Part 24

“Ay,” replied Curran, “but it is the very worst _speaking_ wig I ever had. I can scarce utter one word of _common law_ in it; and as for _equity_, it is totally out of the question.”

“Well, sir,” said Mr. Gahan, the wig-maker, with a serious face, “I hope it may be no loss to me. I dare say it will answer Counsellor Trench.”

But Counsellor Trench would not take the wig. He said, though it did not impede his _speech_, he could not _hear_ a word in it. At length, it was sent by Gahan to Mr. Vesey Fitzgerald, who, having at that time no pressing occasion for either a speaking or hearing wig (in a professional way), and the wig fitting his head, he purchased it from Mr. Gahan, who sold it a bargain, on account of its bad character;—though Curran afterwards said, “he admitted that the wig had been grossly calumniated; for the very same head which Mr. Vesey Fitzgerald then put it on was afterward fixed up at the front of the Irish exchequer, where every one of the king’s debtors and farmers were obliged to pay the wig-wearer some very handsome and _substantial_ compliment!—the said wearer not being necessitated either to _hear_ or _speak_ one word upon the occasion.”

Chief Justice Carleton was a very languishing personage. He never ceased complaining of his bad state of health, and frequently introduced Lady Carleton into his “Book of Lamentations:” thence it was remarked by Curran to be very extraordinary, that the chief justice should appear as plaintiff (_plaintive_) in every cause that happened to come before him!

One _Nisi Prius_ day, Lord Carleton came into court, looking unusually gloomy. He apologised to the bar for being necessitated to adjourn the court and dismiss the jury for that day; “though,” proceeded his lordship, “I am aware that an important issue stands for trial: but, the fact is, I have met with a domestic misfortune, which has altogether deranged my nerves!—Poor Lady Carleton (in a low tone to the bar) has most unfortunately _miscarried_, and——”

“Oh, then, my Lord!” exclaimed Curran, “there was no necessity for your lordship to make any apology; it now appears that your lordship has _no issue_ to try.”

The chief justice faintly smiled, and thanked the bar for their _consideration_.

In 1812, Curran dined at my house in Brookstreet, London. He was very dejected: I did my utmost to rouse him—in vain. He leaned his face on his hand, and was long silent. He looked yellow and wrinkled; the dramatic fire had left his eye, the spirit of his wit had fled, his person was shrunken, his features were all relaxed and drooping, and his whole demeanour appeared miserably distressing.

After a long pause, a dubious tear standing in his dark eye, he on a sudden exclaimed, with a sort of desperate composure, “Barrington, I am perishing! day by day I’m perishing! I feel it: you knew me when I _lived_—and you witness my _annihilation_.” He was again silent.

I felt deeply for him. I saw that he spoke truth: his lamp was fast approaching its last glimmer: reasoning with him would have been vain, and I therefore tried another course—_bagatelle_. I jested with him, and reminded him of old anecdotes. He listened—gradually his attention was caught, and at length I excited a smile; a laugh soon followed, a few glasses of wine brought him to his natural temperament, and Curran was himself for a great part of the evening. I saw, however, that he would soon relapse, and so it turned out: he began to talk to me about his _family_, and that very wildly. He had conceived some strange prejudices on that head, which I disputed with him, until I was wearied. It was a subject he seemed actually insane on: his ideas were quite _extraordinary_, and appeared to me steeled against all reason. He said he felt his last day approaching; his thoughts had taken their _final station_, and were unchangeable.

We supped together, and he sat cheerful enough till I turned him into a coach, at one o’clock in the morning.

Mr. Curran had a younger brother, who was an attorney—very like him, but taller and better-looking. This man had a good deal of his brother’s humour, a little wit, and much satire; but his slang was infinite, and his conduct very dissolute. He was, in fact, what may be termed the best blackguard of his profession (and that was saying a great deal for him). My friend had justly excluded him from his house, but occasionally relieved his finances, until these calls became so importunate, that, at length, further compliance was refused.

