Wilkes. Neither the English nor the Irish Chancellor possessed the required amount of learning or practical knowledge. Most of Thurlow's decrees were drawn up by Hargrave, who went by the name of the lion's provider. Fitz Gibbon's method of doing business is thus illustrated by the biographer: been meditated to destroy the effect of what | voked the crushing and profane repartee of he deemed his masterpiece, called out Sir Hercules, and the affair was forthwith referred to Bushe and another senator; who, after more than one conference, arranged that Sir Hercules should apologise, which he did by saying that he was sorry for what had happened; but, being tired and thirsty, if he had given up the claret, he should have given up the ghost.' Sir Hercules. Langrishe was the patriot to whom Burke's Letters are addressed, and the bon vivant who, being asked whether he had drunk four bottles of claret (the empty bottles were on the table before him) without assistance, replied, No, I had the assistance of a bottle of Madeira.' 6 When the Irish Lord Chancellorship was vacated by the death of Lord Lifford, Fitz Gibbon's claims were so high that it seemed a matter of course for the succession to devolve upon him. He was the master-spirit of the Irish Administration; he had earned and received the warm approval of the Prime Minister; the Lord Lieutenant (the Marquis of Buckingham) and the Chief Secretary threatened to resign if he was passed over. Yet an obstacle was raised which for a time seemed insurmountable. Thurlow stood upon his prescriptive right as Lord Chancellor of England to nominate the Lord Chancellor of Ireland, and he rested his veto upon the almost unbroken practice of never bestowing the office on an Irishman. Mr. O'Flanagan states (what we should be slow to believe without unimpeachable authority) that, after resisting the Prime Minister and the Lord-Lieutenant, the ironhearted Thurlow yielded to the persuasions or cajoleries of the widowed Duchess of Rutland. Contrary to his usual practice, he condescended to explain his opposition, and did it with a good grace. He wrote a congratulatory letter to Fitz Gibbon, in which he says: 'If it were clear that the precedent of relaxing the rule, out of attention to so much merit, would never be repeated till a similar occasion should offer, the exception would, probably, not hurt the rule. But if it must be repeated, as often as similar merit is claimed, probably the exception eats up the rule.' Thurlow and Fitz Gibbon were congenial spirits; they were both bold, unbending, arrogant, and insolent: Thurlow being the bluntest and most unprincipled of the two. There is no part of Fitz Gibbon's career, not even that relating to the Union, so open to reproach as Thurlow's double dealing during the king's illness, coupled with the speech (When I forget my king,' &c.) which pro of Limerick, who wandered from the banks of 'While Lord Clare was Chancellor, a native the Shannon to those of the Liffey, after watching the progress of an equity cause in the Court of Chancery, and returned to the place whence he came, was asked on his return, "How the Chancellor got on as a Judge?" 6.66 Chancellor, indeed!" repeated the Garryowen boy; "tis he has the asy sate of it. He doesn't spake a word; but when the Counsellors are done argufying, he leans over the desk, and gives a nod to Jack Dwyer, who tells him what to do. 'Tis Jack Dwyer ought to be Chancellor, for he makes all the decrees.' This is partially confirmed by Tone in his diary: 'Wolfe is the Chancellor's private tutor in legal matters. Fitz Gibbon has read Coke upon Littleton' under his papa. He has a very intelligent clerk to write his papers; he has Boyd to hunt his cases, he has some talents, great readiness and assurance, and— there is Fitz Gibbon.' The rancorous enmity with which he pursued his old adversary, Curran, from the judicial bench, was utterly indefensible. So soon as it became clear that the advocate had not the ear of the Court, no solicitor could employ him without compromising the client's interest: his annual loss of professional income from the ban set upon him is computed by his son at 1000l. a year, and he, himself, in a letter to Grattan, wrote:- the merit of provoking and despising the per'I made no compromise with honour. I had sonal malice of every man in Ireland who was the known enemy of our country. Without the walls of the Courts of Justice my character was pursued with the most persevering 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 professional income have never been estimated at less, as you have heard, than 30,0007.' On the rare occasions when he was employed in Lord Clare's Court, he caught eagerly at every opportunity of resenting the ungenerous treatment to which he was systematically exposed. Lord Clare had a favourite dog which was permitted to follow him to the bench. One day, during an argument of Curran's, the Chancellor turned ran, aside and began to fondle the