The Irish Catholics had conceived a wonderfully high opinion of Mr. Edmund Burke’s assistance and abilities.—Because he was a clever man himself, they conceived his son must needs be so too; and a deputation was sent over to induce young Mr. Burke to come to Ireland, for the purpose of superintending the progress of their bills of emancipation in the Irish Parliament; and, to bear his expenses, a sum of 2000l. was voted. Mr. Keogh, of Dublin, a very sensible man, who had retired from trade, was extremely active upon this occasion.
The bills were introduced, and resisted: a petition had been prepared by Burke; but being considered neither well-timed nor well-worded, certain even of the warmest Catholic supporters declined to present it.
Young Burke, either totally ignorant of parliamentary rules, or supposing that in a disturbed country like Ireland they would be dispensed with (especially in favour of a son of the great Burke), determined he would present the petition himself;—not at the bar, but in the body of the House! Accordingly, he descended from the gallery, walked into the body of the House with a long roll of parchment under his arm, and had arrived near the Treasury-bench, when a general cry of “Privilege!—A stranger in the House!” arose from all quarters, and checked the progress of the intruder: but when the Speaker, in his loud and dignified tone, called out “Serjeant-at-arms, do your duty!” it seemed to echo like thunder in Burke’s ears; he felt the awkwardness of his situation, and ran towards the bar. Here he was met by the serjeant-at-arms with a drawn sword,—retracing his steps, he was stopped by the clerk; and the serjeant gaining on him, with a feeling of trepidation he commenced actual flight! The door-keepers at the corridor now joined in pursuit; but at length, after an excellent chase, (the members all keeping their seats,) he forced through the enemy behind the Speaker’s chair, and escaped! no doubt, to his great satisfaction. Strong measures were immediately proposed: messengers despatched in all quarters to arrest him: very few knew who he was; when Lord Norbury, (with that vivacious promptness which he always possessed,) on its being observed that no such transaction had ever occurred before, exclaimed, “Yes—I found the same incident some few days back in the cross-readings of the columns of a newspaper:—‘Yesterday a petition was presented to the House of Commons——it fortunately missed fire, and the villain ran off!’”
It was impossible to withstand this sally, which put the House in a moment into good humour. Burke returned to England unsuccessful, and the matter dropped.
It being observed by some member that the serjeant-at-arms should have stopped the man at the back-door, Sir Boyle Roche very justly asked the honourable gentleman—“How could the serjeant-at-arms stop him in the rear, whilst he was catching him in the front?”
I read some time back in the English newspapers an anecdote of Lord Norbury’s having appeared on the bench in a masquerade dress! As I was myself present at that occurrence, it is only just to his lordship to state the facts, whence it will appear that it was totally a mistake—so much so, indeed, that his lordship did not seem to be conscious of his habiliments even whilst every person in court was staring with astonishment.
Some time previously, Lady Castlereagh had given a very splendid masquerade, at which I saw the chief justice in the dress, and character of Hawthorn, in “Love in a Village;” and well did he enact that part. The dress was a green tabinet, with mother-of-pearl buttons, striped yellow-and-black waistcoat, and buff breeches; and was altogether cool and light.
On going the next circuit, (the weather being excessively sultry, and his lordship having a great press of sentences to pass on rebels, &c. at Carlow,) he put on, under his robes, the lightest vestments in his lordship’s wardrobe. Now, be it remembered, that the use of the said masquerade-dress was a dead secret except to the robes that covered it; and neither the passing nor future generations would ever have heard a word of the green jacket, if the said robes had kept themselves close, as the chief justice had carefully provided before the sounding of the trumpet.
The warmth of the day, however, and the variety of appropriate addresses necessary to be framed for so many convicted criminals, might be expected to take away a certain quantity of any man’s precaution; and, as a chief justice is but a man, Lord Norbury fell into the snare! and, feeling the heat insufferable, (which the twisting his wig sideways did not relieve,) he involuntarily first turned up the sleeves of his robe, then loosened the zone round his waist: the robe being now free from all restraint, thought it had a right to steal away from the green jacket; and thus the unconscious chief justice, the representative of the King, “stood confessed” to the auditory in the court-house as representative of a very different character from that of his Majesty! But it was an accident that might, without culpability, have happened even to an archbishop! I myself once saw a bishop play the fiddle, at one of the concerts of the first Lady Westmoreland, in Dublin Castle; and it was not even pretended that he did it by accident.
It is only justice to Lord Norbury to add, that I have repeatedly seen him do things involuntarily, which it would have been totally impossible for him to have done, if conscious, at the time, of his own actions. Though acute in general, he occasionally thought of so many things at once, that he lost all recollection whether of place or circumstance.[[62]]