Chapter VI: The Trial (4)

By the time the fresh supply was on the table, Charley Crofts had emptied his cup and eaten his toast. He lost no time in appropriating the prized articles, as before, chatting away with his usual _nonchalance_, as if he had done nothing uncommon. Mr. Wrixon, sitting like one astonied, watched the disappearance of the second supply, and ordered a third replenishment, which went the way of the preceding. Rising in his chair, he addressed the butler and exclaimed, "John, desire that _all_ the cream and butter in the dairy be brought up, I think we shall have need of the whole of it." Turning to Crofts, he emphatically said, "I have heard of eating bread-and-butter, but Charley, _you eat butter and bread_." By this time the laugh which arose gave him the pleasant information that he was _sold_. From that hour he was as liberal with his cream and butter, as he previously had been with every other article in his mansion. He never was able to ascertain whether Charley Crofts had been put up to the trick, or had simply hit the nail by accident.

Charley Crofts did not confine his visits to the gentry in his native county of Cork. In the decline of his fortunes--indeed, as long as he was able to do anything--he always was possessor of a gem or two in the way of horseflesh. For many years, his income was almost wholly derived from the sale of horses, out of which he obtained a large profit, and it was known that any animal which he sold or vouched for might be depended on. In the way of business, having disposed of a fine hunter to one of the family, who was sportingly inclined, he had to pass a few days at the house of Mr. Lyons, of Croom, in the county of Limerick. This old man had acquired a vast fortune by following the business of a grazier, and had invested large sums in the purchase of landed estates. His sons, determined to cut a figure in the county, indulged in all manner of excess and extravagance. At the time of Charley Crofts' visit, they issued cards for a splendid _déjeuner à la fourchette_, to which the leading people of the district were invited. As Charley Crofts was on intimate terms with everybody who had pretensions to notice, the Lyons family, in solemn conclave assembled, determined that it would be a sagacious and politic move to get him to officiate as a something between Major Domo and Master of the Ceremonies at the intended festival. Desiring no better fun, he cheerfully consented.

The attendance on the gala day was what the newspapers would describe as "full and fashionable." Many went from curiosity, to see in what manner the _parvenu_ would attempt "to ape his betters"--_i.e._, themselves. Several attended, because they owed money to old Lyons (who did a little in _bills_ after abandoning _beef_), and did not like to affront him by not accepting his invitation. A good many went, because they had heard that "all the world and his wife" would be present, and a jovial day might be anticipated.

Thanks to Charley Crofts' _surveillance_, the entertainment, well got up, went off admirably.

Among the more aristocratic guests was the Lady Isabella Fitzgibbon, sister to that Earl of Clare who was the schoolfellow and friend most tenderly and lastingly loved by Byron. At that time she was a fine young woman. She is now a stern old maid--like the odd half of a pair of scissors, of no use to herself or any body else. Lady Isabella affected to look down, with some degree of superciliousness, upon the millionaire's hospitality. Having probably laid in a good supply of mutton chops or beef steaks before she went out, she pointedly neglected the delicacies of the season, which were abundantly supplied, and merely trifled with a lobster-salad. Old Lyons, who had a great respect for good feeding, and particularly for substantials, turned round to her, as she sat by his side, the image of aristocratical don't-care-a-pin-for-all-the-world-ativeness, and kindly said, "Ah, then, my lady, why don't you take some of the good beef and mutton, the capons and the turkeys, and don't be after filling your stomach with that cowld cabbage!"

The high-born _dama_ nearly fainted at what she considered the vulgar good-nature of her host. Soon after, when she had recovered from the shock, she said that she thought she would have a little bread and butter. Immediately opposite her, and within reach of Old Lyons, was a crystal bowl in which floated sundry little _pats_ of that delicious butter for which the county Limerick is famed. Lyons made several vain efforts to spear one of these with a fork, at last, finding that it was impossible to make the capture in that manner, he raised up his coat-sleeve, tucked up the wrist-band of his shirt, and plunging his hand into the bowl, with the exclamation, 'Ha, you little jumping Jennies, I am determined to have you now," secured two pieces of the butter, which he triumphantly deposited on his noble guest's plate, with the words, "There, my lady, when I took the matter _in hand_, I knew I must succeed."

Charley Crofts departed this life some twenty years ago. The close of his career was passed in Cove, where he lived upon an annuity provided by the liberality of some of his former friends. His health had failed him, suddenly, a few years before, and he who had been wont "to set the table in a roar," for nearly forty years, subsided into a querulous valetudinarian. He published his Autobiography, shortly before his death, and it deserves mention as one of the dullest of its class, as far as I recollect, (it is a long time since I yawned over it,) the subject matter chiefly consisted of fierce personalities directed against sundry relatives who, he said, had cheated him out of his property.

To the very last, Charley Crofts could give graphic narratives of his former career and companions, but the moment he attempted to _write_ them down, their spirit wholly evaporated.

IRISH PUBLICISTS.

HENRY GRATTAN.

The history of Ireland's independence, from the rise of the Volunteers until the treacherous sacrifice of nationality by the passing of the Act of Union--an interval of twenty years, yet crowded with events and eminent characters--can best be read in the lives of the illustrious men who asserted, vindicated, and carried that independence. Looking back at the brief but brilliant period in which they shone, truly did Curran speak of them, to Lord Avonmore, as men "over whose ashes the most precious tears of Ireland have been shed."

