"12thly. Because the continuance of such a bloody contest without necessity, appears to be a profane tempting of Divine Providence, in whose benign and almighty hands the fate of battles and of empires is placed

13thly. Because I wish to wash my hands entirely of the innocent blood that may be shed in this war with France, and of all the destruction, confusion, and devastation (perhaps of Great Britain itself) which may ensue.

14thly. Because it was my object to preclude the government of Great Britain from attempting to stir up or excite insurrections in La Vendée, or any other department of the French republic, and the resolution I moved was well-calculated for that purpose.

"15thly. Because the maxim of 'Do not to others that which you would not wish done to yourself,' is an unerring rule, founded upon the clear principles of justice, that is to say of equality of rights. It is upon this strong and solid ground I make my stand. And all public men, in order to merit the confidence of the British people, must show their determination to act with frankness and with unequivocal good faith and justice towards the French republic.

"Having upon this important and momentous subject frequently stood alone, and having also been upon this last occasion totally unsupported in the division, if I should therefore cease at present to attend this house (where I have been placed by the mere accident of birth), such of my fellow-citizens as are friends to freedom, and who may chance to read this my solemn Protest, will find that I have not altered my sentiments or opinions: and that I have not changed any of my principles; for my principles never can be changed. And those fellowcitizens will also find, that I hereby pledge myself to my country, that I shall continue what I ever have been, a zealous and unshaken friend to peace, to justice, and to liberty, political, civil, and religious; and that I am determined to die (as I have lived) a firm and steady supporter of the unalienable rights and of the happiness of all mankind."

In the month of February, 1800, we find his lordship once more in his place in parliament, and moving the following resolution: "That an humble address be presented to his majesty, representing the horrors of war: that in all countries a state of peace is ever the interest of the people, and the shedding of blood, without absolute necessity, repugnant to humanity; and further representing that the present war has been expensive beyond example, productive of a great increase of the national debt, of taxes to an enormous amount, and of an alarming increase in the price of all the necessaries of life and further representing, that peace is necessary to avert the impending danger of famine; for although the present scarcity is in the first instance occasioned by a scanty harvest, the extent of the evil arises from the war; and that it is the duty of this house strongly to dissuade his majesty from the continuance of the contest for the restoration of the ancient line of princes of the house of Bourbon to the throne of France: and to entreat that a negotiation may be immediately opened for peace with the French republic." The motion was rejected by an overwhelming majority. After this period his lordship took less interest in public measures, and lived in comparative retirement. His last years were imbittered by unfortunate family-disputes, in the course of which he

found himself deserted by all his family. He died on the 17th Decem ber, 1816.

His lordship, says the writer of the notice in the Annual Obituary,' was one of the most singular men of the age in which he lived. In person he was tall, lank, with a polished forehead, which, on account of baldness, extended to the occiput. His countenance, of late years, was wan and pale, and shrivelled, so as to render him much older in appearance than in reality; while his locks were straight, stiff, and formal, sacred alike from hair-powder and the curling-irons, so as exactly to resemble Sir Harry Vane's portrait during the civil wars. A scorn of dress and of fashion seems to be hereditary; and so plain and simple was his appearance, that had it not been for a certain awkwardness in his gait and manner, in express defiance to the rules laid down by his celebrated kinsman, Philip Lord Chesterfield, he might, like his own father, the second earl, have been refused admission within the bar of the house of lords, accompanied with the remark of Good man, stand off; such as you must not come here.' One anecdote, on the score of philosophical oddity, will suffice. Sitting one day in company with his lordship, I perceived that his boots were rounded off in a particular manner, so as to be far more capacious than common. On inquiry, I found it to be his opinion, that, as iron joints work best in oil, so do those also composed of bone, muscle, and flesh !' His son, a

fine

young man, since dead, soon after confirmed this fact; and in respect to the reasoning, after due reflection, I am yet to learn why the rigidity and stiffness incident to age, and also to the unnatural constraint of a leathern shoe, may not in part be warded off, by means of an oleaginous composition."

John Courtenay.

BORN A. D. 1741.-DIED A. D. 1816.

THIS gentleman was a native of Ireland, where his family, though of English descent, once possessed immense estates. Viscount Townshend, when viceroy of Ireland, first brought him into political life, by appointing him his secretary, and getting him returned for the borough of Tamworth to the parliament which assembled in October, 1780. He did not, however, identify himself with ministers in his first appearances in the house, although on the resignation of Lord North he accompanied him into retirement.

