light-hearted damsel would suddenly start up, while the music was
playing, and, placing herself before the dancing-master, with that
particular description of curtsy called "a bob," silently challenge him
to dance with her. Now, under all circumstances, except actual inability
to move, the gentleman so challenged has nothing to do but pick up the
gauntlet, and "take the flure." Then, challenger and challenged would
commence an Irish jig--a dance so violent that, writing in the dog-days
as I do, the very recollection of it makes me feel as if the barometer
was some two hundred in the shade. When the damsel had pretty well tired
herself, one of her fair friends would take her place, and so on until a
round dozen or so had had their turn. All this time, the doomed victim
of a man had to continue dancing--and the point of honour was to do so,
without giving in, as long as strength and wind lasted. The company
would gather round, forming a ring for the performers, and the word
would be, "On with the dance" (as it was, at Brussels, on the eve of
Waterloo), until, at last, some male spectator would pityingly dash
into the circle, take the tired man's place, and permit the breathless
and exhausted victim to totter to a seat, gasping out a protest, as he
did, that he could have held out for half an hour longer, and wondered
why any gentleman should interfere with another gentleman's _divarshun_.

In the preceding story of "The Petrified Piper," mention is made of a
dancing-master commonly known as "Ould Lynch." He was an original, in
many respects, and, like many of his profession, was in a constant
flutter of faded finery and actual poverty. He was so much a character
that my father took rather a fancy to him, and had him often at the
house, as a teacher of dancing, in the well populated town of Fermoy. He
had small chance of earning what would keep life and soul together. But
he was a quiet, unassuming man, better educated than most of his class,
and full of anecdote. One social virtue he eminently possessed:--he was
one of the best backgammon players I ever saw, and (I speak it
modestly,) was very fond of me as a pupil.

Lynch was a County Limerick man, on the confines of "the Kingdom of
Kerry," and informed me that, in the parish where he was brought up, the
natives had a passion for backgammon, and were wont, on high-days and
holidays, to hold tournaments (on their favourite game) with the
inhabitants of the next parish, in Kerry. Unfortunately, one day
when a great trial of skill was appointed to come off, it turned out
that no backgammon box was forthcoming. Both parties had contrived to
forget it. To send for the necessary implements would have been a waste
of time, when the combatants had "their souls in arms," and were "eager
for the fray." In this dilemma, a lad who had a decided genius for
expedients suggested a plan by which, without delay, their mutual wishes
could be realized. Under his advice, one of the meadows was fixed upon
as the scene of action. The turf was removed at intervals, so as to make
the place present the semblance of a backgammon board, and substitutes
for men were readily found in the flat stones and slates with which the
ground abounded. The great difficulty was--the dice! They could
extemporize board and men, but how to raise the bits of ivory? The lad
was not to be baffled. He proposed that two men, one selected from each
party, should sit on the ditch opposite each other, with "the board in
the centre, with their respective backs turned _from_ the combatants,
and, in turn, should call out the numbers, as if they had been actually
thrown by dice! This brilliant idea was acted upon. A halfpenny was
thrown up to decide who should have first play, and the men on the ditch
alternately called out, at will, any of the throws which might have
been actually cast had the dice themselves been "to the fore."

Such primitive practice, I venture to say, had never before been applied
to the noble _science_ of backgammon. I use the word advisedly, because,
with skill and judgment, what is called bad luck does not very
materially affect the game. The art is to conquer, despite bad throwing.

Lynch succeeded a worthy named Hearne--a _nom de guerre_, his enemies
averred, for the less euphonious one of Herring. Whatever his name, the
man was quite a character. He fancied himself a poet, and was
particularly fond of taking his favourite pupils aside to communicate to
them in a confidential manner, _sotto voce_, the latest productions of
his muse,--it being expected that, a little later in the evening, the
favoured individuals should delicately draw him out and solicit him to a
public recital of his verses. After a good deal of pressing on their
part, and a show of resistance on his, (which every one understood,) the
little dancing-master would mount on a table, deliver a flourishing
preface in prose, and then go through the recitation, in a manner which
set description at defiance. At the conclusion of this feat, which was
duly encored, Hearne was wont to distribute copies of his composition
printed on whity-brown paper, and the tribute of a five-penny bit was
expected in acknowledgment of the same--simply, as he said, "to pay for
the printing." He had such a peculiar system of orthography--spelling
the words by the sound--that I venture, with all due diffidence, to put
forward his claim to take precedence of the interesting and worthy
founders of the newspaper-nondescript, _The Fonetic Nuz_, at which the
Londoners laughed heartily a dozen years ago. By some accident, I have
preserved a copy of one of Hearne's poetical compositions, in which his
own mode of spelling is carefully preserved, and I subjoin it as a
curiosity,--a specimen of what emanated, some thirty years ago, from one
who belonged to the peculiar class (of which Grant Thorburn is the head)
worthy of being called The Illiterate Literati!

     "_A few lions addressed in prease of Mr. Jon Anderson, Esquire, by
     his humble servant, and votary of the Muses, Wm. Ahearne, profesor
     of dancing._

    "Who lives in this Eaden wich lyes to the easte
      Of Fermoy ould bridge and its pallasades;
    He is the best man on the Blackwater's breast,
      As thousans from povirty he has razed.

    "There's no grand Pear in all Urop this day,
      With him can compare most certinly,
    In bilding a town of buty and sweay
      As Fermoy and its gay sweet liberty.

    "Now, weagh well the case betwin him and those
      Who travel the globe and fair Itly,
    After skroozhing their tinnants hard when at home,
      And spinding their store most foulishly."

The most original idea in these "few lions," is the geographical
information that Italy is _not_ a part of the globe. In the pen-ultimate
line, the poet may have hinted a little sly satire at the "at home" in
high life, where the crushing of hundreds into a space where tens can
scarcely sit in comfort is esteemed a great feat.

A wealthy attorney, named Henley, who had been kind to Hearne, was the
object of an eulogistic "pome." It ran somewhat thus:

    There is a barrister of great fame
      In Fermoy, I do declare,
    Who administers strict justas
      Without bribery or dessate.
    May God prolong your days,
      Your Court to reglate,
    And force sly roges and villines
      To pay their dews and rates.

CHARLEY CROFTS.

In the immortal "Maxims of O'Doherty," written by the late Dr. Maginn,
mention is made of a dinner at the late Lord Doneraile's, in the South
of Ireland, in which a reproof was administered to his Lordship's
meanness in the article of--tippling. He says, "My friend, Charley
Crofts, was also of the party. The claret went lazily round the table,
and his Lordship's toad-eaters hinted that they preferred punch, and
called for hot water. My Lord gave in, after a humbug show of
resistance, and whiskey-punch was in a few minutes the order of the
night. Charley, however, to the annoyance of the host, kept swilling
away at the claret, on which Lord Doneraile lost all patience, and said
to him, 'Charley, you are missing quite a treat; this punch is so
excellent.' 'Thank ye, my Lord,' said Charley, 'I am a plain man, who
does not want trates; I am no epicure, so I stick to the claret.'"

This free-and-easy gentleman, of whom I have some personal recollection,
belonged to a class of which, I suspect, he was the very latest
specimen. Charley Crofts, who had acquired no book-learning, because he
was born to a large landed property, was of a respectable family in the
west of the county Cork, and, even in his decline, was highly honoured
by the multitude, as coming from "the good ould stock." Brought up, but
not educated, by his mother, Charley entered the world with very
flattering prospects. He had a good property, good looks, good temper,
and (what he most prized) good horses. Cursed with an easy disposition,
he had never learned how to utter the monosyllable "No," but had
unfortunately learned how to sign his name--his friends kindly giving
him very frequent opportunities of practicing that autograph, by
obtaining it, across narrow slips of stamped paper, ('yclept "bills" and
"promissory notes") underneath the words "_Accepted, payable at the Bank
of James Delacour, Mallow_." In the long run, these autographs ruined
him--as, bit-by-bit, all his property went to meet the sums to which
they pledged him, and Charley Crofts found himself, at the age of
thirty, without home or money. He had preserved one thing, however--his
personal character. He had committed a great many of the frailties of
his sex and youth, but the shadow of a disreputable or doubtful action
never rested on his name. He could proudly say, like Francis the First,
after the battle of Pavia, "All lost, except honour."

