Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 06.pdf/484

 Duelling at the Irish Bar.

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DUELLING AT THE IRISH BAR. THE late Mr. John Edward Walsh, who was Attorney-General for Ireland in 1 866, and subsequently Master of the Rolls in Ireland till his death in 1869, wrote and published in 1840 a little book entitled " Ire land Sixty Years Ago," in which he directs attention to the practice of duelling at the Irish Bar towards the close of the last century. Many men at the Bar, Mr. Walsh says, practising fifty (one hundred) years ago, owed their eminence not to legal ability, but to their powers as duellists. Mr. Walsh relates that a contemporary of his own con sulted Dr. Hodgkinson, Vice-Provost of Trin ity College, Dublin, then a very old man, as to the best course of study to pursue, and whether he should begin with Fearne or Chitty. The Vice-Provost, who had long been secluded from the world, and whose observation was beginning to fail, immedi ately reverted to the time when he had him self been a young barrister, and his advice was: " My young friend, practise four hours a day in a pistol gallery, and it will advance you to the woolsack faster than all the Fearnes and Chittys in the library." Some noted instances of legal and judicial duelling in Ireland will be of interest. Mr. Curran, who became in 1806 Master of the Rolls in Ireland, while at the bar and a member of the Irish Parliament, fought a duel with Lord Buckingham, Chief Secretary for Ireland, because he declined to dismiss at his request a public officer. Mr. Curran also fought with the Attorney-General, Mr. FitzGibbon — the weapons being enormous pistols twelve inches long. Mr. FitzGibbon afterwards became Lord Chancellor of Ire land and Earl of Clare. His enmity drove Curran out of practice in the Court of Chan cery at a loss, according to his own estimate,

of £30,000. John Scott, who as Earl of Clonmel died in 1798, while Chief Justice of Ireland,

fought Lord Tyrawley and Lord Llandaff, and was a party in several other duels with swords and pistols. Marcus Patterson, who was a contemporary of the Earl of Clonmel, and was Chief Justice of the Irish Court of Common Pleas from 1800 till 1827, was Attorney-General from 1789 till 1800. He was so distinguished, during the turbulent period which preceded the Union, for his duelling propensities, that he was always the man depended on by the Government to frighten a member of the Opposition, and so rapid was his promotion, that it was said he " shot up " into preferment. When in 1826 the question of retirement from the judicial bench was mooted to Lord Norbury, whose mental and physical powers were clearly failing, he immediately produced from a case in his study a brace of duelling pistols, and threatened to challenge anyone who would venture to mention the matter in his presence. Mr. Hely-Hutchinson was a barrister of great eminence, and Prime Serjeant. The holder of this office took precedence in Ire land of the Attorney-General. When prac tising at the Bar he fought many duels. He was subsequently in 1774 appointed Provost of Trinity College, Dublin. He was anxious, when Provost, to establish and endow a professorship of the science of defence in the University of Dublin, and challenged and fought a Mr. Doyle, an Irish Master in Chancery. Those instances, recorded by Mr. Walsh in " Ireland Sixty Years Ago," and by Sir Jonah Barrington in his " Personal Recollec tions," are startling. Mr. Walsh only writes of what he had heard of the doings of a previous generation, but Sir Jonah Barrington, who lived in the Union period, testifies to what he had seen. Sir Jonah was himself Judge of the Irish Court of Admiralty, and a far-famed duellist.