The small, contentious, and active communities of Greece; the little, ill-governed, yet vigorous Republics of modern Italy, stand out in the history of mankind bright and illustrious beyond all hope of comparison; and, from the wondrous intellects that appeared among them, they have proved to all succeeding times a never-failing subject of admiration, envy, and despair. Just in proportion to our own advancement in art, literature, and science, is the intensity of our astonishment, of our envy, and of our despondency. We endeavor to compete with, but can never equal them; we imitate, but, like all imitators, we are condemned to mediocrity; it is only when we attempt to explore some new and untrod region of art or science that we can pretend to the dignity even of comparison. And these regions are rare indeed.
But, if we compare our own social condition with that of the Greeks or the Italians—if we look into their houses, their cities, and their fields,—if we acquire an accurate and vivid conception of the insecurity of life, of property, and of peace among them,—and if we measure the happiness of life by the comforts of every day existence, then, indeed, the superiority belongs to ourselves; and we may be led to ask, whether the advantages of both conditions of political and social existence may not be united; and to that end seek to learn what it was that brought out into such vigorous relief the wonderful mental activity of the two periods, which form such peculiar and hitherto unequalled epocha in the history of mankind. We shall find, if we pursue this inquiry into other times and among other people, that there was one circumstance, among many others indeed, of peculiar weight and importance, which then exercised and has never failed to exercise, wheresoever it has existed, a vast influence upon the mental and moral character of the people—we mean a feeling of intense nationality. This feeling is not all that is required; without it no great originality or vigor in a people is probable, and where it has been strongly manifest, it has generally led to great deeds, and much mental activity. The character of this manifestation will, indeed, greatly depend upon the natural character of the people—upon the peculiar state of their civilization, and upon their political condition. If these be all favorable, the spirit of nationality is divine, and manifest in great and ennobling deeds and thoughts; but, if adverse, then the spirit will be destructive, and vice will be quickened into fatal activity.
In Ireland, at the end of the eighteenth century, a remarkable series of events cherished, if it did not indeed produce, this sentiment of a separate nationality and independence. Conquerors and conquered, in spite of social and religious distinctions, had long since coalesced into one people; and the successful revolt of our American colonies, induced the people of Ireland to demand for themselves freedom and independence also. With arms in their hands the Volunteers wrung from England an independent Parliament in 1782; and in the eighteen years which followed, all that is really great in the history of Ireland, is comprised. The Volunteers, indeed, obtained independence, but that was all. The constitution of the Irish was, as before, narrow and mischievous, oppressive and corrupt; but it was Irish, and independent of the Parliament of England. And the struggles of an independent people, endeavoring, by their own efforts, to reform their own institutions, led to the rising of that brilliant galaxy of statesmen, orators, wits, and lawyers, to which Irishmen of the present day, almost without exception, refer with grief and despondency, not unmixed with indignation, when wishing to make the world appreciate the evils their country has suffered in consequence of its union with England. But, unhappily, the great spirit of freedom was awakened in evil times. Great, vigorous, and almost glorious was this wonderful manifestation of its power; but eventually the horrible corruption and vice of the period bore all before it, and extinguished every chance of benefit from the acquisition of independence. Great men appeared, but they were powerless. Of the remarkable period in which they lived, however, every memorial is of interest. With the society of which they formed a part, so different from our own—with the character and manners of the men themselves, their history, their good sayings and wild deeds, every student of history wishes to become acquainted, and seizes with avidity upon every piece of evidence from which authentic information respecting them may be gathered—and, as a portion of this evidence, the work of Mr. Phillips deserves consideration.
Among the most remarkable of the many distinguished characters of this stirring period was John Philpot Curran,—among Irish advocates, as was Erskine among those of England, facile princeps. With him, when on the bench as Master of the Rolls in Ireland, Mr. Phillips, himself then a junior at the Irish bar, became acquainted. Acquaintance became intimacy, and intimacy led to friendship, which lasted without interruption to the day of Curran's death. Admiration and affection induced Mr. Phillips to gather together memorials of his deceased friend, round whose portrait he has grouped sketches of many of his celebrated cotemporaries. He says in his preface—
"My object has been, touching as lightly as possible on the politics of the time, to give merely personal sketches of the characters as they appeared upon the scene to me. Many of them were my acquaintances—some of them my intimates; and the aim throughout has been a verisimilitude in the portraiture;—in short, to make the reader as familiar with the originals as I was myself."
