SIR JONAH BARRING _ TON'S MEMOIRS.*
Tars will prove virtually a new book to the present generation of readers, though it is old enough, and many of the stories told in it have become classical. It was first published in 1827, and a second edition appeared in 1830. Running through its pages, we recognize some of our most valued favourites, which have gone the round of books and dinner-tables innumerable, and which can hardly be employed any longer in society without a kind of apology. Here is Sir Boyle Roche on posterity having done nothing for us, and on sacrificing the whole of the Constitution to preserve the remainder. Here is Sir Hercules Langrishe drinking three bottles of claret by himself, and being asked if he had done so without assistance, replying that he had had the assistance of a bottle of port. These, and such as these, look out upon us with a friendly air, as much as to say, " We have met very often abroad, but this is our home." So, too, the illustrations of Irish life and manners, of the state of politics which preceded the Union, of the relations of landlord and tenant, of client and attorney, of barrister and judge, have been used by a great many subsequent writers. Mr. Phillips's book on Curran and His Con- temporaries, Mr. Fitzgerald's more recent works on the Sham Squire and Ireland before the Union owe many of their touches, or at least many suggestions for them, to Sir Jonah Barrington. We may almost say that the happiest passages of Mr. Lever's early Irish novels are variations upon themes supplied by these volumes. The rich prodigality of duels for all causes and between all per- sons, the untiring hostility towards process-servers, the humour of the peasantry, the abundant flow of whiskey, the recklessness of Donnybrook Fair, are given us here at first-hand, instead of being either artistically wrought up or embellished by frequent repeti- tion. It is not our object, however, to enter into a philosophical analysis of the characteristics of Sir Jonah's Personal Sketches. The only way in which such a work can be fitly reviewed after this lapse of time is by a process of picking out the plums, that ought to be far easier and more attractive than any formal criti- cism. The chief difficulty is to know how to begin ; there is also some perplexity as to the management of the transitions, and it requires great fortitude and self-denial to come to an end. But as with the book, so with the review, the reader can break off when- ever he feels inclined, and we shall not be more disposed than Sir Jonah himself would have been to set up any claim on the score of artistic completeness.
As Sir Jonah was a lawyer by profession, attaining the dignity of Judge of the Irish Admiralty Court, and being deprived of that post in 1830 by an address of both Houses, we may as well start with some of his legal experiences. The history of his professional rise is curious in itself, but is not very significant either of the author or his subject. Barrington of course was brought in con-
* Persona! Sketches of His Own Times. By Sir Jonah Barrington. Third Edition. With a Memoir of the Author, &c., by Townsend Young, LL.D. 2 vols. London: lloutledge. 1869.
tact with the great names of the Irish Bar, and with the Judges, some of whom have become as notorious in their way as Scroggs and Jefferies. One of these judges before being raised to the Bench was known by the nickname of Counsellor Necessity, in allusion to the maxim " Necessitas non legem habet." It was said of another, who was given to drink, that he was so tender-hearted as never to sentence a culprit to death without having " a drop in his eye." The barbarous sentence prescribed for high treason, which included disembowelling, was once pronounced on a school- master, who received it with gratitude. He blessed the judge for his impartiality, and then turning round said, " God's will be done ! 'Tis well it's no worse !" Barrington asked the man what he meant, and he replied, " Why, Counsellor, I was afraid his lord- ship would order me to be flogged." Both flogging and hanging were carried on so lavishly with and without judicial sanction that this fear was well founded. We may make a slight digression from judgment to execution before descending from the Bench to the Bar. Sir Jonah's sketch of Heppenstall, the walking gallows, has been worked out more fully since, but is worth quoting :—" He was a man six feet two inches in height, strong and broad in pro- portion. When he met anyone he suspected of being a rebel, he would knock him down, pinion him with his garters, and while twisting his long cravat into a rope would considerately exhort his victim to pray for King George, " observing that any prayers for his own d—d Popish soul would be only time lost, as his fate in every world (should there be a thousand) was decided to all eternity for having imagined the death of so good a monarch." After this address, the walking gallows would hoist up the rebel on his shoulders with a powerful chuck, and then trot up and down like a jolting carthorse till the work was completed. As for flog- ing, we hear of two wine-coopers who, while on their way home to dinner, were taken into the barracks and given fifty lashes each, with the promise of fifty more if they did not give information about the hiding of pikes in some of the Dublin vaults and cellars. Sir Judkin Fitzgerald was boasting of his achievements in Tip- perary, where he soaked his cat-o'-nine-tails in brine, and by this he said he preserved the county. "Pickled it, you mean," was the reply. The Government showed that it appreciated Sir Judkin's services, but it had the bad taste and inconsistency to disapprove of Heppenstall. After all, as Lord Chancellor Clare said when a man was sentenced to death for a crime of which he was innocent, " if he does not deserve to be hanged for this, he does for a former affair." Barrington was counsel for the prose- cution in that case, and was recommending that the sentence should be commuted, on the ground that the chief witness had committed perjury.