dog, with the obvious view of intimating inattention or disregard. The counsel stopped; the Judge looked up: 'I beg pardon,' continued CurI thought your Lordships had been in consultation; but, as you have been pleased to resume your attention, allow me to inpress upon your excellent understandings,' &c. This half-humorous sally was a fleabite to the bitter revenge he took before a tribunal in which he could command a fair hearing and a sympathising audience. In 1790 one of the most stirring Irish questions was whether the election of the Lord Mayor of Dublin lay with the Aldermen or the Common Council. It came before the LordLieutenant and Privy Council, forming an open and crowded Court, at which the Lord Chancellor presided. Curran appeared as counsel for the popular candidate, and insisted on arguing the case as one involving constitutional rights of the broadest and most important kind. Under the thin disguise of commenting on the line taken by a former Chancellor, Sir Constantine Phipps, on an analogous occasion, he taxed the resources of his fertile fancy for images to insult and stigmatise Lord Clare. Then occurred one of the most remarkable scenes ever exhibited in a court of justice :— wicke to discover and retract a mistake. The errors of such men are only specks that arise for a moment on the surface of a splendid luminary consumed by its heat, or irradiated by its light, they soon disappear; but the perlike 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 qualities so congenial to their nature, and acquire an incorrigible permanence in the union with kindred frost and cept when the interests of millions can be afkindred opacity. Nor indeed, my Lords, exfected by the vice or folly 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 improvement. verseness of a mean and narrow intellect are Lord Chancellor.-Surely, Mr. Curran, a gentleman of your eminence in your profession Councils has nothing to do with the question must see that the conduct of former Privy before us. The question lies in the narrowest compass,-it is whether the Commons have a right of arbitrary and capricious rejection, or are obliged to assign a reasonable cause for their disapprobation? 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 any defence which I conceive applicable to that case. I am not speaking to a single Judge, to a dry point of law, and on a mere forensic subject. I am addressing a very large auditory, consisting of co-ordinate members, of whom the far greater number is not versed in law. 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 proofs and arguments, and perches on assertion which it calls conclusion." In this very Chamber did a Chancellor and Judges sit, with all the gravity and affected attention to arguments in favour of that liberty and those rights which they conspired to destroy. But to what ends, my Lords, offer arguments to such men? A little peevish mind may be exasperated, but how shall it be corrected by refutation? How fruitless would it have been to represent to that wretched Chancellor that he was betraying those rights he was sworn to maintain; that he was involving a Government in disgrace and a kingdom in a panic and consternation; that he was violating every sacred duty and every solemn enagement that binds him to himself, his country, and his God! Alas! my Lords, by what argument could any man hope to reclaim or 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 probably would have replied to the most unanswerable arguments by some cant, contumelious and unmeaning pophthegm, delivered with the fretful smile of rritated self-sufficiency and disconcerted arroance; or even if he could be dragged by his fears to a consideration of the question, by what miracle could the pigmy capacity of a stunted pedant be enlarged for the reception of the subject? To 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 his noble birth and his professional rank at by the reaction of its own efforts to compre- the Bar-to both of which he was a disgrace hend. It may be given to a Hale or a Hard--had aggravated his crime.' Butler was Here the Chancellor interposed again by moving that the Council-chamber be cleared, and when the argument was resumed, Curvehicle of invective or irony. There is no ran made no further attempt to use it as the denying that this attack is distinguished by felicitous imagery and extraordinary powers of language, but, like most other ebullitions of the same kind, it is overdone. Lord Clare could afford to smile at being twitted with 'the pigmy capacity of a stunted pedant,' or 'the perverseness of a mean and narrow intellect.' In pronouncing sentence, as spokesman of the House of Lords, on the Honourable Samuel Butler, a barrister, for signing a political document which their Lordships held to be a seditious libel, Lord Clare said that the offender could not plead ignorance, as "A pretty piece of work you have made of it, Hamilton," said the Colonel, "taking a