scribed the claim of Great Britain to make laws for
Ireland as "a daring usurpation of the rights of a free people."

For some time longer there was no actual breach between him and Grattan.
Grattan supported the appointment of Fitzgibbon as attorney-general in
1783, and in 1785 the latter highly eulogized Grattan's character and
services to the country in a speech in which he condemned Flood's
volunteer movement. He also opposed Flood's Reform Bill of 1784; and
from this time forward he was in fact the leading spirit in the Irish
government, and the stiffest opponent of all concession to popular
demands. In 1784 the permanent committee of revolutionary reformers in
Dublin, of whom Napper Tandy was the most conspicuous, invited the
sheriffs of counties to call meetings for the election of delegates to
attend a convention for the discussion of reform; and when the sheriff
of the county of Dublin summoned a meeting for this purpose Fitzgibbon
procured his imprisonment for contempt of court, and justified this
procedure in parliament, though Lord Erskine declared it grossly
illegal. In the course of the debates on Pitt's commercial propositions
in 1785, which Fitzgibbon supported in masterly speeches, he referred to
Curran in terms which led to a duel between the two lawyers, when
Fitzgibbon was accused of a deliberation in aiming at his opponent that
was contrary to etiquette. His antagonism to Curran was life-long and
bitter, and after he became chancellor his hostility to the famous
advocate was said to have driven the latter out of practice. In January
1787 Fitzgibbon introduced a stringent bill for repressing the Whiteboy
outrages. It was supported by Grattan, who, however, procured the
omission of a clause enacting that any Roman Catholic chapel near which
an illegal oath had been tendered should be immediately demolished. His
influence with the majority in the Irish parliament defeated Pitt's
proposed reform of the tithe system in Ireland, Fitzgibbon refusing even
to grant a committee to investigate the subject. On the regency question
in 1789 Fitzgibbon, in opposition to Grattan, supported the doctrine of
Pitt in a series of powerful speeches which proved him a great
constitutional lawyer; he intimated that the choice for Ireland might in
certain eventualities rest between complete separation from England and
legislative union; and, while he exclaimed as to the latter alternative,
"God forbid that I should ever see