are mistaken when we wonder at finding 
 frugality, or even avarice, on such good terms with atfiuence, and 
 extravagance inseparable from poverty. In both cases, they are 
 effects that flow^ naturally from their causes. They are the gen- 
 uine issue of their respective parents; who, to own the truth, 
 cherish and preserve their offspring with a care truly parental, and 
 unfailingly successful. 'Tis just so in wisdom, and, on the same 
 principle, the man who has but a very small share of wisdom 
 (like him whose purse is equally shallow) 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 diametrically 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 
 
46 LIFE OF CUERAN. 
 
 the banners of lln^Yiseness, or a single guinea take its flight to 
 supply an extravagance. Each atom of the aggregate is held fast 
 by its gravitation to the whole mass ; hence the fool is prodigal of 
 his little wisdom, 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 should 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." 
 
 During Mr. Curran's attendance at the Temj^le, the society in 
 v\"hich he mixed was almost exclusively that of his Irish fellow- 
 students. He was at that time too unknown to have access to the 
 circle of literature or fashion, and it was perhaps fortunate for 
 him that his obscurity saved him from those scenes where he 
 might have c#ntracted the dangerous ambition of soaring when 
 he should have been learning to fly. Of the celebrated persons 
 then in London, he used to mention that he had seen Goldsmith 
 once at a coffee-house, Garrick (whom he recollected with 
 enthusiasm) two or three times upon the stage, and Lord Mans- 
 field, 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 Avas Macklin, the actor, 
 and the origin of their acquaintance vras rather singular. 
 
 After Mr. Curran had concluded his terms, he was detained for 
 some time in London in expectation 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 banking-house in Lombard-street: without 
 stopping to examine the bill minutely, he flew to present it ; but 
 the banker soon discovered that a necessary indorsement was 
 
MACKLIN, THE ACTOK. 47 
 
 omitted, and of course refused to pay it. Of the scene upon this 
 occasion, as it took place across the counter, his own consterna- 
 tion at the dreadful tidings, and the banker's insensibility to his 
 distress, his solemn and repeated protestations that the bill came 
 from the 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 luxurious description. 
 Having left the banker's, and being without a shilling in his 
 pocket, he strolled into St. James' Park, where he remained 
 during his usual dinner hour, considering 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 remittance. 
 
 As he sat upon one of the benches, exhausted with devising 
 expedients, he began to whistle a melancholy old Irish air ; an 
 old gentleman seated 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 wdiich 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, w^hile other people 
 are dining, you continue here, whistling 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 playfulness 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 Dublin : 
 
48 LIFE OF CUKRAN. 
 
 Mr. Curran, mIio in the interval had risen to eminence, was 
 invited one evening to a party v>'here the actor was one of the 
 company ; they were presented to each other, but Mackhn failed 
 to recognize in the now celebrated advocate and orator, the 
 distressed student in St. James' Park. Mr, Curran, perceiving 
 this, abstained for the moment from claiming any acquaintance ; 
 but he contrived in a little time to introduce a conversation upon 
 the acts of kindness and hospitality Avhich Irishmen so generally 
 receive abroad from such, of their countrymen as they may chance 
 to meet ; as a proof of which, he began to relate what had hap- 
 pened 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 recollec- 
 tion 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, " vre have met before ?" " Yes, Mr. Macklin," 
 replied Mr. Curran, taking his hand, " indeed we have met ; and 
 though upon that occasion 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 hettery* 
 
 Before dismissing this period of Mr. Curran's history, a few 
 words may be added upon the subject of the studies, and intellec- 
 tual habits of his early days ; for, in consequence of his not hav- 
 ing devoted much time in his latter years to books, and still more 
 from the great predominance of imagination over learning, to be 
 observed in all the j^roductions of his mind, an opinion has gene- 
 rally prevailed that his reading was. extremely circumscribed, and 
 that he was, from taste or by constitution, intolerant of any regu- 
 lar application. If such were the fact, notwithstanding the dan- 
 
 * These words were addressed from the bench by Lord Mansfield to Mr. Macklin, to 
 mark his approbation of the liberal conduct 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 interest- 
 ing case are given at length in Kirkman's life of Macklin.— C. 
 
HIS LITEKARY PURSUITS. 49 
 
 ger of the example, it still would not be denied ; tlie 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 exer- 
 cise ; and if all that he created in public, or in the society of his 
 friends, had been composed in the retirement 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. Before he had attained the age of twenty- 
 five, when he was called to the bar, independent of his classical 
 acquirements, which have never been doubted, his acquaintance 
 Avith general literature was far from inconsiderable ; he was per- 
 fectly familiar with all the most jjopular of the English poets, his- 
 torians, and speculative w^riters. 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 profession than his most intimate 
 friends at the time could have believed to be compatible with his 
 convivial habits and public avocations. His frame w^as 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 completely restored it ; this natural felicity of consti- 
 tution 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 Mr. Curran, at the period of 
 
 3 
 
50 We of curran. 
 
 his life at present under consideration, 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 Avhich success was to be attained. 
 According to the concurring accounts given by 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 expression) " in a 
 state of nature;" to remove these defects, he adopted the -pYactice 
 of daily reading aloud, slowly and distinctly, and of most studi- 
 ously observing and imitating the tones and manner of more 
 skilful speakers. The success of this exercise 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 whatever was the subject, whether 
 tender or impassioned, melodised every period. His person was 
 without dignity or grace — short, slender, and inelegantly propor- 
 tioned. To attain an action, that might conceal as much as pos- 
 sible these deficiencies, he recited perpetually before a mirror, and 
 selected the gesticulation that he thought best adapted to his im- 
 perfect 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 origi- 
 nal question ; and this he used to debate alone, with the same anx- 
 ious attention to argument and to diction, as if he were discussing 
 it in open court. There is nothing in all this to excite any won- 
 
HIS FAYOKITE ACTIIORS. 51 
 
 der ; but certainly the person who early submitted to these modes 
 of labour, and frequently resumed them, cannot be considered 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 his style. Some of his 
 letters, 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 declaimed before a glass.* Junius 
 and Lord Bolingbroke, were the English prose writers, whom he 
 at that time studied as the most perfect models of the declama- 
 tory style. Among the English poets, he was passionately fond 
 of " Thomson's Seasons." He often selected exercises of delivery 
 from " Paradise Lost," which he then admired, but subsequently 
 (and it is hoped that few will attempt to justify the change) his 
 sensibiHty to the beauties of that noble poem greatly subsided.f 
 In this list, the sacred writings must not be omitted ; indepen- 
 dent of their more solemn titles to his respect, Mr. Curran was 
 from his childhood exquisitely alive to their mere literary excel- 
 lencies ; and in his maturer years seldom failed to resort to them, 
 as to a source of the most splendid and awful topics of persuasion. J 
 
 * The single exercise that he most frequently repeated for the purpose of improving 
 his acrion and intonation, was the speech of Antony over Caesar's body, from Shakspeare's 
 Julius Cresar. This he considered to be a master-piece of eloquence, comprising in itself, 
 and involving in its delivery, the whole compass of the art. lie 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 yoicng friends 
 at the bar. — C. 
 
 t In criticising Milton, Mr. Curran always dwelt upon what others have considered 
 among the most splendid and attractive parts of his work, the scenes in Paradise ; in 
 objtcting 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, which 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. — C. 
 
 X Of all the profane writer3, Virgil, whom he considered " the prince of sensitive poets," 
 
52 LIFE OF CUKRAN. 
 
 Before quitting the subject of Mr. Currau's youtliful habits, it 
 is proper to mention the pleasure 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 of his 
 neio'hbourhood. Beino^ from his infancy familiar with the native 
 Irish language, he lost nothing of whatever interest such meet- 
 ings could aftbrd. They appear to have had considerable influ- 
 ence on his mind ; he used to say himself, that he derived his 
 first notions of poetry and eloquence from the compositions of the 
 hired mourner over the dead.^ It was probably amidst those 
 scenes that he acquired the rudiments of that thorough know- 
 ledge of the Irish character, of which he afterwards made so 
 amusing an use in enlivening a company, and so important a one 
 in confounding a perjured witness. It may have been too in this 
 humble intercourse that some even of his finer tastes and feelings 
 originated or w^ere confirmed. 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 
 
 was his favourite. For a considerable part of his life, he made it a rule to read Homer 
 once a year; but the more congenial tenderness of Virgil attracted him every day. — C. 
 
 * 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, wliich is continued 
 among the lower orders to the present day. In the last century, it was not usual upon 
 the death of pei'sons of the highest condition. The ceremony is generally performed by 
 women, who receive a remuneration for composing 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 require their 
 attendance; and to remind them, that whenever the hour might arrive, a noble Coro- 
 nach should be ready. Mr. Curran'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 ray 
 executors, that, neither at my wake nor at my funeral, they will suffer any of the savage 
 bowlings, and insincere lamentations, that are usually practised upon these serious and 
 melancholy occasions, but to see the whole of my burial conducted with silence and 
 Christian decency." — C. 
 
DAWN OF III3 ELOQUENCE. 63 
 
 recorded as tlieir lively sallies, it would be seen tliat tliey can 
 be as eloquent in tlieir lamentations as tliey are original in tbeir 
 liumour. Of these almost national peculiarities, so opposite, yet 
 to constantly associated, Mr. Curran's mind strongly partook ; and 
 in liis, as in his country's character, melancholy predominated. 
 In his earliest, as well as his latest speculations, he declined to 
 take a desponding view of human aftairs — he appeared, indeed, 
 more frequently in smiles to relax his mind, or to entertain his 
 companions ; but when left entirely to his original propensities, he 
 seems to have ever wept from choice. 
 
 [If Mr. O'Regan's account can be relied on, Cun-an's predispo- 
 sition for eloquence may be traced to an event which occurred 
 while he was a child, at a wake, in his native Newmarket. The 
 story runs thus : 
 
 " At one of those national carnivals, where the common excitements of 
 snufF, tobacco, and whiskey, and the fruits of plundered orchards, are 
 abundantly supplied, Mr. Curran felt the first dawn, the new-born light, 
 and favourite transport which almost instantly seized upon his imagina- 
 tion, and determined his mind to the cultivation and pursuit of oratory. 
 It was produced by the speech of a tall, finely-shaped woman, with long 
 black hair flowing loosely down her shoulders ; her stature and eye com- 
 manding ; her air and manner austere and majestic. On such occasions, 
 nothing is prepared : all arises out of the emotion excited by the surround- 
 ing circumstances and objects. 
 
 " Some of the kindred of the deceased had made funeral orations on his 
 merits: they measured their eulogies by his bounties; he was wealthy *, 
 his last will had distributed among his relations his fortune and effects ; 
 but to this woman, who married without his consent, to her, his favourite 
 niece, a widow, and with many children, he carried his resentment to the 
 grave, and left her poor and totally unprovided for. She sat long in 
 silence, and at length, slowly, and with a measured pace, approaching the 
 dead body from a distant quarter of the room, with the serenest calm of 
 meditation, laying her hand on his forehead, she paused : and, whilst all 
 present expected a passionate and stormy expression of her anger and 
 disappointment, she addressed these few words to him : ' Those of my kin- 
 dred who have uttered praises, and poured them forth with their tears, to 
 the memory of the deceased, did that which, by force of obligation, they 
 
54: LIFE OF CUERAN. 
 
 were bound to do. They have been bc-ncfited ; they have, in their different 
 degrees, profited by that bounty which he could no longer withhold. He 
 forgot, in his life, the exercise of that generosity by which his memory 
 might now be held regarded and embalmed in the hearts of a disinte- 
 rested ' affection. Such consolation, however, as these purchased praises 
 could impart to his spirit, I would not, by any impiety, tear from him. 
 Cold in death is this head, not colder than that heart while living, through 
 which no thrill of nature did ever vibrate. This has thrown the errors of 
 my youth, and of an impulse too obedient to that affection which I still 
 cherish, into poverty and sorrow, heightened beyond hope by the loss of 
 him who is now in heaven, and still more by the tender pledges he has 
 left after him on earth. But I shall not add to these reflections the bitter 
 remorse of inflicting even a merited calumny ; and because my blood 
 coursed through his veins, I shall not have his memory scored or tortured 
 by the expression of my disappointment, or of the desolation which sweeps 
 through my heart. It, therefore, best becomes me to say, his faith and 
 honor, in the other relations of life, were just and exact ; and that these 
 may have imposed a severity on his principles and manners. The tears 
 which now swell my eyes are those I cannot check ; but they rise like bub- 
 bles on a mountain-stream — they burst never more to appear."] 
 
 One conjecture more shall be hazarded, and so pleasing a one, 
 that few can wish it to be unfounded. It was probably from this 
 early intercourse with the peasantry of his country, and from the 
 consequent conviction of their unmerited degradation, that sprang 
 that unaffected soul-felt sympathy for their condition, so conspicu- 
 ous in Mr. Curran's poHtical career. Upon this subject, it was 
 evident that his heart was deeply involved. From them, notwith- 
 standing much temptation and many dangers, his affections never 
 wavered for an instant. From the first dawn of political obliga- 
 tion 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, and pity. iVt the bar, in the senate,^ on the bench, 
 
 * Upon one occasion, alluding in parliament to the general apathy 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 honourable 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 ware left in the sh?i(\e. ^'—DebaUs in Irish 
 House of Commons, 17S7.— C. 
 
UI3 EARLY SUCCESS. 55 
 
 amidst his family and friends, or in the society of the most ilkis- 
 trious personages of the empire, the sutterings of the Irish peasant 
 were remembered, 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 
 np 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 themselves." 
 
 In some of the published accounts of Mr. Curran's life, it has 
 been stated that, when at the Temple, and afterwards while strug- 
 gling into notice at the bar, he derived part of his subsistence 
 from contributions to literary works ; but for this there is no foun- 
 dation. During the first year of his residence 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 Dr. 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 
 ])]'ofession might not have been so great. There is, perhaps, fully 
 as much truth as humour in the assertion of an English judge, 
 tliat a barrister's first requisite for attaining eminence is '''■not to he 
 ■ ■■<))' th a shillwr/y* The attractions of the bar, when viewed from 
 
 * The learned ju.lge alliuied to, upon being asked "What conduced most to a bairis- 
 tei's success?" is suid to have replied, "that barristers succeeded by many methods; 
 some by great tiilents, some by high connections, some by a miracle, but the majority ly 
 commencinrj wiUiotd a shilling. ''^—Q. 
 
56 LIFE OF CUEKAN. 
 
 a distance, will dazzle and seduce for a while. To a young 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 
 emulaj^e the example, and perhaps reach the distinctions of our 
 Hales, and Holts, and Manslields. 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 difficult, and, 
 after the first glow of enthusiasm has gone by, the most repelling. 
 To say nothing of the violence 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 
 mere art of reasoning, the simple perception of relations, wdiatever 
 the subject matter may be, is an exercise in which a mind so con- 
 stituted may delight ; but, to such a one, the study of the law has 
 but little to offer. If the body of English law be a scientific sys- 
 tem, it is a long time a secret to the student : it has few immuta- 
 ble truths, few master-maxims, few regular series of necessary and 
 nicely adapted inferences. In vain will the student look for a 
 few general principles, to whose friendly guidance he may trust, 
 to conduct him unerringly to his object : to him, it is all perplex- 
 ity, caprice, and contradiction"^ — arbitrary and mysterious rules, 
 of which to trace and comprehend the reasons is the work of 
 years — forced constructions, to w^hich no equity of intention can 
 reconcile — logical evasions, from which the mind's pride indig- 
 nantly revolts — of all these, the young lawyer meets abundance in 
 his books; and to encounter and tolerate them, he must have 
 
 * This was, at least, what Mr. Curran found it. In his poem on " Friendship," already 
 mentioned, he says : 
 
 " Oft, when condemn'd 'midst Gothic tomes to pour, 
 And, dubious, con th' embarras'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 
 Bursts from the yoke, and wanders unconfined."— C. 
 
THE AMEEICAN EAK. 67 
 
 some stronger inducement than a mere literal ambition of learn- 
 ing or of fame. We consequently find that there is no other 
 profession supplying so many members who never advance a single 
 step ; no other which so many abandon, disgusted and disheart- 
 ened by the sacrifices that it exacts. 
 
 To these fearful pursuits, Mr. Curran brought every requisite of 
 mind and character, and education, besides the above and grand 
 requisite of want of fortune. Instead of being surprised at his 
 eminent success, the wonder w^ould 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 powders 
 to slumber for a moment. His poverty, his pride, a secret consci- 
 ousness of his value, and innate superstitious dread of obscurity, 
 " that last infirmity of noble minds," kept him forever in motion, 
 and impatient to realize his own expectations, and the predictions 
 of those friends by whom his efforts w^ere 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, " concluded her letter with 
 mentioning 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 Coverly, 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 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 conse- 
 quence. I have been urged to be called to that bar, and my chief 
 inducement w^as my friendship for Mrs. W., to wdiom I might be 
 useful in that way ; but there is so little likelihood of her going, 
 that I shall scarcely have an opportunity of sacrificing that 
 motive to my attachment for Ireland." 
 
58 LIFE OF CURE AN. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 Mr. Curran called to the Irish Bar— Dissimilarities between that and the is-ugiisu i>a.i- 
 Causes of the Difference. 
 
 Mr. Curran was called in Michaelmas term, iVYo, to tlie Irish 
 bar, which \yas 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 essentially from that of 
 England, it will be necessary to make a passing allusion to tliose 
 distinctions, without which English readers might find it difficult 
 to reconcile the specimens of his eloquence that occur in the fol- 
 lowing pages, with their previous ideas of forensic oratory. 
 
 No person who has attended to the course of forensic proceed- 
 ings in the two countries can have failed to have observed, that 
 while in England they are (with a very few exceptions) carried on 
 with cold and rigorous formality, in Ireland they have not unfre- 
 quently been marked by the utmost vivacity and eloquence. The 
 English barrister, even in cases of the deepest interest, where 
 jiowerful emotions are to be excited, seldom ventures to exercise his 
 imagination, if, indeed, long habits of restraint have left him the 
 capacity to do so : yet in the Irish courts, not only are such sub- 
 jects discussed 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 elo- 
 quence, have still been made the occasion of very fervid appeals 
 to the feehngs or the fancy. This latitude of ornament and 
 digression, once so usual at the Irish bar, has been never known, 
 and would never have been tolerated in Westminster Hall. It 
 
IRISH FORENSIC ORATORY. 59 
 
 would be tliere accounted no less new than extravagant to hear a 
 counsel pathetically reminding the presiding judge of the convi- 
 vial meetings of their early days/-^' or enlivening his arguments 
 on a grave question of lavv' by humorous illustration.f Yet was 
 all this listened to in Ireland with nivor and admiration. It had, 
 indeed, little inliuence upon the decisions of the bench. The 
 advocate might 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 episodes of fancy were 
 ever the most conscientious in preserving the sacred stability of 
 law. Into the Counsel's mirth or tenderness, no matter how 
 digressive, they entered for the moment more pleased than other- 
 wise with irregularities that gratified their taste and relieved their 
 labour ; but with them the triumph of eloquence was but evanes- 
 cent — 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 urbanity, and not from any oblivion of the 
 paramount duties of their station. The effects, however, which 
 such appeals to the passions produced (as they still continue to 
 do) upon juries, was very ditlerent ; and when the advocate trans- 
 ferred the same style into his addresses to the bench, it was not 
 that his judgment had selected it as the most appropriate, but 
 
 ♦ See Mr. Curran's apostrophe to Lord Avonmore, chap, iv.— C. 
 
 t Of tliese examples without number might be produced from Mr. Curran's law argu- 
 ments. His published speech in the Court of Exchequer, on Mr. Justice Johnson's case, 
 is full of them. Equallj"- 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 Irish chairman, and the warrant of a trading 
 justice. Mr. Pitt might be brouglit over here in vincmlis. What to do ? to see whether 
 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 any 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. What countryman are you? An 
 Englishman, by constmction. Very wellj I '11 tJra^ upon my correspondent in Ireland 
 for the body of the counsellor," — 0. 
 
60 LIFE OF CURKAN. 
 
 because he found it impossible to avoid relapsing into tliose 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 
 attributed to the influence of the national character. From what- 
 ever cause it has arisen, the Irish are by temperament confessedly 
 more warm and impetuous than their neighbours : their passions 
 lying nearer the surface, their actions are more governed by 
 impulse, and their diction more adorned by imagination, than it 
 would be reasonable to expect in a colder, more advanced, and 
 philosophic people. In addressing persons so constituted, the 
 methods most likely to prevail are suflSciently obvious. The ora- 
 tor, who knows anything of his art, must be aware that frigid 
 demonstration alone is not the best adapted to men who take a 
 kind of pride in regulating their decisions 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 per- 
 suade themselves. 
 
 It may be observed, too, that although the habits of mind 
 which must be cultivated, in order to succeed in such a style of 
 eloquence, are altogether difi'erent from those involved in the study 
 of the law ; yet in Ireland they have never been deemed incom- 
 patible 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 knowledge, and it is to this combina- 
 tion of pursuits, that invigorate the understanding wdth those 
 which exercise the imagination and improve the taste, that must 
 be attributed that mass of varied and efi'ective talent, which has 
 so long existed among the members of the Irish bar. 
 
 But the immediate cause of that animated style of eloquence 
 
ENGLISH BAR ORATOUr. 61 
 
 that has of late years prevailed there, appears to have been the 
 inliuence of the Irish House of Commons. 
 
 It v,-as principally in the productions of the eminent leaders in 
 that house, that originated the modern school of Irish oratory. 
 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 con- 
 ceptions and the intrepid .oi^ginality 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 w^ere soaring as high as imagination 
 could find language to sustain it, while they were " shaking the 
 walls that surrounded them with those 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 refuta- 
 tion. Introduction, therefore, of the parliamentary manner into 
 the courts of Ireland, is to be accounted for by some circum- 
 stances peculiar to the country. 
 
 During that period when eloquence flourished most in the Irish 
 Parliament, that is, for the last forty years of its existence, the 
 number of barristers in the House of Commons bore a much 
 
 * Erskine's defence of Stockdale. This celebrated advocate may be adduced in refu- 
 tation of some of the above ophiions, 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 the individual, or characteristic to tlie English bar, it may be observed, that 
 it differed essentially from that which prevailed at this time in the British parliament, 
 and to a still greater extent in the Irish senate arid at the Irish bar. If he had produced 
 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 fclicitious than impassioned, that 
 he brought over the judgment to his side. It is not intended by these remarks to assign 
 a superiority to either style — it is to be supposed that the eminent advocates of the two 
 bars adopted the manner that was best suited to their respective countries.— C. 
 
Cr2 
 
 LIFE OF C UUP. AX, 
 
 greater proportion to the wliole than has been at any time usual 
 in England. In those days the poHcy by which Ireland was 
 governed being in the utmost degree unpopular, the whole patro- 
 nage of the Irish administration was necessarily expended in 
 alluring supporters of the measures against w^hich 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 
 that period in question, the increasing influence and talent of the 
 minority rendered it necessary to adopt every method of oppos- 
 ing them (if possible) with a predominance of intellect. The 
 means of doing this, it would appear, were not to be found in 
 that body w^hich ruled the country, and recourse was had to the 
 expedient of enlisting the rising men of the bar in the service of 
 the Administration."^^ Accordingly, 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 w^re thus introduced to the 
 senate, the bar was the profession most generally resorted to by 
 the members or dependents of the highest families ; as one in 
 
 * Such was the commencement of (among others) the late Lord Clonmel's fortune. 
 " The JIarquis of Townshend had expressed his wishes to Lord Chancellor Lifford, for the 
 assistance of some j'oung gentleman of the bar, on whose talent and fidelity he might rely, 
 in the severe parliamentary campaigns then (1769) likely to take place. Lord Lififord, 
 recommended Mr. Scott, who was accordingly retm-ned to parliament, to oppose the party 
 led on by the celebrated Flood." — Hardi/^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 intellect 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 
 Tvhen there scarcely appeared a publication in a newspaper of any degree of merit, 
 which has not been traced to some person of note, on the part of government or the 
 opposition ; but now a multitude of very powerful publications appear, from authors 
 entirely unknown, of profound and spirited investigation." — Letter to the citizens of 
 Dublin— C. 
 
POLITICS AND LAWS. 63 
 
 Avliich, without any claim of merit, tliey could, tlirough tho 
 influence of their patrons, obtain situations of professional emolu- 
 ment, and where, if they possessed such a claim, the road was so 
 open to leg-al preferment and to political distinction ; and con- 
 sequently all of the latter description, recommended 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 successful 
 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 ambition of 
 appearing there was very general at the Irish bar ; it was the 
 grand object upon which every enterprising barrister fixed his 
 eye and his heart. This was the age of political speculation ; it 
 was " Ireland's lifetime." Great original questions were daily in 
 her Parliament : the struggle betw^een popular claims and ancient 
 prerogatives was a scene where much seemed likely to be gained 
 — by the venal for themselves, by the honest for their country ; 
 but whether considered as a post of honour or of profit, it was 
 one to which men of colder temperaments than the Irish might 
 be easily moved to aspire. 
 
 The consequence of this intermixture of political with legal pur- 
 suits was, that the talents most suited to advance the former were 
 much cultivated and constantly exercised ; and from this differ- 
 ence 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 members of each, both in their parliamentary 
 and forensic exertions. The English barrister, long disciplined to 
 technical observances, having passed the vigour of his intellect 
 in submissive reverence to rules and authorities, brings into the 
 House of Commons the same subtle propensities, and the same 
 
61 LIFE OF CUKE AN. 
 
 dread of expanded investigation and of rhetorical ornament that 
 his professional duties imposed ; but in Ireland the leading coun- 
 sel were also from an early age distinguished members of the 
 senate. If in the morning their horizon vras 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 fancy or enterprize ; the lawyer became 
 enlarged into 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 am- 
 bition 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 wonderous things of that proud work of 
 their fathers, which was levelled for ha\dng towered 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 per- 
 fect 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 extent during Mr. Curran's forensic 
 career, vras the frequency of collision between the bar and the 
 bench. It was often his fate to be involved in them, and many 
 are the instances of the promptness of repartee, and of the indig- 
 nant intrepidity with which, on all such occasions, he defended the 
 
 * Messrs. Bushe and Plunkett, two of the members of the Irish House of Commons, 
 the most distinguished for eloquence, continue at the Irish bar. — C. [This was written in 
 1S18. Bushe became Lord Chief Justice of Ireland in 1822, and died in 1843. Plunkett, 
 twice Irish Lord Chancellor, died 1S54, a British Peer.— M.] 
 
JUDICIAL TROIMOTIONS. 65 
 
 privileges of the advocate. It will be presently seen tliat he had 
 scarcely appeared at the bar, when be showed how he could 
 encounter and triumph over all the taunts and menaces of a hos- 
 tile judge. The same spirit of resistance and retaliation wdll be 
 found in his contests with Lord Clare ; and at a much subsequent 
 period, when he was exerting himself in a cause with his charac- 
 teristic firmness, the presiding judge having called 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 repose with more tranquillity 
 than I should enjoy were I sitting upon that bench with a con- 
 sciousness that I disgraced it." 
 
 The same political causes that have been already alluded to as 
 influencing the oratory of the Irish bar, will, in a great measure, 
 account for these conflicts in the courts, and for that tone of sar- 
 casm 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 the community. No doubt, it sometimes happened that this 
 important office was bestowed upon men, to whom the appoint- 
 ment to situations of honour and of trust was less a gift, than the 
 payment of the justest debt. "What dignity could be too exalted 
 for the learned and accomplished Lord Avonmore ? What trust 
 too sacred for Lord Kilwarden, the most conscientious, and pacific, 
 and merciful of men?* But if Ireland beheld such persons 
 
 * Arthur Wolfe, son of a country gentleman in Kildare, was born in 1739, became a 
 barrister, and soon after, a member of the Irish parliament. In this latter capacity, 
 siding with the government, he contended with Flood and Grattan. He was appointed 
 Solicitor-General in 1787, Attorney-G&neral in 17S9, and Chief Justice of Ireland in 179S, 
 being then created Lord Kilwardeu ; in ISOO was raised to the rank of Viscount, and in 
 
 1802 was made Vicc-Chancellor of the University of Dublin. On the evening of July 23, 
 
 1803 (when Emmctt's insurrection prematurely broke out), Lord Kilwarden was met by a 
 band of armed men, in Thomas street, Dublin, who killed him and his nephew by stab- 
 
C'O LIFE OF CURRAX. 
 
 adorning their station, she bad 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 indepen- 
 dence in their court; and though at times they may have suc- 
 ceeded, 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 connections had 
 raised them to a place of nominal superiority, were, in public con- 
 sideration, and in every intellectual respect, the inferiors of the 
 men that they undertook to chide. It sometimes 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 with pride, and acrimony, 
 and contempt. Hence arose in the Irish Courts those scenes of 
 personal contention, which the difierent character of the bench in 
 later limes precludes, and which (whatever side gain the victory) 
 must be ever 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 proceedings 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 counteracted by the more 
 
 • 
 
 bing them with pikes. It was supposed that his administration of the Criminal Law, in 
 1798, had created enmity to him. Lord Kilwarden, who supported the Union, was an 
 eloquent speaker, in the Senate as well as at the bar, and a very eminent lawyer. — M. 
 
FORENSIC JOCULARITY. 67 
 
 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 sub- 
 sisted, as it still subsists, in an eminent degree, in their private 
 intercourse ; it may be also seen constantly breaking forth in their 
 public discussions. At the bar, Avhere the occasions of jocularity 
 so frequently occur, it is, as might be expected, most strikingly 
 displayed. The Jrish judges have not disdained to resign them- 
 selves 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 com- 
 panions, have rather prepared them to tolerate, and even join in 
 those lively irregularities which the more severe decorum of West- 
 minster Hall might condemn. This urbanity and indulgence still 
 remains ; and scarcely a term passes over without many additions, 
 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, v>'hen apj^earing as unwilling wit- 
 nesses, or when struggling under the difficulties of a cross-exami- 
 nation, they seldom fail to fly to shelter. Their answers, on such 
 occasions, are singularly adroit and evasive,f and the advocate is 
 conseqently obliged to adopt every artifice of humour and ridi- 
 cule, as more eft'ectual than seriousness or menace, to extract the 
 truth and expose their equivocations. The necessity of employing 
 
 * It is worth noting that the jokes which now amuse judges, counsel, clients, and wit- ] 
 nespes, in Courts of Law, are notoriously poor ones. Real forensic fun and wit appear to 
 
 have disappeared. This holds good on both sides of the Atlantic. — M, i 
 
 + See Mr. Curran's cross-examination of O'Brien, inserted hereafter. — C. i 
 
68 LIFE or CUERAN. 
 
 such methods of confounding the knavish ingenuity of a witness, 
 perpetually occasions the most striking contrasts between the 
 solemnity of the subjects, and the levity of the language in which 
 they are investigated. It is particularly in the Irish criminal 
 courts that scenes of this complicated interest most constantly 
 occur, lu the front appear the counsel and the endence in a 
 dramatic contest, at which the auditors cannot refrain from bursts 
 of laughter, 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 alternating dexterity or fortune of the 
 combatants. 
 
 This intrusion of ledty into proceedings that should be marked 
 by pomp and dignity may be indecent, but it is ineWtable. With- 
 out this latitude of examination, no right would be secure, and, 
 when exerted, no gravity can resist its influence ; even the felon's 
 visage is often roused from its expression of torpid despair by the 
 sallies that accompany the disclosure of his crimes. As long, 
 therefore, as the Irish populace retain their present character of 
 vivacity and acuteness, the Irish advocate must cultivate and dis- 
 play his powers of humour, often, perhaps, to a greater extent 
 than his own 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. 
 
EARLY EEPUTATION. 69 
 
 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 Avonmore — Monks 
 of St. Patrick, and list of the original members — Anecdotes of Lord Avonmore — Mr. 
 Curran's entrance into Parliament. 
 
 Mr. Curran lias been frequently alluded to as one of tlie many 
 examples in the liistoiy of tne bar, of tlie higliest talents remain- 
 ing for a long time unknown and unrewarded. This, however, 
 was not the fact : so general was the reputation of his abilities, 
 and so numerous his personal friends, that he became employed 
 immediately, and to an extent that is very unusual Avith those, 
 Vvho, like him, have solely depended upon their owm exertions and 
 upon accidental support.* 
 
 The failure of Mr. Curran's first attempt at speaking has been 
 mentioned : a more singular instance of that nervousness which 
 so frequently accompanies 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 -so 
 extreme that he was unable to articulate a syllable ; the brief 
 dropiwd from his hands, and a friend who sat beside him was 
 obliged to take it up and read the necessary passage.f 
 
 * The fact of his early practice appears from his own fee-book, in which the receipts 
 commence from the day after he was called to the bar. The first year produced eigtity- 
 two guineas, the second between one and two hundred, and so on, in a regularly increas- 
 ing proportion. — C. 
 
 t Lord Erskine, on his debut at the English bar, is said to have been equally nervous. 
 
70 LIFE OF CLliKAN. 
 
 This diffidence, however, totally vanished whenever he had to 
 repel w^hat he conceived an unwarrantable attack. It was by 
 gixdng proofs of the proud and indignant spirit with which he 
 could chastise aggression, that he first distinguished himself at the 
 bar : * of this his contest with Judge Robinson is recorded as a 
 very early and memorable 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 lordship, 
 who, like too many of that time, was a party zealot, was known to 
 be the author of several anonymous political pamphlets, which 
 were chiefly conspicuous for their despotic principles and exces- 
 sive 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 instructive, my lord, to study good 
 Avorks than to compose 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 owm them." 
 
 He was here interrupted by the judge, who said, " Sir, you are 
 forgetting the respect which you owe to the dignity of the judi- 
 cial 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 
 
 until (to use his own words) "I thought I felt my hungry little ones pulling my gown, 
 and that gave me courage to speak." — M. 
 
 * 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 the candidates, presuming upon his own 
 rank, and upon the young advocate's unostentatious appearance, indulged in some rude 
 language towards him ; but was instantly silenced by a burst of impetuous and eloquent 
 invective, which it at that time required an insult to awaken,— C. 
 
THE RETORT. 71 
 
 Scotchman, ^^ upon bis arrival in London, thinking- himself insulted 
 by a stranger, and imagining that he was the stronger man, 
 resolved to resent the aftront, and taking oft" his coat, delivered it 
 to a bystander to hold ; but having 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 habiliments had 
 decamped during the aftray. 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 contest, 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 from 
 behind an authority which he has abandoned." 
 
 Judge Robinson — If you say another word, sir, I'll commit you. 
 
 Mr. Curran — Then, my lord, it will be the best thing you'll have 
 committed this term. 
 
 The judge did not commit him ; but he was understood to have 
 solicited the bench to interfere, and make an example of the advo- 
 cate by depriving him of his gown, and to have received so little 
 encouragement, that he thought it most prudent to proceed no 
 further in the aftair.f 
 
 From this, and many other specimens of spirit and ability, Mr. 
 Curran's reputation rapidly increased ; but it was not till he had 
 been four or five years at the bar that his powers as an advocate 
 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 nobleman 
 of that county (Lord Doneraile), for an assault and battery. 
 
 * Perhaps it is unnecessary to remind most readers, that the Scotchman alluded to is 
 Strap, in Smollett's Roderic Random. — C. [Mr. O'Regan relates this reply to Judge 
 Robinson as having been made, not by Curran, but by Mr. Hoare, his friend and 
 cotemporary. — M.] 
 
 tAs a companion to this anecdote, let me mention that, once upon a time, when a 
 gigantic and ignorant barrister who had been wounded by some of the shafts of Curran's 
 wit, half seriously threatened to put him in his pocket — Curran being of stunted stature 
 and size— the quick retort was, " Do ! and then you'll have more law in your pocket than 
 you ever had in your head !" — M. 
 
715 LIFE OF CURRAN. 
 
 The circumstances attending* this case mark the melancholy 
 condition of the times. They aftbrd a single, but a very striking 
 example of those scenes of local despotism and individual sufler- 
 ing, of which, at this degraded period, Ireland ^Yaa daily the wit- 
 ness and the \-ictim. 
 
 The nobleman in question had contracted an intimacy with a 
 young woman, whose family resided in the parish of which the 
 plaintiff in this action was the priest. This woman's brother hav- 
 ing committed some offence against 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 Done- 
 raile to interfere, and to exert his influence and authority for the 
 remission of the offender's sentence. His lordship, without hesi- 
 tation, undertook to interpose his authority. For this purpose he 
 proceeded, accompanied by one of his relatives, to the house, or 
 rather cabin, of the priest. As soon as he arrived there, disdain- 
 ing 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 the voice, 
 which it would have been perilous to disregard, he discontinued 
 his devotions to attend upon the peer. The minister of religion 
 appeared before him (an affecting spectacle, to a feeling mind, of 
 infirmity and humility), bending under years, his head uncovered, 
 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 instance 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 superior ; that the Bishop 
 alone could do it. To a second and more angry mandate, a simi- 
 lar answer was returned, upon which the nobleman, forgetting 
 
FATHER KE ale's CASE. 73 
 
 what he o-sved to his own dignity, the pity .and forbearance due 
 to age, and the reverence due to religion, raised his hand against 
 the unoffending old man, who could only escape the blov/s directed 
 against his person by tottering back into his habitation, and secur- 
 ing its door against his merciless assailant. 
 
 For this disgraceful outrage, to which the sufferer was exposed, 
 because he would not violate the sanctity of his own character, 
 and the ordinances of his church, for the gratification of a profli- 
 gate woman, who chanced to be the mistress of a peer, he for some 
 time despaired of obtaining redress. So great was the pro\ancial 
 power of this nobleman, 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 the general report) declined 
 to be concerned for so unpopular a client,* Mr. Curran justly con- 
 ceiving 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 romantic and imprudent, 
 and only calculated to baffle all his prospects upon his circuit ; he 
 tendered his services to the unfriended plaintiff, and, the unexpected 
 offer being gratefully accepted, laid the story of his unmerited 
 wrongs before a jury of his country. 
 
 No printed report of this trial has been preserved, 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 
 advocate had to address a class of men who were full of furious 
 
 *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 Com- 
 mons, all barristers, solicitors, attorneys or proctors, that should be concerned for him, 
 were voted public enemies {O^Connor''s History of t7ce Jris7i Catholics, p. 218:) and in 
 Ireland the prejudices, which had dictated so iniquitous a measure, were not extinct in 
 17S0.-C. 
 
 4 
 
i-i LIFE OF crrjiAx. 
 
 and inveterate prejudices against his client. The very appearance 
 of a Roman CathoUc clergyman, 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 demand of redress 
 Avas an act of rebellion against the Protestant ascendency — a 
 daring effort to restore a deposed religion to its throne. The 
 cause had also, from the characters of the parties, excited 
 the greatest public interest, and the sympathy of the public, 
 as is always the case when no epidemic passions intervene, 
 was upon the side of the oppressed ; but the general expres- 
 sion of such a feeling was rather detrimental to its object. The 
 crowds that filled and surrounded the court, upon the day of trial, 
 were Roman Catholics, and were supposed, by a very obvious 
 construction, to have assembled, not so much to witness a triumj^h 
 of justice, as to share in a triumph of their religion. Upon such 
 an occasion, the advocate had not merely to state the fact and 
 apply the law; before he could convince or persuade, he had 
 to pacify — to allure his hearers into a patient attention, and 
 into a reversal of the hostile verdict, which, before they were 
 sworn, they had tacitly pronounced. These were the difficul- 
 ties against which Mr. Curran had to contend, and Avhich 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 remmieration for such an injury ; but in Ireland, 
 abo.ut seventy years ago, to have wrung even so much from a 
 Protestant jury, in favour of a Catholic priest, against a 
 Protestant nobleman, was held to be such a ti'iumph of forensic 
 eloquence, and to be in itself so . extraordinary a circumstance, 
 that the verdict was received by the people at large as an impor- 
 tant political event. 
 
 In a part of his address to the jury in this case, the plain- 
 tiff''s counsel animadverted, with the utmost severity of invective, 
 upon the unworthy conduct of the defendant's relative (Mr. St. 
 Leger), who had been present, and countenancing the outrage 
 
ME. ST. LEGEK. 75 
 
 upon the priest.'''' At length, his zeal and indignation liurrying 
 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 renegade soldier, a drumraed-out 
 dragoon, who wanted the courage to meet the enemies of his 
 country in battle, but had the heroism to redeem the ignominy of 
 his flight from danger, by raising his arm against an aged 
 and unoftending minister of religion, who had just risen from 
 putting up before the throne of God a prayer of general interces- 
 sion, in which his heartless insulter was included. 
 
 As soon as the trial was over, he was summoned to make 
 a public apology for those expressions, or to meet Mr. St. Leger 
 in the field. lie was 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 resentment of those whose 
 feelings and character he might have unjustifiably attacked ; but 
 perceiving that an apology would, in the eyes of his countrymen, 
 liave tarnished the lustre of his recent victory, and that it might 
 have the eftect 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 reputation.f A duel 
 
 * There was another circumstance during this trial which had given equal offence, and 
 which, whatever judgment may be passed upon it now, was well calculated to influence 
 the jurj'. Mr. Curran knew that Mr. St. Leger was to be produced as one of the defen- 
 dant's witnesses, and it was in order to diminish the weight of his testimony, that he had 
 described lilra as above. He had, however, mentioned no name, but merely apprised the 
 jury that such a character might be brougl^t to impose upon them. When Mr. St. Leger 
 came upon the table, and tools 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 you 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 sur- 
 prise and irritation, "I am happy, sir, to see you have changed the opinion you enter- 
 tained of me when you were describing me awhile 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 oaths could bind the conscience of such a man as I have just 
 described." 
 
 t When each had taken his ground, Mr. iSt. Leger called out to his adversary to fire: 
 
76 LIFE OF CUERAX. 
 
 accordingly followed ; upon whicli occasion Mr. Curran not only 
 established for himself a character for personal intrepidity (an 
 acquisition of no small moment in a country Avhere the point of 
 honour has always been so sacredly observed), but afforded 
 infinite entertainment to the bystanders, by a series of those 
 sportive saUies, which, when the impulse was on him, no time or 
 place could repress. He declined returning Mr. St. Leger's fire ; 
 so that the aftair, after a single shot, was terminated. 
 
 A more solemn and interesting scene soon followed. The poor 
 priest was shortly after called away to another w^orld. 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 Avas 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 emploj-ed 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 Rom.an Catholic Church, as the reward of his eloquence 
 and intrepidity. Mr. Curran had also the satisfaction of being 
 assured by the lower orders of his countrymen, that he might now 
 fight as many duels as he pleased, without apprehending any dan- 
 ger 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 under- 
 stand that his late triumph should cost him dear. As he was 
 
 •' 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 aimed wide of its mark, called 
 out in a loud voice, " Fire !" St. Leger, who was a nervous man, started, and fired : and 
 having died not long after, was reputed in Munster to have been killed by the report of 
 his own pistol. — C. 
 
Ills riiACTICE INCREASES. 77 
 
 standing amidst a circle of his friends in one of the pnbhc streets 
 of Cork, he was called aside by a person who brought him an 
 intimation from Lord Doneraile, that in consequence of his late 
 unprecedented conduct, he might expect never to be employed in 
 iiiture in any cause where his lordship, or his extensive connec- 
 tions, should have the power to exclude him. The young bar- 
 rister answered, with contemptuous playfulness, and in a voice to 
 be overheard by every one : " My good sir, you may tell his 
 lordship that it is vain for him to bo proposing terms of accom- 
 modation ; for, after what has happened, 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 demand 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 shows 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 feel- 
 ing which a little time matured into an abounded veneration for 
 his capacity, combined with a most devoted attachment to his 
 person. Their enthusiasm in this instance can be scarcely con- 
 ceived by such as have only witnessed the common marks of 
 
 * The motto to the first carriage he set up on the strength of his fees was, "Per varios 
 Casus," on which some person observed that he prudently omitted the latter part of the 
 sentence, '■^ per tot discrimina rerum^" which gave him, he said, a better opinion of his 
 judgment than he was otherwise inclined to entertain. It being remarked to him that 
 he might have still something more appropriate; he answered, " Why, yes, to be sure, 
 '■Ore tenus,^ but the herald painter dissuaded me; he did not like the brevity of wit; and 
 being ihen engaged about discovering, amidst the bones of the crusaders, armorial bear- 
 ings suitable to the motto, I left to him the profit of two syllables, and he counted out the 
 letters— a course since, very wisely, I assure you, adopted in Chancery : nay, I rather 
 think also by the common law courts; and thus you perceive, my friend, from what small 
 sources great rivers begin to flow. God knows they sometimes do inundate without fer- 
 tilizing ; but things being so, who can force back thoSe noxious streams ?" — M. 
 
78 LIFE OF CUKKAN. 
 
 respect paid to ordinary favourites of the people. So miicli 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 unaftectedly familiar and accessible, his genius 
 and habits were so purely national, that the humblest of his coun- 
 trymen, forgetting- the difference of rank in their many common 
 sympathies, fondly considered him as one of themselves^ and cher- 
 ished his reputation not more as a debt of gratitude to him than 
 as a kind of peculiar triumph of their own. These sentiments, 
 which he never descended to any artifices to cultivate, continued 
 unimpaired to his death, and will probably survive him many 
 years. 
 
 In relating the steps by which Mr. Curran advanced to profes- 
 sional 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 had himself risen from 
 an humble station, and knowing, by experience, " how hard it is 
 to climb," was ever most prompt in encouraging and assisting 
 those whom he saw imitating his own honorable example. His 
 friendship for Mr. Curran commenced in 1775 (through the father- 
 in-law of the latter. Dr. Creagh, between whom and Mr. Yelver- 
 ton an old and tender intimacy had subsisted ;) and, with the 
 exception of a few intervals of temporary alienation from political 
 differences, continued unimpaired to his death.* 
 
 * Mr. O'Regan says, " Barry Yelverton, afterwards Lord Avonmore, probably possessed 
 more of the vehemence of masculine intellect than most others of his countrymen. Com- 
 prehensive and luminous, of a copious wit andextensive erudition, he was among the 
 order of talent which Mr. Curran was to succeed. Lord Clonmel had a coarse jocularity, 
 which was received as an useful talent. Mr. Burgh had the majesty of Virgil, and 
 Duquery the elegance of Addison, Temple Emmett possessed the vigour of a great and 
 original mind ; he was certainly a person of singular natural and acquired endowments ; 
 a man who read Coke on Littleton in his bed, as others do Tom Jones or the Persian 
 Tales. Of the chaste, accomplished and classic Duquery, it is related on his own autho- 
 rity, that he read Robertson on the day before his best displays, to catch his unrivalled 
 style, and to harmonize his composition by that of the master of historic eloquence. He 
 had also to contend with tlie wit of Mr. Keller, and the unbending stubbornness of Hoare. 
 
LORD AVONMOKE. 79 
 
 In one of Mr. Curran's latest efforts at the bar/" wo thid 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 w^ere familiar with the simple antique grandeur of mind 
 that dignified the original, recognise 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 dis- 
 may with which it smote upon the general heart of the bar. I 
 am aw^are that I may have the mortification of being told in 
 another country of that unhappy decision, and I foresee in what 
 confusion I shall hang down my head when I am 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 w^ould put above all 
 the sweepings of their Hall, who was of a difierent opinion — who 
 had derived his ideas of civil liberty from the purest fountains of 
 Athens and of Rome — who had fed the youthful vigour of his 
 studious mind with the theoretic knowledge of their wisest phi- 
 losophers and statesmen — and who had refined that theory into 
 the quick and exquisite sensibility of moral instinct, by contem- 
 plating the practice of their most illustrious examples — by dwell- 
 ing on the sw-eet-souled piety of Cimon — on the anticipated Chris- 
 tianity of Socrates — on the gallant and pathetic patriotism of 
 Epaminondas — on that pure austerity of Fabricius, whom to move 
 
 John Fitzgibbon, afterwards Lord Clare, and Lord High Chancellor oif Ireland, was a com- 
 petitor whose ardent and energetic decision of character, whose precision of mind and 
 legal capacity, rendered him a formidable rival. They did not uniformly run the same 
 course of competition ; Mr. Curran was not early qualified to start for the hunter's plate, 
 nor had he ever much taste for the Olympics of a Castle chase; for such, he said, he was 
 short by the head. Yet Mr. Curran often repeated, that had not the father of Mr. Fitz- 
 gibbon pre-occupied the ground for his son, by one stage, he never should or could have 
 gone beyond him. But whenever these high-mettled racers started fairly, and on an equal 
 plain, Mr. Curran was always first at the winning-post." — M. 
 
 * Speech in the case of Mr. Justice Johnson, in the Court of Exchequer, where Lord 
 Avonmore presided.— C. [The date was February 4, 1805.]— M. 
 
80 LIFE OF CUREAN. 
 
 from his integrity would Lave been more difficult than to have 
 pushed the sun from his course. I would add, that if he had 
 seemed to hesitate, it was but for a moment — that liis hesitation 
 was like the passing cloud that floats across the morning sun, and 
 liides it from the viev/, and does so for a moment hide it, by- 
 involving the spectator without even approaching the face of the 
 luminary." 
 
 Lord Avonmore was the person imder whose auspices was form- 
 ed, in the year 1779, a patriotic and convi\dal society — "The 
 Monks of the Order of St. Patrick,"^ which was in those days 
 
 * 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 convivial ; it consisted of two 
 parts, professed and lay brothers. As the latter had no privileges, except that of com- 
 mons in the refectory, they are unnoticed here. The professed (by the constitution) con- 
 sisted of members of either house of parliament, and barristers, with the addition from 
 tlie 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 which 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 Wack tabinet domino. Temperance and sobriety always prevailed. 
 A short Latin grace, " Benedictus benedicat," and " Benedicto benedicatur" (since 
 adopted as the grace of the King's Inns Society, in Dublin) was regularly and gravely 
 pronounced by the priEcentor 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 venture to say, that few productions (either in pamph- 
 lets 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 emancipa- 
 tion for their country. The sad change which has taken place since their dispersion 
 need not be related. 
 
 THE 
 
 MONKS OF THE ORDER OF ST. PATRICK. 
 
 COMMONLY CALLED 
 
 THE MONKS OF THE SCREW. 
 
 Assembled at their Coiivent in St. Kevin Street, Dublin, on and after 
 
 September the M, 1779. 
 
 Members^ Names. 
 
 1. i^0M?i(?er.— Barry Yelverton, barrister, M.P., since Lord Viscount Avonmore, Lord 
 Chief Baron. 
 
 2. Abbot. — William Doyle, barrister, Master in Chancery. 
 
MONKS OF TPIE SCREW. 81 
 
 sufficiently celebrated, and composed of men sucli as Ireland could 
 not easily assemble now. It was a collection of the wit, the 
 
 3. Prior.— John Philpot Curran, barrister, since M.P., Privy Counsellor and Master of 
 the Rolls. 
 
 4. Prcccentor.—RtY. Wm. Day, S. F. T. C. D. 
 
 b. Bui'sar. — Edward Hudson, M.D.* ■] 
 
 6. ASaemto?!.— Robert Johnson, barr. M.P., and since a Judge.* i 
 
 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 Hussey, barr., Rt. Hon. and M.P., and since Chief Baron. j 
 
 11. Burston, Beresford, barr., and K. C* j 
 
 12. Carhampton, Earl of. i 
 
 13. Caldbeck, William, barr., and K. C. ' 
 
 14. Chamberlayne, W. Tankerville, barr. M.P., and since a Judge. | 
 
 15. Charlemont, Earl of. 
 
 16. Corry, Rt. Hon. Isaac, M.P., and since Chancellor of the Exchequer. 
 
 17. Daly, Rt. Hon. Denis, M.P. ! 
 IS. Day, Robert, barr. M.P., and since a Judge.* \ 
 
 19. Dodds, Robert, barr. ,| 
 
 20. Doyle, Joiin, M.P., and since a General in the army, and Bart.* j 
 
 21. Dunkin, James, barr. 1 
 
 22. Duquerj^ Henry, barr., and M.P. '\ 
 
 23. Emmett, Temple, barr. ^ 
 
 24. Finucane, Matthew, barr., and since a Judge. j 
 
 25. Fitton, Richard, barr. ; 
 
 26. Forbes, John, barr., M.P. 1 
 
 27. Frankland, Richard, barr., and K.C. i 
 2S. Grattan, Rt. Hon. Henry, barr., and M.P. i 
 29. Hacket, Thomas, barr. i 
 SO. Hardy, Francis, barr., and M.P. (Lord Charlemont's biographer.) 
 
 31. Harstonge, Sir Henry, Bart, and M.P. ] 
 
 32. Herbert, Richard, barr., and M.P. • 
 
 33. Hunt, John, barr. ;i 
 
 34. Hussey, Dudley, barr., M.P., and Recorder of Dublin. \ 
 
 35. Jebb, Frederic, M.D. 1 
 
 36. Kingsborough, Lord Viscount, M.P. [afterwards Earl of Kingston.] ^ 
 
 37. Mocawen, ■ , barr. ! 
 
 8S, Martin, Richard, barr., and M.P. : 
 
 39. Metge, Peter, barr., M.P., and since a Judge. ; 
 
 40. Mornington, Earl of [the late Marquis Wellesley.] [ 
 
 41. Muloch, Thomas, barr. .; 
 
 42. Newenham, Sir Edward, M.P. ] 
 
 43. Ogle, Rt. Hon. George, M.P. | 
 
 » Surviving.— C. [In 1819].— M. 
 
 4* 
 
82 LIFE OF CURRAN. 
 
 genius, and public virtue of the country ; and though the name of 
 the society itself is not embodied in any of the national records, 
 
 44. O'Leary, Rev. Arthur, honorary. 
 
 45. O'Neal, Charles, barr., K.C., and M.P. 
 
 46. Palliser, the Rev. Doctor, chaplain. 
 
 47. Pollock Joseph, barr. 
 
 48. Ponsonby, Rt. Hon. George, barr., M.P., and since Chancellor of Ireland. 
 
 49. Preston, "William, barr. 
 
 50. Ross, Lieut. Col. M.P. 
 
 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, 'Williani, barr. 
 
 54. Stack, Rev. Richard, F.T.C.D. 
 
 55. Townshend, Marquis of.* 
 
 56. "\Voolfe, Arthur, barr., M.P., and since Lord Viscount Kilwarden, 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 composition, which was immediately adopted as the 
 charter song of the order. The following are all the verses of it that have been recollected. 
 
 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. 
 
 Each year, when your octaves approach, 
 
 In full chapter convened let me find you ; 
 And, when to the convent you come, 
 
 Leave your favorite 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. 
 
 * Elected, proffsseJ, and joined on Ina visit to Dublin, !ifior h'le vice-royally. 
 
LORD AVONMOr.E. 83 
 
 the names of many of its members are to be foini(l in every page, 
 and mil be remembered, while Ireland has a memory, with grati- 
 tnde and pride. The primary object of their association was to 
 give her a Constitution, and to nourish and diffuse among her 
 people the spirit and intelligence 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 members 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 w^as 
 to them, and to the many happy and instructive hours he had 
 passed there, that he so pathetically alluded in the fine burst of 
 social enthusiasm which immediately follows the passage above 
 cited. "And this soothing hope 1 draw from the dearest and ten- 
 derest 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 beloved companions, who 
 have gone before us ; over whose ashes the most precious tears of 
 Ireland have been shed. [Here Lord Avonmore could not refi-ain 
 from bursting into tears.] Yes, my good Lord, I see you do not 
 forget them. I 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 social 
 
 Yet, in honour of fasting, one lean face 
 
 Among you I'll always require ; 
 If the Abbot should please, he 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, tho Abbot, bad a repiarkably large full face; Mr. Curraa'* was tha very reverse. 
 
8-1: LIFE OF CURE AN. 
 
 mirtli became expanded into tlie nobler Avarmtb of social virtue, 
 and the horizon of the board became enlarged into the horizon of 
 man — where the swelling heart conceived and communicated the 
 pure and generous purpose — where my slenderer and younger 
 taper imbibed its borrowed light from the more matured and 
 redundant fountain of yours. Yes, my Lord, we can remember 
 those nights without any other regret than that they can never 
 more return, for 
 
 " "We spent thera not in toys, or lusts, or wine, 
 But search of deep philosophy, 
 "(Vlt, eloquence, and poesy. 
 Arts which I loved, for they, my friend, were thine."* 
 
 Cowley. 
 
 Lord Avonmore was one of those men in whom a rare 
 intellect and vast acquirements are found united with the most 
 artless unsuspecting innocency of nature. AVhatever the person 
 in whom he confided asserted, he considered to be as undoubted 
 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 practice harmless impositions upon his 
 lordship's credulity. His ordinary artifice was to touch his sensi- 
 bility, and thus excite his attention by relating in his presence 
 some afiecting incident, and, then pretending to be unconscious 
 that his lordship was listening, to proceed with a detail of many 
 strange and improbable particulars, until he should be inter- 
 rupted, as he regularly Avas, by the good judge's exclaiming, 
 "Gracious heavens! sir, is it posssible? I have overheard all those 
 most truly amazing circumstances, Avhich I could never have 
 
 * Lord Avonmore, in whose breast political resentment was easily subdued, by the 
 same noble tenderness of feeling which distinguished the late Mr. Fox upon a more cele- 
 brated occasion, could not withstand this appeal to his heart. At this period (1S05) 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 them, and that they should never succeed in 
 future.— C. 
 
FOND OF ANTICIPATING. 85 
 
 believed, if tliey 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 incredu- 
 lous as to every thing that Mr. Curran stated. Still, however, the 
 latter persisted, and, quickening his invention as the difficulties 
 increased, continued from year to year to gain many a humour- 
 ous triumph over all the defensive caution of his friend. Even 
 upon the bench. Lord Avonmore evinced the same superstitious 
 apprehension of the advocate's ingenuity, whom he would fre- 
 quently interrupt, sometimes in a tone of endearment, sometimes 
 of impatience, saying, "*^Ir. 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 frequently interposed to 
 prevent the counsel's putting 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 proceeding to slaughter a calf. 
 Just as his hand was raised, a lovely little child approached him 
 unperceived, and, terrible to relate — I 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 !" 
 
 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 
 
 * Phillips also tells this story, but has worked it up toocli-amatically.— M. 
 
8G LIFE OF CURRAX. 
 
 entrance into Parliament. He had been only seven years at the 
 bar, when Mr. Longfield (afterwards Lord Longueville) had him 
 returned for a borough in his disposal.^' At this time boroughs 
 were the subject of notorious traffic, and it seldom happened that 
 the members returned for them did not bind themselves to remu- 
 nerate the patrons in money or in services. There was no such 
 stipulation in the present instance ; the seat w^as given to Mr. 
 Curran upon the express condition of perfect freedom on his part; 
 but ha\dng soon differed from Mr. Longfield on political subjects, 
 and there being then no way of vacating, he insisted upon pur- 
 chasing a seat, to be filled by any person whom that gentleman 
 might appoint ; an arrangement against which, it is but justice 
 to add, that Mr. Longfield anxiously endeavoured to dissuade 
 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. — C. 
 
 t In the succeeding parliament Mr. Curran also came in, at his own expense, for the 
 borough of Rathcormack. — C. 
 
THE IRISH HOUSE OF COMIVIONS IN" 17S3. 87 
 
 CHAPTER Y. 
 
 The Irish House of Commons, in 1TS3— Slietch of the previous history of Ireland— Effects 
 of the revolution of 1CS3— Catholic penal code— System of governing Ireland— Described 
 by Mr. Curran— Intolerance and degradation of the Irish parliament— Change of sys- 
 tem — Octennial bill — American Revolution — Its effects upon Ireland — The Irish volun- 
 teers — Described by Mr. Curran — Their numbers, and influence upon public measures 
 — Irish revolution of 17S2 — Mr. Grattan's public services — Observations upon the sub- 
 sequent conduct of the Irish Parliament. 
 
 It was at the eventful era of 1783 that Mr. Curran became a 
 member of tlie Irish House of Commons* — an assembly at that 
 day thronged with groups of original historic characters,! the 
 
 * The manner in which Curran got a seat in Parliament has been thus related, as" well 
 authenticated:" Lord Longueville, an Irish peer, with vast property, and large borough- 
 interest, wishing to avail himself of Curran's talents, offered him a seat in Parliament. 
 Curran replied that his politics were opposed to the party to which Lord L. belonged. He 
 was reminded, with a laugh, that patriotism was unprofitable, and that, with a young 
 family, his good sense would tell him so. Some time after, one of Curran's friends asked 
 him for a frank, and informed him that he was gazetted as member for one of Lord 
 Longueville's boroughs. He took his seat, and voted against Lord L.'s friend, the minister. 
 In explanation, he said that he entered Parliament independent and unshackled, and that 
 so he would remain. At that time, he had saved only five hundred pounds. This money, 
 and about twice as much more, which lie borrowed from his friends, he sent to Lord 
 Longueville, in payment for his seat.— M. 
 
 t Of some of these, Mr. Grattan (in his answer to Lord Clare's pamphlet, ISOl) has 
 given the following masterly sketches, over which he has, perhaps, unconsciously distri- 
 buted 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. 
 
 " Mr. Malona. one of the characters of 1753, was a man of the finest intellect that any 
 country ever produced. ' The three ablest men I ever heard were 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 1753, gave to a gentleman from whom I heard it. He is a 
 great sea iu the 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 
 
88 LIFE OF CUKRAN. 
 
 vigorous product of unsettled times: great public benefactors, 
 great public delinquents, but both of rare capacity and enterprise, 
 
 said he was a great sea in a storm.' And like the sea, whether in calm or storm, he ^cas 
 a great productio7i of nature. » 
 
 " Lord Pery.— He is not yet canonized by death ; but he, like the rest, has been canon- 
 ized by slander. He was more or less a party in all those measures which the pamphlet 
 condemns, and indeed 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, accompanied by a temper which was adamant. In his tr^iia 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 17S2, and in the latter, and in both, there was a station of 
 mind that would have become the proudest senate in Europe. 
 
 " Mr. Flood, my rival, as the pamphlet calls him : and I should be unworthy the charac- 
 ter of his rival, if in the 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 joung; 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 Jupiter. 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. "Daly, my beloved friend. — He, in a great measure, drew the address of 1779, in 
 favour of our trade, that 'ungracious measure;' and he saw, read, and approved of the 
 address of 17S2, in favour of our constitution, that ' address of separation.' He visited 
 me in my illness, at that moment, and I had communication on those subjects with that 
 man whose powers of oratory were next to perfection, and whose powers of understand- 
 ing, I might say, from what has lately happened, bordered on the spirit of prophecy. 
 
 " Mr. Forbes — a name I shall ever regard, and a death I shall ever deplore. — Enlight- 
 ened, sensible, laborious, and useful; proud in poverty, and patriotic ; he preferred exile 
 to apostacy, 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 a great measure, the privileges of 
 your country ; and I attribute such a generation of men to the residence of your Parlia- 
 ment. 
 
 " 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. I moved a declaration of 
 rights: 'With my last breath will I support the right of the Irish Parliament,' 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 promo- 
 tion were shut on him, as those of glory opened." — C. 
 
 Walter Hussey Burgh, thus eulogized by Grattan, merits more particular notice. Called 
 
ni3 rOLITTCAL FIOHYOR. 89 
 
 and exliibiting in their virtues or their crimes all the turbulent 
 energy of the storms that were ag-itating tlieir country. The Irish 
 revolution of 1*782, with the memorable acts and deliberations of 
 which period the political history of Ireland commences, had just 
 taken place ; and, although it preceded by a little time Mr. Cur- 
 ran's entrance into Parliament, it still cannot but be adverted to 
 as an event which had a powerful influence upon the fortune and 
 conduct of his future life. lie was of too ardent a temper not to 
 be deeply moved by the circumstances which accompanied that 
 measure : he was the tamiUar friend of the eminent Parliamentary 
 leaders who had been so instrumental in achieving- it; he had 
 witnessed the virtuous struggles and the scenes of civic heroism 
 displayed by them, and by the nation, at this arduous crisis ; and 
 the impression that they made upon his imagination and his con- 
 viction was never after effaced. In order, therefore, fully to com- 
 prehend 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 devoted adherence to the popular cause, exposed 
 him, at different periods of his life, to no little calumny and 
 
 to the Irish bar, in 1769, he had previously obtained a seat and won distinction in the 
 Irish Parliament. In 1772, at the early age of thirty-five, he was placed at the head of 
 the Irish bar, as Prime Serjeant, in which he continued for two years, when, siding with 
 Grattan against the government, on the question of Ireland's right to a free export trade, 
 he resigned his lucrative office. It was restored to him in 17S2, in which year he was 
 made Chief Baron of the Irish Exchequer, declining a proffered peerage. He died the fol- 
 lowing year, before he had completed the age of forty. Ireland might well be proud of 
 Buch a man, whose persuasive eloquence made an aera at the Irish bar and in the senate, 
 equally distinguished for the grace and harmony of his style, and the sweetness and ful- 
 ness of his voice : of him it may be said, as of the Greek orator, he xoas the Bee. Burgh 
 and Yelverton being both engaged on opposite sides in some great and important cause, 
 all the powers of their talents were called forth, as well by the interest the case excited, 
 as by a competition for fame. In speaking of the effect of Burgh's oration, Yelverton 
 observed to a friend, that he would have been satisfied that he had obtained the victory; 
 "But," said he, "when I perceived an old case-hardened attorney sitting in a distant 
 corner of the court, and saw the tears silently coursing down his iron cheeks, and these 
 wrung from him by the touching eloquence of Mr. Burgh, I confess," said Yelverton, " I 
 felt myself vanquished." — M. 
 
90 LIFE OF CURRAN. 
 
 reproach ; but those who impartially consider the past and cotem- 
 porary history of Ireland will find, in every page of it, his excnse, 
 if not his most ample justification. 
 
 For centmies Ireland had been in a state of miserable 
 bondage ; her history is but the disgusting catalogue of her 
 sufferings, exciting to unprofitable retaliation, from which she 
 regularly sunk, subdued but untranquilized, into a condition 
 of more embittered wretchedness,* with the penalties of rebelhon 
 superadded to the calamities of oppression. From the period 
 of her annexation to England in the 12th century, down to 
 the close of the 17th, she had thus continued, barbarous and rest- 
 less ; too feeble and disunited to succeed, too strong, and proud, 
 and irritated to despair ; alternating in dreary succession between 
 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 whether Ireland as 
 an unruly province deserved her fate, or whether her condi- 
 tion was attributable to an inveterate spirit of vindictive domina- 
 tion in the English governments. But as we aj^proach more 
 modern times, all obscurity on the subject ceases : we find the 
 ruling country adopted a formal avowed design of humiHation, 
 which, however applauded (as it still continues to be by some) 
 under the imposing phrase of the "Avisdom of our ancestors," 
 w^as, in reality, founded in much injustice, 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 con- 
 sequences the next. 
 
 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 adhe- 
 
 *" The slave, that struggles without breaking his chain, provokes the tyrant to double 
 it, and gives him the plea of self-defence for extinguishing what at first he only intended 
 to subdue." — Jlr. Cu)'ran''8 speech in IToicUoii'ii case. — C. 
 
ENGLISH MISRULE. 91 
 
 rence to tlie deposed monarch and its result are familiar to 
 all. James's party having been crushed, Ireland was treated 
 as a conquered countiy, that merited nothing but chastise- 
 ment 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 
 men, and by their successors (who, of whatever political denomi- 
 nation, 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 parlia- 
 ment, which, when it remonstrated, was charged with riot 
 and sedition, f Ireland's commerce was openly discouraged : 
 a code more furious than bigotry had hitherto penned was 
 levelled against the mass of the nation, the Roman Catholics. J 
 They were successively excluded from the right to sit in 
 Parliament, to acquire land, to hold any employment nnder the 
 crown, to vote in elections of members of Parliament, to inter- 
 marry with Protestants, to exercise religious worship ; in short, 
 
 * " 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 foregoing."— jro/yneuw's Cause of Ireland. This 
 little volume, written throughout with a modesty and ability worthy of tlie friend of 
 Locke, was formally censured by the English House of Commons. A circumstance that 
 preceded its publication is not without interest. Tlie 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 
 llustrious friend, returned to Dublin, and published his work. — C. 
 
 t When the Irish Commons, in 1792, claimed the right of originating money bills, they 
 were told by the viceroy, Lord Sydney, that " They might go to England and beg their 
 majesties' pardon for their riotous and seditious assemblies." — C. 
 
 X " 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 fitted 
 for the oppression, impoverishment, and degradation of a people, and the debasement 
 in them of human nature itself, as ever proceeded from the perverted ingenuity of 
 man."— ^wr^e's Letter to Sir IT. Lnngrishe. 
 
92 LIFE OF CUREAN. 
 
 by a kind of constructive annihilation, " the Laws did not pre- 
 sume a papist to exist in the kingdom, nor could they breathe 
 without the connivance of government."'* 
 
 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 tliat 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 presents to 
 the reader of her history, not the view of legitimate government, 
 but rather of an encampment 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 individuals, pointed out to his notice by public abhor- 
 rence, and recommended to his confidence only 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 bristle in unmerited elevation ; condemned 
 to be betrayed, and disgraced, and exhausted by the little traitors 
 that have been suffered to nestle and grow 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 conse- 
 quence and of sinking under their crimes, like the lion j^erishing 
 by the poison of a reptile that finds shelter in the mane of the 
 noble animal, Avhile it is stinging him to death."| 
 
 Ireland was in those times, in as strange and disastrous a situa- 
 
 * Such was the declaration from the bench of the Irish chancellor in 1759.— C. 
 t Mr. Curran's speech in Howison's case. — C. 
 
THE IRISH TAllLIAMENT. 93 
 
 tion as can well be imagined; her own legislature liating 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 tlie leading 
 maxims appear in all the clearness of despotic simplicity. They 
 were to awe the real or imputed disatfection of the natives by 
 means of a harsh domestic administration, and to check any more 
 general exercise of power assumed by that administration as an 
 intrusion upon the legislative supremacy of England. As far as 
 respected internal concerns, the Irish Lords and Commons were a 
 triumj)hant faction, despoiling and insulting the remains of a 
 fallen enemy : in their relation with England, they were misera- 
 ble instruments, without confidence or dignity ; armed by their 
 employers with the fullest authority to molest or to crush, but 
 instantly and contemptuously reminded of their owai degradation, 
 if ever they evinced any presumptuous desire to redress. 
 
 Against so unnatural a system, it is no wonder that the dis- 
 countenanced claims of freedom should have no avail. If a 
 transient scream was heard among the people, it excited imme- 
 diate alarm at home, as ominous of an approaching storm ; '* if 
 her voice issued, as it sometimes did, from the Irish Commons, it 
 was considered a daring invasion of the rights of a higher power.f 
 If the spirit of that House became too unruly for provincial pur- 
 poses, the patriotic murmur was quickly hushed by lengthening 
 the pension list ; a given number of oppressors was required, and 
 while a venal heart was to be 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. 
 
 * 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 Preten- 
 der. — PlowdeiVs History of Ireland^ vol. ii., p. SI. Dr. Lucas, who ventured, in his 
 writings, to vindicate the rights of the Irish Conanions, was declared by that House an 
 enemy to his country, and obliged to seek for safety in exile, 1747. — C. 
 
 t Vide question of the appropriation of the surplus, lu 1153. — 
 
94 LIFE OF CUKRAi^'. 
 
 Thus it continued for many years: ^vitli all the miseries of 
 despotism without its repose ; commerce extinguished, the public 
 spirit broken, public honour and private confidence banished, and 
 bigotry and faction alone triumphant. 
 
 Sentiments of wisdom and pity at length occurred 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 investiga- 
 tion 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 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 Avas 
 a House of Commons, 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 purpose of making even a nominal appeal to the sense 
 of the nation ; it was to give the Crown an opportunity of 
 dispersing that provincial oligarchy Avhose maxims had been so 
 ruinous to their country, and of substituting in their place a class 
 of more pliant dependants, who might readily accord with the 
 purposed lenity of the new system. As a right, or a security for 
 a right, which nothing can give a people if they give it not them- 
 selves, this act eflfected little. As a diminution of calamity, as a 
 transfer from the barbarous dominion of their domestic tyrants 
 to the more considerate and enlightened control of the English 
 ministry, it had its value. It was received by the nation, who 
 have been ever as precipitate in their gratitude as in their resent- 
 ments, with transports of enthusiastic and unaccustomed joy ; a 
 
 * And four-fifths of the people were excluded from the elective franchise by the Ist 
 Geo, II. c. 9.— C. 
 t 1T67, under the administration of Lord Townshend. — C. 
 
EVE OF I2\DErEXDEXCE. 95 
 
 sig-nal proof, if such were waiitins:, of their loyalty and their 
 debasement. 
 
 The Irish House of Commons, however, hegan now to wear in 
 some degree the appearance of a constitutional assembly ; not- 
 withstanding the political 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 imme- 
 diate wrongs, were still ever at hand to refute the baneful doc- 
 trines that would have sanctioned their continuance. In the 
 British senate too (ic should be gratefully remembered) Ireland 
 had her advocates ; whose expanded minds, superior to the paltry 
 ambition of domination, Avould haye made the noblest use of 
 their own privileges, that of liberally imparting them. The con- 
 sequence of these better opinions occasionally appeared ; the 
 Viceroy was defeated upon some constitutional questions ;* the 
 Commons w^ere 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 neo-lio-ence 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 w^as 
 certainly in the contemplation of the English minister (Lord 
 North), to what extent it is now immaterial to inquire ; he was 
 anticipated by events that were above his control. 
 
 Ireland was now upon the eve of " a great original transaction." 
 The American colonies had revolted ; the Irish linen trade with 
 those provinces, which had been the principal of Ireland's few 
 sources of commercial wealth, instantly vanished ; to this was 
 
 * Among other instances of the increasing spirit of the House of Commons, was their 
 repeated rejections of the money bills, because they did not take their rise in that house. 
 1T69-C. 
 
9G LIFE OF CL'KRAX. 
 
 added a general embargo upon the exportation of provisions, lest 
 tliey might circuitously reach the insurgents. Universal distress 
 ensued. The Commons, for the first time, assumed the attitude 
 of representatives of the nation : they addressed the viceroy 
 upon the public emergencies with dignity and firmness, and were 
 dissolved in 1777. Strenuous measures were taken by the govern- 
 ment to secure a majority in the Parliament that followed ; but 
 the crisis soon arrived when the destinies of the country were 
 transferred to other hands. 
 
 The internal wretchedness of Ireland had been great ; it was 
 now aggravated by the danger of war : the regular forces in the 
 kingdom exceeded not 5,000 men, the remainder having been 
 called off to recruit the army in America. The enemy's fleets, 
 superior to that of Great Britain, were careering in triumph 
 through the channel, and daily expected upon Ireland's unpro- 
 tected coasts. In this emergency, the town of Belfast, haWng 
 applied to Government for a military reinforcement, and its requi- 
 sition having been answered by an ofter of supply that cannot 
 be related with gravity,'^ had the honour of first raising that 
 warning voice, which, hushing every baser murmur, awoke the 
 nation to confidence and strength. She called upon the citizens 
 to arm in their defence. A corps of Volunteers was immediately 
 established. The noble example was ardently faflowed by the 
 country at large, and Ireland soon beheld starting up with a 
 scenic rapidity, a self-collected, self-disci^Dlined body of forty thou- 
 sand Volunteers. '' You cannot but remember," said Mr. Curran, 
 describing the 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 terrified with appre- 
 hensions 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 nature, of honour, 
 
 * The answer of the governiuent was, that all the assistance it could afiford was half a 
 troop of dismounted horse, and half a company of invalids. — C. 
 
THE IRISH VOLUNTEERS. 97 
 
 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 period, without reviving those sentiments of 
 tenderness and gratitude which then beat in the public bosom ; 
 to recollect amidst what applause, what tears, what prayers, what 
 benedictions, they walked forth amongst spectators agitated by 
 the mingled sensations of terror and reliance, of danger 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 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, for- 
 getting 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 affecting to 
 countenance what they could not control, 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 king- 
 dom, animating them with the enthusiasm, and tempering the 
 general ardour by all the courtesy, and the high moral dis- 
 cipline, that the presence of so many noblemen, and sena- 
 tors, and gentlemen, could inspire. They had armed to pro- 
 tect the crown — no invader appeared ; another and more pre- 
 cious object of protection now remained. Ireland was at their 
 disposal, and they unanimously determined that, to consummate 
 their work, they should continue under arms until they saw 
 
 t Speech in Hamilton Rowan's case. — C. 
 
 5 
 
98 LIFE OF CURE AN. 
 
 her free. They resolved "to show, that if man descends, it 
 is not in his own jjroper 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 
 acquires 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 discontent. 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 for 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 insurgents, illegal in their orig-in and 
 objects. The circumstances of the times had invested the Volun- 
 teers Avith a constitutional character. The Government had 
 recognized them, and aided their formation ; the House of Com- 
 mons voted them a formal declaration of thanks for their public 
 services; the people looked up to them with admiration and 
 respect, as a brave, united, and zealous body, combining the 
 intelligence and moderation of loyal citizens with the influ- 
 ence 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, ^Hhat no jjower 
 on earth, save the King, Lords, and Commons of Ireland, 
 had a right to make laws for Ireland,^''\ were no longer dis- 
 regarded. The case of America had just shawn how a struggle 
 for principle might terminate. "British supremacy had fal- 
 len there like a spent thunderbolt."§ The bigotry, and servility, 
 
 * Mr. Currau's speech in Finnerty's case. — C. t An expression of Mr. Flood's. — C. 
 X The words of Mr. Grattan's motion, April 19, 1780.— C. 
 § Mr. Grattan's speech, Nov. 1-3, 1781.— C. 
 
99 
 
 and disunion, which had so long supported it in Ireland, had for 
 the moment disappeared. Ireland declared, and England felt, 
 that no other policy remained, " but to do justice to a people who 
 were otherwise determined to do justice to themselves."'^" The 
 British ministry, whose infatuated counsels had lost America, and 
 whose tardiness and insincerity with respect to Ireland had 
 been encouraging the spirit of resistance there, were removed, and 
 successors appointed with instructions to make such honoura- 
 ble concessions as were due to the services, the strength, and the 
 just pretensions of the Irish people. The principal restric- 
 tions 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 redressed. England resigned her legislative preten- 
 sions, and recognized Ireland to be 2. free 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 natures, superior to the control 
 of accident, continued to struggle for the public good with 
 a constancy, ability, and zeal, which sprang from within them- 
 selves. Their merits have been long since recorded : the pre- 
 eminent merits of their illustrious leader, now associated with the 
 proudest recollections of his country, require new attestation. 
 For Mr. Grattan's most splendid panegyric, for the only one 
 truly worthy of him, we are to look in what he has himself pro- 
 nounced. His public exertions, the monuments of his genius and 
 his worth, are preserved ; his historian will have but to col- 
 
 * Mr. Grattan's speech, April 19, 1780.— C. 
 
 tlTS2. — 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 independence of the judges, an act in favour of the Dissenting Protestants. A 
 slight relaxation of the penal code had taken place in 1778.— C. 
 
100 LIFE OF CURKAN. 
 
 lect and refer to tliem, justly confiding, tliat as long as eloquence, 
 patriotism, intrepidity, and uncompromising honour are valued in 
 public men, the example of Mr. Grattan will remain the subject 
 of lasting gratitude and praise.* 
 
 The triumph which Ireland gained in the declaration of 
 independence was the triumph of a principle, which, however 
 glorious it might have been to those w^ho achieved it, failed 
 to confer 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 control of another legislature; but no sooner was 
 the victory obtained, than it became evident that very few of its 
 fruits were to be shared .among the people. Great domestic 
 abuses still prevailed ; the corrupt state of the legislature ;f its 
 consequence, an enormous and increasing Pension List ; and, 
 
 *]Mr. Grattan, like other men of original genius and character, has been many times 
 in the course of his memorable career misrepresented and reviled. The following spi- 
 rited defence of him against such attacks was made in the Irish House of Commons, by 
 his friend, Mr. Peter Burroughs, a gentleman 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 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 glorious 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 conpraises 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 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 infinitely did this man, even in the moment of 
 his lowest depression, surpass those upstart patriots who only become visible when their 
 country vanishes !" — C. 
 
 t According to a table of the state of the representation of Ireland, 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, two representatives ; for 110 boroughs, 220 
 burgesses), the people returned 81, including the 64 for counties, and the patrons the 
 remaining 219.— C. 
 
THE OPPOSITION. 101 
 
 above all, the exclusion of tlie Roman Catholics from the most 
 valuable privileges 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 him- 
 self and the party with which for the fourteen years that he 
 was a senator, he acted, is shortly told. They almost uni- 
 formly 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 seve- 
 ral 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 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 instruction. Who- 
 ever takes the pains to examine them will find how transi- 
 tory, and almost valueless to a nation the glory of asserting nomi- 
 nal rights, if there be not diffused throughout its various classes 
 that fund of conservative virtue and spirit, which alone can give 
 dignity and stability to its independence, by operating as a perpe- 
 tual renewal of its claims. He will find one practical and terri- 
 ble example (illustrated by continued discontents and disturb- 
 ances, and finally by a rebellion) 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 real 
 and conscientious communication of those privileges, for which 
 they would deem it dishonorable not to thirst. For the last 
 eighteen years of her separate existence, Ireland was in the theo- 
 retic enjoyment of the same constitution which has long made 
 Great Britain the wonder of other nations ; but in Ireland, how- 
 ever boasted the acquisition, it soon appeared to be but a lifeless 
 copy, minutely exact in external form, but wanting all the vigour, 
 and warmth, and imparting spirit of the glorious original. The 
 
102 LIFE OF CURE AN. 
 
 Irish legislature, seduced by their fatal 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 country, they preferred taking a weak 
 and hostile position 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 constitution.* They aflected 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 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 indepen- 
 dence than those of the Irish aristocracy, upon whom alone 
 the recent revolution had confered it. The 80,000 Volunteers, 
 who had been the instruments of that independence, were not a 
 Protestant association. The depreciated Catholic was in their 
 ranks, adding the authority of his strength, his zeal, and his 
 moderation, to the cause of the Irish Parliament, and not 
 unreasonably confiding, that in the hour of victory his ser- 
 vices 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 powder Avhich 
 they had lately acquired over the destinies of their country — in 
 abandoning, as they did, a proud, irritated, and robust population, 
 to all the contingent suggestions and resources of their indigna- 
 
 * "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 happily you emerged from insignificance and obtained a con- 
 stitution. But when you washed this constitution with the waters which were to render 
 it invulnei'able, you forgot that the part by which you held it was untouched by the 
 immersion; it was benumbed and not rendered invulnerable, and should therefore 
 attract your nicest care."— Insh Far. Beb. 17S7. 
 
THE LEGISLATUEE AND THE EXECUTIVE. 103 
 
 tion — in not having " interposed the Constitution," to save the 
 State. 
 
 But the point of ^iew, in which a regular history of the latter 
 conduct and character of the Irish House of Commons would 
 supply matter of no ordinary interest to a lover of the British. 
 Constitution, is in the example which it would afford, of an assem- 
 bly, founded upon the model of that constitution, exhibiting itself 
 in its stage of final deterioration. In Ireland the prediction of 
 Montesquieu^ has been verified — not in all its dismal extent, for 
 Irish independence has found an eitthariasia peculiar and acciden- 
 tal ; but still the spectacle of legislative immorality, and its instruc- 
 tive warnings, are the same. The corrupted Commons of Ireland 
 surrendered all that was demanded — 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 tbe terms on which they 
 insisted have stamped upon them a character of political dishonour 
 that disdained every control of compunction or of pride. For if 
 the surrender to which they consented was regarded by them as a 
 sacrifice of Ireland's rights, how enormous and unmitigated the 
 delinquency! — or if, on the other hand, they imagined it to be 
 essential 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 Parliament that could do this had no longer any 
 morals to lose — and therefore it is, that the constitutional English- 
 man, who is labouring to procrastinate the fulfilment of the pro- 
 phecy that impends over his own hitherto more fortunate country, 
 
 * " That the British Constitution would not survive the event of the legislative powor 
 bee jming more corrupt than the executive." — Spirit of Laws. 
 
104 LIFE OF CUKEAN. 
 
 is referred for abundant illustrations of the apprehended crisis to 
 the decline and fall of the Irish Legislature. In contemplating 
 that scene, he will have an opportunity of obsernng 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 repre- 
 sentative body ; and should it ever be his calamity to witness, what 
 he will find Ireland was condemned to see, the members of that 
 body betrapng, by their conduct and language, that they held 
 their station as a portion of their private property, rather than as 
 a temporary, public trust — should he observe a general and insa- 
 tiate 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 indecent 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 bri- 
 gade of mercenaries, recognising no duty beyond fidelity to their 
 employers, the Swiss defenders 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 expe- 
 rimental suspensions of its established usages — should English- 
 men ever find all, or many of these to be the characteristics of the 
 depositories of their rights, let them remember the prediction of 
 the philosopher, and the fate of Ireland, and be assured that their 
 boasted securities are becoming but a name. 
 
 But to record at length the progress of that fate, to dwell in 
 any detail upon the various characters, and the various induce- 
 ments (whether of hope, terror, avarice, 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 considerable work. It will be suflBcient for the purposes of 
 Mr. Curran's histoiy to have made these cursory allusions to the 
 
HIS PAKLIAMENTAiiY SPEECHES. 105 
 
 spirit of the times in which he acted, leaving more ample devel- 
 opments 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 displays at the Bar. To this 
 deficiency many circumstances contributed. Depending solely 
 upon his profession for support, he was not only seldom able to 
 give an undivided attention to the questions that were brought 
 before the senate, but he perpetually 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 v^ere 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 liour, so that it often 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 careless- 
 ness of fame, which has left his speeches at the Bar in their pre- 
 sent uncorrected state, has irretrievably injured his Parliamentary 
 reputation. While other members sat up v/hole nights retouching 
 their speeches for publication, he almost invariably abandoned his 
 to their fete, 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 without.* 
 
 Notwithstanding these disadvantages, however, his career in 
 Parliament supplies much that is in the highest degree honourable 
 to his talents, 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 Gov- 
 ernment, and considered it a part of their duty to suppress whatever it might not be 
 agreeable to the Administration to see published. — C. 
 
 5* 
 
106 LIFE OF CURRAN, 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 Mr. Flood's plan of Parliamentary Reform — Mr. Curran's contest and duel with Mr. Fitz- 
 gibbon (afterwards Lord Clare) — Speech on Pensions — His professional success — Mode 
 of life — Occasional verses — Visits France — Letters from Dieppe and Rouen — Anecdote 
 — Letters from Paris — Anecdote — Letter from Mr. Boyse — Anecdote of Mr. Boyse — Let- 
 ters from Holland . 
 
 The first occasion upon-whicli 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, accom- 
 panied by such members of Parliament as were then present, 
 sliould immediately go down to the House of Commons, and 
 move for leave to bring in a bill exactly corresponding with the 
 plan of reform approved of by them, and that the Convention 
 should not adjourn till the fate of his motion was ascertained. 
 Lord Charlemont's biographer, who, apparently 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 uproar, it was 
 clamour, violent menace, and furious recrimination."! In the 
 little that Mr. Curran said, he supported Mr. Flood's motion.^ 
 
 * This is an error. Cumin's name first appears in the Parliamentary Debates on 
 November 12, 17S3, when he briefly objected to the issue of a new writ for Enniscarthy. 
 Again, on November IS, he casually recommended immediate attention to the claims of 
 some distressed manufacturers. Mr. Curran, as member for the borough of Kilbeggan, 
 was then colleague of Henry Flood. — M. 
 
 t Hardy^s Life of Lord Charlemoiit, page 270, where the particulars of this interest- 
 ing scene are very strikingly detailed. — C, 
 
 % Barry Yelverton, then Attornej'-Qeneral, had made a damaging speech against 
 
PERSONAL VINDICATION. 107 
 
 In the following montli lie spoke more at 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 session of 1783 and 1784, contain much 
 that is remarkable, it would be unnecessarily swelling these pages 
 to dwell upon them in detail. 
 
 . [Some notice of Curran's early parliamentary career may not 
 be quite uninteresting. On December 16, 1783, on moving 
 "that it is the sole and undoubted privilege of the Com- 
 mons of Ireland to originate all bills of supply and grants 
 of public money, in such manner, and with such clauses as 
 they shall think proper," Curran spoke at some length, declar- 
 ing that he svas no party man, and entering into a history of 
 the right of the Commons to originate and frame money-bills. 
 He said, " I lament that a learned and honourable member, with 
 Avhom I once had the pleasure of li\dng on terms of friendship, 
 is i«)w absent ; because I think I might rely upon his supporting 
 the resolution I intend to propose ; that support would, perhaps, 
 renew the intercourse of our friendship, which has been lately 
 interrupted. And I must beg the indulgence of the House to 
 say, that that friendship was upon the footing of perfect equality, 
 not imposed by obligation on the one side, or bound by gratitude 
 by the other ; for I thank God, when that friendship commenced, 
 I was above receiving obligations from any man, and therefore, our 
 friendship, as it was more pure and disinterested, as it depended 
 on a sympathy of minds, and congeniality of sentiments, I trusted 
 would have endured the longer. I think myself bound to make 
 this public declaration, as it has gone forth from this House, that 
 I am a man of ingratitude, and to declare, that for any difference 
 
 Flood's proposition ; Langrishe, George Ponsonby, Fitzgibbon, Burke, and Hutchinson also 
 opposed it. Then weakly but pertly, Hardy (afterwards Lord Charlemont's biographer) 
 spoke in opposition, and Curran's speech, in which he cautioned the House not to make 
 a public declaration against the Volunteers, was in reply to Hardy. Leave to bring in 
 the bill was refused by a large majority ; a counter resolution against interference by the 
 Volunteers was then carried : and, soon after, the Convention dissolved. — M. 
 
108 'LIFE OF CURE AN. 
 
 of opinion with my learned and riglit honorable friend, I cannot 
 be taxed with ingratitude ; for that I never received any obliga- 
 tion from him, but lived on a footing of perfect equality, save only 
 so far as his great talents and erudition outwent mine." 
 
 Leonard MacXally's copy of Curran's speeches, a present from 
 Curran himself, contains a note in which it is stated that the 
 person thus referred to was Barry Yelverton — but their coolness 
 vras of a much later date. Besides, their friendship commenced 
 in youth, when neither was in independent circumstances. 
 
 On February 14th, 1785, Curran suj^ported an unsuccessful 
 motion of Flood's, that the immediate and effectual retrenchment 
 of the national expenses was necessary. On the same day, 
 Curran delivered a panegyric on the Volunteers, and personally 
 attached Mr. Luke Gardiner, whom he called " the little advocate," 
 for voting ministerially, in the hope of being rewarded by being 
 raised to a higher rank. (In fact, he was created Lord Mountjoy 
 at the Union.) This led to a v^ordy wrangle Avith Gardiner, 
 whose defence was undertaken by Fitzgibbon, afterwards Earl of 
 Clare, who, assailing Curran as champion of the Volunteers, said, 
 " As I feel myself in a very different situation from that honour- 
 able member, I shall ever entrust the defence of the country to 
 gentlemen, with the King's commission in their pockets, rather 
 than to his friends, the beggars in the streets."] 
 
 In the year 1785 took place his quarrel with the late Lord 
 Clare, then Mr. Fitzgibbon, the Attorney-General"^ an event which 
 deeply afi^ected his future fortunes. During Mr. Curran's first 
 years at the bar they had been on terms of polite and even 
 familiar intercourse;! but the dissimilarity of their public 
 characters, the high aristocratic arrogance of the one, and the 
 
 * John Fitzgibbon was made Solicitor-General on November 9th, 17S3, and on December 
 '2Gth, 17S3, succeeded Yelverton as Attorney-General. Tliis latter office he retained until 
 he was made Lord Chancellor, on August 12th, 17S9, his place as leading law officer to the 
 Crown, being then taken by Arthur Wolfe, afterwards Lord Kilwarden. — M. 
 
 t The first bag that Mr. Curran ever carried was presented to him by Mr. Fitzgibbon, 
 f^r <^ood lucVs sake.—C. 
 
LORD CnANCELLOE CLARE. 109 
 
 popular tenets of tlie other, soon separated tliem ; even tlieir 
 private tastes and habits would have foroidden a lasting friend- 
 ship. Lord Clare despised literature, in v.diich Mr. Curran so 
 delighted. The one in private as in public, disdained all the arts 
 of winning ; he was sullen or overbearing, and when he conde- 
 scended to be jocular was generally offensive. The other was in 
 all companies the reverse ; playful, communicative, and conciliat- 
 ing. Mr. Curran never, like his more haughty rival, regulated his 
 urbanity by the rank of his companions ; 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 Mv. Curran was inces- 
 santly and almost involuntarily displaying, Lord Clare had a real 
 or an affected contempt, and would fain persuade himself that 
 they were incompatible with those higher powers which he con- 
 sidered could alone raise the possessor to an equality with him- 
 self. Mr. Curran was perhaps equally hasty in underrating the 
 abilities of his antagonist. Detesting his arbitrary principles, 
 and disgusted with his unpopular manners, he would see nothing 
 in him but the petty despot, ascending to a bad eminence by 
 obvious and unv.-orthy methods, and therefore meriting his un- 
 qualified hatred and invective. 
 
 With such elements of personal dislike and political 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 io-no- 
 rant 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 
 
110 LIFE OF CURE AN. 
 
 delinquents, in pathetic or indignant appeals to tliose natural ele- 
 mentary principles of human rights, against which political expe- 
 dients are too frequently directed. lie could never, like Lord 
 Clare, have managed a venal, restless aristocracy, so as to com- 
 mand their concurrence in a long system of unpopular encroach- 
 ments ; nor like him have continued for years to face the public 
 reprobation of such conduct: as little could the latter, had he 
 sided with the people, have brought to their cause such varied 
 stories of Avit and ridicule, and persuasive eloquence, as the 
 harangues of his more gifted rival display. 
 
 In a debate on the Abuse of Attachments by the King's Bench, 
 in the Irish House of Commons (February 24, 1785), as Mr. Cur- 
 ran 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 honourable member, and yet, perhaps, I ought rather 
 to envy than blame the tranquillity of the right honourable gen- 
 tleman. I do not feel myself so happily 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 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 retorted by the following description 
 of his opponent : " 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 foreground 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 ; 
 
 * Although Mr. Curran appears here to have commenced hostilities, it should be men- 
 tioned, that he was apprised of Mr. Fitzgibbon's having given out in the ministerial cir- 
 cles that he should take an opportunity, during this debate, in which he knew that Mr. 
 Curran would take a part, of putting dcncn 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."— C. 
 
PARLIAMENTARY WORK. Ill 
 
 I am not a man who denies the necessity of a parliamentary 
 reform at the' time that he proves its expediency by revihng 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 him- 
 self, I leave him to think of it in the committee, and to contem- 
 plate upon it when he goes home." The result of this night's 
 debate was a duel between Mr. Curran and Mr. Fitzmbbon ; after 
 exchanging shots they separated, only confirmed in their feelings 
 of mutual aversion, of which some of the consequences will appear 
 hereafter.^^ 
 
 [The first of Gurran's speeches displaying remarkable ability 
 (Davis says) is a short one made on Orde's Commercial Proposi- 
 tions. Orde,f who was Chief Secretary of Ireland, had proposed 
 several resolutions by which Reciprocity would be nominally 
 granted to Ireland in trade, commerce, and manufactures, as 
 regarded England. In reality, their design was to draw large 
 sums from Ireland for " general defence " (of England), in return 
 for which the poorer country would be allowed to compete with 
 the wealthier and stronger. Curran spoke brielly on the subject 
 on June 30, 1785, and, at much greater length, on July 23. He 
 spoke again on the 11th and 12th of August — his last speech not 
 having commenced until six in the morning, when he declared, 
 exhausted as he was, that his zeal had renewed his strength, and 
 hoped that his then state of mind and body might not be ominous 
 of the condition to which Ireland would be reduced, if the bill 
 should become a law. He prophetically said that if England were 
 allowed the right of taxing Ireland as she pleased, " we must either 
 
 * When the parties were placed on the ground they were left to fire when they pleased. 
 Curran had the first shot, without effect. Fitzgibbon then took aim for nearly half a 
 minute, and on his fire being ineffectual, Curran exclaimed, " It was not your fault, Mr. 
 Attorney; you xcere deliberate enough.'''' — M. 
 
 t Mr. Thomas Orde had married the natural daughter of the fifth Duke of Bolton, on whom 
 her father had entailed the principal part of his large estates, of failure of male heirs to 
 his brother Henry, sixth Duke. In 1794, the Dukedom became extinct, by the death of the 
 sixth Duke, and, in 1797, Mr, Orde was created Baron Bolton, of Bolton Castle, County of 
 York. He died in 1807.— M. 
 
112 , LIFE OF CUERAN. 
 
 sink into utter slavery, or the people must wade to a re-assumption 
 of their rights through blood, or be obliged to take refuse in a 
 Union^ ivhich would be the annihilation of Ireland, and 2vhat, I 
 susjject, the Ministry is drivirig at.^'' Three days after this, Orde 
 withdrew his bill — but, from that hour, Pitt determined to carry 
 the Union. 
 
 On March 11, 1*780, Curran spoke on the Portugal Trade, and 
 glanced at Toler's (afterwards Lord Norbury) unfortunate " knack 
 of turning matters of the most serious nature into ridicule." 
 Toler was then at once the buffo and bravo of Ministers.] 
 
 One of the public grievances, which the Irish Opposition fre- 
 quently, but vainly, attempted to redress, was the enormity of the 
 Pension List. On the 13th of May, in this year (I'lSG), 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 historical documents, which are, perhaps, the 
 most descriptive of the times. The very absence of serious 
 remonstrance shows that serious remonstrance had been exhausted, 
 and that nothing remained but that ridicule should take its ven- 
 geance upon those whom argument could not reform. | 
 
 " I am surprised that gentlemen have taken up such a foolish 
 opinion as that our constitution is maintained by its different 
 component parts, mutually checking and controlling each other. 
 They seem to think, with Ilobbes, that a state of nature is a state 
 of warfare, and that, like Mahomet's coffin, the constitution is sus- 
 
 . * The debate took place, not in Ifay, but in March. Mr. Forbes's motion was leave to 
 bring in a bill to limit the amount of pensions. Sir Hercules Langrishe moved the 
 adjournment of the question until August (equivalent to sine die), and it was adjourned, 
 but again brought on in the following year. — M. 
 
 t Upon this occasion, Mr. Grattan caused the Pension List to be read aloud by the clerk, 
 and concluded his speech by saying, " If I should vote that pensions are not a grievance, 
 I should vote an impudent, an insolent, and a public lie." — C. 
 
THE PENSION LIST. 113 
 
 pended by the attraction 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 impossible for men to 
 run into slavery, you enslave them most effectually. But if, 
 instead of the three different parts of our constitution drawing 
 forcibly in right lines at opposite directions, they were to unite 
 their power, and draw all one w^ay, in one right line, how great 
 would be the effect of their force — how happy the direction of 
 their union ! The present system is not only contrary to mathe- 
 matical rectitude, but to public harmony: but if, instead of Privi- 
 lege setting up his back to oppose Prerogative, he was to saddle 
 his back and in\ate Prerogative to ride, how comfortably might 
 they both jog along ; and, therefore, it delights me to 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 approve 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 insulted 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 months at the court of 
 Lisbon ; and now we hear from the Delphic oracle on the trea- 
 sury 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 factory will furnish some of their softest woollens to make 
 
 * Sir Boyle Roche, who was a Ministerialist and placeman, had opposed the motion, 
 Baying : "I would not stop the fountain of royal favour, but let it flow freely, spontane- 
 ously, and abundantly, as Holywell, in Wales, that tui-ns so many mills. Indeed, some 
 of the best men have drank of this fountain, which gives honour as well as vigour."— M. 
 
114 LIFE OF CURRAN. 
 
 a cushion for hiin 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 that posterity, whose ances- 
 tors are yet unborn, will be surprised at the vengeance he will 
 take. 
 
 " This polyglot of wealth — this museum of curiosities — the 
 Pension List, embraces every link in the human chain, every 
 description of men, women, and children, from the exalted excel- 
 lence of a Hawke or a Rodney, to the debased situation of a lady 
 w^ho humbleth herself that she may be exalted. But the lessons 
 it inculcates form its greatest 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 a^^ary 
 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 shows that, in proportion as our distresses 
 increase, the munificence of the Crown increases also — in pro- 
 portion as our clothes are rent, the royal mantle is extended 
 over us. 
 
 " Notwithstanding the Pension List, like charity, covers a multi- 
 tude of sins, give me leave to consider it as coming home to 
 the members of this house ; give me leave to say, that the Crow^n, 
 in extending its charity, its liberality, its profusion, is laying 
 a foundation for the independence of Parliament ; for, here- 
 after, instead of orators or j^atriots accounting for their con- 
 duct 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, 
 
PARLIAMENT AEY STUD. 115 
 
 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 wish 
 to drive a profitable commerce by having members of parliament 
 to hire or let ; in such case a secretary w^ould find a great 
 difliculty, if the proprietors of members should enter into a com- 
 bination to form a monopoly. To prevent which in time, the 
 wisest way is to purchase up the raw material, young mem- 
 bers 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 outside of these doors. 
 Again, he mi^-lit 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 different things) he might have been taught to dance, 
 2)€dibus ii'e in sententiam. This improvement might be extended ; 
 he might have them dressed in coats and shirts all of one coloui*, 
 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 ; afterwards, like the ancient Spartans, 
 or the fraternity at Kilmainham, they might dine altogether in a 
 large hall. Good heaven! what a sight to see them feeding 
 in public, on 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 pen- 
 sioners will beget pensioners to the end of the chapter." 
 
 Mr. Curran was now (1786) in full practice at the bar. It may be 
 
116 LIFE OF CUKEAN. 
 
 acceptable to hear the manner he spoke himself of his increasing 
 celebrity. The following is an extract from one of his private let- 
 ters 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 w^hatever 
 advantao-e I can derive from his leavinor about four thousand 
 a year at the bar. 
 
 " I midei^tand 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 merit imputed to me of changing a determination 
 which the Chancellor [Lord Lifford] had formed against Bur- 
 roughs,* 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 shoidd scarcely men- 
 tion it for any vanity of mine, if it were not of some little value 
 to others; tot it up, therefore, 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 professional 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 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 ordi- 
 nary routine of his profession, took him twice every year to Mun- 
 
 * Sir William Burroughs, Bart,, afterwards one of the Judges of the supreme court of 
 judicature at Calcutta. The cause to which Mr. Curran's letter alludes was that of New- 
 berg and Burroughs ; by his exertions in which he had acquired a considerable acces- 
 sion to fame.— 0. 
 
" AT HOME." 117 
 
 ster ;* and among the many 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 old- 
 est and dearest friends (once his college fellow-students), the Rev, 
 Thomas Crawford, of Lismore, and the Rev. Richard Cary, of Clon- 
 mel ; botli of them persons unknown to fame, but both so estimable, 
 as men, and scholars, and companions, that his taste and afiections 
 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 man 
 can enjoy, is to reappear in a more splendid condition among 
 those who had known him in his obscurity. If Mr, Curran had 
 
 * Upon one of these journeys, and about Uiis 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 hira to take 
 a seal in his chaise, and soon discovered that he was a deserter. Having stopped 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 it was but 
 small : " Tell me then," continued lie, " whether you feel disposed to pass the little rem- 
 nant 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 composing it, adapted to a plaintive Irish air : 
 
 If sadly thinking, with 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 as in wailing there 's naught availing. 
 
 And Death unfailing will strike the blow, 
 Then for that reason, and for a season, 
 
 Let us be merry before we go ! 
 
 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, 
 
 My griefs are over, and my glass runs low ; 
 Then for that reason, and for a season, 
 
 Let us be merry before we go ! 
 
118 LIFE OF CUERAX. 
 
 been proud, lie miglit have enjoyed this pleasure to the full. 
 Upon the occasion of every return to the scene of childhood, 
 visits and congratulations upon his increasing fame poured in 
 upon " the counsellor " from every side. " His visitors" (accord- 
 ing 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, and some in Irish, and some in a language that was a 
 sort of a compromise between the two — some were communicated 
 verbally — some by letter or by deputy, the absentees being just at 
 that moment .' in trouble,' which generally meant, having been 
 lately committed for some ' unintentional ' misdemeanour, from 
 the consequences of which, who could extricate them so success- 
 fully as ' the counsellor V 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 astonish- 
 ing poet of the age), was never absent ; at w^hatever stage of their 
 poetical circuit he and his itinerant muse might be, the moment 
 certain intelligence 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 condescension and urbanity; 
 to those who seemed inclined " to carry away anything rather than 
 an appetite," 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 laureat seldom failed to receive 
 the " crown" which he had " long preferred to the freshest laurels.'"^ ' 
 
 * The poetry of the roving bard has by some accident perished ; but his name is pre- 
 served 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 ; 
 
 J 
 
,in, ] 
 
 in vain, V 
 ; again. J 
 
 THE BAEDLING. 119 
 
 [During the Session of 11 Si, Mr. Curran constantly attended 
 to his parliamentary duties. At the connnencement of the 
 
 instead therefore of rewarding one of her effusions with the expected donation, he sent 
 the bard the following impromptu : 
 
 A collier once in days of yore, 
 
 From famed Newcastle's mines, a store 
 
 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 measured out his coals ir 
 
 For he got naught but coals agai 
 
 Thus Curran takes O'Connor's Inys, 
 
 And with a verse the verse repays ; 
 
 Not VArse indeed as good as thine, 
 
 Nor rais'd from such a genuine mine ; 
 
 But were it better, 't were in vain 
 
 To emulate O'Connor's strain. 
 
 Then take, my friend — and freely take, 
 
 The verses for the poet's sake : 
 
 Yet one advice from me receive, 
 
 *T will 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 '11 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 sought 
 relief in them, when satiated with more splendid cares. 
 
 Mr. Curran composed two other little poems, of a different description, about this time. 
 The first of the following has been praised, as possessing peculiar delicacy of thought, by 
 the most admired poet that Ireland has ever 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 loved station, 
 
 Go back 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 7iers all the bliss — and the sufferings all mine. 
 
120 LIFE OF CUKKAN. 
 
 Session of 1786, and again in 178*7, the Viceroy's speech alhided 
 to the disturbances in the South of Ireland. On the latter occa- 
 sion, a vehement debate arose on the address in reply to the 
 viceregal missive, and Curran delivered a speech Tvhich Davis 
 calls " one of his best in parliament." The government party 
 
 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 brothei-, 
 Can see naught 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 heart thy possession could tear ? 
 A mourner, a sufif'rer, a wanderer, a stranger — 
 In sickness, in sadness, in pain, and in danger, 
 Next my heart thou shouldst dwell till its last gasp were o'er — 
 Then together we 'd sink — and I 'd part thee no more. 
 
 ON MRS. BILLINGTON'S BIRTH-DAY. 
 
 The wre#h of love and friendship twine, 
 
 And deck it round with flow'rets gay — 
 Tip the lip with rosy wine, 
 
 'T is fair Eliza's natal day ! 
 
 Old Time restrains his ruthless hand, 
 
 And learns one favourite form to spare ; 
 Light o'er her tread, by his command. 
 
 The Hours, nor print one footstep there. 
 
 In amorous sport the purple Spring 
 
 Salutes her lips, in roses drest ; 
 And Winter laughs, and loves to fling 
 
 A flake of snow upon her breast. 
 
 So maj' thy days, in happiest pace, 
 
 Divine Eliza, glide along ! 
 Unclouded as thy angel face. 
 
 And sweet as thy celestial song. 
 
PARLIAMENTARY LIFE. 121 
 
 declared that the disturbance ahnost exchisively consisted of 
 resistance to the clergy (^. e., to tithes), and accused the landlords 
 of grinding the people and abetting the disturbances, and 
 demanded fresh powers. Fitzgibbon, then Attorney-General, 
 speaking of his general knowledge of the Province of Munster, 
 said, " I know it is impossible for human wretchedness to exceed 
 that of the miserable peasantry in that 2>rovince. I know that the 
 unhappy tenants are ground to powder by relentless landlwdsy 
 The Address was an echo of the ^'iceregal speech, and Curran 
 moved an amendment to it, to the effect that the ordinar}^ powers 
 of the law were fully adequate, if duly exerted, to punish and 
 restrain the excesses complained of, and also, that it was necessary 
 to reduce the burthens of the people by every honorable mode of 
 retrenchment. In proposing this, CuiTan entered fully into the 
 causes of the general distress which had produced partial dis- 
 turbances. " Unbound to the sovereign by any proof his affec- 
 tion, unbound to government by any instance of its protection, 
 unbound to the country, or to the soil, by being destitute of any 
 property in it, 'tis no wonder that the peasantry should be up for 
 rebellion and revolt ; so far from being matter of surprise, it must 
 naturally have been expected." Another passage is very good : 
 — " I have read the history of other nations, and I have read the 
 history of yours. I have seen how happily you emerged from 
 insignificance, and obtained your Constitution. But w^heu you 
 washed this Constitution with the waters which were to render it 
 invulnerable, like the mother of Achilles, you forgot that the 
 part by which you held it was untouched on the immersion ; it 
 was benumbed, and not rendered in^^llnerable, and therefore it 
 should attract your nicest care." 
 
 On January 23d, 1787, again alluding to the disturbances, Mr. 
 Curran said, " The low and contemptible state of your magistracy 
 is the cause of much evil, particularly in the Kingdom of Kerry. 
 I say Kingdom, for it seems absolutely not a part of the same 
 county." 
 
 G 
 
122 LIFE OF CUKKAN. 
 
 In what was called the Eight Boy Oath, there was a clause 
 authorizing magistrates to pull down Roman Catholic Churches at 
 which combinations should be formed, or unlawful oaths adminis- 
 tered. On February 19th, 1787, on the motion for the committal 
 of the bill, this clause was objected to, and, though not insisted 
 on, Avas strongly defended by the Attorney-General, Fitzgibbon. 
 Mr. Curran declared that such an act would be a proclamation 
 of a relio-ious war in Ireland. 
 
 On the following day, on the motion that the application of 
 the bill be limited to Cork, Kerry, Limerick and Tipperary, Mr. 
 Curran supported the limitation — which was lost by a large 
 majority. 
 
 On March the 12th, 1787, on the renewal of the lost bill for 
 limiting pensions, Mr. Curran again supported it ; on the follow- 
 ing day he spoke in favour of a resolution moved by Mr. Grattan, 
 that, if tranquillity Avere restored at the next opening of the Session, 
 the House would consider the tithe question. Speaking of the 
 Protestant clergy, he said, " I will never hear of any attempt to 
 injure their legal rights. I love their relig-ion ; there is only one 
 religion under Heaven w hich I love more than the Protestant, but 
 I confess there is one — the Christian religion." Grattan's motion 
 was lost, without a division. 
 
 It Avas sought to introduce into Ireland, the English Navi- 
 gation LaAv, originated by CroniAvell, in 1650, and carried out by 
 12th Charles II., c. 18. The Dublin merchants petitioned against 
 it. Fitzgibbon insulted their petition, Grattan moved an amended 
 clause (not carried) that the act should bind Ireland, only Avhile 
 the benefits and restraints of it Avere equal in the tAvo countries. 
 He was supported by Mr. Curran, Avho said that the Navigation 
 Act was founded on principles of imperial monopoly — to depress 
 the rivals of Great Britain, and to advance the poAver of the naAy. 
 To accept it Avould be to deprive Ireland of a great commercial 
 right.] 
 
 In the year 1787 Mr. Curran visited France, a country for whose 
 
VISIT TO FRANCE. 123 
 
 literature and manners lie had had a very early predilection. The 
 following letters give an account of its first impression on him ; 
 and, however carelessly ^vritten, their insertion ^vill be at least 
 some relief to the harsher scenes of political contention, -which 
 occupy so much of his future history. 
 
 Dieppe, Friday, August 31st, 1TS7. 
 
 " My last from Brighton told you I was setting sail — I did so 
 about eight o'clock yesterday evening, and after a pleasant voyage, 
 landed here this day at twelve. To-morrow I set out for Rouen, 
 A\'here I shall probably remain two or three days. 
 
 " I cannot say the first view of France has made a very favour- 
 able 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 
 2)acket, did everything I wanted, and oftered 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 contains two old fantastical 
 chests of drawers ; a table, on wdiich 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); 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 beefsteak, 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 inquire 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 
 
124: LIFE OF CURHAX. 
 
 of sculpture in it, and, I suspect, not of tlie 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 connois- 
 seur in the matter. I could not but respect the disinterestedness 
 and piefy of our ancestors, who laboured so much to teach pos- 
 terity the mortality of man ; and yet, on turning the idea a little, 
 I could not but suspect that the vain-glory of the builders of pyra- 
 mids and temples was no small incentive to their labours ; why 
 else engrave the lessons of mortality in characters intended to 
 endure for ever, and thus become an exception to the rule they 
 would establish ? But I am turning preacher instead of traveller. 
 
 "I reserved the view of the inhabitants for the last. Every 
 nation, 't is said, has a peculiar feature. I trust poor France shall 
 not be judged of, in that point, by Dieppe. I had expected to sea 
 something odd on my arrival, but I own I was unprepared for 
 what I met; the day was warm, and, perhaps, 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 mistook the women 
 for sailors, with long boddices, and petticoats not completely 
 covering their knees, which I really took for trousers ; however, 
 on a neai-er 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. 
 
 " I may say, truly, I did not see a being this day between the 
 ages of fifteen and fifty. I own I Avas 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 nightcaps, 
 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, I am at a loss to reconcile so many contradictions as 
 
125 
 
 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 reserved for vaulters and 
 rope-dancers, and the indolent and helpless onlj 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 ; 
 and, 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." 
 
 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 
 countr}^ The social turn of these people certainly has the advan- 
 tage ; their manners are wonderfully open and pleasant ; but still, 
 in everything 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 or 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 regarded themselves, 
 and generously to have laboured in what may render them agree- 
 able to their visitors." 
 
 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 
 mentioned. His friend, tlie Reverend Arthur O'Leary (more 
 generally called Father O'Leary"^), knowing that he was to pass 
 
 * Arthur O'Leary, born at Cork, and educated in France, was a Capuchin friar of the 
 order of St. Francis. He was a true and tried patriot, a wit as well as a humourist, and 
 a clear-heiided, powerful writer. In despair for his country, he retired to England, and 
 
126 LIFE OF CURRAN. 
 
 throiigli a particular town, wrote to the superior of a convent in 
 the neiglibourhood, describing the traveller that was shortly to 
 arrive there, and requesting that so ardent a friend of their reli- 
 gion should he welcomed and entertained with all courtesy and 
 honour. Mr. Curran no sooner reached the place, than he 
 received a pressing invitation to take up his abode at the con- 
 vent. 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, without hesitation, 
 replied in the same language. After expressing his general 
 acknowledgments for their hospitality, he assured them that 
 nothing could be more truly gratifying to him than to reside for 
 a few days among them ; that he should feel himself perfectly at 
 home in their society; for that he was by no means a stranger to 
 the habits of a monastic life, being himself no less than a Prior 
 of an Order in his own country — the Order of St. Patrick, or the 
 Monks of the Screw. Their fame, he added, might r.ever 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 "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 occasion, and, instead of 
 accepting all the keys which the Abbot had so liberally offered, 
 w^ould 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 
 
 for many years was officiating clergyman in the Roman Catholic chapel in Soho Square, 
 London. He died in 1802. He was an eminently social man. One of his retorts has 
 been preserved. To a person endeavouring to draw him into a discussion about Purga- 
 tory, he answered, "You may go farther, and fare worse." — M. 
 
TARis IX 1787. 127 
 
 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, proceeded on his journey, not 
 without a most pressing invitation to take ad\'antage of an}^ future 
 occasion of revisiting his friends at the convent. 
 
 The followino' is extracted from one of his letters from Paris : 
 
 " Paris, September 15, 17S7. 
 
 "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 
 Majestyf at chapel, after which we went out hunting ; after which 
 we viewed the palace, the 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 proba- 
 bly take very little notice of her visitors ; so I shall probably, I 
 think, go no more to Versailles. Mr. BoyseJ is perfectly well. I 
 have w^ritten to him this day. My health, thank God, has been 
 perfectly good since I came here, to which, I suppose, the temper- 
 ance of this country has contributed not a little. I am early as 
 usual ; read, w^-ite, 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 being the model of the next. Perhaps upon earth there can- 
 not 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-dances, learned beasts, &c. Yet, I begin to grow satiated, 
 and often wish for a more tranquil habitation." 
 
 Among the traits of French manners, which Mr. Curran, upon 
 
 * The family of the late Lord Carleton, an Irish judge. — M. 
 
 t Louis XVI.— AI. 
 
 $ The benevolent clergyman to wliom he chiefly owed his education. — M. 
 
128 LIFE OF CURRAN. 
 
 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 pecu- 
 liarly 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 ow^n words, " to be 
 the carrier of their thoughts, and accountable for their safe deli- 
 very." They accepted the offer with delight, and immediately 
 commenced a vigorous course of observations and inquiries upon 
 dress and fashion, and such commonplace subjects ; but their 
 interpreter, betraying his trust, changed and interpolated so 
 much, that the dialogue soon became purely his own invention. 
 He managed it, however, Avith so much dexterity, transmitting 
 between the parties so many finely-turned compliments, and ele- 
 gant repartees, that the unsuspecting ladies became fascinated 
 with each other. The Parisian denioiselle was in raptures with 
 the w it and colloquial eloquence of milachj, whom she declared to 
 be parfaitement ahnahle ; while the latter protested that she now, 
 for the first time, felt the full charm of French vivacity. At 
 length, when their mutual admiration was raised to its most ecsta- 
 tic 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 girl; "j'allois le proposer moi- 
 meme ;" and, springing across Mr. Curran, imprinted an empha- 
 tic salutation, according to the custom of her country, upon each 
 cheek of his Mr companion ; and then turning to him, added, 
 " vraiment, monsieur, madame votre amie est un veritable ange." 
 The latter never discovered the deception ; but, after her return to 
 Ireland, used often to remind Mr. Curran of the circumstance, and 
 
LETTER FEOM ME. BOYSE. 129 
 
 ask "wliat 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 could have meant, and the meaning of 
 that is so literal, that it does not require a commentator." 
 
 The name of Mr. Boyse occurred in his last letter ; the friend 
 of his childhood, between whom and Mr. Curran the most cordial 
 intercourse continued, 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* corres- 
 ponded with his former pupil. One of his letters, written in this 
 year, shall be inserted, as an example of the kind and confidential 
 feeling that pervades them all. 
 
 "to J. r. CURRAN, ESQ. ELY PLACE, DUBLIN. 
 
 "BuuxELLES, Feb. 7, 17ST. 
 
 "Dear Jack, 
 
 " I hope my friend's affairs are going well, and flourishing as 
 when I left him : mine, I suppose, are in the last stage of con- 
 sumption, 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 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 regu- 
 lar ? I saw Grattan and Fitzgibbon at Spa ; the former friendly 
 and agreeable, the latter disagreeable to every one. I dined with 
 
 *.Mf. Boyse died a few years after the date of this letter.— C. 
 
