CHAP. Reports of Lord Lifford's judgments. so obscure but may be one time or other sufficiently connected with power to do any man mischief; no man should, therefore, give offence; no man is fit for great affairs who has not a total mastery of his temper." N.B.Fear was the prudence of his life, caution his shield, and temper his fort.' Lord Lifford is the first Lord Chancellor of Ireland Chancellor whose judgments have been preserved. Of these many are unpublished, and one volume is printed. This is entitled 'Reports of Select Cases argued and determined in the High Court of Chancery in Ireland, principally in the time of Lord Lifford.' Though these decisions range from 1767 to 1786, they were unknown to the profession until published by the enterprising Irish publishers, Hodges and Smith, in 1839. They had been reported by an experienced member of the Irish Bar, Mr. Wallis, who gave them to Mr. Lyne, also a barrister. This gentleman undertook to condense and prepare them for publication; finding the task troublesome, he presented them to a relative of the Reporter, Mr. Alexander, a member of the English Bar. He also neglecting to publish them, James Lyne, Esq., son of the gentleman of that name already mentioned, procured them from Mr. Alexander, and carefully examined the manuscripts. A large portion related to the construction of the No Popery laws, now, thank God! obsolete. Those published present features of interest and importance. The period was not supposed productive of men capable of close and argumentative reasoning, for it was during the brief but brilliant epoch of Irish independence. These reports contradict this belief. They show a greater degree of legal learning, and acquaintance with, and reference to, the authority of decided cases, than the bar of Ireland at the time got credit for. The men whose fervid eloquence blazed in the Senate at night cooled down in the morning to discuss legal points. The arguments of Counsel and the decisions of the able and distinguished Judge who for over twenty years presided as Lord Chancellor of Ireland are the best monuments of the profession CHAP. XLIV. v. Hopkins. Devise to unborn we could have. As specimens of the way his Lordship disposed of cases, I subjoin a few reported by Mr. Wallis :In Williams v. Hopkins,' decided in 1777, the Lord Williams Chancellor held a devise of real and personal property to testator's unborn child, and in case of its death under age, to be equally divided between the children, male and child, with female, of testator's two married daughters, Letetia Wil- gift over. liams and Elenor Hopkins, when they should arrive at their respective ages; the interest of that part to the children of Elenor during such minority to go to her, Elenor's sole use; and in case she should not have children, such share to go to the children of Letetia at the death of the posthumous child. Elenor had no children, and the posthumous child having died, upon Bill filed the Chancellor decreed a moiety of the testator's effects to be for the benefit of Elenor's children, if such she should have, and meantime she should have the interest and produce, and on her death without issue, that moiety to go to her sister's children. V. Bateman. In Murray v. Bateman, Lady Rosse his wife, and others, Murray where a tenant for three lives, with covenant for perpetual renewal on payment of a fine within three months from the fall of any life, had not applied for a renewal until the fall of the last life in the lease; upon Bill filed to compel a renewal on refusal to grant same or accept the renewal fines tendered, Lord Chancellor Lifford held, after very full argument, that the plaintiff was entitled to a renewal of 1 Wallis, Rep. by Lyne, p. 285. The condition of having children' when in the will there was a bequest to the parent, was held satisfied by issue being born, though dying during the parents' life time. Vide Weakly v. Rugg, 7 T. R. 322. Also on the same question, Wall v. Tomlinson. 16 Ves. 413. 2 Wallis, Rep. by Lyne, p. 181. At p. 203 Mr. Wallis says, This decree Decree was afterwards reversed by the Lords. Some of the law Lords did not approve reversed of relieving tenants who did not comply with their renewal covenants, and the on appeal. decision created such alarm in Ireland that they procured the Act 19 and 20 Geo. III. Ir. c. 30, the Tenantry Act, which passed the Lords by the narrow majority of one. A note of the argument on the Appeal is reported in 1 Ridg. P. C. 198. Lord Redesdale shows very satisfactorily that the reason why Lord Lifford's judgment in Murray v. Bateman was reversed was not upon laches of the tenant but on account of fraud and wilful concealment.