There could not fail to be dissensions between judges and barristers when such principles as these were followed. Many skirmishes between Bench and Bar are recorded, and though they were often good-humoured enough, they nourished bitter feelings. It is not often that antagonism was carried to such a pitch as between the Bar in general and Lord Chancellor Clare. But the feeling against him was so strong, that on his death it was thought necessary to " sound " the profession about attending his funeral. One of his chief opponents was asked if he objected to join the procession. "Not at all," he replied, "I shall certainly attend his funeral with the greatest pleasure imaginable." Some of Cur- ran's remarks to the judges, only a few of which are given us here, show that there was not much respect felt for the judicial dignity where it was unaccompanied by suitable abilities. In a will case, a judge remarked that it seemed to him very clear the testator intended to keep a life-interest in the estate to himself. " Very true, my lord," observed Curran at once, " testators generally do secure life-interests to themselves, but in this case I rather think your lordship takes the will for the deed." Chief Justice Carleton, who was a very lugubrious personage, came into Court one day more gloomy than ever, and apologized for adjourning the Court at once. " The fact is," he said, " I have met with a domestic misfortune. Poor Lady Carleton has most unfortunately miscarried, and —." " Oh ! then, my lord," interrupted Curran, "there is no necessity for your lordship to make any apology, as it appears that your lordship has no issue to try." As some revenge for their lordships who have thus had to bear the brunt of legal wit, we may pass on to the story of the Counsellor out in a storm. He was ejaculating, " 0 Lord ! 0 Lord ! " and the boatman feeling uncomfortable, turned the current of his thoughts. " Arrah, Counsellor," he said, " don't be going on praying that side, if you plase ; sure it's the other lad you ought to be praying to." " What lad do you mean ?" asked the Counsellor. "What lad? why, Counsellor, the old people always say that the Devil takes care of his own ; and if you don't vex him by praying the other way, I really think, Counsellor, we have a pretty safe cargo aboard at this present passage." This is not unlike the comment of an Irish lawyer when he heard a will read where the testatrix bad bequeathed her soul to God. " She was right enough there," be said, " bequeathing her soul out of hand, or the Devil would certainly have taken it as heir-at-law. But I hope he has the reversion." Yet even this pious wish hardly equals the naiveté of old Counsellor Fitzgibbon, the father of Lord Chancellor Clare. A client brought him a very small fee, and apologized for its smallness by saying it was all he had in the world. " Oh, then," said Fitzgibbon, " you can do no more. As it's ' all you have in the world,' why—hem !—I must take it." " What is written in the law ? how readest thou?" asked a litigious parson of a lawyer who was intent on his brief. "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself," was the retort, and it had such an effect on the parson that he stopped some vindictive proceedings he was just taking against one of his own parishioners.
