All Mr. Pitt could have been decided on was to postpone Emancipation till the Union was completed; for he resigned in 1801, because he was not permitted to satisfy the expectations he had held out to the Catholics.

1

The Cornwallis Correspondence' contains ample proof of the extraordinary expedients to which the Government resorted to carry the Union; and it is no secret that the most unscrupulous and high-handed proceedings were especially favoured by Lord Clare. As soon as the measure was carried, he was made a peer of the United Kingdom and eagerly took part in the debates of the House of Lords, where he rashly attempted to indulge his characteristic arrogance and irritability. On his very first appearance he was twice called to order, and persevering in the alleged irregularity, provoked what reads very like a rebuke from the woolsack. On another occasion, he was unceremoniously put down by the Duke of Bedford; and he had the ill-luck or indiscretion to quarrel with the Lord Chancellor of England, Lord Eldon, with whose anti-Catholic convictions he perfectly agreed. His demeanour on these occasions, indiscreet as it was, belied the character given of him by Grattan, who on its being observed that he was a dangerous man, added—

A very dangerous man-to run away from.' His hostility was not limited to those who were likely to run away from him.

Fortunately for his fame, his career on this new and uncongenial stage was brief. He died in January, 1802, at his house, Ely Place, Dublin; and the feelings with which he was regarded by the bulk of the Irish nation broke out with revolting violence at his funeral. The mob which followed the hearse, yelling and shrieking, with curses loud and deep, were with

Reviewed by me in the Quarterly Review,' No. 209, January 1859, Art. I.

difficulty restrained from heaping filth and mud upon the richly ornamented coffin; and dead cats were hurled at it in memory of a threat attributed to the deceased, that he would make the Irish people as tame as domestic cats.'

His unpopularity was the merited result of his besetting sins and bad qualities: his pride, his insolence, his ungovernable temper, his tyrannical disposition, his avowed contempt for his country and his countrymen. But a calm review of his conduct will bring to light actions, views, and sentiments which should go far towards mitigating the harshness of the national judgment. During the Irish Rebellion of 1798, far from seeking to entrap the misguided leaders of birth and education, such as Archibald Hamilton Rowan, the Sheares, Emmett, and Lord Edward Fitz Gerald-he caused ample warning to be given to them. Will nobody,' he wrote to a connection of Lord Edward's, 'reason with that rash young man? Will nobody induce him to leave the kingdom? I pledge myself every port shall be left open to him.' While Lord Edward lay in Newgate (Dublin), delirious from his wound, his aunt, Lady Louisa Connolly, applied in vain to the Lord Lieutenant (Lord Camden) and the Chief Secretary (Lord Castlereagh) for an order to see him. In her despair, she thought of the Lord Chancellor and drove to his house. He had a large dinnerparty, and dinner was hardly off the table. He went to her directly and heard her request. Lady Louisa,' he said, after a pause for reflection, 'to grant the order is impossible. We have decided in Council that none shall be given. But you are a woman, and a near relative. I know of no decision which prohibits my taking you with me. He went with her at once, and remained three hours in an outer apartment during her interview with her nephew.

In Moore's Life of Lord Edward Fitz Gerald,' the

most unfavourable impression is conveyed of the (socalled) harsh and cruel conduct of the Irish officials, including the Lord Chancellor, in refusing Lord Edward's family access to him till three hours before his death. On the appearance of the first edition, Catherine, Countess of Charleville, who had repeatedly heard the exact particulars related by Lady Louisa Connolly, her intimate friend, sent a note of them to Moore,1 who seems to have received it in the spirit of the Abbé Vertot when he exclaimed, Mon siège est fait!' In the third edition of the Life, now before us, there is not the slightest notice of the part taken in procuring the interview by Lord Clare, who still comes in for his full share of the reproaches levelled at the authorities.

6

When Lord Clare was told that he was dying, he sent for his wife: I have but one request to make of you it is that you will burn all my papers; should they remain after me, hundreds may be compromised.'

On accepting the British peerage, which required frequent absence from his Court, he adopted some judicious measures for preventing the delay of justice; and, enslaved as he was by the spirit of party, he had scruples (too easily silenced) about elevating a mere partisan, notoriously incompetent, to the judgment seat. When Toler (Lord Norbury) was first named, he exclaimed: Make him a Chief Justice! Oh, no; if he must mount the bench, make him a Bishop, or an Archbishop, or anything but a Chief Justice."