Among this noble and gallant array of public virtue and genius HENRY GRATTAN stands conspicuous and pre-eminent. To condense a memoir of him into the space which I have here reserved would be a vain attempt. Let me sketch him in his youth. The child, Wordsworth said, is father of the man, and this was particularly true as regards Grattan.

Henry Grattan, stated by most of his biographers to have been born in 1750 (the year in which Curran entered into earthly existence), was four years older, his baptismal register in Dublin bearing date the 3d of July, 1746. His father, a man of character and ability, was Recorder of Dublin for many years, and one of the metropolitan parliamentary representatives from 1761 to his death in 1766. The well-known patriot, Dr. Lucas, was senatorial colleague and opponent of the elder Grattan, who, although nominally a Whig, was actually a Tory,--was the law officer of the Corporation, which Lucas undauntedly opposed,--and on all essential, political, and legislative points, sided with the Government of the day.

The Grattan family were of considerable and respectable standing in Ireland, and Henry Grattan's grandfather and grand-uncles had enjoyed familiar intimacy with Dean Swift and Dr. Sheridan. Henry Grattan's mother was a daughter of Thomas Marlay, Chief Justice of Ireland, who almost as a matter of course in those days, was to be found on the side of the Government, but administered justice fairly, and on some few occasions showed a love for and pride in his native Ireland. Grattan's mother was a clear-headed, well-informed woman. On both sides, therefore, he had a claim to hereditary talent.

At ordinary day-schools, in Dublin, Henry Grattan received his education. John Fitzgibbon, afterwards the unscrupulous tool of the Government and the scourge of Ireland (as Lord Chancellor Clare), was his class-mate at one of these seminaries. Grattan rapidly acquired the necessary amount of Greek and Latin, and in 1763, being then 17 years old, entered Trinity College. Here, among his friends and competitors, were Foster (afterwards Speaker of the House of Commons), Robert Day, who subsequently adorned the Bench. In the University there was particular rivalry between Fitzgibbon and Grattan; the first was well grounded in classics and science, but almost wholly ignorant of modern literature. Both obtained the highest prizes in the University,--Grattan getting premium, certificate, or medal at every examination.

Before he had completed his twentieth year, Grattan had declared his political opinions. They were patriotic--they were Irish--they were opposed to the principles and practice of his father, and strongly identical with those of Dr. Lucas, his father's constant and bitter opponent. Lucas was a remarkable man. He it was who, immediately after the accession of George III., introduced a bill for limiting the duration of the Irish Parliament to seven years--the custom being, at the time, that a new Parliament should be chosen when a new monarch ascended the throne, and last during his lifetime. It took seven years' perseverance to effect this change--upon which the English Cabinet thrice put a veto. A fourth and final effort succeeded, the limitation being eight years. It was Lucas who, following in the steps of Swift, boldly attacked bad men and bad measures in the newspapers, and thus asserted the Liberty of the Press--that which Curran so earnestly desired to be preserved when, addressing his countrymen, he said, "Guard it, I beseech you, for when it sinks, there sink with it, in one common grave, the liberty of the subject and the security of the Crown." It was Lucas who strenuously denied the right of a British Parliament to govern Ireland, who asserted his country's right to legislative independence, who insisted on her claim for self-government. For this, the law was strained against him,--for this, Dublin grand juries ordered his writings to be publicly burned by the hands of the common hangman--for this, a venal House of Commons voted that he wrote sedition and was an enemy of his country--for this, the Speaker was ordered to issue a warrant for his arrest and imprisonment in gaol--for this, the Lord Lieutenant was solicited to denounce him by Proclamation--for this, the Corporation of Dublin disfranchised him--for this, he had to fly his country and secure life and comparative liberty by eleven years of enforced exile. On his return, in 1760, that very city of Dublin from which he had fled for his life elected him for one of its representatives, Grattan's father being his colleague. As such, the elder Grattan, who was a courtier, opposed the Septennial Bill.

Henry Grattan, a patriot from his childhood, ardently adopted Dr. Lucas' views in favour of Ireland's independence. The result was that, in 1765-6, Henry Grattan was at variance with his father. The death of the elder Grattan took place in 1766, and it was then discovered how much he resented his son's assertion of liberal politics. He could not deprive him of a small landed estate, secured to him by marriage settlement, but bequeathed from him the paternal residence of the family for nearly a century. Thus Henry Grattan had to enter the world, not rich in worldly wealth, and with his soul saddened by the marked and public posthumous condemnation by his father. No wonder that, as he declared in one of his letters at the time, he was "melancholy and contemplative, but not studious." No wonder that, solitary in the old home, he should sadly say, "I employ myself writing, reading, courting the muse, and taking leave of that place where I am a _guest_, not an _owner_, and of which I shall now cease to be a _spectator_." His household Gods were shattered on his hearth, and he sat, cold and lonely, among their ruins. Yet, even then, he dreamed that fortune, smiling upon him, would enable his old age to resign his breath where he first received it. Never was that dream fulfilled. Not even did he die

"'Midst the trees which a nation had given, and which bowed,
As if each brought a new civic crown for his head;"

but his spirit departed, fifty-four years later, in the metropolis of the haughty land which had crushed the independence and broken the nationality of

"His own loved island of sorrow."

