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while they encouraged their spirit and formation, they gave a regulated tone to liberty. He was a good Latin scholar, and knew Greek remarkably well; he had travelled much, and was well versed in the continental languages. He was fond of poetry, and composed some light and pretty things; his intimacy with Marley, the Bishop of Waterford, encouraged this pastime, and their mutual taste led them to an epistolary correspondence, partly verse, partly prose, full of humour, raillery, and wit."

ture in his character was a sacred attachment to the British connexion. His desire was, to keep well with England, and he worked in favour of Government, not for this or that minister, but for the Government solely, and was not only anxious to have the people supporting him, but to have the people supporting the Government." Let libel say what it will, this man was no Whig. He was the antipodes of Whiggism. He might as well be called a negro born in Christendom with a white skin, a Roman nose, and thin lips. He wanted the selfishness, the rashness, the vice, and the vulgarity of Whiggism.

We fully agree with the elder Grattan (for it is impossible that the younger should have written the words), that "it was most fortunate that such an individual existed. [The volunteers had chosen Lord Charlemont for their general-in-chief.] His grave and civil character was necessary to restrain the ardour of the volunteers, and rescue them from their own excesses, for he well knew that liberty loses half its value if it is purchased by victory over the people. There are times, and there are occurrences, when a man ought to stop, and should prefer to break with his party, to going forward. Yet few men who have acquired popularity possess courage enough to risk its loss."

It is equally impossible to disagree with those sentiments. The command of the volunteers was the command of a vast power, which, in the hands of a political traitor, might have subverted the kingdom. The first extravagance of the volunteers resisted by Government might have brought on a civil war; and the first drop of blood shed in this war might have been the spring-head of torrents. The prejudice of party led some to say, that this noble person was merely a man with exquisite manners; but they were mistaken. He was a man of excellent sense. He was at the head of a most powerful national army, supported by the upper classes, and comprising all. He assisted in leading them on to civil liberty. He assisted also in guarding them against popular excesses.

His private life was that of an elegant and cultivated mind. "He wrote well; his replies to the addresses of the volunteers were excellent ; and

We give a slight specimen of this easy courtship of the nine, and in their own country. He had been travelling in Greece-no slight achievement in the year 1749, and for a young noble of twenty-one. At that time the Morea and the Islands were almost a terra incognita to the more civilized portions of Europe. "How many times," says his letter to Marley, "I wished that you could have seen us in some of the droll equipages in which we have been during our abode in the Islands, mounted on asses, and glad to get them-padsaddles, without either bridle or stirrups-seven or eight days without a bed to lie on, encamped on desert islands! My birth-day this year we kept at sea, between the Islands of Crete and Cos-the feast was celebrated with several actings, dutiful and voluntary, firing of cannon, &c. No kind bard being here to write my birth-day ode, and the sea gods being bad poets, I am obliged to cry my own ballad, an extempore as you will easily perceive.

"My Marley! see the rolling years

With certain speed our lives devour; Each day its due proportion bears, And nearer brings the fatal hour.

"'Tis one-and-twenty years this day, Since first I drew my vital breath; So much the nearer to decay!

So much have I approach'd to death!

"He well hath lived, who, when the sun

Departing yields to low'ring night, Can say, This day my task is done,

And let to-morrow seize its right.

"No more of that-this festal day,

In harmless pleasure let us pass. One bumper toast: I'll show the way, 'Tis Marley's health, fill up my glass!"

Don't you think the tossing of the ship is in these lines? I don't think my residence at Delos, the sacred birthplace of Apollo, has much improved me; but if my verses be not good, I am sure they are sincere."

Like all the men of sense in his day, Charlemont was utterly hostile to the encroachments of Popery. So early as 1785, Opposition in Parliament, having worn out all other topics, and, always looking for novelty, let the risk be what it will, took up the Popish question, and proposed to give the Popish peasantry the fatal right of voting for members of Parliament. Against this the argument, and nothing could be truer, was, that the Popish peasantry being wholly in the hands of the priests, to give the franchise to the peasant was in fact to give the priest the power of sending members to Parliament; that though the members thus sent were Protestants, the inevitable result would be, that of engendering a spirit hostile to Protestanism in the legislature, thereby impairing the true liberty of the country, enfeebling its constitution, and ultimately destroying the connexion with England. Those just and forcible arguments prevailed for nearly ten years, but Opposition was active, Protestantism too little aware of its danger, and ministers too eager to purchase popularity by a guilty concession; and, as the result, the privilege of voting was given. The gratitude of Popery for this criminal concession, was a bloody rebellion in 1798.

