The Commercial Restraints of Ireland

by John Hely-Hutchinson

LIFE OF PROVOST HELY HUTCHINSON.

The Right Hon. John Hely Hutchinson, author of the “Commercial Restraints,” was certainly one of the most remarkable men that this country ever produced; and he took, amidst an unequalled combination of brilliant rivals, a very prominent part in the most interesting and splendid period of Ireland’s internal history. He was, according to Dr. Duigenan, a man of humble parents. He entered Trinity College as a Pensioner, in the year 1740, under the name John Hely,[1] and after his marriage he adopted the name Hutchinson, on succeeding to the estate of his wife’s uncle.

In 1744 he obtained his B.A., and Duigenan admits that in his Undergraduate Course he won some premiums at the quarterly examinations. In 1765 he was presented with the degree of LL.D. Honoris Causâ. The College Calendar, in the list of Provosts, has, “1774. The Rt. Hon. John Hely Hutchinson, LL.D., educated in Trin. Coll., Dublin, but not a Fellow; admitted Provost by Letters Patent of George III., July 15; Member of Parliament for the City of Cork, and Secretary of State. Died Provost, Sep. 4, 1794, at Buxton.”[2]

This is all the mention which the published records of the College make of, perhaps, its most celebrated Provost. The Calendar is inaccurate as to the year of his matriculation, and it does not even tell that he was the author of the “Commercial Restraints”—its memorial notices being extremely scanty and brief; but in other contemporary writings we find several notices of him, unfavourable and favourable. He was called to the Bar in 1748; King’s Counsel, 1758; Member for Lanesborough as John Hely Hutchinson of Knocklofty, 1759;[3] in 1760 he received, in a silver case, the freedom of Dublin for his patriotic services in parliament.[4] He was Member for Cork City as John Hely Hutchinson of Palmerston, and afterwards as Right Hon., 1761; Prime Serjeant, sometimes going Judge of Assize, and Privy Councillor, 1761; Alnager,[5] 1763; Major in a Cavalry Regiment, which, when threatened with a court-martial for non-attendance to duty, he sold forthwith for £3,000; Provost and Searcher of Strangford,[6] 1774; Principal Secretary of State, 1777;[7] M.P. for Taghmon, 1790; died 1794 (according to the College Calendar at Buxton, and according to the Gentleman’s Magazine in Dublin). He was also Treasurer of Erasmus Smith’s Board, and one of the Commissioners for inquiring into Education Endowments, and he strove perseveringly but fruitlessly to obtain besides the Chancellorship of the Exchequer.

The most important and most historic of all these appointments was the Provostship, and it is in connection with the Provostship that we know most about him. He won the high office, for which, in regard of any sort of learning, he was totally disqualified, by a dexterous intrigue with the Chief Secretary of the day, Sir John Blacquiere; and those who cared most for Hutchinson considered that the manœuvre was an unwise one for him. It forfeited his assured prospects at the Bar, and it fastened on him the odious imputation of an insatiable avarice. The appointment, moreover, was regarded as an affront and an injury by the body over which he was placed. Fellows and Scholars in various ways resented the indignity, and Hutchinson had to face a very surly temper inside the walls. He faced it with a light heart, and triumphed over it; but it often turned on him, and stung him. He considered that it was well worth the cost; for in the first place it was an appointment for life; and then he had not to give up his lucrative practice in the law courts, which Froude says was worth nearly £5,000 a year; and in fact he never ceased to angle for the Mastership of the Rolls. In the next place, he got in addition a splendid town residence, on which eleven thousand pounds had just been expended; he got an income of two thousand one hundred a year; he got a very wide patronage, and he calculated on getting the control of the parliamentary representation of the University, which at that time was in the hands of the Fellows and Scholars. This last object would have been an immense acquisition for him; but he failed to win the game, the playing of which led him, according to Duigenan and others, into some of his most reprehensible courses.

As has been said above, in the rivalries of public life Hutchinson was pitted against a phalanx of as able men as ever appeared together in any country; and most of these men he supplanted and surpassed. They avenged themselves by lampooning him, and they were masters in the art. The Provost was assailed in prose and in verse, in couplet and in cartoon, in newspapers and pamphlets, in the “Lachrymæ Academicæ,” “Baratariana,” and “Pranceriana;” and these two last pasquinades are unique in English literature. Their satire is as broad and as wounding as that of Junius, while it is often far more finished and playful; and there is no other instance of so many men of the same ability and station being combined in such a mosaic of detraction.[8]

“Baratariana,” so called from Sancho Panza’s island-kingdom, was written in verse and in prose, and it appeared originally as letters in the Freeman’s Journal, which at that time, previous to its removal to “Macænas’ Head” in Bride-street, was published over St. Audeon’s Arch.[9] The principal writers of these letters were Sir Hercules Langrishe,[10] Flood, Grattan, Yelverton, Gervase Bushe, and Philip Tisdall. The volume is “a collection of pieces published during the administration of Lord Townshend,” and in it the Lord Lieutenant figures as “Sancho,” Anthony Malone as “Don Antonio,” Provost Andrews as “Don Francesco Andrea del Bumperoso,” and Hely Hutchinson under the various titles of “Don John Alnagero, Autochthon, Terræ Filius, Monopolist, Single Session, and Serjeant Rufinus.” It was in one of these papers that Grattan, with an audacious drollery, drew his celebrated character of Lord Chatham, as a privileged extract from a manuscript copy of Robertson’s forthcoming “History of America.” The description given by Langrishe of Hutchinson, who was not Provost at that time, is: “He talks plausibly and with full confidence, and whatever Pro-consul is deputed here Rufin immediately kidnaps him into a guardianship, and like another Trinculo erects himself into a viceroy over him. His whole elocution is alike futile and superficial. It has verdure without soil, like the fields imagined in a Calenture. He has great fluency, but little or no argument. He has some fancy, too, but it serves just to wrap him into the clouds and leave him there, while he holds himself suspended, planing and warbling like a lark, without one thought to interrupt the song. If he has any forte it is in vituperation or abuse. In 1766 he defeated the first Militia Bill.[11] His first stride in apostasy was supporting the Privy Council Money Bill in 1767 [for opposing which Anthony Malone[12] had previously lost the Prime Serjeancy in 1754, and the Chancellorship of the Exchequer[13] in 1761;] his next was in defending the motion for the additional regiments, whereby we were treated like a ravaged country, where contributions are levied to maintain the very force that oppresses it.” For these ministerial services Hutchinson got the Prime Serjeancy, with an extra salary of £500 a year. In the next session he was useful to the Crown in regard of the Pensions Enquiry Bill and the Embargo Corn Bill, and was rewarded with the sinecure Alnager’s place, worth £1,000 a year. He was made a Privy Councillor, got the reversionary grant of the Principal Secretaryship of State, and the commission of a half-pay majority, and was what Primate Stone termed “a ready-money voter.” “He got more,” says Flood, “for ruining one kingdom than Admiral Hawke got for saving three.”[14] The “List of the Pack,” one of the rhymes in the volume, has:

“Yet Tisdal unfeeling and void of remorse,
Is still not the worst—Hely Hutchinson’s worse;
Who feels every crime, yet his feeling denies,
And each day stabs his country, with tears in his eyes.”

Philip Tisdall, in “Baratariana,” gives the following humorous description of Hutchinson: “He is jealous of me, and as peevish as an old maid. I love to tease him. I endeavour to put him on as odious ground as I can in parliament, and then I am the first to complain to him that Government should expose their servants to so much obloquy without occasion. I magnify to him the favours and confidence I receive from Government, and my correspondence with Rigby, which nettles him to the heart. He is too finical for Lord Townshend, who makes very good sport of him. One day he dined at the Castle, and when the company broke up, Lord Townshend, who pretended to be more in liquor than he was, threw his arms about his neck and cried out, ‘My dear Tisdall, my sheet anchor, my whole dependence! don’t let little Hutchinson come near me; keep him off, my dear friend; keep him off—he’s damned tiresome.’ At other times His Excellency makes formal appointments to dine at Palmerston[15] at a distant day. The Prime Serjeant invites all the officers of State; Mrs. Hutchinson is in a flurry; they send to me for my cook; and after a fortnight’s bustle, when dinner is half spoiled, His Excellency sends an excuse, and dines with any common acquaintance that he happens to meet in strolling about the streets that morning. This g’emman has a pretty method enough of expressing himself, indeed, but in points of law there are better opinions. My friend, the late Primate, who knew men, said, that the Prime Serjeant was the only person he had ever met with who got ready money, in effect, for every vote he gave in parliament. He has got among the rest the reversion of my Secretary’s office; but I think I shall outlive him.”[16]

