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There was no more a corrupt Irish party to be exposed, or an audacious ministry to be confronted and beaten back. His dearest child had withered under the last blow that struck his country, and all that remained of home had been poisoned by a villain. He had ever been easily affected, and mirth and melancholy divided his restless being. Now these tendencies became diseased and excessive. Memory, to him, wore "a robe of mourning" and came in "a faded ligh.." Dublin, at that time, had been emptied of its genius; it had not acquired the education which, in our day begins to make its society tolerable—and politically it was a blank.

He rallied every young man of promise about him; and many are living who have no greener recollection than the nights they spent at The Priory, when his mind, roused by friendship and sympathy, broke loose from its sorrows. Nor can we wonder, though we must grieve, at the influence which men who had no merit but coarse gaiety and a knowledge of his character, sometimes exercised over his seared and trusting spirit.

Even from amid the excitements of London and Paris, where he was cherished and honoured, he looked back to Ireland and wept bitterly.

In a letter to Mr. Lubé, he says

"Every thing I see disgusts and depresses me; I look back at the streaming of blood for so many years; and every thing every where relapsed into its former degradation. France rechained-Spain again saddled for the priests and Ireland, like a bastinadoed elephant, kneeling to receive the paltry rider: and what makes the idea the more cutting, her fate the work of her own ignorance and fury. She has completely lost all sympathy here, and I see no prospect for her, except a vindictive oppression and an endlessly increasing taxation. God give us, not happiness, but patience!"

The same letter has most plaintive and beautiful thoughts on the value of hearty loving intercourse among friends, and the dull hollowness of "general" society that wretched cheat.

His account of English society is bitter enough too.—

"Since my arrival here, my spirits have been wretchedly low: though treated with great kindness, I find nothing to my mind. I find heads without thinking, and hearts without strings, and a phraseology sailing in ballast: every one piping, but few dancing. England is not a place for society; it is too cold, too vain, without pride enough to be humble, drowned in dull fantastical formality, vulgarised by rank without talent, and talent foolishly recommending itself by weight rather than by fashion-a perpetual war between the disappointed pretensions of talent and the stupid overweening of affected patronage; means without enjoyment, pursuits without an object, society without conversation or intercourse: perhaps they manage this better in France-a few days, I think, will enable me to decide."

This feeling about England confirmed him in refusing to enter the Imperial Parliament, which he had been repeatedly urged to do. Thank God he refused to be handed in by a corrupt patron, to exhibit a genius impotent to convince, and able only to excite and gratify that hard-hearted senate.

His letters from Paris continue to express the same view of Irish affairs, and display the same mixture of jest and woe.—

"Patriotic affectation is almost as bad as personal, but I declare I think these things do a good deal in sinking my health, which is far from good; my spirits quite on the ground; and yet as to Ireland, I never saw but one alternative--a bridewell or a guard-house; with England the first, with France the other. We

might have had a mollification, and the bolts lightened, and a chance of progression; but that I now give up."

That his grief was not the striving of a worldly spirit against the orders of nature, might be judged from a most fearfully humorous description of a visit to the Catacombs of Paris, to see "a dead population equal to four times the living." It has contrasts as terrible as Goethe's. There was a vain woman of the party

"I asked her whether it gave her a sentiment of grief, or fear, or hope? She asked me what room I could see for hope in a parcel of empty skulls? For that reason, madam, and because you know they cannot be filled with grief or fear, for all subjects of either is past,' She replied, oui, et cependant c'est jolie.' It did not raise her in my mind, though she was not ill-looking; and when I met her above ground, after our resurrection, she appeared fit enough for the drawing-rooms of the world, though not for the under-cellar. I do not remember even to have had my mind compressed into so narrow a space: so many human beings, so many actors, so many sufferers, so various in human rank, so equalized in the grave! When I stared at the congregation, I could not distinguish what head had raved, or reasoned, or hoped, or burned. I looked for thought, I looked for dimples,-I asked, whither is all gone did wisdom never flow from your lips, nor affection hang upon them—and if both or either, which was the most exalting which the most fascinating? All silent. They left me to answer for them, 'So shall the fairest face appear.'