The result was that, in his poverty, he was as highly thought of as in
his affluence, and was ever a welcome guest in the first houses of his
native county.

Like the rest of his class, (I mean the estated Irish gentlemen of the
last century,) Charley Crofts had learned to drink deeply. He used to
narrate, with great glee, an incident connected with his entrance into
vivacious habits. His mother, having occasion to leave their country
residence, in order to transact some business in Cork, left her hopeful
son in full possession of the house and full command of the servants,
for the fortnight she intended being absent. Charley, who was then in
his sixteenth year, determined that he would hold no powerless sceptre
of vice-royalty, and invited sundry acquaintances to visit him, which
they did. As a hogshead of fine claret was always on tap, there was no
difficulty in obtaining an adequate supply of drink. One day, however, a
guest happened to express a desire to vary the post-prandial proceedings
by the introduction of a few bottles of port. Now, it happened that Mrs.
Crofts possessed (and was known to possess) some remarkably fine port
wine, which she carefully kept locked up, reserving it for "State days
and holidays." Charley had been left the key of the cellar, and,
considering that his hospitality was especially appealed to, by the hint
about the port, went down and had a supply brought up. That afternoon's
performance went rather hard against the port. Indeed, so much of it was
drank that Charley Crofts was puzzled how to account for it, without
making full confession. A few days after his mother's return, she asked
him to accompany her to the cellar, to provide a suitable location for a
supply of sherry which she expected from Cork. The first thing which
attracted her notice was the remarkable diminution in the stock of her
valued and nearly unique port wine. Catching her eye, Charley
anticipated her inquiry, by remarking that, in her absence, a remarkable
thunder-storm had penetrated to the cellar and broken a quantity of the
bottled wine. Taking up two or three of the bottles, and fully aware
that it would be useless to repine or get angry over the mischief done,
she drew her hopeful son's attention to them, and only said, "A dreadful
storm, indeed! It has actually drawn the corks out of the necks of the
bottles, instead of bursting them in the usual way!"

For the last five-and-thirty years of his life, Charley Crofts may be
said to have literally _lived all around_. He had a number of tried
friends, who were glad to have him as their guest and boon companion,
for a month at a time. He could tell a good story, knew the private
history of every family in the county, was undoubted authority on
horseflesh and every subject connected with the sports of the field, and
could take any quantity of wine without its apparently affecting him.
Nature had endowed him with great muscular power, immense physical
strength, a temper which nothing could cloud, and a mode of expression
so terse as sometimes to be almost epigrammatic. He was exactly
qualified for the shifting sort of life upon which he had fallen.

When I met him, the brighter portion of his career had passed. He was
but the wreck of what he once had been, I was assured by every one; but
one may judge, from the ruin, what the structure had been in its pride.
Numerous anecdotes were afloat as to his sayings and doings, but it is
difficult to realize their effect in our days, unless you could imagine
the person on whom they were affiliated. Though I fear that I shall fail
in the attempt, I shall endeavour to record two or three.

As a four-bottle man, who could drink every one else under the table,
Charley Crofts was not so much of a favourite with wives as with their
husbands. They knew, by experience, that with Charley Crofts in the van,
a wet evening might be looked for--in the dining-room.

Mr. Wrixon, of Ballygiblin, near Mallow, (father of Sir W.
Wrixon-Becher, who married Miss O'Neill, the eminent actress,) had only
a small hereditary property when he succeeded to vast estates, on
condition that he superadded the name of "Becher" to his own patronymic.
As plain Mr. Wrixon, with a small property, he had lived unnoticed, but
his circle of friends immensely increased when he became Mr.
Wrixon-Becher, and a man of "Ten Thousand a Year." Soon after, he
married an English lady, with some fortune, much pride, a fair share of
beauty, and a decided abhorrence of the drinking habits of her husband's
friends. She had heard of, and had been cautioned against, the vivacious
enormities of Charley Crofts, and had actually declared to her husband
(in private, of course) that whenever Mr. Crofts took a seat at her
table, she would immediately relinquish hers.

One day, when Wrixon had been out with the Duhallow hounds, and the run
had been quick and long, the only man who was in with him "at the
death," was Charley Crofts, and under the circumstances--the rain
beginning to fall heavily, Crofts' place of sojourn being at least ten
miles distant, and Ballygiblin at hand,--Wrixon felt that he _must_
invite Charley home, or rest under the imputation of behaving in an
unsportsmanlike and inhospitable manner.

So, he told Charley that half a dozen other good fellows were to take
"pot-luck" with him that day, and that he must insist on Charley's
joining them. Without any pressing or denial, the invitation was
accepted.

Now, Charley Crofts knew, just as well as if he had been present when
the affair was discussed, how and why it was that, of all the houses in
the barony of Duhallow, the mansion of Ballygiblin was the only one to
which he had not a general invitation. Wrixon, the moment he reached
home, turning over his companion to the friendly custody of a mutual
acquaintance, who was to form one of the party that day, hastened to
"his lady's chamber," where he found his wife dressed for dinner, and
(as her glass told her) looking remarkably well. A few well-expressed
and well-timed compliments on her appearance, a congratulation or two on
her exquisite taste in dress, a half-hint and half-promise as to the
killing effect of a set of pearl in contrast with her ebon looks, and
more "blarney" of the same sort, made the lady so very gracious that the
husband ventured to communicate under what circumstances he had been
compelled to invite Charley Crofts to her table. The lady took them, as
they sometimes do in French courts of justice, as "extenuating
circumstances," and consented to receive the dreaded Charley. This done,
she found her way into the drawing-room, where the guests waited upon
her--the most subdued and quiet of them being Charley Crofts. At first,
with his grave air and grave attire, she thought that he might have been
a clergyman.

As the only stranger in the party, Charley had to escort Mrs. Wrixon to
the dining-room, to sit next her, to perform the duties of carving for
her, to supply her with a little of the small change of conversation.
Nobody could behave more decorously, more unlike the lady's fearful
anticipations of the dreaded guest. Now and then, when addressed by his
friends, a quaint remark or a satiric witticism would make her smile,
and convince her that the dangerously seductive companionable character
of her guest had not been undeservedly obtained. On the whole, she had
every reason to think him very much of a gentleman, and graciously
smiled on him when she quitted the table.

"You have conquered her, by Jove," exclaimed Wrixon. "Not yet," said
Charley, "but in a fair way for it." The wine went round. The
conversation branched off into its usual channels, and settled, at last,
upon a meet of the hounds which was to take place on Mr. Wrixon's
property, at which all the company present would attend.

In the middle of the discussion, one of the footmen duly announced that
his lady was waiting for them, with tea and coffee, in the drawing-room.
Heretofore, in that house, such an announcement had always been a mere
matter of form. Not so now. Charley Crofts started up and proceeded to
obey the summons. "Nonsense!" they all exclaimed. "Don't turn milksop.
No one ever goes to tea or coffee in this house." "Say what you may,"
said Charley, "the lady shall not have to complain of my want of
politeness."

In the drawing-room, sooth to say, no gentleman had been expected, and
Mrs. Wrixon was taking a solitary cup of tea. She was an admirable
musician, and was playing "Gramachree" (that saddest of all Irish airs)
just as Charley reached the door. Now, music was among the things which
he thoroughly understood and appreciated, and the moment that he heard
her exquisite execution on the harp he paused, spell-bound, listening
with rapt attention and delight, while the pathos of the air drew tears
from eyes all unaccustomed to the melting mood. When she had concluded,
she turned round, saw the effect which she had produced, and (need I say
it) was flattered at that proof of her skill.