Another note in “Baratariana” records that Tisdall, whose Government salaries exceeded £5,000 a year, had also a reversion of the Alnager’s place, with its £1,000 a year, on the death of Hutchinson; and this mutuality of Reversions, no doubt, accounts for the warm affection that subsisted between Hutchinson and Tisdall. Blacquiere got the Alnagership as the price of the Provostship, as before mentioned. Besides the Alnagership Hutchinson was obliged also to resign the Prime Serjeancy, which was given to Dennis; but even in regard of emolument the Provostship was well worth these two sacrifices, the united income of which was only £1,300. He retained his sinecure of £1,800 a year, and the State Secretaryship, and he was further compensated by the sinecure office of Searcher of the Port of Strangford, with a patented salary of £1,000 a year for his own life and the lives of his two elder sons. He had thus altogether, besides his lucrative practice at the Bar and his own estate, about £6,000 a year, together with the Provost’s House, while his eldest son was Commissioner of Accounts, with £500 a year, and with the reversion of the Second Remembrancership of the Exchequer, worth £800 a year, and his second son had a troop of dragoons.[17]

“Pranceriana” derives its title from “Prancer,” or “Jack Prance,” the nickname which was given to the Provost,

“Restorer of the art of dancing,
And mighty prototype of prancing,”

from his effort to establish in the College a riding and dancing-school, in imitation of the Oxford schools.

“Each college duty shall be done in dance,
And hopeful students shall not walk, but prance.”

The articles were originally published in the Hibernian Journal and Freeman’s Journal,[18] and the two volumes, which appeared in 1776, were announced as “A collection of fugitive pieces published since the appointment of the present Provost.” The collection was dedicated to “J-n H-y H-n, Doctor of Laws, P.T.C., late Major in the Fourth Regiment of Horse, Representative in the late and present Parliament of the city of Cork, one of his Majesty’s Counsel at Law, Reversionary Remembrancer of the Exchequer, Secretary of State, one of His Majesty’s Most Honourable Privy Council, and Searcher, Packer, and Gauger of the Port of Strangford.”[19]

It attacks the Provost all round with every asperity; it mocks his want of learning by calling him “the Potosi of Erudition;” it makes fun of his riding and dancing-schools; and it ridicules his boasted college reforms.

Alluding to his efforts to banish card-playing there is the rhyme—

“You bag and baggage made them pack
Old Whist, and Slam that Saucy jack,
Ombre, Quadrille, Pope Joan, Piquet,
And Brag and Cribbage—cursed set.”

It is obliged to admit, however ungraciously, that the Provost effected some improvements. He obtained from the Erasmus Smith board, of which he was treasurer, the £200 a year for the oratory and composition premiums,[20] as well as the £2,500 for building the theatre, which Duigenan declares the College did not want. He established also the Modern Languages Professorships, the latter-day English Parliament treatment of which is such a curious passage in the history of the University. “Pranceriana” admits, too, that by the Provost the park was walled in,[21] and that common rooms inside the walls, supplied with coffee and papers, were provided for the students; that “tardies” [i.e. returns of students as passing into College between 9 and 12 P.M.] were lessened, that “chapels” required to be attended by them were increased, and that the calling of examination rolls was finished by eight o’clock in the morning, the hours of the Quarterly Examination being at that time from 8 to 12, A.M., and 2 to 4, P.M. Hutchinson was unquestionably very arbitrary and offensive in some of his regulations, but whether he was right or wrong he met the same cynical measure in “Pranceriana.”[22]

The “Lachrymæ,” published in 1777, was the work of Dr. Duigenan alone (see [note B]), and in it he gives full fling to his hatred of the Provost. It is an able and envenomed indictment, and the author hits his victim with the utmost roughness. He accuses the Provost of violating every clause of the Provost’s oath, and of being guilty of every possible abuse of his high office; he, moreover, defames Dr. Leland (see [note C]), and the other Fellows who were or became civil and courteous to the Provost. Duigenan acknowledges that he set himself to be insolent to the Provost; he tells what brave plans of defiance and revenge he formed, and how, after all, the Provost punished him and put him down.

The “Lachrymæ” records all this in piquant and entertaining fashion; and, besides being damaging to the Provost’s character, it is interesting still as a sort of College Calendar of the period, giving antiquarian information of much value concerning the administration, economies, and discipline of the College a hundred years ago. It begins with reciting the naked and unprincipled manœuvre with Sir John Blacquiere, the Chief Secretary[23] to Lord Lieutenant Harcourt, by which Hutchinson, a layman, was appointed Provost, by virtue of the Crown’s dispensing with the Statute which required the office to be filled by a Doctor or Bachelor in Divinity. Blacquiere’s origin, Duigenan says, was like the source of the Nile, only to be guessed at, and Blacquiere himself was insolent, illiterate, and avaricious. On the death of Provost Andrews, in 1774, he recommended as his successor John Hely Hutchinson, who resigned in his patron’s favour the office of Alnager, which Blacquiere ere long farmed out at £1,200 per annum.

Duigenan says that whilst the bargain was in agitation Blacquiere represented the Provostship as much more valuable than it was. He adds that Hutchinson “complained loudly that he had been bitten,” and that to make the best of a bad bargain he took in hands the College Estate.

Henry Flood was an eager candidate for the Provostship, and was put off with a vice-treasurership, and a salary of £3,500 a year. Blacquiere would have given him the Provostship if he could have paid a higher price than Hutchinson; and “he would have sold it to a chimney-sweeper if he had been the highest bidder.” Duigenan says that all he knew of Flood was that he had been bought by Blacquiere, but he had no doubt that he would have made a better Provost than Hutchinson.[24] His disgust against Hutchinson is so intense that it overrides his sour nationality and his jealousy for the rights of the body to which he belonged; and he declares that he would have preferred the appointment of an Oxford or Cambridge clergyman.

In the Gazette announcement of Hutchinson’s appointment his “LL.D.” was puffed, but Duigenan strips the degree of all merit by explaining that it was only an “honorary” one—that it had no Academic significance—that every member of the Irish Parliament had a customary right to it—that it had just been conferred on an ignorant carpenter, one John Magill[25]—and that, as the climax of the prostitution, he himself, Duigenan, in his capacity of Regins Professor of Civil Law, had officially presented Blacquiere for the honour![26]

Non-fellow, unlearned, and layman as he was, Hutchinson got the Provostship, and he was not long in finding out that the constitution of the college afforded a sphere for energy which precisely suited him. By the “New Statutes,” i.e., the Charter and Statutes drawn up by Archbishop Laud, the Provost possessed, or was supposed traditionally to possess,[27] almost absolutely, the management of the college estates, the disposal of its revenues, the nomination of fellows and scholars, and the power of rewarding and punishing fellows and scholars. The choice of parliamentary representatives for the University rested—not as since the Reform Act, with the registered Masters of Arts and Ex Scholars at large—with the corporate body of the fellows and scholars for the time being, all of whom were in a great degree subject to the statutable powers and underhand influence of the Provost. The body consisted of twenty-two fellows and seventy scholars. The College was the only asylum in the kingdom for friendless merit, and Duigenan knew five contemporary bishops who had been fellows.[28] All its usefulness and all its glories were swept away by the appointment of “Mr.”—for he would not call him Dr.—Hutchinson.

Duigenan explains that it took five years’ hard study to get a fellowship; that the juniors were subject to incessant toil and irksome bondage as tutors, and that their single compensating prospect was co-option. The income of the juniors was only £40 a year, but the seniors at that time handed over to them the pupils to help their scanty maintenances.[29] The “Natives’ Places” were held by Scholars who were Irish born, and who succeeded to the Places by seniority and diligent attendance on college duties.

Sizarships were given by nomination, the Provost claiming eight nominations to one of each of the senior fellows, the previous system of election by examination having been superseded by Hutchinson. There was not one of these departments in which, according to Duigenan, Provost Hely Hutchinson did not traffic—and Duigenan’s statements are borne out by the evidence before the parliamentary committee.[30] It was the same with “non-coing,” i.e., allowing money in lieu of commons in the hall; the same in the matter of chambers, the same in regard of leaves of absence, the same in regard of fines, and the same in everything. In all these matters benefits were given to those who would vote for the Provost’s sons, and rights were refused to those who would not so vote. The Fellows in those days used to have to purchase their rooms from the college—they could be compelled by the Provost to attend the lectures of the professors, and Duigenan says that the Provost once ordered him to leave the law courts to attend one of these lectures. Fellows had the right of visiting the students’ rooms—they used to chum together—they used to be allowed to borrow money from the College, and under this arrangement Duigenan owed £300, while Leland and others owed more.

