[39]. What they called in Ireland mahogany acquaintances.
The country had prospered beyond all possible anticipation, and was still further advancing in prosperity, under the then existing system of administration. I did not perceive that any immediate change of men or measures was at all in prospect, nor that it was at that moment necessary, or even desirable. My immediate personal connexions were on the side of the government. I had always doubted the sincerity of the Whigs: my doubts were now realised, and, on the whole consideration, I determined to attach myself to the administration. I had previously voted with them on the choice of a Speaker; but that I did not consider as constituting any pledge as to my future conduct. I voted for Mr. Forster, as the friend of Sir John Parnell, and because I considered him more fitting for the station than his opponent, Mr. William Ponsonby.
Thus, my mind being at length made up, I determined to render myself of some importance to the side I had adopted. The common course of desultory debate (even conquest over declaimers of my own calibre) would have led to no distinction. I decided either to rise or fall; and with this view, resolved to fly at once at the highest game, in which attempt even if I should not succeed, the trial itself would be honourable. My earliest effort was therefore directed against the two most celebrated speakers of that period, Grattan and Curran; and on the first day I rose I exhibited a specimen of what I may now call true arrogance. The novelty of such unexpected effrontery surprised the House, and afterward surprised myself. It was a species of bold hardihood, which, I believe, no person who had a just sense of his own inferiority would have ventured on without great hesitation. I launched into a strong philippic on the conduct of the most able and respectable opposition that Ireland had ever possessed. I followed and traced the Whigs, as I thought, through all their meanderings and designs. In a word, I surpassed the boundaries, not only of what I had myself resolved, but of what common prudence and propriety should have dictated. The government party, at the same time, was evidently not gratified. Its members, no doubt, considered me as a lost partizan, who had courted and called for my own suppression; and with some portion of the same feeling myself, I sat down almost ashamed of my forwardness, and awaiting, if not with resignation, at least with certainty, a just although cruel chastisement. How then must I have been surprised, and how wofully rebuked, by the mild and gentlemanly retorts which I received from Grattan! whilst Curran’s good temper never showed itself more conspicuously than in his treating me merely with wit and facetiousness. I was abashed and mortified on contrasting the forbearance of those great men with my own intemperance. Had I perceived any thing like contempt in that forbearance, I really believe I should have found it difficult to resume my spirits in the House; but no such feeling appeared toward me; and it is most singular to say, that some incidents which sprang from that very night’s debate gave rise both to the friendship of Mr. Grattan,[[40]] with which I was afterward honoured, and to the close intimacy between me and Mr. Curran, which was never after interrupted.
[40]. Though my actual intimacy with, and friendship for, Mr. Grattan, did not mature at a very early period, his conduct that night proved to me the nobleness of his nature. I was impetuous, petulant, and altogether too inexperienced for a debater. Mr. Cuffe, after I had put forth something improperly warm as to Mr. Grattan, said to him, “Why don’t you put down that chap at once? a single sentence of yours would silence him completely.”—“No, no, no!” said Grattan, “we are not at all on a fair level. I could do him a great deal of mischief; he can do me none. My name is made; he is trying to make one, too: he’s a bold boy, but I don’t think he is a bad one.”
I had the good fortune, on that occasion, to make one fair hit as to Grattan, which he afterward told me he was much pleased with. It came across me at the moment:—in fact, most of the speeches I ever made have been literally impromptu. I never studied a speech in my life, except on law cases; and perhaps to this circumstance I may honestly attribute an incorrectness of language that frequently attended my best efforts.
Grattan had repeatedly assailed our side of the house, as “a side from which all public virtue had long been banished.” I observed, “that the right honourable gentleman had proved unequivocally the falsehood of his own assertion, that public virtue was confined to one side of the house; for I had had the honour of seeing the right honourable gentleman himself on both!” I alluded to his having supported government against Mr. Flood, after the vote of 50,000l. by parliament. This joke was loudly cheered, and perhaps somewhat contributed to save me from discomfiture.