III. CHAP. highest point is not sufficiently select as to his assistants.'1 Voltaire observes,' wrote a third of Canning's friends, 'that men succeed less by their talents than their character. He is comparing Mazarin and de Retz. Walpole and Bolingbroke make a similar pair in the last century. Castlereagh and Canning are remarkable examples of the truth of the maxim which our own days have furnished.’2 The ministry had leaders of considerable eminence in Castlereagh and Canning. The nominal lead of the Opposition was held by a man who never acquired any great Parliamentary distinction in England. George Ponsonby. Ponsonby was the grandson of the first Earl of Bessborough. His father, John Ponsonby, Lord Bessborough's second son, married a daughter of the Duke of Devonshire, and became Speaker of the Irish House of Commons. John Ponsonby's second and most distinguished son, George, received a lucrative appointment from the Rockingham administration, but was removed from it by Lord Buckingham in 1787. Vexation at the loss of his office drove him into a political career, and he obtained a seat in the Irish House of Commons. Though the Opposition, to which he allied himself, was led by such men as Grattan and Flood, he succeeded in attaining distinction. The distinction which he gained commended him to the notice of the Whigs, and, on the Talents administration coming into office, he was made Lord Chancellor of Ireland. One Grenville had driven him into politics by depriving him of his appointment; another Grenville had rewarded his support with a much higher situation. The Talents administration fell in the spring of 1807. 1 Sir Walter Scott's Diary, in Lockhart, p. 658. 2 Ward's correspondence with the Bishop of Llandaff, p. 301. Almost as severe is Sir Walter's record of his friend's death. 'The death of the premier is announcedlate George Canning-the witty, the accomplished, the ambitious; he who had toiled thirty years, and involved himself in the most harassing discussions to attain this dizzy height; he who had held it for three months of intrigue and obloquy-and now a heap of dust, and that is all.' Lockhart, p. 662. III. Lord Howick, who had succeeded Fox in the lead of CHAP. the House of Commons, was removed, in consequence of his father's death, to the House of Peers; and the Whigs were in need of a leader. Sheridan, far the ablest of them, was too involved in his pecuniary circumstances to be thought of. Tierney had great claims on the party, but he did not enjoy the confidence of Lord Grenville. Whitbread, though very honest, very sincere, and very acute, had hardly the social position which would have qualified him for the lead. He was a brewer; and the Whigs were not prepared to follow a tradesman A process of exhaustion compelled the Whigs to think of Ponsonby; and Ponsonby was, accordingly, invested with the leadership of his party. For the first and probably last time in history the House of Commons was led by two lawyers. An ex-attorney-general on one side; an ex-Irish chancellor on the other. Ponsonby never made any great mark as leader; but, on the other hand, he excited no illwill. 'His language and manners were those of a gentleman; and, disdaining a flowery and figurative diction, he only aimed at stating arguments fully and forcibly, in which he often succeeded.'1 But, while Ponsonby was thus obtaining a limited success, a much greater orator was rapidly extending the reputation which he had already acquired in another place. Henry Grattan, the great Irish patriot, was born in Dublin, Grattan. in 1746. His father was a barrister, and Recorder of Dublin. The son received his education at Trinity, where he became acquainted with Fitzgibbon, and where he gained the highest honours. In 1772 he followed his father's footsteps, and was called to the bar. But he made no figure in his profession, and never seriously attended to it. Some few years after his call an accidental circumstance introduced him to Lord Charlemont. Lord Charlemont was, at that time, looking out for some 1 Ann. Reg., vol. lix. P. 145. III. CHAP. promising young man capable of expounding the grievances of Ireland in the Irish House of Commons. Flood had seceded from the popular cause, and had accepted a lucrative office under the Irish government. Ireland had thus been deserted in the hour of her need and of her opportunity by her most powerful advocate. The need of Ireland was indeed great. Her share of the cost of the American war had exhausted her treasury; the events of the war had destroyed her linen trade; her provision trade had been ruined by the injudicious legislation of the English Parliament. Religious animosity, in its worst form, distracted the population. A small minority of Protestants possessed all the power; a vast majority of Roman Catholics were ground down and oppressed. No papist was allowed to purchase real property; no Protestant was allowed to hold real property in trust for papists; no papist