have presented, but disdained ever even to hint at. But they who, after his powerful advocacy, his inflexible integrity, his heavy sacrifices, had all but carried the Irish question, have come forward to finish the good work, and have reaped every kind of gratification from doing their duty, instead of making a sacrifice of their interests like him, would do well, while they usurp all the glory of these successes, to recollect the men whose labours, requited with proscription, led the way to comparatively insignificant exertions, still more beneficial to the individuals that made them, than advantageous to the cause they served. The endowments of this eminent statesman's mind were all of a useful and commanding sort-sound sense, steady memory, vast industry. His acquirements were in the same proportion valuable and lasting a thorough acquaintance with business in its principles and in its details; a complete mastery of the science of politics as well theoretical as practical; of late years a perfect familiarity with political economy, and a just appreciation of its importance; an early and most extensive knowledge of classical literature, which he improved instead of abandoning, down to the close of his life; a taste formed upon those chaste models, and of which his lighter compositions, his Greek and Latin verses, bore testimony to the very last. His eloquence was of a plain, masculine, authoritative cast, which neglected if it did not despise ornament, and partook in the least possible degree of fancy, while its declamation was often equally powerful with its reasoning and its statement. The faults of his character were akin to some of the excellences which so greatly distinguished it. His firmness was apt to degenerate into obstinacy; his confidence in the principles he held was not unmixed with contempt for those who differed from him. His unbending honesty and straightforward course of dealing with all men and all subjects not unfrequently led him to neglect those courtesies which facilitate political and personal intercourse, and that spirit of conciliation which, especially in a mixed government chiefly conducted by party, sometimes enables men to win a way which they cannot force towards the attainment of important objects. Perhaps his most unfortunate prejudices were those which he had early imbibed upon certain matters of Ecclesiastical Polity, and which the accidental circumstance of his connexion with Oxford as Chancellor strengthened, to the exclusion of the reforming spirit carried by him into all institutions of a merely secular kind. Upon the Parliamentary constitution of the country he had no such alarms or scruples; and, although it is certain that he would have reformed it much more gradually than the long delay of the great measure rendered ultimately necessary, it is equally clear that he would have stopped short of no improvement which could be reasonably required, merely because it was a change. For he was in this greatest quality of a statesman preeminently distinguished, that, as he neither would yield up his judgment to the clamour of the people, nor suffer himself to be seduced by the influence of the Court, so would he never submit his reason to the empire of prejudice, or own the supremacy of authority and tradition.-"Reliqui sunt, qui mortui sunt-L. Torquatus, quem tu non tam cito rhetorem dixisses, etsi non deerat oratio, quam, ut Græci dicunt, πολιτικόν. Erant in eo plurimæ litteræ, nec eæ vulgares, sed interiores quædam et reconditæ, divina memoria, summa verborum et gravitas et elegantia: atque hæc omnia vitæ decorabat dignitas et integritas. Plena litteratæ senectutis oratio. Quanta severitas in vultû! Quantum pondus in verbis! Quam nihil non consideratum exibat ex ore! Sileamus de isto, ne augeamus dolorem. Nam et præteritorum recordatio est acerba, et acerbior expectatio reliquorum."* 335 MR. GRATTAN. THE name which we mentioned as superior to even age It would not be easy to point out any statesman or patriot, in any age of the world, whose fame stands higher for his public services; nor is it possible to name any one, the purity of whose reputation has been stained by so few faults, and the lustre of whose renown is dimmed by so few imperfections. From the earliest year at which he could appear upon the political stage, he devoted himself to state affairs. While yet in the prime of youth, he had achieved a victory which stands at the head of all the triumphs ever won by a patriot for his country in modern times; he had effected an important revolution in the Government, without violence of any kind, and had broken chains of the most degrading kind, by which the injustice and usurpation of three centuries had bound her down. Her immediate gratitude placed him in a situation of independence, which enabled him to consecrate the remainder of his days to her service, without the interruption arising from professional pursuits; and he continued to persevere in the same course of patriotism marked by a rare union of the moderation which springs from combined wisdom and virtue, with the firmness and the zeal which are peculiar to genius. No factious partizan, making devotion to the public cause a convenient and a safe mask for the attainment of his selfish interests, whether of sordid avarice or of crawling ambition, ever found in Grattan either an instrument or an accomplice. No true friend of the people, inspired with a generous desire of extirpating abuses, and of extending the reign of freedom, ever complained of Grattan's slowness to join the untarnished banner of patriotism. No advocate of human improvement, filled with the sacred zeal of enlarging the enjoyments or elevating the condition of mankind, was ever damped in his aspirations by Grattan's coldness, or had reason to wish him less the advocate of Ireland and more the friend of his species. The principal battle which he fought for his native country required him to embrace every great and difficult question of domestic policy; for the misrule and oppression exercised by England over the Irish people extended to all their commercial dealings, as well as to their political rights, and sought to fetter their trade by a complicated system of vexatious regulations, as well as to awe their legislators by an assumption of sovereignty, and to impose the fetters of a foreign jurisdiction upon the administration of justice itself. In no part of this vast and various field were Mr. Grattan's powers found to fail, or his acquirements to prove deficient; and he handled the details of fiscal and of mercantile policy with as much accuracy and as great address as he brought to the discussion of the broader and easier though more momentous subject-the great question of National Independence. He was left, on the achievement of his great triumph, in possession of as brilliant a reputation as man could desire; and it was unsullied by any one act either of factious violence, or of personal meanness, or of the inconsistency into which overmuch vehemence in the pursuit of praiseworthy objects is wont to betray even the most virtuous men. The popular favour which he enjoyed to so unexampled a degree, was destined in a short time to suffer an interruption, not unusual in the history of popular leaders; and for refusing to join in the designs, of a more than doubtful origin, of men inferior in reputation of every kind, and of a more than doubtful honesty-men who proscribed as unworthy of the people's esteem all that acknowledged any restraints of moderation-he lived to see himself denounced by the factious, reviled by the unprincipled, and abandoned by their dupes, the bulk of the very nation whose idol he had so lately been. The war with France, and the fear of revolutionary movements at home, rendered him for some years an alarmist; and he joined with those who supported the hostilities into which Mr. Pitt and the Portland seceders from the Whig party unhappily plunged the empire. But he carried his support of arbitrary measures at home a very short way, compared with the new allies of the Government in England; and the proceedings of the Irish Ministry, during and after the Rebellion, found in him an adversary as uncompromising as in the days of his most strenuous patriotism, and most dazzling popularity. Despairing of success by any efforts of the party in Parliament, he joined in the measure of secession adopted by the English Whigs, but after a manner far more reconcilable to a sense of public duty, as well as far more effective in itself, than the absurd and inconsistent course which they pursued, of retaining the office of representatives, while they refused to perform any of its duties, except the enjoyment of its personal privileges. Mr. Grattan and the leaders of the Irish opposition vacated their seats at once, and left their constituents to choose other delegates. When the Union was propounded, they again returned to their posts, and offered a resistance to it, which at first proved successful, and deferred for a year the accomplishment of a measure planned in true wisdom, though executed by most corrupt and corrupting means-a measure as necessary for the well-being of Ireland as VOL. IIL |