“Sir,” said the attorney to me one day, “if you will speak to my brother, I am sure he’ll give me something handsome before the week is out!” I assured him he was mistaken, whereupon he burst into a loud laugh!

There was a small space of dead wall, at that time, directly facing Curran’s house, in Ely Place; against which the attorney procured a written permission to build a little wooden box. He accordingly got a carpenter (one of his comrades) to erect a cobbler’s stall there for him; and having assumed the dress of a Jobson, he wrote over his stall, “Curran, Cobbler:—Shoes toe-pieced, soled, or heeled, on the shortest notice:—when the stall is shut, inquire _over the way_.”

Curran, on returning from court, perceived this worthy hard at work, with a parcel of chairmen lounging round him. The attorney just nodded to his brother, cried, “How do you do, Jack?” and went on with his employment.

Curran immediately despatched a servant for the spendthrift, to whom having given some money, the show-board was taken down, the stall removed, and the attorney vowed that he would never set up again as a cobbler.

I never knew Curran express more unpleasant feelings than at a circumstance which really was too trivial to excite any such; but this was his humour: he generally thought more of trifles than of matters of importance, and worked himself up into most painful sensations upon subjects which should only have excited his laughter.

At the commencement of the peace he came to Paris, determined to get into French society, and thus be enabled to form a better idea of their habits and manners,—a species of knowledge for which he quite languished. His parasites (and he liked such) had told him that his fame had already preceded him even to the closet of Louis _le Désiré_: he accordingly procured letters of introduction from persons of high rank in England, who had foolishly lavished favours and fortunes on the gang of emigrants, in general the most ungrateful (as time has demonstrated) of the human species, although it was then universally believed that they could not _quite_ forget the series of kindnesses which had preserved them from starving or from massacre.

Among other letters, he had the honour of bearing one, couched in strong terms, from his Royal Highness the Duke of Sussex to the Count d’Artois, now King of France.

“Now I am in the right line,” said Curran, “introduced by a branch of one royal family to that of another: now I shall have full opportunity of forming my own opinion as to the sentiments of the old and new nobility of France, whereon I have been eternally though rather blindly arguing.”

I was rather sceptical, and said, “I am disposed to think that you will argue more than ever when you get home again. If you want _sentiment_, they say in England that Monsieur has very little of _Sterne_ in his composition.”

“Egad, I believe there is _two_ of you!” retorted Curran; and away he went to the Tuileries, to enter his name and see Monsieur. Having left his card and letters of introduction (as desired), he waited ten days for an audience: Monsieur was occupied.—A second entry was now made by Curran at the palace; and after ten days more, a third: but Monsieur was still _occupied_. A fresh entry and card of J. P. C. had no better success. In my life I never saw Curran so chagrined. He had devised excuses for the prince two or three times: but this last instance of neglect quite overcame him, and in a few days he determined to return to Ireland without seeing the Count d’Artois or ascertaining the sentiments of the ancient and modern French nobility. He told his story to Mr. Lewins, a friend of ours in Paris, who said it must be some omission of the Swiss.

“Certainly,” said Curran, catching at this straw, “it must, no doubt. It must be some omission of the Swiss. I’ll wait _one week_ more:” and his opinion was in a few days realised by the receipt of a note from Monsieur’s aide-de-camp, stating, that His Royal Highness would be glad to receive Mr. Curran at eight o’clock the following morning at the Tuileries.

About nine o’clock he returned to the hotel, and all I could get from him, in his wrath, was “D——n!” In fact, he looked absolutely miserable. “Only think!” said he, at length; “he told me he always dined with his _brother_, and kept no establishment of his own; then bowed me out, by ——, as if I was an importunate _dancing-master_!”

“Wait till _the next revolution_, Curran,” said I, “and _then_ we’ll be even with him!”

At this moment Mr. Lewins came in, and, with a most cheerful countenance, said, “Well, Curran, I carried your point!”

“What point?” said Curran.