was allowed to be in a line of entail; no papist could take lands on lease for a period of thirty-one years and upwards. If the profits of a papist farmer exceeded a certain sum they could be claimed by any Protestant who discovered the excess. No Protestant was allowed to marry a papist. A priest marrying a papist to a Protestant was liable to be hanged. The wife of a papist, adopting the Protestant religion, was entitled to an increased jointure. A barrister or solicitor, marrying a papist, incurred the disqualifications of a papist. A papist was not allowed to live in certain specified towns; he could not vote in a parliamentary election; he could not vote at a vestry meeting; he could hold no office, civil or military; he could not serve on a grand jury; he could not act either as high or petty constable. Such were some of the laws which the arrogance, the injustice, and the folly of a Protestant minority imposed on a Roman Catholic majority less than a hundred years ago. But, if the needs of Ireland were great, her opportunity was extraordinary. England had committed herself to the hopeless task of subduing America, and had no troops to spare for the rebellious subjects nearer home, whom she disdained to conciliate. Ireland, under the pretext of protecting her own shores, filled the streets of her capital with armed volunteers. Her Senate, sharing the enthusiasm which had called her people to arms, passed, on Grattan's eloquent appeal, the resolutions of 1779 and 1782, the former securing the country the advantage of free trade, the latter obtaining for her selfgovernment. A grateful Senate zealously rewarded the eloquent leader under whom such triumphs had been achieved. It was proposed to vote 100,000l. to Grattan in testimony of his services; Grattan's own moderation limited the grant to 50,000l. Grattan, for the moment, was the most popular among Irishmen. But the Irish are as fickle in their applause as they are inconstant in their labours. Flood rose in the house to cast a slur on Grattan's great victory. He had repealed the Act of George I. which had deprived Ireland of her right of self-government. But, according to Flood, the Act of George I. was only declaratory of the right of the English Parliament to legislate for Ireland. Its enactment had settled nothing; its repeal had altered nothing. Grattan warmly defended his own policy. Flood keenly strove to outbid his rival. Grattan twitted Flood with his place; Flood retorted on Grattan that he had accepted money. The contention was so warm that it nearly passed from words to blows. Nothing but the intervention of the House itself prevented a duel. The great Irish Revolution had characteristically ended in an Irish row. So closed the greatest episode in Grattan's career. When the union was proposed he was living near London, in comparative retirement, and in bad health. His country, in its necessity, thought of the great orator whom it had by turns adored and despised. Grattan was СНАР. III. III. CAHP. urged to set out for Ireland; and, though there was considerable risk to his health in the journey, and possible peril to his life from the animosities of his fellow-countrymen, he at once returned to Dublin. Elected for Wicklow, he took his seat amidst the enthusiasm of the House, and, though evidently ill and compelled to sit, delivered one of his most brilliant speeches. A violent attack was immediately made on him by Corry, the Irish Chancellor of the Exchequer. Grattan resented the language; a hostile meeting ensued, and Corry was wounded. It was afterwards stated that Grattan had been elected at twelve, that he had been received by the House at four, and that he had wounded Corry at eight of the same day. Some years elapsed before Grattan sought a seat in the English House of Commons. Far the most eloquent man on the Liberal benches, he never aspired to any great Parliamentary distinction. He devoted himself to urging the claims of his Roman Catholic fellow-citizens; and never was a just cause illustrated and adorned by a more able exponent. Grattan did not live to see the victory of his principles; but a Parliament, which admired the orator who had not been able to convince them, voted him the highest honours. The great Irish patriot sleeps among the mighty English dead in Westminster Abbey. The statue of the great Irish orator stands in the vestibule of the British Parliament. But the grave at Westminster and the statue at St. Stephen's do not form the most enduring monument to Grattan's fame. History, when she records the emancipation of the Roman Catholics, will always associate this act of justice with the name of Grattan.1 The Irish in the House of A short fifteen years had elapsed since the union. The smaller nation had been absorbed in the larger against its Commons. will. And what was the result? The leader of the Government in the House of Commons was the eldest son of 1 Ann. Reg., 1820, p. 1174; Parnell's Hist. of the Penal Laws. |