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 LORD O'HAGAN again appointed Lord High Chancellor for Ireland, but owing to failing health he resigned finally in 1881. There was no such demonstration on his resuming the Chan cellorship as occurred when he first took the office, but on his retiring the same graceful amenities as marked his earlier retirement were to be witnessed. From 1 88 1 Lord O'Hagan's health gradually sank. He tried Biarritz, but in vain, and died in London on the first of February7, 1885, in his 73rd year, surrounded by his family. He was unconscious for some time before death. He died on a Sunday, a fitting day for the passing into his eternal rest of this great and good man. As we gently close the door on the chamber of death, we cannot but remember the estimate of his character left by one who knew him well: "Pure and noble in his private life, he met with great sorrows as with great prosperity,— sorrow he bore with resignation, prosperity without pride." After he had retired for the second time from the Chancellorship he was made a Knight Companion of St. Patrick, being the first lawyer who ever wore the ribbon of this order. He was also made an honorary bencher of Gray's Inn. He was already a Commissioner of National Education, a Commissioner of Charitable Donations and Bequests, a Privy Councillor for Ireland, Senator of Queen's University, and Vice Chancellor of the Royal University, of Ireland. Lord O'Hagan lies buried at Glasnevin. There is a fine oil painting of him in the King's Inns dining room, and a noble statue by Farrell in the Central Hall of the Four Courts. In 1871 Lord O'Hagan had remarried, this time to Alice Mary, youngest daughter and co-heiress of Colonel Towneley, by whom he had several children, one of whom is the present Lord O'Hagan. The Towneleys were zealous upholders of the Catholic faith even during the severity of the Penal Laws. Lord O'Hagan, on account of his courtly manner and persuasive style, was known as "Silken Thomas," a name alreaclv familiar

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to readers of Irish history, though for a very different reason, as the sobriquet of Lord Thomas Fitzgerald. The title was not undeserved by O'Hagan. The patience with which he bore the unremitting attacks of Lord Justice Christian, during his first Chancellorship, would entitle him without more to this somewhat whimsical appella tion. Lord O'Hagan was a distinguished patron and friend of the Law Students' Debating Society of Ireland. For ten years he gave the gold and silver medals for oratory, which have been continued under his name up to this date. The Law Times in reviewing his life makes these remarks : "The career of Lord O'Hagan, rightly read, is pregnant with lessons to the most bitterly prejudiced of our compatriots in Ireland. He was a Roman Catholic, he identified himself with the Repeal Associa tion, he defended O'Connell when he and others were indicted for conspiracy, he defended Father Petcherine against the prosecution of the Crown, he defended the Phoenix conspirators who were the pre cursors of the Fenians. Notwithstanding all this, he passed from one high office to another, until he at length found himself one of the very few Roman Catholic Peers in the kingdom who had been created since the Emancipation Act. All this is natural and proper. There is no govern ment in the world which recognizes more clearly than England that a man is not to be punished but rather rewarded for fearless conduct in his professional career. But there is a certain nobility in the recognition which in this case is conspicuous and exem plary; and it would not be amiss if Irishmen were taught to appreciate what is in England regarded as a matter of course, the fact that administrations honor substantially no less than cordially professional excellence, irre spective of the cause in which it is dis played." We may mention also that O'Hagan's early experience is a proof of the gen erosity of his fellow scholars, who, far