in a Calenture. He has great fluency, but little or no argument. He has some fancy, too, but it serves just to wrap him into the clouds and leave him there, while he holds himself suspended, planing and warbling like a lark, without one thought to interrupt the song. If he has any forte it is in vituperation or abuse. In 1766 he defeated the first Militia Bill.* His first stride in apostasy was supporting the Privy Council Money Bill in 1767 [for opposing which Anthony Malone† had previously lost the Prime Serjeancy in 1754, and the Chancellorship of the Exchequert in 1761;] his next was in defending the motion for the additional regiments, whereby we were treated like a ravaged country, where contributions are levied to maintain the very force that oppresses it." For these ministerial services Hutchinson got the Prime Serjeancy, with an extra salary of £500 a year. In the next session he was useful to the Crown in regard of the Pensions Enquiry Bill and the Embargo Corn Bill, * In 1779 the arms which had been intended for the Militia were given by Government to the Volunteers, the Militia Enrolment Act of the previous years not having been carried out, from want of money. In 1783 the Volunteers were-prematurely-disbanded, and in 1785 the Militia were enrolled, and Langrishe's Bill obtained from parliament £20,000 for clothing them. Subsequently the Commissioners of Array were appointed. † Anthony Malone, along with so many other grandees of the period, lived in Chancery-lane. It requires an effort of historic faith to realise that the Chancery-lane of to-day was a couple of generations ago the abode of such fashion and rank. The fact, however, is quite certain. St. Bride's Vestry Book contains a copy of Anthony Malone's and Alexander MacAulay's Opinions in re Powell's Legacy to the Dublin parishes. See note E. and was rewarded with the sinecure Alnager's place, worth £1,000 a year. He was made a Privy Councillor, got the reversionary grant of the Principal Secretaryship of State, and the commission of a half-pay majority, and was what Primate Stone termed "a ready-money voter." "He got more," says Flood, "for ruining one kingdom than Admiral Hawke got for saving three."* The "List of the Pack," one of the rhymes in the volume, has: "Yet Tisdal unfeeling and void of remorse, Is still not the worst-Hely Hutchinson's worse; And each day stabs his country, with tears in his eyes.” Philip Tisdall, in "Baratariana," gives the following humorous description of Hutchinson: "He is jealous of me, and as peevish as an old maid. I love to tease him. I endeavour to put him on as odious ground as I can in parliament, and then I am the first to complain to him that Government should expose their servants to so much obloquy without occasion. I magnify to him the favours and confidence I receive from Government, and my correspondence with Rigby, which nettles him to the heart. He is too finical for Lord Townshend, who makes 66 *Froude details the bargain. In 1771 it was important to secure for the Army Augmentation Bill the support of Hutchinson, who had been patriotising on the Surplus, Pension, and Septennial Bills. His terms to Lord Lieutenant Townshend were, a provision for the lives of his two sons, one aged 11 and the other 10, by a grant to them or the survivor of them of some office of at least £500 a year. If no vacancy occurred, then either a pension, or a salary to that amount to be attached to some office for them-and his wife to be created a Viscountess." 66 English in Ireland,” vol. i., p. 632, and elsewhere. ་ very good sport of him. One day he dined at the Castle, and when the company broke up, Lord Townshend, who pretended to be more in liquor than he was, threw his arms about his neck and cried out, My dear Tisdall, my sheet anchor, my whole dependence! don't let little Hutchinson come near me; keep him off, my dear friend; keep him off-he's damned tiresome.' At other times His Excellency makes formal appointments to dine at Palmerston* at a distant day. The Prime Serjeant invites all the officers of State; Mrs. Hutchinson is in a flurry ; they send to me for my cook; and after a fortnight's bustle, when dinner is half spoiled, His Excellency sends an excuse, and dines with any common acquaintance that he happens to meet in strolling about the streets that morning. This g'emman has a pretty method enough of expressing himself, indeed, but in points of law there are better opinions. My friend, the late Primate, who knew men, said, that the Prime Serjeant was the only person he had ever met with who got ready money, in effect, for every vote he gave in parliament. He has got among the rest the reversion of my Secretary's office; but I think I shall outlive him."t Another note in "Baratariana" records that Tisdall, whose Government salaries exceeded £5,000 a year, had also a reversion of the Alnager's place, with its £1,000 a year, on the death of Hutchinson; and this mutuality of *Palmerston, the Provost's private country residence, was a noble and beautifully situated mansion on the banks of the Liffey, between Chapelizod and Lucan. It is now occupied by Stewart's Idiot Asylum. †Tisdall did not outlive him, and Hutchinson got the Principal Secretaryship. Reversions, no doubt, accounts for the warm affection that subsisted between Hutchinson and Tisdall. Blacquiere got the Alnagership as the price of the Provostship, as before mentioned. Besides the Alnagership Hutchinson was obliged also to resign the Prime Serjeancy, which was given to Dennis; but even in regard of emolument the Provostship was well worth these two sacrifices, the united income of which was only £1,300. He retained his sinecure of £1,800 a year, and the State Secretaryship, and he was further compensated by the sinecure office of Searcher of the Port of Strangford, with a patented salary of £1,000 a year for his own life and the lives of his two elder sons. He had thus altogether, besides his lucrative practice at the Bar and his own estate, about £6,000 a year, together with the Provost's House, while his eldest son was Commissioner of Accounts, with £500 a year, and with the reversion of the Second Remembrancership of the Exchequer, worth £800 a year, and his second son had a troop of dragoons.* "PRANCERIANA" derives its title from "Prancer," or "Jack Prance," the nickname which was given to the Provost, "Restorer of the art of dancing, And mighty prototype of prancing," * One of the severest letters in the collection is No. 22, on Edmund Sexten Pery, who, for fourteen years, was Speaker of the House of Commons. Patriotic and eminent as Pery was, and upright and loyal as he always was in the Chair, it cannot be denied that he got the Speakership by an unworthy manœuvre. The passage is fully and bitterly rehearsed in the last volume of the Historical Manuscript Reports. Pery was bought by the corrupter Townshend at the same time with Hutchinson, Tisdall, Flood, &c. from his effort to establish in the College a riding and dancing-school, in imitation of the Oxford schools. "Each college duty shall be done in dance, And hopeful students shall not walk, but prance." The articles were originally published in the Hibernian Journal and Freeman's Journal, and the two volumes, which appeared in 1776, were announced as "A collection of fugitive pieces published since the appointment of the present Provost." The collection was dedicated to "J-n H-y H-n, Doctor of Laws, P.T.C., late Major in the Fourth Regiment of Horse, Representative in the late and present Parliament of the city of Cork, one of his Majesty's Counsel at Law, Reversionary Remembrancer of the Exchequer, Secretary of State, one of His Majesty's Most Honourable Privy Council, and Searcher, Packer, and Gauger of the Port of Strangford."+ * The Court of King's Bench granted an information in the name of the king, at the prosecution of the Right Hon. Hely Hutchinson, against Samuel Leathley, the printer of the Freeman's Journal, for publishing in that paper the article signed "Crito," in November, 1776. The article is not in the "Pranceriana.”—[Freeman's Journal, June 9th, 1777.] †The Pranceriana Poetica, or Prancer's Garland, published in 1779, opens, A harlequin provost, cognomine prancer; A lawyer, prime sergeant, and judge of assizes, A parliament man, and a stamper of friezes; A councillor privy; a cavalry major, A searcher and packer, comptroller and gauger; A speecher, a critic, prescriber of rules; A founder of fencing and 'questrian schools. |