All honour then to the French people | scribes, continued the struggle for two years whose attitude has redeemed the national after the period referred to and came out character. History affords no instance of so victorious in the end. sudden a regeneration under the chastening influence of adversity. And can it be pretended that a people who have given such proofs of patience and heroism, whose spirit is so indomitable, whose resources are so vast, are to be blamed for refusing conditions of peace involving, as they believe, national degradation? The war has now fairly become one of nation against nation. The French fighting at their own doors can afford to lose three men where the Germans lose one. They possess fortified harbours for the protection, and the sea for the supply, of their different armies: and unless they abate their spirit, after struggling on through the pitchy darkness, just as light seems dawning on their efforts, we hold it as, at least, not impossible that the nation which is fighting in defence of its own hearths will ultimately prevail. Let us contrast the present position of France with that of another European power described by Lord Macaulay at the end of the fourth year of a desperate struggle for existence : 'At the beginning of November the net seemed to have closed completely round him [Frederick.] The Russians were in the field, and were spreading devastation through his eastern provinces. Silesia was overrun by the Austrians. A great French army was advancing from the west under the command of Marshal Soubise. Berlin itself had been taken and plundered by the Croatians. 'It seemed impossible that the Prussian territories, repeatedly devastated by hundreds of thousands of invaders, could longer support the contest. But the King carried on war as no European Power has ever carried on war, except the Committee of Public Safety during the great agony of the French Revolution. He governed his kingdom as he would have governed a besieged town, not caring to what extent property was destroyed, or the pursuits of civil life suspended, so that he did but make head against the enemy. As long as there was a man left in Prussia, that man might carry a musket; as long as there was a horse left, that horse might draw artillery. The coin was debased; the civil functionaries were left unpaid; in some provinces civil government altogether ceased to exist. But there were still rye-bread and potatoes; there were still lead and gunpowder; and while the means of sustaining and destroying life remained, Frederick was determined to fight it out to the very last.' We think the most faint-hearted Frenchman might derive from the above quotation encouragement to prolonged resistance when he reflects that Prussia, whose desperate condition in the Seven Years' War it de an If Von Moltke should ever realise that conception, the details of which, reduced to paper, are said to have been deposited until required for use in the pigeon-hole labelled Invasion of England,' would the English Eliphazes and Bildads, who with unwrung withers now preach patience and submission to much afflicted France, dare to offer similar counsels to England in her hour of military adversity? And supposing London captured and their armies driven north of the Trent, would the English people be content to purchase peace by the cession of Hampshire and the Isle of Wight? If I were American,' said the great Lord Chatham, as I am an Englishman, while a foreign troop was landed in my country I would never lay down my arms, never-never-never!' Why should we feel surprise and anger because France, actuated by a like sentiment, has proclaimed that solemn pact with victory or death' which has furnished occasion, in her agony, for the sneers of cold-blooded writers? The prolonged resistance of France is amply justified by her resources and by the spirit of her children; and in the sacred struggle in which she is now engaged, we here, in the name of all that is generous, manly, and honourable, wish her from our heartGod speed!' ART. VI.-The Lives of the Lord Chancellors and Keepers of the Great Seal of Ireland, from the Earliest Times to the Reign of Queen Victoria. By J. Roderick O'Flanagan, M.R.I.A., Barrister-atLaw, Author of Recollections of the Irish Bar,' the Bar Life of O'Connell,' &c. In two volumes. London, 1870. Ir has been wittily said that bad books make good reviews, as bad wine makes good vinegar. If this were true, the critics ought to be grateful to Mr. O'Flanagan for the opportunity afforded them by his 'Lives of the Lord Chancellors of Ireland.' It is a bad book, although, with judicious correction and curtailment, it may eventually take rank as a useful compilation. Notwithstanding the amount of anxious labour bestowed upon the composition, we cannot say materiam superabat opus; for the conception is better than the execution, and the materials rise superior to the arrangement and the style. Till within living memory, owing to political causes, the Irish Woolsack was practically reserved for Englishmen. The Lives of the Lord Chancellors of Ireland, therefore, are almost exclusively the lives of English lawyers; so that the nicest discrimination was required in