Quickly recovering himself, Charley Crofts informed her that he had the
pleasure of accepting the invitation she had sent into the dining-room.
Tea was accordingly provided, and the conversation naturally fell upon
music. Charley happened to be a first rate flutist, and having mentioned
in what a delightful manner the flute and harp went together, either to
accompany the voice or without, Mrs. Wrixon sent for her husband's
flute, and allowed him to show her how correctly he had spoken.
Presently, she even sang to the double accompaniment, and her husband
and his friends, curious to know how Crofts was getting on, having now
adjourned from their wine, found him thus engaged.

Meanwhile, in intervals of from three to five minutes, Charley Crofts
had gulphed down successive, and almost countless, cups of tea. Again
and again had the tea-pot been replenished--and emptied. At last, quite
tired out, Mrs. Wrixon said, half in sport, half in earnest, "I am sure,
Mr. Crofts, that I never gave you credit for being such a determined
tea-drinker. As my hand is rather tired, may I beg that you will help
yourself?"

"Madam," said Charley, with imposing gravity, "I am a plain man. I do
not prefer tea to other liquids. You were so good as to send for us to
tea. I always obey a lady's summons when I can, and came hither. I am
accustomed, for years past, to take a certain quantity of fluid after
dinner. I care not what that fluid may be, so that I have my _quantum_.
Ale, punch, wine, or, as now, even this tea. I can help myself to the
other liquids, but tea has no flavor unless it be poured out by a lady's
fair hand!"

Mrs. Wrixon, perceiving that she was fairly caught, exclaimed, "Well,
Mr. Crofts, I think that I must leave you to take what you please in the
dining-room, but whenever you want a little music you can have it here,
and I only hope my husband will treat you so well that you will
frequently give me the pleasure of seeing you under this roof."

This was the manner in which Charley Crofts conquered Madam Wrixon, the
proud, high-bred lady. Good friends they continued unto her dying day,
and Charley would rather hear her play the harp, as she only could play
it, (he fancied,) than assist at the broaching of the finest pipe of
claret that ever was smuggled over from Bordeaux.

Mr. Wrixon, albeit a man of unbounded generosity, had one _leetle_
drawback. He would give sumptuous entertainments; he paid the chief
expenses of the Duhallow Hunt; he indulged his wife in all luxuries of
attire and adornment; he had a passion for beautiful horses and costly
equipages; he was liberal in his charities; he acted as banker for many
of his poorer friends who were of the lackland genus; he seemed to fling
money away, though, indeed, he was by no means a spendthrift; but the
one little "blot" in his tables (I mean, in his character) was a
feverish anxiety to economize on such mere trifles as _cream and
butter_!

So it was, however. His friends were at once amused and rendered
uncomfortable by it. It interfered with the perfection of their tea and
coffee, and always prevented their taking a desired quantity of
bread-and-butter. To allude to this matter, to show the slightest
consciousness of Mr. Wrixon's peculiar idiosyncrasy, in this respect,
was what his friends never ventured upon. They were not the less anxious
to have it removed.

They determined that Charley Crofts should be the amputator. The next
day, at a very early breakfast, preparatory to their taking the field
with the fox-hounds, a lively party assembled at Mr. Wrixon's table, in
unexceptionable red coats, enviable buckskins, irreproachable top-boots,
and the ordinary skull-caps covered with black velvet, which, from time
immemorial, formed the costume of the members of the Duhallow Hunt;
"the most sportingest set of gentlemen," I once heard a peasant say
"that mortial eyes did ever look upon."

The breakfast included all that should constitute the matutinal meal of
a party of keen sportsmen about to cross the country at break-neck
speed--all, except cream and butter, of which, as usual, there was a
_minimum_ supply, very much short of what might be expected from a dairy
of over twenty milch cows. Charley Crofts, as this was his first visit,
might be supposed to be in ignorance of his host's feelings upon that
point. At all events, he acted as if he were.

The cream and butter were placed close by Mr. Wrixon--the supply for a
party of nine or ten consisting of a very small ewer-full of the former,
and two or three _pats_ of the latter, each about the size of a
penny-piece. As if it were a matter of course, Charley, having put the
needful quantities of tea into his cup, filled it up with the entire
contents of the cream-ewer, and, at the same time, put all the butter
upon his plate. Mr. Wrixon, startled by such invasion of his favourites,
feebly desired one of the servants to bring "a _little_ more cream and a
_little_ more butter."

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!

One of O'Connell's earliest displays of acuteness was at Tralee, in the
year 1799, shortly after he had been called to the bar. In an intricate
case, where he was junior counsel (having got the brief more as a family
compliment than from any other cause), the question in dispute was as
to the validity of a will, which had been made almost in _articulo
mortis_. The instrument was drawn up with proper form: the witnesses
were examined, and gave ample confirmation that the deed had been
legally executed. One of them was an old servant, possessed of a strong
passion for loquacity. It fell to O'Connell to cross-examine him, and
the young barrister allowed him to speak on, in the hope that he might
say too much. Nor was this hope disappointed. The witness had already
sworn that he saw the deceased sign the will. "Yes," continued he, with
all the garrulousness of old age, "I saw him sign it, and surely _there
was life in him at the time_." The expression, frequently repeated, led
O'Connell to conjecture that it had a peculiar meaning. Fixing his eye
upon the old man he said,--"You have taken a solemn oath before God and
man to speak the truth and the _whole_ truth: the eye of God is upon
you; the eyes of your neighbours are fixed upon you also. Answer me, by
the virtue of that sacred and solemn oath which has passed your lips,
_was the testator alive when he signed the will_?" The witness was
struck with the solemn manner in which he was addressed, his colour
changed--his lips quivered--his limbs trembled, and he faltered out the
reply--"_there was life in him_." The question was repeated in a yet
more impressive manner, and the result was that O'Connell half
compelled, half cajoled him to admit that, after life was extinct, a
pen had been put into the testator's hand,--that one of the party guided
it to sign his name, while, as a salvo, for the consciences of all
concerned, a living fly was put into the dead man's mouth, to qualify
the witnesses to bear testimony that "there was life in him" when he
signed that will. This fact, thus extorted from the witness, preserved a
large property in a respectable and worthy family, and was one of the
first occurrences in O'Connell's legal career worth mentioning. Miss
Edgeworth, in her "Patronage," has an incident not much different from
this; perhaps suggested by it. The plaintiffs in this case were two
sisters named Langton, both of whom still enjoy the property
miraculously preserved to them by the ingenuity of O'Connell; they were
connexions of my own (Sarah Langton, the youngest, was married to my
cousin, Frank Drew, of Drewscourt), and I have often heard them relate
the manner in which he had contrived to elicit the truth.

It is no common skill which can protect innocence from shame, or rescue
guilt from punishment. Nothing less than an intimate knowledge of the
feelings of the jury, and the habits and characteristics of the
witnesses, can enable an advocate to throw himself into the confidence
of a jury composed of the most incongruous elements, and to confuse,
baffle, or detect the witnesses. There is no power so strong as that of
good cross-examination; and I never knew any man possess that power in
a more eminent degree than O'Connell. The difficulty is to avoid asking
too many questions. Sometimes a single query will weaken evidence, while
a word more may make the witness confirm it. Some witnesses require to
be pressed, before they bring out the truth--others, if too much
pressed, will turn at bay, and fatally corroborate every thing to which
they already have sworn. It is no common skill which, intuitively as it
were, enables the advocate to perceive when he may go to the end of his
tether,--when he _must_ restrain. The fault of a young barrister is that
_he asks too many questions_. It is a curious fact, that, from the first
moment he was called to the bar, O'Connell distinguished himself by his
cross-examinations. If he was eminent in a criminal trial, he was no
less so in civil cases. Here he brought all his legal learning to bear
upon the case, and here, too, he had the additional aid of that
eloquence which usually drew a jury with him.

