THE IRISH

ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD.

DECEMBER, 1872.

EDMUND BURKE: HIS LIFE AND TIMES.'

THE Catholics of Ireland are now a free people. No

badge of Protestant ascendancy is flaunted in our faces by the laws of the land. One hundred years is a short time in the life of a Nation. Yet, when we look back to what Catholics were in Ireland a century ago, and then turn to what they are to-day, the change is truly marvellous.

We have obtained freedom from religious disabilities, and, as a natural consequence, a fair start is, at last, given in the race of life for social and political equality. One hundred years since say 1772-a Catholic could not be a judge, a member of parliament, a magistrate, a barrister, nor a guardian of our municipal and civic rights. Now, Catholics are to be found in the corporations, in both houses of parliament, and in the very highest positions on the bench, placed there for the good of the people to administer impartial justice. Some do honour to that position, such as Lord Chancellor O'Hagan; some disgrace that position, such as the panegyrists of Oliver Cromwell. That is the result of personal malignity, and not

1 A Lecture delivered by the Rev. James Gaffney, C. C., at the request of the Right Rev. Dr. Moran, Bishop of Ossory, for the Kilkenny Catholic Young Men's Society.

In a very beautiful Lecture, entitled "The Spirit of Irish History," by the most eloquent and philosophical Lecturer in the United States-Henry Giles, a Unitarian clergyman of Irish birth and descent-the following passage occurs :

"It is not my province here, even if my power answered to the task, to draw a complete moral portrait of Cromwell. I am simply to speak of him in relation to Ireland, and in that relation he was a steel-hearted exterminator. I have no inclination to deny him grandeur, and if I had, the general verdict would stand independently of my inclination.. How much in Cromwell was the honesty of a patriot; how much the policy of & designer; how much was purity; how much was ambition-which so predominated, the evil or the good, as to constitute his character. This will probably be decided in opposite directions by opposite parties to the end of history. Whatever be the decision on the man, measured on the whole, the facts of his career in Ireland, show him to have been most cruel and most sanguinary."-Giles's Lectures, p. 19.

VOL. IX.

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the fault of the law of the land. What other religious disabilities affected the Catholics, we shall see farther on.

In our hours of freedom and ease, I think we should cherish the memories of those great Irishmen who stood by us when the day was darkest.-Men, differing from us in their creed, yet who were not blinded by prejudice, or hardened by Protestant ascendancy-enlightened men, who, although living in an intolerant age, lifted their voices to denounce the injustice and tyranny under which Irish Catholics suffered, and to claim for the proscribed and persecuted, equal rights and equal liberties with their Protestant fellow-countrymen. Such were Edmund Burke, and John Philpot Curran, and Henry Grattan. Their names ought to be revered, their lives studied, and their memories embalmed in the gratitude of this Catholic nation. Hence, I venture to ask your attention to a few observations on the life and times of Edmund Burke-one of the most illustrious of our Protestant benefactors. Burke was born on Arran-quay, in the City of Dublin, in 1728, the same year that gave birth to Oliver Goldsmith. Burke's father was a Protestant by creed, and a solicitor by profession. Burke's mother was a Catholic; her maiden name Nagle. It is stated that through the Nagle family, who resided at Ballyduffe, county Cork, Edmund Burke was related to the celebrated Edmund Spenser, whose name is associated with the city of Kilkenny by his having styled the river which flows sluggishly through its centre, "the stubborn Nore."

was

I don't think that Burke would set much value on the claim which would seek to connect him with a man, who, although one of England's greatest poets, was, at the same time, as heartless a scoundrel as any adventurer sent over here to civilize us. If any should doubt this, let them read Spenser's "View of the State of Ireland," and see there the gentle poet's plan to exterminate the Irish race-by murder and starvation.

As Edmund Burke was a delicate child, he was sent, when young, to his mother's family to be strengthened by the bracing air of country life. His health was thereby much

1 The year of Burke's birth is much disputed. Professor Robertson, in his valuable "Lectures on the Life, Writings, and Times of Edmund Burke,” says that he was born in 1729, others assign 1730; the date, 1728, seems most probably correct. In the first vol. of the correspondence of the Right Hon. E. Burke, edited by the Earl of Fitzwilliam, it is observed-"the registry of Burke's admission to the College of Dublin, dated the 14th of April, 1743, states him to have been then in his sixteenth year, which would place his birth, as stated in this note, in 1728. No more authentic evidence of his age than the College register affords has been discovered. The registry of his baptism has been sought for without effect."

improved. Surrounded in his boyhood by his Catholic relations, he is said to have drawn from them those deep impressions of liberality and sympathy with the oppressed, which distinguished his after career, and made him always a fast friend to the Catholics.

When sufficiently strong to face the discipline of the schoolmaster, he went, in his thirteenth year, to Ballitore, a small village in the county Kildare, where a school of high repute had been opened in 1726 by a member of the "Society of Friends," whose name was Abraham Shackleton. The teacher was an accomplished classical scholar. The advertisement of his school, which appeared in the public prints of the time, was as follows:

"Ballitore Boarding School.-Abraham Shackleton informs his friends and the public that, being placed guardian over the morals of the youth under his care, he declines, from conscientious motives, to teach that part of the academic course which he conceives injurious to morals, and subversive of sound principles, particularly those authors who recommend, in seducing language, the illusions of love, and the abominable trade of war; those who design their sons for the College will take their measures accordingly. He professes to fit youth for business, and instruct them in polite literature. His terms are six pounds per quarter; no entrance money demanded."