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On the 22nd of August, 1814, he mentions his anxiety to live amongst the French, whom he preferred to the English, but he seems to have doubted his power of living much longer any where. Yet he feared not death.

"I do not like the state of my health; if it was merely maladie under sailing orders for the undiscovered country, I should not quarrel with the passport. There is nothing gloomy in my religious impressions, though I trust they are not shallow: I ought to have been better-I know also that others have been as blameable; and I have rather a cheerful reliance upon mercy than an abject fear of justice. Or were it otherwise, I have a much greater fear of suffering than of death."

Still he bore up, and for two years more he shared his time between a Dublin circle, including Mr. Sheil, and all that was worth knowing here, and a London one, too large for description, but of whom the dearest to him were Moore and Godwin.

During the same interval, he fiddled a little with memoirs of his time,* and a novel which he had commenced. He occasionally appeared too at public dinners.

His time was at last come. The body could no longer endure that deep corroding sorrow. He was attacked by paralysis, in the summer of 1817, at Moore's table, and was immediately ordered to the South of Europe. He, however, thought it necessary to go to Ireland to settle his affairs.

Leaving Dublin, he felt it was for the last time. "I wish it was all over,"

His feeling of duty as to such memoirs was strong, and is well said in the fragment we have of them. "You that propose to be the historian of yourself, go first and trace out the boundary of your grave stretch forth your hand and touch the stone that is to mark your head, and swear by the Majesty of Death, that your testimony shall be true, unwarped by prejudice, unbiassed by favour, and unstained by malice; so mayest thou be a witness not unworthy to be examined before the awful tribunal of that after time, which cannot begin, until you shall have been numbered with the dead."

said he to one friend; and as he grasped another's hand on the packet's deck, he said, "you will never see me more."

He returned to London-but Ireland, enslaved Ireland was like a vision before him. He burst into tears at a large dinner party on some slight allusion to Irish politics.

On the 8th of October he was attacked by apoplexy, and became speechless. On 14th October, 1817, at nine at night, his spirit went to another home. Several of his children, and his dearest friend, Mr. Godwin, watched his painless death. Round the grave he sanctifies, before the effigy of that inspired face which was but the outside of his soul, and oftenest of all, in communion with his undying thoughts, let the young men of Ireland bend.

His life was full of labour, daring patriotism and love. He shrunk from no toil, and feared no peril for country, and fame, and passion. He was no pedant-good by rule, or vicious from calculation. He strove, because he felt it noble and holy and joyous to be strong, and he knew that strength comes from striving. He attained enormous power, power of impassionate eloquence, and he used that power to comfort the afflicted, to guard the orphan, to rescue his friend, and avenge his country.

A companion unrivalled in sympathy and wit; an orator, whose thoughts went forth like ministers of nature, with robes of light and swords in their hands; a patriot who battled best when the flag was trampled down, and a genuine earnest man, breathing of his climate, his country, and his time; let his countrymen study what he was and did, and let his country guard his fame.

His burial possesses more interest than commonly clings round the coffin of the greatest. He had written in one of his letters, expressing anxiety, that the exiles of 1798 should be allowed to return. "But," he says

"They are destined to give their last recollection of the green fields they are never to behold, on a foreign death-bed, and to lose the sad delight of fancied visits to them in a distant grave.

He little thought it would be his own fate.

"The last duties (he pathetically observed in one of his latest letters) will be paid by that country on which they are devolved; nor will it be for charity that a little earth shall be given to my bones. Tenderly will those duties be paid, as the debt of well-earned affection, and of gratitude not ashamed of her tears."

From some cause or other, his executors would not or could not do so, and he was buried in one of the vaults of Paddington church. There his dust lay for twenty years, when his remians were resumed by his mother earth. Ever honoured be they, for they are all that is mortal of one of the purest, loveliest, and most potent spirits this land of ours ever nursed.

