The Press.
London, England, 1855-02-17 00:00:00

THE PRESS.

sation. His sarcasm, though bitter even to
malignity, compared favourably with the
libellous ribaldry of O'Connell and his imme-
diate imitators ' • and there was something to
be remarked in those sparkling flashes which
occasionally lit up the lowering and roaring
storm of the billinsgate of his compatriots, of
whom it might be said, in another sense from
that in which it was applied to the orators of
antiquity, quanto niagis culniirareinini 8i audisse
tis ipsos! But it would be difficult to find a
book in which so little logical argument is
contained as in the speeches of Richard Lalor
Sheil. His best efforts were of that kind
termed conventionally Irish, in an eminent
degree. His so-called reply to Lord Lynd-
hurst, for instance, where his lordship spoke
of the boast of the Irish Celt, that they are
"aliens in blood, aliens in language, and aliens
" in religion," consisted solely of an account
of the services rendered by the Irish to the
imperial power of England, illustrated by
Waterloo, as though one should argue the
identity of blood from the identity of bravery
of the Highlanders and the Zouaves. But
Shell had an advantage rare amongst his
rivals. When power came by Whig corrup-
tion within the reach of the Roman Catholics
of Ireland, he was fit for place. He had
not committed himself to violent doc-
trines. He had not pledged himself deeply
to any of the chimeras by which the Irish
mob was kept in motion, and he was by his
education and manners fit to accept such
goods as "the gods provided." He thus settled
into a quiet placeman, and served himself
instead of the priests for the remainder of his
career, finding sufficient workday common-
sense to attend to the affairs of Greenwich
Hospital, and oversee (nut without the "Doi
Gratia" accident) the new die for the Mint.
On the whole, however, Sheil was in learning,
ability, and consistency, the most respectable
of the " agitators," nor was the fortune that
made him so that fortune which, testi Tom
Moore,
" sheds
Her brightest halo round the weakest heads."

The contents of these two volumes were
contributed to the New Monthly Magazine at
intervals from 1822 to 1829. and 'having been
republished in America without the authority
of Mr. Colburn, and included with others not
written by Mr. Sheil, the present collection
was thought necessary. Of this necessity
there may be two opinions. The " Sketches
" of the Irish Bar," which, the editor informs
us, " were read as well for their fidelity as
" portraitures as for the spirit and elegance
" with which they were written," were, for the
most part, either caricatures intended to
convey local envy and political malice or
ridiculous flattery of some Roman Catholic
barristers, now, with one exception (if O'Loghlen
is, indeed, an exception), utterly forgotten.
As to the elegance of these " Sketches,"
probably it is true in criticism that " every eye
" forms its own beauty," for the phrases " the
" bench was withdrawn from Mr. Joy while
" he was almost in the attitude of seating him-
" self upon it ;" and Judge Fletcher was " a
" man of uncommonly vigorous and brawny
" mind ;" and " the lurid looks and baleful
" countenances of the Protestant conquerors ;"
and "the rugged and hirsute embrace" of
Trinity College, Dublin, with hundreds of
phrases similar, we can haraly take, on Mr.
Savage's authority, for " elegance."
The interest of sketches of the bar of any
country is in itself ephemeral, and Mr. Sheil's
sketches derive so much of it as they poisess
rather from anecdotes and illustrations, with
which mere professional traits have little to do.
The notice of Lord Norbury, for instance, is
a collection of the exaggerated narratives in
which the good story-tellers of the Irish metro-
polis were in the habit of indulging ; but the
following sketch of the haphazard administra-
tion of justice in Nisi Prius trials gives a
fair specimen of Mr. Sheil's word-painting.
The passage purports to be descriptive of
" Lord Norbury 's monologue, commonly called
"a charge "
usually began by pronouncing theloftiest encomiums
upon the party in the action against whom he intended to
advise the jury to give their verdict. For this the audience
were well prepared; and accordingly, after he hid stated
that the defendant was one of the most honourable men
alive, and that he knew his father and loved him, he aud•