From the time of the “Glorious Revolution” none but Fellows had ever been made Provosts, although during that period five Provosts had been appointed. Dr. Andrew’s Fellowship was a sort of excuse for appointing him, although he was a layman; and Duigenan, in calculating the pecuniary losses which he sustained through Hutchinson, intimates that a similar dispensation might have been exercised towards himself if in due course he had succeeded to his Senior Fellowship. These losses he sets down at £3,000 actual, and £6,000 on the calculation of contingencies. The Provostship was worth £2,100 a year, besides a splendid residence. A Senior-Fellowship, we are told, was worth £700 a year; a Junior-Fellowship, including pupils, £200; Scholars had free commons, and there were thirty Native Places, with £20 a year each additional; the Beadle of the University had £20 a year; the Porters £5 a year, with clothes and food in the hall. On an average two Fellowships became vacant every three years. All these particulars Duigenan gives, and they all are made to serve as counts in his indictment of the Provost.

Hutchinson had the College estates surveyed, and Duigenan makes a grievous complaint of this proceeding. He says the survey cost the College two thousand pounds, and that it was an iniquitous device for raising the College rents upon improvements that had been effected by the tenants.[31] He declares that from the rent-raising there resulted beggary, discontent, and emigration. The renewal fines were divided into nine parts, of which two went to the Provost, and one to each of the seven seniors. In the year 1850, the fines were transferred to the College account, and the Senior Fellows were compensated out of the “Cista communis.”[32]

The “Lachrymæ” tells how the Provost got the large old college plate melted down, and turned into a modern service, destroying the engraved coats-of-arms and names of the donors, at an expense to the college of £400.[33] He soon after had it moved out to Palmerston House, and Duigenan does not seem to feel at all sure about its honest return. Most of the Fellows were in the Provost’s power by being married, and Duigenan says that he used the power tyrannically.[34] A Fellow going out on a living was allowed only five months’ benefit of salary.[35]

Duigenan seems to hold the Provost responsible for the “mean and decayed” condition of the chapel, and he more than once rails at him for being of mean parentage.[36] He finds that since the time of Charles I. no Provost, except Hutchinson and his predecessor, had ever sat in the House of Commons. He is obliged to admit that Dr. Andrews’ conduct in private life was somewhat too loose and unguarded for a Provost; but still he was better than Hutchinson, though he was told that the latter was a good husband and father. Mr. Hutchinson might be a good husband and father, “but no one would think the better of a wolf because the beast was kind to its mate and cubs.” Hutchinson had destroyed the seclusion and retirement of the college by infesting its walks and gardens with his wife, adult daughters, infant children with nurses and go-carts, and military officers on prancing horses. He had endeavoured to institute a riding-school and a professorship of horsemanship after the example of Oxford, and he had desecrated the Convocation or Senate Hall by making it a fencing-school. Duelling had become the fashion among the students under the influence of the Provost’s evil example, and the college park was made the ground for pistol practice.[37]

We are told further by Duigenan that the number of students then on the college books was 598, of whom 228 were intern.[38] We see by the Liber Munerum Hiberniæ that by 1792 the number of students had so much increased, consequently on the liberal education spirit of Grattan’s parliament, that a King’s Letter was obtained raising the quarterly examination days from two to four. In the following year was the King’s Letter directing the admission of Catholics to degrees on taking the oath of Abjuration and Allegiance, in accordance with the Act of the Irish Parliament, and in 1794 appears the first “R. C.” entry (Thomas Fitzgerald, of Limerick) on the College Matriculation Books. From that date onward the religious denomination of pupils has always been recorded.

“Pranceriana,” i.e., probably Duigenan, asserts that the Provost, on the eve of the second election in which his son was returned, offered to supply to a voter amongst the candidates for Fellowship a copy of the questions which he was to give in Moral Science for the ensuing examinations;[39] and Duigenan openly says that the Provost was determined that no one should be elected a Scholar who would not previously promise to vote as he should direct him.

He kept an electioneering agent inside the walls, a spy and a corrupter,—“in short, the Blacquiere of Mr. Hutchison.” Duigenan gives a long list of the Provost’s insolences to himself and to other members of the body. He resisted marriage dispensations to the Fellows who were his opponents, while he procured them for his creatures—Leland and Dabzac.

On the death of Shewbridge the Fellow, which was attributed to Hutchison’s refusing him leave to go to the country for change of air, the students defied the Provost’s order for a private interment at 6 o’clock in the morning. They had the bell rung, had a night burial and a torchlight procession, attended the funeral in mourning, and afterwards broke into the Provost’s house.

In the first year of his office the Provost dispersed a meeting of the Scholars and some of the Fellows that was held by advertisement at Ryan’s in Fownes-street, “the principal tavern in the city,” for the purpose of nominating candidates for the representation of the University against the Provost’s nominees.

Duigenan goes on to relate how Hutchinson discharged the various duties of the high office which he had acquired by the traffic above stated. He made an exhibition of his ignorance at a Fellowship Examination by suggesting that Alexander the Great died in the time of the Peloponessian War; but ridiculous a figure as he made in the Scholarship and Fellowship Examinations, he would not withdraw from them, because unless he examined he could not vote or nominate at the election of the Scholars and Fellows. This nomination power was with him a darling object in the execution of his electioneering projects of making the College a family borough, and he abstained from no methods to effectuate his scheme.

We are told at length how the Provost, with the consent of a majority of the Board, deprived Berwick of his Scholarship for absence, because Berwick would not vote for his son, and how the Visitors, on appeal, restored him.[40] How he deprived Mr. Gamble of the buttery clerkship, and replaced him, on the threat of an appeal, suggested and drawn up by Duigenan. How the Provost refused Mr. FitzGerald, a Fellow, leave to accompany his sick wife to the country, and tried to provoke FitzGerald’s hot temper. The Provost’s cruelties and injuries to Duigenan himself knew no limits. He says, that for the purpose of keeping him from being co-opted, the Provost had the Board Registry falsified, that he set the porters to watch him, that he persecuted him, and mulcted him in the buttery books, for sleeping out of college without leave. He relates that he was attacked by the Provost’s gang, and was obliged in consequence to wear arms; and that, finally, Hutchinson compelled him to go out on the Laws’ Professorship on a salary which was raised to £460 a year.[41]

The “Lachrymæ Academicæ” shows how Duigenan spent the leisure hours of his enforced retirement.

It was dedicated to King George III. Duigenan had “dragged this Cacus (the Provost) from his den,” and he appealed to the Duke of Gloucester as Chancellor, and to the archbishops of Armagh and Dublin as Visitors, to rescue the college out of the hands of this worse than Vandalic destroyer, this molten calf, and pasteboard Goliath. As this remedy might fail, from the uncertainty of all events in this world, Duigenan pointed out two other remedies, the application of which lay with the King. One was to have the Provost’s patent voided by a scire facias, and the other was to deprive him of all power, authority, or revenue in the college, during his life. His authority was to be transferred to the Board, and his revenue to be appropriated to pay for the new building. These suggestions were not adopted, but the Lachrymæ did not by any means fall still-born from the press. It produced a powerful sensation within the walls and in outer circles.

On the 19th of July it was censured by the Board in the following resolution:—

“Whereas, a pamphlet hath lately been published in the city of Dublin, with the title of “Lachrymæ Academicæ,” to which the name of Patrick Duigenan, LL.D., is prefixed as author, traducing the character of the Right Honourable the Provost and some respectable Fellows of this society, and misrepresenting and vilifying the conduct of the said Provost and Fellows, and the government of the said college, without regard to truth or decency.

“Resolved by the Provost and Senior Fellows that the author and publishers of the said pamphlet shall be prosecuted in the course of law, and that orders to that purpose be given to the law agent of the college.

“Ordered that the said resolution be published in the English and Irish newspapers.”—[Extract from College Register, July 19, 1777.]

