else appears to be interesting in his political life..!

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He was in principle a Whig. His passions, his habits, his friendships, and his education, made him so. He did not obsequiously follow any individual model; nor did he on all occasions pursue the measures of his party. He had an abstract idea of what love of country should inspire; to this he sometimes referred his actions. If there was any one person among those with whom he acted, to whom he would submit his judgement in cases of doubt or of difficulty, so highly did he venerate Mr. Fox, that his authority would alone be very likely to have decided him.

In the year 1795, when Lord Fitzwilliam went to Ireland as Lord Lieutenant, with powers to adopt such conciliatory courses as would best tend to tranquillize that country, he, among others, called to his councils Mr. Grattan. They, in the early stage of the French war, had professed themselves hostile to its continuance on the part of Great Britain. Lord Fitzwilliam, before he undertook the government of Ireland, had expressed himself in the House of Lords to be friendly to that measure, and had ac→ cordingly given ito his support. Mr. Grattan being the minister of Lord. Fitzwilliam's administration, moved in the Irish House of Commons

an address to his Excellency, proposing to pledge Parliament to a firm and determined support of the war against France, and to prosecute it with vigour. Mr. Curran opposed the address, although at that time he was in expectation of being appointed to the office of Solicitor-General. He was all through an enemy to the war.

His reputation for patriotism does not stand on the narrow ground of being merely consistent to his party: such praise as that can confer he is justly entitled to: in this, however, he appears to have been guided on some occasions by his own judgement, and by different views from those adopted by the men with whom he was connected. He was not so shallow an observer, or such a bigot in politics, as not to have known, that in all the measures, a party can no more be uniformly wise or just, than that all those whom they oppose can be uniformly the contrary. He, therefore, was not a mere instrument to be put in motion at the will of a leader; and, as he came into three suceessive parliaments at his own expense, he considered himself entitled to the privilege of acting independently of party, when he thought fit so to do. On such occasions he retained for himself the liberty of exercising his own discretion, In the instance here related, when he was approaching his fiftieth year, standing on the tiptoe of expectation; when much of his life, and most of his hope, had been exhausted; when he must have

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noticed that Whig administrations had not been, of late years, very lasting; when he, who never had obtained any professional advancement to office or otherwise, through his politics-when he knew that he must have diminished his pretensions, and have endangered his prospects by opposing the address; yet he committed all to hazard; and, acting on his own notions of right, has left this one, (if there were not more,) demonstration of the independence of his mind, and of the rectitude of his principles. This trait of his character, connected with the anecdote related of him in his transaction with Lord Longueville, his refusing the office of Solicitor-General from Lord Kilwarden, can leave no doubt that he must on all these occasions have excluded the consideration of personal aggrandisement, in gratification of the higher motives of acting in conformity with those notions which had obtained such an ascendancy over him, that they composed part of himself, and became inseparable from him.

If Mr. Curran's speeches in Parliament do not abound in the profundity of statesman-like knowledge, either financial or commercial; if they do not hold the same rank in public opinion which those delivered at the bar maintain, their pungency, personality, and caustic wit and ridicule, must have been powerful reinforcements to his

party; and though such are not to be eulogized, perhaps may have been below his pretensions, yet, by these means, he filled up in the senate a grand compartment, which could not have been occupied by any other of his colleagues. Surrounded as he was by satellites of different degrees of heat and of light, the course he took was marked by its fire; and he moved through regions peculiarly his own. If the state of society, or of his audience, drew out his acerbity, or if the nature of the measures he had to oppose make any justification, it must be found in a mind wounded and goaded into an exasperation which, in the well regulated assembly of a British Parliament, would not be patiently endured.

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In his speech, delivered in the House of Commons on Catholic Emancipation, on the 17th of October, 1796, he attacked Dr. Duigenan with his accustomed wit and ridicule. As this is put forward among his Parliamentary speeches, it will afford a just conception of his style of senatorial eloquence.

"Mr. Grattan moved the following resolution:- That the admissibility of persons professing the Roman Catholic religion to seats in parliament is consistent with the safety of the crown, and the connexion of Ireland with Great Britain."

"Seconded by Mr. G. Ponsonby.

"Mr. G. Ogle voted for the order of the day.

"Mr. Curran began by declaring, that he had no words to express the indignation he felt at the despicable attempt to skulk from the discussion of so important and so necessary question, by the affectation of an appeal to our secrecy and our discretion; the ludicrous, the ridiculous secrecy of a public assembly; the nonsense of pretending to conceal from the world what they know as well, or better, than ourselves; the rare discretion of an Irish parliament hiding from the executive directory of the French republic the operations of their own armies; concealing from them their victories in Italy, or their humiliation of Great Britain; concealing from them the various coquetry of her negociations, and her now avowed solicitations of a peace. As ridiculous and as empty was the senseless parade of affecting to keep our own deliberations a secret. Rely upon it, Sir, said he, if our enemies condescend to feel any curiosity as to our discussion, you might as well propose to conceal from them the course of the Danube, or the course of the Rhine, as the course of a debate in this assembly, as winding, perhaps, and perhaps as muddy as either.

"Mr. Curran went into a detail of the property laws as they affected the Catholics of Ireland. He described them as destructive of arts, of industry, of private morals and public order, as extirpating even the Christian religion among them, and reducing them to the condition of savages and rebels, disgraceful to humanity, and formidable to the state. Having traced the progress and effects of those laws from the revolution to 1779; let me now ask you, said he, how have those laws affected the Protestant subject and the Protestant constitution? In that interval were they free? did they possess that liberty which they denied to their brethren?