challenge to the Chancellor." How came you to know what passed be tween us?" asked Rowan. sentenced to pay a fine of 500l., and to be | Sir Robert) Peel remarked, on being told of imprisoned for six months. As soon as he it by Grant: You are well out of the scrape. was released he commissioned Archibald Yarmouth is the last man I should have Hamilton Rowan to demand an apology or chosen; he is a selfish fellow, who for his satisfaction from the Lord Chancellor. Lord cwn sake would never permit a meeting. I Clare calmly referred to his official position should take Daly (the fighting opponent of and bowed Rowan out, but was not satisfied Martin of Galway), who would be sure to till he had taken counsel with a military bring you off with flying colours, or make friend, Colonel Murray, who undertook to you fight.'* Sir Robert was the challenger see Rowan :in three affairs which ended peaceably, through no fault of his or his second's, Sir Henry (afterwards Lord) Hardinge. One of the three was with O'Connell, who, despite of the vow registered in heaven, accepted the challenge. An Irish newspaper (inmorn-spired, it was said, by the Agitator) announc ed, first, his departure from Dublin, and next his arrival at Slaughter's Coffee-house, on his way to a hostile meeting with the Secretary for Ireland' (Peel). The announce ment attracted the attention of the authori ties; O'Connell was apprehended, and the further prosecution of the affair was stopped. Shortly afterwards, O'Connell was arguing a case in the Irish Common Pleas, and, on the Chief Justice (Norbury) assuming a puzzled look, paused and said: 'Possibly, your lordship does not apprehend me.' 'Oh, yes, Mr. O'Connell,' was the reply, no one is more easily apprehended when he wishes it." "I breakfasted with Fitz Gibbon this ing, and he told me the whole affair," answered the Colonel.' The Irish biographer states that this is the only instance he could find of a challenge to a Lord Chancellor. We are not aware of one of an actual challenge to a judge; but Lord Norbury, when Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, is recorded to have checked a learned brother by the significant hint, that he (Lord N.), in becoming a judge, had not ceased to be a gentleman. It was a favourite boast of his that he began the world with fifty pounds and a pair of hair-trigger pistols. The Provost of Dublin University Hutchinson) fought Doyle, a Master in Chancery; and so late as 1812 a judge of the old school, Mr. Justice Fletcher, summed up as follows, on the trial of a duellist for murder: Rowan, who carried Butler's message tc Lord Clare, retained his chivalry to the last. In 1827, at the age of seventy-five, he travelled to London to demand an apology or a meeting from the late Sir Robert Peel, for some expressions used in debate. The affair was amicably adjusted and (we may take it for granted) according to the strictest notions of honour; for the Right Honourable Baronet uniformly acted on the maxim which Grattan, on his death-bed, is said to have impressed on his sons: Always be ready with your pistol.' Early in the century the late Sir Alexander Grant, of gastronomic fame, was engaged in an affair of honour, in which the penultimate Marquis of Hertford (then Lord Yarmouth) acted as his friend. It was settled amicably, but Mr. (afterwards The taunt was unmerited. O'Connell was personally as well as morally and politically brave. Calling Mr. Charles Phillips aside, just before taking his ground at the meeting with D'Esterre (a dead shot), he said: 'I am obnoxious to a party, and they adopt a false pretence to cut me off. I shall not submit to it. They have reckoned without their host; I promise you I am one of the best shots in Ireland at a mark, having, as a pub lic man, considered it a duty to prepare against such unprovoked aggressions as the present. Now, remember what I say to you. I may be struck myself, and then skill is out of the question; but, if I am not, my anta gonist may have cause to regret his having forced me into this conflict.' The parties were placed at twelve paces' distance, with a case of pistols each, and directions to fire when they chose on a given signal. They fired almost together, and D'Esterre fell mortally wounded. The practice of duelling is so interwoven with the forensic annals of Ireland, that any sketch of them, omitting it, would be incomplete, and these illustrative incidents can hardly be considered a digression. for the county of Galway, when, being asked * Daly was Martin's opponent at the election which would be returned, Martin replied, the survivor.' Unluckily for his reputation, Fitz Gibbon | Catholic convictions he perfectly agreed. had committed himself decidedly against the His demeanour on these occasions, indisUnion. It is related that one day, after creet as it was, belied the character given of dinner, a fit of enthusiasm possessed him. him by Grattan, who, on its being observed 'Talk not to me,' he exclaimed, ' of a union: that he was a dangerous man, added,—' A if a Minister dared to do so, I would fling very dangerous man-to run away from.' my office in his face;' and he flounced His hostility was not limited to those who grandly out of the room. 