The censure was officially published in the Dublin Journal, and in Saunders’ News Letter; whereupon Duigenan inserted in the Freeman the following advertisement:—

“Whereas, a false and malicious advertisement has been inserted in the Dublin Journal, and in Saunders’ News Letter, containing a resolution of the Board of Trinity College, Dublin, relative to a book written and published by me, entitled, ‘Lachrymæ Academicæ; or, the present deplorable state of the College of the Holy and undivided Trinity, of Queen Elizabeth, near Dublin.’ It is necessary to inform the public that the said resolution was carried at the Board by the votes of Drs. Leland, Dabzac, Wilson, and Forsayeth (the very same persons who voted for the unstatutable deprivation of Mr. Berwick), against the opinions of Mr. Clement, the Vice-Provost, of Dr. Murray, and Dr. Kearney. It is also necessary to observe that three of these gentlemen who voted for the above resolution are persons whom I have declared my intention, in my book, of accusing, before the Visitors, of having committed unstatutable crimes; which intention I shall most certainly execute.[42] And I do hereby pledge myself to the public that I will effectually prosecute at law every one of the junto for the said scurrilous advertisement, and the resolution therein contained.

“Pat. Duigenan,

“Chancery Lane, July 21st, 1777.”

“N.B.—Dr. Murray signed the said advertisement officially as Registrar of the College, who is obliged to sign resolutions of the majority of the Board. He strenuously opposed the resolution therein contained, and the insertion of it in the Public Prints.”

Besides these Board proceedings, the “Lachrymæ” led to a plentiful crop of litigation in the Courts. In Michaelmas Term, 1777, in the King’s Bench, Serjeant Wood moved for an information against Duigenan at the suit of the Provost on account of the defamation in the “Lachrymæ,” and the application was granted. The same time Barry Yelverton, on the part of Dr. Arthur Browne, Fellow, and Member for the University, moved for an information against the Hibernian Journal, and Fitzgibbon moved for informations against two persons for challenging Duigenan. Applications granted.

In 1778 Counsellors Smith, Burgh, &c., showed cause on behalf of Dr. Duigenan against making absolute the Rule for information against the “Lachrymæ,” when Judge Robinson dismissed the case, saying that it had already taken up fifteen days of the public time, and that he “left the School to its own correctors.”[43]

In 1776, Duigenan insulted the Provost in the Four Courts, and the Provost, disdaining Duigenan, called upon Tisdall to make him responsible for his follower’s conduct. He told Tisdall to consider that he had insulted him with a view to provoke a challenge. This was the occasion on which Duigenan threatened to bulge the Provost’s eye. Tisdall at once applied for an information against him in the King’s Bench. Seventeen counsel were engaged in the cause.

Hutchinson argued his own case before the Court with consummate ability. He delivered a most masterly speech, and offered an apology for calling Tisdall an old scoundrel and an old rascal. He did not recollect having used these expressions, but if he did use them, it was out of Court. He referred pathetically to all the annoyance and ridicule that he was undergoing by pamphlets and in the public press; and he excused his appearing in his own defence by the circumstance that his lawyers were harassed in attendance on the six different suits promoted against him on very unaccountable motives.

The Court of King’s Bench made the rule against him absolute, but the proceedings collapsed in consequence of Tisdall’s death.[44]

Duigenan says that Hutchinson was once publicly chastised by a gentleman whom he had affronted, but we have no other account of the circumstance. Duigenan makes out that he was a coward as well as a tyrant and impostor, and he compares him to “Cacofogo,” the usurer in Beaumont and Fletcher’s play.

In 1789, the Provost supported Grattan in the Regency Bill, and in the motions connected with it. For this he was liable to be dismissed from the lucrative offices which he held under the Crown, and to save himself from this penalty he signed the “Round Robin” of the twenty peers and thirty-seven commoners who were in a similar predicament. This famous instrument which was drawn up in the Provost’s house, pledged the co-signers to stand or fall together, and bound them as a body “to make Government impossible” if the Viceroy, Lord Buckingham, were to venture to punish any of them. Fitzgibbon, then Attorney-General, mercilessly crushed and humbled the “Parliamentary Whiteboys;” he made the synagogue of Satan come and worship before his feet,[45] and the most abject of the recreants was the Provost.[46]

To secure the control of the parliamentary representation of the University was, as has been said, one of Hutchinson’s dearest plans. The pursuit of it led him, according to all accounts, into some of his most dishonourable and vindictive actions, and after all he won but temporary and chequered success in the ambitious experiment. In the prosecution of these election aims, the Provost stuck at nothing. He had agents and emissaries everywhere; and through them as well as by his own direct efforts he instituted an all-pervading system of corruption. He knew how to make subtle but palpable advances to the voters that were under his eye, and to tamper at the same time with their friends and parents at a distance. He ransacked every department of Academic life so as to be expert at turning the whole system of collegiate rewards and punishments into an organised instrumentality for bribery. All the emoluments, rewards, and conveniences of the college were reserved for those who promised their vote to the Provost, and all the obsolete and vexatious disciplines were enforced against those who were disposed to assert their independence in exercising the franchise. By an unscrupulous use of both his patronage, and his powers as Returning Officer, he was enabled to get two of his sons returned for the University, but he saw powerful and damaging petitions against both of them. In 1776, he returned his eldest son Richard against Tisdall, the Attorney-General. Tisdall lodged a petition in June, which the House ordered to be considered in July, but before that day the Parliament was prorogued, and did not meet again till October in the following year. Meanwhile, Tisdall died; the petition was moved by Madden and King, and ultimately, in March, 1778, the Select Committee unseated Hutchinson. John Fitzgibbon conducted the petition, and thereby established his position as a lawyer. He was elected for the University in Hutchinson’s room, and the foundation of his coming greatness was laid.[47]

Richard Hutchinson, it maybe observed, fell back on Sligo, to which he had been elected at the same time that he was elected for the University, and where he seems to have escaped another petition by choosing the University constituency. In the debate as to whether a new writ should be issued for Sligo, in 1778, the Provost took a forward part, and bewailed that he “was forced to go there out of his sick bed to defend his son.” The Gravamina of the College petition of 1778 were almost identical with those of the petition of 1790, and while Parliament was unseating the Provost’s son, the Court of Common Pleas was dealing with the Provost himself. The Rev. Edward Berwick, whose case is related in the “Lachrymæ,” took an action against the Returning Officer for refusing his vote. The Court, overruling the Provost’s objection, made an order that the Plaintiff should have liberty to inspect all the College books that could be of use to him in his suit. The verdict was against the defendant, without costs.[48]

After the disastrous parliamentary petition of 1778, the Provost took no family part in the College elections until the year 1790, when his second son Francis was returned. His return led to a parliamentary inquiry; and the case, which is fully reported, is a very interesting passage in the history of the College and of Hutchinson.[49]

The committee, consisting of fourteen members, besides the chairman, W. Burston, Esq., was chosen on the 14th day of Feb., 1791, and on it sat, amongst the others, the Hon. Arthur Wesley (Duke of Wellington), Right Hon. Lord Edward Fitzgerald, and Right Hon. Denis Daly.

There were two petitions, one by Laurence Parsons, Esq., the defeated candidate, and the other by some scholars and other electors of the borough. The sitting member was the Hon. Francis Hely Hutchinson, and the returning officer was his father the Provost. There was a powerful bar. Beresford Burston, Michael Smith (afterwards Master of the Rolls), Peter Burrowes, and William Conyngham Plunket, were for the petitioners; Tankerville Chamberlain (afterwards Judge of the Queen’s Bench), and Luke Fox (afterwards judge), were for the sitting member; and Robert Boyd (afterwards Judge of King’s Bench), and Denis George, Recorder of Dublin (and afterwards Baron of the Exchequer), were for the Provost. The total constituency was 92, and out of these “84 and no more” tendered their votes. Arthur Browne was returned at the head of the poll by 62 votes, Parsons had 43, and Hutchinson 39. The Provost, on the scrutiny, reduced Browne’s votes to 51, Parsons’ to 34, and his son’s to 36, thus returning his son by a majority of two over Parsons. Against this return the petitioners set forth that the Provost received for his son the votes of several persons who had no right to vote; that he refused for Parsons the votes of several who were legally entitled to vote; that on the scrutiny, he received illegal evidence; that he acted as agent for his son, and by undue means procured votes for him; that he exerted his prerogative antecedently to the election for the purpose of illegally influencing the electors; and that by illegal and partial scrutiny he reduced the number of the votes for Parsons below the number of the votes for his son. Burston stated the case, and referred to the election of 1776, when the Provost’s eldest son was unseated for undue influence. He gave numerous instances of the Provost’s abuse of his powers in the matters of “non-coing” and leaves of absence. He complained of his rejecting votes on the ground of minority on the evidence chiefly of the Matriculation-book. Amongst the witnesses examined were the Very Rev. Wensley Bond, Sch., 1761, Dean of Ross; G. Miller, Fellow (and afterwards Master of Armagh Royal School); William Magee, Fellow and Junior Dean (and afterwards Archbishop of Dublin); Toomy, a scholar (and afterwards Professor of Medicine); Dr. Marsh, Fellow, and Registrar of the college; Whitly Stokes, Fellow (and afterwards Professor of Physic), &c. &c.

