COURAGE OF JOHN PHILPOT CURRAN.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume II, Issue 82, 21 November 1874, Page 10

COURAGE OF JOHN PHILPOT CURRAN.

What I last note in the eloquence of Curran is its courage. Danger is the test of manhood, whether in action or in words ; and hardly a speech historically groat has ever been spoken but at momentous hazard. This, here, I must simply assert. All who are conversant with the subject knoAv that the assertion can be proved. No speaker ever had more courage than Curran, and no speaker ever more needed it. His courage was physical, mental, moral, political, constant, and consistent. Mortal combat was in the time of Curran frequently the cost of a word, and this cost, more than once, Curran was obliged to pay. At the very entrance of his active and professional life, he gave a magnanimous example of moral independence and physical intrepidity. An aged Catholic priest, [Father Neale, in the discharge of bis sacred duty, at the injunction of Ms bishop, excited the anger of a Protestant nobleman. The profligate aristocrat, Lord Doneraile, accompanied by his brother, Mr St. Leger, rode to the old man's cottage, called him out from his devotions, and, at his own door, beat him almost to death. But such was the dominion of Protestant ascendancy at the time, that lawyers refused to be concerned for a Catholic priest. Curran immediately undertook the case, and fearlessly and fiercely stigmatised the culprits. Considering the power ■which these culprits possessed, as Ireland was then ruled, the audacity of a young barrister in daring it was to some heroic, to others insolent, to all a novelty and a wonder. Curran gained a verdict against the nobleman, fought a duel with the nobleman's brother, whom, in the course of the trial, he had characterised as a ruffian and a coward. The venerable man, whose wrongs he so eloquently exposed, in quitting this mortal life soon after, sent for the generous advocate, and gave him bis dying benediction. But well might Jeffrey, ■while commenting in the 'Edinburgh Eeview ' on these events, express his astonishment that such things could ever have been. Demosthenes, it was said, ran away from battle. This was probably a calumny. But against Curran no such calumny was possible. Cicero has been accused not only of being a trimmer, but of being timid ; and Mirabeau, it has been alleged, sold the popular cause for regal bribery. But Curxan was as bold politically as he was personally, and he was as above interest as he was above fear. We cannot at this day estimate what Curran sacrificed to the popular cause, or how much risk he encountered for it. The part which Curran took in the rebellion-trials of 1798 has nothing in the whole history of defensive oratory with which we can compare it. Curran's position was a singular one, and the man was as singular as the position — as singular as either were the circumstances which created the position, and which glorified the man. A strange unity of national character prevailed then in Ireland amidst the most irreconcilable joolitical hatreds. This very community of national genius, impassioned and intense, rendered contest all the fiercer, and made enmity all the darker. Power in its victory was cruel and nnsparing ; weakness in its defeat had nothing to plead, and nothing to hope. Humanity was asleep ; conscience was Wind; pity was deaf; but vengeance was all alive and all awake. Law was a dead letter ; trial by jury was " a delusion, a mockery, and a snare." .Any one who reads the records of those times will learn how universal was then in L-eland this reign of terror. The Marquis of Corn-wallis, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, at the close of the insurrection, says that the executions by ordinary courts, or courts-martial, were nothing compared with the butcheries and burnings committed by armed and licensed murderers, who were not less abhorrent to the high and humane among the rulers than they were monstrous and merciless towards the people. In such a condition of things Curran had to stand nearly alone. He had to speak for the speechless, when words for the accused were almost accounted crimes ; and he had to take the side of the doomed when the rancour of party spirit often confounded the advocate and the client. — ' From Giles's Lectures.'