At page 224, O'Connell defends repetition in the speeches of public orators; and truly, in a constant speaker, such as he was, it became unavoidable. Like the unceasing drop of falling water, it penetrates the hardest substance: insulting band; and that amongst his coadjutors were, Earl Temple, the Earl of Chatham, Lord George Sackville, Edmund, Richard, and William Burke." Here I stop in the enumeration, as the observations I am about to submit refer exclusively to this family. Richard Burke is again brought forward, and prominently, in a subsequent part of the same review, and stated to have been not only one of the associates, but, in Lord Nugent's conviction, the direct author of Junius. Now, I suppose I may take it for granted, that both Lord Nugent, and Sir Fortunatus, on a question so immediately implicating the Burkes, must have read Edmund's Correspondence, published in 1844, by Earl Fitz-William and Sir Richard Burke, in four octavo volumes. Assuming that to be the fact, for who, with the least feeling of interest in that distinguished person, could have failed to have read the publication? I would ask the noble lord, and learned knight, with all due respect, whether they have forgotten, or can discredit, his emphatic protestation, in his letter, (vol. i., p. 274,) of 20th November 1771, to Charles Townsend, thus expressed?"I have, I dare say, to nine-tenths of my acquaintance, denied my being the author of Junius, or having any knowledge of the author.... Perhaps I may have omitted to do so to you in any formal manner, as not supposing you to have any suspicion of me. I now give you my word and honor, that I am not the author of Junius, and that I know not the author." No assertion could possibly be more explicit, or less open to equivocal construction. Expressed in the most forcible terms, and addressed to one of the most eminent men of the time, it seems to me to exclude. all doubt. Burke's voluntary denial had perfectly satisfied Dr. Johnson, as we learn in Boswell, vol. iv., page 216, (8vo. edition.) And his additional assurance that he knew not the author, quite as convincingly demonstrates that his brother had no share in the composition. If he had, Edmund, from their even more than brotherly affection, could not have been ignorant of it; and their cousin William, whom they loved as a brother, could not have participated in the publication, we may, with equal confidence assert, without their knowledge. It was impossible to have been more intimately united, or more mutually communicative than were the three. In the face of Burke's clear and solemn denial, surely some better evidence should be adduced, than the use of similar expressions, before any one of the Burkes should be suspected of having had any share in the authorship of Junius. I shall be pardoned, I trust, for interfering in the vexed question, when I state, what to me is a source of legitimate pride, that on both my father's, and my mother's side, my family was connected with the Burkes. 64 Gutta cavat lapidem, non vi, sed sæpe cædendo." By no one was its impressive influence better known, or more effectually availed of, than by Cobbett. O'Connell derived the arguments opposed to the Methodists, in his contests with that body, alluded to in page 294, of the first, and page 176, of the second volume of Mr. Daunt's work, from the article "On the Bible and Reformation," in the preceding volume of these Essays, as it had appeared in the Dublin Review, No. VI.; for so he acknowledged to me. An anecdote is reported in the third chapter of Mr. Daunt's second volume, relative to the purchase of a lottery ticket, which certainly cannot be the faithful transcript of O'Connell's words; for he was too well acquainted with the parties and circumstances to relate it so imperfectly as it is there presented. I shall state the facts from personal knowledge of the occurrence. The late Mr. Luke O'Shea of Cork, directed his brothers Messrs. John and George Shea,-(they did not resume the characteristic O)—to have a lottery ticket bought for him by their correspondent, Mr. Robert Barnewell of London, which was done on receipt of the letter, while before the answer could proceed, a prize of £20,000,-not £10,000, as in Mr. Daunt's statement-was announced to the purchaser, when, certainly, as no advice had gone forward, he might have substituted another ticket for the prize; but he hesitated not a moment, and forwarded by return of the post, a communication of the fortunate event. In the late Rev. Sydney Smith's "Elementary Sketches of Moral Philosophy," Lecture XV., a similar instance of honorable conduct is related, with circumstances so consonant in general tenor, that, notwithstanding some variation, it may well refer to the same