At the age of twenty-one, Henry Grattan went to London to study the law. At that period, as at present, it is indispensable for every one who desires to be admitted to the Irish bar, that he shall have "studied" for two years at one of the Inns of Court in London. Perhaps this, as much as anything else, shows how completely the English habit has been, and is, to treat Ireland as a mere _province_. Candidates for admission to the Scottish bar are not required to pursue this _nominal_ course of study in another country. Nominal it is, for the requirement does not involve the acquisition, in the most infinitesimal degree, of any knowledge of the principles or practice of the law. All that is necessary is that the future barrister shall have eaten twenty-four dinners in the Hall of his London Inn of Court (three at each term) during two years, and a certificate of this knife-and-fork practice--which is facetiously called "keeping his Terms"--is received by the Benchers of the Queen's Inn in Dublin, as proof that the candidate has duly qualified himself by study! There is no examination as to his knowledge of law--two years in London, and a somewhat lesser amount of legal feeding in Dublin, being the sole qualification for the Irish Bar!

In Michaelmas Term, 1767, being two months past his majority, Henry Grattan entered his name, as student, on the books of the Middle Temple in London. Although he intended to live by the practice of the law, he devoted little attention to its study. Black-letter, precedents, and technicalities he cared little for. The broad principles of jurisprudence attracted his attention; but he mastered them, not as an advocate, but as a future law-maker. In fact, nature had intended him for a politician and statesman, and his mind, from the first, followed the bias which "the mighty mother" gave. As late as August, 1771, when he had been four years in the Temple, he wrote thus to a friend: "I am now becoming a lawyer, fond of cases, frivolous, and illiberal; instead of Pope's and Milton's numbers, I repeat in solitude Coke's instructions, the nature of fee-tail, and the various constructions of perplexing statutes. This duty has been taken up too late; not time enough to make me a lawyer, but sufficiently early to make me a dunce." In the same letter he said, "Your life, like mine, is devoted to professions which we both detest; the vulgar honours of the law are as terrible to me as the restless uniformity of the military is to you."

During the four years of his English residence, varied by occasional visits to Ireland, Mr. Grattan's heart certainly never warmed to the profession which he had chosen. The confession which I have just quoted was made only a few months before he was called to the Irish bar in Hilary Term, 1772. Yet he was a hard reader, a close student, an early riser, and a moderate liver. To afford the means of enlarging his library, he avoided expensive amusements and practiced a very close economy. In November, 1768, these saving habits became matter of necessity rather than of choice, when his mother died so suddenly that she had not time to make, as she had purposed, a formal disposition of her reversion to a landed property which she had meant to leave her son. It passed, therefore, to another branch of the family, leaving Grattan such limited resources that it now was necessary for him to follow a profession.

How, then, did Grattan employ his time in England? We have his own regretful confession, that it was not, for the first four years, in the study of the law. Shortly after his first visit to London, he lost one of his sisters; and deep sorrow for her death, and a distaste for society, drove him from the bustle of the metropolis to the retirement of the country. He withdrew to Sunning Hill, near Windsor Forest, amid whose mighty oaks he loved to wander, meditating upon the political questions of the day, and making speeches as if he already were in parliament. Mrs. Sawyer, his landlady, a simple-minded woman, knew not what to make of the odd-looking, strange-mannered young man, and hesitated between the doubt whether he was insane or merely eccentric. When one of his friends came to see him, she complained that her lodger used to walk up and down in her garden throughout the summer nights, speaking to himself, and addressing an imaginary "Mr. Speaker," with the earnestness of an inspired orator. She was afraid that his derangement might take a dangerous character, and, in her apprehension, offered to forgive the rent which was due, if his friends would only remove her eccentric lodger.

Seventy years after this (in 1838) Judge Day, who lived to almost a patriarchal age, and had been intimate with Grattan in London, wrote a letter, in which, describing him at college, "where he soon distinguished himself by a brilliant elocution, a tenacious memory, and abundance of classical acquirements," he proceeds to state that Grattan "always took great delight in frequenting the galleries, first of the Irish, and then of the English House of Commons, and the bars of the Lords." His biographer records that this amateur Parliamentary attendance had greater attractions for him than the pleasures of the metropolis, and that he devoted his evenings in listening, his nights in recollecting, and his days in copying the great orators of the time. Judge Day also has remembered that Grattan would spend whole moonlight nights in rambling and losing himself in the thickest plantations of Windsor Forest, and "would sometimes pause and address a tree in soliloquy, thus preparing himself early for that assembly which he was destined in later life to adorn."

Such was Grattan's self-training. So did he prepare himself for that career of brilliant utility and patriotism which has made his name immortal.