The pu

nishment to the Parliament was the Union, and the product to the nation was a continued increase of faction, until 1829, when the presence of Popery first polluted the English Parliament, after the lapse of a hundred years of freedom. But as Charlemont grew old and feeble, he grew negative. When the elective franchise was proposed in 1793, he neither aided nor resisted, and before he died, was supposed to be favourable to the change, which was to make all the labours of his life in vain.

It is only due to Grattan to say, that, though combined through life with a tribe who jobbed every thing, he never obtained any office from Government. His fortune was small. "I am," said he, "one of the poorest of commoners, as Lord Charlemont is one of the poorest of peers. But

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we will take nothing. I have £500 a-year.' .." This self-denial had its reward, and deserved to have it. "As the ministers could not purchase me," said he, on another occasion, "the nation purchased me." In 1782, on the address of the Viceroy to Parliament, communicating the acquiescence of the English Government in the motion for independence, it was determined to make a provision for Grattan. Mr Beauchamp Bagneal, member for Carlow, a man of opulence and weight in the country, moved, spontaneously, that £100,000 should be granted, to purchase an estate for him, as a reward for his public services. "But at the request of Mr Grattan's friends, the mover was induced to alter it to £50,000, to which the House and the minister agreed." The reduction was by Grattan's own delicacy. In the first instance, he had intended to refuse any thing, but his sensible old relative, Colonel Marlay, who knew the world better at that time, advised him to accept it. The money was put into the bands of a commission, who purchased a small estate with it, and, such is the wisdom of many counsellors, were said to have made a very improvident bargain. The original grant would not have been too much. Grattan ought to have been placed beyond all further consideration of money. If the House were sincere in its estimate of his services, they were not to be repaid by any sum. If their calculation was to be formed by the resulting value of those services, any sum would be too much. But it was a time of universal illusion. Ireland imagined that Grattan had broken chains that no other hand could break, lifted her from the ground into an elevation where empire lay before her, and opened the floodgates of a commerce which was to swell with the gold of mankind. Such were the dreams of the hour. But Grattan was a dreamer like the rest, and he deserved to be paid the price of teaching the people how to revel in such magnificent dreams.

Another character of peculiar mould next passes across the stage-Scott, the Attorney-General. Scott was a

man of remarkable powers, a clear head, a determined heart, with a large knowledge of law, and a larger knowledge of human nature. Like all the

But

Treasury Bench beyond that again, he would have crossed to it. No one would have wondered at it. The species is still professional, there are men among us at whose change no man wonders more than a naturalist wonders at the change of a worm into a dragon-flythe little creeping, writhing, slippery, subtle thing, into the bold, busy, swift marauder, ever on the wing, glittering in the sunshine, and devouring every thing. Scott had another important quality. If no great orator, he could bring an orator down by other means than arguments. He was a fearless swordsman and an exact shot. He changed his mode, finding his eloquence not irresistible, and "attempted to terrify. He attacked Flood; he supported Lord Townshend; he vindicated Lord Harcourt; he struck his breast-slapped his hat, appealed to his honour and laid his hand upon his sword!”

leading men of his day, principle sat Much addicted to reeasy on him. gard all public men as scoundrels, his chief resolution was to make his way by clinging to either party as it seemed most suited to his advance; alternately trampling and caressing all parties: he had begun, like all poor aspirants, by being a patriot, allied himself to Lucas, lauded the Opposition, abused the Minister, and exhibited all the thews and sinews of a vigorous democrat. But the new reign of George III. opened new prospects. Townshend the viceroy intimated that his eloquence might be turned to better account, and the lawyer became suddenly enlightened. He cast off the ragged uniform of the populace, and equipped himself in the livery of the Castle. He was a rough, bold-speaking, unblushing retainer from that moment, and no man more unhesitatingly laughed at the affectations of political creeds. "My lord," he used to say to the Viceroy, a man singularly like himself in his contempt for the Phocions of the day" My lord, you have spoiled a good patriot.'

