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Sham Squire as
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we have some well-authenticated and racy revelations of many of the singular Irish characters who flourished during the last thirty or forty years of the last century, and in the first few years of the beginning of this. Ireland appears to have been the
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in that day, as the times appear to have been out of joint, and the habits and general _morale_ of the upper and middle ranks were to the last degree loose and irregular. As the manners and modes of action of a people are in a considerable degree fashioned and influenced by the example set them by those who are placed in authority over them, it is not too much to assert that a great deal of the lax morality, unscrupulous spirit, and general demoralization were produced by some of the occupants of the vice-regal throne, and their
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the character and course of life of whom are painted by our author in anything but a seductive way. Brilliancy, show, pleasure, wit, and extravagance were the order of the day; lords-lieutenant were either dissipated _roués_, or incompetent imbeciles, and in either case they were sure to be coerced or cajoled by a mercenary tribe of political adventurers, who directed their actions and influenced their minds. We at once see by the wholesale corruption practised to bring about the Union, how utterly depraved must have been the men who openly or covertly prostituted themselves, when it was in contemplation; and never was political profligacy more open and more daring in its violation of honor, probity, and principle than in the abject submission of the Irish parliament, and its unhesitating anxiety to sell themselves, souls and bodies, to those who tempted them, and who had studied them far too accurately not to be sure of their prey. Amongst those who consented to accept the remuneration thus profusely offered them the lawyers bore a very prominent part; in fact, government could hardly have succeeded without their aid; of these, Fitzgibbon, afterward Lord Clare and chancellor, was the most forward and efficient. There was never a man better adapted for the work he had to do. Bold, active, astute, and unscrupulous, he could be all things to all men; those whom he could not cajole, he frightened; equally ready with the pen, the pistol, and the tongue, he was neither to be daunted nor silenced; terrible in his vengeance, no windings of his victims could escape him; and extravagant in his generosity (when the public purse had to bear the blunt), his jackals and partisans felt that their reward was sure, and therefore never hesitated to comply with his most exact demands. Few men had a larger number of followers, therefore, and no man ever made a more unscrupulous use of them. He had nothing of the recusant about him, however, and first and last he was consistent to his party and to the Protestant creed which he had adopted in early life, for he had been born and partly reared in the Roman Catholic faith. In his personal demeanor he was a lion-hearted man; when hissed in the streets by the populace he calmly produced his pistols; and once, on hearing that a political meeting against the Union was being held, he rushed into the middle of the assembled mass, commanded the high-sheriff to quit the chair, and so closed the meeting. On the bench he was equally fearless, and when recommended to beware of treachery, his answer was,
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They dare not; I have made them as tame as cats.
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If I live, he said,
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He did live to see it, and to take his seat in the British parliament; but matters were altogether altered there. In his maiden effort he was rebuked by Lord Suffolk, called to order by the lord chancellor, while the Duke of Bedford indignantly snubbed him by {126} exclaiming,
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We would not bear such insults from our _equals_, and shall we, my lords, tolerate them at the hands of mushroom nobility? while, to cap the climax, Pitt, after hearing him, turned to Wilberforce, and said loud enough to be heard by Lord Clare,
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Good G--d! did you ever, in all your life, listen to so thorough-paced a scoundrel as that! Disappointed and despairing, he returned to Ireland, and died of a broken heart, while almost the last words he uttered to a friend were,
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Only to think of it! I that had all Ireland at my disposal cannot now procure the nomination of a single gauger!
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Sham Squire, for instance, who might be pleasant but were by no means reputable. Beside, his character for probity was distrusted; his first uprise in life was his wholesale appropriation of the property of a Catholic friend which he held in trust, as Catholics, at that time, could not retain property in their hands, and which he refused to disgorge. He was both venal and vindictive, and but too often prostituted his authority in pursuit of his passions. On one occasion, however, he was signally discomfited. A man of the name of Magee, who owned and edited the
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Evening Post, had frequently come under the lash, and was treated with no mercy. Magee's vengeance took a curious form. Lord Clonmel was an ardent lover of horticulture, and had spent many thousand pounds in making his suburban villa a
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Magee knew this, and as the chief demesne was skirted by an open common from which a thick hedge alone separated it, the journalist proclaimed a rural _fête_, on an enormous scale, to be held on the vacant ground, and to which the whole Dublin population, gentle and simple, were invited. Meats and liquors were given to an unlimited extent, and, in the evening, when the
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were primed with whiskey, several pigs (shaved and with their tails well soaped) were let out as part of the amusement of the day. By preconcert, the affrighted animals were driven against Lord Clonmel's inclosure, which they speedily over-leaped, followed by the mob. Trees, shrubs, flowers, vases, and statues were in a wonderfully short time demolished in the
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while, to make the matter still more deplorable, the owner of the property thus wantonly devoted to revenge stood on the steps of his own hall-door, and with alternate fits of imprecation and entreaty besought the spoilers to desist, but in vain. Toward the close of his life, Lord Clonmel became a hypochondriac, and, supposing himself to be a tea-pot, hardly ventured to stir abroad lest he should be broken. On one occasion, his great forensic antagonist, Curran, was told that Clonmel was going to die at last, and was asked if he believed it.
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I believe, was the reply,
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Shortly before his death he said to Lord Cloncurry,
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My dear Val, I have been a fortunate man, or what the world calls so; I am chief-justice and an earl; but were I to begin life again, I would rather be a chimney-sweeper, than consent to be connected with the Irish government.
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was John Taler,