THE

NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE.

ORIGINAL PAPERS.

SKETCHES OF THE IRISH BAR.NO. VI.

Mr. O'Connell.

Ir any one of you, my English readers, being a stranger in Dublin, should chance, as you return upon a winter's morning from one of the "small and early" parties of that raking metropolis, that is to say, between the hours of five and six o'clock, to pass along the south side of Merrion Square, you will not fail to observe that among those splendid mansions, there is one evidently tenanted by a person whose habits differ materially from those of his fashionable neighbours. The halfopened parlour-shutter, and the light within, announces that some one dwells there whose time is too precious to permit him to regulate his rising with the sun's. Should your curiosity tempt you to ascend the steps, and, under cover of the dark, to reconnoitre the interior, you will see a tall able-bodied man standing at a desk, and immersed in solitary occupation. Upon the wall in front of him there hangs a crucifix. From this, and from the calm attitude of the person within, and from a certain monastic rotundity about his neck and shoulders, your first impression will be, that he must be some pious dignitary of the Church of Rome absorbed in his matin devotions. But this conjecture will be rejected almost as soon as formed. No sooner can the eye take in the other furniture of the apartment, the book-cases clogged with tomes in plain calf-skin binding, the blue-covered octavos that lie about on the tables and the floor, the reams of manuscript in oblong folds and begirt with crimson tape, than it becomes evident that the party meditating amidst such objects must be thinking far more of the law than the prophets. He is, unequivocally, a barrister, but apparently of that homely, chamber-keeping, plodding cast, who labour hard to make up by assiduity what they want in wit-who are up and stirring before the bird of the morning has sounded the retreat to the wandering spectre-and are already brain-deep in the dizzying vortex of mortgages and cross-remainders, and mergers and remitters; while his clients, still lapped in sweet oblivion of the law's delay, are fondly dreaming that their cause is peremptorily set down for a final hearing. Having come to this conclusion, you push on for home, blessing your stars on the way that you are not a lawyer, and sincerely compassionating the sedentary drudge whom you have just detected in the performance of his cheerless toil. But should you happen in the course of the same day to stroll down to the Four Courts, you will be not a little surprised to find the object of your pity miraculously transferred from the severe recluse of the morning into one of the most bustling, important, and joyous personages in that busy scene. There you will be sure to see him,

his countenance braced up and glistening with health and spirits-with a huge, plethoric bag, which his robust arms can scarcely sustain, clasped with paternal fondness to his breast-and environed by a living palisade of clients and attorneys, with outstretched necks, and mouths and ears agape, to catch up any chance-opinion that may be coaxed out of him in a colloquial way, or listening to what the client relishes still better, for in no event can they be slided into a bill of costs, the counsellor's bursts of jovial and familiar humour, or, when he touches on a sadder strain, his prophetic assurances that the hour of Ireland's redemption is at hand. You perceive at once that you have lighted upon a great popular advocate, and if you take the trouble to follow his movements for a couple of hours through the several Courts, you will not fail to discover the qualities that have made him so-his legal competency-his business-like habits-his sanguine temperament, which renders him not merely the advocate but the partisan of his clienthis acuteness-his fluency of thought and language-his unconquerable good humour-and, above all, his versatility. By the hour of three, when the judges usually rise, you will have seen him go through a quantity of business, the preparation for, and performance of which, would be sufficient to wear down an ordinary constitution, and you naturally suppose that the remaining portion of the day must of necessity be devoted to recreation or repose: but here again you will be mistaken; for should you feel disposed, as you return from the Courts, to drop in to any of the public meetings that are almost daily held for some purpose, or to no purpose, in Dublin, to a certainty you will find the counsellor there before you, the presiding spirit of the scene, riding in the whirlwind, and directing the storm of popular debate, with a strength of lungs, and redundancy of animation, as if he had that moment started fresh for the labours of the day. There he remains, until, by dint of strength or dexterity, he has carried every point; and from thence, if you would see him to the close of the day's "eventful history," you will, in all likelihood, have to follow him to a public dinner, from which, after having acted a conspicuous part in the turbulent festivity of the evening, and thrown off half a dozen speeches in praise of Ireland, he retires at a late hour to repair the wear and tear of the day by a short interval of repose, and is sure to be found before dawn-break next morning at his solitary post, recommencing the routine of his restless existence. Now, any one who has once seen, in the preceding situations, the able-bodied, able-minded, acting, talking, multifarious person I have been just describing, has no occasion to inquire his name he may be assured that he is, and can be no other than "Kerry's pride and Munster's glory," the far-famed and indefatigable Daniel O'Connell.