 6* 
 
130 LITE OF CUREAN. 
 
 him and Mr. Orde, at a club where we are members, but he was 
 solemn and displeasing to us all. My compliments to Grattan 
 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, I will go home the latter end of the 
 summer. How go on all your children ? An account of yourself 
 and them will give me pleasure. With best wishes to you all, 
 " I am, dear Jack, yours, sincerely, 
 
 " Nat. Boyse." 
 
 Mr. Boyse came over to Ireland in the following year. Upon 
 the morning of his arrival in Dublin, as he was on his way 
 to Ely Place, he was met by his friend, v/ho was proceed- 
 ing in great haste to the Courts, and had only time to wel- 
 come him, and bid him defer his visit till the hour of din- 
 ner. 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 aiiected by the recollections which the observation 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 indebted for it 
 all. The little boy whose mind you formed, and whose hopes 
 you animated, profiting by your instructions, has risen to 
 eminence and affluence ; but the work is yours ; what you see is 
 but the paltry stucco upon the building of which you laid the 
 foundation."'* 
 
 * Mr. Phillips has worked up this incident into a very dramatic scene— but without 
 
VISIT TO HOLLAi;rD. 131 
 
 [In 1'788, the Parliamentary Reports only gave one speech by 
 Mr. Curran. It was on contraband trade, and bears date Febru- 
 ary 19, 1788. It is not without a touch of wit and quaintness. 
 After saving- that high duties were a premium to the contraband 
 trader, he continued, " The conduct of the gentlemen who 
 conduct the revenue department reminds me of a circumstance 
 which happened in our University some time ago. The lads had 
 got a custom of breaking the lamps. For a long time there could 
 be found no remedy for this grievance, but mending them 
 when broken, till at length a very sagacious member of the Board 
 of Fellows hit upon a very extraordinary expedient. ' The lamps,' 
 said he, ' cannot be well broken in the daytime without imme- 
 diate detection, wherefore if they were taken down at night- 
 fell every evening, and put up every morning, the mischief might 
 be prevented !' The learned doctor's argument has been adopted 
 by the gentlemen of the revenue : they find that smuggling has 
 risen to a great height, they then shut up the ports, thereby 
 making them of no use."] 
 
 This year (1788) Mr. Curran visited Holland, from which he 
 writes as follows : 
 
 " Heltohtslcys, August 1, 1783. 
 
 "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 impres- 
 sion that Holland makes on a traveller. 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 a struggle. We 
 were obliged to put iip an orange cockade on our entrance. We 
 have just dined, and I am so disturbed by the settling the 
 
 improving it. Even as related liere there is much coarseness in Ourran's telling the old 
 clergyman, his benefactor, that he would not dare to assume such an attitude, &c.— M. 
 
132 LIFE OF CUKRA^. 
 
 Lill, and the disputes about guilders and stivers, &c., that I must 
 
 conclude. 
 
 " Yoiu's ever, 
 
 "J. P. C." 
 
 *' Amsterdam, August 5, 178S. 
 
 "You can't expect to find much entertainment in any let- 
 ter from Holland. The subject must naturally be as flat as 
 tho country, in which, literally, there is not a single eminence 
 three inches above the level of the water, the greater part lying 
 much below it. We met Mr. Ilannay, a Scotchman, on the pas- 
 sage, who had set out on a similar errand. Yv^e joined accord- 
 ingly. A few moments after my letter from Ilelvoetshiys was 
 written, we set out in a treckscuit for Rotterdam, where, after a 
 voyage of twenty-four hours easy sail, we arrived without 
 any accident, notwithstanding some struggle 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 traveller. He admired the abundance of the waters, 
 the beauty of the windmills, and the great opulence of Hol- 
 land, 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 at home ; 
 nor could it otherwise be possible for so many individuals to 
 indulge in the splendor of so many country villas as we saw 
 ranged along the banks of the canals, almost every one of which 
 liad a garden and menagerie annexed. The idea of the menage- 
 rie he caught 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 turkeys and as many hen§, 
 
AMSTERDAM. 133 
 
 " Tlie evening, yesterday, brought us to Amsterdam. We had 
 au interpreter who spoke no language. We knew not, under 
 heaven, where to go; spoke in vain to every fellow-passenger, 
 hut 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 some- 
 times amused himself with concealing his country, and that 
 once at Rotterdam he carried on the joke for five days, to 
 the great annoyance of some unfortunate Englishmen, who 
 knew nobody, and dined every day at the table d'hote he fre- 
 quented. Last night we saw a French comedy and opera 
 tolerably performed. This day we spent in viewing the port, 
 stad-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 w^hich they are famous, and of the dirt that makes 
 it necessary : their outsides only have I seen, and I am satisfied 
 abundantly with tliat. 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." 
 
134 LIFE OF CURE AN. 
 
 CHAPTER Vn. 
 
 His Majesty's illness— Communicated to the House 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 accounts — 
 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. 
 
 The year 1*789 was in many respects one of the most interest- 
 ing and important in Mr. Curran's life. From liis 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 question arose, in the progress and consequence of 
 which, there was such a development of the system by which 
 Ireland was in future to be governed, that he did not hesitate to 
 fix his political destiny for ever, by irrevocably connecting himself 
 wdth those whose efforts alone he thought could save their 
 country. His late Majesty's most afflicting indisposition had 
 taken place towards the close of the year 1788. It is known to 
 all that upon the announcement of that melancholy event, the 
 British parliament proceeded to nominate Ilis Pioyal 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 nov,- made to secure 
 a majority. To Mr. Curran it was communicated that his support of 
 the government would be rewarded with a judge's place, and with 
 the eventual 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 in\ated by 
 
THE REGENCY QUESTION. 135 
 
 address to assume tlie full and unrestricted exercise of the regal 
 functions ; and fortunately for liis fame, lie liad too much respect 
 for his duties and his character, to sacrifice them to any con- 
 siderations of personal advancement. 
 
 The Irish administration had been anxious to defer the meet- 
 ing of the legislature until the whole proceedings respecting the 
 regency should be completed in England, in the hope that the con- 
 duct pursued by the British parliament might be followed as a 
 precedent in Ireland ; but the urgencies 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 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,f 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 
 
 * Early in 1764, (the year in which George III. suggested to Lord Granville the taxa- 
 tion of America, as a grand financial measure for relieving the mother country from the 
 heavy war expenses, which had chiefly been incurred for the security of the Colonies), 
 George III. was attacked by an indisposition of six weeks' duration, which is suspected 
 to have been similar in its nature to, though less in its degree than, the malady which 
 assailed him in 17SS-'9, and completely clouded the last ten years of his life. It is a well- 
 known fact, that the Royal Family of England have a predisposition to insanity, attri- 
 buted to their in-and-in breeding system, caused by their marriages with other than royal 
 and Protestant houses being prohibited by law, which has led to their union with cousins 
 and such near relations. It has been sharply said, "that the Guelphs are divided into 
 only two classes, — those who o.re bad, and those who are mad." — M. 
 
 t One of the par'vgra.pK? o* the address upon which the debate arose was the following : 
 *' We ie*»i-vn ycTir ^ix^'eUecCy sincere thanks (however we must lament the necessity of 
 ^uch a. e^vcumstance) for ordering the communication of such documents as you have re- 
 ceived 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." — C. 
 
 [In 1782-'3, Earl Temple (subsequently created Marquis of Buckingham) was Lord 
 Lieutenant of Ireland. In December, 17S7, he was again appointed and held the ofiBce 
 for two years.] — M. 
 
136 LIFE OF CUPvKAN. 
 
 that brings it. Instead of tiianks for communicating it now, it 
 should be resented as an outrage upon us that he did not commu- 
 nicate it before/''' As to thanks for the wishes of Ireland, it is a 
 strange time for the noble Marquis to call for it. I do not wish 
 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 its pretensions ? One gentleman (Mr. Boyd) 
 has lost hundreds a year by his arts, and defends him on that 
 ground ; another (Mr. Corry) praises his economy for increasing 
 salaries in the ordnance — the economy of the noble lord is then 
 to be proved only by public or by private losses. Another right 
 honourable gentleman (the Attorney-General) has painted him as 
 
 * George III. liad a bilious fever in October, 17S3. On the 24th of that month, however, 
 he attended a levee, but, immediately after, exhibited symptoms of insanity. For some 
 time before, he had complained of weight or pressure on the brain, and anticipated how 
 it would end. At a private concert, one evening, he said to Dr. Ayrton, " I fear, sir, I 
 shall not be able long to hear music ; it seems to affect my head, and it is with some dififi- 
 culty I bear it. Alas! the best of us are but frail mortals." The King's illness was pub- 
 licly known in November. Dr. Warren, the regular physician to the Royal Household, 
 had no hope of his recovery. Dr. Willis, famous for his success in the treatment of mad 
 people, declared that the malady would be of short duration. Charles Fox and the Op- 
 position held on by Warren's prognostication. William Pitt, and the ministerial party 
 confided in the opinion of Willis. It was generally admitted that a Regency was indis- 
 pensable, and that the Prince of Wales (afterwards George IV.) was the proper person, 
 as his heir-apparent, to be appointed. Then came the dispute as to the degree of power 
 which, as the King's representative, the Regent should exercise. Fox contended that he 
 should have the royal authority in as much plenitude as the Sovereign himself. Pitt ad- 
 vocated the necessity and legality of imposing various restrictions upon his authority. 
 Pitt's proposition was carried, and the bill had reached its last stage, in the English Par- 
 liament, when the King suddenly recovered — in consequence, it is said, of Dr. Willis hav- 
 ing calmed him by sleep, brought on by the use of a pillow stuffed with hops. Mean- 
 while, the Irish Parliament had hastily carried a measure giving an unrestricted Regency 
 to the Prince of Wales. The Viceroy, having refused to transmit their resolutions to 
 London, a deputation from the Irish Lords and Commons was despatched with them, 
 and made such good speed as to arrive in London a week after the king's convalescence 
 was announced ! In one of the stages of the King's malady, it was announced in one of 
 the bulletins of health, that his Majesty had been so far recovered, as to be able to take 
 the air on horseback. "Then," said Curran, " all this work about appointing a Regent 
 is gone for nothing. What happiness will be diflfused among his Majesty's subjects, when 
 they learn that he is now able totake tJie rei?}./^." — M. 
 
THE REGENCY QUESTION. 137 
 
 a man of uncouth manners, mucli addicted to vulgar aritlimetic, 
 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 stop- 
 page 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 para- 
 graph, as in fact meaning nothing at all. I confess I find the 
 appeal to the compassion of the puplic stronger than that to their 
 justice. I feel for the reverses of human fate. I remember this 
 very supplicant for a compliment, to which he pretends only 
 because it is no compliment, drawn into this city by the people, 
 harnessed to his chariot, through streets blazing with illumination ; 
 and now, after more than a years labour at computation, he has 
 hazarded on a paragraph stating no one act of private or of pub- 
 lic good ; supported by no man that says he loves him ; defended, 
 not by an assertion of his merit, but by an extenuation of his 
 delincpiency. 
 
 " For my part I am but little averse to accede to the sentment 
 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 century had got. As for me, I do not 
 oppose his being borne away from us in a 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 peculation, since, as an honourable member 
 says, it was for his brother; and let us rejoice that his kindred 
 were not more numerous. But I cannot agree with my learned 
 friend v/ho defends the conduct of the noble lord, on the present 
 occasion. The Viceroy here, under a party that had taken a pecu- 
 liar line in Great Britain, should not have availed himself of his 
 trust to forward any of their measures : he should have considered 
 
 * Mr. Pitt was the party thus referred to.— M. 
 
138 LIFE OF CUERAN. 
 
 himself bound by duty and by delicacy to give the people the 
 earliest notice of their situation, and to have religiously abstained 
 from any act that could add to the power of his party, or embar- 
 rass any administration that might succeed him. Instead of that, 
 he abused his trust by proroguing the two Houses, and has dis- 
 posed of every office that became vacant in the interval, besides 
 reviving others that had been dormant for years. Yet the honour- 
 able member 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 mine. A good steward, if his master was visited by 
 infirmity or by death, would secure every article of his eiBfects for 
 his heir ; he would enter into no conspiracy wdth his tenants ; he 
 would remember his benefactor, and not forget his interest. I 
 will also tell my idea of a faithless, unprincipled steward. He 
 would avail himself of the moment of family distraction ; while 
 the filial piety of the son was attending the sick bed of the 
 father, or mourning over his grave, the faithless steward would 
 turn tlie melancholy interval to his private profit; he would 
 remember his own interest, and forget his benefactor, he would 
 endeavour to obliterate or conceal the title deeds ; to promote 
 cabals amono- the tenants of the estate, he would load it with 
 fictitious incumbrances ; he would reduce it to a wreck, in order 
 to leave the plundered heir no resource from beggary except con- 
 tinuing 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 be found in the community, 
 whose conscience w^ould acknowledge the resemblance of the 
 latter.^' 
 
 " I do not think the pitiful compliment in the address worthj 
 a debate or a division ; if any gentleman has a mind to stigma- 
 tize the object of it by a poor, hereditary, unmeaning, unmerited 
 panegyric, let it pass ; but I cannot consent to a delay at once so 
 dangerous and so disgraceful." 
 
 The opposition proved upon this occasion the stronger party ; 
 
 * Afterwards Lord Kilwarden.— M. 
 
PARLIAMENTARY TACTICS. 139 
 
 Mr. Grattan's proposal that the 11th of February should be 
 fixed for taking into consideration the state of the nation 
 was carried, against the exertions of the ministry to post- 
 pone 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 AVales, requesting his 
 royal highness 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 indisposition, 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, it would be superfluous to detail in this place, as the 
 legislative union has for ever prevented the recurrence of such 
 a question ; it will be sufficient merely to observe, that the 
 Whig majoiity who planned and carried the measure of an 
 address were influenced by two leading considerations.! In the 
 first place it seemed to them that the proceeding by an address 
 was the only one which would not compromise the independence 
 of the Irish Parliament. They conceived the present situation of 
 Ireland as similar in many respects to that of England at the 
 period of the revolution : the throne, indeed, was not actually 
 vacant, but an efiicient executive was wanting; and upon the 
 
 * Pitt's plan was that the Prince Regent should not have the power of making peers, 
 of granting offices or pensions, save during royal pleasure, or of making leases, or of 
 having the care of the King's person, or of administering, save in the King's name. 
 Protesting against them, the Prince of Wales had accepted them from the English Par- 
 liament. In Ireland, the legislative resolution was that the Regent should exercise and 
 administer " all regal powers, jurisdiction, and prerogatives" belonging to the Crown. 
 In ISll, when the Prince of Wales really became Regent, it was. under the restrictions of 
 17S9 — which, however, were to cease at the end of twelve months. — M. 
 
 t The resolution (giving unrestricted povver to the Regent) was moved by Mr. Thomas 
 Conolly, supported by C. F. Sheridan, Lord Henry Fitzgerald, Sir Henry Cavendish, Cur- 
 ran, Bushe, and Grattan, opposed by Hobart, Corry, and Attorney-General Fitzgibbon 
 (afterwards Lord Clare), and carried without a division. — M. 
 
140 LIFE OF CURRAN. 
 
 same principle tliat the two liouses in England had, of tlieir own 
 autliority, proceeded to supply the vacancy by the form of an 
 address to the Prince of Orange, so it appeared should those of 
 Ireland (an equally independent legislature) provide for the defi- 
 ciency of their third estate in the present instance. This 
 line of conduct was strenuously opposed by the Attorney-General 
 (Mr. Fitzgibbon) ; but the strongest of his arguments were rather 
 startling than convincing, and made but little impression upon 
 the majority, who justly felt that a great constitutional proceed- 
 ing upon an unforeseen emergency should not be impeded by any 
 narrow technical objections, even though they had been more 
 unanswerable than those adduced upon this occasion.* 
 
 Next to supporting the dignity of the Irish Parliament, the 
 AVhig leaders of 1789 were actuated by the prospects of advan- 
 tage to Ireland which they anticipated from the change of 
 administration and of system that w^ere expected to follow their 
 exertions. They were anxious to invest the Heir Apparent 
 v.'ith the most unrestrained regal authority, in the fullest con- 
 
 * The following was one of Mr. Fitzgibbon's arguments : " Let me now for a moment 
 suppose, that we, in the dignity of our independence, 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 the regency of England ; and suppose we should go 
 further, and desire him to give the royal assent to bills, he would say, 'My good people 
 of Ireland, you 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 Chancellor 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 argument, " is taking seals for 
 crowns, and baubles for sceptres ; it is worshipping wafers and wax in the place of a 
 King; it is substituting 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 contempt ; 
 but when blasphemy is uttered against the constitution, it shall not pass under its insig- 
 nificance, because the essence should be reprehended, though the doctrine cannot mako 
 a proselyte." — M. 
 
A BREAK-UP. 141 
 
 fidence that the benefits on wliicli they calculated would be 
 commensurate 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 existing discontents, or have prevented the calamities that 
 succeeded, must now be matter of controversial speculation, his 
 Majesty's health having been fortunately restored before tlie 
 arrangements regarding the Regency v>'ere yet concluded. 
 
 Although the conduct of the Irish House of Commons at this 
 important crisis has been generally adduced as a proof of 
 the dangerous spirit of independence that pervaded that assem- 
 l)]y, and therefore insisted on as an argument for a legisla- 
 tive union ; yet, were it now worth while to examine the subject, 
 it would not be difficult to show that the crowd who on that 
 occasion so zealously volunteered their support of the oppo- 
 sition w^ere influenced by far other motives than a lofty sense 
 of their own country's dignity; and that, however the Eng- 
 lish government might, at some rare conjuncture, be embarrassed 
 by their versatility, it had nothing to apprehend from their 
 patriotic virtue. No sooner was it ascertained that the cause 
 which they had lately espoused was to be unattended with emo- 
 lument, than they returned in repentance to their tenets ; and 
 incontestably did they prove in their subsequent life the extent 
 and the sincerity of their contrition. 
 
 There were a few, however, who would upon no terms continue 
 their support of the Irish Administration : they lost their places, 
 which they might have retained, and, joining the opposition, 
 adhered to it with undeviating and " desperate fidelity," as long 
 as the Irish Parliament continued to exist.'^ 
 
 ♦Among these were Mr. George Ponsonby, and his brother, Lord Ponsonby ; and in 
 the upper house, the Duke of Leinster. In a letter to Mr. Grattan, Mr. Curran thus 
 alludes to the formation of the last Opposition in the Irish Parliament: "You well 
 remember the state of Ireland in 17S9, and the necessity under which we found ourselves 
 of forming some bond of honourable connexion, by which the co-operation of even a 
 small number might be secured, in making some effort to stem that torrent which was 
 carrying every thing before it. For that purpose our little party was then formed ; it 
 
14:2 LIFE OF CURRAK. 
 
 [On x\pri] 21, 1789, Ciirran supported tlie bill for pre- 
 venting excise officers from voting at parliamentary elections — a 
 measure then defeated by a majority of 148 to 93, but since 
 adopted all througli tlie United Kingdom. Four days later 
 lie supported Sir H. Cavendish's resolutions condemnatory of 
 the Avaste and useless patronage ^vitli which the Dublin police 
 system Avas attended.] 
 
 It has been seen in the preceding pages, that the zeal with 
 which Mr. Curran performed his public duties had already 
 twice endangered his life : in the beginning of the year 1790, it 
 was again exposed to a similar risk. If his duel with the 
 Iiish Secretary, Major Hobart (now alluded to), had been the 
 consequence of accidental intemperance of language or con- 
 duct on either side, the account of it should be hastily dis- 
 missed ; but such was not its character. The circumstances that 
 preceded it are peculiarly illustrative of the condition of the 
 times, of the state of the Irish House of Commons, of the 
 manner in which that state rendered it incumbent upon an 
 honest senator to address it, and of the dangers that attended 
 him who had the boldness to perform his duty. 
 
 In the month of February, 1790, Mr. Curran made the follow- 
 ing speech in that House :* independent of the other reasons 
 for which it is here introduced, it may be offered as among 
 the most favourable examples of his parliamentary oratory. 
 
 consisted of yourself, the late Duke of Leiuster, that excellent Irishman, the late Lord 
 Ponsonby. Mr. George Ponsonby, Mr. Daly, Mr. Forbes, and some very few others. It 
 may not be for us to pronounce encomiums upon it, but we are entitled to say, that had 
 it been as successful as it was honest, we might now look back to it with some degree of 
 satisfaction." — C. [The Ministerial deserters in Ireland were cashiered in all direction. 
 It was said that the Minister thus made more patriots in one day than patriotism had ever 
 made in a year. Sheridan's younger brothei"^ Charles, the Irish Secretary-at-War, was 
 among the ejected — but he fared well, for Pitt gave him a pension of £1,200 a year, with 
 a reversion of £300 to his wife.] — M. 
 
 * This speech was delivered on February 4, 1790, on the question of stamp officers' 
 s-alaries. At that time the Earl of Westmoreland was Viceroy (he succeeded the Marquis 
 <;f Buckingham on January 5, 1790), and Major Hobart was his Chief Secretary— a posi- 
 tion not to be confounded with that of Secretary of State for Ireland, abolished at the 
 Union. — M. 
 
PAKLIAMENTAEY ORATORY. 143 
 
 " I rise with tliat deep concern and melancholy hesitation, which 
 a man must feel who does not know whether he is addressing an 
 independent Parliament, the representatives of the i:>eople of Ire- 
 land, or whether he is addressing the representatives of corruption : 
 I rise to make the experiment ; and I approach the question with 
 all those awful feelings of a man who finds a dear friend 
 prostrate and wounded on the ground, and who dreads lest 
 the means he should use to recover him may only serve to show 
 that he is dead and gone for ever. I rise to make an experiment 
 upon the representatives of the people, whether they have abdi- 
 cated their trust, and have become the paltry representatives 
 of Castle influence ; it is to make an experiment on the feelings 
 and probity of gentlemen, as was done on a great personage, 
 when it was said, 'thou art the man.' It is not a question 
 respecting a paltry Viceroy ; no, it is a question between the body 
 of the country and the administration ; it is a charge against the 
 government for opening the batteries of corruption against the 
 liberties of the people. The grand inquest of the nation are 
 called on to decide this charge ; they are called on to declare 
 whether they would appear as the prosecutors of the accom- 
 plices of corruption : for though the question relative to the divi- 
 sion of the Boards of Stamps and Accounts is in itself of little 
 importance, yet will it develop a system of corruption tending to 
 the utter destruction of Irish liberty, and to the separation of the 
 connexion with England. 
 
 " Sir, I bring forward an act of the meanest administration that 
 ever disgraced this country. I bring forward as one of the threads 
 by which, united with others of similar texture, the vermin of the 
 meanest kind have been able to tie down a body of strength and 
 importance. Let me not be supposed to rest here; when the 
 murderer left the mark of his bloody hand upon the wall, it w^as 
 not the trace of one finger, but the whole impression which con- 
 victed him.'^ 
 
 ♦ The allusion liere is probably to a little story popular among children in Ireland, 
 
144 LIFE OF CUERAN. 
 
 " The Board of Accounts was instituted in Lord To\ynsh end's 
 administration,"^ it came forward in a manner rather inauspicious ; 
 it was questioned in Parliament, and decided by the majority of 
 the five members who had received pLaces under it. Born in cor- 
 ruption, it could only succeed by venality. It continued an useless 
 board until the granting of the stamp duties in Lord Harcourt's 
 time : f the management of the stamps was then committed to it, 
 and a solemn compact was made that tlie taxes should not be 
 jobbed, but that both departments should be executed by one board. 
 So it continued till it was thought necessary to increase the salaries 
 of the commissioners in the Marquis of Buckingham's famous 
 administration ; but then nothing Avas held sacred : the increase 
 of the Revenue Board, the increase of the Ordnance, thirteen thou- 
 sand pounds a year added to the infamous Pension List, these 
 were not sufficient, but a compact, which should have been held 
 sacred, was violated, in order to make places for members of 
 parliament. How indecent ! two county members prying into 
 stamps ! What could have provoked this insult ? I will tell you : 
 you remember when the sceptre was trembling in the hand of an 
 almost expiring monarch ; when a factious and desperate English 
 minister attempted to grasp it, you stood up against the profana- 
 tion of the English, and the insult off'ered to the L'ish crown ; and 
 had you not done it, the union of the empire would have been 
 dissolved. You remember this; remember then yourselves — 
 remember your triumph : it was that triumph which exposed you 
 to submit to the resentment of the Viceroy : it was that triumph 
 which exposed you to disgrace and flagellation. In proportion as 
 you rose by the union, your tyrant became appalled ; but when 
 
 which states that the murderer, intending to cover the whole mark with dust, left that 
 of one finger unconcealed ; but that he continued firmly to protest his innocence, until 
 the removal of the dust convicted him, by displaying an impression corresponding exactly 
 with the size of his hand. A similar circumstance is introduced in an old Spanish 
 play. — C. 
 
 * From 1767 to 1772.— M. 
 
 + Lord Harcourt succeeded Lord Townshend as Viceroy. — M. 
 
PAKLIAMENTAKY BUSINESS. 145 
 
 he divided, he sunk you, and you became debased. How this has 
 happened, no man could imagine ; no man could have suspected 
 that a minister without talents could have worked your ruin. 
 There is a pride in a great nation that fears not its destruction 
 from a reptile ; yet is there more than fable in what we are told 
 of the Romans, that they guarded the Palladium, rather against 
 the subtlety of a thief, than the force of an invader. 
 
 " I bring forward this motion, not as a question of finance, not 
 as a question of regulation, but as a penal inquiry ; and the people 
 will now see whether they are to hope for help within these walls, 
 or turning their eyes towards heaven, they are to depend on God 
 and their own virtue. I rise in an assembly of three hundred 
 persons, one hundred of whom have places or pensions ; I rise in 
 an assembly, one third of whom have their ears sealed against the 
 complaints of the people, and their eyes intently turned to their 
 own interest : I rise before the whisperers of the Treasury, the 
 bargainers and runners of the Castle ; I address an audience before 
 whom was held forth the doctrine, that the Crown ought to use 
 its influence on this house. It has been known that a master has 
 been condemned by the confession of his slave, drawn from him 
 by torment ; but here the case is plain : this confession was not 
 made from constraint ; it came from a country gentleman deser- 
 vedly high in the confidence of Administration, for he gave up 
 other confidence to obtain theirs. 
 
 " I know I am speaking too plain ; but which is the more 
 honest physician, he who lulls his patient into a fatal security, or 
 he who points out the danger and the remedy of the disease ? 
 
 " I should not be surprised if bad men of great talents should 
 endeavour to enslave a people ; but, when I see folly uniting with 
 vice, corruption with imbecility, men without talents attempting 
 to overthrow^ our liberty, my indignation rises at the presumption 
 and audacity of the attempt. That such men should creep 
 into power, is a fatal symptom to the constitution ; the poli- 
 
146 LIFE OF CUKE AN. 
 
 tical, like tlie material body, when nea;- its dissolution, often 
 bursts out in swarms of vermin. 
 
 " In tins administration, a place may be found for every bad 
 man, whether it be to distribute the wealth of the Treasury, 
 to vote in the House, to whisper and to bargain, to stand at 
 the door and note the exits and entrances of your members, 
 to mark whether they earn their wages — whether it be for 
 the hireling who comes for his hire, or for the drunken aid- 
 de-camp who swaggers in a brothel ; nay, some of them find their 
 way to the treasury-bench, the political-musicians, or hurdygurdy- 
 men, to pipe the praises of the viceroy. 
 
 "Yet notwithstanding the profusion of Government, I ask, 
 what defence have they made for the country, in case it should 
 be invaded by a foreign foe ? They have not a single ship on the 
 coast. Is it then the smug aid-de-camp, or the banditti of 
 the Pension List, or the infantine statesmen, w'ho play in the sun- 
 shine of the Castle, that are to defend the country ? No, it 
 is the stigmatised citizens. We are now sitting in a country 
 of four millions of people, and our boast is, that they are 
 governed by laws to which themselves consent ; but are not 
 more than three millions of the people excluded from any parti- 
 cipation in making those laws ? Li a neighboring country,* 
 twenty-four millions of people were governed by laws to wdiich 
 their consent was never asked ; but we have seen them struggle 
 for freedom — in this struggle they have burst their chains, and on 
 the altar, erected by despotism to public slavery, they have 
 enthroned the image of public liberty. 
 
 " But are our people merely excluded ? No, they are denied 
 redress. Next to the adoration which is due to God, I bend 
 in reverence to the institutions of that religion, which teaches me 
 to know his divine goodness ! but what advantage does the 
 peasant of the South receive from the institutions of religion ? 
 
 ♦France. — M. 
 
SIR BOYLE KOCHE. 147 
 
 Does he experience the blessing ? No, lie never hears the voice 
 of the shepherd, nor feels the pastoral crook, but when it is 
 entering his flesh, and goading his very soul. 
 
 " In this country, sir, our King is not a resident ; the beam of 
 royalty is often reflected through a medium, which sheds but 
 a kind of disastrous twilight, serving only to assist robbers 
 and plunderers. We have no security in the talents, or responsi- 
 bility of an Irish ministry ; injuries which the English constitu- 
 tion would easily repel may here be fatal. I therefore call 
 upon you to exert yourselves, to heave off the vile incumbrances 
 that have been laid upon you. I call you not as to a measure of 
 finance or regulation, but to a criminal accusation, which you 
 may follow with pimishment. I, therefore, sir, most humbly 
 move : 
 
 " That an humble address be presented to his Majesty, praying 
 that he will order to be laid before this house the particulars 
 of the causes, consideration, and representations, in consequence 
 of which the Boards of Stamps and Accounts have been divided 
 with an increase of salary to the ofiicers; also that he will 
 be graciously pleased to communicate to this house the names of 
 the persons who recommended that measure." 
 
 To this speech, containing charges so grave and direct, and so 
 demanding an equally solemn refutation if they were refutable, it 
 is curious to observe the style of answer that was made. "When 
 appeals of this nature are received with contumely and mockery, 
 it is, perhaps, among the most certain signs, that the legis- 
 lature which can tolerate such a practice has completely survived 
 its virtue. 
 
 Sir B. Roche. — " Though I am in point of consequence 
 the smallest man amongst the respectable majority of this 
 house, yet I cannot help feeling the heavy shower of the honour- 
 able gentleman's illiberal and unfounded abuse. 
 
 " If I had the advantage of being bred to the learned pro- 
 fession of the law, I should be the better enabled to follow 
 
14S LIFE OF CURRAN. 
 
 the honourable gentleiiian through the long- windings of his 
 declamation ; by such means I should be blessed Avith ' the 
 gift of the gab' and could declaim for an hour or two upon 
 the turning of a straw, and yet say nothing to the purpose ; 
 then I could stamp and stare, and rend, and tear, and look 
 up to the gods and goddesses for approbation. Then in the 
 violence of such declamation, I should suppose myself standing 
 at the head of my shop (at the bar of the King s bench), dealing 
 out my scurrility by the yard to the highest bidder; my 
 shop being well stored with all sorts of masquerade dresses 
 to suit all descriptions of persons. The Newgate criminal (if I 
 was well paid for it) I would dress up in the flowing robes 
 of innocence. The innocent man (being also well paid for it) I 
 could cover up in a cloak of infomy, that should stick as close to 
 him as his regimentals. 
 
 " I am sorry to find that the military character does not seem 
 to meet wdth the honourable gentleman's approbation. I profess 
 myself to have had the honour to be bred a soldier, and if there 
 is any thing amiable or praiseworthy in my character, I am 
 entirely indebted to that school for it. If indeed I w^as bred a 
 pettifogger, or a Newgate solicitor, I should be better enabled to 
 follow the learned gentleman through the variety of matter which 
 he has introduced to the house. My right honourable friend,* 
 upon the floor, is animadverted on and abused, because he is a 
 soldier ; but let me tell the honourable gentleman below^ me, that 
 the high ground of his honour and character places him above 
 the reach of his envenomed shafts, bearded with envy, hatred and 
 malice. 
 
 * ^ H; ^ % % 'W % ^ !i: % ^ ^ 
 
 The Viceroy of this country is surrounded by military gentlemen 
 of the first families in both kingdoms ; they are supposed to be 
 out of the line of all politics, yet the indecent and disrespectful 
 manner in which they are, on this occasion, held out in this house, 
 
 ♦ Major Hobart.— 0. 
 
KEPLY TO BOYLE ROCHE. 149 
 
 does, in my apprehension, deserve the severest censure. I would, 
 however, recommend it to the honourable gentleman to stop a 
 little in his career of general abuse of men, who cannot be here 
 to answer for themselves; lest those gentlemen (who never 
 offended him) might speak to him on the subject in another place. 
 Oh, shame ! shame ! shame and reprobation on such beha\dour !" 
 
 After a long debate, Mr. Curran replied, and concluded with 
 the following observations upon Sir Boyle Roche's language : 
 
 "We have been told this night in express words, that the man 
 who dares to do his duty to his country in this house may expect 
 to be attacked without those walls by the military gentlemen of 
 the Castle. If the army had been directly or indirectly mentioned 
 in the course of the debate, this extraordinary declaration might 
 be attributable to the confusion of a mistaken charge, or an 
 absurd vindication ; but without connexion with the subject, or 
 pretence of connexion with the subject, a new principle of govern- 
 ment is advanced, and that is the bayonet ; and this is stated in 
 the fullest house, and the most crowded audience I ever saw. We 
 are to be silenced by corruption within, or quelled by force of 
 arms without. Nor is it necessary that those avowed principles 
 of bribery and arms should come from any high personal 
 authority ; they have been delivered by the known retailers of 
 administration, in the face of that bench, and heard even v/ithout 
 a murmur of dissent, or disapprobation. As to my part, I do not 
 know how it may be my destiny to fall ; it may be by chance, or 
 malady, or violence, but should it be my fate to perish the victim 
 of a bold and honest discharge of my duty, I will not shun it. I 
 Avill do that duty, and if it should expose me to sink under the 
 blow of the assassin, and become a victim to the public cause, 
 the most sensible of my regrets would be, that on such an altar 
 there should not be immolated a more illustrious sacrifice. As to 
 myself, while I live, I shall despise the peril. I feel, in my own 
 spirit, the safety of my honour, and in my own and the spirit of 
 the people, do I feel strength enough to hold that Administration, 
 
150 LIFE OF CURRAN. 
 
 whicli can give a sanction to menaces like these, responsihle for 
 their consequences to the nation and the individual. 
 
 Mr. CiiiTan liad soon occasion to act upon this last declaration. 
 In a few days subsequent to the preceding debate, he was openly- 
 insulted by a person belonging to one of those classes, upon 
 which he had accused the Administration of squandering the pub- 
 lic money. He accordingly deputed one of his friends, Mr. Egan,* 
 to acquaint the Secretary with the outrage that had been com- 
 mitted on him, in consequence of what he had asserted in the 
 House of Commons, and to express his expectation, " that Major 
 Hobart would mark his sense of such an indignity offered to a 
 Member of Parliament by one of his ofllcial servants, in the dis- 
 missal of the man from his service." To this application Major 
 Hobart replied, that " he had no power to dismiss any man from 
 the service of government," and after referring ]\Ir. Curran to the 
 House of Commons, as the tribunal, before which he should com- 
 plain of any breach of his privileges, expressed his surprise " that 
 any application should have been made to him upon the occasion 
 of an outrage committed by a person who was as much a stranger 
 to him as he could be to Mr. Curran." Upon this, the following 
 respondence ensued : 
 
 "to the right HON. MAJOR HOBART. 
 
 " March 28, 1790. 
 
 "Sir:— 
 
 " A man of the name of , a conductor of your press, a 
 
 writer for your government, your notorious agent in the city, 
 
 * Notwithstanding their friendship, Curran and Egan fought a duel. Curran was small 
 in stature and very slight. Egan was a giant. When the seconds were measuring the 
 ground Egan said, " Curran, my boy, this is not fair, I might as well fire at a lamp post as 
 you, so small are you. Look at me (striking his enormous bulk), you cannot help hit- 
 ting me." Curran answered, " Very true, my good fellow. Suppose that we chalk ray 
 size upon your person, and every bullet outside the outline shall count for nothing !" 
 They both smiled at the ludicrous idea, harmlessly exchanged shots, went and breakfasted 
 together, and never again met in a hostile manner. — M. 
 
LETTER TO MAJOR HOBAKT. 151 
 
 your note-taker in the House of Commons, in consequence of 
 some observation that fell from me in that House on your prodi- 
 gality, in rewarding such a man with the public money for such 
 services, had the audacity to come within a few paces of me, in 
 the most frequented part of this metropolis, and shake his stick at 
 me in a manner which, notwithstanding his silence, was too plain 
 to be misunderstood. I applied to you to dismiss him, because he 
 is your retainer, for whom you ought to be responsible. You 
 have had recourse to the stale artifice of office, and have set up 
 incapacity and irresponsibility against doing an act which, as a 
 minister, you were able, and which, as a man of honour, you 
 should have been ready to do. As to your being a stranger to 
 the man, you knew when you wrote it that it was a pitiful eva- 
 sion ; I did not apply to the Secretary to discard a companion, but 
 to dismiss the runner of his administration. As to your attempt 
 to shelter yourself under the Lord Lieutenant, who, during the 
 continuance of his government, cannot be responsible for such 
 outrages, you should have felt that to be equally unworthy of you. 
 If such subterfuges were tolerated, every member of Parliament, 
 every gentleman of the country, who might become obnoxious to 
 the Castle, would be exposed to personal violence from the ruffians 
 of your administration. I should give up the cause of both, if I 
 did not endeavour to check this practice, not in the person of the 
 instrument, but of his abettor. I knew perfectly well, the resent- 
 ments I had excited by my public conduct, and the sentiments 
 and declarations I have expressed concerning your administration. 
 I knew I might possibly become the victim of such declarations, 
 particularly when I saw that an attempt at personal intimidation 
 was part of the plan of government; but I was too deeply 
 impressed with their truth to be restrained by any consideration 
 of that sort from making them in public, or asserting them with 
 my latest breath. 
 
 " Sir, I am aware that you could not be convicted of having 
 actually commissioned this last outrage upon me ; but that vou 
 
J 52 LIFE OF CURRAN. 
 
 have protected and approved it. I own I am very sorry tliat you 
 have suffered so unjustifiable a sanction of one of your creatures 
 to commit you and me personally. However, as you are pleased 
 to disclaim the offender, and the power of punishing him, I feel I 
 must acquiesce, Avhatever may be my opinion on the subject, and 
 though you have forced upon me a con\nction that you have 
 sacrificed the principles of a man of honour to an official expe- 
 diency. This sentiment I should have conveyed through my 
 friend, but that it might possibly become necessary that our 
 communication on this business should be public. 
 " I have the honour to be, sir, 
 
 " Your obedient servant, 
 
 "John P. Curran." 
 
 "to JOHN PHILPOT CURRAN, ESQ. 
 
 «' Dublin Castle, March 29, 1790. 
 
 "Sir:— 
 
 " Your original application to me, through Mr. Egan, was, 
 
 that Mr. should be dismissed from the service of Government, 
 
 for the insult which he had offered to you ; or that Government 
 should co-operate with you in preferring a complaint to the House 
 of Commons against liim for a breach of their privileges. This 
 application was, on the face of it, official ; and, in answer to it, I 
 pointed out to you, by direction of his Excellency, the Lord Lieu- 
 tenant, the only mode by which you could have the redress you 
 liad sought for the outrage of which you had complained. You 
 have now thought fit to desert the mode of official proceeding, 
 and to couple a personal attack against me with an appeal to the 
 public. 
 
 " Whatever are your hopes and motives in such conduct, be 
 assured that the attempt of making your cause the cause of the 
 public will never succeed. The public will never believe that I 
 could have directly or indirectly instigated any man to insult you. 
 They will see that the regular mode of redress was open to you, 
 
MAJoit iiobart's letter. 153 
 
 even tlie redress you at first affected to seek. You will never 
 fasten a belief on the public that any man was mad enough to 
 insult a member of Parliament, merely for his having accused the 
 Government of prodigality in rewarding him : nor Avill all your 
 ingenuity serve to entangle me in that transaction, merely because 
 
 you are pleased to style Mr. my retainer ; or to create a 
 
 persuasion that I am' personally responsible for the resentment of 
 a servant of the Government, who w^as placed in the situation 
 which he now fills many years before I came into ofiice. The 
 public will view this matter in its true light ; and they will clearly 
 perceive, what no man can ever justify, that you have transferred 
 to me the quarrel which another has provoked, for no one reason, 
 but because you think it politic so to do. 
 
 "Your parade of the resentments which you boast to have 
 excited by your public conduct, and your insinuation that an 
 attempt at personal intimidation was part of the plan of Govern- 
 ment, I cannot condescend to notice. The public will never be 
 the dupes of such a paltry affectation, to give a popular com- 
 plexion to your quarrel. 
 
 " As to your charge of my having sacrificed the principles of a 
 man of honour to political expediency, the motive of the accusa- 
 tion is too evident to demand a reply. I trust to my own charac- 
 ter for its refutation. 
 
 " I pity the condition of any man who feels himself reduced to 
 the desperate expedient of endeavouring to wipe oft' the affi'onts 
 and insults he has submitted to from others, by forcing a quarrel 
 upon a man Vvlio never injured him in the remotest degree ; and I 
 am at a loss to conceive how such a conduct can be reconciled to 
 the principles or feelings of a gentleman or a man of honour. 
 
 " Perhaps a man in a public situation, and who has given no 
 offence, might be well justified in appealing to the laws, if he 
 should be personally called upon. I do not mean, sir, to avail 
 myself of your example. You say, sir, that it may be necessary 
 that the communication on this subject should be public: had 
 
154 LIFE OF CUKKAN. 
 
 you not said so, my answer to you would have been sliort, indeed. 
 I have the honour to be 
 
 " Your obedient, humble servant, 
 
 "K. HOBART. 
 
 " P. S. — Having put you in possession of my sentiments, I shall 
 consider it unnecessary to answer any more letters." 
 
 "to the right HOX. major nOBART.* 
 
 March 30, 1790. 
 
 " Sir, 
 
 " As I wish to stand justified to the public and to you for 
 having had recourse to you on the present extraordinary 
 occasion, I beg leave once more to trouble you with a few lines, 
 to which no answer can be necessary. They will be addressed to 
 you in that temper which the general purport of the last letter I 
 had the honour to receive entitles you to expect. 
 
 "An unparalleled outrage was offered to me — the person 
 was beneath my resentment. In this very difficult situation 
 to whom could I resort but his masters ? and if to them, to whom 
 but the first ? . 
 
 " I never charged you, sir, with instigating that man to such an 
 act ; but am sorry that I cannot add, that such a part has 
 been taken to punish him as was necessary to acquit all your 
 administration. I know perfectly well you found him in office, 
 and also in certain lower confidential departments, which are 
 more easily understood than expressed ; and my complaint Avas, 
 that, after such gross misconduct, he continued there. 
 
 " I beg leave to remind you, that I did not say that any 
 man v/as mad enough to insult a Member of Parliament, merely 
 for accusing Government of prodigality in rewarding him ; but I 
 
 * Major Hobart was son of and successor to the third Earl of Buckinghamshire, and 
 died in 1816.— M. 
 
HOB ART AND CURRAN. 155 
 
 did say, and must repeat, that the insult upon me was made 
 in consequence of my having arraigned the prodigahty of 
 rewarding sicch a man for such services. Permit me to add, 
 that you cannot but have reason to beheve this to be the 
 fact. Some of your Court have talked freely upon the sub- 
 ject ; and the man, by his own application of the word, has 
 acknowledged his vocation and his connexion. 
 
 " I must still continue to think, that what you are pleased to 
 call a quarrel is nothing but the result of my public con- 
 duct. Sure I am that I should have escaped the attacks that 
 have been made upon my person and character, and this last 
 among others, if that conduct had been less zealous and decided. 
 
 " As to your charge of my forcing a quarrel upon a man — 
 " who never in the remotest degree injured you" — there is 
 something in the expression which, I acknowledge, excites in 
 my mind a very lively concern. And it is an aggravation of the 
 outrage upon me, that it left me no resort, save one painful to my 
 feelings, but necessary to my situation. 
 
 "As to the insinuation which accompanies your expression of 
 regret, I am sorry it should have escaped from Major Hobart. 
 He cannot seriously mean that I should squander my person upon 
 every ruffian who may make an attempt upon my life. In 
 the discharge of political and professional duties, every man must 
 expect to excite enemies. I cannot hope to be more for- 
 tunate ; but I shall commit myself only with such as cannot 
 disgrace me. A farther answer may be necessary to this part of 
 your letter ; but that, as it cannot be so properly conveyed 
 in writing, my friend, Mr. Egan, will have the honour to explain. 
 " I have the honour to be, sir, 
 
 " Your obedient servant, 
 
 " J. P. CURRAN." 
 
 A duel immediately followed, in which neither party received 
 any injury. 
 
15G LIFE OF CURE AN. 
 
 Ill reviewing this transaction, it would not be difficult for any- 
 one, who should feel so disposed, to produce many arguments in 
 support of the conclusion, that Mr. Curran's demand of per- 
 sonal satisfaction from the Irish minister was a departure from 
 the usages of public life. Such a person would, however, leave 
 out of his consideration the circumstances that provoked and that 
 could justify such a proceeding — the inliamed state of the times 
 — the previous debate in parliament — the minister's tacit sanction 
 of the menaces of his adherents — and Mr. Curran's remonstrance 
 upon the occasion not having produced an observation that 
 could deter the future insulter. The latter was the view which 
 convinced himself and his friends that it was only by some 
 such decisive measure as that Avhich he adopted that the 
 privileges and persons of his party could be secured from farther 
 violence. The particulars of the affair, however, are given here, 
 not as a subject of controversy, but as a striking public fact, and 
 an event in Mr. Curran's political life. 
 
 Mr. Curran's dispute and frequent collisions in Parliament with 
 Mr. Fitzgibbon have been already adverted to ; and, in what has 
 been hitherto related, the conduct of neither party has appeared 
 marked by any peculiar aggravations ; but the latter having now 
 become Chancellor of Ireland,"''^' Lord Clare remembered the 
 resentments of Mr. Fitzgibbon, and avenged the wounds he had 
 received in the senate by excluding Mr. Curran from all practice 
 in his court.f Such a mode of reprisals has been generally 
 
 * He was appointed in June, 17S0, and was then called to tlie House of Lords as Baron 
 Fitzgibbon, of Lower Connello, county of Limerick. In 1793, he was created Viscount 
 Fitzgibbon, and in 1795, Earl of Clare, all in the Peerage of Ireland. In 1799, he was 
 made a Baron in the Peerage of Great Britain, and died in 1802.— :M. 
 
 t Tills was effected by letting the public see that Mr. Curran had not (in the technical 
 phrase) t?ie ear of the court— a.r\d in this Lord Clare so entirely succeeded, that in a very 
 little time no client would venture to entrust a Chancery cause of any importance to the 
 discountenanced advocate. Mr. Curran's loss of professional income was extreme. 
 
JUSTICE. 157 
 
 repreliended as merely unmanly and ungenerous, but it was 
 a great deal more. The misconduct of persons in elevated 
 stations is seldom canvassed with the rigour necessary to their 
 perfect reprobation. So much does Power impose upon the 
 understandings of men, that, almost trembling to scrutinize the 
 offences that should be most exposed, they are rather satis- 
 fied to consider the enjoyment of high trust as a kind of apology 
 for its violation. A judge setting his face against a particu- 
 lar advocate does not commit a simple act of unkindness or inde- 
 corum ; he offers as criminal an outrage as can be imagined 
 to the most sacred privileges of the community. The claim 
 of the subject to be heard with impartiality is not derived 
 from the favour of the judge ; it is a right, as independent of per- 
 sons, and as sanctioned by law, as that which entitles the judge to 
 sit upon the bench : it is the bounden duty of the latter to afford 
 an honest, unbiassed attention to every suitor in his court, 
 or (what is equivalent) to such counsel as the suitor appoints to 
 represent himself: when the judge, therefore, from motives 
 of private or political dislike, refuses, on hearing of a cause, the 
 fullest indulgence that legal proceedings admit, he not only 
 unworthily marks out an obnoxious individual as the victim 
 of his own angry passions, diminishing his credit, and thereby, 
 perhaps, depriving him of his bread; but as far as in him 
 lies, he directly tends to defraud the unoffending subject of 
 his property, or his reputation, or his life ; he does the same 
 indirectly, by compelling the advocate, if he has a spark of 
 the spirit befitting liis station, to exhaust in resistance to such 
 unseemly partiality a portion of that time and vigour which 
 should be exclusively appropriated to the service of his client. 
 These scenes of indecent strife too inevitably strip the seats 
 of law of their character and influence ; for Vvdio can look 
 up with confidence or respect to a tribunal, where he sees faction 
 
 There was an immediate diminution of £1,000 a year, which the Court of Chancery 
 alone had produced ; and this an increasing jncorae. The aggregate of his loss he 
 always estimated at £80,000.— C. 
 
158 LIFE OF CUKKAX. 
 
 domineering* over equity, and the minister of justice degraded 
 into a partizan ? 
 
 This flagrant abuse of the judicial functions by Lord Clare has 
 never incurred, in Ireland, all the odium that it merited — with 
 his admirers it was a speck upon the sun, and his enemies had 
 deeper crimes to execrate. The widely ditFerent deportment of 
 his successors has also removed all present apprehensions of a 
 repetition of such scenes ; still the vicious model may find its 
 imitators — the tramplers upon human rights are not peculiar to 
 any generation ; and wherever they do appear, their exposure 
 should be insisted on as a future protection to the public ; the 
 characters of such men should be rendered an antidote to their 
 example. 
 
 For this deadly injury inflicted on him by the highest law- 
 ofiicer in the kingdom, Mr. Curran was not tardy in taking signal 
 vengeance. He saw that his enemy had advanced too far to 
 recede — he disdained to conciliate him by submission or by mild 
 expostulation. To have acted with forbearance, or even with 
 temper, (however amiable and prudent, had it been a private 
 case) would have been in the present one, as he considered it, a 
 desertion of wdiat w^as to him above every personal consideration, 
 of a great constitutional principle, involving the rights and secu- 
 rities of the client, and the honour and independence of the Irish 
 bar. He w^as not insensible (it could hardly be expected that he 
 should) to such an invasion of his feelings and his income ; but 
 in resisting it as he did, with scorn and exposure, he felt that he 
 was assuming the proud attitude of a public man, contending 
 against a noxious system of " frantic encroachments," of which he 
 w^as the accidental victim ; and that the result, however unproduc- 
 tive to his private interests, would, at least, show that the advo- 
 cate w^as not to be scared from the performance of his duty by 
 the terrors of contumely or pecuniary loss ; and that though the 
 judge might be for the moment victorious in the contest, his vic- 
 tory should cost him dear. 
 
 The opportunities of hurling direct defiance at Lord Clare 
 
DUBLIN MAYORALTY. 150 
 
 might liave now been rare. Tliey could no longer meet in tlio 
 House of Commons ; and the Chancellor provided against a fre- 
 quent intercourse in his court ; '^ but an extraordinary occasion soon 
 presented itself, and enabled the injured advocate to execute his 
 objects of retaliation, in the dignified character of a public aven- 
 ger, before an audience where every blow was more public and 
 more humiliating. 
 
 The Lord Mayor of the city of Dublin is chosen by the Board of 
 Aldermen, whose choice is confirmed, or disapproved, by the Com- 
 mon Council. In the year 1*790 [April IGth,] the board elected a 
 person (Alderman James) whom the Commons, without assigning 
 the reasons of their disapprobation, successively rejected. f Their 
 real motive was a determination to continue rejecting the names 
 returned to them, until the election of the Aldermen should fall 
 upon a person attaclied to the popular cause. The Board per- 
 ceiving this, and denying that the Common Council had such a 
 right of capricious rejection, returned no more, and broke up 
 without having duly elected a Lord Mayor. Upon this the 
 Sheriffs and Commons (according to the law that provided for 
 such an event) proceeded to elect one, and fixed upon a popular 
 candidate. Alderman Howison.t 
 
 * The occasional style of their warfare in the Court of Chancery, for the little time 
 til at Mv. Curran continued to be employed tliere, raay be collected from the following 
 instance. Lord Clare had a favourite dog that sometimes followed him to the bench. 
 One day, during an argument of Mr. Curran's, the Chancellor, in the spirit of habitual 
 petulance which distinguished him, instead of attending to the argument, turned his head 
 aside and began to fondle the dog. The counsel stopped suddenly in the middle of a 
 sentence — the judge started. " 1 beg pardon," said Mr. Curran, " I thouglit your Lordships 
 had been in consultation ; but as you have been pleased to resume your attention, allow 
 me to impress upon your excellent understandings, that" — &c. — C. 
 
 t The fact is, the burgesses of Dublin in their guilds had pledged themselves not to 
 return any one as Lord Mayor or Member of Parliament for the city, who held place or 
 pension from the government. Alderman James wa3 doubly obnoxious — first as a place- 
 holder and next from the nature of his place, — Commissionership of Police. — M. 
 
 + Howison was elected by SI votes to 8. Napper Tandy led the popular party — Gilford 
 headed the Opposition in the Common Council. The Aldermen again elected Alderman 
 James. This led to the appeal to the Privy Council, on petition from James, who con- 
 tended that the Commons could not legally reject without assigning a cause. — M. 
 
160 LIFE OF CUKE AN. 
 
 This contest between the Board of Aldermen and the Commons, 
 after having undergone much violent discussion, and excited the 
 utmost agitation in the metropolis, was now brought before the 
 Lord Lieutenant and Privy Council (at which Lord Clare presided 
 as Lord Chancellor) for their final decision. The Council Cham- 
 ber was thrown open as a public court. The concourse of spec- 
 tators, among wliom were the most opulent and respectable citizens 
 of Dublin, was immense. The question before the Court was to 
 be the mere legal construction of an act of parliament,* but the 
 Chancellor and the Ministry notoriously favored the pretensions of 
 the Board of Aldermen, so that the question before the public was 
 whether the rights of the city were to be treated with constitu- 
 tional respect, or to be crushed by the despotic power of the 
 Castle.f 
 
 Upon this solemn and vital question, Mr. Curran appeared as 
 one of the leading counsel for the Commons and the object of 
 their choice, Alderman Howison. He had not proceeded far in 
 his argument before he showed that he did not mean to confine it 
 to the literal and technical interpretation of a statute ; but that, 
 looking at the question as the public did, he should raise it from a 
 cold legal discussion into a great constitutional struggle between 
 the prinleges of the subject and the influence of the Irish Ministry. 
 But he could not have taken a more infallible method of soon re- 
 ducing it from a question of law, or of principle, into a personal 
 contest between himself and the aristocratic Chancellor. Accord- 
 
 * The 33d of George II., c. 16.— M. 
 
 t Grattan, Lord Charlemont, Lord Perry, Lord Carhampton, the Viceroy, and others 
 attended. Fitzgibbon presided as Lord Chancellor. Evidence was heard for both sides. 
 The Privy Council decided for a new electioa. The Aldermen re-elected James, and the 
 Common Council again elected Howison. Two new petitions were sent in. On June 7th, 
 1790, counsel were heard by the Privy Council for James and Howison, respectively. The 
 former decision was repeated, — the election went as before. On July 10th, when the case 
 came before the Privy Council for the third time, Curran made the speech, given in the 
 text, in which he attacked the Lord Chancellor. Eventuallj', the Privy Council gave a 
 decision in favour of James, who resigned, and both parties then agreed on electing 
 Howison, the popular man, whom the Privy Council were compelled to approve of, his 
 character and claims being unexceptionable. — M. 
 
SIR CONST AXTIJSTE PHIPPS. 161 
 
 ingly, their liostility immediately burst fortli in the interruptions 
 of the judge, and the contemptuous indiiference with which they 
 were treated by the advocate. A_t length, the latter (by way of 
 allusion to the unconstitutional conduct of a former chancellor, 
 Sir Constantine Phipps, upon a similar occasion) proceeded to draw 
 the following picture of his irritated enemy, in his own presence, 
 and in that of the assembled conmiunity/''' 
 
 " On grounds like these, for I can conceive no other, do I sup- 
 pose the rights of the city were defended in the time to which I 
 have alluded ; for it appears, by the records v/hich I have read, 
 that the city was then heard by her counsel ; she was not denied 
 the form of defence, though she was denied the benefit of the law. 
 In this very chamber did the Chancellor and Judges sit, with all 
 the gravity and affected attention to arguments in favour of that 
 liberty and those rights which they had conspired to destroy. 
 But to what end, my lords, ofter argument to such men ? A little 
 and a peevish mind may be exasperated, but how shall it be cor- 
 rected by refutation ? How fruitless would it have been to repre- 
 sent to that wTetched Chancellor that he was betraying those 
 rights which he was sworn U) maintain ; that he was involving a 
 government in disgrace, and a kingdom in panic and consterna- 
 tion ; that he was violating every sacred duty, and every solemn 
 
 * The person who was the most zealous in exciting a spirit of opposition in the Com- 
 mon Council was Mr. Tandy, a member of the Whig Club. Mr. Grattan, one of the most 
 distinguished members of the same association, speaks thus of the above transaction : — "An 
 attaclv was made on the rights of the city. A doctrine was promulgated, that the Common 
 Council had no right to put a negative on the Lord Mayor chosen by the Board of Aldermen, 
 except the board itself should assent to the negative put on its own choice. This doctrine 
 was advanced by the court, to secure the election of the mayor to itself. In the course 
 of the contest, the Minister involved himself in a personal altercation with the citizens; 
 with Mr. Tandy he had carried on a long war, and with various success. In the compass 
 of his wrath, he paid his compliments to the Whig Club, and that club advanced the 
 shield of a free people over the rights of the city, and humbled the minister, in the pre- 
 sence of those citizens, whose privileges he had invaded, and whose persons he had 
 calumniated." — Answer to Lord Clarets PampJilet. 
 
 Alderman Ilowison's counsel, Mr. Curran, and the late Mr. George Ponsonby (after- 
 wards Chancellor) were members of the Whig Club, and refused to accept any remunera- 
 tion for their exertions upon this occasion. — C. 
 
1G2 LIFE OF GURRAN. 
 
 engagement that bound liim to himself, his country, his sovereign, 
 and his God ! Alas ! my lords, by what arguments could any man 
 hope to reclaim or to dissuade a mean, illiberal, and unprincipled 
 minion of authority, induced by his profligacy to undertake, and 
 bound by his avarice and vanity to persevere ? He would proba- 
 bly have replied to the most unanswerable arguments by some 
 curt, contumelious, and unmeaning apothegm, delivered with the 
 fretful smile or irritated self-sufficiency and disconcerted arro- 
 gance : or even if he could be dragged by his fears to a considera- 
 tion of the question, by what miracle could the pigmy capacity of 
 a stunted pedant be enlarged to a reception of the subject? The 
 endeavour to approach it would have only removed him to a 
 greater distance than he was before, as a little hand that strives to 
 grasp a mighty globe is thrown back by the reaction of its own 
 efforts to comprehend. It may be given to an Hale or an Hard- 
 wicke to discover and retract a mistake : the errors of such men 
 are only specks that arise for a moment upon the surface of a 
 splendid luminary : consumed by its heat, or irradiated by its 
 light, they soon purge and disappear ; but the perversenesses of a 
 mean and narrow intellect are like the excrescences that grow 
 upon a body naturally cold and dark ; — no fire to waste them, and 
 no ray to enlighten, they assimilate and coalesce with those quali- 
 ties so congenial to their nature, and acquire an incorrigible per- 
 manency in the union with kindred frost and kindred opacity. 
 Nor, indeed, my lords, excej^t where the interest of millions can 
 be affected by the folly or the vice of an individual, need it be 
 much regretted, that to things not worthy of being made better, 
 it hath not pleased Providence to afford the privilege of improve- 
 ment." 
 
 Lord Clare."^ — " Surely, Mr. Curran, a gentleman of your emi- 
 nence in your profession must see that the conduct of former 
 Privy Councils has nothing to do with the question before us. 
 
 * He was only Baron Fitzgibbon at the time, not being created Earl of Clare until 
 1705.— M. 
 
THE EETUEN GAME. 163 
 
 The question lies in tlie narrowest compass ; it is merely whether 
 the Commons have a right of arbitrary and capricious rejection, 
 or are obliged to assign a reasonable cause for their disapproba- 
 tion. To that point you have a right to be heard, but I hope you 
 do not mean to lecture the Council." 
 
 Mr. Curran. — " I mean, my lords, to speak to the case of my 
 clients, and to avail myself of every topic of defence which I con- 
 ceive applicable to that case. I am not speaking to a dry point 
 of law, to a single judge, and on a mere forensic subject ; I am 
 addressing a very large auditory, consisting of co-ordinate mem- 
 bers, of whom the far greater number is not versed in law. Were 
 I to address such an audience on the interests and rights of a 
 great city, and address them in the hackneyed style of a pleader, 
 I should make a very idle display of profession, with very little 
 information to those I address, or benefit to those on whose behalf 
 I have the honour to be heard. I am aware, my lords, that truth 
 is to be sought only by slow and painful progress : I know also 
 that error is in its nature flippant and compendious ; it hops with 
 airy and fastidious levity over proof s and arguments^ and perches 
 upon assertion^ which it calls conclusion^ 
 
 Here Mr. Curran's triumph over his proud enemy was com- 
 plete. The sarcastic felicity of this description of the unfavour- 
 able side of Lord Clare's mind and manner was felt by the w^hole 
 audience. The Chancellor immediately moved to have the cham- 
 ber cleared, and during the exclusion of strangers was understood 
 to have ineffectually endeavoured to prevail upon the Council to 
 restrain the advocate from proceeding any further in that mode 
 of argument which had given him so much offence. 
 
 From this period till the year 1*794, Mr. Curran's public his- 
 tory consists principally of his Parliamentary exertions. The 
 Opposition " persisted to combat the project to govern Ireland 
 by corruption : " for this purpose they brought forward a series of 
 popular measures f' in the support of all of which Mr. Curran 
 
 * The most important of these were Mr. Forbes's motion for a place bill, Mr. Grattan's 
 
164: LIFE OF CURRAN. 
 
 took a leading part.* Lord Charlemont's biographer, who heard 
 him upon all those occasions, says of him, " That he animated 
 
 for an inquiiy into the sale of Teerages, the Catholic question, Parliamentary Reform. 
 The inquiry regarding the sale of Peerages was twice moved ; by Mr. Grattan, in 1790, 
 and by Mr. Curran in the following year : both motions failed, although the fullest evi- 
 dence of the fact was offered. " I have proof," said Mr. Curran, " and I stake my cha- 
 racter on producing such evidence to a committee, as shall fully and incontrovertibly 
 establish the fact, that a contract has been entered into with the present ministers to raise 
 to the peerage certain persons, on condition of their purchasing a certain number of 
 seats in this house." Upon this last occasion Mr. Curran was loudly called to order, for 
 having reminded the house, " that they should be cautious in their decision on this 
 question for they were in the hearing of a great number of the people of Ireland.'''' 
 Mr. Grattan defended the expression, and thought the doctrine of censure passed upon 
 it inconsistent with the nature of a popular assembly such as a House of Commons : in sup- 
 port of this opinion he quoted an expression of Lord Chatham, who in the house of peers, 
 where such language was certainly less proper than in a house of commons, addressed 
 the peers, "My Lords, I speak not to your lordships; I speak to the public and to the 
 constitution." " The words," added Grattan, "were at first received with some mur- 
 murs, but the good sense of the house and the genius of the constitution justified him." 
 Mr. Curran, on resuming, repeated the expression, and was again interrupted by violent 
 cries to order, which, however, he silenced by observing, " I do not allude to any strangers 
 in your gallery, but I allude to the constructive presence of four millions of people, whom 
 a Serjeant at arms cannot keep unacquainted with your proceedings." — Irish Pari. Deb., 
 1791. 
 
 During the debate upon the same subject in the preceding year, Mr. Grattan produced 
 a paper, and read as follows : " We charge them (the Ministers) publicly, in the face of 
 their country, with making corrupt agreements for the sale of peerages : for doing which, 
 we say that they are impeachable. We charge them with corrupt agreements for the 
 disposal of the money arising from the sale, to purchase for the sei-vants of the Castle 
 seats in the Assembly of the People ; for which we say that they are impeachable. We 
 charge them with committing these offences, not in one, nor in two, but in many 
 instances ; for which complication of offences we say that they are impeachable ; guilty 
 of a systematic endeavour to undermine the Constitution, in violation of the laws of the 
 land. We pledge ourselves to convict them ; we dare them to go into an inquiry ; we do 
 not affect to treat them as other than public malefactors ; we speak to them in a style of 
 the most mortifying and humiliating defiance ; we pronounce them to be public criminals. 
 Will they dare to deny the charge ? I call upon and dare the ostensible member to rise 
 in his place and say, on his honour, that he does not believe such corrupt agreements 
 
 * The debates in which, during this period (1791-4), Curran took a leading part were 
 on February 12, 1791, when he made a long and powerful attack on the corruption of the 
 Irish Government, and being reproved for alluding to strangers in the House, said, " I 
 do not allude to strangers in the gallery, but to the constructive presence of the people 
 of Ireland ;" on February 18, 1792, when he argued in favour of the removal of 
 Pioman Catholic disabilities ; on January 11, 1793, on the approaching war with France ; 
 on February 9, 1793, in favor of Parliamentary Reform. — M. 
 
IN PAKLIAMENT. 165 
 
 every debate with all his powers ; that he was copious, splendid, 
 full of wit, and life, and ardour." Of the justice of this praise 
 sufficient proofs might be given, even from the loose reports of 
 his speeches upon those questions ; but it will be necessary in the 
 following pages to offer so many examples of his forensic oratory, 
 upon which his reputation so mainly depends, that his efforts in 
 Parliament become, as far as his eloquence is concerned, of 
 secondary moment, and claim a passing attention, rather with 
 reference to his history and conduct, than as necssary to his lite- 
 rary fame. 
 
 have taken place. I wait for a specific answer." Major Hobart avoided- a specific 
 answer. Six days after, Mr. Grattan, alluding to these charges, observed, " Sir, I have 
 been told it was said that I should have been stopped, should have been expelled the 
 Commons, should have been delivered up to the bar of the Lords for the expressions 
 delivered that day. I will repeat what I said that day.'' After reciting the charges 
 seriatim in the same words, he thus concluded, " I repeat these charges now, and if any 
 thing more severe was on a former occasion expressed, I beg to be reminded of it, and I 
 will again repeat it. Why do you not expel me now ? Why not send me to the bar of 
 the Lords? Where is your adviser? Going out of the House, I shall repeat my senti- 
 ments, that his Majesty's Ministers are guilty of impeachable offences, and advancing to 
 the bar of the Lords, I shall repeat these sentiments ; and if the Tower is to be my habi- 
 tation, I will there meditate the impeachment of these Ministers, and return not to capi- 
 tulate, but to punish. Sir, I think I know myself well enough to say, that if called forth 
 to suffer in a public cause, I will go further than my prosecutors both in virtue and in 
 danger." — C. 
 
166 LIFE OF CUKKAN. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 State of parties — Trial of Hamilton Rowan — Mr. Curran's fidelity to his party — Rev. 
 William Jackson's Trial, Conviction, and Death — Remarks upon that Trial — Irish 
 Informers — Irish Juries — The influence of the times upon Mr. Curran's style of 
 Oratory. 
 
 The period was now approacliing which afforded to Mr. Curran's 
 forensic talents their most melancholy, but most splendid occa- 
 sions of exertion. With this year (1'794) commences the series 
 of those historical trials which originated in the distracted con- 
 dition of his country, and to the political interest of which his 
 eloquence has now imparted an additional attraction. 
 
 From the year 1789 the discontents of Ireland had been 
 rapidly increasing ; the efforts of the Opposition in Parliament 
 having failed to procure a reform of the abuses and grievances of 
 which the nation complained, an opinion soon prevailed through- 
 out the community that the Irish Administration had entered 
 into a formal design to degrade the country, and virtually to 
 annul its lately acquired independence, by transferring the 
 absolute dominion over it from the English Parliament, which 
 had previously governed it, to the English Cabinet, which was to 
 be its future ruler. Without inquiring now into the truth of this 
 opinion, it will be sufficient to observe, that, in the agita- 
 tion of the many irritating questions that it involved, it 
 soon appeared that Ireland had little hope of seeing them termi- 
 nated by the gentle methods of argument or persuasion. The 
 adherents of the Administration, and their opponents, were agreed 
 upon the fact of the universal discontent, and upon the 
 dangers that it threatened ; but they differed widely upon 
 the measures that should be adopted for the restoration of 
 repose. 
 
THE PAST. 167 
 
 The first Avere determined to use coercion. They seemed 
 to think that popuLar excesses are almost solely the people's own 
 creation — that they are naturally prone to disaffection — that 
 complaints of grievances are resorted to as a mere pretext 
 to gratify this propensity ; and, consequently, that a provi- 
 dent government should vigourously resist every movement of 
 discontent as the fearful tokens of projected revolution. In con- 
 formity Avith these opinions it appeared to them that terror alone 
 could tranquilize Ireland; and, therefore, that every method of 
 impressing upon the public mind the power of the State, no mat- 
 ter how unpopular their nature, or how adverse to the estab- 
 lished securities of the subject, should be adopted and applauded 
 as measures of salutary restraint. 
 
 The truth and expediency of these doctrines were as firmly 
 denied by others, who maintained that conciliation alone could 
 appease the popular ferment. They deplored the general ten- 
 dency to disaftection as notorious and undeniable ; but they con- 
 sidered that there would have been more wisdom in prevent- 
 ing than in punishing it ; that a very little . wisdom would 
 have been sufficient to prevent it ; and that in punishing it now, 
 the Ministry were " combating, not causes, but eff'ects." They 
 denied that the gTcat mass of the Irish, or of any commu- 
 nity, were naturally prone to disaffection. " Their natural 
 impulses (they observed, in replying to the advocates of coercion) 
 are all the other way." Look into history ; for one revolution, or 
 attempt at revolution, of how many long and uninterrupted des- 
 potisms do we read ; and, whenever such attempts occur, it 
 is easy to assign the cause. There is one, and only one, way 
 of measuring the excellence of any Government — by considering 
 the condition of the governed. No well governed people will 
 desire to exchange real and present blessings for the danger and 
 uncertainty of remote and fantastic speculations : and if ever 
 they are found to commit their lives and fortunes to such despe- 
 rate experiments, it is the most conclusive evidence that they are 
 
168 LIFE OF CURRAN. 
 
 badly governed, and that their sufferings have impelled them " to 
 rise up in vengeance, to rend their chains upon the heads of their 
 oppressors." Look to the neighbouring example of France, 
 and see what abominations an infuriated populace may be 
 brought to practise upon their rulers and upon themselves. Let 
 Ireland be saved from the possibility of such a crisis. The 
 majority of its people are in a state of odious exclusion, visiting 
 them in its daily consequences with endless insults and pri- 
 vations, which, being minute and individual, are only the more 
 intolerable. Would it not be wise then, to listen to their claim 
 of equal privileges, which, if granted, would give you the strong- 
 est security for their loyalty ? There are other grievances — 
 the notorious corruption of the legislature — the enormity of the 
 Pension List — and many more — of these the nation com- 
 plains, and seems determined to be heard.* The times are pecu- 
 liar ; and, if the popular cry be not the voice of wisdom, it should 
 at least be that of warning. The mind of all Europe is greatly 
 agitated : a general distrust of Governments has gone abroad ; 
 let that of Ireland exhibit such an example of -vdrtue and mode- 
 ration, as may entitle it to the confidence of the people. The 
 people seem inclined to turbulence; but treat it as a disease 
 
 ♦Every session the Opposition, again and again, pressed upon the Ministers the dan- 
 gers to which their system was exposing the State. Thus Mr. Grattan observed, early 
 in 1793, " They (the Ministers) attempted to put down the Constitution ; but now they 
 liave put down the Government. We told them so — we admonished them — we told them 
 their driving would not do. Do not they remember how in 1790 we warned them ? They 
 said we were severe — I am sure we were prophetic. In 1791 we repeated our admoni- 
 tion — told them that a Government of clerlvs would not do — that the Government of the 
 Treasury would not do — that Ireland would not long be governed by the trade of Parlia- 
 ment ; we told them that a nation, which had rescued her liberty from the giant of Old 
 England, would not long bear to be trodden on by the violence of a few pigmies, whom 
 the caprice of a Court had appointed Ministers." Mr. Curran's language was equally 
 emphatic — " Ireland thinks, that, without an immediate reform, her liberty is gone — I 
 think so too. While a single guard of British freedom, either internal or external, 
 is wanting, Ireland is in bondage. She looks to us for her emancipation. She expects 
 not impossibilities from us — but she expects honesty and plain dealing ; and, if she finds 
 them not, remember what I predict — she will abominate her Parliament, and look for a 
 reform to herself."— Pari. Deb., 1793.— C. 
 
HAMILTON KOWAN. 169 
 
 rather than avenge it as a crime. }3etween a State and its 
 subjects there should be no silly punctilio ; their errors can never 
 justify yours : you may coerce — you may pass intemperate laws, 
 and unheard-of tribunals, to punish what you should have 
 averted — you may go on to decimate, but you will never tran- 
 quilize." 
 
 These were in substance the views and arguments of the 
 minority in the Irish House of Commons, and of the more 
 reflecting and unprejudiced of the Irish community ; but such 
 mild doctrines had little influence with that assembly, or with the 
 nation. By the Parliament the few that advanced them were 
 regarded as the advocates of the existing disorders, because they 
 ventured to explain their origin, and to recommend the only 
 cure ; while the people were industriously taught to withdraw 
 their confidence from public men, who, instead of justifying the 
 popular resentments by more unequivocal co-operation, were 
 looking forward to the impending crisis as an object of apprehen- 
 sion, and not of hope. 
 
 Such was the condition of the public mind — the Government 
 depending upon force — the People familiarising themselves to pro- 
 jects of resistance — and several speculative and ambitious men of 
 the middle classes watching, with yet unsettled views, over the 
 fermenting elements of revolution, until it should appear how far 
 they could w^ork themselves into union and consistency, wdien Mr. 
 Archibald Hamilton Rowan* published an adress to the Volun- 
 teers of Ireland, setting forth the dangers with which the country 
 was threatened from foreign and domestic foes, and inviting them 
 to resume their arms for the preservation of the general tran- 
 quillity. This publication was prosecuted by the state as a sedi- 
 
 * Mr. Rowan was secretary to the Society of United Irishmen in Dublin. It is proper 
 to observe here, that this was one of the original societies of that denomination, whose 
 views did not extend beyond a constitutional reform. They have been sometimes con- 
 founded with the subsequent associations, which, under the same popular appellation, 
 aimed at a revolution.— C. 
 
 8 
 
170 LIFE OF CUKEAI,". 
 
 tious libel, and Mr, Curran -vvas selected by Mr. Rowan to conduct 
 his defence. 
 
 The speech in defence of Hamilton Rowan has been generally 
 considered as one of Mr. Curran's ablest efforts at the bar. It is 
 one of the few that has been correctly reported ; and to that cir- 
 cumstance is, in some degree, to be attributed its apparent supe- 
 riority. Notwithstanding the enthusiastic applause which its 
 delivery excited, he never gave it any peculiar preference himself. 
 
 The opening of it has some striking points of resemblance to 
 the exordium of Cicero's defence of Milo. If an imitation was 
 intended by the Irish advocate, it was very naturally suggested 
 by the coincidence of the leading topics in the two cases — the 
 public interest excited — the unusual military array in the court — 
 the great popularity of the clients — and the factious clamours which 
 preceded their trials."^ 
 
 " When I consider the period at wdiich this prosecution is 
 brought forward — when I behold the extraordinary safeguard of 
 armed soldiers resorted to, no doubt, for the preservation of peace 
 and order — w^hen I catch, as I cannot but do, the throb of public 
 anxiety, that beats from one end to the other of this hall — w^hen 
 I reflect on what may be the fate of a man of the most beloved 
 personal character, of one of the most respected families of 
 our country, himself the only individual of that family, I may 
 almost say of that country — who can look to that possible fate 
 with unconcern ? Feeling, as I do, all these impressions, it is in 
 the honest simplicity of my heart I speak, when I say that I never 
 rose in a court of justice with so much embarrassment as on this 
 occasion. 
 
 * Nam ilia praesidia, quse pro templis omnibus cernitis, etsi contra vim coUocata sunt, 
 nobis afferunt tamen horroris aliquid : neque eorum quisquam, quos undique intuentes 
 cernitis, unde aliqua pars fori adspici potest, et hiyus exitum judicii expectantes, non cum 
 virtuti Milonis fa vet, tum de se, de liberis suis, de patria, de fortunis hodierno die decer- 
 tari putat. 
 
 Unum genus est adversum infestumque nobis eorum, quos P. Clodil furor rapinls et 
 Incendiis et omnibus exitiis publicis pavit ; qui hesterna etiam concione incitati sunt, ut 
 vobis voce prselrent, quid judicaretis.— 0. 
 
THE DEFENCE. 171 
 
 " If, gentlemen, I could entertain a hope of finding refuge for 
 the disconcertion of my own mind in the perfect composure of 
 yours ; if I could suppose that those awful vicissitudes of human 
 events tliat have been stated or alluded to, could leave your judg- 
 ments undisturbed or your hearts at ease, I know I should form a 
 most erroneous opinion of your character, I entertain no such 
 chimerical hope — I form no such unworthy opinion — I expect not 
 that your hearts can be more at ease than my own — I have no 
 right to expect it ; but I have a right to call upon you in the 
 name of your country, in the name of the living God, of whose 
 eternal justice you are now administering that portion which 
 dwells with us on this side of the grave, to discharge your breasts, 
 as far as you are able, of every bias of prejudice or passion — 
 that, if my client be guilty of the offence charged upon him, you 
 may give tranquillity to the public by a firm verdict of conviction ; 
 or, if he be innocent, by as firm a verdict of acquittal ; and that 
 you will do this in defiance of the paltry artifices and senseless 
 clamours that have been resorted to, in order to bring him to his 
 trial with anticipated conviction. And, gentlemen, I feel an 
 additional necessity of thus conjuring you to be upon your guard, 
 from the able and imposing statement which you have just heard 
 on the part of the prosecution. I know well the virtues and talents 
 of the excellent person who conducts that prosecution.* I know 
 how much he would disdain to impose on you by the trappings of 
 office; but I also know how easily we mistake the lodgment 
 Avhich character and eloquence can make upon our feelings, for 
 those impressions that reason, and fact, and proof only ought to 
 work upon our understandings." 
 
 When Mr. Curran came to observe upon that part of the pub- 
 lication under trial, which proposed complete Emancipation to 
 persons of every religious persuasion, he expressed himself as 
 follows : 
 
 "Do you think it wise or humane, at this moment, to insult 
 
 * The Attorney-Genera!, Mr. Wolfe, afterwards Lord Kilwarden.— 0. 
 
172 LIFE OF CUKRAN. 
 
 them (the Catliolics) by sticking up in the pillory the man who 
 dared to stand forth as their advocate ? I put it to your oaths , 
 do you think that a blessing of that kind, tiiat a victory obtained 
 by justice over bigotry and oppres.sion, should have a stigma cast 
 upon it by an ignominious sentence upon men bold and honest 
 enouo'h to propose tliat measure ? — to propose the redeeming of 
 religion from the abuses of the church, the reclaiming of three 
 millions of men from bondage, and giving liberty to all who had a 
 right to demand it ? — Giving, I say, in the so much censured words 
 of this paper — giving ' Universal Emancipation ?' 
 
 " I speak in the spirit of the British law, which makes Liberty 
 commensurate v/ith, and inseparable from, British soil ; which pro- 
 claims even to the stranger and the sojourner, the moment he sets 
 his foot upon British earth, that the ground on which he treads is 
 holy, and consecrated by the genius of Universal Emancipation. 
 No matter in what language his doom may have been pronounced 
 — no matter in what complexion incompatible with freedom, an 
 Indian or an African sun may have burnt upon him — no matter 
 in what disastrous battle his liberty may have been cloven down — 
 no matter with what solemnities he may have been devoted upon 
 the altar of slavery — the first moment he touches the sacred soil 
 of Britain, the altar and the god sink together in the dust ; his 
 soul walks abroad in her own majesty ; his body swells beyond the 
 measure of his chains that burst from around him ; and he stands 
 redeemed, regenerated and disenthralled, by the irresistible genius 
 of Universal Emancipation." 
 
 There is, farther on, a passage on the freedom of the press, too 
 glowing and characteristic to be omitted : 
 
 " If the people say, let us not create tumult, but meet in delega- 
 tion, they cannot do it ; if they are anxious to promote parliamen- 
 tary reform in that way, they cannot do it ; the law of the last 
 session has, for the first time, declared such meetings to be a crime. 
 What then remains ? — The liberty of the press only — that sacred 
 palladium which no influence, no power, no minister, no govern- 
 
LTEERTY OF THE PRESS. tY3 
 
 ment, whicli nothing but the depravity, or folly, or corrnjDtion of a 
 jury can ever destroy. And what calamities are the people saved 
 from, by having public communication left open to them ? I will 
 tell you what they are saved from, and what the government is 
 saved from. I will tell you also to what both are exposed, by 
 shutting up that communication. In one case sedition speaks 
 aloud, and walks abroad ; the demagogue goes forth — the public 
 eye is upon him — he frets his busy hour upon the stage ; but 
 soon either weariness, or bribe, or punishment, or disappointment, 
 bear him down, or drive him off, and he appears no more. In the 
 other case, how does the work of sedition go forward ? Night 
 after night the muffled rebel steals forth in the dark, and casts 
 another and another brand upon the pile, to which, when the hour 
 of fatal maturity shall arrive, he will apply the flamxC. If you 
 doubt of the horrid consequences of suppressing the effusion even 
 of individual discontent, look to those enslaved countries, where 
 the protection of despotism is supposed to be secured by such re- 
 straints. Even the person of the despot there is never in safety. 
 Neither the fears of the despot, nor the machinations of the slave, 
 have any slumber ; the one anticipating the moment of peril, the 
 other watching the opportunity of aggression. The fatal crisis is 
 equally a surprise upon both ; the decisive instant is precipitated 
 without warning, by folly on the one side, or by phrensy on the 
 other ; and there is no notice of the treason till the traitor acts. 
 But if you wish for a nearer and more interesting example, you 
 have it in the history of your own Revolution ; you have it at that 
 memorable period when the monarch found a servile acquiescence 
 in the ministers "of his folly — when the liberty of the press was 
 trodden under foot — when venal sheriffs returned packed juries, to 
 carry into effect those fatal conspiracies of the few against the 
 many — when the devoted benches of public justice were filled by 
 some of those foundlings of fortune, who, overwhelmed in the tor- 
 rent of corruption at an early period, lay at the bottom like 
 drowned bodies, while soundness or sanity remained in them ; but, 
 
iTtt LIFE OF CURE AN. 
 
 at leugth, becoming buoyant by putrefaction, they rose as they 
 rotted, and floated to the surface of the polluted stream, where 
 they were drifted along, the objects of terror, and contagion, and 
 abomination.* 
 
 "In that awful moment of the nation's travail — of the last 
 gasp of tyranny and the first breath of freedom, how pregnant is 
 the example ? The Press extinguished, the People enslaved, 
 and the Prince undone. As the advocate of society, there- 
 fore, of peace, of domestic liberty, and the lasting union of the 
 two countries, I conjure you to guard the Liberty of the 
 Press, that great sentinel of the State, that grand detector of 
 public imposture — guard it — because when it sinks there sinks 
 wdth it, in one common grave, the liberty of the subject, and the 
 security of the Crown." 
 
 The concluding passage of this speech (of which the preceding- 
 extracts are inserted merely as examples of its style) contains one 
 of those fine Scriptural allusions, of which Mr. Curran made 
 such frequent and successful use : 
 
 " I will not relinquish the confidence that this day will be the 
 jDeriod of his suflferings ; and however mercilessly he has been 
 hitherto pursued, that your verdict will send him home to 
 the arms of his family and the wishes of his country. But 
 if (which Heaven forbid) it hath still been unfortunately deter- 
 mined that, because he has not . bent to power and author- 
 ity, because he would not bow down before the golden calf and 
 worship it, he is to be bound and cast into the furnace ; I 
 do trust in God, that there is a redeeming spirit in the Constitu- 
 
 * Although it has been doubted by some who have observed upon this passage, whether 
 its vigour could atone for the images that it presents, it may not be ungratifying to hear 
 the manner in which it was suggested to the speaker's mind. A day or two before Mr. 
 Rowan's trial, one of Mr. Curran's friends showed him a letter that he had just received 
 from Bengal, in which the writer, after mentioning the Hindoo custom of throwing the 
 dead into the Ganges, added, that he was then upon the banks of that river, and that, as 
 he wrote, he could see several bodies floating down its stream. The orator, shortly after, 
 while describing a corrupted bench, recollected this fact, and applied it as above.— C. 
 
HAMILTON ROWAN. 175 
 
 tion, wbicli will be s^en to walk with the sufferer through the 
 flames, and to preserve him unhurt by the conflagration." 
 
 If the expression of excited emotions by the auditors be 
 the test of eloquence, this w^as the most eloquent of Mr. Curran's 
 forensic productions. To applaud in a court of justice, is at all 
 times irregular, and was then very rare ; but both during the 
 delivery and after the conclusion of this speech, the by-standers 
 could not refrain from testifying their admiration by loud and 
 repeated bursts of applause : when the advocate retired from the 
 court, they took the horses from his carriage, which they drew to 
 his own house ; yet notw^ithstanding this public homage to 
 his talents, the most grateful reward of his exertions was 
 wanting — the jury, of w^hose purity very general suspicions were 
 entertained, found a verdict against his client.^ 
 
 [In the autumn of 1Y92, the Government issued a Proclama- 
 tion against the Irish Volunteers, who replied to it, in an address, 
 written by Dr. Drennan, and signed by Archibald Hamilton 
 Rowan, as Secretary. Both w^ere prosecuted. Rowan, as here 
 related, was defended by Curran. It is stated by Thomas Davis 
 that he had seen the back of Curran's brief, on which were w^rit- 
 ten the catch-words of his speech in this case, viz., *' To Arms — 
 
 * Mr. Rowan was sentenced to fine and imprisonment. In the month of June, 1794, 
 Dr. William Drennan was prosecuted for the publication of the same libel. He 
 was defended by Mr. Curran, and acquitted ; not, however, on the merits of the imputed 
 libel, but on failure of proof that Dr. Drennan had published it. On the first of the pre- 
 ceding May, Mr. Rowan effected his escape from prison, and fled to France. After 
 a long exile, and many wanderings, he was permitted, a few years ago, to return to his 
 country. — C. 
 
 [The reason why Hamilton Rowan escaped from prison was simply this. After 
 he was incarcerated, in pursuance to his sentence, the Rev. William Jaci^son, an emissary 
 frorathe Committee of Salut Fahlique of Paris, accompanied by one Cockayne (a London 
 pettifogging attorney, acting as incendiary and spy for William Pitt, the English Prime 
 Minister), visited him in prison, and engaged him rather deeply, and most unsuspect- 
 ingly, in the schemes of obtaining French aid for Ireland, in which Jackson was 
 interested. On Jackson's arrest, on a charge of high treason, Rowan dreaded the ven- 
 geance of tlie Government, and escaped to France. Thence he went to America, 
 returned to Europe in 1800, received the King's pardon in 1802, and died in 1S84, at the 
 age of eighty-four.— M.] 
 
ITG LIFE OF CURRAN. 
 
 2iid, Reform — 3rd, Catholic Emancipation — 4th, Convention — 
 now unlawful — Consequence of Conviction — Trial before Revolu- 
 tion — Lambert — Muir — Character of R. — Furnace, &c. — Rebel- 
 lion Smothered Stalks — Redeeming Spirit." 
 
 The trial commenced on January 29th, 1794, Wolfe (Attor- 
 ney-General, and afterwards Chief Justice) stated the case. Wit- 
 nesses w'ere examined to show Rowan's connexion with the docu- 
 ment charged as a seditious libel. Curran's speech (one of 
 the best he ever made) then followed, and on its conclusion, 
 a shout of admiration and sympathy arose in the crowded Court, 
 which the Judge (Lord Clonmel) with difRculty stopped. When 
 Curran quitted the Court-house that day, the populace, who 
 waited for him, took the horses from his carriage, and drew him 
 home. The Attorney-General replied to Curran, vindicating him- 
 self from the charge of having unnecessarily and oppressively 
 endeavored to delay the trial. The Prime Sergeant (James Fitz- 
 gerald, father of O'Connell's vanquished opponent at Clare elec- 
 tion in 1828) replied seriatim to Curran. Lord Clonmel charged, 
 not only strongly but violently, against Rowan. The jury con- 
 victed, after only ten minutes' deliberation. Rowan waived his 
 right of taking four days to decide w4iether he would move for an 
 arrest of judgment, but Lord Clonmel declined passing sentence 
 until the four days had expired, and committed Rowan to prison 
 during the interval. 
 
 On February 4, 1*794, how^ever. Rowan's counsel applied to set 
 aside the verdict, on several grounds, viz., that one of the jurors, 
 before the trial, had made a hostile declaration against the 
 prisoner ; that one of the High Sheriffs, who struck the jury 
 panel, w^as partial and hostile ; that the principal witness had 
 committed perjury ; and that the Judge (Lord Clonmel) had mis- 
 directed the jury. The case was argued at great length, by Cur- 
 ran, and responded to by the Crown law^yers. On February Y, 
 the Judges (Clonmel and Boyd) decided against the applica- 
 tion for a new trial. Before sentence was passed, Rowan himself 
 
DK. DREN^AN. 177 
 
 addressed tlie Court, stating that from his position and large stake 
 in the country, he was the last man who could wish for an insur- 
 rection. The sentence was a fine of £2,000, two year's imprison- 
 ment, and to find security (himself in £2,000, and two others in 
 £1,000 each) for his good behaviour for seven years. It had 
 been suggested to, and discussed by the Government, whether, to 
 make the punishment as exemplary as possible. Rowan should not 
 also be put in the ^;/^/or?/. It was feared that this would array 
 the gentry against the Crown (the pillory being a punishment for 
 criminal and not political ofi'ences), and that the populace would 
 not permit it. So the idea was abandoned — if ever seriously 
 entertained. 
 
 In April, 1794, Mr. Curran appeared at Drogheda Assizes for 
 Patrick Kenna and six others, in a respectable sphere of life 
 (commonly called "The Drogheda Defenders"), for seditiously 
 conspiring to raise a levy war and insurrection against the King. 
 They were acquitted, whereupon the Crown withdrew their 
 indictments against other persons. 
 
 In May, 1794, when the proprietors of the Northern Star (a 
 Belfast liberal paper) were prosecuted for publishing " wicked and 
 seditious Kbels," as many as seven informations were filed, but only 
 one brought to trial. Curran, for the defence, raised the point that 
 there was no evidence that twelve of them were guilty of a deed not 
 done by themselves. The sole printer (John Rabb) was convicted ; 
 all the rest, by direction of the court, were acquitted. The defence 
 of Rabb was that the publication was no libel. The mere cost of 
 the license (£10 in each case) for Mr. Curran, the King's Counsel, 
 to plead against the Crown, on the seven informations, was £70. 
 
 In June, 1794, Doctor William Drennau, who, as Chairman of 
 the meeting of Volunteers, had signed the Counter-proclamation, 
 for issuing which (as Secretary) Rowan had been tried, convicted, 
 fined and imprisoned, was put on his trial for having published that 
 document, which was declared to be " a seditious libel." Lord Clon- 
 mel, Mr. Justice (afterwards Lord) Downes and Mr. Justice Cham- 
 
178 LIFE OF CUKEAN". 
 
 berlain were the judges. Sir John Trail, was objected to by Mr. 
 Curran — on the ground that he had formed an opinion on the 
 subject of the prosecution. The Crown-Lawyer not allowing him 
 to be sworn to ascertain the truth of this, from his own lips, the 
 Knight was sworn on the jury and became its foreman. The 
 evidence was inconclusive, Aveak, and insuflicient. Curran 
 addressed the jury at considerable length. The Prime Sergeant 
 replied angrily. The judges charged hostilely. The jury returned 
 a verdict of "Not guilty," and when this was received with 
 applause. Trail (the foreman), called the spectators " an unruly 
 and seditious rabble," adding the regret of the jury " at seeing a 
 criminal they cannot reach — and guilt which they cannot 
 punish."]* 
 
 In the beginning of the year 1195, Lord Fitzwilliam having 
 become Viceroy of Ireland, Mr. Curran was upon the point of 
 being raised to the situation of Solicitor-General ; but the 
 sudden recall of that nobleman defeated this, as well as many 
 other projected changes. 
 
 It should be mentioned here, that from the year 1*789, frequent 
 attempts were made by the adherents of the Administration to 
 detach Mr. Curran from the party which he had formally joined, at 
 that period. Every motive of personal ambition was held out to 
 allure him, and all the influence of private solicitations exerted, but 
 in vain. About this time, when the general panic w^as daily thin- 
 ning the ranks of the Opposition, his most intimate and attached 
 friend, the late Lord Kihvarden (then the Attorney-General) 
 frequently urged him to separate himself from a hopeless cause, 
 and to accept the rewards and honours that were so open 
 
 * Dr. Drennan, the accused, was the author of " Letters of Orellana, an Irish 
 ITelot," in a Belfast paper, in which he strenuously urged the necessity of Parliamentary 
 Reform. He was one of the earliest and most zealous promoters of the Society of United 
 Irishmen, and author of the well-known test of their confederacy. He wrote some 
 admirable Letters to Pitt and Fox against the Union. In the song of "Erin to her own 
 tune ?" he first spoke of Ireland as " the Emerald Isle." "Who has not heard his " When 
 Erin first rose." He died in 1820.— M. 
 
Jackson's trial. 179 
 
 to him. Upon one occasion, when Mr. Curran was confined 
 by illness to his bed, that gentleman visited him, and renew- 
 ing the subject, with tears in his eyes, implored him to consult 
 his interest and his safety : " I tell you (said Mr. Wolfe) that you 
 liave attached yourself to a desperate faction, that will aban- 
 don you at last ; with whom you have nothing to expect but dan- 
 ger and disappointment. With us, how different would be your 
 condition — I ask for no painful stipulations on your part, only say 
 that you would accept of office — my situation will probably soon 
 be vacant for you, and after that, the road would be clear before 
 you." This proof of private affection caused Mr. Curran to weep, 
 but he was unshaken. He replied, "that he knew, better 
 than his friend could do, the men with whom he was associated ; 
 that they were not a desperate faction ; that their cause was that 
 of Ireland, and that even though it should eventually be branded 
 with the indelible stigma of failure, he should never regret 
 that it w^as with such men, and such a cause, that he had linked his 
 final destinies." 
 
 TRIAL OF THE REV. W. JACKSON. 
 
 The next state trial of importance in which Mr. Curran was 
 engaged, was that of Mr. William Jackson, a case of which some 
 of the attending circumstances were so singular, that they cannot 
 be omitted here. 
 
 Mr. Jackson was a clerg-yman of the established church ; he 
 was a native of Ireland, but had for several years resided out of 
 that country. A part of his life was spent in the family of the 
 noted Duchess of Kingston, and he is said to have been the per- 
 son who conducted that lady's controversy with the celebrated 
 Foote.* At the period of the French Revolution, he passed over 
 Paris, where he formed political connections with the ruling 
 
 • Poote, at the close of his letter to her Grace, observes : " pray, madam, is not J -n 
 
180 LITE OF CrKRAX. 
 
 powers there: from France lie returned to London in 1*794, for 
 tlie purpose of procuring information as to the practicability of an 
 invasion of England, and was thence to proceed to Ireland on a 
 similar mission. Upon his arrival in London, he renewed an inti- 
 macy vrith a person named Cockayne, who had formerly been his 
 friend and confidential attorney. The extent of his communica- 
 tions, in the first instance, to Cockayne did not exactly appear ; the 
 latter, liowever, was prevailed upon to write the directions of seve- 
 ral of Jackson's letters, containing treasonable matters, to his cor- 
 respondents abroad ; but in a little time, either suspecting or 
 repenting that he had been furnishing evidence of treason against 
 himself, he revealed to the British minister, Mr. Pitt, all that he 
 knew or conjectured relative to Jackson's objects. By the desire of 
 Mr. Pitt, Cockayne accompanied Jackson to Ireland, to watch and 
 defeat his designs, and as soon as the evidence of his treason was 
 mature, announced himself as a witness for the Crown. Mr. 
 Jackson was accordingly arrested, and committed to stand his 
 trial for high treason. 
 
 It did not appear that he had been previously connected with 
 any of the political fraternities then so prevalent in Ireland, but 
 some of them took so deep an interest in his fate, that the night 
 before his trial, four persons of inferior condition, members of 
 those societies, formed a plan (which, however, proved abortive) 
 to seize and carry off Cockayne, and perhaps to dispatch him, in 
 order to deprive the Government of the benefit of his testimony.* 
 
 Mr. Jackson was committed to prison in April, 1794, but his 
 
 the name of j'our female confidential secretary ?" and afterwards, " that you may never 
 want the benejit of clergy in every emergency, is the wish of Yours, &c." — C. 
 
 * Trial of John Leary for high treason, Dec, 2Sth, 1795. This fact came out on the 
 cross examination of Lawler, an informer, and the witness against the prisoner in this 
 case. Lawler was one of the party that was to have seized Coclvayne : he did not actually 
 admit that he was to have been assassinated; but he allowed that the objection to such 
 a measure was, " that if Cockayne were put to death, and the court should know it, the 
 informations he had given could be read in evidence against Jackson." From the cha- 
 racter of Lawler, however, it was generally suspected that assassination was inten- 
 ded.— C. 
 
Jackson's tsial. 181 
 
 trial was delayed, by successive adjournments, till the same month 
 m the following year. In the interval, he wrote and published a 
 refutation of Paine's Age of Reason, probably in the hope that it 
 might be accepted as an atonement.* 
 
 [The trial took place on April 23, 11 95. The judges were Lord 
 Clonmel, Mr. Justice Downes, Mr. Justice Chamberlain. The prin- 
 cipal witness was Cockayne, the spy. Curran, who defended 
 Jackson, principally relied on the fact that no conviction for high 
 treason could take place in England v/ith two witnesses to the 
 facts, whereas it was thus attempted, in Ireland, to convict on the 
 evidence of one. The anomaly was not removed until 1854, when 
 the law was made the same in both countries. 
 
 The trial lasted until four in the morning, when Jackson was 
 
 * Examples of honourable conduct, no matter by whom displayed, are heard with plea- 
 sure by every friend to human nature. Of such, a very rare instance was given by this 
 gentleman during his imprisonment. For the whole of that period he was treated with 
 every possible indulgence, a fact which is so creditable to the Irish Government, that it 
 would be unjust to suppress it. Among the other acts of lenity extended to him, was a 
 permission to enjoy the society of his friends. A short time before his trial, one of 
 these remained with him to a very late hour of the night : when he was about to depart, 
 Mr. Jackson accompanied him as far as the place where the gaoler usually waited on such 
 occasions, until all his prisoner's visitors should have retired. They found the gaoler in a 
 profound sleep, and the kej's of the prison lying beside him. " Poor fellow !" said Mr. 
 Jackson, taking up the keys, " let us not disturb him ; I have already been too trouble- 
 some to him in tliis way." He accordingly proceeded with his friend to the outer door of 
 the prison, which he opened. Here the facility of escaping naturally struck him — he 
 became deeply agitated ; but after a moment's pause, " / could do it^'' said he, " but 
 what would be the consequence to you, and to the poor fellow within, who has been so 
 kind to me ? No ! let me rather meet my fate." He said no more, but locking the prison 
 door again, returned to his apartment. It should be added that the gentleman, out of 
 consideration for whom such an opportunity was sacrificed, gave a proof upon this occasion 
 that he deserved it. He was fully aware of the legal consequences of aiding in the escape 
 of a prisoner committed under a charge of high treason, and felt that in the present 
 instance, it would have been utterly impossible for him to disprove the circumstantial 
 evidence that would have appeared against him ; yet he never uttered a syllable to 
 dissuade his unfortunate friend. He, however, considered the temptation to be so irresist- 
 able that, expecting to find the prisoner, upon further reflection, availing himself of it, he 
 remained all night outside the prison door, with the intention, if Mr. Jackson should 
 escape, of instantly flying from Ireland.— C. 
 
182 LIFE OF CTJREAN. 
 
 convicted. He was brought np for judgment on the 30th April, 
 1795.^^] 
 
 It is at this stage of the proceedings that the case of Jackson 
 becomes terribly peculiar. Never, perhaps, did a British court of 
 justice exhibit a spectacle of such appalling interest as was wit- 
 nessed by the King's Bench of Ireland, upon the day that this un- 
 fortunate gentleman was summoned to hear his fate pronounced. 
 He had a day or two before made some allusions to the subject of 
 suicide. In a conversation with his counsel in the prison, he had 
 observed to them that his food was always cut in pieces before it 
 was brought to him, the gaoler not venturing to trust him with a 
 knife or fork. This precaution he ridiculed, and observed, " that 
 the man who feared not death, could never want the means of 
 dying, and that as long as his head was within reach of the prison- 
 wall, he could prevent his body's being suspended to scare the 
 community." At the moment, they regarded this as a mere casual 
 ebullition, and did not give it much attention. 
 
 On the morning of the 30th of April, as one of these gentlemen 
 was proceeding to Court, he met in the streets a person warmly 
 attached to the Government of the day ; the circumstance is tri- 
 vial, but it marks the party spirit that prevailed, and the manner 
 in which it was sometimes expressed ; " I have (said he) just seen 
 your client, Jackson, pass by on his way to the King's Bench to 
 receive sentence of death. I always said he was a coward, and I 
 find I was not mistaken ; his fears have made him sick — as the 
 coach drove by, I observed him with his head out of the window, 
 vomiting violently." The other hurried on to the Court, where he 
 found his client supporting himself against the dock ; his frame 
 was in a state of violent perturbation, but his mind was still col- 
 
 * The report of Mr. Curran's defence of Jackson ■will be found in the lately published 
 volume of Howell's State Trials. It was (as he observed himself) " a narrow case," and 
 afforded few materials for the display of eloquence. The principal points which he urged 
 were the necessity of two witnesses (as in England) and the impeached character of the 
 single witness, Cockayne.— 0. 
 
SUICIDE OF A CONVICT. 183 
 
 lected. He beckoned to his counsel to approach him, and making 
 an effort to squeeze him with his damp and nerveless hand, uttered 
 in a whisper, and with a smile of mournful triumph, the dying 
 words of Pierre : 
 
 " We have deceived the senate."* 
 
 The prisoner's counsel having detected what they conceived to 
 be a legal informality in the proceedings, intended to make a mo- 
 tion in arrest of his judgment ; but it would have been irregular 
 to do so until the counsel for the Crown, who had not yet appeared, 
 should first pray the judgment of the court upon him. During 
 the interval, the violence of the prisoner's indisposition momenta- 
 rily increased, and the Chief Justice, Lord Clonmel, was speaking 
 of remanding him, when the Attorney General came in, and called 
 upon the court to pronounce judgment upon him. Accordingly, 
 " the Reverend William Jackson was set forward," and presented 
 a spectacle equally shocking and affecting. His body was in a 
 state of profuse perspiration ; when his hat was removed, a dense 
 steam was seen to ascend from his head and temples ; minute and 
 irregular movements of convulsions were passing to and fro upon 
 his countenance ; his eyes were nearly closed, and when at inter- 
 vals they opened, discovered by the glare of death upon them, that 
 the hour of dissolution was at hand. When called on to stand up 
 before the Court, he collected the remnant of his force to hold 
 himself erect ; but the attempt was tottering and imperfect ; he 
 stood rocking from side to side, wdth his arms in the attitude of 
 firmness, crossed over his breast, and his countenance strained by 
 a last proud effort into an expression of elaborate composure. In 
 this condition he faced all the anger of the offended law, and the 
 more confounding gazes of the assembled crowd. The Clerk of 
 the Crown now ordered him to hold up his right hand ; the dy- 
 ing man disentangled it from the other, and held it up, but it 
 instantly dropped again ! Such was his state, when in the solemn 
 simplicity of the language of the law, he was asked, " What he 
 
 * Otway'B Venice Preserved. 
 
184 LIFE OF CUERAN. 
 
 had now to say wliy judgment of death and execution thereon, 
 should not be awarded against him according to law?" Upon 
 this Mr. Curran rose, and addressed some arguments to the Court 
 in arrest of judgment. A legal discussion of considerable length 
 ensued. The condition of Mr. Jackson was all this while becom- 
 ing worse. Mr. Curran proposed that he should be remanded, as 
 he was in a state of body that rendered any communication be- 
 tween him and his counsel impracticable. Lord Clonmel thought 
 it lenity to the prisoner to dis2:)ose of the question as speedily as 
 possible. The windows of the Court were thrown open to relieve 
 him, and the discussion was renewed ; but the fatal group of death 
 tokens were now collecting fast around him ; he was evidently in 
 the final agony. At length, while Mr. Ponsonby, who followed 
 Mr. Curran, was urging further reasons for arresting the judgment, 
 their client sunh in the docJc.^ 
 
 The conclusion of the scene is given as follows in the rejDorted 
 trial. 
 
 Lord Clonmel — " If the prisoner is in a state of insensibility, it 
 is impossible that I can pronounce the judgment of the Court 
 upon him." 
 
 Mr. Thomas Kinsley, who was in the jury box, said he would 
 go down to him ; he accordingly went into the dock, and in a 
 short time informed the Court that the prisoner was certainly dying. 
 
 By order of the court, Mr. Kinsley was sworn. 
 
 * As soon as the cause of Mr. Jackson's death was ascertained, a report prevailed that 
 his counsel had been previously in the secret, and that their motion in arrest of judgment 
 was made for the sole purpose of giving their client time to expire before sentence could 
 be passed upon him : but for the assertion of this fact, which, if ti-ue, would have placed 
 them in as strange and awful a situation as can well be imagined, there was no founda- 
 tion. So little prepared were they for such an event, that neither of his assigned counsel 
 (Messrs. Curran and Ponsonby) appeared in court until a considerable time after the pri- 
 soner had been brought up. It was Mr. M'Nally, who had been one of his assistant coun- 
 sel upon the trial, and who found him in the condition above described, that first became 
 acquainted with the fact of his having taken poison ; and he, at the request of the unfor- 
 tunate prisoner, rose as amicus curiae, for the purpose of occupying the court till thtf 
 others should arrive and make their intended motion. It was probably from this circum 
 stance that the report originated. — C, 
 
A tragp:dy in court. 185 
 
 Lord Clonmel — " Are yoii in any profession ?" 
 
 Mr. Kinsley — " I am an apothecary." 
 
 Lord Clonmel — " Can you speak \nth certainty of tlie state of 
 the prisoner ?" 
 
 Mr. Kinsley — " I can ; I tliink him verging to eternity." 
 
 Lord Clonmel — "Do you tliink him capable of hearing his 
 judgment ?" 
 
 Mr. Kinsley — " I do not think he can." 
 
 Lord Clonmel — " Then he must be taken away ; take care that 
 in sending him away no mischief be done. Let him be 
 remanded until further orders ; and I believe it as much for his 
 advantage as for all yours to adjourn." 
 
 The Sheriff informed the Court that the prisoner was dead. 
 
 Lord Clonmel — " Let an inquisition, and a respectable one, be 
 held on the body. You should carefully inquire by what means 
 he died." 
 
 The Court then adjourned, and the body of the deceased 
 remained in the dock, unmoved from the position in which he 
 had expired, until the following day, when an inquest was held. 
 A large quantity of metallic poison was found in his stomach. 
 The preceding day, a little before he was brought up to Court, 
 the gaoler having visited his room, found him with his wife, much 
 agitated, and vomiting violently ; he had just taken, he said, 
 some tea, Avhich disagreed with him ; so that there remained no 
 doubt that the unfortunate prisoner, to save himself and his 
 family the shame of an ignominious execution, had anticipated 
 the punishment of the laws by taking poison. 
 
 The following sentences, in his own handwriting, were found 
 in his pocket. 
 
 " Turn thee unto me, and have mercy upon me, for I am deso- 
 late and afflicted." 
 
 " The troubles of my heart are enlarged ; oh, bring thou 
 me out of my distresses." • 
 
 " Look upon my affliction and my pain, and forgive all my sins." 
 
186 LIFE OF CURRAN. 
 
 " Oil ! keep my soul and deliver me. Let me not be ashamed, 
 for I put my trust in tliee." 
 
 Independent of this awful scene, the trial of Jackson was 
 a memorable event. It was the first trial for high treason which 
 had occurred in that Court for upwards of a century. As a mat- 
 ter of legal and of constitutional interest, it established a pre- 
 cedent of the most vital (Englishmen would say, of the most 
 fatal) importance to a community having any pretension to 
 freedom. Against the authority of Coke, and the reasoning 
 of Blackstone, and against the positive reprobation of the princi- 
 ple by the English legislature, it was solemnly decided in Jack- 
 son's case, that in Ireland one witness was sufficient to convict a 
 prisoner upon a charge of high treason — " that the breath which 
 cannot even taint the character of a man in England, shall 
 in Ireland blow him from the earth."* This decision has 
 ever since been recognised and acted upon, to the admiration of 
 that class of politicians (and they have abounded in Ireland) who 
 contend that in every malady of the State, blood should be plen- 
 tifully drawn ; and to the honest indignation of men of equal 
 capacity and integrity, who consider that, without reason or 
 necessity, it establishes an odious distinction, involving in it 
 a disdain of what Englishmen boast as a precious privilege, 
 alluring accusations upon the subject, and conferring security and 
 omnipotence upon the informer. 
 
 It is a little singular to observe, in the State Trials that fol- 
 lowed, the effects of such a law, and to what a class of witnesses 
 it familiarized the Irish Courts of Justice. From the event 
 it would appear, that there was as much prophecy, as of constitu- 
 tional zeal, in Mr. Curran's efforts to prevent its establish- 
 ment, and afterwards to produce its repeal.f To say nothing but 
 
 * Mr. Curran's defence of Jackson. — C. 
 
 t Two days after Jackson's conviction, Mr. Cui-ran moved in Uie House of Commons 
 for leave to bring in a bill for amending the law of Ireland in cases of high treason, and 
 assmiilating it with that of England. 
 
 The Attorney-General earnestly intreated of the mover to postpone the introduction 
 
TREASON WITNESSES. 187 
 
 of a few of tliose cases in which he acted as counsel, the 
 facts of Jackson, Weldon, M'Cann, Byrne, Bond, the Sheareses, 
 Finney, rested ahiiost entirely upon the credibility of a sin- 
 gle witness. All of these, except the last, were convicted ; and 
 that they were involved in the projects, for which they were tried 
 and suffered, is now a matter of historical notoriety. Few, 
 it is hoped, will maintain the dangerous principle, that the subject 
 should have the inducement of impunity to conspire against 
 
 of this bill, lest it might throw a character of illegality upon Jackson's conviction. He 
 believed that the present difiference in the law of the two countries (as to the number of 
 witnesses required) did not arise from casual omission, but from serious deliberation ; it 
 was (he thought) rather necessary to strengthen the Crown against the popular crime, 
 than to strengthen the criminal against the Crown. 
 
 Mr. Curran differed, and considered the rock on which criminal law generally split was 
 its excessive severity. For the reason first assigned, however, he agreed to postpone the 
 bill ; but foreseeing its inevitable failure, he never brought it forward again. 
 
 In England, by different statutes regulating trials for high treason, two witnesses are 
 required. (Algernon Sydney's attainder, as is well known, was reversed, because, among 
 other reasons, there had been but one legal witness to any act of treason.) When those 
 statutes were enacted in Ireland, the clauses requiring two witnesses were omitted. 
 Upon Jackson's trial, therefore, the question was, what had been the old common law of 
 England. Lord Coke lays it down, that by that law one witness was never suflicieut. 
 Judge Foster, differing from him, gives it as his, and as the general opinion, that two 
 were not required by the common law. Of the same opinion is Sergeant Hawkins. 
 These (according to the report of Jackson's trial) were the only authorities referred to 
 by Lord Clonmel in deciding the point. For the contrariety of opinions upon this sub- 
 ject, see the proceedings in Sir J. Fenwick's case, State Ti-ials. 
 
 It cannot be too much lamented, that in such an important particular the law of the 
 two countries should thus differ. The principle cannot be right in both. Inferior regu- 
 lations may vary, but the laws that provide for the safety of the State and the security 
 of the subject are not local ordinances ; they are general laws, and should be founded 
 on the principles which are to be derived from an experience of the operation of human 
 passions, and of the value of human testimony. In Ireland, it has been said, that from 
 the state of society, the Crown demanded additional security ; but the same argument 
 applies as strongly the other way ; for if any community is in such a state of demorali- 
 zation that its members are found violating their oaths, and indulging their passions by 
 frequent acts of treason^ is it not equally clear that they will not refrain from doing the 
 same by frequent acts of perjured evidence ? Whoever will submit to the " penance" of 
 reading the English or Irish State Trials, will soon perceive that treason and perjury are 
 always cotemporary crimes, and that the dangers of the Crown and of the subject are 
 at every period are reciprocal and commensurate. Certainly, as the laws at present 
 stand, either the English subject enjoys too many privileges, or the Irish too few; but 
 that the former is not the case long experience has now incontestably established. — C. 
 
188 LIFE OF CUERAN. 
 
 the State — such a doctrine would bring instant ruin upon any 
 society ; but every friend to constitutional law will distin- 
 guish between the evidence that precedes a conviction and 
 that which follows ; he will remember that the forms of trial, and 
 the legality of evidence, have not been established for the 
 solitary purpose of punishing the guilty ; that their most precious 
 use is for the security of innocence ; and that if, forejudging the 
 real offender, we too hastily deprive him of a single privilege 
 of defence, we establish a perilous rule that survives the occasion 
 and extends beyond it, and of which those who never offended 
 may hereafter be the victims. If the trials of the indivi- 
 duals just named be considered with reference to this view, 
 they will be found to contain matter of important reflection. We 
 may not feel justified in lamenting their personal fate — in giving 
 to their memories " the traitorous humanity and the rebel tear," 
 yet vre cannot but be shocked at the characters of the persons by 
 whose evidence they were carried off. These were all of them 
 men of blighted reputation. It was not merely that they had 
 been accomplices in the crimes which they came to denounce ; 
 and that, finding the speculation dangerous and unprofitable, they 
 endeavoured to retrieve their credit and circumstances, by 
 setting up as " loyal apostates." Deeper far w^as, if not their 
 legal ofience, their moral depravity. Dreadful were the con- 
 fessions of guilt, of dishonour, and irreligion extorted from 
 these wretches. If their direct examination produced a list of the 
 prisoners' crimes, as regularly did their cross-examination elicit a 
 darker catalogue of their own. In the progress of their 
 career, from participation to discovery, all the tender chari- 
 ties of life were abused — every sacred tie rent asunder. The 
 agent, by the semblance of fidelity, ^extracted the secret of 
 his client and his friend, and betrayed him !* The spy resorted 
 to the habitation of his \'ictim, and, while sharing his hospitality, 
 
 * Jackson's Trial. 
 
CONDITION OF THE COURTS. 189 
 
 and fondling his children, was meditating his ruin/" Here 
 was to be seen the wild Atheist, who had gloried in his 
 incredulity, enjoying a lucid interval of faith, to stamp a 
 legal value on his oathf — there the dishonest dealer, the acknow- 
 ledged perjurer, the future murderer.]; 
 
 It has been often a matter of surprise that juries had not tho 
 firmness to spurn altogether the testimony of such delin- 
 quents. In England, upon a recent occasion,§ a jury did so ; but 
 in Ireland there raged, at this time, an epidemic panic. In 
 the delirious fever of the moment, even though the juror 
 might not have thirsted for the blood of the accused, he 
 yet trembled for his own — affrighted by actual danger, or by 
 the phantoms of his disturbed imagination, he becam.e blind 
 or indifferent to the horrors of the immediate scene. The 
 question was often not whether the witness was a man he 
 could believe, but whether his verdict dare assert the con- 
 trary. Perhaps the more flagitious the witness, the more abso- 
 lutely was he the tyrant of the juror's conscience. Any move- 
 ments of humanity or indigTiation in the breast of the latter must 
 have instantly been quelled by the recollection, that to yield 
 
 * Jackson's Trial and the Trial of the Sheareses. A few days before Cockayne had 
 openly announced himself as an informer, he was invited to accompany Jackson to dine 
 with a friend of the latter. After dinner, as soon as the wine had sufficiently circulated, 
 Jackson, according to a previous suggestion from Cockayne, began to sound the politi- 
 cal dispositions of the company, and particularly addressed himself to a gentleman of 
 rank who sat beside him, and who, there was subsequent reason to believe, was deeply 
 involved in the politics of the time. During the conversation, Cockayne appeared 
 to have fallen asleep ; but, in the midst of it, the master of the house was called out by 
 his servant, who informed him, that he had observed something very singular in Mr. 
 Jackson's friend—" he has his hand," said the servant, " over his face, and pretends to 
 be asleep, but when I was in the room just now I could perceive the glistening of hiseyo 
 through his fingers." The gentleman returned to his guests ; and whispering to him who 
 was conversing with Jackson to be cautious of his language, probably prevented some 
 avowal which might eventually have cost him his life. Upon such trivial accidents do 
 the fates of men depend in agitated times ! — C. 
 
 t Trial of the Sheareses.— C. 
 
 t Finney's Trial ; and the other State Trials of 1T98.— 0. 
 
 § Trial of Watfion and others for high treason.— 0. 
 
190 LIFE OF CUSEAX. 
 
 to them might be to point out himself as an object of suspicion, 
 and as the next experiment for an adventurous and irritated 
 informer. 
 
 It is in the same circumstances that we are to look for an excuse 
 (if excuse be necessary) for those impassioned appeals, for that 
 tone of hig-h and solemn obtestation, by which Mr. Curran's pro- 
 fessional efforts at this period are distinguished. In more tranquil 
 times or in a more tranquil country, such enthusiasm may appear 
 extravagant and unnatural ; but it should be remembered, that, 
 from the nature of the cases, and the character of his audience, his 
 address often became rather a religious exhortation than a mere 
 forensic harangue."^ His situation was very different from that 
 of the English advocate, who, presupposing in his hearers a respect 
 for the great fundamental principles of law and of ethics, securely 
 appeals to them, in the conviction, that, if his client deserves it, 
 he shall have all their benefit. In Ireland, the client was not 
 certain of all their benefit. In Ireland, during those distracted 
 days, every furious passion was abroad. The Irish advocate knew 
 
 * Of this, examples *ill occur, in the following pages. Upon inferior occasions we find 
 him impressing the most obvious political truths, by a simplicity of illustration, which 
 shows the description of men among whom he was thrown. When he wished to explain 
 to a jury, "that their country could never be prosperous, or happy, without a general 
 participation of happiness to all its people," he thus proceeds :— " A privileged order in a 
 state may, in some sort, be compared to a solitary individual separated from the society, 
 and unaided by the reciprocal converse, affections, or support of his fellow men. It is 
 like a tree standing singly on a high hill, and exposed to the rude concussions of every 
 varying blast, devoid of fruit or foliage. If you plant trees around it, to shade it from the 
 inclemency of the blighting tempest, and secm-e to it its adequate supply of sun and 
 moisture, it quickly assumes all the luxuriance of vegetation, and proudly rears its head 
 aloft, fortified against the noxious gales which agitate and wither the unprotected bram- 
 bles lying without the verge of the plantation. ' Upon this principle acted thedyingman, 
 whose family had been disturbed by domestic contentions. Upon his death-bed he calls 
 his children around him ; he orders a bundle of twigs to be brought ; he has them untied ; 
 he gives to each of them a single twig; he orders them to be broken, and it is done with 
 facility ; he next orders the twigs to be united in a bundle, and directs each of them to 
 try his strength upon it. They shrink from the task as impossible. ' Thus, my children, 
 (continued the old man) it is union alone that can render you secure against the attempts 
 of your enemies, and preserve you in that state of happiness which I wish you to enjoy.' " 
 —Speech in Defonce of Bird, Eamil and others, tried at Drogheda, 1794.-0. 
 
