Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 354, April 1845

"You are at my mercy," said I. "I might justly put you to death at the instant, as a rebel, in the fact; or I might deliver you up to the law, when your fate would be inevitable. I can make no compromise. But, if you would make such atonement to your own conscience as may be found in undoing a part of the desperate wrong which you have done, go out to those robbers and murderers who are now thirsting for our blood, and put a stop to their atrocities if you can; save the lives of those in the house; or, if you cannot, die in the only attempt which can retrieve your memory."

He looked at me with a lacklustre eye for a moment, and uttered a few wild words, as if his mind was wandering. I sternly repeated my demand, and at length he agreed to try his influence with the multitude. I threw open the door, and sent him out, adding the words – "I shall have my eye upon you. If I find you swerve, I shall fire at you, in preference to any other man in the mob. We shall die together." He went forth, and I heard his recognition by the rebels, in their loud shouts, and their heavier fire against our feeble defences. But, after a few moments, the shouting and the fire ceased together. There was a pause; from its strangeness after the tumult of the last hour, scarcely less startling than the uproar. They appeared to be deliberating on his proposition. But while we remained in this suspense, another change came; loud altercations were heard; and the pause was interrupted by a renewed rush to the assault. We now looked upon all as hopeless, and expected only to perish in the flames, which were rolling in broad sheets over the roof of the mansion. There was no symptom of faint-heartedness among us; but our ammunition was almost exhausted, and every countenance was pale with despair; another half hour, and our fate must be decided. In this extremity, with every sense wound up to its utmost pitch, I thought that I heard the distant trampling of cavalry. It came nearer still. There was evident confusion among the rebels. At length a trumpet sounded the charge, and a squadron of horse rushed into the lawn, sabring and firing among the multitude. The struggle was fierce, but brief; and before we could unbar the doors, and burst out to take a part in the mêlée, all was done; the rebels had fled, the grounds were cleared, and the dragoons were gathering their prisoners.

All was now congratulation; and I received thanks from gallant lips, and from bright eyes, which might have flattered one fonder of flattery. All imputed their safety to the address with which I had employed the feelings of the rebel leader. But for the pause produced by his presence, all must have perished. It had given time for the cavalry to come up; they having been bewildered in crossing the country, and floundering through the wretched by-roads which then formed the disgrace of Ireland. Life is a chapter of accidents; and even their arrival had been a matter of accident. An aide-de-camp of the viceroy had been sent in search of me with despatches: the officer in command at the next town had persuaded him, much against his will, to take as his escort one of the night patroles of horse; and thus were saved a hundred and fifty lives of the first personages of the province. By morning the mansion, and all within it, would probably have been embers.

The aide-de-camp's despatches were sufficiently alarming. The lord-lieutenant had received from England details of the intended insurrection. The privy council had been summoned, and the usual commands issued to keep the troops throughout the country on the alert; but the information was still so imperfect, the skill of the conspirators was so adroitly exerted in keeping their secret, and the outcry of the powerful parliamentary Opposition was so indignant and contemptuous at the remotest hint of popular disaffection, that the Government was virtually paralysed.

But the question was now decided; the scene which I had just witnessed unhappily left no room for doubt, and I determined to set off for the metropolis without delay. I had no sooner expressed my intention, than I was assailed on all hands with advice, and even with entreaties, to postpone my journey until the flight of the rebels was fully ascertained, or at least till daylight gave me a better chance of personal safety. But every moment now seemed to me more precious than the last; and, breaking through a circle of the noble and the fair, I threw myself on my horse, and with the aide-de-camp and a couple of dragoons for my escort, soon left the whole scene of entreaty and terror, sorrow and triumph, behind.

We rode hard through the night, observing frequent signs of the extended insurrection, in fires on the mountains, and the gatherings of peasantry on the roads – sometimes compelled to turn out of our way, by the evidence of their being armed and in military organization; and at others dashing through the groups, and taking them by surprise. A few shots fired at random, or the rage and roar of the crowd as we scattered them right and left in our gallop, were all that belonged to personal adventure; and when the dawn showed us from one of the hills round the capital the quiet city glittering in the first sunshine, all looked so lovely and so tranquil, that it required the desperate recollections of the night to believe in the existence of a vast and powerful combination, prepared to cover the land with burning and blood.

Within a few hours after my arrival, the privy council assembled; my intelligence was received as it deserved; it decided the wavering, and gave increased determination to the bold. Still, our sitting was long and anxious. The peril was now undeniable, but the extent, the object, and the remedy, were alike obscure. It is not, of course, within my purpose to reveal the secrets of councils, in which all is transacted under the deepest bond of confidence; but it may be fairly told, that our deliberations often completely reversed the proverb, that "In the multitude of councillors there is safety," if by safety is meant either promptitude or penetration.

But there was one man among them, who would have distinguished himself in any council upon earth. He was a lawyer, and holding the highest office of his profession. But his ambition was still higher than his office, and his ability was equal to his ambition. Bold by nature, and rendered bolder by the constant success of his career, he would have been a matchless minister in a despotic government. Living under the old régime of France, the laurels of a Richelieu or a Mazarin might have found a formidable competitor in this man of daring and decision. He wanted but their scale of action, to have exhibited all their virtues, and perhaps all their vices.