But, notorious as his new conceptions were, no one thought of calling him to account for the change. There is, it is true, a general impunity allowed to lawyers on this subject; they claim largely the privilege of seeing both sides of a public question; and therefore, in England, they run the hazard of swamping the Constitution, as in Ireland they sold the country. But no one ever thought of questioning Jack Scott. His transition to the Treasury Bench was regarded as perfectly natural. If there had been a

Next, after the actor, we have the democrat reformed. "His principles were arbitrary, his love of liberty cooled after he left the people. And if a question had arisen, he would probably have ordered the soldiers to fire upon the volunteers." In fine, this bold, forward, rude, and vigorous pur suer of power, rose to the Bench, where he was Chief Justice, obtained an earldom, and died, if report be true, worth L.30,000 a-year!

Mr Grattan's work is, on the whole, clever, amusing, and full of anecdote. But it is the work of a Republican degraded into a Radical, and even that Radical degraded into a joint of the tail.

STATE TRIALS.

SPECIMEN OF A NEW EDITION.*

NEARLY a year, we believe, has elapsed since we received from a friend belonging to the profession of the law, a bulky volume, in green boards, rejoicing in the above title, along with a letter expressive of his anxious desire to have our opinion of it, it having, he said, "proved to him a puzzler.' As

it felt heavy in hand, and appeared to contain, verse-text and prose-notes, about four hundred by no means sparse pages, we placed it in the division of our library marked " JURISPRUDENCE" -purposing immediately after Boxday to lay it before the Lord Advocate and the Solicitor-General, whose opinions we thought would be more useful than ours to the Templar. Months on months, however, passed on in their usual hum-drum way, and the volume got its share of cobweb from the indefatigable spider that has grown to such a bulk among our books. More than once our forefinger was on the volume, but retracted on our perceiving the Terror of flies coiled up like a sleeping dragon, whom we felt it best not to waken. Yesterday we happened to observe that he was off his post, galivanting in a corner of the cieling with a spinster of a very matronly appearance, who, nothing loth, had laid aside her distaff on his approach. Our forefinger did its duty in that neat style characteristic of the assiduous and successful student, and we laid ourselves at length on our settee, with the "State Trials" on our breast. As" it had proved a puzzler" to a person of much perspicacity, we eyed it for a while with a somewhat stern and suspicious aspect -resolved, in spite of all his artifices, to know what the writer was aboutand then to transmit to London our private opinion of his work, that our correspondent for we saw through him-might from our letter get up his article thereon for the Law Magazine.

We began, of course, at the end, and took a glance at the notes. We soon saw, with half an eye, that the author was a man of ingenuity and

learning, and internally prophesied that he was born forthe Bench. Thus"And gashed his throat-while begging

space for prayer.' P. 220, line 6. "Though this averment may be sufficiently direct when only certainty to a common intent is required, it clearly would be insufficient for either certainty to a certain intent in general, or certainty to a certain intent in particular. Both the proper and the defective forms may be well exemplified in the deaths of Sir Thomas Holt's cook and of Pandarus the son of Alcanor.

"Action on the case for words. "Sir Thomas Holt struck his cook on the head with a cleaver, and cleaved his head; the one part lay on the one shoulder, and another part on the other. The defendant pleaded not guilty, and it was found against him. It was now moved, in arrest of

judgment, that these words were not ac

tionable; for it is not averred that the cook was killed, but argumentative. The court was of that opinion, Fleming, C. J. and Williams absentibus; for slander ought to be direct, against which there may not be any intendment: but here, notwithstanding such wounding, the party may yet be living; and it is then but trespass. Wherefore it was adjudged for the defendant."-Sir Thomas Holtv. Astgrigg, Cro. Jac. 184. "Et medium ferro gemina inter tempora frontem

Dividit, impubesque immani vulnere malas. Fit sonus; ingenti concussa est pondere tellus:

Collapsos artus atque arma cruenta cerebro

Sternit humi moriens; atque ille partibus
æquis

Huc caput atque illuc humero ex utroque
pependit.'
Eneid, 9, 783.

