remarkable as the father of a more celebrated son, was John Fitzgibbon. He, like Pery, came from Limerick, but from the cabin of a Catholic peasant. The Fitzgibbons were of Norman blood, once wealthy and powerful, but now reduced by forfeitures, and there remained of them only a few families, renting their few acres of potato garden on the estates of their ancestors. Young John, in defiance of the law, had been sent to Paris to be educated, and was intended for a priest. He had no taste for the priestly calling. The Catholic religion itself became incredible to him. He went to London, found means of studying law, and brought himself into notice, while still keeping his terms, by publishing a volume of Reports. Admitted to the Irish bar, he rose early into practice, realized a considerable fortune, and bought a large estate at Mountshannon, in his native county. He sat in Parliament for Newcastle, in the county of Dublin, and he stood almost alone in desiring nothing which Castle favor could give, aspiring to no rank, and content with the wealth which he had earned. To a Government which had aimed at ruling Ireland by honest methods, the elder Fitzgibbon would have been an invaluable servant; to the Halifaxes and Northumberlands, though he never stooped to factious opposition, he was an object of suspicion and dislike. John Fitzgibbon the younger, who grew to be Chancellor and Earl of Clare, was born in 1748, and was now gaining his early laurels at Trinity College. Noticeable, however, beyond all his contemporaries already prominent in the House of Commons, already concentrating in himself the passionate hopes of all young generous-minded Irishmen, was the cele VOL. II. Irish brated Henry Flood. Like the younger Fitzgibbon, Flood was born into a position which secured him from the temptation of making politics a trade. His father, Warden Flood, was Chief Justice of the King's Bench, and as Attorney-General had amassed considerable property. Henry, the eldest son, was born in 1732. He passed without particular distinction through the Irish University. From Dublin he went as a gentleman commoner to Oxford, where he became noted rather as an ornamental youth of letters than as an aspirant for University honors. genius runs naturally to words. Henry Flood was a student of Demosthenes, and his special ambition was to be an orator. His enslaved and unhappy country weighed upon his spirits. She was in bondage; the chains cramped her limbs, and therefore she was miserable. She pined for liberty, and liberty, as Flood understood it, "was the child of eloquence." Not by hard attention to the facts of life; not by submission to the inflexible laws which must be obeyed before they will be our servants; not by patient undoing the triple stranded cord of idleness, extravagance, and anarchy, in which the object of his affection was truly held in servitude; not by these, but on the short bright road of bounding oratory lay Ireland's path towards redemption. Let parliamentary eloquence breathe into the souls of her people, and the foul enchantment would disappear, and Ireland would rise up in her native loveliness. With these ideas in him, and with an estate of 5,000l. a year to fall to him on his father's death, Henry Flood, being then twentyseven years old, entered Parliament as member for Kilkenny in 1759. He was reëlected on the King's death for the same county, and, with a handsome fig ure, a rich sonorous voice, and a mind stored with the phrases which millions of young Irish hearts were then prepared to accept as the Open Sesame of Paradise, he became at once the idol of Irish patriotism, catching the torch which was dropping from the failing hand of Charles Lucas, and eclipsing alike the waning brilliancy of Anthony Malone and the meridian splendor of Hely Hutchinson. Other eminent persons will be heard of in front places on the stage of Irish politics. For special reasons, those which have been mentioned must particularly be borne in mind; and there must be added to the list the name of another young man, then the rival of John Fitzgibbon at Trinity College - as he was his rival afterwards on the broader platform of life. Grattan has been beatified by tradition as the saviour of his country. In his own land his memory is adored. His glittering declamations are studied as models of oratory wherever the English language is spoken. Fitzgibbon is the object of a no less intense national execration. He was followed to his grave with curses, and dead cats were flung upon his coffin. If undaunted courage, if the power to recognize and the will to act upon unpalatable truths, if the steady preference of fact to falsehood, if a resolution to oppose at all hazards those wild illusions which have lain at all times at the root of Ireland's unhappiness, be the constituents of greatness in an Irish statesman, Grattan and Fitzgibbon are likely hereafter to change places in the final estimate of history. Grattan was the elder by two years. His father also was in Parliament. He was Recorder of Dublin and member for the city. John Fitzgibbon was born in 1748, Henry Grattan in 1746. They were at school together, and afterwards at college, where both carried off the highest prizes. From Trinity they went to London, to study law at the Temple, but here their paths divided. Grattan was left fatherless when he was under nineteen. He inherited little property, and had his own fortune to make for himself; but he disliked the bar, and remained for some time uncertain what career he should adopt. Fitzgibbon was heir to a large estate; but he threw himsely earnestly into his profession, and long before the Counsellor died was in the first flight of Irish lawyers. The parliamentary life of these two young men had yet to begin. Let it be understood that their manhood was maturing and their minds were forming in the scenes about to be described. CHAPTER II. LORD TOWNSHEND'S ADMINISTRATION. SECTION I. GEORGE, third Viscount Townshend, was selected as Viceroy of Ireland in the summer of 1767, under the last administration of Lord Chatham, having just succeeded to the title by his father's death. His career in the army had been creditable, if not particularly brilliant. He was with Wolfe on the heights of Abraham, and General Monckton, the second in command, having been carried off wounded early in the action, Townshend, when Wolfe fell, became superior officer, and signed the capitulation of Quebec.1 His brother Charles died immediately after his nomination, and in the first sorrow for the loss of father and brother he entered upon his intricate office. In appearance the new Viceroy was a bon vivant; in his manners easy; in his conversation humorous, and seemingly frank and transparent. He was as ready with a proverb as Sancho Panza,2 and let fall, it was said, in half an hour, and as it were by accident, more 1 The popular leaders in Ireland charged Townshend with having cheated Monckton of his laurels, and stolen an honor to which he had no claim. History, in the hands of Irish writers, has often a tendency to become mythological. See Baratariana, p. 94. 2 This peculiarity was the occasion of the name Barataria being given to Ireland in the squibs and essays published by Flood and his friends. |