At the bar, his career had been one of unexampled rapidity. He had scarcely appeared, when he burst through the crowd, and took the stand to which all the dignities of the profession seem the natural inheritance. He had scarcely set his foot on the floor, before he overtopped the bench. But the courts of justice were too narrow for him. It was in Parliament that he found the true atmosphere for his loftiness of flight, and keenness of vision. At that time the study of public speaking had become a fashion, and the genius of the country, singularly excitable, always ardent, and always making its noblest efforts under the spell of public display, exhibited the most brilliant proofs of its title to popularity. But in the very blaze of those triumphs, the Attorney-general showed that there were other weapons of public warfare, not less original and not less triumphant. No orator, and even no rhetorician, he seemed to despise alike the lustre of imagination and the graces of language. But he substituted a force, that often obtained the victory over both. Abrupt, bold, and scornful, his words struck home. He had all the power of plain things. He brought down no lightning from the heaven of invention, he summoned no flame from below; but the torch in his hand burned with withering power, and he wielded it without fear of man. By constitution haughty, his pride actually gave him power in debate. Men, and those able men too, often shrank from the conflict with one whose very look seemed to warn them of their temerity. But to this natural faculty of overthrow he added remarkable knowledge of public life, high legal repute, and the incomparable advantage of his early training in a profession which opens out the recesses of the soul, habitually forces imposture into light, and cross-examines the villain into reluctant veracity. There never was in Parliament a more remorseless or more effectual hand, in stripping off the tinsel of political pretension. His logic was contemptuous, and his contempt was logical. His blows were all straightforward. He wasted no time in the flourish of the sword; he struck with the point. Even to the most powerful of his opponents this assault was formidable. But with the inferior ranks of Opposition, he threw aside the sword and assumed the axe. Obviously regarding them as criminals against common sense and national polity, he treated them as the executioner might treat culprits already bound to the wheel, measuring the place for his blows with the professional eye, and crushing limb after limb at his leisure. The imperfect reports of debating in his day, have deprived parliamentary recollection of the most memorable of those great displays. But their evidence is given in the fact, that with the most numerous, powerful, and able Opposition of Ireland in his front, and the feeblest Ministerial strength behind him, the Attorney-general governed the parliament until the hour when its gates were closed for ever – when its substance was dissipated into thin air, and all but its memories sank into the returnless grave.

In the House of Lords, as chancellor, he instantly became the virtual viceroy. It is true, that a succession of opulent and accomplished noblemen, every two or three years, were transmitted from Whitehall to the Castle, to pillow themselves upon a splendid sinecure, rehearse an annual King's speech, exhibit the acknowledged elegance of noble English life, and, having given the destined number of balls and suppers, await the warrant of a secretary's letter to terminate their political existence. But the chancellor was made of "sterner stuff." His material was not soluble by a blast of ministerial breath. Not even the giant grasp of Pitt would have dared to pluck the sceptre from his hand. If struck, he might have answered the blow as the flint answers, by fire. But the premier had higher reasons for leaving him in the possession of power; he was pure. In all the uproar of public calumny, no voice was ever heard impeaching his integrity; with the ten thousand arrows of party flying round him from every quarter, none ever found a chink in his ministerial mail. He loved power, as all men do who are worthy of it. He disdained wealth, as all men do who are fitted to use it. He scorned the popularity of the day, as all men do who know the essential baseness of its purchase; and aspiring after a name in the annals of his country, like all men to whom it is due – like them, he proudly left the debt to be discharged by posterity.

The chancellor was not without his faults. His scorn was too palpable. He despised too many, and the many too much. His haughtiness converted the perishable and purchasable malice of party, into the "study of revenge, immortal hate." When he struck down an opponent in the fair strife of Parliament, his scorn was like poison in the wound, and the blow was never forgotten but in the grave. But as a statesman, his chief and unconquerable misfortune was the narrowness of his scene of action. He was but the ruler of a province, while his faculties were fitted for the administration of an empire. His errors were the offspring of his position. He was the strong man within four walls; by the very length of his stride striking against them at every step, and bruised by the very energy of his impulse against his hopeless boundaries.

At length a time of desperate trial arose. The Rebellion of 1798 burst out. He had foreseen it. But the men of the Castle, lolling on their couches, would not believe in its possibility. The men of the populace, stirring up the rabble with the point of the dagger, derided him as a libeller of the people; and even the Government of England – too anxiously engaged in watching the movements of the French legions from the heights of Dover, to have time for a glance at disturbers behind the Irish Channel – for a time left him to his fate. But he was equal to the emergency. He had been scoffingly called "the Cassandra of the aristocracy;" but he had neither the fortunes nor the failures of a Cassandra; he had not forfeited his virtues for his gift, and his prophecy was too soon and too terribly realized to be disbelieved. Of such times it is painful to speak, but of the men by whom such times are met, it is dishonourable not to speak with homage. Almost abandoned by authority, assailed almost by a nation, with the ground shaking under his feet, and the whole frame of Government quivering at every roar of the multitude in arms, he stood the shock, and finally restored the country. Language like this has not been the first tribute to the memory of this ardent, vigorous, and unshrinking statesman. But its chief use, and the noblest use of all tributes to the tomb of civil heroism, is, to tell others by what strength of principle, and by what perseverance of purpose, the rescue of nations is alone to be achieved. In the midst of alarm excited by the extent of the revolt, of ignorance from the novelty of the crisis, and of indecision from the dread of responsibility, he stood firm. The original intrepidity of his nature was even strengthened by the perils of the time; and with the whole storm of unpopularity roaring round him, he sternly pursued his course, and combated the surge, until it sank, and the state vessel neared, if it did not yet enter, the harbour.

It is the natural fate of such men, in such times, to be misunderstood, and to be maligned. The libel which cast every stone within its reach at his living name, long continued to heap them on his grave. But all this has passed away, and the manlier portion of his countrymen now appeal to the administration of the "Great Chancellor," in proof of the national capacity for the highest trusts of empire.

