4
Chr Wr51 %dram' COnlif Itrintsti. SUBIACO, SATURDAY, MAY 6, 1876.
No. 24.-VoL. II.
6 ct n i n
PRICE 6D.
and hedge ? Shall I tell only what I suppose regard (and who that admires genius or we must perforce, reluctantly, bring it to a my readers would like to hear ? Must I reveres patriotism will fail to do that ?) conclusion. It was in 1805, the year of Pitt's think of them rather than of Grattan ? Ot should turn to the examination of the enthral - death and of Nelson's at Trafalgar, that course not. History loses all value if so dealt ling pages in which Mr. MacCarthy has Henry Grattan took his seat in the Imperial HENRY GRATTAN. with ; and it is history we are dealing with, sketched the great labours and achievements Parliament. There, as he had down in the not present or party politics. The times of of this in many respects noblest of Protestant Irish Parliament, he succeeded to a miracle. The Member for Mallow has here given to which we are to think have passed for nearly Irish statesmen. As a token of ho at frankly His first address was spoken of in the Annual the public a brilliant historical sketch of the a hundred years. Of all the busy brains and he is sketched by Mr. MacCarthy " all Register as une of the most brilliant speeches Life, Genius, and Character of one of the and hearts throbbing then within the four around," take the following estimate of what ever heard within the walls of Parliament. most gifted and renowned of Irishmen. His seas of Ireland, I suppose that not one throbs is here spoken of as the charm of his per- l'itt and Fox vied with each other in cheers Study is portioned out in five chapters, led now. Let us then look back on those times sonal character :-" Ile was not a saint : far and congratulations. Byron, Rogers, and off by a few pages of Introduction. The little with historic calmness. Let us forget our- from it. In some respects he was a sad Campbell, who were listening to it in the volume, which extends to no more than selves for an hour. Let us hush the clamor- sinner. Ile was always ready to fight any gallery, were enthusiastic in their admiration. eighty-one octavo pages, has been publisher' ous present. Let us try to make 'the dead man in deadly duel-to 'blaze,' as the phrase It was on the 6th of June 1820, teat he at the suggestion of some members of the past' live again. Let us seek truth, not am- went-at an hour's notice. Ile was equally breat lied his last in London. his remains being Grattan 'Monument Committee, in the hope, munition for party warfare. Thus shall ready and relentless in the duel of oratorical interred near those of Pitt and Fox in Westnot unreasonably entertained by them, that History give us its lesson, and thus, I trust, invective. These were the ways of the time. minster Abbey. Three or four great objects it will help to promote and popularize the shall we obtain distinct ideas of the chief Even Grattan knew no better ; and this of his life, as Mr. MacCarthy remarks signiknowledge of the public as to the great and events in the life, and the chief lineaments in very personal courage and ferocity, so oddly ficantly, are now the law of the land-Free important subject to which it refers. The the character of Henry Grattan." combined with his habitual gentleness, added Trade, Parliamentary Reform, and Catholic opening chapter covers a period of thirty to his popularity. But there was no fal-eness Emancipation. Meaning that the fourth is With this preamble he begins. Grattan's in the man-no dirt to alloy his greatness. not yet accomplished-the Repeal of the years (from 1746 to 1775-exactly a century doubt about, birth there is, happily, no ago), relating to the early life of the illusWhat he did lie did openly. Ile never Union. Our closing words shall be those of trious orator and patriot. Seven years of whether as to the exact date or the precise ' struck beneath the belt.' lie never smiled Lord Mahon, recently deceased as the Earl of extraordinary interest (beginning with 1775, locality. lie was born on the 3rd of July, in a man's face and slandered him behind Stanhope, who, in speaking of Grattan said, and ending with 1782) furnish materials for 1746, in his father's mansion of Belcamp, in his back. Ile never professed friendship and emphatically ;-" Ile loved. with all his the second chapter, in relation to Grattan's Dublin. He came of a race of good old civic proved a traitor when friendship came to be heart, the whole of Ireland, not merely .one famous struggle for i.ommercial Freedom people. Ills father's belongings were honest tested. As a friend, he was true, thoughtful, of its parties, or one of its creeds." and National Independence. Chapter Three traders, were staunch Protestants, were re- tender. As a companion, he exercised quite a set apart for the consideration of the solute foes of I'ope, Papists, and