dread of expanded investigation and of rhetorical ornament that his professional duties imposed; but in Ireland the leading counsel were also from an early age distinguished members of the senate. If in the morning their horizon was bounded by their briefs, in a few hours their minds were free to rise, and extend it as far as the statesman's eye could reach; they had the daily excitation and tumult of popular debate to clear away any momentary stagnations of fancy or enterprize; the lawyer became enlarged into the legislator, and instead of introducing into the efforts of the latter the coldness and constraint of his professional manner, he rather delighted to carry back with him to the forum, all the fervour, and pomp, and copiousness of the deliberative style.

The Parliament of Ireland, the nurse of the genius and ambition of its bar, is now extinct; but the impulse that it gave is not yet spent; the old have not yet forgotten the inspiration of the scene where they beheld so many accomplished orators pass their most glorious hours; the young cannot hear without a throb of emulation the many wonderous things of that proud work of their fathers, which was levelled for having towered too high; nor is the general regret of the bar for its fall unincreased by their possession and daily admiration of two noble and still perfect relics, attesting the magnificence of the structure they have survived.*

Another peculiarity of the Irish bar that is now passing away, but which prevailed to a great extent during Mr. Curran's forensic career, was the frequency of collision between the bar and the bench. It was often his fate to be involved in them, and many are the instances of the promptness of repartee, and of the indignant intrepidity with which, on all such occasions, he defended the

*Messrs. Bushe and Plunkett, two of the members of the Irish House of Commons, the most distinguished for eloquence, continue at the Irish bar.-C. [This was written in 1818. Bushe became Lord Chief Justice of Ireland in 1822, and died in 1843. Plunkett, twice Irish Lord Chancellor, died 1854, a British Peer.-M.]

privileges of the advocate. It will be presently seen that he had scarcely appeared at the bar, when he showed how he could encounter and triumph over all the taunts and menaces of a hostile judge. The same spirit of resistance and retaliation will be found in his contests with Lord Clare; and at a much subsequent period, when he was exerting himself in a cause with his characteristic firmness, the presiding judge having called the sheriff to be ready to take into custody any one who should disturb the decorum of his court, "Do, Mr. Sheriff," replied Mr. Curran, "go and get ready my dungeon; prepare a bed of straw for me; and upon that bed I shall to-night repose with more tranquillity than I should enjoy were I sitting upon that bench with a consciousness that I disgraced it."

The same political causes that have been already alluded to as influencing the oratory of the Irish bar, will, in a great measure, account for these conflicts in the courts, and for that tone of sarcasm and defiance assumed by the barrister on such occasions.

It was one of the public calamities of the period when such scenes were most frequent, that, in the selection of persons to fill the judicial seat, more attention was often paid to family interest and political services than to the claims of merit, or the benefit of the community. No doubt, it sometimes happened that this important office was bestowed upon men, to whom the appointment to situations of honour and of trust was less a gift, than the payment of the justest debt. What dignity could be too exalted. for the learned and accomplished Lord Avonmore? What trust too sacred for Lord Kilwarden, the most conscientious, and pacific, and merciful of men?*

But if Ireland beheld such persons

* Arthur Wolfe, son of a country gentleman in Kildare, was born in 1739, became a barrister, and soon after, a member of the Irish parliament. In this latter capacity, siding with the government, he contended with Flood and Grattan. He was appointed Solicitor-General in 1787, Attorney-General in 1789, and Chief Justice of Ireland in 1798, being then created Lord Kilwarden; in 1800 was raised to the rank of Viscount, and in 1802 was made Vice-Chancellor of the University of Dublin. On the evening of July 23, 1808 (when Emmett's insurrection prematurely broke out), Lord Kilwarden was met by a band of armed men, in Thomas street, Dublin, who killed him and his nephew by stab.