As, however, law was neither "as fleet as a racehorse nor as cheap as watercreases," Sir Jonah's contemporaries very often managed to dispense with it. They found duels a cheaper and a more effectual substitute. If one gentleman owed another a debt and would not pay it, the creditor sent a challenge instead of a writ, the debtor stood a shot, and the debt was cancelled. Barrington once proposed to sue a man on a warranty, but was deterred by a friend assuring him that if he sent an attorney in an affair of horseflesh he would be drummed out of society. The friend volunteered to take a challenge to the seller of the horse, and under that pressure the seller at once refunded the money, which the friend as punctually borrowed. If ever one gentleman did sue another in an affair of this sort, the attorneys carefully kept the declaration from the knowledge of their clients, because they knew that the legal mode of expressing a breach of warranty would lead to a duel it outrance. That the lawyers were not averse to this mode of settling matters appears from the list of duels fought by high judicial authorities :— " The Lord Chancellor of Ireland, Earl Clare, fought the Master of the Rolls, Curran. The Chief Justice B.B., Lord Clonmell, fought Lord Tyrawloy (a privy counsellor), Lord Llandaff, and two others. The Judge of the county of Dublin, Egan, fought the Master of the Rolls, Roger Barrett, and three others. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Right Honourable Isaac Corry, fought the Right Honourable Henry Grattan, a privy counsellor, and another. Medge, Baron of the Ex- chequer, fought his brother-in-law, and two others. The Chief Justice C.P., Lord Norbury, fought Fire-Eater Fitzgerald, and two other gentle- men, and frightened Napper Tandy, and several besides ; only one hit. The Judge of the Prerogative Court, Doctor Dnigenan, fought one bar- rister and frightened another on the ground. The Chief Counsel to the Revenue, Henry Deane Grady, fought Counsellor O'Mahon, Counsellor Campbell, and others ; all hits. The Master of the Rolls fought Lord Buckinghamshire, the Chief Secretary, &c. The Provost of the Uni- versity of Dublin, the Right Honourable Hely Hutchinson, fought Mr. Doyle, Master in Chancery (they went to the plains of Minden to fight), and some others. The Chief Justice C.P., Patterson, fought three coun- try gentlemen, one of them with swords, another with guns, and wounded all of them. The Right Honourable George Ogle, a privy councillor, fought Barney Coyle, a distiller, because he was a papist. They fired eight shots and no hit ; but the second of one party broke his own arm. Thomas Wallace, LG., fought Mr. O'Gorman, the Catholic Secretary. Counsellor O'Connell fought the champion of the Corporation, Captain d'Estdrre fatal to the champion of Protestant ascendancy. The col- lector of the customs of Dublin, the Honourable Francis Hutchinson, fought the Right Honourable Lord Mountmorris."
Barrington's own name was nearly added to this list sub voce Lord Norbury. After attacking each other in the Irish Home of Com- mons, they were making their way to some retired spot where they could decide the question, when the serjeant-at-arms overtook them and brought them back in triumph. One of them was caught in a doorway by his coat-tails, and reappeared in the House without them ; the other was carried off on the back of one of the attendants, and flung down on the floor of the House like a sack. A still more preposterous affray was brought about by Barringtou's use of a legal phrase to one of his brothers. His brother complained to him that a certain jury had been packed, and asked what ought to have been done. The lawyer said, " You should have challenged the array." Off went the brother at once to the grand-jury room, met the High Sheriff at the head of his array, and challenged him " by the advice of counsel." As a further contribution to the history of duelling, Sir Jonah gives us the Irish code of honour settled at the Cloninel summer assizes, and regulated 'by a committee-meeting at the quarter sessions. The rules as to apologies and explanations, as to the limits to be imposed on wounds with the sword, and as to the number of shots to be fired, are extremely precise. Thus, an apology must always precede an explanation, except when two shots each have been fired, but in no case before. " When the lie direct is the first 0ffeut,.. the aggressor must either beg pardon in express terms, exchange two shots previous to apology, or three shots followed up by explanation, or fire on till a severe hit be received by one party or the other." "If swords are used, the parties engage till one is well blooded, disabled, or disarmed." " In case the chal- lenged be disarmed and refuse to ask pardon or atone, he must not be killed, as formerly," which, at all events, shows some re- laxation of the ancient law. "No apology can be received in any case after the parties have actually taken their ground, without exchange of fires." In obedience to this rule, when Barrington was challenged by mistake and the challenger offered to shake hands on the ground, Barrington's second insisted on the affair proceeding. " A young man on his first blood," he said, with infinite self-satisfaction, " cannot break rule, particularly with a gentleman so used to the sport." This was just the reason why Barrington himself would most gladly have accepted the apology. We have an instance, too long to quote, and impossible to con- dense, of a brother barrister making use of these duelling rules to insult a whole regiment with impunity. But an evasion of this kind must have been very rare. Most Irishmen gloried in fight- ing, whether with pistols or with the sprig of shillelah, which Sir Jonah considers much more humane than the fist of a prize-fighter. He tells us of a child being brought out by an old family steward and held upon a man's shoulder to see papa fight. He vindicates- Donnybrook Fair as a place of good-humour, where " men, to be sure, were knocked down now and then, but there was no malice in it." When a man was seen trailing his coat along the ground, or defying anyone to name anything crookeder than rams' horns, it was only an invitation to a little bit of play. This is Sir Jonah's_ account, but then Sir Jonah is an Irishman.