Popery. A a fascination. Men said that. Grattan never memorable fifteen years (from :782 to 1797), Catholic member of Pediment puts all this showed himself half so great in the hours of A VIVID CONTRAST. within which henry Grattan carried on his upon record. That the race was a cultured his roost splendid triumphs as in the hours glorious labours for the effecting of Parlia- race is evident from the fact that the family of his unreserved private intercourse. It is perilous for a man to give evidence mentary Reform, and for accomplishing (if were on the friendliest terms with the Sheri- Every one knew that Grattan had nothing to against a murderer-in Loudon, that centre it only had been practicable at that time !) dans, and that Dean Swift was on intimate cenceal. 'There were no skeletons in his of commerce and civilisation Chapter Four is relations with the household. Henry Brat- closet. His private life was stainlessly pure ; C aliolic Emancipation. devoted to the study of his arduous and tan's father was a barrister in good practice, and in an age when bishops drank their dozen Unfortunate Stokes, witness against the strenuous exertions in one historical year- and with an excellent reputation. lie was bottles, and great statesmen came down to Wainwrights, is too well annie of ilea fact genial in temperament (to all, apparently, isuu-against what the result proved, Westminster more than ' half -seas -over,' no at this moment. It will be recollected 1,y however, to be simply inevitable, the but his soe), and in his person was strikingly one ever saw Grattan other than sober. lie rho -e who know the tragic bile that, owing to accomplishment of the Union of Ireland with handsome. Strange to say, he was a bad was, in the best sense of the word a gentle - Ion unfaltering- energy. one of the most deGreat Britain. The final chapter, Chapter speaker, lie whose son was destined to rise to man." liberate; and horrible murders of England was terought to Five, recounts the last twenty years of II enry the loftiest oratorical heights. He was Respecting Brat an's oratory, Mr. MacCarthy di-coveruel. and the perpetrator (; rat tan's life, closing wi li a curiously simple Tory among the' Tories. At the time when trial and convicted. It was he detected the says deals hardly frank ly-" Even tradition record of his death, the whole book being his illustrious son was born to him lie was in some respects with Grattan. It tells us bloody secret of the mysterione parcel which vo.ind up with a masterly outline of his already enrolled as the Recorder of Dublin. that his voice was shrill, his action inieracc- Wainwright carried with him in a cab to extia aalinary oratorical powers, and of his On his mother's side, Henry Grattan came of fu I, his mariner outrageously odd. O'Connell it for ever. At mall loss of time lot ty and unsullied character. Henry Grattan an old Norman stock-i.e., of the Marlay, or and money he. an huml,lc man appeared, that Grattan almost swept the used to relate De Merlys. One of her ancestors, Sir John was, without doubt. the greatest of the Irish to vindicate juswith his gestures, and that the and ley Ins testimony Protestant slate.owit and it is to the honer Marley, was a Royalist officer under ('rem- ground notion of lily arms was like the roliiiis of a tice total condemn a barbarous and brutal of us all that full nu ed of justice should have well. lier father, Chief Justice 'Marley, ship ass., s n. in,a heavy sea. Curran used to inimic Leen teeeoed, el to bin] by one of the most was a friend of the Earl of Chesterfield when \\Tat has been his reward in that human the latter ous 1,, ol-Licutunant. Mary Brat- !inn, tioning almost to the ground, and and citi Used city, who, journal,- howl against et of the Irish Catholic retire seriHeaven that he had no pe,mliatities thanking tat v es Grattan nuts gnat in many tan herself (Henry's mother) was, in her time, of manner. liyron said his deli, cry was the sm., of all the world. stud ,C42 nothing on particulars. Ne slam, her Idly of the friends among the beauties of the Vice -regal Court, that of a harlequin. Nevertheless, earth but the virtues of Eng .tinel I )Vonnell, of order es er appeared in the public arena. prior to tier marriage with the Dublin and Byron, concur in representing Curran, What has Leen his tateacel? Ile has been No doughtier asserter of the political r,glits Recorder. As a child, henry Grattan was Grattan as one of the greatest orators that yiited with the heaviest puni.dinient it is anti privileges of his fellow -countrymen, of of a feeble and a sickly constitution. llis ever lived. for society to indict upon Ly its tidiest day-sehool studies were in Ship-street all creeds and of all classes, ever raised his When at his greatest, the effect of his voluntary ;Ka ion. ( ice in the Legislature. His gt nits, as Mr. and in