from the mother-country; how, at the crisis of the American war, England was obliged to make concessions which would have been scornfully denied before; how the Irish Legislature was declared supreme; how the trade of the island was set free from the vexatious restrictions set upon it; how the Irish judicature was made independent and the prerogatives of the Crown were curtailed; and how a brilliant period of hope ensued, the harbinger, it was thought, of a national resurrection. As yet, however, little had been done for the proscribed and discredited Catholic people; and, though the worst of the Penal Laws were repealed, the Parliament, reflecting Protestant ascendency, refused, by overwhelming majorities, to do Catholic Ireland political justice. Nevertheless, such is the quickening spirit of aught resembling free institutions, that a strong opposition, with Grattan at its head, upheld the rights of the injured race; and had not the Irish Parliament been lamentably corrupt, or had not the French Revolution sowed the seeds of anarchy and discord in Ireland, the measure of 1829 might have been anticipated by Irish statesmen. During the troubled, changeful, yet stirring period, the Irish Seals were held by two men who represented what may be called inflexible AngloIrish Conservatism. Lord Bowes, an Englishman at the Irish bar, was Chancellor from 1757 to 1767; and was certainly a very able lawyer. The few remaining specimens of his judgments-Mr. O'Flanagan quotes a remarkable extractshow that he had fine reasoning powers, and a penetrating and calm intelligence; and he expressed himself in the terse, felicitous style, not uncommon on the judicial bench during the time that it was graced by Lord Mansfield. As a politician, however, and public man, he was a mere instrument of the junta at the Castle; and he opposed stubbornly every attempt to relax the severity of the Penal Code, and every demand of the Protestant Irish. His successor, Lord Lifford, an Englishman also, but not bred up in the Irish Courts, was a lawyer of much the same type; but though in politics he played a like part, he was less uncompromising in his opinions, no doubt because he fell on times when the Government was continually in difficulties, and judicious trimming was prudent and necessary. We have a tolerably accurate collection of the decisions. of this eminent judge; they disclose a ripe acquaintance with Equity, and are couched in neat and scholarlike language. Yet he did not depart from the views of his predecessors in his interpretation of the Penal Code, though here it must be said for him, that he may have felt the obligation of established precedents. In the recent debates on the Irish Land Act, Lord

Cairns referred to a judgment of Lord Lifford, as evidence that the Irish judges went out of their way in the last century to protect the rights of the Irish peasantry-a paradox of extraordinary boldness; nor does the case of Murray v. Bateman, alluded to by the noble Lord, lead a candid mind to any such conclusion. Lord Lifford held the Irish Seals during the long space of twenty-two years, from 1767 to 1789; and through all the changes of this stormy time, he contrived to make himself acceptable to Governments of the most opposite character, and to obtain very considerable gratifications, over and above the ordinary emoluments of office, for his eminent services in Church and State. Though really Though really a decided politician, he held the even tenor of his way, whether Whig or Tory was in power, balanced by the weight of honours and riches; and if his sympathies were always with the Castle, he managed, with no common tact and cleverness, to stand tolerably well with the popular party.

Mr. O'Flanagan's volumes contain sketches of the Irish Bar, and of some of its leaders, during the periods we have been briefly noticing. None save those who either professed, or had conformed to the dominant faith, were allowed to enter the ranks of the profession; and men like Butler, Nagle, and Rice, who had adorned the bar, in a previous generation, were excluded from it with jealous bigotry. Yet to judge from several distinguished names, not a few Catholic Irish families had representatives in the Irish Forum; and the presence of this class of practitioners, who, it was said, were worse than 'actual Papists,' afflicted the conscience of more than one Chancellor. Many Catholic barristers, however, conformed and became Protestant in an equivocal sense; yet, even in these instances, an association with the old faith seems to have continued, for usually lawyers in this category were intrusted with briefs for Catholic defendants in their sad struggles with Protestant discoverers." 6 The most remarkable example of this occurs in the case of the family of Malone-a junior branch of the O'Connors of Offaley; it changed its creed in the last century, and gave a succession of eminent men during three generations to the Bar and Bench, the most remarkable being Anthony, sometime Chancellor of the Irish Exchequer, and still remembered as a high-minded patriot and the dauntless advocate of the Catholic client. The Four Courts of those days had nothing in common with the noble pile which now forms an appropriate temple to Irish justice; they were a mass of buildings at the back of Christ Church, known by the ominous name of 'Hell,' in the midst of ruined and filthy streets,

running down to the southern bank of the Liffey. This whole region was an Irish Lincoln's Inn Fields, crowded with the chambers and dwellings of lawyers; and here the Marlays, the Tisdalls, and Singletons, and other stars in the legal firmament, were consulted by deferential attorneys, perused the knotty volumes of the Reports, and earned applause, or made fortunes. If we may judge from the Law Reports that survive, the business of the Bar was well done; the causes seem to have been well argued, and points of law to have been thoroughly discussed; and we occasionally find much neatness and even elegance of expression. The age of what is called Irish eloquence, the results of a stormier time, had not arrived; but something of the purity and grace of style conspicuous in the works of Berkeley and Goldsmith, had found its way into the Irish Forum; and tradition records that Anthony Malone was not inferior to William Murray in correctness and felicity of diction. Yet the evidence of Reports may be deceptive; and though the Irish Bar of those days undoubtedly contained illustrious names, the average education and quality of its members do not seem to have been very high. Complaints abound in contemporary letters, and even in formal legal treatises, of the extravagance and idleness, of the drunkenness and vice, too prevalent among Irish lawyers; and we have ourselves seen a Grand Jury minute, that a Chief Baron of this period was, as usual, 'in a state of intoxication.' Indeed, though a few great lawyers appeared in almost every generation, it was hardly possible that the legal profession could attain a standard of general excellence in the disordered state of Irish society.

