from seven to eleven. The House was then called on to vote, that whoever advised that measure had acted contrary to the sense of the Commons. The numbers on a division were equal -106 on each side. It thus came to the casting voice of the Speaker, who, resenting the insult which had been offered to the House, said, "This is a question which involves the privileges of the Commons of Ireland. The noes have opposed the privilege; the noes have been wrong-let the privileges of the Commons of Ireland stand unimpeached. Therefore, I say, the noes have it." He had a fine person and a commanding voice. He delivered this lofty sentence with corresponding dignity, and the effect upon the House and the country was memorable. A curious anecdotes is told of this Irish Aristides. In the commencement of his political career he had become one of a party in the House, which, adopting certain principles, pledged itself never to take office but as a body. But Lord Townshend soon discovered the art, probably no very difficult discovery, of breaking up the party, by giving its members employment on his own terms. On this general violation of the compact, he still considered himself bound by it. He went to his former friends and said: "You have broken your engagement, you have released me; but I shall still consider myself bound. I will adhere to the compact. I will not take office; but I will never have any thing more to say to you." All this is high-toned; but it would make the anecdote more intelligible, as well as the sentiment more important, if the date had been divulged. If it was before Mr Pery's appointment to the Speakership, his self-denial evidently did not prevent him, as we see, from accepting one of the most lucrative public offices, which he could not have obtained but by the direct influence, or at least the ready acquiescence of the Crown; if it was after, he was then rich, old, and a peer. The temptations of office could not then have been strong, and his self-denial never would have been perfectly consistent with a sense of his ease. In 1767, Grattan came to London, and entered himself as student in the Middle Temple. This practice, the author, in his usual strain, pronounces "one of the badges of servitude worn by the people of Ireland!" He admits in the next truth, that it "takes the young mind from a narrow and prejudiced locality, and tends to make it expand in a freer region." This, we should suppose, an object of some importance to a profession which has peculiarly to deal with human liberties. But the author is never happy but when he can persuade himself that he lives in a dungeon, and is surrounded by a population of turnkeys. At all events, the badge of slavery is not a very heavy one, for it may be worn or not as the "slave" thinks fit-no Irish student being now under any necessity of coming to the English Inns of Court; the advantage of this coming, however, being so decided, that every Irish student who can afford it enters his name, and thereby secures the privilege of being called to the English bar, if he should subsequently so desire, and the higher advantage of the best legal education which the empire can offer. Grattan had evidently designed himself, from the beginning, for a parliamentary career. He seems to have given but slight attention at any time to the study of the law, but to have spent his evenings chiefly in listening to the debates in Parliament. He was fortunate in his period. Lord Chatham was then in his full vigour, pouring out that impassioned oratory which constituted an era in the senate. In the intervals of those studies, he seemed to have kept up a considerable correspondence with his friends. We wish that more of these letters could have been procured. They are often fantastic, but they are always written with elegance, and sometimes with feeling. Some of his theories were speedily contradicted by his practice. He thus speaks of matrimony, in a letter to his friend Broome: "Our friend Macawley seems happy in the connubial state. He speaks as a man attached and contented; and, like a missionary of Hymen, he preaches his dominion to all. I am too well acquainted with my own inequalities, as well as too poor to receive the yoke. You and I, in this, as in most other things, perfectly agree. We imagine woman too frail a bark for so long and so tempestuous a voyage as that of life." But this was the reasoning of a philosopher of one-and 1 twenty. In a few years after, when of beauty and character, and continu- We have a letter from Judge Day, as late as 1838, mentioning some particulars of this period. Among other matters, he mentions-" We lived in the same chambers of the Middle Temple, and took a house in Windsor Forest, commanding a beautiful proEspect. He delighted in romantic scenery. Between both, we lived to=gether three or four years, the happiest period of my life. When we resided in Windsor Forest, he would spend whole moonlight nights rambling and losing himself in the thickest plantations; he would sometimes pause and address a tree in soliloquy, thus early preparing himself for that assembly which he was destined to adorn." He then states the commencement of his knowledge of