THE LIFE, LETTERS, AND SPEECHES OF LORD PLUNKET.*—[SEcoxp NOTICE.)

Tim motives which had led to large concessions on the part of the English Government to the claims of the Irish patriotic party in 1782 no longer existed in 1798. In the former year it was literally true that " England's diffichlty was Ireland's oppor- tunity." The revolt of the English Colonies in North America, added to a threatened invasion of the French, rendered the pro- pitiation of Ireland a political necessity. Ninety thousand Irish volunteers, drilled and armed, supporting the claims of the Irish people, rendered resistance impossible. Those claims were, first, the abolition of commercial restrictions imposed in ancient times by the jealousy of English traders ; and, secondly, the " declara- tion of the independence of the Irish Legislature and Judicature." As long as the Volunteers remained united and enrolled the Irish Parliament stood by their aid. But as soon as the support of that body was withdrawn, and the Volunteers themselves dispersed, the Irish Legislature was in the power of the English Government. The representation was in the hands of a few persons who had always been willing to barter their influence with the Government for places, pensions, and peerages, and the House itself was crowded with Government placemen and pensioners. The efforts of the Liberal party to remedy this state of affairs by constitutional means were unavailing ; in; the words of Grattan, they " sought a -reform that should have given a Constitution to the people, and the Emancipation that should have given a people to the Constitu- tion," in vain. To extort these changes by the assistance of the Volunteers might have been practicable, but was rejected as un- constitutional by Grattan and the more respectable leaders of the Liberal party.

The Volunteers, bewildered between their loyalty and their patriotism, divided between their love of the Constitution and their love of country, • The We, Leiters, and Speeth.s of herd Piunket. By his Grandson, the Hou. David Plunket. Luulon: Smith, Elder, and Co. 18;7.

knew not which way to turn. They found their political action no longer encouraged by those whose advice they had been accustomed to obey ; the Government said there was no further occasion for their services to meet a foreign invasion, and their own leaders told them that they were no longer required to repel the political aggression of their fellow- subjects. Thus discouraged, almost discredited, the great national army melted away.

In 1790 a fresh difficulty perplexed the English Government in its dealings with Ireland. The influence of the French Revolu- tion spreading to that country infected the independent Dissenters of the North no less than the Catholic population, and the hope was aroused of winning their long sought emancipation by force. The accession of the Duke of Portland gave to Mr. Pitt an oppor- tunity of stemming for a while the current, by pretending to encourage the hopes of the Liberal party. This was done by sending to Ireland as Lord-Lieutenant

the man who, of all others, by his personal character as well as by his political sentiments, was calculated to inspire the moderate patriotic party with confidence ; that man was Earl Fitzwilliam. He arrived in Ireland in ,the end of 1794, and was received with a hearty welcome and an exhibition of popular enthusiasm more unanimous than any the country bad seen for ten years.

The hopes of the Liberal party ran high, but were doomed to speedy disappointment. One of the first acts of the new Viceroy was to dismiss from an unimportant office a member of one of the great Protestant families through whom the Government had been hitherto conducted, a family " whose members filled, it was said, one-fourth of all the places in the island." The old dominant spirit was aroused, the party by whose aid and upon whose repre- sentations the Government had long ruled Ireland appealed to their friends in power, they were successful, and Lord Cornwallis was recalled.

The excitement throughout Ireland was intense. Both Houses of Parliament passed unanimously votes of confidence in the Lord-Lieu- tenants which were followed by addresses from every part of the country. On the day he quitted Dublin all tho shops wore closed, and the whole city presented an aspect of gloom. On that day the Irish people aban- doned all hope that the promised reforms would be earnestly attempted by the Legislature. The Catholics of the South and the Presbyterians of the North might now make common cause, for all the many pro- scribed classes had learnt that the Parliament of Ireland was but a small and corrupt faction, a faction which believed itself able to defy the wishes, and was determined to ignore the rights, of the great majority of their fellow-countrymen. The people were thus given to understand that the policy of conciliation had been tried and finally abandoned. Acting upon this hint, they commenced a system of military organization which spread rapidly throughout the country.

Then broke out the terrible rebellion which was only to be extin- guished in blood, and the quelling of which put an end to all hope of successful resistance by physical force to the armed dictatorship of the Executive.

To such a condition had the country come, and to such a state had Parlia- ment been brought, when Pitt sent over Lord Cornwallis to Ireland, to offer with one hand a policy of conciliation to the people, but with the other to thrust the Act of Union on the House of Commons. For, however submissive the Legislature had become on all points that concerned only the interests of the people at large, it was certain that they would show some spirit on the question of their own existence.

