1839.] Henry Grattan. Part II. 531
ber for the University, and a vacancy being thus created, the Provost pushed his son into his place. However, the most fortunate have some rubs in their career. His system had been too precipitate with the electors, (to use the gentlest phrase;) a scrutiny was demanded, his son was thrown out, and he had the additional mortification to see him succeeded by Fitz-Gibbon, (afterwards Earl of Clare and Lord Chancellor,) and who had been one of Tisdall's counsel.
Hutchinson died in 1795, singularly fortunate in his career, having founded a family, and being the father of two peers, his eldest son possessing the title of Lord Donoughmore, and his second son, General Hutchinson, gallantly earning his peerage by the defeat of the French in Egypt. The fact was, that the only grand mistake of Hutchinson's life was the work of his love of place; the provostship of a learned university was the last situation which a man of his habits should have chosen. The seat was formed for a Churchman, as the head of a college, all whose fellows, with one or two exceptions, were necessarily in holy orders. Having been founded expressly for the maintenance of the Protestant religion in the land, it was evidently unsuited to a layman, and that layman a bustling, intriguing, ambitious man of the world. He besides wanted the exact literature and science which were required to preside at the public examinations, and other essential business of the college. This want, especially, exposed him to scorn among the fellows, and became the source of constant ridicule. A volume by his old enemy Duiguenan, entitled "Lachrymæ Academicæ," was a long and bitter burlesque of his literary deficiencies. But the provostship was three thousand pounds a-year, and the college returned two members to Parliament. Those were strong temptations. They were evidently too strong for his prudence, and equally so for his peace. The chief discomforts of his latter years arose from them; and, singularly fortunate as his general life had been, his headship of the reluctant university might supply an important lesson to avarice and ambition, if either the one or the other was ever within the reach of experience, or reclaimable by human wisdom.
Grattan's entrance into Parliament is thenceforth an era in the history of his country. He took his seat, for the first time, on the 11th of December 1775, for the borough of Charlemont, in which the death of the carl's brother, who was drowned in the Irish Channel, had left a vacancy. Thus the great Irish Whig, like all the leading English ones, was indebted to the borough system, which they made a hypocritical theme of libel, for the very opportunity of uttering the libel. No popular constituency in Ireland at that time would have received Grattan, simply a young barrister, without fortune or public notoriety. But what the multitude and the Reform Bill never would have done for him, was done by an amiable and intelligent man of rank, possessed of just influence, and exerting it with an honesty and a discrimination which will never be found, to the end of time, in the corrupt and brawling crowd of the ten-pounders of a great town. The members now chosen for London, Dublin, and Edinburgh, the three capitals of the empire, are sufficient proofs of the utter inadequacy of the Reform Bill to provide qualified representatives, and of the sure victory of the vulgar, the time-serving, and the revolutionary. Thanks to the mischiefs concocted by the native virulence and long festering venom of old Lord Grey, aided by the fresh bile of his son-in-law Lord Durham, and put in action by the meagre servility of the menial of both, Lord John Russell!
In 1777, Fox visited Ireland, and happened to hear Grattan in the House. Afterwards, meeting him at dinner at Lord Moira's, (afterwards Marquis of Hastings,) lie complimented the young orator on his speech, and quoted some of the passages with compliment. This instance of Fox's habitual politeness made a great impression on him, and probably afterwards constituted one of his strongest links to Whiggism. The newspapers, too, gave him due encouragement; the verdict of one seems to have been adopted by the whole:—"Mr Grattan spoke—not a studied speech, but in reply—the spontaneous flow of natural eloquence. Though so young a man, he spoke without hesitation: and, if he keeps to this example, will be a valuable weight in the scale of patriotism." That Grattan spoke