The examination of the witnesses brought out a great many curious and interesting facts relative to college men and college administration a hundred years ago. For instance, Mr. Fox, in arguing against the right of Scholars, being minors, to vote, referred to the election of 1739, when Alexander MacAulay, Dean Swift’s nominee,[50] was elected against Philip Tisdall; and when the election was set aside by the House of Commons on account of the vote of Mr. Sullivan[51] (afterwards Professor of Laws), who, being elected a Fellow at nineteen years of age in 1738, was a minor when he voted.

Plunket and Smith argued on the other side that Scholars, being minors, were entitled to their votes, and that these votes were allowed in the contested election of 1761, when Lord Clonmel ran French against the Attorney General, Tisdall, on account of the latter’s hesitancy about the Octennial Bill. It was argued further that the Matriculation-book was not legal evidence as to age, inasmuch as “boys without any sanction gave in their ages older than they really were, from a desire to be thought men.” Finally, the committee resolved unanimously that Fellows and Scholars, though minors, have a right to vote for members to represent the University.

Mr. Miller[52] deposed that he was applied to by the Provost for his vote, and that he was offered a copy of the Provost’s fellowship examination questions in Morality,[53] “an advantage,” said Burrowes, “which would have made a docile parrot appear superior to Sir Isaac Newton.” Three of the senior fellows voted for Hutchinson at the election. Toomey, a Scholar, was a Catholic, and refused to vote because the Junior Fellows could prove that he was a Catholic, and would take his pupils from him. He would not conform, although the Provost’s eldest son pressed him, and told him that his own ancestors were Catholics and had conformed, and that he himself would be a Catholic if he lived in a Catholic country. Toomey knew that Casey, a Scholar, was a Catholic, and that he was chapel roll-keeper, attended college chapel twenty times a week, and partook of the Sacrament. Toomey “did not vote at the election because his vote would be of no use as he was a Roman Catholic.”[54] James Hely, a Scholar, was a Catholic in Limerick, and had conformed in St. Werburgh’s Church, in Dublin, to the Rev. Mr. L’Estrange, curate. The petitioners strove to disqualify Hely “for Popery,” but his conformity was admitted by the committee.

Mr. Graves, Fellow (afterwards Professor of Divinity and Dean of Ardagh), had voted for Hutchinson, and he believed that the Provost did declare to the Senior Fellows that he would nominate him to the Fellowship even against the majority of the Board. Dr. Hales’ pupils were worth £500 or £600 a year to him;[55] and on his resignation the Provost claimed the power of distributing his pupils amongst the other Fellows. Hales had sixty or seventy pupils. Fellow-commoners paid £12, pensioners £6, per annum. It was deposed by another witness that the Provost nominated Mr. Ussher to a Fellowship in 1790—and it is so stated in the Calendar—although he had but two votes amongst the Senior Fellows, and those two were Drs. Kearney and Barrett.

Mr. Magee, Junior Dean, stated, that after his election to Fellowship he was desirous to go to the bar, and that the dispensation was prevented by the Provost. Shortly before the election, however, the Provost offered to obtain the dispensation for him, with commons money and the usual allowance, if he would either vote for Hutchinson or go out of the way. Magee declined both proposals, and lost the dispensation; but probably he got on as well in the Church as he would have succeeded at the Bar. In the course of Mr. Magee’s examination the following passage occurred: “Counsel—Is not Dr. Fitzgerald a warm man? Magee—There are other warm men in college besides Dr. Fitzgerald. Counsel—I perceive there are.” Mr. Toomy, a Scholar of the house, acknowledged that he was a Catholic. He told about “Regulators’ Places” for Sizars, worth about £16 a year, and about “Natives’ Places” for Scholars worth the same, and the electioneering use which the Provost made of these appointments. Mr. Stordy, the college clerk, told a great deal about the system of “non-coing.” A Scholar’s non-co was worth £16 a year, and a Fellow’s was worth, for one half year, 7s. 7d. a week, and for the other half, 8s. 6d. a week, or about £21 a year. Dr. Marsh, Senior Fellow, was twice refused leave of absence by the Provost. The Provost gave the Vice-Chancellor’s rooms to his own supporters. A Scholar could have leave for thirty-two days, and a fellow for sixty-three.[56] By Yelverton’s Act, Trinity College students could be called to the bar three years before non-graduates.

Mr. Whitley Stokes, Fellow, gave instances of the Provost’s partiality at the election.

Mr. Fox opened the case for the sitting Member, and maintained that there was no instance of undue influence, and he was followed by Mr. Boyd on the part of the Provost. Then Mr. Plunkett spoke to evidence, against the Provost and the sitting Member. The Recorder replied for the Provost in very eulogistic terms, mentioning his seven Under-Graduate premiums, his college reforms, improvements, &c. He disparaged the made-up arithmetical evidence of Miller and Magee, and was followed by Mr. Chamberlaine for the sitting Member. Mr. Burrowes closed the argument in a very eloquent speech, which was as severe on the Provost as the “Lachrymæ” or “Pranceriana” was. It is noticeable, by the way, that Duigenan took no part in the petitions, and that he was neither employed in the case nor even named in the examination. Burrowes said that Miller’s rejection of the Provost’s offer of his questions was “a moral miracle.” It was Miller’s third attempt for fellowship.

Burrowes “lamented the necessity of the odious investigation which exposed to public view the disgraceful and disastrous state of the University—condoning the undue influence would make the college as corrupt as any pot-walloping borough—the University would be shortly depopulated, and its only remaining trace would be the octennial convention of an unresisted Provost, and unresisting electors, to return suitable representatives to Parliament, and celebrate the festival of banished literature and vanquished public spirit. The decay of the University in such an event, would be desirable; its honours ought to be a brand of disgrace in society, and the contaminated Scholar ought to become a despised and abandoned citizen.” Burrowes was full of pride and loyalty for the old place. He was himself an Ex-Scholar,[57] as were also amongst the lawyers in the case Beresford Burston, Plunket, Smith, Fox, and Boyd; and he was jealous for the honour of the Academic prize. “Some of the most important officers in the state,” he exclaimed, “are filled by men who were Scholars of the University; in the learned professions the most eminent men have in their youth been Scholars. The most respectable divines, the most eminent lawyers, a considerable number of the Judges of the land, have been Scholars. Every individual of the eight lawyers[58] who appeared before this Committee have been Scholars of the University.”[59] Burrowes closed his speech:—“I sit down assured you cannot pronounce the Honourable Francis Hely Hutchison to have been duly elected.” Forty-one witnesses were produced by the petitioners, of whom ten were Fellows and thirteen Scholars. The Hutchisons produced six witnesses—no Fellow, one Scholar, and a lady.

The Committee sat from the 14th February to the 24th March, when, by a majority of one, including the double vote of the chairman, it resolved (Wellington and Lord E. Fitzgerald voting in the minority) “That the Hon. Francis Hely Hutchinson had made use of no undue influence; that he was duly elected a burgess to represent the University in the present Parliament; and that the Provost, as Returning Officer of the University, acted legally and impartially at and before the election.”

Perhaps the most significant fact evolved by the investigation was that some of the Scholars were Catholics, the Statutes and the Anglican Sacrament notwithstanding. There was no reserve in the statement, and no remark on it was made by any member of Committee.[60] The point was not brought forward in the petition, nor pressed by any of the Council, except in the case of one Scholar, whose conformity was accepted by the Committee. In fact the “Popery” seems to have been taken quite as an understood thing,[61] and this coincides entirely with the famous declaration of Fitzgibbon. In 1782, speaking on Gardiner’s Bill, in the Irish House of Commons, as Member for the University, he asserted that “the University of Dublin was already open, by connivance, and that no religious conformity was required.” It is not easy to reconcile this with the then existing regulations for students as well as for Scholars, and in that debate the Provost did not speak exactly in this strain. On the contrary, he lamented that the religious disabilities did exist, and he was urgent for a King’s Letter to give the Catholics equality in the University, under a Theological Professor of their own.[62]

That debate, it may be noticed, is memorable for the cordial and consenting speeches of the Provost and of the two Members for the University, Hussey Burgh and Fitzgibbon. They all were in favour of Catholic relief, especially in the matter of education, and they all would have opened the College freely and liberally to Catholics. It was in this debate that Hussey Burgh protested against the Irish Bishops’ practice of ordaining men on Scotch degrees. The Provost warmly thanked Burgh for sustaining the right and the dignity of the University. He said that the number of yearly degrees had risen from 95 to 109, and that Trinity College Graduates could be supplied for as many curacies as had the legal allowance of £50 a year.[63]

Plunket was very indignant at the miserable bribery and corruption that were administered by the Provost, but he had not a word to say against the deeper and wider corruption that was ingrained in the sectarian exclusiveness of the constitution of the place. How could he say anything, being himself in the same condemnation? He was the son of a Unitarian minister;[64] and is said to have lived and died an Unitarian, and still he was a Scholar of the House.

