leader of the Opposition in the House of Commons. His appearance in that capacity is commemorated by one of the cleverest papers in 'The New Whig Guide:' The Trial of Henry Brougham, for calling Mr. Ponsonby an Old Woman.' In the verses on 'The Choice of Leader,' we find :

What boots our debate?'-thus the rebels began ;

'What avails the discussion of topic or plan? No plan can succeed and no party can thrive With a leader who neither can lead us nor drive.

'What! was it come to this-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 that was but fit for hallooing on a mob? Had he heard a man out of doors using such language as that by which the honourable gentleman had violated the decorum of Parliament, he would have seized the ruffian by the throat and dragged him to the dust.'

Martin, of Galway, spoke as follows, Mr. Ponsonby's sister being, with some other ladies, in the gallery :—

Reluctant as we are to pass over Lord Manners and Sir Anthony Hart, who come next, we really have no alternative; for our remaining space is only just sufficient for a compressed tribute to the memory of Plunket, to whom must be awarded the first place amongst Irish orators, if reason and logic, as well as fancy, wit, humour, and imagination, are to be the tests. Curran's imagination has been compared to virgin gold crumbling from its own richness. Grattan's mind was pre-eminent for fertility and force. But neither of them equalled Plunket in the combination of chasteness and purity with splendour, intensity, and power. His loftiest flights and boldest bursts were tempered and restrained by the severest taste: he never risked an apostrophe, the most dangerous of rhetorical figures or artifices, until the audiences were thoroughly warmed for its reception: he was never stiltish, like Sheridan in the most applauded passages of the Begum speech, nor melodramatic, like Burke in the dagger scene: he was never gaudy or flowery; in a word, he was wholly free from the faults popularly attributed to the Irish school of eloquence; and this is the reason why some of his greatest triumphs were won in the English House of Commons, in which Flood failed and Grattan obtained only a qualified success. It was a favourite aphorism of Fox, that if a speech read well, it was not a good speech. Plunket's speeches do read well, and they are emphatically good speeches. It was the opinion of a man steeped to the lips in classic lore, the lamented Sir George Cornewall Lewis, that Plunket came nearer to the Demosthenic model than any other modern orator: Ciceronian excellence to Pitt. awarding the palm for

Plunket has not been fortunate in his

*

biographers. The Life in two volumes, by his grandson, is an imperfect and unsatisfactory work: being especially deficient in accurate reports of the best speeches: and Mr. O'Flanagan has vainly endeavoured to make up by admiring enthusiasm for his incapacity to grasp so varied and expansive a subject, or to keep to it. As if he had not enough upon his hands without meddling with irrelevant topics, he introduces (aproof Thurlow's being Lord Chancellor well-known reply to the Duke of Grafton; a student) Thurlow's

floor.'

A duel, a bloodless one, followed. When Martin was asked how he knew that Miss Ponsonby was in the gallery, he replied, Oh, I walked down to the House with Ponsonby, and he told me his sister was coming to hear him.'

when Plunket was

6

It was after his talents had been thoroughly tested and appreciated in the higher walks of business, that the leaders of the Opposition became anxious to secure his services as a parliamentary debater, and in the spring of 1798 Lord Charlemont sought an interview for the purpose of offering him a seat. But Lord Charlemont was opposed to Catholie Emancipation, and they separated with an expression of regret by Plunket, that 'while holding the same political opinions on almost every other topic, on one subject they were not of one mind, and he therefore declined to be a nominee of his Lordship for fear of being obliged to act against his wishes.' He was too valuable a recruit to be let slip in this fashion. Lord Charlemont requested another visit, which ended satisfactorily to both parties, and the patriot Earl afterwards confessed to his son that 'Plunket prevailed over his old prejudice.'

Plunket took his seat for the borough of Charlemont on February 6th, 1798, and almost immediately came into collision with Lord Castlereagh on the all-absorbing topic of the Union. No adversary of that noble Lord assailed him with so much keen sarcasm, so much vehement invective, so much biting personality. Yet Lord Castlereagh bore up against it with his habitual fearlessness and his usual imperturbable mien: never once suffering his temper to be ruffled, nor attempting to bring the Castle system of intimidation into play. Indeed Plunket's occasional vehemence (not to say violence) of language never brought on a duel; nor, so far as we can learn, ever provoked a challenge; the most plausible explanation being that the loftiness of his language redeemed or mitigated its offensiveness, and that a man of his earnest temperament, wrapped up in his subject, neither gives nor takes affronts like one who is evidently aiming at applause and wounds the self-love of others to gratify Certain it is that he took the first opportunity of delivering a meditated diatribe against Lord Castlereagh, which stands unsurpassed for polished bitterness, after giving distinct notice that he was about to stretch the privileges of debate to the utter most verge. On Barrington's being called to order by Corry and Beresford for denouncing the means which the Government

his own.

'I have no idea that the freedom of debate shall be controlled by such frequent interruptions. I do not conceive that my honourable friend is out of order, and when my turn comes to speak, I shall repeat these charges in still stronger language, if possible, and indulge gentlemen on the other side of the House with an

opportunity of taking down my words, if they have any fancy to do so.'