Why has not the history of this man, and of his day, been written? Why has not some generous spirit, impelled alike by a sense of justice and a sense of patriotism, adopted this argument for the intellectual opulence and moral energy which may still exist in the Irish mind? Is there no descendant to claim the performance of a duty, which would reflect a lustre on himself from the light which his filial piety planted on the sepulchre? Or why are the recollections of rebels to be taken down from the gibbet, and embalmed in history, while the name of him who smote the rebellion is suffered to moulder away?

I am not writing a panegyric. He had his infirmities; his temper was too excitable, and his measures were too prompt for prudence. But his heart was sound, and his spirit was made for the guidance of a state in the hour of its danger. If a feebler mind had then presided in the public councils, Ireland, within a twelvemonth, would have been a republic; and in every hour since, would have been agonizing under the daggers of rival factions, or paying the fearful price of her frenzy in indissoluble chains.

If this were the single act of his life, it was sufficient for fame. It is enough to inscribe on the mausoleum of any man, that "he rescued his country from a Democracy!"

The first news of the revolt which reached England, produced a formidable effect on the legislature. Even the sagacity of the premier had been deceived, and his cabinet evidently staggered on the effect of the surprise. Opposition had been equally startled, and were still more perplexed in their decision. Dealing for years in all the high-sounding topics of national wrong and national difficulty, they were astonished at the first actual realization of popular revenge. The Englishman had heard of wars as the child hears of spectres – none had seen them, and the narratives served only to excite the imagination. But the tremendous novelty of revolt was now at their doors. Whether the Irish revolters acted in concert with the undying hostility of France, or with the factions reform of England; the danger in either case assumed a shape of the most appalling magnitude. Opposition, in the very prospect of power, shrank from possession; as the stormers of a fortress might start back when they saw the walls rolling down before them in some sudden convulsion of nature. They had predicted every casualty which could befall a country, ruled by a cabinet inexorably closed against themselves. But when their predictions had changed their character from the fantastic and remote into the substantial and immediate – when the clouds which they so often predicted to be advancing over the prosperity of the land, seemed to have suddenly rushed forward, and condensed and darkened with the full freight of national havoc; they as suddenly flew to shelter in utter inaction, and left the minister to meet the storm. Pitt was soon equal to the crisis. The orders which he dispatched to Ireland were stamped with all the considerate vigour of his matchless ability. I had sent him all the information which could be obtained of the progress and purposes of the revolt, with the suggestions arising from the contingency. His remarks on my communication were brief, but incomparably clear, direct, and decided. Their tenor was, that I should distinguish accurately between the deluded and the deluders – that I should assure the loyal of the unhesitating support of England – and that, in all instances, I should cultivate the national loyalty, reward the generous obedience, and sympathize with all the gallant and generous qualities of a people with whom every thing was to be done, by taking an interest in their feelings. These principles were so entirely my own, that I acted upon them with double zeal, and with complete success. The loyalty of Ireland rapidly exhibited itself in the most willing sacrifices; all ranks of opinion coincided in the necessity of bold and instant action; and from day to day, party, absorbed in the sense of the national exigency, disappeared, and patriotism rose. The leading men of both sides of the House ranged themselves in the ranks of the voluntary corps which came forward to assist in the public defence, and the fine metaphor which had once made the senate thunder with applause – "The serpent's teeth, sown in the ground, sprang up armed men," – was now amply, but more fortunately, realized. The bitternesses and schisms of public opinion were hidden in the earth, and the harvest was a brave and spontaneous armament of men prepared to undergo all hazards for the sake of their country.

"Happy," says the French wit, "the land which has nothing for history." This happiness has never belonged to Ireland. Her annals are a romance. But the period of which I speak exhibited her senatorial strength with an energy, almost compensating for her popular misfortunes. While Parliament in England languished, parliament in Ireland started into sudden power. It was aroused by the visible presence of the public peril. Ireland was the outpost, while England was the camp; there the skirmish was at its height, while the great English brigade moved up slowly from the rear. The ardour and activity of the national temperament were exercised in perpetual conflict, and every conflict produced some new champion.

The actual construction of the senate house stimulated the national propensity for display. The House of Commons was an immense circular hall, surmounted with a lofty dome. A gallery supported by columns was formed round the base of the dome, with seats for seven hundred persons, but on crowded occasions capable of containing more; the whole highly ornamented, and constituting a rotunda, uniting grandeur with remarkable architectural elegance. Thus every member acted in the sight of a large audience, however thin might be the assemblage below; for the curiosity attached to the debates was so powerful, that the spacious gallery was generally full. But the nature of that audience excited the still stronger temptation to the bold extravagances of the Irish temperament. The chief portion of this auditory were females, and those the most distinguished of Ireland; women of wit, beauty, and title, the leaders of fashion, and often the most vivid and zealous partizans in politics – of all audiences, the most hazardous to the soberness of public deliberation. As if with the express purpose of including every element adverse to the calmness of council, the students of the neighbouring university possessed the privilege of entrée to the gallery; and there, with the heated imaginations of youth, and every feeling trained by the theories of Greek and Roman Republicanism, they sat, night after night, watching the ministerial movements of a harassed monarchy.

What must be the condition of a minister, rising before such an audience, to pronounce the grave doctrines of public prudence; to oppose argument to brilliant declamation; to proclaim regulated obedience, in the midst of spirits fantastic as the winds; and to lay restraints, essential to the public peace, on a population proud of their past defiances, and ready to welcome even civil war? I was not conscious of any natural timidity; nor have I ever found occasion to distrust my nerve on any great demand; but I must acknowledge, that when in some of the leading debates of that most absorbing and most perilous period, I rose to take the initiative, the sight of the vast audience to whom I raised my eyes, was one of the severest trials of my philosophy. The members round me excited no alarm; with them I was prepared to grapple; it was a contest of argument; I had facts for their facts, answers for their captiousness, and a fearless tongue for their declamation. But the gallery thus filled was beyond my reach; its passions and prejudices were inaccessible by any logic of mine; and I stood before them, less as in the presence of a casual auditory than of a tribunal, and at that tribunal, less as an advocate than as a culprit on the point of being arraigned.