And a more curious collection of likenesses was never crowded into one canvas. They all, indeed, have a strong family resemblance, but certainly they are like nothing else in nature; and to us, living in grave, and possibly dull and prosaic England—and in this our matter of fact and decorous age—the doings of the society which they have made illustrious, appear more like a mad saturnalia than the sober and commonplace procedure of rational men. The whole people—every class, profession, and degree—seemed to consider life but a species of delirious dance, and a wild and frantic excitement the one sole pleasure. Repose, thoughtfulness, and calm, they must have considered a premature death. Every emotion was sought for in its extreme, and a rapid variation from merriment to misery, from impassioned love to violent hate, was the ordinary (if in such an existence any thing could be deemed ordinary)—the common and ordinary condition of life. Laughter, that was ever on the brink of tears—a wild joy, that might in an instant be followed by hopeless despondency—alternations from sanguine and eager hope to blank and apparently crushing despair,—such was Irish life, in which every one appeared to be acting a part, and striving to appear original by means of a strained and laborious affectation. Steady, continued, and rational industry, was either unknown or despised; economy was looked upon as meanness—thrift was called avarice—and the paying a just debt, except upon compulsion, was deemed conduct wholly unworthy of a gentleman. Take the account Mr. Phillips himself gives. He speaks of the Irish squire; but the Irish squire was the raw material out of which so-called Irish gentlemen were made. "The Irish squire of half a century ago scorned not to be in debt; it would be beneath his dignity to live within his income; and next to not incurring a debt, the greatest degradation would have been voluntarily to pay one." And yet was there great pretension to honor, but a man of honor of those days would in our time be considered a ruffian certainly, and probably a blackleg or a swindler. "It was a favorite boast of his (the first Lord Norbury) that he began life with fifty pounds, and a pair of hair-trigger pistols." "They served his purpose well.... The luck of the hair-triggers triumphed, and Toler not only became Chief Justice, but the founder of two peerages, and the testator of an enormous fortune. After his promotion, the code of honor became, as it were, engrafted on that of the Common Pleas; the noble chief not unfrequently announcing that he considered himself a judge only while he wore his robes." The sort of law dispensed by this fire-eating judge might be easily conceived even without the aid of such an anecdote as the following: "A nonsuit was never heard of in his time. Ill-natured people said it was to draw suitors to his court." Toler's reason for it was that he was too constitutional to interfere with a jury, Be that as it may, a nonsuit was a nonentity, 'I hope, my Lord,' said counsel in a case actually commanding one, 'your Lordship will, for once, have the courage to nonsuit? In a moment the hair-triggers were uppermost. 'Courage! I tell you what, Mr. Wallace, there are two sorts of courage—courage to shoot, and courage to nonshoot—and I have both; but nonshoot now I certainly will not; and argument is only a waste of time.' "I remember well," says Mr. Phillips, when speaking of another judge, Mr. Justice Fletcher, "at the Sligo summer assizes for 1812, being counsel in the case of 'The King v. Fenton,' for the murder of Major Hillas in a duel, when old Judge Fletcher thus capped his summing up to the jury: 'Gentlemen, it's my business to lay down the law to you, and I will. The law says, the killing a man in a duel is murder, and I am bound to tell you it is murder; therefore, in the discharge of my duty, I tell you so; but I tell you at the same time, a fairer duel than this I never heard of in the whole coorse of my life.' It is scarcely necessary to add that there was an immediate acquittal." By way of giving some idea of the character of society then, the following enumeration is supplied by the memory of Mr. Phillips:—
"Lord Clare, afterwards Lord Chancellor, fought Curran, afterwards Master of the Rolls. So much for equity; but common law also sustained its reputation. Clonmel, afterwards Chief Justice, fought two Lords and two Commoners,—to show his impartiality, no doubt. Medge, afterwards Baron, fought his own brother-in-law, and two others. Toler, afterwards Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, fought three persons, one of whom was Fitzgerald, even in Ireland the 'fire-eater,' par excellence. Patterson, also afterwards Chief Justice of the same court, fought three country gentlemen, one of them with guns, another with swords, and wounded them all! Corry, Chancellor of the Exchequer, fought Mr. Grattan. The Provost of Dublin University, a Privy Councillor, fought Mr. Doyle, a Master in Chancery, and several others. His brother, collector of Customs, fought Lord Mountmorris. Harry Deane Grady, counsel to the Revenue, fought several duels; and 'all hits,' adds Barrington, with unction. Curran fought four persons, one of whom was Egan, Chairman of Kilmainham; afterwards his friend, with Lord Buckinghamshire. A duel in these days was often a prelude to intimacy."
In spite, nevertheless, of this rude, nay, almost wild condition of society,—in spite of a most fantastic affectation attending nearly every act and thought and word,—yet were Curran and his cotemporaries men of great and vigorous ability. Grattan, Curran, and Flood, deserve indeed to take rank among the foremost class of their own age,—among the men of genius of every age and country. If we speak of them as orators, and wish to judge of their excellence with relation to the great orators of our own country, we must bear in mind the character of the society in which they lived, and of the assemblies they addressed. It would be unjust to try them by the rules of our fastidious taste and undemonstrative manners. They addressed Irishmen, and Irishmen just when most excited, and indulging in all the wild sallies of a dearly-prized and lately acquired independence. What to us would appear offensive rant and disgusting affectation, would, in the Irish House of Commons, have been but the usual manifestation of strong feeling, and was absolutely required, if the speaker desired to move as well as convince his auditory.
If, however, we seek to know what was the virtue of these men, more especially that of Curran, we must probe to the bottom the corruptions and baseness of that society, which deserves to be branded as among the most base and the most corrupt that history has hitherto described. The temptations which England employed, the horrible corruption and profligacy she fostered, must be fully known, if we desire to do justice to the men who came out undefiled from that filthy ordeal.