JUEY-PACKING. 191 
 
 that the juries Avith whom he had to deal were often composed 
 of men Avhose feelings of humanity and relig'ion were kept under 
 by their political prejudices — that they had already foredoomed 
 his client to the grave — that, bringing with them the accumulated 
 animosities of past centuries, they came less to try the prisoner 
 than to justify themselves, and make their verdict a vote of appro- 
 bation upon the politics of their party.* To make an impression 
 upon such men, he had to awaken their dormant sympathies by 
 reiterated statements of the first principles of morals and religion : 
 he addressed himself to their eternal fears, his object being fre- 
 quently, not so much to direct their minds to the evidence or the 
 
 * The following observations of Mr. Curran will give some idea of the juries 
 of those days : he is addresing a jury impannelled to try the validity of a chal- 
 lenge : — 
 
 " This is no common period in the history of the world — they are no ordinary trans- 
 actions that are now passing before us. All Europe is shaken to its centre ; we feel its 
 force, and are likely to be involved in its consequences. There is no man who has sense 
 enough to be conscious of his own existence, who can hold himself disengaged and uncon- 
 cerned amidst the present scenes ; and, to hear a man say that he is unbiassed and unpre- 
 judiced, is the surest proof that he is both. Prejudice is the cobweb that catches vulgar 
 minds ; but the prejudices of the present day float in the upper regions — they entangle tho 
 lofty heads — they are bowing them down— you see them as they flutter, and hear them as 
 
 they buzz. Mr. has become a very public and a very active man ; he has his mind, I 
 
 doubt not, stored with the most useful and extensive erudition — he is clothed with the sacred 
 office of a minister of the Gospel — he is a magistrate of the county — he is employed as agent 
 lo some large properties — he is reputably connected, and universally esteemed, and there- 
 fore is a man of no small weight and consideration in this country. He has more than once 
 positively sworn that he has applied to the high sherifif— that he struck off no names but 
 those that wanted freeholds ; but to-day, he finds that freeholders were struck off by his 
 own pen— he tells you, my lords, and gentlemen triers, with equal modesty and ingenuity, 
 that he has made a mistake— he returns eightj'-one names to the sheriff — he receives 
 blank summonses, fills what he deems convenient, &c. Gracious heaven ! what are the 
 courts of justice? what is trial by jury ? what is the country brought to ? Were it told 
 in the courts above — were it told in other countries — were it told in Westminster Hall, that 
 such a man was permitted to return nearly one half of the grand panel of the county 
 from one particular district, — a district under severe distress, — to which he is agent and 
 on which, with the authority he possesses, he is able to bring great calamity ! He ascends 
 the pulpit with the Gospel of benignity and peace — he endeavours to impress himself and 
 others with its meek and holy spirit : — he descends — throws off the pm-ple — seizes the 
 insurrection act in the one hand, and the whip in the other — flies by night and by day 
 after his game ; and, with his heart panting, his breath exhausted, and his belly on the 
 ground in the chase, he turns round, and tells you that his mind is unpr^udiced — that 
 his breast is full of softness and humanity."— J?ow>rt. Aseize9, 1T05.— C. 
 
192 LIFE OF CURE AX. 
 
 law, as to remind them of the Christian duties ; and even in those 
 cases, where both law and fact were upon his side, and where, 
 under other circumstances, he might have boldly demanded an 
 acquittal, he was in reality labouring to extort a pardon. 
 
 It was wdth the same view that he so often made the most im- 
 passioned appeals, even to the Bench, when he saw that its j^oliti- 
 cal feelings were hostile to the interests of his client. Thus, upon 
 the trial of Hamilton Rowan, the principal witness for the Crown, 
 having deposed that he had seen Mr. Rowan at a meeting of 
 United Irishmen, consisting of one hundred and fifty persons, and 
 his evidence upon this most material fact ha\dng been impeached, 
 the Chief Justice (Lord Clonmel), in his charge to the jury, ob- 
 served, " One hundred and fifty Volunteers, or United Irishmen, 
 and not one comes forward! Many of them would have been 
 proud to assist him (the traverser). Their silence speaks a thou- 
 sand times more strongly than any cavilling upon this manh credit 
 — the silence of such a nurnher is a volume of evidence in support 
 of the prosecution^ * Upon a motion for a new trial, Mr. Cur- 
 
 * This passage of Lord Clonmel's charge was omitted, and, no doubt, designedly, in the 
 original edition of Hamilton Rowan's trial, published in Dublin. — C. 
 
 Lord Clonmel, for many years Chief Justice of the King's Bench in Ireland, was a man 
 whose mind and form were very coarse. He had risen from a low origin to great wealth 
 and high station, but never looked like a gentleman. His manners were coarse. His 
 appearance was peculiar — his face was the color of the scarlet robe which he wore, a3 
 Judge, and literally "flared up" (so rubicund was it) when he got into a passion, which 
 was about once in every twenty minutes. He and Cm-ran did not agree. At the bar, 
 when both were young, they had had several wordy contests, in which Curran succeeded. 
 This was never forgotten by his opponent when a Judge. It is related that on one occa- 
 sion the noble lord was so pressed both by the argument, the eloquence, and the wit of 
 Mr. Curran, that he lost temper, and called on the sheriffs to be ready to take any one 
 into arrest who would be found so contemptuously presuming to fly into the face of the 
 court. Mr, Curran, perceiving the twittering of a swallow actively in pursuit of flies, in 
 his turn called on the sheriffs to take that swallow into arrest, for it was guilty of con- 
 tempt, as it had contemptuously presumed to^fii/ in the face of the court. The ridicule of 
 this, and the peals of laughter which ensued, closed the scene. On some contested argu- 
 ment in the Court of King's Bench, Lord Clonmel, who was said to have a stronger dash 
 of the overbearing than of the brave, stood out against Mr. Curran with a brow-beating 
 vehemence, and showed a determination to have things entirely in his own way. He 
 made repeated but ineffectual efforts to reduce Mr. Curran, or (as the phrase is used) to 
 put him down. He, however, withstood all the violence of those attempts, and the 
 
SNARL WITH A JUDGE. 193 
 
 ran, in commenting upon those expressions, could not refrain from 
 exclaiming, " I never before heard an intimation from any judge 
 to a jury, that bad evidence, liable to any and every exception, 
 ought to receive a sanction from the silence of the party. With 
 anxiety for the honour and religion of the law, I demand it of 
 you, must not the jury have understood that this silence was evi- 
 dence to go to them ? Is the meaning contained in the expression 
 ' a volume of evidence' only an insinuation ? I do not know where 
 any man could be safe — I do not know what any man could do to 
 screen himself from prosecution — I know not how he could be 
 secure, even Avhen he Avas at prayers before the throne of Heaven, 
 that he was not passing that moment of his life, in which he was 
 to be charged with the commission of some crime to be expiated 
 to society, by the loss of his liberty or of his life — I do not know 
 what shall become of the subject, if the jury are to be told that 
 the silence of a man charged is ' a volume of evidence that he is 
 guilty of the crime.' Where is it written? I know there is a 
 place where vulgar phrensy cries out that the public instrument 
 must be drenched in blood — where defence is gagged, and the de- 
 voted wretch must perish. But even there the victim of such 
 tyranny is not made to fill, by voluntary silence, the defects of his 
 accusation ; for his tongue is tied, and therefore no advantage is 
 taken of him by construction : it cannot be there said that his not 
 speaking is 'a volume of evidence' to prove his guilt." After 
 some farther observations, he thus concluded his arguments : 
 " You are standing on a narrow isthmus, that divides the great 
 ocean of duration — on the one side of the past, on the other of the 
 
 encounter was upheld with all that passion could supply, or courage hope to extinguish. 
 Mr. Ourran look^, and lighted up all the fire of his mighty eye, surveyed his adversary 
 with the most intense and mdignant scowl, such as would have pierced through all 
 impediments; while the red and inflamed countenance of the Judge, with the menace and 
 attitude of an overwhelming passion, kindled into a burning blaze. With a firm, calm, 
 and measured tone, Mr. Curran addressed him, and whilst he did so, he seemed armed 
 with the bolt of heaven, ready to hurl destruction on his victim. After some prelude, he 
 concluded his address in these words: "Does your lordship think I am tiiat silly dog to 
 bay that moon — to bay that moon — which I am not able to extinguish ?" — M. 
 
 9 
 
194 LIFE OF CURRAN. 
 
 future — a ground tliat, while you yet hear me, is washed from 
 beneath your feet. Let me remind you, my lords, while your de- 
 termination is yet in your power — dum versatur adhitc intra pene- 
 tralia Vestce — that on the ocean of the future you must set your 
 judgment afloat ; and future ages will assume the same authority 
 which you have assumed ; posterity will feel the same emotions 
 which you have felt, when your little hearts have beaten, and 
 your infant eyes have overflowed at reading the sad story of the 
 sufterings of a Eussel or a Sydney." 
 
 All this has been represented as very strange, and even absurd, 
 by those who would not reflect upon the state of the times, and 
 the necessity which it imposed upon the advocate of addressing 
 the passions which he knew to be actuating his hearers, no matter 
 to what order of the community thev mio-ht belonof. 
 
CATHOLIC EMANCIPATION. 195 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 Catholic Emancipatioa— Mr. Curran moves an address to the Throne for an inquii-y into 
 the state of the poor — Other Parliamentary questions — Mr. Ponsonby's plan of Reform 
 rejected — Secession of Mr. Curran and his friends — Orr's trial — Finnerty's trial — Fin- 
 ney's Trial — The informer, James O'Brien. 
 
 [On May 4, 1795, a sharp debate took place in the Irish Coni' 
 mons, on the second reading of a Catholic Emancipation Bill, 
 which had been introduced, during the preceding January, under 
 the liberal auspices of Lord Fitzwilliam, the new and liberal 
 Viceroy. But George III. was determined not to admit his 
 Roman Catholic subjects to the enjoyment of civil rights, and the 
 too liberal Viceroy was recalled. The Irish Commons, on the 
 strength of the Emancipation Bill being a fact, had liberally voted 
 large supplies for carrying on the war then raging between France 
 and England: The money received, the Irish Government threw 
 over the Catholics, and the second reading of the Emancipation 
 Bill w^as lost — there being 155 votes against and 84 for it. Mr. 
 Curran supported the measure, and defended the character and 
 conduct of Lord Fitzwilliam.] 
 
 In May, 1795, Mr. Curran moved an address to the throne 
 upon the distresses of Ireland, the recall of Lord Fitzwilliam, and 
 the misconduct of his Majesty's ministers in their government of 
 Ireland. It was not expected, by the opposition, that this motion 
 would be carried : their object in bringing it forward was merely 
 to leave a record of their opinions upon the subjects contained in 
 the address.'^ Mr. Curran prefaced his motion by a long speech, 
 
 * This address, after a few prefatory clauses stating the attachment of the Commons to 
 his Majesty's person, and the monarchical form of government, and their late extraordi- 
 nary supplies for carrying on the present most eventful war, proceeds — 
 
 That we were the more induced to this, from a zeal for his Majesty's service, and an 
 
196 LIFE OF CUKRAN. 
 
 in the course of wliich he emphatically warned the House of the 
 dangers that impended over the public tranquillity ; but upon this, 
 a,s upon many former occasions, his predictions were disregarded. 
 " I know," said he, " that this is not a time when the passions of 
 the public ought to be inflamed ; nor do I mean to inflame them 
 [murmurs from the other side of the House). Yes, I speak not to 
 inflame ; but I address you in order to allay the fever of the pub- 
 lic mind. If I had power to warn you, I would exert that power 
 in order to diminish the public ferment — in order to show the 
 
 attachment to Great Britain ; but accompanied with an expectation that our extraordi- 
 nary grants would be justified to our constituents by a reform, under a patriot viceroy, 
 of the various and manifold abuses that had taken place in the administration of the 
 Irish Government; a reformation which we conceived, in the present times, and under 
 such an increase of debt and taxes, indispensable, and which we do, therefore, most 
 humbly persist to implore and expect. 
 
 That, after the supply was granted and the force voted, and whilst the chief governor, 
 possessing the entire confidence of both Houses of Parliament, and the approbation of all 
 the people, was reforming abuses, and putting the country in a state of defence, he was 
 suddenly and prematurely recalled, and our unparalleled efforts for the support of his 
 Majesty answered by the strongest marks of the resentment of his ministers. 
 
 That, in consequence of such a proceeding, the business of Government was inter- 
 rupted, the defence of the country suspended, the unanimity which had under the then 
 Lord Lieutenant existed converted into just complaint and remonstrance, and the energy, 
 confidence, and zeal of the nation, so loudly called for by his Majesty's ministers, were, 
 by the conduct of those very ministers themselves, materially affected. 
 
 That these, their late proceedings, aggravated their past system ; in complaining of 
 which, we particularly refer to the notorious traffic of honours — to the removal of the 
 troops contrary to the law, and in total disregard of the solemn compact with the nation 
 and safety of the realm — to the criminal conduct of Government respecting the Irish 
 army — to the disbursements of sums of money, without account or authority — to the 
 improvident grant of reversions, at the expense of his Majesty's interest, sacrificed, for 
 the emolument of his servants, to the conduct of his Majesty's ministers m both coun- 
 tries, towards his Protestant and Catholic subjects of Ireland, alternately practising ori 
 their passions, exciting their hopes, and procuring their disappointment. 
 
 That, convinced by the benefits which we have received under his Majesty's reign that 
 the grievances of which we complain are as unknown to his Majesty as abhorrent from 
 ]iis paternal and royal disposition. 
 
 We, his Commons of Ireland, beg leave to lay ourselves at his feet, and, with all 
 humility to his Majesty, to prefer, on our part, and on the part of our constituents, this 
 our just and necessary remonstrance against the conduct of his ministers ; and to 
 Implore his Majesty that he may be graciously pleased to lay his commands upon his 
 minister to second the zeal of his Irish Parliament in his Majesty's services, by manifest- 
 ing in future to the people of Ireland due regard and attention. 
 
ABUSES AND GKIEVANCES. 197 
 
 people that they have more security in your warmth than they 
 can have in their own heat — that the ardour of your honest zeal 
 may be a salutary ventilator to the ferment of your country — in 
 order that you may take the people out of their own hands, and 
 bring them within your guidance. Trust me, at this momentous 
 crisis, a firm and tempered sensibility of injury would be equally 
 honourable to yourselves and beneficial to the nation : trust me, 
 if^ at a time when every little stream is swollen into a torrent, we 
 alone should be found to exhibit a smooth, and listless, and frozen 
 surface, the folly of the people may be tempted to walk across us ; 
 and, whether they should suppose they were only walking upon 
 ice, or treading upon corruption, the rashness of the experiment 
 might be fatal to us all." 
 
 [He said that the abuses and grievances which afflicted Ireland 
 were " the sale of the honours of the peerage ; the open and 
 avowed sale, for money, of the peerage, to any man rich and 
 shameless enough to be a purchaser." Such a course, he said, 
 depraved the Commons, profaned the sanctity of the Lords, poi- 
 soned the sources of legislation and the fountains of justice, and 
 annihilated the very idea of public honour and public integrity — 
 but all this had been done by the government of Lord Westmor- 
 land. Next was the depriving Ireland of troops, when the enemy 
 was at the gate, and the breach of the compact to maintain 12,000 
 soldiers in Ireland, might have been the loss of the island. Then 
 came the wasteful expenditure of public money. There was the 
 abuse of patronage — every office of value, of which a reversion 
 could be granted, having been so disposed of for years and years 
 to come. There was the injustice of neglecting, refusing, delaying 
 relief to the Roman Catholics. Lastly, there were the restraints 
 upon Irish Commerce. 
 
 This was a full budget. Curran moved the address, Grattan 
 seconded, and Ponsonby supported it. The Government moved 
 and carried the adjournment of the House, and thus the address 
 was not even put to the vote.] 
 
198 LIFE OF CCKKxiX. 
 
 In the beginning of tlie following year, Mr. Curran moved 
 " that a committee should be appointed to inquire into the state 
 of the lower orders of the people," to whose wretchedness he 
 attributed the prevailing discontents ; but his motion was, as 
 usual, " suffocated by the question of adjournment." He also dis- 
 tinguished himself by his support of Mr. G rattan's amendments 
 to the addresses in this year, by his exertions on the question of 
 Catholic emancipation, and by his opposition to the suspension of 
 the habeas corpus act. 
 
 [In December, 1795, Mr. Curran appeared in the Court at 
 Dublin, as counsel for James Vv^eldon, charged with high treason. 
 His client had been one of the "Dublin Defenders," and was 
 charged not only with associating with traitors unknown, to assist 
 the French, the public enemies of the Crown, but with associating 
 with the Defenders to subvert the Protestant religion, and wdth 
 cori-upting one William Lawler to become a Defender. The 
 chief evidence for the Crown was this Lawler, whose testimony 
 Mr. Curran cut up into tatters, besides giving proof that he was 
 not credible. Weld on Avas convicted and hanged ; though Leary, 
 another prisoner, was acquitted, under precisely similar facts ! 
 
 Some more particular notice of Mr. Curran's last year of Par- 
 liamentary life appears required here. In February, 1796, in the 
 debate on the Indemnity Bill, he supported Grattan's unsuccessful 
 motion that Justice Chamberlain and Baron Smith, the judges 
 who had gone circuit in the disturbed districts, should first be 
 examined, to open the state of the country and the general con- 
 duct of the magistrates. In the same month, he spoke in favour 
 of free trade between England and Ireland, and strongly opposed 
 the Insurrection Act, which gave magistrates the arbitrary power 
 of transportation, describing it as " a bill for the rich and against 
 the poor," constituting poverty a crime, and leaving it to the dis- 
 cretion of wealth to apportion the punishment. 
 
 In October, 1796, when the French -were preparing Hoche's 
 expedition for the invasion of Ireland, and the Irish Government 
 
NATIONAL DEFENCE. 199 
 
 recommended union as a means of strength, G rattan m-jved that 
 unanimity could best be obtained by enacting such laws as would 
 secure to all of the King's subjects " the blessings and privileges 
 of the Constitution, without distinction of religion." Mr. Curran 
 was among those who supported this liberal view. His speech on 
 this occasion contained man}^ truths, -well put. " Believe me, Sir," 
 he said, " an invader can look for nothing but certain destruction 
 when he is opposed by the wishes and passions of the people. It 
 is not garrisons, it is not generals, nor armies, upon which we can 
 repose in safety. It is on the union and zeal of the general inha- 
 bitants, removing provisions, discovering designs, marring the 
 projects, and hanging on the retreats of an enemy, that baffles 
 and defeats him more than any regular force can do." In all 
 probability, this was suggested by the orator's recollection of the 
 manner in Avhich, during the American War of Independence, the 
 troops of Great Britain were discomfited. Mr. Curran was fond 
 of historic studies, and had warmly sj^mpathised wdth the Ameri- 
 cans in their arduous contest for national independence. 
 
 Another passage is worthy of quotation, as illustrative of Mr. 
 Curran's figurative style. Answering the remark that the Irish 
 Catholics had got much, and ought to be content, he said : " Why 
 have they got much ? is it from the Minister ? is it from the Par- 
 liament which threw its petition over its bar ? No, they got it by 
 the great revolution of human affairs, by the astonishing march 
 of the human mind ; a march that has collected too much 
 moment on its advance to be now stopped in its progress. Tho 
 bark is still afloat, it is freighted with the hopes and liberties of 
 men ; she is already under w^eigh — the rower may faint, or the 
 wind may sleep, but rely upon it, she has already acquired an 
 energy of advancement that will support her course, and bring her 
 to her destination ; rely upon it, whether much or little remains, 
 it is now vain to Avithhold it ; rely upon it, you may as well stamp 
 your foot upon the earth, in order to prevent its revolution. You 
 cannot stop it ! you will only remain a silly gnomon upon its sur- 
 
200 LIFE OF CURKAN. 
 
 face to ineasiire the rapidity of rotation, until you are forced 
 round and buried in the shade of that body, whose irresistible 
 course you would endeavour to oppose." 
 
 The Attorney-General moved that leave be given to bring in a 
 Bill similar to what had been enacted when England was threat- 
 ened with invasion, authorizing the Irish Executive to take up 
 and detain all persons suspected of treasonable practices. Leave 
 was given, the bill was forthwith presented, read a first and 
 second time that night (Oct. 13, 1796), and ordered to pass into 
 committee the next day. On the motion that it be committed, a 
 small opposition party, headed by Mr. George Ponsonby, resisted 
 the measure. ]\Ir. Curran, commenting on the haste with which it 
 had progressed, said : "At tAvo o'clock in the morning, the House 
 was moved for leave to bring in a Bill to suspend the Habeas 
 Corpus Act ; at five minutes joast two in the morning, the bill was 
 read a first time ; and, after grove and mature deliberation, the 
 bill was ordered to be read, and was accordingly read a second 
 time at ten minutes past two in the morning. Its principle was 
 then fully considered and approved of; and at fifteen minutes 
 after two in the morning, it was laid before a Committee of the 
 whole House!" The division was 13V to 7, and the Habeas Cor- 
 pus act was suspended accordingly. 
 
 On October l7th, 1796, in a debate on Grattan's motion in 
 favour of the admission to seats in Parliament (seconded by 
 George Ponsonby, and strenuously opposed by the Government), 
 Dr. Duigenan, a polemical and political intolerant of the first 
 (mud-and-) water, used violent and off"ensive language against the 
 Catholics, in whose communion he had participated in his youth. 
 Mr. Curran replied to him, and said, " He has abused the Catho- 
 lics, he has abused their ancestors, he has abused the merchants 
 of Ireland, he has abused Mr. Burke, he has abused those who 
 voted for the order of the day." Mr. Curran then described his 
 manner and matter of speaking — " that confusion of history and 
 divinity, and civil law and canon law — that rollicldng mixture of 
 
IIOCHE'S EXPEDITIOX. 201 
 
 politics and theology, and antiquity, with which he has over- 
 Yvhehned the debate ; for the havoc and carnage he has made of 
 the population of the last age, and the fury with which he seemed 
 determined to exterminate, and even to devour, the population of 
 this ; and which urged him, after tearing and gnawing the cha- 
 racters of the Catholics, to spend the last efforts of his rage, with 
 the most unrelenting ferocity, in actually gnawing the names/'^ 
 In truth, sir, I felt some surprise, and some regret, when I heard 
 him describe the sceptre of lath, and the tiara of straw, and 
 mimic his bedlamite Emperor and Pope with such refined and 
 happy gesticulation, that he could be prevailed on to quit so con- 
 genial a company." Alluding to the declaration that the Catho- 
 lics must not have Emancipation, because they demanded it with 
 insolence, Mr. Curran said, " Suppose that assertion, false as it is 
 in fact, to be true, is it any argum.ent with a public assembly that 
 any incivility of demand can cover the injustice of refusal ? 
 How low must that assembly be fallen, which can suggest as an 
 apology for the refusal of an incontestible right, the answer which 
 a bankrupt buck might give to the demand of his tailor — he will 
 not pay the bill, because ' the rascal had dared to threaten his 
 honour.' " The motion in favour of Catholic Emancipation was 
 lost by 143 to 19. 
 
 On January 6, 1797, Mr. Curran strongly joined in the animad- 
 versions of the (Opposition on the inactivity of the British navy, 
 when invasion was anticipated, whereby Hoche's expedition was 
 within an ace of success. When the French fleet were in Bantry 
 Bay, not a British line-of-battle ship was on the whole course of 
 the kingdom of Ireland. A few weeks later (February 24th 
 1797), Curran supported an address for the increase of the domestic 
 army of Ireland, especially the yeomanry corps. The Ministerial 
 
 * Dr. Duigenan, Trho used excessive gesticulation, and sometimes lashed himself into 
 such a rage as to foam at the mouth, had such a peculiar way of barking out the name of 
 Mr. Keogh, one of the Catholic leaders, that Mr. Curran said it was a sort of pronuncia- 
 tory defamation. — M. 
 
 9* 
 
202 LIFE OF CURKAN. 
 
 party resisted the proposition, which was based on the increasing 
 power of France, the inability or inactivity of England for the 
 defence of Ireland, and the danger of Ireland herself. Mr. Curran 
 mentioned, as a fact, that when the French fleet arrived in 
 Bantry, there were not, in that quarter of the country, including 
 Cork (the second city of Ireland), one thousand men to meet the 
 enemy ! 
 
 In February, 1*797, Mr. Curran also spoke on Ponsonby's 
 motion of censure on the Irish Ministry, and on Vandeleur's 
 motion for an Absentee Tax. In March of the same year, he 
 went rather freely, and very forcibly, into the motion of censure 
 for disarming the inhabitants of Ulster, on the pretext that 
 " daring and horrid outrages " had been perpetrated in that pro- 
 vince. This, in eftect, was declaring the inhabitants generally to 
 be guilty of high treason. The Government had obtained a great 
 majority in the Commons, and the motion was defeated. In 
 truth, by this time, they had so distributed places, pensions, peer- 
 ages, and promises, that they could carry or defeat any and every 
 motion in both Houses of Parliament.] 
 
 His last parliamentary effort was in the debate on Mr. William 
 Brabazon Ponsonby's plan of parliamentary reform,* which inclu- 
 ded Catholic Emancipation, and was brought forward by the 
 Opposition as a final experiment to save Ireland from the horrors 
 of the impending rebellion. By the late report of the secret 
 committee, it had appeared that extensive associations for trea- 
 sonable objects existed throughout the country : the Administra- 
 tion considered that force alone should be resorted to — the Oppo- 
 sition were as decided that conciliation, and conciliation alone, 
 would restore tranquillity. The ostensible objects of the con- 
 spiracy were reform and Catholic Emancipation : the Administra- 
 tration admitted that these were merely pretexts, and that revolu- 
 tion was the real though covert design ; but they argued " that 
 the House ought to make a stand, and say that rebellion must be 
 
 ♦May 15th, 1797.— C. 
 
REFORM. 203 
 
 put down^ before the grievances that were made its pretext should 
 be even discussed." To this it was answered by Mr. Curran, " if 
 Reform be only a pretence, and separation be the real objects of 
 the leaders of the conspiracy, confound the leaders by destroying 
 the pretext, and take the followers to yourselves. You say they are 
 one hundred thousand ; I firmly beHeve they are three times the num- 
 ber ; so much the better for you. If these seducers can attach so 
 many followers to rebellion, by the hope of reform through blood, 
 how much more readily will you engage them, not by the promise, 
 but the possession, and without blood." " Reform (he continued) 
 is a necessary change of mildness for coercion : the latter has 
 been tried, and what is its success ? The Convention Bill was 
 passed to punish the meetings at Dungannon and those of the 
 Catholics : the Government considered the Catholic concessions 
 as defeats that called for vengeance — and cruell}' have they 
 avenged them ; but did that act, or those which followed, put 
 down those meetings ? the contrary was the fact ; it most foolishly 
 concealed them. "When popular discontents are abroad, a wise 
 Government should put them in an hive of glass ; you hid them. 
 The associations at first were small — the earth seemed to drink it 
 as a rivulet ; but it only disappeared for a season : a thousand 
 streams, through the secret windings of the earth, found their 
 way to one source, and swelled its waters ; until at last, too mighty 
 to be contained, it burst out a great river, fertilizing by its exun- 
 dations, or terrifying by its cataracts. This was the effect of your 
 penal code — it swelled sedition into rebellion. What else could 
 be hoped from a system of terrorism ? Fear is the most transient 
 of all the passions — it is the warning that nature gives for self- 
 preservation ; but when safety is unattainable, the warning must 
 be useless, and nature does not therefore give it. The Adminis- 
 tration mistook the quality of penal laws : they were sent out to 
 abolish conventicles ; but they did not pass the threshold, they stood 
 sentinels at the gates. You thought that penal laws, like great 
 dogs, would wag their tails to their masters, and bark only at 
 
204 LIFE OF CUKEAN. 
 
 their enemies : you were mistaken ; they turn and devour those they 
 were meant to protect, and were harmless where they were intended 
 to destroy. Gentlemen, I see, laugh — I see they affect to be still 
 very ignorant of the nature of fear : this cannot last ; neither, 
 while it does, can it be concealed : the feeble glimmering of a 
 forced smile is a light that makes the cheek look paler. Trust me, 
 the times are too humanized for such systems of government — 
 humanity will not execute them ; but humanity will abhor them, 
 and those who wished to rule by such means. We hoped much, 
 and, I doubt not, meant well by those laws ; but they have miser- 
 ably failed us : it is time to try milder methods. You have tried 
 to force the people : but the rage of your penal laws was a storm 
 that only drove them in groups to shelter. Before it is too late, 
 therefore, try the better force of reason, and conciliate them by 
 justice and humanity. Neither let us talk of innovation — the 
 progress of nature is no innovation — the increase of people, the 
 growth of the mind, is no innovation, unless the growth of our mind 
 lag behind. If we think otherwise, and consider it an innovation 
 to depart from the folly of our infancy, we should come here in 
 our swaddling clothes ; we should not innovate upon the dress 
 more than the understanding of the cradle. 
 
 " As to the system of peace now proposed, you must take it on 
 its principles; they are simply two — the abolition of religious 
 disabilities, and the representation of the people. I am confident 
 the effects would be every thing to be wished ; the present alarm- 
 ing discontent will vanish, the good will be separated from the 
 ill-intentioned ; the friends of mixed government in Ireland are 
 many — every sensible man must see that it gives all the enjoy- 
 ment of rational liberty, if the people have their due place in the 
 state. This system Avould make us invincible against a foreign 
 or domestic enemy; it would make the empire strong at this 
 important crisis ; it would restore to us liberty, industry, and 
 peace, which I am satisfied can never by any other means be 
 restored" 
 
SENATORS IN A PET. 205 
 
 The counsels of peace and conciliation v/hich Mr. Curran and 
 his friends now proposed to the Parliament were the last which 
 they had to oiier ; and finding that they were to be rejected, they 
 resolved to take no farther part in deliberations where their inter- 
 ference was so unavailing. " I agree (said Mr. Curran, in conclu- 
 sion) that unanimity at this time is indispensable ; the house seems 
 pretty unanimous for force ; I am sorry for it, for I bode the worst 
 from it : I shall retire from a scene where I can do no good, and 
 where I certainly should disturb that unanimity ; I cannot, how- 
 ever, go without a parting entreaty, that men would reflect upon 
 the awful responsibility in which they stand to their country and 
 their conscience, before they set an example to the people of aban- 
 doning the constitution and the law, and resorting to the terrible 
 expedient of force." 
 
 Mr. G rattan, Avho followed Mr. Curran, concluded his speech by 
 announcing the same intention : — " Your system is perilous indeed. 
 I speak without asperity ; I speak without resentment ; I speak, 
 perhaps, my delusion, but it is my heartfelt conviction ; I speak 
 my apprehension for the immediate state of our liberty, and for 
 the ultimate state of the empire ; I see, or imagine I see, in this 
 system, every thing which is dangerous to both ; I hope I am 
 mistaken — at least, I hope I exaggerate ; possibly I may : if so, 1 
 shall acknowledge my error with more satisfaction than is usual 
 in the acknowledgment of error. I cannot, however, banish from 
 my memory the lesson of the American war, and yet at that time 
 the English Government was at the head of Europe, and was 
 possessed of resources comparatively unbroken. If that lesson 
 has no effect on ministers, surely I can suggest nothing that will. 
 We have offered you our measure — you will reject it : we depre- 
 cate yours — you will persevere ; having no hopes left to persuade 
 or to dissuade, and having discharged our duty, we shall trouble 
 yojj no more, and after this day shall not attend the House of 
 Commonsr 
 
 [The Opposition ceased to attend, and after a few more sittings 
 
206 . LIFE OF CUFwRAN. 
 
 Parliament was adjourned on July 3, 1*797. In England, about 
 the same time, Charles James Fox, leader of " His Majesty's Oppo- 
 sition," finding his party invariably in a minority, declared his 
 intention to forbear prosecuting an useless attendance in Parlia- 
 ment. In 1800, however, Fox resumed his seat, and. used his 
 most strenuous opposition as a friend of Ireland, to the Union. 
 In 1799, Mr. Grattan returned to the Irish Parliament for a short 
 time, to oppose the Union. Mr. Curran's senatorial life closed 
 with his secession in 1797.] 
 
 A few weeks after the secession of the Opposition, Mr. Grattan 
 addressed a letter to the citizens of Dublin upon the part of him- 
 self and the other members of the minority, to explain'their mo- 
 tives in taking that step. This letter, besides being a splendid 
 monument of the writer's genius, is an important historical docu- 
 ment, and when confronted with the reports of secret committees 
 and similar official statements, will show what an imperfect idea 
 they convey of the real condition of the times. 
 
 TRIAL OF MR. PETER FINNERTY. 
 
 Mr. Curran's next great professional exertion was in the defence 
 of Mr. Finnerty, who was tried in December, 1797, for a libel on 
 the Government and person of the Viceroy (Lord Camden). The 
 subject of the libel was the trial and execution of a person named 
 William Orr, which had taken place a little before. Orr, who had 
 been committed on a charge of high treason, was arraigned on an 
 indictment framed under the Insurrection Act, for administering 
 unlawful oaths, and convicted. A motion in arrest of judgment 
 was made, in the argument upon which Mr. Curran, who was his 
 leading counsel, is said to have displayed as much legal ability 
 and aftecting eloquence as upon any occasion of his life. This 
 argument is so imperfectly reported as to be unworthy of insertion. 
 It contains, however, one striking example of that peculiar idiom 
 
PETER FINNERTy's CASE. . 207 
 
 in which he discussed the most technical questions ; in contending 
 that the act under which his cHent was tried had expired, he 
 observes : " The mind of the judge is the repository of the Law that 
 does exist, not of the law that did exist ; nor does the mercy and 
 justice of our law recognize so disgraceful an office as that of a 
 judge becoming a sort of administrator to a dead statute, and col- 
 lecting the debts of blood that were due to it in its lifetime^ 
 
 Another of his arguments for arresting the judgment was, " that 
 the state had no right to wage a piratical war against the subject 
 under false colours : " — that Orr's oifence (supposing the informer 
 who gave evidence against him to have sworn truly) amounted to 
 high treason, and that he should therefore have been indicted 
 under the constitutional statute relating to that crime, from which 
 the accused derive so many privileges of defence. It may be 
 necessary to inform some readers, that when acts of high treason 
 are made merely /(?/o?2y by a particular statute, the persons under 
 trial lose, among other advantages, the benefit of their counsel's 
 address to the jury, to which, had they been indicted for high 
 treason, they would have been entitled.^' Upon such occasions, 
 when Mr. Curran, in addressing the Court upon questions of law, 
 happened to let fall any observations upon the general merits of 
 the case, he had to sustain the reproach of " attempting to insinu- 
 ate vl speech to the jury." 
 
 But all his efibrts were unavailing ; his legal objections were 
 overruled by the Bench ; and in answer to what he had addressed 
 to the feelings of the Court, the presiding judge, Lord Yelverton, 
 from whose mind classical associations were never absent, adverted 
 to a passage in the history of the Roman commonwealth, where, 
 after the expulsion of the Tarquins, it was attempted by the Patri- 
 cians to restore royalty ; and the argument made use of was, " that 
 a government by laws was stern and cruel, inasmuch as laws had 
 neither hearts to feel, nor ears to hear ; whereas government by 
 kings was merciful, inasmuch as the sources of humanity and 
 
 * The law and practice have been altered since this was written. — M. 
 
208 LIFE OF CURKAN. 
 
 tenderness were open to entreaty."* " For my part," added his 
 Lordship, "I am acting under a government by hxws, and am 
 bound to speak the voice of the law, which has neither feehng nor 
 passions." 
 
 But this excellent and feeling judge soon showed how little of 
 leo-al insensibility belonged to his own nature. When he came to 
 pronounce sentence of death upon the prisoner, he was so affected 
 as to be scarcely audible, and the fatal words were no sooner con- 
 cluded than he burst into tears, and, sinking his head between his 
 hands, continued for many minutes in that attitude of honourable 
 emotion. 
 
 The prisoner was recommended to the jury for mercy, but, after 
 receiving no less than three respites, was finally executed.f He 
 died protesting his innocence ; and though such a declaration be 
 very doubtful evidence of the fact (for who, about to suffer for a 
 political crime, would not prefer to be remembered as a martyr ?), 
 still there were, in the case of Orr, some corroborating circum- 
 stances which render it a matter of surprise and regret that they 
 should have been disregarded. His previous life and character 
 had been irreproachable : subsequent to his trial, it appeared that 
 the informer, upon whose evidence he had been convicted, had, 
 according to his own confession, perjured himself on a former 
 
 * Regem hominem esse, a quo impetres ubi jus, ubi injuria opus sit — esse gratise locum, 
 esse beneflcio, et irasci et ignoscere posse — inter amicum atque inimicum discrimen 
 nosse. Leges rem surdam, inexorabilem esse, salubriorem melioi-emque inopi, quam 
 potenti — nihil laxamenti nee veniae habere, si modum excesseris. — Tit. Liv. lit. 2. — Lord 
 Yelverton was considered as one of the most accomplished classical scholars of his lime. 
 An unfinished translation of Livy (his favourite historian) remains among his papers.— C. 
 
 [A lawyer pleading before Lord Avonmore, having to oppose some principles urged 
 against him on the authority of Judge Blackstone, treated the works of that great com- 
 mentator in terms of disrespect; at which Lord Avonmore was so provoked that he 
 instantly burst forth into the following beautiful compliment to that eminent writer: " He 
 first gave to the law the air of science ; he found it a skeleton, and clothed it with flesh, 
 colour, and complexion; he embraced the cold statue, and by his touch it grew into life, 
 ?ense, and beauty. His great works survive the vagaries which pass through the crude 
 minds of each giddy innovator, and which every packet imports in the form of a blue 
 paper report."— M.] 
 
 t On October 14, 1T97.— M. 
 
orr's trial. 209 
 
 occasion, and had been, in other particulars, a person of infamous 
 conduct and reputation ; but above all, the circumstances under 
 which the verdict was found against Orr pointed him out, if not 
 as an object constitutionally entitled to mercy, at least as one to 
 whom it would have been an act of salutary mildness to have 
 extended it. The jury had continued from seven o'clock in the 
 evening till six on the following morning considering their ver- 
 dict ; in the interval, spirituous liquor had been introduced into 
 the jury-room, and intimidation used to such as hesitated to con- 
 cur with the majority. To these latter facts two of the jury made 
 a solemn affidavit in open court, before the judge who tried the 
 cause. 
 
 Upon these proceedings, a very severe letter of remonstrance to 
 the Viceroy appeared in the "Press" newspaper, of which Mr. 
 Finnerty was the publisher ; and the letter being deemed a libel, 
 the publisher was brought to immediate trial. 
 
 Mr. Curran's address to the jury in this case must be con- 
 sidered, if not the finest, at least the most surprising specimen of 
 his oratorical powers. He had had no time for preparation ; it 
 was not till a few minutes before the cause commenced that his 
 brief was handed to him. During the progress of the trial he 
 had occasion to speak at unusual length to questions of law that 
 arose upon the evidence ; so that his speech to the jury could 
 necessarily be no other than a sudden extemporaneous exertion : 
 and it was, perhaps, a secret and not unjustifiable feeling of piide 
 at having so acquitted himself upon such an emergency that 
 inclined his own mind to prefer this to any of his other efforts. 
 
 The following is his description of the scenes which attended 
 and followed the trial of William Orr : 
 
 " Let me beg of you for a moment to suppose that any one of 
 you had been the writer of this strong and severe animadversion 
 upon the Lord Lieutenant, and that you had been the witness of 
 that lamentable and never-to-be-forgotten catastrophe ; let me 
 
210 LIFE OF CURRAN. 
 
 suppose that you had known the charge upon which j\Ir. Orr was 
 apprehended — the charge of objuring that bigotry which had torn 
 and disgraced his country, of pledging himself to restore the peo- 
 ple to their place in the Constitution, and of binding himself 
 never to be the betrayer of his fellow-laborers in that enterprise ; 
 that you had seen him upon that charge torn from his industry 
 and confined in a gaol ; that, through the slow and lingering pro- 
 gress of twelve tedious months, you had seen him confined in a 
 dungeon, shut out from the common use of air and of his own 
 limbs ; that, day after day, you had marked the unhappy captive, 
 cheered by no sound but the cries of his fjmiily or the clanking 
 of his chains ; that you had seen him at last brought to his trial ; 
 that you had seen the vile and perjured informer deposing against 
 his life ; that you had seen the drunken, and worn out, and terri- 
 fied jury give in a verdict of death ; that you had seen the same 
 jury, when their returning sobriety had brought back their 
 reason, prostrate themselves before the humanity of the Bench, 
 and pray that the mercy of the ('rown might save their characters 
 from the reproach of an involuntary crime, their consciences from 
 the torture of eternal self-condemnation, and their souls from the 
 indelible stain of innocent blood. Let me suppose that you had 
 seen the respite given, and the contrite and honest recommenda- 
 tion transmitted to that seat where mercy v/as presumed to dwell : 
 that new and before unheard-of crimes are discovered against the 
 informer; that the royal mercy seems to relent; that a new 
 respite is sent to the prisoner ; that time is taken to see ' whether 
 mercy could be extended or not ;' that after that period of linger- 
 ing deliberation had passed, a third respite is transmitted ; that 
 the unhappy captive himself feels the cheering hope of being- 
 restored to a family that he had adored, to a character that he 
 had never stained, and to a country that he had ever loved ; that 
 you had seen his wife and his children upon their knees, giving 
 those tears to gratitude which their locked and frozen hearts had 
 
DEFENCE OF FINNERTY. 211 
 
 refused to anguish and despair, and imploring the blessings of 
 eternal Providence upon his head who had graciously spared the 
 father and restored him to his children : 
 
 •Alas! 
 Nor wife, nor children, no more shall he behold, 
 Nor friends, nor sacred home !' 
 
 " Often did the weary dove return to the window of his little 
 ark ; but the olive leaf was to him no sign that the waters had 
 subsided. No seraph Mercy unbars his dungeon, and leads him 
 forth to light and life ; but the minister of Death hurries him to 
 the scene of suffering and of shame : where, unmoved by the 
 hostile array of artillery and armed men collected together to 
 secure or to insult, or to disturb him, he dies with a solemn 
 declaration of his innocence, and utters his last breath in a prayer 
 for the liberty of his country. 
 
 "Let me now ask you, if any of you had addressed the public 
 ear upon so foul and monstrous a subject, in what language 
 would you have conveyed the feelings of horror and indignation ? 
 Would you have stooped to the meanness of qualified complaint ? 
 Would you have checked your feelings to search for courtly and 
 gaudy language ? -Would you have been mean enough — but I 
 entreat your pardon : I have already told you I do not think 
 meanly of you. Had I thought so meanly of you, I could not 
 suff"er my mind to commune with you as it has done: had I 
 thought you that base and servile instrument, attuned by hope 
 and fear into discord and falsehood, from whose vulgar string no 
 groan of suff'ering could vibrate, no voice of integrity or honour 
 could speak, let me honestly tell you I should have scorned to 
 fling my hand across it ; I should have left it to a fitter minstrel ; 
 if I do not, therefore, grossly err in my opinion of you, you could 
 invent no language upon such a subject as this, that must not lag 
 behind the rapidity of your feelings, and that must not disgrace 
 those feelings if it attempted to describe them." 
 
212 LIFE OF CUIiRAN. 
 
 The distracted condition of Ireland at this unfortunate period, 
 may be collected from the following description. To the general 
 reader of Mr. Curran's speeches, the frequent recurrence of so 
 painful a theme must diminish their attractions ; but it was too 
 intimately connected with his subjects to be omitted ; and as has 
 been previously remarked, the scenes which he daily witnessed 
 had so sensible an influence upon the style of his addresses to 
 juries, that some advertence to them here becomes indispensable. 
 
 "The learned counsel has asserted that the paper which he 
 prosecutes is only part of a system formed to misrepresent the 
 state of Ireland -and the conduct of its government. Do you not 
 therefore discover that his object is to procure a verdict to sanc- 
 tion the parliaments of both countries in refusing an inquiry into 
 your grievances ? Let me ask you then, are you prepared to say, 
 upon your oath, that those measures of coercion which are daily 
 practised, are absolutely necessary, and ought to be continued ? 
 It is not upon Finnerty you are sitting in judgment ; but you are 
 sitting in judgment upon the lives and liberties of the inhabitants 
 of more than half of Ireland. You are to say that it is a foul pro- 
 ceeding to condemn the Government of Ireland ; that is a foul 
 act, founded in foul motives, and originating in falsehood and 
 sedition ; that it is an attack upon a government under which the 
 people are prosperous and happy; that justice is administered with 
 mercy ; that the statements made in Great Britain are false — are 
 the effusions of party or of discontent ; that all is mildness and 
 tranquillity ; that there are no burnings — no transportations ; that 
 you never travel by the light of conflagrations ; that the jails are 
 not crow^ded month after month, from which prisoners are taken 
 out, not for trial, but for embarkation ! These are the questions 
 upon w^hich, I say, you must virtually decide. It is vain that the 
 counsel for the Crown may tell you that I am misrepresenting the 
 case ; that I am endeavouring to raise false fears, and to take 
 advantage of your passions ; that the question is, whether this 
 paper be a libel or not, and that the circumstances of the countiy 
 
DEFENCE OF FINNEETY. 213 
 
 have nothing to do with it. Such assertions must be in vain ; 
 the statement of the counsel for the Crown has forced the intro- 
 duction of those important topics; and I appeal to your own 
 hearts whether the country is misrepresented, and whether the 
 Government is misrepresented. I tell you therefore, gentlemen 
 of the jury, it is not with respect to Mr. Orr or Mr. Finnerty that 
 your verdict is now sought ; you are called upon, on your oaths, 
 to say that the Government is wise and merciful ; the people 
 prosperous and happy ; that military law ought to be continued ; 
 that the Constitution could not with safety be restored to Ireland; 
 and that the statements of a contrary import by your advocates 
 in either country are libellous and false. I tell you, these are the 
 questions ; and I ask you, if you can have the front to give the 
 expected answer in the face of a community who know the coun- 
 try as well as you do. Let me ask you how you could reconcile 
 with such a verdict, the gaols, the tenders, the gibbets, the confla- 
 grations, the murders, the proclamations, that we hear of every 
 day in the streets, and see every day in the country ? What are 
 the processions of the learned counsel himself, circuit after circuit ? 
 Merciful God ! what is the state of Ireland, and where shall you 
 find the wretched inhabitant of this land ? You may find him 
 perhaps in gaol, the only place of security, I had almost said of 
 ordinary habitation ! If you do not find him there, you may see 
 him flying with his family from the flames of his own dwelling — 
 lighted to his dungeon by the conflagration of his hovel ; or you 
 may find his bones bleaching on the green fields of his country ; 
 or you may find him tossing on the surface of the ocean, and ming- 
 ling his groans with those tempests, less savage than his prosecutors, 
 that drift him to a returnless distance from his family and his 
 home, without charge, or trial or sentence. Is this a foul misre- 
 presentation ? Or can you, with these facts ringing in your ears, 
 and staring in your face, say, upon your oaths, they do not exist ? 
 You are called upon, in defiance of shame, of truth, of honour, 
 to deny the sufferings under which you groan, and to flatter the 
 
214: LIFE OF CURRAN. 
 
 prosecution that tramples you under foot. Gentlemen, I am not 
 accustomed to speak of circumstances of this kind, and though 
 familiarized as I have been to them, when I come to speak of 
 them, my power fails me, my voice dies within me ; I am not 
 able to call upon you : it is now I ought to have strength ; it is 
 now I ought to have energy and voice, but I have none ; I am 
 like the unfortunate state of the country, perhaps like you. This 
 is the time in which I ought to speak, if I can, or be dumb forever ; 
 in which, if you do not speak as you ought — you ought to be 
 dumb forever." 
 
 When Mr. Curran came to comment upon that part of the pub- 
 lication under trial, which stated that informers were brought for- 
 ward by the hopes of remuneration — " Is that," said he, " a foul 
 assertion ? or will you, upon your oaths, say to the sister country, 
 that there are no such abominable instruments of destruction as 
 informers used in the state prosecutions in Ireland ? Let me 
 honestly ask you, Avhat do you feel when in my hearing— when, 
 in the face of this audience, you are called upon to give a verdict 
 that every man of us, and every man of you, know% by the testimony 
 of your own eyes, to be utterly and absolutely false ? I speak not 
 now of the public proclamations for informers with a promise of 
 secrecy and extravagant reward. I speak not of those unfortunate 
 wretches, who have been so often transferred from the table to the 
 dock, and from the dock to the pillory — I speak of v/hat your 
 own eves have seen, dav after day, durino; the course of this com- 
 mission, while you attended this court — the number of horrid 
 miscreants who acknowledged, upon their oaths, that they had 
 come from the seat of government — from the very chambers of 
 the Castle (where they had been worked upon, by the fear of 
 death and the hopes of compensation, to give evidence against 
 their fellows) that the mild, the wholesome, and merciful councils 
 of this Government are holden over those catacombs of living 
 death, where the wretch, that is hurried a man, lies till his heart 
 has time to fester and dissolve, and is then dug up a ivitness. Is 
 
THE PEEJUEED WITXESS. 215 
 
 this a picture created by an Lag-ridden fancy, or is it fact ? Have 
 you not seen him, after his resurrection from that tomb, make his 
 appearance upon your table, the living image of life and death, 
 and the supreme arbiter of both ? Have you not marked, when 
 he entered, how the stormy wave of the multitude retired at his 
 approach ? Have you not seen how the human heart bowed to 
 the awful supremacy of his power, in the undissembled homage 
 of deferential horror? How his glance, like the lightning of 
 Heaven, seemed to rive the body of the accused, and mark it for 
 the grave, while his voice warned the devoted wretch of woe and 
 death — a death which no innocence can escape, no art elude, no 
 force resist, no antidote prevent ? There was an antidote — a juror's 
 oath ! But even that adamantine chain, which bound the inte 
 grity of man to the throne of eternal justice, is solved and molten 
 in the breath which issues from the mouth of the informer. Con- 
 science swings from her moorings ; the appalled and affrighted 
 juror speaks what his soul abhors, and consults his own safety in 
 the surrender of the victim — 
 
 et qu?e sibi quisque timebat 
 
 Unius in miseri exitium couversa tulere. 
 
 Informers are worshipped in the temple of justice, even as the 
 devil has been worshipped by Pagans and savages — even so in 
 this wicked country, is the informer an object of judicial idolatry 
 — even so is he soothed by the music of human groans — even so 
 is he placated and incensed by the fumes and by the blood of 
 human sacrifices." 
 
 It is some relief to turn from these descriptions (the truth of 
 which any who may doubt it, will find authenticated by the his- 
 torian), to the attestation which the advocate bore (and which he 
 was alw^ays ready to bear) to the honourable and dignified demea- 
 nour of a presiding judge.'" "You are upon a great forward 
 
 * The Hon. William Downes. — C. [Downes was a dull and prosy man of great bulk, with 
 an immense face terminating in a great double chin, like a gigantic dewlap, — Curran said, 
 
216 * LIFE OF CUERAIT. 
 
 ground, with the people at your back, and the Government in 
 your front. You have neither the disadvantages nor the excuses 
 of juries a century ago. No, thank God ! never was there a 
 stronger characteristic distinction between those times, upon which 
 no man can reflect without horror, and the present. You have 
 seen this trial conducted with mildness and patience by the court. 
 We have now no Jefferies, with scurvy and vulgar conceits, to 
 browbeat the prisoner and perplex his counsel. Such has been 
 the improvement of manners, and so calm the confidence of 
 integrity, that during the defence of accused persons, the judges 
 sit quietly, and show themselves worthy of their situation, by 
 bearing, with a mild and merciful patience, the little extravagan- 
 cies of the bar, as you should bear with the little extravagancies 
 of the press. Let me then turn your eyes to that pattern of 
 mildness in the bench. The press is your advocate ; bear with 
 its excess, bear with everything but its bad intention. If it comes 
 as a villanous slanderer, treat it as such ; but if it endeavour to 
 to raise the honour and glory of your country, remember that 
 you reduce its power to a nonentity, if you stop its animadver- 
 sions upon public measures. You should not check the efibrts of 
 genius, nor damp the ardour of patriotism. In vain will you 
 desire the bird to soar, if you meanly or madly steal from it its 
 plumage. Beware lest, under the pretence of bearing down the 
 licentiousness of the press, you extinguish it altogether. Beware 
 how you rival the venal ferocity of those miscreants, who rob a 
 printer of the means of bread, and claim from deluded royalty 
 the reward of integrity and allegiance."^ 
 
 " The most appropriate reply I ever made in my life -was to Bushe. It is rather long and 
 somewhat laboured, but if you will bear with me, I will repeat it all in less than half an 
 hour, by a stop watch. ' My Lord chief justice Downes,' says Bushe to me one day, with 
 that large plausible eye, glittering in that kind of light which reveals to a shrewd obser- 
 ver that he is quite sure he has you, ' my Lord chief justice Downes is beyond all compa- 
 rison, the wittiest companion I have ever laiown or heard of.' I looked into B.'s eye, and 
 said hwm 1 It required all Jiis oicn oil to keep smooth the surface of that face.'"~M. 
 * The jury found a verdict against the traverser. The above extracts are taken from 
 
DEFENCE OF FINNEETY. 
 
 217 
 
 TRIAL OF PATRICK FINNEY. 
 
 Mr. Curran's defence of Patrick Finney (who was brought to 
 trial on January 16th, 1*798, on a charge of high treason), if not 
 the most eloquent, was at least the most successful of his efforts 
 at the bar. This may be also considered as the most important 
 cause that he ever conducted, as far as the number of his clients 
 could render it so ; for in addition to the prisoner at tiie bar, he 
 was virtually defending fifteen others, against whom there existed 
 the same charge, and the same proof, and whose fates would have 
 immediately followed had the evidence against Finney prevailed. 
 The principal witness for the Crown in this case w^as an informer, 
 named James O'Brien, a person whom his testimon}" upon this 
 trial, and his subsequent crimes, have rendered notorious in Ire- 
 land. The infamy of this man's previous life and morals, and 
 improbability and inconsistencies of his story, were so satisfac- 
 torily proved to the jury, that, making an eftbrt of firmness and 
 humanity very unusual in those days, they acquitted Finney; and, 
 at the next sitting of the court, the fifteen other prisoners were in 
 consequence discharged from their indictments. [On taking the 
 oath of allegiance, and filing recognizances for good behaviour.] 
 
 In speaking of Finney's acquittal, it would be an act of injustice 
 to attribute it to the ability of Mr. Curran alone. He was assisted, 
 as he was upon so many other occasions of emergency, by Mr. 
 M'Nally,* a gentleman in whom the client has always found a 
 
 a fuller report of Mr. Curran's speech upon this occasion than that w hich is to be found in 
 the published collection. — C. 
 
 [Finnerty was sentenced to two years' imprisonment, to stand in the pillory for an 
 hour, to pay a fine of £20, and to give security for his future good behaviour. He finally 
 became a member of the newspaper press in London, and sufifered imprisonment, in that 
 capacity, for the publication of seditious libels.] — M. 
 
 * Leonard M'Nally, Esq., for many years an eminent Irish barrister, and long since 
 known to the English public as the author of Robin Hood, and other successful dramatic 
 pieces, the productions of his earlier days. Among many endearing traits in this gentle- 
 man's private character, his devoted attachment to Mr. Curran's person and fame, and, 
 since his death, fo the interests of his memory, has been conspicuous. The writer of this 
 cannot advert to the ardour and tenderness with which he cherishes the latter, without 
 emotions of the most lively and respectful gratitude. To Mr. M'Nally he has to express 
 
 10 
 
218 LIFE OF CUERAN. 
 
 zealous, intrepid advocate, and in wlioni Mr. Curran, from his 
 youth to his latest hour, possessed a most affectionate, unshaken, 
 and disinterested friend. An instance of Mr. Curran's confidence 
 in the talents of his colleague occurred upon this trial ; the cir- 
 cumstance, too, may not be without interest, as an example of the 
 accidents which influence the niost important questions. 
 
 The only mode of saving their client Avas by impeaching the 
 credit of O'Brien. It appeared in their instructions that tfiey had 
 some, though not unexceptionable, evidence of his having extorted 
 money, by assuming the character of a revenue officer. 
 
 Some extracts from the cross-examination of this witness shall 
 be inserted as too singular, on many accounts, to be omitted. It 
 should be observed that Mr. Curran, upon this occasion, departed 
 in some measure from his ordinary method of confounding the 
 perjurer. Instead of resorting to menace or ridicule, he began by 
 affecting a tone of respect, and even submission ; and, by thus en- 
 couraging O'Brien's insolence, threw him oft' his guard, and led 
 him on more completely to develope his own character to the 
 jury:— 
 
 James 0''Brien cross-examined hy Mr. Curran. 
 
 Q. Pray, Mr. O'Brien, whence came you ? 
 
 A. Speak in a way I will understand you. 
 
 Q. Do you not understand me ? 
 
 A. Whence ? I am here. Do you mean the place I came from ? 
 
 Q. By your oath, do you not understand it 1 
 
 many obligations for the zeal with which he has assisted in procuring and supplying 
 materials for the present work. The introduction of these private feelings is not entirely 
 out of place — it can never be out of place to record an example of stedfastness in friend- 
 ship. For three and forty years Mr. M'Nally was the friend of the subject of these pages ; 
 and during that long period, uninfluenced by any obligation, more than once, at his own 
 personal risk in repelling the public calamities which Mr. Curran's political conduct had 
 provoked, he performed the duties of the relation with the most uncompromising and 
 romantic fidelity. To state this is a debt of justice to the dead: the survivor has an 
 ampler reward than any passing tribute of this sort can confer, in the recollection that 
 during their long intercourse not even an unkind look ever passed between them. — C. 
 Leonard M'Nally died on the 15th of February, 1820.— M. 
 
JEMMY o'bKIEN. 219 
 
 A. I partly censure it now. 
 
 Q. Now that you partly censure the question, answer it. Where 
 did you come from ? 
 
 A. From the Castle. 
 
 Q. Do you live there ? 
 
 A. I do while I am there. 
 
 Q. You are welcome, sir, to practice your wit upon me. Where 
 did you live before you came to Dublin ? 
 
 A. In the Queen's county. 
 
 Q. What way of Hfe were you engaged in before you came to 
 Dublin ? 
 
 A. I had a ftirm of land which my father left me ; and I let it, 
 and afterwards sold it, and came to Dublin to follow business I 
 learned before my father's death. I served four years to Mr. 
 Latouche of Marley. 
 
 Q. To what business ? 
 
 A, A gardener. 
 
 Q. Were you an excise officer ? 
 
 A. No. 
 
 Q. Nor ever acted as one ? 
 
 A. I don't doubt but I may have gone of messages for one. 
 
 Q. Who was that 1 
 
 A. A man of the name of Fitzpatrick. 
 
 Q. He is an excise officer ? 
 
 A. So I understand. 
 
 Q. AVhat messages did you go for him ? 
 
 A. For money when he was lying on a sick bed. 
 
 Q. To whom ? 
 
 A. To several of the people in his walk. 
 
 Q. But you never pretended to be an officer yourself ? 
 
 A. As I have been walking with him, and had clean clothes on 
 me, he might have said to the persons he met that I was an excise 
 officer. 
 
 Q. But did you never pretend to be an officer ? 
 
220 LIFE OF CURBAN. 
 
 A. I never did pretend to be an officer. 
 
 Q. Did you ever pass yourself for a revenue officer ? 
 
 A. I answered that before. 
 
 Q. I do not y/ant to give you any unnecessar}- trouble, sir ; treat 
 me with the same respect I diall treat you. I ask you again, did 
 you ever pass yourself for a revenue officer ? 
 
 A. Never, barring when I was in drink, and the like. 
 
 Q. Then, when you have been drunk, you have passed as a 
 revenue officer ? 
 
 A. I do not know what I have done when I was drunk. 
 
 Q. Did you at any time, drunk or sober, pass yourself as a 
 revenue officer ? 
 
 A. Never, when sober. 
 
 Q. Did you, drunk or sober ? 
 
 A. I cannot say what I did when I was drunk. 
 
 Q. Can you form a belief — I ask you upon your oath — you are 
 upon a solemn occasion — Did you pass yourself for a revenue 
 officer ? 
 
 A. I cannot say what happened to me when I was drunk. 
 
 Q. What ! Do you say you might have done it when you were 
 drunk ? 
 
 A. I cannot recollect what passed in my drink. 
 
 Q. Are you in the habit of being drunk ? 
 
 A. Not now ; but some time back I was. 
 
 Q. Very fond of drink ? 
 
 A. Very fond of drink. 
 
 Q. Do you remember to whom you passed yourself for a reve- 
 nue officer ? 
 
 A. I do not. 
 
 Q. Do you know the man who keeps the Red Cow, of the 
 name of Cavanagh ? 
 
 A. Where does he live ? 
 
 Q. Do you not know yourself ? 
 
 A. There is one Red Cow above the Fox and Geese. 
 
JEMMY o'bRIEN. 221 
 
 Q. Did you ever pass yourself as a revenue officer there ? 
 
 A. I never was tliere but with Fitzpatrick ; and one day there 
 had been a scuffle, and he abused Fitzpatrick and threatened him ; 
 I drank some whiskey there, and paid for it, and went to Fitz- 
 patrick and told him, and I summoned Cavanagh. 
 
 Q. For selling spirits without licence ? 
 
 A. I did, and compromised the business. 
 
 Q. By taking money and not prosecuting him ? 
 
 A. Yes. 
 
 Q. Did you put money in your own pocket by that ? 
 
 A. I did. 
 
 Q. But you swear you never passed yourself for a revenue officer? 
 
 A. Barrino- when I was drunk. 
 
 o 
 
 Q. Were you drunk when you summoned Cavanagh ? 
 
 A. No. 
 
 Q. When you did not prosecute him ? 
 
 A. No. 
 
 Q. When you put his money into your pocket ? 
 
 A. No. 
 
 Q. Do you know a man of the name of Patrick Lamb ? 
 
 A. I do not ; but if you brigliten my memory, I may recollect. 
 
 Q. Did you ever tell any man you were a supernumerary, and 
 that your walk was Eathfarnham and Tailaght ? 
 
 A. I never did, except when I was drunk ; but I never did any- 
 thing but what was honest when I was sober. 
 
 Q. Do you believe you did say it ? 
 
 A. I do not know what I might have said when I was drunk. 
 You know when a man is walking with an exciseman, he gets a 
 glass at every house. 
 
 Mr. Curran. — I know no such thing, never having vralked with 
 an exciseman. 
 
 Witness. — Then, you may know it. 
 
 Q. Do you know any man passing by 4.hc name, or called 
 Patnck Lamb ? 
 
222 LIFE OF CURRAN. 
 
 A. Not that I recollect, upon my ivord. 
 
 Q. Upon your oath ? 
 
 A. I do not recollect : I mean to tell everj-tliing- against myself 
 as against any other. 
 
 Q. Do you know a person of the name of Margaret Moore? 
 
 A. Where does she live ? Is she married ? 
 
 Q. She lives near Stradbally. Do you know her ? 
 
 A. I know her well — I thought it might be another. I was 
 courting a woman of that name before my marriage. 
 
 Q. Did you come to DubHn before her or after ? 
 
 A. I was in Dublin before I knew her. 
 
 Q. Did you get a decree against her ? 
 
 A. I did get a summons for money she owed me. 
 
 Q. Were you taken to the Court of Conscience by her ? 
 
 A. No. (Contradicted by the evidence on the defence.) 
 % ^ % M ^ * 
 
 Q. When you met Hyland, were you an United Irishman ? 
 
 A. Always united to every honest man. 
 
 Q. Were you an United Irishman ? 
 
 A. Never sworn. 
 
 Q. Were you in any manner an United Irishman before that 
 day? 
 
 A. Never sworn in before that day. 
 
 Q. Were you in any manner ? 
 
 A. Do n't I tell you that I was united to every honest man ? 
 
 Q. Do you believe you are answering my question ? 
 
 A. I do. 
 
 Q. Were you ever in any society of United Irishmen before 
 that day ? 
 
 A. I do not at all know but I may, but without my knowledge : 
 they might be in the next box to me, or in the end of the seat 
 with me, and I not know them. 
 
 Q. Were you ever in a society of United Irishmen but that 
 day ? 
 
JEMMY o'brien. 223 
 
 A. I was since. 
 
 Q. Were you ever of tlieir meetings, or did you know anything 
 of their business before that day? 
 
 A. No ; but I have lieard of the Defenders' business. 
 
 Q. Were you of their society ? 
 
 A. No ; but when they came to my father's house, I went to 
 Admiral Cosby's and kept guard there, and threatened to shoot 
 any of them that would come ; one Connelly told me I was to be 
 murdered for this expression. 
 
 Q. Hyland made signs to you in the street ? 
 
 A. He did. 
 
 Q. Did you answer them ? 
 
 A. No. 
 
 Q. Why did you not ? 
 
 A. Because I did not know how. 
 
 Q. Then, is your evidence this — that you went into the house 
 in order to save your life ? 
 
 A. I was told that I might lose my life before I went half a 
 street, if I did not. 
 
 Q. Then, it was from the fear of being murdered before you 
 should go half a street, that you went in to be an United Irish- 
 man ? 
 
 A. You have often heard of men being murdered in the busi- 
 ness. 
 
 Q. Do you beheve that ? 
 
 A. I do : it is common through the country ; I have read the 
 proclamations upon it, and you may have done so too. 
 
 Q. How soon, after you were sworn, did you see the magistrate ? 
 
 A. I was sworn upon the 25th, and upon the 28th I was 
 brought to Lord Portarlington ; and in the interval of the two 
 days, Hyland was with me and dined with me. 
 
 Q. Why did you not go the next day ? 
 
 A. Because I did not get clear of them, and they might 
 murder me. 
 
224 LIFE OF CURRAN. 
 
 Q. Wliere did you sleep the first niglit after ? 
 
 A. At my own place. I was very full — very drunk. 
 
 Q. Did either of them sleep there ? 
 
 A. Xo. 
 
 Q. Where did you live ? 
 
 A. In Keven street, among some friends good to the same 
 cause. 
 
 Q. Where did you see Hyland the next day ? 
 
 A. He came to me next morning before I was out of bed, and 
 stayed all day, and dined : we drank full in the evening. 
 
 Q. What became of you the next day? 
 
 A. Hyland came early again, and stayed all day. I was after 
 getting two guineas from my brother. I was determined to see it 
 out — to know their conspiracies after I was sworn. 
 
 Q. Then, you meant to give evidence ? 
 
 A. I never went to a meeting that I did not give an account 
 of it. 
 
 ^ ^': ^ ^ ^ ^ 
 
 Q. Do 3^ou know Charles Clarke, of Blue Bell ? 
 
 A.. I have heard of such a man. 
 
 Q. You do not know him ? 
 
 A. I do : I do not mean to tell a lie. 
 
 Q. You did not know him at first ? 
 
 A. There are many men of the name of Clarke ; I did not 
 know but it might be some other. It did not immediately come 
 into my memory. 
 
 Q. You thought it might be some other Clarke ? 
 
 A. There is a Clarke came in to me yesterday. 
 
 Q. Did you ever get money from Clarke, of Blue Bell, as an 
 excise officer? 
 
 A. I got os. Scl. from him not to tell Fitzpatrick : he did not 
 know me, and I bought spirits there ; and seeing me walk with an 
 exciseman, he was afraid I would tell of him, and lie gave me 
 2s. Sd. 
 
225 
 
 Q. And you put it in )-our pocket ? 
 A. To be sure. 
 
 * % * Ht ^ * 
 
 Q. Did you pass yourself as a revenue officer upon him ? 
 
 A. No. 
 
 Q. You swear that ? 
 
 A. I do. 
 
 Q. You knoAv a man of the name of Edward Purcell ? 
 
 A. That is the man that led me into everything. He has 
 figured among United Irishmen. He got about J340 of their 
 money, and went off. He has been wrote to several times. 
 
 Q. How came you to know him ? 
 
 A. Through the friendship of Fitzpatrick. He had Fitzpa- 
 trick's wife, as a body might say, having another man's wife. 
 
 Q. He made you acquainted ? 
 
 A. I saw him there, and Fitzpatrick well contented. 
 
 Q. Did you ever give him a recipe ? 
 
 A. I did. 
 
 Q. Was it for money ? 
 
 A. No. 
 
 Q. What was it ? 
 
 A. It was partly an order, where Hyland, he, and I, hoped to be 
 together. It was a pass-w^ord I gave him to go to Hyland to buy 
 light gold that I knew was going to the country. 
 
 Q. Did you ever give him any other recipe ? 
 
 A. I do not know but I might : we had many dealings. 
 
 Q. Had you many dealings in recipes ? 
 
 A. In recipes ? 
 
 Q. I mean recipes to do a thing ; as, to make a pudding, &c. 
 Did you give him recipes of that nature ? 
 
 A. I do not know but I might give him recipes to do a great 
 number of things. 
 
 Q. To do a great number of things ? What are they ? 
 
 A. Tell me the smallest hint, and I will tell the truth. 
 
 10^" 
 
226 LIFE OF CUKRAN. 
 
 Q. Upon that engagement, I will tell you. Did you ever give 
 liim a recipe to turn silver into gold, or copper into silver ? 
 
 A. Yes ; for turning copper into silver. 
 
 Q. You have kept your word ? 
 
 A. I said I would tell everything against myself. 
 
 Q. Do you consider that against yourself? 
 
 A. I tell you the truth : I gave him a recipe for making copper 
 money like silver money. 
 
 Q. What did you give it him for ? Did he make use of it ? 
 Was it to protect his copper from being changed that you did it? 
 
 A. He Avas very officious to make things in a light easy way, 
 without much trouble, to make his bread light : but I did it more 
 in fun than profit. 
 
 Q. You did not care how much coin he made by it ? 
 
 A. I did not care how much coin he made by it : he might put 
 it upon the market cross. 
 
 Q. Do you say you do not care how many copper shillings he 
 made? 
 
 A. I did not care whether he made use of it or not. 
 
 Q. Upon your solemn oath, you say that you did not care how 
 many base shillings he made in consequence of the recipe you 
 gave him ? 
 
 A. I did not care how inany he told of it, or Avhat he did 
 with it. 
 
 Q. Had you never seen it tried ? 
 
 A. No, I never saw the recipe I gave him tried ; but I saw 
 others tried. 
 
 Q. For making copper look like silver ? 
 
 A. To be sure. 
 
 Q. Do you recollect whether you gave him half-a-crown, upon 
 which that recipe was tried ? 
 
 A. I never saw it tried ; but I gave him a bad half-crown. I 
 
 did not give it him in payment : I did it more to humbug him 
 
 than anything else. 
 
 ****** 
 
AN ARTFUL DODGE. 227 
 
 Q. Do you know Mr. Roberts ? 
 
 A. What Mr. Roberts ? 
 
 Q. Mr. Arthur Roberts of Stradbally « 
 
 A. I do. 
 
 Q. Did you ever talk to any person about his giving a charac- 
 ter of you ? 
 
 A. He could not give a bad character of nie. 
 
 Q. Did you ever tell any person about his giving you a 
 character ? 
 
 A. I say now, in the hearing of the court and jury, that I heard 
 of his being summoned against me ; and, unless he would forswear 
 himself, he could not give me a bad character. 
 
 Q. Did you ever say you would do anything against him ? 
 
 A. I said I would settle him ; but do you know how ? There 
 was a matter about an auction that I would tell of him. 
 
 Q. Had you a weapon in your hand at the time ? 
 
 A. I believe I had a sword. 
 
 Q. And a pistol ? 
 
 A. Yes. 
 
 Q. And you had them in your hand at the time you made the 
 declaration ? 
 
 A. I knew he was a government man ; and I would not do 
 any thing to him in the way of assassination. 
 
 While Mr. Curran was cross-examining O'Brien upon the point 
 of his assuming the character of a revenue officer, the prisoner's 
 agent accidentally heard, from some of the by-standers, that there 
 was a man residing at the distance of a few miles from Dublin, 
 whose testimony would place beyond a doubt that O'Brien was 
 perjuring himself in the answers that he returned. A chaise was 
 immediately despatched, to bring up this person ; and, in the inter- 
 val, it was proposed by Mr. Curran, that he, who, as senior, was 
 to liave commenced the prisoner's defence, should reserve himself 
 for the speech to evidence, and that his colleague should state the 
 
228 LIFE OF CUxil^AN. 
 
 case, and continue sjjeaklng as long as he could find a syllable to 
 say, so as to give time to the chaise to return before the trial 
 should be over. The latter, in v^hose character there was as little 
 of mental as of personal timidity, accepted the proposal without 
 hesitation, and for once belying the maxim that " brevity is tlie 
 soul of wit," produced an oration so skilfully voluminous, that, 
 by the time it was concluded, which was not until his physical 
 strength was utterly exhausted, the evening was so far advanced, 
 that the Court readily consented to a temporary adjournment, for 
 the purpose of refreshment; and before it resumed its sitting, the 
 material witness for the prisoner had arrived. "'^ 
 
 For this important service rendered to their cause, Mr. Curran, 
 in his address to the jury, paid his colleague a tribute, to which, as 
 a man and an advocate, he was so well entitled. When, in the 
 commencement of his speech, he alluded to the statement of his 
 fi'iend, and expressed " his reluctance to repeat any part of it, for 
 fear of weakening it," he turned round to him, threw his arm 
 affectionately over his shoulder, and, with that pathetic fervour of 
 accent so peculiarly his own, addressed him thus : " My old and 
 excellent friend, I have long known and respected the honesty of 
 your heart, but never, until this. occasion, ^^'as I acquainted with 
 the extent of your abilities. I am not in the habit of paying 
 compliments where they are undeserved." Tears fell from Mr. 
 Curran as he hung over his friend, and pronounced these few and 
 simple words ; and, however unimposing they may appear in the 
 repetition, it certainly was not the part of his defence of Finnerty 
 that touched the jury the least. 
 
 His speech in this case (particularly in the imperfect report of 
 it that has appeared) does not contain many passages calculated 
 to delight in the closet. It is chiefly occupied in developing the 
 atrocities of the detestable O'Brien ; and this object he accom- 
 
 * Thomas Davis, who edited the last collection of Curran's speeches, possessed Leonard 
 McNally's own copy (a gift from Curran himself) and left a memorandum to the effect 
 that he spoke for three hours and a half.— M. 
 
A TEEJURED WITNESS. 229 
 
 plished with signal success. That wretch, who had, in the early 
 part of the trial, comported himself with so much triumpliant 
 insolence, was for a moment appalled by Mr. Curran's description 
 of his villanies, and by the indignant fury of his glances. He 
 was observed palpably shrinking before the latter, and taking 
 shelter in the crowd whicli thronged the Court. The advocate 
 did not fail to take advantage of such a circumstance. " What 
 was the evidence of the innocent, unlettered, poor farmer Cava- 
 nagh ; pursuing the even tenor of his way in the paths of honest 
 industry, he is in the act of fulfilling the decree of his Maker — he 
 is earning his bread by the sweat of his brow, when this villain, 
 less pure than the arch-liend who brought this sentence of labori- 
 ous action on mankind, enters the habitation of peace and honest 
 industry; and, not content with dipping his tongue in perjury, 
 robs the poor man of two guineas. Where is O'Brien now ? — 
 Do you wonder that he is afraid of my eye ? — that he has buried 
 liimself in the crowd ? — that he crept under the shade of the 
 multitude when this witness would have disentangled his evidence ? 
 Do you not feel that he was appalled with horror, by that more 
 piercing and penetrating eye that looks upon him, and upon me, 
 and upon us all ? At this moment even the bold and daring 
 villany of O'Brien stood abashed ; he saw the eye of Heaven in 
 that of an innocent and injured man ; perhaps the feeling was 
 consummated by a glance from the dock — his heart bore testi- 
 mony to his guilt, and he fled for the same. Do you know him, 
 gentlemen of the jury ? — Are you acquainted with James O'Brien ? 
 If you are, let him come forward from the crowd where he has 
 hid himself, and claim you by a look." 
 
 Tlie religious character of Mr. Curran's addresses to juries, 
 during these convulsed times, has been already adverted to ; of 
 this the conclusion of his defence of Finney affords a striking 
 example : — 
 
 "This is the great experiment of the informers of Ireland, to 
 ascertain how far they can carry on a traffic in human blood. 
 
230 LIFE OF CUREAN. 
 
 This cannibal informer, this demon, O'Brien, greedy after human 
 gore, has fifteen other victims in reserve, if fi-om your verdict he 
 receives the unhappy man at the bar — fifteen more of your fellow- 
 citizens are now in gaol, depending on the fate of the unfortunate 
 prisoner, and on the same blasted and perjured evidence of 
 O'Brien. Be 3'ou then their saviours ; let your verdict snatch 
 them from his ravening maw, and interpose between yourselves 
 and endless remorse. The character of the prisoner has been 
 given. Am I not warranted in saying that I am now defending 
 an innocent fellow-subject on the grounds of eternal justice and 
 immutable law ? and on that eternal law I do call upon you to 
 acquit my client. I call upon you for your justice ! Great is the 
 reward and sweet the recollection in the hour of trial, and in the 
 day of dissolution, when the casualties of life are pressing close 
 upon the heart, or v.hen in the agonies of death you look back to 
 the justifiable and honourable transactions of your life, xit the 
 awful foot of eternal justice, I do therefore invite you to acquit my 
 client ; and may God of his infinite mercy grant you a more last- 
 ing reward than that perishable crown we read of, which the 
 ancients placed on the brow of him who saved in battle the life of 
 a fellow-citizen? In the name of public justice I do implore you 
 to interpose between the perjurer and his intended \ictim ; and if 
 ever you are assailed by the hand of the informer, may you find 
 an all-powerful refuge in the example which, as jurors, you shall 
 set this day to those that might be called to pass upon your lives, 
 that of repelling, at the human tribunal, the intended efiects of 
 hireling perjury and premeditated murder. And if it should be 
 the fate of any of you to coimt the tedious moments of captivity, 
 in sorrow and pain, pining in the damps and gloom of a dungeon, 
 while the wicked one is going about at large, seeking whom he 
 may devour, recollect that there is another more awful tribunal 
 than any upon earth, which we must all approach, and before 
 which the best of us will have occasion to look back to what little 
 good we may have done on this side the grave. In that awful 
 
KETRIBUTIYE JUSTICE. 231 
 
 trial — oil ! may your verdict tliis day assure your hopes, and give 
 you strength and consolation, in tlie presence of an adjudging 
 God. Earnestly do I pray that the author of eternal justice may 
 record the innocent deed you shall have done, and give to you the 
 full benefit of your claims to an eternal reward, a requital in 
 mercy upon your souls." 
 
 The fate of O'Brien is almost a necessary sequel to tlie trial of 
 Finney. Mr. Curran, ^Yhom long observation in the exercise of 
 his profession had familiarized to every gradation of atrocity, 
 declared at the time, that, much as he had seen of crime, he had 
 never met with such intense, unmitigated villany, as the conduct 
 and countenance of this ruffian manifested ; and he did not hesi- 
 tate to predict, that some act of guilt "would shorten his career. 
 Two years after, O'Brien was tried for murder,* and by a kind of 
 retributive justice, the two counsel who had rescued Finney were 
 appointed to conduct the prosecution. 
 
 Mr. Curran's speech in O'Brien's case is not distinguished by 
 much eloquence ; but it possesses one quality, infinitely more 
 honourable to him than any display of talent could have been. It 
 is full of moderation, resembling as much the chai'ge of a judge 
 as the statement of a prosecutor, and contains no vindictive allu- 
 sion to the previous crimes of the prisoner. This the following 
 exti-act will show : 
 
 " The present trial is considered abroad as of some expectation. 
 I am very well aware that when a judicial inquiry becomes the 
 topic of public and general conversation, every conversation is in 
 itself a little trial of the fact. The voice of public fame, the 
 falsest witness that ever was sworn or unsworn, is always ready to 
 bear testimony to the prejudice of an individual. The mind be- 
 comes heated, and it can scarcely be expected, even in a jury-box, 
 
 * An assemblage of persons of the louver orders having taken place in the suburbs of 
 Dublin, for the purpose of recreation, the officers of the police, accompanied by O'Brien, 
 proceeded to disperse them. The multitude fled, and in the pursuit one of them (named 
 Hoey) was murdered by O'Brien.— C. 
 
LIFE OF CUFwKAN. 
 
 to find it cool, and reflecting, and uninterested. There are t^vo 
 tribunals to which every man must be amenable ; the one a muni- 
 cipal tribunal, the other the great, and general, and despotic tri- 
 bunal of public reputation. If the jury have any reason to sup- 
 pose that any man who comes before them has been already tried 
 by public fame, and condemned, I beg to remind them of the 
 solemn duty that justice imposes on them ; to turn their eyes 
 away from the recollection that any sentence of that sort of con- 
 demnation has been pronounced by the voice of public reputation ; 
 and if they think that his character has sunk under such a sen- 
 tence, I remind the jury, that the infamy of such a condemnation 
 is enough without their taking it into their consideration. It is 
 the duty of the jury to leave the decrees of that court to be exe- 
 cuted by its own authority, for they have no right to pass sentence 
 of condemnation upon any man because that ill-judging court 
 may have passed sentence on his character. They ought to 
 recollect, that the evidence given before that court was unsworn, 
 and therefore they are bound to consider the evidence before them 
 naked and simple, as if they had never heard the name of the 
 man they are to try, and the sentence of condemnation that pub- 
 lic fame had pronounced upon his character. There is but one 
 point of view in which public character ought to be taken ; that 
 is where there is doubt. In such a case general good character 
 ought to have great weight, and go towards the acquittal of the 
 accused ; but should it so happen that general bad character should 
 be thrown into the scale, it ought not to have one twentieth part 
 the weight that good character should have. 
 
 "The jury, I am satisfied, will deliberately and cautiously weigh 
 the evidence to be produced ; they must be perfectly satisfied in 
 their minds of the guilt of the prisoner. They must feel an irre- 
 sistible and coerciv^e force acting on them, from the weight of the 
 evidence, before, by their verdict, they pronounce that melancholy 
 sentence which would remove a murderer from the face of the 
 earth." 
 
JEM;>IY o'bRIEN. 233 
 
 O'Brien was convicted and executed. Tlie populace of most 
 countries are too disposed to regard tlie death of tlie greatest 
 criminals witli sympatliy and regret ; but so predominant were the 
 feelings of terror and detestation which O'Brien's character had 
 excited, that his execution was accompanied by shouts of the most 
 unusual and horrid exultation. 
 
 Before dismissing the subject of this wretched man, one obser- 
 vation should be made, of which the omission might seem to 
 imply a reproach upon the conduct of the prosecutors in Finney's 
 case. It may occur, that the information of such a person should 
 not have gained a moment's attention, still less have endangered 
 the lives of so many subjects. It is, therefore, only just to add, 
 that the real character of O'Brien was unknown to the officers 
 of the Crown, until it became developed in tlie progress of the 
 trial. The Attorney-General, who conducted that prosecution, was 
 the late Lord Kilwarden, a man the most reverse of sanguinary, 
 and who, in those violent times, was conspicuous for correcting 
 the sternness of his official duties by the tenderness "of his own 
 amiable nature. His expiring sentiments had been the maxim of 
 his life : " Let no man perish but by the just sentence of the law." 
 
234 LIFE OF CUKRAN. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 Rebellion of 179S — Its causes — Unpopular system of Government — Influence of the 
 French Revolution — Increased intelligence in Ireland — Reform Societies — United Irish- 
 men — 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. 
 
 The order of tliis work has now brought us to the year 1*798 
 — the year '98 ! — a sound that is still so full of terrible associations 
 to every Irishman's imagination. During the agitated period 
 which followed the transactions of 1782, Ireland had seen the 
 newly-acquired spirit of her people, inflamed by disappointment, 
 by suffering, and by ignorance, discharging itself in bursts of indi- 
 vidual or local turbulence, Avhich were not much felt beyond the 
 particular persons, or the immediate spot. But the hour, of which 
 these were the prophetic signs, and of which so many warning 
 and unheeded voices foretold the approach, at length arrived, 
 bringing with it scenes of ci'vil stiife that struck dismay into 
 every fibre of the community, sending thousands to the grave, 
 thousands into exile, and involving many a virtuous and respected 
 family in calamity and shame. 
 
 In adverting to the events of this disastrous era, it would be an 
 easy task to recapitulate its horrors, or, according to the once 
 popular method, to rail at the memory of its victims ; but it is 
 time for invective and resentment to cease; or, if such a feeling 
 will irresistibly intrude, it is time at least to control and suppress 
 it. Fifty years have now passed over the heads or the graves 
 of the parties to that melancholy conflict, and their children ma} 
 now see prospects of prosperity opening upon their country, not 
 perhaps of the kind, or to the extent to which in her more ambi- 
 tious days she looked, but assuredly a more rational description 
 
CAUSES OF REBELLION. 235 
 
 than could have been attained by violence ; and such as, when 
 realized, as they promise soon to be, will compensate for past 
 reverses, or at all events console. At such a moment, in approach- 
 ing this fatal year, we may dismiss every sentiment of personal 
 asperity, or posthumous reproach ; without wishing to disturb the 
 remorse of those upon either side who may be repenting, or to 
 revive the anguish of the many that have suiiered, we may now 
 contemplate it as the period of an awful historical event; and 
 allude to the mutual passions and mistakes of those "who acted or 
 perished in it, with the forbearance that should not be refused to 
 the unfortunate and the dead. 
 
 It has been seen, in the preceding pages, that the system by 
 which Ireland was governed had excited general dissatisfaction, 
 and that, in the year 1789, several of the most able and distin- 
 guished persons in the Irish Parliament foi-med themselves into a 
 body, for the avowed design of opposing the measures of the 
 Administration, and of conferring upon their country, if their 
 exertions could enable them, all the practical benefits of a free 
 constitution. While they were scarcely yet engaged in this ardu- 
 ous struggle, the French Revolution burst upon the world — not, 
 as it has since been witnessed, presenting images of blood and 
 disorder, but coming as the messenger of harmony and freedom 
 to the afflicted nations. This character of peace and innocence 
 it did not long retain, or was not allowed to retain ; but, in the 
 progress of its resistless career, its crimes seemed for a while 
 almost justified by the grandeur of their results, and by the impos- 
 ing principles which they were committed to estabhsh. It soon 
 appeared how popular talent, combined wnth popular force, could 
 level all the old decrepit opinions against which they had confede- 
 rated, and Europe was fixed with mingled wonder and dismay 
 upon the awiid spectacle of a self-emancipated people seated upon 
 the throne, from which they had hurled the descendant of their 
 former idols as an hereditary usurper. 
 
 The effects of this great event, and of the doctrines by which 
 
236 LIFE OF CUKKAX. 
 
 it was defended, were immense. Every day some long-respected 
 maxim was tried and condemned, and a treatise sent forth to jus- 
 tify the decision. The passions were excited by addressing the 
 reason — by bold and naked appeals to the primitive and undeni- 
 able principles of human rights, without allowing for the number- 
 less accidents of human condition by wliicli those rights must 
 inevitably be modified and restrained. Philosophy no longer 
 remained to meditate in the shade ; she was now to be seen direct- 
 ing the movements of the camp, or marching at the head of tri- 
 umphal processions, or presiding at civic feasts and regenerating 
 clubs. In all this there was absurdity ; but there was enthusiasm. 
 The enthusiasm spread with contagious fury. Every nation of 
 Europe, every petty state became aniinated by a new-born vigour 
 and unaccustomed pretensions ; and, as if awaldng from a long 
 slumber, imagined that they had discovered in the old social bonds 
 the shackles that enslaved them. " The democratic principal in 
 Europe was getting on and on like a mist at the heels of the coun- 
 tryman, small at first and lowly, but soon ascending to the hills, 
 and overcasting the hemisphere.'"" This principle made its way 
 to England, where the better genius of the constitution prevailed 
 against its allurements : it passed on to Ireland, where it was 
 welcomed with open arms by a people who had been long since 
 ripe for every desperate experiment. 
 
 During the twenty years which preceded the French Revolution, 
 the progress of intelligence in Ireland had been unprecedented ; a 
 
 * Mr. Grattan's Letter to the Citizens of Dublin. 
 
 The readers of Milton will not fail to recognise this image, and to observe the use 
 which men of genius can make of their predecessors. 
 
 All in bright array 
 The cherubim descendtd — on the ground 
 Gliding meteorous, as evening mist 
 Risen from a river o'er the marish glides, 
 And gathers ground fast at the laborer's heels 
 Pfomeward returning. 
 
 Paradise Lost, Book xii. 
 
REVOLUTION. 237 
 
 circumstance Avliich is to be in part attributed to the general dif- 
 fusion of knowledge at the same period througliout tiie European 
 community, but still move to the extraordinaiy excitement which 
 her own domestic struggle had given to the Irish mind. In Ire- 
 land almost the whole of this accession of intellect was expended 
 upon pohtical inquiries, the most natural subjects of investigation 
 in a country whose actual condition was so lar belov\' her most 
 obvious claims ; and this peculiar attention to local politics seems 
 to have been the reason that her contributions to general science 
 and literature have not been commensurate with the genius and 
 increased acquirements of her people. It has already been shown 
 how much of this new energy was exerted npon the Parliament 
 for the reformation of the old penal system, v.hich it was evident 
 the nation had determined no longer to endure ; but the Parlia- 
 ment was inexorable ; and, by thus unnaturally opposing, instead 
 of conducting, and sometimes indulging, sometimes controlling 
 the public sentiment, left it at the mercy of all whose resentment 
 or ambition might induce them to take advantage of its exaspera- 
 tion. 
 
 Of such there were many in Ireland. There were several men 
 of speculative and enterprising minds, who, looking upon the 
 obstinate defence of abuses at home, and the facility with which 
 they had been banished from a neighbouring country, became 
 convinced that a Revolution would now be as attainable as a 
 Reform, and that there was a fund of strength and indignation in 
 the Irish people, which, if skilfully directed, would vanquish every 
 obstacle. There is no intention here of passing any unthinking 
 panegyric upon those who were thus meditating a conspiracy 
 against the State — upon the merits of such fatal appeals to chance 
 and violence, no friend to law and humanity can hesitate a moment 
 — but it is due to historical truth to state, that, in the present 
 instance, they were not a band of factious demagogues, of despe- 
 rate minds and ruined fortunes, who were looking to a Revolution 
 as a scene of confusion and depredation. In the formation of 
 
238 LIFE OF CUKPvAX. 
 
 such a confederacy there could, indeed, have been no scrupulous 
 selection of persons. Several, no doubt, entered into the associa- 
 tion from private motives ; some from ambition — some from 
 vanity — some from revenge ; but there Avere many whose mental 
 attainments, and personal virtues, and enthusiastic fidelity to the 
 cause they had espoused, extorted the admiration and sympathy 
 of those who were the least disposed to justify their conduct, or 
 deplore their fate. 
 
 As early as the year 1791 the future leaders of the projected 
 designs were taking measures for organizing the pubhc force, by 
 producing a general union of sentiment among the various classes 
 upon whose co-operation they were to depend. As yet neither 
 their plans nor objects were distinct and defined ; but without any 
 formal avowal of those objects to each other, and perhaps without 
 being fully apprized themselves of their own final determinations, 
 they took as eftectual advantage of every public accident as if the 
 •svhole had been previously digested and resolved. About this 
 period several of the friends to constitutional monarchy, among 
 whom appeared some of the most respected and exalted characters 
 in the country, united in forming political societies,^ for the purpose 
 of collecting together all the rational supporters of freedom, and, 
 by affording a legal and public channel of expression to the popu- 
 lar sentiment, of preventing the adoption of secret and more for- 
 midable combinations. Many of the persons, who were afterwards 
 the most active promoters of more violent j^roceedings, became mem- 
 bers of these societies, of which the avowed object was a simple 
 
 * The principal of tliese was the Whig Club, which was formed under the auspices of 
 the late Lord Charlemont. Tiie example was. soon followed by the establishment of 
 Bocieties of United Irishmen at Belfast and Dublin, and finally in every part of the king- 
 dom. It would be inconsistent»with the limits of this work to trace minutely the progress 
 of these societies ; but it should be observed, that several who were leading members of 
 the United Irishmen, when their designs had become revolutionary, were unconnected 
 with them at an earlier period. It is also necessary to remark, that, though many of 
 those who took an active part in their proceedings at every period of theii* existence 
 would originally have been satisfied with a reform, there were exceptions. See the fol- 
 lowing note. — C. 
 
UNTIED IP. IS 11 MEN. 239 
 
 redress of grievances — and with this there are reasons to believe 
 that the future leaders of the conspiracy would in the tirst instance 
 have been satisfied ; but soon perceiving the improbability of such 
 an event, while they continued, as members of the original and 
 legal associations, ostensibly to limit their views to a Constitutional 
 Reform, they were industriously establishing subordinate clubs* 
 throughout the country, to which, in order to allure adherents, and 
 to evade suspicion, they assigned the same popular denominations, 
 and the same tests ; but, by impressing on the minds of all who 
 were admitted (and all of every class were admitted) that no hope 
 of constitutional redress remained, they speedily formed them 
 into a widely extended confederacy, under the name of the 
 Irish Union, for revolutionizing Ireland, and establishing a 
 Republic. 
 
 This statement refers more immediately to the north of Ireland, 
 were a large portion of the inhabitants were Protestants or Dis- 
 senters, who, having no religious disabilities to exasperate them, 
 and being to a considerable degi-ee possessed of affluence and edu- 
 cation, must be supposed to have been determined to republican 
 principles upon purely speculative grounds. It should, however, 
 be observed, that simultaneously ^^^th their proceedings, and 
 
 * Entitled "Societies of United Irishmen." By the test of the more early of these 
 societies, the members pledged themselves " to persevere in endeavouring to form a 
 brotherhood of affection among Irishmen of every religious persuasion, and to obtain an 
 equal, full, and adequate representation of all the people of Ireland in the Co7nmona 
 Bouse of rarUameiU." In the year 1795 the latter words were struck out, in order to 
 accommodate the test to the revolutionary designs that began to be generally entertained. 
 Report of the Secret Coinmittee, 179S. It is a received opinion, that the celebrated 
 Thobald Wolfe Tone was the author of the Constitution of the later United Irishmen ; 
 but the writer of this work is informed that he himself denied this to be the fact. " He 
 assured me (adds my authority) that Captain Thomas Russell, to whom he was for many 
 years so warmly attached, was the person who drew up that remarkable paper, and that 
 he (Tone) was not a member of the close society of United Irishmen till the eve of his 
 embarking at Belfast for America, in the summer of 1795." It is, however, certain 
 that Mr. Tone, as far back as 1791, strongly recommended to the societies of United 
 Irishmen, then in their infancy, to attempt a Revolution, as appears from his letter 
 written in that year to the society at Belfast. — Report of the Secret Committee. 
 —(Appendix.)— C. 
 
240 LIFE OF CUKRAN. 
 
 without any connexion or communication with them, a most for- 
 midable league existed among the poorer Catholics of several 
 districts. These latter, assuming the name of Defenders,* had 
 originally associated to repel the local outrages of their Protestant 
 neighbours. The frequency and the length of the conflicts in 
 which they were involved, had forced them into a kind of barbar- 
 rous discipline and coherence ; and having now become confident 
 from their numbers, and from their familiarity with success or with 
 danger, they began to despise the laws, of which they had vainly 
 invoked the protection, and to entertain a vague idea that their 
 strength might be successfully employed for the improvement of 
 their condition. While their minds were in this state of confused 
 excitation, emissaries were despatched from the united societies to 
 explain to them their wrongs, and to propose the remedy. The 
 Defenders were easily persuaded by the eloquence of doctrines, 
 which only more skilfully expressed their previous sentiments; 
 and, laying aside their religious resentments and distinctive appella- 
 tion, adopted the more general views and title of United Irish- 
 men. 
 
 Before the year 1796, societies of United Irishmen prevailed in 
 every quarter of the kingdom. The great majority consisted of 
 the lowest classes, of whom all that had the inducements of degra- 
 dation, or of personal animosities, readily enlisted under a stan- 
 dard that was to lead them to freedom and revenge. In order to 
 secure an uniformity of action, and habits of subordination, a regu- 
 lar and connected system (comprising committees, baronial, county, 
 and prodncial ; and, finally, an executive) was established, and 
 periodical returns of members admitted, arms procured, money 
 contributed, and of every other proceeding, were made with all 
 the forms and order of civil state. 
 
 * The Defenders first appeared about the year 17S5: they increased rapidly, and 
 soon attained a considerable degree of organization. From their oath and rules, 
 •which are couched in the rudest language, it sufBciently appears that the Associatiou 
 must have been composed of the lowest order in the community.— 0. 
 
PREPAKATIONS FOB REVOLT. 241 
 
 Their numbers had soon become so great, that riothing but dis- 
 cipline seemed wanting to the accomplishment of their objects; 
 and when we consider the description of men of whom the mass 
 was composed, we cannot contemplate without surprise the spirit 
 of ardour and secrecy that they displayed, and the enthusiastic 
 patience with which they submitted to the irksomeness of delay, 
 and to the labours and dangers by which alone any degree of dis- 
 cipline could be acquired. In the neighbourhood of the capital 
 and the principal towns, where large bodies could not have assem- 
 bled without discovery, they separated into very small parties, 
 each of which appointed the most skilful to direct its manoeuvres. 
 The most active search was made for persons who had ever been 
 in the military profession, to whom every motive of reward, and 
 rank, and expected glory, were held out, and generally with suc- 
 cess, to allure them into the association. Under these they met, 
 night after night, to be instructed in the use of arms ; sometimes 
 in obscure cellars, hired for the purpose ; sometimes in houses, 
 where every inhabitant was in the secret ; it even sometimes 
 happened that in the metropolis these nocturnal exercises took 
 place in the habitations of the more opulent and ardent of the 
 conspirators. In the interior their evolutions were performed upon 
 a more extensive scale. There, every evening that the moon, the 
 signal of rendezvous, was to be seen in the heavens, the peasant, 
 without reposing from the toils of the day, stole forth with his rude 
 implement of war, to pass the night upon the nearest unfrequented 
 heath, with the thousands of their comrades, who were assembled 
 at that place and hour, as for the celebration of some unrighteous 
 mysteries. It was also a frequent custom at this time, among 
 the lower orders, to collect in large bodies, under the pretext 
 indulging in some of the national games of force ; but for the 
 secret purpose of inspiring mutual confidence, by the display of 
 their numbers, and their athletic forms, and of exercising in those 
 mimic contests the alertness and vigour which they were so soon 
 to employ in the real conflict. The general enthusiasm was kept 
 
 11 
 
242 LIFE OF C'CRHAK. 
 
 alive by the distribution of songs in praise of freedom, arranged 
 to popular native airs. Green, the old distinguishing colour of 
 the island, and in itself, from its connexion with the face and 
 restorative energies of nature, an excitant to the imaginations of 
 men, who conceived themselves engaged in a struggle for the 
 recovery of their natural rights, was adopted as their emblem. 
 Their passions for spirituous liquors, a propensity that seems in 
 some degree peculiar to those with w^hom it is the only luxury, and 
 to those who have exhausted every other, was restrained, by explain- 
 ing to them the embarrassment in Avhich the sudden non-con- 
 sumption of such a source of revenue would involve the Govern- 
 ment. And so intense was the ardour for the general cause, that 
 this inveterate indulgence was sacrificed to such a motive, and the 
 populace became for a while distinguished by habits of unaccus- 
 tomed, and it might be said, impassioned sobriety.^' 
 
 The leaders of the United Irishmen began now (1796) to look 
 with confidence to the success of their desio-ns ; but foreseeina: 
 that notwithstanding their strength and enthusiasm, the contest 
 with the regular forces of the Government might be sanguinary 
 and protracted, they were anxious to call in the aid of a disciplined 
 army, which, by directing the movements and restraining the 
 excesses of the insurgents, might enable them to decide the strug- 
 gle at a blow\ For such a reinforcement they turned their eyes 
 towards France. The documents produced upon Jackson's trial 
 had lately given them public intimation, that that country was 
 disposed to assist the Irish malcontents. The latter w^ere aware 
 that France could have no interest in promoting a constitutional 
 reform in Ireland, of which the obnous eftect would have been an 
 accession of strength to the British empire : they therefore applied 
 for a military aid to effect a separation fi'om England.f This 
 
 * Of the preceding facts, some are taken from the report of the secret committee, 
 and others are given upon the authority of individual information. — C. 
 
 t The United Irishmen despatched an agent to France for this purpose, about the mid- 
 dle of 1796. Mr. Tone was then at Paris, and exerted all his influence to the same effect. 
 
FJKAXCE AND THE KEBELS. 243 
 
 would evidently be an important object with the French Govern- 
 ment ; and it was the necessity of holding out such an inducement 
 that in some degree determined the Irish directory to the final 
 and extreme measure of a Revolution. The French authorities 
 accepted the proposal, 'and immediately prepared for the embar- 
 kation of an army, to co-operate with the Irish insurgents. But 
 the main dependence of the leaders of the conspiracy was upon 
 the Irish populace ; an agricultural population, full of vigour, 
 burning for the conflict, and long inured to habits of insurrection. 
 Of these, 500,000 were in arms. 
 
 If it should here be asked by any of the many subjects of the 
 same empire, who still continue strangers to the former condition 
 of Ireland, how so long and formidable a system of secret organiza- 
 tion could have been carried by her people for the violent design 
 of revolutionizing her country ? the answer is not difficult. It 
 
 lu the first memorial which Mr. Tone presented to the French directory in order to in- 
 duce them to send an expedition to Ireland, he stated that at that period more than two- 
 thirds of the sailors in the British Navy were Irish ; that he was present when the 
 Catholic delegates urged this to Lord Melville as one reason for granting emancipation, 
 and that his lordship had not denied the fact. This statement was understood to have 
 had great weight with the directory, who immediately committed the whole of the subject 
 to the consideration of Carnot (then one of the directory) and Generals Clark and 
 Hoche. The gentleman who has communicated the preceding circumstances has added 
 the following anecdote : Soon after an expedition to Ireland had been left to the decision 
 of Carnot, Clark, and Hoche, they named an evening to meet Tone at the palace of Lux- 
 embourg. Tone arrived at the appointed hour, eight o'clock. He was ushered into a 
 splendid apartment. Shortly after the director and the generals made their appearance : 
 they bowed coldly, but civilly, to Tone, and almost immediately retired, without apology 
 or explanation, through a door opposite to that by which they had entered. Tone was 
 a good deal struck by so unexpected a reception ; but his surprise increased, when ten 
 o'clock arrived, without the appearance of, or message of any kind from those on whom 
 all his hopes seemed to depend. The clock struck eleven, twelve, one— all was still in the 
 palace ; the steps of the sentinels, on their posts without, alone interrupted the dead 
 silence that prevailed within. Tone paced the room in considerable anxiety; not even 
 a servant had entered of whom to inquire his way out, or if the director and the generals 
 had retired. About two o'clock the folding doors were suddenly thrown open ; Carnot, 
 Clarke, and Hoche entered ; their countenances brightened, and the coldness and reserve 
 so observable at eight o'clock, had vanished. Clarke advanced quickly to Tone, and 
 taking him cordially by the hand, said, '■'■Citizen! I congratulate i/ou : we go to Ire- 
 land." — The others did the same; and having fixed the time to meet again, the persons 
 engaged in this remarkable transaction separated. — C. 
 
244 LIFE OF CUBE AX. 
 
 sprang from their degradation, and from the ignorance and 
 revenge that accompanied it. The Rebellion of 1*798 was a ser- 
 vile war. In Ireland her millions of peasantry were a mere collec- 
 tion of physical beings, to whom nature had amply dispensed every 
 human passion, but whom society had imparted no motives to 
 restrain them. The informing mind of a free constitution had 
 never reached them ; they never felt the trano[uillizing conscious- 
 ness that they were objects of respect. In Ireland the State was 
 not the '' great central heart," that distributed life and health, and 
 secured them in return. The old Irish government was a mechani- 
 cal, not a moral system ; it was, what it has been so often likened 
 to, a citadel in an enemy's country ; its first and its last expedient 
 was force ; it forgot that those whom no force can subdue, nor 
 dangers terrify, will kneel before an act of conciliation. But it 
 obstinately refused to conciliate, and the people at length, prepared 
 by the sufferings and indignities of centuries, listened with sanguine 
 or desperate credulity to the counsel which reminded them of their 
 strength, and directed them to employ it in one furious eftbrt, 
 which, whether it failed or prospered, could not embitter their 
 condition. 
 
 The spirit of the Government found a ready and fatal co-opera- 
 tion in the gentry of the land. Never was there a class of men 
 less amenable to the lessons of experience ; adversity, the great 
 instructor of the wise, brought to them all its afflictions without 
 their antidote. Every fierce, inveterate resentment of the race 
 lineally descended, with the title-deeds, from the father to the 
 child. Year after year the landlord's house was fired, his stock 
 was plundered, his rent unpaid, his land a waste, and each succeed- 
 ing year he was seen effecting his escape, through scences of tur- 
 bulence and danger, from his estate to the capital, to make his 
 periodical complaint of his sufterings, and to give the minister 
 another vote for their continuance. 
 
 The Irish landlord of the last century was the great inciter to 
 insurrection. With a nominal superiority of rank and education. 
 
LANDLORD AND PEASANT. 245 
 
 he was in every ferocious propensity upon a level with the 
 degraded dependants, whom he affected to contemn, and whose 
 passions he vainly laboured to control ; because he had never set 
 them the example by controlling his own. Finding his efforts 
 abortive, he next vindictively debased them ; and the consequence 
 was, that in a little time he shared the same fate with his victims. 
 The condition of Ireland during the eighteenth century affords a 
 striking and melancholy example of the certain retribution with 
 which a system of misrule will visit those who so mistake their 
 own interests as to give it their support. An inconsiderable order, 
 or a single sect, may (however unjustly) be degraded with impu- 
 nity ; but the degradation of the mass of a nation will inevitably 
 recoil upon its oppressors. The consequences may not always be 
 visible in formidable acts of force ; but there is a silent and unerr- 
 ing retaliation in the etlecis upon morals and manners, by which 
 the tyrant is made eventually to atone for his crimes. In every 
 condition of society the predominating sentiments and manners 
 will spread and assimilate. In highly polished states they may be 
 observed descending from the higher to the inferior ranks. The 
 courtesy and humanity of the old French peer were found to give 
 a tinge to the conversation of the mechanic. In uncivilized 
 countries the progress is the reverse ; the rudeness of the boor 
 will ascend and taint his master. The latter was the case in 
 Ireland ; the Irish peasant, in his intercourse with his superiors, 
 saw nothing of which the imitation could soften and improve him. 
 The gentry, although conscious that their religion, and the violent 
 means by which so many of them had acquired their properties, 
 excited the suspicion and aversion of those below them, resorted 
 to every infaUible method of confirming these hostile impressions. 
 Instead of endeavouring to eradicate them by mildness and pro- 
 tection, they insulted and oppressed. The dependant, unrestrained 
 by any motive of affection or respect, avenged himself by acts of 
 petty outrage. The outrage was resented and punished as an 
 original unprovoked aggression. Fresh revenge ensued, and hence 
 
24:6 LIFE OF CUERAN. 
 
 every district presented scenes of turbulent contention, in whicli 
 tlie haughty lord lost whatever dignity he had possessed, and 
 finally became infected with the barbarous passions and manners 
 of the vassals whom he had disdained to civilize, till he required 
 as much to be civilized himself. 
 
 The attachment of the Irish peasant to the government v/as 
 suspected ; but nothing could have been more unskilful than the 
 means adopted to secure his fidelity. The Irish aristocracy, v,ho 
 imagined that because they were loyal, they might proceed to 
 every violent extreme, were a band of political fanatics, and would 
 have made proselytes by the sword. They knew nothing of the 
 real nature of the allegiance which they were so zealous to estab- 
 lish, and which was never yet estabhshed by the sword. They 
 were not aware that the allegiance of a nation to the state is a 
 feeling compounded of a thousand others, half interest, half senti- 
 ment, of gratitude, of hope, of recollections, of the numberless 
 minute and " tender influences," that reconcile the subject to his 
 condition ; that it is seldom a direct and defined attachment to the 
 sovereign, but a collection of many subordinate attachments, of 
 which the sovereign has all the benefit ; that it is but the youngest 
 of the group of private virtues, and, like them, must be reared in 
 the bosom of domestic comfort ; that it is upon the moral alle- 
 giance of each rank to its immediate relations, of the servant to 
 his master, of the artisan to his employer, of the tenant to his 
 landlord, that must be founded the political allegiance of the 
 whole to the State. 
 
 Those mistaken loyalists supposed that they were teaching 
 allegiance by a haughty and vindictive enforcement of the laws 
 against its violation. They did not see that they were exacting 
 from tlie laws what no laws could perform ; that their positive 
 provisions must be always impotent, where their spirit is not pre- 
 viously infused into the subject by manners and institutions. In 
 Ireland these two Avere at perpetual variance. The Irish lawgiver 
 passed his statute, i^;etting forth, in pompous phraseology, its wis- 
 
INTOLERANCE. 24:7 
 
 dom and necessity, and denouncing tlie gibbet against the offender, 
 and then returned to his district, to defeat its efficacy, by giving a 
 practical continuance to the misery, the passions, the galling epi- 
 thets, and the long train of customary insults and local provocations 
 that were for ever instigating to crime. He did what was stranger 
 and more absurd than this — he had the folly to put the State in 
 competition with a power above it. He trampled upon the reli- 
 gion of the people'* — not reflecting that, though by the doctrines 
 of Christianity all injuries are to be forgiven, it had been the uni- 
 versal practice of its various sects, for successive centuries, to 
 except the offences committed against themselves. He pointed to 
 the peasant's chapel, and gloried in the reflection, that the disloyal 
 bell which had called their fathers to worship should never sound 
 upon the ears of their children — as if to approach his Maker with 
 a little show of decent pomp was not the harmless pride of every 
 man of every faith upon the surf^ice of the globe. He thought he 
 could drive them along the path of allegiance, where he had 
 placed their religion to stop the way; and was surprised that, 
 when the alternative was to be made, they should turn upon their 
 driver rather than advance in the face of what they dreaded more 
 than death. 
 
 The mass of the Irish people were tillers of the soil, and were 
 thus systematically debarred, by those who should have been their 
 patrons and instructors, from every motive to be tranquil. The 
 country gentleman, the great bulwark (if he performs his duties) 
 against extended projects of revolution, hated them and feared 
 them. He received them with sullen reserve when they brought 
 him his rent, and trembled at the vigorous hands that paid it ; but 
 there was no moral intercourse between them, no interchange of 
 
 * The first attacks upon the Irish Catholics originated in the English parliament; but 
 the Irish aristocracy gave the penal code their fullest support. Had the latter performed 
 their duty, and undeceived England upon the supposed necessity of continuing it, the fute 
 of Ireland would have been very different; but upon this subject England was abuced, 
 and is to this hour abused. — C. 
 
248 LIFE OF CURRAN. 
 
 sympatliy and endeaiing offices. The landlords, in constant alarm 
 for their property and safety, would not convert the depredator 
 into a protector. They opposed the tenant's education, which 
 would have taught him to employ his idle hours in acquiring a 
 love of order, instead of passing them in plans to recover in 
 plunder what he had paid in rent, and looked upon as tribute. 
 Erecting themselves into the little deities of their own district, 
 they would not let the tenant touch of knowledge, lest he should 
 " become as one of them." They drew between themselves and 
 their natural allies a proud line of separation, which effectually cut 
 off all communications of reciprocal affection, but proved a barrier 
 of air against irruptions of hatred and of force. In Ireland there 
 were none of those feudal pri\dleges which bring the persons and 
 feelings of the Scottish dependants into closer contact with those 
 of their superiors. The Irish peasant was never seen in the hall 
 of his lord. He was left in his hovel to brood over his degrada- 
 tion — to solace or inflame his fancy with legendary traditions of 
 his country's ancient glory, and with rude predictions of her com- 
 ing regeneration, and to hail, in every factious spirit, the Messiah 
 that was to redeem her. 
 
 These were the real causes of the avidity with which the Irish 
 populace entered into this formidable conspiracy. The government 
 was early apprised of its existence though not of its extent, and 
 took very vigorous but ineffectual means to suppress it. Session 
 after session it resorted to measures of terror or precaution, by 
 penal acts and prosecutions, to try their efficacy ; but, of the per- 
 sons thus proceeded against, the acquittal of many only served to 
 bring discredit upon the Administration, while the executions of 
 such as were convicted were regarded' by their party as so many 
 acts of hostile severity, that called, not for submission, but revenge. 
 The Ministers of the Crown conducted themselves, at this trying 
 crisis, with a zeal which could not be too much applauded, if it 
 were not so often carried to excess, and with the most undoubted 
 fidelity to the powers w^hom they served ; but throughout they com- 
 
MINISTERIAL FOLLY. 24:9 
 
 mitted one fatal error, which must for ever detract from their 
 characters as able statesmen. Because it was evident that a few 
 educated men were at the head of the popular combinations, they 
 adopted, and to the last persisted in the opinion, or at least in the 
 assertion, that the whole was essentially a conspiracy of a few 
 speculative adventurers, who had seduced the nation from its alle- 
 giance, and that all the power and wisdom of the State was to be 
 confined to the counteraction of the malignant design ; and to this 
 notion, notwithstanding its daily refutation, they adhered, with the 
 spirit I'ather of persons engaged in an acrimonious controversy, 
 than of ministers whose duty it was to save the country from the 
 horrors of a civil war.'" It was to no purpose that the sophistry 
 by which they defended it was exposed — it was in vain that they 
 were told, by men who knew the state of Ireland and the general 
 course of the human passions as well as they did, that their rea- 
 sonings w^ould never satisfy the disaffected — that the dissatisfaction 
 was not temporary or accidental, but radical — and that it was only 
 a waste of time and of life to resort to unpopular laws and frequent 
 executions, while the parent mischief remained untouched upon 
 the statute book. The Irish Ministry not only spurned those coun- 
 sels, which the event proved to have been prophetic, but, superadding 
 a farther error, they reviled the advisers with so little discretion, 
 that they gave the real conspirators official authority for believing 
 that the opposers of the Administration vv^ere secretly the advo- 
 cates of rebellion, and thus afforded them an additional incitement 
 to persevere in their designs.f 
 
 * Even after the suppression of the Rebellion, when the Government possessed the 
 fullest information regarding its origin and progress, the Viceroy, in his speech to the 
 Parliament, wa'3 made to saj% " the foulest and darkest conspiracy was formed and long 
 carried on by the implacable enemy of this realm, for the tctal extinction of tJie Constitu- 
 tion, etc." — Lord LieutenaiWs Speech, Octoler 6, 1798. 
 
 t A leading member of the minority in the Irish House of Commons was the late Mr. 
 George Ponsonby, a gentleman, who, if the purest constitutional views and personal dig- 
 nity of deportment could have saved from insults, would have escaped them ; but at this 
 period no dignity was a pi-otection. He, among others, impressed upon the Ministry that 
 Ireland could be preserved from the threatened crisis by no means but by a complete 
 
260 LIFE OF CUKSAN. 
 
 This glaring departure from the most obvious prudence has been 
 variously accounted for. By many it has been attributed to inca- 
 pacity. A more general opinion was, that the Government was 
 fomenting the conspiracy, in order that the excesses to which it 
 would lead might reconcile the nation to a Legislative Union : and, 
 however vulgar and improbable the latter supposition may appear, 
 it is still perhaps the only one that can satisfactorily explain the 
 apparent inconsistencies and infatuation of their councils. 
 
 The enemy of Great Britain had already made an abortive effort^' 
 
 reform of the Parliament, by Catholic emancipation, and by an equalization of commerce 
 between England and Ireland. The following was the answer of one of the servants of 
 the Crown (the solicitor-general) to Mr. Ponsonby's opinions : " What was it come to, that 
 in the Irish House of Commons they should listen to one of their own members degrading 
 the character of an Irish gentleman by language which was fitted but for hallooing a mob ? 
 Had he heard a man uttering out of those doors such language as that by which the hon- 
 ourable gentleman had violated the decorum of Parliament, he would have seized the 
 ruffian by the throat, and dragged him to the dust ! What were the house made of who 
 could listen in patience to such abominable sentiments ? — sentiments which, thank God, 
 were acknowledged by no class of men in this country, except the execrable and infamous 
 nest of traitors, who were known by the name of United Irishmen, who sat brooding in 
 Belfast over their discontents and treasons, and from whose publications he could trace, 
 word for word, every expression the honourable gentleman had used." — Irish Farl. Deb. 
 Feb. 1797. 
 
 George Ponsonby, one of the " Old Whigs," was a man of mediocre capacity, owing hi3 
 position mainly to the circumstance of his aristocratic connexions. His father had been 
 Speaker of the Irish House of Commons. His cousin was Earl of Bessborough ; his father- 
 in-law was the Earl of Lansborough. Born in 1755, he was called to the bar in 1780, and 
 speedily was made King's Counsel, and Counsel to the Revenue Commissioners. Quar- 
 relling with " the Castle," he was turned out of office, and became patriotic : 
 
 " Here and there some stern, high patriot stood, 
 Who could not get the place for which he cried." 
 
 In the Irish Parliament he was one of the Opposition leaders, and was made Lord Chan- 
 cellor of Ireland in 1S06. On the break up of the Fox ministry he lost his office, but was 
 solaced with a pension of £4000, which he duly drew, year after year, until his death in 
 July 1817. For some years after leaving Ireland, he was a Parliamentary leader of the 
 Opposition in England. — M. 
 