The next Chancellor of Ireland was one of the most remarkable men on whom the dignity has devolved. Lord Clare was born in 1749, the second son of John Fitzgibbon, a hardworking member of the Irish Bar, who amassed a considerable fortune by penurious thrift and professional industry. The boy gave promise at an early age of an imperious temper and of fine parts, and he was brought up to scorn the Irish Catholic, his father, who had conformed to Protestantism, being a more than usually zealous convert. Young Fitzgibbon distinguished himself greatly at college, and was called to the Irish Bar in 1772, where he rose quickly and had large practice, the wealth he inherited in no wise deadening his resolute energy and eager ambition. He became in 1780 one of the representatives of the University of Dublin, and flung himself with ardour into the patriotic movement for the Parliamentary independence of Ireland, which proved successful in 1782.

VOL. CXXXIV. NO. CCLXXIII.

F

His proud, stern, yet handsome figure stands out prominently in old prints commemorating the meetings of the Volunteers; and at this time he was esteemed and respected by Charlemont, Grattan, and the chief Irish Whigs. Indeed, when the Coalition was in power, he was made Attorney-General for Ireland at the early age of thirty-four, and for some months he co-operated zealously with Fox in his enlightened Irish policy. Keen-sighted, however, and without scruples-beware of that 'young man,' it had been remarked to Grattan-Fitzgibbon saw when the favourable time had come for a legal Thane' to 'fly; ' he carried unto the camp of Pitt audacity, vigour, and a malevolent tongue; and when Pitt became Minister, the Irish Attorney-General continued in office.

6

During the next five years Fitzgibbon was the masterspirit of the Irish Government at the Council Board and in College Green; and if his effrontery was without shame, his talents were commanding and brilliant. At this juncture the system of ruling the liberated Parliament by open corruption and the high hand was in full vigour; and the salaried patriot lavished patronage, defended jobbing of the worst kinds, and denounced his former political friends with unremitting zeal and rare ability. Though his style of speaking was rude and coarse, he was a cool and formidable debater; the force of his overbearing disposition swayed the Administration and Opposition; and if he was a political bravo, if he often lowered the dignity of his office by violence and opprobious language, he was at least as daring in act as in word, and fearless in every turn of politics. For such services, and also because, unlike Thurlow, he had stuck to Pitt during the critical period of the Regency debates, Fitzgibbon was elevated in 1789 to the rank of Lord Chancellor of Ireland; and, singular as had been his training, he was not, in one sense, unfit for the office. He really was a very able judge; and though he was supercilious to the Bar, and his harsh arrogance occasionally broke out, his clear, penetrating, and masculine intellect enabled him to become an adept in Equity. This was the most brilliant period of the Irish Bar, for a singular combination of circumstances had raised the position of the profession, and had thrown on it a lustre of fame it never possessed before or since; yet in point of talent its recognised head was not inferior to any of its members. Fitzgibbon, having been made Earl of Clare, presided in the Irish House of Lords until its extinction at the Union, and exhibited in that Assembly the peculiar qualities which made him conspicuous in the House of Commons. His speech in favour of the Union, indeed, is a model of insolence,

yet of sound argument; and if he browbeat and sneered at the Irish Peers, as the low-born offspring of Cromwellian settlers whose very existence depended on England, he demonstrated that the well-being of Ireland was bound up with the British connexion. When Chancellor, as when Attorney-General, Lord Clare was almost supreme at the Castle; and, during the dark and disastrous period which witnessed the rise of the United Irishmen and the rebellion of 1798, he was, we regret to say, the inflexible advocate of an indiscriminating policy of coercion. He made himself especially conspicuous by his denunciation of the Irish Catholics; and his ferocity disgusted the humane Cornwallis, and even shocked the cool-headed Castlereagh. Lord Clare hardly outlived the Union; having first, however, completely failed in the English House of Lords, where he tried in vain to domineer as he had done in Ireland, and he died neglected and generally detested. He was a coarse-minded and even a bad man, yet he had a strong character and great gifts, and tradition records that he could be a warm friend as well as an implacable enemy.

We have no space to notice at length the Irish Chancellors after the Union. During the generation which followed that event, Ireland was in a state of political torpor, broken only by remitting agitation, and, save for an interval of a few months, was bound in the chains of Tory misgovernment. The Rebellion of 1798 and the reaction against the French Revolution, had checked the progress of liberal ideas; the hopes of Catholic Ireland had been prostrated by the obstinacy of George III. and the concession of Mr. Pitt; and darkness gathered over the ill-fated, land which for a season had rejoiced in hope. The administration of the country fell into the hands of the Orange oligarchy-the legitimate descendants of the ancient colonists who had never amalgamated with the nation; a sectarian faction ruled at the Castle, and the Governments of the Percevals and Liverpools, distracted by the perils of the war, and alarmed at the attitude of the people, had no policy but that of relying on the Protestant garrison to keep down the Catholics. A change for the better certainly began during the Lord-lieutenancy of Lord Wellesley; but even that illustrious statesman was unable to extirpate Protestant ascendency, and it was reserved for a more fortunate time to accomplish that tardy measure of justice. With one exception, of which we shall say a word, the Irish Chancellors of this period reflected the harshness and sectarian prejudices which characterised the whole system of government. Lord Redesdale, who succeeded Lord Clare, though in no sense a great jurist-he was fond