Abby -street, At seventeen lie was is described as niagieal oratory simply Ile ha-. Leen iliatharged from his situation, MacCarthy wall says, shed [14 re-a lustre entered .ts a student at Trinity College. " Over all there reigned a lofty imaginative deprived ail the mean, of livelithat is imin,ti,halde----ott the annals of Ireliold. There he took high !tenors. There, besides, power which gave it a kind of poetic beauty and hood. and left with hi, family to starve to conspieweis among he began early to reveal his oratorical powers, lie was resple heroic elevation a sot t of ; while cc ery de.nli-or sal;ect to a pauper's dreary those who, tor one glorious interval, gave devoting himself strenuously to the study of thought, word, argument and illustration, lreland a recognized p;ace ;tming the nations Cicero and Demosthenes. His University were animated by an intellectual power and de.stiny. l'or he has been dieltarged owing to the fact that popular reeling runs hard e popular knowledge in course ended, lie took steps for his call to the of Christendom a moral enthusiasm which made a great speech his regale], however, is very vague, confused, Bar. For five years, almost continuously, lie of Grattan's a great political and historical against him. and no other employer will care to take him on and f ratmientary. His last biographer, whose resided in London. Ilk introdtations to event. No wonder that in after days many admirable study of his career and character society there were sufficiently brilliant. He a noble soul yearned as Gavan Duffy But physical sufferings is not enough-the is now in our hands, says frankly, at starting, was welcomed to the house of the Prime torture of mental pain has been emperadded. yearnedthat while he could readily enough Minister, Lord Shelburne. lie made the 'Hie unfortunate man has been bombarded within those last twenty years, personal acquaintance, among others, of the Os to hare lived as Grattan Med, in the glow of his with threatening letters of the grossest and manly years: spoken have any Earl of Chatham, of Edmund Burke, of at almost most atrocious character. His very life is thunder main those iron words that thrill like the length upon Grattan's labours and his Charles Fox, and of John Wilks. His prin- Tochsh menaced. Ile is emphatically informed that of spears achievements, when he came to examine more dole chum at this period was a then law limn have sworn to murder Intel- Leeause he closely than he had hitherto done the mate- student, afterwards a judge, Robert Day, a To the clashing of Grattan's arguments there gave evidence against an assees,in rials at his command in relation to the eleven Kerrytnan. Henry Grattan studied soon answered the clash of arms-the arms of The Loral, cl journalists have not professed particulars of I; rattan'a life, as affording a comparatively little law, but attended very the VellitihsTs. A hundred thousand men even so lunch as shocked at this clue to his character, he was startled to find frequently, indeed, the galleries both of the of every rank, from the lowest peasant to the themselves They have not interfered hideous that, in his mind's eye, he had no clear Lords anei Commons. As a pastime he trap- proudest peer, of every creed and political to protestontruat. against that wicked perversity of portrait of the man. Consulting others, he scribed and recited, copiously, passages from party, rose in loyal defence of their native popular feeling which make- such things posfound that they, too, were in precisely the Chatham, Burke, and Bolingbroke. In the land, which the exigences of foreign war had sible-they have not denounced the mursame predicament. They could talk glibly January of 1772 Grattan was called to the left unprotected, and in no less loyal resolve derous criminals who thus de, ote an innocent enough about Grattan, but of the man him- Bar. lie soon, however, gave up the rule of to assert its commercial freedom and its fate Lecatise he succeeded in self they proved to know next to nothing. barrister. Ile was not Mr. Briefiess. Losing legislative independence. The people nian to a fearful No, they take good care, by Looking elsewhere for the information he was his first case, he returned the fee and with- sympathised from sea to sea. The l'arlia- Finishing guilt. to offend the paying multitheir silence, not in search of, turning to literature, in the hope drew from practise. Failing at the liar, for meat rose as one man. The Ministry yielded. evidence of the extent of diseovering, here and there, a side light, three years he succeeded in nothing else. The English Parliament yielded. COminer- tude and thus give the lie could detect anything of that kind only at Ireland's cause at this juncture appeared chid freedom was granted. Legislative free - and influence of that sentiment against of a murderer