 * In December 1796 the French Fleet was dispersed by a storm. A part of it anchored 
 in Bantry Bay, where it remained for some days ; but the vessel, on board of which Gen. 
 Iloche (the commander of the expedition) was, not arriving, the French admu-al, without 
 attempting a landing, returned to France. It is well known that grievous complaints were 
 made in the English Parliament against the Ministry, for having left the coast of Ireland 
 
THE CROPriES. .261 
 
 to transport an armament to Ireland, the landing of which was to 
 have been the signal for the intended rising ; but the leaders of the 
 Irish Union, still depending upon the promised renewal of the 
 attempt, had been anxious to restrain the impatience of the people 
 until the foreign succours should arrive. Disappointed, however, 
 in their expectations from abroad, and apprehending from any fur- 
 ther delay, either the uncontrollable impetuosity or the desertion 
 of their followers, they resolved, in the early part of this year, 
 against their better judgment, to bring the matter to a final issue. 
 The 23d of May was fixed as the day for a general insurrection. 
 
 so unprotected on this occasion. In explanation of this apparent negligence, Theobold 
 Wolf Tone, who had been confidentially employed in the preparations for the French 
 expedition (he was himself on board one of the vessels that anchored in Uantry Bay) 
 related the following circumstances, as having come within his personal knowledge. 
 While this formidable armament, which had so long fixed the attention of Europe, was 
 fitting out at Brest, various conjectures prevailed as to its probable destination. The 
 general opinion was that the invasion of either Ireland or Portugal was intented. — There 
 was at this time (according to Mr. Tone's account) a secret agent of the British ministry 
 at Brest, who, having discovered that a particular printer of that town had General 
 Hoche's proclamations in his press, privately offered him a large sum for a single copy. 
 With this offer the printer made General Hoche acquainted, who immediately drew up a 
 proclamation, as addressed to the Portuguese by the commander of the French invading 
 army. A few copies of this were accordingly, by the General's desire, struck off, and 
 handed by the printer to the agent. The latter forwarded them to Mr. Pitt, whom the 
 receipt of such a document is said to have so completely deceived, that he directed the 
 British squadrons to make Portugal the peculiar object of their vigilance, and, in the first 
 instance, treated the report of an actual descent upon Ireland with derision. Although 
 the appearance of the French Fleet in Bantry Bay produced no movements of disaffection 
 in the vicinity, it was yet at this period, or very shortly after, that the organization of 
 the United Irishmen was most complete, and their prospect of success most promising. 
 In 1797 they felt assured, that, in the event of a general insurrection, the greater number 
 of the Irish militia regiments would have revolted. It is confidently asserted, that an 
 attack upon Dublin having been proposed in that year, every soldier who mounted guard 
 in that city on the night of the intended attempt was in their interests. The following 
 occurrence, however ludicrous, is a striking proof of the prevailing sentiment among the 
 native forces. At this time persons of democratic principles, in imitation of the French 
 revolutionists, wore their hair short behind ; from which custom Croppies and Rebels 
 became synonymous terms. A commander of yeomanry in Dublin, while reviewing his 
 corps, observed a false tail lying upon the parade. He held it up, and asked who had 
 dropped it. By an instantaneous movement, every man of the corps raised his hand to 
 the back of his head. This corps is said to have been, in consequence, disbanded on the 
 following day.— C. 
 
262 LIFE OF CUEKAN. 
 
 Of this intention the government having- received information 
 in the course of the preceding March, arrested several of the 
 principal leaders in the capital ; and, announcing by proclamation 
 the existence of the conspiracy, authorised the military powers to 
 employ the most summary methods of suppressing it. 
 
 This formal declaration of the impending crisis was followed by 
 the most extreme agitation of the public mind. Every ear was 
 catching, every tongue was faltering some tremendous confirma- 
 tion that the hour was at hand. As it approached, the fearful 
 tokens became too manifest to be mistaken. In the interior, the 
 peasantry were already in motion. Night after night large masses 
 of them were known to be proceeding by unfrequented paths to 
 some central points. Over whole tracts of country the cabins 
 were deserted, or contained only women and children, from whom 
 the inquirers could extort no tidings of the owners. In the towns, 
 to which, in the intervals of labour, the lower classes delighted to 
 flock, a frightful dimunition of numbers was observed ; while the 
 few that appeared there, betrayed, by the moody exultation of 
 their looks, that they w^ere not ignorant of the cause. Throughout 
 the capital, against which the first fury of the insurgents was to 
 be directed, and where, from its extent, there could never be a 
 certainty that the attack had not already begun, the consternation 
 was universal. The spectacle of awful preparation, that promised 
 security, gave no tranquillity. In the panic of the moment the 
 measures for security became so many images of danger. The 
 military array and bustle in some streets — the silence and desertion 
 of others — the names of the inhabitants registered on every 
 door — the suspension of j^ublic amusements, and almost of private 
 intercourse — the daily proclamations — prayers put up in the 
 churches for the general safety — families flying to England — part- 
 ings that might be eternal — every thing oppressed the imagination 
 with the conviction, that a great public convulsion w^as at hand. 
 The Parliament* and the courts of justice, wdth a laudable attach- 
 
 * On the 22d of May (the day before the ipsurreclion) the House of Commons voted an 
 
MAKTIAL LAW. 253 
 
 ment to the forms of the constitution, continued their sittings; 
 but the strange aspect of senators and advocates transacting civil 
 business in the garb of soldiers, reminded the spectator that the 
 final dependance of the state was upon a power beyond the laws. 
 In Dublin the domestics of the principal citizens had disappeared, 
 and gone off to join the insurgents ; while those, who could not be 
 seduced to accompany them, became the more suspected, from 
 this proof of their fidelity: they could have remained, it was 
 apprehended, for the sole purpose of being spies upon their mas- 
 ters, and co-operators in their intended destruction ; and thus, to 
 the real dangers of a general design against the government, were 
 added all the imaginary horrors of a project of individual ven- 
 geance. The vigorous precautions of the Administration, instead 
 of inspiring confidence, kept alive the public terror and suspense. 
 In every quarter of the kingdom the populace were sent in droves 
 to the prisons, till the prisons could contain no more. The vessels 
 in the several bays adjoining the scenes of disturbance were next 
 converted into gaols. The law was put aside : a non-commissioned 
 oflicer became the arbiter of life and death. The military were 
 dispersed through every house : military visits were paid to every 
 house in search of arms, or other evidence of treason. The dead 
 were intercepted on their passage to the grave, and their cofiins 
 examined, lest they might contain rebellious weapons. Many of 
 the conspirators were informally executed. Many persons who 
 were innocent w^ere arrested and abused. Many who might have 
 been innocent, were suspected, and summarily put to death. 
 
 Upon the appointed day the explosion took place. The shock 
 was dreadful. The imagination recoils from a detail of the scenes 
 that followed. Every excess that could have been apprehended 
 from a soldiery, whom General Abercrombie, in the language of 
 
 address to the Viceroy, expressing their fidelity and their reliance upon the vigilance and 
 vigour of his government. In order to render the proceeding more imposing, all tho 
 members of that house, with the Speaker at their head, walked through the streets, two 
 and two, and presented the address to his Excellency.— C. 
 
264: LIFE OF CURRAN. 
 
 manly reproof had der^lared to be in a state of iiccirtiousness that 
 rendered it formidable to all but the enemy; every act of furious 
 retaliation to be expected from a peasantry inflamed by revenge 
 and despair, and, in consequence of the loss of their leaders, 
 surrendered to the auspices of their own impetuous passions, dis- 
 tinguished and disgraced this fatal conflict.^' After a short and 
 sanguinary struggle, the insurgents were crushed. The numbers 
 of them who perished in the field, or on the scafibld, or were 
 exiled, are said to have amounted to 50,000 ; — the losses upon the 
 side of the crown have been computed at 20,000 lives ; — a solemn 
 and memorable fact : — 70,000 subjects sacrificed in a single year, 
 whose energies, had other maxims of government prevailed, might 
 have been devoted to what it is equally the interest of subjects 
 and governments to promote — the cause of rational freedom, the 
 possession of which can alone inspire a manly and enlightened 
 attachment to the laws and the state. 
 
 * The high state of passion and resentment which prevailed at this unfortunate period 
 may be collected from the single fact that in the House of Commons a member suggested 
 that military executions should have a retrospective operation, and that the state pri- 
 soners, who had been for several weeks in the hands of government, should be summarily 
 disposed of; but the secretary. Lord Castlereagh) with becoming dignity and humanity, 
 vehemently discountenanced so shocking a proposal. — C. [There is something ludicrous 
 in any one's gravely speaking of the " humanity " of Castlereagh ! — M.] 
 
TRIAL OF THE SHEARESES. 555 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 Trial of Henry and John Sheares. 
 
 As soon as the public safety was secured (it was long before tran- 
 quillity was restored) by the defeat of the insurgents, a general 
 amnesty was granted to all, except the actual leaders of the con- 
 spiracy, who should surrender their arms, and take the oath of 
 allegiance to the King. Several of the leaders were in the hands 
 of the Government, and it was now decided that the most conspi- 
 cuous of them should be brought to immediate trial, in order that 
 their fates should give a final blow to any still remaining hopes of 
 their adherents. 
 
 The first of the persons thus selected were two young gentle- 
 men, brothers, and members of the Irish bar, Henry and John 
 Sheares.* Their previous history contains nothing peculiar. They 
 Avere both of respectable and amiable characters. The elder of 
 them " had given many hostages to fortune ;" but with the ardour 
 incidental to their years, and to the times, they had been induced 
 to look beyond those sources of private happiness which they 
 appear to have abundantly enjoyed, and to engage in the political 
 speculations that were now to be expiated with their lives. When 
 the original members of the Irish executive were committed to 
 prison, in the month of March, the Sheareses were among those 
 who were chosen to supply their place, and they took a ^ery 
 active part in arranging the plan of the approaching insurrection. 
 
 * The Sheareses were arrested on the 21st of May, 1798, two days before the rising of the 
 people. They were two Cork gentlemen, "barristers by profession," says Davis, ^'both 
 men of liberal education, but of very unequal characters. Henry, the eldest, was mild, 
 changeful, weak: John was fiery and firm, and of much greater abilities."— M. 
 
256 LIFE OF CUKRAN. 
 
 Of all these proceedings tlie Govermnent obtained accurate infor- 
 mation tlirougli a Captain Armstrong, an officer of the Irish 
 militia, who had succeeded in insinuating himself into their con- 
 fidence, for the purpose of discovery.* They were accordingly 
 arrested two days previous to the explosion, and were now sum- 
 moned to abide their trial for high treason. 
 
 Mr. Currants defence of these unfortunate brothers was sup- 
 pressed at the period, and is generally supposed to have alto- 
 gether perished. A report of the trial has, however, been pre- 
 served, from which an account of the share that he bore in it 
 shall now be given .f 
 
 The prisoners were brought to the bar, and arraigned, on the 
 4th of July, 1798.;}; In this stage of the proceedings, a very inte- 
 resting and important discussion took place. Their counsel hav- 
 ing discovered that one of the grand jury, who had found the 
 bill of indictment, was a naturalized Frenchman,§ pleaded that 
 
 * Of Captain Armstrong, Davis says, " This frightful wretch had sought the acquaint- 
 ance of the Sheareses — made it—encouraged their prospects — assisted them with military- 
 hints — professed tender love for them — mixed with their family, and used to dandle Henry 
 Sheares's children. * * * He shared their hospitality — urged on their schemes — came 
 to condole with them in prison — and then assassinated them with his oath." John Warne- 
 ford Armstrong was Captain in the King's County Militia. He made the acquaintance 
 of the Sheareses to get them into his clutches, and dined with John the day before the 
 arrest. He had actually known them only ten days before that. Barrington says that 
 Henry Sheares " was a participator in the treason, and aided in procuring emissaries to 
 seduce the troops at Loughlinston. There CapUiin Armstrong became acquainted with the 
 two brothers — pledged to them his friendship — persuaded them he would seduce his regi- 
 ment — gained their implicit confidence — faithfully fulfilled the counter-plot — devised 
 several secret meetings — and worked up sufficient guilt to sacrifice the lives of both." — M. 
 
 t The father of the Sheareses, a Banker in Cork, had been a member of the Irish Par- 
 liament, and in that capacity had succeeded in carrying an act (5th George III.) by 
 which was conceded to prisoners the right to have counsel assigned them by the Court and 
 to have a copy of the indictment. Under this statute, Mr. Curran and Mr. McNally were 
 assigned as counsel to John Sheares, and Mr. Plunket for Henry Sheares. — M. 
 
 X The trial took place before Lord Carleton, Barons ^mith and George, and Justice 
 Daly.— M. 
 
 § It was McNally who filed the plea that John Decluzeau, one of the jurors who found 
 the bills, for High Treason, against the Sheareses and for others, was an alien, not naturali- 
 z&d. The Crown lawyers argued against this plea, and then, in reply, Curran spoke in 
 its support. — M. 
 
TRIAL OF THE SHEARSESES. 257 
 
 fact against its legality. The following are parts of Mr. Curran's 
 argument npon the occasion : "^ 
 
 " My lords ; the law of this country has declared, that in order 
 to the conviction of any man, not only of any charge of the 
 higher species of criminal offences, but of any criminal charge 
 whatsoever, he must be convicted upon the finding of two juries ; 
 first, of the grand jury, who determine upon the guilt in one point 
 of view ; and, secondly, by the corroborative finding of the petty 
 jury, who establish that guilt in a more direct manner ; and it is 
 the law of this country, that the jurors, who shall so find, whether 
 upon the grand or upon the petty inquest, shall be probi et legales 
 homines omni exceptione majores. They must be open to no legal 
 objection of personal incompetence ; they must be capable of 
 having freehold property, and in order to have freehold property, 
 they must not be open to the objection of being born under the 
 jurisdiction of a foreign prince, or owing allegiance to any foreign 
 power. Because the law of this country, and indeed the law of 
 every country in Europe, has thought it an indispensable precau- 
 tion, to trust no man with the weight or influence which territo- 
 rial possession may give him contrary to that allegiance which 
 ought to flow from such possession of property in the country. 
 This observation is emphatically forcible in every branch of the 
 criminal law ; but in the law of treason, it has a degree of force 
 and cogency that fails in every inferior class of oftence ; because 
 the very point to be inquired into in treason is the nature of alle- 
 giance. The general nature of allegiance may be pretty clear to 
 every man. Every man, however unlearned he may be, can easily 
 acquire such a notion of allegiance, whether natural and born 
 with him, or whether it be temporary and contracted by emigra- 
 tion into another country ; he may acquire a vague, untechnical 
 
 * Different statutes of Charles II. Geo. I. and Geo. III. enact, that naturalized aliens, 
 performing certain specified conditions, "shall be deemed liege, free, and natural sub- 
 jects, to all intents and purposes;" with a proviso "that they shall not be enabled to 
 serve in Parliament, nor to be of his majesty's privy council, nor to hold any office of 
 trust, civil or military, in the kingdom.— C. 
 
258 LIFE OF CUKEAN. 
 
 idea of allegiance, for his immediate personal conduct. But I am 
 warranted in saying that the constitution does not suppose that 
 any foreigner has any direct idea of allegiance but what he owes 
 to his original prince. The constitution supposes, and takes for 
 granted, that no foreigner has such an idea of our peculiar and 
 precise allegiance, as qualifies him to act as a juror, where that is 
 the question, to be inquired into ; and I found myself upon this 
 known principle, that though the benignity of the English law 
 has, in many cases, where strangers are tried, given a jury, half 
 composed of foreigners and half natives, that benefit is denied to 
 any man accused of treason, for the reason I have stated ; because, 
 says Sir W. Blackstone, 'aliens are very improper judges of the 
 breach of allegiance.'* A foreigner is a most improper judge 
 of what the allegiance is which binds an English subject to his 
 constitution. And, therefore, upon that idea of utter incompe- 
 tency in a stranger, is every foreigner directly removed and repelled 
 from exercising a function that he is supposed utterly unable to 
 discharge. If one Frenchman shall be suffered to find a bill of 
 indictment between our Lord the King and his subjects, by a 
 parity of reasoning may twenty-three men of the same descent be 
 put into the box, with authority to find a bill of indictment. By 
 the same reason, that the court may communicate Avith one man 
 whose language they do not know, may they communicate with 
 twenty-three natives of twenty-three difterent countries and lan- 
 guages. How far do I mean to carry this ? Thus far : that every 
 statute, or means by which allegiance may be shaken of!', and any 
 kind of benefit or privilege conferred upon an emigrating foreigner, 
 is for ever to be considered by a court of justice with relation to 
 that natural incompetency to perform certain trusts, which is 
 taken for granted and established by the law of England. 
 
 " Therefore, my lord, my clients have pleaded, that the bill of 
 indictment to which they have been called upon to answer has 
 
 * 4 Bl, Com. 852.— C. 
 
EIGHTS OF ALIENS. 259 
 
 been found, among others, by a foreigner, born under a foreign 
 allegiance and incapable of exercising tlie right of a juror, upon 
 the grand or the petty inquest. The stat. of Charles II. recites 
 that the kingdom was wasted by the unfortunate troubles of that 
 time, and that trade had decreased for want of merchants. After 
 thus stating generally the grievances which had afflicted the trade 
 and population of the country, and the necessity of encouraging 
 emigration from abroad, it goes on and says, that strangers may 
 be induced to transport themselves and families to replenish the 
 country, if they may be made partakei-s of the advantages and 
 free exercise of their trades without interruption and disturbance. 
 The grievance was the scarcity of men; the remedy was the encour- 
 agement of foreigners to transport themselves, and the encourage- 
 ment given was such a degree of protection as was necessary to 
 the full exercise of their trades in the dealing, buying and selling 
 and enjoying the full extent .of personal secuiity. Therefore it 
 enacts, that all foreigners of the protestant religion, and all mer- 
 chants, &c. who shall, within the term of seven years, transport 
 themselves to this country shall be deemed and reputed natural- 
 born subjects, and 'may implead and be impleaded,' and 'prose- 
 cute and defend suits.' The intention was to give them protection 
 for the purposes for which they were encouraged to come here ; 
 and therefore the statute, instead of saying, generally, ' they shall 
 be subjects to all intents and purposes,' specifically enumerates the 
 privileges they shall enjoy. If the legislature intended to make 
 them ' subjects to all intents and purposes,' it had nothing more 
 to do than say so.'^" But not having meant any such thing, the 
 statute is confined to the enumeration of the mere hospitable 
 rights and privileges to be granted to such foreigners as come here 
 for special purposes. It states, ' he may implead, and he shall be 
 answered unto ;' that ' he may prosecute and defend suits.' Why 
 go on and tell a man, who is to all intents and purposes a natural- 
 
 * The statute does say this generally, in the first instance; but the subsequent enu- 
 meration of particuhir privileges supports the view that Mr. Curran took of it. — C. 
 
260 LIFE OF CURRAN. 
 
 born subject, that lie may implead and bring actions ? I say, it 
 is to all intents and purposes absurd and preposterous. If all 
 privileges be granted in the first instance, why mention particular 
 parts afterwards ? A man would be esteemed absurd, who by his 
 grant gave a thing under a general description, and afterwards 
 granted the particular parts. What would be thought of a man, 
 who gave another his horse, and then said to the grantee, ' I also 
 give you liberty to ride him when and where you please V AVhat 
 was the case here ? The government of Ireland said, ' we want 
 men of skill and industry; we invite you to come over; our inten- 
 tion is, that if you be protestants, you shall be protected ; but you 
 are not to be judges, or legislators, or kings; we make an act of 
 parliament, giving you protection and encouragement to follow 
 the trades, for your knowledge in which we invite you. You are 
 to exercise your trade as a natural- born subject. How ? ' With 
 full power to make a bargain and enforce it. We invest you with 
 the same power, and you shall have the same benefit, as if you 
 Avere appealing to your own natural forum of public justice. You 
 shall be here as a Frenchman in Paris, buying and selling the 
 commodities appertaining to your trade.' 
 
 " Look at another clause in the act of Parliament, which is said 
 to make a legislator of this man, or a juror, to pass upon the 
 life or death of a fellow-subject — no, not a fellow-subject, but a 
 stranger. It says, 'you may purchase an estate, and you may 
 enjoy it, without being a trustee for the crovv^n.' Why was that 
 necessary, if he were a subject to all intents and purposes ? But, 
 m}^ lords, a great question remains behind to be decided upon. I 
 know of no case upon it. I do not pretend to say that the indus- 
 try of other men may not have discovered a case. But I would 
 not be surprised if no such case could be found — if, since the his- 
 tory of the administration of justice, in all its foi-ms, in England, 
 a stranger had not been found intruding himself into its con- 
 cerns — if, through the entire history of our courts of justice, an 
 instance was not to be found of the folly of a stranger interfering 
 
AN alie:n grand juror. 261 
 
 upon so awful a subject as the bj'cacli of allegiance between a 
 subject and his king. ^ly lords, I beg leave upon this part to say 
 that it would be a most formidable thing, that a court of justice 
 would pronounce a determination big with danger, if they should 
 say that an alien may find a bill of indictment involving the 
 doctrine of allegiance. It is permitting him to intermeddle in a 
 business of which he cannot be supposed to have any knov^ledge. 
 Shall a subject of the Irish Crown be charged Avith a breach of 
 his allegiance upon the saying of a Geraian, an Italian, a French- 
 man, or a Spaniard ? Can any man suppose any thing more 
 monstrous or absurd, than that of a stranger being competent to 
 form an opinion upon the subject ? I would not form a supposi- 
 tion upon it. At a time w^hen the generals, the admirals, and the 
 captains of France, are endeavouring to pour their armies upon 
 us, shall we permit their petty detachments to attack us in judicial 
 hostility ? Shall we sit inactive, and see their skirmishes take off 
 our fellow-subjects by explosions in a jury-room ? 
 
 " When did this man come into this country ? Is the raft upon 
 which he floated now in court ? What has he said upon the back 
 of the bill ? What understanding had he of it ? If he can write 
 more than his own name, and had written ' ignoramus ' upon the 
 back of the indictment, he might have Avritten truly ; he might 
 say he knew nothing of the matter. He says he is naturalized. 
 ' I am glad of it ; you are welcome to Ireland, sir ; you shall have 
 all the privileges of a stranger, independent of the invitation by 
 which you came. If you sell, you shall recover the price of your 
 wares ; you shall enforce the contract. If you purchase an estate, 
 you shall transmit it to your children, if you have any ; if not, your 
 devisee shall have it. But you must know, that in this constitu- 
 tion there are laws binding upon the court as strongly as upon 
 you. The statute itself, Avhich confers the privileges you enjoy, 
 makes you incapable of discharging offices. W^hy ? Because 
 they go to the fundamentals of the constitution, and belong only 
 to those men who have an interest in that constitution transmitted 
 
262 LIFE OF CUKRAN. 
 
 to them from their ancestors.' Therefore, my lords, the foreigner 
 must be content ; he shall be kept apart from the judicial func- 
 tions ; — in the extensive words of the act of parliament, he shall 
 be kept from ' all places of trust whatsoever.' If the act had been 
 silent in that part, the court would, not^Yithstanding, be bound to 
 say tliat it did not confer the power of filling the high departments 
 of the state. The alien would still be incapable of sitting in either 
 house of parliament — he would be incapable of advising with the 
 king, or holding any place of constitutional trust whatever. 
 "What ? shall it be said there is no trust in the office of a grand 
 juror? I do not speak or think lightly of the sacred oflice con- 
 fided to your lordships, of administering justice between the crown 
 and subject, or between subject and subject ; — I do not compare 
 the ofiice of grand juror to that ; — but, in the name of God, v/ith 
 regard to the issues of life and death — with regard to the conse- 
 quences of imputed or established criminality — what difference is 
 there in the constitutional importance between the juror who 
 brings in a verdict, and the judge who pronounces upon that ver- 
 dict the sentence of the law ? Shall it be said that the former is 
 no place of trust? What is the place of trust meant by the 
 statute ? It is not merely ginng a thing to another, or depositing 
 it for safe custody ; it means constitutional trust, the trust of exe- 
 cuting given departments, in which the highest confidence must 
 be reposed in the man appointed to perform them. It means not 
 the trust of keeping a paltry chattel — it means the awful trust of 
 keeping the secrets of the state and of the king. Look at the 
 weight of the obligation imposed upon the juror — look at the 
 enormous extent of the danger, if he violate or disregard it. At 
 a time like the present, a time of war — what, is the trust to be 
 confided to the conscience of a Frenchman ? But I am speaking 
 for the lives of my clients ; and I do not choose even here to state 
 the terms of the trust, lest I might furnish as many hints of mis- 
 chief as I am anxious to furnish arguments of defence. But shall 
 a Frenchman at this moment be entrusted with those secrets upon 
 
ARGUMENTS AGAINST ALIENS. 263 
 
 which your sitting on the bench may eventually depend ? What 
 is the inquiry to be made ? Having been a pedlar in the country, 
 is he to have the selling of the country, if he be inclined to do so? 
 Is he to have confided to him the secrets of the state ? He may 
 remember to have had a jir8t allegiance, and that he was sworn to 
 it. He might find civilians to aid his perfidious logic, and to tell 
 him that a secret, communicated to him by the humanity of the 
 country which received him, might be disclosed to the older and 
 better natured allegiance sworn to a former povv^er ! He might 
 give up the perfidious use of his conscience to the integrity of the 
 older title. Shall the power of calling upon an Irishman to take 
 his trial before an Irish judge, before the country, be left to the 
 broken speech, the lingua franca of a stranger, coming among 
 you, and saying, ' I was naturalized by act of parliament, and I 
 cannot carry on my trade v/ithout dealing in the blood of your 
 citizens V He holds up your statute as his protection, and flings 
 it against your liberty, claiming the right of exercising a judicial 
 function, and feeling, at the same time, the honest love for an 
 older title to allegiance. It is a love which every man ought to 
 feel, and which every subject of this country would feel, if he left 
 his country to-morrow, and were to spend his last hour among the 
 Hottentots of Africa. I do trust in God there is not a man that 
 hears me, who does not feel that he would carry with him, to the 
 remotest part of the globe, the old ties which bound him to his 
 original friends, his country, and his king. I do, as the advocate 
 of my clients, of my country — as the advocate for you, my lords, 
 whose elevation prevents you from the possibility of being advo- 
 cates for yourselves — for your children I do stand up ; and rely 
 upon it, that this act of parliament has been confined to a limited 
 operation ; it was enacted for a limited purpose, and will not allow 
 this meddling stranger to pass upon the life, fame, or fortune of 
 the gentlemen at the bar — of me, their advocate — of you, their 
 judges — or of any man in the nation. It is an intrusion not to 
 be borne." 
 
2G4 LIFE OF CUKRAN. 
 
 Mr. Plunket followed Mr. Curran on the same side ; but, after a 
 long discussion, it was ruled by the court, that the office of grand 
 juror was not one of the offices of trust alluded to by the legis- 
 lature, and, consequently, that the person objected to was competent 
 to fill it. The prisoners were, therefore, in the language of the 
 law, " awarded to answer over." Their trial was, upon their own 
 application, in consequence of the absence of witnesses, postponed 
 till the 12th of July, when it came on for final decision before 
 Lord Carleton, Mr. Justice Croohshank, and Mr. Baron Smith.^' 
 
 Mr. Curran's speech upon this occasion,| which was considered 
 as the most moving that he had ever pronounced, was rendered 
 peculiarly aftecting, by the circumstances that accompanied its 
 delivery. Notwithstanding the length of many of the state trials 
 of this period, the courts seldom adjourned till the proceedings 
 were concluded, so that their sittings were not only protracted 
 to a late hour of the night, but it was not unusual for the return- 
 ing morning to find them still occupied with their melancholy 
 labours.^ 
 
 * The Attorney-General of that day, who stated the case for the Crown, was John 
 Toler, — afterwards known as Lord Norbury, " the hanging judge," who would jest with 
 the culprit as he sentenced him to the Gallows. — Alderman Alexander proved that he had 
 found in the open desk of Henry Sheares, in Bagjfot Street, a rough draft of a rebellious 
 proclamation to the People of Ireland, in the handwriting of John Sheares. Armstrong 
 was examined for tJi-e Crown by Saurin. — On the trial it was for Henry Sheares in 
 particular, that Curran spoke. Mr. Davis, who had seen the brief of prisoners' Coun- 
 sel, and knew that John Sheares had actually dictated the defence, states that they 
 admitted his part in the proceedings against the Government, and, in fact, indicated to 
 Counsel his desire to save his brother Henry even at the risk of his (John's) life. — M. 
 
 t This speech in its reported state, is by no means the most favourable specimen of 
 Mr. Curran's eloquence. Several passages in it are broken and unconnected, which may 
 be attributed either to the incorrectness of the reporter, or to the extreme exhaustion of 
 the speaker. If the defect arose from the latter cause, the solemnity of his delivery 
 atoned for it with his auditors; for nothing could exceed the effect which it pi-oduced 
 upon them. The suppression of this defence has been so often the subject of public 
 regret, that the whole of it, as it has been preserved, is given here. — C. [This is an 
 error. In Davis's edition of Curran's speeches, a fuller report is given.] M. 
 
 X George Ponsonby opened for Henry and Plunket for John Sheares. M'Nally pressed 
 some law points with little effect. Three witnesses were then examined to prove Captain 
 Armstrong an Atheist : two that he was an avowed Republican and rebel. Several wit- 
 nesses testified as to the character of the Sheareses. The trial had commenced at nine 
 
TRIAL OF THE SHEARESES. ' 265 
 
 It was midnight when Mr. Curran rose to address the jury; and 
 the feelings ^v\th. wliich he entered on the task cannot be perfectly 
 conceived, without adverting to the persons who were grouped 
 around him. At the bar stood his clients, connected with each 
 other by blood, with their advocate, and many more of the sur- 
 rounding audience, by profession, and with the presiding judge by 
 the ties of hereditary friendship/'^" Upon the bench he saw in 
 Lord Carleton one of his own oldest and most valued friends, with 
 whom he was now to intercede, if intercession could avail, for 
 those who had so many tender claims to his merciful considera- 
 tion ; while upon the jury appeared several whom Mr. Curran (and 
 probably his clients) had long known as acquaintances and com- 
 panions, and Avith more than one of whom he had lived, and was 
 still living, upon terms of the most confidential intimacy. When 
 to this collection of private relations, so unusual upon such an 
 occasion, are added the other attending public circumstances, it 
 is not surprising that the surviving spectators of this memorable 
 scene should speak of it as marked by indescribable solemnity. 
 The fate that impended over the unfortunate brothers — the per- 
 turbed state of Ireland — the religious influence of the hour — the 
 throng of visages in the galleries, some of them disfigured by 
 poverty, others betraying, by their impassioned expression, a 
 consciousness of participation in the offence for which the accused 
 
 in the morning. At midnight, after fifteen hours' sitting, in a crowded court, in midsum- 
 mer, Curran entreated the delay of a few hours " for repose, or rather for recollection." 
 If necessary, said he, "I will go on, if I sink." Lord Carleton, instead of adjourning 
 until the next morning, which he could have done, asked the Attorney-General's opinion. 
 Toler declined assenting to any adjournment, and said if the Sheareses' counsel did not 
 speak to the evidence, the Crown lawyer would waive their right to speak, and leave the 
 matter at once to the Court. Then, after a sitting of 16 hours, with only twenty minutes' 
 interval, Carleton decided on going on. And the trial actually proceeded eight hours 
 longer— making i\oeniy-four in all ! It was under such circumstances that Curran 
 made his speech for Henry Sheares, one of the greatest forensic efiforts ever made in 
 any Court of law. — M. 
 
 * Lord Carleton had been the intimate friend of the parents of the prisoners— (see the 
 conclusion of the trial :) — a report even prevailed that he had been the guardian of the 
 latter ; but this, it is presumed, was incorrect. — C. 
 
 12 
 
266 LIFE OF CUKKAN. 
 
 were about to suffer, and all of tliem rendered haggard and 
 spectral by tlie dim liglits that discovered tliem — the very presence 
 of those midnight lights so associated in Irish minds with images 
 of death — every thiug combined to inspire the beholders, who 
 were now enfeebled by exhaustion, with a superstitious awe, and 
 to make the objects, amidst which the advocate rose to perform 
 the last offices to his sinking clients,* appear not so much a reality 
 as the picture of a strained and disturbed imagination. 
 
 Mr. Curran.f — "My lord, before I address you or the jury, I 
 would wish to make one preliminary observation. It may be an 
 
 * Mr. Curran was nominally counsel foi* only one of the prisoners: he had originally 
 been the assigned counsel for both ; but before the trial commenced, at the request of 
 John Sheares, Mr. Ponsonby was assigned one of his counsel in the room of Mr. Curran, 
 in order to give the prisoners four counsel between them. The other two were Mr. Plun- 
 ket and Mr. M'Nally. But as the charge and evidence against both the prisoners were 
 the same, the counsel for one was virtually defending the other. — C. 
 
 t That the reader may more fully comprehend the topics of Mr Curran's speech for the 
 prisoners, the following summary of the leading articles of the evidence is inserted. The 
 principal witness for the crown, John Warnford Armstrong, of the King's County militia, 
 proved the overt-acts of high treason laid in the indictment. He swore that he was 
 introduced by Mr. Byrne, a bookseller of Dublin, to the prisoners, who, supposing him 
 (Armstrong) to be an United Irishman, freely communicated to him their treasonable 
 designs. He had subsequent interviews with them at their own homes, the subjects of 
 which he regularly reported to Colonel L'P^strange and Captain Clibboru of his own regi- 
 ment, to Mr. Cooke of the Castle, and to Lord Castlereagh. Doubts having been enter- 
 tained of the witness' belief in the existence of a Deity, a future state of rewards and 
 punishments, Mr. Curran, who cross-examined him, pressed him upon those points. Cap- 
 tain Armstrong swore that he had always professed that belief, and that he had never 
 derided the obligation of an oath. 
 
 He also swore that he had never said, " that if no other person could be found to cut 
 off the head of the King of England, that he (the witness) would do it ;" and that he had 
 never declared " that the works of Paine contained his creed." 
 
 To these latter articles of Armstrong's, evidence was opposed, that of T. Dought, Esq., 
 who swore that Armstrong, with whom he was very intimate, had frequently uttei-ed 
 atheistical opinions; and, with his usual calmness of manner, had spoken of the future 
 state of the soul of man as an " eternal sleep — annihilation — non-existence." 
 
 K. Bride, Esq., barrister at law, swore that he had heard Armstrong speak slightingly 
 of the obligation of an oath. 
 
 C. R. Shervington, Esq., (Lieutenant, 41st regiment, and uncle to Armstrong) swore 
 that Armstrong had said in his presence, that if there was not another executioner in 
 the kingdom for George the Third, he would be one, and pique himself upon it ; and that 
 upon another occasion Armsti'ong handed him Painc's Rights of Man, saying, *' Read this, 
 it is my creed." 
 
TlilAL OF THE SHEAKESES. 267 
 
 observation only — it may he a request. For myself I am indiifer- 
 ent ; but I feel I am now unequal to tlie duty — I am sinking under 
 the weight of it. We all know the character of the jury : the 
 interval of their separation must be short, if it should be deemed 
 necessary to separate them. I protest I have sunk under this trial. 
 If I must go on, the Court must bear with me ; — the jury may also 
 bear with me ; — I will go on until I sink ; — but, after a sitting of 
 sixteen hours with only twenty minutes' interval, in these times, I 
 should hope it would not be thought an obtrusive request, to hope 
 for a few hours' interval for repose, or rather for recollection." 
 
 Lord Carleton. — "What say you, Mr. Attorney-General?" 
 
 Mr. Attorney-General Toler. — " My lords, I feel such pubHc 
 inconvenience from adjourning cases of this kind, that I cannot 
 consent. The counsel for the prisoners cannot be more exhausted 
 than those for the prosecution. If they do not choose to speak to 
 the evidence, we shall give up our right to speak, and leave the 
 matter to the Court altogether. They have had two speeches 
 already ; and leaving them unreplied to is a great concession." 
 
 Lord Carleton. — " We would be glad to accommodate as much 
 as possible. I am as much exhausted as any other person ; but 
 we think it better to go on." 
 
 Mr. Curran. — " Gentlemen of the jury : it seems that much has 
 been conceded to us. God help us ! I do not know what has been 
 conceded to me — if so insignificant a person may have extorted 
 the remark. Perhaps it is a concession that I am allowed to rise 
 in such a state of mind and body, of collapse and deprivation, as 
 to feel but a little spark of indignation raised by the remark, that 
 much has been conceded to the counsel for the prisoners ; much 
 has been conceded to the prisoners ! Almighty and merciful God, 
 who lookest down upon us, what are the times to which we are 
 reserved, when Ave are told that much has been conceded to priso- 
 ners who are put upon their trial at a moment like this — of more 
 darkness and night of the human intellect than a darkness of the 
 natural period of twenty-four hours ; that public convenience can- 
 
268 LIFE OF CDRPvAN. 
 
 not spare a respite of a few hours to tliose who are accused for 
 their Uves ; and that much has been conceded to the advocate, 
 almost exhausted, in the poor remark which he has endeavoured 
 to make upon it ! 
 
 "My countrymen, I do pray you, by the awful duty which you 
 owe your country — by that sacred duty which you owe your cha- 
 racter (and I know how you feel it) I do obtest you, by the 
 Almighty God, to have mercy upon my client — to save him, not 
 from the consequences of his guilt, but from the baseness of his 
 accusers, and the pressure of the treatment under which I am 
 sinking. With what spirit did you leave your habitations this 
 day ? In what state of mind and heart did you come here from 
 your family ? With what sentiments did you leave your children, 
 to do an act of great public importance ; to pledge yourselves at 
 the throne of Eternal Justice, by the awful and solemn obligation of 
 an oath, to do perfect, cool, impartial, and steady justice, between 
 the accuser and the accused ? ^ Have you come abroad under the 
 idea that public fury is clamorous for blood ; that you are put 
 there under the mere formality or ceremonial of death, and ought 
 to gratify that fury with the blood for which it seems to thirst ? 
 If you are, I have known some of you,* more than one, or two, 
 
 * One of the persons on the jury to whom the observation was particularly directed, 
 was Sir John Ferns, with whom Mr. Curran had been long connected by habits of private 
 friendship, and in whose society he had passed many of his happiest hours of convivial 
 relaxation. 
 
 The following little impromptu shows, in a striking point of contrast, the diffei'ent styles 
 in which different occasions induced the writer to address the same individual: — 
 
 TO SIR JOHN FERNS. 
 
 WITH A BOTTLE OF CHAMPAIGXE. 
 
 This bottle I've raised from the dust. 
 Where for many a year it had lain, 
 In hope tliat one day with the just 
 It might rise and might sparkle again. 
 
 And now, my dear Sir John, I send 
 This type of good tidings to come, 
 That the grave-digger's empire must end, 
 And hi3 prisoners get loose from the tomb. 
 
 J. P. 0. 
 
TEIAL OF THE SHEARESES. 
 
 or three, in some of those situations, where the human heart speaks 
 its honest sentiments. I think I ought to know you well ; you 
 ouo-ht to know me ; and there are some of you who ought to lis- 
 ten to what so obscure an individual may say, not altogether 
 without some degree of personal confidence and respect. I will 
 not solicit your attention, by paying the greatest compliment 
 which man can pay to man ; but I hold you in regard as being 
 worthy of it ; I will speak such language as I would not stoop to 
 hold if I did not think you worthy of it. Gentlemen, I will not 
 be afraid of beginning with what some may think I should avoid, 
 the disastrous picture which you must have met upon your w^ay to 
 this court. A more artful advocate might endeavour to play with 
 you, in supposing you to possess a degree of pity and of feeling 
 beyond that of any other human being. But I, gentlemen, am 
 not afraid of beginning by warning you against those prejudices 
 which all must possess ; by speaking strongly against them ; by 
 striking upon the string, if not strong enough to snap it, I will 
 wake it into vibration. Unless you make an exertion beyond the 
 power almost of men to make, you are not fit to try this cause. 
 You may preside at such an execution as the witness would extol 
 himself for,"^ at the sentence flowing from a very short inquiry 
 into reason. But you are not fit to discharge the awful trust of 
 honest men coming into the box, indifterent as they stood 
 unsworm, to pronounce a verdict of death and infamy, or of exis- 
 tence and of honour. You have only the interval between this 
 
 * Captain Armstrong, the witness in this case, having been questioned by Mr. Currau 
 regarding the death of two countrymen, replied, " We were going up Blackmore Hill, 
 under Sir James Duff; there was a party of rebels there. We met three men with green 
 cockades : one we shot — another we hanged — and the third we flogged and made a guide 
 of." Thomas Drought, Esq., (one of the witnesses for the prisoners) gave in evidence a 
 conversation which he had held with Armstrong, respecting this transaction. " I asked 
 him, (said Mr. Dought) how he could possibly reconcile it to himself to deprive those 
 wretches of life, without even the form of a trial. He acknowledged that he did so. I 
 asked him whether he expected any punishment for it ; and though he did not expect it 
 from Government, yet that there was an all-powerful Being who would punish him. He 
 said, ' You knew my opinion long ago upon this subject.'" This was the execution to 
 which Mr. Curran above alluded — C. 
 
270 LIFE OF CUKEAN. 
 
 and pronouncing your verdict to reflect ; and the otlier interval, 
 when you are resigning up your last breath, between your ver- 
 dict and your grave, when you lament that you did not as you 
 ought. 
 
 " Do you think I want to flatter your passions ? I would scorn 
 myself for it. I want to address your reason ; to call upon your 
 conscience ; to remind you of your oaths, and the consequence of 
 that verdict, Avhich upon the law and the fact, you must give 
 between the accuser and the accused. Part of what I shall say 
 must of necessity be addressed to the Court, for it is a matter of 
 law. But upon this subject, every observation in point of law is 
 so inseparably blended with the fact, that I cannot pretend to say 
 that I can discharge your attention, gentlemen, even when I address 
 the Court. On the contrary I shall the more desire your atten- 
 tion, not so much that you may understand what I shall say, as 
 what the Court shall say. 
 
 " Gentlemen, this indictment is founded upon the statute 25 
 Ed. III. The statute itself begins with a melancholy observation 
 upon the proneness to deterioration, which has been found in all 
 countries, unfortunately, to take place in their criminal law, par- 
 ticularly in the law respecting High Treason. The statute begins 
 with reciting, that, in the uncertainty of adjudications, it became 
 diflScult to know what was treason, and what was not : and, to 
 remove further difliculty, it professes to declare all species of 
 ti'eason that should thereafter be so considered ; and, by thus regu- 
 lating the law, to secure the state and the constitution, and the 
 persons of those interested in the executive departments of the 
 government, from the common acts of violence that might be used 
 to their destruction. The three first clauses of the statute seem 
 to have gone a great way indeed upon the subject ; because the 
 object of the provisions was to protect the person ; and I beg of 
 you to understand what I mean by person — I mean the natural 
 person; I mean no figure of speech — not the monarch in the 
 abstract, but the natural man ; the first clause was made without 
 
TRIAL OF THE SIIEAKESES. 271 
 
 the smallest relation to tlie executive power, but solely to the 
 natural body and person. The words are, 'When a man doth 
 compass or imagine the death of the king, or of our lady his 
 queen, or their eldest son and heir, and thereof be of sufficient 
 proof attained of open deed by men of his condition, he shall be 
 a traitor.' This, I say, relates only to the natural person of the 
 king. The son and heir of the king is mentioned in the same 
 manner; but he has no power, and therefore a compassing his 
 death must mean the death of his natural person ; and so must it 
 be in the case of the king. To conceive the purpose of destroying 
 a common subject was once a felony of death ; and that was 
 expressed in the same language, compassing and imagining the 
 death of the subject. It was thought right to dismiss that severe 
 rigour of the law in the case of the subject ; but it was thought 
 right to continue it in the case of the king, in contradistinction to 
 all the subjects within the realm. 
 
 " The statute, after describing the persons, describes what shall 
 be evidence of that high and abominable guilt ; it must appear by 
 open deed — the intention of the guilty heart must be proved by 
 evidence of the open deed committed towards the accomplishment 
 of the design. Perhaps in the hurry of speaking — perhaps from 
 the mistakes of reporters ; sometimes from one, and sometimes 
 from the other, judges are too often made to say that such or such 
 an overt act is, if proved to have been committed, ground upon 
 which the jury must find the party guilty of the accusation. I 
 must deny the position, not only in the reason of the thing, but I 
 am fortified by the ablest writers upon the law of treason. In the 
 reason of the thing ; because the design entertained, and the act 
 done, are matters for the jury. AVhether a party compassed the 
 king's death or not, is matter for the jury ; and, therefore, if a cer- 
 tain fact be proved, it is nonsense to say that such a conclusion 
 must follow; because a conclusion of law would then be pro- 
 nounced by the jury, not by the court. I am warranted in this by 
 the writers cited by Mr. Justice Foster ; and therefore, gentlemen, 
 
272 LIFE OF CUKRAjq". 
 
 upon tlie first count in the indictment you are to decide a plain 
 raatter of fact : 1st, Whether the prisoner did compass and ima- 
 gine the death of the king ] or ^vhether there be any act proved, 
 or apparent means taken, which he resorted to for the perpetration 
 of that crime ? Upon this subject many observations have ah'eady 
 been made before me. I will take the liberty of making one : I 
 do not know whether it has been made before. Even in a case 
 where the overt act stated has of its own nature gone to the per- 
 son of the king, still it is left to the jury to decide whether it was 
 done M'ith the criminal purpose alleged or not ? In Russel's case 
 there was an overt act of the conspiracy to seize the guards ; 
 natural consequence threatened from an act of gross violence so 
 immediately approaching the king's person, might fairly be said to 
 affect his life ; but still it was left to the jury to decide whether 
 that was done for the purpose of compassing the king's death. I 
 mention this, because I think it a strong answer to those kinds of 
 expressions, which in bad times fall from the mouths of prosecu- 
 tors, neither law nor poetry, but sometimes half metaphysical. 
 Laws may be enacted in the spirit of sound policy, and supported 
 by superior reason ; but when only half considered, and their pro- 
 visions half enumerated, they become the plague of government, 
 and the grave of principle. It is that kind of refinement and cant 
 which overwhelmed the law of treason, and brought it to a meta- 
 physical death ; the laws are made to pass through a contorted 
 understanding, vibratory and confused ; and therefore, after a small 
 interval from the first enaction of any law in Great Britain, the 
 dreams of fancy get around, and the law is lost in the mass of 
 absurd comment. Hence it was, that the statute gave its awful 
 declarations to those glossarists, so that if any case should arise, 
 apparently within the statute, they were not to indulge themselves 
 in conjecture, but refer to the standard, and abide by the law as 
 marked out for them. Therefore, I say, that the issue for the jury 
 here is to decide, in the words of the statute, whether the priso- 
 ners " did compass the death of the king," and whether they can 
 
TRIAL OF THE SHE^yaESES. 273 
 
 say, upon their oaths, that there is any overt act proved in evi- 
 dence, manifesting an intention of injury to the natural person of 
 the king. 
 
 " I know that the semblance of authority may be used to contra- 
 dict me. If any man can reconcile himself to the miserable toil 
 of poring over the records of guilt, he will find them marked, not 
 in black, but in red, the blood of some unfortunate men, leaving 
 the marks of folly, barbarity, and tyranny. But I am glad that 
 men, who in some situations, appear not to have had the pulse of 
 honest compassion, have made sober reflections in the h-our of poli- 
 tical disgrace. Such has been the fate of Lord Coke ; who, in the 
 triumph and insolence of power, pursued a conduct, which, in the 
 hour of calm retreat he regretted in the language of sorrow and 
 disappointment. He then held a language which I willingly 
 repeat, ' that a conspiracy to levy war was no act of compassing 
 the murder of the king.' There he spoke the language of law and 
 good sense ; for a man shall not be charged with one crime, and 
 convicted of another. It is a narrow and a cruel policy to make 
 a conspiracy to levy war an act of compassing the king's death, 
 because it is a separate and distinct offence ; because it is calling 
 upon the honest affections of the heart, and creating those pathetical 
 effusions which confound all distinct principles of law, a grievance 
 not to be borne in a state where the laws ought to be certain. 
 
 " This reasoning is founded upon the momentary supposition 
 that the evidence is true, for you are to recollect the quarter from 
 whence it comes : there has been an attempt, by precipitate con- 
 fession, to transfer guilt to innocence, in order to escape the pun- 
 ishment of the law. Here, gentlemen, there is evidence of levying 
 war, which act, it is said, tends to the death of the king. That is 
 a constructive treason, calculated as a trap for the loyalty of a jury, 
 therefore you should set bounds to proceedings of that kind ; for 
 it is an abuse of the law to make one class of offence, sufliciently 
 punished already, evidence of another. Every court, and every 
 jury, should set themselves against crimes, when they come to 
 
274 LIFE OF CUKKAN. 
 
 determine upon distinct and specified guilt ; but they are not to 
 encourage a confusion of crimes by disregarding tlie distinction of 
 punishments, nor to shov/ the eifusion of their loyalty by an efiusion 
 of blood. 
 
 " I cannot but say, that when cases of this kind have been under 
 judgment in Westminster Hall, there was some kind of natural 
 reason to excuse this confusion in the reports — the propriety of 
 making the j^erson of the king secure : a war immediately adjoin- 
 ing the precincts of the palace — a riot in London — might endanger 
 the life of the king. But can the same law^ prevail in every part of 
 the British empire ? It maj^ be an overt act of compassing the 
 king's death to levy war in Great Britain ; but can it be so in 
 Jamaica, in the Bahama Islands, or in Corsica, when it was annexed 
 to the British empire ? Suppose at that time a man had been 
 indicted there for compassing the king's death, and the evidence 
 was that he intended to transfer the dominion of the island to the 
 Genoese or the French ; what would you say, if you were told 
 that was an act by which he intended to murder the king ? By 
 seizing Corsica he was to murder the king ! How can there be 
 any immediate attempt upon the king's life by such a proceeding? 
 It is not possible, and therefore no such consequence can be pro- 
 bably inferred ; and therefore I call upon you to listen to the court 
 with respect ; but I also call upon you to listen to common sense, 
 and to consider whether the conspiring to raise war in this coun- 
 try be an overt act of compassing the king's death in this country.'" 
 I will go further. If the statute of Edward HI. had been con- 
 ceived to make a conspiracy to levy war an over act of compassing 
 
 * This point was strongly urged by Mr. Ponsonby, counsel for John Sheares, and by Mr. 
 Curran's colleague, Mr. Plunket ; but the Court decided that it was untenable. The 
 Prime Serjeant observed upon it with more zeal than logical consistency : — " It was ^o?' 
 this day reserved to broach the alarming and monstrous position. I trust in God that 
 the authority of such opinions has not gone abroad ; and that the rebellion, which has 
 for some time ravaged the country, has not been matured by such a doctrine." Lord 
 Carleton, instead of countenancing so absurd an insinuation against the counsel, answered 
 their arguments in the language cf compliment and respect. — C. 
 
TRIAL OF THE SIIE^IKESES. 275 
 
 the king's death, it would be unnecessary to make it penal by any 
 subsequent statute ; and yet subsequent statutes were enacted for 
 that purpose, which I consider an unanswerable argument, that it 
 was not considered as coming within the purview of the clause 
 against compassing the king's death. Now, gentlemen, you will be 
 pleased to consider what was the evidence brought forward to 
 support the indictment. I do not think it necessary to exhaust 
 your attention by stating at large the evidence given by Captain 
 Armstrong. He gave an account which we shall have occasion to 
 examine with regard to its credibility. He stated his introduction, 
 first, to Mr. Henry Sheares, afterwards to his brother; and he 
 stated a conversation, which you do not forget, so strange has it 
 been! But, in the whole course of his evidence, so far from 
 making any observation, or saying a word of connexion with the 
 power at war with the king, he expressly said, that the insurrec- 
 tion, by whomsoever prepared, or by what infatuation encouraged, 
 was to be a home exertion, independent of any foreign interference, 
 whatever. And, therefore, I am warranted in saying, that such an 
 insurrection does not come within the first clause of the statute. 
 It cannot come within the second, of adhering to the king's ene- 
 mies, because that means his foreign enemies ; and here, so far 
 from any intercourse with them, they were totally disre- 
 garded. 
 
 " Adhering to the king's enemies means co-operating with them, 
 sending them provisions, or intelligence, or supplying them with 
 arms. But I venture to say, that there has not been any one case, 
 deciding that any act can be an adherence to a foreign enemy, 
 which was not calculated for the advantage of that enemy. In the 
 case of Jackson, Hensey, and Lord Preston, the parties had gone 
 as far as they could in giving assistance. So it was in Quigley's. 
 But, in addition to this, I must repeat, that it is utterly unneces- 
 sary that the law should be otherwise, for levying war is of 
 itself a crime; therefore it is unnecessary, by a strained con- 
 struction, to say, that levying war, or conspiring to levy war, 
 
276 IJFE OF CUEKAN. 
 
 should come witliin any other clause equally ^^enal, but not so 
 descriptive. 
 
 " But, gentlemen, suppose I am mistaken in both points of my 
 argument — suppose the prisoners (if the evidence were true) did 
 compass the king's death, and adhere to the king's enemies : what 
 are you to found your verdict upon ? Upon your oaths : what are 
 they to be founded upon ? Upon the oath of the witness : and 
 what is that founded upon ? — upon this, and this only — that he 
 does believe there is an eternal God, an intelligent supreme exist- 
 ence, capable of inflicting eternal punishment for offences, or con- 
 ferring eternal compensation upon man after he has passed the 
 boundary of the grave. But where the witness believes that he is 
 possessed of a perishing soul, and that there is nothing upon which 
 punishment or reward can be exerted, he proceeds, regardless of 
 the number of his offences, and undisturbed by the terrors of 
 exhausted ftmcy, which might save you from the fear that your 
 verdict is founded upon perjury. Suppose he imagines that the 
 body is actuated by some kind of animal machinery — I know 
 not in what language to describe his notions — suppose his 
 opinion of the beautiful system framed by the almighty hand to 
 be, that it is all folly and blindness compared to the manner in 
 which he considers himself to have been created — or his abomi- 
 nable heart conceives his ideas, or his tongue communicates his 
 notions ; — suppose him, I say, to think so — what is perjury to 
 him ? He needs no creed, if he thinks his miserable body can 
 take eternal refuge in the grave, and the last puff of his nostrils 
 can send his soul into annihilation ! He laughs at the idea of 
 eternal justice, and tells you, that the grave, into which he sinks 
 as a log, fonns an intrenchment against the throne of God and 
 the vengeance of exasperated justice ! 
 
 " Do you not feel, my fellow-countrymen, a sort of anticipated 
 consolation in reflecting upon the religion which gave us comfort 
 in our early days, enabled us. to sustain the stroke of affliction, and 
 endeared us to one another ; and, when we see our friends sinking 
 
CHAKACTER OF ARMSTRONG. 2^77 
 
 into the earth, fills us with the expectation that we rise again — 
 that we but sleep for a while to wake for ever. But what kind of 
 communion can you hold — what interchange expect — what confi- 
 dence place in that abject slave — that condemned, despaired-of 
 wretch, who acts under the idea that he is only the folly of a 
 moment — that he cannot step beyond the threshold of the grave 
 — that that, which is an object of terror to the best, and of hope 
 to the confiding, is to him contempt or despair ? 
 
 " Bear with me, my countrymen ; I feel my heart running away 
 with me — the worst men only can be cool. What is the law of 
 this country ? If the witness does not believe in God, or a future 
 state, you cannot swear him. What swear him upon ? Is it upon 
 the book or the leaf? You might as well swear hira by a bram- 
 ble or a coin. The ceremony of kissing is only the external 
 symbol by which man seals himself to the precept, and says, 
 ' May God so help me, as I swear the truth.' He is then attached 
 to the Divinity upon the condition of telling the truth ; and he 
 expects mercy from Heaven, as he performs his undertaking 
 But the infidel ! By what can you catch liis soul ? or by what 
 can you hold it ? You repulse him from giving evidence ; for he 
 has no conscience — no hope to cheer him — no punishment to 
 dread ! What is the evidence touching that unfortunate young 
 man ? What said his own relation, Mr. Shervington ? He had 
 talked to him freely — had known him long. What kind of cha- 
 racter did he give of him ? Paine was his creed and his philoso- 
 phy. He had drawn his maxims of politics from the vulgar and 
 furious anarchy broached by Mr. Paine. His ideas of religion 
 were adopted from the vulgar maxims of the same man — the 
 scandal of inquiry — the blasphemer of his God as of his king. 
 He bears testimony against himself, that he submitted to the 
 undertakino' of readino- both his abominable tracts — that abomin- 
 able abomination of all abominations, Paine's 'Age of Reason;' 
 who professes to teach mankind, by acknowledging that he did 
 not learn himself ! Why not swear the witness upon the vulgar 
 
278 LIFE OF CUEEAX. 
 
 maxims of tliat base fellow, that wretched outlaw and fugitive 
 from his country and his God ? Is it not lamentable to see a 
 man labouring under an incurable disease, and fond of his own 
 blotches ? ' Do you wish,' says he, ' to know my sentiments with 
 regard to politics? I have learned them from Paine! I do not 
 love a king ; and, if no other executioner could be found, I would 
 myself plunge a dagger into the heart of George III., because he 
 is a king. And because he is my king, I swear, by the sacred 
 missal of Paine, I would think it a meritorious thing to plunge a 
 dagger into his heart, or whom I had devoted a soul which Mr. 
 Paine says I have not to lend.' Is this the casual effusion of a 
 giddy young man, not considering the meaning of what he said ? 
 If it were said among a parcel of boarding-school misses, where 
 he might think he was giving a specimen of his courage, by nobly 
 denying religion, there might be some excuse. There is a latitude 
 assumed upon some such occasions. A little blasphemy and a 
 little obscenity passes for wit in some companies. But recollect 
 it was not to a little miss, whom he wished to astonish, that he 
 mentioned these sentiments, but to a kinsman, a man of that boil- 
 ing loyalty. I confess I did not approve of his conduct in the 
 abstract, talking of running a man through the body;* but I 
 admired the honest boldness of the soldier who expressed his 
 indignation in such warm language. If Mr. Sher\dngton swore 
 truly. Captain Armstrong must be a forsworn witness — it comes 
 to that simple point. You cannot put it upon other ground. T 
 put it to your good sense — I am not playing with your under- 
 standings — I am putting foot to foot, and credit to credit. One or 
 other of the two must be perjured : which of them is it ? If you 
 disbelieve Captain Armstrong, can you. find a verdict of blood 
 upon his evidence ? 
 
 * This alludes to a part of Mr. Shervington's testimony. " I met Captain Clibborn, 
 and told him I was sorry to find that John Armstrong was finding the secrets of men, in 
 order to discover them. He told me it was a diflferent thing— that the Sheareses wanted 
 to seduce him from his allegiance. 'Damn him!' said I, 'he should have run them 
 through the body.' " 
 
AN APPKOYEE. 279 
 
 " Gentlemen, I go further. I know your liorror of crimes — 
 your warmth of loyalty. They are among the reasons why I 
 respect and regard you. I ask you, then, will you reject such a 
 witness ? or would you dismiss the friend you regarded, or the 
 child you loved, upon the evidence of such a witness ? Suppose 
 him to tell his own story. ' I went to your friend or your child — 
 I addressed myself in the garb of friendship, in the smile of confi- 
 dence, in order to betray it. I traduced you — spoke all the evil I 
 could against you, to inflame him. I told him your father does 
 not love you.' If he went to you, and told you this — that he 
 inflamed your child, and abused you to your friend, and said, ' I 
 come now to increase it, by the horror of superadded cruelty,' 
 would you dismiss from your love or affection the child or the 
 friend you loved for years ? You would not prejudge them. You 
 would examine the consistency of the man's story ; you would 
 listen to it with doubt, and receive it with hesitation. 
 
 "Says Captain Armstrong, Byrne was my bookseller ; from him 
 I bought my little study of blasphemy and obscenity, with which 
 I amused myself. — ' Shall I introduce Mr. Sheares to you V — not 
 saying which. AVhat was done then ? He thought it was not 
 right till he saw Captain Clibborn. Has he stated any reason why 
 he supposed Mr. Sheares had any wish at all to be introduced to 
 him? any reason for supposing that Byrne's principles were of 
 that kind ? or any reason why he imagined the intercourse was to 
 lead to any thing improper ? It is most material that he says he 
 never spoke to Byrne upon political subjects : therefore he knew 
 nothing of Byrne's principles, nor Byrne of his. But the propo- 
 sal was made ; and he was so alarmed, that he would not give an 
 answer until he saw his captain. Is not this incredible ? There 
 is one circumstance which made an impression upon my mind, that 
 he assumed the part of a public informer; and, in the first instance, 
 came to the field with pledgets and bandages. He was scarcely 
 off" the table when a witness came to his credit. It is the first 
 time that I saw a witness taking fright at his own credit, and 
 sending up a person to justify his own character. 
 
280 LIFE OF CURKAX. 
 
 " Considei" how he has fortified it. He told it all to Captain 
 Clibborn ! He saw him every evening, when he returned, like a 
 bee, with his thighs loaded with evidence. What is the defence ? 
 that the witness is unworthy of belief. My clients say their lives 
 are not to be touched by such a man: he is found to be an informer; 
 he marks the victim. You know the world too well, not to know 
 that every falsehood is reduced to a certain degree of malleability 
 by an alloy of truth. Such stories as these are not pure and simple 
 falsehoods. Look at your Oateses, your Bedloes, and Dugdales ! 
 I am disposed to believe, shocking as it* is, that this witness had 
 the heart, when he was surrounded by the little progeny of my 
 client ; when he was sitting in the mansion in which he was hos- 
 pitably entertained ; when he saw the old mother, supported by 
 the piety of her son, and the children basking in the parental 
 fondness of the father ; that he saw the scene, and smiled at it ; 
 contemplated the havoc he was to make, consigning them to the 
 storms of a miserable world, without having an anchorage in the 
 kindness of a father !* Can such horror exist, and not waken 
 the rooted vengeance of an eternal God ? But it cannot reach 
 this man beyond the grave ; therefore I uphold him here. I can 
 imagine it, gentlemen ; because when the mind becomes destitute 
 of the principles of morality and religion, all within the miserable 
 being is left a black and desolated waste, never cheered by the 
 rays of tenderness and humanity; when the belief of eternal 
 justice is gone from the soul of man, horror and execution may 
 set up their abode ; I can believe that the witness (with what view 
 I cannot say ; with what hope I cannot conjecture ; you may) did 
 meditate the consigning of these two men to death, their children 
 to beggary and reproach ; abusing the hospitality with which he 
 was received, that he might afterwards come here and crown his 
 
 * The writer of this is assured, by a gentleman now in Dublin, and who is free from 
 any political zeal which could induce him to invent or distort a fact, that, upon his 
 dining one day at the house of Henry Sheares, immediately before his arrest, he observed 
 Armstrong, who was one of the guests, taking his entertainer's little children upon 
 his knee, and, it was then thought, affectionately caressing them. — C. [Armstrong 
 strongly denied this accusation. "J— M. 
 
Armstrong's evidence. 281 
 
 work, having first obtained the little spark of truth, by which his 
 mass of falsehood was to be put into animation. 
 
 " I have talked of the inconsistency of the • story. Do you 
 believe it, gentlemen ? The case of my client is, that the witness 
 is perjured; and you are appealed to, in the name of that ever 
 living God whom you revere, but whom he despiseth, to consider 
 that there is something to save him from the baseness of such an 
 accuser. 
 
 " But I go back to the testimony. I may wander from it ; but 
 it is my duty to stay with it. Says he, ' Byrne makes an impor- 
 tant application : I was not accustomed to it ; I never spoke to 
 him ; and yet he, with whom I had no connexion, introduces me 
 to Sheares. This is a true brother.' You see, gentlemen, I state 
 this truly : he never talked to Byrne about politics ; how could 
 Byrne know his principles ? by inspiration I He was to know the 
 edition of the man as he knew the edition of books. ' You may 
 repose all confidence.' I ask not is this true ; but I say it can be 
 nothing else than fahe. I do not ask you to say it is doubtful ; it 
 is a case of blood ; of life or death. And you are to add to the 
 terrors of a painful death the desolation of a family, overwhelming 
 the aged with sorrow, and the young with infamy! Gentlemen, 
 I should disdain to trifle with you; I am pinning your minds down 
 to one point, to show you to demonstration that nothing can save 
 your minds from the evidence of such perjury; not because you 
 may think it false, but because it is impossible it can be true. I 
 put into the scales of justice that execrable perjury; and I put 
 into the other the life, the fame, the fortune, the children of my 
 client. Let not the balance tremble as you hold it: and, as 
 you hold it now, so may the balance of eternal justice be held 
 for you. 
 
 " But is it upon his inconsistency only I call upon you to reject 
 him ? I call in aid the evidence of his own kinsman, Mr. Sher- 
 vington, and Mr. Drought ; the evidence of Mr. Bride, and Mr. Gray- 
 don. Before you can believe Armstrong, you must believe that all 
 
282 LIFE OF CIJERAN. 
 
 tliese are perjured. What are his temptations to perjury ? the hope 
 of bribery and reward : — and he did go up with his sheets of paper 
 in his hand ; here is one : it speaks treason ; here is another : the 
 accused grows paler ; here is a third : it opens another vein. Had 
 Shervington any temptation of that kind ? No : let not the honest 
 and genuine soldier lose the credit of it. He has paid a great 
 compliment to the proud integrity of the King his master, when he 
 did venture, at a time like this, to give e\adence, ' I would not 
 have come for a hundred guineas!'^' I could not refuse the 
 effusion of my heart, and avoid exclaiming, 'May the blessings 
 of God pour upon you; and may you never want a hundred 
 guineas !' 
 
 " There is another circumstance. I think I saw it strike your 
 attention, my lords. It was the horrid tale of the three peasants 
 whom he met upon the road : they had no connexion with the 
 rebels. If they had, they were open to a summary proceeding. He 
 hangs up one, shoots a second, and administers torture to the body 
 of the third in order to make him give evidence. Why, my lords, 
 did you feel nothing stir within you ? Our adjudications have 
 condemned the application of torture for the extraction of evidence. 
 When a wild and furious assassin had made a deadly attempt upon 
 a life of much public consequence, it w^as proposed to put him to 
 the torture in order to discover his accomplices. I scarcely know 
 whether to admire most the awful and impressive lesson given by 
 Felton, or the doctrine stated by the judges of the land. ' No,' 
 said he, ' put me not to the torture ; for, in the extravagance of my 
 pain, I may be brought to accuse yourselves.' What say the 
 judges ? — ' It is not allowable, by the law and constitution of Eng- 
 land, to inflict torture upon any man, or to extract evidence under 
 the coercion of personal sufferings.' Apply that to this case ; if 
 
 * When Mr. Shervington was asked, upon his cross-examination by the counsel for the 
 Crown, " if he had not kindly come forward, upon hearing that Captain Armstrong was 
 to be a witness against the Sheareses," he answered, "No : I was summoned. I would 
 not have appeared for a hundred guineas.''— C. 
 
WEITTEN EVIDENCE. 283 
 
 the unfortunate man did himself dread the application of such an 
 engine for the extraction of evidence, let it be an excuse for his 
 degradation, that he sought to avoid the pain of body, by public 
 infamy. But there is another observation more applicable : says 
 Mr. Drought, 'Had you no feeling, or do you think you will escape 
 future vengeance V ' Oh ! sir, I thought you knew my ideas too 
 well to talk in that way. Merciful God ! do you think it is upon 
 the e\adence of such a man that you ought to consign a fellow 
 subject to death ? He who would hang up a miserable peasant to 
 gratify caprice, could laugh at remonstrance, and say, ' you know 
 my ideas of futurity.' If he thought so little of murdering a fellow 
 creature without trial, and without ceremony, what kind of com- 
 punction can he feel within himself when you are made the instru- 
 ments of his savage barbarity ? He kills a miserable wretch, 
 looking perhaps for bread for his children, and who falls unaccused 
 and uncondemned. What compunction can he feel at sacrificing 
 other victims, when he considers death as eternal sleep, and the 
 darkness of annihilation ? These victims are at this moment led 
 out to public execution ; he has marked them for the grave ; he 
 will not bewail the object of his own work ; they are passing 
 through the vale of death, while he is dozing over the expectancy 
 of mortal annihilation. 
 
 " Gentlemen, I am too weak to follow the line of observation I 
 had made ; but I trust I am warranted in saying, that if 3^ou weigh 
 the evidence, the balance will be in favour of the prisoners. 
 
 " But there is another topic or two to which I must solicit your 
 attention. If I had been stronger, in a common case I would not 
 have said so much ; weak as I am, here I must say more. It may 
 be said that the parol evidence may be put out of the case ; that, 
 attribute the conduct of Armstrong to folly, or passion, or whatever 
 else you please, you may safely repose upon the written evidence. 
 This calls for an observation or two. As to Mr. Henry Sheares, 
 that written evidence,* even if the hand-writing were fully proved, 
 
 * This wi'itten evidence was an address to the United Irishmen, in the hand-writing of 
 John Sheares.— C. 
 
284 LIFE OF CUKRAN. 
 
 does not apply to liim : I do cot say it was not admissible. The 
 writings of Sidney, found in his closet, were read ; justly according 
 to some ; but I do not wish to consider that now. But I say the 
 evidence of Mr. Dwyer has not satisfactorily established the hand- 
 writing of John. I do not say it is not proved to a certain extent, 
 but it is proved in the very slightest manner that you ever saw 
 paper proved ; it is barely evidence to go to you, and the witness 
 might be mistaken. An unpublished writing cannot be an overt 
 act of treason ; so it is laid down expressly by Hale and Foster. 
 A number of cases have occurred, and decisions have been pro- 
 nounced, asserting that writings are not overt acts, for want of 
 publication ; but if they plainly relate to an overt act proved, they 
 may be left to the jury for their consideration. But here it has no 
 reference to the overt act laid ; it could not have been intended 
 for publication until after the unfortunate event of revolution had 
 taken place, and therefore it could not be designed to create 
 insurrection. Gentlemen, I am not counsel for Mr. John Sheares, 
 but I would be guilty of cruelty if I did not make another obser- 
 vation. This might be an idle composition, or the translation of 
 idle absurdity from the papers of another country ; the manner in 
 which it was found leads me to think that the more probable. A 
 writing designed for such an event as charged would hardly be 
 left in a writing-box, unlocked, in a room near the hall door. The 
 manner of its finding also shows two things ; that Henry Sheares 
 knew nothing of it, for he had an opportunity of destroying it, as 
 Alderman Alexander said he had ; and further, that he could not 
 have imagined his brother had such a design ; and it is impossible, 
 if the paper had been designed for such purposes, that it would 
 not be communicated to him. 
 
 " There is a point to which I will beseech the attention of your 
 Lordships. I know your humanity, and it will not be applied 
 merely because I am exhausted or fatigued. You have only one 
 witness to any overt act of treason. There is no decision upon the 
 point in this country.* Jackson's case was the first : Lord Clon- 
 
 * This is not correct: it was the unanimous opinion of the three judges of the Court of 
 
EVIDENCE ON TREASON. 285 
 
 mel made an allusion to tlie point ; but a jury ouglit not to find 
 guilty upon the testimony of a single witness. It is the opinion of 
 Foster, that by the common law, one witness, if believed, was 
 sufficient. Lord Coke's opinion is that two were necessary. They 
 are great names ; no ]nan looks upon the works of Foster with 
 more veneration than myself, and I w^ould not compare him with 
 the depreciated credit of Coke; I would rather leave Lord Coke 
 to the character which Foster gives him ; that he was one of the 
 ablest lawyers, independent of some particulars, that ever existed 
 in England. In the wild extravagance, heat, and cruel reigns of 
 the Tudors, such doctrines of treason had gone abroad as drenched 
 the kingdom with blood. By the construction of crown lawyers 
 and the shameful complaisance of juries, many sacrifices had been 
 made, and therefore it was necessary to prune away these excesses 
 by the stat. of Edward VI., and therefore there is every reason to 
 imagine, from the history of the times, that Lord Coke was right in 
 saying, that not by new statute, bnt by the common law^, confirmed 
 and redeemed by declaratory acts, the trials were regulated. A 
 law of Philip and Mary was afterwards enacted ; some think it was 
 a repeal of the stat. of Edward VI., some think not. I mention 
 this diversity of opinions with this view, that in this country, upon 
 a new point of that kind, the weight of criminal prosecution will 
 turn the scale in favour of the prisoner ; and that the court will be 
 of opinion that the stat. 7 William III. did not enact any new 
 thing unknown to the common law, but redeemed it from abuse. 
 "What was the state of England ? The king had been declared to 
 have abdicated the throne : prosecutions, temporising juries, and 
 the arbitrary construction of judges, condemned to the scaffold 
 those w^ho were to protect the Crown ; men who knew, that, after 
 the destruction of the cottage, the palace was endangered. It was 
 not, then, the enaction of anything new ; it was founded in the 
 caution of the times, and derived from the maxims of the consti- 
 
 King's Bench, before whom Jackson was tried, that in Ireland two witnesses were not 
 necessary in cases of High Treason.— See Jaclison's Trial.— 0. [It is altered now.— M.] 
 
286 LIFE OF CUKRAN. 
 
 tution. I know tlie peevishness with which Burnet observed upon 
 that statute. He is reprehended in a modest manner by Foster. 
 But what says Blackstone, of great authority, of the clearest head 
 and the profoundest reading ? He differs from Montesquieu, the 
 French philosopher. 
 
 " ' In cases of treason there is the accused's oath of allegiance 
 to counterpoise the information of a single witness ; and that may, 
 perhaps, be one reason why the law requires a double testimony 
 to convict him : though the principal reason, undoubtedly, is to 
 secure the subject from being sacrificed to fictitious conspiracies, 
 which have been the engines of profligate and crafty politicians in 
 all ages.' ^ 
 
 " Gentlemen, I do not pretend to say that you are bound by an 
 English act of parliament. You may condemn upon the testimony 
 of a single witness. You, to be sure, are too proud to listen to the 
 wisdom of an English law. Illustrious independents ! You may 
 murder under the semblance of judicial forms, because you are 
 proud of your blessed independence ! You pronounce that to be 
 legally done which would be murder in England, because you are 
 proud ! You may imbrue your hands in blood, because you are 
 too proud to be bound by a foreign act of parliament : and when 
 you are to look for what is to save you from the abuse of arbitrary 
 power, you will not avail yourself of it, because it is a foreign act 
 of parliament ! Is that the independence of an Irish jury ? Do I 
 see the heart of any Englishman move when I say to him, ' Thou 
 servile Briton, you cannot condemn upon the peijury of a single 
 witness, because you are held in the tight waistcoat of the cogency 
 of an act of parliament? If power seeks to make victims by 
 judicial means, an act of parliament would save you from the 
 perjury of abominable malice. Talk not of proud slavery to law, 
 but lament that you are bound by the integrity and irresistible 
 strength of right reason ; and, at the next step, bewail that the all- 
 
 * 4 Blackstone's Commentaries, 858. 
 
TRIAL OF THE SHEAEESES. 287 
 
 powerful Author of nature has bound himself in the illustrious 
 servitude of his attributes, which prevent him thinking what is not 
 true, or doing- what is not just.' Go, then, and enjoy your inde- 
 pendence. At the other side of the water your verdict, upon the 
 testimony of a single witness, would be murder. But here you 
 can murder without reproach, because there is no act of parlia- 
 ment to bind you to the ties of social life, and save the accused 
 from the breath of a perjured informer. In England a jury could 
 not pronounce a conviction upon the testimony of the purest man, 
 if he stood alone ; and yet what comparison can that case bear 
 with a blighted and marred informer, where every word is proved 
 to be perjury, and every word turns back upon his soul ? 
 
 " I am reasoning for your country and your children, to the 
 hour of your dissolution : let me not reason in vain. I am not 
 playing the advocate : you know I am not. I put this case to the 
 bench : the stat. 7 W. 3 does not bind this country by its legisla- 
 tive cogency ; and will you declare positively, and without doubt, 
 that it is common law, or enacting a new one ? Will you say it 
 has no weight to influence the conduct of a jury from the author- 
 ity of a great and exalted nation ? the only nation in Europe where 
 Liberty has seated herself. Do not imagine that the man who 
 praises Liberty is singing an idle song : for a moment it may be 
 the song of a bird in his cage : I know it may. But you are now 
 standing upon an awful isthmus, a little neck of land, w^here 
 Liberty has found a seat. Look about you — look at the state of 
 the country — the tribunals that dire necessity has introduced. 
 Look at this dawn of law, admitting the functions of a jury. I 
 feel a comfort. Methinks I see the venerable forms of Holt and 
 Hale looking down upon us, attesting its countenance. Is it your 
 opinion that bloody verdicts are necessary — that blood enough 
 has not been shed — that the bonds of society are not to be drawn 
 close again, nor the scattered fragments of our strength bound 
 together to make them of force ; but that they are to be left in 
 that scattered state, in which every little child may break them to 
 
288 LIFE OF CUEEAN. 
 
 pieces ? You will do more towards tranquillizing the country by 
 a verdict of mercy. Guard yourselves against the sanguinary 
 excesses of prejudice or revenge ; and, though you think there is 
 a great call for public justice, let no unmerited victim fall. 
 
 " Gentlemen, I have tired you. I durst not relax. The danger 
 of my client is from the hectic of the moment, which you have 
 fortitude, I trust, to withstand. In that belief, I leave him to you ; 
 and, as you deal justice and mercy, so may you find it. And 1 
 hope that the happy compensation of an honest discharge of your 
 duty may not be deferred till a future existence — which this wit- 
 ness [Armstrong] does not expect — but that you may speedily 
 enjoy the benefits you will have conferred upon your country."* 
 
 It was between seven and eight o'clock, on the morning of the 
 13 th of July, when the jury retired to consider their verdict. 
 After the deliberation of a few minutes, they returned it, finding 
 both the prisoners guilty. As soon as the verdict was pronounced, 
 the unfortunate brothers clasped each other in their arms. They 
 w^ere brought up for judgment at three o'clock on the same day 
 upon which occasion, they both addressed the court. 
 
 Henry, who had a numerous family, was proceeding to request 
 a short respite ; but, when he came to mention his wife and chil- 
 dren, he was so overwhelmed with tears, that he found it impossi- 
 ble to go on. His brother spoke with more firmness, and at more 
 length. He began by strenuously disavowing the sanguinary 
 intentions that had been imputed to him in consequence of the 
 unpublished address to the insurgents which had been found in 
 his handwriting, and produced in evidence against him. "The 
 accusation," said he, " of which I speak, while I linger here yet a 
 few minutes, is ' that of holding out to the people of Ireland a 
 
 * The Prime-Sergeant replied for the Crown. Henry Shearea, who was then allowed to 
 say a few words, strongly denied all knowledge of the paper found in his desk, and asked 
 was it likely that, having the dearest sources of happiness around him, he should sacrifice 
 them and himself by leaving such a document in an open writing- box? Lord Carleton 
 chai-ged the jury, the two other judges concurring, and the verdict was returned after a 
 deliberation of seventeen minutes.— M. 
 
289 
 
 direction to give no quarter to the troops fighting for its defence.' 
 I cannot onl}^ acquit my soul of such an intention, but I declare, 
 in the presence of that God before whom I must shortly appear, 
 that the favourite doctrine of my heart was — that no human 
 being should siiffer death, hut where absolute necessity required itP 
 After having spoken for a considerable time to the same 
 eflect, he proceeded. " Now, my lords, 1 have no favour to ask 
 of the Court. My country has decided that I am guilty; and 
 the law says that I shall suffer. It sees that I am ready to 
 suffer. But, my lords, I have a favour to request of the Court 
 that does not relate to myself. I have a brother, whom I have 
 ever loved dearer than myself; — but it is not from any affec- 
 tion for him alone that I am induced to make the request; 
 he is a man, and therefore, I hope prepared to die, if he stood 
 as I do — though I do not stand unconnected ; but he stands more 
 dearly connected. In short, my lords, to spare your feelings 
 and my own, I do not pray that I should not die ; but that the 
 husband, the father, the brother, and the son, all comprised in one 
 person, holding these relations, dearer in life to him than any man 
 I know ; for such a man I do not pray a pardon, for that is not 
 in the power of the Court, but I pray a respite for such a time as 
 the Court, in its humanity and discretion, shall think proper. 
 You have heard, my lords, that his private affairs require arrange- 
 ment. I have a further room for asking it. If immediately both 
 of us be taken oft^, an aged and reverend mother, a dear sister, 
 and the most affectionate wife that ever lived, and six children 
 will be left without protection or provision of any kind. When I 
 address myself to your lordships, it is with the knowledge you will 
 have of all the sons of our aged mother being gone : two perished 
 in the service of the king, one very recently. I only request, that, 
 disposing of me with what swiftness either the public mind or 
 justice requires, a respite may be given to my brother, that the 
 family may acquire strength to bear it all. That is all I wish. I 
 shall remember it to my last breath ; and I will offer up my 
 
 13 
 
290 LIFE OF CURKAN. 
 
 prayers for you to that Being who has endued us all with sensi- 
 bility to feel. This is all I ask." 
 
 To this aflecting appeal, Lord Carleton replied : " In the awful 
 duty imposed on me, no man can be more sensibly affected than I 
 am, because I knew the very valuable and respectable father and 
 mother from whom you are both descended. I knew and revered 
 their virtues. One of them, happily for himself, is now no more : 
 the other, for whom I have the highest personal respect, probably, 
 by the events of this day, may be hastened into futurity. It does 
 not rest with us, after the conviction which has taken place, to 
 hold out mercy — that is for another place ; and I am afraid, in 
 the present situation ' of public affairs, it will be difficult to grant 
 even that indulgence which you, John Sheares, so pathetically 
 request for your brother. With respect to the object of your 
 soliciting time for your brother, unfortunately it could be of no 
 use ; because, by the attainder, he will forfeit all his property, real 
 and personal : nothing to be settled will remain." 
 
 His lordship then, after some preliminary observations, pro- 
 nounced sentence of death upon the prisoners ; and, at the prayer 
 of the attorney-general, directed that it should be executed on the 
 succeeding day.* 
 
 * A few hours before his execution, Henry Sheares wrote a letter to Mr. (afterwards Sir 
 Jonah) Barrington, a facsimile of which is to be found in the latter's " Historic Anecdotes 
 of the Legislative Union between Great Britain and Ireland." Barrington says : " Ther& 
 never was a more affecting picture of a feeling, agonized mind, at the approach of a 
 violent death, than is this facsimile. Had but three hours been granted for the unhappy 
 culprit's preparation for his fate, he would have been respited. Lord Clare was disposed 
 to act with great humanity towards this amiable, but misguided man, having discovei-ed 
 that he was utterly ignorant of the sanguinary proclamation, which was found in his secre- 
 taire — he had never seen it." In Henry Sheares' letter, he besought Barrington to fly to 
 the Lord Chancellor — " Ah, save a man whose fate will kill his family !" — to tell the Chan- 
 cellor that he would pray for him for ever, " and that the Governme^it shall ever find inc 
 tohat they wish " — that the inipers found in his oflSce he knew nothing of — that he had 
 been duped, misled, deceived — that he never was for violence — that his whole happiness 
 was centred in his family, "with them 1 will go to America, if the Government will allow 
 me ; or that I will stay here, and he the most zealous friend they have" and would be 
 under any conditions the Government might choose to impose on him, if they would but 
 restore him to his family. This letter is dated 8 o'clock, but did not reach Barrington 
 
JOHN SHEAKES'S FAREWELL. 291 
 
 The following is a copy of Mr. John Sheares' farewell letter to 
 his family. It is addressed to his sister, to whom he had been 
 most tenderly attached. It may not have much literary merit ; 
 " but nature is there, which is the greatest beauty." 
 
 " KiLMAiNHAM PRISON. — Wednesday night. 
 
 " The troublesome scene of life is nearly closed ; and the hand 
 that now traces these lines, in a short time will be no longer capa- 
 ble of communicating to a beloved family the sentiments of his 
 heart. 
 
 " It is now eleven o'clock, and I have only time to address my 
 beloved Julia in a short, eternal farewell. Thou sacred Power ! — 
 whatever be thy name and nature — who has created us the frail 
 and imperfect creatures that we are, hear the ardent prayer of one 
 now on the eve of a most awful change. If thy Divine Providence 
 can be affected by mortal supplication, hear and grant, I most 
 humbly beseech thee, the last wishes of a heart that has ever 
 adored thy greatness and thy goodness. Let peace and happiness 
 once more visit the bosom of my beloved family. Let a mild 
 grief succeed the miseries they have endured ; and, when an affec- 
 tionate tear is generously shed over the dust of him who caused 
 their misfortunes, let all their ensuing days glide on in union and 
 domestic harmony. Enlighten my beloved brother : to him and 
 his invaluable wife grant the undisturbed enjoyment of their 
 mutual love ; and, as they advance, let their attachment increase. 
 Let my Julia, ni}^ feeling, my too feeling Julia, experience that 
 
 until 11 o'clock of the morning after the trial. He hastened to Lord Clare, and showed 
 him the letter. It moved him ; and he exclaimed, naturally enough, " What a coward he 
 is !" He said it was impossible to save John Sheares, and the doubt was how the Viceroy 
 could draw the distinction between them. At last, anticipating that Henry would make 
 any disclosures to save his life, he desired Barrington to go to the prison, see Henry 
 Sheares, and put the question to him. " I lost no time," says Barrington, " but I found, 
 on my arrival, that orders had been given, that nobody should be admitted without a 
 written permission. 1 returned to the Castle— they were all in council. Cooke [the 
 Secretary] was not in his office— I was delayed. At length the Secretary returned— gave 
 me the order. I hastened to Newgate, and arrived at the very moment the executioner 
 was holding up the head of my friend, saying : ' Here U the head of a traitor /' "— M. 
 
292 LIFE OF CURRAN. 
 
 consolation which she has so often imparted to others ; let her soul 
 repose at length in the consummation of all the wishes of her 
 excellent heart ; let her taste that happiness her virtues have so 
 well merited. For my other sisters provide those comforts their 
 situation requires. To my mother — 0, Eternal Power ! what gift 
 shall I wish for this matchless parent ? Restore her to that peace 
 which I have unfortunately torn from her : let her forget me in 
 the ceaseless affections of my sisters, and in their prosperity ; let 
 her taste that happiness which is best suited to her affectionate 
 heart ; and, when at length she is called home, let her find, in 
 everlasting bliss, the due reAvard of a life of suffering virtue. 
 
 "Adieu, my dear Julia! My light is just out. The approach 
 of darkness is like that of death, since both alike require me to 
 say farewell ! farewell, for ever ! 0, my dear family, farewell ! — 
 Farewell, for ever ! 
 
 "J. S." 
 
 In the cemetery of the Church of St. Michan's, in Dublin, there 
 are vaults for the reception of the dead, of which the atmosphere 
 has the peculiar quality of protracting for many years the process 
 of animal decay. It is not unusual to see there the coffins crum- 
 bling away from around what they were intended for ever to con- 
 ceal, and thus giving up once more to human view their contents, 
 still pertinaciously resisting the influence of time. In this place 
 the unfortunate brothers were deposited ;* and in this state of 
 undesigned disinterment their remains may be seen to this day, 
 the heads dissevered from the trunks, and "the hand that once 
 traced those lines" not yet mouldered into dust.* 
 
 * They were hanged and beheaded in the front of Newgate. Davis says of John 
 Sheares : " He died (as did Henry, too, when he really came to his doom), placidly and 
 well." On the other hand, Harrington records that " They came hand in hand to the 
 scaffold : Henry died without firmness — the brother met his death with sufficient forti- 
 tude."— M. 
 
 t This reproach is out of date in 1855. In consequence of what Mr. W. H. Curran 
 stated on this subject, in these pages and elsewhere, the mortal remains of the Sheareses 
 were put out of public view, into substantial oak coffins. — M. 
 
203 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 Trials of M'Cann, Byrne, and Oliver Bond— Reynolds the informer— Lord Edward Fitz- 
 gerald— His attainder— Mr. Curran's conduct upon the State Trials— Lord Kilwarden's 
 friendship— Lines addressed by Mr. Currau to Lady Chai-lotte Rawdon— Theobald 
 Wolfe Tone — His trial and death. 
 
 The trial of the Sheareses was followed by that of John M'Cann 
 of the 17th of July, lV98, of WiUiam Michael Byrne on the 20th, 
 and Oliver Bond on the 23d of the same month. These were 
 among the persons who had been at the head of the United Irishmen 
 in the metropolis, and whom the Government, upon information 
 communicated by one of their associates, had arrested in the pre- 
 ceding March. Mr. Curran acted as leading counsel for them all ; 
 but his speeches in the two former cases having been entirely 
 suppressed,'^ the present account must be confined to his defence 
 of Bond. 
 
 [Oliver Bond was an eminent woollen-draper, residing in Bridge 
 Street, Dublin, and is described by Davis as "a shrewd, kind man." 
 He was indicted for hio-h treason, — that is for havino- administered 
 unlawful oaths, on the 20th of May, 1798, to Thomas Reynolds 
 and others, for conspiring to cause a rebellion to overthrow the 
 King's government, for collecting money to furnish arms and 
 ammunition for that purpose, for aiding and causing Reynolds to 
 be a rebel Colonel in the county of Kildare, and for aiding and 
 assisting the French to invade Ireland, &c. 
 
 The principal witness, Thomas Reynolds, of Kilkea Castle, 
 "swore hard" but many persons testified that he was not to be 
 believed upon his oath. In fact, he was steeped to the eyes in 
 
 * M'Cann and Byrne were convicted and executed. — C. 
 
294: LIFE OF CUERAN. 
 
 crime. He stole jewels, and silks from his mother, — swindled a 
 servant out of a bond of JBIVS, — and was accused, by bis own 
 brotlier-iu-law, under circumstances of the strongest suspicion, of 
 having poisoned his wife's mother, for the sake of robbing her of 
 i£300. His infamy, as will be seen by the extracts from his evi- 
 dence, was proven, out of his own lips.*] 
 
 This was considered by the bar as the most powerful of his 
 efforts upon the state trials of this year. Mi*. Curran has been 
 represented, by the detractors of his reputation, as surrounded, 
 during those trials, by an admiring populace, whose passions, 
 instead of endeavouring to control, he was rather anxious to exas- 
 perate, by presenting them with exaggerated pictures of the 
 calamities of the times. It is not true that his audiences were of 
 this description : one of the most honourable circumstances of his 
 life is the fact that they were of a far different kind. He was 
 encompassed, indeed, by men whose passions were sufficiently 
 inilamed, but they were passions which it required no ordinary 
 courage in the advocate to brave, and to despise. In his defence 
 of Bond he was repeatedly interrupted, not by bursts of applause, 
 but by violence and menace ; with what effect will appear in the 
 course of the following passages. 
 
 " Gentlemen, much pains has been taken to warm you, and then 
 you are intreated to be cool ; when the fire has been kindled, it 
 has been spoken to, and prayed to be extinguished. What is 
 that?"t [Here Mr. Curran was again interrupted by the tumult 
 of the auditors ; it was the third time that he had been obliged 
 
 * Pieynolds's family did not like to rest under the imputation of his having been an 
 informer and perjurer. His son, some years since, published an apology for his life. It 
 failed to clear him. Reynolds was rewarded with two consular appointments, and, for 
 some time was postmaster of Lisbon during the Peninsular war. In all he received 
 £45,000 for swearing men's lives awaj"-, and one of his family still receives the pension 
 settled on him, literally as the price of blood. — M. 
 
 t This question was occasioned by a clash of arms among the military that thronged 
 the court; some cf those who were nearest to the advocate appeared, from their looks 
 and gestures, about to offer him personal violence, upon which, fixing his eye sternly on 
 them, he exclaimed, " You m;iy assassinate, but you shall not intimidate me." — C. 
 
TRIALS OF m'cANN, BYRNE, AND BOND. 295 
 
 to sit down : on rising he continued,] " I have very little, scarcely 
 any hope of being able to discharge my duty to my unfortunate 
 client, — perhaps most unfortunate in having me for his advocate. 
 I know not whether to impute these inhuman interruptions to 
 mere accident ; but I greatly fear they have been excited by pre- 
 judice." 
 
 [The Court said they would punish any person who dared to 
 interrupt the counsel for the prisoner. " Pray, Mr. Curran, pro- 
 ceed on stating your case ; we will take care, with the blessing of 
 God, that you shall not be interrupted."] 
 
 " You have been cautioned, gentlemen, against prejudice. I also 
 urge the caution, and not with less sincerity : but what is the pre- 
 judice against which I would have you armed ? I will tell you : 
 it is that pre-occupation of mind that tries the accused before he 
 is judicially heard; that draws those conclusions from passion 
 ,vhich should be founded on proof, and that sutlers the temper of 
 'he mind to be dissolved and debased in the heat of the season. 
 It is not against the senseless clamour of the crowd, feeling impa- 
 tient that the idle discussion of facts delays the execution, that I 
 warn you. No : you are too proud, too humane, to hasten the 
 holiday of blood. It is not against any such disgraceful feelings 
 that I warn you. I wish to recall your recollections to your own 
 minds, to guard you against the prejudice of elevated and honest 
 understanding, against the prejudice of your virtues. 
 
 " It has been insinuated, and with artful applications to your 
 feelings of national independence, that I have advanced, on a 
 former occasion, the doctrine that you should be bound in your 
 decisions by an English act of parliament, the statute of William 
 III. Reject the unfounded accusation ; nor believe that I assail 
 yo'ur independence, because I instruct your judgment and excite 
 your justice. No : the statute of William III. does not bind you ; 
 but it instructs you upon a point which before was enveloped in 
 doubt. The morality and wisdom of Confucius, of Plato, of Socra- 
 tes, or of Tully, does not bind you, but it may elevate and illu- 
 
296 LITE OF CURRAN. 
 
 minate you ; and in tlie same way have British acts of parliament 
 reclaimed you from barbarism. By the statute of AVilliam III. 
 two witnesses are necessary, in cases of high treason, to a just and 
 equal trial between the Sovereign and the subject; and Sir William 
 Blackstone, one of the wisest and best authorities on the laws of 
 England, states two witnesses to be but a necessary defence of the 
 subject against the profligacy of ministers. In this opinion he 
 fortifies himself with that of Baron Montesquieu, who says, that, 
 where one witness is sufficient to decide between the subject and 
 the state, the consequences are fatal to liberty; and a people so 
 circumstanced cannot long maintain their independence. The 
 oath of allegiance, which every subject is supposed to have taken, 
 stands upon the part of the accused against the oath of his accuser; 
 and RO principle can be more wise or just than that a third oath 
 is necessary to turn the balance. Neither does this principle 
 merely apply to the evidence of a common and impeached informer, 
 such as you have heard this day, but to that of any one witness 
 however high and respectable his character." 
 
 The informer in question was Thomas Reynolds,* a name that 
 
 * Reynolds was a silk-mercer of Dublin, who had taken a very active part in the con- 
 spiracy. He was, in 1797, a colonel of the United Irishmen, afterwards treasurer and 
 representative of a county, and finally a delegate for the Province of Leinster. As the 
 time of the general insurrection approached, either remorse, or the hope of reward 
 induced him to apprise the Government of the danger. Having previously settled his 
 terms (500 guineas in hand, and personal indemnity) through Mr. Cope, a Dublin Mer- 
 cliant, he gave information of an intended meeting of the Leinster delegates at Mr. 
 Bond's house, upon which those persons, among whom were M'Cann and Byrne, were 
 arrested in the month of March. The evidence of Reynolds, when connected with the 
 papers that were seized, was so conclusive against the three who were tried, that no line 
 of defence remained but to impeach his testimony. The following extracts from Mr. 
 Curran's cross-examination of him will show the manner in which this was attempted. 
 
 THOMAS REYNOLDS CROSS-EXAMINED BV MR. CURRAN, 
 
 Q. You talked of yourself as a married man ; who was your wife ? 
 
 A. Her name was Witherington. 
 
 Q. Whose daughter ? 
 
 A. The daughter of Catherine and William Witherington, of Grafton-street. 
 
 Q. She has brothers and sisters ? 
 
 A. One sister and two brothers. 
 
THE INFOKMEK. 297 
 
 will be long- remembered in Ireland, and of which the celebrity has 
 been extended to England, by some late discussions of his charac- 
 ter in the British Parliament. This man had been the principal 
 
 Q. How long are j^ou married ? 
 
 A. I was married upon the 25th of March, 1794. 
 
 Q. You were young when your father died? 
 
 A. I was about sixteen years of age. 
 
 Q. I think your mother carried on the business after his death ? 
 
 A, She did. 
 
 Q. Do you recollect at that time whether, upon any occasion, you were charged, per- 
 haps erroneously, with having taken any of her money? 
 
 A. No, sir, I do not recollect having heard any such cliarge. 
 
 Q. You have sisters ? 
 
 A. I have, and had sisters. 
 
 Q. Some of them were living at the time of your father's death ? 
 
 A. All that are now living were : there were more but they died. 
 
 Q. Do you recollect having had any charge made of stealing trinkets or any thing 
 valuable belonging to those sisters ? 
 
 A. Never. I never was charged with taking any thing valuable belonging to any of my 
 sisters. 
 
 Q. Were you ever charged with having procured a skeleton key to open a lock belong- 
 ing to your mother? 
 
 A. I was, 
 
 Q. I do not ask you whether the charge were true or not ; but you say there was a charge 
 of that kind ? 
 
 A. I say I was told my mother said so. 
 
 Q. She did not believe it I suppose ? 
 
 A. She did not say anything she did not believe. 
 
 Q. And she said it ? 
 
 A. I heard so ; and I have no reason to doubt it. 
 
 Q. It was to open a drawer? 
 
 A. No : it was to open an iron chest. 
 
 Q. Where there were knives and forks kept ? 
 
 A. It is not usual to keep such things there. I believe papers were kept there. Mr. 
 Warren was my mother's partner : he kept her in ignorance, and did not supply her 
 with money. 
 
 Q. Do you not believe that your mother made this charge ? 
 
 A. I believe she thought it at the time. She was a woman of truth : though, at times 
 extremely passionate. I wish to say this : — You ask me whether I ever was accused of 
 stealing money, or other valuables or trinkets, from my sisters : I was not ; but I was 
 accused of stealing my mother's trinkets. I was then about sixteen years of age. 
 
 Q. During the partnership between Mr. Warren and your mother, do you recollect any 
 thing about a piece of lutstring? 
 
 A. I do perfectly M'ell. 
 
 Q. Was any charge made of stealing that? 
 
 13* 
 
298 LIFE OF CUKEAN. 
 
 witness for the Crown upon the trial of M'Cann and Byrne ; and 
 it is not improbable that a tenderness for his reputation had occa- 
 sioned the suppression of Mr. Curran's defences in those cases. 
 
 A. The very .same charge. I was charged with stealing the lutstring to give it to a 
 girl, and that I also took my mother's jewels for the same purpose. 
 
 Q. Then the charge consisted of two parts— the taking, and the manner in which they 
 were given away ? 
 
 A. If you will have it so. 
 
 Q. I am not asking you whether you committed any facts of this kind or not, but 
 whether the charges were made ? 
 
 A. I tell you the charges were made; and I took the things. 
 
 Q. Then you committed the theft ; and you were charged with the stealing? 
 
 A. Both of the facts were true. 
 
 Q. I did not ask you as to the skeleton key ? 
 
 A. That charge was untrue. 
 
 Q. It did not fit the lock? 
 
 A. I had no such key : the charge was unfounded : the others were true. 
 
 Q. How long is Mrs. Witherington, your mother-in-law, dead ? 
 
 A. Twelve months, last April. 
 
 Q. Where did she die ? 
 
 A. In Ash-street : a part of the house was my ofiice, and connected with the house. 
 
 Q. How long did she live there? 
 
 A. About ten months. 
 
 Q. Do you recollect what the good old lady died of? 
 
 A. I do not know ; but heard it was a mortification in her bowels ; she was complaining 
 badly for some 'days. 
 
 Q. Had there been any medicine brought to her ? 
 
 A. I recollect perfectly well, after she was ill, medicine was brought her. 
 
 Q. By whom? 
 
 A. By me. 
 
 Q. Are you a physician ? 
 
 A. No : but I will tell you. A Mr. Fitzgerald, a relation of our family, who had been 
 an apothecary, and quitted business, left me a box of medicines, containing castor oil, 
 cream of tartar, rhubarb, tartar emetic, and such things. I had been subject to a pain 
 in my stomach, for which he gave me a quantity of powders in small papers, which I 
 kept for use, and found great relief from : they saved my life. I asked Mrs. Reynolds for 
 one of these papers to give Mrs. Witherington, and it was given to her. 
 
 Q. It did not save her life? 
 
 A. 
 
 No, sir ; and I am sorry for it. 
 
 Q. 
 
 You paid her a sum 
 
 of money? 
 
 A. 
 
 I did. 
 
 
 Q. 
 
 How much ? 
 
 
 A. 
 
 £300. 
 
 
 Q. 
 
 How long before her death ? 
 
 A. 
 
 About a fortnight or 
 
 ■ three weeks 
 
 it in 
 
 my books. 
 
 
 I got her receipt, and made my clerk account for 
 
CHARACTEK OF RErNOLDS. 299 
 
 The following description of him by Mr. Curran, in Bond's case, 
 has been omitted in the common report : 
 
 " I know that Reynolds has laboured to establish a connection 
 between the prisoner and the meeting held at his house ; but how 
 does he manao-e ? he brings forward asserted conversations with 
 persons who cannot confront him — with M'Cann, whom he has 
 sent to the grave, and with Lord Edward Fitzgerald, whose prema- 
 ture death leaves his guilt a matter upon which justice dares not 
 to pronounce. He has never told you that he has spoken to any 
 of these in the presence of the prisoner. Are you then prepared, 
 in a case of life and death, of honor and of infamy, to credit a vile 
 informer, the perjurer of an hundred oaths — a wretch whom pride, 
 honour, or religion could not bind ? The forsaken prostitute of 
 every vice calls upon you, with one breath, to blast the memory 
 of the dead, and to blight the character of the living. Do you 
 think Reynolds to be a villain ? It is true he dresses like a gen- 
 tleman ; and the confident expression of his countenance, and the 
 tones of his voice, savour strong of growing authority. He 
 measures his value by the coffins of his victims ; and, in the field 
 of evidence, appreciates his feme as the Indian warrior does in 
 fight — by the number of scalps with which he can swell his tri- 
 umphs. He calls upon you, by the solemn league of eternal 
 justice, to accredit the purity of a conscience washed in his own 
 
 Q. Were you ever charged with stealing that money ? 
 
 A. I never heard that such a charge was made : none of the family ever spoke of it to 
 my face. 
 
 Q. Captain Witherington is the son of your mother-in-law ? 
 
 A. He is. 
 
 Q. Did he make that charge ? 
 
 A. Not to myself. I will mention a circumstance ; she had a bond, and gave it to Mr. 
 Jones to purchase a commission : he said the money could not be got ; and the £300 waa 
 asked to purchase the commission ; and I always thought that her son, Edward Wither- 
 ington got that money. She died suddenly, and had not made a will. 
 
 Q. She died suddenly ? 
 
 A. She died unexpectedly. 
 
 Q. She died in forty-eight hours after taking the powder, which you gave to cure her ? 
 
 A. She took the paper on Friday evening, and died on Sunday morning. 
 
300 LIFE OF CUKBAJSr. 
 
 atrocities. He has promised and betrayed — lie has sworn and 
 forsworn ; and, whether his soul shall go to heaven or to hell, he 
 seems altogether indifferent, for he tells you that he has estab- 
 lished an interest in both. He has told you that he has pledged 
 himself to treason and to allegiance, and that both oaths has he 
 contemned and broken."* At this time, Avhen reason is affrighted 
 from her seat, and giddy prejudice takes the reins — when the 
 wheels of society are set in conflagration by the rapidity of their 
 own motion — at such a time does he call upon a jury to credit a 
 testimony blasted by his own accusation. Vile, however, as this 
 execrable informer must feel himself, history, alas ! holds out too 
 much encouragement to his hopes ; for, however base, and however 
 perjured, I recollect few instances, in cases between the subject 
 and the crown, where informers have not cut keen and rode 
 
 * The following is the list of Reynolds' oaths : 
 
 Q. (By Mr. Curran). Can you just tott up the different oaths that you took upon either 
 side? 
 
 A. I will give the particulars. 
 
 Q. No, you may mention the gross. 
 
 A. No ; I will mention the particulars. I took an oath of secrecy in the county meet- 
 ing — an oath to my captains, as colonel. After this I took an oath, it has been said — I do 
 not deny it, nor do I say I took it, I was so alarmed ; but I would have taken one if 
 required — when the United Irishmen were designing to kill me, I took an oath before a 
 county member, that I had not betrayed the meeting at Bond's.* After this I took an 
 oath of allegiance. 
 
 Q. Had you ever taken an oath of allegiance before ? 
 
 A. After this I took an oath before the privy council. I took two, at different times, 
 upon giving information respecting these trials. I have taken three since, one upon each 
 of the trials ; and, before I took any of them, I had taken the oath of allegiance. 
 
 * Upon one occasion Reynolds saved himself from the vengeance of those whom he had betrayed, in'a way 
 that was more creditable to his presence of mind. Before he had yet publicly declared his infidelity to the cause 
 of the United Irishmen, as one of their leaders, Samuel Neilson, was passing at the hour of midnight through the 
 streets of Dublin, he suddenly encountered Reynolds, standing alone and unarmed. Neilson, who was an athletic 
 man, and armed, rushed upon him, and commanded him, upon pain of instant death, to be silent and to accom- 
 pany him. Rej-nolds obeyed, and suffered himself to be dragged along through several dark and narrow lanes, 
 till they arrived at an obscure and retired pass.ige in the liberties of Dublin. Here Neilson presented a pistol to 
 his prisoner's breast — "What," said the indignant conspirator, "should I do to the vQlain who could insinuate 
 himself into my confldenoe for the purpose of betraying me?"' Reynolds, in a firm tone, replied, "You should 
 shoot hini through the heart." Neilson was so struck by this reply, that, though his suspicious were not removed, 
 he changed his purpose, and putting up his pistpl, allo^ved the other to retire. This fact is given as related by 
 an eminent Irish barrister, to whom it was coinnmnJc»ted b^ ono pf the parties, — C. 
 
PEKOKATION. 301 
 
 awhile triumphant on public prejudice. I know of few instances 
 wherein the edge of his testimony has not been fatal, or only- 
 blunted by the extent of its execution, and retiring from the pub- 
 lic view beneath an heap of its own carnage." 
 
 Mr. Curran's parting words to the jury in this case have been 
 also omitted in the printed collection of.his speeches. 
 
 " You have been emphatically called upon to secure the state by 
 a condemnation of the prisoner. I am less interested in the con- 
 dition and political happiness of this country than you are, for 
 probably I shall be a shorter while in it. I have then the greater 
 claim on your attention and confidence, when I caution you against 
 the greatest and most fatal revolution — that of the sceptre, into the 
 hands of the informer. These are probably the last words I shall 
 ever speak to you ; but these last are directed to your salvation, 
 and that of your posterity, when they tell you that the reign of the 
 informer is the suppression of the law. My old friends, I tell you, 
 that, if you surrender yourselves to the mean and disgraceful 
 instrumentality of your own condemnation, you will mark your- 
 selves fit objects of martial law — you will give an attestation to 
 the British minister that you are fit for, and have no expectation 
 of any other, than martial law — and your liberties will be flown, 
 never, never to return ! Your country will be desolated, or only 
 become the gaol of the liWng ; until the informer, fatigued with 
 slaughter, and gorged with blood, shall slumber over the sceptre 
 of perjury. No pen shall be found to undertake the disgusting 
 office of your historian ; and some future age shall ask — what 
 became of Ireland ? Do you not see that the legal carnage which 
 takes place day after day has already depraved the feelings of 
 your wretched population, which seems impatient and clamorous 
 for the amusement of an execution. It remains with you — in your 
 determination it lies — whether that population shall be alone com- 
 posed of four species of men — the informer to accuse, the jury to 
 find guilty, the judge to condemn, and the prisoner to sufter. It 
 regardeth not me what impressions your verdict shall make on the 
 
302 LIFE OF CURE AN, 
 
 fate of this country ; but you it much regardeth. The observa- 
 tions I have offered, the warning I have held forth, I bequeath you 
 with all the solemnity of a dying bequest ; and oh ! may the 
 acquittal of your accused fellow-citizen, who takes refuge in your 
 verdict from the vampire who seeks to suck his blood, be a blessed 
 and happy promise of speedy peace, confidence, and security, to 
 this wretched, distracted, and self-devouring country !"* 
 
 The preceding trials were immediately followed by an act of 
 attainder against three of the conspirators who had previously 
 perished, and whose property and consideration pointed them out 
 as objects of this measure of posthumous severity. One of these 
 was Lord Edward Fitzgerald,! a young nobleman, whose high 
 connections and personal qualities excited the most lively sympathy 
 for his unfortunate end. He was one of the leaders against whom 
 Reynolds had given information ; and for some weeks had con- 
 trived, by disguising and secreting himself, to elude the pursuit of 
 the officers of justice. At length he was traced to an obscure 
 house in the metropolis, and apprehended. He made a desperate 
 resistance, and shortly after died in prison, from the wounds which 
 he had received in the struggle. His widow and infant children 
 petitioned against the bill of attainder, upon which occasion Mr. 
 Curran was heard as their counsel at the bar of the House of 
 Commons.]; 
 
 [Lord Camden, the Viceroy, was vainly appealed to by Lord 
 Edward's family, to take compassion on the widow and three 
 babes, the eldest not four years old, and protect their estate for 
 
 * Ml-. Bond was convicted, and sentenced to die : but, in consequence of a negociation 
 entered into between the government and the state prisoners, of which one of the articles 
 proposed by the latter was that his life should be spared, he was respited. He was shortly 
 after carried off by an attack of apoplexy. — C. [Thomas Davis, giving credence to a 
 charge made by Dr. Madden, in his " United Irishmen," says that there is much evidence 
 to show that Bond was murdered. I confess that I do not see the motive of such a 
 crime. — M.] 
 
 t The other two were Messrs. Cornelius Grogan, and Beauchamp Bagenal Harvey.— C. 
 
 t August 20th, 1793.— C. 
 
LOED EDWARD FITZGERALD. 303 
 
 them from violence and plunder. The Viceroy would not, or 
 could not, exercise humanity. On the 2'7th July, 1*798, Toler 
 (afterwards Lord Norbury) introduced a bill into the Irish House 
 of Commons, to attaint Lord Edward, and Messrs. Grogan and 
 Harvey. All eftbrts against this vicarious trial of dead and uncon- 
 victed men were fruitless. Arthur Moore (afterwards a judge), 
 Jonah Barrington, and Plunket spoke, as members of Parliament, 
 on the side of humanity. Reynolds, who had been implicitly 
 trusted by Lord Edward, established the case against him. Still, 
 it appeared (as it was) against law and justice to attaint an untried 
 man — every accused person being presumed innocent until con- 
 victed, on trial. Mr. Curran's appeal, though powerful, was 
 hopeless.] 
 
 His speech upon this question is imperfectly reported ; but even 
 had it been more correctly given, the leading topics would be 
 found of too abstract a nature to attract the general reader. It^ 
 still contains, like almost all his arguments upon the most techni- 
 cal subjects, passages of feeling and interest. At this period, he 
 could never refrain, no matter what the occasion might be, from 
 giving expression to the mingled sentiment of melanclioly and 
 indignation with which the scenes that were passing before him 
 had filled his mind. 
 
 " Upon the previous and important question, namely, the guilt 
 of Lord Edward (without the full proof of which, no punishment 
 can be just), I have been asked by the committee if I have any 
 defence to go into. I was confounded by the question, which I 
 could not answer ; but, upon a very little reflection, I see, in that 
 very confusion, the most conclusive proof of the injustice of the 
 bill ; for, what can be more flagrantly unjust than to inquire into 
 a fict, of the truth or falsehood of which no human being can 
 have knowledge, save the informer who comes forward to assert 
 it ? Sir, I now answer the question : / have no defensive evidence 
 — it is impossible that I should. I have often of late gone to the 
 dungeon of the captive^ but never have I gone to the grave of the 
 
304 LIFE OF CUEKAN. 
 
 dead to receive instructions for his defence — nor^ in truth, have I 
 ever before been at the trial of a dead man ;* I, therefore, offer uo 
 evidence U23on this inquiry, against the perilous example of which 
 I do protest, on behalf of the public, and against the cruelty and 
 injustice of which I do protest in the name of the dead father, 
 whose memory is sought to be dishonoured, and of his infant 
 orphans, v/hose bread is sought to be taken away." 
 
 The allusion in the following passage to the amiable character 
 of Lord Edward Fitzgerald, will lose much of its force to those 
 who have heard nothing of that unfortunate nobleman, except his 
 fate. His private excellencies were so conspicuous, that the officer 
 of the Crown [Toler], who moved for leave to bring in the bill of 
 attainder, could not refrain from bearing ample testimony to 
 them : " his political oflences he could not mention without grief; 
 and, were it consistent with the principles of public justice, he 
 would wish that the recording angel should let fall a tear, and 
 wash them out for ever." 
 
 " One topic more," said Mr. Curran, " you will permit me to 
 add.f Every act of this sort ought to have a practical morality 
 
 * Lord Brougham has more than once mentioned to me that, in the whole range of 
 forensic eloquence with which he was acquainted, he remembered nothing more pathetic 
 and touching than this passage which I have printed in Italics. The Bill of attainder 
 passed despite of many strenuous efforts to interest George III. in favour of the widow 
 and her orphans. Lord Edward's estate was then sold in Chancery, to satisfy a mortgage, 
 and bought for £10,500 by Mr. W. Ogilvie, Lord Edward's stepfather, who cleared the 
 property, and restored it to the widow. The poor woman (better known, perhaps, as 
 Pamela, the reputed daughter of Madame de Genlis and Egalit6), quitting Ireland, went 
 to live at Hamburg, where she married within two years of Lord Edward's death. The 
 union was disunion. She died, at Paris, poor and miserable, in 1S31. The British 
 Government promised to reverse the act of attainder, when the Irish " troubles " were 
 over, but this merciful act of justice was not accomplished until 1S19. The reader may 
 recollect Byron's graceful sonnet of thanks to George IV. (then Prince Regent), for this 
 act.— M. 
 
 t The gist and law of the case were thus put by Curran into a single sentence : " But 
 if lie died without attainder, a fair trial was impossible, because a fair defence was impos- 
 sible ; a direct punishment upon his person was impossible, because he could not feel it ; 
 and a confiscation of his estate was equally impossible, because it was then no longer his, 
 but was vested in his heir, to whom it belonged by a title as good as that by which it had 
 ever belonged to him in his lifetime, namely, the known law of the country."— M. 
 
THE STATE TEIAXS. 305 
 
 flowing from its principle. If loyalty and justice require that 
 these infants should be deprived of bread, must it not be a viola- 
 tion of that principle to give them food or shelter? Must not 
 every loyal and just man wish to see them (in the words of the 
 famous Golden Bull) always poor and necessitous, and for ever 
 accompanied by the infamy of their father ; languishing in con- 
 tinued indigence, and finding their punishment in living and their 
 relief in dying ; and if the widowed mother should carry the 
 orphan heir of her unfortunate husband to the gate of any man 
 who might feel himself touched by the sad vicissitudes of human 
 affairs — who might feel a compassionate reverence for the noble 
 blood that flowed in his veins, nobler than the loyalty that first 
 ennobled it ; that, like a rich stream, rose till it ran and hid its 
 fountain — if remembering the many noble qualities of his unfor- 
 tunate father, his heart melted over the calamities of the child ; 
 if his bosom swelled, if his eyes overflowed, if his too precipitate 
 hand was stretched out by his pity or his gratitude to the poor 
 excommunicated sufferers, how could he justify the rebel tear, or 
 the traitorous humanity ?" 
 
 Mr. Curran's conduct upon these memorable causes exposed his 
 character at the time to the foulest misrepresentation. The furious 
 and the timid considered it an act of loyalty to brand as little 
 better than a traitor the advocate who, in defending the accused, 
 ventured to demand those legal ]3rivileges, and that fair, impartial 
 hearing, to which, by the constitution of their country, they were 
 entitled. He often received, as he entered the Court, anonymous 
 letters threatening his life, if he should utter a syllable that might 
 bring discredit upon the public measures of the day. Even in the 
 House of Commons, he had, in the preceding year, to meet the 
 charge of having forfeited the character of a "good subject" by 
 his efforts for his cHents. " I am heavily censured," said he, " for 
 having acted for them in the late prosecutions. I feel no shame 
 at such a charge, except that of its being made at such a time as 
 
306 LIFE OF CUREAN. 
 
 this ; that to defend the people should be held out as an imputation 
 upon the King's counsel, when the people are prosecuted by the 
 state. I think every counsel is the property of his fellow subjects. 
 If, indeed, because I wore his Majesty's gown I had declined my 
 duty, or had done it weakly or treacherously — if I had made that 
 gown a mantle of hypocrisy, and had betrayed my client, or sacri- 
 ficed him to any personal view — I might, perhaps, have been 
 thought wiser by those who have blamed me, but I should have 
 thought myself the basest villain upon earth." And, in a letter to 
 Mr. Grattan, some years after, alluding to the same subject, he 
 says: "But what were those attacks? Slanders provoked by a 
 conduct of which my friends, as well as myself, had reason to be 
 proud — slanders cast upon me by the very men whose want of 
 vvdsdom or humanity threw upon me the necesssity of pursuing 
 that conduct which provoked their vengeance and their misrepre- 
 sentations. Thank God ! I did adopt and pursue it, under the 
 pressure of uninterrupted attacks upon my character and fortune, 
 and frequently at the hazard of my life. I trust, that while I have 
 memory, that conduct will remain indelibly engraven upon it, 
 because it will be there a record of the most valuable of all claims 
 — a claim upon the gratitude of my own conscience." 
 