Even he, however, does not wholly accept the Irish peasant's defence of swearing. He declines to believe that it is "only their way of talking English, and that they can speak very good Irish without either cursing or swearing because it's their own tongue." The peasant has certainly the most ingenious excuses. He says, amongst other things, that the reason why schoolmasters do not punish children for swearing is that to teach them anything better would encourage disobedience to their parents. " The fathers and mothers of the childer generally curse and swear their own full share every day, at any rate ; and if the master told the childer it was a great sin they would consider their fathers and mothers wicked people, and so despise and fly in their faces." Another trait of the Irish peasantry recorded by Sir Jonah is their vague- ness on the subject of distances :- "I have often heard it remarked and complained of by travellers and. strangers, that they never could get a true answer from any Irish pea- sant as to distances, when on a journey. For many years I myself thought it most unaccountable. If you meet a peasant on your journey, and ask him how far, for instance, to Ballinrobe, he will probably say it is three short miles.' You travel on, and are informed by the next peasant you meet that it is five long miles.' On you go, and the next will tell ' your honour' it is 'four miles, or about that same.' The fourth will swear if your honour stops at three miles, you'll never get there I' But, on pointing to a town just before you, and inquiring what place that is, he replies, ' Oh! plaze your honour, that's Ballinrobe, sure enough Why, you said it was more than three miles off.'—' Oh yes r to be sure and sartain, that's from my own cabin, plaza your honour. We're no scholards in this country. Arrah how can we tell any dis- tance, plaza your honour, but from our own little cabins? Nobody but the schoolmaster knows that plaza your honour.' " To make up for these faults, we have striking instances of fidelity. On one estate, where there were many small holdings, and the landlord was afraid of losing his own crops by overripeness while the tenants were getting in theirs, he found that the whole body of peasantry of the country had come in the night, reaped his crops for him and stacked them, after having been at work the whole'day on their own holdings. In some other cases, the proofs of affection and zeal given by Irish people to their landlords or masters were not quite so innocent. Barrington's grandmother happened to express a wish that an obnoxious neighbour's ears were cut off. This she said publicly at a large dinner, and when supper-time came the old butler, with a face full of glee, put a large snuff-box in his mistress's hand. She opened the box, and shook out the contents on the table. They turned out to be the ears of the obnoxious neighbour. The way in which process- servers were treated in Connemara is a sample of the same kind of spirit. Barrington asked some man if it was true that the King's writ did not run in Connemara. " By my sowl," was the answer, "it's King George's writ that does run at Connemara, all as one as a black greyhound. Oh, the deuce a stop he stays till he gets into the courthouse at Galway again." Whenever a bailiff was caught with a writ or any other parchment, he had his choice between eating it, with plenty of whiskey to wash it down, or being dropped into a coalpit. One man was forced to eat a
Chancellor's bill, which was soaked in a keg of potheeu till it was tender, and which seems to have lasted him about a fortnight at three meals a day. It must be remembered, as some explanation of this attachment on the part of the peasantry, that in those days no gentleman ever distrained for rent. The landlords had too much of a fellow-feeling for impecuniosity to adopt any such measures. Barrington remarks, it propos of Swift's maxim, "Money's the Devil, and God keeps it from us," that "if this be orthodox, there will be more gentlemen's souls saved in Ireland than in any other part of his Britannic Majesty's dominions." An Irish baronet of a very ancient family, a very large territory in Galway, and no ready money complained to Sir Jonah that " the duns, like a flock of jacksnipe, were eternally thrusting their long bills into me as if I was a piece of bog." To make up for the want of money, every gentleman was honoured with the gout. Sir Jonah attributes this to the quantity of acid contained in the rum-shrub which was drank to keep down the claret, not to the claret itself, or to the rum, or to another liquid called whiskey. This last was given to the children at Donnybrook Fair, "to keep the could out of their little stomachs." When Curran heard some one boast of having brought up his boys from their very childhood with the fear of God always before their eyes, he remarked, " Ah ! 'twas a fortunate .circumstance indeed, very fortunate, indeed, that you frightened them so early." A rather contrary moral may be drawn from the practice of Donnybrook Fair.
