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CHAP. II.

First effort of the Catholics-Dr, Curry-Mr. O'ConorMr. Wyse Their characters, friendship, and exertions to rouse their countrymen - Symptoms of relaxation in the penal code-Causes of this change-Anxiously seized-Appeals to the Catholic Aristocracy-To the Catholic Clergy-Fail-Causes of this failure-Appeal to the Catholic Merchants-Succeeds-First meetings --Partial attempt at a Dublin association, by Mr. CurryAddress of the Merchants-Graciously received-Plan of Mr. Wyse for the establishment of a general Association-Adopted-First general Association of the Catholics of Ireland.

Ir was in the full vigour of this atrocious persecution, when all that was life and spirit seemed to have departed from the body, and the hope even of redemption had been forgotten, that Providence raised up from the midst of these calamities, three individuals who were destined to be the first forerunners of the future emancipation of their countrymen. The pulpit had caught the contagion from the legislature, and calumnies, unchecked and unanswered, against the living and the dead, were poured out weekly upon the victims of national hatred—“ pereun

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tibus addita ludibria"-every insult and contumely was added to sharpen the lagging and blunted vengeance of the law. It was on one of these occasions, on the 23rd of October, 1746, that a young girl, passing from one of these sermons through the Castle-yard of Dublin, lifted up her hands in astonishment and horror, and exclaimed, "And are there any of these bloody Papists now in Dublin?" The incident excited the laughter of the bystanders; but there was one in the crowd upon whose ear it fell with a far different meaning. Dr. Curry was standing

near.

The sermon was purchased and read: it overflowed with invective, and with slanders. Catholicity was misrepresented with every additional circumstance of malignity, which existing prejudice and historical falsehood could combine. From that day forth he dedicated the whole weight and energies of his mind to an immortal cause. He had yet no other combatant by his side, nor the hopes of a combatant to sustain him; he stood alone in the field, and bore upon his single shield the entire burden of the conflict.

Dr. Curry in any period of Irish history would have been a remarkable man. In the present, he borrowed additional distinction from the difficulties with which he was surrounded. De

scended from the ancient sept of the O'Corra, it was to its connexion with the struggles and calamities of Ireland that he owed the partial depression of his family. His grandfather had perished at Aughrim, and left to his father but a few shreds of the paternal inheritance. Like others exposed to similar vicissitudes at that disastrous period, he was compelled to recur to the continent for education. He studied medicine in the University of Paris, and exercised the profession with great distinction and profit on his return to Dublin. The necessities of human nature were too powerful for any legislative enactment, and despite of the searching malignity of the anti-Catholic code, the Catholic physician, like the Catholic merchant, soon rose to the most extensive practice and eminence. The intellectual and moral qualities were admirably blended and balanced in his nature. Constant at the side of the poor and rich, charitable without affectation, generous without display, he was the friend as well as the physician, the protector and adviser as well as the succourer, of the afflicted. His whole life was a series of the most judicious and active benevolence. Abroad he was unceasingly occupied in all those stirring scenes connected with human misery; at home his pen was dedicated, not to

adding by its polemical virulence a new stimulant to the mental malady of the day, but in dissipating the blindness of prejudice, in subduing the inflammation, in staying the paroxysm, of passion and persecution. No writer had a more difficult task to perform than the writer of the "Review of the Civil Wars"-" plenum opus aleæ." He trod, indeed, as he advanced upon a scarcely subsiding volcano, and met under surfaces the most flattering, treacherous gusts of flame and smoke at almost every step. He had to investigate truth obscured by a cloud of parliamentary journals; he had to pursue it through voluminous and ex-parte records; he had to rescue it from the virulence and vindicate it from the folly of the day. He has walked in the midst of this darkness, and trodden on this danger in general with a calm and unfaltering step; and if at times complaint escapes from his lips in beholding the desolation around him, it is more in the mildness and sorrow of half-suppressed expostulation that he speaks, than in the bitterness and anger of open denunciation.* To his country true, a disinterested

* In a late history, to which the praise of general impartiality has been so well awarded, the "Review of the Civil Wars" has been treated with more than usual severity. Dr. Curry merited any other than the indiscriminate cen

politician, unswayed by the puny vanities of little men, feeling deeply his country's wrongs, but never speculating upon them for distinction and honours to himself, dearest to those who knew him best, carrying into public the conciliating charities of private life, and into private life, the firmness but not the rigour of public, Dr. Curry seemed particularly and especially framed for times the most difficult in our history,-times which more than any other required the deliberate and cautious march of a philosophic spirit,-and to have adopted, in the first awakening of the slumbering in

sure so largely bestowed by Mr. Hallam. (Constitutional History, vol. ii.) Any one who will take the trouble to open a single page of Dr. Curry's work, will find that there is scarcely a statement, however remotely affecting the general colour of his argument, for which the original authorities are not quoted; and that these authorities have, in almost every instance, been intentionally and scrupulously confined to the Protestant side of the question. Dr. Curry wrote in times when partialities such as Mr. Hallam describes, would easily have been detected, and when the least objection to the claim of fair dealing would have at once neutralised the chief object which the learned contributors had principally in view. But Mr. Hallam's opinions on Irish history are far more questionable, than on the history of his own country. He has scarcely afforded Ireland a glance, and has given a recollection instead of a view.