Another peculiar evil resulted from the admission of this crowd, and of its composition. Every casual collision of debate became personal. The most trivial play of pleasantry was embittered into an insult; the simplest sting of passing controversy was often to be healed only by a rencounter in the field. For the whole was acted on a public stage, with the élite of the nation looking down on the performance. The hundreds of bright eyes glancing down from the gallery, were critics whose contempt was not to be resisted; and no public assembly, since the days of the Polish pospolite, ever settled so many points of debate in the shape of points of honour.

At length Opposition rallied, and resolved to make a general assault upon the Administration. Like their English friends, they had been stunned for a while by the suddenness of the outbreak. But as the Turkish populace, in a conflagration or the plague, no sooner recover from their first fright than they discover the cause in the government, and march to demand the head of the vizier; the popular orators had no sooner found leisure to look round them, than they marshalled their bands, and demanded the dismissal of all antagonist authority. I was first to be torn down. I stood in the gate, and while I held the keys, there was no entrance for expectant ambition. I waved the flag in the breach, and until the banner was swept away, the storm was ineffectual. Yet this turning the whole weight of party vindictiveness on my head, gave me a new courage, the courage of passion, the determination which arises from a sense of injury, and which magnifies with the magnitude of the trial. In other times, I might have abandoned the struggle; but, with the eyes of a nation thus brought upon me, and all the ablest men of the opposite benches making my overthrow the very prize of their victory, I determined "to stand the hazard of the die."

The eventful night came at last; for days before, every organ of public opinion was in the most feverish activity; lampoons, pamphlets, and letters to the leading journals, the whole machinery of the paragraph-world was in full work round me; and even the Administration despaired of my being able to resist the uproar – all but one, and that one the noblest and the most gifted of them all, my friend the chancellor. I had sat long past midnight with him on the eve of the coming struggle; and I received his plaudits for my determination. He talked with all his usual loftiness, but with more than his usual feeling.

"Within the next twenty-four hours," said he, "your fate will be decided. But, in public life, the event is not the dishonour; it is the countenance with which we meet it, that makes all the difference between success and shame. If you fall, you will fall like a man of character. If you triumph, your success will be unalloyed by any baseness of purchase." I told him sincerely, that I saw in the vigour and resolution of his conduct a model for public men. "However the matter may turn out in the debate," said he, rising and taking his leave, "there shall be no humiliation in the conduct of government, even if we should be defeated. Persevere to the last. The world is all chances, and ten to one of them are in favour of the man who is resolved not to be frightened out of any thing. Farewell."

Still, the crisis was a trying one, and my occupation during the day was but little calculated to smooth its anxieties. The intelligence from the county announced the increased extent of the revolt; and the intercepted correspondence gave startling proof of an organization altogether superior to the rude tumults of an angry peasantry. Several sharp encounters had taken place with the soldiery, and in some of them, the troops, scattered in small detachments and unprepared, had suffered losses. Insurrectionary proclamations had been issued, and the revolt was already assuming a military form; camps were collected on the mountains, and the arming of the population was become general. My day was occupied in writing hurried despatches to the magistrates and officers in command of the disturbed districts; until the moment when the debate was expected to begin. On my way to the House, every thing round me conspired to give a gloomy impression to my mind, weary and dark as it was already. Public alarm was at its height and the city, with the usual exaggerations of undefined danger, presented the appearance of a place about to be taken by storm. The streets were crowded with people hurrying in search of news, or gathered in groups retailing what they had obtained, and evidently filled with the most formidable conceptions of the public danger. The armed yeomanry were hurrying to their stations for the night, patrols of cavalry were moving out to scour the environs, and the carriages of the gentry from the adjoining counties were driving to the hotels, crowded with children and domestics; while waggons loaded with the furniture of families resident in the metropolis, were making their way for security into the country. All was confusion, hurry, and consternation. The scene of a great city in alarm is absolutely inconceivable but by those who have been on the spot. It singularly harassed and exhausted me; and at length, for the purpose of escaping the whole sight and sensation together, I turned from the spacious range of streets which led to the House; and made my way along one of the narrow and obscure lanes which, by a libel on the national taste, were still suffered to remain in the vicinity of an edifice worthy of the days of Imperial Rome.

My choice was an unlucky one, for I had scarcely gone a hundred yards, when I found my passage obstructed by a crowd evidently waiting with some sinister purpose. A signal was given, and I was called on to answer. I had no answer to make, but required that I should be suffered to pass on. "A spy, a spy! down with him!" was the exclamation of a dozen voices. A rush was made upon me, and notwithstanding my struggle to break through, I was overwhelmed, grasped by the arms, and hurried into the entrance of a house in utter darkness. I expected only a dagger in my heart, and from the muttered tones and words which escaped my captors, not one of whom could I discern, I seemed evidently about to encounter the fate of the spy which they deemed me. But, convinced that nothing was to be gained by submission, I loudly demanded by what right I was seized, declared myself a member of Parliament, and threatened them with the especial vengeance of the law, for obstructing me in the performance of my duty.

This announcement evidently had its effect, at least in changing the subject of their consultation; and, after another whisper, one of their number stepped up to me, and said that I must follow him. My refusal brought the group again round me, and I was forced down the stairs, and through a succession of airless and ruined vaults, until we reached a massive door. There a signal was given, and was answered from within; but the door continued closed.

