TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE LATE MR. TIERNEY.
IT seldom happens that one remarkable personage removes from the scene at a time. Nature in her doings and her undoings seems to abhor singularities. Her gifts and her resumptions are by twos and by threes. Our notice of the President of the Royal Academy was scarcely dry, when the death of an old statesman drew our attention from paint- ing to politics—from the REYNOLDSES and OPIES, the long gone com- panions of LAWRENCE, to the PITTS and BURKES and other gifted con- temporaries of GEORGE TIERNEY. Mr. TIERNEY had been so long among us, that his beginning seemed lost in the remoteness of anti- quity. As a public man he had endured for a period that is granted to few. Here and there we have a comfortable listener who has lived in a calm unruffled mood, while those that enlightened and instructed the Senate have faded one after another from the view. But TIERNEY had not only sat, he had taken an active part in the debates into which BURKE, Fox, PITT, WYNDHAM, SHERIDAN, WHITBREAD, ROMILLY, had poured the full stream of their rich. and varied elo- quence. All these were departed ; more than a quarter of a century had run since death claimed some of them, and half an ordinary Par- liamentary life had elapsed since it called away the last ; yet there, in his wonted seat of five-and-forty years, was still seen the member for Knaresborough, as pively, acute, and vivacious as when he first sat down with men whose sons and grandsons were now clustered round him.
Of the higher qualities of oratory that distinguished the several emi- nent men along with whom he entered political life, Mr. TIERNEY possessed but a slender share. He had neither the poetry of BuRRE, nor the comprehensiveness of Fox, nor PITT'S logic, nor SHERIDAN'S Wit; he could neither denounce with WHITBREAD nor persuade with ROMILLY. His eloquence, for Mr. TIERNEY was an eloquent man, was indeed sui generzs. His language was simple and idiomatic, al- most colloquial ; his tone and manner conversational. His severest remarks were delivered without a frown, his most humorous without a smile, and while all around him, except the unhappy victim of his ridi- cule or sarcasm, were bursting with laughter, Mr. TIERNEY'S features remained unmoved. The stream of his oratory was not rapid nor was it deep, but it was perennial. There was no halt, no embarrassment ; his words came as it were unbidden, yet so nice was the order in which they followed, that the most fastidious selection could seldom have found terms more appropriate. Mr. TIERNEY was no student, at least his public displays gave no indication of it. He seldom understood or affected to understand more of a subject than was for the time before him. His speeches were mostly occasional. He does not seem at any time of his life to have laid down for his conduct any great leading principles of policy. He had accordingly no scale to which to refer his arguments. His consistency arose raore out of honesty of feeling than comprehensiveness of understanding. He was the politician of senti- ment rather than of reflection. This, which gave the highest zest to his speeches when delivered, renders them comparatively valueless to pos- terity. His judgments' as has been remarked of Lord Elmo/es, were too minutely adapted to the case in hand to admit of application to any other. Where he had to lead a discussion, his ignorance of prin- ciples betrayed him into the grossest errors. On one occasion, so late as 1799, we find him decrying large farms and large capitals; and but a short time before, he excited the laughter of DUNDAS by a melancholy detail of the evils arising out of the repeal of the laws against forestalling and regrating. The cast of his mind was analytical; he was chiefly felicitous in reply. His favourite method was to lay hold of the premises and deductions of his oppo- nent, and, by a dexterous modification of the one or the other, to turn the weight of them against their author. TIERNEY'S own weapons of warfare were of the simplest description imaginable ; but having laid his enemy on his back with a pebble and sling, he delighted to finish him with his own sword. In these keen rencontres, however, and though the argumentum ad hominenz was a favourite with him, he was ever master of his temper and his terms ; his broadest humour was without vulgarity, his severest sarcasms were conceived in the spirit and delivered in the language of a gentleman. His wit was a Damascus blade in a practised hand: its cuts were less the effect of the force of the blow than of the dexterity of the assailant and the fine edge of the weapon, and the deepest and most desperate