When his turn came, after forcibly recapitulating the charges of intimidation and corruption, he fell, with the full weight of indignant patriotism and outraged public virtue, on Lord Castlereagh :—

'The example of the Prime Minister of Eng-' land, inimitable in its vices, may deceive the faults; he abandoned in his latter years the noble Lord. The Minister of England has his principles of reform, by professing which he obtained the early confidence of the people of England, and in the whole of his political conduct he has shown himself haughty and intractable; but it must be admitted that he has shown himself by nature endowed with a towering and transcendent intellect, and that the the magnificence and unboundedness of his vastness of his moral resources keeps pace with projects. I thank God it is much more easy for him to transfer his apostasy and his insolence than his comprehension and sagacity, and I feel the safety of my country in the wretched feebleness of her enemy. I cannot fear that the Constitution which has been formed by the wisdom of ages, and cemented by the blood of patriots and of heroes, is to be smitten to its centre by such a green and sapless twig as this.'

In reference to the term sapless, coupled with impotent instrument' in the same speech, Mr. O'Flanagan says: "There was terrible force in this allusion. It is also said that, when Teeling's mother was refused pardon for her son, implicated in the rebellion of 1798, she said to Lord Castlereagh: "You cannot comprehend my feelings, my Lord; I remember, you have no child." We fully acquit Plunket of intending any allusion of the sort. Under the show of

apologising for vehemence, he grows more vehement:

'But, Sir, we are told that we should discuss this question with calmness and composure. I am called on to surrender my birthright and my honour, and I am told I should be calm and should be composed. National pride! Independence of our country! These, we are told by the Minister, are only vulgar topics fitted but for the meridian of the mob, but unworthy to be mentioned to such an enlightened assembly as this; they are trinkets and gewgaws fit to catch the fancy of childish and unthinking people like you, Sir, or like your pre

days of the Irish Parliament, combating for its existence, was addressing an audience little less excited than himself. Metaphors gathered from every branch of art, science, and literature, were profusely lavished and enthusiastically applauded. Plunket's answer to the popular argument for an union is an example:

This fine apostrophe is impaired by the same incongruity which we noted in the railing matches between Curran and Fitz Gibbon. Lord Castlereagh was in his thirtieth year in 1798, and his appearance and manner must have been singularly youthful to give even temporary effect to these sarcasms against his youth. He was, however, always distinguished by his firm, manly, aristocratic bearing, and his self-control. There was not a particle of boyish vivacity or petulance in his composition. No public character has made so perceptible an advance in public estimation as his, in exact proportion as it has become known; and it is clear, from his Correspondence, that the same statesman-like views which he carried out in after life animated him when he was denounced as the narrow-minded foe of his native country on the floor of the Irish House

of Commons.

The tendency to make facts subordinate to effects is not peculiar to rhetorical historians; vehement speakers are equally subject to it. Nor are they uniformly discreet. In this same speech Plunket was hurried into a declaration or vow of which he had ample reason to repent:

For my part I will resist it (the Union) to the last gasp of my existence, and with the last drop of my blood; and, when I feel the hour of my dissolution approaching, I will, like the father of Hannibal, take my children to the altar and swear them to eternal hostility against the invaders of their country's freedom.'

This is the passage on which Cobbett harped with annoying pertinacity, nicknaming the children the young Hannibals, and periodically reminding the father that, instead of swearing his sons to eternal hostility against the British Government, he had sworn them into good places under it. In the cold, calm, and often chilling atmosphere of the English House of Commons, the orator who soars into the sublime does so at the imminent risk of a collapse. The wings of Mr. Bright's angel of death, when (in the debate on the Crimean war) You might almost hear their rustling, were within an ace of being clipped.

'The two Parliaments may clash! So in Great Britain may King and Parliament; but we see they never do so injuriously. There are principles of repulsion! yes; but there are principles of attraction, and from these the enlightened statesman extracts the principle by which As soon would I listen to the shallow observer the countries are to be harmoniously governed. of nature, who should say there is a centrifugal force impressed on our globe, and therefore, lest we should be hurried into the void of space. we ought to rush into the centre to be consumed there. No-I say to this rash arraigner of the dispensations of the Almighty, there are eternal wisdom has declared the law by which impulses from whose wholesome opposition we revolve in our proper sphere, and at our proper distance. So I say to the political visionary,-from the opposite forces which you object to, I see the wholesome law of imperial connexion derived-I see the two countries preserving their due distance from each other, generating and imparting heat, and light, and life, and health, and vigour; and I will abide by the wisdom and experience of the ages which are passed, in preference to the speculations of any modern philosopher.'

It is no deduction from the oratorical splendour of this passage that the wisdom and experience of the age which had passed told a different story: that the two legislatures could never be made to harmonise, except by keeping the one dependent on the other.

Plunket's excellence in a lighter style was displayed in his reference to the suggestion in the Speech from the Throne, that the carrying of the Union would be a great satisfaction to the Lord Lieutenant in his old age:

'I must, for one, beg to be excused from making quite so great a sacrifice, from mere personal civility, to any Lord-Lieutenant, howof a nation, I must own, does not appear to me ever respectable he may be. The independence exactly that kind of a bagatelle which is to be offered, by way of compliment, either to the youth of the noble Lord (Lord Castlereagh), who honours us by his presence in this House, or the old age of the noble Marquis (Cornwallis), who occasionally sheds his setting lustre over the other. To the first I am disposed to say, in the words of Waller,—

"I pray thee, gentle boy, Press me no more for that slight toy;"