that Dr Patrick Duiguenan, with whom his after life was one long political quarrel. Duiguenan was a man of rough manners, but of strong understanding and extensive knowledge. Having obtained a fellowship in the Dublin University, he practised in the ecclesiastical courts, where he ultimately became a judge. Though he married a Roman Catholic, and in respect for the feelings of his wife frequently admitted Roman Catholic priests to his table, in public life he exhibited the most determined resist NO. CCLXXXVII. VOL, XLVI. To ance to the encroachments of Rome. His learning made him a peculiarly formidable opponent; and the brilliant tropes and pathetic appeals of the advocates of emancipation, were terribly trampled down by his knowledge of Romish councils and decrees. the last, he opposed reason to eloquence, and learning to delusion. His arguments were unanswerable, and therefore attributed to prejudice; his learning was solid, and therefore passed by as obsolete. He had the merit of resisting, when all others gave way; of sustaining the truth, when it was the fashion to panegyrize falsehood; and of warning his country against the dangers of emancipation, when the whole mob of philosophers and politicians, the aspirants for place, and the seekers after popularity, were clamouring for it as the panacea for the "expiring Constitution." The name of Duiguenan was, of course, a mark for religious and political obloquy. But it was where the religion was superstition, and the politics were Jacobinism. No man in his own time was able to disprove his arguments, as, unhappily, no man in ours can doubt the sagacity of his predictions. He was a clearheaded, accomplished, and vigorous scholar, a sound lawyer, and a rational patriot. He died, with the regrets of many good, many learned, and many wise men ; and his memory deserves all the honour which ought to be given to powerful championship in the righteous cause. A note to Judge Day's letter mentions a circumstance which he supposes to have been the origin of the continued hostility between Grattan and Duiguenan. It was at the Temple that they first met. He introduced them to each other, and Duiguenan, intending to please Grattan, uttered a furious philippic against Dr Lucas, knowing that his father the recorder had been his opponent. But Grattan defended Lucas, and thought that he had been hardly treated by the Irish Government. The conversation grew warm-they further differed on those important topics, the prerogative and the people; Grattan replied, and Day was "afraid that he would have attacked Duiguenan.' However, they parted, and in the evening Grattan came to the Grecian Coffeehouse, where they used to 2 c Perhaps," says the latter, "it was owing to this trifling incident that the animosity was engendered, which afterwards displayed itself throughout Duiguenan's character and conduct." But this unsubstantial motive was wholly inconsistent with the characters of both. They had a more sufficient reason; strong diversity of opinion, both political and religiousopposite views on the most important subjects of life and government. Grattan had early formed his antipathy to the powers that be. In 1768, he thus exults over the Irish Parliament: "I am glad that sink of prostitution, the Irish Parliament, is to be drained octennially. This will control it, if it cannot amend, and may improve what is in the last stage of putrefaction, and cannot change without being bettered." He then turns his wrath upon both Ireland and England with the same bitterness of rebuke, and the same pointed vigour which constituted the language of his Parliamentary life. "The old court party, that have been corrupt expediencers for so many ages, honour the cause they forsake, and, like the black train of physic, inform the neighbourhood of their patient's health by their departure. The same bartering, the same venality which you mention as commencing in Ireland, reigns in England with avowed dominion." The instance which he gives of the Corporation of Oxford, is curiously put. "This corporation," says Grattan, "had sold its representation. Being brought before the House of Commons, it made no defence, and, being committed to jail, it sent a declaration of penitence, concluding, however, at the same time, the sale it was punished for attempting. This is astonishing; that no further penalty is inflicted on this bold prostituted body is more so.' His fondness for the picturesque is conspicuous in his early letters. Of the country around Sunning Hill, he says, in another letter-" The country I am in is most beautiful. There is an antiquity and wildness in the wood. lands here, infinitely surpassing what I have met with-whole tracts of country covered with nature, without the least interval of art. These are the forests of which Pope has sung with so much elegance, and which has been a sanctuary as well as a theme to the masters of poetry.' In another letter to his friend Broome, he mentions his having been present at a memorable Parliamentary debate, and gives a slight sketch of the principal speakers. The intent and tendency of the motion was to obtain from Parliament a promise of support for Lord North. "Lord North, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, a man versed in state mystery and little versed in finances, spoke in defence of the Court, in a manner impetuous, not rapid; full of cant, not melody; deserved the eulogium of a fervent speaker, not a great one. Grenville, on the part of the Opposition, was peevish and wrangling, and provoked those whom he could not defeat. Burke, the only orator I have yet heard in the House of Commons (and the character arises from his matter, not his delivery,) was impetuous, oratorical, and undaunted; he treated the Ministry with high contempt, and displayed with most animated derision their schemes and purposes." Some of those letters give melancholy traits of his mind. "There are times," he writes, (" at least I feel such,) when we lose every pleasing sensation; when our relish is suspended, and self-dissatisfaction becomes the state of the intellect. At times like these, I dare not write to you (his friend Broome), and be sure, whenever I am guilty of delay, not my regard but my mental economy is impaired. * * I have moments (I dare say you have them also) of despondency, regret, apathy, and the rest of that deadly train that disturbs our peace and defeats our purposes. They do not continue long, burn without cause, without cause they vanish." He then touches on his general reading, and gives sketches, striking but one-sided, of the English historians. "I have lately dipped a little into English history. Lord Clarendon is amusing and instructive, but culpable in his language, his method, and his partiality. Burnet is vain and unclassical; his knowledge extensive, his understanding contemptible." Those were young opinions. In his maturer age he might have pronounced Clarendon deficient in method, but he must have acknowledged the dignity of his thoughts and the manliness of his principles. His History is the " monument" of English loyalty. The inelegance of Burnet's style is beyond dispute, but his "vanity" is a love of giving his authorities for truth; his unclassicality is a love of telling things as he heard them; and the fertileness of his understanding is to be discovered only in his having given us the best "history of his period" extant in literature. But of Hume he says, "He is the only author who, from his abilities and compass, deserves the title of an English historian. Lord Bolingbroke has a rapidity that gives him sometimes a real, and always a seeming, superiority over those against whom he contends; his language is strenuous, his censure presumptuous, his spirit prodigious, his affectation of language great, his affectation of despising still greater. Next to Moses, Plato seems to be his great detestation." But, captivated as Grattan was by the flow and fervour of this eminent apostate's style, he had sagacity enough to see his hollowness. Pity he should so desert the doctrine which he sets out to inculcate; and that he should fear to avow conclusions he seems so fairly to have deduced." It is curious that, with all his admiration for the style of Bolingbroke, he adopted one directly the reverse, and, with all his scorn for his principles, he made him his political master. In this year Grattan lost his mother. Her death overwhelmed him with sorrow. We quote some of his expressions, for the benefit of those who think that genius is something too lofty to stoop to the domestic affections. Grattan was certainly not of the present school of magnificent misanthropy, which makes elevation of mind consist in contempt for all labours but those of shaking states or trampling on public morals-an elevation not unlike that of men who ascend mountains, and at once leave human nature below, and place themselves in chillness, barrenness, and solitude. Possessing the most remarkable talents, and talents especially for public life, no man seems to have felt more fondly for his family. His language on the death of his father, who had used him with unfatherly harshness, is far from any unfilial retribution. His language on that of his mother, who, by an indolence, or an oversight equally cruel in its consequences, had died without a will, thus allowing a landed property, which she had intended for her son, to go out of the family, is ardently affectionate. Thus actually disinherited by the peevishness of one parent, and virtually disinherited by the carelessness of another, he appears never to have revenged his undoubted wrongs on the memory of either. Of his mother he writes in some memoranda, which seem to have been composed to give vent to the outpourings of his mind. "You were the only woman in the world who loved me; the love you bore me, the thousand kindnesses I have received from you, your tenderness, your anxiety, your liberality, your maternal concern for me, are a most affecting and wounding consideration. To remember these obligations with the gratitude they deserve, makes your death insupportable. Your good sense, your meekness in misfortune, your fortitude in suffering, the judicious love you distributed among your children, your generous negligence of yourself, place you among the first of women. A thousand amiable instances of your virtues, a thousand