John O'Connell gives an anecdote which illustrates his father's success
in the defence of his prisoners. It had fallen to his lot, at the
Assizes in Cork, to be retained for a man on a trial for an aggravated
case of highway robbery. By an able cross-examination, O'Connell was
enabled to procure the man's acquittal. The following year, at the
Assizes for the same town, he found himself again retained for the same
individual, then on trial for a burglary, committed with great
violence, very little short of a deliberate attempt to murder. On this
occasion, the result of Mr. O'Connell's efforts rose a disagreement of
the jury; and, therefore, no verdict. The Government witnesses having
been entirely discredited during the cross-examination, the case was
pursued no farther, and the prisoner was discharged. Again, the
succeeding year, he was found in the criminal dock; this time on a
charge of piracy! He had run away with a collier brig, and having found
means for disposing of a portion of her cargo, and afterwards of
supplying himself with some arms, he had actually commenced cruising on
his own account, levying contributions from such vessels as he chanced
to fall in with. Having "caught a tartar," whilst engaged in this
profitable occupation, he was brought into Cove, and thence sent up to
Cork to stand his trial for "piracy on the high seas." Again Mr.
O'Connell saved him, by demurring to the jurisdiction of the Court--the
offence having been committed within the jurisdiction of the Admiralty,
and, therefore, cognizable only before an Admiralty Court. When the
fellow saw his successful counsel facing the dock, he stretched over to
speak to him, and, raising his eyes and hands most piously and fervently
to heaven, he cried out--"Oh, Mr. O'Connell, may the Lord spare you--_to
me_!"

Here let me give my opinion, that the disqualification of his
religious tenets, which kept him in a stuff gown while his juniors in
standing, and inferiors in talent, were strutting about with all
professional honour, was _not_ much detriment to O'Connell's
advancement. Here was a man, confessedly at the head of his profession,
yet excluded from its honours by unjust and intolerant laws--it became,
therefore, a practice to consider him a martyr for the sake of his
religion, and he got many and many a brief because such was the feeling.
His disqualification as a Catholic gained him business as a Barrister.

The Union failed to make Ireland happy--because the chains of the
Catholics were still allowed to gall them, instead, as Mr. Pitt
contemplated, of being removed with the least possible delay. George
III. threw himself between Ireland and justice. Relief was expected from
Mr. Fox, and might, perhaps, have been granted, but the death of that
statesman, almost immediately succeeded by an Anti-Catholic Ministry,
sounded the knell to the hopes of the people of Ireland. It was at this
time that Mr. O'Connell came forward as a politician; he had personal
reasons for doing so, because, now being in the enjoyment of a very
excellent practice at the bar, he found numerous vexations arising from
the privileges enjoyed by men less talented, less qualified than
himself, but who enjoyed the advantages which religious and political
"ascendency" gave them.

The Catholics at last threw themselves into an attitude of defence.
O'Connell's first decided step[16] was the taking part in the proceedings
of a meeting of Catholics, held in Dublin in May, 1809. Then, for the
first time for over a hundred years, Catholics literally "spoke out."
Their daring appeared to draw strength for their despair. What was
called "the Catholic Committee" was formed, and this, strongly against
O'Connell's advice, violated the law by assuming a _representative_
character. Lord Killeen (eldest son of the Earl of Fingal, a Catholic
peer), and some others of the leaders, were prosecuted by the
Government. They were defended by O'Connell, and Ireland then witnessed
the almost unprecedented circumstance of Catholic agitators being
acquitted by a Protestant jury in Dublin.

     [16] O'Connell's first public speech was against the Union. It was
     made on January 13, 1800, at a Catholic meeting in Dublin, in
     unequivocal condemnation of that measure. The resolutions that day
     adopted were drawn up by O'Connell, and assumed an antagonistic
     position.

The Catholic Committee, however, became alarmed, and broke up. Then was
formed the Catholic Board, at which it was a matter of dispute whether
Emancipation might not be purchased by allowing the Crown to pay the
Catholic clergy, and giving the head of the Church of England a veto on
the appointment of Catholic bishops in Ireland. Feeble and vacillating,
the greater portion of the Catholic nobility held aloof from the
struggle, in which O'Connell took the popular side. Later in the day,

The late Duke of Richmond (Viceroy of Ireland) put down the Catholic
Board by means of his Attorney-General Saurin. The members of that
Board, as some small acknowledgment for the services of their colleague,
voted Mr. O'Connell a piece of plate, of the value of 1000_l._ The Board
being put down, the Catholic cause would have fallen but for the
intrepidity of O'Connell, who assumed the leadership at once, and
published a letter, continued annually for a long time, in which he
stated the wrongs of Ireland, with her claims for relief, and suggested
the mode of action. This annual message had the motto, from Childe
Harold,

            "Hereditary bondsmen, know ye not,
    Who would be free, themselves must strike the blow."

Mr. Saurin is said to have seriously contemplated prosecuting O'Connell
for sedition because of this motto from "Childe Harold."

The Catholic Board was suppressed, it is true, but there remained a
thousand modes of action by which the spirit of patriotism might be kept
alive in Ireland. Aggregate and other public meetings were instantly
held, and at one of these Mr. O'Connell, in 1815, designated the
Corporation of Dublin as a "beggarly corporation." A member of that
"beggarly" and bankrupt body took upon himself to play the bravo in its
defence. This man was a Mr. D'Esterre, and is understood to have had a
promise of patronage from the Corporation (in the shape of a good
berth), if he humbled the pride of O'Connell. It is more charitable than
reasonable to hope that the Corporation were not so ruffianly as to hold
out this hope to D'Esterre, because he was notoriously the best shot in
Dublin; and yet, such "honourable" assassination is exactly what such a
body would reward, if they did not suggest it.

D'Esterre paraded the streets of Dublin with a horse-whip in his hand,
and vowed vengeance against O'Connell. He did not meet him; but he
afterwards challenged him. O'Connell refused to apologize--met the
challenger, and mortally wounded him. D'Esterre, as I have said, was a
crack shot, and O'Connell was not; but it sometimes happens that the
practiced duellist suffers the penalty which he has inflicted upon
others.

D'Esterre had been an officer of marines, and it has been stated, and
always believed, that he constituted himself the Champion of the
Corporation, not only in the hope, but with a direct promise of
obtaining a lucrative appointment, provided that he "silenced"
O'Connell. The odds were five to one in his favour--for he was cool and
determined, and could snuff a candle with a pistol shot at twelve paces.
His skill, his coolness, availed not. At the first shot he fell, and his
death speedily followed.

Soon after, Sir Robert Peel (the then Irish Secretary) fastened a
quarrel upon Mr. O'Connell, who again placed himself in the hands of his
friends. A hostile meeting was appointed--the authorities in Dublin
interfered--the parties were bound over to keep the peace--they agreed
to meet on the Continent, but the duel was ultimately prevented by the
arrest of Mr. O'Connell, in London, on his way to Calais. He was held to
bail before the Chief Justice of the King's Bench, not to fight Mr.
Peel; and since that time declined any further meetings of the sort.[17]
It would have been well if, when he determined to avoid duels, O'Connell
had also resolved to abstain from language offensive to men of honour
and men of feeling. His chief fault, during his last thirty years, was
the application of epithets towards his political opponents, which
appear to have been culled rather in the market of Billingsgate, than in
the flowery garden of Academe!

     [17] It was the late Dr. England, Catholic Bishop of Charleston, S.
     C., who then resided near Cork, who pointed out to O'Connell the
     conjoint sin and folly of duelling, and induced him to promise that
     he would never again appeal to arms. It was reported, at the time,
     that O'Connell had lingered in London, when Peel expected him at
     Calais, awaiting news of his wife's health (he had left her ill in
     Dublin), and that another public character had declined a challenge
     on the plea of his daughter's illness. The late Chief Justice Burke
     thus commemorated the double event:

     "Two heroes of Erin, abhorrent of slaughter, Improved on the Hebrew
     command; One honored his wife, and the other his daughter, That
     'their days might be long on the land.'"

For several years after the duel with D'Esterre, O'Connell was almost
alone in the struggle for Emancipation. His practice steadily increased,
and his legal knowledge, ability and tact, united with wondrous art in
the examination of witnesses, and great influence with juries (by the
union of a species of rhetoric consisting of common sense, humour, and
rough eloquence, cemented together by a good share of "Blarney"), soon
made him a very successful barrister. Whenever a Catholic victim was to
be defended or rescued, whether an Orange oppressor was to be assailed
and punished, O'Connell was in the van. The Catholics readily took him
as their champion, and he won their gratitude by his services, and
gained their personal attachment by a good humour which nothing could
daunt, and a plain, straightforward, affectionate manner of eloquence
which went directly home to their hearts. To this hour it is a moot
point whether the Irish had greater admiration for his talents,
gratitude for his services, confidence in his fidelity, or attachment
for his person.