Mr. O'Connell was born about eight and forty years ago, in that part of the United kingdoms of Ireland and Kerry, called Kerry. He is said to be descended in a mathematically and morally straight line from the ancient kings of Ivera.* The discrowned family, however, have something better than the saddening boast of regal descent to prop their pride. His present ex-majesty of Ivera, Mr. Daniel O'Connell's uncle, has a territorial revenue of four or five thousand a

* One of the kingdoms of the county of Kerry.

year to support the dignity of his traditional throne; while the numerous princes of the blood, dispersed through the dominions of their fathers, in the characters of tenants in fee-simple, opulent leaseholders, or sturdy mortgagees in possession, form a compact and powerful squirearchy, before whose influence the proud "descendants of the stranger" are often made to bow their necks, in the angry collisions of county politics. The subject of the present notice is understood to be the heir-apparent to his uncle's possessions. These he must soon enjoy, for his royal kinsman has passed his 90th year. In the mean time he rules in his own person an extensive tract among the Kerry hills; of little value, it is said, in point of revenue, but dear to the possessor, as the residence of the idol of his heart, and in truth almost the only tenant on three-fourths of the estate—

"The mountain-nymph, sweet Liberty.”

Mr. O'Connell was originally intended for the Church, or more strictly speaking, for the Chapel. He was sent, according to the necessities of the time, to be educated at St. Omer-for in those days the wise government of Ireland would not allow the land of Protestant ascendancy to be contaminated by a public school of Catholic theology. Dr. Duigenan was compelled to permit the detested doctrines to be freely preached; but to make the professors of them good subjects, he shrewdly insisted that they should still, as of old, be forced to cross the seas, and lay in a preliminary stock of Irish loyalty at a foreign university. But the dread of indigenous theology was not peculiar to that great man. I observe that some of our statesmen of the present year have discovered that all the disasters of Ireland have been caused by an invisible establishment of Jesuits, and must continue until the omnipotence of Parliament shall expel the intruders-a felicitous insight into cause and effect, resembling that of the orthodox crew of a British packet, who having discovered, during a gale of wind, that a Methodist preacher was among the passengers, at once made up their minds that the fury of the tempest would never abate until the vessel should be exorcised by heaving the non-conformist overboard. I have not heard what occasioned Mr. O'Connell to change his destination. He probably had the good sense to feel that he had too much flesh and blood for a cloister; and the novelty of a legal career to a Catholic (for the Bar had just been opened to his persuasion) must have had its attractions. He accordingly left St. Omer with its casuistry and fasting and vesper hymns, to less earthly temperaments; and having swallowed the regular number of legs of mutton at the Middle Temple, was duly admitted to the Irish Bar in Easter Term 1798. The event has justified his choice. With all the impediments of his religion and his politics, his progress was rapid. He is now, and has been for many years, as high in his profession as it is possible for a Catholic to ascend.

Mr. O'Connell, if not the ablest, is certainly the most singular man at the Irish Bar. He is singular, not merely in the vigour of his faculties, but in their extreme variety and apparent inconsistency; and the same may be said of his character. The elements of both are so many and diverse, that it would seem as if half a dozen varieties of the human species, and these not always on the best terms with each

other, had been capriciously huddled together into a single frame to make up his strange and complex identity; and hence it is, that, though I spoke of him heretofore as a favourable subject for a sketch, I find the task of accurate delineation to be far less easy than I anticipated. I have the man before me, and willing enough, it would appear, that his features should be commemorated; but, like the poor artist that had to deal with the frisky phisosopher of Ferney, with all my efforts I cannot keep him steady to any single posture or expression. I see him distinctly at one moment a hard-headed working lawyer, the next a glowing politician, the next an awful theologian; his features now sunk into the deepest shade of patriotic anguish, now illuminated, no one can tell why, as for the celebration of a national triumph. A little while back I caught him in his character of a sturdy reformer, proclaiming the constitution, and denouncing the vices of courts and kings, and he promised me that he would keep to that; but before I had time to look about me, there he was, off to the levee! be-bagged and be-sworded like any oppressor of them all, playing off his loyal looks and anti-radical bows, as if he was to be one of Mr. Blake's next Baronets, or as if he had not sufficiently proved his attachment to the throne by presenting his majesty with a crown of Irish laurel on the beach of Dunleary. Such a compound can be described only by enumerating its several ingredients; and even here I am not sure that my performance, if rigidly criticized, may not turn out, like my subject, to be occasionally at variance with itself. I shall begin with (what in other eminent lawyers is subordinate) his individual and extra-professional peculiarities; for in O'Connell these are paramount, and act a leading part in every scene, whether legal or otherwise, of his complicated avocations.