Shackleton paid unremitting attention to his pupils. Burke remained with him nearly three years, and then left for Trinity College, Dublin, bringing away with him a great sense of gratitude to his kindly and assiduous teacher, and a great attachment to his son, Richard Shackleton, who was about Burke's own age.

That friendship lasted, bright and strong, throughout all Burke's career of subsequent fame, till the death of Richard Shackleton in 1792.1

"Give me that man

That is not Passion's slave, and I will wear him

In my heart's core; aye, in my heart of hearts,
As I do thee."

Burke entered Trinity College on the day after he left Ballitore. The date of his entrance was the 14th of April, 1743. So soon as he passed his examination and was admitted

1 Richard Shackleton died of fever, caught by being shaved, on his way to Mountmellick, by a village barber, with a razor employed immediately before in shaving the corpse of a man who had died of putrid fever.--Leadbeater Papers, vol. i., p. 199.

he wrote to young Shackleton. A passage of the letter shows how carefully Shackleton's father had taught him :Dublin, April.

"Dear Dicky-I arrived pretty safe at this city, and was sent, in company with Jack Baily, immediately after breakfast next morning, to Dr. Pelissier, Fellow, T.C.D.—a gentleman (since it falls in my way to give his conjectural character, accounted one of the most learned in the University), an exceedingly good-humoured, cleanly, civil fellow. N.B.-I judge by outward appearances. To be short, I was examined very strictly in the Odes, Satires, and Epistles of Horace, and am admitted. I cannot express-nor have I the knack of doing it-how much I am obliged to your father for the extraordinary pains and care he has taken with me, so as to merit the commendation of my tutor, and all I can do is, to behave myself so as not to bring a scandal upon him or his school." This was a very touching acknowledgment from a grateful lad, only in his sixteenth year.1

Many years later, Burke, in the House of Commons, "paid a noble tribute to the memory of his early teacher, and readily acknowledged it was to him he owed the education that made him worth anything."

Burke's Career in Trinity College.-Amongst Burke's college chums was Oliver Goldsmith: and fitting recompense it is, that they, who stood side by side in their collegiate days, unhonoured and unknown, should now be commemorated at the threshold of their University by those exquisite statues, which, for beauty, grace, and power, are not surpassed by any monuments in Europe.

It is a strange fact, that three men who studied in Trinity College, and whose names are emblazoned in the story of the last century, should have received at the University no mark of literary eminence-Swift, Goldsmith, and Burke. Goldsmith was, undoubtedly, an idler, and therefore in the exact sciences he could make no progress. But what of that poetic spirit that has adorned the language by the "Deserted Village," and the "Traveller ?" Was there no professor of English Literature with ken enough to discern

1 Abraham Shackleton resigned the school to his son Richard (Burke's chum) in 1766. Richard's daughter, Mary, was married to Leadbeater. She wrote the "Annals of Ballitore," and the "Leadbeater Papers,"

See also a very touching letter of condolence to Richard Shackleton's daughter, Mrs. Leadbeater.-Prior's Life of Edmund Burke, p. 417. Richard Shackleton visited Burke annually for several years before his (Shackleton's) death in 1792.

Henry Grattan entered Trinity College, Dublin, in 1763, exactly twenty years after Burke; unlike Burke, he carried off all the highest honours of Trinity in his day.

his refined poetic genius, though concealed by a plain and clumsy exterior?

And what of Swift? How could he go through college, like a ship through the waters, or an arrow through the air, and leave not a trace behind. Swift got his degree of Bachelor of Arts, with the adjunct "Honoris Causa," a term conveying, in college phrase, that he was all but a dunce. Swift, a dunce! "A magnificent genius," writes Thackeray, in his English Humourists, "a genius wonderfully bright, and dazzling, and strong to seize, to know, to see, and flash upon falsehood."

So also Edmund Burke. He went his way without any college fame. Why, you may say, was this? Was he an idler, like Oliver; was he distracted or corrupted by town dissipations? Not at all. Whilst his chum, Goldsmith, was lying in the feathers of his bed-tick, without a blanket to cover him, because he had given the last shred of flannel that he possessed to a shivering beggarwoman at the College gates, Burke was deep in study, not of the abstract sciences, or metaphysics, but of general literature and the history of his country. In one of his letters to young Shackleton he writes: "I am endeavouring to get a little into the history of this our poor country."

Noble words, which should ring in the ears of all Irish men and women, and direct their studies!

Such studies were not prized then nor are they now at Trinity College, and so Burke made no name at that university. It is but a few years since the Catholic University was founded, and it has been crippled, and snubbed, and cheated out of its legitimate position and rights by the influence of party and bigotry combined; yet it has, at its sole cost, published a work which alone does more for Irish history than Trinity College has done during the three hundred years of its existence. I refer to O'Curry's MS. Materials of Irish History.

Designed by his father's wishes for the Bar, Burke went, in 1750,3 to keep his terms in London. He must have been comparatively poor and friendless, and that is a very sad plight in which to be found alone in the terrible streets of London, His first impressions of that great capital are given in a letter as follows:

"A description of London and its natives would fill a volume. The buildings are very fine; it may be called the 1 "Swift went to school at Kilkenny, and afterwards to T.C.D., where he got

a degree with difficulty, and was wild, witty, and poor."-Thackeray.

* He took out his degree of B. A. in 1748, but he won no honours, &c.

3 Burke went to London to begin life there (1750), the year that John Philpot Curran was born.

He never was "called to the Bar," and therefore did not practise as a barrister.