*Curran now lies buried in Glasnevin cemetry. His funeral to it was public, and so is his tomb. There is a monument to him in St. Patrick's church-a bust by Moore, on a sarcophagus. It is copied from Lawrence's picture, and is the finest monument, so simply made, I ever saw. Let the reader look at it when the setting sun comes upon it, and he will recognize lineaments of power. It is most like him in his glorified mood, full of thought and action. In an Irish Pantheon our greatest orator should be represented at full length, and the bass reliefs of his sarcophagus should be his receiving Father Neale's blessing, his rising to defend the Sheareses, his delivery of the judgment in Merry and Power, and his weeping for Ireland near his child's grave at the Priory.

SPEECHES

OF THE

RIGHT HONOURABLE

JOHN PHILPOT CURRAN.

FLOOD'S REFORM BILL.

November 29th, 1783.

CURRAN, as we have stated in the Memoir, entered Parliament for Kilbeggan in 1783, as Flood's colleague.

The first time his name appears in the Parliamentary Debates,* is on the 12th of November, 1783, objecting to the issue of a new writ for Enniscorthy; but his remarks are limited to two sentences, and were unavailing.-Debates, vol. ii., p. 116.

His next appearance is, on the 18th of November, casually recommending immediate attention to the claims of some distressed manufacturers.-Debates, vol. ii., p. 176.

His speech in favour of Flood's motion for leave to bring in a bill for Parliamentary Reform, is reported at but little more length, yet it seems to have been vigorous, though, perchance, extravagant. Flood's mode of bringing the subject on was clumsy, as he neither gave it the actual weight, nor freed it from the political odium of being a message from the Volunteer Convention, then seated in the Rotunda. Flood's own speech-a fearless and profound one-was made in the middle of the debate, after the Attorney-General (Yelverton) had damaged the bill very cleverly. Langrishe, George Ponsonby, Fitzgibbon,

Previously to 1782 our only Parliamentary Reports are two volumes, for 1763 4, by "a Military Officer" (Sir James Caldwell). From 1781 to 1799 we have eighteen volumes of Commons' Debates, of various degrees of excellence, and two volumes of Lords' Debates. The eighteenth volume of the Commons' Debates is very scarce; Byrne, the printer, it is said, shipped the stock to America, and it was lost at sea. The Union debates are only in pamphlets; a good volume of them reprinted would be a great convenience.

B

Bushe, and Hutchinson, followed, and opposed Flood, one with epigrams, another with dogmas, another with crafty doubts, and Fitzgibbon with powerful scorn. The weakest and most stupidly insolent speech was made by Hardy, (afterwards Lord Charlemont's biographer,) and to him Curran replied :

I am surprised to see a man rising up, with the violence of a maniac, to tell us that this bill ought not to be received while the convention is sitting; but that convention, and The Volunteers in general, you will not find your enemies; they have no other enemies but the enemies of their country. That a reform has long been necessary the history of this country evinces. Why were you so long slaves, but because the parliament wanted a reform? Why, just after your hearts throbbed at your newly-acquired constitution, at the glory of Ireland, did you sink that glory in the slavery of an adulatory address, but that you wanted a reform? The man who so violently opposes this day a reform, was once the patron of such a measure; but, perhaps, we shall soon behold him seated where no storms shall fret him.

What have we been doing since we met? We have been talking of retrenchment, and running a course of the most profligate profusion, while our miserable fellow-creatures are roaming the streets for bread. [Here he gave a most pathetic picture of the distress of the poor.*] But some of our new statesmen would guide the government, if it were as easy to be managed as a carriage with four horses by an expert charioteer. Your argument, that if the measure come from The Volunteers you will reject it, is a denunciation that you consider them as enemies: I caution the house not to make a public declaration of war against them!-Debates, vol. ii., pp. 255, 6.

After a slight speech from Grattan for the motion, leave to bring in the bill was refused by a majority of 158 to 49. The Attorney-General then moved" That it is now become necessary to declare that this House will maintain its just rights and privileges against all encroachments whatsoever." This latter was carried by 150 to 68, and Mr. Thomas Conolly moved, and carried with unanimity, a "life and fortune" address to the King, in support of "our present happy constitution." The Convention was then wheedled and lied into a dissolution. (See MacNevin's History of The Volunteers, Grattan's Memoirs, &c.)

* In our transition from the artificial prosperity given by the Irish Manufacture pledge of 1788-9, to the genuine prosperity consequent on independence, there was some distress, and much complaint in Dublin.

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