selecting such portions as relate to their judicial career in Ireland and compressing or rapidly glancing over the rest. Not marking this peculiarity of his subject, Mr. O'Flanagan has overloaded it with general history, English and Irish. But he is rich in traditions and reminiscences; he is well versed in Irish Memoirs and Biographies; he is trustworthy, if not always apposite in his citations; and he blunders honestly when he blunders (which he does very often) in his dates. In a word, despite of its manifold defects, we have found the book capital gleaning ground, and we hope by means of it to illustrate and place in broad relief the most eventful passages of the forensic annals of Ireland-annals forming the brightest pages of her history, the pages of which she has most reason to be proud, almost the only pages which she might write without a blot and read without a tear. Thomas Moore was wont to relate how, some time after the publication of the first volume of his History of Ireland,' a literary lady was kind enough to suggest to him the History of Ireland' as an appropriate subject for his pen; and he frankly admitted the suggestion to be a fair test of the limited circulation of his book, which (so far as he had then gone) was exclusively conversant with rude traditions, apocryphal heroes, and mythical events, which read better in poetry than prose. Warned by his example, we have nothing to say to personages like Cormac Mac Art, monarch of Ireland, A.D. 227, who, we are assured by Mr. O'Flanagan, 'was distinguished for his devotion to literature, and is said to have regained his ancestral throne by his intellectual powers; nor do we care to meddle in detail with the Chancellors who flourished in the dark ages, from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century, when the office was more political than judicial, and was indiscriminately bestowed on lawyers, churchmen, powerful nobles, and men of the sword. Thus, in 1449, Richard, Duke of York, being appointed Viceroy of Ireland, made his son, Edmund Plantagenet, Earl of Rutland, Lord Chancellor. In 1483 the Great Seal was entrusted to Sir Thomas Fitz Gerald (brother of the Earl of Kildare, Lord Deputy), who, on the civil war breaking out anew, resigned it for the battle-axe, and fell fighting valiantly in the command of a division at the battle of Stoke. Nicholas, Lord Howth, led the billmen on foot at the well-named battle of Knocktough (hill of slaughter), fought on August 10, 1504, and was appointed Lord Chancellor of Ireland in 1509. Archiepiscopal Chancellors abounded on each side of the Irish channel; and we so repeatedly find the Great Seal in the possession of an Archbishop of Dublin, that the dignities seem to have had an affinity to each other at these early stages of civil and ecclesiastical administration. One of the most remarkable instances was that of John Alan, Wolsey's chaplain, whom, in 1528, the then all powerful cardinal made Archbishop and Lord Chancellor at once. This double elevation took place in open defiance of that famous Earl of Kildare of whom so many strange stories are related. One, tolerably well known, that on a Lord of the Council saying-All Ireland cannot govern that Earl,' the King (Henry VIII.) declared Then that Earl shall govern all Ireland,' and forthwith made him viceroy. Another, that when he was accused before the same council of having set fire to a cathedral, he excused himself on the ground that he believed the archbishop was in it at the time. And here arises the grave question, whether the archbishop whom he meant to roast, was or was not the cardinal's hated nominee. We find that one of Kildare's first acts as Lord-Deputy was to take away the Great Seal from Alan, and confer it on the Archbishop of Armagh. It further appears that the feud between Alan and the Fitz Geralds led to his death by violence. During one of their insurrectionary movements against the constituted authorities, after vainly trying to escape to England, he was seized in his bed by a party of the Geraldines, and dragged half-naked before Lord Offaly, the son of his dreaded foe. He fell on his knees and besought the young lord to forget former injuries and respect his calling. Lord Offaly, meaning to spare him, exclaimed in IrishBeir naim an bodach (Take away the churl), which his followers unfortunately misinterpreted and immediately beat out the Archbishop's brains. The Chancellor,' remarks Mr. O'Flanagan, in these primitive days, had very extensive jurisdiction, and a proportionate sphere of duty. Besides presiding in the Court of Chancery, attending Parliament, and assisting the Lord-Deputy with his advice; ministering to the wants of his diocese, and the important functions of an archbishop or bishop, he presided as Judge of Assize, and disposed of the business civil and criminal. The absence of the Chancellor in England, in 1380, caused the assizes which were to be holden before him to lapse.' The mixed character of the office may account for the novel description of dutying fast enough with the anti-protestant reundertaken by the Lord Chancellor (Trimles- quisitions of the new regime, was replaced by town) in 1537, 'who, with the Archbishop Sir