He continued increasing in influence for many years. From 1815, until he
relinquished most of his practice in 1831, the annual income from his
professional pursuits cannot have averaged less than from £6000 to
£8000--an immense sum for a lawyer to make in Ireland. No man could make
such an income, except one who was at once an excellent Nisi Prius
pleader, as well as a good Crown lawyer. He united the highest
qualifications of both. He could wield at will immense power over a
jury, and argue with a success rarely equalled, so as to reach the
understanding of a judge. Hence, he had the most extraordinary
versatility. You would see him at one o'clock joking a jury out of a
verdict in the Nisi Prius court, or familiarly laying down cases for the
information of the judge; and, the next hour, you might behold him in
the Crown court, defending an unhappy man accused of murder, and
exercising a caution and prudence in his unparalleled cross-examination
of witnesses which would alike surprise and please. No man could more
readily get the truth from a witness, or make him say only just as much
as suits the particular point he had in view.

In 1821, when George the Fourth visited Ireland, Mr. O'Connell made "his
first appearance, by particular desire," in the part of a courtier. He
presented a laurel crown to the monarch on his departure, and eulogized
him to the seventh heaven as "a real friend of old Ireland," anxious to
see her

            "Great, glorious, and free,
    First flower of the earth, and first gem of the sea."

He did more than this. He sacrificed his feelings, as a Catholic, in
order to conciliate the Ascendency party. Intent on conciliation, he
even dined with the Dublin Corporation, and drank their charter toast of
intolerance,[18] "The pious, glorious and immortal memory." Concession
was vain. The leopard would not change his spots; and, throwing away the
scabbard, O'Connell drew the sword, and threw himself, body and soul,
into the stormy battle of Agitation.

     [18] This celebrated toast, the drinking or refusal of which, for
     many years, was the great test of (political) Protestantism in
     Ireland, was drank on the knee, and ran thus: "The glorious, pious,
     and immortal memory of the great and good King William, Prince of
     Orange, who saved us from Pope and Popery, brass money and wooden
     shoes. He that don't drink this toast, may the north wind blow him
     to the south, and a west wind blow him to the east; may he have a
     dark night, a lee shore, a rank storm, and a leaky vessel to carry
     him over the ferry to hell; may the devil jump down his throat with
     a red-hot harrow, that every pin may tear out his inside; may he be
     rammed, jammed, and damned into the great gun of Athlone, and fired
     off into the kitchen of hell, where the Pope is roasted on a spit,
     and basted with the fat of Charles James Fox, while the Devil
     stands by pelting him with Cardinals!"

In 1823, O'Connell, finding how little was to be anticipated from George
IV. (who, as king, forgot the promises he made when Prince of Wales),
organized a great plan for uniting his Catholic countrymen into an array
against the laws which excluded them from the enjoyment of their civil
and rights. He had great difficulty in arousing the languid energies of the
Irish people, so hopeless had they been for a long time. At last, the
Catholic Association assumed a "local habitation and a name." The
subscription to the somewhat aristocratical Catholic Board had been five
pounds a year--one fifth of that amount was the payment to the
Association; and, at last, the Catholic Rent was instituted on the basis
of admitting contributions of a shilling a-year. Every subscriber to
this small amount thereby became a member of the Association, and crowds
eagerly joined it, on these terms, from all parts of Ireland. Here were
agitation and combination. Here was money, the very sinews of war. Here
was a fund, large in amount, annually augmenting, applicable to a
variety of purposes connected with the assertion of the Catholic claims
and the defence of Catholics, who thought themselves individually
wronged or injured by their Orange masters. Here, with O'Connell at
their head, was a band of leaders, most of them in the practice of the
law, who had station, influence, audacity, courage, integrity, and the
art of moving the multitude by voice or pen. The Government speedily
feared, and felt, it to be an _imperium in imperio_.

Armed with a vast numerical combination, strong in the possession of
large funds, headed by able and fearless men, the Association assumed
the duty of standing between the people and the mal-administration
of the law. Every local act of tyranny, intolerance and oppression was
exposed, if it were not visited with exemplary punishment. The
complaints of the people were heard, through the influence of the
leaders, within the very walls of the Imperial Parliament. A brilliant
arena was opened for Catholic talent, for the Association held its
discussions like a regular legislative assembly, and its debates were
spread abroad, all over the kingdom, on the wings of the press. Of the
whole system O'Connell was the motive power--the head--the heart. His
influence was immense.

Such an array could not be beheld by any government with indifference.
It was determined to put down the Association by act of Parliament. In
1825, O'Connell formed one of a deputation to England, to make
arrangements for an adjustment of the Catholic claims--committed the
error of consenting to take Emancipation clogged with "the wings" (that
is, to State payment for the Catholic clergy, and confiscation of the
40s. elective franchise), but finally admitted his mistake, and his
error of judgment was forgiven by his countrymen. The Association was
suppressed. O'Connell, whose policy was to baffle rather than to
contest, and whose boast ever was that he agitated "within the law,"
allowed the Catholic Association to dissolve itself, but continued the
agitation by "aggregate meetings" in nearly every county of Ireland, and
by the establishment of a new Catholic Association, formed ostensibly
for purposes of charity alone. The Government could do nothing against
this.

In 1826, when a general election took place, O'Connell brought into
unexpected operation the forces which he commanded. He started popular
candidates in several Irish counties, and defeated the former members,
who had always voted against the Catholics. The lesson was a striking
one, but the Executive in Downing-street heeded it not, and declared
unmitigated and perpetual enmity against the Catholics. On the other
hand, the Association pledged itself to oppose every candidate connected
with the government. In 1828, a vacancy occurred, by Mr. Vesey
Fitzgerald (who himself had always voted for Catholic Emancipation)
having accepted a seat in the Duke of Wellington's Cabinet, and then
O'Connell ventured the bold experiment of contesting the representation
of Clare. He was returned after a most severe contest--forced
Wellington, by that election to concede Emancipation--claimed his seat
under that concession--was refused by Manners Sutton, the Speaker--was
re-elected for Clare[19]--since sat for Waterford, Kerry, Dublin,
Kilkenny, and Cork--made the best speech upon the Reform Bill--supported
the Melbourne ministry when the contest between them and Peel came
on--invariably maintained the most liberal principles, and supported the
most liberal measures--diminished, if he did not conquer, the dislike
which England and Scotland felt towards him as a Catholic and Irish
agitator--and had a parliamentary influence greater than any man ever
before possessed, being able to count on the votes of _forty_ members,
who formed what is called the joints of his "tail."

     [19] Mr. Grattan says, at an expense of £20,000--an amount which
     seems incredible, as there was only a brief shadow of opposition.

Had O'Connell's labors as an agitator ceased when they achieved
Emancipation, no reputation could have stood higher. But, from 1829, he
attempted to make "Repeal" his party-cry. In April, 1834, he moved for
the Repeal of the Union. Thirty-eight members voted _with_, and five
hundred and twenty-three _against_ him. Only _one_ English member
supported him--Mr. James Kennedy, who sat for the small borough of
Tiverton.

The influence of O'Connell continued great, with the Government, as well
as in Ireland, while the Whigs were in office. But the Melbourne
ministry broke up in the autumn of 1841, and "Othello's occupation" was
gone when they went over to the opposition benches. In 1843, it is true,
he made renewed, important and remarkable attempts to excite Ireland--to
agitate (within the law) against the government of which Sir Robert Peel
was the head, but he was prosecuted, and the Monster Trials, lasting
twenty-five days, and ending in his conviction and imprisonment, first
taught his countrymen that he was not infallible nor invulnerable. His
conviction was subsequently annulled by the House of Lords, on appeal,
but the iron had entered into his soul, and when he resumed his seat in
Parliament he evidently was breaking. Then followed the revolt against
his supremacy by the vigorous and more decided "Young Ireland" party,
and, with failing health and defeated aims, he went to the
Continent--his desire being to visit that imperial and Papal Rome of
which he had long been the energetic and obedient servant. He died
before he accomplished his pilgrimage; but his heart rests in the
Eternal City.