mutual obligations that interwove our affections, crowd on me, and afflict me. Your incomparable qualities tor, ment me now, though I was formerly proud to recollect them. Heaven forbid that you should only live in the memory of those who knew your vir tues, and that such merit should have no reward but the tears and admiration of those that survive you!" From the commencement of his life at the Temple, Grattan had evidently intended to adopt the career of politics. He was dazzled by Lord Chatham's celebrity, and thought all beneath Parliament contemptible. But he found either his original direction, or his principal excitement, in a speech made by a minister against the doc. trines which he so strenuously made his own. George Grenville was the minister who first proposed American taxation; nothing could be more natural than such a proposal. The American establishments were paid out of the English revenue-what could be more just than that America should pay for them, if she could ?-yet it was against this demand that she rebelled. Grattan says," When I went to London to the Temple, the first person I heard speak was George Grenville. He talked of American taxation, and of the indisputable law of the realm, which gave that right, and he extended this to Ireland. It made a great impression on me, and I felt very much at the time. I recollect taking great pains to answer him. I wrote a reply, which I thought was very good, and with much care; but it touched every point except the question-it stood clear of that. However, this had a great effect upon me, and was of much service. It impressed upon my mind a horror of this doctrine; and I believe it was owing to this speech of George Grenville's, that I became afterwards so very active in my opposition to the principles of British government in Ireland." Through his uncle Colonel Marlay, he was introduced to William Gerard Hamilton, Secretary to Lord Halifax, and Lord-Lieutenant in 1761. This was single-speech Hamilton, whom Walpole thus described, in his amusing and graphic style, in 1755. His "Young Mr Hamilton," says Walpole, who was present, "opened for the first time in behalf of the treaties, and was at once perfection. speech was set, and full of antitheses, but those antitheses were full of argument; and he broke through the regularity of his own composition, answered other people, and fell into his own track again with the greatest ease. His figure is advantageous, his voice strong and clear, his manner spirited, and the whole with the ease of an established speaker. You will ask what could be beyond this? Nothing, but what was beyond whatever was, and that was Pitt!" In December following, Mr Hamilton was rewarded with a seat at the Board of Trade; in 1761, he was appointed Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, and for many years held the office of Chancel. lor of the Exchequer of that kingdom. He died in 1796. In one of his letters to Mr Calcraft, 1764, he writes: "It is thought that the move as to Ireland is still in agitation; this is all the news of the day. I need not tell you I am not so situated as to have any other information, nor do I wish it. Last Grattan's mind in early life, exhibits the most wayward sensibility. He writes to his friend, in excuse for some interruption of their correspondence: "Forgive my tardiness, and pity the indisposition of my mind, instead of reproving my delay. The breast, the slave of a thousand discordant passions; now intoxicated with company, now saddening in solitude; sometimes disturbed with hope, sometimes depressed with despair, and equally ravaged with each; disgusted often, and often precipitately enamoured—all this makes me poor in my own esteem, and seem unkind in yours. I live in the Temple, and have taken convenient chambers, that promote study. If ever we meet, we shall talk of these times with more happiness than we have passed through them. He at last arrived in Ireland, where he had determined to fix himself, and to strike a bold stroke for that renown which he conceived was to be found only in political life. In 1770, he writes to his friend Day: "Ireland has been the scene of action the foregoing part of this winter. There has been no winter in which party has more fluctuated. At one time the independent men, as they call themselves, inclining to Government, and threatening to defeat the Speaker; at another time supporting the Speaker, and casting the balance against Government. Lord Townshend was rather despised than hated till this late measure. "I shall soon be in England: I am tired of Dublin, with all its hospitality, and all its claret. Upon our arrival, it seemed a town hung in mourning, swarming with poverty and idleness. We feel relaxation growing upon us as soon as we arrive, and we catch the epidemic sloth of the luxurious capital." With all his passion for Ireland, he was still strongly attached to England. In another letter he says," I am impatient to return to England: the splendid and the enrapturing scenes of London begin to wanton in my imagination. I have here reputable friends, and am myself not totally without credit; and yet, such is the perverseness of our nature, I am im◄ |