There is only one witticism recorded of Lord Clare, and we agree with Mr. Phillips that it is good enough to make us wish for more. When Yelverton, then Chief Baron, went over to England on the occasion of George III.'s illness, his companions were Curran, Egan,2 and a Mr. Barrett, reputed to be fond of play.

1 Told me by Lady Charleville, one of the most remarkable women I ever knew and the best friends I ever had.

2

" Egan was a very large man and very hirsute. Did you ever see

'He travels,' said Fitz Gibbon, like a mountebank, with his monkey, his bear, and his sleight-of-hand man.'

6 It feels like a relief (observes Mr. O'Flanagan) to turn from the turbulent and fretful career of Lord Clare to the calmer and more equable course presented by the life of his successor on the woolsack, Lord Redesdale, one of the most eminent, and, certainly, with the exception of Lord St. Leonards, the most distinguished Equity Judge who ever held the Great Seal of Ireland.' Unfortunately the charm of a biography is often in an inverse ratio to the quiet unobtrusive virtues of the man, and an equable course is necessarily less productive of incident than a turbulent Excellent lawyer as he was, Lord Redesdale is now principally remembered in Dublin by the jokes made at his expense.

one.

An amusing description of his first dinner with the Irish judges and King's counsel is given by Barrington, from which it would seem that his lordship had himself to thank for the running fire of pleasantries opened on him. He took it into his head to be light and facetious, which was not his forte. After two or three failures, he remarked that, when he was a lad, cockfighting was the fashion, and that both ladies and gentlemen went full dressed to the cock-pit, the ladies being in hoops. I see now, my lord,' said Toler, it was then the term cock-a-hoop was invented.' A little disconcerted, the Chancellor produced another reminiscence of his youth, namely, that when people learnt to skate, they carried blown bladders under their arms to buoy them up if the ice broke. Ah, my lord,' said the same tormentor, that is what we call bladderum skate in Ireland.'

such a chest as this ?' he exclaimed, striking his breast. A trunk, you mean, my dear Egan,' replied Curran. It was Egan, on whom Curran, when they were about to fight a duel, proposed to chalk out his own size, upon an understanding that any shot outside the chalk lines should go for nothing.

In the hope of effecting a diversion, he next turned to a King's counsel whom he just knew by name: 'Mr. Garrett O'Farrell, I believe you are from the county of Wicklow, where your family have long held considerable property and are very numerous. I think I was introduced to several during my late tour in that county. Yes, my lord,' replied O'Farrell, 'we were very numerous; but so many of us have lately been hanged for sheep-stealing, that the name is getting rather scarce.' The scene in which Plunket played him off about the kites has been frequently in print.

Although more puzzled than pleased with the habits and peculiar humour of his new associates, Lord Redesdale got on tolerably well with them on the whole : he made valuable additions to their stock of equity, and O'Connell declared before Parliament, Lord Redesdale was the best Chancellor I ever saw."

1

Lord Redesdale was summarily displaced by the Fox and Grenville Government in 1806, and Mr. George Ponsonby was appointed his successor. This was a strong measure, for Mr. Ponsonby's claims were almost exclusively political; and Mr. O'Flanagan's brief notice of him dwells more on his parliamentary than on his forensic or judicial exploits. His tenure of the Great Seal lasted less than a year; and, retiring on the usual pension, he became for a time leader of the Opposition in the House of Commons. His appearance in that capacity is commemorated by one of the cle

1 At the trial of Horne Tooke, the Attorney-General (Scott, Lord Eldon) replying to some attack of the defendant, said: 'I can endure anything but an attack on my good name: it is the little patrimony I have to leave to my children, and, with God's help, I will leave it unimpaired.' Here he burst into tears, and the Solicitor-General (Mitford) wept with his leader. 'Do you know,' exclaimed Tooke in a loud aside, what Mitford is crying for? He is crying to think of the little patrimony Scott's children are likely to get.' To explain this joke, Mr. O'Flanagan thinks it necessary to state that Scott had just invested 22,000l. in an estate.