Here it can scarcely be out of place to glance at O'Connell's success as
a Parliamentary orator.

In the British Parliament, where oratorical success is usually very
difficult, Irishmen have generally shown themselves not merely good, but
even eloquent speakers. Edmund Burke may challenge mention alongside of
the great Chatham--and will have a more permanent place of honour,
because his speeches, admirable even as compositions, now belong to the
standard classics of the Anglo-Saxon race. Sir Philip Francis (the
reputed author of "The Letters of Junius") was not inferior, in power
and effect, to the younger Pitt. Richard Brinsley Sheridan and George
Canning nobly maintained the national credit, as transcendently eloquent
men. Lord Wellesley and Henry Grattan occupy a first position as great
orators. In later days, assuredly Daniel O'Connell and Richard Lalor
Sheil have not been surpassed by any of their rivals. Whenever Irish
parliamentary eloquence is spoken of, William Conyngham Plunket cannot
be overlooked. He was, perhaps, the very best speaker in the British
Parliament at any time. He had few of the ordinary characteristics of
Irish eloquence. Wit he possessed in a high degree, but was chary in its
use. Pathos he rarely ventured upon--though there are some incidental
touches at once tearful and tender. He relied on clear arrangement of
facts, logical closeness of reasoning, strong earnestness, remarkable
sagacity, and the exercise of tact and common sense which a spirit at
once strong and ardent had disciplined and exercised. His manner, also,
grave and almost austere, added weight to his words of power. He
succeeded Grattan in the leadership of the Catholic party in Parliament,
and his speech (in 1821) converted nine votes from hostility to justice.
It was on this occasion, alluding to the great departed who had joined
in the discussions relative to Ireland's claims for civil and religious
liberty, that he said--"Walking before the sacred images of the
illustrious dead, as in a public and solemn procession, shall we not
dismiss all party feelings, all angry passions, all unworthy prejudices?
I will not talk of past disputes; I will not mingle in this act of
national justice anything that can awaken personal animosity."

It was not, however, in the English legislature, but during the last
twenty years of the Irish Parliament, that Irish eloquence was in its
zenith. On one hand were Fitzgibbon and Scott (afterwards Lords Clare
and Clonmel), Connolly, Cavendish, and Arthur Wolfe. On the other side
was such an array of talent, patriotism, and eloquence as, in the same
period of time, has never been surpassed--never equalled. There were
Hussey Burgh and James Fitzgerald, Flood and Grattan, Curran and Barry
Yelverton, Plunket and Saurin, Parnell and Denis Daly, Brownlow and
Saxton Perry, Foster and Ponsonby, Goold and Peter Burrowes,
silvery-tongued Bushe and honest Robert Holmes. Most of these were
lawyers, and made an exception to the general rule that the eloquence of
the Bar and of the Senate are so different in character as to seem
almost incompatible in practice. In Ireland, during her last days of
nationality, the great cause for which they were contending, appeared to
have animated the members of the bar with a spirit which disdained all
narrow limits of conventionality, and elevated them above the ordinary
routine of common life. We read, in Holy Writ, how one of the seraphim
touched Isaiah's lips with fire, and, with little effort of the
imagination, we may well believe that Patriotism, in like manner,
touched the lips of Irishmen, during that hard struggle for the very
existence of their nation, at once hallowing and purifying the words
which fell from them. But such eloquence was only a flash amid darkness,
too brilliant to stay, and force and fraud were evil spirits superior,
at that time, to Truth, Virtue, and Eloquence. The day may come when
Ireland shall once again be a nation,--may the Past then and forever be
a lesson and a warning.

It is singular that, in the Irish Parliament, nearly all the great
speakers have been lawyers. With few exceptions, men of law have not
succeeded in the English Parliament. Lords Mansfield, Lyndhurst and
Brougham, with Romilly and Follett, are the chief exceptions. Camden,
Thurlow, Eldon, Gifford, Cottenham, Truro, St. Leonards, Erskine,
Scarlett, Stowell, Tenterden, Best, and a great many more did not
maintain, in Parliament, the reputation they had won at the bar. Three
Irishmen, however, albeit members of the legal profession, have taken
the lead in the British Senate, even in our own time. These were
Plunket, O'Connell, and Sheil.

Of Plunket and Sheil there may be another occasion and opportunity of
speaking. It is of O'Connell that I would record a few impressions now.
It must be remembered that when he entered Parliament, in 1829, he had
entered into his fifty-fifth year. Plunket was at least ten years
younger when he too entered the British House of Commons. Sheil was
little more than thirty-six when he took his seat. It was feared by his
friends and hoped by his enemies that, like Erskine and other great
advocates, O'Connell would fail in Parliament. True it was that Grattan
was fifty-nine before he first spoke in the English House of
Commons--but Grattan was one in ten thousand. Besides, he was all his
life a parliamentary speaker, which is very different from being a
lawyer in full practice also--the essentials for success at the bar and
in the Senate being far apart. Grattan himself, speaking of his great
rival, Flood, who had greatly distinguished himself in the Irish, and as
greatly failed, in the English Parliament, said "he forgot that he was a
tree of the forest, too old and too great to be transplanted at fifty."

O'Connell's opponents confidently anticipated his failure. He is too
much of a mob-orator, was the cry of one set. He will never please so
refined an assembly as the British House of Commons; he is too much of a
lawyer, said another section of ill-wishers, and we know how perpetually
lawyers fail in the House. His accent is dead against him, lisped a few
others, and will be laughed at as vulgar. One of his most violent
antagonists was Lord Eldon, before whom he had appeared, in an appeal
case before the Lords, when he visited London in 1825 (on the memorable
occasion of "the Wings"); but this Chancellor, inimical as he was,
turned round to Lord Wynford (then Sir W. D. Best), when the speech was
ended, and said, "What a knowledge of law!--how condensed, yet how clear
his argument!--how extremely gentlemanly, and even courtierly is his
manner. Let him only be in the House once, and he will carry every thing
before him." Many even of O'Connell's own friends doubted whether he
could accommodate himself to the manners, fashion, habits, and
restrictions of that very artificial assemblage, presumed to contain
"the collective wisdom of the nation," but the slightest doubt on the
subject does not appear to have cast its shadow into his own mind. To
him, as to Lady Macbeth, there was no such word as--fail! Like Nelson,
he did not know what fear was.

His putting up for Clare Election, in 1828, was one of the boldest
measures ever ventured on--short of raising the banner of revolt against
the government. It compelled Wellington and Peel to concede Catholic
Emancipation--a concession ungracious and ungrateful, since it was
clogged with a clause, the result of personal spite, prohibiting
O'Connell, because he had been elected in 1828, from taking the oaths
contained in the Relief Bill of 1829. That prohibition sent him back to
Clare for re-election, and he entered Parliament with his mind not
unnaturally angry at the injustice for which _he_ had been singled out
as a victim.

He took his seat, and, almost immediately, it was perceived that he was
not to be trifled with. Nature had been bountiful to him. In
stature tall, and so strongly built that it was only by seeing, when a
man of ordinary height was by his side, how much he over-topped him.
Physical vigour and mental strength were well combined in him. Then, his
voice--a miraculous organ, full of power, but not deficient, either, in
mellow sweetness. His glance told little--but his lips were singularly
expressive, as much so as the eyes are to ordinary mortals. Add to this,
a full consciousness of power--a conviction that he had been the main
agent for opening Parliament to his hitherto prohibited
co-religionists--that Ireland looked to him, and not without cause, for
a great deal more--that he virtually represented, not the men of Clare
only, but was "Member for all Ireland,"--that he was a tactician,
trained by thirty years of public life,--that he had also the practiced
skill in handling all the available points of an argument which his
professional career had given him,--and that he then looked upon
Emancipation only as an instalment. Put all these together, and it will
be seen, at once, that the man in whom they were embodied could scarcely
fail to make himself felt, dreaded, and much observed.