adorning their station, she had the anguish and humiliation to see others degrading it by their political fury, or by the more indecent gratification of their particular animosities. Influenced by such unworthy feelings of party or of private hostility, the judges, in those days, were too prone to consider it a branch of their official duty to discountenance any symptoms of independence in their court; and though at times they may have succeeded, yet, at others, indignant and exemplary was the retaliation to which such a departure from their dignity exposed them: for it was not unusual that the persons who made these experiments upon the spirit of the bar, and whose politics and connections had raised them to a place of nominal superiority, were, in public consideration, and in every intellectual respect, the inferiors of the inen that they undertook to chide. It sometimes happened, too, that the parties, whose powers might be less unequal, had been old parliamentary antagonists; and when the imputed crimes of the oppositionist came to be visited upon the advocate, it is not surprising that he should have retorted with pride, and acrimony, and contempt. Hence arose in the Irish Courts those scenes of personal contention, which the different character of the bench in later times precludes, and which (whatever side gain the victory) must be ever deprecated as ruinous to the client, and disgraceful to that spot, within whose precincts faction and passion should never be permitted to intrude.

But though the solemnity of judicial proceedings in Ireland might have been often disturbed by the preceding causes, they have been more frequently enlivened by others of a less unamiable description. Notwithstanding the existence there of that religious and political bigotry which tends to check every cheerful impulse, and, in their place, to substitute general distrust and gloom, these baneful effects have been powerfully counteracted by the more

bing them with pikes. It was supposed that his administration of the Criminal Law, in 1798, had created enmity to him. Lord Kilwarden, who supported the Union, was an eloquent speaker, in the Senate as well as at the bar, and a very eminent lawyer.-M.

prevailing influence of the national character. The honest kindly affections of nature, though impeded, have still kept on their course. In spite of all the sufferings and convulsions of the last century, the social vivacity of the Irish was proverbial. It subsisted, as it still subsists, in an eminent degree, in their private intercourse; it may be also seen constantly breaking forth in their public discussions. At the bar, where the occasions of jocularity so frequently occur, it is, as might be expected, most strikingly displayed. The Irish judges have not disdained to resign themselves to the favourite propensity of their country. The humorous sally or classical allusion, which would have pleased at the table, has not been frowned upon from the bench; their habits of social intimacy with the bar, and their own tastes as scholars and companions, have rather prepared them to tolerate, and even join in those lively irregularities which the more severe decorum of Westminster Hall might condemn. This urbanity and indulgence still remains; and scarcely a term passes over without many additions, either from the bar or the bench, to the large fund of Irish forensic humour.*

A more frequent and less dignified description of mirth, of which so much may be observed in the legal proceedings of Ireland, is that which originates in the particular character of the lower orders of that country. They abound in sagacity and repartee-qualities to which, when appearing as unwilling witnesses, or when struggling under the difficulties of a cross-examination, they seldom fail to fly to shelter. Their answers, on such occasions, are singularly adroit and evasive, and the advocate is conseqently obliged to adopt every artifice of humour and ridicule, as more effectual than seriousness or menace, to extract the truth and expose their equivocations. The necessity of employing

It is worth noting that the jokes which now amuse judges, counsel, clients, and witnesses, in Courts of Law, are notoriously poor ones. Real forensic fun and wit appear to have disappeared. This holds good on both sides of the Atlantic.-M.

† See Mr. Curran's cross-examination of O'Brien, inserted hereafter.-C.

such methods of confounding the knavish ingenuity of a witness, perpetually occasions the most striking contrasts between the solemnity of the subjects, and the levity of the language in which they are investigated. It is particularly in the Irish criminal courts that scenes of this complicated interest most constantly occur. In the front appear the counsel and the evidence in a dramatic contest, at which the auditors cannot refrain from bursts of laughter, and at a little distance behind, the prisoner under trial, gazing upon them with agonized attention, and catching at a presage of his fate in the alternating dexterity or fortune of the combatants.

This intrusion of levity into proceedings that should be marked by pomp and dignity may be indecent, but it is inevitable. Without this latitude of examination, no right would be secure, and, when exerted, no gravity can resist its influence; even the felon's visage is often roused from its expression of torpid despair by the sallies that accompany the disclosure of his crimes. As long, therefore, as the Irish populace retain their present character of vivacity and acuteness, the Irish advocate must cultivate and display his powers of humour, often, perhaps, to a greater extent than his own better taste would desire; and the courts, aware of the necessity of such an instrument for eliciting the truth, will not consider it incumbent on them to interfere with its use.