His frame is tall, expanded, and muscular; precisely such as befits a man of the people-for the physical classes ever look with double confidence and affection upon a leader who represents in his own person the qualities upon which they rely. In his face he has been equally fortunate; it is extremely comely. The features are at once soft and manly; the florid glow of health and a sanguine temperament is diffused over the whole countenance, which is national in the outline, and beaming with national emotion. The expression is open and confiding, and inviting confidence; there is not a trace of malignity or wile-if there were, the bright and sweet blue eyes, the most kindly and honestlooking that can be conceived, would repel the imputation. These popular gifts of nature O'Connell has not neglected to set off by his external carriage and deportment-or, perhaps, I should rather say, that the same hand which has moulded the exterior has supersaturated the inner man with a fund of restless propensity, which it is quite beyond his power, as it is certainly beside his inclination, to controul. A large portion of this is necessarily expended upon his legal avocations; but the labours of the most laborious of professions cannot tame him into repose: after deducting the daily drains of the study and the Courts, there remains an ample residuum of animal spirits and ardour for occupation, which go to form a distinct, and I might say, a predominant character-the political chieftain. The existence of this overweening vivacity is conspicuous in O'Connell's manners and movements, and being a popular, and more particularly a national quality, greatly recommends him to the Irish people-"Mobilitate viget"

Body and soul are in a state of permanent insurrection. See him in the streets, and you perceive at once that he is a man who has sworn that his country's wrongs shall be avenged. A Dublin jury (if judiciously selected) would find his very gait and gestures to be high treason by construction, so explicitly do they enforce the national sentiment, of "Ireland her own, or the world in a blaze." As he marches to Court, he shoulders his umbrella as if it were a pike. He flings out one factious foot before the other, as if he had already burst his bonds, and was kicking the Protestant ascendancy before him; while ever and anon a democratic, broad-shouldered roll of the upper man is manifestly an indignant effort to shuffle off "the oppression of seven hundred years." This intensely national sensibility is the prevailing peculiarity in O'Connell's character; for it is not only when abroad and in the popular gaze that Irish affairs seem to press upon his heart the same Erin-go-bragh feeling follows him into the most technical details of his forensic occupations. Give him the most dry and abstract position of law to support-the most remote that imagination can conceive from the violation of the Articles of Limerick, or the Rape of the Irish Parliament, and ten to one but he will contrive to interweave a patriotic episode upon those examples of British domination. The people are never absent from his thoughts. He tosses up a bill of exceptions to a judge's charge in the name of Ireland, and pockets a special retainer with the air of a man that dotes upon his country. There is, perhaps, some share of exaggeration in all this; but much less, I do believe, than is generally suspected, and I apprehend that he would scarcely pass for a patriot without it; for, in fact, he has been so successful, and looks so contented, and his elastic, unbroken spirits are so disposed to bound and frisk for very joy-in a word, he has naturally so bad a face for a grievance, that his political sincerity might appear equivocal, were there not some clouds of patriotic grief or indignation to temper the sunshine that is for ever bursting through them.

As a professional man, O'Connell is, perhaps, for general business, the most competent advocate at the Irish Bar. Every requisite for a barrister of all-work is combined in him; some in perfection-all in sufficiency. He is not understood to be a deep scientific lawyer. He is, what is far better for himself and his clients, an admirably practical one. He is a thorough adept in all the complicated and fantastic forms with which Justice, like a Chinese monarch, insists that her votaries shall approach her. A suitor advancing towards her throne, cannot go through the evolutions of the indispensable Ko-tou under a more skilful master of the ceremonies. In this department of his profession, the knowledge of the practice of the Courts, and in a perfect familiarity with the general principles of law that are applicable to questions discussed in open Court, O'Connell is on a level with the most experienced of his competitors; and with few exceptions, perhaps with the single one of Mr. Plunkett, he surpasses them all in the vehement and pertinacious talent with which he contends to the last for victory, or, where victory is impossible, for an honourable retreat. If his mind had been duly disciplined, he would have been a first-rate reasoner and a most formidable sophist. He has all the requisites from nature singular clearness, promptitude, and acuteness. When qccasion requires, he evinces a metaphysical subtlety of perception