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The Speeches Of Grattan |
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Title: The Speeches Of Grattan Author: Thomas Davis [More Titles by Davis] The Speeches of Grattan.[41]
The speeches of Grattan were collected and his memoirs written by his son. The latter is an accessible and an invaluable account of his life; but the speeches were out of print, not purchasable under five or six guineas, and then were unmanageably numerous for any but a professed politician. Mr. Madden's volume gives for a trifle all Grattan's most valuable speeches, with a memoir sufficient to explain the man and the orator. On the speeches of Grattan here published we have little to say. They are the finest specimens of imaginative eloquence in the English, or in any, language. There is not much pathos, and no humour in them, and in these respects Grattan is far less of an Irishman, and of an orator too, than Curran; but a philosophy, penetrating constitutions for their warnings, and human nature for its guides--a statesman's (as distinguished from an antiquarian's) use of history--a passionate scorn and invective for the base, tyrannical, and unjust--a fiery and copious zeal for liberty and for Ireland, and a diction and cadence almost lyrical, made Grattan the sudden achiever of a Revolution, and will make him for ever one of the very elements of Ireland. No other orator is so uniformly animated. No other orator has brightened the depths of political philosophy with such vivid and lasting light. No writer in the language except Shakespeare has so sublime and suggestive a diction. His force and vehemence are amazing--far beyond Chatham, far beyond Fox, far beyond any orator we can recall. To the student of oratory Grattan's speeches are dangerously suggestive, overpowering spirits that will not leave when bid. Yet, with all this terrible potency, who would not bask in his genius, even at the hazard of having his light for ever in your eyes. The brave student will rather exult in his effulgence--not to rob, not to mimic it--but to catch its inspiration, and then go on his way resolved to create a glory of his own which, however small, being genuine, shall not pale within its sphere. To give a just idea of Grattan's rush and splendour to anyone not familiar with his speeches is impossible; but some glimmer may be got by one reading the extracts we shall add here. We shall take them at random, as we open the pages in the book, and leave the reader, untaught in our great orator, to judge, if chance is certain of finding such gems, what would not judicious care discover! Let him use that care again and again. "Sir, we may hope to dazzle with illumination, and we may sicken with addresses, but the public imagination will never rest, nor will her heart be well at ease; never! so long as the parliament of England exercises or claims a legislation over this country: so long as this shall be the case, that very free trade, otherwise a perpetual attachment, will be the cause of new discontent; it will create a pride to feel the indignity of bondage; it will furnish a strength to bite your chain, and the liberty withheld will poison the good communicated. We were wrong in saying there was no humour in Grattan. Here is a passage humorous enough, but it is scornful, rhetorical humour:-- "It does not affect the doctrine of our religion; it does not alter the church establishment; it does not affect the constitution of episcopacy. The modus does not even alter the mode of their provision, it only limits the quantum, and limits it on principles much less severe than that charity which they preach, or that abstinence which they inculcate. Is this innovation?--as if the Protestant religion was to be propagated in Ireland, like the influence of a minister, by bribery; or like the influence of a county candidate, by money; or like the cause of a potwalloping canvasser, by the weight of the purse; as if Christ could not prevail over the earth unless Mammon took him by the hand. Am I to understand that if you give the parson 12s. in the acre for potatoes and 10s. for wheat, the Protestant religion is safe on its rock? But if you reduce him to 6s. the acre for potatoes and wheat, then Jupiter shakes the heavens with his thunder, Neptune rakes up the deep with his trident, and Pluto leaps from his throne! See the curate--he rises at six to morning prayers; he leaves company at six for evening prayer; he baptises, he marries, he churches, he buries, he follows with pious offices his fellow creature from the cradle to the grave; for what immense income! what riches to reward these inestimable services? (Do not depend on the penury of the laity, let his own order value his deserts.) £50 a year! £50! for praying, for christening, for marrying, for churching, for burying, for following with Christian offices his fellow-creature from cradle to grave; so frugal a thing is devotion, so cheap religion, so easy the terms on which man may worship his Maker, and so small the income, in the opinion of ecclesiastics, sufficient for the duties of a clergyman, as far as he is