had established itself in Ireland in the reign of Charles the Second, he thought it incumbent upon him to live upon a scale of expenditure more consistent with Irish notions of dignity than with English maxims of economy and good sense. He was a man of refined manners, and of polished if not prudential habits. His son Charles imbibed from him an ardent love of literature, and had an opportunity, from his familiar intercourse with the best company in the kingdom, to acquire those graces of manner which render him a model of elegance in private life, and which, in the discharge of professional business, impart such a dignified suavity to his demeanour as to charm the senses before the understanding is addressed. His mother was the sister of MajorGeneral Sir John Doyle, and is said to have been a highly cultivated woman. Mr. Bushe received his education in the University of Dublin, and, I may add, in the Historical Society which was established by the students for the cultivation of eloquence and of the arts which are connected with it. Although it derived its appellation from the study of history, to which it was nominally dedicated, the political situation of the country speedily directed its pursuits to the acquisition of the faculty of public speech; through which every man of talent expected to rise into eminence, at a period when oratory was the great staple commodity in the intellectual market. This institution rose of its own accord out of the spontaneous ambition of the students of the University. So far from assisting its growth, the fellows of the college employed every expedient to repress it. Their own monastic habits made them look with distaste upon an establishment whose pursuits were so widely at variance with their own tastes; and they were as much at a loss to discover the use of oratory, as the professor at Louvain to find out the benefit of Greek. They uniformly endeavoured to counteract the society, upon a variety of pretences; but their chief motive of opposition appears to have arisen from the liberality of the sentiments which were inculcated in the discussions which took place at the weekly meetings of the institution. They observed that toleration had become a prevalent doctrine in the college: this they justly attributed to that diffusion of truth which of necessity attends its investigation; and saw that the genius of Orangism, which had so long found a secure asylum within their cloisters, had been disturbed in the place of its favourite abode. In the true spirit of monks (and however they may differ in the forms of their faith, in their habits, and in the practical results in which their principles are illustrated and embodied, the monks of all religions are inveterately the same,) the Superiors of the University took the society under their baneful protection. They attempted to hug it to death in their rugged and hirsute embrace. The students, however, soon became aware of the real objects of their interference, and were compelled, in order to preserve the institution from the consequences of so impure a connexion, to recede from the University, and hold their meetings beyond its walls. This was a step inconsistent with the discipline which ought to be maintained in every establishment for the education of youth; but any violation of propriety which it involved, may justly be laid to the charge of the superiors of the college, by whom it was provoked.

Mr. Bushe had been recently called to the Bar, but had not yet devoted himself to its severer studies with the strenuous assiduity

name.

which is necessary for success in so laborious a profession. But the fame which he had acquired in the society itself, induced its rebellious members to apply to him to pronounce a speech at the close of the first session which was held beyond the precincts of the college, for the purpose of giving the dignity and importance to their proceedings which they expected to derive from the sanction of his distinguished Mr. Bushe acceded to the request, and pronounced a very eloquent oration, which Mr. Phillips has, I observe, inserted in his collection of Specimens of Irish Oratory. It is remarkable for purity and simplicity of style, and for an argumentative tone, which in so young a man, who had hitherto exercised himself upon topics which invited a puerile declamation, and the discussion of which was a mere mockery of debate, afforded grounds for anticipating that peculiar excellence which he afterwards attained. A few metaphors are interspersed, but they are not of the ordinary class of Irish illustration; and what was unavoidable in an assembly composed of insurgent students, an hyperbole is occasionally to be found in the course of this very judicious speech. But, taken as a whole, it bears the character of the mature production of a vigorous mind, rather than of the prolusion of a juvenile rhetorician. This circumstance is a little remarkable. The passion for figurative decoration was at this time at its height in Ireland. The walls of the Parliament House resounded with dithyrambics, in which, at the same time, truth and nature were too frequently sacrificed to effect. The intellect of the country was in its infancy, It is and although it exhibited signs of athletic vigour, it was pleased with the gorgeous baubles which were held out for its entertainment. therefore somewhat singular that while a taste of this kind enjoyed so wide and almost universal a prevalence, Mr. Bushe should, at so early a period of his professional life, have manifested a sense of its imperfections, and have traced out for himself a course so different from that which had been pursued by men whose genius had invested their vices with so much alluring splendour. This circumstance is partly, perhaps, to be attributed to the strong instinct of propriety which was born with his mind, and, in some degree, to his having passed a considerable time out of Ireland, where he became conversant with models of a purer, if not of a nobler eloquence, than that which was cultivated in the sister kingdom. He lived in France for some years amongst men of letters; and although the revolution had subverted, in a great degree, the principles of literature as well as of government, yet enough of relish for classical beauty and simplicity had survived, amongst men who had received the advantages of education, to furnish him with the opportunity, of which he so advantageously availed himself, of cultivating a better style of expression than he would, in all probability, have adopted had he permanently resided in Ireland. It may appear strange that I should partly attribute the eminence in oratory to which Mr. Bushe has attained, to the Historical Society, after having stated that he deviated so widely from the tone of elocution which prevailed in that establishment, and in which, if there was little of childishness, there was much of boyhood. But, with all its imperfections, it must be recollected that such an institution afforded an occasion for the practice of the art of public speaking, which is as much, perhaps, the result of practical acquisition, as it is of natural endow