which prevails in prosecutor the rarest intervals. An admirable paper simply hopeless. Among those who deemed dour was achieved. On the 16th of April, London, about Grattan was ready to hand in Mr. it so was Grattan. Meanwhile his father, 1782, Ireland's Independence was declared." What a chorus of yapping and Heavens Lecky's " Leathers of Public Opinion." Ex- who had always been an irascible and hard Then it was in his greatest speech that cellent though it is in itself, this is rather an father to him, dying, left the whole of his Grattan achieved, with a voice tremulous with howling would they not raise if any such occurred in Ireland What a essay, however, upon, than a portraiture of, property away from him, with the exception emotion, one of his loftiestflights f eloquence. case had Grattan. A solid and masterly argument of .42:3oo a year. His mother, whom he idol- It was in moving the Declaration of Irish In- gurgling gush of virtuous indignation would there is, again, in Mr. O'Neill Daunt's lecture. ized, had also passed away, as had his favorite dependence. " Rarely, if ever," says his flood their pages What a shriek for slashBut it makes no pretence whether of being a sister. Added to this, his health broke, and biographer " were orator or audience more ing measures. what a howl for coeicion would distinct, personal, or biographical delineation. the lady whom he was engaged to marry moved than when Grattan uttered his famous make horrible the air, bringing down an avalanche of bayonets upon the offending Baffled so far in his researches as to facts, expired prematurely. Worst of all, Grattan apostrophe" and dates, and incidents, Mr. MacCarthy was had become an infidel. He had lost a belief I am now to address a free people ages district. driven to the apparently Dryasdust toil of in himself and in everything. The philo- have passed away, and this is the first But Ireland gives no parallel to such ofrummaging. He ransacked for himself, and sophy, so-called, of Rousseau, Bayle, and moment in which you could be distinguished fences. got others to ransack for him tired ustiest Voltaire, then filling the air, poisoned his by that appellation. No ; when last popular feeling Was manishelves of a dozen libraries in Cork, and imagination. Grattan had sunk into an epiI have spoken on the subject of your fested in Ireland in reference to a murder it Dublin, and London. Ile devoured scores curean. This world he regarded as a man's liberty so often, that I have nothing to add, was displayed so vehemently against flue susupon scores of books that had been long out ne plus ultra. Happily, mercifully, at heart, and have only to admire by what Heaven - pected culprit that he had to be surrounded of print, and that had for years slipped out of at bottom, his nature was sound. As this directed steps you have proceeded until the by escorts of police on his way from gaol to recollection. Ile sought traces of Grattan in latest and best of his biographers says to him, whole faculty of the nation is braced up to court -house and back, and they scarcely all kinds of contemporary periodicals, big and "He shook off his ignoble nightmare." Re- the act of her own deliverance. saved him from popular wrath. little, in the dullest and driest old Parlia- covering his faith, his spirits regained their I found Ireland on her knees, I watched In Ireland the anger of the people was mentary Reports and of every description elasticity, his faculties reawakened, hope over her with a paternal solicitude 1 have within his reach at the moment, of old revived in him he determined, come what traced her progress from injuries to arms, turned against the man suspected of a base murder. memoirs, old magazines, and old newspapers. might, to do something for Ireland. Ile and from arms to liberty. Spirit of Swift That, eventually, as the result of all these sought the companionship of choicer friends. spirit of Moleyneux your genius has preIn England, in London, the wrath of the labors, he had his reward, the hook now In England he won the friendship of Samuel veiled' Ireland is now a nation ! in that people rages against an innocent man, beunder notice bears witness for him. Rogers, in Ireland that of Flood. From this new character I hail her and bowing to her cause he brought 'a barbarous murderer to justice "The subject," he says, " is a touchy one. turning -point of his history, the interest of august presence, I say, Esto perpetual How shall I deal with it ? Shall I try to Grattan's Life begins and intensifies. Our notice of this brilliant Historical And the Coercion Code governs Irelandplease everybody ? Shall I cut, and trim, Those who cars to know the truth in his Study has run, however, to such length, that not England.-Irishman. (B c n e r -i I
-............------I
5
!
11,
t
i
e
:-
!
t
I
;
1
!
!
:-
:
;
;
1
1
1
!