My emotions during all this period were agonizing. I might not have felt more than others that fear of death which belongs to human nature; but death, in darkness, without the power of a struggle, or the chance of my fate being ever accounted for; death by the hands of assassins, and in a spot of obscure butchery, was doubly appalling. But an hour before, I had been the first man in the country, and now what was I? an unhappy object of ruffian thirst of blood, destined to die in a charnel, and be tossed among the rubbish of ruffian hands, to moulder unknown. Without condescending to implore, I now strongly attempted to reason with my captors on the atrocity of offering violence to a stranger, and on the certainty that they would gain more by giving me my liberty, than they could possibly do by burying their knives in my bosom. But all was in vain. They made no reply. One conception alone was wanting to the torture of the time; and it came. I heard through the depth of the vaults the sound of a church clock striking "eight." It was the very hour which had been agreed on for commencing the debate of the night. What must be thought of my absence? What answer could be made to any enquiry for my presence? What conceivable escape could my character as a minister have, from the charge of scandalous neglect, or more scandalous pusillanimity; from treachery to my friends, or from an utter insensibility to personal name and official honour in myself? The thought had nearly deprived me of my senses. The perspiration of mental torment ran down my face. I stamped the ground, and would have dashed my forehead against the wall, had not the whole group instantly clung round me. A few moments more of this wretchedness, and I must have died; but the door at length was cautiously opened, and I bounded in.

At a long narrow table, on which were a few lights, and several books and rolls of paper, sat about twenty men, evidently of the lower order, though one or two exhibited a marked superiority to the rest. A case of pistols lay on the table, which had probably been brought out on the signal of my arrival; and in the corners of the room, or rather vault, were several muskets and other weapons piled against the wall. From the obvious disturbance of the meeting, I was clearly an unwelcome guest; and, after a general sweep of the papers off the table, and a whisper which communicated to the chairman the circumstances of my capture, I was asked my name, and "why I had intruded on their meeting?" To the latter question my reply was an indignant demand, "why my liberty had been infringed on?" To the former, I gave my name and office at full length, and in a tone of authority. No announcement could have been more startling. The president actually bounded from his chair; others plucked out knives and pistols; all looked pallid and thunderstruck. With the first minister of the realm in this cavern of conspirators, every life of whom was in peril of the axe; my presence among them was like the dropping of a shell into a powder magazine.

But the dismay soon passed; their native daring returned, and I saw that my fate hung once more on the balance. After a brief consultation, and many a gloomy glance at their prisoner, the president summed up the opinion of the board. "You must be sensible, sir," said he, addressing me; "that in times like the present, every man must be prepared to make sacrifices for his cause. The call of Ireland has summoned us here – that call is irresistible; and whatever may be our feelings, for you, sir, who have been brought into this place wholly without our desire, the interests of a great country, determined to be free, must not be put in competition with the life of any individual, be his rank what it may." He paused, but a general murmur of applause showed the full approval of his grim auditory. "You, sir," he continued, with the solemnity of a judge passing sentence, "are one great obstacle to the possession of our public rights. You are a man of talents and courage, and so much the more dangerous to the patriot cause. You would disdain our folly, if we threw away the chance which fortune has put into our hands; – you must die. If we were in your power, the scaffold would be our portion. You are now in ours, and the question between us is decided." I felt, from his tone, that all remonstrance was useless; and I scorned to supplicate. "Do as you will," I indignantly exclaimed. "I make but one request. It is, that no imputation shall be suffered to rest on my memory; that the manner of my death shall be made known; and that no man shall ever be suffered to believe that I died a coward or a traitor." "It shall be done," slowly pronounced the president. I heard the click of a trigger, and looking up at the sound, saw one of the sitters at this board of terror, without moving from his place, deliberately levelling it at my head. I closed my eyes. In the next instant, I heard a scuffle; the pistol was knocked out of his hand, and a voice hurriedly exclaimed, "Are you all mad? For what purpose is this butchery? Whom are you about to murder? Do you want to bring a curse upon our cause?" All rose in confusion; but the stranger made but one spring to the spot where I stood, and fixing his eyes on me with astonishment, loudly repeated my name. As the light fell on him, I recollected at once, though his hat was deeply drawn over his eyes, and a huge cloak was wrapped round him, palpably for the purpose of concealment, the rebel leader whom I had so strangely met before. He turned to the table. "And is it in this infamous way," he fiercely exclaimed, "that you show your love of liberty? Is it in blood that you are to dip your charter; is it in making every man of common sense despise, and every man of humanity abhor you, that you are to seek for popular good-will? Down with your weapons! The first man who dares to use them, I declare a traitor to his country!" His energy made an impression; and giving me his hand, which, even in that anxious moment, I could perceive to be as cold as stone, he pronounced the words, "Sir, you are free!" But for this they were not prepared; and some exclamations rose, in which they seemed to regard him as false to the cause, and the words – "sold," and "traitor" – were more than once audible. He flamed out at the charge, and passionately demanded proofs. He then touched another string. "Now listen to what I have to tell you, and then call me traitor, if you will. You are in the jaws of ruin. I have but just discovered that Government has obtained knowledge of your meeting; and that within five minutes every man of you will be arrested. I flew to save you; now judge of my honour to the cause. You have only to make your escape, and thank the chance which has rescued your lives." Still my safety was not complete. There were furious spirits among them, who talked of revenge for the blood already shed, and graver spirits who insisted on my being kept as a hostage. But my protector declaimed so powerfully on the folly of exacting terms from me under duress; on the wisdom of appealing to my generosity in case of reverses; and, above all, on the certainty of their falling into the hands of authority, if they wasted their time in quarrelling as to my disposal; that he again brought them to a pause. A loud knocking at the door of one of the distant vaults, and a sound like the breaking down of the wall, gave a sudden success to his argument, and the meeting, snatching up their papers and weapons, glided away as silently as so many shadows.