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We corroborate the opinion of the Court; and should any one in December choose to say that we, in November, acted towards any Cockney as Sir Thomas Holt is said to have acted towards his cook, we promise not to prosecute him for a groundless slander.

A little further on, we stumbled on an excellent note concerning the law about dogs. Mr Moile had written—

By Nicholas Thirning Moile, Esq., of the Inner Temple, Special Pleader. Simpkin, Marshall, and Co. 1833.

London:

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"It is said, in Ireland v. Higgins, Cro. Eliz. 126, that the law takes notice of four kinds of dogs-mastiffs, hounds, spaniels, and tumblers; and that a man may justify a battery in defence of his dog. Yet the existence of property over dogs seems to have been admitted with great doubt and deliberation, see 12 Hen. 8, 3, 4, and now stands upon a very peculiar footing; for,by one of the nicest and subtlest of distinctions, dogs are a species of property, for which trespass or trover will lie, but in which felony cannot be committed. In this respect, however, they are in no different situation from that of the ancient villeins, which could not be stolen, Sir Edward Coke instructs us, because they were in reality' like a box of chartres."

In the reign of Henry VIII., it is stated that a vigorous attempt was made to put all dogs entirely out of the pale and protection of the law. Upon demurrer to a count in trespass, for taking a bloodhound, it was argued for the defender, (we translate the Norman French,)" that no action lay for a dog, for that no man could bring an action about a thing of no value or profit, and that a dog was of no value, but for pleasure.” On the other hand, it was argued for the plaintiff, "that though a dog may be a thing for pleasure, yet it is profitable for my hunting or for my recreation. For, if I have a popinjay or thrush that sings and refreshes my spirits, that is a great comfort to me; and if any one takes it from me, he ought to be punished." The judges were divided in opinion-Brook, Pollard, and Brudnel holding the point good; while Eliot, who must have been a fool and something more, laid it down "that there could be no action for a dog, for a dog is vermin, and savage by nature, being called in Latin fera, and never jumentum nec armentum. Et adjudge fuist que il a vera action par ceo, et 6s. 4d. par damages et costes.' Too little; but the pursuer did not prosecute vindictively. The dog had not been shot, merely kidnapped. The judgment settled the law as to theft; as to

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murder, it would seem as if some thought the law unsettled even at this day; at least so late as the autumn of 1837. Mr Moile adds well-" More modern decisions have borne variously with greater or less severity, upon this species, between which and our own, as may be said with no less truth than Cicero said of between man and the elephant, or than jurists say of mankind with each other, THERE EXISTS SOMETHING LIKE A SOCIAL COMPACT." In shooting a dog-unless he be a sad dog indeed-a man cruelly violates a social compact. Yet you may not illegally tread on a dog's toes. "in Smith v. Pelah, the Chief Justice ruled that if a dog has once bit a man, and the owner, having notice thereof, keeps the dog, and lets him go about, or lie at his door, an action will lie against him at the suit of a person who is bit, though it happened by such person's treading on the dog's toes, for it was owing to his not hanging the dog in the first instance, and the safety of the King's subjects ought not afterwards to be endangered. The scienter is the gist of the action.' 2 Etrange, 1263." A housekeeper is justified in shooting a housebreaker; but hardly so, we should suppose, if at the time the housebreaker be breaking out of the house-say, escaping by the window. But what is to be said of the following judgment? "In Morris v. Nugent, it was ruled that to justify shooting another person's dog, he must be actually attacking the party at the time; therefore, when the defendant was passing the plaintiff's house, and the plaintiff's dog ran out, and bit the defendant's gaiter, and on the defendant turning round and raising his gun, the dog ran away, and he shot the dog as he was running away, it was held that the defendant was not justified in so doing."

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The decision was right; for the defendant having been frightened first out of his wits, and then out of his temper, was incapacitated by his own mean passions, to mark the distinction_ not surely a very nice one-between his gaiter and the calfof his leg; and, moreover, was blind and deaf-which no Christian can be-to the strong symptoms, if not of remorse and penitence, certainly of fear and a converted mind in the dog, which ought to have saved him, not from stone or cudgel, but

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