The Sun.
London, England, 1821-12-27 00:00:00

MR. PLUNKET.

EXTRACT OF A PRIVATE LETTER FROM DUBLIN.
I was lately in Court to hear, Mr. PLus;KET
ou a very interesting case. He is certainly the
greatest advocate that ever existed. It is amaz-
ing how a man who seems born' for the Senate,
can so completely accommodate himself to the
practice of the Bar ; how the Hercules, who can
so powerfully wield the club, can also so dex-
terously twirl the distaff. His mind is cast in the
mould of the severest philosophy. Upon the
most abstract subjects he is most at home. And
yet, to witness the energy and intenseness with
which he can apply his great mind to the most
common-place business of his profession, you
would imagine that. he never had a thought be-
yond it. His characteristics as an advocate are
force, directness, and simplicity. He leaves no-
thing unsaid that he should say, and says no-
thing that he should not say. Nothing can be
more lucid than his arrangement. His arguments
are so built upon each other that the last comes
upon you with all the accumulated force of the
preceding., His manner is the most unpretending
thing imaginable. No affectation, of display ; no
parade of ;hewing accomplishments. lle ii com-
pletely subservient to his cause throughout. I
have heard orators whose manner of speaking was
more captivating. But there is a presence of
mind and a consciousness of power about him that
are in themselves independent of all the lighter
graces, and the effect of which is such, that you
feel quite at ease, and rest completely satisfied
under his protection. You feel, us it were, the
shield of a giant thrown over you ; and find it
difficult to believe that the being who iS, with so
much ease to himself, raising an . impregnable
circumvallation of argument around you, is less
than omnipotent. The case in which I lately
heard him was one which you may have seen no-
ticed in the papers under the, head of " Scully
versus Scully." The opulent family of that name
in the county of Tipperary have been at law
about a considerable portion of their father's pro-
perty ; one party -. claiming under time father's
will, the other party under the mother's marriage
settlement. The mother, it seems, was entitled,
under her marriage settlement, to one-third of
her husband's substance at his death. This claim
she was induced to relinquish, on the day of his
death, in consideration of a certain life income,
and the case turned upon the validity of the deed
by which she made such renunciation. I have
endeavoured to give as literal a transcript as pos-
sible of Mr. Plunket's observations on this part
of the case ; although to a certain degree faith-
ful, I am conscious that it falls far short of the
force with which they were made.
" My Learned Friend, the Solicitor-General,
has made battle as if we accused them of opening
the will on the day of his death, and has pleaded
that such was the usual practice of the family,
and, indeed, the custom of the country. My
Lord, we made no such charge. It was, perhaps,
right that the will should have been then opened.
It was no doubt reasonable that his extensive fa-
mily and connexions should have been apprised of
the state of his affairs. But what we complain of
is this, that this renunciation of properly should
have been purloined from the disconsolate Widow,
WHILE HER HUSBAND'S BODY REMAINED UN-
BURIED IN THE HOUSE !—Was that right ?
Was. that reasonable ?—Was that the usage of
the country ?—Was that the practice of the
Scully family, or of any family in which
nature, or humanity, or civilization, pre-
vailed ? My Learned Friend has said that
this old Lady despised the vulgar affectation
of sorrow which would render her incompetent
on such an occasion to the discharge of business ;
that she was a woman of a noble, elevated, dig-
nified character, who met the event of her hus-
band's death with a becoming fortitude, and
scorned the feeling, miserable, boarding-school
sentimentality, the, circulating library trash, that
is sometimes exhibited on such occasions. What,
my Lord ! FIFTY YEARS MARRIED TO THE MAN,
and to call the feelings of nature at a finalsepara-
lion from him, boarding school sentimentality! But
my learned Friend is not quite consistent in his
description of this old. Lady. In one place he
describes her as the stoic philosopher, the Cor-
nelia or the Agrippina, who was not to be moved
by the casualties of life, and who met her hus-
band's death as an ordinary occurrence. And in
another he represents her as mean and despicable
enough to chaffer about the pike of his shroud. I can
account for this inconsistency. In the one case,
my learned Friend was left to the suggestions of
his own noble and generous nature. In the other,
he was obliged to abide by the instructions in
his brief. Oh ! my Lord, it is creditable to my
Learned Friend, that he felt this part of the case
to be too strong for him. Boarding school senti-
mentality ! Circulating library. trash ! Is it thus
nature is to be insulted ? After having been fifty
years married to the man, the sharer of his joys
and griefs, the companion of his fire side, the wife
of his bosom, the mother of his children, are we
to be told that she considered any expression of
grief at his death as the sickly and girlish whim,
pering of the boarding school ? Are those feelings
which Providence has implanted within us for
the best and holiest of purposes to be thus
ridiculed and stigmatized ? Those feelings, which,
when the soul is bowed down with agony, and
the heart-strings are strained even to cracking
with grief, are mercifully intended to lead us
from the consideration of the empty and perish-
able things of this life, to the contemplation of
him who is alone unchangeable, and in whom
alone is an abiding felicity to be found. If
ever there was a moment in which, if she were
human, she must have been incompetent to the
discharge of weighty and important business, it
was the moment chosen for the execution of this
deed. If ever there was a moment in which
every thing earthly must have appeared indiffe-
rent to her, in which all the wealth and honour
in the world must have appeared valueless and
empty, it was the moment taken advantage of by
the defendents to cause her to do that act, in
consequence of which they now contend that
she is to be deprived of the advantages .of her
marriage settlement."