that Plunket came nearer to the Demosthenic model than any other modern orator: awarding the palm for Ciceronian excellence to Pitt.

Plunket has not been fortunate in his biographers. The Life, in two volumes, by his grandson, is an imperfect and unsatisfactory work: being especially deficient in accurate reports of the best speeches:1 and Mr. O'Flanagan has vainly endeavoured to make up by admiring enthusiasm for his incapacity to grasp so varied and expansive a subject, or to keep to it. As if he had not enough upon his hands without meddling with irrelevant topics, he introduces (apropos of Thurlow's being Lord Chancellor when Plunket was a student) Thurlow's well-known reply to the Duke of Grafton; and apropos of Plunket's father having 'found a congenial spirit in a fair daughter of the town washed by the beauteous Lough Erne,' he tells us how the said town (Enniskillen) was once inhabited by the Maguires and their tributaries,' amongst whom were my ancestors the O'Flanagans, Chiefs of Tara, now the barony of Magheraboy.'

6

The upshot is that the Reverend Thomas Plunket, a Presbyterian minister of Enniskillen, married Mary, daughter of Mr. Redmund Conyngham of that ilk, and had by her six sons and two daughters, the youngest son being William Conyngham Plunket, born July 1, 1764. The family removed to Dublin in 1768, where the father died in 1776; leaving little or no fortune beyond a good name, to which the future Chancellor was mainly indebted for his education. The requisite funds were provided by the members of the paternal congrega

1 'The Life, Letters, and Speeches of Lord Plunket. By his Grandson, the Hon. David Plunket. With an Introductory Preface. By Lord Brougham.' In two Volumes. London, 1867. There is little in the Introductory Preface which had not already appeared in Lord Brougham's Historical Sketches.' It is much to be regretted that the composition of this biography did not devolve on another grandson, the present member for Trinity College, Dublin; who, himself an excellent speaker, would at least have done justice to the oratorical portion.

tion, and were honourably repaid by him in after life with interest.

He entered Trinity College, Dublin, in 1779, obtained a scholarship in 1782, and in the course of the same year joined the Historical Society, that nursery of Irish eloquence, in which so many of his most distinguished countrymen have, like him, first essayed their powers and laid the foundation of their fame. As the audiences were not limited to the resident students, the celebrity acquired in it soon spread beyond its walls; and the distinguished position won in this Society was no inconsiderable recommendation to Plunket when (in 1787) he commenced his attendance in the Irish Courts with a view to practice. He had spent the two years preceding his call to the Bar in England reading hard, and his biographer attributes the superiority of tone and judgment of which he gave proof at starting in the conduct of cases, to the opportunities he had enjoyed of studying the best examples of English advocacy, which, it is suggested, was of a less digressive and more sober or prosaic character.

"The English barrister would deem venturing on a flight of impassioned eloquence while discussing a legal proposition as nothing short of absurdity, while an Irish barrister of this period would not have hesitated to indulge in such disporting. We have instances in which the learned counsel reminded the chief of the court he was addressing of the banquets which they shared the friends they lost-the tears they mingled.' He next proceeds to give instances of the Irish fondness for metaphor: As for example, one member of the Bar implored the jury not to be influenced "by the dark oblivion of a brow." Another, whose clients had instituted proceedings against a false witness, said "Gentlemen, my clients are not to be bamboozled. They adopted a bold course. They took the bull by the horns, and indicted him for perjury." A

third, anticipating the case of his opponents-"I foresee what they are at. I see the storm brewing in the disstance, I smell a rat, but I'll nip it in the bud."

men.

If Mr. O'Flanagan were equally well up in the traditions of the English bar, he would know that sentimental or poetical digressions, with mixed metaphors running riot, have been by no means peculiar to his countryErskine was quite as discursive as Curran, and even more egotistical-witness the introduction of the savage with the bundle of sticks in the speech for Stockdale, or the appeal to the probable opinion of his ancestors on a knee-buckle. We have heard a learned counsel and law author (Archbold) pathetically adjuring the judge of the Bail Court to consider 'the agonising effects of a rule nisi;' and another (of literary and legal eminence) conclude a dry technical argument before the Common Pleas by reciting from the Merchant of Venice' the entire passage beginning: The quality of mercy is not strained.' A quondam leader of the Western Circuit and Vinerian Professor (Philip Williams), in a law lecture at Oxford, spoke thus: The student, launched on an ocean of law, skips like a squirrel from twig to twig, vainly endeavouring to collect the scattered members of Hippolytus.' Moreover, there was nothing extraordinary or exceptional in an Irish student's two years' residence in England for the purposes of legal study; and all things considered, we should be disposed to account for Plunket's sobriety of fancy and sense of fitness by the inborn qualities of his mind.

