priest, without derogating from his dignity or honour:-No body of men could be more intrepid and gallant than the leaders of the Irish bar; and yet it was thought too daring and presumptuous for any of them to assist the sufferer in obtaining redress for an outrage like this. In England, those things are inconceivable; but the readers of Irish history are aware, that where the question was between Peer and Peasant-and still more when it was between Protestant and Catholic-the barristers had cause for apprehension. It was but about forty years before, that upon a Catholic bringing an action for the recovery of his confiscated estates, the Irish House of Commons publicly voted a resolution, that all barristers, solicitors, attorneys, and proctors who should be concerned for him, ⚫ should be considered as public enemies! This was in 1735. In 1780, however, Mr C. found the service not quite so dangerous; and by great eloquence and exertion extorted a reluctant verdict, and 30 guineas of damages from a Protestant Jury. The sequel of the affair was not less characteristic. In the first place, it involved the advocate in a duel with a witness whom he had rather outrageously abused-and, in the next place, it was thought sufficient to justify a public notification to him, on the part of the noble defendant, that his audacity should be punished by excluding him from all professional employment wherever his influence could extend. The insolence of such a communication might well have warranted a warlike reply. But Mr C. expressed his contempt in a gayer and not less effectual manner. Pretending to misunderstand the tenor of the message, he answered aloud, in the hearing of his friends, My good sir, you may tell his lordship, that it is in vain for him to be proposing terms of accommodation; for after what has happened, I protest I think, while I live, I shall never hold a brief for him or one of his family.' The threat, indeed, proved as impotent as it was pitiful; for the spirit and talent which the young counsellor had displayed through the whole scene, not only brought him into unbounded popularity with the lower orders, but instantly raised him to a distinguished place in the ranks of his profession.

In 1783 Mr C. got a silk gown, and was brought into Parliament; and here properly commences the Political part of the work. Nothing can be so deplorable as the history of Ireland up to this epoch-except perhaps a part of its history since. But nothing can at the same time be more pregnant with warning and instruction, both as to the utter hopelessness of repressing Discontent by Severity, and as to the inefficacy of Parliaments that do not really represent the sense and the interests of the people. Ireland was governed for centuries by a native Par

liament-but it was so constituted as to have no sympathy with the body of the population; and her worst corruptions and oppressions were those that originated in its bosom. Her rulers, too, have at all times been in possession of an overwhelming force, by which to overbear and repress every appearance of resistance; and they have used it without measure or mercy-but with the most lamentable success. The great modern specifics for preserving tranquillity-coercion, intimidation, and punishment-have been lavishly and relentlessly administered in Ireland, from the earliest periods of her history down to the present' day; and the result has been, not that she has been more tranquil than the other parts of the empire, but that she has been far more agitated. There has been no relaxation of the reins of authority in that unhappy country-no weak compliances with popular inclinations-no rash neglect of popular usurpations. The Government has always been strong and jealous, and prompt and efficacious-and has never yet had to reproach itself with ill-timed lenity, or menaces not carried into execution. Martial law, and military execution without the warrant of any law, have always been ready to combine their energies with those of coercive and disqualifying statutes and sweeping proscriptions; and spies and informers have been constantly employed and believed, to an extent elsewhere unheard of; and the consequence has been, not only that the country has been uniformly misgoverned and oppressed-that its trade and agriculture have been incredibly depressed, so that its revenue has always fallen short of the actual expense of its government-but that it has been, without intermission, in a state of the most frightful insecurity and disorder, or at least has passed, in a constant and miserable alternation, from the gloomy despair of one defeated insurrection to the desperate contrivance of another.

If these facts do not speak a loud memento to England-if they do not afford a practical answer to those who cry out against all reform, and think peace is only to be maintained by severity, we know not where to find in history any lessons of authority; or in what circumstances to look for a nearer parallel to the policy that is now in question among ourselves. There is one other feature in the Irish story, the application of which we most earnestly deprecate-but which it is necessary to state, in order to show the nature of the hazards, and the measure of the humiliation with which such policy is sure to be attended. The only great improvement which the Government received, was effected by an Armed Insurrection,-and wrung by force from the hands of those rulers by whose justice it would never have been yielded,

It is scarcely necessary to mention any of the earlier particulars of this wretched story. It was at the Revolution, that era of glory and freedom to England, that the humiliation of Ireland was consummated-her political independence openly invaded-her trade intentionally depressed-and four-fifths of her population. disfranchised, and excluded from all public, and almost all private rights. The law,' it was publicly stated from the Bench, did not presume a Papist to exist in the kingdom; nor could they breathe but by the sufferance of the Government.' The House of Commons, of course, was a mere Committee of the leaders of the Orange faction; and, as if to make the mockery of representation more ridiculous, it was never dissolved; and the members held their seats for their own lives, or for that of the monarch. This enormity was not corrected till 1767, when the octennial bill, limiting the endurance of Parliament to eight years, was introduced by the English minister, to the great indignation of the Perpetual Senate. But the effect of this was only to transfer the task of oppression from a domestic faction to the more pliant dependants of the English Cabinet, who continued to domineer over Ireland as a conquered country, and without disguise to sacrifice her interests to their own. The American war however, at last brought on a crisis of suffering which in part operated its own cure. By that event, the linen trade with the colonies, which was the great staple of Irish industry, was at once annihilated; and the exportation of her provisions, the only other branch of her commerce, was relentlessly interdicted by the English government, lest supplies should in this way be obtained by the revolted colonies. Thus beggared and plundered, Ireland was next denied the common benefit of protection; and while the fleets of the enemy were cruizing round her shores, almost the whole of her army was transported to the Western hemisphere, and her ports and cities left defenceless, to the mercy of the expected invaders. When, in this extremity, the city of Belfast, and the great adjoining district, applied for some means of defence, the answer they received from the Government was, that they would endeavour to send them half a troop of dismounted horse, and half a company of invalids!' The citizens were driven, therefore, to arm for their own protection; and a corps of volunteers was speedily formed in every considerable place of the kingdom. The occupation was congenial to the martial character of the people; and held out, for the first time, a show of national power and independence to which they had long been strangers. The associations spread over all the country with incredible rapidity; and, before the end of the year 1781, they had grown to a great army, of not less than 80,000 men,