 In resisting such attacks, or in braving any more aggravated 
 measures of political hatred, Mr. Curran might have stood alone, 
 and have looked with calmness to the result ; but gratefully to his 
 own feelings, and honourably for others, he was not thus abandoned 
 to his own protection. It was now that he was enabled to appre- 
 ciate the full value of some of the intimacies of his youth, by 
 finding in his own case how tenderly the claims of the ancient 
 friend and companion were respected in a season of general alarm, 
 distrust, and unnatural separation. Had it not been for the inter- 
 ference of Lord Kilwarden, his character and repose would have 
 been more frequently invaded ; but that virtuous person, whose 
 mind was too pure to be sullied by party rancour, discountenanced 
 
LOED KILWAEDEN. 307 
 
 every proposal to prosecute his friend ; and "never failed to check, 
 as far as his authority could do so, any acts of malignity which 
 might have been adopted without his knowledge.* 
 
 It would be defrauding Lord Kilwarden of his greatest praise, 
 to attribute this generous interposition to considerations of mere 
 private friendship : it was only a part of that system of rare and 
 manly toleration which adorned his whole public career. It is 
 
 * As an example of the spirit of petty persecution to which he was exposed from per- 
 sons in subordinate authority, it may be mentioned, that in the year 1798, when the mili- 
 tary were billeted throughout the country, a party of seventeen soldiers, accompanied 
 by their wives, or their profligate companions, and by many children, and evidently 
 selected for the purpose of annoyance, were, without any previous notice, quartered on 
 Mr. Cnrran's house ; but the moment that Lord Kilwarden heard of the circumstance, the 
 nuisance was removed. There is another instance of similar interposition to which Mr. 
 Curran alludes in his speech on behaff of Hevey, and of which the particulars are too 
 honourable to Lord Kilwarden to be omitted. Mr. Curran, in that case, mentioned, that 
 " a learned and respected brother barrister had a silver cup, and that Major Sandys (the 
 keeper of the provost prison) having heard that it had for many years borne the inscrip- 
 tion of ' Erin go brach,' or ' Ireland for ever,' considered this perseverance in guilt for 
 such a length of years as a forfeiture of the delinquent vessel ; and that his poor friend 
 was accordingly robbed of his cup." The gentleman in question was Mr. M'Nally. The 
 manner of the robbery is characteristic of the times ; a Serjeant waited upon him, and 
 delivered a verbal command from Major Sandys to surrender the cup; Mr. M'Nally 
 refused, and commissioned the messenger to carry back such an answer as so daring a 
 requisition suggested. The Serjeant, a decent, humane Englishman, and who felt an 
 honest awkwardness at being employed on such a service, complied ; but respectfully 
 remonstrated upon the imprudence of provoking Major Sandys. The consequences soon 
 appeared : the serjeant returned with a body of soldiers, who paraded before Mr. M'Nally's 
 door, and were under orders to proceed to extremilies if the cup was not delivered up. Upon 
 Mr. M'Nally's acquainting Lord Kilwarden with the outrage, the latter burst into tears, 
 and exclaiming, that "his own sideboard might be the next object of plunder, if such 
 atrocious practices were not checked," lost not an instant in procuring a restitution of 
 the property. The cup was accordingly sent back with the inscription erased, " And 
 here," continued Mr. Curran, observing upon this transaction, " let me say, in my own 
 defence, that this is the only occasion upon which I have ever mentioned it with the 
 least appearance of lightness. I have often told the story in a way that it would not 
 become me to tell it here : I have told it in the spirit of those feelings that were excited 
 at seeing that one man could be sobe;- and humane, at a moment when so many thousands 
 were drunk and barbarous ; and probably my statement was not stinted, by the recollec- 
 tion that I held that person in peculiar respect and regard. But little does it signify 
 whether acts of moderation and humanity are blazoned by gratitude, by flattery, or by 
 friendship: they are recorded in the heart from which they sprung : and, in the hour of 
 adverse vicissitude, if it should ever come, sweet is the odour of their memory, and pre- 
 cious the balm of their consolation." — C. 
 
308 I-IFE OF CUKKxVN. 
 
 often tlie fate of the most splendid characters, who mingle in poli- 
 tical contentions, to be misunderstood and traduced, until the tur- 
 bulence of the scene is past, or until the appeasing influence of the 
 grave extorts an admission of their virtues. With Lord Kilwarden 
 it was otherwise , so conspicuous were (if not his talents) his integ- 
 rity and humanity, more admirable than the most exalted talents, 
 that Ireland, in her most passionate moments, thought and spoke 
 of him while he lived as she now does of his memory. His con- 
 duct in the situation of Attorney-General would alone have entitled 
 him to the lasting gratitude of his country. This trying and so 
 frequently unpopular ofiice he filled during the most agitated period 
 of her history. From the year 1*790 to 1798 it devolved upon him 
 to conduct the state prosecutions, a task so difiicult to perform with- 
 out reproach ; and, to his honour it is recorded, that he did not 
 escape reproach — the reproach of an extreme respect for human 
 life. He delighted in mercy ; and though, " like the noble tree, 
 that is wounded itself, while it yields the balm," the indulgence of 
 his nature exposed him to censure, he was still inflexibly merciful, 
 screening the deluded, mitigating, where it could be done, the pun- 
 ishment of the convicted, abstaining, in the most aggravated cases, 
 from embittering the agonies of the criminal by oflicial invective, 
 or by more inhuman levity. Such were the arts by which this 
 excellent man collected arround him the applause of the good, 
 and earned for his memory that epitaph which is never separated 
 from an allusion to his fate — " the lamented Lord Kilwarden." 
 
 As soon as the first interval of professional occupation permitted 
 him, Mr. Curran seized the opportunity of passing over to England, 
 and of seeking in a more tranquil scene, and in the consolations of 
 private friendship, a temporary relief from the anguish with which 
 he had witnessed the spectacle of turbulence and suffering at home. 
 Upon the present occasion, his feelings of personal respect, and his 
 
CAKOLAN, THE IFaSII BAED. 309 
 
 certainty of finding a generous sympathy for tlie calamities of their 
 common country, directed his steps to the residence of the Ear] of 
 Moira,^^ a nobleman for whose public and private virtues he had 
 long entertained the most ardent veneration ; and it would here be 
 depriving Mr. Curran's memory of one of the titles of honour, 
 upon wdiich he always set the highest value, if it were not added, 
 that, from his first acquaintance with his lordship, and with his 
 accomplished mother, he continued ever after to enjoy their most 
 perfect confidence and esteem. During this visit to them, he 
 addressed to the latter the following little poem, in which the pre- 
 vailing sentiment Avill be found to be the despondency that oppres- 
 sed his own mind at the unfortunate period. 
 
 LINES ADDRESSED TO LADY CUARLOTTE RAWDON, AND WRITTEN ON A BLANK 
 LEAF OF CAROLAN's IRISH AIRS. DONNINGTON PARK, OCTOBER, 1798. 
 
 And she said unto her people, Lo ! he is a wanderer and in sadness ; go 
 therefore, and give him food, that he be not hungry, and wine, that he be 
 comforted. And they gave him food and wine, and his heart was glad: 
 and, when he wtis departing, he said unto her, I will give thee a book — it 
 containeth the songs of the bards of Erin, of the bards of the days that are 
 gone ! and these bards were prophets, and the griefs of the times to come 
 were known unto them, and their hearts were sore troubled ; and their 
 songs, yea, even their songs of joy, were full of heaviness ! This book will 
 I give unto thee ; and it shall be a memorial of the favour thou showcdst 
 unto me. And I will pray a prayer for thee, and it shall be heard — that 
 thy days may be happy 5 and that, if sorrow should come unto thee, it may 
 only be for a season, and that thou mayest find comfort even as I have 
 done, so that thou mayest say, even as I have said, I did not take heed 
 unto my words, when I said I was as* one without hope. Surely I am not 
 a wanderer, neither am I in the land of strangers ! 
 
 * The Earl of Moira here named served, in this country, as Aide-de-camp to Sir Henry- 
 Clinton, and subsequently as Adjutant-General of the British forces. He was then Lord 
 Rawdon, and, on his father's death, became Earl of Moira. He ruined his fortune by 
 intimacy with George, Prince of Wales — was sent to India, as Governor-General to 
 repair it — remained there nine years, and was made Marquis of Hastings in his absence. 
 He returned to England in 1S22, and was made Governor of Malta in 1824, and died in 
 1826. He was father of Lady Flora Hastings, so foully "done to death/ by lying- 
 tongues," in Queen Victoria's Coujft, some years since. — M. 
 
310 LIFE OF CUREAN. 
 
 By the waters of Babylon we sat down and wept, when we remember 
 thee, Sion ! 
 
 Carolan, thy happy love 
 
 No jealous doubt, no pang can prove. 
 
 Thy generous lord is kind as brave ; 
 
 He loves the bard, and scorns the slave : 
 
 And Charlotte deigns to hear thy lays, 
 
 And pays thee not with thoughtless praise. 
 
 With Howery wreaths the cup is crown'd : 
 
 The frolic laugh, the dance goes round 
 
 *• The hall of shells :" the merry throng 
 
 Demand thy mirth, demand thy song. 
 
 Here echoes wait to catch the strain, 
 
 And sweetly give it back again. 
 
 Then, happy bard ! awake thy fire — 
 
 Awake the heart-string of thy lyre — 
 
 Invoke thy Muse. Thy Muse appears ; 
 
 But robed in sorrow, bathed in tears. 
 
 No blithesome tale, alas ! she tells — 
 
 No glories of the '•' hall of shells "— 
 
 No joy she whispers to thy lays — 
 
 No note of love, no note of praise ; — 
 
 But to thy boding fancy shows 
 
 The forms of Erin's future woes, 
 
 The wayward fates, that crown the slave, 
 
 That mar the wise, that crush the brave. 
 
 The tyrant's frown, the patriot's doom. 
 
 The mother's tears, the warrior's tomb. 
 
 In vain would mirth inspire thy song : 
 
 Grief heaves thy breast, and claims thy tongue : 
 
 Thy strain from joy to sadness turns : 
 
 Thy bard would smile — the prophet mourns.* 
 
 Mr. Curran had scarcely returned to Ireland to resume his public 
 duties, when it was his fate to be engaged, while performing them, 
 in another scene, wdiich bore a striking resemblance to the melan- 
 
 * These vei'ses were written in answer to a question from Lady Rawdon, upon the 
 cause of the mixtui-e of liveliness and melancholy which distinguishes the compositions 
 of Carolan.— C. 
 
THEOBALD WOLFE TONE. 311 
 
 choly catastrophe in Jackson's case. The circumstances alluded 
 to were those which followed the trial and conviction of Theobald 
 Wolfe Tone. 
 
 Mr. Tone was one of the most active promoters of the designs of 
 the United Irishmen ; and, according to the concurring testimony 
 of all his cotemporaries, was the ablest man who had given his 
 support to that cause. He was originally a member of the Irish 
 bar, where his talents could not have failed to have raised him to 
 distinction ; but the principles of the French Kevolution, and the 
 hope of successfully applying them to change the condition of his 
 own country, soon diverted his ardent mind from legal pursuits, 
 and involved him in that political career which subsequently occu- 
 pied his life. In this new field he, at a very early period, became 
 conspicuous for his zeal in supporting the claims of the Roman 
 Catholics, who appointed him a secretary to their committee, and 
 voted him a sum of money as the reward of his exertions. He was 
 also one of the original projectors of the plan of combining the 
 popular strength and sentiment, which was afterwards matured into 
 the Irish Union. That association existed some years before its 
 object was to effect a revolution ; but it has already been shown, 
 that, as early as 1791, Mr. Tone recommended precisely the same 
 views which the future leaders vainly attempted to accomplish. In 
 1794, when Jackson arrived in Ireland upon his secret mission 
 from the French Government, he soon discovered that Mr. Tone 
 was one of the persons the most likely to approve and assist his 
 designs. He accordingly communicated them to him, and was not 
 disappointed in his expectation. Mr. Tone so cordially embraced 
 the proposal of an invasion of Ireland by the French, that, had not 
 the urgency of his private affairs prevented, he would have passed 
 over to France, in order to confer in person with the French 
 authorities upon the subject. Some of the discussions upon this 
 topic took place in the prison of Newgate, in the presence of 
 Cockayne and Mr. Hamilton Rowan, the latter of whom was at 
 that time under sentence of confinement for the publication of a 
 
312 LIFE OF CURE AN. 
 
 libel. Jackson being- shortly after arrested upon the information 
 of Cockayne, Mr. Rowan, who was aware that the evidence of that 
 witness would equally involve himself, effected his escape, and fled 
 to France. Mr. Tone remained. Whatever his more private com- 
 munications might have been with Jackson, upon whose fidelity 
 he relied, he conceived that the amount of Cockayne's testimony 
 could convict him of no higher an oftence than misprision of 
 treason. Considerable exertions were 'also used by his private 
 friends to dissuade the Government from a prosecution ; and, in 
 consequence, he was not arrested. The evidence upon Jackson's 
 trial, however, having publicly shown that some degree of treason- 
 able connexion had subsisted between him and Mr. Tone, the latter 
 was advised, if he consulted his safety, to withdraw from Ireland. 
 He accordingly, in the summer of 1795, transported himself and 
 his family to America.'^ Here he did not remain many months. 
 He tendered his services to the French Directory, and having met 
 with all the encouragement he could desire, he procured a passage 
 to France, where he arrived in the beginning of the year 1Y96. 
 He was most favourably received, and appointed to a commission 
 in the French army. His eftbrts to persuade the Directory to 
 send an armament to Ireland have been previously mentioned. 
 The first expedition having failed, a second attempt was made in 
 the autumn of 1*798. This was equally unsuccessful; and Mr. 
 Tone, who was on board the Hoche French line-of-battle-ship, one 
 of the vessels captured by Sir J. B. Warren's squadron ofi" the Irish 
 coast, fell into the hands of the English Government, and was 
 brouglit to trial by court-martial in Dublin, on the 10th of Novem- 
 ber, 1798.1 
 
 * The vessel, in which he was a passenger, no sooner arrived in sight of an American 
 port, than she was boarded by a boat from a British man of war. Mr. Tone was (among 
 others) impressed to serve as a sailor in his majesty's navy ; but, after considerable 
 difiBculties, his own remonstrances, and the solicitations of Mrs. Tone, obtained his 
 release. — C. 
 
 t Tliere is no report, in Thomas Davis's excellent edition of Curran's speeches, of his 
 defence of Wolfe Tone. — M. 
 
tone's trial. 313 
 
 Mr. Tone appeared in court in tlie dress of a French officer. 
 When called on for his defence, he admitted the facts of which he 
 was accused;^ but pleaded (of course ineftectually) his French 
 commission. He then proceeded to read a paper which he had 
 drawn up in justification of his conduct, from the conclusion of 
 which it was evident that he had entertained no hope that any 
 defence could avail him. " I have little more to say. Success is 
 all in this life ; and, unfavoured of her, virtue becomes vicious in 
 the ephemeral estimation of those who attach every merit to pros- 
 perity. In the glorious race of patriotism, I have pursued the 
 path chalked out by Washington in America, and Kosciusko in 
 Poland. Like the latter, I have failed to emancipate my country; 
 and, unlike them both, I have forfeited my life. I have done my 
 duty, and I have no doubt the Court will do theirs. I have only 
 to add, that a man who has thought and acted as I have done, 
 should be armed against the fear of death. I conceive," continued 
 he, " that I stand here in the same light with our emigres ; and, 
 if the indulgence lay within the power of the court, I would only 
 request what French magnanimity allowed to Charette and to the 
 Count de Sombreuil — the death of a soldier, and to be shot by a 
 file of grenadiers. This is the only favour I have to ask; and I 
 trust that men, susceptible of the nice feelings of a soldier's honour, 
 will not refuse the request. It is not from any personal feeling 
 that I make this request, but from a respect to the uniform which 
 I wear, and to the brave army in which I have fought." 
 
 This final request was not granted. It was directed by the 
 Government that he should be executed in the ordinary form, and 
 in the most public manner ; but this the prisoner took the resolu- 
 tion of preventing, by an act, which, in his case, shows the uncertain 
 security of any speculative determinations respecting suicide, 
 against the pressure of the actual calamity, or of the many 
 
 ^ When asked what he would plead, he exclaimed, " Guilty ; for I have never, during 
 my life, stooped to a prevarication."— C. 
 
 14 
 
314 LIFE OF CUKE AN. 
 
 other motives which impel a man to raise his hand against him- 
 self. 
 
 Upon the evening before the Hoche sailed, from Brest, the sub- 
 ject of suicide was fully discussed among the Irish, who formed a 
 part of tlie expedition. They felt confident of success, should the 
 French troops debark in safety upon the coast of Ireland; but they 
 were equally certain, that, if captured at sea, they would all be 
 condemned, and executed. Upon this a question arose, whether 
 in the latter event, they should suffer themselves to be put to 
 death according to the sentence and forms of law. Mr. Tone 
 maintained that they ought ; and, with his usual eloquence and 
 animation, delivered his decided opinion, that, in no point of view 
 in w^hich he had ever considered suicide, could he hold it to be 
 justifiable. It is supposed, that, in his own particular instance, 
 he did not at this time anticipate an ignominious mode of death ; 
 but that he expected, in case of capture and condemnation, to be 
 allowed the military privilege which he afterwards so earnestly 
 claimed.f Disappointed in this hope, he now committed the act 
 which he had so lately reprobated. He was induced to do so 
 either by a natural impulse of personal pride, of which he had 
 not previously contemplated the powerful influence, or (as is con- 
 jectured by those who best knew him) out of consideration for 
 the army of which he w^as a member, and for whose honour, in 
 his estimation, no sacrifice could be too great. 
 
 Mr. Tone's execution w^as fixed for Monday, the 12th of Novem- 
 
 t The gentleman who has communicated the above circumstances was present at the 
 conversation. Independent of the moral arguments adduced against suicide, it was sug- 
 gested by one of the company, that from political considerations, it would be better not 
 to relieve, by any act of self-murder, the Irish government from the discredit in which 
 numerous executions would involve it — an idea which, he says, Mr. Tone warmly 
 approved. He adds, that when it appeared that the Hoche was likely to be captured, a 
 boat was despatched to her from the Biche (a small, fast sailing vessel, which afterwards 
 escaped into Brest) in order to bring off all the Irish on board ; but that Mr. Tone could 
 not be persuaded to avail himself of the opportunity. — C. [Wolfe Tone's own Memoirs 
 tell every thing about him.— M.] 
 
315 
 
 ber. At an early hour upon that morning the sentinel who 
 watched in his room having approached to awaken him, found 
 him with his throat cut across, and apparently expiring. A sur- 
 geon was immediately called, who, on examining the wound, pro- 
 nounced it not mortal, though extremely dangerous ; to which Mr. 
 Tone faintly answered, " I find, then, I am but a bad anatomist." 
 The wound was dressed, with the design of prolonging life lill the 
 hour of one o'clock, the time appointed for his execution. In the 
 interval a motion was made in the court of King's Bench by Mr. 
 Curran, on an affidavit of Mr. Tone's father, stating that his son 
 had been brought before a bench of officers, calling itself a court- 
 martial, and by them sentenced to death. " I do not pretend to 
 say," observed Mr. Curran, " that Mr. Tone is not guilty of the 
 charges of which he was accused; I presume the officers were 
 honourable men ; but it is stated in the affidavit, as a solemn fact, 
 that Mr. Tone had no commission under his majesty, and therefore 
 no court-martial could have cognizance of any crime imputed to 
 him, Avhile the court of King's Bench sat in the capacity of the 
 great criminal court of the land. In times wdien war was raging, 
 when man was opposed to man in the field, courts martial might 
 be endured ; but every law authority is with me while I stand 
 upon this sacred and immutable principle of the constitution — that 
 martial laiu and civil law a,re incompatible ; and that the former 
 must cease with the existence of the latter. This is not the time 
 for arguing this momentous question. My client must appear in 
 this court. He is cast for death this day. He may be ordered for 
 execution while I address you, I call on the court to support the 
 law. I move for a habeas corpus to be directed to the provost- 
 marshal of the barracks of Dublin, and Major Sands to bring up 
 the body of Mr. Tone." 
 
 Chief Justice.* — " Have a writ instantly prepared." 
 
 * Lord Kilwarden.— 0. 
 
Oib LIFE OF CUKRAN. 
 
 Mr. Currau. — "My client may die while this '^vTit is pre- 
 paring." 
 
 Chief Justice. — " Mr. Sheriff, proceed to the barracks, and 
 acquaint the provost-marshal that a writ is preparing to suspend 
 Mr. Tone's execution ; and see that he be not executed^ 
 
 The Court awaited, in a state of the utmost agitation, the return 
 of the Sheriff. 
 
 Mr. Sheriff. — " My lords, I have been at the barracks, in pursu- 
 ance of your order. The provost-marshal says he must obey Major 
 Sands. Major Sands says he must obey Lord Cornwallis." 
 
 Mr. Curran. — " Mr. Tone's father, my lords, returns, after serving 
 the habeas corpus : he says General Craig will not obey it." 
 
 Chief Justice. — " Mr. Sheriff, take the body of Tone into your 
 custody. Take the provost-marshal and Major Sands into custody : 
 and show the order of this court to General Craig." 
 
 Mr. Sheriff, who was understood to have been refused admittance 
 at the barracks, returns. — "I have been at the barracks. Mr. 
 Tone, having cut his throat last night, is not in a condition to be 
 removed. As to the second part of your order, I could not meet 
 the parties." 
 
 A French emip-rant suro-eon, whom General Craig; had sent 
 along with the Sheriff, was sworn. 
 
 Surgeon. — " I was sent to attend Mr. Tone this morning at four 
 o'clock. His windpipe was divided. I took instant measures to 
 secure his life, by closing the wound. There is no knowing, for 
 four days, w^hether it will be mortal. His head is now kept in one 
 position. A sentinel is over him, to prevent his speaking. His 
 removal would kill him." 
 
 Mr. Curran applied for further surgical aid, and for the admis- 
 sion of Mr. Tone's friends to him. Refused. 
 
 Chief Justice. — " Let a rule be made for suspending the execu- 
 tion of Theobald Wolfe Tone ; and let it be served on the proper 
 person." 
 
DEATH OF TONE. 317 
 
 Tlie prisoner lingered until tlie 19tli day of November, when he 
 expired, after having endured the most excruciating pain;^ and 
 with his fate shall close the account of the part which Mr. Curran 
 bore in the public transactions of this calamitous year. 
 
 * Mr. Tone had reached only his thirty-fourth year. His father was an eminent coach- 
 maker in Dublin : he had sixteen children (thirteen sons and three daughters), of whom 
 only five attained the age of maturity, and whose fates afford a singular instance of the 
 wanderings and calamities of a single family. Theobald died as before related. Matthew 
 was executed the same year, in Dublin barracks, for high treason : it is said that no more 
 than five persons were present at the execution. William was killed in India, a major in 
 Holkar's service. Arthur accompanied his brother Theobald to America ; and was subse- 
 quently, at the early age of eighteen, appointed to the command of a frigate in the ser- 
 vice of the Dutch republic : he is supposed to have perished at sea, as no account was 
 ever after received of him. Mary was married to a foreign merchant, and died at St. 
 Domingo. Their aged mother survives, and now [1S19] resides in Dublin. After the death 
 of Mr. Wolfe Tone, his widow and infant children were protected by the French republic ; 
 and, on the motion of Lucien Bonaparte, a pension granted for their support.— C. 
 
318 LIFE OF CrRRAN. 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 Efifects of the Legislative Union upon Mr. Curran's mind — Speech in Tandy's case — Speech 
 in behalf of Hevey— Allusion in the latter to Mr. Godwin— Mutual friendship of Mr." 
 Currau and Mr. Godwin. 
 
 Mr. Curran's history,, during the eight remaining years of his 
 forensic Hfe, consists almost entirely of the causes of interest in 
 which he was engaged. He was no longer in Parliament when 
 the question of the Union was agitated and carried. This measure, 
 Avhich he had always deprecated as ruinous and disgraceful to his 
 country, completed those feelings of political despondency to which 
 the scenes of the rebellion, and the uniform failure of every strug- 
 gle to avert them, had been habituating his mind.* With the 
 Union, which he considered as "the extinction of the Irish name," 
 all his long cherished hopes for Ireland vanished for ever. From 
 this last shock to his affections and his pride he never recovered. 
 It was ever after present to his imagination, casting a gloom over 
 all his political speculations, and interfering with the repose of his 
 private hours. This sensibility to what so many others bore with 
 complacency as a mere national disaster, will, perhaps, be ridiculed 
 as affected, or doubted as incredible; but those who best knew 
 
 * Years before, while in Parliament, he had thus predicted the results of an Union: — 
 "It is very easy to conceive, that in case of such an event the inevitable consequence 
 would be, an union with Great Britain. And if any one desires to know what that 
 would be, I will tell him : It would he the emigration of every man of consequence from. 
 Ireland; it tcould be the participation of British taxes xcithout British trade; it 
 woidd he the extinction of the Irish name as a people. We should hecome a wretched 
 colony, perhaps leased out to a company ofJetDS, as was formerly in co7item2)lation, 
 and governed hy a few tax-gatherers and excisemen, unless jjossiitly you may add fif- 
 teen or twenty couple of Irish m.emhers, who might he found every session sleeping in 
 their collars under the manger of the British Minister.''^ — M. 
 
JAMES NAPPER TANDY. 319 
 
 him can attest the sincerity and extent of his affliction. It was so 
 deep, that he began seriously to meditate a final departure from 
 Ireland/*' At one time he looked towards America, at another to 
 the Enoflish bar; but the better influence of duties and old attach- 
 ments prevailed over these suggestions of melancholy, and he 
 remained to conclude his fortunes on the scene where they had 
 commenced. 
 
 CASE OF JAMES NAPPER TANDY. 
 
 One of Mr. Curran's speeches, which has been omitted in all 
 the editions of the published collection,! was that in behalf of 
 Mr. James JSTapper Tandy. Mr. Tandy had been a conspicuous 
 member of the early societies of United Irishmen. In 1795, he 
 was indicted for High Treason, and fled to the Continent, where 
 he became an officer in the French service. He was one of the 
 persons excluded from the benefit of the bill of general amnesty, 
 which was passed after the suppression of the rebellion of 17 9 8. 
 The other particulars of his case may be sufficiently collected from 
 Mr. Curran's statement. The trial took place in the King's Bench, 
 before Lord Kilwarden and the other jndges of that Court, on the 
 19th of May, ISOO.J 
 
 Mr. Curran (for the prisoner). — " My lords, and you, gentlemen 
 
 * "That country (as he observes in one of his latest speeches at the bar) of which I 
 haA'e so often abandoned all hope, and which I have been so often determined to quit for 
 ever — 
 
 Sa?pe vale dicto, multa sum deinde locutus, 
 Et quasi discedens oscula summa dabam, 
 Indulgens animo, pes tardus erat." 
 
 Speech in Judge Johnsoii's Case. 
 t It is to be found in Davis's edition. — M. 
 
 X Napper Tandy had been a merchant in Dublin, of good family, and became an active 
 member of the Corporation fully twenty-five years before 179S. In the struggle for Irish 
 Independence, he commanded the Artillery of the Volunteers, and had his guns cast with 
 
 " Free Trade or else " upon them. He led the Radical party in the Corporation, in 
 
 1790, and was much mixed up with the United Irishmen from 1791. He fled to America, 
 from prosecution, in 1794, left it in 1798, and headed the Irish Government's list of per- 
 sons to be held as traitors, if they did not come in to be tried before December 179S. 
 Eventually, he was seized at Hamburgh, (a neutral German city) deported to Ireland, 
 
320 LIFE OF CITREAN. 
 
 of the jury, I am in this case of counsel for Mr. Tandy, the 
 prisoner at the bar. I could have wished it had been the plea- 
 sure of the gentlemen who conduct this business on the part of 
 the Crown to have gone on first : the subject itself is of a very 
 novel nature in this country ; but certainly it is the right of the 
 Crown, and which the gentlemen have thought proper to follow, 
 to call on the counsel for the prisoner to begin ; and, therefore, it 
 is my duty, my lords, to submit to you, and to explain, under the 
 direction of the Court, to you, gentlemen of the jury, what the 
 nature of the question is that you are sworn to try. 
 
 " An act of parliament was passed in this country, which began 
 to be a law on the 6th of October, IVOS ; on that day it received 
 the royal assent. By that law it is stated, that the prisoner at the 
 bar had been guilty of acts of treason of many different kinds : 
 and it enacted, that he should stand attainted of high treason 
 except he should, on or before the first day of December following, 
 surrender himself to one of the Judges of this Court, or to one of 
 his Majesty's justices of the peace, for the purpose of becoming 
 amenable to that law, from Yhi(;h he was supposed to have fled, in 
 order to abide his trial for any crime that might be alleged against 
 him. 
 
 "It was a law not passed for the purpose of absolutely pro- 
 nouncing any judgment whatsoever against him, but for the pur- 
 pose of compelling him to come in and take his trial : and nothing- 
 can show more strongly that that act of Parliament has not estab- 
 lished anything touching the fact of the prisoner's guilt ; because 
 it would be absurd, in one and the same breath, to pronounce that 
 he was guilty of high treason, and then call upon him to come in 
 and abide his trial : and the title of the act speaks that it is an 
 act not pronouncing sentence against the prisoner, but that it is 
 an act in order to compel him to come forward. 
 
 tried, defended by Curran, and acquitted. In April ISOl, he was again tried for " invad- 
 ing" Ireland, convicted, sentenced to be hanged, and was finally exchanged against a 
 general officer taken by the French, and died there, soon after. — M. 
 
NAPPER TANDY. 321 
 
 " This act creates a Parliamentary attainder, not founded on tlie 
 establishment of the prisoner's guilt of treason, but on his contu- 
 macious avoidance of trial, by standing out against a trial by law. 
 I make this observation to you, gentlemen of the jury, in order 
 that you may, in the first instance, discharge from your minds any 
 actual belief of any criminality in the prisoner at the bar, and that 
 for two reasons — first, because a well-founded conviction of his 
 guilt, on the authority of this statute, might have some impression 
 on the minds of men sitting in judgment on the prisoner ; but for 
 a more material reason I wish to put it from your minds, because 
 his guilt or innocence has nothing to do with tlie issue you are 
 sworn to try. 
 
 "Gentlemen, the issue you are called to try is not the guilt or 
 innocence of the prisoner; it is therefore necessary you should 
 understand exactly what it is. The prisoner was called on to show 
 cause why he should not suffer death, pursuant to the enacting 
 clause of the statute ; and he has put in a plea, in which he states, 
 that before the timiC for surrender had expired, namely, on the 
 24th of November, 1798, seven days before the day that he had 
 for surrendering had expired, he was, by the order of his Majesty, 
 arrested, and made a prisoner in the town of Hamburgh ; and that 
 in consequence of such arrest, it became impossible for him to 
 surrender himself and become amenable to justice within the time 
 prescribed : and the counsel for the crown have rested the case on 
 the denial, in point of fact, of this allegation ; and, therefore, the 
 question, that you are to try is simplified to this — ' I was arrested,' 
 says the prisoner, ' whereby it became impossible for me to sur- 
 render' — to which the counsel for the crown reply, 'You have not 
 been arrested at the time alleged by you, w^hereby it became impos- 
 sible for you to surrender.' This I conceive to be the issue, in 
 point of fact, joined between the parties, and on which it is my 
 duty to explain the evidence that will be offered, 
 
 " Mr. Tandy is a subject of this country, and had never been in 
 it from the time this act of parliament passed, until he was brought 
 
 14* 
 
322 LIFE OF CURRAN. 
 
 into it after liis arrest on tlie 24tli of November, 1*798: on that 
 clay he was in the town of Hamburgh. lie had seven days, in 
 ■which time it was practicable for him to arrive in this country, 
 and surrender himself, according to the requisitions of the act of 
 attainder. Every thing that could be of value to man was at stake, 
 and called on him to make that surrender. If he did not sur- 
 render, his life was forfeited — if he did not surrender, his fortune 
 was confiscated — if he did not surrender, the blood of his family 
 ■was cori'upted ; and he could leave them no inheritance, but the 
 diso^race of havino; suffered as a traitor. 
 
 " Your common sense, gentlemen, will show you, that where a 
 man is to forfeit his life unless he complies with the conditions of 
 an act of parliament — your common sense, your common humanity 
 must show you, that a man ought to be suffered to perform the 
 conditions on which his life depends. It can require no argument 
 to impress upon your mind, that to call on a man to surrender 
 himself on pain of death, and by force to prevent him from sur- 
 rendering, goes to an atrocity of oppression that no human mind 
 can contemplate without horror. 
 
 " But it seems that the prisoner at the bar was a man of too 
 much consequence to the repose of all ci\dlized nations ; to the 
 great moral system, I might almost say, to the great physical 
 system of the universe, to be permitted to act in compliance with 
 the statute that called upon him to surrender himself upon pain 
 of death. The wisdom of the entire continent was called upon 
 to exercise its mediation on this most momentous circumstance — 
 the diplomatic wisdom of Germany was all put into action on the 
 subject — the enlightened humanity of the north was called on to 
 lend its aid. Gentlemen, you know as well as I the princely vir- 
 tues, and the imperial qualifications, the consummate wisdom and 
 sagacity of our stedfast friend and ally, the Emperor of all the 
 Russias ; you must feel the awe with which he ought to be men- 
 tioned : his sacred person has become embodied in the criminal 
 law of England, and it has become almost a misprision to deem 
 
NAPPEK TANDY. o'Zd 
 
 of him or speak of him but with reverence. I feel that reverence 
 for him ; and I deem of him and conceive him to be a constella- 
 tion of all virtue — compared with whose radiance the Ursamajor 
 twinkles only as the glow-worm. And, gentlemen, what was the 
 result of the exercise of this combination of wisdom ? That James 
 Napper Tandy ought not to be got r^d of in the ordinary way. They 
 felt an honest and a proper indignation, that a little community 
 like Hamburgh should embezzle that carcase which was the pro- 
 perty of a mild and merciful Government : they felt a proper 
 indignation that the senate of Hamburgh, under the present 
 sublime system, should defraud the mercy of the Government of 
 the blood of the prisoner, or cheat the gibbet of his bones, or 
 deprive the good and loyal ravens of this country of his flesh — 
 and accordingly by an order issued to these miserable inhabitants 
 of the town of Hamburgh, who Avere made to feel that common 
 honesty and common humanity can only be sustained by a strength 
 not to be resisted ; they were obliged to break the ties of justice 
 and hospitality — to trample on the privileges that every stranger 
 claims ; they were obliged to suffer the prisoner to be trampled 
 on, and meanly, and cruelly, and pitiably to give up this unfor- 
 tunate man to the disposal of those who could demand him at 
 such a price. 
 
 " If a surrender, in fact, had been necessary on the part of the 
 prisoner, certainly a very material object was achieved by arrest- 
 ing him : because they thereby made it impossible for him to 
 avail himself of the opportunity. They made it impossible for 
 him to avail himself of the surrender, if the reflection of his mind 
 led him to it. If a sense of the duty he owed his family led him 
 to a wish, or to an intention, of availing himself of the remaining 
 time he had to surrender, they were determined he should not 
 take advantage of it. He had been guilty of what the law deems 
 a crime, that is, of flying from justice, though it does not go to 
 the extent of working a corruption of blood : but by this act of 
 power — by this act of tyrannic force, he was prevented from doing 
 
,324 LIFE OF CURRAN. 
 
 thfit which every court of justice must intend he was willing to 
 do : which the law intends he would have done — which the law 
 gave him time to do — which the law supposes he might have done 
 the last hour, as well as the first. He was on his passage to this 
 country ; that would not have taken up a third part of the time 
 that had now elapsed — but by .seizing on him in the manner he 
 was arrested, it became impossible for him to surrender himself, 
 or become amenable to justice. 
 
 But, gentlemen, the prisoner, when he was arrested, was treated 
 in a manner that made it impossible for him to do any act that 
 might have been considered as tantamount to a surrender. He 
 was confined in a dungeon, little larger than a grave — he was 
 loaded with irons — he -was chained by an iron that communicated 
 from liis arm to his leg; and that so short, as to grind into his 
 flesh. In such a state of restriction did he remain for fifteen days ; 
 in such a situation did he lie in a common vault ; food was cut 
 into shapeless lumps, and flung to him by his filthy attendants as 
 he lay on the ground, as if he had been a beast ; he had no bed 
 to lie on ; not even straw to coil himself up in, if he could have 
 slept. In that situation he remained in a foreign country for 
 fifteen days of his long imprisonment ; and he is now called to show 
 good cause why he should not sufier death, because he did not 
 surrender himself and become amenable to the law. He was 
 debarred all communication whatsoever ; if he attempted to speak 
 to the sentinels that guarded him, they could not understand him : 
 he did make such kind of indications of his misery and his suff'er- 
 ings as could be conveyed by signs, but he made them in vain ; and 
 he is now called on to show good cause wherefore he did contu- 
 maciously and traitorously refuse to surrender himself, and become 
 amenable to the law. 
 
 " Gentlemen of the jury, I am stating facts that happened in a 
 foreign country ; will you expect that I should produce witnesses 
 to lay those abominable ofiences before you in evidence ? It was 
 Tiot in the power of the prisoner at the bar to procure witnesses ; 
 
NAPPER TANDY. 325 
 
 he was not of importance enougli to call on tlie armed civilization 
 of Europe, or on the armed barbarity of Europe, to compel the 
 inhabitants of the town where he was imprisoned to attend at the 
 bar of this court to give evidence for the preservation of his life ; 
 but though such interposal could not be obtained to preserve his 
 life, it could be procured for the purposes of blood. 
 
 " x\nd this is one reason why the rights of neutral states should 
 be respected : because, if an individual, claiming those privileges, 
 be torn from that sanctuary, he comes without the benefit of the 
 testimony of those that could save his life. It is a maxim of law, 
 that no man shall lose any thing, much less his life, by the non- 
 performance of a condition, if that non-performance had arisen by 
 the act of God, or of the party who is to avail himself of the con- 
 dition ; that the impossiblity so imposed shall be an excuse for the 
 non-performance of the condition : that is the defence the prisoner 
 relies upon here. ' Why did you not surrender, and become 
 amenable to justice ? Because I was in chains.' — ' Why did you 
 not come over to Ireland ? Because I was a prisoner in a grave in 
 the town of Hamburgh.' ' Why did you not do something tanta- 
 mount to a surrender ? Because I was unpractised in the lan- 
 guage of the strangers, who could not be my protectors, because 
 they were also my fellow-sufferers.' 
 
 " But he may push this reasoning much farther : the statute 
 was made for the express purpose of making him amenable. When 
 the crow^n seized him at Hamburgh, it thereby made him amen- 
 able, and so satisfied the law. It could not seize him for execu- 
 tion as an attainted person, for the time had not arrived at wMch 
 the attainder could attach. The King, therefore, seized him as a 
 man liable to be tried, and yet he calls upon him to suffer death, 
 because he did not make himself amenable by voluntary sur- 
 render ; that is, because he did not do that which the King was 
 pleased to do for him, by a seizure which made it at once unneces- 
 sary and impossible for hira to do by any voluntary act. 
 
326 LIFE OF CIJEEAN. 
 
 " Such is the barbarity and folly that must ever arise, when 
 force and power assume the functions of reason and justice. 
 
 " As to his intention after the arrest, it is clearly out of the 
 question. The idea of intention is not applicable to an impossible 
 act. To give existence to intention, the act must be possible, and 
 the agent must be free. Gentlemen, this, and this only, is the 
 subject on which you are to give a verdict. I do think it is 
 highly honourable to the gentleman who has come over to this 
 country, to give the prisoner at the bar the benefit of his e\a- 
 denoe ; no process could have compelled him : the inhabitants of 
 foreign countries are beyond the reach of process to bring wit- 
 nesses to give evidence. But we have a witness, and that of the 
 highest respectability, who was himself at Hamburgh at the time 
 Mr. Tandy was arrested, in an ofiScial situation. We will call Sir 
 James Crawford, who was then the King's representative in the 
 town of Hamburgh. We will show you, by his evidence, the 
 facts that I have stated ; that before the time allowed to the pri- 
 soner to surrender had elapsed, Sir James Crawford did in his 
 official situation, and by orders from his own Government, cause 
 the person of Mr. Tandy to be arrested in Hamburgh. Far am 
 I from suspecting, or insinuating against Sir James Crawford, that 
 any of the cruelties that were practised on that abused and help- 
 less community, or on my abused client, were committed at his 
 instance or personal sanction ;• certain am I that no such fact 
 could be possible. 
 
 " I told you before, gentlemen, that the principal question you 
 had to try was, the fact on which the parties had joined issue : 
 the force and arrest alleged by the prisoner ; and the denial of 
 that force by the counsel for the Crown. There is one considera- 
 tion, that I think necessary to give some attention to. What you 
 may think of the probable guilt or innocence of the prisoner, is not 
 within the question that you are to decide ; but if you should have 
 any opinion of that sort, the verdict given in favour of the prisoner 
 can be no preclusion to public justice, if after your verdict they 
 
NAPPEK TANDY. 327 
 
 still call for liis life ; the utmost that can follow from a verdict in 
 his favour will be, that he will be considered as a person who has 
 surrendered to justice, and must abide his trial for any crime that 
 may be charged against him. There are various ways of getting 
 rid of him, if it is necessary to the repose of the Avorld that he 
 should die. 
 
 " I have said, if he has committed any crime, he is amenable to 
 justice, and in the hands of the law : he may be proceeded against 
 before a jury, or he may be proceeded against in another and 
 more summary manner ; it may so happen that you may not be 
 called upon to dispose finally of his life or of his character. 
 
 " Whatever verdict a jury can pronounce upon him can be of 
 no final avail. There was, indeed, a time when a jury was the 
 shield of liberty and life : there was a time, when I never rose to 
 address it without a certain sentiment of confidence and pride ; 
 but that time is past. I have no heart now to make any appeal 
 to your indignation, your justice, or your humanity. I sink under 
 the consciousness that you are nothing. With us, the trial by 
 jury has given place to shorter, and, no doubt, better modes of 
 disposing of life. Even in the sister nation, a verdict can merely 
 prevent the duty of the hangman ; but it never can purge the 
 stain which the first malignity of accusation, however falsified by 
 proof, stamps indelibly on the character of an ' acquitted felon.' 
 To speak proudly of it to you would be a cruel mockery of your 
 condition ; but let me be at least a supplicant with you for its 
 memory. Do not, I beseech you, by a vile instrumentality, cast 
 any disgrace upon its memory. 
 
 " I know you are called out to-day to fill up the ceremonial of 
 a gaudy pageant, and that to-morrow you will be flung back again 
 among the unused and useless lumber of the constitution : but,, 
 trust me, the good old trial by jury will come round again ; trust 
 me, gentlemen, in the revolution of the great wheel of hum.an 
 affairs, though it is now at the bottom, it will reascend to the 
 station it has lost, and once more assume its former dignity and 
 
328 LIFE OF CUliKxiN. 
 
 respect ; trust me, that mankind will become tired of resisting tlie 
 spirit of innovation, by subverting every ancient and established 
 principle, and by trampling upon every right of individuals and of 
 nations. Man, destined to the grave — nothing that appertains to 
 him is exempt from the stroke of death — his life fieeth as a dream, 
 .his liberty passeth as a shadow. So, too, of his slavery — it is not 
 immortal ; the chain that grinds him is gnawed by rust, or it is 
 rent by fury or by accident, and the ivretch is astonished at the 
 intrusions of freedom, unannounced even by the harbinger of hope'^ 
 Let me therefore conjure you, by the memory of the past, and the 
 hope of the future, to respect the fallen condition of the good ofd 
 trial by jury, and cast no infamy upon it. If it is necessary to 
 the repose of the world that the prisoner should die, there are 
 many ways of killing him — we know there are ; it is not necessary 
 that you should be stained with his blood. The strange and still 
 more unheard of proceedings against the prisoner at the bar, have 
 made the business of this day a subject of more attention to all 
 Europe than is generally excited by the fate or the suffering of 
 any individual. Let me, therefore, advise you seriously to reflect 
 upon 3'our situation, before you give a verdict of meanness and of 
 
 * There is a passage in Dante descriptive of the same state of amazement, produced 
 by an unexpected escape from danger. 
 
 E come quei che con lena affanata, 
 
 Uscito del pelago alia riva, 
 
 Si volge all' acqua perigliosa, e guata. 
 
 (And, as a man with difficult short breath, 
 Forespent with toiling, 'scaped from sea to shore, 
 Turns to the perilous wide waste, and stands 
 At gaze.) 
 
 Oary''s Translation. 
 
 A distinguished Italian writer, (Ugo Foscolo, in the Quarterly Review) now in Eng- 
 land, commenting upon this passage in a late number of a periodical work, observes, 
 nearly in the words of Mr. Curran, " The concluding verse places the man in that state 
 of stupor which is felt upon passing at once to safety from despair, without the interven- 
 tion of hope : he looks back upon perdition with a stare, unconscious how he had escaped 
 it."— C. 
 
SIR HENRY HAYES. 329 
 
 blood that must stamp the character of folly and barbarity upon 
 this already disgraced and degraded country.'"" 
 
 [A trial of great local interest, in wliich jSIr. Curran was engaged, 
 came off at the Spring Assizes of Cork, on April 13th, 1801, when 
 Sir Henry Hayes was capitally indicted for the abduction of Miss 
 Pike. The facts were these ; Hayes was son of the Alderman of 
 Cork, and had ran through a large property. He was fashionable 
 and expensive in his habits. A widower, with several children, he 
 determined to retrieve his fortune by marriage. Samuel Pike, a 
 Quaker, was a banker in Cork, on whose death, Mary Pike, his 
 daughter, became possessed of £20,000. She was 21 years of age, 
 in weak health, and when the cause for action took place, was liv- 
 ing with her relation, Mr. Cooper Penrose, at his beautiful seat 
 called Wood Hill, on the Glanmire road, near Cork. On Sunday, 
 July 2, 1797, Sir Henry Hayes, who was unacquainted with Mr. 
 Penrose, rode over to Wood Hill, was shown round the demesne, and 
 finally, in the full spirit of hospitality, w^as asked to remain and 
 dine. At table, he first saw Miss Pike, but had no conversation 
 with her as she sat at a side table, with Mr. Penrose's daughters. 
 
 Hayes returned to Cork, and having ascertained that Miss Pike's 
 mother was a patient of Dr. Gibbings, wrote to him on some trifling 
 pretence, obtained a reply, and then, closely imitating the handwrit- 
 ing, sent a note to Mr. Penrose, intimating that Mrs. Pike was taken 
 suddenly ill and wdshed to see her daughter, and to command dis- 
 patch as she was not expected to live many hours. This missive 
 reached Mr. Penrose after midnight, on July 22nd, 1797, and Miss 
 Pike, accompanied by Miss Penrose and another relative, set off in 
 Mr. Penrose's carriage. The night was tempestuous and dark. 
 The carriage had not proceeded very far before it was stopped 
 by a body of armed men. Miss Pike was identified by a muffled 
 man, placed in another carriage with a lady, and driven off, sur- 
 
 * The jury found a verdict for the prisoner. He was afterwards permitted to retire 
 to the continent, where he ended his days.— C. 
 
330 LIFE OF CUKEAN. 
 
 rounded by an armed escort, to Mount Yernon, the seat of Sir Henry 
 Hayes, in the suburbs. The muffled man was Hayes, the lady was 
 his sister. The traces of Mr. Penrose's carriage were cut to pre- 
 vent pursuit. The muffled man took Miss Pike in his arms, out 
 of the carriage, into his house, and placed her for that night, under 
 charge of two women. Next morning, at day-break, she was forced 
 into an upper room by Sir Henry and Miss Hayes, and a man in 
 priest's habits was introduced, who performed a sort of marriage 
 ceremonial, in which Sir Henry attempted to force a ring upon 
 her finger, which she threw away. She was then locked up in 
 the room, which contained only a table and bed, and after tea had 
 been given to her. Sir Henry, (to use her own words,) w^as " com- 
 ing in and out, and behaving in the rudest manner," and saying she 
 was his wife. However, he did not perpetrate the worst outrage. 
 She insisted on writing to her friends, who liberated her the next 
 day. 
 
 If Sir Henry Hayes was popular, Miss Pike's friends were 
 wealthy, persevering, and determined. They appealed to the law, 
 such abduction being then a capital felony under the statute. 
 Hayes fled. A reward of £2000 was offered by the Government 
 and Miss Pike's friends, but in vain. Hayes was outlawed, but 
 actually returned to Cork, where he lived, unconcealed and unmo- 
 lested. At last, Hayes wrote to Miss Pike, politely offering to 
 stand his trial, which took place (the outlawry being reversed, by 
 consent,) nearly four years after the commission of the offense. Mr. 
 Justice Day was the presiding Judge. There was a great array 
 of counsel on both sides. For the Crown, Mr. Curran and six 
 others; for the prisoner, Mr. Quin and seven more. Hayes came 
 into Court attended by "host of friends." Curran's speech was 
 earnest, eloquent, grave, and at times pathetic. He dwelt on the 
 anomaly of Miss Pike, the victim, being compelled to fly to Eng- 
 land, for security, during two years that the ravisher w^as "basking 
 in the favours of a numerous kindred and acquaintance, in a 
 widely-extended city," where every man knew his person. Hayes 
 
HEYEY Ain) SIRR. 331 
 
 called no witnesses, his counsel pressing for an acquittal in law, 
 from the insufficiency of evidence under the statute of abduction. 
 Curran replied. The jury returned a verdict of " Guilty," with a 
 recommendation to mercy. The point of law raised by Sir Henry's 
 counsel was referred to the twelve judges and decided against him. 
 The capital punishment was not inflicted, being commuted to 
 transportation for life. In a few years, a full pardon was granted. 
 Hayes returned to Cork, and died over twenty years after the 
 tria].^'] 
 
 The next of Mr. Curran's professional efforts which shall be 
 noticed was that in behalf of Mr. John Hevey, who brought an 
 action for false imprisonment against Charles Henry Sirr, town- 
 major of Dublin, f This, though a private case, was intimately 
 connected with the public events in which the preceding state 
 trials originated. It also resembles them in the examples of suffer- 
 ing and depravity which it exhibits. It presents a picture of a race 
 of beings, the greatest scourge of an agitated country — political 
 middle-men, who, conscious that the restoration of tranquillity 
 must throw them out of employment and plunder, feel an interest 
 in aggravating the public disorders by every art of violence and 
 persecution, which, under the pretext of proving their zeal, can 
 prolong the necessity of their office. Of this office and its detest- 
 
 * The popular voice was wholly in favor of Sir Henry Hayes. A ballad-singer made a 
 good deal of money by selling a song, the refrain of which was 
 Sir Henry kissed — Sir Henry kissed 
 
 Sir Henry kissed the Quaker. 
 And what if he did ? You ugly thing, 
 I'm sure he did not ate her ! 
 
 On the morning of the trial, as Mr. Curran was going into the Court-House, some of the 
 populace, who greatly admired him, called out " God bless you, Mr. Curran ! I hope you'll 
 win the day !" Curran, who was against their favorite, answered " If I do, you'll lose the 
 Knight:'''' I recollect having seen Sir Henry Hayes, in the streets of Cork, in 1825. He 
 was a low-statured, thick-set man, wearing a broad-brimmed hat. It was said that his 
 constant companion was a man who used to walk with his head on one side, the effect, I 
 have heard, of his having been hanged in the rebellion of 1798. — M. 
 
 t May 17th, 1802.— C. [The trial took place before Lord Kilwarden and a special 
 jury.— M.] 
 
332 LIFE OF CURRAK". 
 
 able abuses, a tolerable idea may be formed from a sketch of Mr. 
 Curran's statement. 
 
 "It was at that sad crisis [1198) that the defendant, from an 
 obscure individual, started into notice and consequence. It is the 
 hot-bed of public calamity that such inauspicious products are 
 accelerated without being matured. From being a town major, 
 a name scarcely legible in the list of public incumbrances, he 
 became at once invested with all the real powers of the most abso- 
 lute authority. 
 
 " With this gentleman's extraordinary elevation began the story 
 of the sufferings and ruin of the plaintiff. A man was prosecuted 
 by the state ; Hevey, who was accidentally present at the trial, 
 knowing the witness for the prosecution to be a person of infamous 
 character, mentioned the circumstance in court. He was sworn, 
 and on his evidence the prisoner was acquitted. In a day or two 
 after, Major Sirr met the plaintiff in the street, asked how he dared 
 to interfere in his business ? and swore, by God, he would teach 
 him how to meddle with ' his peoj)le.' On the following evening 
 poor Hevey was dogged in the dark into some lonely alley — there 
 he was seized, he knew not by whom, nor by what authority — his 
 crime he soon learned, it was the treason he had committed against 
 the majesty of Major Sirr. He w^as immediately conducted to a 
 new place of imprisonment in the Castle-yard, called the provost. 
 Of this mansion of misery Major Sandys was the keeper, a gentle- 
 man of whom I know how dangerous it is to speak, and of whom 
 every prudent person will think and talk with all due reverence. 
 Here Hevey lay about seven weeks; he was at last discovered 
 among the sweepings of the prison. ' Hevey ' (said the Major) ' I 
 have seen you ride, I think, a smart sort of mare — ^you can't use 
 her here — you had better give me an order for her.' Hevey, in- 
 duced by hope and by fear, gave the order. The Major accepted 
 the order, saying, ' Your courtesy will not cost you much — you 
 are to be sent down to-morrow to Kilkenny, to be tried for your 
 life — you will most certainly be hanged — and you can scarcely 
 
MAJOR SIRE. 333 
 
 think that your journey to the other ^vorkl will be performed on 
 horseback.' Hevey was accordingly transmitted to Kilkenny, tried 
 by a court-martial, and convicted upon the evidence of a person 
 under sentence of death, who had been allured by a proclamation 
 offering' a reward to any man who would come forward and give 
 any evidence against the traitor Ilevey. Lord Gornwallis read 
 the transmiss of Hevey's condemnation — his heart recoiled from 
 the detail of stupidity and barbarity. lie dashed his pen across 
 the odious record, and ordered that Hevey should be forthwith 
 liberated. On his return to Dublin the plaintiff met Major Sandys, 
 and demanded his mare ; — ' Ungrateful villain,' (says the Major) 
 ' is this the gratitude you show^ to his Majesty and to me, for our 
 clemency to you — you shan't get possession of the beast.' Hevey 
 brought an action for the mare ; the Major, not choosing to come 
 into court and suggest the probable success of a thousand actions, 
 restored the property. 
 
 " Three years," continued Mr. Curran, " had elapsed since the 
 deliverance of my client ; the public atmosphere had cleared ; the 
 private destiny of Hevey seemed to have brightened, but the malice 
 of his enemies had not been appeased. On the 8th of last Sep- 
 tember, Mr. Hevey was sitting in a public coffee-house; Major 
 Sirr was there ; Mr. Hevey was informed that Major Sirr had at 
 that moment said, that he (Hevey) ought to have been hanged. 
 The i^laintifF was fired at the charge ; he fixed his eyes on Sirr, 
 and asked if he had dared to say so ? Sirr declared that he had, 
 and had said truly. Hevey answered, that he was a slanderous 
 scoundrel. At that instant Sirr rushed upon him, and, assisted by 
 three or four of his satellites, who attended him in disguise, secu- 
 red him and sent him to the Castle guard, desiring that a receipt 
 might be given for the villain. He was sent thither. The officer 
 of the guard chanced to be an Englishman, but lately ai'rived in 
 Ireland — he said to the bailiffs, ' If this was in England, I should 
 think this gentleman entitled to bail, but I don't know the laws of 
 this country ; however I think you had better loosen those irons 
 on his wrists, or they may kill him.' 
 
334: LIFE OF CURRAN. 
 
 "Major Sirr, the defendant, soon arrived, went into his office, 
 and returned with an order which he had written, and by virtue of 
 which Mr. Hevey w\as conveyed to the custody of his old friend 
 and gaoler, Major Sandys. Here he was flung into a room of 
 about thirteen feet by twelve ; it was called the hospital of the 
 provost ; it was occupied by six beds, in which were to lie fourteen 
 or fifteen miserable wretches, some of them sinking under conta- 
 gious disorders. Here he passed the first night without bed or 
 food. The next morning his humane keeper, the Major, appeared. 
 The plaintiff demanded why he was so imprisoned, complained of 
 hunger, and asked for the gaol allowance ? Major Sandys replied 
 with a torrent of abuse, which he concluded by saying, ' your 
 crime is your insolence to Major Sirr ; however, he disdains to 
 trample on you ; you may appease him by proper and contrite 
 submission ; but unless you do so you shall rot Avhere you are. I 
 tell you this, that if Government will not protect us, by God, we 
 will not protect them. You will probably (for I know your inso- 
 lent and ungrateful hardiness) attempt to get out by an habeas 
 corpus, but in that you will find yourself mistaken, as such a ras- 
 cal deserves.' Hevey was insolent enough to issue a habeas cor- 
 pus, and a return was made on it, ' that Hevey w^as in custody 
 under a warrant from General Craig, on a charge of treason.' That 
 this return w^as a gross falsehood, fabricated by Sirr, I am instructed 
 to assert. The judge, before whom this return was brought, felt that 
 he had no authority to liberate the unhappy prisoner ; and thus, 
 by a most inhuman and malicious lie, ray client was again reman- 
 ded to the horrid mansion of pestilence and famine. Upon this 
 Mr. Hevey, finding that nothing else remained, signed a submission 
 dictated by Sandys, was enlarged from confinement, and brought 
 the present action." 
 
 The foregoing is a very curtailed sketch of the particulars of 
 this case ; those who partake of the prevailing taste for strong 
 emotions are referred to the entire report, where they will find in 
 every line abundant sources of additional excitement. 
 
 Of the style in which the advocate commented upon these 
 
STATE OF IRELAXD. 335 
 
 extraordinnry facts, the following is among the most striking 
 examples : 
 
 Adverting to the ignorance in which England was kept regard- 
 ing the sufferings of Ireland, and to the benefit to be derived from 
 sending her one authenticated example, Mr. Curran goes on — " I 
 cannot also but observe to you, that the real state of one country 
 is more forcibly impressed on the attention of another by a verdict 
 on such a subject as this, than it could be by any general descrip- 
 tion. When you endeavour to convey an idea of a great number 
 of barbarians practising a great variety of cruelties upon an incal- 
 culable number of sufierers, nothing defined or specific finds its way 
 to the heart ; nor is any sentiment excited, save that of a general, 
 erratic, unappropiated commiseration. If, for instance, you wished 
 to convey to the mind of an English matron the horrors of that 
 direful period, when, in defiance of the remonstrance of the ever 
 to be lamented Abercromby,* our poor people were surrendered to 
 the licentious brutality of the soldiery, by the authority of the 
 State — you would vainly endeavour to give her a general picture 
 of lust, and rapine, and murder, and conflagration. By endea- 
 vouring to comprehend every thing, you would convey nothing. 
 "When the father of poetry wishes to pourtray the movements of 
 contending armies and an embattled field, he exemplifies only, he 
 does not describe — he does not venture to describe the perplexed 
 and promiscuous conflicts of adverse hosts, but by the acts and 
 fates of a few individuals he conveys a notion of the vicissitudes 
 of the fight and the fortunes of the day. So should your story to 
 her keep clear of generalities ; instead of exhibiting the picture of 
 an entire province, select a single object, and even in that single 
 object do not release the imagination of your hearer from its task, 
 by giving more than an outline. Take a cottage — place the 
 aff'righted mother of her orphan daughters at the door, the pale- 
 ness of death in her face, and more than its agonies in her heart — 
 
 * Sir Ralph Abercromby (born in 1738, died in ISOl) commanded the troops in Ireland 
 during the early part of tho Rebellion of 1798 ; but his disgust at the system of cruelty and 
 tyranny sanctioned there by the Government, caused him to make indignant remon- 
 strances, which were answered by his recall. — M. 
 
33 G LIFE OF CURE AN. 
 
 her aching heart, her anxious ear struggling through the mist of 
 closing day to catch the approaches of desolation and dishonour. 
 The ruffian gang arrives — the feast of plunder begins — the cup of 
 madness kindles in its circulation — the wandering glances of the 
 ravisher become concentrated upon the shrinking and devoted 
 victim : you need not dilate — you need not expatiate — the unpol- 
 luted mother, to whom you tell the story of horror, beseeches you 
 not to proceed ; she presses her child to her heart — she drowns 
 it in her tears — her fancy catches more than an angel's tongue 
 could describe ; at a single view she takes in the whole miserable 
 succession of force, of profanation, of despair, of death. So it is in 
 the Cjuestion before us. If anj- man shall hear of this day's trans- 
 action, he cannot be so foolish as to suppose that we have been 
 confined to a single character like those now brought before you. 
 No, gentlemen, far from it — he will have too much common sense 
 not to know, that outrages like these are never solitary ; that 
 "where the public calamity generates imps like these, their number 
 is as the sands of the sea, and their fury as insatiable as its 
 waves." 
 
 The jury awarded Mr. Hevey i£150 damages:* out of Ireland 
 this verdict excited some surprise and indignation, feelings which 
 sufficiently corroborate Mr. Curran's assertion, that the internal con- 
 dition of his country was but little known in the sister kingdom. 
 A story of such complicated sufferings and indignities would have 
 found afar different reception from an English jury — but the plain- 
 tiff in this action was a person to whom,' in Ireland, it would have 
 been deemed disloyal to have granted a just remuneration. Hevey 
 was susjDected of disaffection in 1798, and the men who were thus 
 regardless of his appeal to their sympathy, were avenging the 
 popular excesses of that year. 
 
 In the course of Mr. Curran's observations upon the persecution 
 of his client in this case, he took an occasion of introducing a happy 
 
 * Plunket was counsel for Major Sirr. Despite the favourable verdict, Hevey was 
 ruined. The long imprisonment made hita bankrupt. Poverty and sorrow broke his 
 mind (said Davis), and he died a pauper lunatic shortly after.— M. 
 
WILLIAM GODWIN. 337 
 
 and well-merited compliment to a friend and a man of genius. 
 "No country" (said lie) "governed by any settled laws, or treated 
 with common humanity, could furnish any occurrences of such 
 unparalleled atrocity ; and if the author of Caleb Williams, or of 
 the Simple Story,* were to read the tale of this man's sufterings, it 
 might, I think, humble the vanity of their talents (if they are not 
 too proud to be vain) when they saw how much more fruitful a 
 source of incident could be found in the infernal workings of the 
 heart of a malignant slave, than in the richest copiousness of the 
 most fertile and creative imagination." 
 
 Among his English friends, the author of Caleb Williams was 
 the one to whom Mr. Curran, during the last twenty years of his 
 life, was the most attached, and in whose society he most delighted. 
 However he may have dissented from some of Mr. Godwin's 
 speculative opinions, he always considered him as a man of the 
 most decidedly original genius of his time, and uniformly discoun- 
 tenanced the vulgar clamour with which it was the fashion to assail 
 him. There are many who well remember his fervour and elo- 
 quence upon this topic, the tears which he so frequently excited 
 by his glowing descriptions of the private excellencies of his friend, 
 and of the manly, philosophic equanimity by which he triumphed 
 over every accident of fortune. Mr. Curran's affection and respect 
 were not unreturned — Mr. Godwin attended him in his last illness, 
 watched over him till he expired, accompanied him to his grave, 
 and has since his death omitted no occasion, in public or private, 
 of honouring his memory .f 
 
 * Mrs. Inchbald. — M. 
 
 t His work, Mandeville, is dedicated to the memory of Mr. Curran, "the sincerest 
 friend he ever had," a tribute of generous and disinterested regard, of which the motives 
 are above all suspicion.— C. [Godwin, who was six years younger than Curran, survived 
 him, not departing this life until 1836. At the time when Curran complimented Godwin, 
 in his speech for Hevey, the novelist, who was on a visit at the Priory, was in Court. On 
 returning, Curran, who expected at least a word or two of acknowledgmeiit, and received 
 none, asked Godwin what he thought of the trial ? " Oh," said Godwin, " I had forgot- 
 ten. I am glad that I heard you, as I have now some idea of your manner.''^ The very 
 last note written by Curran was an invitation to Charles Phillips to meet Godwin at 
 dinner."— M.] 
 
 15 
 
338 LIFE OF CIJERA^<. 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 Mr. Curran visUs Paris— Letter to his son— Insurrection of 1S03— Defence of Kirwan— 
 Death of Lord Kilwarden — Intimacy of Mr. Robert Eminett in Mr. Curran's family, and 
 its consequences — Letter from Mr. Emmett to Mr. Currau — Letter from the same to Mr. 
 Richard Curran. 
 
 This year (1802) Mr. Curran, taking advantage of tlie short 
 peace, revisited France. His journey thither now was undertaken 
 ■with views and anticipations very different from those which had 
 formerly attracted his steps towards that country. He had this 
 time little hope of any gratification ; he went from an impulse of 
 melancholy curiosity, to witness the extent of his own disappoint- 
 ments, and to ascertain in person whether anything worth saving, 
 in morals and institutions, had escaped the general wreck ; for he 
 was amono- those whose general attachment to freedom had in- 
 duced them to hail with joy the first prospects which the revolu- 
 tion seemed to open upon France. His own early admiration of 
 the literary and social genius of her people had made him watch, 
 with the liveliest interest, the progress of their struggles, until 
 they assumed a character which no honourable mind could con- 
 template without anguish and horror. 
 
 To Mr. Curran, too, every painful reflection upon the destiny 
 of France was embittered from its connexion with a subject so 
 much nearer to his heart, the fate of Ireland : for to whatever 
 cause the late rebellion might be attributed, whether to an 
 untimely and intemperate spirit of innovation in the people, or to 
 an equally violent spirit of coercion in the state, it was in the 
 influence of the French revolution that the origin of both might 
 be found. 
 
 It will be seen, from some passages in the following letter to 
 
VISIT TO PAEIS. 339 
 
 one of his sons, that he found little in France under its consular 
 government to diminish his regrets or justify a return to hope. 
 
 " Paris, October 5, 1S02. 
 
 "Dear Richard, 
 
 " Here I am, after having lingered six or seven days very 
 unnecessarily in London. I don't know that even the few da^^s 
 that I can spend here will not be enough ; sickness long and 
 gloomy ; convalescence disturbed by various paroxysms ; relapse 
 confirmed ; the last a spectacle soon seen and painliilly dwelt upon. 
 I shall stay here yet a few days. There are some to whom I have 
 introductions that I have not seen. I don't suppose I shall get 
 myself presented to the consul. Not having been privately bap- 
 tized at St. James's would be a difficulty ; to get over it a favour ; 
 and then the trouble of getting one's self costumed for the show; 
 and then the small value of being driven, like the beasts of the 
 field before Adam when he named them ; I think I sha'n't mind 
 it. The character of this place is wonderfully different from that 
 of London. I think I can say without affectation, that I miss the 
 frivolous elegance of the old times before the Revolution, and that 
 in the place of it I see a squalid, beard-grown, vulgar \nvacity ; 
 but still it is vivacity, infinitely preferable to the frozen and awk- 
 ward sulk that I have left. Here they certainly wish to be happy, 
 and think that by being merry they are so. I dined yesterday 
 with Mr. Fox, and went in the evening to Tivoli, a great planted, 
 illuminated garden, where all the bourgeoisie of Paris, and some of 
 better description, went to see a balloon go up. The aeronaut was 
 to have ascended with a smart girl, his honne amie ; for some 
 reason that I know not, some one else went up in her place ; she 
 was extremely mortified ; the balloon rose, diminished, vanished 
 into night; no one could guess what might be its fate, and the 
 poor dear one danced the whole evening to shake off her melan- 
 choly. 
 
 " I am glad I have come here. I entertained many ideas of it, 
 
oiO LIFE OF CUSKAN. 
 
 which I have entirely given up, or very much indeed altered. 
 Never was there a scene that could furnish more to the weeping 
 or the grinning philosopher ; they well might agree that human 
 aflPairs were a sad joke*. I see it every where, and in every thing. 
 The wheel has run a complete round ; only changed some spokes 
 and a feAv ' fellows,' very little for the better, but the axle certainly 
 has not rusted ; nor do I see any likelihood of its rusting. At 
 present all is quiet except the tongue, thanks to those invaluable 
 protectors of peace, the army ! ! At Tivoli last night we had at 
 least an hundred soldiers, with fixed bayonets. The consul now 
 lives at St. Cloud in a magnificence, solitary, but still fitting his 
 marvellous fortune. He is very rarely seen — he travels by night 
 — is indefatigable — has no favourite, &c. 
 
 " As to the little affairs at the Priory ,f I can scarcely conde- 
 scend, after a walk in the Louvre, amid the spirit of those arts 
 which were inspired by freedom, and have been transmitted to 
 power, to think of so poor a subject. I hope to get a letter from 
 you in London, at Osborne's, Adelphi. Many of the Irish are 
 here — not of consequence, to be in danger : I have merely heard 
 of them. Yesterday I met Arthur O'Connor in the street, with 
 Lord and Lady Oxford. Her ladyship very kindly pressed me to 
 dine : but I was engaged. I had bargained for a cabriolet, to go 
 
 * This idea occurs again in a speech, delivered by Mr. Curran two years subsequent 
 to the date of the above letter. "I find, my lords, I have undesignedly raised a laugh. 
 Never did I less feel merriment — let me not be condemned — let not the laugh be mistaken. 
 Never was Mr. Hume more just than when he says, ' that in many things the extremes 
 are nearer to one another than the means.' Few are those events, that are produced by 
 vice and folly, which fire the heart with indignation, that do not also shake the sides 
 with laughter. So when the two famous moralists of old beheld the sad spectacle of life, 
 the one burst into laughter, and the other melted into tears ; they were each of them 
 right and equally right. 
 
 Si credas utrique 
 Res sunt humanae flebile ludibrium. 
 
 But these are the bitter ireful laughs of honest indignation, or they are the laughs of 
 hectic melancholy and despair." — Speech in behalf of Mr. Justice Johnson. 
 t Mr. Curran's country seat in the vicinity of DubUn. — 0. 
 
341 
 
 and see my poor gossip. Set out at two : at the end of five miles 
 found I was totally misdirected — returned to St. Denys — got a 
 miserable dinner, and was fleeced as usual. I had some vengeance 
 of the rascal, however, by deploring the misery of a country where 
 a stranger had nothing for his dinner but a bill. You feel a 
 mistake in chronology in the two " yesterdays ;" but, in fact, part 
 of this was written yesterday, and the latter part now. I need not 
 desire you to bid any one remember me ; but tell them I remem- 
 ber them. Say how Eliza does. Tell Amelia and Sarah I do not 
 
 forget them. God bless you all. 
 
 "J. P.O." 
 
 A more detailed and elaborate exposition of Mr. Curran's 
 opinions upon the condition of France at this period, and upon the 
 merits of its ruler's system, is contained in a speech which he 
 made the following year in defence of Owen Kirwan,"'^' one of the 
 persons engaged in the insurrection of the 23d of July, 1803. He 
 undertook the office of counsel for some of these deluded insur- 
 gents, not in the expectation that any aid of his could save them, 
 but because it aftbrded him an opportunity of warning his country- 
 men against a recurrence to such fatal enterprises, by publicly 
 protesting against their folly and criminality, and by exposing the 
 fatuity of those who imagined that a revolution, achieved by the 
 assistance of France, could have any other effect than that of sub- 
 jecting Ireland to the merciless control of that power. His 
 
 * The trial of Owen Kirwan arose out of Robert Emmett's unsuccessful attempt at a 
 general insurrection, in 1S03. The revolt was over almost before it commenced. Govern- 
 ment made numerous arrests. A special commission was issued for the trial of the priso- 
 ners, and the judges were Lord Norbury, Mr. Justice Finucane, and Barons George and 
 Daly. Nineteen persons were tried; one was acquitted, one was respited, and Robert 
 Emmett, with sixteen more, were convicted and executed. Several of the prisoners were 
 defended by Curran, Ponsonby, and McNally; but Curran's only speech was for Owen 
 Kirwan, who was convicted. No other verdict could have been given on the evidence, 
 proof being given of the outbreak, and of Kirwan (a tailor in Plunket street, Dublin) 
 having turned out from his shop with a piiie on liis shoulder, at the head of several men. 
 It was attempted to be shown, but without success, (luit Kirwan had slept at home on the 
 night in question. He was executed on September 3, iSaS.— ]\I. 
 
342 LIFE OF CURKAN. 
 
 opinions and advice upon this subject he gave at considerable 
 length in the speech alluded to, vv'hich, independent of any other 
 claims to praise, remains an honourable testimony of his prompt- 
 ness in opposing the passions of the people, where he did not con- 
 ceive that they were the necessary result of more reprehensible 
 passions in a higher quarter. He has hitherto been seen almost 
 uniformly exclaiming against the latter as the principal causes of 
 his country's disasters ; it is therefore due to him, and to the Gov- 
 ernment of 1803, to give an example of the different language that 
 he used where he considered it deserved. 
 
 " I cannot but confess that I feel no small consolation when 1 
 compare my present with my former situation upon similar occa- 
 sions. In those sad times to which I allude, it was frequently my 
 fate to come forward to the spot where I now stand, with a body 
 sinking under infirmity and disease, and a mind broken with the 
 consciousness of public calamity, created and exasperated by pub- 
 lic folly. It has pleased heaven that I should live to survive both 
 these afllictions, and I am grateful for its mercy. I now come here 
 through a composed and quiet city — I read no expression in any 
 face, save such as marks the ordinary feelings of social life, or the 
 various characters of civil occupation — I see no frightful spectacle 
 of infuriated pov»-er or sufiering" humanity — I see no tortures — I 
 hear no shrieks — I no longer see the human heart charred in the 
 flame of its own vile and paltry passions, black and. bloodless, 
 capable only of catching and communicating that destructive fire 
 by which it devours, and is itself devoured — I no longer behold 
 the ravages of that odious bigotry by which v.-e were deformed, 
 and degraded, and disgraced ; a bigotry against which no honest 
 man should ever miss an opportunity of putting his countrymen, 
 of all sects, and of all descriptions, upon their guard. 
 
 " Even in this melancholy place I feel myself restored and 
 re created by breathing the mild atmosphere of justice, mercy, and 
 humanity — feel I am addressing the parental authority of the law. 
 I feel I am addressing a jury of my countrymen, of my fellow-sub- 
 jects, and my fellow-Christians, against v>-hom my heart is waging 
 
343 
 
 no concealed hostility, from whom my face is disguising no latent 
 sentiment of repugnance or disgust. I have not now to touch the 
 high-raised strings of an angry passion in those that hear me ; nor 
 have I the terror of thinking, that, if those strings cannot be 
 snapped by the stroke, they will be only provoked into a more 
 instigated vibration. 
 
 " I have heard much of the dreadful extent of the conspiracy 
 against this country, of the narrow escape of the Government: 
 you now see the fact as it is. By the judicious adoption of a mild 
 and conciliatory system of conduct, what was six years ago a for- 
 midable rebellion has now dwindled down to a drunken, riotous 
 insurrection — disgraced, certainly, by some odious atrocities : its 
 objects, whatever they were, no doubt highly criminal ; but, as an 
 attack upon the state, of the most contemptible insignificance. 
 
 " I have no pretension to be the vindicator of the Lord Lieu- 
 tenant of Ireland, whose person I do not know that I have ever 
 seen ; at the sajne time, v/hen I am so necessarily forced upon the 
 subject, I feel no disposition to conceal the respect and satisf^iction 
 with which I saw the King's representative comport himself as he 
 did, at a crisis of no little anxiety, though of no considerable 
 danger. I think it was a proof of his excellency's firmness and 
 good sense, not to discredit his own opinion of his confidence in 
 the public safety, by an ostentatious display of unnecessary open 
 preparation ; '* and I think he did himself ecjual honour, by pre- 
 serving his usual temper, and not suffering himself to be exasper- 
 ated by the event, when it did happen, into the adoption of 
 any violent or precipitate measures. Perhaps I may even be 
 excused, if I confess that I was not wholly free from some profes- 
 sional vanity when I saw that the descendant of a great lawyerf 
 
 * Preparation was not made. Had Emmett's followers congregated in a compact foroo 
 and assailed the Castle, it must have been taken ; for, so unprepared was the Govern- 
 ment, that, whether from carelessness or design, there was not a single ball in the arsenal 
 which would fit the artillery ! — M, 
 
 t Lord Hardwicke.— M. 
 
o44 LIFE OF CURRAN. 
 
 was capable of remembering what, without the memory of such 
 an example, he perhaps might not have done, that, even in the 
 moment of peril, the law is the best safeguard of the constitution. 
 At all events, I feel that a man, who, at all times, has so freely- 
 censured the extravagancies of power and force as I have done, is 
 justified, if not bound, by the consistency of character, to give the 
 fair attestation of his opinion to the exercise of wisdom and 
 humanity wherever he finds them, whether in a friend or in a 
 strano-er." 
 
 Upon the subject of the mere political folly, setting even apart 
 all moral tie of duty or allegiance, or the difiiculty or the danger " 
 of Ireland's desiring to separate from England, and fraternize with 
 France, Mr. Curran observes, " Force only can hold the acquisi- 
 tions of the French Consul. What community of interest can he 
 have with the different nations that he has subdued and plundered ? 
 clearly none. Can he venture to establish any regular and pro- 
 tected system of religion among them ? Wherever he erected an 
 altar, he would set up a monument of condemnation and reproach 
 upon those wild and fantastic speculations which he is pleased to 
 dignify with the name of philosophy, but w^hich other men, per- 
 haps because they are endowed with a less aspiring intellect, 
 conceive to be a desperate, anarchical atheism, giving to every 
 man a dispensing powder for the gratification of his passion, teach- 
 ing him that he may be a rebel to his conscience with advantage, 
 and to his God with impunity. Just as soon would the govern- 
 ment of Britain venture to display the crescent in their churches, 
 as an honorary member of all faiths to show any reverence to the 
 cross in his dominions. Apply the same reasoning to liberty. Can 
 he venture to give any reasonable portion of it to his subjects at 
 home, or his vassals abroad ? The answer is obvious : sustained 
 merely by military force, his unavoidable policy is to make the 
 army every thing and the people nothing. If he ventured to elevate 
 his soldiers into citizens and his wretched subjects into freemen, 
 
FRANCE AND lEELAND. 345 
 
 lie would form a confederacy of mutual interest between both, 
 against which he could not exist a moment. 
 
 " I may be asked are these merely my own speculations, or have 
 others in Ireland adopted them, I answer freely, non mens hie 
 sermo est. It is to my own knowledge, the result of serious reflec- 
 tion in numbers of our countrymen. In the storm of arbitrary 
 sway, in the distraction of torture and suffering, the human mind 
 had lost its poise and tone, and Avas incapable of sober reflection ; 
 but, by removing those terrors from it, by holding an even hand 
 between all parties, by disdaining the patronage of any sect or 
 faction, the people of Ireland were left at liberty to consider her 
 real situation and interest; and happily for herself, I trust in God, 
 she has availed herself of the opportunity, AVith respect to the 
 higher orders, even of those who thought they had some cause to 
 complain, I know this to be the fact — they are not so blind as not 
 to see the difference between being proud, and jealous, and punc- 
 tilious, in any claim of privilege or right between themselves and 
 their fellow subjects, and the mad and desperate depravity of seek- 
 ing the redress of any dissatisfaction that they might feel, by an 
 appeal to force, or the dreadful recourse to treason and to blood. 
 As to the humbler order of our people, for whom, I confess, I feel 
 the greatest sympathy, because there are more of them to be 
 undone — I have not the same opportunity of knowing their actual 
 opinions ; but if their opinions be other than I think they ought 
 to be, would to God they were present in this place, or that I had 
 the opportunity of going into their cottages — and they well kn'ow 
 I should not disdain to visit them, and to speak to tliem the lan- 
 guage of affection and candour on the subject — I should have little 
 difficulty in showing to their quick and apprehensive minds how 
 easy it is, when the heart is incensed, to confound the evils which 
 are inseparable from the destiny of imperfect man, with those 
 which arise from the faults or errors of his political situation. I 
 would put a few questions to their candid, unadulterated sense : Do 
 
 15* 
 
346 LIFE OF CUKKAN. 
 
 you tliink you have made no advance to civil prosperity within the 
 last twenty years? Are your opinions of modern and subjugated 
 France the same that you entertained of popular and revolu- 
 tionary France fourteen years ago ? Have you any hope, that, if 
 the first Consul got possession of your island, he would treat you 
 half so well as he does those countries at his door, whom he must 
 respect more than he can respect or regard you? Can you sup- 
 pose that the perfidy and treason of surrendering your country to 
 an invader would, to your new master, be any pledge of your 
 allegiance ? Can you suppose that, while a single French soldier 
 was willing to accept an acre of Irish ground, he would leave 
 that acre in the possession of a man who had shown himself so 
 stupidly dead to the suggestions of the most obvious interest, and 
 to the ties of the most imperious moral obhgations? Do you 
 think he would feel any kind-hearted sympathy for you ? Answer 
 yourselves by asking, what sympathy does he feel for Frenchmen, 
 whom he is ready by thousands to bury in the ocean, in the bar- 
 barous gambling of his wild ambition ? What sympathy, then, 
 could bind him to you ? He is not your countryman : the scene 
 of your birth and your childhood is not endeared to his heart by 
 the reflection that it was also the scene of his. He is not your 
 fellow-Christian : he is not, therefore, bound to you by any simi- 
 larity of duty in this world, or by any union of hope beyond the 
 grave ; what, then, could you suppose the object of his visit, or the 
 consequence of his success ? Can you be so foolish as not to see 
 that he w^ould use you as slaves while he held you ; and that when 
 he grew^ weary, wdiich he w^ould soon become, of such a w^orthless 
 and precarious possession, he w^ould carry you to market in some 
 treaty of peace, barter you for some more valuable concession 
 and surrender you to expiate by your punishment and degrada- 
 tion, the advantage you had given him by your follies and your 
 crimes." 
 
 The particulars of the scene on the night of the 23d of July are 
 
LOKD KILWARDEN. 34:7 
 
 not inserted here."^' It resembled a riot rather than insurrection, 
 and was alarming only because it was unexpected ; for, notwith- 
 standing the momentary panic which it excited, in a few hours the 
 public tranquillity was restored ; yet however innocuous to the 
 state, it was to Ireland a great calamity. It revived and confirmed 
 many sentiments of internal animosity and distrust, by fatally prov- 
 ing that the elements of disorder were not extinct ; it violently tore 
 from the services of his country the respected Lord Kilwarden, one 
 of the most upright of her magistrates ; the wisest, because the 
 gentlest, in her councils ; the man w^ho of all others least required 
 such a martyrdom to consecrate his name. It is scarcely necessary 
 to add, that to Mr. Curran the fate of a person whom he had so 
 long loved and honoured, and who in the season of trial had proved 
 so tender a friend to him, and to their common country, was a 
 source of profound and lasting affliction.! 
 
 * The account of the plan of insurrection, drawn up by Mr. Robert Emmett during hia 
 imprisonment, has been published.— C. 
 
 t It is universally agreed that the murder of this excellent man was the unpremedi- 
 tated act of a ferocious rabble ; but there are various accounts of their probable motives 
 in wantonly sacrificing so upright and humane a judge to their fury. A popular expla- 
 nation of this is, that that the perpetrators mistook him for another person. There is also 
 an account which admits the mistake in the first instance, but subjoins other particulars 
 which appear sufficiently probable ; and as some of the facts, of which there are no doubt, 
 reflect the highest honour upon Lord Kilwarden's memory, the whole shall be given 
 here. In the year 1795, when he was Attorney-General, a number of young men (all of 
 whom were between the age of fifteen and twenty) were indicted for high treason. 
 Upon the day appointed for their trial they appeared in the dock, wearing shirts with 
 tuckers and open collars, in the manner usual with boys. When the Chief Justice of the 
 King's Bench, before whom they were to to be tried, came into court and observed them, 
 he called out, " Well, Mr. Attorney, I suppose you're ready to go on with the trial of 
 these tuckered traitors?" The Attorney-General was ready, and hatl attended for the 
 purpose ; but indignant and disgusted at hearing such language from the judgment seat, 
 he rose, and replied, " No, my lord, I am not ready ; and, (added he, in a low tone to 
 one of the prisoners' counsel who was near him) if I have any power to save the lives of 
 these boys, whose extreme youth I did not before observe, that man shall never have the 
 gratification of passing sentence of death upon a single one of these tuckered traitors." 
 He performed his promise, and soon after procured pardons for them all, upwn the condition 
 of their expatriating themselves for ever ; but one of them obstinately refusing to accept the 
 pai'don upon that condition, he was tried, convicted and executed. Thus far the facts 
 rest upon credible authorities ; what follows is given as an unauthenticated report. After 
 
348 LIFE OF CURRAN. ' 
 
 But it was not solely in this point of view that tlie late events 
 affected Mr. Curran : there were some accompanying circumstances 
 which more intimately related to himself; and however painful 
 their introduction may be, it yet becomes every one who has a 
 sense of the fidelity which is due to the public whom he addresses, 
 not to screen himself behind his personal feelings, where a para- 
 mount duty demands their sacrifice ; still less would he, upon whom 
 that duty at present devolves, be justified under such a pretext, in 
 leaving the possibility of any misconception or reproach regarding 
 one whose memory the combined sentiments of nature, of country, 
 and of individual respect, impel him to cherish and revere. In the 
 following facts, as far as they are generally connected with Mr. 
 Curran, there is indeed no new disclosure. It is a matter of noto- 
 riety, that at this period his house was searched — that he appeared 
 himself before the members of the Privy Council ; that a rumour 
 prevailed, to which his political enemies gave a ready credit, and 
 as far as they could, a confirmation, that he was personally impli- 
 cated in the recent conspiracy. To be silent, therefore, upon a 
 subject so well known, would be a fruitless effort to suppress it ; to 
 allude to it remotely and timidly would be to imply that the whole 
 could not bear to be told : it only remains then to give an explicit 
 statement of the particulars, and to subjoin one or two original 
 documents, which will be found to corroborate it in every essential 
 point. 
 
 The projector of the late insurrection, Mr. Robert Emmett, who 
 was a young gentleman of a highly respectable family, of very 
 striking talents and interesting manners, was in the habit of visit- 
 
 the death of this young man, his relatives (it is said) readily listening to every misrepre- 
 sentation which flattered their resentment, became persuaded that the Attorney- General 
 had selected him alone to suffer the utmost severity of the law. One of these (a persoa 
 named Shannon) was an insurgent on the 23d of July, and when Lord Kilwarden, hearing 
 the popular cry for vengeance, exclaimed from his carriage, " It is I, Kilwarden, Chief 
 Justice of the King's Bench!" "Then," cried out Shannon, "you're the man that I 
 want !" and plunged a pike into his lordship's body. This story was current among the 
 lower orders in Dublin, who were most likely to know the fact.— C. 
 
ROBERT EMMETT. 349 
 
 ing at Mr. Ciirran's house : here he soon formed an attachment for 
 [Sarah] Mr. Curran's youngest daughter. Of the progress of that 
 attachment, and of the period and occasion of his divulging it to 
 her, Mr. Emmett's letters, inserted hereafter, contain all that is to 
 be told. It is necessary, however, to add, as indeed will appear 
 from those letters, that her father remained in total ignorance of 
 the motive of Mr. Emmett's visits, untill subsequent events made 
 it known to all. To a man of his celebrity and attractive conversa- 
 tion, there seemed nothing singular in finding his society cultivat- 
 ed by any young person to whom he aftbrded (as he so generally 
 did to all) the opportunities of enjoying it. As the period, how- 
 ever, of the intended insurrection approached, Mr. Curran began 
 to suspect, from minute indications, which would probably have 
 escaped a less skilful observer, that his young visiter was actuated 
 by some strong passions, Avhich it cost him a perpetual effort to 
 conceal ; and in consequence, without assigning to those appear- 
 ances any precise motive, or giving the subject much attention, he, 
 in general terms, recommended to his family not to allow what 
 was at present only a casual acquaintance to ripen into a greater 
 degree of intimacy. 
 ^"iJpon the failure of the insurrection, its leader escaped, and 
 succeeded for some weeks in secreting himself. There is reason 
 to believe, that had he attended solely to his safety, he could have 
 easily effected his departure from the kingdom ; but in the same 
 spirit of romantic enthusiasm which distinguished his short career, 
 he could not submit to leave a country to which he could never 
 more return, without making an effort to have one final interviev/ 
 with the object of his unfortunate attachment, in order to receive 
 her personal forgiveness for what he now considered as the deep- 
 est injury. It was apparently with a view to obtaining this last 
 gratification that he selected the place of concealment in which 
 he was discovered : he was arrested in a house situated midway 
 between Dublin and Mr. Curran's country seat. Upon his person 
 were found some papers, which showed that subsequent to the 
 
350 LIFE OF CUKE AN. 
 
 insurrection he iiad corresponded with one of that gentleman's 
 ftimily : a warrant accordingly followed as a matter of course, to 
 examine Mr. Ciu'ran's house, v.'here some of Mr. Emmett's letters 
 were found, which, together with the documents taken upon his 
 person, placed beyond a doubt his connection with the late con- 
 spiracy, and were afterwards used as e\ddence upon his trial. 
 
 It vras from this legal proceeding that Mr. Curran received the 
 first intimation of the melancholy attachment in which one of his 
 children had been involved. This is not the place to dwell upon 
 the agony which such a discovery occasioned to the private feelings 
 of the father. It was not the private calamity alone which he had 
 to deplore; it came embittered by other circumstances, which, 
 for the moment, gave his sensibility an intenser shock. He was a 
 prominent public character, and from the intrepid resistance which 
 he had uniformly made in the senate and at the bar to the unconsti- 
 tutional measures of the state, was inevitably exposed to th^ 
 political hatred of many, who would have gloried in the ruin of 
 his reputation as in a decisive triumph over those principles which 
 he had all his life supported. He had seen and experienced too 
 much of party calumny not to apprehend that it would show little 
 respect for a misfortune which could afford a pretext for accusa- 
 tion ; and however secure he might feel as to the final results of 
 the most merciless investigation, he still could not contemplate 
 without anguish the possibility of having to suffer the "humiliation 
 of an acquittal." But his mind was soon relieved from all such 
 distressing anticipations. He waited upon the Attorney-General,* 
 and tendered his person and papers to abide any inquiry which the 
 government might deem it expedient to direct. That officer 
 entered into his situation with the most prompt and manly 
 sympathy, and instead of assuming the character of an accuser of 
 
 * The right honourable Staudish O'Grady, the present Chief Baron of the Exchequer In 
 Ireland. — 0. [Standish O'Grady, was created Baron O'Grady of Rockbarton, and 
 Viscount Guillamore, of Caher Guillamore, in the County of Limerick, in 1831, when he 
 quitted the Bench. He died in April, 1840, aged T4 years.— M.] 
 
CUSRAN SUSPECTED. 351 
 
 the father, more generously displayed his zeal in interceding for 
 the child. At his instance Mr. Ciirran accompanied him to the 
 Privy Council. Upon his first entrance there was some indication 
 of the hostile spirit which he had originally apprehended. A 
 noble lord, who at that time held the highest judicial situation in 
 Ireland,''^ undertook to examine him upon the transaction Avhich 
 had occasioned his attendance. To do this was undoubtedly his 
 duty ; but overstepping his duty, or at least his prudence, he 
 thought proper to preface his intended questi-bns by an austere 
 authoritative air, of which the palpable meaning was, that he 
 considered intimidation as the most effectual mode of extracting 
 the truth. He fixed his eye upon Mr. Curran, and was proceeding 
 to cross-examine his countenance, when (as is well remembered by 
 the spectators of the scene) the swell of indignation, and the 
 glance of stern dignity and contempt v/hich he encountered there, 
 gave his own nerves the shock which he had meditated for 
 another's, and compelled him to shrink back into his chair, silent 
 and disconcerted at the ftiilure of his rash experiment. With this 
 single exception, Mr. Curran was treated with the utmost delicacy ; 
 for this he was principally indebted to the friendship of the 
 Attorney-General, who finding that every inquiry and document 
 upon the subject explained all the circumstances beyond the 
 possibility of an unfavourable conjecture, humanely and (where it 
 was necessary) firmly interposed his authority, to save the feelings 
 of the parent from any additional affliction. 
 
 The following are the letters which it seems requisite to 
 introduce. There was a time when the publication of them 
 would have excited pain, but that time is past. The only persons 
 to whom such a proceeding could have given a pang, the father 
 and the child, are now beyond its reach ; and their survivor, who 
 from a sense of duty permits them to see the light, does so under 
 a full persuasion, that all those who from personal knowledge, or 
 
 * The Earl of Clare, his old antagonist,— M. 
 
352 LIFE OF CURRAN. 
 
 from report, may sometimes recall their memories with sentiments 
 of tenderness or esteem, will find nothing in the contents of those 
 documents which can provoke the intrusion of a harsher feeling. 
 
 FROM MR. ROBERT EMMETT TO JOHN PHILPOT CURRAN, ESQ. 
 
 " I did not expect you to be my counsel.^'' I nominated you, 
 because not to have done so might have appeared remarkable. 
 
 Had Mr. been in town, I did not even wish to have seen 
 
 you ; but as he was not, I wrote to you to come to me once. I 
 know that I have done you very severe injury, much greater than 
 I can atone for with my life : that atonement I did offer to make 
 before the Privy Council, by pleading guilty, if tliose documents 
 were suppressed.f I offered more — I offered, if I was permitted 
 to consult some persons, and if they would consent to an accom- 
 modation for saving the lives of others, that I would only require 
 for my part of it the suppression of those documents, and that I 
 would abide the event of my own trial. This also was rejected; 
 and nothing but individual information (with the exception of 
 names) would be taken. My intention was, not to leave the sup- 
 
 *Curran had originally been named as one of Emmett's counsel, but the delicacy of his 
 situation forbade his acting. He had the highest opinion of him, and subsequently said : 
 "I would have believed the word of Emmett as soon as the oath of any man I ever 
 knew."— M. 
 
 tHis letters to Sarah Curran. — In fact, the letters were not brought before the Court, 
 on the trial, and, in fulfilment of the compact, Emmett made no legal defence. Ilis 
 celebrated speech was a/^er conviction, when he was called up to offer any cause why 
 sentence should not be passed. The reader of Washington Irving (the whole world), will 
 recollect that the unhappy loves of Emmett and Sarah Curran, supplied a subject for one 
 of the most touching and pathetic papers in " The Sketch Book." After Emmett's execu- 
 tion, home became changed to Sarah Curran, and she went to live in the house of Mr. 
 Penrose near Cork. There, Captain Sturgeon prevailed upon her to marry him, which she 
 did, telling him that her affections were in the grave. He took her to Sicily, where, in a 
 few months, she died of a broken heart. Captain Sturgeon, who survived her several 
 years, was killed in battle, during the Peninsular War, — Emmett wore a tress of her hair 
 next his heart, when he was executed ; and, only an hour before his death, he bade her 
 farewell in this brief note, " My love, Sarah ! it was not thus that I thought to have 
 requited your affection, I did hope to be a prop around which your affections might have 
 clung and which never have been shaken ; but a rude blast has snapped it, and they have 
 fallen over a grave !"— He died, as he had lived, fearlessly.— M. 
 
353 
 
 pression of those documents to possibility, but to render it unneces- 
 sary for any one to plead for me, by pleading guilty to the charge 
 myself. 
 
 " The circumstances that I am now going to mention, I do not 
 state in my own justification. When I first addressed your 
 daughter, I expected that in another week my own fate would be 
 decided. I knew that in case of success, many others might look 
 on me difierently from what they did at that moment ; but I speak 
 with sincerity, when I say that I never was anxious for situation 
 or distinction myself, and I did not wish to be united to one who 
 was. I spoke to your daughter, neither expecting, nor, in fiict, 
 under those circumstances wishing tliat there should be a return 
 of attachment ; but wishing to judge of her dispositions, to know 
 how far they might be not unfavourable or disengaged, and to 
 know what foundation I might afterwards have to count on. I 
 received no encouragement whatever. She told me that she had 
 no attachment for any person, nor did she seem likely to have any 
 that could make her wish to quit you. I staid away till the time 
 had elapsed when I found that the event to wdiich I allude was to 
 be postponed indefinitely. I returned by a kind of infatuation, 
 thinking that to myself only was I gi\dng pleasure or pain. I 
 perceived no progress of attachment on her part, nor anything in 
 her conduct to distinguish me from a common acquaintance. 
 Afterwards I had reason to suppose that discoveries were made, 
 and I should be obliged to quit the kingdom immediately ; and I 
 came to make a renunciation of any approach to friendship that 
 might have been formed. On that very day she herself spoke to 
 me to discontinue my visits ; I told her that it was my intention, 
 and I mentioned the reason. I then, for the first time, found, 
 when I was unfortunate, by the manner in which she was affected, 
 that there was a return of affection, and that it Avas too late to 
 retreat. My own apprehensions, also, I afterwards found, were 
 without cause, and I remained. There has been much culpability 
 on my part in all this, but there has also been a great deal of that 
 
Sotl- LIFE OF CUERAX. 
 
 misfortune Avliicii seems uniformly to have accompanied me. 
 That I have written to your daughter since an unfortunate event 
 has taken place, was an additional breach of propriety, for which 
 I have sutfered well ; but I will candidly confess, that I not only 
 do not feel it to have been of the same extent, but that I consider 
 it to have been unavoidable after what had passed ; for though I 
 will not attempt to justify in the smallest degree my former 
 conduct, yet when an attachment was once formed between us — 
 and a sincerer one never did exist — I feel that, peculiarly circum- 
 stanced as I then was, to have left her uncertain of my situation 
 v\'Ould neither have weaned her affections, nor lessened her 
 anxiety ; and looking upon her as one, whom, if I had lived, 1 
 hoped to have had my partner for life, I did hold the removing 
 her anxiety above every other consideration. I v.ould rather have 
 had the atlections of your daughter in the back settlements of 
 America, than the first situation this country could atibrd without 
 them. I know not whether this will be any extenuation of my 
 offence — I know not whether it will be any extenuation of it to 
 know, that if I had that situation in my power at this moment, I 
 w^ould relinquish it to devote my life to her happiness — I know 
 not whether success would have blotted out the recollection of 
 what I have done — but I know that a man, with the coldness of 
 death on him, need not be made to feel any other coldness, and 
 that he may be spared any addition to the misery he feels not for 
 himself, but for those to whom he has left nothing but sorrow."* 
 
 FROM THE SAME TO RICHARD CURRAN, ESQ. 
 " MY DEAREST RICHARD, 
 
 " I find I have but a few^ hours to live, but if it was the last 
 moment, and that the power of utterance wa,s leaving me, I would 
 
 *The original, finra which the above has been copied, is not signed or dated. It was 
 written in the interval between Mr. Emmett's conviction and execution. — C. 
 
ROBERT EMMETT. 355 
 
 thank you from the bottom of my heart for your generous expres- 
 sions of affection and forgiveness to me. If there was any one in 
 the world in whose breast my death might be supposed not to stifle 
 every spark of resentment, it might be you ; I have deeply injured 
 you ; I have injured the happiness of a sister that you love, and 
 who was formed to give happiness to every one about her, instead 
 of having her own mind a pray to affliction. Oh ! Richard, I have 
 no excuse to offer, but that I meant the reverse ; I intended as 
 much happiness for Sarah as the most ardent love could have 
 given her. I never did tell you how much I idolised her : it was 
 not with a wild or unfounded passion, but it was an attachment 
 increasing every hour, from an admiration of the purity of her 
 miind, and respect for her talents. I did dwell in secret upon the 
 prospect of our union. I did hope that success, while it afforded 
 the opportunity of our union, might be the means of confirming an 
 attachment which misfortune had called forth. I did not look to 
 honours for myself — praise I would have asked from the lips of no 
 man ; but I would have wished to read in the glow of Sarah's 
 countenance that her husband v/as respected. My love, Sarah ! it 
 was not thus that I thought to have requited your affection. I did 
 hope to be a prop round which your affections might have clung, 
 and which would never have been shaken ; but a rude blast has 
 snapped it, and they have fallen over a grave.* 
 
 " This is no time for affliction. I have had public motives to 
 sustain my mind, and I have not suffered it to sink, but there have 
 been moments in my imprisonment when my mind was so sunk 
 by grief on her account, that death would have been a refuge. 
 
 " God bless you, my dearest Richard. I am obliged to leave 
 
 off immediately. 
 
 " Robert Emmett." 
 
 * In 1847 a London journal mentioning the death of Miss Curran, at Rome, dechired 
 that the lady was " the betrothed of Robert Emmett," and the heroine of Moore's song 
 and Irving's touching story. This was an error. It was Amelia, Curran's eldest daughter, 
 who thus died at Rome. His youngest daughter, Sarah, had passed away some thirty 
 years before. — M. 
 
356 LIFE OF CUKRAN. 
 
 This letter was written at twelve o'clock on tlie day of Mr. 
 Emmett's execution,* and tlie firmness and regularity of the origi- 
 nal hand-writting contain a striking and affecting proof of the 
 little intluence which the approaching event had over his frame. 
 The same enthusiasm which allured him to his destiny, enabled 
 him to support its utmost rigour. He met his fate with unosten- 
 tatious fortitude ; and although few could ever think of justifying 
 his projects or regreting their failure, yet his youth, his talents, 
 the great respectability of his connexions, and the evident delusion 
 of which he was the victim, have excited more general sympathy for 
 his unfortunate end, and more forbearance toward his memory, than 
 is usually extended to the errors or sufferings of political offenders.f 
 
 * The best account of Emmett's trial is given by Dr. Madden. lie pleaded " Not guilty," 
 but made no defence. Nor, in his speech after conviction, did he allude to Plunket. 
 G'Grady was Attorney-General, James McClelland was Solicitor General, and it was his 
 duty to speak to evidence. But Plunket performed that task — and is accused of having 
 volunteered to do it. Neither of the two law olBcials had thought it necessary to speak 
 — so clear was the case against Eramett, but Plunket (as one of his own biographers ad- 
 mits) " assailed the sad enthusiast, in that form of his deepest suffering, in a theme of 
 invective which might well have been spared." It would seem as if Plunket wished to 
 show how his own strong liberality had declined down to the Government gauge. In two 
 months from that date, Plunket was in oflice as Solicitor-General. — M. 
 
 t In Ireland, the Emmett family have invariably spelled their name with a double t. 
 In this country, they have economized, and write Emmet.— Isl. 
 
OUKRAN'S DOMESTIC AFFAIilS. 357 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 Ml'. Curran's domestic afifairs — Foi'ensic eflbrts — Appointed Master of the Rolls in Ireland 
 — His literary projects — Letter to Mr. M'Nally — Account of a visit to Scotland in a letter 
 to Miss Piiilpot— Letter to Mr. Leslie— Letters to Mr. Hetherington. 
 
 [This seems to be the proper place to introduce a notice of Mr. 
 Curran's domestic relations, which it was very pardonable in his 
 son, to have avoided any mention of. His two other biographers, 
 Phillips and O'Regan, were not in a situation to be affected by 
 such delicacy, and have spoken what they knew. Phillips says: — 
 
 "There is no doubt there were times when he was subject to 
 the most extreme despondency; but the origin of this was visible 
 enough, without having recourse to any mysterious inquiries. It 
 was the case with him as it is with every person whose spirits are 
 apt to be occasionally excited — the depression is at intervals in 
 exact proportion. Like a bow overstrained, the mind relaxes in 
 consequence of the exertion. He was naturally extremely sensi- 
 tive — domestic misfortunes rendered his home unhappy — he flew 
 for a kind of refuge into public life; and the political ruin of his 
 country, leaving him without an object of private enjoyment or of 
 pati'iotic hope, flung him upon his own heart-devouring reflec- 
 tions. He was at those times a striking instance of his own 
 remark upon the disadvantages attendant upon too refined a sensi- 
 bility. 'Depend upon it, my dear friend,' said he, 'it is a serious 
 misfortune in life to have a mind more sensitive or more cultiva- 
 ted than common; it naturally elevates its possessor into a region 
 which he must be doomed to find nearly uninhabited P It was a 
 deplorable thing to see him, in the decline of life, when visited by this 
 constitutional melancholy. I have not unfrequently accompanied 
 
358 LIFE OF CURRAN. 
 
 him in his walks upon such occasions, almost at the hour of mid- 
 night. He had gardens attached to the Priory, of which he was 
 particularly fond; and into these gardens, when so affected, no 
 matter at what hour, he used to ramble. It was then almost 
 impossible to divert his mind froin themes of sadness. The gloom 
 of his own thoughts discolored everything, and from calamity to 
 calamity he would wander on, seeing in the future nothing for 
 hope, and in the past nothing but disappointment. You could 
 not recognize in him the same creature who, but an hour prece- 
 ding, had 'set the table in a roar' — his gibes, his merriment, his 
 flashes of wit, were all extinguished. He had a favorite little 
 daughter, who was a sort of musical prodigy. She had died at 
 the age of twelve, and he had her buried in the midst of a small 
 grove just adjoining this garden. A little rustic memorial was 
 raised over her, and often and often have I seen him, the tears 
 'chasing each other' down his cheeks, point to his daughter's 
 monument, and 'wish to be wdth her, and at rest.' Such, at 
 times, was the man before whose very look not merely gravity, 
 but sadness has often vanished — who has given birth to more 
 enjoyment, and uttered more wit, than perhaps any of his contem- 
 poraries in any country — who had in him materials for social 
 happiness such as we can not hope again to see combined in any 
 one; and whose death has cast, I fear, a permanent eclipse upon 
 the festivities of his circle. Yet even these melancholy hours 
 were not without their moral. They proved the nothingness of 
 this world's gifts — the worse than inutility of this world's attain- 
 ments; they forced the mind into involuntary reflection; they 
 showed a fellow-creature enriched with the finest natural endow- 
 ments, having acquired the most extensive reputation, without a 
 pecuniary want or a professional rival, yet w^eighed down with a 
 constitutional depression that left the poorest wealthy and the 
 humblest happy in the comparison. Nor were they Avithout a 
 kind of mournful interest : he spoke as under such circumstances 
 no human being but himself could have spoken — his mind was so 
 
HIS DOMESTIC AFFAIRS. 359 
 
 veiy strangely constituted; such an odd medley of the romantic 
 and the humorous; now soaring into regions of light and sublim- 
 ity for illustrations, and now burrowing under ground for such 
 ludicrous and whimsical examples; drawing the most strange 
 inferences from causes so remote, and accompanied at times with 
 gestures so comic, tha't the smile and the tear often irresistibly met 
 during the recital. Perhaps, after one of those scenes of misery, 
 when he had walked himself tired and wept himself tearless, he would 
 again return into the house, where the picture of some friend, or 
 the contingency of some accident, recalling an early or festive 
 association would hurry him into the very extreme of cheerful- 
 ness! His spirits rose — his wit returned — the jest, and the tale, 
 and the anecdote pushed each other aside in an almost endless 
 variety, and day dawned upon him, the happiest, the pleasantest, 
 and the most fascinating of companions. The friends whom he 
 admitted to intimacy may perhaps recognize him, even in this 
 hurried sketch, as he has often appeared to them in the hospitali- 
 ties of the Priory; but, alas! the look all eloquent — the eye of 
 fire — the tongue of harmony, the exquisite address that gave a 
 charm to everything, and spell-bound those who heard him, are 
 gone for ever!" 
 
 The domestic misfortunes which rendered his home unhappy, 
 are thus mentioned by O'Regan ; — 
 
 " Mr. Curran had been married very early to a Miss Creagh, of 
 the county of Cork, with whom for many years he lived very 
 happily. She was of an ancient and highly esteemed family, in 
 the neighbourhood of Newmarket. His union with this lady was 
 founded on affection ; her fortune, though small, yet enabled him 
 to pursue his career of study and ambition, and took off many 
 difficulties to which his youth might otherwise have been exposed. 
 He built on a glen in his native country a tasty and rather an 
 handsome cottage, which he called the Priory. This became the 
 
360 LIFE OF CUREAN. 
 
 residence of his family, and the occasional resort of many of the 
 first men of his time and of his country, while his yet limited 
 fortune did not permit a suitable residence in the capital. From 
 this connection commenced under the happiest auspices of mutual 
 aftection, afterwards sprang the sorest tortures of his life : it was 
 here began the tempest to his soul. He had many children by 
 this marriage ; and so unhappy became his mind by the dishonour 
 which afterwards ensued, that it rent asunder the finest charities 
 of the heart ; and for ever afterwards were broken up those great 
 ties and ligaments, by which nature binds the savage and the sage 
 in delicious bondage to the so^•ereignty of this protecting con- 
 trivance. Yet, by permitting his mind to dwell too ardently on 
 this domestic and deplorable calamity, he appears to have suftered 
 under its influence, and to have permitted his own peace to be 
 poisoned. These matters had a powerful re-action on his own 
 happiness ; and, thus swung from his moorings, he seemed never 
 after to have had any safe anchorage to ride upon. It is true his 
 vivacity, though impaired, was not extinguished ; it burst forth 
 like gleams of light, and vanished ; its fiery track left a burning 
 ember after it. The moral aliment by which he was accustomed 
 to be nourished was gone, or, if it remained, it did so remain, but 
 to sour upon his stomach ; and to the morbid state of the affec- 
 tions of the heart, succeeded a distracting and a malady of soul, 
 for which society gave but the peace of its presence. Such was 
 the distress, so deep and so afflicting, that with all the elasticity 
 of his temperament, it took him years to consent to be concerned 
 in actions of that nature which unbound his own wounds ; and, in 
 his own words, ' let in the brine of the salt sea through the chinks 
 of a vessel, not yet sufficiently staunched or seasoned to keep it 
 out.' At length, however, he conquered those sensations; and 
 we find him the advocate in the famous case of the Rev. Charles 
 Massy, against the Marquis of Headford, tried at Ennis, in the 
 county of Clare, in July 1804, where damages were laid at ^240,000 
 and iBl 0,000 were recovered, — a tribute to eloquence; but how 
 
MRS. CURRAN. 361 
 
 can money heal a wounded spirit ? This he spoke of as a gigan- 
 tic victory over his own feelings; and, in this trial, the philosopher 
 might have traced the history of human suffering amidst the most 
 glowing eloquence ; he could have deduced what might have sup- 
 plied the moral chair with maxims and illustrations, fresh from 
 the mint of nature, by perceiving the agonies of two sufferers 
 identified in the client and in the advocate. Here he had nothing 
 to dramatize, nothing unreal. He had but to spread upon the 
 canvas the picture of woe familiar to his own sufferings : he did 
 so ; and if the reporter (the editor of this collection) were faithful, 
 or fortunate to preserve the genuine features of the figure, such 
 might have been placed among the works of the first masters : but 
 to those who heard him, and felt the effect of his overwhelming 
 eloquence, to such it was as electric, and as affecting a piece of 
 pathos, as ever yet was addressed to human feelings : it bore down 
 every thing before it ; and he who wrote was often suspended in 
 his labours ; and those who heard it were entranced and amazed. 
 Mr. Curran was much flattered on hearing that it drew tears from 
 the eyes of our gracious Queen ^ on the reading of it.f But, had 
 
 * Cliarlotte ; wife of George III.— M. 
 
 t Mr. Phillips states that a few years after this speech had been delivered, Mr. Curran 
 was introduced, through the jocularity of a common friend, to the noble defendant, in 
 St. James's Street. It is a mistake to suppose, as has been asserted, that he declined all 
 advocacy in actions of criminal conversation from the period of his own domestic calamity 
 down to that of the trial for Lord Headford. The fact is, in the very year preceding, he 
 obtained one thousand pounds damages in the case of Pentland against Clarke. This 
 case is not reported in the printed volume, but it was tried before Lord Avonmore, the 
 very same judge who presided on the trial of Mr. Curran's own action. The chief argu- 
 ment against him on that lamentable occasion was his alleged inconstancy; and there is 
 a most curious passage in the speech before me, in which he takes occasion to anticipate 
 that ground of defense, and leaves his own opinions on a subject on which, whether 
 justly or unjustly, he was supposed to be so much interested. This speech is very little 
 known. — " There is a species of defense, which perhaps the gentlemen on the other side 
 may attempt to set up — I mean that of recrimination; and I have been led to think that 
 acts of this kind proved against the husband ought not to prevent him from recovering 
 damages for the seduction of his wife ; for the consequence arising from illicit connec- 
 tions is widely different with respect to the husband and the wife : casual revelry and 
 immorality in the husband is not supposed to cast an indelible disgrace upon the wife, 
 and can not defraud the children of their property, by introducing a spurious offspring 
 
 16 
 
362 LIFE OF CUKKAX. 
 
 she heard it delivered, the native notes of Kotzebue would have 
 been, in comparison, but mock heroic. Not quite apprised how- 
 Queens feel upon these occasions, certain it is, tljat her humble 
 subjects, the Ennis ladies, enjoyed it in transports, and his name 
 resounded throuo-h the rocks and o-roves of Edenvale. 
 
 "In tlie action for criminal conversation, brought by Mr. 
 Curran against the Rev. Mr. Sandys, (not Sandes), Lord Clare 
 was supposed not to be an indifferent spectator. It was on this 
 occasion Mr. Saurin's talents were first drawn forth in a statement 
 for defendant, at once solid, luminous, and vehement. Lord 
 Avonmore, the early patron and friend of Mv. Curran, tried the 
 case ; and, in its progress, many interesting and affecting scenes 
 took place ; the private feelings of the man, his known partiality 
 for the plaintiff", though occasionally interrupted by some small 
 jealousies, the pity for his sufferings, frequently burst forth in 
 some of the finest touches ever witnessed ; but the sense of justice, 
 the pride and purity of his mighty mind, quickly deposed the 
 brief authority of the most generous feelings ; and the judge, 
 resuming his great functions, shook off" the dew-drops from the 
 lion's mane. By the sovereignty of that character it was, that 
 the judge alone presided. On his trial, as wxll of men as of the 
 case, Mr. Plunket, (to whom Lord Avonmore had been a friend, 
 and whose infoncy had been protected since the loss of his father 
 by that excellent nobleman, was employed on the part of Mr. 
 Sandys. Amidst the clashing of opposite arguments, and many 
 animated contentions with Lord Avonmore sustained for a long 
 time in undecided conflicts, Mr. Plunket rallied with fresh forces, 
 
 to which the infidelity of the wife may lead. ' Errors of this kind in the husband may not 
 arise from an actual turpitude of heart ; he may have committed errors of this kind, 
 and yet be a good father ; he may be a good citizen, he may be a good husband, not- 
 withstanding he may not be entirely without blemish. I am not speaking of a constant 
 scene of riot and excessive debauchery, but of acts which, though they are to be con- 
 demned, it is possible to atone for by subsequent good conduct. Could the ill conduct 
 of the husband entail upon the wife the character of a prostitute? No. But the conse- 
 quences resulting from the conduct of the wife are of a very diflferent nature indeed." — M. 
 
PROMOTION TO THE BEXCH. 363 
 
 and drew upon those great stores, with which nature has so abun- 
 dantly supplied him : sometimes playing off the light artillery of 
 that wit, which his pride so chastens, that it lies back like that 
 recondite matter in animal nature which is produced for susten- 
 ance, but upon great and important accasions ; sometimes riding 
 on the wiry edge of irony, his own appropriate figure ; and which 
 nor Swift nor Lucian ever possessed in a richer vein. In the 
 indulgence of some of those sallies thrown off in the impetuosity 
 of feeling, the ardent sensibility of the joatron, the friend and the 
 judge, kindled, and rapidly rising into one of those impassioned 
 blazes, to v/hich his great nature was subject, he burst forth into 
 this short exclamation, et tu fill — and thou also, my son. The 
 effect w^as overpowering on Mr. Plunket ; the sense of gratitude , 
 the reverence for the venerable judge ; the obligations imposed on 
 him by the duty he owed his client, and other emotions of a 
 nobler kind, became, by their varied combinations, irresistible ; 
 while he, overwhelmed by the impetuosity of mingled, yet contra- 
 dictory forces, muffling his face in his mantle, sunk down, and was 
 dissolved in tears — tears more creditable to him, than all that 
 eloquence, less popular than argumentative, of which he of most 
 men, may be truly said to be one of the greatest masters. 
 
 " Mr. Curran obtained a verdict, and damages, which the defen- 
 dant was never afterwards called upon to pay ; he was scarcely 
 ever heard of after ; whilst the unhappy woman, sustained by the 
 bounty of the afflicted husband, made the best atonement by a 
 conduct ever after without reproach or censure. This event dis- 
 coloured the stream of his future life ; and, from the change in his 
 domestic habits, furnished many topics for unkind observation. 
 It is certain he did not refuse to her the consolation of a requested 
 interview, when she lay on the bed of sickness, and, as she thought, 
 of death. If he did not totally forget the injuries he had suffered, 
 he generously consented to see her, which she sought as a con- 
 solation, and which to him was the severest trial. This occurred 
 in London some years after the action : but a message, announc- 
 
364 LIFE OF CURKAN. 
 
 ing the certainty of lier recovery, made this melancholy visit 
 imnecessary."] 
 
 Upon the death of Mr. Pitt, * [1806] the political party with 
 whom Mr. Curran had so long been acting- having come into office, 
 he was appointed Master of the Rolls in Ireland, and a member 
 of the Privy Council, f With this appointment he was dissatisfied 
 
 * In the interval between 1S03 and the period of his elevation to the bench (1S06) jMr. 
 Curran farther distinguished himself at the bnr m the prosecution of Ensign .John 
 Castley, for conspiracy to murder the Rev. AV. Led wich, a Roman Catholic Clergyman, 
 (Feb. 1S04,) and obtained a conviction for assault; in the case of Massey against the 
 Marquis of Headfort (July 1S04) and in the case of Mr. Justice Johnson (February, 1805.) 
 His speeches upon those occasions are among his most vigorous efforts ; but ample speci- 
 mens of his forensic eloquence having been already introduced, the reader is referred to 
 the published collection. — C. [It was in his speech, made on Feb. 4, 1805, for Judge John- 
 son, that Curran introduced the well-known, and already-quoted, eulogium on Lord Avon- 
 more, with a touching allusion to their former friendship.] 
 
 t Upon this occasion the Irish bar convened a meeting, and voted the following address 
 to Mr. Curran : — 
 
 "Sir — In your recent appointment to a high and dignified situation, the first pride of 
 the Irish bar feels itself gratified, that independent spirit, preeminent talents, and inflexi- 
 ble integrity have recommended their possessor to the royal favour, and procured his ad- 
 vancement to the bench of justice. 
 
 " Yes, Sir, we trust that the lustre which shone upon your distinguished progress as an 
 advocate will beam with a milder but more useful influence from the bench ; and the un- 
 biased, impartial, and upright judge will be found in the person who exalted the charac- 
 ter of the Irish bar, by his eloquence, and uniformly supported the rights and privileges 
 of an honourable profession." 
 
 MR. CURRAn's answer. 
 
 " Gentlemen" — I thank you from my heart for this proof of your confidence and affec- 
 tion. The appi-oving opinion of so enlightened and independent a body as the Irish bar 
 would be a most valuable reward of merit much superior to mine, which I am conscious 
 has gone little beyond a disposition, but I trust an honest and ardent disposition, so to 
 act in my public and professional characters, as not to be altogether unworthy of the 
 name of an Irishman of that disposition. I receive your kind commendation with pride. 
 I feel that probity of intention is all that we can be responsible for. 
 
 " I am peculiarly gratified by the flattering attestation you are pleased to bestow on 
 my endeavours to support the privileges of our profession. They are vitally and insepar- 
 ably connected with the enjoyment of constitutional liberty and the effectual administra- 
 tion of justice. The more active part which I may have taken in the defence of these 
 privileges I bequeath to you ; but be assured that I bring with me the most perfect convic- 
 tion, that in continuing to maintain them, I shall co-operate with you in the discharge of 
 one of the most important duties that can bind us to our country." 
 
TKEAT3»IENT BY MK. PONSONBY. 365 
 
 at the time, and he never became entirely reconciled to it. It 
 imposed upon his mind a necessity of unaccustomed labour and 
 unaccustomed restraint, to which opposite habits of so many years 
 did not allow him easily to submit. 
 