Events of great moment took place in England during Grattan's sojourn there. The contest between John Wilkes and the Government was then in full course, leading to important results, and encouraging, if it did not create, the publication of the fearless and able letters of Junius. At that time, great men were in the British Senate, and Grattan had the good fortune to hear their eloquence, to watch the deeds in which they participated. The elder Pitt, who had then withdrawn from the Commons, and exercised great power in the Upper House, as Earl of Chatham, still took part in public business. There, too, was Lord North--shrewd, obese, good-tempered, and familiar. There was Charles James Fox, just commencing public life, alternately coquetting with politics and the faro-table--his great rival, Pitt, had not then arisen, nor his eminent friend Sheridan, but Edmund Burke had already made his mark, Barrè was in full force, as well as Grenville, and the great lawyers Loughborough and Thurlow had already appeared above the horizon, while Lords Camden and Mansfield were in the maturity of fame. Then, also, flourished Charles Townshend, who would have deserved the name of a great statesman but for his mistake in trying to obtain revenue for England by taxation of America. There was the remarkable man called "Singlespeech" Hamilton, from one brilliant oration which was declared by Walpole to have eclipsed the most successful efforts even of the elder Pitt. In the Irish Parliament, too, which he always visited when in Dublin during the Session, were men of great eminence and ability, with some of whom--Flood, Hutchinson, and Hussey Burgh--not long after, Grattan was himself to come into intellectual gladiatorship. In both countries, therefore, he became familiar with politics and politicians. What marvel if he deviated from the technicalities of the law into the wider field of law-making and statesmanship?

How closely he observed the eminent persons who thus came before his notice, may be judged from the character of Lord Chatham, which was introduced in a note to "Barataria,"(a satirical _brochure_ by Sir Hercules Langrishe), as if from a new edition of Robertson's History of America. Many persons, at the time, who looked for it in Robertson, were disappointed at not finding it there. _Apropos_ of Langrishe; it may be added that he it was who said--that the best History of Ireland was to be found "in the continuation of _Rapin_," and excused the swampy state of the Ph[oe]nix Park demesne by supposing that the Government neglected it, being so much occupied _in draining the rest of the kingdom_.

Greatly admiring the nervous eloquence of Lord Chatham, it is evident that Grattan's own style was influenced, if not formed by it. He could not have had a better model. Grattan, out of pure admiration of the man, reported several of his speeches for his own subsequent use. Writing about him many years later, he said, "He was a man of great genius--great flight of mind. His imagination was astonishing. He was very great, and very odd.[14] He never came with a prepared harangue; his style was not regular oratory, like Cicero or Demosthenes, but it was very fine, and very elevated, and above the ordinary subjects of discourse. He appeared more like a pure character advising, than mixing in the debate. It was something superior to that--_it was teaching the lords, and lecturing the King_. He appeared the next greatest thing to the King, though infinitely superior. What Cicero says in his 'CLARIS ORATORIBUS' exactly applies: '_Formæ dignitas, corporis motus plenus et artis el venustatis, vocis et suavitas et magnitudo._' 'Great subjects, great empires, great characters, effulgent ideas, and classical illustrations formed the material of his speeches.'"[15]

[14] This refers more particularly to the year 1770.

[15] Grattan used to say that nothing ever was finer, in delivery
and effect, than Chatham's appeal, on the American question, to the
bishops, the judges, and the peers:--"You talk of driving the
Americans: _I might as well talk of driving them before me with
this crutch_."

Until he permanently and finally took up his residence in Dublin, Grattan was greatly prejudiced in favour of England. In August, 1771, he wrote to a friend that he would return to Ireland that Christmas, "to live or die with you," and added, "It is painful to renounce England, and my departure is to me the loss of youth. I submit to it on the same principle, and am resigned." At that time he was twenty-five years old.

In his letters to his friends at this time, he commented on Irish politics so forcibly as to show that he was a close observer. Alluding to the means used by the Viceroy (Lord Townshend) to corrupt the legislature, he said, "So total an overthrow has Freedom received, that its voice is heard only in the accents of despair." This sentence very probably suggested the concluding part of Moore's beautiful lyric, "The harp that once through Tara's halls,"

"Thus Freedom now so seldom wakes,
The only throb she gives,
Is when some heart indignant breaks,
To show that still she lives."

Early in 1772, Grattan was called to the Irish bar--not from any predilection for the profession, but from the necessity of eking out his limited means by the exercise of his talents. It is recorded that having gone the circuit, and failed to gain a verdict in an important case where he was specially retained, he actually returned to his client half the amount of his fee--fifty guineas. A man who could act thus, was clearly not fitted for the profession, nor destined to arrive at wealth by its means.

At that time the rising talent of Ireland was decidedly liberal, and in favor of progress. Grattan was thrown into familiar intimacy with this society, and his own opinions were influenced, if not determined, by the Catholic spirit of their avowed principles. Lord Charlemont, Hussey Burgh, Robert Day, (afterwards the Judge,) Dennis Daly, and Barry Yelverton--men whose names are familiar to all who have read the history of Ireland's later years of nationality--were his familiar friends.

Grattan wished for the lettered ease of literary retirement, but his narrow means did not permit him to live without labour. He said, "What can a mind do without the exercise of business, or the relaxation of pleasure?" He took to politics as a relief from the demon of _ennui_. He attended the debates in Parliament. He said "they were insipid; every one was speaking; nobody was eloquent." He had become a lawyer, as he sadly confessed, "without knowledge or ambition in his profession." He would fain have gone into retirement, but complained that, in his too hospitable country, "wherever you fly, wherever you secrete yourself, the sociable disposition of the Irish will follow you, and in every barren spot of that kingdom you must submit to a state of dissipation or hostility." He said that his passion was retreat, for "there is certainly repose, and may be a defence, in insignificance."