Alexander Fiton, one of the numerous and other members of the council, under- victims of Lord Macaulay's rhetorical exagtook a converting circuit, which jumbled geration. Describing the sweeping subverpreaching, hanging, law, and religion, varied sion of the Protestant interest in Ireland, he by feasting and visiting, in a most extraordi- says:nary manner.' Their proceedings at Wexford, as officially reported, may suffice for a specimen : "There, the Sunday, my Lord of Dublin preached, having a very great audience, when also were published the King's injunctions. The day following we kept the Sessions there both for the city and the shire, where was put to execution four felons, accompanied with another, a friar, whom, among the residue, we commanded to be hanged in his habit, and so to remain upon the gallows for a mirror to all his brethren to live truly.' The salary at the institution of the office (1214, temp. Henry III.) was forty marks a year, exclusive of fees and perquisites; out of which was to be maintained a special body-guard of six men-at-arms and six archers fully equipped for the protection of the Great Seal. It would appear from an application of Alan's to Lord Cromwell in 1531, that the salary, besides being retained at this low figure, was somewhat irregularly paid : เ And here with us I cannot have the forty mark fee of the Chancellorship, now two years and a half past in arrear, nor yet such money as I laid out upon the King's letters, as well for ships and mariners' wages, as for reparation done in the King's Chancery, also his castle. Sir, afore God I desire none translation, nor any manner of benefice of cure, or yet of dignity, but only (if it might please the King's highness to have some compassion upon me) a prebend which should cause no murmur of absenty from thence, whereby I might keep a dozen yeomen archers in wages and livery, when I lie in the marches upon the Church lands, to keep me in the King's service from his Irish enemies and English rebels. So knoweth God, who may send you (when I am out of half my debt) this next year, one hobby, one hawk, and one Limerick mantle, which three things be all the commodities for a gentleman's pleasure in these parts.' The last of the archiepiscopal Chancellors of Ireland was Boyle,-Archbishop of Dublin in 1663 when he received the Great Seal, and Archbishop of Armagh in 1678. He continued in uninterrupted possession of the office for the unprecedented period of twentytwo years, and it was as an octogenarian, no longer equal to the work, that he was displaced in 1685, on the accession of James II. He was succeeded by Sir Charles Porter, an English lawyer of note, who, not comply 'The highest offices in the State, in the Army, and in the Courts of Justice, were, with scarcely an exception, filled by Papists. A pettifogger named Alexander Fitton, who had been detected in forgery, who had been fined for misconduct by the House of Lords at Westminster, who had been many years in prison, and who was equally deficient in legal knowledge and in the natural good sense and acuteness by which the want of legal knowledge has sometimes been supplied, was Lord Chancellor. His single merit was that he had apostatised from the Protestant religion; and this merit was thought sufficient to wash out even the stain of his Saxon extraction. He soon proved himself worthy of the confidence of his patrons. On the bench of justice he declared that there was not one heretic in forty thousand who was not a villain. He often, after hearing a cause in which the interests of his Church were concerned, postponed his decision, for the purpose, as he avowed, of consulting his spiritual director, a Spanish priest, well read doubtless in Escobar.' The appointment of this man was so clearly indefensible that Lord Macaulay might have been content to state the plain truth concerning him. The term 'pettifogger' conveys the impression of a low, mean, and sharp practitioner. Now, it nowhere appears that Fitton, although bred to the bar, ever practised at all, and it was in pushing his claims as the undoubted representative of an old family of knightly rank, that he fell under the imputation of forgery. A document produced on his behalf in the course of a prolonged litigation with his relative Lord Brandon, was pronounced spurious; but the evidence was conflicting, and the House of Lords, who (the case not being judicially before them) committed him and his witnesses for contempt, notoriously acted on the instigation of his noble antagonist, under the pretence of upholding the dignity of their order. His real offence in their eyes was the implied reflection on a peer. Mr. O'Flanagan, who defends Fitton with the excusable zeal of a co-religionist, plausibly urges his favourable reception by the Irish bench and bar, who were not so wanting in spirit or sense of honour as to associate with or plead complacently before a pettifogger or a gaolbird, and he bears strong testimony to Fitton's comparative efficiency as a judge: There are nearly a hundred Chancery decrees, made during the reign of James II., enrolled. I have looked carefully through those made while Lord Gawsworth (Fitton) held the Great Seal, but could observe