 [O'Reagan says : " The truth is w^ell known, that Mr. Curran's 
 practice was not so much in the courts of equity. This has been 
 partly accounted for already ; the minuter details of practice he was 
 not well acquainted with, and at the time of life when he was 
 appointed to that office, tlie character of the mind had acquired a 
 stiflf and unbending rigour unfit for pursuits which to him were ever 
 uncongenial. Forms were not habitual to his taste, or to the eleva- 
 tion of his mind ; its aspirations were loftier. Of forms he once 
 observed that they were bullet moulds : if once, said he, you have 
 them, you may cast on ad infinitum. He should have condescended 
 to them, however, and because he did not do so, and because his 
 mind was accustomed to the common, criminal, and constitutional 
 codes, he was not in his proper element in the Rolls. He unwill- 
 ingly yielded to be placed there.] 
 
 Whatever might be its dignity or emolument, it had no political 
 consequence ; and therefore, to him, who had acted such a part in 
 the history of his country, it seemed rather like a compensation 
 for former services, than as a means of taking that honourable 
 share to which he felt himself entitled, in an administration that 
 promised such benefits to Ireland. These sentiments of disgust, 
 in which he perhaps indulged to an unreasonable excess, disturbed 
 the friendship which had so long subsided between him and the 
 late Mr. George Ponsonby, whom Mr. Curran considered as having, 
 by his acquiescence in his appointment to the Rolls, attended to 
 his nominal interests at the expense of his feelings and his repu- 
 tation. In this opinion, how^ever encouraged by some subsequent 
 circumstances, it is due to the memory of Mr. Ponsonby to state, 
 that Mr. Curran was mistaken. Mr. Ponsonby made no such in- 
 tentional sacrifice of his friend. He imagined that he was observ- 
 ing, with the strictest honour, the spirit of every former engage- 
 
366 LIFE OF CURKAN. 
 
 ment, althoiigli it cannot be too mucli lamented that lie should 
 have withheld all explanation on the subject, until a mutual aliena- 
 tion had taken place, which no explanation could recall. The 
 impression was never removed from Mr. Curran's mind, that he 
 had, upon this occasion, been unkindly treated ; but it is pleasing 
 to observe, that his resentment was softened and finally subdued 
 by the recollection of his former regard and respect. He visited 
 Mr. Ponsonby in his last illness, and after his lamented death 
 took every opportunity of dwelling upon his virtues, and attesting 
 the clainjs, which the long and disinterested services of himself 
 and his family had given their name to the gratitude of their 
 country. 
 
 [Mr. Curran felt himself driven into the pul)lication of a letter 
 to Mr. Grattan, in which he shewed that he had full grounds for 
 being dissatisfied with the manner in which his party, and par- 
 ticularly Mr. George Ponsonby, had treated him. Passages of 
 this letter, explaining his position, can scarcely be out of place 
 here — particularly as the document itself had a limited circulation 
 at first, and has long been out of print. Mr. Curran says : 
 
 "You will remember the state of Ireland in 1779; and the 
 necessity under which we found ourselves, forming some bond of 
 honourable connexion, by which the co-operation of even a small 
 number might be secured, in making some effort to stem that tor- 
 rent, which was carrying every thing before it. For that purpose 
 our little party was formed ; — it consisted of yourself the Duke of 
 Leinster, (that excellent Irishman) the late Lord Ponsonby, Mr. 
 B. Daly, ISIr. G. Ponsonby, Mr. Forbes, myself, and some very few 
 others. It may not be for us to pronounce encomiums upon it, but 
 we are entitled to say, that had it been as successful as it was 
 honest, we might now look back to it with some degree of satis- 
 faction. The reason of my adverting to it is, that, under the 
 sanction of that party, and in its presence, it was agreed between 
 Mr. G. Ponsonby and me, that if any circumstances should arise 
 
36 T 
 
 under Avliicli it might be honourably open to us to accept office, 
 it should be on the terms of his taking the first, and my taking 
 the second place in the course of professional advancement. Upon 
 the basis of this com.pact, which was always publicly known, and 
 adopted by Lord Fitzwilliam, in 1795, Mr. G. Ponsonby was then 
 nominated to the ofiice of Sohcitor General. The completion of 
 that arrangement was prevented by the change of the Irish Admin- 
 istration; the compact itself continued with increased force, (if 
 hy the continued fidelity of observance, compact can be susceptible 
 of accessional obligation) till the late change in 180G; it was again 
 acted upon by the parties to it. On that occasion I was the only 
 interested member of that party that remained in Ireland. I did 
 not write to any of my friends then in London ; not to Lord Pon- 
 sonby; not even to you. I knew your zeal for my interest; I knew 
 the friendship and purity of Lord Ponsonby — I was sensible of the 
 warm protection of Mr. Fox, to which I had no claim, save what 
 might be suggested to a noble and generous spirit, like his, by my 
 conduct as a public m^an ; I knew also, the protection my interests 
 would have found in Lord Moira, Lord Erskine, or Lord Ilowick, had 
 such protection been necessary. I felt no solicitude for myself; I 
 remained at home; the event justified my confidence; Mr. G. Pon- 
 sonby accepted the Seals ; a proof, of itself, that I must have been 
 appointed to the next attainable situation. The next situation could 
 be no other than the office of Attorney-General ; it was the only 
 place in the power of the new Administration to vacate ; from its 
 official rank in the Government it was the natural passage to that 
 place on the King's Bench, to which, as next in professional 
 advancement, I had a right to succeed. But on this fact I was 
 not left to conjecture. I was apprised by letter from you, and also 
 Mr. G. Ponsonby, that my interests had been taken care of ; Mr. 
 G. Ponsonby communicated the same to a relation of mine, then 
 in London ; directing him to inform me that my place as Attor- 
 ney-General was fixed, and that my coming over would be but 
 unnecessary trouble." 
 
o68 LIFE OF CUEKAN. 
 
 The Duke of Bedford, was sent over as Viceroy to Ireland, and 
 on Mr. Ponsonby's appointment as Chancellor, he assured Mr. Cur- 
 ran that every thing would be done for him to his satisfaction. 
 But instead of getting the aj^pointment of Irish Attorney-General, 
 (the stepping stone to the Chief Justiceship, for which, as a com- 
 mon lawyer, he was well qualified, Mr. Curran found that Mr. 
 Plunket was to be continued in that office. After some delay, he 
 saw the Viceroy, who told him that the Mastership of the Rolls 
 was reserved for him. What follows can best be related in Mr. 
 Curran's own words : 
 
 " You may easily judge of my feelings on this communication ; 
 but it was the first time I had ever seen the Duke of Bedford ; I 
 had no shadow of claim upon his Grace ; he was not the person 
 to whom I could complain, that I was humbled or ill-treated ; I 
 barely said that " that I was grateful to his Grace for the courtesy 
 of the communication ;" and retired with an almost decided pur- 
 pose to decline the appointment. This substitution I considered a 
 direct departure from the compact with Mr. G. Ponsonby, and 
 accompanied by the aggravation of withholding that consultation 
 and explanation, without which, and without my own express 
 consent, I ought not to have been so disposed of. As to the place 
 itself, it was the last I should have chosen ; it imposed upon me a 
 change of all my habits of life ; it forced my mind to a new 
 course of thinking, and into new modes of labour, and that, 
 increased labour ; it removed me from that intellectual exercise 
 which custom and temper had rendered easy and pleasant; it 
 excluded me from the enjoyment of the honest gratification of an 
 oflScial share in an administration which I then thought would 
 have consisted principally, if not altogether, of the tried friends of 
 Ireland. When the party with which I had acted so fairly, had, 
 after so long a proscription, come at last to their natural place, / 
 did not expect to have been stuck into a window, a spectator of the 
 procession. From the station, v/hich I then held at the Bar, to 
 
MOTIVES TO ACCEPTATION. 869 
 
 accept the neutralized situation of the Rolls, appeared to me a 
 descent, and not an elevation : — It had no allurement of Avealth, 
 for diminished as my income had been by the most remorseless 
 persecution for years, by which I was made to expiate the crime 
 of not being an alien to my country, by treachery, or by birth, it 
 was still abundant when compared Avith my occasions, and was 
 likely to continue so, long as the occasions should last. 
 
 "To this intended refusal, however, my friends in Ireland 
 thought there were strong objections; they thought it would look 
 like an accusation of the party at large, to the great majority of 
 whom I had reason to be more attached than ever — they urged 
 other inducements unnecessary to detail — and which I thought 
 worthy my attention. There remained a still superior motive to 
 decide me : to have yielded to resentment, or disgust, and refused 
 the offered situation, might be to carry disturbance and irritation 
 to the bed of a dying friend ; I knew the untemporising nature of 
 Lord Ponsonby, where he thought his honour concerned, and 
 I saw that the whole arrangement of the administration for 
 Ireland, as far as it depended upon him, might be dissolved, if he 
 thought me ill-treated ; I had a similar apprehension from the 
 part you yourself would pursue upon such an occasion ; and I 
 could not but see, that if you and Lord Ponsonby were to with- 
 draw your support from the Irish Administration, that unhappy 
 country could have little to hope from any new order of things. 
 I resolved therefore to submit, and to do so with an appearance 
 of as much good humour as I could affect." 
 
 He submitted, therefore, rather than break up his " party." He 
 saw Mr. Ponsonby, who informed him that Sir Michael Smith, 
 (then Master of the Rolls) should be " treated with on the subject 
 of his resignation," and Mr. Curran had the mortification of seeing 
 that instead of coming into the stipulated situation " by an undis- 
 puted claim of right (?) and without the burthen of one shilling 
 expense to the country," he was flung upon the precarious chance 
 
 16* ' 
 
370 LIFE OF CUKKAN. 
 
 of a place, which if achieved at all could be obtained only by a 
 charge on the public, and rendered additionally disgusting to him- 
 self by the appearance of a job. He says : 
 
 "At last, after delays perhaps not easy to be avoided, but 
 certainly affording ample time for the triumph of my enemies, and 
 the vexation of my friends, both of whom looked upon me as 
 insulted and abandoned, that treaty took place, without any 
 participation of mine, and without the remotest hint that it could 
 involve any stipulation and guarantee on my part. I was informed 
 by Mr. G. Ponsonby that the arrangement was completed : That 
 Sir Michael was to resign on the terms of receiving the retiring 
 salary ; and also, upon the promise by the government, that his 
 deputy Mr Ridge way, should get a place of 600Z. per annum, if such 
 place should become vacant before the 25 th of Marcli ensuing, 
 until which time no addition could be made to the pension list ; 
 and if no such vacancy should occur before that day, he should 
 then be placed on the pension establishment for 500/. a year, for 
 his life, and that a provision by pension, to the amount altogether 
 of 300Z. a year, was also to be made for three inferior officers of 
 Sir Michael's Court. 
 
 " Had any idea of any stipulation whatever on my part been 
 suggested, feeling as I did, I could not have borne it — for, see how 
 it would have stood : on my part, it would have been a direct 
 purchase of a judical office. The purchase could not be made 
 good out of its own income, which could last only to my death or 
 resignation : for these annuities v.ere for the lives of four other 
 persons, and worth at least 8000/. ; ■ with these 8000Z. therefore, I 
 was eventually to charge my private fortune ; for this sum I was 
 to buy the disappointment of an expectation, which I thought 
 certain, and to commit a breach of the law and the constitution. 
 
 "But if I could have dispensed with the matter of purity, 
 another question remained : Was this change between my pro- 
 fessional and judicial situation so to be obtained, worth the sum of 
 
HIS DEFENCE. 371 
 
 8000/. ? There would have been, therefore, two previous questions 
 to decide, a question of crime, and a question of prudence : if I 
 had consulted a moralist upon the one and a Jew upon the other, 
 what would have been the answer ? I would not therefore have 
 submitted for a moment, I ^vould have snapped the thread in such 
 a manner as would have made it impossible to splice it, and have 
 felt pleasure in being restored to my liberty." 
 
 Five months elapsed before Sir Michael Smith resigned the 
 Rolls. Mr. Curran was then appointed. Time passed on. No 
 place was given, as promised, to Mr. Ridgeway. The Ministry 
 fell to pieces, by the death of Mr. Fox, and finally broke up in 
 April 1807. No pensions had been granted .to Mr. Ridgeway and 
 the three other officers of Sir Michael Smith's court, and it was 
 then endeavored to throw upon Mr. Curran the liabilities of the 
 non-performance of a promise to Sir Michael Smith, actually 
 made without his consent, or even knowledge. He refused to 
 allow his salary as judge to be burthened wdth the payment of 
 800/. a year for life to the deputy, trainbearer, tipstaff, and crier 
 of his predecessor. He adds : 
 
 " I some time after, heard that Mr. G. Ponsonby had made a 
 grant of 800/. per annum to Mr. Ridgeway, and those three 
 inferior officers, and this act has been represented to the public as 
 occasioned by w^ant of gratitude to Mr. G. Ponsonby, my benefac- 
 tor, and of personal honor as a member of the party ; as to the 
 first part of the charge, you well know how unfounded it is ; thank 
 God, I have had many friends ; I am now^ addressing the most 
 valued of them ; but, in the sense intended, I never had a benefac- 
 tor : If I had entertained any views of ambition, I could have 
 been lifted only by a stronger wing than my own ; but my journey 
 has been on the ground, and performed on foot, and I was able to 
 walk without the crutches of patronage. As to the allegation of 
 my breach of just or honorable engagement, the fact of sucli 
 
372 LIFE OF CUKRAN. 
 
 engagement must have been witli the knowledge of the Duke of 
 Bedford, of Mr. G. Ponsonby, and of Sir Michael Smith ; and I 
 aver that I never was required to take any part in guaranteeing 
 to Sir Michael Smith that agreement of government, or of being 
 liable to him in any event for the performance ; and that I never 
 did, directly or indirectly, make any promise on the subject ; and 
 that I know not of any act whatsoever, which, to the best of my 
 judgment, after the maturest consideration, can warrant the 
 allegations that have been made against me. Of these allegations, 
 I now feel it necessary to take some farther notice : I well knew 
 hoAV incapable Mr. G. Ponsonby must be of making them ; if he 
 had heard them, he had too much honour to repel them with 
 indignation ; it is therefore the more necessary for me to advert 
 to them. It is said, the substitution, of which I complained, was 
 for my benefit : I answer, first, that it was a question upon which 
 I alone was competent to decide ; a question for the feelings of a 
 gentleman ; not the calculation of a notary public. Had it been 
 referred to me, as I think it ought, I should have seen, as the 
 public did see, and did say, that it went to sink me, by excluding 
 me from all political confidence. Between such discredit and 
 pecuniary compensation, no honorable mind could balance. But 
 the assertion itself is untrue in fact. The place which I hold was 
 as inferior to that of Attorney-General, in point of pecuniary 
 emolument, as of political consequence. The professional and 
 ofiicial income I should have derived from the latter, could not 
 have been less than double the amount of what I now enjoy. I 
 should have made no deduction for any prccariousness of tenure, 
 for never was there an administration less likely to be changed. 
 That income, therefore, I should have counted upon as certain, 
 till I passed to the chief seat on the King's Bench ; a situation of 
 equal certainty with that of the Polls ; of far more dignity ; of, I 
 believe twice the annual value ; far more congenial with my 
 habits and temper ; which I should have filled with, perhaps, more 
 advantage to the public ; certainly, with much greater to myself 
 
A EETEOSPECT. 
 
 373 
 
 And to that place, the office of x\ttorney-General would have led 
 by the course of ordinary usage. And to that place it must have 
 led me, because in no other way could the compact have been 
 finally fulfilled. I say, then, it was not for my benefit ; and I say 
 further, it was for the benefit of Mr. G. Ponsonby himself; as, 
 without some arrangement in which I should acquiesce, his own 
 compact must have been an insurmountable bar to his acceptance 
 of office. I say, also, that if the compact with me had been 
 observed, the arrangement with Sir Michael Smith could never 
 have existed ; nor of course any person be called upon to compen- 
 sate for its non-performance. And yet the charge against me is, 
 that having received a part payment of a debt, I was bound in 
 honour, out of that payment, to defray the expense of the disap- 
 pointment which prevented my receiving the whole." 
 
 Further on, he thus records his claim for consideration from his 
 " party." 
 
 " I came into Parliament at a very early period ; having no 
 hereditary fortune, I could have little property. During the whole 
 time of my sitting there, I never deviated from those principles 
 which have bound us together ; I continued, from Parliament to 
 Parliament, to come in at my own expense. It is apparent how 
 heavy such a burthen must have been. I was not like other men, 
 who came into Parliament without any expense ; who had great 
 family interest to support them ; I had not the same means nor 
 the same inducements. To this, perhaps, it might be objected, 
 that at my first coming into the House of Commons I did accept 
 a seat from a particular friend ; and the fact is so ; but it is also 
 true, that having soon difiered on political subjects with that gen- 
 tleman, I purchased a seat for a friend of his, there being then no 
 way of vacating ; though, to do him justice, he endeavoured to 
 dissuade me from it ; having given me the seat on the express 
 condition of perfect freedom on my part. From the first, I adopt- 
 ed your principles, and on those we acted until the forming of our 
 
874 LIFE OF CrREAN. 
 
 party, IVSG. In the mere personal compact between Mr. G. Pon- 
 sonby and me, you (Mr. Grattan) could have no interest ; for it 
 was known that you would not accept any emolument of office. 
 The compact itself \vrs, not a stipulation for gain, but simply a 
 bond of cohesion in the faithful discharge of that agreement. I 
 made no compromise with power ; I had the merit of provoking 
 and despising the personal malice of every man in Ireland who 
 was the known enemy of the country. Without the walls of the 
 courts of justice, my character was pursued by the most persever- 
 ing slander ; and within those walls, though I was too strong to 
 be beaten down by any judicial malignity — it was not so with my 
 clients ; and my consequent losses in mere professional income, 
 have never been estimated at less, as you must have often heard, 
 than 50,0001. ; and yet for these losses, it seems I am to be con- 
 sidered as compensated. It is with no little pain that I descend 
 to such paltry topics, but when accusation is vile and grovelling, 
 what dignity can be expected in defence ? It seems the privilege 
 of vulgar calumny, that the victim must be humbled by the one, 
 if he be not disgraced by the other." • 
 
 Mr. Curran concluded his letter to Mr. Grattan by requesting 
 him to communicate Avith Mr. Ponsonby (then receiving 4000 Z. 
 a year, as pension for having been Chancellor for less than a 
 twelvemonth), and ascertain whether he had any claims on Mr. 
 Curran, as regards the pensions to Sir M. Smitli's ex-officers. 
 If he had, Mr. Curran ofiered to refer it to Mr. Grattan, Lord 
 Moira, Lord Grey, Lord Erskine, Lord Holland, or Lord Pon- 
 sonby, or any other friend or friends that might be appointed. 
 Lords Moira, Grey, and Holland were accordingly named as 
 arbitrators. The matter remained in dispute until May 1810, 
 when it dropped, on Mr. Ponsonby's declaring that he had 
 nothing to be referred ; and that, therefore, it was for Mr. Curran 
 to open the case, which Mr. Curran, in the absence of his friends, 
 declined doing^. Very properly Mr. Ponsonby, not Mr. Curran, 
 
ME-REY V. POWEE. 375 
 
 •was saddled vrltli the payment of Sir M. Smith's ex-officers ; ^vhiie 
 in power, he might have obtained employment or provision for 
 them, and, not having done so, suffered for his default or neg- 
 lect. 
 
 The fact is, Mr. Ponsonby, who had aristocratic connexions 
 (his brother and cousin were Peers), was made Chancellor by the 
 English party, who disliked Curran, the maker of his own fame 
 and fortune, as being " too Irish." Mr. Ponsonby would have 
 cast aside Mr. Curran if he dared, and alleged that his private 
 character would not justify his being made Attorney-General. 
 That this assertion was untrue, may be judged from the fact, that 
 he was made Master of the Rolls — the second equity judge in 
 Ireland. Mr. Grattan is said, when the " party " were puzzled 
 what to do with Mr. Curran, to have suggested, with most unbe- 
 coming levity, that he should be made an Irish bishop. This is 
 recorded ]>y Mr. Phillips. 
 
 Mr. Davis states the professional opinion of the time, when he 
 declares that " Curran Avas unsuited to the technicalities and 
 minute business of the Rolls. He had neither knowledge nor 
 taste for it. He felt this, and the moment he could rise was one he 
 anxiously looked to. It may be guessed that his orders or details 
 were not very sound nor convenient. The only memorable deci- 
 sion he made was that in Merry v. Power." 
 
 The facts of this case may be stated thus. In 1804, Mary 
 Power made her will, bequeathing a considerable portion of her 
 property to the Rev. Dr. John Power (Roman Catholic bishop of 
 Waterford) and others, in trust for charitable purposes. Mr. 
 Merry, her brother, a merchant in Spain, was her next of kin, and 
 died intestate. Her son administered, and brought a suit in the 
 Spiritual Court to set aside the will as unduly obtained and as 
 disposing a large property to " Papists," and for superstitious pur- 
 poses. His application as an administrator, pendente lite, was 
 refused. He then filed a bill praying that the effects be brought 
 into Court by Dr. Power, the acting executor of Mary Power, and 
 
876 LIFE OF CURRAN. 
 
 her counsel, contending that the will was caused by fraud, by Dr. 
 Power, whom he contumeliously described as " one John Power, a 
 Popish priest " On the other hand, it wa sargued that there was 
 no color for impeaching the transaction ; that the bequests had 
 been most praiseworthy — that the Court had already affirmed the 
 legality of the trusts, — and that it would be unprecedented for a 
 Court to interfere, as was prayed, before the defendant had 
 answered, or havd even time to put in an answer. 
 
 In giving judgment, the Master of the Rolls (Mr. Curran), said, 
 on the allegation that the will was obtained by fraud practised by 
 " one John Power :" 
 
 " I see no semblance of fact to sustain such a charge. Who 
 does this ' one John Power ^ a Popish priest^^ turn out to be ? I 
 find he is a Catholic clergyman — a doctor in divinity, a titular 
 bishop in the diocese of Waterford. And yet I am now pressed 
 to believe this gentleman has obtained this will by fraud. Ev^ery 
 fact now appearing repels this charge ; I cannot but say that tho 
 personal character of the person accused, repels it still more 
 strongly. Can I be brought, on grounds like those now before 
 me, to believe, that a man, having the education of a scholar, the 
 habits of a relio-ious life, and vested with so hio-h a character in 
 the Ministry of the Gospel, could be capable of so detestable a 
 profanation as is flung upon him ? Can I forget that he is a 
 Christian bishop, clothed not in the mere authority of a sect, but 
 clothed in the indelible character of the Episcopal order; suffering no 
 diminution from his supposed heterodoxy, nor drawing any increase 
 or confirmation from the merits of his conformity, should he think 
 proper to renounce what we call the errors of faith ? Can I 
 bring my mind on so slight, or rather no grounds, to believe, that 
 he could so trample under his feet all the impressions of that edu- 
 cation, of those habits, and of that high rank in the sacred minis- 
 try of the Gospel, which he holds, as to sink to the odious impiety 
 imputed to him ? Can I bring myself to believe such a man, at 
 the dying bed of his fellow-creature, would be capable v/ith one 
 
CHARITY. 377 
 
 liand of presenting tlie cross before lier uplifted eye, and with the 
 other, of basely thieving from her those miserable dregs of this 
 world, of which his perfidious tongue was employed in teaching 
 her a Christian's estimate ? I do not believe it ; on the contrary, 
 I am (as far as it belongs to me in this interlocutory way, to judge 
 of the fact) as perfectly convinced that the conduct of Doctor 
 Power was what it ought to be, as I am that the testatrix is 
 dead." 
 
 On the allegation that it was a foolish bequest to superstition 
 and Popish uses, he said that, on examination, he had found the 
 object of these bequests to be to provide shelter and comfortable 
 support for poor helpless females; and clothes, and food, and 
 instruction, for poor orphan children. 
 
 " How can we behold such acts, without regarding them as 
 forming a claim to, as springing from a consciousness of immor- 
 tality ? In all ages the hour of death has been considered as an 
 interval of more than ordinary illumination : as if some rays from 
 the light of the approaching world had found their way to the 
 darkness of the parting spirit, and revealed to it an existence 
 that could not terminate in the grave, but was to commence 
 in death. 
 
 '• But these uses are condemned, as being not only superstitious 
 but Popish uses. As to that, I must say that I feel no disposition 
 to give any assistance even to the orthodox rapine of the living, 
 in defeating even the heterodox charity of the dead. I am awaro 
 that this objection means somewhat more than directly meets the 
 ear, if it means anything. The objects of these bequests, it seems, 
 are Catholics, or, as they have been called. Papists ; and the 
 insinuation clearly is, that the religion of the objects of this 
 woman's bounty, calls upon me to exercise some peculiar rigour of 
 interference to abridge or defeat her intentions. Upon this point 
 I wish to be distinctly understood ; I do not conceive this to be 
 the spirit of our existing law ; nor, of course, the duty of this court to 
 act upon that principle in the way contended for. In times, thank 
 
378 
 
 LIFE OF CURRAN. 
 
 God, now past, the laws would have warranted such doctrines. 
 l^hose laws owed their existence to unfortunate combinations of cir- 
 cumstances that were thought to render them necessary. Butifiue 
 look back luith sorroio to their enactment^ let zis look forward with 
 kindness and gratitude to their o^epeal. Produced by national 
 calamity, they were brought by national benevolence^ as well as by 
 national contrition^ to the altar ofjmblic justice and concord^ and 
 there offered as a sacrifice to atone, to heal, to conciliate, to restore 
 social confidence.^ and give us the hojpe of prosperity and safety, 
 which no people ever had, or deserved, or dared to have, except 
 where it is founded on the community of interests, a perfectly- 
 even and equal participation of just rights, and a consequent con- 
 tribution of all the strength — of all the parts so equally interested 
 in the defence of the whole. 
 
 " I know they have been supposed to originate in religious 
 bigotry — that is, religious zeal carried to excess — I never thought 
 so. The real spirit of our holy religion is too incorruptibly pure 
 and beneficent to be depraved into any such excess. Analyse the 
 bigot's object, and we see he takes nothing from religion but a 
 flimsy pretext in the jH'ofanation of its name ; he professes the 
 correction of error and the propagation of truth. But when he 
 has gained the victory, v.hat are the terms he makes for himself? 
 Power and profit. What terms does he make for religion ? Pro- 
 fession and conformity. What is that profession ? The mere utter- 
 ance of the lips ; the utterance of sounds, that after a pulsation or 
 two upon the air, are just as visible and lasting as they are audible. 
 What is the conformity ? Is it the practice of any social virtue 
 or Christian duty ? Ts it the forgiveness of injuries, or the pay- 
 ment of debts, or the practice of charity ? No such things. It is 
 the performance of some bodily gesture or attitude. It is going 
 to some place of worship. It is to stand or to kneel, or to bow to 
 the poor-box, but it is not a conformity that has anything to do 
 with the judgment, or the heart, or the conduct. All these things 
 bigotry meddles not with, but leaves them to religion herself to 
 
THE PENAL LAWS. 379 
 
 perform. Bigotry only adds one more, and that a very odious 
 one, to the number of those human stains which it is the business 
 of true rehgion not to burn out with the bigot's fire, but to 
 expunge and wash away by the Christian's tears : such, Invariably, 
 in all the countries and ai^es, have been the motives to the bigot's 
 conflicts, and such the use of his victories : not the propagation 
 of any opinion, but the engrossment of power and plunder ; of 
 homage and tribute. Such, I much fear, was the real origin of 
 the Popery laws. But power and privilege must necessarily be 
 confined to very few. In hostile armies you find them pretty 
 equal, the victors and the vanquished, in the numbers of their 
 hospitals and in the numbers of their dead ; so it is with nations, 
 the great mass is despoiled and degraded, but the spoil itself is 
 confined to few indeed. The result finally can be nothing but the 
 disease of dropsy and decrepitude. In Ireland this was peculiarly 
 the case. Religion was dishonoured, man was degraded, and social 
 affection was almost extinguished. Kfeiv^ a very few still profited 
 by this abasement of humanity. But let it be remembered, with 
 a just feeling of grateful respect to their patriotic and disinterested 
 virtue, and it is for this purpose that I have alluded as I have 
 done, that that few composed the whole power of the legislature 
 which concurred in the repeal of that system, and left remaining 
 of it, not an edifice to be demolished, but a mere heap of rubbish, 
 unsightly, perhaps pernicious, to be carted away. 
 
 " If the repeal of those laws had been a mere abjuration of 
 intolerance, I should have given it little credit. The growing 
 knowledge of the world, particularly of the sister nation, had 
 disclosed and unmasked intolerance, had put it to shame, and 
 consequently to flight ! But though public opinion may j^roscribe 
 intolerance, it cannot taJce aivay poioers or privileges established by 
 law. Those powers of exclusion and monopoly could be given up 
 only by the generous relinquishment of those who possessed them. 
 And nobly were they so relinquished by those repealing statutes. 
 Those lovers of their country saw^ the public necessity of the 
 
380 LIFE OF CUKKAN. 
 
 sacrifice, and most disinterestedly did they make it. If too, they 
 have been singular in this virtue, they have been as singularly 
 fortunate in their reward. In general, the legislator, though 
 he sows the seed of public good, is himself numbered with 
 the dead before the harvest can be gathered. With us it has 
 not been so — with us the public benefactors, many of them 
 at least, have lived to see the blessing of Heaven upon their 
 virtue, in an uniformly accelerating progress of industry and 
 comfort, and liberality, and social affection, and common 
 interest, such as I do not believe that any age or nation has ever 
 witnessed. 
 
 " Such I do know was the view, and such the hope, with which 
 that legislature, noio no more ! proceeded so far as they went, in 
 the repeal of those laws so repealed. And well do I know how 
 warmly it is now remembered by every thinking Catholic, that 
 not a single voice for those repeals was or could be given, except 
 by a Protestant legislator. With infinite pleasure do I also know 
 and feel, that the same sense of justice and good will which then 
 produced the repeal of those hnvs, is coiitinuing to act, and with 
 increasing energy, up)on those 2)€TSons in both countries, ivhose worth 
 and whose ivisdom are likely to explode whatever principle is 
 dictated by bigotry and folly, and to give currency and actio?i to 
 whatever principle is wise and salutary. Such, also, I know to be 
 the feelings of every court in this hall. It is from this enlarged 
 and humanized spirit of legislation that courts of justice ought to 
 take their 2^ri7iciples of expounding the law. 
 
 " At another time I should probably have deemed it right to 
 preserve a more respectful distance from some subjects which I 
 have presumed (but certainly with the best intentions, and I hope, 
 no unbecoming freedom), to approach. But I see the interest the 
 question has excited, and I think it right to let no person carry 
 away with him any mistake, as to the grounds of my decision, or 
 suppose that it is either the duty or the disposition of our courts 
 to make any harsh or jealous distinctions in their judgment 
 
cueran's later years. 381 
 
 founded on any differences of religious sects or tenets. I think 
 therefore, the motion ought to be refused; and I think myself 
 bound to mark still more strongly my sense of its impropriety, by 
 refusing it with full costs."] 
 
 The remaining years of Mr. Curran's life contain little of inci- 
 dent. His time was passed without much variety between the 
 duties of his judicial situation, and the- enjoyment of that social 
 intercourse for which his taste continued undiminished to the last. 
 It was observed by his friends, to whom he was an object of so 
 much interest that the slightest circumstance connected with him 
 attracted their attention, that his spirits began to decline from 
 the moment of his elevation to the bench. He felt sensible him- 
 self that the sudden discontinuance of those modes of intellectual 
 exercise, which an uninterrupted habit of so many years had 
 rendered almost a necessary of life, was impairing the health of 
 his mind.* All his powers w^ere still in the fullest vigor, and he 
 
 * It was at this time tliat Charles Phillips made the acquaintance of Mr. Curran. He 
 thus describes its commencement ; 
 
 " When I was called to the bar he was on the bench ; and, not only bagless, but brief- 
 less, I was one day, with many an associate, taking the idle round of the hall of the Four 
 Courts, when a common friend told me he was commissioned by the Master of the Rolls 
 to invite me to dinner that day at the Priory, a little country villa about four miles from 
 Dublin. Those who recollect their first introduction to a really great man, may easily 
 comprehend my delight and my consternation. Hour after hour was counted as it passed, 
 and, like a timid bride, I feared the one which was to make me happy. It came at last, 
 the important ^ve o'clock^ the ne phis ultra of the guest who would not go dinnerless at 
 Curran's. Never shall I forget my sensations when I caught the first glimpse of the little 
 man through the vista of his avenue. There he was, as a thousand times afterward I saw 
 him, in a dress which you would imagine he had borrowed from his tip-staff— his hands 
 on his sides— his face almost parallel with the horizon— his under lip protruded, and the 
 impatient step and the eternal attitude only varied by the pause during which his eye 
 glanced from his guest to his watch, and from his watch reproachfully to his dining- 
 room. It was an invincible peculiarity ; one second after five o'clock, and he would not 
 wait for the viceroy. The moment he perceived me, he took me by the hand, said he 
 would not have any one introduce me, and with a manner which I often thought was charm' 
 ed, at once banished every apprehension, and completely familiarized me at the Priory. 
 I had often seen Curran — often heard of him — often i-ead him, but no man ever knew any 
 thing about him who did not see him at his own table with the few whom he selected. Ho 
 was a little convivial deity ! He soared in every region, and was at home in all ; he touch- 
 
382 LIFE OF CtlEEAN. 
 
 could not but feel discontented and mortified at finding them (not 
 so much released from toil as) condemned to repose. In the hope 
 of removing this inquietude by indulging his faculties in their ac- 
 customed tastes, he began to project one or two literary works. * 
 One of them, and which it is much to be regretted that he had 
 not the firmness to execute, Avas memoirs of his own time ; but all 
 the entreaties of his friends, and all his own resolutions, gave w^ay 
 before his unconquerable aversion to written compositions. The 
 only notice of tliis intended Avork found among his papers, was the 
 following motto and preface : 
 
 ed every thing, and seemed as if he had created it ; he mastered the human heart with the 
 same case that lie did liis violin. You wept, and you laughed, and you wondered ; and 
 the wonderful creature who made you do all at will never let it appear that he was more 
 than your equal, and was quite willing, if you chose, to become your auditor. It is said 
 of Swifc that his rule was to allow a minute's pause after he had concluded, and then, 
 if no person took up the conversation, he recommenced. Curran had no conversational 
 rule whatever ; he spoke from impulse ; and he had the art so to draw you into a partici- 
 pation, that, though you folt an inferiority, it was quite a contented one. Indeed, noth- 
 ing could exceed the urbanity of his demeanour. At the time I speak of he was turned of 
 sixty, yet he was as playful as a child. The extremes of youth and age were met in him ; 
 he had the experience of the one and the simplicity of the other. At five o'clock we sat 
 down to dinner, during which the host gave ample indications that it was one of his happy 
 days. He had his moody ones : there was no one more uncertain. Joyous was my an- 
 ticipation of a delightful evening. But, alas ! what are the hopes of man ? When the 
 last dish had departed, Curran totally confounded me with a proposal, for which I was 
 anything but prepared — ' Mr. Phillips, as this is the first of, I hope, your very many visits 
 to tlie Priory, I may as well at once initiate you into the peculiarities of the place. You 
 may observe, though the board is cleared, there are no preparations for a symposium : 
 it all depends upon you. My friends here generally prefer a xoalk after dinner. It is a 
 Bweet evening ; but if you wish for wine, say so without ceremony.' Even now I can see 
 Curran's star-like eyes twinkling at the disappointment no doubt visible in mine. I had 
 heard, and truly, that he was never more delightful than with half a dozen friends, after 
 dinner, over his bottle. The hope in which I had so long revelled was realized at last — and 
 here came this infernal walk and the ' sweet evening !' Oh, how I would have hailed a 
 thunder-storm ! But, to say the truth, the sun was shining, and the birds were singing, 
 and the flowers were blooming and breathing so sweetly on that autumn eve, that, wonder- 
 ing not at the wish of my companions, I also voted for the ' walk.' Never was man so 
 mystified. We took the walk, no doubt, but it was only to the drawing-room, where, over 
 a dessert freshly culled from his gardens, and over wines for which his board was cele- 
 brated, we passed those hours which formed an era in my life. It was the commence- 
 ment of that happy intoixourse which gave this world a charm it ought, perhaps, never to 
 possess." 
 • He left a novel more than half finished, and a long criticism on Milton.— M. 
 
LITERAKT PROJECTS. 383 
 
 " You that propose to be the historian of yourself, go first and 
 trace out the boundary of your grave — stretch forth your hand 
 and touch the stone that is to mark your head, and swear by the 
 Majesty of Death, that your testimony shall be true, unwarped by 
 prejudice, unbiassed by favour, and unstained by malice ; so 
 mayest thou be a witness not unworthy to be examined before the 
 awful tribunal of that after time, which cannot begin, until you 
 shall have been numbered with the dead. 
 
 "I have frequently conceived the design of wTiting some 
 memoirs of myself, and of the times in which I have lived, but I 
 have been prevented by other avocations, not very compatible with 
 such a purpose. I was also deterred by the great hazard to which 
 every man is exposed who ventures to take himself for a subject. 
 What security can he offer to himself or to his reader against the 
 glosses and perversions of false modesty and vain glory? How- 
 can he satisfy either that he is not an advocate, when he should 
 bejonly a reporter? As to the strange and wayward destinies that 
 have agitated this unhappy country during the interval I speak of 
 — when I recollect the strong incitement that I felt as an observer 
 or an. actor, can I hope to subside into that unfevered moderation, 
 without which I can scarcely be competent to the task of review- 
 ing or recording them"? And yet, perhaps, in my strong feeling of 
 the difficulty and the danger, there may be some hope of escape. 
 The consciousness may be some safeguard against myself, and the 
 fairness of the avowal will naturally prevent the reader from fol- 
 lowing me when I am led astray. I have therefore resolved to 
 make some attempts upon the subject, in such intervals of health 
 or of leisure as I may be able to command ; pursuing it in that 
 way, I cannot hope for much minuteness of detail, or much exact- 
 ness of connexion. But, how^ever imperfect the performance may 
 be, and indeed must be under such circumstances, yet if it shall 
 contribute to preserve the memory .of some acts, and of some 
 actors, that ought not to perish, but should be preserved for the 
 purpose of praise, or punishment, or example, my labour, however 
 humble, will not be without its use." 
 
3S4 LITE OF CUKRAX. 
 
 He thus alludes to the same subject in one of his private letters : 
 " I have long thought of doing something on the time in Avhich 
 I have myself lived, and acted, tmd suffered ; from the bringing 
 Ireland, in 1782, from the grave in which she had slept for so 
 many centuries, to her reinterment in 1800; after so short an 
 inteiTal of hectical convalescence, and of hope so cruell}^ and 
 effectually assailed and extinguished, probably for ever! This 
 must, of necessity, draw me to collateral notice of myself in some 
 small and very subordinate degree — the few events that befel 
 myself — and the sentiments and opinions that I entertained upon 
 public affairs, together with the notions that I formed as a public 
 and professional man. Perhaps the strong terror which I antici- 
 pate at the possible seductions of silly vanity and egotism may be 
 some antidote against their poison. And yet, perhaps, on this very 
 point, my present feelings should convince me how little I have to 
 hope from my own caution or discretion. I am conscious that I 
 feel uneasy at thinking that the fooleries and falsehoods that have 
 been published as memoirs of me during my life, will be more 
 wantonly repeated when I am gone, which must be soon. And 
 though I now think my only idea is to leave behind me some 
 little postscript, merely to prevent misrepresentation, and modestly 
 confining itself within the extreme insignificance of the subject, 
 who, my dear Dick, will go bail for the quill that is bom of a 
 goose ?" 
 
 Another and a more favourite design, which the same distaste 
 to writing involved in a similar fate, was the composition of a 
 novel, of which the scenes and characters were to be connected 
 with the modern history of Ireland. Of this work, which since 
 the period of the Union he had been meditating, his mind had 
 completed the whole plan : he often repeated long passages, 
 descriptive of the most interesting situations, and marked by a 
 style of affecting eloquence, which would have rendered the work, 
 had he submitted to the task of committing it to paper, a valuable 
 and very original accession to that department of English literature. 
 
CORKESPONDENCE. 385 
 
 However, although subsequent to Mr. Curran's leaving the bar, 
 his mind produced little that could add to his previous reputation, 
 there still remain many farther examples of his style and opinions, 
 preserved in his letters on private and public subjects, and in occa- 
 sional speeches, from which a selection shall be introduced in the 
 remaining portion of his history. The greater number of the 
 private letters are written from England, which, notwithstanding 
 his constant complaints against what he considered the cold unso- 
 cial manners of its people, he seized every opportunity of visiting, 
 and seldom quitted without reluctance and despondency. This 
 was particularly the case since the Union, of wdiich the effects had 
 been so fatal to the society of the Irish capital. 
 
 TO LEONARD m'nALLY ESQ., DUBLIN. 
 
 ♦'Godwin's, 41 Skinner street, London.* 
 
 " Dear Mac, 
 
 " I got the cover yesterday, thinking to \vrite a Very long wise 
 letter to you ; now I have only the few moments that G.'s griskin 
 takes to be burnt. Poor Tooke is, I fear, at his last. A singular 
 man ! One glory he has eminently — he has been highly valued 
 by many good men of his day, and persecuted by almost every 
 scoundrel that united the power with the wall to do so. His 
 talents were of the first stamp, his intellect most clear, his attach- 
 ment to England, I think, inflexible, his integrity not to be 
 seduced, and his personal courage not to be shaken. If this shall 
 be admitted, he has lived long enough ; and if it is not, he has 
 lived too long. 
 
 "My health is much better; ray breast quite free, the pain gone, 
 my appetite rather better, sleep not so profound, spirits flatter, 
 temper more even, altogether some gainer by the reduction of wine. 
 At your side, I understand, my good friends have Sangradoed me, 
 but I have taken only the water ; no bleeding for me. I have 
 written to Amelia; that may save you some three pages, which 
 
 * Godwin, the novelist, liept a book-shop in Sliinner street, at this time.— M. 
 
 17 
 
386 LIFE OF CUEIiAN. 
 
 mio-ht be blank and written at the same time. I would beo- a 
 line, but I shall have set out too soon to get it. No news here, 
 but what the papers give you ; they are all mad about the conven- 
 tion; I ditfer from them totally, as I feel a disposition to do on 
 every subject. 
 
 "I am glad to hear you are letting yourself out at Old Orchard; 
 you are certainly unwise in giving up such an inducement to 
 exercise, and the absolute good of being so often in good air. I 
 have been talking about your habit without naming yourself I 
 am more persuaded that you and Egan are not sufficiently afraid 
 of weak liquors. I can say, from trial, how little pain it costs to 
 correct a bad habit. On the contrary, poor nature, like an ill-used 
 mistress, is delighted with the return of our kindness, and is anxious 
 to show her gratitude for that return, by letting us see how well 
 she becomes it. 
 
 "I am the more solicitous upon this point from having made 
 
 this change, which I see will make me w^aited for in heaven longer 
 
 than perhaps they looked for. If you do not make some pretence 
 
 for lingering, you can have no chance of conveying me to the 
 
 wherry ; and the trutli is, I do not like surviving old friends. I • 
 
 am somewhat inclined to Avish for posthumous reputation; and if 
 
 you go before me, I shall lose one of the most irreconcilable of my 
 
 trumpeters; therefore, dear Mac, no more water, and keep the 
 
 other element, your v.-ind, for the benefit of your friends. I wnll 
 
 show my gratitude as well as I can, by saying handsome things 
 
 of you to the saints and angels before you come. Best regards to 
 
 flll with you. 
 
 "Yours, &c. 
 
 "J. P. C." 
 
 TO MISS PHILPOT, DUBLIN. 
 
 Loudon Castle (Scotlayid), Sept. 12, 1810. 
 
 "The day is too bad for shooting, so I write. We arrived in 
 miserable weather at Donaghadee; thence we set sail for the 
 
TOUK IN SCOTLAND. 387 
 
 Port, where, after a prosperous voyage of ten hours, we arrived. 
 Two English gentlemen had got before us to the inn, and engaged 
 four horses, all there were; two might have drawn them one very 
 short stage, and they saw us prepare to set out with a cart, which 
 we did, and I trust with a cargo of more good manners and good 
 humour aboard us than the two churls could boast in their chaise 
 and four. 
 
 "I was greatly delighted with this country; you see no trace 
 here of the Devil working against the wisdom and beneficence of 
 God, and torturing and degrading his creatui-es. It seems the 
 romancing of travelling; but I am satisfied of the fact, that the 
 poorest man here has his children taught to read and write, and 
 that in every house is found a Bible, and in almost every house a 
 clock; and the fruits of this are manifest in the intelligence and 
 manners of all ranks. The natural effect of literary information, 
 in all its stages, is to give benevolence and modesty. Let the intel- 
 lectual taper burn ever so brightly, the horizon which it lights is 
 sure but scanty; and if it soothes our vanity a little, as being the 
 circle of our light, it must check it also, as being the boundary of 
 the interminable region of darkness that lies beyond it. I never 
 knew any person of any real taste and feeling, in whom knowledge 
 and humility were not in exact proportion. In Scotland what a 
 work have the four and twenty letters to show for themselves! — 
 the natural enemies of \ace, and folly, and slavery; the great 
 sowers, but still greater weeders, of the human soil. No where 
 can you see the cringing hypocrisy of dissembled detestation, so 
 inseparable from oppression, and as little do you meet the hard, 
 and dull, and right lined angles of the southern visage; you find 
 the notion exact and the phrase direct, with the natural tone of 
 the Scottish muse. 
 
 "The first night, at Ballintray, the landlord attended us at sup- 
 per; he would do so, though we begged him not. We talked to 
 him of the cultivation of potatoes. I said I wondered at his taking 
 them in place of his native food, oatmeal, so much more substantial. 
 
388 LIFE OF CURRAN. 
 
 His answer struck me as very cliaracteristic of the genius of 
 Scotland — frugal, tender and picturesque. 'Sir,' said he, 'we are 
 not- so much i' the wrong as you think; the tilth is easy, they are 
 swift i' the cooking, they take little fuel; and then it is pleasant to 
 see the gude -wife Avi' a' her bairns aboot the pot, and each wi' a 
 potato in its hand.' 
 
 " We got on to Ayr. It was fortunate ; it was the last day of 
 the rain and the first of the races ; the town was unusually full, 
 and we stood at the inn door — no room for us. ' My dear Cap- 
 tain,''* said I, ' I suppose we must lie in the streets.' ' No, that 
 you shall not,' says a good-looking man — it was Campbell of Fair- 
 field — ' my wife and I knew you were coming, and we have a warm 
 bed ready for you ; she is your countrywoman, and I am no stran- 
 ger to you ; I had a trial in Dublin eight years ago, and you were 
 in the cause.' ' Oh ! yes, sir, I remember ; we beat the enemy.' 
 ' Oh ! yes, sir,' says Campbell of Fairfield, ' I beat the enemy, 
 though you were at his head.' I felt my appetite keen. I was . 
 charmed with the comical forgiveness of his hospitality. I assured 
 him I heartily forgave him for thrashing my rascal client ; and a 
 few moments brought me to the kind greeting of my very worthy 
 countrywoman. They w ent a little aside, and I overheard their 
 whispers about dinner. Trouble, you may suppose, I did not wish 
 to give ; but the feeling of the possible delay by an additional 
 dish, was my panic. ' My dear Madam, I hope you won't make 
 me feel that I am not one of your family by adding any thing.' 
 ' No, that I won't,' says she ; ' and if you doubt my word, I'll give 
 you the security of seven gentlemen against any extravagance.' So 
 saying, she pointed to a group of seven miniatures of young men, 
 
 * The late Joseph Atkinson, Esq., of Dublin. — C. [He was one of Moore's earliest and best 
 friends, and ample justice was done to his merits and his memory, by "the poets of all 
 circles," in some beautiful stanzas on his death. It may be remembered that one of 
 Moore's Juvenile Poems was a "Familiar Epistle," addressed to Mr. Atkinson, to whom, 
 also, was written a missive from Bermuda, in Moore's Odes and Epistles from Ame- 
 rica.— M.] 
 
ADMIRATION OF SCOTLAND. 389 
 
 that hung- over the fire-place. 'Six of those poor fellows are all 
 over the earth ; the seventh, and these two little girls, are with us ; 
 you will think that good bail against the wickedness of extrava- 
 gance. Poor fellows !' she repeated. ' Nay, madam, don't say 
 " poor fellows," at the moment when you feel that hospitaUty pre- 
 vents the stranger from being a poor fellow. You don't think this 
 the only house in the world vrhere the wanderer gets a dinner, 
 and a bed ; who knows, my dear countrywoman, but Providence 
 is at this moment paying to some of your poor fellows far away 
 from you, for what your kind heart thinks it is giving for 
 nothing.' ' Oh, yes,' cried she ; ' God bless you for the thought.' 
 'Amen, my dear madam,' answered I; 'and I feel that he has 
 done it.' 
 
 " We were much pleased with the races ; not, you may suppose, 
 at a few fooHsh horses forced to run after each other, but to see 
 so much order and cheerfulness ; not a single dirty person nor a 
 ragged coat. I w\as introduced to many of their gentry. Lord 
 Eglington, Lord Casselis,. Lord Archibald Hamilton, &c., and 
 pressed very kindly to spend some time with them. 
 
 " Poor Burns ! — his cabin could not be passed unvisited or un- 
 wept ; to its two Httle thatched rooms — kitchen and sleeping- 
 place — a slated sort of parlor is added, and 'tis now an alehouse. 
 We found the keeper of it tipsy ; he pointed to the corner on 
 one side of the fire, and wdth a most mal-a-ioro'pos laugh, ob- 
 served, ' there is the very spot where Robert Burns was born. 
 The genius and the fate of the man were already heavy on my 
 heart; but the drunken laugh of the landlord gave me such a 
 view of the rock on which he foundered, I could not stand it, but 
 burst into tears. 
 
 " On Thursday we dine with Lord Eglington, and thence I hope 
 to pursue our little tour to Lochlomond, Glasgow, Edinburgh, &c. 
 These places are, at this time of the year, much deserted : how- 
 ever, we shan't feel it quite a solitude ; and, at all events, publi(3 
 buildings, &c., do not go to watering-places, so that still something 
 
390 LIFE OF CUEKAN. 
 
 will be visible. In tins region the winter is always mild, but the 
 rain is almost perpetual, and still worse as you advance to the 
 north. An Englishman said to an Highlander, ' Bless me. Sir, 
 does it rain for ever V The other answered — ' Oh ! nay, Sir, it 
 snaws whiles.' 
 
 " See what a chronicle I have written, &c., &c. 
 
 " J. P. C." 
 
 The preceding is not the only record that Mr. Curran has left 
 of his admiration of Scotland. His defence of Mr. Hamilton 
 Rowan contains a short but glowing eulogium upon the genius of 
 that country, for whose splendid services in the cause of the human 
 mind no praise can be too great. After speaking ot the excessive 
 terror of French principles, by which juries v/ere governed in their 
 verdicts, he pi-oceeded : — " There is a sort of aspiring and adven- 
 turous credulity, v^hich disdains assenting to obvious truths, and 
 delights in catching at the improbability of circumstances, as its 
 best ground of faitli. To what other cause can you ascribe that 
 in the wise, the reflecting, and the philosophic nation of Great 
 Britain, a printer has been found gravely guilty of a libel, for pub- 
 lishing those resolutions to which the prime minister of that king- 
 dom had actually subsci'ibed his name ? To what other cause can 
 j^u ascribe what, in my mind, is still more astonishing; — in such 
 a country as Scotland — a nation cast in the happy medium between 
 the spiritless acquiescence of submissive poverty and the sturdy 
 credulity of pampered wealth — cool and ardent- — adventurous and 
 persevering — winging her eagle flight against the blaze of every 
 science, with an eye that never winks and a wing that never tires — 
 crowned as she is with the spoils of every art, and decked with the 
 wreath of every muse, from the deep and scrutinizing researches 
 of her Hume to the sweet and simple, but not less sublime and 
 pathetic, morality of her Burns — how from the bosom of a country 
 like that, genius, and character, and talents, should be banished to 
 a distant barbarous soil, condemned to pine under the horrid com- 
 
LETTER FROM CIIELTENAM. 391 
 
 munion of vulgar vice and base-born profligacy, for twice the 
 period that ordinary calculation gives to the continuance of human 
 life ?" '^' 
 
 TO PETER LESLIE, ESQ., DUBLIN. 
 
 "Cheltenham, Sept. 11, ISU. 
 
 "Dear Peter, 
 
 " Don't open this till the little circle of our Hirish friends are 
 together. You will be all glad to hear tliat an old friend is yet in 
 the harbour of this stormy world, and has not forgotten you : in 
 truth, it is only that sentiment that troubles you with this worth- 
 less despatch ; but small as its value may be, it is worth at least 
 vvhat it costs you. I don't think these waters are doing me any 
 good — I think they never did ; they bury my poor spirits in the 
 earth. I consulted yesterday evening (indeed chiefly to put so 
 many moments to a technical death) our countryman B., a very 
 obstinate fellow : though I paid him for his affability, and his 
 'indeed, I think so too, Mr. Shandy,' I could not work him into an 
 admission that I had any malady whatsoever, nor even any to hope 
 for by continuing the intrigue with Mrs. Forty :j' so I have a 
 notion of striking my tent, and taking a position beliind the 
 Trent, at Doninglon.J During my stay here I have follen into 
 some pleasant female society; but such society can be enjoyed 
 only by those who are something at a tea-table or a ball. Tea 
 always makes me sleepless ; and as to dancing, I tried three or four 
 steps that were quite the cream of the thing in France at one time, 
 and which cost me something. I though it might be the gaiters 
 that gave them a piperly air ; but even after putting on my black 
 silk stockings, and perusing them again before the glass, which I 
 put on the ground for the purpose of an exact review, I found the 
 the edition was too stale for republication. 
 
 "The cover of this contains a list of all the politicians now in 
 
 * Mr. Ciirran alludes to the sentence of Mr. Muir, Palmer, &c., who had been trans- 
 ported for sedition — C. 
 tThe person who dispensed the waters at Cheltenham.— C. 
 if. The seat of Lord Moira.— C. 
 
392 LIFE OF CUKRAN. 
 
 Cheltenliam, and therefore you must see that I am out of work as 
 well for my head as my heels. Even the neAvspapers seem so 
 parched by the heat of the season, which is extreme, as to have 
 lost all vegetation. In short, I have made no progress in anything 
 except in marketing, and I fancy I can cast a glance upon a 
 shoulder of Welsh mutton Avith all the careless indecision of an 
 unresolved purchaser, and yet with the eye of a master ; so I have 
 contrived to have two or three at five o'clock, except when I dine 
 abroad, which I don't much like to do. 
 
 *' If you remember our last political speculations, you know all 
 that is to be known ; and that all being just nothing, you cannot 
 well forget it. The smoke is thickest at the corners farthest from 
 the chimney, and therefore near the fire we see a little more dis- 
 tinctly ;* but as things appear to me, I see not a single ticket in 
 the wheel that may not be drawn a blank, poor Paddy's not ex- 
 cepted. To go back to the fire — each party has the bellows hard 
 at work, but I strongly suspect that each of them does more to 
 blind their rivals, and themselves, too, by blowing the ashes about, 
 than thev do in coaxino- or chcrishino- the bhaze for the comfort 
 or benefit of their own shins. Therefore, my dear Peter, though 
 we have not the gift of prophecy, we have at least the privilege 
 of praying. There is no act of parliament that takes away the 
 right of preferring a petition to heaven ; and therefore, while it 
 yet is lawful, I pray that all may end well, and that we may have 
 an happy escape from knaves and fools. In that hope there is 
 nothing either popish or seditious. To-morrow I go to Gloucester, 
 to the music-meeting, and then I think Mrs. Forty and I shall take 
 the embrace of an eternal adieu. Do not forget me to all our 
 dear friends about you, and assure them that, however kindly 
 they may remember me, I am not, as far as grateful recollection 
 
 * This familiar image, almost similarly applied, was the subject of some perplexity to 
 Br. Johnson. — " Roscommon, foreseeing that some violent concussion of the State was 
 at hand, proposed to retire to Rome, alleging, that it was best to sit near the chimney 
 when the chamber smoked, a sentence of which the application seems not very clear." — 
 Life of Roscommon.— Q. 
 
CORRESPONDENCE. 393 
 
 can go, in their debt. God grant we may all meet again in com* 
 fort here, or in glory somewhere else. 
 
 " Yours, dear Peter, very truly yours, 
 
 " John P. Curran." 
 
 TO RICHARD HETHERINGTON, ESQ.,"^ DUBLIN. 
 
 «' London, 1811. 
 
 " Dear Dick, 
 
 " I merely write to say that I am alive. Never any thing 
 so dull as this place ; I shall soon steer towards you. You must 
 know I have been requested by a great sculptor to sit for him, and 
 w^e are now employed in making a most beautiful head in mud, 
 which is to be the model for a piece of immortal Parian marble. 
 Is that a small style of going, Dick ? Having now disposed of what 
 was most important, we come to smaller matters — ]:)olitics and war. 
 Wellington has been obliged to give up Rodrigo, and retire west- 
 ward ; I suppose to eat his Christmas pies at his old quarters in 
 Torres Vedras, to which every hundred pound that is sent to him 
 costs only one hundred and forty pounds here. As to politics, they 
 seem quite relinquished by every one : nobody expects any mate- 
 rial change of men or measures ; nor, in truth, do I see any thing 
 in the present state of things that can't be done as well by one set 
 as another. I have little doubt that Perceval is as warlike a hero 
 as Grenville, and just as capable of simplifying our government to 
 the hangman and the taxgatherer. I am just interrupted ; so, God 
 
 bless you. 
 
 " J. P. Curran." 
 
 TO THE SAME. 
 
 " Holland House, 1811 . 
 
 "Dear Dick, 
 
 " The allurement of a frank gives you this. Here I am, 
 much better I think — all lonely. Burton here for a week — al- 
 
 * This gentleman held the situation of deputy keeper of the Rolls under Mr. Curran ; 
 all of whose letters in his possession he kindly communicated for insertion in this 
 work.— C. 
 
394: LIFE OF CURKAN. 
 
 most every body else away. I am scarcely sorry for having* come, 
 one gets out of print ; liowever, I have scarcely to complain, I 
 find myself quite a proof copy. Dear Dick, a man loves to be 
 cockered a little ; and certainly I am not stinted here. I suspect it 
 is all aftectation when I talk cheaply of the great and the grand ; 
 
 for instance, I went to pay my devoirs to Lady D , who was 
 
 very kind ; also to Lady A , who was vastly gracious ; also 
 
 Godwin, as also Lord Holland. To-morrow I shall think of Denis 
 O'Bryen and the Duke of Sussex ; 'twill be well if I don't forget 
 you and the hill, while I remember 
 
 " J. P. C." 
 
 " Some more lies from the continent : — another victory — three 
 legs of Bonaparte shot away, the fourth foot very precarious. I 
 really suspect that you have been here incog. ^ and bit every body ; 
 for they will believe nothing, even though authenticated by the 
 most respectable letters from Gottingen. Farewell. 
 
 " J. P. CURRAN." 
 
 TO THE SAME. 
 
 " London, October 12, 1811. 
 
 "Dear Dick, 
 
 " I look forward to being very domestic for the winter. I 
 feel my habits and feelings much upon the change : it puts me in 
 mind of a couple of bad verses of my own growth, 
 
 And the long train of joys that charm'd before. 
 Stripped of their borrow'd plumage, charm no more. 
 
 I am weak enough to indulge in a conceited contrition for having 
 done nothing, and the penitential purpose of doing something before 
 I die. God help us ! how poor the vanity that self accuses us of 
 wasting funds that never existed, and draws for compensation upon 
 the time that we are not destined to see ! or upon efforts that we 
 
ENGLISH POLITICS. 395 
 
 liave not strength to make ! You will think it odd that here in 
 London I should he very studious ; but so it has been. I have 
 been always prone to metaphysical and theological subjects, though 
 T well know the uncertainty and fruitlessness of such researches.; 
 however, I think to call another cause, and adjourn that, till I go 
 thither where all must be plain and clear — where the evidence 
 must be solid, and the judgment infallible. 
 
 " I have been only at one play, and that in company with the 
 author, Moore.^'^ I sleep three or four nights in the week in the 
 country ; so that in Ireland I look to be very good — like an old 
 bachelor who proposes to marry, and take the benefit of an insol- 
 vent act. 
 
 " There is still no news here — people seem almost sick of con- 
 jecturing. As to my part, if I have any opinion, it is that a 
 change would be only partial. The public undoubtedly have no 
 enthusiasm for the outs, and Perceval unquestionably has risen 
 much. In the City tliejr think him a man of probity and of busi- 
 ness, which they think much better than high and lofty tumbling. 
 As to our miserable questions, they are not half so interesting as 
 the broils in the Caraccas. What a test of the Union ! And 
 what a proof of the apathy of this blind and insolent country I 
 They affect to think it glorious to struggle to the last shilling of 
 their money, and the last drop of our blood, rather than submit 
 their property and persons to the capricious will of France ; and 
 yet that is precisely the power they are exercising over us— the 
 modest authority of sending over to us laws, like boots and shoes 
 ready made for exportation, v/ithout once condescending to take 
 our measure, or ask whether or where they pinch us. 
 
 " But enough, I think, of religion and politics. 
 
 "J. P. C." 
 
 * Thomas Moore. The play was operatic, and was damned. Itg name was " M. P. or 
 the Blue Stockings."— M. 
 
396 LIFE OF CUERAN. 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 Mr. Curran is invited to stand for the borough of Newry— Speech to the electors— Letter 
 to Sii- J. Swinburne— Letter on Irish affairs to H. R. H. the Duke of Sussex. 
 
 From the period of Mr. Curran's elevation to the bench, his friends 
 had been very desirous to see him a member of the British par- 
 liament. Independent of the service which they expected that 
 his zeal and talents might render to Ireland, there mingled with 
 their feelings on this subject a sentiment of national pride. His 
 parliamentary abilities they considered as having been greatly under- 
 rated; notwithstanding the extensive circulation of his reported 
 speeches, the admiration they had met in England was cold in 
 comparison to the enthusiastic applause which their delivery had 
 excited at home. They were therefore anxious that he should 
 have an opportunity, before age or death should render it impos- 
 sible, of justifying their preference, and confirming his own repu- 
 tation by even a single display, before such an audience as the 
 British senate, of those powers which his countrymen had so long 
 been extolling as unrivalled. 
 
 These reasons — particularly the sense of duty, were frequently 
 urged upon him, but with little effect. The only question, upon 
 which it seemed to him that he could be useful, was that of Catho- 
 lic Emancipation; and even here he could not venture to be 
 sanguine, When he recollected that his illustrious friend, Mr. 
 Grattan, who had made that question almost the business of a 
 long life, was still (though supported by so much of the most 
 exalted rank and talent in the British empire) vainly exerting his 
 splendid abilities to drive or shame the bigot from his post, Mr. 
 Curran fear<^d that the accession of any strength that he possessed 
 
NEWRY ELECTION. 397 
 
 would prove of little value to the cause. The motives of personal 
 vanity or ambition had still less iniiuence. It is not surprising 
 that he, who in the season of ardour and hope had been so negli- 
 gent of fame, should continue equally inditierent, now that these 
 incentives to action were passing or had passed away. 
 
 Such Avere his feelings (too full perhaps of desj^ondency and 
 indolence) when, upon the general election in 1812, the indepen- 
 dent interest of the town of Newry proposed to elect him their 
 member. A deputation from that borough having waited upon 
 him for the purpose, he accepted the invitation,* and repaired to 
 Newry;f but after a contest of six days, perceiving that the 
 
 * The feelings with which Mr. Curran accepted the invitation appear in his answer. 
 "to the worthy and independent electors of the borough of newry. 
 
 " Gentlemen — I have just received an address, signed by a number of highly respect- 
 able members of your ancient borough, inviting me to offer myself a candidate to repre- 
 sent your town in parliament. To be thought worthy of such a trust, at so awful a crisis 
 as the present, and to receive such an invitation, unsolicited and unexpected, is an 
 honour that I feel deeply and gratefully. 
 
 " Gentlemen, I need not trouble you with many words. You know my principles, you 
 know my conduct heretofore — I ara not a stranger coming forward to menace, or to buy 
 you, in order that I may sell you ; nor do I rest my pretension on any contrition for the 
 past, nor any premediated promise that I will at some future period begin to act honestly 
 by you. From the earliest period of my life to see this ill-fated country retrieved from 
 her sad condition of suffering and of sharae has been the first and warmest wish of my 
 heart, and warm it shall continue, till I myself am cold for ever. 
 
 " I know you will not impute it to a want of the most profound respect for you, wlien 
 I say that I will not personally solicit the vote of any individual. I cannot run the risk 
 of soliciting a suitor in tl)e character of an elector — it would not benefit my judicial 
 situation, and I think it would diminish that credit, which suffrage above all suspicion 
 of bias, ought to give to your representative. It will therefore be sufficient that I attend 
 you in such time before the election as will enable me to know your farther pleasure. 
 
 "I have the honour to be, Gentlemen, with a full sense of your confidence and favour, 
 
 " Your obedient servant, 
 
 "John Philpot Curran. 
 ''Stephen's Green, Octoler 8, 1812." 
 
 t Mr. Curran's reception was most enthusiastic. He was met two miles outside Newry, 
 and about 3000 persons joined in drawing him into the borough in his carriage, from which 
 the horses had been taken. He made a brilliant speech (of which no report has been 
 preserved), which occupied eighty minutes in the delivery, and was greatly applauded. 
 His rival, who avowed Anti-Catholic opinions, was groaned. But some of the Catholic 
 
398 LWE OF CUKRAN. 
 
 strength of tlie other candidate (General Needham) left him no 
 prospect of success, he declined any farther struggle. Upon this 
 occasion, Mr. Curran delivered a speech of considerable length. 
 It was liis last great public effort, and was characterized by the 
 same energy and fancy, and the same spirit of patriotic enthusiasm, 
 which reign in all his former productions. After stating to the 
 electors of Xewry the circumstances under which he had been 
 induced to appear among them, and the condition of the borough, 
 which had baffled the exertions of his friends, Mr. Curran pro- 
 ceeded to impress upon his hearers that the long train of sufferings 
 which Ireland had endured for centuries had originated in the 
 dissension of her people, and that whatever of them remained 
 could only be removed by mutual toleration. " Under this sad 
 coalition of confederating dissensions, nursed and fomented by the 
 policy of England, this devoted country has continued to languish 
 with small fluctuations of national destiny, from the invasion of 
 the second Henry to the present time. And here let me be just 
 while I am indignant ; let me candidly own that to the noble 
 examples of British virtue, to the splendid exertions of British 
 courage, to their splendid sacrifices, am I probably indebted for 
 my feelings as an Irishmen and my devotion to my country. They 
 thought it madness to trust themselves to the influence of any 
 foreign country ; they thought the circulation of the political blood 
 could be carried on only by the action of the heart within the 
 body, and could not be injected from without. Events have shown 
 you that what they thought, was just ; and that what they did, was 
 indispensable : they thought they ought to govern themselves — 
 they thought that at every hazard they ought to make the effort — 
 they thought it more eligible to perish than to fail ; and to the 
 God of Heaven I pray that the authority of so splendid an example 
 may not be lost upon Ireland." 
 
 After describing the condition of Ireland subsequent to the 
 
 voters were not true to their own cause, and this, backed by government influence, 
 defeated Curran. — M. 
 
SPEECH AT NEWKY. 399 
 
 revolution, Mr. Ciirran continued; — ''At length, in 1782, a noble 
 effort was made, and deathless ought to be the name of him* that 
 made it, and deathless ought to be the gratitude of the country 
 for which it was made — the independence of Ireland was acknow- 
 ledged. Under this system of asserted independence, our progress 
 in prosperity was much more rapid than could have been expected, 
 when we remember the conduct of a very leading noble person 
 upon that occasion — never was a more generous mind or a purer 
 heart — but his mind had more purity than strength. He had all 
 that belonged to taste, and courtesy, and refinement ; but the grand 
 and the sublime of national reform were composed of colours too 
 strong for his eye, and comprised an horizon too outstretched for 
 his vision.f The Catholics of Ireland were in fact excluded from 
 the asserted independence of their country. Thus far the result 
 comes to this, that w^herever perfect union is not found, complete 
 redress must be sought in vain." 
 
 Passing on to the Union, Mr. Curran proceeded — " The w^hole 
 liistory of mankind records no instance of any hostile Cabinet, 
 perhaps even of any internal cabinet, actuated by the principles 
 of honour or of shame. The Iiish Catholic was therefore taught 
 to believe, that if he surrendered his country he would cease to 
 be a slave. The Irish Protestant was cajoled into the belief, that 
 if he concurred in the surrender, he would be placed upon the 
 neck of an hostile faction. Wretched dupe ! — You might as well 
 persuade the gaoler that he is less a prisoner than the captives he 
 locks tqj, merely because he carries the key in his poclcet.\ By that 
 
 * Mr. G rattan. 
 
 t The person here alluded to was obviously the late Earl of Charlemont ; but though 
 tliat nobleman originally opposed the claims of the Roman Catholics, he had the honour 
 in his latter years of rising above his early prejudides; he has also made Ireland amends 
 for the delay, in having left a representative of his house, and of his more matured 
 opinions, from whom all that his country can demand is that lie may never change his 
 present principles and conduct. — C. 
 
 % We doubt not that this is the origin of Byron's well known lines in Don Juan : 
 " The nations are 
 In prison— but the gaoler, what is he ? 
 
400 LIFE OF CUKRAN. 
 
 reciprocal animosity, however, Ireland was surrendered ; the gnilt 
 of the surrender was most atrocious — the consequences of the 
 crime most tremendous and exemplary. We put ourselves into a 
 condition of the most unqualified servitude — we sold our country, 
 and we levied upon ourselves the price of the purchase — we gave 
 up the right of disposing of our properties — we yielded to a 
 foreign legislature to decide whether the funds necessary to their 
 projects or their profligacy should be extracted from us, or be 
 furnished by themselves; the consequence has been, that our 
 scanty means have been squandered in her internal corruption as 
 profusely as our best blood has been wasted in the madness of 
 her aggressions, or the feeble folly of her resistance. Our debt 
 has accordingly been increased more than tenfold — the common 
 comforts of life have been vanishino- — we are sinkino- into beo-- 
 gary — our poor people have been worried by cruel and unprincipled 
 prosecutions, and the instruments of our government have been 
 almost simplified into the tax-gatherer and the hangman. At 
 length, after this long night of suffering, the morning star of our 
 redemption cast its light upon us, the mist was dissolved and all 
 men perceived that those whom they had been blindly attacking 
 in the dark were in reality their fellow sufferers and their friends. 
 AVe have made a discovery of the grand principle in politics, that 
 the tyrant is in every instance the creature of the slave — that he 
 is a cowardly and a computing animal — and that in every instance 
 he calculates between the expenditure to be made and the advan- 
 tage to be acquired. And I therefore do not hesitate to say that 
 if the wretched Island of Man, that refugium peccatorum^ had 
 sense and spirit to see the force of this truth, she could not be 
 
 No lesser victim to the bolt and bar. 
 
 Is the poor privilege to turn the key 
 
 Upon the captive, freedom ? He's as far 
 
 From the enjoyment of the earth and air, 
 
 Who watches o'er the chain, as they who wear." 
 
 But Byron avowed that a poet had a right, whenever he found a good idea, to seize 
 and use it.— M. 
 
NEWRT ELECTION. 401 
 
 enslaved by tlie whole power of England. The oppressor would 
 see that the necessary expenditure in whips, and chains, and gib- 
 bets, would infinitely countervail the ultimate value of the acquisi- 
 tion ; and it is owing to the ignorance of this unquestionable 
 truth, that so much of this agitated globe lias, in all ages, been 
 crawled over by a Manx population. This discovery Ireland at 
 last has made. The Catholic claimed his rights — the Protestant 
 generously and nobly felt as he ought, and seconded the claim ; a 
 silly government was driven to the despicable courage of cowardice, 
 and resorted to the odious artillery of prosecutions — the expedi- 
 ent failed : the question made -its way to the discussion of the 
 senate— I will not tire you with the detail. A House of Com- 
 mons who, at least, represented themselves, perhaps afraid, perhaps 
 ashamed of their employers, became unmanageable tools in the 
 hands of such awkward artists, and were dissolved; just as a 
 beaten gamester throws the cards into the fire in hopes in a new 
 pack to find a better fortune." 
 
 A little farther on, Mr. Curran, again adverting to the circum- 
 stances of the election, was interrupted by the other candidate's 
 agent : when that person was made to sit down, Mr. Curran re- 
 sumed. " I do not wonder at having provoked interruption when 
 I spoke of your borough. I told you that from this moment it is 
 free. Never in ray life have I so felt the spirit of the people as 
 among you; never have I so felt the throbs of returning life. I 
 almost forgot my own habitual estimate of my own small import- 
 ance ; I almost thought it was owing to some energy within my- 
 self, when I was lifted and borne on the buoyant surge of popular 
 sympathy and enthusiasm. I therefore again repeat it, it is 
 the moment of your new birth unto righteousness. Your proved 
 friends are high among you — your developed enemies are expunged 
 for ever — your liberty has been taken from the grave, and if she 
 is put back into the tomb, it can be only by your own parricide, 
 and she must be buried alive." 
 
 "Ireland (said he, towards the conclusion of his address) can do 
 
402 LIFE OF CUREAN. 
 
 more for herself now tlian slie has done for centuries heretofore. 
 She lay a helpless hulk upon the water ; but now, for the first 
 time, we are indebted to the Protestant spirit for the delicious 
 spectacle of seeing her equipped with masts, and sails, and com- 
 j)ass, and helm ; at length she is sea-worthy. Whether she is to 
 escape the tempest and gain the port is an event to be disposed 
 of by the great Ruler of the waters and the winds. If our voyage 
 be prosperous, our success will be doubled by our unanimity ; but 
 even if we are doomed to sink, we shall sink with honour. But 
 am I over-sanguine in counting our Protestant allies ? Your own 
 county gives you a cheering instance in a noble Marquis, ^"^ i-etiring 
 from the dissipation of an English court, making his country his 
 residence, and giving his first entrance into manhood to the cause 
 of Ireland. It is not from any association of place that my mind 
 is turned to the name of Moira — to name him is to recognize 
 what your idolatry has given to him for so many years ; but a 
 late transaction calls for a word or two. I thought anxiously 
 upon it at the time, and from that time to this, if he required to 
 be raised, he must have been raised in public opinion by the 
 event of that negociation.f He saw that the public in either 
 
 * The Marquis of Downshire. — C. 
 
 t Mr. Curran had, a few weeks before, in an equally public manner, discountenanced 
 the angry feelings with which he found some of his countrymen had regarded the con- 
 duct of his noble friend in the recent negotiations for a new administration. At a pub- 
 lic dinner, given in Dublin to the Bishop of Norwich by the friends of religious freedom, 
 and attended by many, the most distinguished for rank and talent in Ireland, Mr. Curran, 
 in addressing the meeting, enumerated the several illustrious persons in the empire who 
 supported the cause which they were that day celebrating: "But," said he, " I have not 
 yet mentioned the name, which I was delighted to see you were on the tiptoe of expecting, 
 and which, in whatever order it might be mentioned, you had in your own minds placed 
 in its natural station, at the head of the list — the beloved child of Ireland, the ornament, 
 and consoler, and intrepid defender of his country- -the scholar of the camp — the philo- 
 sopher of the senate -the exalted devotee of that high and unparlying honour, that will 
 bend to no consideration of life, or death, or country, or even of fame : that man who, of 
 all others, most distinctly sees into your character — your ardent, generous (do not be 
 angry with me), your tender and excitable sensibility — your feather-springed disposa- 
 bility to affectionate and momentary jealousy, which evaporates in the breath that 
 expresses it. He knows it well— he loves you for it— he knows the rapid condition of its 
 
NEWRY ELECTION. 403 
 
 country could not have any hope from an arrangement, in which 
 the first prehminary was a selfish scramble for patronage, that 
 must have ended in a scramble for power; in which the first 
 efforts of patriotism were for the surrender of mopsticks in the 
 palace ; to sink the head, and to irritate the man who wore the 
 Crown, instead of making their first measure a restitution of 
 representation to the people, who, if they were as strong as they 
 ought to be, could have nothing to apprehend from the tinsel of a 
 robe or the gilding of a sceptre. 
 
 " Little remains for me to add to what I liave already said. I 
 said you should consider how you ought to act — I will give you ray 
 humble idea upon that point. Do not exhaust the resources of 
 your spirit by idle anger or idle disgust — forgive those who have 
 voted against you here — they will not forgive theniselves. I under- 
 stand they are to be packed up in tumbrils \yith layers of salt be- 
 tween them, and carted to the election for the country, to appear 
 again in patriotic support of the noble projector of the glories of 
 Walcheren. Do not envy him the precious cargo of the raw 
 materials of virtuous legislation — be assured all this is of use. 
 
 " Let me remind you before I go of that precept, equally pro- 
 found and beneficent, which the meek and modest author of our 
 blessed religion left to the world : ' and one command I give you, 
 that you love one another.' Be assured that of tl»s love the true 
 spirit can be no other than probity and honour. The great ana- 
 logies of the moral and the physical world are surprisingly coinci- 
 dent; you cannot glue two pieces of board together unless the 
 joint be clean ; you cannot unite two men together, unless the 
 
 recoil ; but he ought not to be wounded, nor you humiliated by any formal ceremonial of 
 that contrition. iLoud applame.] But I find I am not so bad a painter as I thought; 
 you have made it unnecessary for me to put the name over the picture. May I be per- 
 mitted to add, that although I have not been altogether unhonoured by some condescend- 
 ing notice from that illustrious and noble person, yet I am too proud to be swayed by any 
 feeling which, if merely personal, must be despicable, and that it could not add a single 
 pulsation to that energy of aflfection and respect with which my heart clings to him as an 
 Irishman."— C. [The Earl Moira afterwards was created Marquis of Hastings.— M.] 
 
404: LIFE Ol^" CUKRAN. 
 
 cement be virtue : for vice can give no sanction to compact, she 
 can form no bond of affection. 
 
 " And now, my friends, I bid you adieu, with a feeling at my 
 heart that can never leave it, and which my tongue cannot attempt 
 the abortive effort of expressing. If my death do not prevent it, 
 we shall meet again in this place. If you feel as kindly to me as 
 I do to you, relinquish the attestation which I know you had 
 reserved for my departure. Our enemy has, I think, received the 
 mortal blow ; but though he reels, he has not fallen ; and we have 
 seen too much upon a greater scale of wretchedness of anticipated 
 triumph. Let me therefore retire from among you in a way that 
 becomes me and becomes you, uncheered by a single voice, and 
 unaccompanied by a single man. May the blessing of God pre- 
 serve you in the affection of one another.'"^' 
 
 The following letters contain Mr. Curran's farther views upon 
 the state of public affairs in Ireland at this period : 
 
 to sir j. swinburne. 
 
 "Sir, 
 
 " I have just received the honour of your letter. I am very 
 deeply, indeed, impressed by the honour of being thought by the. 
 committee not unworthy of the office of steward, at the meeting 
 of the friends of religious freedom. 
 
 " If there were no obstacle in my way, but what was within my 
 own control, most promptly, and with pride and gratitude, would 
 I obey so flattering a summons ; but the difficulty is what it does 
 not belong to me to dispense with. The Court of Chancery will 
 be sitting on the day of your meeting, and I could not be warrant- 
 ed in leaving my duty here, from any impulse, however strong, of 
 
 * In the middle of liis speech Mr. Bell (a regularly ill-favoured gentleman), who was 
 agent for the rival candidate, stood up, and fixed his eyes upon Mr. Curran, "with a very 
 peculiar expression of countenance." On this Mr. Curran exclaimed, "Mr. Seneschal, I 
 demand of you as returning officer, that I, a candidate, shall be protected, s,s you are in 
 duty bound to do, frojn being disturbed by the obscene and unnatural grimaces of a 
 baboon." Whereupon Mr. Bell sank into his seat — used up ! — M. 
 
iiiisii roLiTics. 405 
 
 personal gratitude or respect. I cannot look forward to any pro- 
 bable state of the court, that can leave me to my own disposal ; 
 but if such should occur, I shall certainly wait upon you. I am, 
 however, not a little consoled in the reflection, that my absence 
 from such a scene can be regretted' only by myself, and that my 
 presence could contribute little, or rather nothing, to the intended 
 result. The sanction of illustrious personages,*' who vouchsafe to 
 patronise the meeting, must do much towards its object ; and much 
 also must be effected by the high rank and character of others, 
 who I make no doubt will be zealous in following such an example, 
 when the projects of intolerance are disclaimed by the authority 
 of the enlightened and exalted ; and when the great mass of the 
 people are permitted to see what cannot be difficult in so reflecting 
 a nation as England, that the cause of tolerance is really that of 
 justice, and prudence, and true Christianity, in which they them- 
 selves are as deeply interested as their fellow-subjects can be. It 
 is not, I trust, too sanguine to hope that practical bigotry must be 
 driven to take refuge in flight ; and that the empire may look for- 
 ward to the adoption of such just and beneficent counsels as must 
 ever compose the only certain basis of internal tranquillity, and of 
 external safety. I know, sir, you will perceive that I allude princi- 
 pally to this part of the empire. I have passed not a short life in 
 it ; my notions respecting it are the fruit of long observation of it 
 both in and out of parliament ; and so deeply are these ideas graven 
 upon my judgment, that upon a late occasion I was willing to forego 
 every consideration of much labor passed, of advancing years, and 
 declining health, and to undertake the duty of once more sitting in 
 parliament. I could have no motive of ambition, or of party, or 
 view to reputation ; I looked not to be an advocate for my country, 
 but I did venture to hope that a man so peifectly removed from all 
 temptation to partiality, and with so much opportunity of 
 knowledge, might be received as not an incredible witness, in point 
 of fact, for tliis afflicted island. And from the discharge of so 
 
 * Dnkeg of Kent and Sussex, sons of George III.—M, 
 
406 J.IFE OF CUKKAN. 
 
 sacred a duty, I thought it would have been most unworthy to 
 affect to excuse myself upon any etiquette of office, when the law 
 had declared no incompatibility between official and public duty. 
 I did think, and I 3'et think, that if the real state of this country 
 be fairly and fully impressed upon the parliament and the public, 
 it must appear to demonsti-ation, that the hopes and the fears of 
 the tw^o parts of the empire are one and the same ; that it is the 
 critical moment in which every thino- ought to be done to oppose the 
 embankment of a consolidated nation to the hostile torrent, instead 
 of lea\dng it even a chance of admission through the interstices of 
 an incohering and porous population ; and that those high persons, 
 who sav/ things a year ago in this point of view, and were then 
 willing to devote themselves to the public service, may, upon 
 further consideration, think that the obstacles which then prevent- 
 ed their intention ought not for ever to deprive their country of 
 the benefits of their virtue or capacity to serve it. Such an event 
 as I allude to, they may be assured, would have a most consoling 
 and cheering effect upon Ireland, because we should look with con- 
 fidence to their acting upon that noble and conciliating principle 
 of religious freedom, which has raised your illustrious patron, and 
 those who think as he does, so high in the reverence of all men ; 
 they would be sure of retrieving Ireland from a state of suffering 
 and peril ; they would be sure of finding a co-opei-ation in every 
 honest Irishman infinitely superior to the zeal of party, or of sect, 
 and founded on the pure devotion of public duty and public 
 spirit. And it would convey to the heart of a loyal and ardent 
 people a conviction that they were yet of a value in a quarter 
 where their fondest hopes and affections had been fixed for years. 
 But I fear my solicitude on this subject has led me to intrude 
 farther than I had intended upon your attention. Permit me, 
 therefore, only to request that you will be pleased to accept my 
 cordial thanks for the courtesy of your communication, and to pre- 
 sent my humble respects to the committee. 
 
 " I have the honour to be, sir, <fec., 
 
 "J. P. CURRAN." 
 
EELIGIOUS FREEDOM. 4:07 
 
 TO HIS ROYAL HIGHNESS THE DUKE OF SUSSEX. 
 
 " I cannot, sir, express the pleasure with which 1 learn that the 
 sanction of your illustrious rank and your great name are given 
 to that noble principle of religious freedom, and that upon a ground 
 perfectly distinct from all view whatsoever of political party. The 
 relation in which you stand with respect to your country, and your 
 august house, must remove all pretext for soiling our pure and 
 modest religion, by blending it with the sordid spirit of party ; or 
 of advancing the projects of the latter, by an affected association 
 with the former, in which heaven cannot be either interested or 
 honoured, and in which the true principle of political wisdom and 
 social virtue cannot foil to be degraded and depraved. Never, 
 jDerhaps, have the fatal consequences of this monstrous union been 
 more sadly proved and developed than in the Late few years that 
 we have passed ; and more especially in this ill-fated country. In 
 England your dissenters were pressed sorely enough by disabling 
 and excluding statutes ; but still the sharpness of those legal mono- 
 polies went rather against their interest than their honour. Still 
 they were equal as Englishmen ; and though shut out, perhaps very 
 unwisely and very unjustly, from a part, and certainly no incon- 
 siderable part, of the constitutional precincts of their country, they 
 still had the uncontrollable range of the residue as freely and 
 proudly as any other portion of the land ; they had to complain 
 of suffering rather than stigma or shame. With respect to other 
 religious descriptions of sects, very unworthy indeed to be classed 
 with dissenters — the strange combinations of persons connected 
 together by the fantastical adoption of wild and extravagant opin- 
 ions, much easier to be named than to be understood, England 
 seems to have acted with the policy that might be expected from a 
 discreet and thinking nation. You have most judiciously cut off 
 the supplies, that martyrdom would have given them in their meek 
 and ardent campaign against the sobriety and decorum of true 
 religion. Your established clergy have stinted them in that food 
 
408 LIFE OF CUKKAN. 
 
 whicli refutation gives to folly. They have had too much good 
 sense, and too much sound consideration for their sacred functions, 
 to enter the lists of argument \Yith these learned cobblers, and right 
 reverend blacksmiths. However they may have been mortified by 
 the scandal of their orgies, they have had forbearance enough to 
 leave their diseases to cure themselves, and to consign them to the 
 wholesome and cooling regime of silent commiseration and inflexi- 
 ble neglect. The Law has followed the example of the Church, and 
 refused the honours of the pillory or the stake to the adventm'ous 
 aspirants ; and to this concurrence in good temper and good sense 
 may it be attributed, in a great degree at least, that these contra- 
 band dealers and inventors of unheard-of forms of doctrine, and 
 patterns of tenets, have not been still more successful in supersed- 
 ing the good order and sobriety of the national faith and practice. 
 I should have hoped that this concurrence was founded on the adop- 
 tion of a maxim, that forms the basis of that principle so fortunately 
 adopted by your Royal Highness, the inviolability of religious 
 freedom. But deeply con(;erned am I to see, that however acted 
 upon in England, it has not been pursued in Ireland with the same 
 dignity and temper. In saying this I do not mean to impute abso- 
 lutely bad intentions to any party, or to say that neither has been 
 betrayed into any step that may call for censure or regret ; but I do 
 think that in our late, or rather our present, unhappy conflicts here, 
 a manifest distinction might be made. The Catholic was petition- 
 ing for a repeal of certainly very afflicting grievances, and it would 
 be only fair to make some allowance for the tone and phrase in 
 which he might utter what came simply to this : — ' I am in bondage 
 without havino- committed any crime. Mv deo-radation and suffer- 
 ing are justified by the most cruel imputation on my character and 
 honour, and I humbly pray to be set at liberty.' If a man were 
 to utter such an appeal with insolence or outrage, I do not say he 
 ought to be kindly heard ; but if he felt the right to freedom so 
 coldly as to prefer his claim with an apathy that must freeze it, I 
 should not hesitate to say, he ought not to be relieved ; he has not 
 
LETTER TO THE DUKE OF SUSSEX. 409 
 
 3'et arrived at tliat impatience of slavery, without which he cannot 
 be yet ripe for freedom. I cannot, therefore, avoid saying that the 
 mere ardour of the Cathohcs, in the pursuit of an object far more 
 valuable than life, without wdiich life could be of no value, was not 
 a just ground for suspecting that their meeting to petition was a 
 mere pretext to cover any other or any criminal design. The rank 
 and property of the persons, which made them so firmly responsi- 
 ble to the State, should, I think, have repelled such a suspicion, 
 and particularly when sanctioned by so numerous a co-operation of 
 their Protestant fellovf -subjects. I do not say that the government 
 might not have intended well, or that a most unhappy mistake w\as 
 any other than an error of judgment; but I do think that when the 
 subsequent conduct of the people had proved their innocence 
 beyond all doubt, a milder and more conciliating conduct might 
 have been adopted with equal dignity and wisdom. " But I fear a 
 province is a bad school for a statesman to learn that the essence 
 of dignity consists much more in rest than in action. It has not 
 been so, and the consequence has been a state of trouble and fer- 
 mentation, such as I never before witnessed in Ireland. Crimina- 
 tion and recrimination have gone on to an extent on all sides, most 
 deeply to be deplored by every man wdio wishes well to Ireland or 
 the empire. The discussions of those unhappy questions have been 
 carried on in the shape of criminal prosecutions; of proceedings 
 that never should be resorted to, except in cases of real guilt, and 
 never as political measures of aspersion or counteraction. The 
 result has been — No culpable intention whatsoever has been 
 proved ; no project has been defeated ; the purity of the admin- 
 istration of justice itself has been exposed by the unhappy indis- 
 cretion of giving ground for actions, and the readiness of bringing 
 forward prosecutions, in which every judgment and verdict for them 
 has been a public calamity, by sinking them in the public opinion, 
 and leading the people to entertain an idea, which I trust can never 
 be true, that even the judicial authority may be degraded to an 
 instrumentality to the State. A man of any party but that of 
 
 IS 
 
410 LIFE OF CUKKAN. 
 
 public tranquillity and safety would probably speak a language very 
 different from what I am holding to your Royal Highness. But my 
 mind is profoundly impressed with tlie actual suffering and awful 
 possible danger of such a state of things, which is not at all diminish- 
 ed by the real innocence of intention, which I am ready to concede 
 to all parties. It is not the guilt of the parties, it is the fact of the 
 conflict in which the peril consists. It was from this view of things, 
 though not then so sadly matured as they are at present, that I was 
 most anxious, a year ago, that the arrangement then proposed might 
 take effect : every aspect of things seemed to indicate such an event 
 as most practicable, and most salutary. The resolution of the House 
 of Commons seemed to point it out as a measure of inevitable 
 necessity : the exalted magnanimity of an illustrious personage, 
 relinquishing every personal consideration, gave it complete facility, 
 and that in a way the most endearing to the Irish people, by show- 
 ing that his mind was perfectly untainted by bigotry.'^ Strange in- 
 deed would it be, if an individual of the first taste in England could 
 be so tainted ; for what is taste but the moral instinct of a highly 
 cultivated understanding ? The great talents and character of the 
 noble persons concerned was a pledge to the empire of what might 
 be expected from the measure. It held out a hope of friendly 
 adjustment with America, instead of forcing her unnaturally into the 
 ranks of our enemies, and driving her to waste her young blood in 
 battle, instead of preserving it for growth ; instead of recollecting 
 that she might be destined to be the cradle of a Hercules, who, 
 even in his infancy, was doomed to crush the snakes of despotism, 
 and whose full-grown labours might be reserved, by the extirpation 
 of monsters, to form a new system for freedom in the west, even 
 after it had been- banished, like the Americans themselves, from the 
 east. It gave us at least an additional hope of an interval to 
 breathe, by a peace with France ; an event made probable by the 
 known opinions of those noble persons upon the subject; and made 
 
 * The Prince Regent, afterwards George IV.— M. 
 
LETTEE TO THE DUKE OF SUSSEX. 411 
 
 still more probable by the incalculable addition to the actual force 
 of the empire, in the perfect conciliation of Ireland, which they, 
 and, I much fear, they alone, could be likely to effect ; but in these 
 prospects we were destined to be disappointed. Upon the cause 
 of this failure there was a variety of opinions, but there was a per- 
 fect concurrence in the feeling, that it w^as a great misfortune to 
 this nation : it doomed us to a continuance of disquiet, and an in- 
 crease of burdens and of dangers ; yet we did not hastily give up 
 the hope that the difficulties might be yet got over. ISTor can I 
 now conceive how it is possible for those noble persons to allow the 
 weight of a feather to those difficulties, when they see that every 
 event that has happened from that hour to this is flung into the 
 opposite scale, and is a call upon them to come forward and do 
 their duty to their country. 
 
 " As an Irishman I own my heart sunk wdien all hope was at an 
 end of seeing our favourite countryman* return to his native land 
 bearing the olive branch ; the only man who seemed peculiarly 
 designated for the great work of conciliation ; but even from the 
 lip the cup has been dashed — the grating upon the mountain of 
 Ararat was a delusive omen of the subsiding of the waters ; and 
 our miserable ark is still tossed, not upon a sinking but a rising 
 and more angry flood. My own concern, at that time, did not 
 spring from any personal bad opinion of the ministers ; I gave 
 them then and I give them now, full credit for perfect good inten- 
 tion. Indeed, I can scarcely conceive the possibility of a public 
 man's having the heart not to intend most conscientiously for the 
 best ; but I could not avoid seeing that the vote of the house was 
 a sort of presentment against them by the grand inquest of the 
 nation; and that the readiness of their master to dismiss them 
 was a full confirmation of the public opinion, that it was a blight 
 under which, if they did not die, they must dwindle ; and that 
 their acts and their language could not but correspond with a dimi- 
 
 * The Earl of Moira.— M. 
 
412 LIFE OF CUKE AX. 
 
 nislied stature. They have verified their sad foreboding, peculiarly 
 Avith resj^ect to America and to Ireland ; their tone and style has 
 been undignified, peevish, and exasperating, sophisticated and 
 insulting. What else have been their Orders in Council ? ' The 
 French are abusing your rights on the sea, we v,dll retaliate by 
 abusing them also : — the highwaymen rob you of half your pro- 
 perty, we will retaliate upon the highwaymen by robbing you of 
 the other half.' But this is a subject perhaps beyond my depth, 
 and upon which my reasonings m:iy be partial. There are many 
 sad analogies that give us a deep and tender interest in the fate of 
 that country. We cannot forget the fresh and daily increasing 
 ties that bind us to them as brothers, or children, or kindred. An 
 American war can never be popular in Ireland ; and the same 
 causes that make it impossible for us to be their enemies, make it 
 improper to be their judges. My mind, therefore, returns to home 
 the natural scene of every man's immediate solicitude. Upon this 
 subject, to almost any other person than your Royal Highness, I 
 should have much to say. To you, sir, I know how absurd it 
 would be to affect to give information. The feeling and the 
 splendid part which you have be.en pleased to take in our interests 
 and our sufferings prov^e to us, not only how perfect a knowledge 
 of them you possess, but also how much a patient and impartial 
 judgment can contract questions Avhich blindness and passion had 
 dilated and perplexed, and to what a salutary degree you have 
 been successful in simplifying the real objects to which the atten- 
 tion of the tAvo countries ought to be confined. Any longer tres- 
 pass upon your Royal Highness' patience can go no further, there- 
 fore, than very passingly to advert to the progress which I hope has 
 been made in the happy work of conciliation. 
 
 "I think the good sense of England must now see, that the 
 habits of reasoning and acting in Ireland are not to be judged by 
 the interested and distorted misrepresentations that have been 
 made of this country during centuries past. I understand with 
 pleasure that those historical topics of abuse, which caught the 
 
LETTEK TO THE DUKE OF SUSSEX. 413 
 
 public attention for some time, are now spurned or lauglied at, as 
 the venomous and silly effusions of reading without learning, or 
 learning without knowledge ; the real heads of inquiry are now 
 plain. I know some weight was once given to the distinction, 
 that mere exclusion was not 2>rivation. I believe there is now no 
 rational man who does not see, that when it is justified upon the 
 most degrading imputations, it is the bitterest of all privations, 
 because in the same moment it takes away the privilege of the 
 subject and the character of the man. 
 
 " It has been said, ' It is dangerous to give power to the Catho- 
 lics as long as this objection was undefined.' This acted upon the 
 nerves of, I am sure, many good men ; but it could not but cease 
 to do so, when they reflected that nothing like power was sought 
 or intended to be given. Mere admissibility is nothing like 
 power ; mere admissibility can no more make a Catholic a ganger 
 than it can make him a king. I am admissible to be Lord Chan- 
 cellor of England ; but would not any man in his senses imagine I 
 had escaped from Bedlam if I called such admissibility by the 
 name of power? It was said, that Emancipation would lead to 
 attempts upon our establishments. It is not surely difficult to see 
 that establishments can be altered or destroyed only by law or by 
 force. 
 
 " As to law, the danger comes exactly to this ; whether a few 
 Catholic members could succeed in making proselytes of King, 
 Lords and Commons, so as to subvert the Protestant Church ? I 
 confess, sir, that it is not my opinion of our Catholic gentry ; if 
 they became senators I suspect their ambition would have very 
 little to do with religion, and that they would be seen going forth 
 with the ministers of the day, as well as their Protestant brethren, 
 in the mildest spirit of patriotic toleration. 
 
 " As to brutal force, I can't see that admissibility to sit in the 
 House of Commons could be an inducement with any man to burn 
 it. I cannot comprehend how giving men those interests in the 
 state, without which no state can have any real value in their eyes, 
 
4:14: LIFE OF CURRAN. 
 
 can increase their wish any more than their power to destroy it. 
 I have heard of common sailors making- off with a ship and cargo, 
 but never of the proprietor joining- in such an act. I never heard 
 even of an Irish gentleman robbing himself and running away. 
 If they are then asked — what do we solicit, and what can they 
 give us ? I cannot doubt that a generous nation will feel no little 
 pain in being obliged to answer — ' We cannot give you power, nor 
 place, nor wealth ; we cannot undo the sad consequences of con- 
 tinued oppression ; we cannot restore you in a moment to national 
 health ; the most we can do is to remove the actual malady in 
 which you have been so long consumed ; and to put you into a 
 state of possible convalescence, in which the progress, at the best, 
 must be hectical and tardy.' 
 
 "I know the hopes of some men are damped by the petitions 
 against us. My hope is, that they are favourable to us ; when the 
 motives and the means of procuring them are considered (and 
 they cannot be unknown) they cannot fail of kindling a condign 
 detestation of those who can resort, for any human object, to such 
 obdurate and remorseless guilt, as that of exciting man against 
 man; of loosening those bonds that should bind the subject to the 
 state, and poisoning the sources of that Christian benevolence that 
 ought to be the consolation of nations under those sufferings with 
 which it has pleased Providence to permit almost the whole 
 civilized world to be afflicted ; nor can I deem it possible that so 
 just a detestation of the oppression should not lead to a propor- 
 tional sympathy for the sufferers. As to the petitions from our- 
 selves, we know they are the natural consequences of our condition ; 
 they are much stronger proofs of deplorable prostration than of 
 real malice ; and happy is it for the quiet of Ireland, that they are 
 so considered. When Verres was accused for his frightful mal- 
 administration in Sicily, a counter-petition was obtained ; and if I 
 forget not, at the head of the deputation who came to implore 
 that no mercy should be extended to him, was advancing to the 
 senate, an illustrious Sicilian, who had himself been the most dis- 
 
LETTER TO THE DUKE OF SUSSEX. 415 
 
 tinguislied victim of what authority may perpetrate in a province. 
 I cannot imagine that the dispLay of such a spectacle could do 
 injury to the cause of the unfortunate supplicants; nor can I 
 think, that if the Irish Catholic were now put upon his trial before 
 an impartial tribunal of the English nation, his accusation weighed 
 against his defence, his friends against his enemies, his conduct 
 against his treatment ; I cannot doubt that in such a situation, his 
 character and claims would be so felt, that he might boldly say, 
 ' I would to God that not only you, but all those who hear me this 
 day, were both, almost and altogether such as I am, except these 
 bonds.' I cannot, sir, in regard to the duty of perfect candor 
 which I owe to your Royal Highness, avoid saying that the wild 
 spirit of aggression which of late time has raved among us, has 
 miserably reduced the respect in which every good government 
 cannot fail to be held. These contests for dignity, without doubt, 
 have been most disastrous. Alas, Sir, I much fear that dignity is 
 a robe which he, that will box for it, must lay aside during the 
 conflict, and there is great risk that when he has been soundly 
 threshed, he may find, like Strap, that it has been taken away dur- 
 ing the battle by tlie honest gentleman who undertook to keep it. 
 " But, sir, the baleful effects of this violence cannot stop here. 
 It is too visible that manners, and morals too, must become feroci- 
 ated ; so that there can be no doubt, that if good sense and feeling 
 shall not make the edge of authority more blunt, necessity must 
 soon make it sharper even than it is. If the rider will not sit 
 quietly on his saddle, but will hold his seat by grappling the sides 
 of the animal with his spurs, he cannot avoid changing to a bridle 
 of no ordinary force. No other way can remain for restraining 
 the madness he provokes. This, sir, in my conscience I am con- 
 vinced is the state of this country : things cannot stay as they are ; 
 temporizing palliatives will not avail ; it will answer no end to 
 draw upon our great grandsons in favour of the great grandsons 
 of the Catholics, for liberty to be granted in the course of the next 
 century. 
 
416 LIFE OF CUERAN. 
 
 " Mean time, for I more than feel how much I have passed the 
 limits, I cannot but hope the best effects from the principle of 
 religious freedom, which you are pleased to protect, and of which 
 you will be so powerful a patron, and so bright an example. 
 
 " Be pleased, sir, to accept my hmnble thanks for your condes- 
 cending wish, that I should have the honour of being present at 
 the meeting of the friends of such a principle ; as I find it is not 
 to be immediate, I do not altogether give up the hope of beiijjg 
 present, but, present or absent, it will have my most devout prayers 
 for its success. I have the honour, sir, to be, with the most pro- 
 found sense of attachment and respect, 
 
 " Your Royal Highness' dutiful servant, 
 
 "J. P. C." 
 
DECLINE OF CUKEAn's IIEALTII. 417 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 Mr. Curran's health declines — Letters to Mr. Hetherington— resignation of his judicial 
 office — Letters from London to Mr. Lube— Letters from Paris to the same — His last ill- 
 ness and death. 
 
 In the beginning of 1813, the declining condition of Mr. Curran's 
 health obliged him to meditate the resignation of his judicial office. 
 While he was in London in the month of April of that year, he 
 suffered a severe attack of inflammation in his chest. His illness, 
 though by no means dangerous, was a subject of considerable 
 alarm to his mind, in consequence of an old but unfounded opin- 
 ion tliat his lungs were naturally weak ; a mistake into which he 
 had been led from confounding the temporary hoarseness and 
 exhaustion which usually followed every great exertion in public 
 speaking with a constitutional debility of that organ. There is 
 somethino- characteristic in his manner of announcino* his illness 
 upon this occasion to his friend in Dublin. 
 
 to r. hetherington, esq. 
 
 "Dear Dick, 
 
 " Really I think rather an escape — I have been confined to 
 to my bed these ten days ; a violent attack on my breast — lungs 
 not touched — better now, but very low and weak. I can't say 
 with certainty when I can set out. Will you let Mr. Lockwood 
 (or if he is not there the Chancellor) know my situation ; a wanton 
 premature effort might kill me. 
 
 "J.P. C." 
 18* 
 
418 LIFE OF CUKE AN. 
 
 to the same. 
 "Dear Dick, 
 
 " I had hoped a quicker recovery, but the fit was most severe. 
 I thought to have put myself into a chaise to-morrow, but the 
 physician says it might be death, unless deferred some days 
 longer. The malady was upon the breast ; I think I caught it by 
 walking from Kensington — the morning was snowy and the wind 
 east. I had not even gone to a play but once — I am most uneasy 
 at this absence from court, however involuntary. I have written 
 to Lord Manners., I have no news ; nothing could be kinder, or 
 more general than the liattering reception I have met. Still I. am 
 not acting like a dying man. Surely I could not prepare to dance 
 out of the world to a grand forte-piano; yet they talk of such a 
 thing. The town is also full of rumours of a silver tea-pot, &c. 
 &c.* What can all this mean ? Doesn't it show a regard for 
 our executors ? Mj best regards to all about you, and with you. 
 
 "J. P. C.'^ 
 
 Mr. Curran was in a little time so far recovered as to be able to 
 resume his judicial functions. In the long vacation he returned as 
 usual to England, from which he writes as follows. 
 
 TO RICHARD HETHERIXGTON, ESQ. DUBLIN. 
 
 " Cheltenham, Sej^teniber 3, 1813. 
 
 "Dear Dick, 
 
 " You ought to have heard from me before ; I have been a 
 truant ; however, in fact I had little to say : I am here now ten 
 days. I took the waters ; as usual, they bore down whatever 
 spirits I had to lose. Yesterday I went to the doctor ; he told me 
 
 * When Mr. Curran was confined to his bed and suffering considerable pain, he could 
 not abstain from the same playfulness. His medical attendant having observed one 
 morning, that he found he coughed with more diflSculty than on the preceding evening— 
 *' That's very surprising," replied the patient, " for I have been practising all night."— C. 
 
LIONISING. 419 
 
 I had taken them wrong and was wrong in taking them ; that I 
 had no symptom of any disease whatever ; he mentioned also, in 
 confidence, that notice had been taken of my intimacy with Mrs. 
 Forty ; that there were some ladies not far from the well, strangers 
 altogether to my poor dear, in whom religion had turned from 
 milk, and soured into vinegar ; who had little hope of being talked 
 ill of themselves, and who made it a moral duty to slide them- 
 selves in upon the market jury of every character, and give a 
 verdict against them upon their own knowledge ; particularly if 
 there were any circumstance that made it an act of common 
 mercy, in those canters of slanderous litanies, to be silent or 
 merciful. ' My dear sir,' said he, ' let not women complain of their 
 injuries from men, when they are such odious beasts in devour- 
 ing one another.' In truth, my dear Dick, it is frightful to see 
 how little they can spare their friends, when they can make them 
 the pretexts for venting their infernal malice. I confess it has 
 added to my sickness of heart against that country,* of which I 
 have really deserved so much. 
 
 " You can scarcely believe what a difference I find here — court- 
 ed and cherished by strangers; I assure you the question of 
 celebrity between the royal tiger and me is not quite decided. 
 The change of scene is amusing, so is the diversity of characters ; 
 there is a moral benefit in the change of scene ; you look back to 
 the niche you filled and you see it not : how minute then must be 
 the little thing that filled it ? Here too every body is as intimate 
 with me as I permit. I really begin to think that the best tenure 
 of earthly attachment is tenancy at will. You have the use of 
 the soil, and the way-going crop ; then nothing you plant shoots 
 so deeply but you may remove it without injury to the soil or to 
 itself. If affections strike their roots far into the heart, they can- 
 not be pulled up without laceration and blood. I am not without 
 an idea of cutting you altogether: I could easily get into Parlia- 
 
 * Ireland. The censorious ladies in question were his countrywomen.— C. 
 
420 LIFE OF CUERAN. 
 
 ment and on my own terms, but the object would not justify a 
 purchase ; and I need not tell you, I would not submit to restric- 
 tions. 
 
 " You will be surprised when I tell you that I have the highest 
 authority for knowing that the silly malice of the Castle has not 
 had the smallest impression on a certain high quarter. As I have 
 jilted Mrs. Forty, ray head is getting better, and I shall try and 
 write. I may as well stay here sometime as any where else : I am 
 afraid of London ; however, I can't but pay a visit to the Duke of 
 Sussex. Will you enclose " Wagrani " to Mr. Reeves, and add 
 my respects, and request that he will have the goodness to forward 
 it to me to Cheltenham. The post is just going out — write to me 
 by return ; best regards to the hill. I begin to think that ' com- 
 pliments to all inquiring friends ' generally dwindles into a sine- 
 cure. What of the poor Priory \ we have passed some happy and 
 innocent days there. God bless you, dear Dick, prays very sin- 
 cerely yours 
 
 "J. P. C. 
 
 " P. S. These senators are in bed, or this should pass more free 
 than I have ever been able to do." 
 
 to the same. 
 "Dear Dick, 
 
 " My last was in spleen and haste ; this is a postscript. I can 
 scarcely add what I should have said, because I forget what I 
 did say ; no doubt I was too vain not to brag of the civility I 
 have met, and consequently of the good taste of every body. Did 
 I say any thing of the Italian countess, or the French count her 
 uncle, whose legs and thighs are turned into grasshopper springs 
 by a canister-shot at the battle of Novi ? She talks of going- 
 westward ; as Irish scandal does not talk Italian, and as she can't 
 speak English, she may be safe enough, particularly with the 
 assistance of a Venetian blind ! Dear Dick, God help us ! I find 
 I am fast recovering from the waters \ I think I'll drink no more 
 
421 
 
 of tliem ; my nerves are much more composed, and my spirits, 
 though far from good, are more quiet. Wliy may not the wretch 
 of to-morrow be happy to-day? I am not much inclined to 
 abstract optimism, but I often think Pope was right when he said 
 that ' whatever is, is right,' though he was perhaps too shallow a 
 moralist to know, not why he thought so, but why he said so ; 
 p'robably 'twas like your own poetry, he made the ends of the 
 lines jingle for the sake of the rhyme. 
 
 " Apropos of jingle. I forgot, I believe, to beg of you to send 
 me two copies of ' O Sleep !' I wTote it for Braham. I su23pose 
 the air not correctly. * 
 
 " Did I beg of you to see and to direct James as to the erections 
 at the barn ? don't forget it ; because, perhaps, I may see the 
 Priory once again. I dreamt last night of your four-horse stable, 
 and I was glad to find all well. 
 
 " You can scarcely believe what a good humoured compromise 
 I am coming into with human malice, and folly, and unfixedness. 
 By reducing my estimate of myself, every collateral circums-tance 
 sets out modestly on the journey of humility and good sense, 
 
 * TO SLEEP. 
 
 Sleep, awhile thy power suspending, 
 Weigh not yet my eye-lid down, 
 
 For Mem'ry, see ! with Eve attending. 
 Claims a moment for her own. 
 
 1 know her by her robe of mourning, 
 I loiow her by her faded light, 
 
 When faithful with the gloom returning, 
 She comes to bid a sad good-niglit. 
 
 Oh ! let me here, with bosom swelling, 
 
 While she sighs o'er time that's past 
 Oh ! let me weep, while she is telling 
 
 Of joys that pine and pangs that last. 
 And now, sleep, while grief is streaming, 
 
 Let thy balm sweet peace restore. 
 While fearful hope through tears is beaming, 
 
 Soothe to rest that wakes no more. 
 
422 LIFE OF CUREAN. 
 
 from the sign of tlie Colossus to that of the Pigmy, where the 
 apartments are large and ample for the lodger and his train. 
 
 " Just as before, the post is on my heels ; Richard has only time 
 to put this in the office. I shall probably soon write more at my 
 leisure. Compliments at the hill : ditto repeated shaking the 
 hottle. 
 
 "J. P. C." 
 
 " The Scotch indorser of this gave me my dinner yesterday : 
 champagne and soda. He votes with the Ministers. I gave a 
 lecture, and got glory for rebuking a silly fellow that tried to sing 
 an improper song in the presence of his son. 'Thunders of 
 ajDplause.' " 
 
 TO THE SAME. 
 
 " Cheltenham. 
 
 "Dear Dick, 
 
 " I have not been well here — these old blue devils, I fear, have 
 got a lease of me. I wonder the more at it, because I have been 
 in a constant round of very kind and pleasant society. To- 
 morrow Sir Frederick Faulkner and I set out for London. I don't 
 turn my face to the metroplis co7i amore^ but the Duke of Sussex 
 might not take it well if I did not call upon him — so I go, being 
 at once an humble friend and a patriot. Low as I have been my- 
 self in spirits, I could not but be attracted with the style of society 
 and conversation here, particularly the talents and acquirements 
 of females — I am sorry to say, few of them our countrywomen. 
 The vulgarity too and forwardness of some of our heroes quite 
 terrible. On the whole, however, perhaps, I'm the better for the 
 jaunt." 
 
 Early in the following year, in consequence of the still declining 
 condition of his health and spirits, Mr. Curran resigned his judi- 
 cial situation. Upon which the following address was presented 
 to him by the Catholic Board : — 
 
RETIRES FROM PUBLIC LIFE. 423 
 
 " to the right honourable john philpot curran, 
 
 " Sir, 
 
 " The general board of tlie Catliolics of Ireland feel it their 
 duty to address you on your resignation of the high office to which 
 your talents were called, and the duties of which you have dis- 
 discharged with the courtesy of a gentleman ; the abilities of a 
 lawyer ; the dignity of a judge ; and the characteristic integrity 
 which has ever distinguished you. Taking a review of a life de- 
 voted to the service of your country, and the cause and the interest 
 of public and private liberty, we shall ever hold in proud and grate- 
 ful remembrance the energy which you displayed in resisting oppres- 
 sion, and defending the rights of the subject and the constitution ; 
 the independent spirit with which you met the frowns and seduc- 
 tions of power ; the intrepidity with which you vindicated your 
 insulted and maligned country, and the sacrifices which you made 
 at the shrine of public virtue. The freedom and the privileges of 
 your profession, so closely connected with those of the public, you 
 upheld both at the bar and on the bench. The first flight of your 
 juvenile genius was a noble and generous defence of an obscure 
 but, respectable individual against a lawless assault of tyrannical 
 power. You have uniformly opposed that bigoted, that baneful 
 policy, which impiously tries the principles of man by his religi- 
 ous creed. You have maintained the great and sound principle 
 of religious Hberty. A just, a liberal, and an enlightened mind 
 abhors the pernicious system of excluding from equal rights those 
 who contribute equally to the support of the state with their pro- 
 perty and their lives ; a system which sacrifies the liberty of the 
 country to protect the monopoly of a party, and which, by perpet- 
 uating division and discord, saps the foundation of all social inter- 
 course. You, Sir, and the other illustrious advocates of Irish 
 prosperity, are well aware that the total extinction of such a 
 system is absolutely essential to the consolidation and permanence 
 of the general strengt^h of the empire. Permit us, therefore, sir, 
 to indulge our earnest hope, that your splendid talents, emerging 
 from the eclipse of judicial station, and reviving under that name 
 
42i LIFE OF CUKEAN. 
 
 which has attached the hearts of your countrymen, will again be 
 exerted in the service of Ireland." 
 
 " Gentlemen, 
 
 " Be pleased to accept my warmest acknowledgment for this 
 flattering mark of your approbation and regard. So far as hones- 
 ty of intention can hold the place of desert, I can indulge even a 
 proud feeling at this proof of your good opinion, because I have 
 no secret consciousness that can blush while I receive it. I have 
 early thought that the mere fact of birth imposes, by the autho- 
 rity of God, a loyalty to country, binding the conscience of man 
 beyond the force of any technical allegiance, and still more devoted 
 and excusable. To our unhappy country I know that this senti- 
 ment was little better than barren ; however, what I had I gave. 
 I might have often sold her — I could not redeem her. I gave her 
 the best sympathies of my heart, sometimes in tears, sometimes in 
 indignation, sometimes in hope, but oftener in despondence. I am 
 repaid far beyond my claim ; for what reward can be more pre- 
 cious than the confidence and affection of those for whom we could 
 not think any sacrifice too great ? I am still farther repaid by*see- 
 ing that we have arrived at a season that gives us so fair a pro- 
 spect of better days than we have passed. When I view these 
 awful scenes that are daily marking the interposition of Providence 
 in punishment- or retribution, that teach rulers to reflect, and 
 nations to hope, I cannot yield to the infidelity of despair, nor 
 bring myself to suppose that we are destined to be an exception to 
 the uniformity of divine justice, and that in Ireland alone the ways 
 of God shall not, in his good time, be vindicated to man, but that 
 we are to spend our valour and our blood in assisting to break the 
 chains of every other nation, and in riveting our own ; and that 
 when the most gallant of our countrymen return to us, laden 
 with glory and with shame, we are to behold them dragging about 
 an odious fetter, with the cypress and the laurel intertwined. On 
 the contrary, I feel myself cheered and consoled by those indica- 
 
EEPLY TO THE CATHOLIC BOARD. 425 
 
 tions, wliich inspire the strong hope that the end of our affliction 
 is rapidly advancing, and that we shall soon be placed in a con- 
 dition where we shall cease to be a reproach to the justice 
 and wisdom of Great Britan. The calumnies of our enemies have 
 been refuted, and have left no impression behind them, save a 
 generous regret that they could ever have been believed. It is 
 with no ordinary feeling of condonation and respect that we should 
 hail the awaking of a nation, formed to be illustrious, from the 
 trance of a bigotry that cannot be refuted, because it does not 
 reason; that, like every other intoxication, stupefies while it in- 
 flames, and evaporates only by sleep. It becomes us to congratu- 
 late on the recovery without retrospect to the time it may have 
 cost. Within the short limits even of a year, the spirit of a just 
 and liberal policy has assumed a station that scarcely could be 
 hoped from the growth of centuries. That wise country has 
 learned to see us as we are ; to compare our sufferings with our 
 merits and our claims ; and to feel that every kind and tender 
 sympathy that speaks to the heart or head of a man in favour of 
 his fellow-subjects is calling upon her to put an end to the 
 paroxysms of that gaol fever which must for ever ferment and 
 fester in the imprisonment of a nation, and to do it in a way that 
 shall attach while it redresses, and bind a blended empire in the 
 bond of equal interest and reciprocal afiection. We are asking 
 for no restorative ; the legislature has none to give ; we ask only 
 for what is perfectly in its power to bestow; that deobstruent 
 which may enable the human creature, even by a slow convales- 
 cence, to exert the powers of his nature, and give effect, by the 
 progress of his happiness and virtue, to the beneficence of that 
 Being which could not have permanently, designed him for the 
 sufferings or the vices of a slave. In your anxiety for the honour 
 of the bar, I cannot but see an auspicious omen of your near ap- 
 proach to the possession of such a treasure that deserves so high 
 a protection. Short is the time that has passed since you could 
 not have adverted to that subject without a mixture of shame and 
 
426 LIFE OF CrRRAN. 
 
 anguish ; but you can now resort to jDersons of your own religious 
 persuasions for those great talents for whose purity you are so 
 justly anxious. You are certainly right in thinking the independ- 
 ence of the bar the only unfailing safeguard of justice, and of that 
 liberty without which justice is but a name. It is the equal pro- 
 tection of the people against the state, and of the state against 
 the people. If Erskine had lived in the dark times of the second 
 James, it might have saved his country from the pain of reading 
 the events of those days, when the Court could procure a bench, 
 but the subject could not find a bar. It is with an emotion diffi- 
 cult to describe that I see how easily our hearts are betrayed into 
 an exaggerated estimation of those we are supposed to love. You 
 are pleased to bespeak the continuance of my poor efforts in the 
 cause of Ireland. I cannot without regret reflect how feeble they 
 ■would be ; but I am fully consoled in the idea, that they would be 
 as unnecessary as inefficient. It is still no more than justice to 
 myself to say, that if an opportunity should occur, and God be 
 pleased to let it be accompanied by health, my most ardent affec- 
 tions would soon find the channel in which they had flowed so 
 long. A devoted attachment to our country can never expire but 
 with my last breath. It is a sentiment that has been the compan- 
 ion of my life : and though it may have sometimes led to what 
 you kindly call sacrifices, it has also given me the most invaluable 
 consolation. And even when the scene shall come to a close, I 
 trust that sentiment shall be the last to leave me, and that I shall 
 derive some consolation in the reflection, that I have been a zeal- 
 ous, though an unprofitable, servant. 
 