-See 2 Scho, and Lef. 687. СНАР. White V. Dillon. his lease pursuant to the covenant upon payment of renewal fines, according to the septennial calculation. The rights of married women to dispose of property by will came before the Lord Chancellor, in White v. Dillon, decided in 1788.1 On a separation between husband and wife, a deed was executed conveying the wife's marriage portion, with other property, to trustees, for her sole and separate use, to pay rents, and produce to her, her executors, administrators, and assigns, for her and their separate use. The wife subsequently was allowed an interest in some houses, which were bequeathed to trustees to the sole and separate use of the wife, and to be disposed by her as if sole. By will she left her husband five shillings, and her separate property to her relations. On her executor seeking probate, the husband contested the grant, and therefore submitted to the jurisdiction of the Court; finding the Judge of the Prerogative against him, and in favour of the will, the husband applied to the Lord Chancellor for a writ of prohibition. The case was argued by the Attorney-General, John Scott, for the executor, and Mr. Yelverton for Mr. White, the husband of the deceased lady. In the Chancellor's judgment the law was thus clearly stated: A married woman is by her coverture disabled from making a will. She is not sui juris, but under the control and power of another; by her marriage she ceases to have any dominion over her former property, which is transferred to the husband by the marriage, and she therefore cannot have a right to dispose of things over which she has not any power. The husband then, having the power over the wife's goods equally with his own (for he may dispose of the chattels and recover her choses in action), may dispose thereof at his pleasure; and when he absolutely assigns them to trustees for the wife, he ceases to have any further dominion over them. After separation, a wife is in many respects sui juris, and the separation is a consent and allowance by the husband of the wife's sole acts in consequence of such separation; so that 1 Wallis, Rep. by Lyne, p. 302, both reasons against the feme covert making a will cease in case of separations. And though any disposition of hers by testament may not be thereby called a will, yet it, in fact, is a will, and operates in every respect as such; and there is no solid difference between a will and a testamentary writing or schedule. Exclusive of this, the party now applying for the Prohibition has fully admitted the jurisdiction of the Ecclesiastical Court, and submitted thereto by allowing the cause to proceed to a final hearing without any objection; although he must have been earlier apprised of the legal right now insisted on by him, if any he had. Prohibition refused.' 3 1 See the law held in Fettyplace v. Gorges, 1 Ves. Jun. 46; Rich v. Cockell, 9 Ves. 369; Sturges v. Corp, 13 Ves. 190. For disputing jurisdiction after proceedings. See Anon, 1 Vern. 301; 2 T. R. 475. The decisions of Lord Chancellor Lifford in print are contained in the work from which these cases are cited. A very elaborate judgment in Rochfort v. Lord Ely is contained in Appendix to Ridgeways, P.C. vol. i. p. 528. Also his judgment in same cause, id. p. 551. There are, I am informed by my friend John Adair, Esq., of the Irish Bar, many unpublished and unprinted cases argued before his Lordship in MSS., which were presented by Mr. Adair to the present Lord Lifford. CHAP. CHAP. John Fitz His cha- Sympathy for Irish Catholics on the Continent. CHAPTER XLV. LIFE OF LORD CHANCELLOR EARL OF CLARE, FROM HIS BIRTH TO HIS WE now reach the most remarkable man who has yet held the Great Seal of Ireland, JOHN FITZ GIBBON, EARL OF CLARE. Though a native of the soil he evinced no amor patriæ, and sought his own aggrandisement at the expense of his country. His career displays dauntless courage, the highest intellect, the utmost selfishness, and unrestrained arrogance. While strongly condemning the result of his career, it is impossible not to admire the might of his abilities, and the range of his talents. The atrocities of the penal code made the people of Ireland objects of sympathy in every Catholic country in Europe. The penal laws, which, as far as legislation could effect, debased the intellect by forbidding education to the Irish Catholics, caused Irish colleges to be endowed and established for their special use on the Continent, and that comprehensive and liberal education which the Parliaments of Britain and Ireland prohibited under severe penalties, was generously afforded to the exiles of Erin in more tolerant lands. By the waters of Tiber, in the City of the Seven Hills-Eternal Rome--the Irish college was thronged with students. In Paris, in St. Omer's, in Louvain, and in Liége, in Salamanca, and in other wellknown seats of learning, familiar as household words in the homes of the persecuted Irish-the sons of Erin drank deep of the well of knowledge. Here they acquired the learning necessary for the service of the altar or the practice of medicine, and returned to Ireland clergymen or doctors, ready and willing to save body and soul. Many of the wealthier Irish Catholics endowed these colleges, |