I naturally attempted to thank my protector, but he put his finger to his lip and pointed to the quarter from which the police were apparently forcing their way into the subterranean. This was clearly a time of peril for himself as well as his associates, and I followed him silently through the windings of this hideous locale. We shortly reached the open air, and I cannot describe the solemn and grateful sense with which I saw the sky above my head, the lights glimmering in the windows, and felt that I was once more in the land of the living. My conductor led me within sight of the door of the House of Commons, and, with a slight pressure of the hand, turned from me, and was lost among the crowd. I rushed in, exhausted, overpowered, sinking with apprehension of the evil which might have been done in my absence, and blushing at the shame which probably awaited me.

But I was fortunately disappointed. By some means, which I could never subsequently ascertain, a rumour of my seizure had reached the House; and the strongest alarm was excited by the dread of my assassination. The commencement of the debate was suspended. Opposition, with the dignified courtesy which distinguished their leaders, even proposed the adjournment of their motion; the messengers of the House were dispatched in all directions to bring some tidings of me; and I had afterwards the satisfaction to find that none imputed my absence to any motive unbecoming my personal and official honour. Thus, when I entered the House, nervous with apprehension, I was received with a general cheer; my colleagues crowded round me with enquiries and congratulations; members crossed from the opposite benches to express their welcome. The galaxy of the living and the lovely in the gallery, which the expectation of the great debate had filled with all the fashionable portion of the capital, chiefly, too, in full dress, as was the custom of the time, glanced down approvingly on me; and, when at last I took my seat, I felt myself flattered by being the centre of one of the most splendid and interesting assemblies in the world.

The House was at length hushed, and Grattan rose. I cannot revert to the memory of that extraordinary man, without a mixture of admiration and melancholy – admiration for his talents, and melancholy for the feeling that such talents should expire with the time, and be buried in the common dust of the sepulchre. As a senatorial orator, he was incontestably the greatest whom I have ever heard. With but little pathos, and with no pleasantry, I never heard any man so universally, perpetually, and powerfully, command the attention of the House. Thee was the remarkable peculiarity in his language, that while the happiest study of others is to conceal their art, his simplicity had the manner of art. It was keen, concentrated, and polished, by nature. His element was grandeur; the plainest conception in his hands, assumed a loftiness and power which elevated the mind of his hearers, as much as it convinced their reason. As it was said of Michael Angelo, that every touch of his chisel was life, and that he struck out features and forms from the marble with the power of a creator, Grattan's mastery of high conceptions was so innate, that he invested every topic with a sudden magnitude, which gave the most casual things a commanding existence to the popular eye. It was thus, that the grievance of a casual impost, the delinquencies of a police, the artifices of an election, or the informalities of a measure of finance, became under his hand historic subjects, immortal themes, splendid features, and recollections of intellectual triumph. If the Pyramids were built to contain the dust of nameless kings and sacrificed cattle, his eloquence erected over materials equally transitory, memorials equally imperishable.

His style has been criticised, and has been called affected and epigrammatic. But, what is style to the true orator? His triumph is effect – what is to him its compound? What is it to the man who has the thunderbolt in his hands, of what various, nay, what earthly – nay, what vaporous, material it may be formed? Its blaze, its rapidity, and its penetration, are its essential value; and smiting, piercing, and consuming, it is the instrument of irresistible power.

But Grattan was an orator by profession, and the only one of his day. The great English speakers adopted oratory simply as the means of their public superiority. Pitt's was the oratory of a ruler of empire; with Fox, oratory was the strong, massive, and yet flexible instrument of a leader of party. But with Grattan it was a faculty, making a portion of the man, scarcely connected with external things, and neither curbed nor guided by the necessities of his political existence. If Grattan had been born among the backwoodsmen, he would have been an orator, and have been persuasive among the men of the hatchet and the rifle. Wherever the tongue of man could have given superiority, or the flow and vigour of conception could have given pleasure, he would have attained eminence and dispensed delight. If he had not found an audience, he would have addressed the torrents and the trees; he would have sent forth his voice to the inaccessible mountains, and have appealed to the inscrutable stars. It is admitted, that in the suffering condition of Ireland, he had a prodigious opportunity; but, among thousands of bold, ardent, and intellectual men, what is his praise who alone rushes to their front, and seizes the opportunity? The English rule over the sister country has been charged sometimes as tyranny, which was a libel; and sometimes as injustice, which was an error; but it had an unhappy quality which embraced the evils of both – it was invidious. The only map of Ireland which lay before the English cabinet of the eighteenth century, was the map of the sixteenth – a chart spotted with the gore of many battles, not the less bloody that they were obscure; and disfigured with huge, discoloured spaces of barbarism. They forgot the lapse of time, and that time had since covered the graves of the past with a living race, and was filling up the swamps of the wilderness with the vigour and the passions of a new and glowing people. They still governed on the guidance of the obsolete map, and continued to administer a civilized nation with the only sceptre fit for barbarism – the sword. By a similar misconception, while they declared the islands one indivisible empire, they governed them on the principle of eternal separation. No Irishman was ever called across the narrow strait between the two countries, to take a share in the offices, or enjoy the honors of England. Irish ambition, thwarted in its own country, might wander for ever, like Virgil's unburied ghosts, on the banks of the Irish Channel, without a hope of passing that political Styx. The sole connexion of the islands was between Whitehall and the Castle – between power and placemen – between cabinets and viceroys. It never descended to the level of the nation. It was a slight and scarcely visible communication, a galvanic wire, significant only at the extremities, instead of a public language and human association – instead of a bond of heart with heart – an amalgamation of people with people. Posterity will scarcely believe that the neglect of unity should have so nearly approached to the study of separation. Even the coin of the two countries was different in impress and in value – the privileges of trade were different – the tenure of property was different – the regulations of the customs (things which penetrate through all ranks) were different – and a whole army of revenue officers were embodied to carry on those commercial hostilities. The shores of the "Sister Islands" presented to each other the view of rival frontiers, and the passage of a fragment of Irish produce was as impracticable as if it had been contraband of war.