 [This appears the proper place to introduce some of Charles 
 Phillips' reminiscences of Mr. Curran. lie says : 
 
 " It was during Mr. Curran's occupancy of the Rolls bench that 
 I had the happiness of making his acquaintance. It soon became 
 intimacy, and so continued to his death. A higher privilege 
 could scarcely be enjoyed than his society conferred. Its simpli- 
 
REOOLLECTIONS OF CUKRAN. 427 
 
 city was its greatest charm. He could afford to discard his great- 
 ness, and he did so. There was nothing of the senator, or the 
 orator, or the judicial dignitary, or the superior in any way about 
 him ; but he was Curran, better and greater than all of them com- 
 bined. Ostentation was a stranger to his home ; so was formality 
 of any kind. His table was simple, his wines choice, his welcome 
 warm, and his conversation a luxury indeed. His habits were 
 peculiar — some of them perhaps eccentric. For instance, an old 
 person was scarcely ever seen within his dwelling. I can remem- 
 ber but three, and they were professionally connected with himself 
 or his court. Although, as has been seen, risking his life reck- 
 lessly enough, lie had an aversion to anything that was associated 
 with death. Hence the aspect of old age depressed him, while 
 youth's joyousness semed to revive his own. Of his early bar 
 associates, whose countenances indicated the ravages of time, I 
 never remember one as a guest at the Priory. But it was a daily 
 custom, when his court had risen, to stroll through the hall, 
 recruiting his dinner company from the juniors. There were 
 seldom more than half a dozen, and it was on such occasions he 
 shone to most advantage. IS'o one who did not see him when he 
 was at his best can have any idea of his exquisite companionship. 
 There was undoubtedly a reverse to the medal. He was occasion- 
 ally the dullest of the dull, weighed down to the earth by some 
 constitutional dejection. He was very for from being a happy 
 man. Social misfortune aggravated a melancholy which was 
 inherent in his nature. AVhen irritated or discomposed, he could 
 render himself, as I have heard, though I had no experience of it, 
 inconceivably disagreeable. This, however, was rare, and, when 
 he was in one of his happy veins, no one ever equalled him. Lord 
 Byron wrote of him that he had fifty faces : he might have added 
 fifty voices and fifty natures, in the assumption of which he, for 
 the moment, merged his own identity. His powers of imitation 
 were marvellous and irresistible. He was the parish priest, the 
 Munster peasant, the coal-quay fish-woman, the joval squireen, and 
 
428 LIFE OF CURRAN. 
 
 the illiterate squire, each in tlieir turn, and each a facsimile. He 
 not merely aped the manner, but he either displayed the mind of 
 the individual, or ascribed to him some drollery which much 
 enhanced the humor of the assumption. Thus, when asked by 
 Lord Byron to give him some idea of Mr. Grattan, bowing lowly 
 to the ground, he expressed his gratitude that neither in person 
 nor gesture was he obnoxious to imitation. That great man was 
 composed of peculiarities. In stock stories his treasury was rich, 
 and the perilous attempt to draw on it was generally assigned to 
 me. However, failure was rare. He was too simple to suspect, 
 and too facile to refuse. For instance, when the vulvar pomposity/ 
 of the Mayor of Cork was to be elicited, the wine was tasted, the 
 lips were smacked, and the glass held up scientifically to the 
 candle. Mr. Curran, this strikes me as very fine claret. O 
 dear ! you are very good to say so ; it's the red wax, the best I 
 have. I can't compliment you as my cousin the Mayor of Cork 
 did the Lord Lieutenant when he was entertaining him : ' Mr. 
 Mayor this is very choice wine.' ' Does your Excellency think so ? 
 Why it is good wine, your Excellency, but ifs nothing at all to 
 some Tve got in my cellar I' And then he followed up his own 
 jest with the short, sharp, dry, familiar laugh, which he never 
 refused to that of another. When Curran really enjoyed his 
 evening, and the bottle had circulated sufliciently, it was some- 
 times his custom, when the weather permitted, to adjourn to the 
 gardens. The walk was refreshing, and always preluded grilled 
 bones, and plenty of what in L'eland was then called ' the 
 MATERIALS ' — namely, scalding water, lemon, sugar, and the pot- 
 theen — for a definition of which, see Miss Edgeworth. There were 
 always beds for the guests at the Priory — a precaution by no 
 means inconsiderate. When breakfast came, it was somewhat 
 problematical how the party were to return. If all was propitious, 
 the carriage was in waiting ; if a cloud was seen, however, the 
 question came, ' Gentlemen, how do you propose getting to 
 court ?" Ominous was the silence which ushered in the summons. 
 
IN HIS LATER DAYS. 429 
 
 * Richard, harness the mule to the jaunting car, and take the gen- 
 tlemen to town !' One of this worthy animal's most favorite 
 pastimes Avas to carry the company into a pool of water which lay 
 by the road side ! Of course the host knew nothing of the mule's 
 jocularity, and most certainly it never was suggested to him by 
 any refusal of an invitation to the Priory. 
 
 "Although himself so admirable a mimic, he by no means 
 relished being made a subject. One day being apprised that a 
 gentleman then present personated him to the life, Curran affected 
 to request a performance ; entreaty and evasion were more than 
 once repeated, when he terminated the scene : Well, indeed, my 
 dear W., I'm sadly disappointed. It must be an amusing thing 
 to see a cat running across a piano, and calling it music. 
 
 " Mr. Curran sprang from the people,* and he not only never 
 forgot it, but was proud of it. His associates were not of the 
 aristocracy, if, indeed, such a term was applicable to the very 
 
 * Mr. Curran was particularly sensitive to any mark of respect or confidence on the 
 part of the lower orders. In one of his little poems he commemorates with much satis- 
 faction. 
 
 " A croppy heifer spared by Holt." 
 This Holt was an extraordinary man. He was a farmer and dealer in wool, originally 
 keeping aloof from politics. Of a liberal cast of mind, however, he refused to take any 
 part against his Roman Catholic countrymen. This, in such times, was quite sufficient to 
 render him a marked man, and being so, a domiciliary visit was paid to his house on the 
 breaking out of the rebellion of 1798. He was not at home, and the visitors burned the 
 house and property to ashes ! Rendered desperate by this, he repaired to a cave in the 
 Devil's Glen, in the county of Wicklow. Here he found some United Irishmen, refugees 
 like himself, and, in the frame of mind in which he was, was easily persuaded to take the 
 oath and become their general. In a week he was at the head of one hundred and six- 
 teen men, and many hundreds afterward joined him. He became an admirable guerilla 
 chief, and, during six months, kept the whole power of the government at bay. Well 
 acquainted with the Wicklow mountains, and possessing both skill and intrepidity. Holt 
 proved himself more than a match for the king's officers. At length some noble traits of 
 character which he exhibited induced Lord Powerscourt to open a negotiation with him. 
 Holt consented to expatriate himself to New South Wales, which he did ; but soon receiv- 
 ing a free pardon, he returned to Ireland, where he died in 1826. Holt was a very 
 superior man of his class, and proved himself a formidable antagonist. He wrote and 
 published his life. His men, in one of their forays, carried off, with other cattle, a cow 
 of Curran's, whose house was near the mountains. However, when Holt saw the 
 initials " J. P. C." branded on one of the horns, he guessed to whom the animal belonged 
 and sent it home with a complimentary apology. 
 
430 LITE OF CUKKAX. 
 
 arrogant and very ignorant persons who at that time usurped it 
 in Ireland. He heartily despised them. He never was of the 
 Castle or their set. Before the Union he was generally in opposi- 
 tion, and after that the Viceroy appeared to him only as a titled 
 memorial of the country's degradation. He used to talk, indeed, 
 of his poor cottage, as he called it, having been graced by the 
 choicest spirits of the land — not culled for their birth from a dull 
 peerage, nor for their possessions from an ignorant proprietary, 
 but from men risen from the ranlcs — from the Duquerys, Yelver- 
 tons, and Grattans, wdiose personal merits flung pedigree into the 
 shade. There was in his own manner that easy and urbane 
 courteousness which if not derived from nature, is very difficult 
 of acquisition."] 
 
 Shortly after his resignation he passed over to London, in order 
 to proceed to, and take a last look at, France, now once more 
 accessible from the i'dW of Napoleon. He addressed several let- 
 ters from London and Paris to one of his intimate friends in L'e- 
 land.* Of these the following selection will be found to contain 
 his opinions at large upon the interesting events that had lately 
 and upon the state of society in those rival capitals ; 
 
 TO DENIS LUBE, ESQ., DUBLIN. 
 
 " London, June, 1S14. 
 
 " My Dear Lube, 
 
 " I AM not many days in London ; yet am I as sick of it, as 
 ever I was of myself. No doubt it is not a favourable moment 
 for society ; politics spoil every thing ; it is a perpetual tissue of 
 plots, cabals, low anxiety, and disappointment. Every thing I 
 see disgusts and depresses me ; I look back at the streaming of 
 blood for so many years; and everything everywhere relapsed 
 into its former degradation. France rechained — Spain again sad- 
 
 * Mr. D. Lube, of the Irish bar ; a gentleman of peculiarly estimable character, ia 
 whom Mr. Ourran reposed the most unbounded confidence. — C. 
 
MODERN SOCIETY. 431 
 
 died for the priests — and Ireland, like a bastinadoed elephant, 
 kneeling to receive the paltry rider: and what makes the idea 
 the more cutting, her fate the work of her own ignorance and 
 fury. She has completely lost all sympathy here, and I see no 
 prospect for her, except a vindictive oppression and and an 
 endlessly increasing taxation. God give us not happiness, but 
 patience ! 
 
 " I have fixed to set out for Paris on Tuesday with Mr. W. He 
 is a clever man, pleasant, informed, up to every thing, can dis- 
 count the bad spirits of a friend, and has undertaken all trouble. 
 I don't go for society, it is a mere name ; but the thing is to be 
 found no where, even in this chilly region. I question if it is 
 much better in Paris. Here the parade is gross, and cold, and 
 vulgar ; there it is, no doubt, more flippant, and the attitude more 
 graceful ; but in either place is not society equally a tyrant and a 
 slave ? The judgment despises it, and the heart renounces it. 
 We seek it because we are idle, we are idle because we are silly ; 
 the natural remedy is some social intercourse, of which a few drops 
 would restore ; but we swallow the whole phial, and are sicker 
 of the remedy than we were of the disease. We do not reflect 
 that the variety of converse is found only with a very few, selected 
 by our regard, and is ever lost in a promiscuous rabble, in whom 
 we cannot have any real interest, and where all is monotony. We 
 have had it some times at the Priory, notwithstanding the bias of 
 the ball that still made it roll to a particular side. I have enjoyed 
 it, not long since, for a few hours in a week with as small a number, 
 Avhere too there was no smartness, no wit, no petty aff'ectation, no 
 repartee ; but where the heart will talk, the tongue may be silent — 
 a look will be a sentence, and the shortest phrase a volume. No ; 
 be assured if the fancy is not led astray, it is only in the coterie 
 that the thirst of the animal being can be slaked, or the pure 
 luxury and anodyne of his life be found. He is endeared and ex- 
 alted by being surpassed; he cannot be jealous of the wealth, 
 however greater than his, which is expended for his pleasure, and 
 
432 LIFE OF CURRAN. 
 
 which in fact, he feels to be his own. As well might an alderman 
 become envious of the calabash in which his soul delights before 
 the Lord. But we are for ever mistalviug the plumage for the bird: 
 perhaps we are justly punished by seeking happiness where it is 
 not given by nature to lind it. Eight or ten lines back I looked 
 at my watch ; I saw 'twas half-past six, the hour at which dinner, 
 with a friend or hvo, was to be precisely on the table. I went — 
 was presented to half a dozen dial plates that I never saw before, 
 and that looked as if they had never told the hour of the day. I- 
 sat gagged — stayed twenty minutes — came back to write, leaving 
 Richard to bring me word if, between this and to-morrow, the 
 miserable mess shall be flung into the trough. How complete a 
 picture this of glare without worth, and attitude without action. ' My 
 temper,' to quote myself, ' and my dinner lost.' Can it have been 
 the serious intention of Providence that affectation should obtain 
 these triumphs over sense and comfort ? and yet, really my host 
 is a very good fellow in the main. 
 
 " 'Tis now half-past seven — no Richard. I had just put on my 
 hat to go to the next coffee-house, but I resolved to punish myself 
 for the petty peevishness of being angry, because every one has 
 not as much good sense as I think I have myself I am now wish- 
 ing there may be no dinner till ten, that I may have the glory of 
 self-punishment — 
 
 ' Judico me cremari, 
 in continuation — 
 
 ' Et combustus fui.' * 
 
 " We sat down at eight, sixteen strong, but it had nothing of a 
 
 * Mr. Curran alludes to an anecdote related by Sir William Blackstone, in one of the 
 notes to his Commentaries. In the reign of Henry the Sixth, the Chancellor of Oxford 
 claimed the right of trying an action brought against himself ; upon which occasion his 
 counsel, Sergeant Rolfe, introduced the following curious argument in support of the 
 claim:— t/eo vous dirai un fable. Eii ascmi temps f ait un j^npe et avoit fait un 
 grand offence, et le cardinals vindrent a lay et disoyent a luy '■'■ ppccasti ;" et il dit^ 
 *^Judica me;" et ils disoyent, '■'■non possuimis, quia caput et ecclesice ; judica tcip- 
 su7n :" et Vapostol dit, '■'■judico me cremari," et fait combustus; et apres fuit un 
 sainct. Et in ceo cas ilfuit son juge demene, et issint n^estpas inconvenient que un 
 home aoUjugc deniene. — I3la. Com. Book 3, p. 299, note. 
 
POLITICS. 433 
 
 coterie. I sat next to a pleasantisli sort of a lady ; but alas ! a look 
 of attention is not a look of affiance : there are graciousnesses that 
 neither identify nor attract ; and as to the atmosphere that sported 
 on her dimples, I would just as soon have had a thimbleful of 
 common air. After all, how rare the coincidences that conciliate 
 affection and exclusive confidence ! how precarious ! 
 
 'For either 
 He never shall find out fit mate, but such 
 As some misfortune bring him, or mistake ; 
 Or \vhom he wishes most shall seldom gain. 
 
 Or if she love, withheld 
 By parents, or his happiest choice too late 
 Shall meet already linked and wedlock-bound 
 To a fell adversary, his hate or shame.' 
 
 " Milton, you see, with all his rigour, was not insensible of these 
 lachrymce rerum. There is one thing that ought to make us hum- 
 ble and patient. When we are close enough for the inspection of 
 others, we soon find that ' life is eternal war with woe.' Many, 
 too, are doomed to ' suffer alone ;' and, after all, would not a truly 
 generous nature prefer the monopoly of its own ills rather than 
 fling any part of them upon a kindred bosom ? 
 
 " You ask me about politics. Regarding myself, my answer is — 
 I had no object in parliament except the Catholic question, and 
 that I fear is gone. Westminster will probably be a race of 
 bribery, equally dangerous and precarious.* Burdett's conduct 
 has been quite that of a friend and a man : he would have been 
 most ardent, and what was to me most grateful, on a public 
 ground. I dined with him yesterday; at first the party was 
 numerous — the masquerade, about ten, drained them down to 
 three, my compagnon de voyage and myself; till one it was quite 
 
 * It was expected at this time that there would shortly be a vacancy in the represen- 
 tation for Westminster, in which event Mr. Curran had been encouraged to offer himself as 
 a candidate, but he never entered warmly Into the scheme. This is the political project 
 to which he adverts more than once in his subsequent letters.— C. 
 
 19 
 
434: LIFE OF CURRAN. 
 
 a coterie ; with no wine, there's no playing on an instrument with 
 many strings ; half of them form only base accompaniinents. 
 
 "I thought to have gone incog, to Paris, but my excellent 
 friend, the Duke of Sussex, insisted on my taking a letter to 
 Monsieur. [After Charles X.] 
 
 ' So now cocked hats, and swords, and laces, 
 And servile bows and low grimaces : 
 For what at court the lore of Pascal 
 AYeighed 'gainst the crouchings of a rascal ?' 
 
 " As to my stay there, everywhere is to me nowhere ; there- 
 fore, if it depends on me, I shall drop off when I'm full, or Mr. W. 
 will haul me along. If our friends have any wish, it ought to 
 decide, and shall do so. I cannot endure to be conscious of any 
 retaliating sulk in myself; and I know that heaven loveth the 
 
 cheerful giver. 
 
 " Yours, &c., 
 
 " J. P. C." 
 
 TO THE SAME. 
 
 " London, June, 1814. 
 
 " Dear Lube, 
 
 " Just received your kind fragment. I cannot say I read it 
 without some pain. When fortune deigns to favour, particularly 
 if there is any port and dignity in her condescension, we are apt 
 to feel any declination from the consistency of her kindness. If 
 she has justly entitled herself to stand upon a high pedestal, she 
 cannot sink into any pettishness without affliction to the votary, 
 who may be too apt to fear that there may have been blindness 
 in what she withholds. 
 
 Anne Howe^^ is an injudicious example of a woman of talents, 
 favouring without much claim, inflicting without much cause, and 
 diminishing the value of what she gives, and what would other- 
 
 * This is a fictitious name. Tlie subject of this part of the above letter was entirely 
 of a private nature, and is alluded to with a studied obscurity.— 0, 
 
EKGLISII SOCIETY. 435 
 
 wise rise above all price, by tlie levity of an unequal tenor that 
 takes away from her the splendid of her own unilbrm judgment 
 in her own justiiication ; it lets down the giver, and abashes the 
 taker. Our friends should not have made a point so much be- 
 neath their region ; let them, therefore, review and correct. How- 
 ever, it should be ever the duty of gratitude, not to let even the 
 breaking of a single string take away the merit of the residue of 
 the octave, if that had given out all the luxury of harmony and 
 feeling before that single key had lost its voice — but, perhaps too 
 much of this. 
 
 " Since my arrival here my spirits have been wretchedly low : 
 though treated with great kindness, I find nothing to my mind. I 
 find heads without thinking, and hearts without strings, and a 
 phraseology sailing in ballast — every one piping, bnt few dancing. 
 England is not a place for society ; it is too cold, too vain, with- 
 out pride enough to be humble, drowned in dull fantastical form- 
 ality, vulgarized by rank without talent, and talent foolishly 
 recommending itself by weight rather than by fashion — a perpetual 
 war between the disappointed pretension of talent and the stupid 
 over-weening of affected patronage; means without enjoyment, 
 pursuits without an object, and society without conversation or 
 intercourse : perhaps they manage this better in France — a few 
 days, I think, will enable me to decide. In that object I probably 
 w^ould have succeeded; I should have been strongly supported, 
 but a conflict of corruption ! surely not to be thought of. How 
 would it mortify the discerning pride of our friends to see us 
 decked and degraded in a mantle ! 
 
 " So vilely purchased and so vilely wrought !" 
 
 and to find themselves disguising the pangs of w^ounded sympathy 
 in the force semblance of gratulation. The advice of Longinus, 
 'consider how Homer would have expressed this idea,' applies 
 equally to everything. How would the adviser have advised ? — 
 how feel ? Will the ' promise so true/ ' for ever to partake the joy 
 
4=S6 
 
 LIFE OF CUKRA^s". 
 
 and tlie wo,' be performed in sharing tlae joy of what is right, 
 or in the sad condolence at what is weak or wrong ? If the latter, 
 what would it be but the rising of the whirlwind, and drifting a 
 mountain of sand upon the green spot that could never again ap- 
 pear ? While fate permits that spot to bloom, sacred should it be 
 kept, at least from voluntary weeds. 
 
 " One of our friends asked me how soon I meant to return. In- 
 stead of answering directly, I observed that the question implied 
 no particular wish, or, if any, rather for a retarded than a precipi- 
 tated return. If any wish had been intimated, it would have 
 decided me. I did not impute the indecision to any want of 
 interest, but I intended to have discussed it at large the day after 
 my departure. What is the wish? Perhaps, on such a subject, 
 the wisher might condescend to be also the amanuensis. I shall 
 remain here, I think, just long enough to get a line — enclosed to 
 J. Spencer, Esq. 28 Bury Street. If I am left to my own conjec- 
 tures, my stay in France might be for the winter ; it might lead 
 to an excursion to Italy, in vainly pursuing ' phantoms that pro- 
 mise and afterwards disown.' A proposal towards such a plan has 
 been mentioned to me, and by a pleasant man, who has been there 
 already. 
 
 " Don't mistake me, in supposing that I meant anything peevish 
 in the indecision of wish by our friends ; quite the contrary. I 
 really think it veiy difficult to know what wish to form, while all 
 things are in such a state of vacillation. The post is just ringing. 
 Farewell ! 
 
 J. P C." 
 
 " Paris, August, 3, 1814. 
 
 "Dear L. 
 
 " I received your kind letter, and thank you for it ; ' levius fit,^ 
 &c. When I came here, I intended to have scribbled some little 
 journal of what I met. I am now sorry I did not. Things so soon 
 become familiar, and appear not worth notice : besides, I have not 
 
LETTER FROM PARIS. 437 
 
 been well since I came here. If I had written, and sent it to vou, 
 it would have been a tissue of astonishment, or affliction, or disgust. 
 I see clearly I am likely to be drummed out of this sad world. I 
 fear war will soon unfold her tattered banners on the continent. 
 This poor country is in a deplorable state — a ruined noblesse, a 
 famished clergy, a depopulated nation, a state of smothered war 
 between the upstarts and the restored; their finances most dis- 
 tressed ; the military spirits divided ; the most opposite opinions 
 as to the lasting of the present form of things — every thing un- 
 hinged : yet I really sympathised with this worried, amiable, and 
 perhaps contemptible people ; so full of talent and of vice, so fri- 
 volous, so inconstant and prone to change, so ferocious too in their 
 fickleness ; about six revolutions within twenty years, and as fresh 
 as ever for a new dance. These strange vicissitudes of man draw 
 tears, but they also teach wisdom. These awful reverses make 
 one ashamed of being engrossed by mere self, and examining a 
 louse through a miscroscope, 'complain of grief, complain thou art 
 a man.' 
 
 " I never so completely found my mind a magic-lantern ; such a 
 rapid succession of disjointed images ! the past, the present, the 
 future possible. One ought not to be hasty in taking of bad impres- 
 sions, and I need not say that three weeks can give but little room 
 for exact observation ; but from what I do see, and learn from 
 others who have seen long and deeply, I have conceived the worst 
 of social Paris. Every thing on the surface is abominable ; beast- 
 linesses that even with us do not exist ; they actually seem in talk 
 and in practice to cultivate a familiarity with nastiness. In every 
 public place, they are spitting on your shoes, in your plate, almost 
 in your mouth. Such community of secretions, with, I think, 
 scarcely any exception, is not to be borne. Then the contrast 
 makes it worse — gaudiness more striking by filth: the splendid 
 palace for the ruler, the hovels and the sink for the ruled ; the fine 
 box for the despot, the pigeon-holes for the people ; and it strikes 
 me with sadness, that the women can be little more than the figur- 
 
438 LIFE OF CURRAN. 
 
 antes, much more the property, and that a very abused property, 
 than the proprietors ; receiving a mock reverence, merely to carry 
 on the drama, but neither cherished nor respected. What a re- 
 flection, if, as I fear, it is true that the better half of the species, 
 (for such I really think them, when fitly placed) should be so 
 sacrificed! How vile the feeling and the taste, that can degrade 
 them from being the real directors and mistresses of man, to be 
 the mere soubrettes of society, gilded and smart, and dextrous and 
 ■\dcious, giving up all that exalts and endears them in their proper 
 characters of wives and friends, and partners in good, and conso- 
 lers in adverse fortunes ! Even before the revolution, manners 
 were bad enough, but many causes since have rubbed oft" the gild- 
 ing; the banishment of the nobles, the succession of low men to 
 power, and more than all the elevation of plebeian soldiers to high 
 rank, promoting of course their trulls to a station where manners 
 and morals were under their influence; and this added to the horri- 
 ble example set by Bonaparte himself in his o\vn interior, putting 
 every thing honest or sacred out of countenance and out of fashion. 
 Add to this, wdiat must have sent down the contagion to the lower 
 orders — the conscription : the wretched men marrying without 
 preference mei'ely to avoid the array, and then running into that 
 army to escape from their ill-chosen partners; all these causes 
 must have conspired to make a frightful carnage in manners and 
 morals too. In short, I am persuaded that a single monster has 
 done more to demoralize and uncivilize this country than a cen- 
 tury can repair. I am disposed to attribute to the same causes 
 the growing fanaticism of England, In Ireland we had little to 
 lose in civilization ; but look at our late extravagances, and see at 
 least how much we have lost in our . own and in the opinion of 
 others. For years to come, I see no hope ; we have the anguish 
 of being ourselves the cause of not going forward a little in the 
 march of the world, but of still remaining a by-word among 
 nations. Patriotic alfectation is almost as bad as personal, but I 
 declare I think these things do a good deal in sinking my health, 
 
FRENCH SOCIETY. 439 
 
 which is far from good ; my spirits quite on the ground ; and yet 
 as to Ireland, I never saw but one alternative — a bridewell or a 
 guard-house; with England the lirst, with France the other. We 
 might have had a mollification, and the bolts lightened, and a 
 chance of progression; but that I now give up. 
 
 "I really wish the thing with myself over; and trust me that 
 wish is not irreligious or peevish, but rather a good humoured 
 feeling, that, not wishing to eat more, I may be better by rising 
 from table ; ' enouirh is as o-ood as a feast.' 
 
 " I am every hour more and more confirmed as to my ideas of 
 society; it is not for those that thiuk or feel; it is not one fool get- 
 ting on the back of many, to fly from himself. In France you can 
 scarcely make even that experiment, for all here agree that at 
 the present moment all society is dead. Nor is it wonderful, that, 
 when all the actors on the great scene are changed, the parts 
 should be badly performed ; but still I have found society, as it is 
 called, and met a great deal of kindness, and some persons of 
 talent ; but even there I found society an orchestra, where the 
 fiddlers were putting one another out, or rather where one played 
 a solo, and every other bow was soaped. 
 
 " At this moment my friend enters ; he differs totally from my 
 opinion, saying, ' I have lived single in a great city ; few friends, 
 many acquaintances ; I think I have done right and shall continue. 
 Sameness would cloy. How many happy matches have you 
 seen ? How many faithful friendships ? Too much intimacy lays 
 you bare ; your little infirmities diminish respect, perhaps excite 
 disgust, perhaps end in hatred. With the same persons and those 
 fev/, what chance of having yourself, or finding in them, the attach- 
 ment, the good tempei', and good sense necessary for bearing and 
 forbearing ? You have complained of being spit upon — but you 
 can easily curse them, make a polite bow, and go away ; but that 
 would be no cause for breaking a closer attachment. Are you 
 not conscious, that you have observed, since we have been so 
 much together, some faults in me not observed before ? Have you 
 
440 LIFE OF CURE AN. 
 
 no suspicion of reprisal V All this I treated as misanthropic 
 cant — he retorted on me, ' What is your select attachment but 
 genei-al intolerance ? What is the syrup of concentrated affection 
 but extract from the wormwood of embittered irritability ? When 
 has any man ever found the male or the female inmate always 
 equal, patient, and amiable ? or even suppose it, will not sickness 
 or death rend the bond, and leave you or them in a desert ? As 
 to me, I can bear almost every body ; the grave-digger, I laugh 
 at. I cannot weep over myself when I'm gone, and I will not 
 over any body else.' He pressed me to say if I seriously thought 
 there was nothing in these topics. I told him I had frequently 
 been presented with them before, but was not exactly in a frame for 
 an ulterius concilium. In truth, it was rather memory awakened, 
 than oj)inion shaken, that made me disposed to silence ; but of 
 this enough for the present. 
 
 " I found myself all abaft. We agreed to go to la cliamhre cles 
 Deputes. One of the members chanced to ha^'e heard of my 
 name, was extremely courteous, lamented that I should be a mere 
 auditor, but he would take care that I should be placed according 
 to my high worthiness. We were accordingly placed aux pre- 
 mieres tribunes: the question was to be of the liberty of the press, 
 and of a previous censorship. The Baron had some difficulty in 
 working us forward, and said how happy he was in succeeding. 
 I assured him I was greatly delighted by the difficulty, as it 
 marked the just point of solicitude of the public. The chamber 
 is very handsome ; the president faces the assembly ; before him 
 is a tribune, which the orator ascends, and reads his speech with 
 his back to the president — we waited anxiously. I thought I 
 shared in the throb of a public heart. We observed some bustle ; 
 the seats of the interior, reserved for the members, became crowded 
 to excess by ladies admitted I know not how. The order for 
 strangers to retire was read ; the ladies would not stir. The 
 president could find no remedy, and adjourned the house to next 
 day. I was rather disgusted : the Baron asked me what we would 
 
FEENCH CHAMBER OF DEPUTIES. 441 
 
 have done in England ? I said we had too much respect for our 
 ladies to permit them to remain ; he shook his head : I did not 
 understand what he meant. But does not this prove, v/hat I said 
 a day or two ago (for this is written by starts) to be true, ' that 
 women here have only a mock respect V if real, would they have 
 dreamed of such a silly termagancy ? Does it not mark their 
 unfeeling coxcombry and apathy in the public interest, and how 
 fit they are to be the mothers of the Gracchi ? And yet women 
 here are vain of their sway. I can imagine nothing more humiliat- 
 ing than such Saturnalian licentiousness. 
 
 " However, I went next day. There was a previous list of the 
 orators, pro and con : they mounted alternately, and read written 
 speeches. The echo was strong ; I lost much. But how can any 
 man read his own speech ? He may the speech of the dead or 
 the absent ; it is any thing but discussion. The orator swabs his 
 face, notwithstanding the sedateness of the exertion ; and when 
 he stops to drink, which is a part of the performance, the whole 
 assembly handle their 'kerchiefs, and trumpet in the most perfect 
 time and unison, to the great animation and interest of the speech, 
 and no doubt to the great comfort of the auditors, who must have 
 had their secretions brimful during their attention. The question 
 will not be decided probably in many -days. The press is surely 
 the great sentinel — it gives the light to see and the tongue to 
 speak. They say the Russians always eat the candles before they 
 swallow the people. I can't tell you how interested I am ; I begin 
 to doubt if man ought to be monopolized or his taper, however 
 dim it may be, put under the bushel of mere private confined 
 affection. Some, it seems, are afraid of the sudden mischiefs that 
 might arise among a volatile people, if restraint were removed 
 too soon ; I own it never was my notion. But I kno-sf not how 
 far these fears may be real or feigned. Such is the fate of revo- 
 lutions — nothing certain but blood. The march of the captives 
 begins through a Red Sea ; and, after forty years in seeking new 
 abodes and strange gods, the leader seldom sees the promised 
 
442 LIFE OF CUKEAN. 
 
 land, or, at least, dies before his foot has touched it. What is it, 
 here at least, but the succession of wretches doing the duty of the 
 hangman, till it is the turn of each to be the victim? These 
 thoughts often console me. My dear friend, we must stay as we 
 are ; but let us look at the history of past and the acts of present 
 men, and learn to be patient and modest. 
 
 " You can't forget my hatred of Bonaparte ; everything I hear 
 confirms it. AYhen I went up to see his famous column at Bou- 
 logne, the poor muse, I thought was left behind, whispered at the 
 moment, 
 
 ' When ambition achieves her desu'e, 
 
 How fortune must hiugh at the joke ! 
 You mounted a pillar of fire, 
 You siuk iu a pillar of smoke.' 
 
 " I am greatly pleased to have this man's extinction marked by 
 so much abject degradation. These butchers and robbers, called 
 conquerers, have kept their dees up by the splendour of thfeir rise 
 or fall ; but what a fall has this man had ! He retires instead of 
 falling like a b]-ave highwayman, or as a Cataline did : he dwindles 
 into an isl-icle, and plays the pitiful tricks of povrer among fisher- 
 men and washerwomen. After losing the game of the world, he 
 sits down, like a child, to make castles with cards. Even his mili- 
 tary talents are questioned. They say, that having no respect for 
 property or person, he extorted such sums of money, and thousands 
 of men, as made resistance physically impossible, even notwithstand- 
 ing an infinite number of mistakes of head and violence of tem- 
 per — but here you know I am speaking without book. Still he 
 had laid hold of the gaudiness of many, and is talked of with 
 regret ; bTit his rising again is, I trust in God, impossible. I do 
 believe the present rulers mean very well, though the King has none 
 of the vices that might recommend him here. I believe he is 
 well taught in the school of adversity, and has a respect for what- 
 ever is good and honest. Whatever he be bigoted, I don't know. 
 
FEENCH POLITESSE. 443 
 
 An attempt was made to shut the shops on Sunday, and to carry 
 the host in procession, but boih failed; they were, however, desisted 
 from with great temper. 
 
 " I now regret that I did not throw upon paper the things that 
 occurred every day; I have often regretted the omission. I would 
 advise you to keep a journal of that kind ; it will cost very little 
 trouble, and will have the freshness of being ready gathered, not 
 faded by forgetfulness and cold and laboured recollection. Even 
 while I have been scribbling this, many incidents that glowed with 
 life at the moment, have so lost their life, that though I rolled them 
 they threw up nothing but Vvater, and would be rotten before they 
 could reach you, so I ceased all attempts to revive them. I had 
 twenty things, the first few days to say of my host, and his wife, 
 and his daughter. It seems they fled to Lubec at ths first horrors 
 of the revolution, and the children were born there ; the girl, I 
 thought, seemed to have a good opinion of me, and I thought her 
 good taste ought to make amends for her want of beauty; and cer- 
 tainly she had brought a very scanty viaticum of charms from the 
 north. About the end of the first week, meaning to be very sweet, 
 she assured me I had the best English accent she ever heard, and 
 that it was exactly the same as that of her English master. During 
 this chat, in marches the teacher. The scoundrel is a German, 
 who went to London at five and twenty, and returned, after four 
 years, to teach the purity of their language in Paris. Poor girl ! 
 I turned her regimentals at the moment, and remanded her to 
 her ugliness. However, all is well, for she knows nothing of the 
 crime, or the sentence, or the pardon. The father and mother are 
 very good sort of people, and have saved me from some small impo- 
 sitions ; for really nothing can be so shameless and abject as the 
 frauds upon strangers. Even at the cofiee-house where I break- 
 fast, the keeper of it, a very genteel woman, makes me almost 
 every day pay a different price for the same thing. It is still only 
 fair to say, the French are the civilest people upon earth, and I 
 really believe sincerely good natured to strangers. Two nights 
 
444 LIFE OF CUEKAl^-. 
 
 ago I was overtaken by tlie national guard : I asked tlie officer my 
 way ; he answered so courteously, that I ventured a question or 
 two more ; he continued the same good nature, and the private 
 next behind him assisted in doing the duties of hospitality. I said 
 T was afjaid he had led me to pass the line of respect to him, but 
 his answer was, and in the kindest tone, ' Sir, a stranger comme il 
 faut can never pass it in France.' I doubt if I should have found 
 it so in England. Apropos ! I am qnite sure the two nations hate 
 each other as devoutly as ever ; and I think their respective imper- 
 fections of character will be kept alive by the mutual spirit of 
 contempt. Paris will think it graceful to be volatile, as long as 
 London thinks it dio'nified to be dull." 
 
 TO THE SAME. 
 
 " Paris. 
 
 " My Dear Lube. 
 
 " I write again, because I judge from myself, and how kindly 
 I felt your last, that you would like to hear from me ; perhaps the 
 not being able to abstain from writing to the absent is the only 
 certain proof that distance and memory are compatible : however, 
 the compliment is not great, when you know that I have flung my- 
 self upon you as a correspondent only at those intervals when I 
 could not bear my own company. The thermometer has been 
 higher here lately than at any former time. Close, dirty streets, 
 stewing play-houses, and a burning sun, have, perhaps naturally 
 enough, completed the extreme depression of my spirits, and made 
 me fit for nothing. I endeavour to dissipate, by wasting myself upon 
 spectacle — but it wo 'nt do ; this day I thought to look for some- 
 thing gay in the catacombs. It seems all Paris stands upon a 
 vaulted quarry, out of which the stone to build it has been taken, 
 and it is not very rare to see an entire house sink down to its 
 original home, and disappear. Part of the excavation has been 
 fitted up as a residence in remainder for a grave. We went down, 
 
THE CATACOMBS. 445 
 
 I think, seventy steps, and traversed more than half a mile by 
 torch, or rather taper light, and we beheld more than 2,300,000 
 fragments of what once was life. They amount to four times the 
 present population of Paris. The bones were very carefully built 
 up, and at intervals were studded with projecting rows of skulls, 
 with mottos occasionally written up in Latin or French. It was a 
 sort of caravan, mostly women : one of them asked me to translate 
 one of those ; it was, I think, ' in nihilum revertitur quod ex nihilo 
 fuit.' I asked whether it gave her a sentiment of grief, or fear, or 
 hope ? She asked me what room I could see for hope in a parcel 
 of empty skulls ? ' For that reason, madam, and because you 
 know they cannot be filled with grief or fear, for all subjects of 
 either is past.' She replied, ' oui, et cependant c'est jolie.' I could 
 not guess to what she applied the epithet, so I raised the taper to 
 her face, which I had not looked at before, and had it been any 
 thing but the mirror of death, I should have thought she had looked 
 into it, and applied the one reflection to the other, so perfectly 
 unimpressed was her countenance. It did not raise her in my mind, 
 though she was not ill-looking ; and when I met her above ground, 
 after our resurrection, she appeared fit enough for the drawing- 
 rooms of the world, though not for the under-cellar. I do not 
 remember ever to have had my mind compressed into so narrow a 
 space : so many human beings, so many actors, so many sufferers, 
 so various in human rank, so equalized in the grave ! AVhen I 
 stared at the congregation, I could not distinguish what head had 
 raved, or reasoned, or hoped, or burned. I looked for thought, I 
 looked for dimples; I asked, whither is all gone — did wisdom 
 never flow from your lips, nor aftection hang upon them — and if 
 both or either, which was the most exalting — which the most 
 fascinating? All silent. They left me to answer for them, 'So 
 shall the fairest face appear.' 
 
 " I was full of the subject. In the evening I went to distract at 
 the comedy of le Misanthrope, the best of Moliere. The severe 
 affection of Alceste, and the heartless coquetry of Celimene, were 
 
44:6 LITE OF CUERAN. 
 
 excellently done. It is not only tragedy that weeps — Golgotha 
 was still an incubus upon me. I saw the moral of the piece went 
 far beyond the stage — it only began there. Every good play 
 ought to be just in the particular fable. It ought also (to be use- 
 ful) to have a general analogy far more extensive and equally 
 exact. Alceste is a man in the abstract — Cehmene is the object 
 of his wish, whatever that may be ; she smiles, and caresses, and 
 promises. He thinks he feels the blood in her heart, for he mis- 
 takes the pulse of his own for that of hers; he embraces the 
 phantom, or thinks he does so, but is betrayed, and opens his eyes 
 upon the desert : at the moment he does not recollect that the 
 loss to him is little; 'tis only the loss of himself — to her it is 
 nothing, for it is made up in the next conscription ; and, at all 
 events, whether sick or wounded, the march of man's warfare is 
 never suspended ; the moving infirmary never halts, and every day 
 brings him a stage nearer a la harrier e cVenfer^ the entrance of 
 the catacombs. 
 
 "This sad subject naturally turns me to another, that makes me 
 suspect that my contempt of this world is not quite sincere. I 
 mean the poor extravasated Irish that I meet here ; I meet their 
 ghosts as I pass, and view them as Eneas did, 
 
 ' Quos abstulit atra dies et funere mlscet acerbo.' 
 
 How can I affect to despise a scene where my heart bleeds for 
 every sufferer ? I wish to disperse my feelings as a citizen of 
 the world, and break my own monopoly of them, but they all 
 come back to our unhappy country. One of the most beautiful 
 touches of the prince of sensitive poets is where he tinges the 
 wanderings of Dido with patriotism, ■ 
 
 * Ssspe longum incomitata videtur 
 
 Ire viara et Tyrios deserta qua^rere terra.' 
 
 By the by, it does some credit to the character of humanity that we 
 sometimes exchange the suffering of egotism for a nobler sympathy, 
 
PARISIAN THEATRICiiLS. 447 
 
 and lament over others instead of keeping all our tears for our- 
 selves. What exquisite nectar must they be to those over whom they 
 are shed ! Nor perhaps should the assurance that they do n't suf- 
 fer alone be always witheld, because it may not be always true ; 
 because for the purpose of consolation, it is enough if it be believed, 
 whether true or not : if the payment is complete, is it worth 
 while to inquire whether the coin be counterfeit or not ? But with 
 respect to our poor exiles the sympathy is most sincere as well as 
 ardent : I had hopes that England might let them back. The sea- 
 son and the power of mischief is long past; the number is almost 
 too small to do credit to the mercy that casts a look upon them. 
 But they are destined to give their last recollection of the green 
 fields they are never to behold, on a foreign death-bed, and to lose 
 the sad delight of fancied visits to them in a distant grave. 
 
 " I continue to feel an increasing dislike of every thing here ; I 
 probably sha' n't remain long. I have left some things in Ireland 
 unsettled that I must arrange, however I may dispose of myself 
 Iftreafter. England can 't arrest me long ; I have never found any 
 good in watering-places. My malady, a constitutional dejection, 
 can hope for no remedy in water or in wine. In general, the bene- 
 fit of those places is attributed to the attendant temperance, but a 
 person little given to excess any where has not much to add in that 
 way ; and as to evening parties, in a crowd of strangers, I never 
 liked them, nor was fit for them : I have therefore gi\ en my even- 
 ings to the theatres — I prefer them to English, notwithstanding the 
 difficulty of a foreign language. I prefer the style of their stage 
 to ours : ours always appeared to me flat and dull, with never 
 more than one or two of tolerable merit ; on the contrary, here 
 you never find any very bad. A comic nation is perpetually send- 
 ing young aspirants to Paris, where of course there can be no 
 d<.'arth. In England you must put up with what you can get. l^o 
 doubt, it is hard to find any exact principles of acting ; 't is in a 
 great degree arbitrary and accidental — still nature will assert cer- 
 tain boundaries. In France there may be bombast, and tinsel, and 
 
448 LIFE OF CURE AN. 
 
 the eternal monotony of amour in their plays is liable to objec- 
 tions, lying- much deeper than the mere criticism of the stage ; it 
 goes vitally to the morals and manners of the people — it goes to 
 make the woman a bad sort of man, and the man a bad sort of 
 woman ; it goes to take away the solid basis of every virtue of either 
 sex : it leaves the man little to wish, to the woman little to bestow ; 
 it annihilates the fine spirit of attachment. What can he feel for 
 confidence given on a principle of good breeding ? To fascinate, 
 there must be no doubt of its being exclusive. When I am writing 
 my bad verses, I would spurn the muse, if I suspected her of whis- 
 pering the same idea to twenty other poetasters. On the same 
 principle, if you have only the sixty-fourth part of a ticket in the 
 lottery of regard, the prize is in fact a blank. How can you join 
 in triumph with sixty-three other fortunate adventurers? Still 
 these exhibitions amuse ; the acting is flippant and graceful, and 
 the music sometimes excellent. The English, who have no 
 national music, affect to despise French. It is sometimes, perhaps, 
 tinselish ; but I own it frequently catches my fancy, and even nfy 
 heart. 
 
 -;r ^ 'k ^ =k ^i % 
 
 " I am not sorry for having come hither when I did — perhaps 
 you see society better when cut into piece-meal, as in anatomy 
 every thing is laid bare to the student — perhaps it is seen to great 
 disadvantage. The best lesson that man can learn is toleration, 
 and travelling ought to be the best school. There are many points 
 in which this people must be allowed praise — lively, cheerful — a 
 constitutional philosophy, disposing them to be always satisfied. 
 I wish, as to government, they could be brought to an anchor ; 
 whether that is to happen, who can tell ? Nothing can be more 
 divided than the general sentiment: the higher military men have 
 got safe into harbour, and wish perhaps for quiet ; all under them 
 most discontented ; long arrears due. They can't employ them 
 abroad, for want of money; and when the deval is raised, and 
 can't be kept in work — we know the story. The favour to Bona- 
 
RETURN TO ENGLAND. 449 
 
 parte is the more singular, because, allowing for his extraordinary 
 energy, I doubt if he had a single great quality. It is clear he 
 was no statesman; force alone was sufficient for all he did. Men 
 here of the best authority pronounce him a man of uncommon 
 energy in action, but of no talent for retreat. The question is of 
 more curiosity than moment. If otherwise, it might not be easy 
 to know what credit to give to these criticisms. 
 
 " 22d. At last w^e have got our passports, and ordered a car- 
 riage for to-morrow. We shall go by Dieppe. Neither my fel- 
 low-traveller nor myself in the best health or spirits : I have a 
 great kindness for him, though no human beings can be more 
 different. I do n't think diversity is incompatible with friendship 
 or affection ; but strong contrariety, I fear, is. How different are 
 they from the volatility of France, as well as from the loud, ardent, 
 indiscreet vehemence of our poor people. Certainly it is not mere 
 interest that forms the weight to the clock, through the utter want 
 of any regulating power makes it a sad time-piece. But I con- 
 sider it now as nearly a ' conclamatum est,'' and the insurrection 
 act little other than a monumental inscription. 
 
 " London. Tuesday. (A new venue.) After a day spent at 
 Dieppe, we sailed : and, after forty hours, landed at Brighton. I 
 don't like the state of my health ; if it was merely maladie under 
 sailing orders for the undiscovered country, I should not quarrel 
 with the passport. There is nothing gloomy in my religious im- 
 pressions, though I trust they are not shallow : I ought to have 
 been better — I know also that" 'others have been as blameable ; 
 and have rather a cheerful reliance upon mercy than an abject 
 fear of justice. Or w^ere it otherwise, I have a much greater fear 
 of suffering than of death. 
 
 " I had almost made up my mind to bestow a citizen to France, 
 and I am mortified at finding any drag upon the intention — yet a 
 drag there is. I have no doubt that the revolution has thrown 
 that country a century back, yet she has qualities that might have 
 hoped a better destiny. It has been suggested to me that a 
 winter in Paris might answer better. 
 
450 LIFE OF CUPvEAN. 
 
 "I just now return from a long conversation with the truly 
 royal personage,^ who saves you from the postage of this. A few 
 days must, I now think, take me across. I think of meeting some 
 persons at Cheltenham. As to waters, I suspect they are seldom 
 of use. I am quite decided against them, till Charon pledges me 
 on the Styx. 
 
 "Yours, ver}^ truly, 
 
 " J. P. CURRAN." 
 
 The following letter, written in 1815, concludes the series of 
 his private correspondence : 
 
 " London. 
 
 " Dear Lube, 
 
 " As I sit down to write, I am broken in upon. In sopth I 
 had little to say — the mere sending this is full proof that I have 
 escaped being supped upon by Jonas's landlord, or any of his sub- 
 jects. I sailed Wednesday night, and arrived here at half-past six 
 this morning sound and sad. Kings and generals as cheap as 
 dirt, and yet so much more valuable a thing as a lodging as dear 
 as two eggs a penn}^ Saturday not being a day of business in the 
 House, I met nobody; though I did not go to bed on my arrival : 
 the little I have heard confirms the idea you know T entertained 
 of a flatness of a certain political project ; it could not pass unop- 
 posed, and in such a conflict, the expenditure of money to make a 
 voter a knave, that you might be an honest senator, would, in 
 such a swarm of locusts, surpass all calculation. However, I 
 know nothing distinctly as yet, therefore I merely persevere in 
 the notion I stated to you. 
 
 " I have just seen the immortal Blucher. The gentlemen and 
 ladies of the mob huzza him out of his den, like a wild beast to 
 his offal ; and this is repeated every quarter of an hour, to their 
 great delight, and for aught appears, not at all to his dissatisfaction. 
 I am now going to dine with a friend, before whose house the illus- 
 
 * H. R. n. the Duke of Sussex,— C. 
 
THE END APPEO ACHES. 451 
 
 trious monarchs proceed to their surfeit at Guildhall. No doubt 
 we shall have the newspapers in a state of eructation for at least 
 a week. But I must close. 
 
 "J. P. C." 
 
 • The short remainder of Mr. Curran's life was passed principally 
 between DubHn and London.'^ Notwithstanding the decline of 
 his health and spirits, the vigour of his mind continued unimpared, 
 and probably added to his indisposition, by the constant impatience 
 of inactivity in which it kept him. He occasionally returned to 
 the literary projects already mentioned; bat to speak had been the 
 business of his life, and his mind could not now submit itself to 
 the solitary labours of the closet. He still continued to look to- 
 wards parliament, rather, perhaps, to give himself some nominal 
 object, than from any hope or desire to be there. While in London 
 he sometimes attended and spoke at public dinners. Both there 
 and in Ireland his time w^as usually spent in the society of his in- 
 timate friends, whom his powers, as a companion, delighted to the 
 last. 
 
 [Mr. Phillips may again be drawn upon here. He says : 
 
 " He also frequently visited both London and Cheltenham, and 
 it was my good fortune generally to accompany him. On one 
 occasion, however, having preceded him to town, he very kindly 
 
 * Mr, Curran, some short time before his death, had occasion to consult a physician in 
 London on the general state of his health. He accordingly waited on a gentleman very 
 eminent in that profession j he had no introduction to him, and was perfectly a stranger. 
 The doctor made many enquiries as to the nature of his complaint, and of his constitution, 
 and among other things asked him, had his father ever been afflicted by gout. Even then, 
 the humor of Mr. Curran did not desert him : he perceived that the doctor did not see 
 into the nature of his case, and, hoping little from him, he answered by assuring him, 
 " that his father had left him neitlier money nor malady ; that the only inheritance he 
 ever got from him was a large stock of excellent advice ; and that so careful was he of it, 
 that he never broke bulk, never useil any part of it, and that it was very likely to descend 
 to posterity in the very same condition in which it had been left :" — wished the doctor a 
 good morning, and left him more puzzled about the manthan the Malady.— 0^ Reg XJH. 
 
452 LIFE OF CTJRRAN. 
 
 offered me the following letter of introduction. I insert it, not 
 merely as my credential to the reader, but because I cherish it as 
 a precious and flattering relic of a friendship which w^as the honor 
 and happiness of my youth. 
 
 " ' nth October, 1816. 
 
 " ' My Dear Friend — You know how squeamish I am of intro- 
 ducing. I do not make any attempt of that kind, for the bearer is 
 Charles Phillips, whom you well know already, and I am paying 
 a compliment to my own yanity by giving him this, as it tells two 
 things I am proud of : one, that I know him ; the second, that 
 you are so good as to know 
 
 "'John P. Curran.'" 
 
 " This at once gave me a passport to the splendid hospitality of 
 Mr. Perry, the able proprietor of the Morning Chronicle, whose 
 sumptuous board made me recollect the saying of Mr. Tierney 
 when seated at it : 'I see now, Perry, how much better it is to 
 publish speeches than to make them\ 
 
 " During Mr. Curran's yisits to London, he occasionally, but not 
 habitually, mingled in the political and literary society of the day. 
 He was not fond of crowded rooms ; his taste was rather a select 
 circle of perhaps half a dozen, and those, if possible, intimates. 
 Among the most remarkable whom he encountered — there is no 
 other word for it — was Madame de Stael. Of this celebrated lady 
 he gave me rather an extraordinary idea. After he had once or 
 twice met her in society, she requested an interview with him at 
 her residence on a particular day. ' I waited on her,' said he, 
 ' as bound in gallantry so to do ; and on being shown into her 
 drawing-room, she desired that no one else should be admitted. 
 
 " ' And now, Mr. Curran,' said she, ' on the reply you make to 
 me, I apprise you our future intercourse must depend.' This was 
 rather startling, but you may imagine my amazement Avhen she 
 commenced reciting a kind of indictment against my character ! 
 Ay, with due emphasis and little reservation, believe me. There 
 
LORD EESKIKE. 453 
 
 was not a single item in tlie scandalous account which calumny 
 had fabricated against me with which she was not perfectly 
 familiar. Every misfortune of my private life, and every aspersion 
 on my public conduct, she poured forth with a most marvellous 
 volubility. The audacity of the whole procedure almost stunned 
 me. I was at first inclined to plead to the jurisdiction and make 
 my bow, but then I remembered she had a tongue, and I saw how 
 she could use it, so I entered on the defence.' He then recapitu- 
 lated, seriatim^ the charges she had made and the exculpations he 
 had essayed. How any person, and especially a female, could 
 have originated such a discussion, seems inexplicable. Her 
 oration, as he gave it, and his reply, occupied fully half an hour. 
 The allegations on which she entered were coarse and cruel in the 
 extreme — the sweepings of the Dublin streets for thirty years 
 preceding, furnished, no doubt, by some of the party scavengers 
 who sedulously collected them. However, in this instance it was 
 labor lost, as the lady pronounced a verdict of acquittal. 
 
 " I had once myself an opportunity of seeing him suddenly put 
 on his defence, and by one of the fair sex also. We were walking 
 together in a public thoroughfai'e, when a lady, confronting and 
 impeding us, thus commenced: 'Mr. Curran, I really am of opin- 
 ion that you might be better employed than in vilifying me and 
 my boarding-house.' ' Madam,' said Curran, ' I know well that 
 I have many sins to answer for, but, before Heaven, I protest, the 
 having wasted a word upon yourself, or a thought upon your 
 boarding-house, will not be found in the catalogue,' and he bowed 
 himself away. 
 
 " With Lord Erskine, his celebrated rival at the English bar, he 
 was in habits of intimacy. He had a very high respect for his 
 powers, but, aware of the comparison which the world naturally 
 instituted between them, he rather avoided the topic. His lord- 
 ship, it is said, once provoked a sarcasm from Curran : very 
 unusual indeed, for his wit was not ill-natured. It was a few 
 years after the Irish Union, and immediately after Mr. Grattan's 
 
454 LIFE OF CUBRAN. 
 
 debut in the Imperial Parliament. The conversation after dinner 
 naturally turned on the very splendid display of the Irish orator. 
 Lord Erskine, as Curran imagined, exhibited rather an uncalled- 
 for fastidiousness, and of Mr. Grattan's fame he was almost as 
 jealous as of his own. The conversation proceeded. ' Come, 
 come,' said his lordship, ' confess at once, Curran, was not Grat- 
 tan a little intimidated at the idea of a first appearance before the 
 British Parliament V The comparison galled Curran to the 
 quick. ' Indeed, my lord, I do not think he was, nor do I think 
 he had any reason. "When he succeeded so splendidly with so 
 eloquent and so discriminating a body as the Irish House of 
 Commons, he need not have apprehended much from any foreign 
 criticism.' ' Well, but, Curran, did he not confess he was afraid, 
 no matter what might be the groundlessness of his apprehensions 
 — did you not hear him say so ? Come, come,' continued his 
 lordship, a little pertinaciously. 'Indeed, my good lord, I never 
 did. Mr. Grattan is a very modest man — he never speaks for him- 
 self^ was the sarcastic and silencing rejoinder. It is well known 
 that Cicero, and not Grattan, was Lord Erskine's model in this 
 particular. 
 
 "Some time afterwards they met at the table of an illustrious 
 personage.* The royal host, with much complimentary delicacy, 
 directed the conversation to the profession of his celebrated visitors. 
 Lord Erskine very eloquently took the lead. He descanted iu 
 terms which few other men could command on the interesting 
 duties of the bar, and the high honors to which its success con- 
 ducted. 'ISTo man in the land,' said he, 'need be ashamed to 
 belong to such a profession. For my part, of a noble family my- 
 self, I felt no degradation in practicing it : it has added not only 
 to my wealth, but to my dignity.' Curran was silent, which the 
 host observing, called for his opinion. ' Lord Erskine,' said he, 
 'has so eloquently described all the advantages to be derived 
 fi'om the profession, that I hardly thought my poor opinion was 
 
 ♦ The Prince Regent— afterwards Qeorge IV.— M. 
 
EivAL wn^s. 455 
 
 worth adding. But perhaps it was — perhaps I am a better prac- 
 tical instance of its advantages even than his lordship — he was 
 ennobled by birth before he came to it, but it has,' said he, making 
 an obeisance to his host, ' it has, in my person, raised the son of a 
 peasant to the table of his prince.'' Nothing, perhaps, could be 
 more dignified than the humility of the allusion. But Mr. Currau 
 had too great a mind not to feel that in fact he was ennobled by 
 the obscurity of his origin. The accident of birth is surely no 
 personal merit of its possessor ; and too true it is that the pure 
 fountain of hereditary honor too often flows through a polluted 
 channel. Between these two great contemporary rivals a com- 
 parison has been often instituted. It is, perhaps, scarcely admis- 
 sible. There was very little in common between them : they 
 were rather to be contrasted than compared. Each had his own 
 peculiar merits, and each did honor to his profession and his 
 country. The following playful description, by Byron, is amusing 
 and truthful, though, as the reader has already seen, he altered 
 his opinion much in Mr. Curran's favor. The noble poet is 
 enumerating the guests at a dinner party : 
 
 " There also were two wits by acclamation, 
 Longbow from Ireland, Strongbow from the Tweed, 
 Both lawyers, and both men of education ; 
 But Strongbow'S wit was of more polished breed : 
 Longbow was rich in an imagination, 
 As beautiful and bounding as a steed, 
 But sometimes stumbling over a potatoe, 
 While Strongbow'S best things might have come from Gate. 
 
 Strongbow was like a new-tuned harpsichord ; 
 
 But Longbow, wild as an ^olian harp, 
 
 With which the winds of Heaven can claim accord, 
 
 And make a music either flat or sharp. 
 
 Of Strongbow'S talk you would not change a word ; 
 
 At Longbow's phrases you might sometimes carp : 
 
 Both wits — one born so and the other bred — 
 
 This by the heart— his rival by the head." 
 
456 LIFE OF CUEEAN. 
 
 "In the Autumn of 1816 I accompanied him to Cheltenham for 
 the purpose of consuhing Sir Arthur Brooke Faulkener (a friend 
 and physician whom he much vakied) on the state of his health. 
 During his visit, though at times dej)ressed, he occasionally rallied 
 and even went a little into society. 
 
 " I had introduced him to two very lovely and accomplished 
 sisters, who have since gone to increase the treasures of the East. 
 After passing an evening in the enjoyment of conversation rarely 
 to be met with, he said to me, 'I never saw such creatures : even 
 to my old eyes it is quite refreshing to see the sunshine of genius 
 fiying over their beautiful countenances.^ 
 
 " On the walk, one morning, we met an Irish gentleman who 
 certainly most patriotically preserved his native pronunciation. 
 He had acquired a singular habit of lolling out his tongue. 
 ' What can he possibly mean by it V said I to Curran. ' I think 
 it's clear enough,' said he, ' the man's trying to catch the English 
 accent.^ 
 
 " On another occasion, passing a person whom he much disliked, 
 he said, ' Observe that solemn blockhead — that pompous lump of 
 dulness. Now, if you breakfasted and dined with that fellow for 
 a hundred years, you could not be intimate with him — he would 
 not even be seen to smile, lest any body might suppose he was 
 too familiar with himself P 
 
 " Curran used to relate a ludicrous encounter between himself 
 and a lish-woman on the quay at Cork. This lady, whose tongue 
 would have put Billingsgate to the blush, was incited one day to 
 assail him, which she did w^ith very little reluctance. ' I thought 
 myself a match for her,' said he, ' and valorously took up the 
 gauntlet. But such a virago never skinned an eel. On the con- 
 trary, she was manifestly becoming more vigorous every moment, 
 and I had nothing for it but to beat a retreat. This, however, 
 w^as to be done with dignity ; so, drawing myself up disdainfully, 
 I said, ' Madam, I scorn all farther discourse with such an indivi- 
 dual.^ She did not understand the word, and thought it, no 
 
THE BKEAK-UP. 4.57 
 
 doubt, the very hyperbole of opprobrium. ' Individual, you waga- 
 bone !' she screamed ; ' what do you mean by that? I'm no more 
 an individual than your mother Avas !' Never was victory more 
 complete. The v.'hole sisterhood did homage to me, and I left 
 the quay of Cork covered with glory."] 
 
 In the spring of 1817, he began to sink rapidly. While dining 
 with his friend, Mr. Thomas Moore, he sufiered a slight paralytic 
 attack in one of his hands. He was also incommoded by frequent 
 oppression in his chest, for which, as well as for his general health, 
 his medical ad\dsers recommended him to visit the milder climate 
 of the south of Europe. Preparatory to following that advice, he 
 passed over to Dublin, in July, to arrange his private affairs. But 
 his friends could perceive, by his altered looks, that the hour of 
 final separation was fast approaching. Of this he was not insensi- 
 ble himself. As he walked through the grounds of his country 
 seat, with Mr. M'Nally, he spoke, of the impending event with 
 tranquillity and resignation. 
 
 " I melt (said he) and am not 
 Of stronger earth than others. 
 
 / wish it was all ovei'P 
 
 On the day of his departure for England, after having parted 
 in the ordinary way from another of his friends, he returned sud- 
 denly and grasped his hand, saying, in a aftectionate, but firm 
 tone, " You will never behold me more." He had a short time 
 before, when leaving Cheltenham, handed the following little im- 
 promptu, as a final adieu to a family there (Sir x\rthur Brooke 
 Faulkener's), from whom he had received peculiar marks of hos- 
 pitality and kindness : 
 
 " For welcome warm, for greeting kind 
 The present thanks the tongue can tell ; 
 But soon the heart no tongue may find, 
 Then thank thee with a sad farewell 1" 
 20 
 
458 LIFE OF C ITER AN. 
 
 As Mr. Curran travelled between Holyhead and Cheltenham he 
 was re-visited by paralytic symptoms. Upon his arrival at the 
 latter place, doubtful of the nature of the recent attack, he request- 
 ed of a medical friend to examine his pulse, and to declare expli- 
 citly whether it indicated any disposition to palsy. The physician 
 assured him, that there v/as no indication of the kind. " Then," 
 said Mr. Curran, " I suppose I am to consider v.^hat has lately hap- 
 pened as a runaway knock, and not a notice to quit." 
 
 " In the summer of 1817 he returned to Ireland for the last time, 
 and in the September of that year again joined me at Cheltenham, 
 under Avhat mental disquietude the following letter, written a few 
 days before to a friend there, will evince much better than any 
 words of mine : 
 
 " ' My Dear Friend — You'll think me a sad fellow — so I think 
 too. However, you are too clear-sighted in diagnostics not to see 
 the causes of my being so low-pulsed a correspondent. The truth 
 is, I was every day on the point of leaving a country where folly 
 and suffering were lying like lead upon my heart ; and, iu the 
 mean time, I could only make one communication, the most 
 unnecessary in the world, namely, that I never suspend the respect 
 and solicitude which I always feel for you, and to which you are 
 so well entitled. 
 
 " ' Now I think you may look io a call at least. I may not be 
 able, perhaps, to linger long, but I could not find myself within 
 shot of you without coming mechanically to a present and a snap^ 
 even though it should be no more than a flash in the pan. I had 
 hopes of seeing your brother, but he has deceived my hope. As 
 to Hope herself, I have closed my accounts altogether with her. 
 Drawing perpetually upon my credulity, I now find her, too late, 
 an insolvent swindler. jNIeantime my entire life passed in a 
 wretched futurity — breathing, I may say, in the paido post 
 futurum : I have happily, however, found out the only remedy, 
 
THE CLOSING SCENES. 459 
 
 and that is, to give over the folly of breathing at all. I hiid some 
 hope for this persecuted country, but that, I fear, is over. If our 
 heads were curled like the Africans, I suppose we should go 
 snacks with them in the justice and sympathy of that humane and 
 philanthropic nation of yours ; but if her tears of commiseration 
 should make the hair of the Africans lank like ours, I make no 
 doubt but you would send a coxcomb or two politically and madly 
 
 like and * to Ireland. 
 
 " ' Ever yours, J. P. Curran.' 
 
 " His short stay at Cheltenham could scarcely be called existence. 
 During that time he was with difficulty induced to pass the w^eek 
 of the Gloucester musical festival at Hynham Court, near that 
 city. Here he became restless and unmanageable. Music, of 
 which he had been so passionately fond, only irritated and incensed 
 him. All of a sudden, at one of the morning performances at the 
 Cathedral, he took it into his head that the whole proceeding was 
 a blasphemy, and insisted on elbowing himself out through the 
 aisle ! Remonstrance was in vain. ' I'll stand it no longer I' he 
 exclaimed, while all eyes were turned towards him ; ' it's shameful 
 
 — it's sinful — ^just hear him — the black, odious baboon, yell- 
 
 ino; out that " the Lord is a man of war." I'll not countenance it ' 
 — and away he went ! Nothing whatever could induce him again 
 to enter the Cathedral, and he abruptly returned to Cheltenham 
 on the next day, whither, under the circumstances, I felt it a duty 
 to follow him. He had had, it seems, some premonitory symp- 
 toms in the spring of the year, at which his physicians felt no 
 alarm, but which greatly added to his own depression. It was 
 but too clear, however, that nature was almost exhausted. He 
 fell asleep in the daytime, and even after dinner, and when he 
 awoke it was to thoughts of sadness. It was in this frame of mind 
 
 * I have left an hiatus here, out of my high respect for the Attorney-General.— C. 
 Phillips. 
 
4:60 LIFE OF CUKKAN. 
 
 that he once said to Mr. Grattan, ' I begin to tremble for Ireland. 
 I almost wish to go to Spain, and borrow a beard, and turn monk. 
 I am weaning off my early affections, and almost wish the grave- 
 digger would overtake me in another country.' He was perpe- 
 tually fancying things which never had existence, and misinter- 
 preting those which had. He told me he was dying. 
 
 " Poor fellow ! little did I then think that, in a very few days, 
 I was to see the verification of his forebodings ! The heart, 
 indeed, was still beating, but the tongue — that tongue so eloquent 
 — was mute forever. On Wednesday, the 8tli of October, I called 
 on him at his lodgings in Brompton. One of his eyes was swol- 
 len, and partly closed ; but so little was it heeded, that he asked 
 me to dine with him on the day following, to meet Mr. Godwin. 
 It was, however, alas ! a fatal premonitory symptom. At eleven 
 o'clock at night he wrote the following note to me — the last he was 
 to lorite ! It is remarkable that there is not a superfluous word 
 in it. In fact, he was struck with apoplexy in two hours after. 
 
 " ' Dear Phillips — Just got a note : Mrs. Godwin is sick ; he'll 
 dine here Sunday. If you prefer an invalid, come to-morrow — 
 You'd be more gratified on Sunday. Utrum horum ? Yours, 
 
 ' J. P. CURRAN. 
 " ' Wednesday. '* 
 
 " This note I received at my hotel at seven o'clock on Thursday 
 morning, and with it the mournful intelligence of what had 
 occurred. I hastened at once to Brompton, and, alas ! what a 
 spectacle awaited me ! There he lay upon the bed of death — 
 scarcely breathing — one eye closed, and one side quite inanimate. 
 
 " And this was all that now remained of Curran — the light of 
 society — the glory of the forum — the Fabricius of the senate — the 
 idol of his country. The only symptom of intelligence he gave 
 was his squeezing my hand when I asked if he recognised me. A 
 few dayfc afterward he seemed conscious of the presence of one of 
 
HIS DEATH. 461 
 
 his oldest and most valued friends, the late Judge Burton. All 
 that filial piety could do, aided by the most eminent of the 
 faculty, to alleviate his sufferings, was done. At seven o'clock 
 on the evening of the fourteenth of October, I saw him for the 
 last time : at nine we lost him. He expired at Y Amelia Place 
 Brompton, in the sixty-eighth year of his age."*] 
 
 He had arrived in London in September, where he proposed to 
 pass the winter, still intending to proceed to the south of France, 
 or Italy, in the commencement of the ensuing spring. His spirits 
 were now in a state of the most distressing depression. He com- 
 plained of having " a mountain of lead upon his heart." This de- 
 spondency he increased by dwelling perpetually upon the condi- 
 tion of Ireland, which his imagination was for ever representing 
 to him as doomed to endless divisions and degradation. A few days 
 before his last illness he dined with his friend, the late Mr. Thomas 
 Thompson. After dinner he was for a while cheerful and anima- 
 ted, but some allusion having been made to Irish politics, he in- 
 stantly hung down his head, and burst into tears. On the Yth of 
 October, a swelling appeared over one of his eyes, to which, attri- 
 buting it to cold, he gave little attention. On the night of the 8th, 
 he was attacked by apoplexy. He was attended by two eminent 
 physicians. Doctors Badham and Ainslie, and by Mr. Tegart, of 
 Pall Mall, all of wliom pronounced his recovery to be impossible. 
 The utmost efforts of their skill could not protract his existence 
 many days.f Mr. Curran expired at nine o'clock at night, on the 
 14th of October, 1817, in the 68th year of his age. During his 
 short illness, he appeared entirely free from pain ; he was speech- 
 less from the commencement of the attack, and with the excep- 
 
 * Fiom Phillip's Recollections. — M. 
 
 tHis last moments were so tranquil that those around him could scarcely mark the mo- 
 ment of expiration. Though surprised by sickness at a distance from his home, he was not 
 condemned to receive the last offices from the hands of strangers : three of his children, 
 Captain Curran of the Navy, his son at the Irish Bar, and his daughter, Mrs. Taylor, 
 vrere fortunately in London, and had the mournful gratification of paying the last duties 
 to their illustrious father. — O'Regan. 
 
462 LIFE OF CUKRAN. 
 
 tion of a few intervals, quite insensible. His last minifies were 
 so placid, that those who watched over him could not mark the 
 exact moment of expiration. Three of his children, his son-in-law, 
 and daughter-in-law, and his old and attached friend, Mr Godwin, 
 surrounded his death-bed, and performed the last offices of piety 
 and respect. 
 
 Mr. Curran's funeral did not take place till the 4th of Novem- 
 ber. His Avill, which it was supposed would have contained his 
 own instructions upon the subject, having been left in Ireland, it 
 ■was found necessary to await the examination of that document, 
 and the directions of the executors.* In the interval, Mr. Daniel 
 O'Connell, who was at Bath, and on the point of setting out with 
 his family for Dublin, having i-eceived information of Mr. Curran's 
 death, very generously sacrificed every consideration of private 
 convenience, and hastened up to London, to attend his deceased 
 
 * O'Regan (who wrote in 1S17) says: "The cliildren of Mr. Curran who now survive 
 him are Richard, who was called to tlie Irish bar, and for some years has retired from 
 it, under the visitation of a settled melancholy ; John, a captain in the Navy ; William, 
 now an Irish barrister, and a gentleman of considerable promise. Mrs. Taylor, the wife 
 of an English clergyman ; Amelia, unmarried. He had another son, James, who died in 
 the East Indies ; and a daughter, who is also dead. Of his brothers I knew two : one who 
 is seneschal of Newmarket; the other was bred an attorney, and was considered a young 
 man of as much natural genius as Mr. Curran himself. 
 
 " The date of the will is the 19th of September, ISIG, and was opened in presence of Mr. 
 Burton, Mr. Richards, Mr. M'Nally, Mr. John Franks, barristers, and Mr. Ponsonby 
 Shaw. It was deposited at Mr. Shaw's bank ; and the abstract, which I know to be 
 authentic, is as follows; ' His real and personal property is left in trust to PhiJpot Fitz- 
 gerald for his life-use, witli remainder to Mr. Curran's collateral relations; subject to a 
 charge of £5000 for Henry Fitzgerald, brother to Philpot Fitzgerald, called his nephews ; 
 a provision on the estate of £80 a- year for Mrs. Curran for her life ; an annuity of £50 
 a-year to his daughter Amelia Curran, in addition to such provision as he before had 
 made for her ; a sum of £300 was bequeathed to Mrs. Dickson, of Brompton : some small 
 Ihjcacies ; but neither of his sons Richard, John, or William, were mentioned in the will 
 or codicil ; nor his daughter Mrs. Taylor. Thomas Quin, John Franks, John Glover, 
 and Charles Burton, Esquires, were named trustees and executors. — He had in the Irish 
 funds from ten to twelve thousand pounds in the S^ per cents, stock in his own name. 
 The Priory was the whole of his freehold estate. The interest he had in a lease of his 
 former residence in the county of Cork had expired. He also had some property in the 
 American funds, but I cannot at present ascertain its amoimt : it is supposed not to liave 
 been considerable." — M. 
 
HIS BUfilAL. 463 
 
 countryman to the grave : an act of aflectionate respect which was 
 peculiarly honourable to that gentleman, between whom and Mr. 
 Curran a considerable misunderstanding had latterly existed upon 
 the subject of Catholic politics. It was the anxious desire of Mr. 
 O'Connell, and of several other friends of Mr. Curran, who were 
 upon the spot, that his remains should be transported to his own 
 country, in order to give a people, with whose interests and destiny 
 the departed advocate had so entirely identified liis own, a final 
 opportunity of publicly testifying their admiration and regrets. 
 Those who advised this measure were aware that he had himself 
 (when he felt his end approaching) found a source of aliecting 
 consolation in the hope that, wherever it should be his Me to 
 expire, Ireland would claim him. " The last duties (he pathetically 
 observed in one of his latest letters) will be paid by that country 
 on which they are devolved ; nor will it be for charity that a little 
 earth shall be given to my bones. Tenderly will those duties be 
 paid, as the debt of well-earned aftection, and of gratitude not 
 ashamed of her tears." But with this last wash it was now found 
 impossible to comply. His will was altogether silent regarding 
 his interment ; and of the four executors whom he had appointed 
 only one was present in Dublin. That excellent person (Mr. John 
 Franks of the Irish bar), had he been left to the exercise of his 
 sole discretion, would have yielded to none in j^erforming any act 
 of honour or affection to the memory of his friend ; but in con- 
 sequence of the absence of the other executors, and from several 
 legal considerations, he could not feel himself justified in autho- 
 rising any departure from the ordinary course. Mr. Curran's 
 remains were, therefore, privately interred in London, in one of 
 the vaults of the Paddington church.^ 
 
 * The persons who attended his funeral were (besides the members of his own family) 
 Mr. Tegart, Messrs. Lyne and P. Phillips, of the Irish bar, Mr. P. Finnerty, the late Mr. 
 Thomas Thompson, the Rev. George Croly, Mr. Thomas Moore, and Mr. Godwin. Mr. 
 O'Connell's professional engagements had obliged him reluctantly to depart for Ireland 
 before the day of Mr. Curran's interment. — C. [Mr, O'Connell was ai Rath when Curran 
 died. He immediately wrote to Mr. Phillips, at London, strongly recosnuiending a public 
 
464 LIFE OF CURRAN. 
 
 [In 1834, seventeen years after the deatli of Mr. Curran, a com- 
 mittee of gentlemen was formed in Dublin, to provide for the 
 removal of his mortal remains to Ireland. Prospect Cemetery, 
 Glasnevin, Dublin, was the locality selected for his last earthly 
 resting-place. The consent of his son (and biographer) was 
 obtained, — a faculty permitting the removal of the body from 
 Paddington Church was procured, — the exhumed body was 
 removed to the house of Alderman Sir Matthew Wood, in George 
 Street, — it was thence taken to Dublin, where it was received by 
 Mr. W. H. Curran and one of the Committee, — was temporarily 
 deposited in the private Mausoleum at Lyons, the residence of Lord 
 Cloncurry, the friend of Curran, — and was finally removed to a 
 grave at Glasnevin. The attendants were Messrs. W. H. Curran, John 
 Finlay, Con. Lyne, and Andrew Carew O'Dwyer — the last-named 
 being the person with whom originated the proposition for restoring 
 the remains to their native soil. This re-interment was private. 
 The pageantry of a national procession which was suggested, was 
 respectfully and judiciously declined by Mr. W. H. Curran. A 
 massive sarcophagus in Glasnevin contains the remains of Ireland's 
 great orator and patriot, and the inscription, far more expressive 
 than a laboured epitaph, is simpl)^ the one word 
 
 CURRAN. 
 
 There is a monimient to Curran in St. Patrick's Cathedral, 
 Dublin — a bust by Moore, on a sarcophagus. It is copied from 
 Lawrence's portrait, and, Mr. Davis says, " is the finest monument, 
 so simply made, I ever saw. It is most like him in his glorified 
 
 funeral, declaring that of all, he was "the only incorrupted and faithful," adding, 
 " There is a loveliness and a heartiness over me when I think of this great man whom 
 we have lost. Charles, there never was so honest an Irishman. His very soul was 
 republican Irish. Look to his history in 1778, in '82, in 1790— at the Union— at all times— 
 in all places." He suggested that the Irish of all classes in London should be invited to 
 attend the funeral, each wearing a shamrock, and that " on his coffin should be laid a 
 broken harp and a wreath of shamrock."— The funeral was private.— :M.] 
 
curran's monument. 165 
 
 mood, full of tiioiiglit and action. In an Irisli Pantheon, our 
 greatest orator should be represented at full length, and the has- 
 reliefs of his sarcophagus should be his receiving Father Neale's 
 blessing, his rising to defend the Sheareses, his delivery of the 
 judgment on Merry and Power, and his weeping for Ireland near 
 his child's grave at the Priory."] 
 
466 LIFE OF CUERA^. 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 Observations on Mr. Curran's Eloquence — Objections to his Style considered — His habits 
 of preparation for Public Speaking — His Ideas of Popular Eloquence — His Pathos — 
 Variety of his powers — His Imagination — Peculiarity of his Images— His use of Ridicule 
 — Propensity to Metaphor — Irish eloquence — Its origin — Mr. Curran's and Burke's 
 eloquence compared. 
 
 For the last twenty years of Lis life, Mr. Ciirran enjoyed tlie 
 reputation of being the most eloquent advocate that had ever ap- 
 peared at the Irish bar ; and if future times shall hold his genius 
 in estimation, it is eloquence ^vhich must entitle him to that dis- 
 tinction."^ His name may, indeed, derive a still more splendid 
 
 * O'Regan says : " Whatever criticism may have torn from him, — however mutilated 
 he may have been by the shallowne?s or inaccuracy of his reporters, his effect has been as 
 described; in one comparatively subordinate power of mind, so frequently mistaken for 
 genius or high understanding, he manifested taste in almost every subject connected 
 with literature. His skill in music made him attentive to the structure and harmony of 
 his periods. He well knew that eloquence charmed the ear, and opened the widest 
 entrance to the heart ; and he studied with great earnestness the principles of this art. 
 So fastidious was he of pedantry, that, amidst his profuse quotations from the ancient 
 classics, he studiously avoided this error : when he used them, they were employed as 
 powerful illustrations, or beautiful ornaments. He was one of those few scholars who 
 stripped literature of that affectation which encumbers it; he broke and flung away the 
 husk and shell by which it is too frequently surrounded; and his delicacy fused the 
 original sentiments into his native language, enriching both by the medium through 
 which both were delivered. You drank the Falernian in all its richness and raciness. 
 You looked not to the musty casks of antiquity for the mark of the consulate, in which 
 it had been stored ; but you got it defoecated and poured forth in profusion into the clear 
 modern glass, sparkling and mantling in all the purple colours, and in all the odour and 
 flavour of its -best vintage. To this exquisite delicacy of taste Mi\ Curran had not an 
 exclusive title ; in the fine and cultivated mind of Mr. Bushe, redolent with classics, he 
 may have found a rival." He adds — "Such was the effect produced, that in taking the 
 note of his speech in the case of Massy and Headfort, in which I was of counsel with 
 him, I became suspended ; the hand forgot its office, and, till roused from the delicious 
 transport by some friend near me, I was not conscious that I left the paper unstained by 
 any one note. On observing this circumstance to Mr. Curran in a few days after, he 
 said, ' Possibly at that very moment you were taking the best impression, perhaps then 
 drinking deeply. It is probable it was then you were doing me and yourself the greatest 
 justice.' " — M. 
 
HIS ELOQUENCE. 467 
 
 claim to po^tlnimoiis respect, for the purity and manliness of Lis 
 public conduct, during times when the hearts and nerves of so 
 many others were tried, and sunk beneath the proof. Divested of 
 this, his eloquence would have been comparatively worthless. 
 Orators are common characters ; but it is not so common to find a 
 man, uj^on every occasion of his life preferring his public duty to 
 his personal advancement — conducting himself, amidst the shock 
 of civil contentions, with danger and allurements on every side, so 
 as to command the entire approbation of his own conscience and 
 the more impartial, though not more valuable, applause of that 
 succeeding time which is a stranger to the particular interests and 
 passions that might bias its decisions. This period has not yet come ; 
 but it may be asserted that it is approaching, and that v.-hen it shall 
 actually arrive, Mr. Curran's memory has notliing to fear from its 
 judgment. Before this tribunal it will be admitted that he, and 
 the few who joined him, in making (in defiance of much momentary 
 opprobrium) an undaunted stand against those sinister measures 
 upon which the framers have subsequently reflected with shame, 
 were but exercising the right of superior minds, whose privilege it 
 is to discern, amidst all the tumult of conflicting opinions, and the 
 hasty expedients of ephemeral sagacity, wliat alone is permanently 
 wise and good — to judge the men and acts of their own day, witli 
 the same unbetraying firmness with which they judge the times that 
 have passed, and with which posterity will judge themselves. It 
 will not be overlooked, that it is the ordinary fate of such persons 
 to be misconceived and reviled ; that in the hour of general intoxi- 
 cation, the most grievous of offenders is he who passes the cup, 
 and will not be degraded, rebuking, by his importunate sobriety, 
 the indecent revelry that surrounds him. To have done this will 
 be considered more rare and honourable in Mr. Curran's history, 
 than to have been distinguished by the most commanding abilities ; 
 but in his case it is needless to dwell upon his conduct as separated 
 from his oratory. " Words," said Mirabeau, " are things." In Mr. 
 Curran's public life, liis speeches were his acts; and all that the 
 
468 LIFE OF CURRAN. 
 
 reader of tliem requires to know is, tliat his practice never discre- 
 dited liis professions. If what he said was honest, what he did was 
 not less so. His language and his actions had a common origin and 
 object, and cannot now be dissociated for the purpose of separate 
 encomium or condemnation ; it is out of his own mouth that he 
 must now be judged. 
 
 His eloquence was original, not formed by the imitation of any- 
 preceding model, so much as resulting from his individual consti- 
 tution of mind and temperament, and from the particular nature of 
 the society and the scenes upon which he was thrown. With the 
 same advantages of education elsewhere, he would undoubtedly 
 have risen above the ordinary level — he possessed powers too un- 
 common to keep him long in obscurity ; but it required the theatre 
 upon which his life was passed, to give them that exact direction 
 to which his oratory is indebted for its peculiar character.* The 
 history of his mind is, in this respect, intimately connected with 
 that of his country. 
 
 By nature ardent, of the most acute sensibility, instinctively alive 
 to every social gratification, he passed his infancy and youth among 
 those ranks where such qualities are the peculiar objects of applause. 
 The heart naturally cherishes the scenes and authors of its first 
 indulgences ; and Mr. Curran entered upon his career of public 
 
 * Mr. O'Regan says: "He found within himself the happy power of giving shapes and 
 exquisite forms to the beings of his own ci'eation. Whether passing from images of ter- 
 ror to the soft and tender touches of pathos; whether he sported in the laugh of comedy, 
 or in the broad grin of farce, he was equally successful in all. If he would hurl the bolt 
 of a Jupiter, shake thrones, and appal tyrants, you might conceive it was the work of 
 Homer ! Would he move to pity, you had all the effect of Virgil ; and would he excite to 
 mirth or laughter, you might have fancied yourself conversing with a Congreve. Such 
 was his excellence in each of these departments, that he may have placed himself nearly 
 at the head of each ; yet, though he rejected with fastidiousness to form himself either 
 on the plans of the sophists, or of those societies which prefer words to ideas, talking to 
 thinking, he furnished his mind from the great stores of antiquity, and enriched it with 
 much of the best and purest modern literature. By both he chastened the wanderings of 
 his own luxuriant imagination, and regulated the branches without injuring the tree ; 
 the sap was directed to feed the trunk, not to waste its aliment in idle foliage, or in 
 gaudy flowers." — M. 
 
SYMPATHY WITH THE PEOPLE. 469 
 
 life strongly attached to that order of the commumty which he 
 had first known and of which, notwithstanding his accidental 
 elevation, he considered himself as a part, and as bound to their 
 interests by every motive of symjmthy and duty. This early incli- 
 nation to the popular cause could not fail to be encouraged by 
 the condition of the times — by the successful efforts of America, 
 which excited so much imitative enthusiasiii in Ireland — and by 
 those consequent movements of patriotic spirit which preceded the 
 revolution of 1782. But, above all, there was in his daily view the 
 degraded condition of his fellow-subjects ; a spectacle which, with- 
 out any farther incentive, might readily awaken, in a feeling breast, 
 much suspicion of the wisdom and humanity of the government that 
 could countenance such a system. Nor did his mind, when it 
 ascended from his own personal impulses to the less questionable 
 conclusions of England's great legal and constitutional authorities, 
 discover anything that should make him pause in his estimate of 
 the importance of the people's privileges. In contemplating the 
 British constitution, to the fullest benefits of which he never ceased 
 to vindicate his country's most undoubted claim, his first and his 
 last conviction \vas, that no matter by what terms it might be 
 described, it was essentially popular ; that the original elemental 
 principle which gave it life and vigour, and which alone could give 
 it permanency, w^as the subject's freedom ; that this, the most vital 
 part, experience had shown to be most exposed to unconstitutional 
 invasion ; and that, as long as this practical tendency subsisted, it 
 behoved every friend to the throne and the laws to demonstrate his 
 attachment, not by a parade of simulated or fanatic loyalty, but by 
 upholding, on every occasion, the dignity and the spirit of the sub- 
 ject. But, whatever was the cause, whether the original character 
 of his mind, or the influence of early associations, or his education, 
 or the passing scene, or, as seems most probable, all of them 
 combined, he no sooner appeared than he declared himself the 
 advocate of the people's rights, a title which he ever after sup- 
 ported with an ardour and constancy that leave no doubt of his 
 sincerity. 
 
470 LIFE OF CURRAN. 
 
 It was the intensity of his feeling, which obstacles soon matured 
 into a passion, that gave such an uncommon interest to his oratory. 
 Whatever may be the opinion of the expediency of such popular 
 tenets, there is a natural magnificence about them, when presented 
 through the medium of a fervid imagination, to which the most 
 unsvmpathising are compelled to pay a momentary homage — to 
 those who are persuaded of their truth, and Avho feel that they 
 have been defrauded of their benefits, they come as oracles fraught 
 with rapture and consolation. 
 
 In all Mr. Curran's political speeches this sentiment of devoted at- 
 tachment to liberty and to the country is conspicuous, animating and 
 dignifying every topic that he advances. It cannot be too frequently 
 repeated (and to attest it is a debt that Ireland owes his memory) 
 that in his most vehement assertion of her rights, he was most 
 conscientiously sincere. His love of Ireland w^as of no vulgar and 
 fickle kind, originating in interest, vanity or ambition. Ireland was 
 the choice of his youth, and was from first to last regarded by him, 
 not so much with the feelings of a patriot as with the romantic 
 idolatry of a lover. To her his heart was contracted for better and 
 for worse ; to her " what he had to give he gave," confederating 
 all his most cherished projects with her w-ayward fortunes, and 
 surrendering to her service all the resources of his genius, in the 
 successive stages of her pride, her hopes, her struggles, and her 
 despair. In him every man who knew him knew that these were 
 not common-place pretences, which he put forth as mere instru- 
 ments of rhetoric : the most sensitive of his audience were never 
 under more subjection to his enthusiasm than he was himself; and 
 it w'as in the evidence of this fact, more than in any art, that lay 
 the extraordinary fascination of his manner. There was no elabo- 
 rate ardour, no technical impetuosity ; nothing to imply that while 
 his lips were on fire his heart might be cold ; but every look, tone, 
 and gesture, carried with them the conviction, that if he were 
 deluding them he was deluding himself. 
 
 Much of this fervour may be collected from his printed speeches, 
 but let the reader of them, in justice to their author, recollect that 
 
OBJECTIONS TO HIS STYLE. 471 
 
 he is a reader, not an auditor ; that tlioiigli lie may find the words, 
 and even these imperfectly recorded, he finds not all those accom- 
 paniments, without which the language is but a cold monumental 
 image of the thoughts that once glowed with living energy. The 
 words remain, but the eye before Avhich judges and juries have £0 
 often shrunk — the unaffected and finely varying tones of indignant 
 remonstrance, or of tender expostulation — the solemn and pathetic 
 pause that embodied in a moment's silence more passion and per- 
 suasion than any spoken eloquence could convey — for these, and 
 for much more than these, the reader must necessarily look in vain ; 
 and without them his estimate of the orator's entire powers must 
 be as conjectural, as if he should undertake to appreciate the 
 merits of some departed ornament of the stage from a tame peru- 
 sal of the scenes to which he alone had imparted all the warmth 
 and dignity of life. 
 
 Mr. Curran's speeches have met with some unfavourable criti- 
 cism out of Ireland ; and, though many of the objections may be 
 founded, many have also been made without a sufficient advertence 
 to the scenes which accompanied their delivery. It is found that 
 there are passages and descriptions too strong, and even shocking 
 for the closet. One of their principal merits was, that they were 
 never intended for the closet : they were intended for occasions of 
 emergency and despair; to excite passions of such force as to 
 counteract the violence of those that already raged; to rescue the 
 accused, and not to propitiate the critic. Yet even the critic, who 
 condemns the taste that could paint the perjured informer, and other 
 public delinquents, in such loathsome colours as the Irish advo- 
 cate employed, should remember, that upon this subject his own 
 rules will justify an important distinction. A writer who, in works of 
 mere invention where he has the selection of his topics, takes a 
 delight in dwelling upon revolting ideas, may be justly accused of 
 being unhappy and perverted in his taste ; but this is only where 
 the introduction of such images is gratuitous, and not naturally aris- 
 ing from the horror of the situation. We should proscribe such 
 
4T2 LIFE OF CUKRAN. 
 
 situations altogether, were we fastidiously to reject the only colors 
 in which they could be painted. We da not complain of Burns for 
 the " father's grey hairs sticking to the heft,"* nor of Campbell 
 for the "life-blood oozino- throuo-h the sod."! Juliet is not hissed 
 off the stage for her anticipated loathings in the tomb of the 
 Capulets : so also it is but fair to judge of similar passages of Mr. 
 Curran's oratory, and with this additional consideration, that instead 
 of inventing, he was but describing existing facts and characters, 
 in portraying Avhicli no language or illustration could surpass 
 the nauseous. Before he had described the perjured v/itness as 
 emerging from " those catacombs of li'vdng deatli, where the 
 wretch that is buried a man lies till his heart has time to fester 
 and dissolve, and is then dug up an informer^'' he had day after 
 day seen those horrid apparitions stalk upon the public table, and 
 he had himself been almost scared from his duty by the frightful 
 glarings with which they would have converted the general exe- 
 cration into general dread, into the undissembled homage of defe- 
 rential horror. J; 
 
 A more sustainable objection to his style is the exuberance and 
 occasional extravagance of his imagery. It would be no defence 
 of him to say that he could not avoid it ; that in the ardour of 
 extemporaneous creation, his mind frequently lost all authority over 
 its associations. It was, indeed, the fact, that his imagination did 
 often tyrannize over his other faculties, and that many wayward ideas 
 were precipitated into existence by the still pressing throng that 
 
 * Tam O'Shanter. t O'Connor's child. 
 
 $ " I have been eighteen years at this bar, and never until this year (1794) have I seen 
 such witnesses supporting charges of this kind with such abandoned profligacy. In one 
 case where men were on their trial for their lives, I felt myself involuntarily shrinking 
 under your lordship's protection from the miscreant who leaped upon the table and an- 
 nounced himself a witness. I was trusting in God, that these strange exhibitions would 
 be confined to the remote parts of the country. I was astonished to see them parading 
 through the capital; but I feel that the night of unenlightened wretchedness is fsist approach- 
 ing, when a man shall be judged before he is tried — when the advocate shall be libelled 
 for performing his duty to his client, that right of human nature — when the victim shall 
 be hunted down, not because he is criminal, but because he is obnoxious." — Mr. Cur- 
 rani's Defence of Dr. Drennan^ 1794. 
 
HIS DESULTORY PREPARATION. 473 
 
 followed before his taste had time to suppress or adorn them. This 
 defect was perhaps in some degree organic; perhaps discipline 
 and caution might have corrected it ; but unless he had altogether 
 changed his modes of intellectual exercise, it could scarcely be 
 expected that any care could have entirely removed it. 
 
 The dangers of offending against good taste depend in a great 
 measure upon the class of the mental powers that are employed. 
 They who confine themselves to the exercise of those of reasoning, 
 may continue from day to day to give extemporaneous utterance to 
 every idea ; and though they fail in their logic with every breath, 
 may still avoid the smallest violation of good taste. But when the 
 mind ascends to subjects of invention and imagination, there is no 
 longer this security. Where is the poet, the most intuitively cor- 
 rect, who does not reject much which at first had pleased ; whose 
 mind has not been even incommoded by the intrusion of many fan- 
 tastic combinations, which instead of venturing to express in lan- 
 guage, he crushes at the moment of their birth ? And it is only 
 by exercising this right over the children of its fancy, by condemn- 
 ing the deformed to an early death, that of those who are permit- 
 ted to survive, none are without beauty and proportion. The ora- 
 tor who in the same way aspires to create, and who, like Mr. Cur- 
 ran, defers the work till he is excited by the presence of a pub- 
 lic audience, has- to encounter all the dangers of the poet, without 
 enjoying his privileges. The same fervour and impetuosity that 
 lead to felicity, will often hurry him into extravagance : the 
 latter, once produced, cannot be recalled — he has no leisure to 
 soften, and mould, and reconcile ; and hence conceptions, which 
 in his cooler moments he would have suppressed, or have 
 rendered worthy of himself, remain irrevocably accusers of his 
 taste. 
 
 JBut perhaps this subject will be most readily explained, by ad- 
 verting to Mr. Curran's habits of preparation for public speaking. 
 From tihe first experiment of his talents, in London, till he had at- 
 tained some eminence at the bar, he never composed his speeches 
 
4:74: 
 
 LIFE OF CURRAN. 
 
 for the purpose of delivering- them from memory ; but both at the 
 .debating societies, and during his early years at the bar, he used 
 to assist his mind by ample notes upon the questions to which he 
 had to speak. When his reputation rose, he for a while adopted 
 the former method ; but such written attempts having proved com- 
 paratively stiif and cold, and in every way greatly inferior to his 
 more extemporaneous effusions, his own judgment, and the advice 
 of his friends, induced him for ever to abandon that plan, and ad- 
 here to the one more suited to the habits and character of his 
 mind. 
 
 There was something peculiar and desultory in his manner of 
 considering the important questions that he had to meet. He very 
 rarely retired formally to his closet : it was as he walked in the 
 hall of the courts, or as he rode between Dublin and his country 
 seat, or during his evening strolls through his own grounds,"^^ that 
 
 * On letting his beautiful and tasty residence in the county of Cork, which was distant 
 from the lakes of Kiilarney but one short day's journey, he became the purchaser of a 
 country-seat near Rathfarnham, on the slope of those delightful hills hanging over the 
 Marquis of Ely's demesne. The scenery before the windows is of interminable expanse, 
 and commanding one of the richest and best dressed landscapes in Ireland, including the 
 Bay of Dublin, the ship?, the opposite hill of Howth, the pier, the light-house, and a long 
 stretch of the county of Dublin ; on the eastern side May-puss Craggs and obelisks, and a 
 long range of hills. The house is plain, but substantial, and the grounds peculiarly well 
 laid out, and neatly kept; sheltered to the south by a bridge of mountains; and tliough its 
 elevation is considerable and commanding, it is relatively a plain or flattening on the 
 mountain's side; its prospects are delightful. It was, as he said, a toilette, at which one 
 might dress and shave for eternity. Situated about four miles from Dublin, and a sort of 
 centre beiween the seats of his friend Mr. G iltan in the county of Wicklow, and the late 
 Mr. George Ponsonby in the county of Kildare, and about eight miles from each. The 
 country surrounding it is enchanting, and the neighbourhood populous and good. Within 
 the short distance of two miles on the city side, was Lord Avonmore's seat of Fortfield, 
 the residence of tlie present Master of the Rolls, Sir William M'Mahon. The houses of 
 many other gentlemen of his friendship and of his profession were thickly crowded 
 round him. Here it was he chose to pass in study,- or in society, those hours which were 
 not devoted to business ; and here he generally entertained his friends. He brought no- 
 thing from his former country residence but its name (the Priory). His table was frugal ; 
 plain, yet comfortable ; but his wines were the best and choicest, in which he did not 
 generally more indulge, than in the ordinary manner of a gentleman. His deviations 
 from sobriety were not frequent, and made but exceptions to his usual habits of temper- 
 ance. Here it was, like Achilles in his tent, he delighted his heart with his harp^ the vio- 
 loncello was his instrument, and from this he did not desire reputation for skill fn that de- 
 
EXTEMPOiiANEOUS ELOQUENCE. 475 
 
 he meditated his subjects. Sometimes as he lay in bed, he had 
 (like Rousseaii,f and \yitli a more fortunate memory) creative visita- 
 tions, which he often declared were to him more delightful than 
 repose. One of his most usual and favourite times of meditation, 
 was when he had his violin or violoncello in his hand : he would 
 thus forget liimself for hours, running voluntaries over the strings, 
 or executing some trivial air, while his imagination was far away, 
 collecting its forces for the coming emergency. 
 
 Many of his finest passages were extemporaneous bursts, but many 
 were thus prepared. It is, however, worth observing, that he seldom 
 committed them verbally to memory. He contemplated the 
 
 lightful art. He sought no more than to feel the pleasure it imparted ; nor am I apprised 
 that he ever aspired to the glory of exhibiting even at a concert. An Irish giant used to 
 come from the mountains to play upon it, and said it was the biggest fiddle he ever met; 
 but that it was very awkward with but three strings, for so he sometimes found it. Here 
 also it was that he composed much more than as yet has met the eye. Still it may be 
 hoped, that a criticism of Milton's Paradise Lost may survive ihe wreck of works which a 
 fastidious and refined taste may have too rapidly condemned. Leisure and revision may 
 give a finish wliich may not satisfy himself, yet the efforts of such a mind, however care- 
 lessly flung off, nmst always be gratifying to curiosity. At his dinners two peculiarities 
 appeared : one constantly, that of having dinner served to the minute of five o'clock. 
 This was frequently inconvenient to others, but as he defin«d a good dinner to be two 
 dishes and fi^e o'clock, it sometimes occurred, that tliere were no other terms to be inclu- 
 ded in this definition. He drank a few glasses of port at dinner, " to keep," as he said, 
 " the wet of the claret out of his stomach." The second peculiarity was, that you fre- 
 quently met at his table persons seldom undistinguished, though often unknown to each 
 other. And in this he often resembled his friend .Tohn HorneTooke, who at his feasts at 
 Wimbledon had persons of all tongues, nations, characters, and qualities. His own habits 
 were plain and frugal, though the pomp and parade of good living did not appal him. He 
 sustained through life a preference of the comforts to the luxuries of the table. Liqueurs 
 being served after dinner, noyeau, persico, and everything recherche ; malmsey, Madeira, 
 hock, &c., Mr. Curran being asked which he would prefer, seized a bottle of the lattei-, 
 and said, " Hoc erat in votis. A young gentleman who sat near him observed that the 
 liqueurs were much better, and importunately recommended persico, adding that he who 
 was fond of the Medes, should love the Persians also : to which Mr. Curran instantly re- 
 plied, Persicos odi puer. — O'Regan. 
 
 * " Je meditois dans mon lit a yeux fermes, et je tournois et retournois dans ma tete 
 mes periodes avec des peines incroyables ; puis quand j'etois parvenu a en etre content, 
 je les deposois dans ma memoire, jusqu'a ce que jepusse les mettre sur le papier ; mais le 
 temps de me lever et de m'habiller me faisoit tout perdre, et quand je m'etois mis a mon 
 papier, il ne me venoit presque plus rien de ce que j'avois compose." — Confessioiis di 
 liousseau. 
 
476 LIFE OF CURRAN. 
 
 topics and images until lie had secured them beyond the danger of 
 escape, and when the occasion came, and the same train of asso- 
 ciations was revived, his mind not so much recollected, as repeated 
 anew the operations by which it had originally created. He had 
 not the words of a single sentence by heart ; he had the leading 
 ideas, and trusted to their reappearance to recall the same diction 
 and imagery which had been suggested at the first interview. But 
 it almost invariably happened that his own expectations were far 
 exceeded, and that wdien his mind came to be more intensely heat- 
 ed by his subject, and by that inspiring confidence which a public 
 audience seldom fails to infuse into all who are sufiiciently gifted 
 to receive it, a multitude of new ideas, adding vigour or ornament, 
 were given oft"; and it also happened, that in the same prolific mo- 
 ments, and as almost their inevitable consequence, some crude and 
 fentastic notions escaped ; which, if they impeached their author's 
 taste, at least leave him the merit of a splendid fault which none 
 but men of genius can commit. 
 
 This was the account that he gave of his own intellectual 
 habits, which he recommended to the imitation of all who aspired 
 to excel in oratory ; for according to his idea of popular 
 eloquence, a facility of extemporaneous creation and arrangement, 
 and of adapting and modifying according to the occasion, the pro- 
 duce of previous meditation, was indispensable : vnthout it a 
 person might be an elegant composer, and a skilful reciter and 
 actor, but being necessarily at the mercy of every unforeseen con- 
 tingency, could never be an orator. The practice of writing 
 speeches and delivering them from memory, he strongly repro- 
 bated ; he considered that it not only cut off the speaker from the 
 benefit of those accidental bursts which so often turn the fortune 
 of the day, and for which no anticipating sagacity can provide ; 
 but that when exclusively persevered in for any time, it directly 
 tended to debilitate his mind ; that instead of habituating him to 
 a manly confidence in his own resources, and to that generous 
 surrender of himself to the enthusiasm of the moment, which can 
 
EXTEMPORE SPEAKINa. 4:77 
 
 almost impart the gift of miracles to tliose who put their faith in 
 it, and which, even where it leads astray, Avill cany away the 
 audience in its train, it generated a noxious taste for verbal linery 
 — for epigram, antithesis, and inanimate declamation ; and along 
 with this, a pusillanimous and irrecoverable apprehension of failing 
 to be correct, so destructive of that spirit of adventure, and occa- 
 sionally heedless intrepidity, v.dthout which there is no plunging 
 into the deeper recesses of human passions. So strongly was he 
 impressed with the opinion that real eloquence demanded the 
 fullest measure of extemporaneous ardour and ability, that when, 
 about a year before his death, he was urgently solicited to address 
 a jury in defence of a friend against whom an action for a libel 
 was depending, he could not bring himself to comply v>dth the 
 request, however honourable and complimentary •* assigning as 
 one of his reasons, his suspicion that after a desuetude of ten years, 
 added to the more temperate and hesitating views which his 
 judicial functions during that period had imposed, his mind might 
 have become too rigid to yield to all the impulses of popular 
 emotion with the same prompt and fortunate reliance which had 
 secured the triumphs of his younger days.f 
 
 He was unaffectedly communicative to his young friends of 
 the bar who consulted him on these subjects.]; Amongst other 
 
 * To have done so would have been a violation of all professional precedent. In 
 Great Britain and Ireland, a man who has once occupied the Bench never returns to 
 the Bar.— M. 
 
 + One of Mr. Curran's greatest and longest efforts was his defence of Mr. Hamilton 
 Rowan. The following is a copy of the notes from which he spoke upon that occasion, 
 and their small number will show his dependence upon his own mind, without much 
 mechanical aid. 
 
 " To arms. — 2°. Reform — 3°. Catholic emancip. — 4°. Convention — now unlawful — 
 Consequence of conviction — Trials before revolution — Drowned — Lambert — Muir — 
 Character of R. — furnace, &c. — Rebellion smothered stalks — Redeeming spirit." — C. 
 
 X O'Regiin says, " For the many years of his practice in the hall, his wit made an 
 Eera ; there went by no day that did not furnish something new from him. The young 
 and old of the bar were so fascinated with his effusions, that they got rapid circulation ; 
 they were echoed through the courts, and did, like sound, propagate themselves in every 
 direction. You had them in the streets, and at the table; they were as certainly sup- 
 plied, and made as necessary apart of the entertainment, as the wine: they travelled 
 
478 LIFE OF CURKAN. 
 
 particulars, lie used to tell them, that the peculiarities of his own 
 person had had an influence in formino- his style of public speak- 
 ing. He was conscious that it wanted dignity and grace, and in 
 the apprehension that vehemence might expose him to ridicule, he 
 originally proposed to himself to become persuasive by a mild, 
 expostulatory manner ; but when he foi'med this resolution he was 
 unaware of his own resources ; his genius, as soon as exasperated 
 into an exertion of its force, prevailed over all the suggestions of 
 modest precaution. Still it may be observed in almost all his 
 speeches, that the first propensity is perpetually declaring itself; 
 that in the midst of all his arguments, and impetuosity, and 
 invective, he never forgets to implore. 
 
 But independent of any study and design upon his part, it 
 was here that he was by nature pre-eminently qualified to succeed. 
 His speeches upon political subjects contain many afiecting speci- 
 mens of his pathetic powers ; but it was in questions confined to 
 individual interests, where the domestic or social relations had 
 been abused, that he exhibited the entire extent of his command 
 over all the softer emotions of the human breast. For the secret 
 of this power he was little indebted to books, or to the artifices of 
 rhetoric. Its source was in his habitually intense sensibility to the 
 affecting scenes of real life, moi'e peculiarly to those of domestic 
 happiness or aftection, as he witnessed them in their most natural 
 and tender forms, among those humble classes Avith which his 
 original condition had first familiarised him. While yet a boy he 
 caught an inspiration of the plaintive genius of his country, where, 
 after all, the national genius prefers to dwell — beneath the 
 peasant's roof. According to his own account, it was in the Irish 
 cabin that he first learned to w^ep for others. He found there, 
 what all who stoop to enter may find, the rude elements of the 
 
 with you into the country ; they were domesticated everywhere ; they pleased youth and 
 delighted old age. When he left the practice of his profession, he did not leave the hall. 
 He frequently descended from the bench, and distracted in groups of admirers his over 
 active and over ardent mind."— M. 
 
PASSIONATE OKATORY. 479 
 
 finest and softest affections. It was there that his young fancy, 
 powerfully impressed with the living spectacle of all those homely 
 but vigorous movements of undisguised nature which touch the 
 heart the most, unconsciously prepared itself for those pathetic 
 descriptions at which future assemblies were to melt : and when 
 the occasion came of calling upon his hearers for their sympathy, 
 he had only to present fo their imagination some of those pictures 
 of tenderness or distress over which he had so often wept himself. 
 
 His pathos, however, was not confined to such delineations ; 
 much of its influence depends upon the solemn associations which 
 it raises, upon its alliance with emotions of a higher order than 
 individual sufiering can produce. The pangs of a single victim 
 may appeal most forcibly to our pity, but the more intense the 
 feeling, the more it is in danger of failing in dignity. One of the 
 charms of Mr. Curran's pathos is, that it is so ofte-ii connected with 
 patriotic sorrow, or with more extensive and enlightened regrets 
 for the general fate of nations. He represents the great principles 
 of freedom as outraged and depressed, and deplores their fall ; but 
 we are perpetually reminded that they deserved a nobler destiny, 
 and are made to feel the same sentiment of exalted melancholy, 
 with which we would bend over the grave of one of the illustrious 
 dead. We may lament the loss as irretrievable, but in the utmost 
 extremity of our grief, we are elevated by the consciousness that 
 we bear an honourable testimony to our own sensibility to departed 
 worth. 
 
 But it was not only by successful appeals to any single passion 
 that he surpassed every forensic speaker of his country ; the won- 
 der that he excited was owing to the rapidity of his transitions 
 from passion to passion, from the deepest emotions that agitate 
 the soul up to the liveliest combinations of a playful imagination. 
 And yet this, the most extraordinary and distinguishing of his 
 powers, can never be fully comprehended by those who know him 
 only through his graver and recorded efforts. It is upon the lat- 
 ter that his general and lasting fame must now depend ; but in 
 
480 LIFE OF CUKKAN. 
 
 Ireland, while any of his cotemporaries who heard him survive, 
 and perhaps long after they all shall have followed him to the 
 grave, his name will enjoy a peculiar and scarcely less brilliant 
 reputation in the traditional accounts of the numberless unpre- 
 meditated and magical effusions that have been no otherwise 
 preserved ; and which in the estimation of his admiring hearers 
 would alone have rendered him the ornament and boast of the 
 Irish bar. For more than twenty years those astonishingly varied 
 talents, upon which the critic may now fear to pass too unqualified 
 an encomium, converted the Irish courts of justice into a theatre 
 of popular recreation, whither day after day the multitude delighted 
 to flock to behold the orator in whom they gloried, going, in the 
 space of a few^ moments, his rounds of the human passions and 
 the human faculties; alternately sublime, indignant, sarcastic, 
 subtle, playful, pathetic. 
 
 This extreme versatility, if Mr. Curran be contemplated as a 
 model, may be deemed a defect, but Ibr every practical purpose 
 its success was so decided as to justify his adopting it. Had his 
 eloquence been more scliolastic, had ev-ery topic of persuasion 
 been selected with an eye to rhetorical observances, he v/ould have 
 escaped some literary reproaches, but he would have gained fewer 
 triumphs. The juries among whom he was thrown, and for whom 
 he originally formed his style, were not fastidious critics ; they 
 were more usually men abounding in rude unpolished sympathies, 
 and who were ready to surrender the treasure, of which they 
 scarcely knew the value, to him that offered them the most 
 alluring toys. Whatever might have been his own better taste, as 
 an advocate he soon discovered, that the surest way to persuade 
 was to conciliate by amusing them. . With them he found that 
 his imagination might revel unrestrained ; that, when once the 
 w^ork of intoxication was begun, every wayward fancy and wild 
 expression was as acceptable and effectual as the most refined wit ; 
 and that the favour which they would have refused to the unat- 
 tractive reasoner or to the too distant and formal orator, they had 
 
IMAGINATIVE FACULTY. 481 
 
 not the firmness to Avitlihold, when soHcited with the gny per- 
 suasive familiarity of a companion. These careless or licentious 
 habits, encouraged by early applause and victory, were ne\'er 
 thrown aside, and we can observe in almost all his productions, no 
 matter how august the audience, or how solemn the occasion, that 
 his mind is perpetually relapsing into its primitive indulgences. 
 
 But whatever judgment may now be passed upon those wander- 
 ings of fancy by which those who were actually allured away were 
 too charmed to utter a reproach, it is impossible to withhold our 
 admiration of those mental qualities in which the beauties and 
 imperfections of Mr. Curran's eloquence had equally their origin. 
 They both originated in that intense activity of the imaginative 
 faculty which was the predominant characteristic of his mind. It 
 was in the exceeding richness of this, that consisted the essential 
 distinctive originality of his style. It was not that his reasonings 
 were subtle, his topics imposing, or his periods flowing ; all of these 
 may be found in others ; but that what he passionately conceived, 
 he could convey in passion's proper idiom ; that his mind had 
 familiar access to a w^orld of splendid and vigorous illustration, 
 w^hence it could select at pleasure the clothing that might best 
 adorn, or ennoble every favourite idea ; it was that nature, in the 
 profuseness of her bounty, " filling even to overflowing," had " o'er 
 informed " him wdth that supplemental poetic sense, which, dis- 
 daining to recognise in objects their homely realities, is for ever 
 delighting to invest them with attributes not their own, raising 
 what is low, animating what is cold, veiling what is deformed, or 
 again fearlessly tearing away the veil where some high moral pur- 
 pose demands that the deformity beneath should be exposed and 
 exaggerated, and thus by the agency of its own creations, impart- 
 ing to what the vulgar eye might view with most indifterence, 
 imagined charms or visionary horror. 
 
 The images in which Mr. Curran excelled w^ere not of that order 
 which it requires, but a simple process of intellect, unconnected 
 with much mental or physical emotion to produce. There are 
 
 21 
 
4:82 LIFE OF CUREAN. 
 
 some cultivated minds, to which so much varied knowledge is at 
 all times present, that whatever be the subject of their thoughts, 
 innumerable resemblances force themselves upon them, rendering 
 them j^rofusely figurative, but evidently without for a moment 
 disturbing their tranquillity. But the Irish advocate's finest con- 
 ceptions Avere the growth of the deepest sensibility. In his 
 pathetic and descrijDtive bursts, so impressively did his language 
 communicate to others the full extent of his emotions, that it 
 might be said of him that at such moments he "felt aloud;" that 
 his words Avere but the audible throbbings of his bosom labouring 
 to vent itself in rapid, irregular, and abrupt gushes from the excess 
 of feeling that oppressed it. 
 
 In producing this electric sympath}^ between the orator and his 
 audience, there Avas something more than art can teach or than 
 nature gives to many. Its original source Avas in his heart and 
 spirit as much as in his talents; in his uncompromising and impas- 
 sioned identification of himself Avith his subjects ; in that chival- 
 rous devotion to Avhatever principle he espoused, which impelled 
 him boldly to defy and silence its adversaries, by the proud tender 
 of his OAvn individual responsibility for its truth and honour. In 
 this, there Avas much that belonged to the man, no less than to 
 the advocate — much of prcA'ious character — of personal and men- 
 tal intrepidity — of profound moral sensibility, and its companion, 
 moral pride, upon all the great questions of human rights and 
 obligations. It was this extreme sensibility, combined (if not 
 itself occasioned by) a superior intellect, that filled Mr. Curran's 
 style Avith so much bold and vivid imagery. For it Avould be 
 most unjust to attribute to him any deficiency of logical poAvers, 
 because he so frequently supported the cause of freedom and 
 morals, by sentiment and imagination. The very reverse Avas the 
 fact. Of the dignity and importance of that cause, every sound 
 understanding which reflects upon it is convinced ; but there is a 
 degree of intense conviction, knoAvai only to a few priA-ileged 
 minds, whose conclusions, instead of being the result of cold and 
 
HIS EARNESTNESS. 483 
 
 waiy deduction, flasli upon them at once with all the light and 
 warmth of instincts ; and the consequence of this rapid perception 
 is, that they either neglect or will not submit to a formal demon- 
 stration of Avhat they have themselves thus intuitively acquired, 
 or that assuming the truth to be equally evident to all, they think 
 not so much of proving as of enforcing it by imposing illustration, 
 and by addressing their hearers' imagination and passions, in 
 order to kindle in them the courage or the shame, without which, 
 in defiance of their conviction, the truth may be sacrificed to their 
 fears or interests. This was constantly Mr. Curran's great object, 
 and it was in effecting it that so much of his extraordinary power 
 lay. Few speakers ever possessed such despotic controul over the 
 honest passions of their audience, for few ever so unhesitatingly 
 surrendered themselves to the inspiration of their own. He had 
 the true popular temperament; there was no cold philosophic 
 tranquillity about him, but all was life and action. His thoughts, 
 style, and manner, " had certain vital signs." He was all his life 
 contendina: for a cause, and he did it with no " half-faced fellow^- 
 ship ;" he loved it " not wisely but too well," and not the less 
 because it wanted friends. His cause was his religion, to which 
 he adhered, under what he considered its persecution, with all the 
 confiding, " desperate fidelity " of a martyr ; and though his zeal 
 might to many appear mistaken, still it was zeal, real, disinterested 
 and fervent, aftecting from its sincerity even where its tendency 
 was least approved, and not unfrequently communicating its flame 
 by surprise to those who were most active in extinguishing it. 
 At the period of those displays to which these observations more 
 particularly refer, the times were "too deeply commoved" for 
 affectation ; his audiences saw and knew that he had none ; his 
 very irregularities proved it. He was not for ever reminding them 
 that he was an orator; he had, not the art, but what was above 
 art, the feeling and manliness to forget it himself. He did not 
 consider that he was only acting a part of which the world might 
 hereafter say, that it was well or ill supported; but that a great 
 
484 LIFE OF CURKAN. 
 
 constitutional trust had devolved upon him, of which, heedless of 
 the world's sentence upon his skill or conduct, he would I'igidly 
 perform all the solemn obligations. When miduig-ht after mid- 
 night* he rose, " with darkness and with dangers compassed 
 round," not so much with the expectation of averting his clients' 
 doom, as to show that all the decent rites of defence should be 
 observed, or to give utterance to his own anguish at his country's 
 fate, he took little thought of the future critic's comments. When 
 " his soul was sick even unto fainting," he was not studying how 
 " the stream of agony might flow decorously down his brow ; how 
 he should writhe with grace and groan in melody." Upon all 
 those terrible occasions, he felt himself to be much more tlian the 
 advocate of the mere individuals under trial; he had much to say 
 that was not contained in his instructions. However, as a subject 
 and a man, he might have condemned their projects or have 
 bewailed their delusion, he still considered it his paramount duty, 
 as the advocate of the thousands who were yet hesitating ere they 
 plunged, and whom a gleam of mercy might recall and save — as 
 the advocate of himself, of society, and of the last remnant of 
 the constitution, the pri\dlege of complaint — to discountenance 
 the rage of public accusation, and to protest in his own person 
 against the continuance of those fatal counsels, to which he refer- 
 red so much of the disasters that he witnessed and predicted. 
 
 It is impossible to read a page of his speeches without observing 
 how much the power depends upon this impassioned feeling ; and 
 how strikingly expressive of such a high temperature are the images 
 that he employed. Numberless examples might be given, as the 
 descriptions of the trial and execution of Orr — of the horrors of 
 those distracted times — of the Irish informer — of " the perjured 
 O'Brien,! a wretch who would dip the evangelists in blood " — of 
 Eeynolds, " who measured his importance by the cofiins of his vic- 
 
 * Several of his speeches on the state trials were delivered at that hour.— C. 
 + " I have heard of assassination by sword, by pistol, and by dagger; but here is 
 a wretch who would dip the evangelists in blood."— C, 
 
HIS FORENSIC EFFORTS. 485 
 
 tims, and appreciated liis fame in the field of evidence, as tlie Indian 
 warrior did in fight, by the number of scalps with which he could 
 swell his triumphs." Many of his images, when stript of the im- 
 posing phraseology, are remarkable for their simplicity and famil- 
 iarity, and for that reason came more home to tlie bosoms of their 
 hearers, as where he . exclaims — " Is it possible you can bring 
 yourselves to say to your country, when the measures of govern- 
 ment are pregnant with danger, that at such a season the press 
 ought to slumber upon its post, or sound nothing but adulation and 
 praise, acting like the perfidious watchman on his round, who sees 
 the robber wrenching the bolts, or the flames bursting from the win- 
 dows, while the inhabitant is wrapt in sleep, and cries out that ' the 
 morning is fair and all is well V " Or where, describing the extinc- 
 tion of the press, he thus concludes — " It is then that freedom is at 
 its last grasp — it is then the honest man dares not speak, because 
 truth is too dreadful to be told — it is then the proud man scorns to 
 speak, but, Hke a sturdy physician, bafiled by the wayward excesses 
 of a dying patient, retires indignantly fi'om the bed of an unhappy 
 wretch, whose ear is too fastidious to bear the sound of wholesome 
 advice — whose palate is too debauched to bear the salutary bitter 
 that might redeem him, and therefore leaves him to the felonious 
 piety of the slaves that talked to him of life, and strip him before 
 he's cold." 
 