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ment. A false ambition of ornament might prevail in its assemblies, and admiration might be won by verbose extravagance and boisterous inanity; but a man of genius must still have turned such an institution to account. He must have thrown out a vast quantity of ore which time and circumstance would afterwards separate and refine. His faculties must have been put into action, and he must have learned the art, as well as tasted the delight, of stirring the hearts and exalting the minds of a large concourse of men. The physique of oratory too, if I may use the expression, must have been acquired. A just sense of the value of gesture and intonation results from the practice of public speaking; and the appreciation of their importance is necessary to their attainment. It is for these reasons that I am inclined to refer a portion of the prosperity which has accompanied Mr. Bushe through his profession, to an institution, the suppression of which, under the provostship of Doctor Elrington, has been a source of great regret to every person who had the interests of literature at heart. His successor, Doctor Kyle, has followed the steps of his worthy prototype. The consequences which both of them had anticipated have already taken place, and the University, which a few years ago was conspicuous for liberality in political sentiment, has a second time become a sink of low faction, and the reservoir in which Orangism has deposited its vilest filth. It was at one period expected that Doctor Magee would have been appointed provost; and his repeated declarations, and even remonstrances in its favour, were confidently regarded as affording a security that he would re-establish a society to which, as well as his distinguished contemporaries, he had acknowledged himself to be deeply indebted. But, unfortunately for the interests of the college and of the country, that eminent divine has not had an opportunity of accomplishing his desires, and of restoring an institution in which polite literature was cultivated to such an extent as to compensate for its deplorable neglect in the regular course of the University.

The reputation which Mr. Bushe had acquired among his fellowstudents, attended him to his profession; and in a very short period he rose into the public notice, as an advocate of distinguished abilities. It was indeed impossible that he should remain in obscurity. His genius was not of such a character as to stand in need of a great subject for its display. The most trivial business furnished him with an occasion to produce a striking effect. There are some men who require a lofty theme for the manifestation of their powers. Their minds demand the stimulus of high passion, and are slow and sluggish unless awakened by the excitement which great interests afford. This is peculiarly the case with Mr. Burrowes, who upon a noble topic is one of the ablest advocates at the Irish bar, but who seems oppressed by the very levity of a petty subject, and sinks under its inanity. He is in every respect the opposite of Mr. Bushe, who could not open his lips, or raise his hand, without immediately exciting and almost captivating the attention of every man around him. There is a peculiar mellowness and deep sweetness in his voice, the lower tones of which might almost without hazard of exaggeration be compared to the most delicate notes of an organ, when touched with a fine but solemn hand. It is a voice full of manly melody. There is no touch of effeminacy about it. It possesses abundance as well as harmony, and is not more