In the first twelvemonth--that is, from his re-election in 1829, until
the meeting of the new Parliament in November 1830--O'Connell
disappointed a great many by playing what may be called a waiting game.
It was expected that he would be perpetually speaking, upon all
occasions, and, in that case, attempts would have been made to laugh, or
cough, or clamor him down. He voted regularly, and always on the right
side. In 1831, when the Grey ministry were in power, O'Connell, now
strengthened by a strong and compact body of Irish members pledged to
work with and under him (their return was the result of the General
Election), took the station in the Legislature which he maintained for
nearly fifteen years. During the prolonged struggle for Parliamentary
Reform, one of the most impressive speeches in advocacy of the measure
was O'Connell's. On all great occasions his voice was heard and his vote
given. It cannot be asserted that he invariably spoke and voted as now,
when we read the events of those days as history, it may dispassionately
be thought he should have done; but he was undoubtedly an indefatigable,
earnest, eloquent member of Parliament, through whose pertinacity and
tact many concessions were made to Ireland which were calculated to
serve her. The geniality of his nature was as unchecked in the Senate as
it had been at the Bar, or in the Catholic Association. He was eminently
a good-tempered man, and this availed him much in the House of Commons,
where, if it so please him, a man can readily make himself and others
uncomfortable by the exhibition of even a small portion of ill-temper.
Sometimes he laughed at his opponents, but so good-naturedly that they
also enjoyed the jest. Such was his cut at John Walter, proprietor of
the _Times_, who had remained on the ministerial benches after his Tory
friends had quitted them. He removed, speedily enough, when O'Connell
pointed to him as--

     "The last rose of summer, left blooming alone."

So, when Lord Stanley (now Earl of Derby) separating from the Whigs,
started a party of his own, which was lamentably small, O'Connell quoted
against him a couplet from a familiar poet--

    "Thus down thy side, romantic Ashbourne, glides
    The Derby dilly, carrying six insides."

And so, pre-eminent over all was his parody on Dryden's celebrated
comparison. Three Colonels (Perceval, Verner, and Sibthorpe) represented
Sligo, Armagh, and Lincoln. The two first were smooth-faced and
whiskerless as a maiden. Sibthorpe is "bearded like a bard." O'Connell,
alluding to them in the House, thus hit them off, amid a general roar,
in which the victimized trio could not refrain from joining--

    "Three Colonels in three distant counties born,
    Sligo, Armagh, and Lincoln did adorn.
    The first in matchless impudence surpassed,
    The next in bigotry--in both the last.
    The force of nature could no further go,
    To beard the third she shaved the other two."

Like other politicians, O'Connell did not escape without occasional
personal passages at arms. In one of these, with Mr. Doherty, then Irish
Solicitor-General, in May, 1830, O'Connell may be said to have come off
second-best. He had attacked Doherty for his conduct as Crown lawyer in
what was called the Doneraile conspiracy. The whole of the Tory party
sided with Doherty, who made a forcible defence, attacking his assailant
in turn, and the Whigs did not very warmly support O'Connell, who had
then only been a few months in Parliament. This _rencontre_, which took
place while "The Duke" was Premier, raised Doherty to the Chief
Justiceship of the Common Pleas in Ireland--and led to Peel's offering
him a seat in the Cabinet in 1834, and a Peerage in 1840. O'Connell used
to say, and with truth, that _he_ had placed Doherty on the Bench.

On another occasion O'Connell was far more successful. This was the
celebrated Breach of Privilege case.

Victoria ascended the throne in June, 1837. Shortly after there was a
General Election, and a great many of the members returned were
petitioned against. The Tories had raised a large fund to defray the
cost of these proceedings, and it was called "The Spottiswoode
Subscription," as Spottiswoode, the Queen's printer (a patent
life-office of much emolument), acted as its treasurer. Angry debates
arose in the House of Commons on this subject, and personalities were
so much and so tumultuously bandied to and fro, that Mr. Abercrombie,
the Speaker, threatened to resign if they were repeated,--as if,
grasping Scotchman as he was, he _could_ ever have brought himself to
resign the £6,000 a-year attached to the office!

The controverted elections were duly referred to the usual Election
Committees, ballotted for out of the members then in the House. These
committees were duly sworn, as juries are, to do justice between man and
man. But it was unhappily notorious that when the majority were Whigs,
they almost invariably decided against Tory members, and _vice versâ_.
As ill luck would have it, the majority of the decisions went to unseat
Liberal members. As parties were nearly balanced in Parliament, at that
time--indeed the Whigs remained in office merely because there was a new
and inexperienced sovereign who would have been puzzled how to act on a
change of ministry--the Liberals complained of the decisions of the
Election Committees.

On February 23, 1838, Lord Maidstone, who had been elected for
Northamptonshire, and was the eldest son of the intolerant Earl of
Winchelsea, who fought a duel on the Catholic Relief Bill, with
Wellington, in 1829, drew the attention of the House of Commons to a
Breach of Privilege. He complained that, two days before, at a public
dinner given at the Crown and Anchor Tavern, Mr. O'Connell had declared
that in the Election Committees "Corruption of the worst description
existed, and above all there was the perjury of the Tory politicians."
Also, that he "was ready to be a martyr to justice and truth; but not to
false swearing, and therefore, he repeated, that there was foul perjury
in the Tory Committees of the House of Commons."

What followed I saw, and can never forget. O'Connell, who had been
reading (or appearing to read) a newspaper while Lord Maidstone was
accusing him, keenly arose, sternly looked around the House, folded his
arms, and, in his deepest tones and most impressive manner, said, "Sir,
I did say every word of that--every word of that; and I do repeat that I
believe it to be perfectly true. Is there a man who will put his hand on
his heart and say that it is not true? Such a man would be laughed to
scorn."

Maidstone then gave notice of a motion condemnatory of O'Connell, and
the discussion was adjourned until the following Monday. Maidstone moved
that O'Connell's speech was an imputation on the whole House, and that
he be censured for it as a breach of privilege. O'Connell replied in a
speech of great power, in the midst of which he was self-designated "The
pensioned servant of Ireland," and plainly declared that whenever an
Election Committee was appointed, it was known that the decision would
be exactly according to the political majority of its members; and
repeating that he had spoken only the truth, and would stand by his
words. The Agitator then retired.

A great many members spoke,--the Whigs making a lukewarm defence for
O'Connell, instead of admitting and lamenting the truth of his remarks.
The Tories clamoured for a heavy censure. In a House of 517 members, out
of 658, a majority of _nine_ were for the censure. Next Daniel
Callaghan, member for Cork city, Edmund Burke Roche, member for Cork
county, W. D. Gillon for Falkirk, and J. P. Somers for Sligo, severally
and seriously declared that, each and all, they adopted Mr. O'Connell's
words and sentiments! It was then carried by 298 to 85 (Lord John
Russell voting in the majority) that the words were "a false and
scandalous imputation on the House."

Next, on the motion that O'Connell be reprimanded in his place, an
exciting debate ensued. Mr. Callaghan repeated his endorsement of
O'Connell's imputation, and his words were taken down by the Clerk of
the House, on the motion of Mr. Hume, who called on the Speaker to
notice his contumacy. But the Speaker was mute. Next day, Mr. Roche also
repeated his full adherence to O'Connell's charge. The vote of censure
was carried by a majority of twenty-nine.

O'Connell duly attended in his place, was gravely reprimanded by the
Speaker (his own particular friend!), and said, when the farce was
over, "Galileo remarked 'the world does move, after all.' And so,
despite the censure of this House, I repeat all I said before. The
system I condemn reminds one of the Judge in Rabelais who decided cases
by throwing three dice for the plaintiff and two for the defendant. I
had rather take the dice-box and say 'seven's the main,' than take my
chance on an Election Committee of this House. I express no regret for
what I have said. I have retracted nothing. I will retract nothing. I
have told the truth."