 To this extreme sensibility Mr. Curran could, for the most part, 
 give expression in grave, energetic, and elevated language. Where 
 the subjects before his mind were those of pity or eulogium, or of 
 general description, passages wdthout number may be cited, in 
 which the most fastidious cannot complain that the dignity is 
 unsustained. But when he was called upon, as he so often found 
 himself, to speak in terms of reprobation ; when some great public 
 w^rongs, of which he had as quick a sense as of a personal outrage, 
 awakened his indignation, in the midst of more regular declama- 
 tion, there were frequent intrusions of ludicrous association, which, 
 at first view, may seem to form an unappropriate contrast w^th the 
 
486 LIFE OF CUIJKAN. 
 
 prevailing solemnity of tlie occasion. In the generality of such 
 instances, however, it will appear, upon a little consideration, that 
 the levity is in the language and not in the ruling sentiment. Ordi- 
 nary disapprobation may be conveyed in terms of ordinary and 
 serious reproach ; but in ardent natures, whose habit it is to over- 
 feel upon every subject, whether of praise or censure, the sense of 
 wrong, that in a common mind would stop at comparatively mode- 
 rate indignation, becomes inflamed by their fancy into feelings of 
 intense execration quite beyond the reach of formal invective to 
 express. Such persons are seldom satisfied with gravely reproving 
 what they condemn ; it is not enough " to tell it how they hate 
 it ;" they know that the expression of their hatred alone will not 
 detract from the dignity of its object; that it is often but the im- 
 potent railing of an inferior. AVhether it be a public or a private 
 delinquent that they denounce, they feel that they would be allow- 
 ing him to escape almost with impunity, if they did not degrade him 
 from his social or personal rank down to the level of his offence. 
 To hatred they therefore add bitter ridicule ; for ridicule, though 
 not the test of truth, is the test of scorn and contempt. Humour 
 for such a purpose (and it was for this that Mr. Curran most fre- 
 quently employed it) is not levity ; it has nothing of the sportings 
 of a heart at ease, but its source is in the profoundest passion, and 
 in that indignant haughtiness peculiar to the extreme of passion, 
 which in its most violent paroxysm will assume a proud vindictive 
 playfulness of exterior, lest the detested object should glory in the 
 discovery of all the agitation that he excites, or lest it might be 
 taken as a tribute to his importance to deem him worthy of a frown. 
 It was in this impassioned, exaggerating spirit, upon which the 
 particular talent of an advocate so much depends, that Mr. Curran 
 approached every person or measure that he had occasion to 
 arraign ; whether the subject of his sarcasm happened to be a rival 
 candidate, " whose voters might be seen coming in Hke the beasts 
 of the field, in droves, from their pastures, presenting a picture of 
 human nature in a state of degradation such as never had been 
 
HIS CONVERSATION. 487 
 
 witnessed since Nebuchadnezzar was at grass ;" or an Irish secre- 
 tary, " regarding whom he would not imitate the ancient tyrant's 
 practice of tormving insects ;" or an English ministry, " a motley 
 group, without virtue, or character, or talents — the sort of cabinet 
 that we have laughed at on the stage, where ' the potent, grave, 
 and reverend senioi-s' were composed of scene-shifters and candle- 
 snuffers, robed in old curtains and wigged from the stores of the 
 theatre ;" or even though he should have to call the public atten- 
 tion to " the princely virtues and the imperial qualifications, the 
 consummate wisdom and sagacity of our steadfast friend and ally, 
 the Emperor of all the Russias — a constellation of all virtue, com- 
 pared with whose radiance the Ursa Major but twinkles as the 
 glow-worm." 
 
 Over this, the most popular, and when skilfully managed, one 
 of the most effective modes of attack, Mr. Curran's fancy gave him 
 the entire command ; and if he ever employed it to excess, or out 
 of place, he but shared in the common failing of indolence and 
 focility, that of preferring as best what is found the most easy and 
 most successful. And here, in speaking of his facility in creating 
 resemblances, whether of a humorous or a more elevated order, it 
 is worthy of remark, that the history of his mind, in this respect, 
 strongly favours the opinion that the powers of the imagination 
 are as capable of improvement from cultivation as any other of 
 the mental faculties. In Mr. Curran these powers were strikino-ly 
 progressive ; in his earlier attempts there is little of the usual 
 exuberance of a juvenile imagination ; they are, on the contrary, 
 compared with his subsequent compositions, cold and prosaic, and, 
 when considered as specimens of fancy, unworthy of the mind that 
 produced them. The same remark applies to his conversation. 
 It was by his conversation that he first attracted notice ; but, how- 
 ever delightful in other respects, it was for a long time unillumi- 
 iiated by those gleams of poetic conception, which in his maturer 
 years were incessantly bursting forth. The fact was (and in this his 
 mind was peculiar) that his imagination developed itself with such 
 
488 LIFE OF CURRAN. 
 
 extreme slowness, that it was not till he had been for some years 
 a candidate for public distinction that he became aware of the 
 particular powers that were to secure his success. . The conscious- 
 ness of them came gradually, and was, as it were, forced upon him 
 by the unlooked for effect of accidental and unpremeditated 
 efforts : but becoming at length assured of the secret of his 
 strength, his confidence, ambition, and industry were excited, and 
 he then, almost for the first time, began formally and assiduously 
 to encourage, botli in public and private, those habits of imagina- 
 tive creation, wdiich were subsequently to form the prominent 
 character of his mind. The consequence of thus keeping his 
 imagination in perpetual exercise was most conspicuous, and as a 
 mere metaphysical fact is not incurious or unimportant. So great 
 was the facility and the fertility which it produced, that, in his 
 later years, scarcely an idea presented itself which did not come 
 accompanied by some illustrative image. It was by the image 
 that he generally preferred to express the idea, and accordingly 
 his ordinary conversation, where he indulged in this propensity 
 Avith the least reserve, presented such a series of original and 
 apparently unlaboured illustrations, that he might almost be said 
 to have habitually thought in metaphors. 
 
 Mr. Curran's speeches are generally referred to as instances of 
 what is now denominated the Irish school of eloquence, the distin- 
 guishing quality of which is said to be the predominance of pas- 
 sion and imao-ination over solid aro-ument. The correctness of 
 this definition is questionable. It is true that the eminent persons 
 who have employed this style perpetually express their thoughts 
 in impassioned and figurative language, but there is no incompati- 
 bility between such a mode of expression and the profoundest 
 reasoning. When a person addresses a public body, he does not 
 proceed, like a mathematician, rigidly to demonstrate through 
 each link of the chain the validity of every conclusion. A speaker 
 who should attempt to make such a parade of logical exactness 
 would soon discover that his audience would never submit to so 
 
IRISH SCHOOL OF ELOQUENCE. 489 
 
 liarassing a tax upon tlieir attention. The popular orator is 
 necessarily obliged to throw out his conclusions, in separate 
 unconnected masses. To try their value, we are not to asjc if 
 they are deducible from what has immediately preceded. They 
 often are not so : they are often the results of previous meditation 
 which he has stored in his memory, and takes occasion to advance 
 as they happen to be suggested by the topics under discussion ; 
 although, strictly speaking, there may be no logical connexion 
 between them. Their value is, therefore, to be ascertained, not by 
 examining them as deductions from his previous matter, but by 
 inquiring into the correctness of that original process of reasoning 
 by which alone his mind could have acquired them ; and if what 
 the orator puts forward in the form of assertions appear, upon 
 investigation, to be capable of demonstration, it is manifest that 
 his matter is not less argumentative because he conveys it in a 
 figurative diction. The profoundest moral and political truths 
 may be conveyed as well in figurative as in literal language. The 
 strength of a thought depends as little as that of a man upon 
 dress. We may disapprove of the taste which needlessly decks it 
 out in gaudy attire ; but we are not, for that reason, to question 
 its native force, and still less when it com.es appropriately adorned 
 with the richest clothing of a poetic imagination. 
 
 But whatever may be the merits of this style, it does not 
 appear to have been for any length of time peculiar to the Irish 
 people.^' It was unknovrn in Ireland before the present reign. 
 We do not find it to any extent in the productions of Swift, Gold- 
 smith, or Sterne, the three most popular writers of that country. 
 There is infinitely more of passion,. and of the higher order of 
 fancy, which is termed imagination, in the prose works of some 
 
 * This observation is to be understood to apply to the literary productions of the 
 educated classes. The idiom of the native Irish language is highly figurative, and has a 
 sensible influence upon the minds of the lower orders; but it would be difficult to show 
 that this influence has ever extended much beyond them.— C. 
 
 21* 
 
490 LIFE OF CUKKAN. 
 
 of tlie eminent Englisli writers of the seventeenth century.* This 
 figurative style -was introduced into the Irish House of Commons 
 about the period of Ireland's great struggle for her independence. 
 An opinion prevails that Burke was its original founder ; but 
 though Burke might have employed it in the British senate a few 
 years before that period, it is a violent assumption to suppose that 
 the eminent leaders in the Irish Parliament should have unani- 
 mously dismissed their previous ideas of oratorical composition, 
 in order to become his imitators. There is also the strongest 
 internal evidence against the supposition. An imitator does not 
 copy merely the leading qualities of his model ; he unconsciously 
 conforms to it in every particular — in the structure of his periods, 
 favourite forms of expressions, and other minute observances, which 
 perpetually betray his secret. Let the speeches of Burke be com- 
 pared with those of Mr. Grattan, the most eloquent of the Irish 
 senators, and not a trace of such imitation can be detected : no 
 two styles (as far as regards the diction and verbal construction) 
 can be more different. Burke's language is rhetorical and copious, 
 even to profuseness. He leaves nothing to be supplied by his 
 hearers. He addresses them as persons previously unacquainted 
 with the subject, and becomes so explanatory, that he seems deter- 
 mined not to leave off till he forces them to understand it. Mr. 
 Grattan is the reverse — abrupt, condensed, and epigrammatic, 
 rejecting the connecting particles of speech, and often the con- 
 necting ideas, as expletives and incumbrances. He throws off his 
 matter in the form of a table of the contents of his mind. 
 
 If any single individual could be said to have laid the foundation 
 of this style, it might equally be traced to the great Lord Chatham, 
 many of whose impassioned bursts belong to that order of eloquence 
 which was so general in the Irish House of Commons : but its pre- 
 valence in that assembly can be more naturally and satisfactorily 
 
 * Of this, numerous examples might be produced from the prose works of Milton, the 
 writings of Jeremy Taylor, Lord Bacon, &c. — C. 
 
POPULAR ELOQUENCE. 491 
 
 explained by the condition of the times, and the nature of the sub- 
 jects which agitated the nation. In the various stages of political 
 society, there is none so favourable to popular eloquence as that in 
 which the advantages of freedom are fully appreciated by the 
 intellectual classes, but are in danger of being lost, or are unjustly 
 withheld. This may be either at that period of national decline, 
 when, from the corruption of morals, and its unerring signs, the 
 venality of every rank, and a general contempt for established 
 institutions, liberty is imperfectly secured against foreign invasion, 
 or the licentious ambition of powerful subjects. Such was the case 
 when eloquence most flourished in Greece and Rome. Or it may 
 be when a people is just emerging from bondage — in that anxious 
 interval between the first signs of returning life in the national 
 body and its perfect reanimation, when violent and repeated shocks 
 are necessary to rekindle its spirit, and preserve it from relapsing 
 into torpor. This was the condition of Ireland. At such a period 
 the advocates of popular rights could not confine themselves within 
 the limits of temperate discussion. The flagrant abuses — the shame- 
 less stand made against their reformation — the notorious venality 
 and worthlessness of those who made it — the natural pride and 
 generous impatience of men, who found their honest efforts counter- 
 acted by a race of beings whom they despised, necessarily impel- 
 led them to give utterance to their indignation in all the vehemence 
 of the most passionate remonstrance. These circumstances of 
 themselves — the deep sense of their country's wrongs, and of the 
 necessity of animating it, and exposing its oppressors — will suffi- 
 ciently explain the peculiarities of their oratory. Figurative lan- 
 guage is the natural idiomatic style of invective and complaint; the 
 sufferer (or the advocate who represents him) finds a melancholy 
 consolation in painting his misery in the most vivid colours that an 
 exasperated imagination can supply. There is a feeling of high- 
 minded self-love in the victim, whose spirit is not utterly enslaved, 
 which leads him to exaggerate, if possible, the injustice under 
 which he groans, and proudly to justify himself against his destiny. 
 
492 LIFE OF CURRAN. 
 
 The Enoflish House of Commons affords a corroboration of these 
 remarks. Whenever the same im|)assioned style of eloquence has 
 been heard there, it has almost invariably proceeded, not from the 
 ministei'ial members defending the wisdom and expediency of their 
 acts, but from the leaders of the Opposition inveighing against 
 measures which they held to be dishonourable or oppressive. 
 
 In addition to the general influence which Burke is supposed to 
 have had upon the oratory of his countrymen, it has been often 
 observed, that a strong individual resemblance may be discovered 
 between him and Mr. Curran. It is very doubtful praise to say of 
 any one that he differed from Burke : still, if the two men be atten- 
 tively compared, it must be admitted, that in many leading 
 points, the}^ were strikingly dissimilar. Thus (without attempting 
 an elaborate analysis of their respective qualities), to advert to the 
 most obvious differences. Both possessed the faculties of rea- 
 son and imagination in a high degree ; but the general maxims to 
 wdiich those powers conducted them were strongly contrasted. In 
 all his general views of society, Burke's mind discovers a deep 
 respect for power, for " rank, and office, and title, and all the 
 solemn plausibilities of the world." He reviewed the history of 
 the world, and, pausing over the institutions which had affected its 
 destiny, reverenced them for the greatness of their effects. Mr. 
 Curran looked at institutions as connected with freedom ; and, 
 where he found a tendency in them to enslave the human mind, 
 forgot all their imposing grandeur in that single evil. Thus Burke's 
 imagination contemplated, " with an awful gravity," the age of 
 chivalry (the time of our " canonized forefathers," as a splendid 
 array of pageantry, gallantry, and deeds of arms, with its proud 
 " bearings and ensigns armorial," and ■ all those images of power 
 which " carry an imposing and majestic aspect." The other 
 remembered its oppressions, and was never heard to lament that 
 " the age of chivalry w^as gone. The same leaning to power may 
 be observed in Burke's pathetical effusions. His most affecting 
 lamentations are over fallen greatness. Mr. Curran's pathos was 
 
bprke's eloquence. 493 
 
 less ambitious, but more social and extensive, embracing the suf- 
 ferings of every rank. The pathos of the one was more that of the 
 schools : the sublime epic pathos of antiquity. He was most touched 
 by historical viscissitudes. He hung over the royal corse and 
 wept from the recollection that the head, now prostrate in the 
 dust, had lately worn a crown. The other's tears were not reser- 
 ved for the misfortunes of the great — he did not disdain to shift 
 the scene of distress from the palace to the cottage or the dun- 
 geon, and to sympathise with those obscure afflictions which his- 
 tory does not condescend to record, but which man is destined 
 hourly to endure. 
 
 Burke's acquired knowledge was more extensive, and his mind 
 more scientific and discursive. He looked upon the great scene of 
 human aftairs as a problem for a philosopher to resolve, and de- 
 lighted in those wide comprehensive views where much interme- 
 diate balancing and combination must precede the final result. No 
 one could better describe the spirit of a particular age, or the con- 
 dition and resources of a powerful empire. Mr. Curran's genius 
 was less philosophic, but more popular. He had more confined 
 his studies to the human passions and feelings as he observed them 
 in active operation before him. His general views were derived 
 from his own experience rather than from historical instruction. 
 He had witnessed so much of the abuses of power, that he acquir- 
 ed a hatred of and contempt for it ; and his chief skill lay in ex- 
 posing those abuses. He could best describe a scene of local or 
 individual oppression, and lay bare, for public execration, " the in- 
 fernal workino's of the hearts of the malio-nant slaves " who were 
 its instruments. 
 
 Many particulars in which they differed may be attributed to 
 their respective situations. They were cotemporaries ; but they 
 lived in such different countries, that they might be said to have 
 lived in a different age. Burke's life was passed under a political 
 system, which (whatever might be its theoretic imperfections) was 
 difi*using real blessings all around ; and to leave it as he found it 
 
49J: LIFE OF CUKRAN. 
 
 "was the wise end of all his efforts. The other lived under a sys- 
 tem, which, with " many shows of seeming- pure,"' was an actual 
 curse ; and his life was a long struggle to inspire his country with 
 the spirit to i-eform it. These different objects of each — of the one 
 to preserve freedom, of the other to obtain it — gave a different 
 character to their oratory. Burke's wisdom had taught him the 
 dangers of popular innovation ; and he would have protected, even 
 under the shield of superstition, the institutions over which he 
 watched. There is a certain oracular pride and pomp in his man- 
 ner of announcing important political truths, as if they were awful 
 mysteries which the uninitiated crowd were to reverence from afar. 
 Like the high priests of old, he would have inspired a sacred dread 
 of approaching the inmost temple, lest some profane intruder 
 should discover and proclaim that the god was not there. The 
 spectacle of misrule in Ireland had, on the contrary, impressed upon 
 Mr. Curran's mind the necessity of animating the people w^ith a 
 spirit of fearless inquiry. To do this he had to awaken them to a 
 sense of their importance and their claims, by gratifying their self- 
 love, and filling them with the persuasion, that there w'as no truth 
 wdiich they were not fitted to examine and comprehend. 
 
 Burke is more instructive and commanding than persuasive. He 
 looked upon the people from an eminence, from which he saw 
 them under their diminished forms, and betrayed a consciousness 
 that he was above them. The other remained below — threw him- 
 self among them — and, persuading them that they were his equals, 
 by that means became the master of their movements. 
 
 This is the most striking distinction in the impressions which 
 they make upon us — that we feel the one to be our superior, 
 and imagine the other to be only a companion. In Burke's most 
 exalting conceptions there is a gorgeous display of knowledge and 
 intellect, which reminds us of our inferiority and our incapacity to 
 ascend without his aid. The popular charm of the other's elo- 
 quence is, that it makes us only feel more intensely what we have 
 felt before. In his loftiest flights, we are conscious of being eleva- 
 
BUKKE AND CURRAN COMPARED. 495 
 
 ted v/itli liim, and for the moment forget that we soar upon 
 another's wing ; for the elements of his sublimity are the passions 
 in which we all partake ; and, when he wakes the living chords 
 to their highest ecstasy, it is not that he strikes one which was 
 never touched before, but that he gives a longer and louder vibra- 
 tion to the chords which are never still. 
 
 The history of each exemplifies their characters. Burke was a 
 philosopher, and could transplant his sympathies. He went 
 abroad, and passed his life admiring and enjoying the benefits of 
 " his adopted, and dearer, and more comprehensive country." Mr. 
 Curran was a patriot, whose affections, could he have torn them 
 from their native bed, would have drooped in another soil. He 
 stayed at home, and closed his days in deploring the calamities 
 which he had vainly labored to avert. 
 
496 LIFE OF OURRAN. 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 Mr. Curran's skill in cross-examination— His general reading— His conversation— His 
 ■wit— Manuscript thoughts on various subjects — His manners, person — Personal pecu- 
 liarities—Conclusion. 
 
 Next to tlie force of Mr. Curran's eloquence was the skill of his 
 cross-examinations, a department of his profession in which he 
 was, perhaps, still more unrivalled than as a speaker. Of the extent 
 of this talent it is impossible that any description or examples can 
 convey an adequate idea to those who have never witnessed the 
 living scene ; but the bar, who alone could fully appreciate his 
 resources, for they alone v^^ere fully sensible of the difficulties in 
 each case against which he had to contend, have unanimously 
 allowed that his address and sagacity as a cross-examiner were 
 altogether matchless. It vras, perhaps, here that as an advocate 
 he vras most feared and most resistless.^' In cases where there 
 
 * In the cross-examination of witnesses, Mr, Curran's scrutiny was tremendous. 
 Instinctive and intuitive as Shakespeare, he knew all the fastnesses, passes and windings 
 of the human heart, into which truth seeks to retire and to conceal itself. He knew all 
 the weaknesses, the passions of hope and of fear, of interest and of resentment ; and 
 such was his knowledge of human nature, and so much was he in her confidence, that 
 he silently inhaled all the operations of the villain he would expose ; dragged Cacus from 
 his cave, penetrated into the mysteries of hell, and threw open to the common observer 
 the secrets of those dark regions. Keen and ardent in the pursuit, he was always sure 
 of his game ; eager and intrepid in the chase, he was ever in at the death ; whether play- 
 ful or severe, he never relaxed ; whether his weapon was ridicule, or open and direct 
 attack ; whether it was the power of reason cutting through a weak and fluttering consci- 
 ence, his edge was unerring: the mole which hid its head in the earth, he perceived by 
 the kicking of its feet ; when it could see nothing, it thought itself secure and Unseen. 
 If truth lay at the bottom of her well, he plunged in, and plucked up drowned honour by 
 the locks ; or did she escape to the mountain top, he would round its slopes and gain its 
 heights with the activity of an Arab warrior. He had the power to elicit it from the 
 flint; and by his touch, as if with a wand, he caused it to gush forth from the hardest 
 rock. It may justly be said of him, that " The Gordian knot of it he could untie familiar 
 
CKOSS-EXAMINATION. 497 
 
 was some latent fraud or perjury, in exposing which his whole 
 strength was always most conspicuously developed, he uniformly 
 surprised his own profession no less than the general spectator, by 
 the singular versatility of his powers, and by his familiarity with 
 every variety of human character, at once so extensive and so 
 minute, that he could discover at a glance the exact tone and 
 manner best calculated to persuade, terrify or entrap into a con- 
 fession of the truth, the particular description of person upon 
 whom he had to work. In managing a sullen or dishonest wit- 
 ness there was nothing that he left untried ; solemnity, menace, 
 ridicule, pathos, flattery, and even for the moment respectful sub- 
 mission. In contests of this kind he had, in an eminent degree, 
 the art of "stooping to conquer." If a fevvMnsidious compliments 
 to the witness's understanding, and an apparently cordial assent 
 to all his assertions and opinions, or a long series of jests, no mat- 
 ter whether good or bad, seemed likely to throw him olf his guard, 
 he never hesitated ;^ his favourite method was by some such artifice 
 to divert his attention, or to press him with pretended earnestness 
 upon some trivial irrelevant point until he found the witness elated 
 with his fancied security, and then to drop, as it were incidentally, 
 
 as his garter." Jurors latterly began to doubt themselves, and to be frighted at the 
 magic of his address ; while he who bore false witness against his neighbours was often 
 seen, like Festus, to have trembled. In variety and effect in this department of his pro- 
 fession he was unrivalled, and sola sicca secuni spatintut^ ardua. — O'Regan. 
 
 * The following may be taken as a specimen of the ludicrous phraseology to which he 
 sometimes resorted : — A witness having sworn that as he was returning, at a late hour, 
 from a supper party, he was assaulted by Mr. Curran's client, the counsel, in his cross- 
 examination, asked him — " if the number of eggs that composed his supper was not more 
 than that of the graces and equal to that of the muses? — if he did not usually drink a 
 little coarse wine at dinner, by way of foundation to keep the claret out of the wet? if 
 he did not swallow a squib after dinner, by way of Latin for his goose ? and if, after his 
 foundation of white wine, with a superstructure of three pints of claret, a stratum of 
 nine eggs, a pint of porter, and a supra-cargo of three pints of Geneva punch, his judg- 
 ment was not a little under the yoke?" — C. [In the case Massy v. the Marquis of Ifead- 
 ford, Mr. Curran had described the "noble" defendant, as a hoary adulterer. In the 
 cross-examination of one of the witnesses, he found it difficult to prove his age. At last 
 the witness admitted, that the Marquis was gray. "You will admit," said Curran, quot- 
 ing a well known adage, " that Tie was gray before he was good." — M.] 
 
498 - LIFE OF CUItKAN. 
 
 and with a tone of indifference as to tlie answer, or in a manner 
 implying that it liad been already admitted, some vital question, 
 to which, in all probability, the desired reply would be given 
 before the perjurer liad time to recollect whether he had pre- 
 viously asserted or denied the fact. So unexpected and surprising 
 were his discoveries of a person's character and morals, from 
 external indications so slight as to be imperceptible to others, 
 that the lower orders of his countrymen had an almost supersti- 
 tious reverence for his abilities, as if he were gifted with a super- 
 natural power of " looking through the deeds of men." From 
 the prevalence of this opinion, his name was the proverbial terror 
 of the Irish informer. Even those wretches who, in " drudging for 
 a pardon," or a reward, had so steeled their conscience against 
 remorse and shame, that they could hear unmoved the deep buzz 
 of smothered execrations with which the multitude announced 
 their approach, and even glory in their indifference to the " sound 
 of public scorn," had not the nerves to sustain his torturing 
 development of their unrighteous lives. They were not only 
 abashed and confounded by that art, which he so consummately 
 possessed, of involving them in prevarication, by confronting them 
 with themselves, but they have been actually seen, as if under a 
 momentary shock of virtuous panic, to plunge from off the public 
 table, and fly to shelter from his upbraiding presence, leaving the 
 rescued victims to reward by their blessings theii' advocate and 
 saviour. 
 
 It will not be necessary to dwell at any length upon Mr. Cur- 
 ran's character as a lawyer. He was never profoundly read ; but 
 his mind had firmly seized all the leading principles of the Eng- 
 lish code, more particularly those of .consticutional law; and he 
 "was always considered by the members of his own profession to 
 have displaye<I eminent skill in his logical application of them. 
 In the earlier part of his carreer his reasoning powers were admit- 
 ted to have been of the first order, until the splendour of his 
 eloquence gave rise to the unfounded notion, that where there 
 
HIS ACQUIREMENTS. 499 
 
 was so much imagination the faculty of reason must have been 
 deficient. But some of his published arguments amply refute tliis 
 opinion. 
 
 His judicial history contains little requiring particular notice. 
 Upon the bench he religiously respected those privileges which 
 at the bar he had so strenuously supported. If he fell into any 
 error upon this point, it was that his abhorrence of favouritism 
 often led him to be over scrupulous in granting any indulgence, 
 where the counsel claiming it happened to be one of his personal 
 friends. 
 
 With regard to his general reading, much of it may be col- 
 lected from his speeches. The frequency of classical and scriptural 
 allusions, and of expressions borrowed from the English poets, suf- 
 ficiently point out the writings with which he was most familiar. 
 He was never deeply versed in general history ; he had, however, 
 studied with attention and success that portion of it (the great 
 constitutional epochs in the history of Great Britain and Ireland) 
 Avhich it was peculiarly incumbent on him, as a lawyer and a 
 senator, to know. The enthusiasm with which, in a passage 
 already cited, he has described tlie scientific and literary genius 
 of Scotland, proves the impression made upon him b}' the noble 
 productions of that intellectual people. His early knowledge of 
 the French language has been mentioned. He continued to cul- 
 tivate it during the rest of his life ; and though his study of it was 
 only occasional and desultory, and his residence in France never 
 exceeded a few weeks at a time, he spoko and wrote it with unusual 
 correctness. It may be added, as a peculiarity of his taste, that 
 he used to express himself to be more sensible of the beauties of 
 that language than of his own. Among the French serious writers 
 he always preferred Rousseau. He understood ItaUan sufiiciently 
 well to comprehend the popular poetry of modei'n Italy; but 
 Italian literature was never one of his favourite pursuits. 
 
 After having stated so much in commendation of Mr. Curran's 
 intellectual superiority ; it mav seem like the spirit of boundless 
 
O" 
 
 600 LIFE OF CURRAN. 
 
 eulogium to go on ; but who, that ever knew him, could dismiss 
 his life without dwelling for a moment upon his colloquial and 
 convivial powers ? As a companion, he was, in his own country, 
 confessedlv without a rival. In speaking of the charms of his 
 conversation, it would be exceeding the truth to assert, as has 
 sometimes been done, that the creations of his careless hours were 
 often more vi\dd and felicitous than his more studied public 
 eftbrts ; yet is it no small praise to be justified in saying, that they 
 were equal, or nearly equal ; that few who approached him, 
 attracted by his general reputation, ever left him without havin 
 their admiration confirmed, if not increased, by the -sagour and 
 originality of his ordinary conversation.* According to the testi- 
 mony of those who had enjoyed his society at an earlier period, 
 some of its attractions had latterly disappeared. The survivors of 
 the " Monks of St. Patrick," are those who best can tell what Mr. 
 Curran was at the festive board. It was in that season of youth 
 and hope, when exalted by the spirit of their classic and patriotic 
 meetings, and surrounded by " those admired and respected, and 
 beloved companions," that his mind surrendered itself to every 
 emotion of social enthusiasm, throwing off in exhaustless profusion 
 every thought that could touch the fancy or the heart. No 
 laboured description can now convey an adequate notion of those 
 
 * It was in conversation when he was properly in his own climate ; when in high tone, 
 and harmonised by fit accompaniments, that he " discoursed most excellent music." 
 Often happiest when his subject was gravest, or when letters, men, taste, past, or passing 
 events were touched. On these topics he entered with a curious felicity, so as to swell 
 the listener's mind to participate in the proud consciousness of human superiority, of 
 which he could be scarcely apprised till he heard him. And whether he courted the 
 mournful muse, or were his even the sallies of gaiety and mirth, such was the sombre of 
 his pencil, or such the playfulness and airhiess of -his imagery ; and so surprising were 
 the rapid transitions to the most exquisite comedy, that days and nights passed thus 
 with him were truly in his own phrase (on some other occasion) " the refections of the 
 gods." His quotations, though frequent, were never pedantic : he melted down the clas- 
 sic sentiment, and it became more pure, and you felt the allusion or illustration in all 
 the freshness of its original force. It was on these occasions his soul resembled a fincly- 
 toned.instrument, which a rude or clumsy touch flung into disorder: it was the harp 
 which played to the zephyr, and whose wildest were its sweetest notes !"-"0'Rkgan. 
 
BIS WIT. 501 
 
 eftusions. The graver parts, bad they been preserved, would have 
 been found to reseuible many admired passages in bis printed 
 speeches ; but the lighter and most frequent sallies, deriving their 
 charm from minute and evanescent combinations of characters 
 and circumstances, have necessarily perished with the occasions 
 for which alone they were intended. 
 
 Numerous specimens of his wit have been preserved, from which 
 its style, rather than its extent, may be collected. It may be gen- 
 erally observed of his wit, that it delighted, not so much from the 
 naked merit of any single efibrt, as from the incessancy and un- 
 expectedness of its combinations. It also possessed one quality, 
 which is above all value, that of never inflicting an undeserved 
 wound. In all those cases where the words might seem to intend 
 a personal reflection, he never failed to neutralise the poison by a 
 playful ironical manner which testified his own belief of what he 
 was asserting. It Avould be difficult to produce an equal number 
 of pointed sayings, in which the spirits consist so little in particu- 
 lar of general satire ;, neither do they appear, like the humorous 
 sallies of many celebrated wits, to have been dictated by any pecu- 
 liar set of speculative opinions. The sceptic, the misanthrope, the 
 voluptuary, and all, in short, who habitually look at the business 
 of life through the medium of their particular doctrines, are per- 
 petually betraying in their mirth some open or lurking application 
 to their favorite tenets : the instances of their wit, if accurately 
 examined, may be resolved into illustrations of their system. Thus 
 the humour of Voltaire is for ever reminding us of his impiety ; 
 that of Swift, of his splenetic contempt of human folly ; but almost 
 all of Mr. Curran's lively sayings were suggested at the moment 
 by the immediate circumstances and persons, or verbal associations; 
 they are in general insulated and individual, ending where they 
 began, and not referrible to any previous systematic view of human 
 aftairs.* 
 
 *An entire collection of the bons mots attributed to Mr. Curran would fill many pages. 
 The following are selected as a few specimens. In all of them it will be seen how much 
 
502 LIFE OF CUKRAN. 
 
 Mr. Home Tooke, after having passed an evening in the com- 
 pany of Mr. Curran and the late Mr. Sheridan, whom he had, 
 upon that occasion, for the first time met together, was asked his 
 opinion of the wit of each. He rephed, " that Sheridan's w^as like 
 steel highly polished, and sharpened for display and use; that 
 
 less the essence depends upon the satire than upon the fanciful combination of words or 
 images. 
 
 Mr. Curran was engaged in a legal argument— behind him stood his colleague, a gen- 
 tleman whose person was remarkably tall and slender, and who had originally designed 
 to take orders. The judge observing that the case under discussion involved a ques- 
 tion of ecclesiastical law—" Then," said Mr. Curran, " I can refer your lordship to a 
 high authority behind me, who was once intended for the churali, though {in a whisjyer to 
 a friend beside him) in my opinion he was fitter for the steeple." 
 
 An officer of one of the courts, named Halfpenny, having frequently interrupted Mr. 
 Curran, the judge peremptorily ordered him to be silent, and sit down. "I thank your 
 lordship," said the counsel, " for having at length nailed that rap to the counter^ 
 
 " I can't tell you, Curran," observed an Irish nobleman, who had voted for the Union, 
 "how frightful our old House of Commons appears to me." " Ah ! my lord," replied the 
 other, " it is only natural for murderers to be afraid of ghosts." 
 
 A deceased judge had a defect in one of his limbs, from which, when he walked, one foot 
 described almost a circle round the other. Mr. Curran being asked how his lordship still 
 contrived to walk so fast, answered—" Don't you see that one leg goes before like a tip- 
 staff, and clears the way for the other ?" 
 
 Mr. Curran, cross-examining a horse-jockey's servant, asked his master's age. "I 
 never put my hand in his mouth to try," answered the witness. The laugh was against 
 ihe counsel, till he retorted—" You did perfectly right, friend, for your master is said to 
 be a great bite." 
 
 A miniature painter, upon his cross-examination by Mr, Curran, was made to confess 
 that he had carried his improper freedoms with a particular lady so far as to attempt to 
 put his arm round her waist. " Then, sir," said the counsel, " I suppose you took that 
 waist (waste) for a common." 
 
 "No man," said a wealthy, but a weak-headed barrister, " should be admitted to the 
 bar who has not an independent landed property." " May I ask, sir," said Mr. Curran, 
 " how many acres make a xcise-acre .?" 
 
 " Would you not have known this boy to be my son, from his resemblance to me ?" asked 
 a gentleman. Mr. Curran answered— " Yes, sir ; the maker's name is stamped upon the 
 blade." 
 
 Mr. Curran was asked what an Irish gentleman, just arrived in England, could mean by 
 perpetually putting out his tongue? Answered— " I suppose he's trying to catch the 
 English accent." 
 
 At a public dinner he was defending his countrymen against the imputation of being a 
 naturally vicious race. " Many of our faults, for instance (said he), arise from our too 
 free use of the circulating medium {pointing to the wiiie) but I never heai-d of aq Irish- 
 man being horn dmnh," 
 
LOOSE THOUGHTS. 503 
 
 Ciirran's was a mine of virgin gold, incessantly crumbling awa}^ 
 from its own richness." 
 
 The celebrated Madame De Staei, who during her last resi- 
 dence in England, was surrounded by persons the most distin- 
 guished for talent, frequently observed that she had been most 
 struck by the originality and variety of Mr. Curran's colloquial 
 powers. This was in 1813, when his health and spirits were in a 
 state of depression, which rendered the effort to support his part 
 in such company a painful exertion.^'' 
 
 Among his papers there are a few sheets covered with thoughts 
 loosely thrown together, from which a few extracts may convey 
 some idea of the more striking passages of his conversation. 
 
 " England has been industriously taught to believe, that Avliat- 
 ever degrades or tortures this devoted country is essentially good 
 for her ; and that if some supernatural spirit (a Popish imp to be 
 sure) were to take advantage of some dark night, and in the morn- 
 ing the Irish peasant should awake in astonishment to find his 
 cottage with its roof thatched, and its floor dried, and clothes and 
 food miraculously supplied for his children, I can scarcely doubt 
 that when certain intelligence of so disaffecting a visitor had 
 arrived in Britain, a solemn ftist and humiliation would be pro- 
 claimed by our orthodox rulers to expiate whatever of our crimes 
 had drawn down so heavy a punishment, and to atone for the 
 offence, for example, of abolishing the slave trade, and to show 
 our contrition by giving it a five years' reprieve, that so it might 
 recover itself and live for ever, to the satisfaction of a merciful 
 God, and the true glory of his holy religion." 
 
 " [Bourbons : freedom of the press.) — Perhaps exile is the 
 
 * Allndiiia: in a private letter to one of those parties, he says, " I dined yesterday with 
 a society of wits at IMadame de Stael's ; Sheridan, other great names, &c. I find that 
 even sugar may cloy. Perhaps there is no society in which less bona-fide cordiality 
 reigns. In truth where can you look to find so much false money as among coiners by 
 trade? Believe me I have passed much pleasanter evenings at Whitehall. (A country- 
 place In the vicinity of Dublin.)— C. 
 
604 LIFE OF CUKliAN. 
 
 bitterest ingredient of captivity. The Jew felt it so, when he 
 wept by the waters of Babylon. If adversity ever becomes a 
 teacher, surely her school ought to be found in exile." 
 
 '^ [Christianity.) — The first ages were hypocrisy and imposture. 
 These soon excited their natural enemy, free thinking. Religion 
 could have been no party in the conflict. She was neither a 
 sophist nor a poet ; she had little dealing with rhetoric or meta- 
 physics; but at last, when Hypocrisy and Atheism have made 
 peace, she may come round again." 
 
 " [Lord .) — These small folks are as much afraid of the 
 
 press, as Robinson Crusoe's man Friday was of the musquet, when 
 he ' prayed massa gun don't go off and kill poor wild man.' " 
 
 " [Hoio holds Ireland^ — The upper orders gone and the remains 
 following. The people agriculturists." 
 
 ^' [Agriculture.) — The mother and nurse of a military popula- 
 tion. Ireland has been forced to this. It was thought that she 
 was sunk under the arbitrary tyranny of British monopoly. Let 
 the proud Briton regale himself in the wholesome air of mines and 
 workshops, and become ossified in the strengthening attitudes of 
 monotonous labour, while the degraded Irishman drav>'S health 
 and number, and fierceness, and force, and becomes too nimble to 
 be caught by his crippled owner, who hobbles after him and 
 threatens him with his crutch." 
 
 " [Irish administration) — I should much sooner presume to 
 speak out against the solid substance of an English ministry, than 
 venture on a whisper against their shadows in Ireland. 
 
 " I know the seeming moderation of these men, but I fear it is 
 like the moderation of the drunkard who glories in the sobriety of 
 the morning ; who mistakes exhaustion for contrition, and is vain 
 of reformation that stole upon him while he slept. 
 
 " To inflame the public mind on a point of theology, was to 
 divert them from the great point of national oppression on which 
 the country could not but be unanimous, and to turn it to one on 
 which England would be against us. 
 
HIS MAJNNERS. 505 
 
 " I do n't hesitate to say, that a good government would in a 
 week have Ireland tranquil. 
 
 " Putting out the law will never do ; but here the insurrection 
 act was clearly a topic in argument, not a measure of necessity. 
 
 " In all countries revolutions have been produced by the 
 abuses of power. If you would mark the process of force look 
 to '98. 
 
 "The tyrant may say to the slave, you are bound in conscience 
 to submit — the slave may put the question to his conscience, and 
 receive a very different answer. 
 
 " Obedience is founded on allegiance and protection ; but if an 
 idea is held out that a nation, containing at least two-thirds of the 
 military population of the empire, is to remain upon their knees 
 in hope of the interval when cruelty and folly may work them- 
 selves to rest, and humanity and justice awaken — I say, forbid 
 it the living God ! that victim man should not make his elec- 
 tions between danger and degradation, and make a struggle 
 for that freedom, without which the worship of his name has no 
 value." 
 
 Mr. Curran's manners were remarkably simple and unassuming. 
 In his youth, before his value was sufficiently ascertained to procure 
 him uniform respect, he occasionally exhibited before his superiors 
 in rank some signs of that pride with which men of genius are dis- 
 posed to assert their dignity; he never indulged however in this feel- 
 ing to an offensive degree. The early and long continued habit of 
 his mind, was to underrate his own talents and importance. It was 
 only where he imagined that some slight was intended, that he 
 showed a consciousness of his claims ; but the occasions of excit- 
 ing his vanity or indignation on this point entirely ceasing as his 
 character became known, the feeling itself was soon extinguished. 
 
 In his daily intercourse, he scrupulously avoided an ordinary 
 failing of superior men, that of impressing upon less gifted persons 
 
 22 
 
506 LIFE OF CUREAN. 
 
 a sense of tlieir inferiority. In this department of the business of 
 life, he eminently possessed (to use a favourite expression of his 
 own) that nice tact^ which taught him to accommodate his style 
 and sentiments to the various characters and capacities of those 
 Avith Vvhom he conversed. However humble their rank or pre- 
 tensions, he listened with good humour to all they had to oifer, 
 and was never betrayed into a ridicule of those little demonstra- 
 tions of vanity and self-love, which they who mix in the world 
 have to encounter every moment. 
 
 In his political relations, he was not vindictive. The prominent 
 and decided part which he took in public affairs necessarily invol- 
 ved him in many enmities, which the condition of the times, and 
 the nature of the question at issue, inflamed into the highest state 
 of exasperation ; but as soon as the first fever of passion and indig- 
 nation had subsided, he evinced a more forgiving disposition than 
 he found among his opponents.^' In his later years, he spoke 
 of the injuries which he had sustained from Lord Clare and many 
 others, with a degree of moderation which could scarcely have 
 been expected from a person of his quick and ardent tempera- 
 ment.f 
 
 * He was in principle a Whig. His passions, his habits, his friendsliips, and his educa- 
 tion, made hina so. He did not obsequiously follow any individual model ; nor did he 
 on all occasions pursue the measures of his party. He had an abstract idea of what love 
 of country should inspire; to this he sometimes referred his actions. If there was any 
 one person among those with whom he acted, to whom he would submit his judgment in 
 cases of doubt or of difficulty, so higlily did he venerate Mr. Fox, that his authority 
 would alone be very likely to have decided him. — O'Regan. 
 
 t A few years before his death, Mr. Curran strolled one day into the Poet's Corner in 
 Westminster Abbey. As he contemplated the monuments, he became deeply affected by 
 the spectacle of mortality on every side, and for the moment dismissing every harsher 
 feeling, gave up his mind to the solemn reflections which the scene was calculated to in- 
 spire. " The holy influence of the spot (to adopt the words of an illustrious countryman 
 of his in relating this circumstance) had so subdued him, that he began to weep." While 
 he was in this softened mood, he observed at a little distance his old antagonist. Doctor 
 Duigenan. Mr. Curran, considering that they were both to be soon beyond the possibility 
 of further contention, and that no place could be more suited for the exchange of mutual 
 forgiveness, approached, and affectionately offered him his hand. "I shall never take 
 Mr. Cm-ran'B hand," replied the doctor, and abruptly turned away. — 0. 
 
HIS PERSONAL APPEAEANCE. 50T 
 
 Mr. Curran's person was short, slender, and ungraceful, resem- 
 bling rather the form of a youth not yet fully developed, than the 
 compact stature of a man.* His face was as devoid of beauty as 
 his frame. His complexion was of that deep muddy tinge by 
 which Dean Swift's is said to have been distinguished. He had a 
 dark, glistening, intellectual eye, high arched, and thickly covered 
 brows, strong, uncurled, jet-black hair, which lay flat upon his 
 forehead and temples. When his thoughts were unoccupied (which 
 was rare) his features were not particularly expressive ; but the 
 moment he became animated, there was a rush of mind into his 
 countenance which dilated every fibre, and impressed upon it a 
 character of peculiar energy and genius. 
 
 [Mr. Phillips thus glances at his appearance in 1805 ; 
 
 " Mark well that slight short figure with restless gait, and swaying 
 motion, and speaking gesture — he with the uplifted face, protruded 
 under lip, and eyes like living diamonds. See how the young 
 men cluster round him. Observe the spell-bound gaze — hark to 
 the ringing laughter. That is Curran — the unique, the wondrous, 
 the inimitable Curran — who spake as poets in their inspiration 
 wrote, and squandered wit with Rabelais profusion. Curran, whose 
 words, merry or mournful as his country's music, commanded tears 
 or laughterf at his bidding. Curran, in evil days, erect amid the 
 
 * O'Regan says " Mr. Curran was in person rather under the middle stature ; his frame 
 wiry, yet muscular; and, though the countenance was not prepossessing, yet it was 
 redeemed by the eye, which was full of fire and energy; and might be likened to that of 
 Coriolanus, ichich could have pierced a corslet. He often said it would- cost him half an 
 hour more to get at the heart of his hearer, than it would a handsome man. He was 
 always pleasant on the subject of defect of beauty ; and, when in Parliament, turned it 
 very happily against another member. One of the messengers brought in an unsealed 
 note from the door of the House, hastily written, and not addressed to any person. Mr. 
 Curran looked at the back of the paper, and observed that it was not for him and asked 
 why he had handed it to him? The messenger answered, by saying, the gentleman who 
 had given it to him was at the door ; that he pointed at Mr. Curran, and desired him to 
 give it to the ugliest gentleman in the House : he directly pointed to the other side, and 
 desired him to give it Mr. , for it was for him it was intended." 
 
 t I never met a person who possessed this wonderful faculty before. Lord Brougham 
 one day, in my presence, asked the late Dr. Birkbeck, who knew Curran, whether my 
 
508 LIFE OF CUERAN. 
 
 groveling, pure amid the tainted ; in public life, tlie most consis- 
 tent of patriots ; in private, tlie most social, exquisite, enchanting 
 of companions."] 
 
 His voice was not naturally powerful or musical ; but he mana- 
 ged it so skilfully, that he gave full expression to every feeling 
 and passion which it had to convey. Its unrivalled excellency lay 
 in communicating solemn and pathetic sentiments. In private and 
 serious conversation, it was remarkable for a certain plaintive sin- 
 cerity of tone, which incessantly reminded those wdio knew him 
 of the melancholy that predominated in his constitution. His de- 
 livery, both in public and private, w^as slow, and his articulation 
 uncommonly distinct. He was scrupulous in his choice of words, 
 and often paused to search for the most expressive. His powers 
 of language and delivery were the result of assiduous industry and 
 observation. There was nothing, however minute, connected with 
 the subject, which he deemed beneath his attention.'" 
 
 It is perhaps time to close this account ; yet as many might 
 feel disa|)pointed at the omission of those minuter traits which 
 render the individual still more peculiar and distinct, and bring 
 him into a kind of personal acquaintance with . those who never 
 saw him, some passing notice shall be taken of the more striking 
 
 estimate of hira was not exaggerated, " All I can say," was the answer, " is, that for the 
 five weelcjs he and I lodged together in Paris during the peace of Amiens, there were not 
 five consecutive minutes within which he could not make me hoth laugh and cry /" Tea 
 years later, Lord Byron sa.ys of him, "I have met Curran at Holland House. He beats 
 every body. His imagination is beyond human, and his humor (it is difficult to define 
 what is wit) perfect. He has fifty faces, and twice as many voices, when he mimics. 1 
 never met 7iis equal.'''' Again : " Curran ! Curran's the man who struck me most. Such 
 imagination ! There never was any thing like it. He was wonderful even to me who had 
 seen many remarkable men of the time. The riches of his Irish imagination were 
 exhaustless. I have heard that man sjjeak more poetry than 1 have ever seen written, 
 though I saw him seldom, and but occasionally.^^ 
 
 * He sometimes mispronounced the word " tribunal," throwing the accent upon the first 
 syllable. When reminded of the error, he alleged in his excuse, that, having once heard 
 the word so pronounced by Lord Moira, whom he considered a model of classical pro- 
 nunciation, he adopted his method ; and, though subsequently aware of the incorrect- 
 ness, unconsciously repeated it.— C. 
 
HIS ORDINARY HABITS. 609 
 
 features of tliis suboixlinate class, wliicli separated Mr. Curran from 
 other men. 
 
 One of lus great peculiarities was, tliat, in the most trivial things, 
 he was peculiar. He did not sit in his chair like other persons : he 
 w^as perpetually changing his position, throwing himself into atti- 
 tudes of thinking, and betraying, by the most incessant play of shift- 
 ing expressions on his countenance, that there was something with- 
 in which was impatient of repose. It was the same when he 
 walked or rode. Long before his features could be discerned, his 
 friends recognized him from afar by the back of his -hand firmly 
 compressed upon the hip, his head raised towards the sky, and 
 momentarily turning round, as if searching for objects of obser- 
 vation ; or, if he was in conversation, by the earnest waving of his 
 body, and the fervour of his gesticulation. These were the exter- 
 nal signs of that latent impulse which was the source of his genius. 
 One of the most extraordinary circumstances in his constitution 
 was the length of time to which this impulse could continue to 
 act with undiminished force. He used to assure his intimates, that, 
 long after the body's exhaustion had incapacitated him for farther 
 exertion, ho felt a consciousness that the vigour of his mind was 
 unimpaired. Even his capacity of dispensing with bodily rest, con- 
 sidering the apparent delicacy of his frame, was surprising. Dur- 
 ing the more active period of his life, he frequently sacrificed a 
 night's rest with impunity. After passing the day in his pro- 
 fessional occupations, and one half of the night in the House of 
 Commons, and the other in the convivial meetings of the leaders 
 of his party, he re-appeared on the succeeding morning in the 
 courts, as fresh for the ensuing labours of the day as if he had 
 spent the interval in renovating sleep. There were, in his more 
 ordinary habits, many similar indications that his frame was, as it 
 were, overcharged with life. In his conversation his fancy gene- 
 rally became more brilliant as the night advanced. He retired to 
 bed with reluctance ; and his friends often remarked, that he was 
 seldom so eloquent and fascinating as after he had risen from his 
 
610 LIFE OF CUERAN. 
 
 chair, momentarily about to depart, but still lingering and delight- 
 ing them — " indulgens animo, pes tardus erat." In his own house, 
 after his guests had retired to their chambers, he seized any excuse 
 for following one of them, and renew^ing the conversation for 
 another hour ; and the person thus intruded upon seldom con- 
 sidered himself the least fortunate of the party. It appears from 
 all this, that Mr. Curran was not much addicted to sleep. One 
 reason why his frame required so little may have been that his sleep 
 was generally most profound, and uninterrupted by dreams. The 
 latter circumstance he often regretted, for he was inclined to think 
 that the throng of fantastic ideas which present themselves in 
 dreams might, if carefully attended to, have supplied him with 
 new sources of poetic imagery. 
 
 In his diet he ^vas constitutionally temperate : he ate little, 
 and was extremely inditlerent regarding the quality of his fare. 
 For the greater part of his life he vras subject to a debility of the 
 stomach, which, though it could scarcely be called a disease, was 
 yet so permanent as to be the source of the utmost inconvenience. 
 Whenever dinner was delayed beyond the expected time,* the 
 irritation of his stomach became so intolerable, that he was 
 frequently obliged to retire altogether from the company. From 
 his attachment to the pleasures of convivial society, he was sup- 
 posed to have been addicted to wine ; but the fact w^as that a very 
 small quantity excited him ; and, whenever he drank to any 
 excess (as was sometimes the case in large companies) it was 
 rather mechanically and from inattention than from choice. 
 When left to his natural propensities, he was almost as temperate 
 in this respect as in his food. At his own table he was hospitable 
 and unceremonious. In every transaction of common life, he dis- 
 
 * He insisted, at home and abroad, on dining at five o'clock. On the contrary, Toler 
 (Lord Norbury) liked to dine late. One day, Mr. Toler was going to take his ride, and 
 meeting Mr. Curran walking towards his house to dine, passingly said, "Do not forget, 
 Curran, you dine with me to-day ;" " I rather fear, my friend," replied Mr. Curran, " it 
 is you who may forget it."— M. 
 
TRAITS OF CHARACTEE. 511 
 
 liked and despised the affectation of state. His maxim was, that 
 the festive board should be a little republic, where the host, hav- 
 ing previously provided whatever was necessary for the general 
 interest, should appear with no greater privileges or responsibili- 
 ties than a guest. 
 
 From the same distaste to show, he was always remarkable for 
 the plainness, and even negligence, of his external dress ; but he 
 paid the most scrupulous attention to personal cleanliness. His 
 regular custom was to plunge every morning when he rose into 
 cold water. It may be generally added, that in all his ordinary 
 habits, in his house, his equipage, his style of living, of travelling, 
 &c. — the same republican simplicity prevailed. During the two 
 or three last years of his life, he might often be seen, on the road 
 between London and Cheltenham, seated outside one of the public 
 coaches, and engaged in familiar conversation with the other 
 passengers. 
 
 His constitutional tendency to melancholy has been already 
 noticed ; yet, in the familiar intercourse of daily life, the promi- 
 nent characteristic of his mind was its incessant playfulness — a 
 quality which rendered his society peculiarly acceptable among 
 females and young persons. He took great delight in conversing 
 with little children, whom he generally contrived to lead into the 
 most exquisitely comical dialogues. He was fond of giving 
 ludicrous appellations to the places and persons around him. His 
 friend Mr. Hudson the dentist's house was built in "the Tus- 
 can order" — a celebrated snuff-manufacturer's country-seat was 
 " Sneeze-town " — the libraries at watering-places were " slopshops 
 of literature." He called a commander of yeomanry (who dealt 
 largely in flour) " Marshal Sacks " — a lawyer, of a corpulent frame, 
 "Grotius" — another, who had a habit of swellino* out his cheeks, 
 " Puffendorf." He often humorously remonstrated with a friend, 
 who was of a very tall stature, and with whom, as one of his 
 " very longest acquaintances," he used that freedom, " upon his 
 want of decorum in going about and peeping down the chimnies. 
 
612 LIFE OF CURKAN. 
 
 to see what his neighbours were to have for dinner." This list 
 might be extended to a greater length than would be necessary 
 or suitable. 
 
 In speaking of Mr. Curran's literary habits, it should have 
 been mentioned that he was, for the greater part of his life, an 
 ardent reader of novels."^ In his earlier years, it was his regular 
 custom to have one under his pillow, Avith which he commenced 
 and closed the reading of the day. His sensibility to the interest 
 of such works was so excessive, as to be scarcely credible by those 
 who never saw him sobbing, almost to suffocation, over the 
 pathetic details of Richardson,f or in more extravagant parox- 
 ysms of laughter at the ludicrous descriptions of Cervantes. There 
 was a kind of infantile earnestness in his preference of anything ot 
 this sort which struck his fancy ; for days it would usurp his 
 tlioughts and conversation. When the translation of the Sorrows 
 of Werter first appeared, he was for ever repeating and praising 
 some favourite passages,^ and calling upon every friend that 
 chanced to visit him to join in the eulogy, with all the impatience 
 of a child to display a new toy to his companions. 
 
 Such were his excellencies, or his harmless peculiarities, and the 
 office of enumerating them has been easy and attractive. But 
 biography, if the fidelity to truth which it demands be too rigidly 
 exacted, may become a harsh task, converting a friend, or one 
 nearer than a friend, unto the ungracious character of an accuser. 
 Every lover of genius would wish that this account of Mr. Curran's 
 life might here have closed without rendering it liable to the charge 
 of having suppressed any circumstance which it would not have 
 
 * So was O'Connell, all his life.— M. 
 
 t Particularly the will of Clarissa Harlowe, which he considered a masterpiece of 
 pathos — C. 
 
 :|: Among them was the following, from one of Werter's letters — "When in the fine 
 evenings of the summer you walk towards the mountains, think of me ; recollect the time 
 you have so often seen me come up from the valley ; raise your eyes to the churchyard 
 that contains my grave, and, by the light of the departing sun, see how the evening 
 breeze waves the high grass which grows over mo." — C. 
 
HIS CHARACTEK. 613 
 
 been to the interest of his name to have disclosed. But the ques- 
 tion will be asked, has this been a faithful picture ? — Have no shades 
 been designedly omitted? — Has delicacy or flattery concealed no 
 defects, without which the resemblance cannot be true ? To such 
 inquiries it is answered, that the estimable qualities, which have 
 formed the preceding description, have not been invented or exag- 
 gerated ; and if the person, who has assumed the duty of collect- 
 ing them, has abstained from a rigorous detail of any infirmities 
 of temper or conduct, it is because a feeling more sacred and 
 more justifiable than delicacy or flattery has taught him, and 
 should teach others, to regard them with tenderness and regret. 
 In thus abstaining from a cruel and unprofitable analysis of fail- 
 ings, to which the most gifted are often the most prone, no 
 deception is intended. It is due to that public to whom Mr. 
 Curran's merits have been here submitted as deserving their 
 approbation, to admit with candour that some particulars have 
 been withheld vvdiich they would not have approved ; but it is also 
 due to his memory to declare, that in balancing the conflicting 
 elements of his character, what was virtuous and amiable will be 
 found to have largely preponderated. He was not perfect; but 
 his imperfections have a peculiar claim upon our forbearance, when 
 we reflect that they sprung from the same source as his genius, and 
 may be considered as almost the inevitable condition upon which 
 that order of genius can be held. Their source was in his imagi- 
 nation. The same ardour and sensibility which rendered him so 
 eloquent an advocate of others, impelled him to take too impas- 
 sioned and irritating views of questions that personally related to 
 himself. The mistakes of conduct into which this impetuosity of 
 temperament betrayed him cannot be defended by this or by any 
 other explanation of their origin, yet it is much to be able to say 
 that they were almost exclusively confined to a single relation, and 
 that those who in consequence suffered most, but who, from their 
 intimate connexion with him, knew him best, saw so many redeem- 
 
 22* 
 
514 LIFE OF CUSEAN. 
 
 ing qualities in his nature, that tliey uniformly considered any 
 exclusion, from his regard not so much in the light of an injustice, 
 as of a personal misfortune. 
 
 There was a time when such considerations would have failed to 
 appease his numerous accusers, who, under the vulgar pretext of 
 moral indignation, were relentlessly taking vengeance on his public 
 virtues by assiduous and exaggerated statements of private errors, 
 which, had he been one of the enemies of his country, they would 
 have been the first to screen or justify. But it is hoped, that he 
 was not deceiving himself when he anticipated that the term of 
 their hostility would expire as soon as he should be removed be- 
 yond its reach. " The charity of the survivors (to use his own 
 expressions) looks at the failings of the dead through an inverted 
 glass ; and slander calls off the pack from a chase in which, when 
 there can be no pain, there can be no sport ; nor will memory weigh 
 their merits with a niggard steadiness of hand." But even should 
 this have been a delusive expectation — should the grave which now 
 covers him prove an unrespected barrier against the assaults of 
 political hatred, there will not be wanting many of more generous 
 minds, who loved and admired him, to rally round his memory from 
 the grateful conviction that his titles to his country's esteem stand 
 in defiance of every imperfection, of which his most implacable 
 revilers can accuse him. As long as Ireland retains any sensibility 
 to public worth, it will not be forgotten, that (whatever wayward- 
 ness he may have shown tow^ards some, and those a very few) she 
 had, in every vicissitude, the unpurchased and most unmeasured 
 benefit of his affections and his virtues. This is his claim and his 
 protection ; that having by his talents raised himself from an hum- 
 ble condition to a station of high trust and innumerable temptations, 
 he held himself erect in servile times, and has left an example of 
 political honour, upon which the most scrutinizing malice cannot 
 detect a stain. Nor will it be deemed an inconsiderable merit to 
 have thus, without fortune or connexions, forced his way into a 
 
HIS EMINENCE. 515 
 
 situation of such responsibility. " He that seeketh to bo eminent 
 amongst able men (said the ablest of men) hath a great task." '^^ 
 This task Mr. Curran fulfilled. In the generous struggle for 
 distinction, he was surrounded, not by a race of puny compe- 
 titors, whom accident or wealth had lifted above their sphere, but 
 by men of surpassing vigour, in whose ranks none but athletic 
 minds could be enrolled. Flood, Yelverton, Daly, Burgh, Perry, 
 Forbes, Ponsonby, and, to crown the list, their leader and solitary 
 survivor, Henry Grattan,f — these, all of them great names, and 
 worthy of their country's lasting pride, were the objects of his 
 honourable emulation, and to have been rewarded by their appro- 
 bation, and admitted an associate of their labours, is in itself an 
 evidence of his value, which neither- praises can increase, nor 
 envy take away. 
 
 * Bacon's Essays. 
 
 t Henry Grattan died (soon after the above was written) on June 4, 1820. He waa 
 interred in Westminster Abbey, next to Fox.— M. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 ANECDOTES OF CURRAN AND HIS FRIENDS. 
 
 "When Mr. Curran was iu Trinity College, Dublin, he was summoned by 
 the Board of Senior Fellows (the moral and literary censors of the 
 University) and stood before them in all that may be conceived lachrymose 
 in feature, penitent in exterior, yet internally unmoved. After a long 
 lecture, delivered in Hebrew, and explained into Greek, the accusation 
 amounted in plain English to this, that he " kept idle women in hia 
 chambers," and concluded according to the form of the statute and good 
 morals. He saw he had no way to escape but by the exercise of his wit, 
 and solemnly assured them that the accusation was utterly unfounded, as 
 he never in his life kept any woman idle in his rooms. 
 
 Bills of indictment had been sent up to a Grand Jury, in the finding of 
 which Mr. Curran was interested. After delay and much hesitation, one 
 of the Grand Jurors came into court to explain to the Judge the grounds 
 and reasons why it was ignored. Mr. Curran, very much vexed by the 
 stupidity of this person, said, •' You, Sir, can have no objection to write 
 upon the back of the bill, ignoramus, for self and fellow jurors 5 it will 
 then be a true bill." 
 
 When the habeas corpus suspension act passed, some time before the 
 year 1798, some person arguing for the propriety and necessity of that 
 law, had thrown out doctrines and opinions unfavourable to the freedom 
 of the constitution ; he, whose countenance and doctrines were by no 
 means agreeable to his hearers, was opposed by one of them, who said, 
 " Were you incarcerated for six months under this law you so much extol, 
 I should be glad to see how you would /oo/c." On which Mr. Curran 
 observed, " Perhaps he would not look a bit the worsen 
 
618 APPENDIX. 
 
 A member of the last Irish parliament, who had held one of the highest 
 law offices under the crown, all on a sudden came over to that party who 
 opposed the Union, voted against that measure, and lost his office, not 
 without much regret. Some person speaking of his conduct on this 
 occasion, extolled it highly, and observed, that he had made great sacri- 
 fices for his country's good, and had proved himself a sincere patriot. 
 "Sincere! no," said Mr. Curran, "he is a sorry patriot.'' 
 
 A learned serjeant, whose promotion to the bench was daily expected, 
 happened to be rather tedious in the statement of a case on trial before 
 one of the chief judges, who, anxious for compression, observed to the 
 Serjeant, that when he came to administer justice, he would then know the 
 value of time. A gentleman well known for his humour, and not having 
 much esteem for the judge, in relating the matter, gave quite another 
 turn to it by omitting the word administer ; " When you come to justice 
 you will the7i know the value of time." 
 
 Whenever any barrister is promoted, it is a rule on circuit that he shall 
 send to the bar mess, at least a dozen of claret, to drink his health. A 
 gentleman, not very much distinguished for ability, was recently appointed 
 to one of the county chairs, and his claret was announced in these words : 
 
 " This is Mr. 's health, and may he live long to administer justice, 
 
 as I am sure he will, indifferently .'" 
 
 £. barrister whom Mr. Curran very much esteemed for many amiable 
 qualities, among others, for a fine temper and good nature, dining with 
 him, was asked to be helped to green gooseberries and cream ; he said he 
 liked them very much, but feared, if he ate of them, he might be called, 
 as Dr. Goldsmith was, a gooseberry fool. Mr. Curran said, " Take the 
 gooseberries, my friend, and the milk of human kindness which so abun- 
 dantly flows round your heart, will soon make a fool of them." 
 
 During Lord Westmoreland's administration, when a number of new 
 corps were raised in Ireland (and given as jobs and political favours,) it 
 was observed that when inspected there, the establishment of each regi- 
 ment was nominally reported to be complete at embarkation for England, 
 but when landed at the other side, many of them had not a quarter of 
 their numbers. " No wonder," said j\Ir. Cnrran, " for after being mus- 
 tered, they are afraid of being peppered, and oflf they fly, not wishing to 
 pay for the roast ." 
 
ANECDOTES OF CUERAN. 519 
 
 Mr. Joseph Atkinson and Mr. Curran went on a visit to Scotland, where 
 they passed a day with the family of Lord Boyle : Lady Charlotte Boyle, 
 the sister of Lord Hopetown, asked Mr. Curran what he thought of Edin- 
 burgh ? "I think. Madam," said he, " speaking of the Ancient and New 
 Town, it is like an old gentleman married to a blooming young bride ; he 
 venerably loves and protects her, whilst she graces his side by her beauty 
 and elegant attractions." 
 
 A person observing how many new houses were erecting in Dublin, said, 
 " What will they all end in ?" Mr. Curran replied, " they must end in 
 siiioke^ 
 
 On Mr. Curran's visit into Scotland, he heard that the priest of the 
 temple of Hymen at Gretna Green no longer forged the chains of wed- 
 lock ; that he was not now a blacksmith, but a tobacconist. Mr. Curran 
 said, ^'So much the better, for he will make the happy couple give quid for 
 quo." 
 
 Mr. Egan the lawyer, when chairman of Kilmainham, had entertained 
 expectations that he would be thence promoted to a seat on the bench ; he 
 was perceived by Mr. Curran to have paid great attention to some beauti- 
 ful woman ; and his principles not being exactly of the Jose]}h character, 
 he was jocosely charged by Mr. Curran as to the motives. Egan, fearing 
 that his immorality might become an impediment to his advancement, 
 Lord Manners being at the head of the law department, said, "I am 
 free to confess I am not restrained by morals, but by Manners. ''I '^ You 
 should rather have said,'* observed Mr. Curran, "that your bad manners 
 are restrained by his good morals." 
 
 Of some attorney, whose character for litigation fame dealt severely 
 with, Mr. Curran observed, that every one's hand was raised against him, 
 and his against every one. And he thought him like a rat which had 
 got under the chairs, where every one made a blow at him, but no one 
 could bit him. 
 
 Some time after the Union, Mr. Curran was walking by the Parliament 
 House with a certain member, a friend of his, who had supported that 
 measure ; this gentleman observed that he never passed that house 
 without the deepest melancholy and regret. "I do not wonder at it," 
 said Mr. Curran, " I never knew a man who had committed murder, who 
 was not haunted by the ghost of the murdered whenever he came to 
 fhe spot at which the foul deed was done." 
 
520 APPENDIX. 
 
 la Ireland they have a good-natured, familiar, open manner of friendly 
 intercourse, which enters frequently into the most serious and solemn 
 affairs. A gentleman of the age of thirty, about four feet high, and quite 
 a boy in appearance, for want of accommodation in a very crowded court, 
 in the county of Kerry, got into the jury-box. He was very much beloved, 
 and being too low to peep over the box, perched himself on the brawny 
 shoulders of one of the jurors. In the progress of the trial it was observed, 
 that there were thirteen persons in the box. This created some confusion, 
 and it was objected, that it would be a ground to set aside the verdict. 
 Mr. Curran said that, considering the difficulty of the question, the jurors 
 were right in putting as many heads together as they could ; but be that 
 as it may, the verdict would not be endangered, for it would be secured 
 by the maxim of the law, which says, '^ de minimis non curat lexP 
 
 Of some learned serjeant, who had given a confused, elaborate, and 
 tedious explanation of some point of law, he observed, that whenever that 
 grave counsellor endeavoured to unfold a principle of law he put him in 
 mind of a fool whom he once saw struggling for a whole day to open an 
 oyster with a rolling pin. 
 
 He said of a busy, bustling, garrulous lawyer, that he always thought 
 him like a counsellor in a play, where all was stage-trick, bustle, or scene- 
 shifting. 
 
 In cross-examining an old clergyman whose evasions of truth were dis- 
 graceful to him, Mr. Curran closed with this question, "Doctor, when yoa 
 last put your spectacles in the Bible, give me leave to ask you, did you 
 close it on that passage which says ' Thou shalt not bear false witness 
 against thy neighbour V " 
 
 He told an anecdote of an Irish tenant in Kerry, who came to pay his 
 rent of £500, and the lady of the house perceiving he had a propensity to 
 play, she being very ugly, of a musty, dingy countenance, with a bad 
 squint, and who never looked straightly at any object but a pack of cards, 
 or the money set on the game, she prevailed on him, however, to play, 
 till he had lost all his money, and she still continued to encourage him, 
 relying on his honour now that his money was lost. At length, fixing his 
 eyes fiercely on her, he excused himself, declaring in a decided tone, that 
 he would play no more with her ladyship, for that she had the devils' 
 look [luck] and her own. 
 
ANECDOTES OF CURKAN. 521 
 
 Such was the effect of Mr. Curran's pleasantry, that even on ordinary 
 occasions, servants in attending on the table often became suspended, like 
 the bucket in the well, and frequently started as if from a reverie, when 
 called upon for the ordinary attendance. Sometimes a wine glass could not 
 be had, or if asked for, a knife or fork was presented in its place ; their faces 
 turned away, you heard nothing but the breaks of a suppressed laugh- 
 ter. He had a favourite black servant who lived with him for many years, 
 and to whom, for his great fidelity, Mr. Curran was very much attached. 
 This poor fellov/ was observed for a few days before his departure, to have 
 been oppressed with gloom and sadness, the cause of which was not directly 
 enquired into. One morning, whilst in this state, he came up anxiously to 
 his master, and with apparent regret and an air of much dejection requested 
 to be discharged. Mr. Curran told him he was very much concerned to 
 lose the services of so faithful a person, that he had a strong regard for 
 him ; and on enquiring into the reason of his desire to leave him, the black 
 replied, '• it is impossible for me to remain longer with you, massa." 
 " Why, my good fellow, we will see all care taken of you." ^' No massa, 
 I cannot live longer with you, I am losing my health with you, you make 
 me laugh too much." 
 
 A brother barrister of his, remarkable for having a perpetuity in dirty 
 shirts, was drily asked in the presence of Mr. Curran, " Pray, my dear Bob, 
 how do you get so many dirty shirts ?•' Mr. Curran replied for him, ** I 
 can easily account for it ; his laundress lives at Holyhead, and there are 
 nine packets always due." This gentleman wishing to travel to Cork 
 during the rebellion, but apprehensive he should be known by the rebels, 
 was advised to proceed incog., which he said was easily effected, for by dis- 
 guising himself in a clean shirt, no one would know him. 
 
 Of the same gentleman, who was a sordid miser, it was told Mr. Curran 
 that he had set out from Cork to Dublin, with one shirt, and one guinea. 
 " Yes," said Mr. Curran, " and I will answer for it, he will change neither 
 of them till he returns." 
 
 Going to dine in the country with the late Judge Fletcher, he had arriv- 
 ed early enough to take a walk in the garden 5 Mr. Fletcher's country 
 seat is separated from a public road by a stone wall, which having fallen 
 in during a severe winter, the gardens were thereby left open to the dust 
 of the road : it was now the month of April, and Mr. Fletcher was observ- 
 ing on the rows of brocoli, which be said were very backward, and 
 
522 APPENDLX. 
 
 scarcely to be seen, though they had been carefully drilled. On which 
 Mr. Curran observed, "It is very true, but consider, they have been much 
 exposed to the dust, and look as if they had been after a long march.- ^ 
 This sally it is said to have cost the judge more than he calculated upon, 
 as he immediately raised the wall six feet higher. 
 
 Lord Avonmore supported the measure of the Union, it is supposed, as 
 the result of his judgement : Mr. Curran opposed it. It was said, in gra- 
 titude for this, the lord obtained from the crown an office of considerable 
 emolument.* When the draught of the patent was sent to him for his 
 approbation, he called into his study a few of his friends, among the rest, 
 Mr. Curran, to see if all was right. The wording ran in the usual form ; 
 " To all to whom these letters patent shall come, greeting, &.c &c. we of 
 the united kingdom of Great Britain and /re/a/zc?, king, &c. &c. ;" Mr. 
 Curran, when the reader came to this part, exclaimed, " Stop Stop F' 
 " My God !" said Lord Avonmore impatiently, " why stop ?"' " Why ? be- 
 cause," said Mr. Curran, " it sets out the considerafioyi too early in the 
 deed.-' 
 
 Mr; Curran made occasional visits into France, where he met with many 
 of those most celebrated for genius and letters; among others he became 
 acquainted with the Abbe Sicard, and returned him thanks in the name 
 of human nature for the good he had done to mankind. He was also 
 well known to Madame De Stael, and his account of her accords with 
 what has long before been known to the public. He conversed with her, 
 and though her face was by no means prepossessing, he describes her as 
 having the power of talking herself into a beauty. 
 
 A barrister entered one of the Four Courts, Dublin, with his wig so 
 much awry as to cause a general titter. Seeing Curran smile, he said, " Do 
 you see any thing ridiculous in my wig ?'' '* No,'' replied Curran, 
 " nothing but the head." 
 
 * At the Union, Lord Avonmore (who voted for It), was elevated in the peerage from ttie 
 rank of Baron to that of Viscount, and received a patent (probably tlie document above 
 named) appointing him Principal Registrar of the Irish Court of Chancer3'-, with a salary 
 of 4199^. and succession to his son, by whom it is received to this hour. By this Lord 
 Avonmore was Chief Baron of the Excliequer and a clerk in the Chancellor's Court. It 
 is cmious to find his lordship so invariably praised, by Irish writers, for his patriotism. 
 As plain Barry Yelverton, briefless (and nearly shirtless) he was a " patriot," for many 
 years, — as a judge, peer, and unionist what was he ? — M. 
 
ANECDOTES OF CUKRAN". 523 
 
 A lawyer, a friend of Mr. Curran, who bad devoted mucli more of 
 his time to the study of Hoyle than of Hale, a notable gambler, but a 
 person of eccentric and lively turn of mind, got entangled with Mr. Cur- 
 ran one day after dinner, and losing a little ground on the score of temper, 
 sharply observed, that he had too much spirit to allow any person to go 
 too far with him, and passionately added, •' No man shall trifle with me 
 with impunity;" to which Mr. Currau replied, '• Play with you, Roderick, 
 you mean." 
 
 Mr. Curran one day riding by the country seat of one of the judges, 
 was struck by a group of lovely children whom he perceived playing in 
 the avenue ; he stopped to inquire to whom all these fine children belonged ; 
 he was answered by the nurse, who had a beautiful infant in her arms, 
 
 that they were the children of Judge . " Pray, my good woman, 
 
 how many of them has he?" "There are twelve playing about inside, 
 and this in my arms is the thirteenth." " Then," said Mr. Curran, "the 
 judge has a full jury, and may proceed to trial whenever he chooses, and 
 the young one will make an excellent criei-." 
 
 Mr. Egan, the lawyer, was a person of very large stature and of great 
 thews and sinews : on going into a bath, he exultingly struck his breast, 
 all over matted with hair, and exclaimed, " Curran, did you ever see so 
 fine a chest V *' Trunk, you mean," said Mr. Curran. 
 
 Egan, in addressing a jury, having exhausted every ordinary epithet 
 of abuse, he stopped for a word, and then added, '' this naufrageous 
 ruffian." When afterwards asked by his friends the meaning of the word, 
 he confessed he did not know, but said " he thought it sounded well.' 
 
 Mr. Curran happening to cross-examine one of those persons known in 
 Ireland by the insignificant description of half gentlemen, found it neces- 
 sary to ask a question as to his knowledge of the Irish tongue, which 
 though perfectly familiar to him, the witness affected not to understand, 
 whilst he, at the same time, spoke extremely bad English : " I see, sir, 
 how it is, you are more ashamed of knowing your own language, than of 
 cot knowing any other." 
 
 A lady having shewed him her fan, with the map of England upon it, 
 he said, '• Madam, it should be the map of the world, for it puts all uur 
 hearts in a flutter like yourself." 
 
524 APPENDIX. 
 
 A gentleman who was too desirous of attracting the attention of those 
 about him to the style and fashion of his dress, and one time, to the shape 
 of a pair of half boots, which he had that day drawn on, appealed to Mr. 
 Curran, among others, for his opinion, who said, " He observed but one 
 fault, — they shewed too much of the calfJ^ 
 
 A gentleman, whose father had been a wealthy and respectable shoe- 
 -maker of the city of Dublin, and who had indulged many persons with 
 credit, had lately died, and left, with other property, his account books to 
 his son, who was a person of great vivacity and good humour ; an old 
 debtor of the father, in bandying wit with the son, annoyed him with the 
 piquancy of his raillery, the son observed, that he was paying oif in 
 an odd coin, demanded payment of the debt, and said, if it was further 
 delayed, he would sue him : the other asked in what capacity would he 
 sue 1 " As sole executor ^^ said Mr. Ciirran. 
 
 Mr. Curran made frequent excursions to England, " to distract,''' as he 
 said, and there he enjoyed the society of many friends. Lords Moira, 
 Carleton, and a long catalogue of persons eminent for rank and talents. 
 Burke and Sheridan, though known to him, he appears never to have set 
 so high a value upon as other men did. Of Burke, he used to say, that 
 *•' his mind was like an over-decorated chapel, filled with gauds and shews, 
 and badly assorted ornaments.'' Of Dr. Johnson, that "he was a super- 
 stitious and brutish bigot, and that, with the exception of his Dictionary, 
 he had done more injury to the English language than even Gibbon 
 himself." 
 
 Of John Home Tooke he thought in the words of Mr. Grattan, that 
 no man was to be found of more acuteness, or of more undaunted resolu- 
 tion. '' Methinks,'- said Mr. Grattan, " if Mr. John Home Tooke purposed 
 to drink his glass of wine, and that the bolts of heaven had rent asunder the 
 earth beneath his feet, Mr. J. H. Tooke would still drink his glass of wine." 
 Mr. Tooke, in once asking a countryman of Mr. Curran's, what opinion 
 the Irish entertained of his wit compared with that of Mr. Sheridan ; on 
 being answered, that his own countrymea conceived no other man living 
 possessed it in equal brilliancy, richness, and variety, the philosopher of 
 England observed, " I know both these gentlemen, and I know them well, 
 both in public and in private ; Sheridan is laboured and polished, you 
 always see the marks of the chisel and hatchet about him ; Curran is 
 a rich and glittering ore, which is raised from the mine without effort, and 
 in the most exuberant profusion." 
 
ANECDOTES OF CUKEAN. 525 
 
 It was once observed in Mr. Curraa's company, that the late Mr. Fox 
 had no relish for broad humour. " I am not sure," said Mr. Curran, " that 
 Fox dislilied humour ; sometimes, when the boj^doa raillery of my animal 
 spirits has ruffled the plumage of my good manners, when my mirth has 
 turned dancing-master to my veneration, and made it perhaps a little too 
 supple, I have sported playfully in the presence of this slumbering lion, 
 and now and then he condescended to dandle the child. He laughed 
 inwardly. It was not easy to say what Fox would call a mot, but when 
 said, I thought I saw a smile rippling over the fine Atlantic of his 
 countenance.^'' 
 
 Mr. Curran had occasion to hire a servant ; and wishing to procure a 
 person of good character and respectable appearance, he requested a 
 friend to look out for such. The friend was a wag, and had very lately 
 dismissed his own servant, who happened to be the reverse of what Mr. 
 Curran wished for. The friend had two objects to gratify ; one to amuse 
 himself with Mr. Curran, the other, to humble the presumptuous ex- 
 pectations of an arrogant, dishonest, and conceited fellow, whom, on 
 account of his vanity, &c., he had discharged. The candidate was shown 
 up one morning to Mr. Curran ; his appearance was much in his favour. 
 He was dressed in the best fashion of a Bond-street beau. Mr. Curran was 
 for a moment under a mistake ; observing him unfolding some papers, and 
 conceiving him to be no less than some gallant defendant in a crim. con. 
 action, and that he came to retain him, he requested him to take a chair, 
 and asked him. if he had had breakfast. The other answered by producing 
 his discharges. Mr. Curran, perceiving his error, proceeded to business ; 
 and asked him, after the production of his credentials, " what wages he 
 would expect ?" to which he answered, " My last wages at Sir Thomas 
 
 were lOOZ. a year, and two suits of coloured clothes." Mr. Curran 
 
 inwardly started, and observed, " Yon, sir, to be sure, are highly noticed 
 by those with whom you have lived ; and, from your appearance, and the 
 strong recommendations you have got, even the value you set upon your- 
 self cannot be considered too high; and, if all other matters could be 
 understood, possibly no difference may arise on this head : but, as my 
 occf\sions demand particular and punctilious attention to hours, I would 
 be glad to know what time you would wish to devote to yourself." 
 "Why, sir, from one to five o'clock, as I generally ride out each day." 
 " But if you get these hours, would you be quite exact in your return ?" 
 '' Certainly, sir." " What do you generally drink after dinner?" "Why, 
 sir, my last allowance was one bottle of wine a day." " Are you quite 
 
526 APPENDIX. 
 
 certain that a moderate portion of wine would have no injurious effect ?'' 
 •' Oh ! certainly not, sir," with a smile. '•' Pray, sir, am I to understand 
 you, that you keep your own horses, or am I to keep them for you ?" 
 •' Why, sir, out of such small wages, it would be quite impossible 
 that I could keep my own horses." '■ Well, sir," said Mr. Curran, •' I 
 think I now pretty well understand you : let me see, between wine, 
 wages, clothes, horses, keeping, &c. &c., your service may stand me about 
 350/. a year." '' Why, something thereabout, sir." Wearied with this 
 creature's impudent, arrogant expectations, he ended, by saying, " My 
 good friend, there remains but one point of difference between us, which 
 you may easily adjust ; it entirely rests with you : suppose we were to 
 change sides ; for on these terms, I assure you, I should anxiously desire 
 to become your very humble servant /" 
 
 There were two gentlemen of the Irish bar, one a northern, the other a 
 southern : they were tall as poplars : of them he said, *' One is the north 
 pole, the other the south pole." One of them being seen in London 
 walking with Mr. Curran, some person asked him who that extraordinary 
 man was, that so much resembled Lisraahago, and what was his business 
 to London ? Mr. Curran replied, *' that though he was one of his longest 
 acquaintance, yet he did not precisely know what his business to London 
 was, except, perhaps, to peep down the chimneys of the Londoners, to see 
 what they had for dinner.'- One of those gentlemen had, by the length 
 of his legs, so annoyed an English lady who sat opposite to him in a public 
 coach, that, when he proposed to some of the company to take a walk for 
 a short stage, on his going out he observed, '• I think it will be of great 
 use to me to stretch my legs." " Good God ! (the lady remarked,) sir, if 
 you do, there will be no enduring you, they are so long already." 
 
 Mr. Mahaffy, (who long presided in the Admirality Court, as deputy for 
 Sir Jonah Barrington, the Judge) a very tall gentleman, was retained by 
 Archdeacon Verscoyle in a cause which was instituted to try his right to 
 a certain church. In one of the stages of the trial, the Archdeacon des- 
 pondingly asked Mr. Curran (who was of counsel for him,) his opinion as 
 to the event of the suit. Mr. Curran gave him every hope ; and, pointing 
 to Mr. Mahaffy, observed, '• My dear Archdeacon, as you have retmned 
 the spire, the church can be in no danger." 
 
 Of some person who voted for the Union, and owed his elevation to his 
 vote, he observed, '* that he was the foulest bird that ever perched upon 
 the ruins of a broken constitution." 
 
AIiq-EODOTES OF CURRAN. 527 
 
 From one of ihos-e Greek isles recently reilliimed by the vigorous and 
 fascinating poetry of the most original writer of this century, a beautiful 
 Smyrnese lady, perhaps sister to the Bride of Abydos, lately arrived iu 
 Dublin. To the repose and softness of her eye, the finely turned oval of 
 her face, there were added a languishment of air, and a richness of dress, 
 peculiar to those delicious climates, from which time has not despoiled 
 them of every thing by despoiling them of freedom. Such were her 
 charms, that she was followed in the public assemblies and in the streets, 
 by crowds of admirers. AValking in one of the squares, she was perceived 
 by a friend of Mr. Curran, who instantly exclaimed, ''Oh! there is the 
 beautiful woman from Smyrna, I must leave you for a moment to see 
 her.-' Shortly after returning, he found Mr. Curran, who said, " Well my 
 friend, what say you. Quid tibi visa Chios, quid Smyrna ?'' 
 
 He was engaged on behalf of a plain tradesman, a citizen of Dublin, 
 who had been ill-treated, where insult was added to injury, and where the 
 man was horse-whipped, beaten down, and falsely imprisoned. He com- 
 plained through Mr. Curran to a court of justice, and a jury listened to 
 his tale of woe and of sufferings, which wanted not the colouring of ima- 
 gination ; it was most affectingly told by his counsel : he used no orna- 
 ments to dress out the victim which had already suffered so much. His 
 appeals were deeply affecting, because natural. He gave up to the jury 
 the case of an innocent and oppressed man in terms which were directed 
 to the heart, — the jury and the audience were touched : but the client, 
 who heard all, was so overv/helmed that he burst forth from a silence he 
 had before been noticed for, into a sudden exclamation, accompanied with 
 tears : '' Oh ! my Lord, all the counsellor has told you is every word of it 
 true, but till this moment I never knew I had been half so cruelly ill- 
 treated." 
 
 A hot fool, plunged into distress, was playing at billiards, and having 
 wagered his only guinea on the success of the game, became tremulously 
 anxious on the last stroke of the ball ; perceiving the clock giving notice 
 to strike one, as he hoped, and fearing some distraction, he paused for a 
 moment ; another and another succeeded, till the clock went insensibly on 
 to twelve. Thus suspended, his irritation increased, he played and lost, 
 and in his rage seizing the ball, drove it at the clock with such fury and 
 force that he broke it in pieces : the owner sought compensation and 
 obtained it. This being related in the presence of Mr. Curran, he observed 
 " That the damage should be very small as the clock struck first J* 
 
528 APPENDIX. 
 
 An Englishman, visiting Dublin for the first, sat next Mr. Grattan at a 
 civic feast, and found him as dull — as the place and occasion required. 
 He was much disappointed ; and seeking an occasion to meet Mr. Curran 
 a few days after at dinner, not apprised of the unbroken intimacy and 
 friendship which politically and privately ever subsisted between those 
 gentlemen, indiscreetly observed, that Mr. Grattan, appeared to possess 
 nothing striking in conversation, and to have exhibited nothing of those 
 extraordinary powers for which he was so celebrated. Mr. Curran started, 
 and replied, " Surely, sir, you cannot expect that the sun will be always 
 found in its meridian : permit me, however, to ask you where you had the 
 good fortune to have met this gentleman." On being answered, at a city 
 feast ; " Oh, yes : it is very true : I comprehend it perfectly. Yet, take 
 my word for it, my good sir, he is still a sweet bird, though he never sings 
 but in his own climate.''^ 
 
 Shortly after the establishment of our colony at Botany Bay, when the 
 population was fast increasing, Mr. Curran in one of his speeches upon a 
 criminal trial, observed, " that should the colony thrive, and become a 
 regular civil government, what a pleasant thing it would be to have the 
 laws administered by judges reprieved at the gallows; by justices who 
 had picked pockets ; by counsellors who had pleaded at the bar for their 
 lives ; by lawyers who had set the law at defiance ; to see house-breakers 
 appointed to protect the public property ; highwaymen entrusted with the 
 public money : rioters invested with commissions of the peace, and shop- 
 lifters to regulate the markets. Such, however, said he, were the original 
 people of Rome 5 and such the foundation of the states of America." 
 
 A beautiful young woman of the name of Serjeant, whose father was an 
 officer of a yeomanry corps in Dublin, happened to pass Mr. Curran in 
 the street ; struck by her beauty, he inquired of a friend who she was, and 
 being answered, that she was the lovely Miss Serjeant whom he had seen 
 ten years before at Cheltenham — " What, not married yet? then I suppose 
 her father will make her &, permanent Serjeant." 
 
 Mr. Hoare's countenance was grave and solemn, with an expression like 
 one of those statues of the Brutus head : he seldom smiled ; and if he 
 smiled, he smiled in such a sort as seemed to have rebuked the spirit that 
 could smile at all. Mr. Curran once observing a beam of joy to enliven 
 his face, remarked, " Whenever I see smiles on Hoare's countenance, I 
 think they are like tin clasps on an oaken coffin.i" 
 
ANECDOTES OF OUERAN. 529 
 
 A gentleman of one of the s*«4hern counties in Ireland, well known 
 for a certain determination of mind, and unaccommodating strength of 
 resolution, was perceived to be very active on some trial in which Mr. 
 Currau v/as engaged ; it was proposed to refer the case to the arbitration 
 of this gentleman, as he was reputed to be an honest man : on the other 
 side an objection was raised, founded on the known sternness of his char- 
 acter ; and it was also remarked, that his iron leg was the softest part 
 about him ; '• Oh, surely," said Mr. Curran, " that must be irony. ''^ 
 
 The printed speech of some young barrister* had been laid before Mr. 
 Curran, and his opinion asked after he had carefully perused it. '' Why," 
 said he, ''there is much more of flower than figure in it — more of fancy 
 than design : it is like (as I suspect the mind of the author to be) a tree 
 in full blossom — shake it, and you have them on the ground in a minute, 
 and it would take a season to reproduce them." 
 
 An eminent member of Parliament, a leader of the opposition, being 
 In the company of Mr. Curran, had heard him copiously and vehemently 
 descant on the numerous grievances under which he represented Ireland 
 to be labouring. This gentleman, became very urgent in his solicitations 
 to get materials for some good speeches from such a source, rather impru- 
 dently requested of Mr. Curran to supply him with a list of these grievances, 
 accompanied by such observations and details as he would wish to make 
 upon them. Mr. Curran suspecting that there was full as much of per- 
 sonal interest as of patriotism in the request, declined gratifying it. Some 
 friend asked him, in a few days after, why he did not comply with the ear- 
 nest desire of the person alluded to. "No," said Mr. Curran, '* I have no 
 notion whatever, at my time of life, nor indeed at any, to turn hodman to 
 any political architect.''^ 
 
 A barrister of the name of Going had, among other pleasantries, a 
 favourite story, which he so agreeably exaggerated every time he told it, 
 that at length it became too monstrous for belief. He was charged with 
 this in presence of Mr. Curran, who observed, that the story was not the 
 worse for being enlarged, that it was an excellent story, and had the 
 merit of proceedint 
 gathers strength by going." 
 
 * Charles Phillips, his future biographer.— M. 
 
 23 
 
530 APPENDIX. 
 
 Speaking of the supineness of Government, while the fire of rebellion was 
 not yet extinguished, but raked over, he observed they were like the silly 
 sea-boy, who thought that during the time he slept, the ship ceased to 
 move. 
 
 lu Parliament, on the debate of an iraportaut question, involving some 
 of the deepest interests of his country ; perceiving the House to be very 
 thinly attended, he rose, and after many arguments and observations, he 
 at length demanded in a commanding tone of voice of the Speaker — '• Where 
 are the members? have they not been summoned ? It seems then," said he, 
 " they are not forthcoming ; perhaps at this very moment, they may be 
 found chained in couples in the kennel, or under the management of the 
 ministers' secretary.-' 
 
 Enthusiastically fond of music, he perceived at a rehearsal, one of those 
 Roderigos or foolish gentlemen, who haunt concerts and oratorios, busy 
 and bustling, ordering and disordering everything : vexed with the popin- 
 jay, he observed to a friend — ''Mark that fellow, he is like the fool who 
 blows the bellows for the organist, and because he does so, he thinks it is 
 himself who performs the instrument." 
 
 Speaking of the profession of the law, he compared the hope of suc- 
 cess to the gamut of the musicians ; he said one should gather his strength 
 and begin with the low notes; and this he illustrated by saying, ''It 
 reminded him of a cunning barber, who began his trade by shaving a 
 beggar, in the hope that one day or other he would rise to shave a 
 duchess.'* 
 
 Walking one evening in autumn, in Saint James's Park, accompanied 
 by Mr. Charles Phillips, celebrated equally for his eloquence as for his 
 poetry, there suddenly came on a violent tempest, which rived the gnarled 
 oak, and shook the leaves, and strewed them over the walks, as thick as 
 those in Yallombroso, which Mr. Curran remarking, said, "My dear friend, 
 observe here ; we are desired by philosophy to take lessons from Nature ; 
 yet how foolishly does she seem to act on the present occasion ; she flings 
 away her blessings and her decorations ; she is at this moment very busy 
 in stripping those defenceless trees, at the approach of winter and of 
 cold, at that very season when they most want covering." 
 
 THE END. 
 
INDEX, 
 
 Abercombie, Sir Ralph, protests against the 
 Government's reign of terror in Irehind, 
 and is recalled, 835. 
 
 Aldvvorth family at Newmarket, 2 ; their 
 kindness to Curran, 4. 
 
 Apjolin, W., Curran's poetical address to, 
 1-i; Curran's character of, 16. 
 
 American Bar, Curran's early intention of 
 joining it, 5T. 
 
 American Revolution, effect of, in Ireland, 
 95. 
 
 Appendix, 517. 
 
 Armstrong, Captain, the informer who be- 
 trayed the ^hearses, 256; described by 
 Davis, ib.; his infamous character, 264 ; 
 his evidence, 266: denounced by Curran, 
 277 
 
 Atkinson, Joseph, friend of Curran and 
 Moore, 3S7. 
 
 Avonmore, Lord (Barry Yelverton), edu- 
 cated at INliddleton, 5; liis regard for 
 Curran, 7S; complimented by Curran, 79; 
 founds tlie Order of the Monks of the 
 Screw, SO; Curran's Address to, 83; his 
 habit of anticipation, 85 ; reference to, in 
 Parliament, 107 ; presides at Orr's trial, 
 207 ; his opinion of Blackstone, 208 ; his 
 patriotism. 
 
 Bar, the Irish, mode of admission to, 17; 
 points of difference from the English bar, 
 60. 
 
 Barrington, Sir Jonah, his account of Henry 
 Sheares' last appeal to the Government, 
 270. 
 
 Bond, Oliver, indicted for treason, 293; de- 
 fended by Curran, 294; convicted, and 
 dies in prison, 302. 
 
 Boor, the English, described, 23. 
 
 Boyse, Rev. Nathaniel, rector of Newmar- 
 ket, educates Curran, 4 ; at Paris, 127 ; 
 letter from, 129 ; visits Curran in Dublin, 
 131). 
 
 Brownlow, Mr., Grattan's sketch of, SB. 
 
 Burgh, llussey, sketched by Grattan, 88 ; 
 notice of, 89. 
 
 Burke, Edward, his eloquence compared 
 with Curran's, 492, 
 
 Burrowes, Peter, his defence of Grattaii, 
 100. 
 
 Bushe, Charles Kendal, 04. 
 
 Byrne, NVilliani Michael, convicted and e.K- 
 ecuted for treason, 293. 
 
 Byron, I;ord, borrows an image from Cur- 
 ran, 399 ; compares Erskine and Curran, 
 455 ; his opinion of Curran's imagination, 
 508. 
 
 Carleton, Lord, presides at the trial of the 
 Sheareses, 256 ; refuses to adjourn the 
 Court, after sixteen hours' sitting, 265. 
 
 Castlereagh, Lord, his humaniti/, 254. 
 
 Catacombs of Paris, 444. 
 
 Catholic Emancipation, Curran's early ad- 
 vocacy of, 33 ; resisted by the Irish Par- 
 liament, 102; supported by Curran, 195. 
 
 Catholic Penal Code, 91. 
 
 Charlemont, Lord, 233; early opposition to 
 the Catholic Claims, 399. 
 
 Clare, Earl of: his life, 108; contest and 
 duel with Curran, 109; virtually shuts 
 him out of all Chancery practice, 156; 
 Curran's retort to, before the Privy Coun- 
 cil, 162. 
 
 Clonmel, Lord, his rise, 62; quarrels with 
 Curran, 192. 
 
 Cockayne, the informer, anecdote of, 189. 
 
 Courts of Law in Ireland, irregularities in, 
 66. 
 
 Creagh , Dr. Richard, his character of " Jack 
 Curran," 36; antipathy to keening, 52; 
 becomes Cui'ran's father-in-law, 55. 
 
 Croppies, the, 251. 
 
 Curran, Amelia, dies in Rome, 355. 
 
 Curran James, Seneschal of Newmarket, 2; 
 his education, 3. 
 
 Curran, John Fhilpot; Date and Place of 
 Birth, 1 ; his Descent, 2 ; his Parentage, 
 3 ; his Education, 4; his Schoolfellows. 5; 
 works Punch's l'uppet-Sh<nv, 6; enters 
 Trinity College, Dublin, as Sizar, ih. ; his 
 favorite Classics, ih. ; his Coll>-ge friend- 
 ships, 7 ; writes a Sermon for Mr. Stack, 
 9 ; adopts the Law as his Profession, 10 ; 
 Satire on Dr. Duigenan, ih. ; his College 
 life, 11 ; Poetical Address to Mr. Apjohn, 
 13 ; leaves College, 17 ; enters the Middle 
 
532 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Temple, ib. ; Letters to Mr. Weston, 18 ; 
 Journey to London, 19 ; describes an 
 English Boor, 23 ; visits Hampton Court, 
 24; his Life in London, 25; Letter to 
 Jerry Keller, 28 ; his Oratory, early Fail- 
 ure, and Success, as related by himself, 
 29; attends Debating Clubs, 83; early 
 advocacy of Catholic Emancipation, ib. ; 
 Poem on Friendship by, 34 ; his Character 
 sketched by Dr. Creagh, 36; Hudson's 
 Predictions of, 37 ; Letter from London, 
 39; his Industry in the Temple, 42; his 
 Society in London, 46 ; Interviews with 
 Macklin, ib. ; early Application and At- 
 tainments, 48 ; favorite Authors, 51 ; 
 Scene at a Wake, 53 ; Attachment to the 
 Irish Peasantry, 54 ; Marries Miss 
 Creagh, 55 ; called to the Irish Bar, 58 ; 
 his forensic Oratory, 59 ; his Firmness, 
 65 ; early Success at the Bar, 69 ; Contest 
 ■with Judge Robinson, 70; advocacy of a 
 Catholic Priest, assaulted by Lord Done- 
 I'aile, 71 ; obtains a Verdict, 74 ; animad- 
 version on Captain St. Leger's conduct, 
 75; Duel with, 76; receives Father 
 Neale's dying benediction, Z(^-i. ; supported 
 by Lord Avonmore's friendship, 'i 8; his 
 Character of, and Address to Lord Avon- 
 more, 79 ; joins the Monks of the Screw, 
 80 ; List of the Members, ib. ; appointed 
 Prior of the Order, 81 ; writes the Char- 
 ter Song, 82; pathetic Address to Lord 
 Avonmore, 83 ; their Quarrel and Recon- 
 ciliation, 84; enters Parliament, 86; how 
 he obtained his Seat, 87 ; joins the Na- 
 tional Party, 101 ; inferior character of 
 his Parliamentary Speeches, 105 ; supports 
 Flood's proposition for a Reform in Par- 
 liament, 106 ; his early Career in Parlia- 
 ment, 107 ; Contest and Duel with Fitz- 
 gibbon (Earl of Clare), 109; Speaks 
 against Orde's Commercial Propositions, 
 111; Speech on the Pension List, 112; 
 Character of the Pension List, 114; in 
 full Practice at the Bar, 115 ; Letter from, 
 116; builds the Priory at Newmarket, «6 ; 
 his Companions and Avocations there, 
 117; Occasional A'^erses, 119; Speech on 
 Irish Disturbances, 120 ; on the Right Boy 
 Oath, the Pension List, and Navigation 
 Laws, 122 ; first visit to France, ib. ; Let- 
 ter from Dieppe, 123; from Rouen, 125; 
 visit to a French Abbot, 126 ; Letter from 
 Paris, 127; Scene at the Opera House, 
 128 ; receives Mr. Boyce in Dublin, 130 ; 
 Speech on Contraband Trade, 131 ; visits 
 Holland, zZ>. ,• Letter from Helvoetsluys, 
 ib. ; from Amsterdam, 132 ; the King's 
 illness and the Regency question, 134 ; 
 the Ermine and a Peerage offered to Cur- 
 ran, and refused, ib. ; his Speech in Par- 
 liament, 135 ; rei)lies to Fitzgibbon, 140; 
 Speech on the Division of the Board of 
 Stam])s and Accounts, 143 ; attacked by 
 Sir Boyle Roche, 147; his Reply, 149; 
 Correspondence with Major Hobart, 150 ; 
 Duel, 165 ; shut out of Chancery Practice 
 by Lord Clare, 156 ; signal vengeance for 
 
 the wrong, 158 ; Alderman Howlson's 
 case, 159 ; appeal to the Viceroy, Chan- 
 cellor, and Privy Council, 161); strong 
 Personal Attack on Lord Clare, 162; Par- 
 liamentary Speeclies, 165 ; defends Ham- 
 ilton Rowan, 170 ; Universal Emancipa- 
 tion, 172 ; the Liberty of the Press, ib. ; 
 noble Peroration, 174: Conviction, 175 ; 
 Defence of the "Defender:-," 177; near 
 approach to Office, 1"78 ; defends Jackson, 
 179 ; Jackson's Suicide, 182 ; Contest 
 with Lord Clonmel, 192; Parliament- 
 ary Career, 196 ; last Year [1795] of his 
 Legislative life, 198; retires from Parlia- 
 ment, 206; Speech for William Orr, 
 206; defence of Peter Finnerty, 209; 
 denounces informei's, 214; defence of 
 Patrick Finney, 217; cross-exam- 
 ines James O'Brien, the informer, 
 218; denounces his perjuries, 229; 
 prosecutes him to Conviction for Mur- 
 der, 231 ; Speech on the trial of the 
 Sheareses, 257 and 2t)4 ; triumph of mind 
 over physical exhaustion, 267 ; defence of 
 Oliver Bond, 294 ; cross-examines Rey- 
 nolds, the informer, 296 ; his character, 
 800 ; appears as counsel against the at- 
 tainder of Lord Edward Fitzgerald, 303; 
 subjected to Orange insults, 307; visits 
 England, 808; Lines to Lady Charlotte 
 Rawdon, 810; trial of Wolfe Tone, 813; 
 Curran moves for a habeas corx^us for the 
 convict, 315; Curran's prediction as to 
 effects of the Union, 318; its effects on his 
 mind, ib. ; speech in Napper Tandy's case, 
 321 ; speech against Sir Henry Hayes, for 
 abduction, 380: appears for Hevey v. 
 IMajor Sirr, 882 ; compliments Godwin, 
 the novelist, 837 ; visits Paris, 338 ; letter 
 to his son, 339 ; Emmett's revolt, defence 
 of Owen Kirwan, 341 ; Curran suspected 
 of complicity with Emmett, 348 ; tenders 
 himself and papers for examination, 350 ; 
 appears before the Privy Council, meets 
 Lord Clare, and defeats calumny, 351; 
 his domestic affairs, 857; his wile's infi- 
 delity, 359; throws his own feelings into 
 the case Massy ■». Marquis of Headford, 
 860 ; his suit against Mr. Sandys, 361 ; 
 appointed Master of the Rolls, 363 ; ad- 
 dress of the Bar to, 364; history of his 
 appointment, ib. ; iil-treated by Ponson- 
 by, the Chancellor, 365 ; his letter to Grat- 
 tan thereon, 366 ; was unsuited for equity 
 business, 375; his decision in Merry v. 
 Power, ib. ; his ] erson and manners de- 
 scribed by Phillips, 381 ; his literary pro- 
 jects, 382 ; letter to McNally, 385 ; to Miss 
 Philnot, 386 ; visits Scotland, SS7 ; Eulogy 
 on the Scottish nation, 890 ; letter to P. Les- 
 lie, «'&. ; to R. Hetherington, 392; Parlia- 
 mentary contest for Newry, 396 ; address to 
 the electors, 397 ; his reception, iJ/. ; speech 
 to the electors, 898; resigns the contest, 
 404 ; letter to Sir J. Swinburne, 404 ; to the 
 Duke of Sussex, 407 ; his health declines, 
 417 ; letters from England, ib. ; Poem to 
 Sleep, 423 ; resigns his judicial seat, 424 ; 
 
INDEX. 
 
 683 
 
 address from the Catholic Board, ih. ; his 
 reply to, 425 ; reiniiiiscences of by Phillips, 
 42S; his later life at the Priory, 430 ; his 
 sympathy with the people, 431 ; coiupli- 
 meut paid by Holt, ih. ; \isit to Paris, 432 ; 
 political projects, 435; scenes in Paris, 
 440; epigram on Niipoleon, 442; at the 
 Catacombs, 444 ; French drama, 44(3 ; 
 sight of Bluciier, 450 ; the end ap- 
 proaches, 451 ; Phillips' account, 451 ; 
 intimacy with Madame de Stael, 452; 
 with Lord Erskine, 453; with the Prince 
 llegent, 454; Byron's description of, 455 ; 
 Parali'tic attaclc, 457; last visit to Ire- 
 land, ib., melancholy forebodings, 45S ; 
 the last hours, 460; expires at the age of 
 sixty-eight, 4G1 ; his funeral, 462 ; his 
 will, i!> , removal of his remains to Ire- 
 land, 464; Sarcophagus at Glasnevin and 
 monument in St. Patrick's Cathedral, ih.^ 
 his eloquence, 466 ; sympathy with the 
 People, 469; objections to his style, 411 ; 
 his slight preparations, 473 ; his extempo- 
 raneous eloquence, 475 ; his own idea of 
 its power, 477 ; his pathos, 47S ; variety 
 of his power, 4S0 ; his imagination, ib., 
 his earnestness, 4So ; propensity to meta- 
 phor, 4S4; his peculiar school of elo- 
 quence, 4SS ; its origin, 490 ; compared 
 with Lord Chatham's style, ib. ; Curran 
 compared witu Burke, 492 ; his skill in 
 cro.->s-examination, 496 ; his legal read- 
 ing, 408; his judicial ability, 499; his 
 general reading, ib. ; his conversation, 
 500 ; his wit, 501 ; his boti-mots, 502 ; his 
 wit compared with Sheridan's, 5u2; his 
 manners, 505 ; his political principles and 
 contests, 506 ; his person, 507 ; his ap- 
 pearance in his maturer years, ib. ; 
 Byron's opinion of his imagination, 50S ; 
 his voice and delivery, 508 ; his peculi- 
 arities, 509 ; his temperance in diet, 510 ; 
 personal traits of character, 511 ; fond of 
 novel reading, 512; his character, 513; 
 his acknowledged eminence, 515. 
 
 Curran, Mrs. J. P. ; her marriage, 359; her 
 infidelity, 381: last interview with her 
 husband, 863; is provided for by his 
 will, 462. 
 
 Curran, Sarah, mother of J. P. Curran, 3; 
 Davis's character of, 3; epitaph on, 9; 
 
 Curran, Sarah, her love-passages with 
 Robert Emmett, 340 ; her lover's farewell, 
 854 ; her marriage and death, 355. 
 
 Cuaran, William Henry, son and biogra- 
 pher of Curran, paasim. 
 
 Curran's poems, 34, 82, 117, 119, 120, 228, 
 810,423,448. 
 
 Davis, Thomas, his records of Curran's 
 
 youth, 5. 
 Day, Judge, a schoolfellow of Curran, 5. 
 Debating Clubs, Curran's early practice 
 
 in, 33. 
 De Stael, Madame, anecdote of, 452 ; her 
 
 opinion of Curran's colloquial powers, 
 
 503. 
 Defenders, The, then- character, 240. 
 
 Doneralle, Lord, assaults a Catholic Priest 
 72. 
 
 Downes, Chief Justice, anecdote of, 216. 
 
 Drenuan, Dr., an Irish patriot, 178 
 
 Duigenaii, Dr. Patrick, satire oa by Cur- 
 ran, 60; parliamentary fracas with, 210 ; 
 meets Curran in Westminster Abbey, 506. 
 
 Emmett, Robert, his revolt, 341 ; his cha- 
 racter, 348; his passion for Sarah Cur- 
 ran, 349 ; failure of his insurrection, ib. ; 
 arrest, ib. ; letter to Curran, 352 ; to 
 Richard Curran, 354 ; his execution, 
 356; his trial as given by Madden, i&. 
 Plunket's attack on him, ib, 
 
 English Law, remarks on the study of, 5G. 
 
 English misrule in Ireland, 91 ; its system 
 and principles, 92. 
 
 Erskine, Lord, eloquence of, 61 ; anecdote 
 of, 453 ; compared with Curran, 455. 
 
 Ferris, Sir John, impromptu to, by Curran, 
 268. 
 
 Finnerty, Peter, trial of, for libel, 206 ; de- 
 fended by Curran, 209 ; convicted, fined, 
 and imprisoned, 217. 
 
 Finney, Patrick, tried for liigh treason, 217. 
 
 Fitzgerald, Lord Edward, implicated by 
 Reynolds, 299; act of attainder against 
 his blood, 302; resisted by Curran, 303 ; 
 attainder removed, ib. 
 
 Fitzgibbon, John. See Lord Clare. 
 
 Flood, Henry, character of, by G-rattan, 88; 
 proposes a reform in Parliament, 106. 
 
 Forbes, Mr., character of by Grattan, 83. 
 
 Forensic Jocularity, 67. 
 
 French Revolution, effects of, in Ireland, 
 235. 
 
 Friendship, early poem on, by Curran, 34. 
 
 George IIL, insanity of, 134 ; its frequent 
 recurrence, 135 ; made a party pivot of, 
 136. 
 
 Godwin, William, Curran's compliment to, 
 837. 
 
 Grattan, Henry, his opinion of Irish intel- 
 lect, 62; Sketches of eminent Irishmen, 
 by, 87; his character, 99 ; defence of, by 
 Burrowes, 100 ; his death, 515. 
 
 Hampton Court, described by Curran, 24. 
 
 Hastings, Trial of Warren, 61. 
 
 Hayes, Sir Henry, his abduction of Misa 
 
 Pike, 829 ; compulsory marriage, 830 ; 
 
 flight, return, and trial, ib. ; conviction 
 
 and transportation, 331. 
 Hevey, John, his persecutions by Major 
 
 Sirr, 832 ; his death, 336. 
 Hobart, Major, his correspondence with 
 
 Curran, 150 ; duel, 155. 
 Hoche, General, heads the French invasion 
 
 of Ireland, 201 and 250; second expedi- 
 tion, 812. 
 Holt, the rebel general, 431. 
 Holland, Curran's visit to, 131, 
 Hudson, the Dublin dentist, a friend of 
 
 Curran's, letters from, 37. 
 I Humouroua forensic illustratloni, 69. 
 
634 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 "If sadly thinking," the Deserter's song, by 
 
 Curran, 117. 
 Ireland, sketch of its history before 17S3, 90. 
 Irish eloquence, character and causes of, 60. 
 Irish inlormers, base character of, 188. 
 Irish judges, jocularity of, 07. 
 Irish juries, pusillanimity of, 189 ; Curran's 
 
 remarks on, 191. 
 Irish landlords of the last century, 245. 
 Irish revolution of 1782, 89; its progress 
 
 and extent, 98. 
 
 Jackson, Rev. William, a state prisoner, 
 175; trial of, 179; refuses to escape from 
 prison, 181 ; conviction and suicide, 182. 
 
 Keening at Irish funerals, 53, 
 
 Keller, Jerry, one of Curran's schoolfellows, 
 5 ; letter from Curran to, 28. 
 
 Kirwan, Owen, trial and conviction of, 341. 
 
 Kilwarden, Lord (Arthur Wolfe) his career, 
 65; solicits Curran to join the Govern- 
 ment 179; stands Cui-ran's friend in 
 1798 ; murder of, 347. 
 
 Lawyers in the Irish Parliament, 63. 
 Longueville, Lord, returns Curran to Par- 
 liament, 87. 
 Lucas, Dr., an exile for his patriotism, 93. 
 
 Macklin, the actor, Curran's interviews 
 with, 46. 
 
 McCann, John, tried, convicted, and exe- 
 cuted for treason, 293. 
 
 McNally, Leonard, his regard for Curran, 
 217 ; speaks against time, 228, 
 
 Malone, Antony (Irish Judge) sketched by 
 Grattan, 87. 
 
 Middleton, School of, where Curran was 
 educated, 4, 
 
 Moira, Earl of, notice of, 309 ; Curran's 
 character of, 402. 
 
 Monks of the Screw, founded by Lord Avon- 
 more, SO; list of members, z&,; Curran, 
 the Prior, writes the Charter Song, 82. 
 
 Moore, Thomas, his intimacy with Curran, 
 457. 
 
 Napoleon, Curran's estimate of, 345 ; epigram 
 on, 442. 
 
 Neale, Rev. Mr., a Catholic clergyman, 
 assaulted by Lord Doneraile,72; Curran's 
 advocacy of, 73; obtains a verdict, 74; 
 gives a dying benediction to Curran, 76. 
 
 Newmarket, Curran born at, 1, 
 
 Newry election, 396 ; Curran's speech, 398. 
 
 Norbury, Lord, prosecutes the Sheareses as 
 Attorney-General, 284; insists on the 
 trial proceeding after sixteen hours 
 sitting, 267 ; his character of Lord Edward 
 Fitzgerald, 304. 
 
 O'Brien, James, the informer, 218 ; his 
 perjuries denounced, 229; is executed 
 lor murder, 231. 
 
 O'Conneil's character of Curran, 464. 
 
 O'Connor, the Bard in Newmarket, 118. 
 
 O'Grady, Standish (Viscount GuiUiamore), 
 
 Attorney-General of 1803, 350. 
 O'Leary, Father, 125; introduces Curran to 
 
 a French monastery, 126. 
 O'Kegan, William, his recollections of Cur- 
 ran, 6, et passim; his description of 
 
 Curran, 507. 
 Opera, French, scene at, 123. 
 Orde, Thomas, Irish Secretary (afterwards 
 
 Lord Bolton) his commercial propositions, 
 
 111. 
 Order of St. Patri k. Monks of the. see 
 
 Clonics of the Screio. 
 Orr, William, trial of 206 ; Curran's speech 
 
 for 207; thrice respited, and finally 
 
 executed, 208. 
 Osborne, Sir William, sketched by Grattan, 
 
 88. 
 
 Parliament of Ireland, nursery of great 
 men, 64 ; reform of, 94 ; its constituent 
 parts, 100; Octennial Bill passes and 
 disbands the Irish Parliamentary dicta- 
 tors, 94; surrender the fruits of their 
 triumph, 103. 
 
 Penal laws, 91. 
 
 Pension list, Curran's speech in 112 ; second 
 speech against 122. 
 
 Pery, Lord Grattan's sketch of, 88. 
 
 Phillips, C, his introduction to Curran, 381 ; 
 his reminiscences, 428 ; account of his 
 last days, 451 ; hia description of Curran 
 fifty years ago, 507. 
 
 Pike, Mary, abducted by Sir H. Hayes, 329 ; 
 compulsory marriage, 330 ; prosecutes 
 Hayes to conviction, ib. 
 
 Pitt's eloquence, 61. 
 
 Plunket, William, Conyngham, 64 ; acts as 
 Counsel for John Sheares, 264 ; against 
 Robert Emmett, 358; against Curran in 
 " Curran v. Sandys," 362. 
 
 Ponsonby George, notice of 250 ; his ill- 
 treatment of Curran, 365. 
 
 Priory, The, Curran's country-house at 
 Newmarket, 116. 
 
 Priory, The, (Curran's seat near Dublin) his 
 melancholy hours at, 358. 
 
 Putting down the Young Patriot, 110. 
 
 Rawdon, Lady Charlotte, Curran's lines to, 
 310. 
 
 Rebellion of Ninety-eight, 234; its causes, 
 235 ; organization of, 238 ; training of 
 the masses, 241 ; aided by the French, 
 2-43; the Government and the gentry 
 against the people, 244; the conspiracy 
 fomented by the Executive, 250 ; put 
 down by summary and sanguinary 
 means, 252; alarm of the legislative 
 body at, 253. 
 
 Regency question, 134 ; Pitt's plan of re- 
 strictions, 189. 
 
 Repartee of the lower Irish, 67. 
 
 Revolution of 16SS, effects of, 91. 
 
 Reynolds, Thomas, the informer, 298 ; his 
 character as a youth, 294; his reward, 
 ib.; cross-examined by Curran, 296; his 
 presence of mind, 800. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 535 
 
 Robinson, Judge, Curran's contest with, 70. 
 
 Roche, Sir Boyle, defence of the Pension 
 List, 113 ; attack on Curran in Parlia- 
 ment, 147 ; is replied to, 149. 
 
 Rowan, Archibald Hamilton; joins the 
 United Irishmen, 109 ; indicted for pub- 
 lishing a seditious libel, 170; eloquently- 
 defended by Curi-an, ib. ; conviction, im- 
 prisonment, and escape, 175. 
 
 St. Leger, Hon. Captain, assaults an aged 
 priest, 74; duel with Curran, 75; his 
 death, 76. 
 
 Scotland, Curran's eulogy on, 890. 
 
 Screw, monks of the, 80. 
 
 Sheares, Henry and John, 255 ; join the 
 Rebel party, and are betrayed and arres- 
 ted, 256; brought to trial, z/"'. ; Curran's 
 speech for, 267 ; conviction, 288; useless 
 appeal to the Court, ib. ; letters 270 and 
 271 ; execution, 272. 
 
 Sheridan's wit compared with Curran's, 502. 
 
 Sirr, Major, prosecutes John Hevey, 832 ; 
 trial at law for damages, 336. 
 
 Stack, Rev. Richard, letters from Curran 
 to.T. 
 
 Tandy, Napper, leads the popular party in 
 Lord Mayor's election, 159 ; trial of, 320. 
 
 Toler, John ; see Lord Ilorhurij. 
 
 Tone, Theobald Wolfe, reputed author of 
 United Irishmen's Constitution, 239: 
 his efforts to bring Frencli troops into 
 Ireland, 243; trial of, 311 ; captured in a 
 Frencli ship, 312 ; justifies his conduct, 
 313; condemnation and suicide, 315 ; his 
 career, 317. 
 
 Union, Act of, passed by the baseness and 
 treachery of the Iri^h Legislature, 103, 
 
 " United Irishmen," 239. 
 
 Volunteers, the Irish, 96; described by 
 Curran, ib. ; swell to an army of 80,000 
 men, 97 ; their influence upon public mea- 
 sures, 93; obtain Ireland's recognition as 
 a free nation, 99 ; not a Protestant Asso- 
 ciation, 102. 
 
 Wake, Scene at a, 53. 
 
 Weston, Rev. Henry, Curran's letters to, 
 
 18 ; Poem addressed to, 34. 
 Whig Club, the Irish, 238. 
 Wolfe, Arthur, see Lord Kihcarden. 
 
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