It was Grattan who first broke down this barrier, and he thus rendered the mighty service of doubling the strength of the empire; perhaps rendered the still mightier service of averting its separation and its ruin. As the nation had grown strong, it had grown sullen; its disgust was ripening into wrath; and its sense of injury might speedily have sought its relief in national revenge. And yet it is only justice to acknowledge that this evil arose simply from negligence on the part of England; that there was no design of tyranny, none of the capriciousness of superiority, none of the sultan spirit in the treatment of the rayah. But no minister had yet started up in English councils capable of the boldness of throwing open the barrier; none of intellectual stature sufficient to look beyond the old partition wall of the countries; no example of that statesmanlike sagacity which discovers in the present the shape of the future, and pierces the mists, which, to inferior minds, magnify the near into giant size, while they extinguish the distant altogether. But no man can ever write the annals of England, without a growing consciousness that magnanimity has been the instinct of her dominion; that she has been liberal on principle, and honest by nature; that even in the chillest and darkest hour of her sovereignity, this influence has existed unimpaired, and like gravitation on the globe, that it has accompanied and impelled her, day and night alike, through the whole circuit of her proud and powerful career.

This was the glorious period of Grattan's public life. His task, by universal confession, was the noblest that could be enjoined on man, and he sustained it with powers fitted to its nobleness. On the later portion of his history I have no desire to touch. The most hazardous temptation of early eminence is the fondness which it generates for perpetual publicity. The almost preternatural trial of human fortitude is, to see faction with its vulgar and easy triumph seizing the fame, which was once to be won only by the purest and rarest achievements of patriotism. When the banner which had flamed at the head of the nation on their march to Right, and which was consigned to the hand of Grattan as its legitimate bearer, was raised again, in a day threatening the subversion of every throne of Europe; he exhibited a jealousy of his obscure competitors, unworthy of his renown. But he did not join in their procession. He was unstained. If he felt the avarice of ambition, he exhibited no decay of that original dignity of nature, which, in his political nonage, had made him the leader of bearded men, and a model to the maturity of his country's virtue.

On this night he spoke with remarkable power, but in a style wholly distinct from his former appeals to the passions of the House. His accents, usually sharp and high, were now lingering and low; his fiery phraseology was solemn and touching, and even his gesture, habitually wild, distorted, and pantomimical, was subdued and simple. He seemed to labour under an unavowed impression of the share which the declamatory zeal of his party had to lay to its charge in the national peril. But I never saw more expressive evidence of his genius, than on this night of universal consternation. His language, ominous and sorrowful, had the force of an oracle, and was listened to like an oracle. No eye or ear strayed from him for a moment, while he wandered dejectedly among the leading events of the time, throwing a brief and gloomy light over each in passing, as if he carried a funeral lamp in his hand, and was straying among tombs. This was to me a wholly new aspect of his extraordinary faculties. I had regarded rapidity, brilliancy, and boldness of thought, as his inseparable attributes; but his speech was now a magnificent elegy. I had seen him, when he furnished my mind almost with the image of some of those men of might and mystery, sent to denounce the guilt, and heap coals of fire on the heads of nations. He now gave me the image of the prophet, lamenting over the desolation which he had once proclaimed, and deprecating less the crimes than the calamities of the land of his nativity. I never was more struck with the richness and variety of his conceptions, but their sadness was sublime. Again, I desire to guard against the supposition, that I implicitly did homage to either his talents or his political views. From the latter, I often and deeply dissented; in the former I could often perceive the infirmity that belongs even to the highest natural powers He was no "faultless monster." I am content to recollect him as a first-rate human being. He had enemies and may have them still. But all private feelings are hourly more and more extinguished in the burst of praise, still ascending round the spot where his dust is laid. Time does ultimate justice to all, and while it crumbles down the fabricated fame, only clears and separates the solid renown from the common level of things. The foibles of human character pass away. The fluctuations of the human features are forgotten in the fixed majesty of the statue; and the foes of the living man unite in carrying the memorial of the mighty dead to its place in that temple, where posterity comes to refresh its spirit, and elevate its nature, with the worship of genius and virtue.

