That Kirwan's preaching was attended by immense congregations is unquestionable; and that his collections were very large is equally true. But there were circumstances remarkably in favour of both. He preached but three or four times in the year, and he never preached but for charities patronised by the highest personages of the land. The Lord-lieutenant and the principal nobility were generally the patrons of those especial charities. There was this additional advantage, that then poor-laws in Ireland were unknown, and public liberality was thus the more urgently required, and the more willingly exercised. The day of his preaching was in general an anniversary; for which the whole preceding year was a preparation; and the collection was thus, in a certain degree, the payment of a rent.
The magnitude of his collections has been the subject of some erroneous conjectures. On the occasion of his preaching for the families of the yeomanry who fell in the rebellion of 1798—a memorable and melancholy occasion, which naturally called forth the national liberality—the collection was said to have amounted to a thousand pounds. A very large sum, but it was a national contribution.
Kirwan's style of delivery, too, had some share in his popular effect—he recited his sermons in the manner of the French preachers; and the novelty formed a striking contrast to the dreary reading of the ordinary preachers. He was also fond of lashing public transgressions, and the vices of high life were constantly the subject of sharp remarks, which even stooped to the dresses of the women. The nobility, accordingly, came to hear themselves attacked; and, as all personality was avoided, they came to be amused.
Still, Kirwan was a remarkable man, and worthy of mention in any volume which treats of the memorable personages of Ireland.
We wish that we could avoid speaking of his treatment by the Church dignitaries of his time. While they ought to have received such a convert with honour, they seem to have made a point of neglecting him. He was not merely a man of talent in the pulpit, but alike accomplished in science and elegant literature; for he had been successively Professor of Rhetoric, and of Natural Philosophy, in (if we recollect rightly) the College of Louvain, at a time when French Mathematics were the pride of the Continent.
Yet he never obtained preferment or countenance, and scarcely even civility, except the extorted civility of fear, from any of the ecclesiastical heads of Ireland. The dull and common-place men, with whom it was then customary to fill the Irish Sees, shrank from one who might have been a most willing, as he must have been a most able, instrument in reconciling his Papist countrymen to the Church of England. And, without any other cause than their own somnolent stupidity, they rendered wholly useless—as far as was in their power—a man who, in a position corresponding to his ability, might have headed a New Reformation in Ireland.
Kirwan's only dignity was given to him by the Lord-lieutenant, Cornwallis, after nearly fifteen years of thankless labour; and it consisted only of the poor Deanery of Killala, a nook on the savage shore of Western Ireland. He died soon after, of a coup-de-soleil—as it was observed the natural death of a man of his genius!
But we must break off from this captivating volume. We recollect no political work in which politics are treated with more manly propriety, or personal character delineated with more vigorous truth; in which happier anecdotes abound, or in which the writer gives his own opinion with more firmness, yet with less offence to public feelings. From its evident knowledge of Ireland, it could be written by none but an Irishman; but its sentiments are cosmopolite. If the author sails under his national flag, still, his bark must be recognised as a noble vessel, and welcome in any Port of the World.