He was destined for better things. He had married Henrietta Fitzgerald, who claimed descent from the Desmond family, (actually from that branch of which that Countess of Desmond, who died at the age of 162, was the foundress,) but had, as her own dowry, the far greater wealth of youth, beauty, virtue, talent, and devoted affection. The union was eminently happy. Mrs. Grattan became the mother of thirteen children, and it is known that on many occasions, but especially in the troublous times of 1798 and 1800, (the rebellion and the betrayal of Ireland by her parliament,) Grattan frequently consulted and acted on the advice of his wife, which invariably was to do what was right, regardless of personal consequences. After his marriage, he went to reside in the county Wicklow, where, almost from early youth, he had been enamoured of the beautiful scenery, and even then spoke of Tinnahinch, which he subsequently purchased, as a place which might be "the recreation of an active life, or the retreat of an obscure one, or the romantic residence of philosophical friendship." "Here," said his son, "he mused in when melancholy, he rejoiced in when gay; here he often trod, meditating on his country's wrongs--her long, dreary night of oppression; and here he first beheld the bright transient light of her redemption and her glory." Here, too, in the moments of grief he wept over her divisions and her downfall. The place continues a family possession, and, identified as it is with the name of Grattan, should never be allowed to pass into the possession of any others.

Grattan's wife, highly gifted by nature, and with her mind cultivated and enlarged by education, urgently pressed him to embark in political life. She knew, even better than himself, what his mental resources were, how patriotic were his impulses, how great his integrity, how undaunted his courage. She interested his friends in his behalf, and, at last, on the death of Mr. Caulfield (Lord Charlemont's brother), Grattan was returned to Parliament for the borough of Charlemont, and on the 11th of December, 1775, in his thirtieth year, Henry Grattan took his seat as member for Charlemont. On the fourth day after he made a speech--a spontaneous, unstudied, and eloquent reply--and it was at once seen and admitted that his proper place was in Parliament. From that day the life of Grattan can be read in the history of Ireland.

What he did may be briefly summed up. He established the Independence of Ireland, by procuring the repeal of the statute by which it had been declared that Ireland was inseparably annexed to the Crown of Great Britain, and bound by British acts of Parliament, if named in them--that the Irish House of Lords had no jurisdiction in matters of appeal--and that the _dernier resort_, in all cases of law and equity, was to the peers of Great Britain.

For his great services in thus establishing Ireland's rights, the Parliament voted him £50,000. He considered that this was a retainer for the future as well as a mark of gratitude for the past, and henceforth devoted the remainder of his life--a period of nearly forty years--to the service of his country.

Grattan's last act, as an Irish legislator, was to oppose the Union, which destroyed the nationality _he_ had made--his last act, as a public man, was to hurry to London, in his seventy-fifth year, under the infliction of a mortal disease, to present the petition in favour of the Irish Catholics, and support it, at the risk of life, in Parliament.

Grattan's great achievements were all accomplished in early life, while the "_purpurea juventus_" was in its bloom, while the heart was in its spring. Great men, of all shades of political and party passion have been eager and eloquent in his praise. Byron, speaking of Ireland, ranked him first among those

"Who, for years, were the chiefs in the eloquent war,
And redeemed, if they have not retarded, her fall."

Moore, who knew him well, said,

"What an union of all the affections and powers,
By which life is exalted, embellished, refined,
Was embraced in that spirit--whose centre was ours,
While its mighty circumference circled mankind."

Faithfully too, as well as poetically, did he describe his speeches as exhibiting

"An eloquence rich, wherever its wave
Wandered free and triumphant, with thoughts that shone through,
As clear as the brook's 'stone of lustre,' and gave,
With the flash of the gem, its solidity too."

Lord Brougham said that it was "not possible to name any one, the purity of whose reputation has been stained by so few faults, and the lustre of whose renown is dimmed by so few imperfections." After describing the characteristics of his eloquence, he added, "It may be truly said that Dante himself never conjured up a striking image in fewer words than Mr. Grattan employed to describe his relation towards Irish independence, when, alluding to its rise in 1782, and its fall, twenty years later, he said, 'I sat by its cradle--I followed its hearse.'"

Sydney Smith, in an article in the _Edinburgh Review_, shortly after Grattan's death, thus bore testimony to his worth:--"Great men hallow a whole people, and lift up all who live in their time. What Irishman does not feel proud that he has lived in the days of Grattan? who has not turned to him for comfort, from the false friends and open enemies of Ireland? who did not remember him in the days of its burnings, wastings and murders? No government ever dismayed him--the world could not bribe him--he thought only of Ireland: lived for no other object: dedicated to her his beautiful fancy, his elegant wit, his manly courage, and all the splendour of his astonishing eloquence. He was so born, so gifted, that poetry, forensic skill, elegant literature, and all the highest attainments of human genius, were within his reach; but he thought the noblest occupation of a man was to make other men happy and free; and in that straight line he kept for fifty years, without one side-look, one yielding thought, one motive in his heart which he might not have laid open to the view of God or man."

The man to whom tributes such as these were voluntarily paid, must have been a mortal of no ordinary character and merit.

DANIEL O'CONNELL.

Daniel O'Connell, at one period called "the member for all Ireland," was born, not at, but near Derrynane Abbey, in Kerry, on the 6th of August, 1775, and died at Genoa on the 15th of May, 1847. He had nearly completed his seventy-second year. For nearly forty years of that extended period he had been a public man--perhaps the most public man in Ireland. For at least a quarter of a century his reputation was not merely Irish--nor British--nor European--but unquestionably cosmopolitan.

