RECOLLECTIONS OF O'CONNELL.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXV, Issue 31, 10 December 1897, Page 4

RECOLLECTIONS OF O'CONNELL.

"In my journal," writes O'Neill Daunt, '• of November 5, 1840, 1 find, among other memoranda, some interesting forensic recollections of O'Connell. Hedges Eyre, an Orange leader, had invariably engaged O'Connell as his counsel. On one occasion a brother Orangeman severely censured Hedges Eyre for employing the Catholic leader. ' You've got seven counsels without him, and why should you give your money to that Papist rascal I ' Hedges did not make any immediate reply, but they both remained in court watching the progress of the trial. The counsel on the opposite side pressed a point for nonsuit, and carried the judge along with him. O'Connell remonstrated against the nonsuit, protesting against so great an injustice. The judge seemed obdurate. ' Well, hear me at all events,' said O'Connell. ' No, I won't,' replied the judge ; I've already heard the leading counsel.' ' But lam conducting counsel, my lord,' rejoined O'Connell, ' and more intimately aware of the details of the case than my brethren ; I entreat you, therefore, you will hear me.' The judge ungraciously consented, and in five minutes O'Connell had argued him out of the nonsuit. ' Now,' said Hedges Eyre in triumph to his Orange confrere, 'now do you see why I gave my money to that Papist rascal .'' " O'Conneli related this story of a physician who had been detained for many days at the Limerick assizes, to which he had been subpoenaed as a witness. He pressed the judge to order him his expenses. "On what plea do you claim your expenses V demands the judge. On the plea of my having buffered personal loss and inconvenience, my lord," replied the simple applicant ; '• I have been kept away from my patients these five days — and, if I am kept here much longer, how do 1 know but they'll get well." Here is a reminiscence of the method in which the harshness of the penal law system in its decline was mitigated by the action of the judicial bench : "My poor confessor, Father O'Grady," said O'Connell, "who residtd with my un<;le when I was a boy, was tried in Tralee on the charge of beinj a Popish priest but the judge defeated O'Grady's prosecutors by distorting the I.w in his favour. There was a flippant scoundrel who came forward to depose to Father O'Grady's having said Mass. ' Pray, sir,' said the judge ' how do you know he said Mass V ' Because I heard him say it, my lord.' ' Did he say it in Latin ." saked the judge. ' Yes, my lord,' ' Then you understand Latin .'' ' A little.' ' What words did you hear him say V ' Aye Maria.' ' That is the Lord's prayer, is it not ?' asked the judge. ' Yes, my lord,' was the fellow's answer. '• Here is a pretty witness to convict the prisoner,' cried the judge. He swears Aye Maria is Latin for the Lord's prayer.' ■ The judge charged the jury for the prisoner, so my poor old friend, Father O'Grady, was acquitted." In O'Connell's earJy days the judicial bench was disgraced by a judge, "who was," said O'Connell. "so fond of brandy that he always kept a supply of it in court upon the desk before him in an inkstand ut peculiar m. ike. His lordship used to lean his arm upon the desk, bob down his head and steal a hurried sip from time to time through a quill which lay among the pens, which manoeuvre, he nattered himself, escaped observation. One day it was sought by counsel to convict a witness of having been drunk at the period to which his evidence referred. Henry Deane Grady laboured hard, on the other haul. to show that the man had been sober. 'Come, now, my good man,' said the judge, 'it is a very important consideration ; tell the court truly, were you drunk or were you sober on that occasion .'' " - Oh. quite sober, my lord,' broke in Grady, with a significant look at the inkstand, • as sober — as a judge.' " O Connell used to relate the following pathetic story of a Tim Driscoll, lor many years a leading member ot the Munster circuit : " I reuaembt r," he saiu, '• an occasion when Tim behaved nobly. His brother, who was a blacksmith, was to be tried for - his life lor the part he had taken in the rebellion of 1798, 2 and Tim's 1 mends among the barristers predicted that Tim would , shirk his brother and contrive to be engaged in the other court i when the trial should come on, in ordtr to avoid the public I recognition of so humble a connection as the blacksmith. Bets were offered upon the course Tim would take. He nobly dis-

appointed the predictions of his enemies. He waited till his \brother was brought into the dock — sprang into the dock and embraced him — remained at his side during the whole trial, cross-examined the witnesses for the prosecution from the dock, invariably styling the prisoner 'my brother.' He carried the sympathies of the jury entirely with him got a verdict for his brother and earned glory for himself."

When O'Connell was Lord-Mayor of Dublin, on the first day's sitting his weekly court was, of course extremely crowded. The tipstaffs tried to clear it. " Let all persons leave the court that haven't business," shouted one of these functionaries. "In Cork," said O'Connell, " I remember the crier trying to disperse the crowd by exclaiming, ' All ye blackguards that isn't lawyers quit the court !"

" I remember," said O'Connell. " being counsel at a special commission in Kerry against a Mr. S. ; and, having occasion to press him somewhat hard in my speech, he jumped np in the court and called me ' a purse-proud blockhead.' I said to him, 'In the first place, I have got no purse to be proud of ; and, secondly, if I be a blockhead, it is the better for you as the counsel against you. However, just to pave you the trouble of saying so again, I'll administer a slight rebuke.' Whereupon I whacked him soundly on the back with the president's cane. Next day he sent me a challenge but very shortly after he wrote to me to state that, since he had challenged, he had discovered that my life was inserted in a valuable lease of his. ' Under these circumstances,' he continued, ' I cannot afford to shoot you unless as a precautionary measure you first insure your life for my benefit. If you do, then heigh for powder and ball — I'm your man ' Now this seems so ludicrously absurd that it is almost incredible, yet it is literally true." — London Law Times.