In 1784 he opposed Pitt's Commutation Act,' and, in 1786, the duke of Richmond's plan of internal fortifications. He was one of the earliest and staunchest supporters of Wilberforce in his noble efforts to put down slavery. In 1797 we find him in the minority which supported Mr Grey's motion for parliamentary reform; and in 1805 he joined the same member in his motion relative to the Spanish papers. On the change of administration in 1806 Mr Courtenay became a commissioner of the treasury. He enjoyed office only a few months, after which he retired from public life. His death took place on the 24th of As an orator, Courtenay amused more frequently than he convinced: his speeches often displayed a glittering but harmless

March 1816.

poignancy which almost amounted to wit. Though a whig he wrote a laudatory poem on Johnson. He was also the author of A Series of Poetical Epistles on the Manners, Arts, and Politics of France and Italy of Philosophical Reflections (addressed to Priestley) on the Revolution in France; and of a Poetical and Philosophical Essay' on the same subject, dedicated to Burke. To use a Johnsonian phrase, he was eminent as a talker.

Patrick Duigenan.

BORN A. D. 1735.-DIED A. D. 1816.

THIS celebrated character is generally supposed to have been the son of an Irish peasant. A Roman Catholic writer, who evidently owes his subject no good-will, says of him: "Dr Duigenan owes his birth to Paddy O'Dewgenan, and Joan his wife, two Catholics, who subsisted by tending cattle on one of the bleakest mountains of the county of Leitrim." He also maintains that he was intended for a priest, but converted by a Protestant clergyman, who kept a school, and raised him to the situation of his assistant. "With his elevation, our hero adopting new views, read his recantation, and changed his real name of O'Dewigenan, which he thought savoured too much of Popery, to the more Protestant appellation of Duigenan. Mr Duigenan, as we must now call him, remained at this school, till by the benevolent aid of his master, he acquired as much learning as enabled him to gain admission as a sizer to Trinity college, Dublin, where, conscious he was fighting pro unguibus, his application was so intense, that, though unassisted by any extraordinary talents, he obtained a scholarship, and afterwards in due time a fellowship, then the highest point of ambition to which he could aspire. Among the Irish Catholics it is universally observed that kiln-dried Protestants, (by which is meant those who have read their recantation from the church of Rome to that of England or Ireland,) are peculiarly intolerant and hostile to the members of their former communion."

However obscure his birth may have been, we soon find him taking a distinguished place amongst his fellow-colleagues at Dublin and rewarded with a lay-fellowship, of which only two are allowed by the statutes of that university. When Hely Hutchinson became provost, Duigenan exhibited his dissatisfaction at the appointment by the publication of a Latin poem entitled Lachrymæ Academicæ,' and imme diately withdrawing from under his jurisdiction. He successively pubished a series of satirical pieces levelled against the provost, for which he was called to account by one of Hutchinson's admirers. Duigenan accepted the challenge sent him, but terrified his adversary into a compromise by appearing on the field armed with a huge blunderbuss with which he threatened to blow him to pieces.

ment.

In 1785 he was appointed king's advocate-general and a judge in the Prerogative court. In 1790 he was returned to the Irish parlia "His adherence to the old high church principle," says one of his contemporaries, "finally procured him a seat in parliament, when the increasing liberality of public feeling made it likely that those prin