connected at all with the Christian religion. But we have fallen on one of his most marvellous passages, and we give it entire:-- "I will put this question to my country; I will suppose her at the bar, and I will ask her, Will you fight for a Union as you would for a constitution? Will you fight for that Lords and that Commons who, in the last century, took away your trade, and, in the present, your constitution, as for that King, Lords, and Commons who have restored both? Well, the minister has destroyed this constitution; to destroy is easy. The edifices of the mind, like the fabrics of marble, require an age to build, but ask only minutes to precipitate; and as the fall of both is an effort of no time, so neither is it a business of any strength--a pick-axe and a common labourer will do the one--a little lawyer, a little pimp, a wicked minister the other. We now return to the memoir by Mr. Madden. It is not the details of a life meagre for want of space, and confused for want of principles, as most little biographies are; it is an estimate--a profound one--of Grattan's original nature, of the influences which acted on him from youth to manhood, of his purposes, his principles, and his influence on Ireland. Henry Grattan was twenty-nine years of age when he entered on politics, and in seven years he was the triumphant leader of a people free and victorious after hereditary bondage. He entered parliament educated in the meta-physical and political philosophy of the time, injured by its cold and epigrammatic verse and its artificial tastes--familiar with every form of aristocratic life from Kilkenny to London--familiar, too, with Chatham's oratory and principles, and with Flood's views and example. He came when there were great forces rushing through the land--eloquence, love of liberty, thirst for commerce, hatred of English oppression, impatience, glory, and, above all, a military array. He combined these elements and used them to achieve the Revolution of '82. Be he for ever honoured! Mr. Madden defends him against Flood on the question of Simple Repeal. Here is his reasoning:-- "It is an easy thing now to dispose of the idle question of simple repeal. In truth, there was nothing whatever deserving of attention in the point raised by Mr. Flood. The security for the continuance of Irish freedom did not depend upon an English act of parliament. It was by Irish will and not at English pleasure that the new constitution was to be supported. The transaction between the countries was of a high political nature, and it was to be judged by political reason, and by statesmanlike computation, and not by the petty technicalities of the court of law. The revolution of 1782, as carried by Ireland, and assented to by England (in repealing the 6th George the First), was a political compact--proposed by one country, and acknowledged by the other in the face of Europe; it was not (as Mr. Flood and his partisans construed the transaction) of the nature of municipal right, to be enforced or annulled by mere judicial exposition." This is unanswerable, but Grattan should have gone further. The Revolution was effected mainly by the Volunteers, whom he had inspired; arms could alone have preserved the constitution. Flood was wrong in setting value on one form--Grattan in relying on any; but both before and after '82 Flood seems to have had glimpses that the question was one of might, as well as of right, and that national laws could not last under such an alien army. Taken as military representatives, the Convention at the Rotunda was even more valuable than as a civic display. Mr. Madden censures Grattan for having been an elaborate neutral during these Reform dissensions; but that the result of such neutrality ruined the Convention proves a comparative want of power in Flood, who could have governed that Convention in spite of the rascally English and the feeble Irish Whigs. Oh, had Tone been in that council! In describing Grattan's early and enthusiastic and ceaseless advocacy of Catholic liberty, Mr. Madden has a just subject for unmixed eulogy. Let no one imagine that the interest of these Emancipation speeches has died with the achievement of what they pleaded for; they will ever remain divinest protests against the vice and impolicy of religious ascendency, of sectarian bitterness, and of bigot separation. For this admirable beginning of the design of giving Ireland its most glorious achievement--the speeches of its orators--to contemplate, the country should be grateful; but if there can be anything better for it to hear than can be had in Grattan's speeches, it is such language as this from his eloquent editor:-- "Reader! if you be an Irish Protestant, and entertain harsh prejudices against your Catholic countrymen, study the works and life of Grattan--learn from him--for none can teach you better how to purify your nature from bigotry. Learn from him to look upon all your countrymen with a loving heart--to be tolerant of infirmities caused by their unhappy history--and, like Grattan, earnestly sympathise with all that is brave and generous in their character. [The end] GO TO TOP OF SCREEN |