act; but he gives no names. Mr. Luke O'Shea was, in consequence, usually known as Luck O'Shea. He immediately posted for London, and while there, got his portrait, as a cavalry volunteer, drawn by Mr. Martin Archer Shee, now a knight,* and President of the Royal Academy, but then, above half a century past, only commencing his professional career. The painting was a noble one, particularly the horse, and of large dimensions; for it covered no small portion of Messrs. Shea's entrance hall, at their residence in Knapp's miscalled square, now demolished. Mr. Luke O'Shea, whose paternal provision had been inconsiderable,† thus become the chosen of fortune, married Miss Conron, and his two sons, Hatton and Luke, inhabit, I believe, Dublin, or its neighbourhood. The London firm of Robert Barnewell and Sons, is highly respectable, both commercially and socially. On the senior partner's establishment in London, he opened an account in 1767, at Messrs. Fullers' bank, contemporaneously with three more Irish gentlemen, likewise Catholics-Messrs. Kirwan, Gorman, and French; but these three houses successively sunk under the adverse vicissitudes of trade; while the Messrs. Barnewell have upheld to the present day an eminence of character and position correspondent with the noble act of their founder. They are, too, a branch and a direct one, of the ancient baronets of Greenanstown, created in 1622, Since deceased. + His father left him, in the words of his will, "the run of the kitchen, with a life annuity of £150." who, though inferior in title, are senior in family generation to the Barons of Trimlestown, one of the few now residuous, of the Plantagenet peerages. Thus similarly, the-Catholic Stanleys of Cheshire precede in the family genealogical tree the Earls of Derby; and several other instances might be cited of juniors superseding their elders in rank, as exemified in these two cases, and equally so, both in the lately regnant branch of the Bourbons in France, and in the present royal house of Saxony, which is junior to the ducal branch of which our Prince Consort is a member. What is stated in the same chapter as having occurred to O'Connell, "when a younker," at Cotter and Kelletts' bank, must be incorrectly reported from his recital, for, when he was a youth, Sir James Cotter was not, I am confident, a partner; and, at all events, when, for an annual stipend of £500, the baronet's name was associated to the firm, he never interfered in its management, or appeared in the business proceedings of the bank. He succeeded Sir Rigges Faulkiner, not as an active, but as a sleeping, partner; and the gentleman who set matters to rights between O'Connell and the cashier, was the elder Richard Kellett, father of the baronet, and not Sir James Laurence Cotter. The noted Denis O'Brien, so termed in page 54, was usually called, Honest Denis, "per antiphrasin,” and at page 60, the Mr. W. A. O'Meara, through whom the King of Bavaria obtained O'Connell's autograph, was the Rev. William Aloysius O'Meara, a Franciscan friar, formerly a member of the Broad-lane fraternity of Cork, and then successively the travel ling governor of several young gentlemen, such as my nephew, Stephen O'Meagher, of Kilmoyler, Lord Riverston's son, our county representative, Mr. Burke Roche, and others. Previously to his recent death, he had been chaplain to an English Convent under the Benedictine rule. Many years since O'Connell related to me his meeting with the two brothers, Sheares, on his return home from St. Omer, and Douai, in January, 1793, and his horror at the language of these unhappy men, in reference to the execution which they had exultingly witnessed of the ill-fated Louis XVI. Just then emerged from the doctrine and discipline of a college deeply abhorrent of the proceedings of the period, of which the establishments were the victims, he participated in the impression and sentiments, and indeed ever continued unaltered in these early views, and cordial preference of constitutional monarchy to any other form of government. Mr. John O'Connell, in the biography of his illustrious father, by some oversight or lapse of the pen or memory, post-dates the royal execution by eleven months, placing it in December, instead of January (the 21st) 1793. The day will ever be present to my deeply impressed recollection. Before the outbreak of the insurrection in 1798, during the Assizes of Limerick, Lord Clare desired to have an interview with the two Sheares, to which my father in the hope of a pacific result, invited them at his house; but it ended unfortunately in more intense and exasperated irritation, as was discernible in the young men's flushed features and defiant bearing, as they parted. Yet the Chancellor's object was |