The opposition was vehement. Meetings of the Bar, the bankers, merchants, and other bodies were held, to protest against the pro- posed Union ; but the members of the English Government never flinched from their determination, notwithstanding the numbers and ability of their opponents. The mission of Lord Cornwallis was accepted by him as something more than a mere act of dip- lomacy. His own feelings were enlisted, and however disagree- able his task, the belief in its expediency was with him the excuse for its zealous performance. The different aspects in which the question of the Union presented itself to that nobleman and to its opponents are concisely and fairly stated by Mr. David Plunket:-

He [Lord Cornwallis in his correspondence with the English Govern- ment] saw in Ireland only a province, and considered the Legislative Union only as a great Imperial measure, that might advance the interests of Irishmen, but would certainly consolidate the strength and stability of the Empire. Plunket loved Ireland for her own sake, as an indepen- dent country, united only to England by a community in liberty at home and power abroad, and believed that the Act of Union was not only a doubtful experiment as regards material prosperity, but that it would, if carried, be the first of a series of measures of centralization, by which at last all traces of an independent nationality must be effaced. He had received these opinions through the doctrines and the elo- quence of such statesmen and patriots as Ponsonby and Grattan, and they had been illustrated by the approval of such characters as Moira and Charlemont.

From first to last the opposition of Plunket was uncompromising and sustained. The first debate on the Union took place in January, 1799, and lasted nearly a day and a night. Lord Castle- reagh, in a speech which Mr. David Plunket characterizes—some- what harshly—as "a mixture of dislocated arguments, broken

metaphors, and cold, hard sneers," summarized all that could be effectively said in favour of the proposed Union. To him Plunket replied.

Some who witnessed the effect of this his first great parliamentary effort, although they often afterwards heard his most famous speeches in the British House of Commons, still always insisted that at no other time did he produce an effect so deep and strange. When he began to speak it was between six and seven o'clock on the morning of the 28rd of January, and the uncertain light of a wintry daybreak fell upon his broad and massive face, pale as ever, but then deeply marked by the traces of intense thought and long and painful excitement. His powerful frame heaved from his efforts to suppress the terrible emotions within, and when his strong metallic voice rang out with words of awful warning and denunciation, all other sounds in the House were hushed into death like silence.

The speech, which abounds with beautiful passsages, displays all the fearlessness and fervour, as well as some of the faults of a young debater, but bristles with darts of the most bitter sarcasm. As a characteristic passage take the following :- I see the protection against the wickedness of the plan in the imbeci- lity of its execution, and I congratulate my country that, when a design was formed against her liberties, the prosecution of it was entrusted to such hands as it is now placed in. The example of the Prime Minister of England, imitable in its vices, may deceive the noble lord. The Minister of England has his faults. He abandoned in his latter years the principle of Reform, by professing which he had attained the early confidence of the people of Eugland, and in the whole of his political conduct he has shown himself haughty and intract- able, but it must be admitted that he is endowed by nature with a towering and transcendent intellect, and that the vastness of his resources keeps pace with the magnificence and unboundedness of his projects. I thank God that it is much more easy for him to transfer his apostacy and his insolence than his comprehension and his sagacity, and I feel the safety of my country in the wretched feebleness of her enemy. I cannot fear that the Constitution which has been founded by the wisdom of sages and cemented by the blood of patriots and of heroes, is to be smitten to its centre by such a green and sapless twig as this.

The Union Bill was fiercely debated in every stage of its pro- gress through the House of Commons, but by no member with such energy and skill as by Plunket. He led, as he knew, a for- lorn hope, but he never wavered. A galling fire of sarcasm and invective, in the face of which the measure of the Union was carried, met the Ministers at every step, and was kept up with unabated vigour by the genius and eloquence of Plunket. On the 10th of June, 1800, the Union Bill passed, and was sent to the Lords for their concurrence, "the last words uttered against the Union in the Irish House of Commons having been spoken by Plunket."

The Act of Union was a death-blow to the old patriotic party in Ireland. Its members were turned out of their Parliament, as Grattan said, " with safe consciences, but with breaking hearts." Some of them, who already stood upon the threshold of fame, abandoned all hope of better days for their country or themselves, and withdrew into the obscurity of retirement. Others, especially among the younger men, accepting the situation as an accomplished fact, settled down to win renown in the less brilliant career of professional toil. Plunket was one of these. Applying his splendid faculties to the work of his profession with the zeal and energy that court success, he speedily rose to eminence. At the end of the year 1803 he was appointed Solicitor-General for Ireland, "simply as a recognition of his political leadership, and as being the man who was at the time best able to conduct the law business of the Crown," and in 1805 was advanced to the position of Attorney-General. At this time he was repeatedly urged by Lord Grenville to enter the House of Commons in the United Parliament, the Minister perceiving how valuable the aid of Plunket's talents would prove to his Administration ; but for many years he steadily refused to take any part in Imperial politics, and with the exception of two months before the dissolu- tion in 1807, when he sat for Midhurat, he did not seek a seat in Parliament until 1812, " applying himself in the interval to his profession, securing the greatest name and probably the largest income ever obtained by an Irish barrister." From this to the end of his political career Plunket's name is identified with the one great question of Irish policy at that time, Catholic Emancipation, and the narrative of his political life is almost the history of that long-deferred measure of justice.

