Bits of Blarney

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 Phœnix 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

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 waveWandered 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 detestationOf 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.