The first peerage conferred on an Irish Catholic for personal
merit and service to the State since the reign of James II. has been conferred this week on the Lord Chancellor of Ireland, who is to be raised to the Peerage of the United Kingdom by the title of Baron °Magma of Tullaghoge. The last peerage conferred for those reasons was the Earldom of Lucan, conferred by James on the distinguished soldier General Patrick Sarsfield. We believe the only peerage ever conferred on an Irish Catholic lawyer was that of the Viscount of Kilmallock, conferred, in 1624, on Chief Justice Sir Dominick Sarsfield. There is a peculiar appropriateness in the title. The O'llagan of Tullaghoge was, in the old time, the hereditary chief justiciary of Ulster, and Brehon to O'Neill, and the family seem to have always had an innate disposition to the Law. That a representative of the great Celtic Brehons of the North should now enter the House of Lords by the title of the old chieftaincy, and be at once O'Hagan of Tullaghoge and Lord Chancellor of Ireland, is a sign in the sky. The new Lord Chancellor will be a great accession to the strength of the Govern- ment in the House of Lords in defending the provisions of the Irish Land Bill. Last year, on the Irish Church Bill, there was a deplorable want of debating power on the Government side of the House.
