the respective merits of two pumps, with an intensity of earnestness and a measured gravity worthy of a great political contest.

It is a fine saying of Coleridge that in men of genius the matured judgment of the man is combined with the delicacy of feeling and the susceptibility of impressions of the child, and it needs but little acquaintance with biography to perceive that these last elements almost invariably enter into the composition of really great men. It is scarcely less true of the temple of genius than of the temple of Christianity, that he who would enter in must become as a little child.

It does not fall within the province of the present work to paint the rebellion of 1798. Public opinion had but little scope during a period of military law and of mob violence, and the historians of the two countries may well let the curtain fall over a scene that was equally disgraceful to both. The man who at that time occupied the first position in the public mind was, beyond all question, Curran. Seldom has Ireland produced a patriot of more brilliant and varied talents; and although there were grave defects in his private character, his public life was singularly unblemished, and few of his contemporaries inspired a larger measure of affection. Rising from the humblest position, he early attracted public attention as a poet of no mean promise-a wit of almost the highest order-and an orator who might compare with the greatest of his countrymen. If his speeches, like those of most lawyers, are somewhat lax and inaccurate in their style; if they are not remarkable either for depth of thought or for force of reasoning, they are characterised at least by a musical flow that delights even in an imperfect and uncorrected report, and by powers of pathos, imagination, and humour that scarcely met in an equal degree in any

of his contemporaries. He was not a great lawyer, but he was one of the greatest of advocates, admirably fitted to sway juries and a consummate master of cross-examination. A member of a profession where all promotion depended on the Government, and was then given from political motives, he was never guilty of abandoning a principle or swerving from a public duty. At the very beginning of his career he signalised himself by volunteering to defend an old priest who had been maltreated by a Protestant nobleman, and whose cause no other member of the Bar was willing to adopt. Lord Clare drove him from the Court of Chancery by continual evidences of dislike. Lord Carleton hinted to him that he might lose his silk gown for his defence of the United Irishman Neilson. During one of his speeches he is said to have been interrupted by the clash of the arms of an angry soldiery, and more than once he had to dread those political duels by which dulness so often revenged itself upon genius. In his famous speech for Hamilton Rowan he could adopt almost without alteration the exordium of Cicero's defence of Milo, but, unlike Cicero, the intimidating circumstances he described only served to stimulate his eloquence. And yet this man, before whose sarcasm and invective perjured witnesses so often trembled; this man, on whose burning eloquence crowded and sometimes hostile courts hung breathless with admiration till the shadows of evening had long closed in, was in private life the most affable, the most gentle, the most unassuming of friends. The briefless barrister, the young man making his first essays of ambition, the bashful, the needy, and the disappointed, found in him the easiest of companions, and acknowledged with delight that his social qualities were as fascinating as his eloquence.

Like his great contemporary Erskine, he never obtained in Parliament a position corresponding to that which he

held at the Bar; but his parliamentary career, if not very brilliant, was at least eminently consistent and disinterested. He made his maiden speech in favour of Flood's Reform Bill; he took part in almost every subsequent effort to purify the Parliament, to emancipate the Catholics, to reduce the pensions, to ameliorate the criminal code, and to prevent the introduction of military law, and he laboured with especial earnestness, though without success, to assimilate the law of treason in Ireland to that of England, by which two witnesses were necessary for a capital conviction. In all the great trials of '98 he was the counsel for the prisoners. His finest effort is his defence of Hamilton Rowan, which has been styled by the first of our oratorical critics the most eloquent speech ever delivered at the Bar, though it is said to owe a great deal of its pre-eminence to the fact that it was better reported than his other speeches. It was on that occasion that he delivered his well-known justification of the principle of universal emancipation,' which had been asserted by the United Irishmen, and denounced by the Crown officers as treasonable. I speak in the spirit of the British law, which makes liberty commensurate with and inseparable from the British soil; which proclaims even to the stranger and the sojourner, the moment he sets his foot on British earth, that the ground on which he treads is holy and consecrated by the genius of universal emancipation. No matter in what language his doom may have been pronounced; no matter what complexion, incompatible with freedom, an African or an Indian sun may have burnt upon him; no matter in what disastrous battle his liberty may have been cloven down; no matter with what solemnities he may have been devoted upon the altar of slavery; the first moment he touches the sacred

'Lord Brougham in his defence of Hunt.

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soil of Britain the altar and the god sink together in the dust; his soul walks abroad in its own majesty; his body swells beyond the measure of his chains that burst from around him, and he stands redeemed, regenerated, and disenthralled by the irresistible genius of universal emancipation.'

The rebellion of '98 was at last suppressed, and the ministers determined to avail themselves of the opportunity to annihilate the Irish Parliament. The notion of a Union had been more than once propounded in both countries. Cromwell had summoned Irish members to the Parliament in Westminster. Many eminent writers had advocated a Union, among others, Sir W. Petty, and Adam Smith; and about the time of the Union with Scotland both Irish Houses of Parliament, as we have already seen, had indicated their strong wish that a similar measure might be carried for Ireland. A Legislative Union accompanied by free trade, and thus abolishing the great mass of commercial restrictions under which Ireland then suffered, would have been undoubtedly accepted at that time by the Irish Protestants with enthusiasm, and would probably have been viewed at least with indifference by the Irish Catholics. The reply of the Lord Lieutenant, however, to the parliamentary address was exceedingly discouraging; and from this time the question seems to have slept till 1759, when a report was current that such a measure was contemplated; and it was now so unpopular that the Dublin mob seized a number of the members and made them swear that they would vote against it.

The unpopularity of all notion of a Legislative Union in Ireland for a long time steadily increased. The country had grown more powerful and more prosperous. The worst of the penal laws had been abolished or had become completely obsolete, and the relations between the Protestants and

Catholics were far more harmonious. Ireland had obtained under Lord North a measure of free trade which gave great scope to her native industries, and though free trade with England was not yet conceded, the strong commercial motive which had made the idea of a Union popular in the early years of the century was much weakened. At the same time, under the influence of Flood, Grattan, the volunteers, and the American Revolution, a strong spirit of nationality had arisen. The emancipation of the Irish Parliament by the Constitution of 1782 at once recognised and stimulated it, and from this time for many years it was acknowledged by the best judges in Ireland that even the suggestion on the part of the Government of an attempt to carry a Legislative Union would be most dangerous. Corrupt and easily influenced as the Irish Parliament was, it would have been totally impossible to induce it to vote such a measure.

On the other hand, the very circumstances that made the Union so unpopular in Ireland made it in the eyes of the English ministers especially desirable. It was the conviction of a succession of viceroys and of some of the most considerable English statesmen that the link of connection binding the two countries together under the Constitution of 1782 was so slender that it could not resist any serious strain of conflicting interests or sentiments. The geographical situation of Ireland; the strange system under which the Irish Executive fluctuated with the changes of English parties; and the complete absence of any power capable of superintending and unifying the common commercial interests of the Empire made the dangers of dissension and disruption very great. It is true that the Irish Parliament consisted as yet of men who were attached to the Empire by the strongest ties, both of feeling and interest, and who had shown themselves during the great