Such being the advantages and peculiar merits with which he started, it surprises us to find that his early eminence at the Bar was acquired in criminal cases on

1 This was in a patent case. In the course of his address to the jury, Erskine held up the buckle and exclaimed theatrically, 'What would my ancestors have said, could they have seen this miracle of ingenuity ?' 'You forget,' remarked Garrow, that your ancestors were unacquainted with the garment for which it was intended,'

the North-Western Circuit; although his keen insight into the humours and habits of the peasantry enabled him to deal with them most effectively in the witnessbox. His defence of a horse-stealer made him so popular with the fraternity that one of them was heard exclaiming, 'I tell you what, boys: if I'm lagged for the next horse I steal, by Jabers I'll have Plunket.'

A prevaricating witness under cross-examination complained that the counsellor had bothered him ' entirely,' and given him the maigrims. 'Maigrims,' said Lord Avonmore: 'I never heard that word before.' 'My lord,' interposed Plunket, the witness says I have given him the megrims, a bilious affection, merely a confusion of the head arising from the corruption of the heart.'

It was after his talents had been thoroughly tested and appreciated in the higher walks of business, that the leaders of the Opposition became anxious to secure his services as a parliamentary debater, and in the spring of 1798 Lord Charlemont sought an interview for the purpose of offering him a seat. But Lord Charlemont was opposed to Catholic Emancipation, and they separated with an expression of regret by Plunket, that while holding the same political opinions on almost every other topic, on one subject they were not of one mind, and he therefore declined to be a nominee of his lordship, for fear of being obliged to act against his wishes.' He was too valuable a recruit to be let slip in this fashion. Lord Charlemont requested another visit, which ended satisfactorily to both parties, and the patriot earl afterwards confessed to his son that Plunket prevailed over his old prejudice.'

6

Plunket took his seat for the borough of Charlemont on February 6th, 1798, and almost immediately came into collision with Lord Cstlereagh on the allabsorbing topic of the Union. No adversary of that noble lord assailed him with so much keen sarcasm,

so much vehement invective, so much biting personality. Yet Lord Castlereagh bore up against it with his habitual fearlessness and his usual imperturbable mien: never once suffering his temper to be ruffled, nor attempting to bring the Castle system of intimidation into play. Indeed Plunket's occasional vehemence (not to say violence) of language never brought on a duel; nor, so far as we can learn, ever provoked a challenge; the most plausible explanation being that the loftiness of his language redeemed or mitigated its offensiveness, and that a man of his earnest temperament, rapt up in his subject, neither gives nor takes affronts like one who is evidently aiming at applause and wounds the self-love of others to gratify his own. Certain it is that he took the first opportunity of delivering a meditated diatribe against Lord Castlereagh, which stands unsurpassed for polished bitterness, after giving distinct notice that he was about to stretch the privileges of debate to the uttermost verge. On Barrington's being called to order by Corry and Beresford for denouncing the means which the Government were employing to carry their measure, Plunket rose and said :

'I have no idea that the freedom of debate shall be controlled by such frequent interruptions. I do not conceive that my honourable friend is out of order, but when my turn comes to speak, I shall repeat these charges in still stronger language, if possible, and indulge gentlemen on the other side of the House with an opportunity of taking down my words, if they have any fancy to do so.

When his turn came, after forcibly recapitulating the charges of intimidation. and corruption, he fell, with the full weight of indignant patriotism and outraged public virtue, on Lord Castlereagh

'The example of the Prime Minister of England, inimitable in its vices, may deceive the noble lord. The Minister of England has his faults; he abandoned in his latter years