CURRAN'S QUARREL WITH FITZGIBBON.
Curran distinguished himself not more as a barrister than as a member of parliament; and in the latter character it was his misfortune to provoke the enmity of a man, whose thirst for revenge was only to be satiated by the utter ruin of his adversary. In the discussion of a bill of a penal nature, Curran inveighed in strong terms against the Attorney-General, Fitzgibbon, for sleeping on the bench when statutes of the most cruel kind were being enacted; and ironically lamented that the slumber of guilt should so nearly resemble the repose of innocence. A challenge from Fitzgibbon was the consequence of this sally; and the parties having met, were to fire when they chose. "I never," said Curran, when relating the circumstances of the duel,—"I never saw any one whose determination seemed more malignant than Fitzgibbon's. After I had fired, he took aim at me for at least half a minute; and on its proving ineffectual, I could not help exclaiming to him, 'It was not your fault, Mr. Attorney; you were deliberate enough,'" The Attorney-General declared his honor satisfied; and here, at least for the time, the dispute appeared to terminate.
Not here, however, terminated Fitzgibbon's animosity. Soon afterwards, he became Lord Chancellor, and a peer of Ireland, by the title of Lord Clare; and in the former capacity he found an opportunity, by means of his judicial authority, of ungenerously crashing the rising powers and fortunes of his late antagonist. Curran, who was at this time a leader, and one of the senior practitioners at the Chancery Bar, soon felt all the force of his rival's vengeance. The Chancellor is said to have yielded a reluctant attention to every motion he made; he frequently stopped him in the middle of a speech, questioned his knowledge of law, recommended to him more attention to facts, in short, succeeded not only in crippling all his professional efforts, but actually in leaving him without a client. Curran, indeed, appeared as usual in the three other courts [of the "Four Courts" at Dublin]; but he had been already stripped of his most profitable practice, and as his expenses nearly kept pace with his gains, he was almost left a beggar, for all hopes of the wealth and honors of the long-robe were now denied him. The memory of this persecution embittered the last moments of Curran's existence; and he could never even allude to it, without evincing a just and excusable indignation. In a letter which he addressed to a friend, twenty years after, he says, "I made no compromise with power; I had the merit of provoking and despising the personal malice of every man in Ireland who was the known enemy of the country. Without the walls of the court of justice, my character was pursued with the most persevering slander; and within those walls, though I was too strong to be beaten down by any judicial malignity, it was not so with my clients, and my consequent losses in professional income have never been estimated at less, as you must have often heard, than £30,000."