In 1790, a very able pamphlet, suggested by Provost Hutchison’s despotic regime, was published anonymously, entitled: “An Inquiry how far the Provost of Trinity College, Dublin, is invested with a negative on the proceedings of the Senior Fellows by the Charter and Statutes of the College.”

The pamphlet is traditionally ascribed to the Rev. G. Miller, F.T.C.D., who gave such important evidence before the parliamentary committee; and, substantially, it is based upon the arbitrary acts of the Provost, which were brought out before the committee, and which are more fully stated in the “Lachrymæ” and “Pranceriana.”

The “Enquiry” asserts that the Provost claimed and exerted a negative upon all Board proceedings; and that in the election of Fellows and Scholars he had not only a negative but a final affirmative. The writer maintains that this, although the traditional, was not the true sense of the Statutes; and that by the Statutes the Provost had no greater power than the head of any other Corporation. He argues very closely and clearly to this purpose in regard of elections especially, from the grammatical meaning of “unâ cum” and “cum;” and he shows that what the Statute requires is merely the presence of the Provost, and that then, like the rest, he is bound by a majority decision. The writer is more subtle and less convincing in his solution of the last clause of the statute beginning “Quod si primo.”[65]

Mr. Miller submitted a statement of the case for legal opinion, and obtained opinions supporting his own view from Sir William Scott (Lord Stowel), Sir Michael Smith, (Baron of the Exchequer and Master of the Rolls), Edward Law (Lord Ellenborough), Arthur Wolfe (Lord Kilwarden, Lord Chief Justice), and others.

The three questions were: (1) Had the Provost an absolute negative on Board Proceedings? (2) Was he concluded by the concurring votes of five Senior Fellows? (3) Could he nominate Fellows and Scholars to the exclusion of a candidate by a majority of the electors?

The first and third were answered in the negative; and the second in the affirmative by all the lawyers.[66]

While all these people were amusing themselves anatomising the Provost, he was not by any means silent on his own side. Besides his speeches in Parliament and his utterances at the Privy Council and at the Board, he had recourse to the public press. He sent a vindication of himself to the Hibernian Journal, which Duigenan says was the beginning of all the writing. The Provost also published by Leathley, Bookseller to the University, a pamphlet entitled, “Regulations made in Trinity College since the appointment of the Provost,” and “Pranceriana” says that the unlucky pamphlet was withdrawn promptly after the attack made upon it in the Hibernian. It was for this attack that the Provost had the editor of the journal, Mr. James Mills, ducked under the College pump. This smashing article is No. 27 in the “Pranceriana Collection,” and it certainly is a notable piece of criticism. It was attributed to the pen of Malone, the editor of “Shakespeare.” It is, perhaps, worth mentioning here, that as the College Library was without a copy of the Provost’s book until the year 1853, so it was without a copy of “Pranceriana” until the year 1880. Trinitas incuriosa suorum! The copy of the “Pranceriana” in the Library is the Second Edition, 1784, with the Appendix of 1776.

All the foregoing testimonies are damaging to the Provost’s memory; but it is only fair to remember that all of them are the utterances of men who were his envious and unscrupulous personal enemies. In some respects John Hely Hutchinson was bad enough, but the most abiding charge against him is that of greediness and place-traffic; and in this transgression it is probable that he only sinned more deeply than most of the public men around him. He certainly was audacious in his demands, but he was a king in jobbery. What Duigenan does not at all account for is, how Hutchinson was able to drive all these flourishing bargains, and to hold such high place under various administrations and in the teeth of combining rivalries—and still this is a circumstance that ought, biographically, to be accounted for. The etiology is supplied in other contemporary sources, written in a more discerning spirit—and it is this, that the Provost was a man of immense ability, and of rare personal ascendency. He possessed, moreover, in a signal degree, the undaunted personal courage which, as mentioned further on,[67] was inherited by his sons and grandson; although Duigenan, who was himself very much of the Bob Acre type, refuses him even this credit, and mocks his sham duels.[68] He knew how to make himself both dreaded and desired by the Government, for he could be either its greatest help or its most formidable opponent. He knew the men he had to deal with, and he dealt with them according to the knowledge.

We have descriptions of the Provost in many contemporary works, and these descriptions, while they make no secret of his rapacity, present a strong reverse side to the “Pranceriana” picture.[69]

Thus Hardy[70] says: “John Hely Hutchinson, father to the Earl of Donoughmore and Lord Hutchinson, introduced a classical idiom into the House of Commons. No member was ever more extolled than he was on his first appearance there. He opposed Government on almost every question, but his opposition was of no long continuance. As an orator his expression was fluent, easy, and lively; his wit fertile and abundant; his invective admirable, not so much from any particular energy of temperament or diction, as from being always unclogged with anything superfluous, or which could at all diminish the justness and brilliancy of its colouring. It ran along with the feelings of the House and never went beyond them.... The consequence of this assumed calmness was that he never was stopped.... The members for a long time remembered his satire, and the objects of it seldom forgave it.... In his personal contests with Mr. Flood (and in the more early part of their parliamentary careers they were engaged in many) he is supposed to have had the advantage.... To Flood’s anger, Hutchinson opposed the powers of ridicule; to his strength he opposed refinement; to the weight of his oratory an easy, flexible ingenuity, nice discrimination, and graceful appeal to the passions. As the debate ran high, Flood’s eloquence alternately displayed austere reasoning and tempestuous reproof; its colours were chaste but gloomy; Hutchinson’s, on the contrary, were of ‘those which April wears,’ bright, various, and transitory; but it was a vernal evening after a storm, and he was esteemed the most successful because he was the most pleasing.... Mr. Gerrard Hamilton (than whom a better judge of public speaking has seldom been seen) observed that in his support of Government Hutchinson had always something to say which gratified the House. ‘He can go out in all weathers, and as a debater is therefore inestimable.’ He had attended much to the stage, and in his younger days he lived on great habits of intimacy with Quin, who admired his talents and improved his elocution.... He never recommended a bad measure, nor appeared a champion for British interest in preference to that of his own country. He was not awed into silence; he supported the Octennial Bill, the Free Trade Bill, and the Catholic Bill.... His acceptance of the Provostship of Trinity College was an unwise step.... After a long enjoyment of parliamentary fame it was then said that he was no speaker, and after the most lucrative practice at the Bar that he was no lawyer.... His country thought far otherwise, and his reputation as a man of genius, and an active, well-informed statesman, remained undiminished to the last. He left the opposition in 1760, and took the Prime Serjeancy.... In private life he was amiable, and in the several duties of father and husband most exemplary. In 1789, on the debate about the Prince of Wales’s regency, Grattan opposing the administration was supported with great ability by Hutchinson, then Secretary of State. In the Lords, Lord Donoughmore took the same side. In 1792, in the debate on Langrishe’s Bill for the restoration of the elective franchise to Irish Catholics, Hutchinson’s two sons (Francis [?], afterwards Lord Donoughmore, and the one afterwards Lord Hutchinson) voted in the minority with the patriots.”

The Gentleman’s Magazine (1794) says that he was a wondrously gifted man and one of the most remarkable persons that this country ever produced. At the same time it calls him a rank courtier, and recites most of the “Pranceriana” and “Lachrymæ” tattle against him.

Grattan and Grattan’s son held a very high opinion both of his genius and of his fidelity to the interests of Ireland. Both of the Grattans, on the other hand, had a horror of Duigenan, as a truculent and coarse vulgarian. It is in Grattan’s “Life” that we are told about Duigenan’s threatening in the Law Courts to “bulge the Provost’s eye,” and it is there that Curran’s epigram on Duigenan’s oratory is preserved.[71]

Grattan says that Hutchinson supported every honest measure—all the main and essential ones, such as the Claim of Right, Free Trade, the Catholic Bills, Reform, and the Pension Bill. “He was the servant of many governments, but he was an Irishman notwithstanding.” He possessed greater power of satire than any man of his day, and Grattan quotes Horace Walpole’s anecdote about his habit of annoying Rigby and the Government when he wanted to make himself disagreeable to them. At other times he was immensely useful to the Government. Grattan considered that his chief fault was want of openness and directness of character, together with love of self-advancement. He was an enthusiastic admirer of Grattan, and took a prominent part in demanding for him the national presentation in 1782.