remarkable for its sweetness than in its sonorous depth. His attitude and gesture are the perfection of "easy art"-every movement of his body appears to be swayed and informed by a dignified and natural grace. His countenance is of the finest order of fine faces, and contains an expression of magnanimous frankness, that in the enforcement of any cause which he undertakes to advocate, invests him with such a semblance of sincerity as to lend to his assertion of fact, or to his vindication of good principle, an irresistible force. It was not wonderful that he should have advanced with extreme rapidity in his profession, seconded as he was by such high advantages. It was speedily perceived that he possessed an almost commanding influence with the jury; and he was in consequence employed in every case of magnitude which called for the exertion of such eminent faculties as he manifested upon every occasion in which his powers were put into requisition. Talents of so distinguished a kind could not fail to raise him into political consequence, as well as to insure his professional success. The chief object of every young man of abilities at the Bar was to obtain a seat in parliament. It secured him the applause of his country if he devoted himself to her interests; or if he enlisted himself under the gilded banners of the minister, place, pension, and authority, were the certain remunerations of the profligate services which his talents enabled him to bestow upon a government, which had reduced corruption into system, and was well aware that it was only by the debasement of her legislature that Ireland could be kept under its controul. The mind of Mr. Bushe was of too noble a cast to lend itself to purposes so uncongenial to a free and lofty spirit; and he preferred the freedom of his country and the retributive consciousness of the approbation of his own heart, to the ignominious distinctions with which the administration would have been glad to reward the dereliction of what he owed to Ireland and to himself. Accordingly we find, that Mr. Bushe threw all the energy of his youth into opposition to a measure which he considered fatal to that greatness which Nature appeared to have intended that his country should attain; and to the last he stood among the band of patriots who offered a generous but unavailing resistance to a legislative Union with Great Britain. However as an Englishman I may rejoice in an event, which, if followed by Roman Catholic Emancipation, will ultimately abolish all national antipathy, and give a permanent consolidation to the empire; it cannot be fairly questioned that every native of Ireland ought to have felt that her existence as a country was at stake, and that, in place of making those advances in power, wealth, and civilization, to which her natural advantages would have inevitably led, she must of necessity sustain a declension as rapid as her progress towards improvement had previously been, and sink into the provincial inferiority to which she is now reduced. This conviction, the justice of which has been so well exemplified by the event, prevailed through Ireland; and it required all the seductions which the minister could employ, to produce the sentence of self-annihilation, which he at last succeeded in persuading a servile legislature to pronounce. To the honour of the Irish Bar, the great majority of its members were faithful to the national cause; and Curran, Plunket, Ponsonby, Saurin, Burrowes, and Bushe, accomplished all that eloquence and patriotism could effect, in opposition to the

mercenaries, who had sold the dignity of their protession, as well as the independence of their country, in exchange for that ignoble station, to which by their slimy profligacies they were enabled to crawl up. Bushe was the youngest of these able and honest men; but he was among the most conspicuous of them all. In answer to what was urged in favour of the Union, grounded upon the necessity of employing corrupt means to govern the country as long as there were two independent legislatures, and in ridicule of the improvement which it was alleged that the Irish Parliament would derive from its union with that of England, he said, "The pure and incorruptible virtue of the ministers cannot bear the prospect of such corruption, and that they may not see it, they plunge into the midst of it. They are Platonists in politics; the gross sensualities of the connexion disgust them, but the pure and spiritual indulgences of the union delight them. I own I always suspect this furious virtue: the morals of prudery are always problematical. When I see this pliable patriotism declaiming with surly indignation to-day, and cringing with supple adulation to-morrow-in the morning Diogenes growling in his tub, and in the evening Aristippus fawning in the antichamber, I always suspect that there is something more than meets the eye. I would ask some one of those enlarged and liberal politicians, does he think that the simple executive government which is to be left in Ireland, will be an improvement upon our situation, and whether he knows of no method to reform the parliament, except by annihilating

The noble Lord (Castlereagh) may instruct him by retracing the speculations of his youthful days, and supply him with some of those plans of reform which it would not have cost him half so much trouble to carry as the extinction of parliament. But what is to be the transfiguration which is to glorify it, and how is this corruptible to put on incorruption? It is sentenced to death. In Ireland it is to suffer the death of a felon, but its resurrection in Westminster, in the midst of angel purity and immaculate innocence, is, it seems, to compensate for the suspension of its political life. But have these high priests of the new dispensation revealed the truth to us, as to this paradise of Westminster? Do they know the British Parliament who thus speak? Do they think there is no borough patronage or borough representation? Do they suppose there are no placemen? Do they conceive it a pool of Bethesda, in which our impurities are to be cleansed? Do they forget that this immaculate parliament, more than twenty years ago, declared by a solemn vote that the influence of the Crown had increased, was increasing, and ought to be diminished? Do they forget that the present prime minister declared eighteen years ago, that unless that assembly was radically reformed, the empire was lost? Do they know that it has never been reformed since? and do they think that one hundred Irish transplantations will reform it? Have they ever considered that there ministerial influence predominates so effectually, that the opposition has seceded in despair? Have they ever visited this exhibition of pure representation? Have they ever looked at Mr. Pitt governing that assembly by his nod, and scarcely concealing his own actual despotism with the forms of the constitution?"

In this strenuous resistance which was offered by the respectable portion of the Irish Bar to the measure which deprived Ireland of the advantages of a local legislature, a consciousness of deep personal in-.