“I knew it would _take_,” pursued Lewins, smirking: “I told Monsieur’s aide-de-camp that you felt quite hurt and unhappy on account of Monsieur’s having taken no notice of your letters or yourself, though you had paid him _four_ visits at long intervals, and that—”

“What do you say?” shouted Curran.

Upon Lewins repeating his words with infinite glee, my disappointed friend burst out into a regular frenzy, slapped his face repeatedly, and ran about, exclaiming, “I’m disgraced! I’m humbled in the eyes of that man! I’m _miserable_!”

I apprehend he experienced but little more civility from any of the restored gentry of the French emigrants, to several of whom he had brought letters, and I am sure had he received any notable invitation from them, I must have heard of it. I fancy that a glass of _eau sucré_ was the very extent of the practical hospitality he experienced from _Messieurs les émigrés_, who, if I might judge by their jaws and cravats of the quantity and quality of their food, and of their credit with washerwomen, were by no means in so flourishing a state as when they lived on our benevolence.

There is much of the life of this celebrated man[67] omitted by those who have attempted to write it. Even his son (a barrister, whom I have never seen) could have known but little of him, as he was not born at the time his father’s glories were at their zenith. Before he became the biographer of his celebrated parent, Mr. Curran would have done well to inquire who had been that parent’s decided friends, and who his invidious enemies; who supported him when his fame was tottering, and who assailed him when he was incapable of resistance: if he had used this laudable discretion before he commenced his _character_, he would probably have learned how to _eulogise_, and how to _censure_, with more justice and discrimination.

Footnote 67:

Curran died, I believe, at Brompton, and was buried in Paddington church-yard; but I am ignorant whether or not a stone marks the spot.

No gentlemen of our day knew Mr. Curran more intimately than myself, although our natural propensities were in many points quite uncongenial. His vanity too frequently misled his judgment, and he thought himself surrounded by a crowd of friends, when he was encompassed by a set of vulgar flatterers: he looked quite carelessly at the distinctions of society, and in consequence ours was not generally of the same class, and our intercourse more frequently at my house than at his. But he could adapt himself to all ranks, and was equally at home at Merrion Square or at the Priory.

The celebrity of Curran’s life, and the obscurity of his death—the height of his eminence, and the depth of his depression—the extent of his talents, and the humiliation of his imbecility—exhibited the greatest and most singular contrast I ever knew among the host of public characters with whom I so long associated.

At the bar I never saw an orator so capable of producing those irresistible transitions of effect which form the true criterion of forensic eloquence. But latterly, no man became more capable, in private society, of exciting drowsiness by prosing, or disgust by grossness: such are the inconsistent materials of humanity.[68]

Footnote 68:

It is very singular that Mr. Duguery, one of the most accomplished men, the most eloquent barristers, and best lawyers I ever knew, (a cousin-german of Lord Donoughmore,) fell latterly, though at an early age, into a state of total imbecility—became utterly regardless of himself, of society, and of the world;—and lived long enough to render his death a mercy!

I should not allude here to a painful subject as respects the late Mr. Curran, had it not been so commonly spoken of, and so prominent an agent in his ulterior misfortunes: I mean that unlucky suit of his against the Rev. Mr. Sandes. I endeavoured as much as possible to dissuade him from commencing that action, having reason to feel convinced that it must terminate in his discomfiture; but he was obdurate, and had bitter cause to lament his obduracy. I did my utmost also to dissuade him from his unfortunate difference with Mr. Ponsonby. I told him (as I firmly believed) that he was _wrong_, or at all events _imprudent_, and that his reputation could bear no more trifling with: but he did not credit me, and that blow felled him to the earth!

THE LAW OF LIBEL.