nothing to mark ignorance of his duty or incapacity to perform it. He confirms reports, dismisses bills, decrees in favour of awards, grants injunctions, with the confidence of an experienced Equity Judge.' The chances are that Fitton knew quite as much of law and equity as the common run of preceding Irish Chancellors, or as Lord Shaftesbury, Lord Chancellor of England in 1672, who had no legal training at all. The 'spiritual director' whom Fitton was wont to consult about his decisions was Dr. Stafford, a Doctor of the Civil Law and a Master in Chancery, who was in high esteem for learning and probity, whether he had or had not been a Spanish priest, well read, doubt less, in Escobar.' Fitton, compelled to beat a hasty retreat after the battle of the Boyne, was attainted and fled to France, where he died. Whether' (adds Mr. O'Flanagan, quoting Ormond's History of Cheshire') the conduct of Fitton before he was made Chancellor was criminal or innocent, God only can judge, but His hand fell heavily upon the representatives of the Fittons of Gawsworth. In less than half a century the husbands of its two co-heiresses, James Duke of Hamilton and Charles Lord Mohun, were slain by each other in a murderous duel, arising out of a dispute relative to a partition of the Fitton estates; and Gawsworth itself passed into an unlineal hand by a series of alienations complicated beyond example in the annals of this county.' On the forced retreat of Fitton, Sir Charles Porter was re-appointed, and quitted with reluctance his quiet chambers in the Temple to resume the anxious duties of the post. He seems to have had an instinctive foreknowledge of the trials in store for him, for, having the misfortune to differ with the Viceroy (Lord Capel) touching the Treaty of Limerick, he fell under the ban of the more violent of the dominant party, and articles of impeachment were moved against him by Colonel Ponsonby in the Irish House of Commons, for partiality, corruption, arbitrary proceedings above the law, and (the pith of the whole) favouring Papists against Protestants. A quarrel between the two Houses, touching the attendance of peers as witnesses, offered him a plausible opportunity for evading inquiry; but, conscious of his innocence, he manfully presented himself at the bar of the Lower House, where (according to the journals) being admitted with the purse, a chair being placed for him on the right hand, within the bar, he laid down the purse and his hat, and, at the back of the chair, uncovered, was heard what he could say on the articles exhibited against him.' What he said (of which there is no record) was so much to the purpose that the articles were rejected by a majority of 121 against 77. But the affair was not destined to end here. As he was driving home his coach tried to pass another : A "This was the coach of Rochfort, Speaker of the House of Commons and Attorney-General, a violent enemy of the Lord Chancellor. stray glare of light happening to fall upon the Chancellor's equipage, as the two vehicles were nearly in collision, the Speaker instantly called aloud for the Chancellor's coachman to keep back. This peremptory mandate being either unheard or unheeded, the Speaker, in his robes, darted from his coach, and disregarding danger and dirt, seized hold of the reins of the Chancellor's horses, and brought them on their haunches. With a petulance and littleness unworthy such an occasion, he ordered his mace to be produced from his coach, and thrust it before the Chancellor's coachman, declaring "That he would be run down by no man, and would justify what he did." "The Lord Chancellor, with wise discretion, took no personal part in this street rencontre. He made no attempt to drag his mace through the mire, and was content to allow the Speaker's carriage precedence while their route lay in the same direction.' It would have been quite in keeping with the manners of the period had the Lord Chancellor called out the Speaker and decided the question of privilege by an exchange of shots; but Porter's English breeding preserved him from the contagion of Irish folly, and he adopted the more reasonable step of complaining to the Lords of the personal affront put upon him and them. They were nowise reluctant to back him up and formally demanded an explanation; but all the answer they got was, that' as the matter was purely accidental, it could not be looked on as a designed affront to their Lordships in the person of their Speaker.' It is recorded (by Mr. H. Roscoe in Westminster Hall') of a Lord Chancellor of England (Northington), whose state-coach was impeded by a carman, that he swore by God, that if he had been in his private coach, he would have got out and beat the d-d rascal to a jelly.' Porter died of apoplexy on June 15, 1677, and was succeeded by John Methuen, who, though called to the Bar, had diverged into diplomacy, and was actually accredited envoy to Portugal, when, happening to be in London on leave, he was selected to hold the Irish Great Seal. His qualifications, which were rather of the negative sort, are stated in Vernon's letter of recommendation to the Duke of Shrewsbury :— 'It will not be judged fit, I suppose, to take any of the Irish