Fallen as we are upon the evil days of Mediocrity, it may not be useless to dwell upon the conduct and the character, the aims and the actions, of one who, think of him as we may, candour must admit to be one of the great men of the age,--one of the very few great men of Ireland's later years.

"Some men are born to greatness--some achieve greatness--and some have greatness thrust upon them." Daniel O'Connell stands in a predicament between the two latter postulates. He certainly was the artificer of his own fame and power, but, as certainly, much of it arose out of the force of circumstances. When he launched his bark upon the ocean of politics, he may have anticipated something--much of success and eminence, but he never could have dreamed of wielding such complete and magnificent power as was long at his command. Strong determination, great ability, natural facility of expression, the art of using strong words without committing himself, and a most elastic temperament, ("prepared for either fortune," as Eugene Aram said of himself)--all these formed an extraordinary combination, and yet all these, even in their unity, might have been of little worth, but for the admitted fact that circumstances happily occurred which allowed these qualities a fair scope for development. Many poets, I dare swear, have lived and died unknown--either not writing at all, or writing but to destroy what they had written. Noble orators have lived and died, "mute and inglorious," because the opportunity for display had never been given. In truth, we may say, with Philip Van Artevelde,

"The world knows nothing of its greatest men."

It is the curse of Authorship that until the grave fully closes upon his ashes, the fame of the writer is scarcely or slightly acknowledged. When the turf presses upon his remains, we yield tardy justice to his merits, and translate him, as a star, into the "heaven of heavens" of renown. But the Orator, on the other hand, has _his_ claims admitted from the commencement--he may make his fame by one bold effort--he may win admiration at one bound, and each successive trial, while it matures his powers, increases his reputation. He lives in the midst of his fame--it surrounds him, like a halo: he is the observed of all observers,--he has constant motive for exertion--he breathes the very atmosphere of popularity, and has perpetual excitement to keep up his exertions. Of this there scarcely ever was a more palpable example than O'Connell. Originally gifted with all the attributes of a popular if not a great orator, he advanced, by repeated efforts, to the foremost rank, because the public voice cheered him--the public opinion fostered him. Had he, for three or four years, spoken to dull or cold audiences, the world would probably have lost him as an orator. He might, indeed, have been a great forensic speaker, but of that eloquence which placed seven millions of Irish Catholics in a situation where, without being branded as rebels, they might openly demand "justice for Ireland," the chance is, the world have known nothing. What man, before this man, had ever succeeded in awakening at once the sympathy of the old and of the new world? Few men so well out-argued the sophistry of tyranny. Far above the crowd must he be, who, at one and the same time, affrighted the Russian autocrat by his bold invectives, and was appealed to as the common enemy of misrule, by the unhappy victims of the "Citizen-King"--who not only asserted the rights of his fellow slaves in Ireland, but hesitated not, at all times and in all places, to express his

"Utter detestation
Of every tyranny in every nation!"

O'Connell was often denounced as a "Dictator." What made him one? The exclusive laws which kept him humiliated in his native land. The wrongs of Ireland made him what he was, and Misrule carefully maintained the laws which made those wrongs. Had Ireland been justly governed, there would not have been occasion for such "agitation" as Mr. O'Connell kept up. If the "agitator" was indeed the monster which he was represented to be, Misrule is the Frankenstein which made him so. The wrongs of Ireland and the tyranny of evil government goaded him into action, and gave him power. Misrule sowed the wind, and reaped the whirlwind.

It has been strongly asserted, and as strongly denied, that a long line of ancestry gave O'Connell an hereditary right to take part in the public affairs of his native land, as if he, and all of us, did not inherit that right as an heir-loom derived from the first principles of nature. The tradition of his house was that the O'Connell family were entitled to rank among the most ancient in Ireland, antiquarians having avowed that his surname was derived from Conal Gabhra, a prince of the royal line of Milesius--that they originally possessed immense estates in the county of Limerick, and removed to the barony of Iveragh, in the western extremity of Kerry, where they enjoyed the almost regal office of Toparchs;--that, in the time of Elizabeth, their then chief, Richard O'Connell, made submission of his lands to the British crown;--that the rebellion of 1641 removed the sept O'Connell to the County Clare, by forfeiture (a certain Maurice O'Connell it was who forfeited his property in the Civil Wars of 1641, and received the estates in Clare as a partial indemnity; his uncle, Daniel O'Connell of Aghgore, in Iveragh, took no share in the Civil War, and thus preserved his estate);--that the Clare branch of the family supported James II., and, on the triumphs of the Orange party, had to seek in foreign lands the distinctions from which the Penal Laws excluded it in its own.

One of these, a certain Daniel O'Connell, who subsequently was created Count of "the Holy Roman Empire," disqualified, by his religion, from holding military or civil rank in his own country, entered the French service in 1757--when he was only fourteen years of age. He served in the seven years' war--at the capture of Port Mahon, in 1779, and was severely wounded at the grand sortie on Gibraltar in 1782--remained faithful to Louis XVI., until fidelity was of no further use--emigrated to England--was there appointed, in 1793, Colonel of the 6th Irish Brigade--retained that command until the corps was disbanded--returned to France, at the Restoration, in 1814--was there and then restored to his rank of General and Colonel-Commandant of the regiment of Salm, and named Grand Cross of the Order of St. Louis--refused to take rank under Louis Philippe--and died in 1834, aged ninety-one, a military patriarch, full of years and honours, holding the rank of General in the French, and being oldest Colonel in the English service. Count O'Connell was grand-uncle to "the Liberator."