Observations on the law of libel, particularly in Ireland—“Hoy’s Mercury”—Messrs. Van Trump and Epaphroditus Dodridge—Former leniency regarding cases of libel contrasted with recent severity—Lord Clonmel and the Irish bar—Mr. Magee, of the “Dublin Evening Post”—Festivities on “Fiat Hill”—Theophilus Swift and his two sons—His duel with the Duke of Richmond—The “Monster!”—Swift libels the Fellows of Dublin University—His curious trial—Contrast between the English and Irish bars—Mr. James Fitzgerald—Swift is found guilty, and sentenced to Newgate—Dr. Burrows, one of the Fellows, afterward libels Mr. Swift, and is convicted—Both confined in the same apartment at Newgate.

In the early part of my life, the Irish press, though supposed to be under due restraint, was in fact quite uncontrolled. From the time of Dean Swift, and Draper’s Letters, its freedom had increased at intervals not only as to public but private subjects. This was attributable to several curious causes, which combined to render the law of libel, although stronger in theory, vastly feebler in practice than at the present day; and whoever takes the trouble of looking into the Irish newspapers about the commencement of the American revolution, and to 1782, will find therein some of the boldest writing and ablest _libels_ in the English language. Junius was the pivot on which the liberty of the press at one moment vibrated: liberty was triumphant; but if that precedent were to prevail to the same extent, it achieved too much.

The law of libel in England, however railed at, appears to me upon the freest footing that private or public security can possibly admit. The press is not encumbered by any _previous_ restraints. Any man may write, print, and publish whatever he pleases; and none but his own peers and equals, in two distinct capacities, can declare his culpability, or enable the law to punish him as a criminal for a breach of it (this excepts the practice of informations, often necessary). I cannot conceive what greater liberty or protection the press can require, or ought to enjoy. If a man voluntarily commits an offence against the law of libel with his eyes open, it is only fair that he should abide by the statute that punishes him for doing so. Despotic governments employ a previous censorship, in order to cloak their crimes and establish their tyranny. England, on the other hand, appoints independent judges and sworn jurors to defend her liberties; and hence is confirmed to the press a wholesome latitude of full and fair discussion on every public man and measure.

The law of libel in Ireland was formerly very loose and badly understood, and the courts there had no particular propensity for multiplying legal difficulties on ticklish subjects.

The judges were then dependant; a circumstance which might have partially accounted for such causes being less frequent than in later times: but another reason, more extensively operating, was, that in those days men who were libelled generally took the law into their own hands, and eased the King’s Bench of great trouble by the substitution of a small-sword for an information, or a case of pistols for a judgment;—and these same articles certainly formed a greater check upon the propagation of libels than the twelve judges and thirty-six jurors, altogether, at the present day; and gave rise to a code of laws very different from those we call municipal. A third consideration is, that scolding-matches and disputes among soldiers were then never made matters of legal inquiry. Military officers are now, by statute,[69] held unfit to remain such _if_ they _fight_ one another, whilst formerly they were thought unfit to remain in the army if they did _not_: formerly, they were bound to fight in person; now, they can fight by proxy, and in Ireland may hire champions to contest the matter for them every day in the week, (Sunday excepted,) and so decide their quarrels without the least danger or one drop of bloodshed. A few able lawyers, armed with paper and parchment, will fight for them all day long, and, if necessary, all night likewise; and that, probably, for only as much recompense as may be sufficient to provide a handsome entertainment to some of the spectators and pioneer attorneys, who are generally bottle-holders on these occasions.

Footnote 69:

See the Mutiny Act.

Another curious anomaly is become obvious. If _lawyers_ now refuse to pistol each other, they may be scouted out of society as cowards, though duelling is _against_ the _law_! but if military officers take a shot at each other, they may be dismissed from the army, though fighting is the essence and object of their profession: so that a civilian, by the new lights of society, changes places with the soldier;—the soldier is bound to be peaceable, and the civilian is forced to be pugnacious—_cedent arma togæ_. It is curious to conjecture what our next metamorphosis may be!

The first publication which gave rise (so far as I can remember) to decided measures for restraining the Irish press, was a newspaper called “Hoy’s Mercury,” published above fifty years ago by Mr. Peter Hoy, a printer, in Parliament-street, whom I saw some time since in his shop, on Ormond Quay, in good health, and who voted for me on the Dublin election of 1803.

