The Commercial Restraints of Ireland

by John Hely-Hutchinson

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made in Trinity College since the appointment of the Provost,” and “Pranceriana” says that the unlucky pamphlet was withdrawn promptly after the attack made upon it in the Hibernian.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]