It may not be generally known that the military tactics of Europe at the present day have emanated from Count O'Connell. The French Government resolved, in 1787, that the art of war should be thoroughly revised, and a military board, consisting of four general officers and one colonel, was formed for that purpose. Count O'Connell, who then commanded the Royal Suedois (or Swedish) regiment, was justly accounted one of the most scientific officers in the service, and was named as the junior member of that board. The other members soon discovered how correct and original were the views of their colleague, and unanimously confided to him the _redaction_ of the whole military code of France. So well did he execute this important commission, that his tactics were followed in the early campaigns of revolutionized France, by Napoleon--and finally adopted by Prussia, Austria, Russia and England.

To Morgan O'Connell, father of "the Liberator," descended none of the property originally held by the family. His elder brother, Maurice, succeeded to a large portion, (that which eventually was bequeathed to Daniel,) and it had the peculiarity of being free from all chiefry, imposts, or Crown charge--an unusual thing, and occurring only in the instance of very remote tenure. This portion was held under what was called Shelburne leases--renewable for ever, and first granted _before_ the enactment of the Penal laws, and therefore not "discoverable;" that is, not liable to be claimed from a Catholic holder by any Protestant who chose to claim them.

Daniel O'Connell's father became a petty farmer and a small shop-keeper at Cahirciveen. At that time he was simply known as "Morgan Connell,"--there being some to this day who wholly deny the right of the family to the prefix of "O." The Irish proverb says:

By Mac and O,
You'll always know
True Irishmen, they say;
For if they lack
The O or Mac,
No Irishmen are they.

The same doubters have contended that the independence realized by Morgan O'Connell was gained, not by farming nor by shop-keeping, but by extensive smuggling. But it was gained in some manner, and with it was purchased a small estate at Carhen, within a mile of Cahirciveen, where his years of industry had been passed, and not far from Derrynane. It was at Carhen that Daniel O'Connell was born, on the 6th August, 1775--the very day (he used to say) on which were commenced hostilities between Great Britain and her American colonies.

Daniel O'Connell's grandfather was the third son of twenty-two children. He died in 1770, leaving as his successor his second son, Maurice (John, the eldest, having predeceased him). This gentleman was never married, and it was on his death, in 1825, that the "Agitator" succeeded him as owner of the Derrynane estate. Morgan O'Connell (father to the "Liberator") died in 1809, and left two other sons, who are also handsomely provided for--John, as owner of Grena, and James of Lakeview, both places near Killarney.

I trust that I have not travelled out of my way to give this sketch of the descent of the family connexions of O'Connell. It shows that, at any rate, _he_ is not the _novus homo_--the mere upstart, without the advantages of birth and fortune, which he was often represented to be. At the same time, no O'Connell need be ashamed of what honest industry accomplished--that much of the landed property which O'Connell's father inherited, held by John O'Connell of Grena, was purchased from the profits of his business as a farmer and general shop-keeper.

From the first, Maurice O'Connell, of Derrynane, attached himself to his nephew Daniel, whom he educated. The earliest instructions in any branch of learning which the future "Liberator" received, were communicated to him by a poor hedge-schoolmaster, of a class ever abounding in Kerry, where every man is said to speak Latin. David Mahony happened to call at Carhen when little Daniel was only four years old, took him in his lap, and taught him the alphabet in an hour and a half. Some years later, he was regularly taught by Mr. Harrington--one of the first priests who set up a school after the repeal of the laws which made it penal for a Roman Catholic clergyman even to live in Ireland. At the age of fourteen he went abroad with his brother Maurice to obtain a good education.

Seventy years ago, the policy, or rather the impolicy of English domination actually prohibited the education of the Catholics within Great Britain and Ireland. They were, therefore, either compelled to put up with very limited education, or forced to go abroad for instruction,--rather a curious mode of predisposing their minds in favour of the English laws. Mr. O'Connell was originally intended for the priesthood, and was educated at the Catholic seminary of Louvain, next at St. Omer, and, finally, at the English college of Douay, in France. But, at that time, there were fully as many lay as clerical pupils at that college.

At St. Omer, Daniel O'Connell rose to the first place in all the classes, and the President of the College wrote to his uncle, in Ireland--"I have but one sentence to write about him, and that is, that I never was so mistaken in all my life as I shall be, unless he be destined to make a remarkable figure in society."

The two brothers commenced their homeward journey on the 21st of December, 1793--the very day on which Louis XVI. was guillotined at Paris. During their journey from Douay to Calais, they were obliged to wear the revolutionary cockade, for safety. But, as good Catholics, they were bound to abhor the atrocities perpetrated, at that time, by the Jacobins, in the sacred name of liberty, and when they stood on the deck of the English packet-boat, indignantly tore the tri-colour from their hats, and flung them, with all contempt, into the water. Some French fishermen, who saw the act, rescued the cockades, and flung imprecations against the "aristocrats" who had rejected them. At the same time, when an enthusiastic Irish republican, who had "assisted" at the execution of Louis, exhibited a handkerchief stained with his blood, the young students turned away and shunned him, in disgust and abhorrence. Not then, nor at any period of his career, was O'Connell an anti-monarchist. It is said that, during the trial of Thomas Hardy, at London, (October, 1794,) for high treason, he was so much shocked at the unfair means used by the Crown lawyers to convict the accused--means foiled by eloquent Erskine and an honest jury--that he resolved to place himself as a champion of Right against Might, and identify himself with the cause of the people. While he was on the Continent, that relaxation of the Penal laws took place which allowed the Catholic to become a barrister. It is probable that _this_ was the immediate cause of his becoming a lawyer. A young man of his sanguine temperament was likely to prefer the bar, with its temporal advantages,--its scope for ambition,--its excitement,--its fame, to the more secluded life of an ecclesiastic. Accordingly, I find that he entered as a law-student at Lincoln's Inn, in January, 1794--eat the requisite number of term-dinners there, for two years--pursued the same qualifying course of "study" at King's Inn, Dublin, and was called to the Irish bar, in Easter term, 1798, in the 23d year of his age.