In this newspaper Mr. Hoy brought forward two fictitious characters—one called Van Trump, the other Epaphroditus Dodridge. These he represented as standing together in one of the most public promenades of the Irish capital; and the one, on describing the appearance, features, and dress of each passer-by, and asking his companion—who that was?—received, in reply, a full account of the individual, to such a degree of accuracy as to leave no doubt respecting identity—particularly in a place so contracted as (comparatively speaking) Dublin then was. In this way as much libellous matter was disseminated as would now send a publisher to gaol for half his life; and the affair was so warmly and generally taken up, that the lawyers were set to work, Peter Hoy sadly terrified, and Van Trump and Epaphroditus Dodridge banished from that worthy person’s newspaper.

But the most remarkable observation is, that so soon as the Irish judges were, in 1782, made by statute independent of the crown, the law of libel became more strictly construed, and libellers more severely punished. This can only be accounted for by supposing that, while dependent, the judges felt that any peculiar rigour might be attributed, in certain instances, less to their justice than to their policy; and, being thus sensitive (especially in regard to crown cases), they were cautious of pushing the enactments to their full scope. After the provision which rendered them independent of the ruling powers, this delicacy became needless:—but, nevertheless, a candid judge will always bear in mind, that austerity is no necessary attribute of justice, which is always more efficient in its operation when tempered with mercy. The unsalutary harshness of our penal code has become notorious. True, it is not acted up to; and this is only another modification of the evil, since it tempts almost every culprit to anticipate his own escape. On the continent it is different. There, the punishment which the law provides is _certainly_ inflicted: and the consequence is, that in France there is not above _one_ capital conviction to any _twenty_ in England.

The late Lord Clonmel’s[70] heart was nearly broken by vexations connected with his public functions. He had been in the habit of holding parties to excessive bail in libel cases on his own fiat, which method of proceeding was at length regularly challenged and brought forward; and, the matter being discussed with asperity in parliament, his lordship was restrained from pursuing such courses for the future.

Footnote 70:

His lordship’s only son (married to a daughter of the Earl of Warwick) is now a total absentee, and exhibits another lamentable proof, that the children even of men who rose to wealth and title by the favours of the Irish people feel disgusted, and renounce for ever that country to which they are indebted for their bread and their elevation!

He had in the Court of King’s Bench, about 1789, used rough language toward Mr. Hackett, a gentleman of the bar, the members of which profession at that time considered themselves as all assailed in the person of a brother barrister. A general meeting was therefore called by the father of the bar; a severe condemnation of his lordship’s conduct voted, with only one dissentient voice; and an unprecedented resolution entered into, that “until his lordship publicly apologised, no barrister would either take a brief, appear in the King’s Bench, or sign any pleadings for that court.”

This experiment was actually tried:—the judges sat, but no counsel appeared; no cause was prepared; the attorneys all vanished, and their lordships had the court to themselves. There was no alternative; and next day Lord Clonmel published a very ample apology, by advertisement in the newspapers, and, with excellent address, made it appear as if written on the evening of the offence, and therefore voluntary.[71]

Footnote 71:

An occurrence somewhat of the same nature took place at no very great distance of time, at Maryborough assizes, between Mr. Daley, a judge of the Irish Court of King’s Bench, and Mr. W. Johnson, now judge of the Common Pleas.

Mr. Daley spoke of committing Mr. Johnson for being rude to him; but, unfortunately, he committed himself! A meeting was called, at which I was requested to attend; but I declined, and was afterward informed that my refusal had (very unjustly) given offence to _both_ parties. The fact is, that, entertaining no very high opinion of the placability of either, I did not choose to interfere, and so unluckily replied that “they might _fight dog_, _fight bear_,—I would give no opinion about the matter.”

One of the few things I ever forgot is, the way in which that affair terminated:—it made little impression on me at the time, and so my memory rejected it.