BETHAM'S ETRURIA CELTICA

Herodotus has this amusing story of a philological experiment made by the Egyptian king Psammetichus, who may, not inappropriately, be termed the James the First of his dynasty: —

"The Egyptians, before the reign of Psammetichus, considered themselves the oldest of mankind; but, after the reign of Psammetichus, enquiry having been made as to whether that were the case, thenceforth they considered the Phrygians to be their elders, themselves being next in seniority. For Psammetichus, finding no satisfactory solution to his enquiry on this subject, devised the following plan: He took two infant boys, born of humble parents, and committed them to the care of a shepherd, to be educated in this manner – that he should not permit any one to utter a sound in their hearing, but should keep them by themselves in a lonely house, admitting only she-goats at stated times to suckle them, and rendering them the other requisite services himself. So he did so; and Psammetichus directed him, as soon as the infants should cease their inarticulate cries, that he should carefully note what word they should first utter. And so it was, that, after the lapse of two years, both infants, with outstretched hands, running to meet their attendant the shepherd, as he entered one day, cried out, 'becco.' Of which the shepherd at first made no report, but hearing them reiterate the same, as often as he went to visit them, he informed his lord, and, by his commands, brought the boys and exhibited them; whereupon Psammetichus, as soon as he heard them, enquired 'what nation they were who called any thing by the name of becco?' to which enquiry he learned for answer, that the Phrygians call bread by that name. So the Egyptians being convinced by that argument, conceded the point, that the Phrygians had existed before them. 'All which,' says the father of history, 'I learned from the priests of Vulcan at Memphis.'"

This story, after exciting the smiles of the learned for about two thousand years, fell, in an evil hour for the peace of mind of modern philologers, into the hands of John Goropius Becan, a man of letters at Antwerp, who, recollecting that bec has a like signification in Dutch, (bec in that language meaning bread, and becker, as in our own, a baker,) immediately jumped to the conclusion, that Dutch must have been the language of the Phrygians, and that the Dutch were consequently the most ancient of mankind. This insane proposition he puts forward as the sole foundation of his two great folios, entitled, "Origines Antwerpianæ, sive Cimmeriorum Beceselana," printed at Antwerp in 1569, in which he derives all the nations of antiquity from the Dutch, and makes all the names of gods, demigods, heroes, and places of the Old World, to have their only proper and characteristic signification in that language. The grave precision with which he lays the first and only foundation-stone of this monstrous superstructure, is sufficiently entertaining. "The Phrygians spoke the Scythic (i. e. the High-Dutch) tongue; and the Egyptians allowed the Phrygian language to be the primitive one. For when their king had ascertained that bec was a word of the original language of mankind, and could not understand it, he was informed that, among the Phrygians, it signified bread; whereupon he adjudged that language to be of all others the first in which bec hath that meaning; which bec being, at this day, our word for bread, and becker ("baker") for bread-maker, it stands, consequently, confessed, on this most ancient testimony of Psammetichus, that our language is, of all others, the first and oldest." From so extravagant a commencement, nothing but the most fantastical results could be expected, and the reader will not be surprised to find Goropius making Adam and Eve a Dutchman and a Dutchwoman, as one of the very first corollaries from his fundamental proposition; the Patriarchs follow; then the Gentile gods, goddesses, and heroes; the Titans, the Cyclops, the pigmies, griffins, and

"Gorgons, and hydras, and chimeras dire," —

nations, tribes, territories, seas, rivers, lakes, mountains, valleys, cities, and villages – all are drawn into this vast vortex of nonsense, set agoing originally by the single syllable bec, which, after all, if this story of the priests of Vulcan have any foundation in fact, was, most probably, nothing more than an imitation of the peculiar cry of the goats by which the infants had been suckled. Goropius's book was published at a time when the learned world were in no humour to tolerate such absurdities; and therefore, although exhibiting a considerable amount of learning in its own mad way, and a proportionate and characteristic degree of ingenuity, it called forth one of the severest reproofs that literary presumption has ever brought down, from the pen of Joseph Scaliger, whose condemnation was re-echoed by all the literary men of note of the day. It being part of Goropius's system that the ancient Gauls were Dutch, and the task of showing all the known words of the old Gaulish language to be significant in Dutch, being, consequently, incumbent on him as a first step to his bolder speculations on the unexplained names of men and places, he had, among others, given some ridiculous Dutch equivalents from the word ambactus, which, as we are informed by Festus, meant a slave or retainer in the old Gaulish tongue. Scaliger, shortly after, editing Festus, with annotations, and coming to the word in question, took that opportunity to administer to Goropius the following castigation – "I am unable to restrain my laughter," he says, "at what this singularly audacious and impudent person has written against Turnebus on this word. But, as all his books exhibit nothing else than a most impudent confidence in himself, so I reject his opinion on this matter as utterly impertinent and nonsensical. Never have I read greater absurdities; never have I seen, neither heard of greater or more audacious temerity, seeking, as he does, to derive all languages from his own barbarous dialect, so as to make the Hebrew itself inferior to the Dutch; nay, even reprehending Moses for taking the names of the patriarchs from his native Hebrew. Unlucky patriarchs and fathers, that were born Philistines of Palestine, and not Dutchmen of Antwerp!" Abrahan Mylius, another great scholar, though not of so extended a reputation as either of the Scaligers, soon after expressed much the same sentiments. "I am not," he says, "so full of wantonness as to be able to crack his insufferably absurd jokes with Becan, and give the palm of antiquity to the language of Flanders in preference to the Hebrew, making it the parent tongue not only of all other languages, but of the Hebrew itself." Schrevelius, the lexicographer, gave vent to his contempt in verse: —

"Quis tales probet oscitationes!
Quis has respectat meras chimeras!
Non Judæus Apella de proseucha,
Non qui de Solymis venit perustis,
Aut quisquam de grege Tabatariorum
Queis phœni cophinique cura major:
Cimmerii denique non puto probabunt
Et si prognatos Japhet putantur
Gomoroque parente procreati."

Our own Cambden, about the same time commencing his great work on British Antiquities, began by a protestation against being supposed "insaniam Becani insanire." Justus Lipsius alone, of all the learned men of the day, restrained the expression of positive indignation. "We often speak of Becan and his book about our language," he says, writing to Schottius, "and have frequent jokes on the subject. He, as you know, would have it not only to be an elegant and polished tongue, but the primitive one, and mother of all the rest. But we