The country, of course, was now entirely at their disposal; and they soon began to feel the power which they possessed, and resolved not to separate till the independence of Ireland had been secured. The feeble and infatuated ministry, whose counsels had by this time lost America, and sown the seeds of inextinguishable discontent at home, looked with helpless consternation at the giant spectre they had contributed to raise. They broke up, however, at last, in their own weakness and unpopularity; and their successors handsomely conceded what it was no longer practicable to withhold-renounced the legislative pretensions of England, and recognised Ireland, as a free nation, with a legislature independent and supreme.

This Revolution however, for such it clearly was, was more flattering to the national pride of Ireland, than beneficial to the body of her people. The Legislature, though independent, was yet far from having any community of interest or of feeling with the nation at large. Lavish creations, and it is said even purchases and bargains, had filled the House of Lords with the devoted adherents of the English ministry. Out of the 300 members who composed the House of Commons, 220 sate for burghs, in almost all of which the Orange faction either domineered, or the influence of some great proprietor was despotical; while by far the greater part of the remainder were devoted to the same interest. Then, whatever virtue or independence might have belonged to a body so constituted, was assailed by a larger and more profuse dispensation of offices and pensions than has been known, even since, in the sister kingdom. The enormity of the Irish pension list has at all times been a topic of reproach to the general Government; and Mr Curran himself stated openly, in the House of Commons, that he was ready to prove that upwards of 100 of his auditors held places or pensions from the Government. In such circumstances, it is not much to be wondered at, that one of the first questions agitated in the emancipated Parliament, should have been that of Parliamentary Reform or that it should have been lost by a vast majority. Mr Curran first distinguished himself in that hopeless cause-and there first came into contact with an antagonist, whose hostility, neither generous nor placable, pursued him through the remainder of their joint lives-the Attorney-General Fitzgibbon, afterwards Lord Clare.

6

During Mr Curran's first years at the bar they had been on terms of polite and even familiar intercourse; but the dissimilarity of their public characters, the high aristocratic arrogance of the one, and the popular tenets of the other, soon separated them; even their private tastes and habits would have forbidden a lasting friendship. Lord

Clare despised literature, in which Mr Curran so delighted. The one in private as in public disdained all the arts of winning; he was sullen or overbearing, and when he condescended to be jocular was generally offensive. The other was in all companies the reverse; playful, communicative, and conciliating. Mr Curran never, like his more haughty rival, regulated his urbanity by the rank of his companions; or, if he did, it was by a diametrically opposite rule; the more humble the person, the more cautiously did he abstain from inflicting pain. For all those lighter talents of wit and fancy which Mr Curran was incessantly and almost involuntarily displaying, Lord Clare had a real or an affected contempt, and would fain persuade himself that they were incompatible with those higher powers which he considered could alone raise the possessor to an equality with himself. Mr Curran was perhaps equally hasty in underrating the abilities of his antagonist. Detesting his arbitrary principles, and disgusted with his unpopular manners, he would see nothing in him but the petty despot, ascending to a bad eminence by obvious and unworthy methods, and therefore meriting his unqualified hatred and invective.' I. 196, 197.

In 1785, those conflicting principles broke out into personal hostility. Fitzgibbon called Curran a puny babbler;' and he retorted, by telling him that his argument was more like • the paltry quibble of a lawyer than the reasoning of a statesman, and his language more like that of an Attorney particu•lar, than an Attorney General; and then they went out, like true Irish debaters, and finished the dispute by firing a brace of pistols at each other-but left the field, unlike Irish combatants, with sentiments of unabated hostility.

In 1786, Mr C. made one of his best Parliamentary speeches on the Pension list; of the spirit and somewhat excessive liveliness of which, the following may be taken as a specimen.

This polyglot of wealth, this museum of curiosities, the pension list, embraces every link in the human chain, every description of men, women, and children, from the exalted excellence of a Hawke or a Rodney, to the debased situation of a lady who humbleth herself that she may be exalted. But the lessons it inculcates form its greatest perfection. It teacheth that sloth and vice may eat that bread which virtue and honesty may starve for after they have earned it it teaches the idle and dissolute to look up for that support which they are too proud to stoop and earn: it directs the minds of men to an entire reliance upon the ruling power of the State, who feeds the ravens of the royal aviary that cry continually for food: it teaches them to imitate those saints on the pension list that are like the lilies of the field, they toil not, neither do they spin, and yet are arrayed like Solomon in his glory: in fine, it teaches a lesson, which indeed they might have learned from Epictetus, that it is sometimes good not to be over virtuous; it shows, that, in proportion as our distresses in