Taylor[72] says that Hutchinson was a very effective Provost, that he restored the discipline of the place, and that to him the University owes the improvement of the modern languages professorships. Taylor adds that he was a man of an enlightened mind and extended views, and that it is now admitted his views were consonant with the best principles of education.

Lord North knew Hutchinson’s peculiarity well, and he said that “if England and Ireland were given to him he would want the Isle of Man for a potato garden.” The Duke of Rutland, Lord Lieutenant here in 1784, formed a similar estimate, when he wrote that “the Provost had always some object in view, and that his objects were not generally marked with the character of moderation and humility.”[73]

Dr. Wills[74] gives Provost Hely Hutchinson a very high place amongst the eminent men of the country, and mentions his eloquence and college reforms as well as his greed.

Even Mr. Froude,[75] who vastly dislikes himself and his sons, is constrained to call him the “able and brilliant Hely Hutchinson,” and to tell of his “meridian splendour.” He quotes Lord Lieutenant Townshend’s statement that he was “the most popular man in parliament to conduct a debate.”

The famous Colonel Isaac Barrè,[76] who, as he got Scholarship in 1744, was a college class-fellow of Hutchinson, gives the following description of him in 1768:—“When the Army Augmentation Bill was introduced by Tom Connoly, it was opposed by Sexten Pery on constitutional grounds, and by the Attorney General (Tisdall) on grounds that left him free to support the Bill afterwards if it were his interest to do so.[77]

“The Prime Serjeant (Hutchinson)” says Barrè “was not so prudent[78] (as Tisdall), and opposed it in a long, languid speech, full of false calculations; among the rest this curious one, that adding £40,000 per annum to the national expense was, in fact, adding a million to its debt, and that the nation, in the next session, would be £1,800,000 in debt. If all this is true, how will he have the impudence to support this measure hereafter? But, indeed, he has contradicted himself three or four times in the course of this session upon this subject.[79] He talks now of being dismissed. His profit by his employment is trifling, not above three or four hundred a year.[80]

“He is personally disliked, a mean gambler—not one great point in him—and exceedingly unpopular in this country. I must tell you a short anecdote which put him very much out of temper. The day after the first division he came to Council in a hackney chair, which happened, unluckily, to be No. 108 (the number of the majority). A young officer at the Castle wrote under the number of the chair, “COURT” in large characters, and at the top a coronet was drawn.[81]

“He denied positively in the beginning of his speech, any bargain or terms proposed by him at the Castle, but was not believed.... As far as I am able to judge,” continues Barrè, “this country is manageable easily enough. The prevailing faction exists only by your want of system in England. They have no abilities, and their present and only friend, Hutchinson (for Tisdall is quite broken), cannot be depended on for a moment.”

In the last volume (vol. viii.) of the “Historical Manuscripts Report” we find some very interesting mentions of Hutchinson in the letters that passed between “Single Speech” Hamilton and Edmund Sexten Pery. Both of these eminent men entertained a high opinion of, and a sincere personal regard for, the Provost. In 1771, Hamilton, who was Chancellor of the Irish Exchequer, and had been Chief Secretary to two Lord Lieutenants (Lords Halifax and Northumberland) wrote to Pery, the Speaker[82] of the House:—“As long as you and Andrews and Hutchinson are in being and business, Ireland will never want attractions sufficient to make me prefer it to a situation of ‘more splendour and greater influence.’”

Two years later, Hamilton wrote to Pery about the collapse of the negotiations for his resigning the Exchequer Chancellorship in Hutchinson’s favour, and begged that Hutchinson would not again require him to sacrifice his own solid and substantial interests. Another letter, dated 1779, says that Flood was eagerly canvassing for the post, and that Hutchinson was discontented. The Chancellorship was not given to either of the rivals—it was given to Foster, who was afterwards Speaker; and Hutchinson accordingly failed to score a second triumph over “the generous-minded, ornamental, sonorous-voiced Henry Flood, who was eclipsing his meridian splendour.”[83]

In 1777 the Corporation of Dublin petitioned the Provost and Board for a free education for the son of the deceased patriot, Dr. Lucas. The College authorities responded in a literal spirit, and generously granted to the lad not only a remission of fees, but free rooms and free commons as well.[84]

In 1779, were published the “Commercial Restraints,” which in its original shape was, a contribution to Lord Lieutenant Buckinghamshire as to the best method of extricating the country from its discontent and troubles. Froude says (vol. ii., p. 223), that it was the most important of all the opinions gathered by the Viceroy, and that it earned Hutchinson’s pardon from Irish patriotism for his subserviency to the Court and Lord Townshend. The work is an extremely able review of the whole history and condition of our native Irish trade and industries, and it is as loyal in its nationality as it is able. It is the only specimen we have to show us the Provost as a writer and as an economist, and it certainly secures him a high place in these two estimates.

In this aspect the work possesses a great biographical value, inasmuch as it serves to complete the likeness of the Provost, and the complement which it supplies falls in line with the best features of the original. Although his sentences are often slovenly and sometimes ungrammatical, he could write forcibly and clearly, as well as speak persuasively and rhetorically; he could make facts and figures deliver their lesson; he could summon up the ghost of the past to illustrate and enforce the duties of the present; he could enwrap a message of peace in a mantle of warning; and when no selfish interest intervened he could fling his sword into the scale that was freighted with his country’s welfare.

During Hutchinson’s Provostship His Excellency the Lord Lieutenant, Lord Buckinghamshire, went in state to the University, and was received at the entrance of the Old Hall by the Provost and Fellows. At his entrance, Dr. Kearney made an eloquent oration; at the printing office, where H. E. was entertained with a view of the artists, another oration was delivered by Mr. Hutchinson, youngest (?) son of the Provost; at the Anatomy and Philosophical Rooms addresses were delivered by the Hon. Dr. Decourcy, son of Lord Kinsale, and the Hon. Mr. Jones, son of Lord Ranelagh. Thence he went to the Library, where an excellent oration was made by Dr. Leland, the Librarian, Orator, and Professor. H. E. afterwards dined in the New Hall with the Provost and Fellows, and numbers of the nobility and gentry. The elegance of the entertainment cannot be described, and is imagined to stand the College in no less than £700.[85]

In 1791 a Visitation by Lord Chancellor Lord Clare as Vice-Chancellor, and Dr. Fowler, Archbishop of Dublin, was held in the New Theatre, at the instance of the Provost, in reference to the complaint of Mr. Allen of having been unjustly kept out of Fellowship in 1790. The Visitors ruled that the question was not open to discussion, in consequence of the length of time which had elapsed. The Provost then brought forward his claim to the negative power over the proceedings of the Board, and was replied to by Drs. Kearney and Brown. The Provost argued from the Statutes and especially from the Unâ cum Præposito clauses, and spoke for three hours and a half with great ability. Mr. Miller spoke on behalf of the Junior Fellows, touching their right to retain the emoluments of their pupils when they went out on livings. Miller was rebuked by the Chancellor for accusing the Provost of wanting to turn the disposal of pupils into a matter of patronage. The Rev. Mr. Burrowes and Mr. Magee spoke on the same side. Magee was personal, and on the Provost’s protest the Chancellor stopped him. The Visitors declined to decide whether the Provost has an arbitrary election negative at the election of Fellows and Scholars; they ruled that the Provost has the power of disposing of pupils; and that he is bound by the majority of the Board. The Lord Chancellor bewailed the internal dissensions, alluded to his “own education in the College, and declared that there was not another University in Europe better calculated for the great purposes of promoting virtue and learning.” The Visitation lasted three days.

In 1792, Hutchinson saw the Gardiner-Hobart Catholic Relief Bill carried, and three days after, the 26th of February, he saw the House of Parliament burned. On the 1st of March following Sir John Blacquiere repaid the University for its honorary degree by moving the thanks of the house to the College students for their spirited exertions in extinguishing the fire; and by suggesting that in acknowledgment of the daring bravery of the youths their old privilege of right of admission to the gallery should be restored to them. Mr. Hutchinson, the Member for the University, acknowledged the compliment with becoming pride and dignity. The Provost’s last reported appearance in parliament was on the 6th of July, 1793, when he spoke in support of the Bill for the Charitable Musical Society. In the previous month, on one of the Militia Bills, he defended his son Francis from a rebuke of Mr. Secretary Hobart, though he voted against the son.