'Now, mark,' were likely to run away from him. Fortusaid Daly, that is the very man who would nately for his fame, his career on this new support it. That little man who talks so and uncongenial stage was brief. He died in big would vote for an union-aye, to-mor- January, 1802, at his house, Ely Place, Dubrow.' Immediately on the measure being lin; and the feelings with which he was resuggested by the English Ministry, he vehe- garded by the bulk of the Irish nation broke mently urged it on, with objects essentially out with revolting violence at his funeral. distinct from theirs, unless, indeed, he very The mob which followed the hearse, yelling much misunderstood Lord Castlereagh and and shrieking, with curses loud and deep, Mr. Pitt. He wrote thus from London to were with difficulty restrained from heaping Lord Castlereagh in Dublin:filth and mud upon the richly ornamented coffin; and dead cats were hurled at it in memory of a threat attributed to the deceased that he would make the Irish people as tame as domestic cats.' 'Grosvenor Square, Oct. 16, 1798. 'I have seen Mr. Pitt, the Chancellor, and the Duke of Portland, who seem to feel so sensibly the very critical situation of our damnable country, and that the Union alone can save it. His unpopularity was the merited result I should have hoped that what has passed of his besetting sins and bad qualities: his would have opened the eyes of every man in pride, his insolence, his ungovernable temEngland to the insanity of their present conduct with respect to the Papists; but I can per, his tyrannical disposition, his avowed very plainly perceive that they were as full of contempt for his country and his countrytheir Popish projects as ever. I trust and men. But a calm review of his conduct will hope I am not deceived; that they are fairly inclined to give them up, and to bring the measure forward unincumbered with the doctrine of Emancipation. Lord Cornwallis has intimated his acquiescence on that point, and Mr. Pitt is decided on it, and I think he will keep his colleagues steady.' All Mr. Pitt could have been decided on was to postpone Emancipation till the Union was completed; for he resigned in 1801, because he was not permitted to satisfy the expectations he had held out to the Catholics. We described and exemplified in a review of the Cornwallis Correspondence' the extraordinary expedients to which the Government resorted to carry the Union; and it is no secret that the most unscrupulous and highhanded proceedings were especially favoured by Lord Clare. As soon as the measure was carried, he was made a peer of the United Kingdom and eagerly took part in the debates of the House of Lords, where he rashly attempted to indulge his characteristic arrogance and irritability. On his very first appearance he was twice called to order, and persevering in the alleged irregularity, provoked what reads very like a rebuke from the Woolsack. On another occasion, he was unceremoniously put down by the Duke of Bedford; and he had the ill luck or indiscretion to quarrel with the Lord Chancellor of England, Lord Eldon, with whose anti Quart. Rev.,' No. 209, January, 1859, Art. 1. bring to light actions, views, and sentiments which should go far to mitigate the harshness of the national judgment. During the Irish Rebellion of 1798, far from seeking to entrap the misguided leaders of birth and education, such as 6 to Archibald Hamilton Rowan, the Sheares, Emmet, and Lord Edward Fitz Gerald-he caused ample warning to be given to them. Will nobody,' he wrote to a connection of Lord Edward's, reason with that rash young man? Will nobody induce him to leave the kingdom? I pledge myself every port shall be left open him. Whilst Lord Edward lay in Newgate (Dublin) delirious from his wound, his aunt, Lady Louisa Connolly, applied in vain to the Lord Lieutenant (Lord Camden) and the Chief Secretary (Lord Castlereagh) for an order to see him. In her despair, she thought of the Lord Chancellor and drove to his house. He had a large dinner-party, and dinner was hardly off the table. He went to her directly and heard her request. Lady Louisa,' he said, after a pause for reflection, 'to grant the order is impossible. We have decided in council that none shall be given. But you are a woman, and a near relative. I know of no decision which prohibits my taking you with me.' He went with her at once, and remained three hours in an outer apartment during her interview with her nephew. In Moore's 'Life of Lord Edward Fitz Gerald,' the most unfavourable impression is conveyed of the (so-called) harsh and cruel conduct of the Irish officials, including the Lord Chancellor, in refusing Lord Edward's family access to him till three hours before his