Although he had retired from public life, and was seriously ill when the measure which resulted in legislative union with Great Britain was introduced, Grattan stood for a vacant constituency, and re-entered the House whose independence he had gained while the debate affecting its existence was in progress. There have been few more pathetic scenes in the history of Parliaments than that which, in the final debate, shows us the old man eloquent, too feeble to stand, and addressing the House by its leave seated, pleading for the last time in the cause of his country. It was that he might spend his latest years in support of the bill for the removal of the disabilities of Roman Catholics, whose emancipation had been one of the objects of his political career, that Grattan consented to enter the British Parliament. The keynote of his plea sounds in the words he used in one of the speeches upon the question: “Bigotry may survive persecution, but it can never survive toleration.” Like Edmund Burke, the path he chose in life was not one which led to preferment; and it is best perhaps that his resting-place in the Abbey beside Pitt and Fox is undistinguished by name or stone. What epitaph could England write for Henry Grattan? The full-length portraits of Grattan and Flood possessed by the College hang upon the same wall in the Dining Hall. That of Grattan represents him in the hour of his triumph, moving the Declaration of Independence. Flood, a striking figure, stands defiantly out, as if replying to a hostile speaker in the measured invective for which he was famous. Flood’s name is to be found in the list of the benefactors of Trinity College. He left an estate of five thousand pounds, to be devoted to the purchase of Irish MSS., and for the encouragement of the study of that language.
In the minutes of the Irish Parliament, as moving and seconding motions for the removal of the political disabilities of the Roman Catholics, appear frequently in combination the names of two peers educated in Dublin University—Lords Mountjoy and O’Neill. Parliamentary friends when the insurrection of Ninety-Eight plunged the country into civil war, they became brothers in arms. Alike in fate, O’Neill fell at the battle of Antrim, Mountjoy at New Ross.
Another illustrious Irish name among the Dublin graduates of the period is that of Sir Lucius O’Brien, a leading statesman and financier in the Lower House, a man of much practical ability and of unblemished honour. As leader of the “Country Party,” he was foremost in the successful struggle to relieve Irish finance from waste and corruption, and to free Irish trade and legislation from unjust restriction.
Plunket, by some considered Grattan’s equal as an orator, must be regarded as one of the most remarkable men of his age. At the Bar, as in the Senate, he made a profound impression upon men who, like Lord Brougham, his warm friend and admirer, were keen critics and trained lawyers. The severity of his style distinguishes him from all other speakers of the period. The grace and beauty of Plunket’s oratory are not to be found in any wealth of ornamental diction. Its texture was logical; every phrase, whether direct or involving illustration, was uttered with but one end in view—that of persuasion. To dazzle without producing conviction is not a part of the aim of any sincere man. Plunket made no effort to captivate the sense; he addressed himself to the reason, and to honourable victory.
PLUNKET.
Curran, afterwards Master of the Rolls under Fox during his short administration, made his reputation as a speaker by his defence of the prisoners in the trials of Ninety-Eight. The speech—a masterpiece—in which he defended Hamilton Rowan, was, in the estimation of Brougham, “the most eloquent speech ever delivered at the Bar.” Curran’s eloquence is florid and passionate, more typical of Irish oratory, as that phrase is usually understood, than that of the greater men of the time. He appealed more directly to the emotions, and was a consummate master in that difficult art—the arousing and controlling the feelings of his audience. In this art his younger contemporary, Richard Lalor Sheil, also excelled. Although of undignified figure, and denied by nature the gifts of voice and manner which fascinate public assemblies, he overcame all obstacles to the attainment of that power which, unlike that of the poet or philosopher, is always a witness of its own triumph.
Thomas Moore was one of the first Roman Catholics to take advantage of the Act of 1793, which threw open to them the University of Dublin. Although his co-religionists now obtained the privilege of attending the College classes, they were debarred until many years later from the higher academic honours, and Moore, who was entitled to a Scholarship on his answering, could not profit by it. He was, however, recognised by the authorities as a youth of promise, and was the recipient on one occasion of a special prize for a set of English verses, the prize being a copy of the Travels of Anacharsis, with the inscription, “Propter laudabilem in versibus componendis progressum.” Moore’s recollections of the debates in the Historical Society, of which he was a prominent member, are full of interest. He became a close friend of Emmet, who was, he tells us, at this time “of the popular side in the Society the chief champion and ornament.” In 1798, when Lord Clare, the Vice-Chancellor of the University, held a solemn Visitation, with the view of discovering whether any treasonable persons or factions had been at work among the students, Moore was examined as a witness. At first he refused to take the oath, but, on learning that such refusal would lead to expulsion, submitted, and gave his evidence, which disclaimed all knowledge of any secret societies within the University. Moore acknowledges that the Visitation, though somewhat of an arbitrary proceeding, was justified in its results. There were, he tells us, a few, among them Robert Emmet, “whose total absence from the whole scene, as well as the dead silence that day after day followed the calling out of their names, proclaimed how deep had been their share in the unlawful proceedings inquired into by this tribunal.” The modern critics of the psychological school seem to have agreed to place “Anacreon” Moore far down on the roll of the “followers of the narrow footsteps of the bards.” They are unable to find, in Lalla Rookh or the Irish Melodies, the intellectual mastery of life without which poetry has for them no real value. They complain that in Moore the sense of
“The heavy and the weary weight
Of all this unintelligible world”