Mr. David Plunket, following the career of his grandfather, through the remainder of the biography traces it chiefly through letters and speeches having reference to that hard-fought struggle, and in doing so he has compiled with admirable skill a complete and interesting account of what used to be called the Catholic Question. A spirited review of the effects of the Penal Code in Ireland from the close of the seventeenth down to the commence- ment of the present century aptly prefaces the transcription of

Lord Plunket's magnificent speeches on Catholic claims. The maokett.

removal of Catholic disabilities became the object towards which he devoted all the fullness of his great powers ; its attainment was the crowning triumph of his life. In early years he had fought its battle in the Irish House. Twenty years after the Union he received from the dying hands of Henry Grattan " that mag- nificent bequest, the conduct of the Catholic cause," and he never wavered from his trust :—

In his own unhappy country he had known religions distinctions as the sources of all the misery, vice, and weakness that made the Irish people a byword amongst nations ; he had seen an insolent minority domineering over semi-barbarous masses of their fellow-countrymen. To religions hatred he attributed the horrors of '98, the humiliation of 1800, and still he saw growing into wealth and importance a power within the State that, if not allowed to mingle with the other elements of national strength, must become a cause of national weakness. It required no prophetic foresight to know that every day the great measure of justice was delayed, ill-will and hatred were freshly sown amongst the people, seeds of the storm of which the whirlwind must sooner or later be reaped.

In 1827 the Catholic question was fast reaching its crisis. The Relief Bills attempted to be carried were at last resisted by such bare majorities that the result seemed inevitable. In this year Plunket was appointed Lord Chief Justice of the Common Pleas in Ireland, and at the same time raised to the Peerage. The latter dignity unquestionably was fairly earned as a reward of invaluable public services, and as a distinction suitable to the social rank he had already won, but Canning, as Mr. David Plunket frankly admits, " no doubt, also felt that Lord Plunket's services in the Upper House would be of the utmost importance when the final issue of the great cause in which they were both so deeply interested should come to be decided there." And Canning was right, for on the second reading of the Emancipation Bill in the Upper House, Lord Plunket delivered what was perhaps the finest. and most effective of his many speeches on the question. We have refrained from extracting bits of any of the great speeches which are given in full in these volumes. Lord Plunket's oratory was so versatile that no space which we could afford would contain fair specimens, but he who reads these speeches for himself is sure- to enjoy an intellectual treat, and many an Englishman whose knowledge of the past politics of Ireland is limited will gain from their perusal much to interest and instruct him from the words of one who loved his country, who knew her failings, and helped to.

redress her wrongs.

With the enactment of Catholic Emancipation the great object of Plunket's life was attained, and though he often afterwards attended the House of Lords in intervals of leisure from his duties as Lord Chancellor of Ireland (which office he held from 1830 to 1841), he was seldom moved to any great exertion ; he had in fact gained. his suit, but lost his peculiar occupation in Parliament. For ten years he presided with great ability in the Irish Court of Chancery, and when at last he was compelled, sorely against his will, to retire, and let in Lord Campbell—a monstrous party job—the expressed feelings of the Bar testified the loving veneration im which he was held by those who knew him best.

For several years after his retirement, his mind retained its perfect vigour, and with a few friends, who were old enough to remember the stirring events of his earlier career, he was fond of recurring to those times. It particularly pleased him, too, to cap quotations from the Greek and Latin authors with those who were fresh from school and college studies, a competition in which he was always successful. Gradually, however, the weight of nearly ninety years began to press heavily upon him, and the complete change from habits of busy life to those of total idleness told upon his mind, so that his last days were spent iv a sad intellectual lethargy, and death came to him with a merciful release.

Lord Plunket's life is a biography written, as is not always the case, in perfect good taste and in a captivating style. Mr. David Plunket, working evidently con amore, has employed every valu- able scrap of somewhat scanty and not veryIductile materials. The memory of his grandfather's genius will not soon fade, for the record has been fashioned with truthfulness and skill.