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CHAPTER XV.

THOMAS ADDIS EMMET,

THE ORATOR OF DEEP FEELING.

IRELAND, in its natural features, national spirit, and moral history, is a land of strange contrasts. Ancient sovereignty and modern servitude, the noblest virtues and most ignoble vices, intellects of the greatest splendor and hearts of the warmest affection, alas! often blinded with excess of passion and chilled under tyrannic wrongs,-these are some of her national peculiarities and mental traits. Her poets are among the oldest and the best; her literati shine brightly amid the chieftest luminaries of art and science; her martial heroes have never been excelled; and of her statesmen it is enough to say, that for centuries they have been what they now are, the mightiest leaders of Parliament. While they had national councils of their own, they shone supremely in legislative wisdom and justice; when forced into alliance with England, they eclipsed the splendors they encountered. The brightest names in English literature and generalship, science and jurisprudence, are Irish.

But it is in eloquence, especially, that Ireland may

safely challenge the most refined nations of modern times. Like all things human, it has its faults, sometimes seen in a superabundance of imagery, and more often expressed in exaggerated sentiments; but its merits predominate, and are supassingly grand, in force, fervor, passion, imagination and argument. An unbroken series of consummate orators illuminate the dreary history of injured and abused Ireland, like so many pillars of fire. Prominent among these stands the name of Thomas Addis Emmet.

He was born in the city of Cork, in 1765. His parents were highly respectable inhabitants of that city. At an early age, the son was placed at the University of Dublin, and designed by his father for the profession of medicine. Having completed his classical course, he was removed to Edinburgh, where he pursued his medical studies. On the death of his elder brother, who was a member of the Irish bar, his parents wished him to change his professional studies; to which desire he assented. He went to London, read two years in the Temple, and attended the courts at Westminster. Having prosecuted his preparatory studies with great care, he returned to Dublin, and commenced practice. His talents, natural and acquired, were seen to be of a high order, and he soon obtained distinction and business.

It was at this period that a spirit of rebellion against regal oppression shook Ireland to the centre. Emmet was too ardent in character, and too enthusiastically attached to his country to remain indifferent. He deeply imbibed the indignant resentment which every where prevailed against British connection and control.

When, in 1795, the societies of united Irishmen were revived, Emmet not only joined them, but soon became a prominent leader. Their avowed object was revolution, and independence for Ireland. He boldly acted as one of the grand executive committee of the societies, when they were computed as consisting of at least five hundred thousand men. On March 12, 1798, he was arrested and committed to prison at Dublin, as a conspirator. In July, after a severe confinement, an interview took place between Emmet and Lord Castlereagh, at Dublin Castle, and it was agreed that he and the other State prisoners should be permitted to go to the United States, as soon as they had made certain disclosures of their plans of revolution, in respect to the alliance which it was supposed had been projected between the united Irishmen and France. A memoir of disclosures was delivered, August 4th, but all names involved were inflexibly withheld. Further examinations took place, and Mr. Emmet was, as he supposed, discharged. Instead, however, of being sent to the United States, he and nineteen more were, early in 1799, landed in Scotland, and incarcerated in a fortress of Nairn, called Fort George. This new imprisonment lasted three years. At the expiration of that term of injustice, pardons arrived for all except Mr. Emmet. The governor of the fortress, however, took the responsibility to release him, when, with his admirable wife, who had shared unremittingly his reverses and imprisonment, both in Ireland and Scotland, they were landed at Cuxhaven, spent the winter of 1802 in Brussels, and that of 1803 in Paris. In October, 1804, they sailed

from Bordeaux for this country, and arrived in New York on the eleventh of the next month. Emmet was then forty years old. He was well qualified for both the professions of medicine and law, and hesitated which to adopt in the new world; but his friends induced him to resume practice at the bar. His original intention was to remove at once to Ohio, but the then governor of the "Empire State," George Clinton, prevailed on him to settle in New York. By special dispensation, he was admitted to the bar without delay, and by indefatigable industry rendered doubly efficient by fervent eloquence, he rose rapidly to the first rank of his profession. It is said that in the course of a very few years, he was not surpassed in business and fame by the most eminent lawyers in America.

Having thus briefly glanced at Mr. Emmet's career, up to the time of his landing on our shores, we will examine more minutely into his qualifications, his personal appearance, his progress in public favor, and the peculiarities of his eloquence.

We have seen that Mr. Emmet was early and thoroughly disciplined in classical erudition and professional training at the best institutions of the three kingdoms. In every field he explored, he was distinguished for patient toil, critical observation, and rapid conquests. The variety of his studies, connected with opposite professions, probably had a happy effect in liberalizing his mind with diversified and comprehensive views. has been already noted, it was the unhappy loss of his distinguished and eloquent brother that induced Mr. Emmet to abandon the practice of medicine and aspire

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after forensic glory. He entered upon this career at a later period in life than is usual with aspirants after excellence in the rugged and thorny path of the law. But his maturity was no impediment to ultimate sucHis mind had become so well accustomed to the generalizations of science, that in about two years he reduced the chaotic mass of English law to an organized creation. Early in life he had formed the habit of recurring to first principles, and this often led him to those sources of legal knowledge of which Coke, Hale, and Mansfield had drunk. His intellect was naturally inquisitive and eager of acquisition; and his natural tastes, as well as cultivated habits, prompted him at the outset to lay a broad and firm foundation of general jurisprudence, such as is seldom formed by the effeminate and timid hands of ordinary students. Instead of being an injury to him, it was undoubtedly an advantage of the highest order to have been variously trained before he came to make his first efforts at combination among the distracting and endless distinctions of law. Such would be our inference from the discipline and professional success of the first orators of every age. Demosthenes, Cicero, Lord Erskine, and Patrick Henry, were each about twenty-six years old when they commenced their forensic labors. Sir James Mackintosh and Mr. Emmet were still later in their studies, and were both for some time educated for another profession. But whatever may be our inferences, there can be no dispute touching the fact as to Mr. Emmet's great and invaluable qualifications for the office he finally assumed and zealously prosecuted until death. He stored

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