In that his last session, he saw carried—and along with Grattan, Forbes, Yelverton, Gardiner, and the other Liberals helped to carry—the Place, Pensions, Barren Land, and India Trade Acts. He introduced the bills for the Parliament grant of £1,300 to establish the College Botanical Gardens, and he earnestly supported Knox’s Bill for admitting Catholics to Parliament.

He presided at the Board of Trinity College for the last time on the 25th of August this same year. His health was giving way, and his old enemy, the gout, was prevailing against him.

In the political side of his career Hutchinson saw a wondrous change in the meaning and method of Irish parliamentary life. When he began (1759) to take part in public affairs, the Irish parliament was at about its lowest level of degradation. Having been abolished by Cromwell and re-created by Charles II., it had become from the time of the Restoration little else than an office for registering and levying the English orders for pensions and salaries, and for passing the Money Bills. Poyning’s Act and the 6th of George I. were in such active operation that the Government asserted the power of originating and altering the Money Bills, and that Anthony Malone was dismissed first from the Prime Serjeancy and later from the Exchequer Chancellorship for denying his right. A few years later, Lord Lieutenant Townshend, came over here for the express purpose of smashing the Irish Junto, and he smashed it by the simple process of taking the bribery into his own hands,[87] and making it, what Sir Arthur Wellesley[88] forty years after found it, an English state department.[89] He was so indignant with the Commons for rejecting an altered Money Bill that he entered a protest on the Lords’ Journal and prorogued the Parliament.[90] Down to Hutchinson’s time the Lord Lieutenants were absentees, and the Lords Justices were the centre of the Junto of “Undertakers” who undertook to the English Government to manage business here—i.e. “their own business”—on their own conditions. In the National Senate there was no national or intellectual life, and scarcely a name has survived in history.

There are no Reports of debates until the year 1781; for over 50 years scarcely a single important measure was passed;[91] place holders in parliament were multiplied, and the pension and salary lists increased in proportion.[92] To lessen the balance available for this bribery, the surplus revenue was expended in local and private jobs.[93] The Mutiny Act was perpetual; parliaments ran for the monarch’s life, judges held at pleasure, Catholics were debarred the franchise and education; Anglican State Protestantism was built up by cruelty and crime, complaints of grievances were met by commendations of the Charter Schools, and the trade and industries of the country were suffered, without remonstrance, to lie strangled under the jealous and grasping commercial restraints imposed by the English Parliament.

All these things Hely Hutchinson saw when he first looked out on the field of Irish administration; and before he died he saw most of these reproaches swept away by the operation of the courage, and intellect, and vigour which, contemporaneously with himself, found their way into the Commons House. Sexten Pery was a few years before him, and “Sexten Pery,” says Grattan, “was the original fountain of all the good that befell Ireland.” Flood entered parliament the same year as Hutchinson, Hussey Burgh, and Gardiner a few years later, and then came Yelverton and Grattan, and by the power of these resolute anti-Englishers the face of the country was changed. They found Ireland a child, and they watched her growth from infancy to arms, and from arms to liberty. They led the Volunteers to victory, and wrung back a portion of the people’s rights from the frightened oppressor.[94]

To this change Hutchinson directly, and still more indirectly, contributed. He quickened the parliamentary tone, and lifted its level. He was the father of the cultivated style of oratory which henceforward characterised the debates; he was the best debater in the house, and, after Grattan, the finest speaker. He could patriotise, and he could philippise; and whether he patriotised or philippised, he did it formidably and efficiently. He was venal, but he feared no man’s face; he was a ready-money voter, but he could go out in all weathers. He trafficked, without satiety, in patents and sinecures for himself and his sons, but he insisted on Free Trade for Ireland.[95]

Take him for all in all, and the first John Hely Hutchinson certainly presents a very rare combination of striking features. He was a representative man of a remarkable age, and he sprung out of the conditions of a period which he very much helped to mould. He was endowed with leading abilities, and was disfigured by hideous blemishes. From an humble start in life he made his way to the high places of the field, and, without any surroundings, he raised himself to be a living power in the State. He was mighty in speech, in courage, in council, and in achievement; and he could be craven, vindictive, corrupting, and paltry. In invective he was unequalled; and he was more sorely scorched by ridicule and rebuke than any man of his day. He lived in perpetual discords and in endless schemes, and the success which, in the main, followed him was chequered by bitter defeats and mortifications. He enjoyed a splendid fortune, maintained a lordly style, and wielded vast influence, and not a single generous action is recorded of him. Negligent of learning, he became the head of the University in one of its periods of peculiar brilliancy, and, having for twenty years drawn its revenues and exploited its resources, he is not named in its list of benefactors. He reared a numerous, affectionate, gifted, and successful family, and he founded a peerage.[96]

However unprincipled Hutchinson was in his bargainings with the Castle, he was often sound and straight on national and Catholic questions. He was an enthusiastic admirer of Grattan, and, on essential matters touching the interests and dignity of the country, he gave Grattan a cordial and effective support. The proudest passage in his life was the day (16th April, 1782) when, as Principal Secretary of State, he read out to the Irish Parliament the king’s message, practically conceding independence.[97] There is not in Anglo-Irish history another event of equal grandeur; and Hely Hutchinson’s Provostship for ever and inseparably connects the College with the climax of a triumph over English arrogance and obstinacy which, in the main, was won by a phalanx of her own sons when the prince of all the land led them on.[98]

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The Will of “John Hely Hutchinson, His Majesty’s Principal Secretary of State,” made in 1788—proved and probate granted in November, 1794, by the Right Worshipful Patrick Duigenan, Doctor of Laws, Commissary, and so forth, is in the Public Record Office.

There are seven codicils of various dates, down to the year of the Provost’s death. He says that no man ever had better or more dutiful and affectionate children—God bless them all—and amongst them he left £5,000 to each of his two eldest daughters, with 5 per cent. interest, and £4,000 to each of the two younger. He left £5,000 to his son Francis, as engaged at the time of his marriage, and to his sons John, Abraham, Christopher, and Lorenzo £4,000 each; £500 to Jane, eldest daughter of his worthy friend, Dr. Wilson. If any children should die before 21, or marriage, their share was to go amongst the younger children, but so as no younger child was to have more than £5,000 on the whole. All his real and personal estate,[99] subject to the foregoing legacies, he left to his dearly-beloved son, Lord Donoughmore, his sole executor. He was to raise the portions of the two younger daughters to £5,000, if the estate could afford it. His office in the Port of Strangford he considered part of his personal estate, having purchased it with the knowledge and at the desire of the Irish Government;[100] and he included it in the bequest to Lord Donoughmore for the lives in being. In a codicil (1789) he bequeathed £200 each to John, and to Abraham and Christopher while they shall continue at the Temple. Later codicils mention that some of these sums had been paid in full, and the legacies were accordingly revoked. He left his books on Morality, Divinity, and Poetry to Abraham, the law books to Francis, and the rest of his books to John. In a codicil of 1794, he left to Abraham “whose health is delicate,” £100 a year till he shall obtain a net income of £200 yearly by some ecclesiastical preferment, this being in addition to the former legacy.[101] To his butler he left £20 a year, and to another servant £20. He desired his manuscript essay towards a history of the College[102] to be published, being first perused by his son, Lord Donoughmore.[103] He directed his body to be opened, and to be laid by his late dear wife.

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The following Will which laid the foundation of the fortunes of the family is also in the Public Record Office:—

“The last Will and Testament of Richard Hutchinson of Knocklofty, in the county of Tipperary, Esq. Whereas I have this day executed a deed, whereby it appears that there are several sums now affecting my estate, and amounting in the whole to the sum of ten thousand nine hundred and fifty-two pounds four shillings and a farthing; and whereas Ann Mauzy, widow, and Lewis Mauzy, her son, have agreed to accept the sum of four thousand pounds in lieu of all their claims and demands. Now it is my will that such personal fortune as I now, or at the time of my death shall be possessed of shall be applied, in the first place, towards paying and discharging such sums of money as John Hely Hutchinson, Esq., shall think proper to pay the said Ann Mauzy, provided the same does not exceed the said sum of four thousand pounds; and the rest and residue of my personal estate and fortune if anything shall remain, I bequeath to my beloved niece, Christian Hely Hutchinson.

“Witness my hand and seal, this fourth day of August, one thousand seven hundred and fifty-seven.

“RICHARD HUTCHINSON.”

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