So saying, having bearded the House by strongly repeating his
accusation, he sat down. It was considered that he had gained a victory,
and the conclusion of all was a total change and reform in the system of
Parliamentary election committees.

But it was in Ireland--whether in the Catholic Association, at an
Aggregate Meeting, at a public dinner, or in a court of law--that
O'Connell was to be seen "in all his glory." In Ireland his influence
was extraordinary--not only for its vast extent, but for its
continuance. No other public man, no matter what the country or the age,
has maintained his popularity, as O'Connell did, for nearly forty years.
I think that this may be partly attributed to the belief, long and
widely entertained by his followers, almost unbroken to the last,
encouraged by himself, and generally borne out by circumstances, that he
was above the law, that the law could not reach _him_, that he "could
drive a coach and six through any Act of Parliament."

In February, 1831, he was indicted and tried (with Tom Steele and
Barrett, of _The Pilot_ newspaper) for holding political meetings which
the Viceroy's proclamation had forbidden. They pleaded guilty, but as
the law under which they were tried was allowed to expire before they
were brought up for judgment, his prophecy, that the law could not reach
him, was fulfilled. In 1843 he was less fortunate. Three months in
prison!--_that_ destroyed the _prestige_.

This man was eminently endowed by nature with the bodily and mental
qualifications for a Tribune of the People. In stature he was lofty, in
figure large. His bold, good-natured face was an advantage--as were his
manly appearance and bearing. His voice was deep, musical, sonorous and
manageable. Its transitions from the higher to the lower notes was
wondrously effective. No man had a clearer or more distinct
pronunciation--at times, it even went to the extent of almost
syllabizing long words. How lingeringly, as if he loved to utter the
words, would he speak of "Cawtholic E-man-cee-pa-tion!" He rather
affected a full Irish accent, on which was slightly grafted something of
the Foigardism which, in his youth, had attached itself to him when he
studied in France. No one who noticed his capacious chest could wonder
that O'Connell was able to speak longer than most men without pausing
to take breath. When making a speech, his mouth was very expressive; and
this has been noticed as the characteristic of that feature, in Irish
faces. In his eyes (of a cold, clear blue) there was little speculation,
but the true Irish expression of feeling, passion and intellect played
about his lips. Looking at him, as he spoke, a close observer might
almost note the sentiment about to come from those lips, before the
words had utterance--just as we see the lightning-flash before we hear
the thunder-peal.

His eloquence was eminently characteristic. Irishmen, in general, have
"the gift of the gab,"--that is, the power of expressing their
sentiments in public with ease to themselves and to their hearers. It
gives them little trouble to make a speech; and this faculty and this
facility arise, very probably, from the political circumstances of their
country as much as from anything else. In England there is no necessity
why a man should have decided political opinions. In Ireland no man dare
be neutral. Persons may disagree, and do; but they unite in despising
and condemning the unhappy wight who does not belong to any party. An
Irishman, in Ireland, _must_ be a partisan. Being so, there is no
earthly reason why, attending any public meeting, he should not be
induced to take part in the proceedings, and make a speech. Oratory is a
very catching thing,--listening begets the desire to be listened to, in
turn; and, once that a man has heard his own voice in public, depend on
it, he will be anxious to hear it again.

Self-possession, which is "half the battle" in public life, is an
essential in public speaking. However, it is not _the_ essential. There
must be a copious flow of words--a happy and rapid selection of
language--an earnestness of manner--a knowledge of human character--and,
above all, a considerable degree of information, with a certain portion
of the "imagination all compact," which breathes fervour and poetry into
the spoken speech. Great is the orator's power. He can touch the human
heart--he can move the secret springs of action--he can sway the popular
will as he pleases--he can comfort the afflicted, infuse hope into the
oppressed, alarm the oppressor, and make ill-directed Power and Might
tremble on their lofty thrones.

Ireland has been particularly profuse in her contribution of eminent
orators. Burke, Canning, Plunket, Grattan, Sheil, Wellesley and Curran,
stand pre-eminent on the roll; but I doubt whether O'Connell, when the
length of his reign is considered, as well as the great extent of his
influence, derived chiefly from his power as a speaker, was not greater
than any of these great orators. He had less wit than Canning--less
imagination than Curran--less philosophy than Burke--less rhetoric than
Sheil--less pure eloquence than Plunket--less classical expression
than Wellesley--less pathos than Grattan; but he had more power than any
of them. There was wonderful force in his language. And when addressing
an Irish audience, there was such an alternation of style--now rising to
the loftiest, and now subsiding to the most familiar--that he carried
all hearts with him, and those who listened seemed as if under the spell
of an enchanter, so completely did he move them as he pleased. Judging
by their _effect_, O'Connell's speeches must be considered as among the
best, if not the very best, of the time and country.

O'Connell's versatility as a speaker was wonderful. He was "all things
to all men." In a Court of Law he would often joke a jury into his view
of the case, and when this did not succeed, would convince them by
subtle argument, bold declamation, and a natural eloquence. At a
political meeting, where he had to address a multitude, they would
alternately smile or get enraged, as he jested with or excited their
feelings. In Parliament, which he did not enter until he was fifty-four
years old, he generally was more calm, more careful, more sudued, more
solicitous in his choice of words, and more vigilant in restraining the
manner of delivering them.

The great secret of his power, as a speaker, was his earnestness. He
ever had a great object in view, and he always applied himself, with a
strong and earnest mind, to achieve that object. Whenever he pleased,
he could rise to the greatest height of eloquence; but he preferred,
when speaking to the people, to use language which each of them could
understand. He varied his speeches, too, with badinage and jokes, which,
though merely humourous, made his audience smile, and keep them in good
temper with each other, with themselves, and with him. The Irish, who
thronged to listen to him, went to be amused as well as to be harangued.
Nor did he disappoint them. I may illustrate what I mean by giving an
example of one of his familiar illustrations.

In 1827, during the time of what was called "The New Reformation," in
Ireland, O'Connell made a speech at the South Chapel, in Cork. It
contained the following passage, after a very elaborate denial of the
assumed conversions which the "New Reformation" gentry had boasted
of:--"They remind me, gentlemen, of a Frenchman who waited on Lord
Kenmare, and offered to drain the lakes of Killarney, which would
restore a great quantity of arable land. Lord Kenmare happened to think
that he had land enough, and civilly declined having his property
deprived of the beautiful lakes, its proudest ornament. The Frenchman,
however, being one of those who

    'Do good by stealth, and blush to find it fame,'

persisted in his fancy, and accordingly rose at break of day to drain
the lake. And, boys, how do you think he was doing it? Why, he was
baling it out with his hat! (Great laughter.) Now, there are seven
millions of Catholics in Ireland--the New Reformation folk do not boast
of more than six or seven conversions, or perversions, in the week--so
that, allowing (which is impossible, where there are bright eyes and
warm hearts such as flash and throb around me, in this large assembly)
that the Catholics of Ireland will not increase in the meantime, there
must, at this rate, be a million of weeks elapse before all of them are
drained out by conversion. (Cheers.) Boys, these Reformation gentry
remind me mightily of the Frenchman baling out the Lake of Killarney
with his hat!"

It was with pleasant, homely jokes like this--yet each having a tendency
to work out the argument--that O'Connell was wont to amuse the Irish. In
point of wit, I doubt whether O'Connell's little Frenchman be not as
original a character as Sydney Smith's far-famed Mrs. Partington.

O'Connell's friends lamented, and with ample cause, at his aptness to
abuse the license of public speech. He was very fond of bestowing
nicknames on his opponents, and of applying offensive epithets to
them.[20] As early as July, 1808, at a meeting of the famous Catholic
Board, he had commenced that sort of speaking--which lowers him who
adopts it rather than those against whom it is levelled. He then said
"the present administration are the personal enemies of the Catholic
cause; yet if the Catholics continue loyal, firm, and undivided, they
have little to fear from the barren petulence of the ex-advocate,
Percival, or the frothy declamations of the poetaster, Canning--they