lawyers, both as to the country and the factions they are divided into, and one to be sent from hence should not be merely chosen for his abilities at the bar; and when Sir Charles Porter was sent, I think he might as little have pretended to it as this gentleman, who to his knowledge in the law has added his experience abroad, and his commendable behaviour in the House of Commons.' He was also, after some short hesitation, taken up by the Lord Chancellor of England, and the fact, remarks Mr. O'Flanagan, of Lord Somers recommending Methuen to the King, shows that he considered him well qualified for the office.' It shows, to our mind, that Lord Somers had formed an extremely low estimate of the professional qualifications for the dignity, and the lack of them in this instance proved too glaring to be overlooked. The duties Methuen performed so ill became proportionally irksome to him, and after trifling with them for three or four years, his old post of envoy was opportunely placed at his disposal :— 'He gladly accepted the offer made him, and, without a sigh, saw the once coveted Great Seal of Ireland transferred to his veteran suc cessor, Sir Richard Cox. He filled the important office of Ambassador at the Court of Lisbon, and was responsible for the Treaty which bears his name. This Methuen Treaty was so distasteful to the Portuguese, that it is said, when, in 1701, it was carried to King Pedro II. for his signature, he vigorously set to and kicked it about the room. It is likewise related the Ambassador himself was so little pleased with his own work, that he privately advised Queen Anne not to ratify it. The Ambassador died at his post in Lisbon in the year 1706. His death was sudden, and his loss much lamented by the politicians of the time.' or followed an independent course, escaped an impeachment or a vote of censure by one or other of the two Houses; and Sir Constantine Phipps (the ancestor of the Marquis of Normanby) must be considered fortunate in finding his case, when prejudged by the Commons, warmly taken up by the Lords. The charge against him was the common and popular one of having injured the Protestant interest by undue liberality towards Papists, and he had given great offence by refusing to join in a procession for celebratthe Orangemen. An address to the Queen ing an anniversary held in high honour by for his removal was carried in the Lower House on December 13, 1713, which was diametrically opposite tendency from the met and counteracted by addresses of a Upper House and the Convocation. The Lords also directed the prosecution of one of his assailants for saying that the Lord Chancellor was a canary bird, a villain, and had set this country by the ears, and ought to be hanged.' He was the friend of Prior and the correspondent of Swift, who, in a letter to Dr. King, relating to the rival addresses, dwells on the inexpediency of giving a triumph to either party. That the assailants obtained none, is patent from the fact that Phipps held his ground till the accession of George I., when a general change of Government took place, and, ceasing to be Lord Chancellor, he resumed his practice at the English Bar, where (we are told) he was much employed by Jacobites and Tories -a fact which goes far to justify the instinctive antipathy of the Irish Williamites. Brodrick, whose accession to the Irish WoolPhipps was succeeded in 1714 by Sir Alan sack is hailed by the biographer as the commencement of a new era for the Irish Bar, because, although it had rarely been wanting in eminent members, Broderick was the first on whom the highest prize of the profession had been bestowed-the honour being enhanced by his being at the same time raised to the peerage by the title of Lord Midleton. It must be admitted, however, that the appointment was not altogether the recognition or reward of forensic distinction, although he had risen to the rank of Solicitor-General; for he was Speaker of the Irish House of Commons from the seeond year of Queen Anne till his elevation to the Chancellorship-an uninterrupted period of more than eleven years. A principal complaint against the line of alien Chancellors being their affection for their native lan c and their frequent absence from the proper sphere of their duty, it was provoking in Hardly any of the early Chancellors of the extreme to Irish patriots to find the Ireland who rose above the common level, | Green Isle no better treated by the most This passage is worthy of Sir Nathaniel Wraxall; and the most extraordinary confusion of facts and dates prevails throughout in Mr. O'Flanagan's account of the Methuens. At page 459 we are told that Porter died on June 15, 1697, and was succeeded by Methuen; at page 491, that Methuen was declared Chancellor of Ireland at a Council held in January, 1696-7; at page 495, that Methuen returned to England in December, 1701, and did not again resume his judicial duties in Ireland; at page 512, that Cox, appointed on Methuen's resignation, was nominated in July, 1703. The Methuen Treaty which Mr. O'Flanagan tells us was made by the ex-Chancellor and kicked about the room by the King of Portugal in 1701, was made by his son Paul, and is dated December 27, 1703. |