'Of course, if Mr. Curran really wishes it, you had better obey. It is a long ride for you every morning from the Abbey to the Four-courts.'
The Priory, on the other side of Dublin, was about the same distance from the Four-courts, Terence thought with anger. The girl was playing with him, as she always did.
'I hope Sara will make you comfortable,' she went on. 'No doubt she will, she is so sweet a girl. Then we shall meet at Castle balls, and you shall lead me out for a rigadoon like a mere stranger. That will be funny, will it not? You don't mean what you say one bit, and it is a relief to me to know that it is all flummery--you silly, hot-pated, blarneying Pat! Come along. We will go and eat our breakfast and be thankful that we have one to eat, instead of talking nonsense. That is all that you or I are fit for, I am afraid! For it is not such as you nor I who are destined to save poor Ireland!'
CHAPTER IX.
[THE PRIORY.]
A year went by, and Terence was still away from home, an inmate of the Priory; settled down, much against his will, as a sober councillor, principal assistant to Mr. Curran, the continually rising advocate. Sober is scarcely the fitting epithet, for conviviality was the besetting sin of all classes of Irish in the eighteenth century, and it was notorious that legal gentlemen, from Judge Clonmel to the meanest attorney, were constantly in the habit of going drunk to roost. Where lawyers led, Dublin was fain to follow, for the Bar took the lead in the society of the metropolis, occupying a strong middle position of its own between 'gentlemen to the backbone' and 'half-mounted' ditto, from, which it dictated to both. As the policy of ministers grew more and more unpopular, it became more and more urgent that Government patronage should be expended in purchasing support for the measures under which the country groaned; and where could support be more easily found than among the exponents of forensic wisdom?
Successfully to do battle with Flood and Grattan it was necessary to scrape together as much intellect as was available, and so every promising barrister became certain of a seat in parliament if he would furbish up his brains for the Viceroy's benefit. This gave to the lawyers a prestige which drew sons of peers within their ranks, and they assumed superior airs, which no man challenged, in that their profession was a nursery to the senate--a step-ladder to the highest honours. Younger sons of noble houses invariably lean towards the middle class, because a wide difference of income divides them in feeling and ways of thought from their elder brothers. Such lordlings as possessed a competence chose to while away their hours elegantly in gowns and bands. And so the Bar became the fashion, the lawyers being credited with such attributes as they thought proper to adopt, and being permitted to wield an arbitrary sway which was beneficial and mirth-inspiring. They assumed the right of mind over matter, and people bowed the knee without inquiry, for they were pre-eminently jolly dogs who made life the merrier, whose scraps of legal lore sounded mightily sonorous to ignorant ears, and who, if one was rash enough to presume to dispute their law, were always ready to take refuge behind the inevitable pistol. But human nature at its best is frail, and even lawyers are not always pure. When came the tug of war--when the Four-courts were closed and courts-martial juggled away men's lives--the councillors prated no more of their incorruptible virtue, but donned the uniform as others did, and truckled, with a few bright exceptions, as meanly as the rest.
But we are now in 1796, when King Claret ruled the roast; when all were besotted with drink, from Clonmel who gave sentence with a drop in his eye, to the beggar in the dock who starved his stomach to buy a drain of spirits; when out of the six thousand houses which formed Dublin, thirteen hundred were occupied as boozing-kens; when guests were deprived of their shoes by a host who understood hospitality, and broken glass was sprinkled in the passages to prevent a man from jibbing at his liquor.
Mr. Curran's fears were being realised in this year of '96, for the criminal business to which he had turned his attention was increasing on his hands through the swelling torrent of treasonable charges. My Lord Clare's policy was bearing its full crop of evils, for he had succeeded in moulding the too plastic Viceroy into the shape that suited him, according to the plan laid down by Mr. Pitt. Lord Camden, whilst meaning to do well, was repeatedly led astray, as many a better man has been before him. To Clare he was a docile cat. He submitted to the secret council of Lords--that mysterious wehmgericht--who were urged by the chancellor to the most violent proceedings, and became unconsciously a scapegoat for the bearing of the sins of others.
Under skilful manipulation the Society of United Irishmen flourished prodigiously. Tom Emmett and Neilson were kept in prison, where they languished without trial. Others were let out and caged again as occasion required, that they might inflame their fellows with a catalogue of dread experiences. Midnight meetings resulted, wherein orators declaimed of the wickedness of the perfidious one, and summoned all true patriots to take the fatal oath. The decision which had been come to on the disastrous night in Trinity was carried out to the letter, and was much assisted in its fulfilmeut by the harsh treatment of the chiefs. The military system was engrafted on the civil.