death. On the appearance of the first edition, Catherine Countess of Charleville, who had repeatedly heard the exact particulars related by Lady Louisa Connolly, her intimate friend, sent a note of them to Moore, who seems to have received it in the spirit of the Abbé Vertot when he exclaimed (on the arrival of fresh facts for his History of Malta), Mon siège est fait!' In the third edition of the Life, now before us, there is not the slightest notice of the part taken in procuring the interview by Lord Clare, who still comes in for his full share of the reproaches levelled at the authorities. When Lord Clare was told that he was dying, he sent for his wife: 'I have but one request to make of you; it is that you will burn all my papers; should they remain after me, hundreds may be compromised.' On accepting the British peerage, which required frequent absence from his Court, he adopted some judicious measures for preventing the delay of justice; and, enslaved as he was by the spirit of party, he had scruples (too easily silenced) about elevating a mere partizan, notoriously incompetent, to the judgment seat. When Toler (Lord Norbury) was first named, he exclaimed: 'Make him a Chief Justice! Oh, no; if he must mount the bench, make him a bishop, or an archbishop, or—anything but a Chief Justice.' There is only one witticism recorded of Lord Clare, and we agree with Mr. Phillips that it is good enough to make us wish for more. When Yelverton, then Chief Baron, went over to England on the occasion of George III.'s illness, his companions were Curran, Egan, and a Mr. Barrett, reputed to be fond of play. He travels,' said Fitz Gibbon, like a mountebank, with his monkey, his bear, and his sleight-of-hand man.' * 6 It feels like a relief (observes Mr. O'Flanagan) to turn from the turbulent and fretful career of Lord Clare to the calmer and more equable course presented by the life of his successor on the woolsack, Lord Redesdale, one of the most eminent, and, certainly, with the exception of Lord St. Leonards, the most distinguished Equity *Egan was a very large man and very hirsute. 'Did you ever see such a chest as this?' he exclaimed, striking his breast. A trunk, you mean, my dear Egan,' replied Curran. It was Egan, on whom Curran, when they were about to fight a duel, proposed to chalk out his own size, upon an understanding that any shot outside the chalk lines should go for nothing. Judge who ever held the Great Seal of Ireland.' Unfortunately the charm of a biography is often in an inverse ratio to the quiet unobtrusive virtues of the man, and an equable course is necessarily less productive of incident than a turbulent one. Excellent lawyer as he was, Lord Redesdale is now principally remembered in Dublin by the jokes made at his expense. An amusing description of his first dinner with the Irish judges and king's counsel is given by Barrington, from which it would seem that his Lordship had himself to thank for the running fire of pleasantries opened on him. He took it into his head to be light and facetious, which was not his forte. After two or three failures, he remarked that, when he was a lad, cock-fighting was the fashion, and that both ladies and gentlemen. went full dressed to the cock-pit, the ladies being in hoops. I see now, my Lord,' said Toler, it was then the term cock-a-hoop was invented.' A little disconcerted, the Chancellor produced another reminiscence of his youth, namely, that when people learnt to skate, they carried blown bladders under their arms, to buoy them up if the ice broke. Ah, my Lord,' said the same tormentor, that is what we call bladderum skate in Ireland.' In the hope of effecting a diversion, he next turned to a king's counsel whom he just knew by name: 'Mr. Garret O'Farrell, I believe you are from the county of Wicklow, where your family have long held considerable property, and are very numerous. I think I was introduced to several during my late tour in that county.' "Yes, my Lord,' replied Mr. O'Farrell, we were very numerous; but so many of us have lately been hanged for sheep-stealing, that the name is getting rather scarce.' เ 6 The scene in which Plunket played him off about the kites has been frequently in print. Although more puzzled than pleased with the habits and peculiar humour of his new associates, Lord Redesdale got on tolerably well with them on the whole; he made valuable additions to their stock of equity, and O'Connell declared before Parliament, 'Lord Redesdale was the best Chancellor I ever saw.' Lord Redesdale was summarily displaced by the Fox and Grenville Government in 1806, and Mr. George Ponsonby was ap pointed his successor. This was a strong measure, for Mr. Ponsonby's claims were almost exclusively political; and Mr. O'Flanagan's brief notice of him dwells more on his parliamentary than on his forensic or judicial exploits. His tenure of the Great Seal lasted less than a year; and, retiring on the usual pension, he became for a time |