The Rebellion was in full fling at the time, and (in order, no doubt, to show his "loyalty" as a Catholic) he joined what was called "the lawyers' corps," associated to assist the Government in putting down revolt.

The period of his admission was singularly favourable. Catholics had just been admitted to the Irish bar--to the minor honours of the profession; although it was hoped, and not extravagantly, that, in time, all its privileges would be thrown open to them. It was impossible to say what was Mr. O'Connell's ambition at the time; however high, he could not have had a dream of the elevation which he subsequently reached. He must have felt, however, that he had a wide field for the exercise of his abilities. His ostensible ambition, for many years, was to become a good lawyer. During what is called "the long vacation," and at other periods when he could spare time, he resided a good deal with his uncle in Kerry, where he pursued the athletic sports in which, almost to the close of his career, he delighted to participate. On one occasion, while out upon a hunting expedition, he put up at a peasant's cabin, sat for some hours in his wet clothes, and contracted a typhus fever. In his delirium he often repeated the lines from Home's tragedy of Douglas:

"Unknown I die--no tongue shall speak of me.
Some noble spirits, judging by themselves,
May yet conjecture what I might have proved,
And think life only wanting to my fame."

His son has preserved a letter, written in December, 1795, when he was in his twenty-first year, in which he communicates his views to his uncle Maurice, of Derrynane. A passage or two may be worth quoting, to show with what earnestness he devoted himself to the career upon which he was then preparing to enter. He says, "I have now two objects to pursue--the one, the attainment of knowledge; the other, the acquisition of all those qualities which constitute the polite gentleman. I am convinced that the former, besides the immediate pleasure which it yields, _is calculated to raise me to honour, rank, and fortune_ [how prophetic were the young man's aspirations!]; and I know that the latter serves as a general passport or first recommendation; and, as for the motives of ambition which you suggest, I assure you that no man can possess more of it than I do. I have, indeed, a glowing, and--if I may use the expression--an enthusiastic ambition, _which converts every toil into a pleasure, and every study into an amusement_."

He adds, in the same honourable spirit, "Though nature may have given me subordinate talents, I never will be satisfied with a subordinate situation in my profession. No man is able, I am aware, to supply the total deficiency of abilities, but every body is capable of improving and enlarging a stock, however small, and, in its beginning, contemptible. It is this reflection that affords me most consolation. If I do not rise at the bar, I will not have to meet the reproaches of my own conscience. * * * Indeed, as for my knowledge in the professional line, that cannot be discovered for some years to come; but I have time in the interim to prepare myself to appear with greater _éclat_ on the grand theatre of the world."

As a barrister, he naturally took the Munster circuit, and here his family connexion operated very much in his favour. In the counties of Clare, Limerick, Kerry and Cork, he had relatives in abundance, and being, I believe, the first Catholic who had gone that circuit, he naturally engrossed a considerable portion of the business which the Catholics had previously, _ex necessitate_, distributed among the barristers of a contrary persuasion. He succeeded, moreover, in establishing the reputation of being a shrewd, clever, hard-working lawyer, and briefs flowed in so abundantly, that he may be cited as one instance, amid the ten thousand difficulties of the bar, of great success being immediately acquired. There was nothing precarious in this success: he was evidently a shrewd, clever, long-headed lawyer, and while the Catholics gave him briefs, because of his family and religion, the Protestants, not less wise, were not backward in engaging his assistance--not that they much loved the man, but that his assistance was worth having, as that of a man with a clear head, a well-filled mind, strong natural eloquence, and, from the very first, a mastery over the art of cross-examining witnesses.

O'Connell's friends scarcely anticipated, from what his youth had been, the success which met him on his first step into active manhood. He held his first brief at the Kerry Assizes, in Tralee. Between a country gentleman named Brusker Segerson and the O'Connells there long had been a family feud. Brusker accused one of the O'Connell tenants at Iveragh, of sundry crimes and misdemeanors, which judge and jury had "well and truly to try and determine." Young O'Connell had his maiden brief in this case. Brusker, knowing the young lawyer's inexperience, anticipated a triumph over him, and invited a party of friends to witness the "fatal facility" with which the accused would be worsted. But it happened not only that the accused was the acquitted, but there was a general opinion, from the facts on the trial, that Brusker Segerson's conduct had been oppressive, if not illegal. Brusker turned round to his friends and soundly swore that "Morgan O'Connell's _fool_ was a great lawyer, and would be a great man." Henceforth he always employed O'Connell--but with the distinct and truly Irish understanding that the hereditary and personal feud between them should in no wise be diminished!