were cleanly made. Like most men who are masters of their 'fence," his equanimity was rarely disturbed by the thrusts of an enemy. Yet he could on occasions display more indignant animation than more pas- sionate men. Those who have been in the habit of attending the de- tabs, must recollect his reply to Mr. CANNING'S sarcastic observa- tions on the want of unity of view among the members of the Oppo- sition. His tone, look, and gesture, when starting to his feet he tossed down his bat on the table, and burst out, " Does then the right ho- nourable gentleman mean to claim for himself and his friends a mo- nopoly of conciliation?" are described as energetic in the highest de- gree; and the castigation he bestowed on CANNING, who had recently taken office under Lord LONDONDERRY, was the most merciless that minister ever received before or after. Mr. TIERNEY was an expert financier. His views of taxation were indeed, like his views of every thing else, of a somewhat limited range ; but what he saw he saw clearly. With all the advantages of tables, and the simplicity which the labours of successive Chancellors of the Exchequer have introduced into it, a budget speech is still a tough affair to encounter. But to TIERNEY it was in its most complicated form a matter of child's play. He could unravel the arguments of PITT, when clothed in figures of arithmetic, with as much ease as when clothed in figures of rhetoric : he could hunt an error in calculation through all its com- plexities and changes, until he had grappled with it m its primitive form and nakedness. BEXLEY'S profundity did not puzzle, nor did ROBINSON'S flights dazzle him; he could pull the one from his abyss, and the other from his empyrean, with equal facility. This is a sketch, and a very imperfect one, of the intellectual character of the late right honourable GEORGE TIERNEY. In respect of his moral character, we need only repeat the language of a powerful political opponent (the Standard)—" Mr. Tierney was, we believe, a very honest, high-spi- rited, and disinterested man."
Mr. TIERNEY was born in 1756, and was consequently at the time of his death in or verging upon his seventy-fourth year. The place of his birth is not certainly known; it is believed to have been Dublin. His father was a member of a mercantile house in London. Mr. TIERNEY was bred to the bar, and was called; but a fortunate mar- riage induced him to turn to the more congenial field of politics. He stood candidate for Colchester, and was unsuccessful. The canvass is said to have cost him 12,0001.; the whole of which he had to pay, although he entered on it at the instance of another. He was returned for Southwark in 1786, in opposition to Mr. THELLUSO v the Govern- ment candidate. In 1798, he was accused by Mr. PITT of opposing Ministers with a view to embarrass the service of the country ; and a challenge was the consequence. The parties met at Putney Heath, when two shots each were fired, without damage to either, Mr. PITT firing his second shot in the air. When Mr. ADDINGTON came into office in 1802, Mr. TIERNEY joined him, as Paymaster of the Navy; which office he resigned when Mr. PITT returned to power. In 1806, he formed one of the GRENVILLE Administration, as President of the Board of Control; which he resigned the same year, when the Whigs went mit. He was appointed Master of the Mint in Mr. CANNING'S Administration, and went out with Lord GODERICH. He resigned Southwark in 1806; he then represented successively Athlone, Ban- don-Bridge, Appleby, and lastly Knaresborough. The death of this remarkable man was as calm as the general cur- rent of his life had been consistent and uniform. He had laboured under a disease of the heart for a number of years, and there was a tendency to watery effusion in the chest and limbs which had, how- ever, been greatly relieved by medicine ; nor were his complaints at any time so severe as to diminish his cheerfulness, or prevent him from enjoying company. A friend, who visited him on Sunday, found him reading MOORE'S "Byron:" he was in high spirits, and chatted and laughed with his visitor for half an hour. On Monday morning also, he was extremely cheerful, and transacted a great deal of business. At two o'clock, his servant entering the room to announce Colonel PHIPPS, found, to his horror and amazement, that his master was no more. Mr. TIERNEY'S head was reclined against his chair ; and it was the opinion of his medical attendant, that he had passed from life to death without pain or struggle, or even consciousness of the transition.
" Paullatim exolvit se corpore' lentaque colla, Et captum Into posuit caput."
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