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oner of note through the years of terror with a shock to the judicial mind. They which ran from 1790 to 1805. are magnificent; but they are not law. In After the Union his interest in politics 1812 he resigned his office and retired to waned. The discovery of the truth of the London, where he died in 1817. French statesman's estimate of the com Curran's is by far the most interesting mercial value of a man's opinions was not personality haunting the Four Courts. Some one that brought to " honest Jack Curran " a of his competitors have excelled in crossdesire for further political insight. He was examination, others in denunciation, others content to wait till the change of govern in persuasive reasoning. Curran alone ex celled in all. He could ment in 1806 put his i unravel the most in party into power and genious web which himself into place. perjury ever spun, Some discussion could seize on every seems to have taken fault and inconsis place ere Curran's fu tency, and build on ture position was de them a denunciation termined. Grattan terrible in its earnest suggested, with un wonted levity, that he ness; could cajole a jury into a verdict should be raised to when every point of the episcopal bench. common law and com He was, in fact, made mon-sense seemed ar Master of the Rolls, rayed against him. and it is doubtful Chief among Cur which office was less ran's contemporaries suitable. was Charles Kendal We have the au Bushe, who has almost thority of his mother entirely escaped the that " Jacky was born biographer. Bushe to be a bishop," and had every talent save on this point she is that of self-advertise certainly entitled to ment, and so became a hearing. We have CHARLES KENDAL BUSHE. nothing greater than the opinion of all his a Chief-Justice, — a biographers that on the Equity bench he was manifestly out of post generally reserved for those who have just fallen short of greatness. The son place. The political enmity of the Chancellor of a clergyman in a lucrative living, Bushe Lord Clare had driven Curran to the Nisi knew nothing of the res angnsta domi Prius and Criminal courts. It was almost which hampered and crippled Curran. In impossible that the Advocate should at the 1782, being fifteen years old, he entered end of such a life take up with success the Trinity College; and when he left it no one, unimpassioned task of weighing points of save Bushe himself, doubted that a few years Equity. Hence Curran took with him to would see him high in place and power. Pie the Rolls Court something of the atmos was called to the bar in 1790, and at once phere of his earlier years. sprang into fair practice. Seven years later he entered parliament, Many of his judgments read like appeals and in 1799 was offered a seat in the Cabinet to a jury, and some of his decisions come