however. The first year his fees amounted to £100, the second to between £100 and £2oo, and they continued to increase rapidly every year. He was materially assisted in his advancement at the Bar by the steady friendship of Lord Kilwarden, his political opponent. At the Cork Summer Assizes of 1780, he sprang at once into fame and popularity by acting as counsel for a Catholic clergyman who had been brutally horsewhipped by Lord Doneraile. Other lawyers on the circuit had feared to take up the case, and Curran secured a verdict for his client; having afterwards to fight a duel with a Captain St. Leger, and to endure the hostility of the Doneraile family. About this period we find him prior of the "Monks of the Screw," a literary and convivial club numbering amongst its members the most brilliant men in Dublin—Grattan, Charlemont, Barry, Daly, Temple, Emmet, and others. The charter song of the society, written by Curran, is to be found in most collections of Irish ballad poetry. In 1783 he entered Parliament as member for Kilbeggan; three years afterwards he was returned for Rathcormack, which he represented until 1797. But meagre reports of his parliamentary speeches have been handed down to us. He spoke on Flood's Eeform Bill in 1783, again on the right of the Commons to originate money bills; and his speech in February 1785, on the abuse of attachments by the King's Bench led to a duel with FitzGibbon. That on Catholic Emancipation delivered on 4th February 1792, is perhaps the only one worthy of his reputation as an orator. He showed "that a disunited people cannot long subsist," and declared that the certain result of a union would be that public spirit would die out in Ireland, while "fifteen or twenty couple of Irish members, might be found every session sleeping in their collars under the manger of the English minister." In 1797, with Grattan and other members, he retired, hopeless of being able to assuage revolution or stem the torrent of ministerial intrigue. It was at the Bar that Curran made his reputation as a brilliant orator, and his greatest flights of genius were in defence of the United Irishmen. He acted not alone as a paid counsel, but as a friend and adviser, sympathizing to a certain extent in their aspirations, and throwing his whole heart into their defence. On Hamilton Rowan's trial for seditious libel in 1793, he gave utterance to that well remembered apostrophe to the spirit of liberty, under which, on British soil, the slave "stands redeemed, regenerated, and disenthralled by the irresistible genius of universal emancipation." His last effort in the trials of 1798 was for Wolfe Tone. He was not in Parliament to oppose the Union, which measure threw a cloud over the rest of his life. He even contemplated emigration to the United States. He had no sympathy with Emmet in 1803, and was little prepared to make allowance for Emmet's having become privately engaged to his daughter Sarah. Curran's treatment of her was most severe, and she had to find a home among strangers. On Pitt's death in 1806, Curran was appointed Master of the Rolls for Ireland, a position for which he was not very well qualified, and which he held but for eight years—resigning in 1814 upon a pension of some £3,000 per annum. After his resignation of this office he resided much at his mansion in Brompton, where he enjoyed the society of Erskine, Home Tooke, Sheridan, the Prince Regent, Thomas Moore, and William Godwin. His latter days were embittered by domestic troubles. The depressed state of his mind may be gathered from one of his letters written at this period: "Everything I see disgusts and depresses me: I look back at the streaming of blood for so many years, and everything everywhere relapsed into its former degradation—France rechained, Spain again saddled for the priests, and Ireland, like a bastinadoed elephant, kneeling to receive the paltry rider." In the summer of 1817 he was attacked by paralysis at the table of his friend Thomas Moore, in London. After his return home, another attack supervened, and he succumbed in London, 14th October 1817, aged 67. A few days before his death, while dining with a friend, he hung down his head and burst into tears upon allusion being made to Irish politics. He was buried at Paddington; but his remains were in 1834 brought to Ireland and reinterred at Glasnevin, resting during the few days between their arrival and interment, in his friend Lord Cloncurry's mausoleum at Lyons. His own words were verified: "The last duties win be paid by that country on which they are devolved. Nor will it be for charity that a little earth will be given to my bones: tenderly will those duties be paid, as the debt of well-earned affection and of gratitude, not ashamed of her tears." His bust in St. Patrick's Cathedral is considered a striking likeness—one portraying the brilliancy of his talents. "Byron wrote of Curran: "The riches of his Irish imagination were exhaustless. I have heard that man speak more poetry than I have ever seen written, though I saw him seldom
119
