ntenance of public right in a country, where every possession,
property, and principle of man comes continually in the shape of a
question of right, and where the true supremacy is in the law. But in
Ireland, the spirit of the nation compensated for the deficiency of
power in the law; and the bar was, _par excellence_, the profession of
the gentleman. This gave it the highest tone of personal manners. But it
had another incentive, still more characteristic. The House of Commons
was in the closest connexion with the bar. It was scarcely more than a
higher bar. All the principal men of that House had either been educated
for the profession, or were actually practising barristers; and as the
distinctions of the senate were more dazzling, as well as more rapidly
attainable, than those of the law, the force of the profession was
thrown into parliamentary life. The result was, a reflected influence on
both; the learning of the bar invigorating the logic of the debates, the
eloquence of the debates enriching and elevating the eloquence of the
courts of law. At this period the Courts abounded with eloquent men, who
would have been distinguished at any tribunal on earth; but, while some
might exhibit keener argument, and others more profound learning, the
palm of forensic eloquence was universally conceded to one. Need I
pronounce the name of Curran? Take him for all in all, he was the most
extraordinary example of natural faculties that I have ever known. All
the chief orators of that proud day of oratory had owed much to study,
much to circumstances, and much to the stimulus of great topics, a great
cause, and a great theatre for their display. When Burke spoke, he had
the world for his hearers.--He stood balancing the fates of empires; his
voice reached to the bosom of all the cabinets of civilized nations; and
with the office of a prophet, he almost inevitably adopted the majestic
language, and seized the awful and magnificent views of the prophet.
This is no depreciation of the powers of that immortal mind; for what
can be a higher praise than that, with the largest sphere of duty before
him perhaps ever opened to man, he was found equal to the fullness of
his glorious task? Sheridan, too, was awakened to a consciousness of his
own powers by the national voice raised against Indian delinquencies. He
had a subject teeming with the loftiest materials of oratory--the
sufferings of princes, the mysteries of Oriental superstition,