SATURDAY,

denly came with a most singular emphasis, which he ac-
companied with a strange shake of his wig, to the fatal
" but," which made the sudienoe who were iu expectation
of it burst into a fit of laughter, while he proceeded to
charge, as he almost invariably did, in the plaintiffs
favour. He then entered more deeply, as humid, into the
case, and, flinging his judicial robe half aside, and some-
times casting off his wig, started from his seat, and threw
off a wild harangue, in which neither law, argument, nor
method could be discovered. It generally consisted of
narratives connected with the history of his early life
which it was impossible to associate with the subject, of
jests from Joe Miller, nixed with jokes of his own manu-
facture, and of sarcastic allusions to any of the counsel
who had endeavoured to check him during the trial. He
was exceedingly fond of quotations from Milton and
Shakspeare, which, however out of place, were very well
delivered, and evinced an excellent enunciation. At the
conclusion of his charge he made some effort to call the
attention of the jury to any leading incident which par-
ticularly struck him, but what he meant it was not very
easy to conjecture, and when he sat down the whole per-
formance exhibited a mind which resembled a whirlpool of
mad, in which law, facts, arguments, and evidence were
lost in unfathomable confusion.

In the same sketch we have some idea given
of the kind of debates which sometimes hap-
pened in the Parliament of Ireland, and Lord
Norbury is exhibited as " a hired bravo," from
the violence of the language in which he was
accustomed to indulge. We fear, however,
that the popular had little superiority in lan-
guage over the Government side of that as-
sembly, as the " ever-glorious Grattan," when,
in debate on the " Declaratory Act" of 1782,
Mr. Flood endeavoured to keep the great
patriot to his own principles, attacked the
latter gentleman (whose profile was imperfect)
as "an obscene bird with cadaverous aspect
" and broken beak." This was probably a
portion of that eloquence which " Demos-
thenes wanted," and with which Grattan was
" endued."

The notice of a man of great attainments
and of unsullied integrity, but guilty of being a
hereditary Protestant—the Right Hon. William
Saurin—is an average specimen of the misre-
presentation and disparagement in which the
Irish peasant tribunes were in the habit of in-
dulging. Like a certain pariah class, it is
amusing to see how prone they are to charge
plebeian origin." However far removed, when
"these sketches were written, from the society in
which Mr. Saurin lived, Mr. Sheil could not
have been ignorant that his first line respect-
ing the great lawyer was a simple invention.
" Mr. Saurin," he says, "is the son of a Pres-
" byterian clergyman, who followed the duties
" of his pious but humble calling in the north
"of Ireland." Mr. Saurin's grandfather, Louis
Saurin, D.D., Precentor of Christ's Church,
Dublin, and Dean of Ardagh, was brother of
the famous Jacques Sauna, the Huguenot,
and of Marc Antoine Saurin, Gentleman of the
Bedchamber to George I. Dr. Louis Saurin's
son William became Vicar of Belfast, and was
father of the Attorney-General whom Mr.
Sheil " sketches," and also of the Bishop of
Dromore. Such an inquiry is only of value from
the fact that one of the commonest expedients
of the Romanist party in Ireland has been the
deliberate misrepresentation of the rank and
origin of their opponents, not the least consis-
tent, feared, and effective of whom was the
Right Hon. William Sarnia.
The article entitled "The Catholic Bar"
betrays the usual amount, either of want of
knowledge of the value of Irish authorities, or
the actual citation of incredible witnesses
The impartiality and independence of the
Romish judges foisted on the bench by James
11., Mr. Sheil proves by James's hrother•in-law
and Viceroy, Lawrence Hyde, who, though he
took fright at the King's final insanity in favour
of the Jesuits, would have willingly gone any
length in Ireland, where matters were sup-
posed to be safer than at home. Any
reader of constitutional history will admire
the audacity, or ignorance, or both, of
him who wrote what follows of the pious
and fearless Archbishop King, the author
of the "State of the Irish Protestants," and
relying, for the Archbishop's refutation, on the
book of Bishop Leslie, who followed James
into exile, and professed Papacy at St. Ger-
mains :

--- •
In the reign of James 11., Roman Catholic barristers
were raised to office; and, as the time appears to be at hand
when they will be rendered eligible by law to hold places
of distinction and of trust, it is worth our while to examine
in what way they conducted themselvea when, in the short
interval of their political prosperity, Roman Catholics
were invested with authority. Doctor King Boys that, "no