ciples might need an advocate to support them. Sent to the senate by clerical influence, Dr Duigenan has never forgotten what he owes to his patrons, nor has he at any time omitted an occasion of inculcating on the house and the public the virtues, the poverty, and the loyalty of the clergy, or of holding out popery and sectarists as the enemies of God and of religion, of moral duty and of good government. It is not only against papists and sectarists, as such, that the caustic eloquence of Dr Duigenan is directed; the Irish, as distinguished from the British settler and their descendants in Ireland, are equally, at times, the smarting victims of his tongue; even a name sounding like that of an Irishman, or an Irish Catholic, furnishes a theme for the parliamentary invectives of the learned doctor. The unfortunate name of Keogh, which belonged to a man some time active in the cause of emancipation and reform, has more than once been pronounced by Dr Patrick Duigenan in a manner, and a tone, which, while it entertained the senate, spoke his contempt and scorn for Irish gutturals. It would be doing great injustice to this learned gentleman to insinuate that he is an indolent senator, except when the concerns of the church call for his exertions; the fact is, he is one of the most zealous supporters of the Irish administration, and the most devoted enemy of sedition in every form; but it must be acknowledged that his powers are most happily raised when the interests of the clergy combine with the safety of the state, and when he labours at once for God and for his country. Hence it is that he calls forth his finest figures, and flames with most heat, when he opposes such a man as Mr Grattan, who so mistakingly would engraft religious freedom on civil liberty. Indeed, against such men as Mr Grattan, the doctor delights to pitt himself. Even when that gentleman had retired from parliament, his address to his constituents, and some other trifles which appeared in public under his name, excited the attention, and roused the fire of the doctor. He attacked them in a pamphlet so much in the doctor's strong way, so vehement, we do not say so scurrilous and so abusive, that Mr Grattan thought himself called upon to give the gentleman, who had taken so much offence at him, some other way of obtaining satisfaction than mere writing would afford him; he accordingly left London, went to Dublin, and after publishing an advertisement in most of the London and Dublin papers, in which he applied the strongest epithets of contempt to the doctor's publication, gave notice, that for a certain number of days, in the advertisement mentioned, he should be found at Keams's hotel, in Kildare-street. doctor, however, on this occasion, showed himself a well-disposed subject, who could not easily be persuaded to break the peace: he exerted no sagacity in finding out Mr Grattan's meaning, and Mr G. knowing, perhaps, the danger of giving an ecclesiastical judge a more explicit declaration of it, returned after some time to England. It is remarkable, that Dr Duigenan is at present a widower. His wife was a very rigid Catholic; and notwithstanding the vehemence of his declaration against popery, with his strong opposition to every popish claim, he kept constantly, during his wife's life, a Catholic priest in his house, as her confessor and chaplain. He is still a healthy, strong man, though in declining years: whether he will a second time connect himself with the abominations of Babylon, is a matter of curious speculation."

The

He was the first member who ventured to propose a union with Great

Britain. At the time of his death, which happened on the 11th of April, 1816, he was an Irish privy-counsellor; vicar-general of the metropolitan court of Armagh, of the dioceses of Meath and Elphin, and of the consistorial court of Dublin; judge of the prerogative court; king's advocate-general of the high court of admiralty; professor of civil law in the university of Dublin, and LL. D.

He was a man of very considerable powers, but violent to an extreme In all his actions, and not without reason suspected of sycophancy to ministers.

Sir Roger Curtis.

BORN A. D. 1750.-DIED A. D. 1816.

THIS gallant admiral was born at Downton in Wilts, where his father was an opulent farmer. He early evinced a decided predilection for the sea, and was allowed to gratify his inclination. He entered the service under Captain, afterwards Admiral, Barrington, as a midshipman on board the Venus. In 1771 he became a lieutenant, and in 1776 was appointed commander of the Senegal sloop of war. His services on the North American station recommended him to the notice

of Admiral Lord Howe, who promoted him to the rank of post-captain. in which capacity he materially contributed to the reduction of New York, Rhode Island, and Philadelphia. In 1781 he greatly distinguished himself by his able service in throwing supplies into Gibraltar, and in the following year he contributed greatly to the gallant defence of that place made by Governor Elliot against the Spanish and French forces, as appears from the following extract from the governor's dispatches:

"The Spanish squadron having gone to the eastward of the rock, and formed in a line, (the admiral leading,) came before the batteries of Europa, and under a very slow sail, commenced a fire from all their guns until the last ship had passed. They repeated their manœuvre at two o'clock the following morning, and again in the forenoon of the same day. These successive cannonades did not any way damage the works. Some of the leading ships having been pretty frequently struck by our shot, they afterwards kept at a greater distance. Two Spanish ships went early in that morning to Algeziras to repair, as we imagine. All the batteries at Europa were manned by the marine brigade encamped there, with a small proportion of artillerists. The guns were extremely well laid and pointed; the whole under the immediate command of Brigadier Curtis. But the 13th of September was the epoch fixed upon for the grand attack, and as many of the Spanish vessels were deemed indestructible by fire, in consequence of a new invention by General D'Arçon, a French engineer, it was expected that a serious impression would be made. The following is the total amount of the combined force brought into action upon the present memorable occasion:-1. Spanish ships of three decks, 2;-2. Of the line, 28;3. French ships of three decks, 5;-4. Of the line, 9;-5. Spanish ships of from fifty to sixty guns, 3;-6. Battering ships, 10;-7. Floating battery, 1-8. Bomb ketches, 5. In addition to these 63 sail, are