Another instance of early training, about which there may also be some doubts, is to be found among Sir Jonah's family records.
A great aunt of his vowed to revenge the murder of her husband, who was taken prisoner and hanged before her eyes because she would not give up her castle. Her opponents had given her the choice between surrendering her castle and seeing her husband hanged, and she had replied with dignity to the messenger, "Mark the words of Elizabeth Fitzgerald, of Moret Castle, they may serve for your own wife on some future occasion. I won't render my keep, and I'll tell you why,—Elizabeth Fitzgerald may get another husband, but Elizabeth Fitzgerald may never get another castle, so I'll keep what I have." Evidently Sir Jonah's great-aunt was a shrewd practical woman. The result of her answer was, that in half an hour her husband was swinging before her gate. She then called up her young son, showed him his dangling parent, and made him swear vengeance on the murderers. The oath having been duly taken, she said to the servants, " Now take the boy down and duck him head over heels in the horse-pond."
Thus the oath and its consequences were fully impressed on his mind, and no sooner had he come to years of discretion than four of the hostile family were missed in one night. The manes of Squire Fitzgerald were appeased in this manner, and his wife's apparent callousness to his fate wore a better aspect. At all events, she could speak with greater confidence than the more modern Irish baronet who horrified a Lord-Lieutenant by deprecating a good harvest. " We shall have an excellent crop," said the Lord- Lieutenant, " this timely rain will bring everything above ground."
"God forbid, your Excellency," exclaimed the baronet, sighing heavily, "for I have got three wives under it!" The same man being
at a large dinner party, was called on to propose a toast just after some magnate had given " The wooden walls of England." Determined that his country should not be outdone, the baronet proposed " The wooden walls of Ireland." "This toast being quite new to us all," says Sir Jonah, " he was asked for an explanation, upon which, filling a bumper, he very gravely stood up, and bowing to the Marquis of Waterford and several country gentlemen who commanded county regiments, he said, ' My lords and gentlemen, I have the pleasure of giving you—The wooden walls of Ireland, the Colonels of Militia !' " From this baronet Sir Jonah takes us on by an easy transition to Sir Boyle Roche, and though we do not propose to repeat his familiar blunders, the history given us of the course of study which reduced his mind to that level is too humorous to be passed over. " His lady," Sir Jonah tells us, " who was a bas bleu,' prematurely injured Sir Boyle's capacity, it was said, by forcing him to read Gibbon's Rise and Fall [Decline and Fall we always called it] of the Roman Empire, whereat he was so cruelly puzzled, without being in the least amused, that in his cups he often stigmatized the great historian as a low fellow, who ought to have been kicked out of company wherever he was, for turning people's thoughts away from their prayers and their politics, to what the Devil himself could make neither head nor tail of."
We must now bring this unconscionable review to an end. One more story, and we have done. A certain noble lord was churchwarden of a parish, and as such had to account to the par- son for the money in the poor-boxes. His lordship's arithmetic was perhaps of a rather shaky kind, and the parson several times insinuated that money was kept back, which so incensed the noble churchwarden that he refused to give up any of the proceeds of a charity sermon. Thereupon the parson announced that a second charity sermon would be preached, as the proceeds of the first were not forthcoming. Everybody took the hint, the church was crowded, and the parson mounting the pulpit gave out his text, " He that giveth to the poor lendeth to the Lord." We will not accompany Sir Jonah into the laugh that followed.
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