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THE CABINET

OF

IRISH LITERATURE.

PERIOD A.D. 1730-1800.

HENRY FLOOD.

BORN 1732-DIED 1791.

Kilkenny, his native county-a seat which he exchanged for that of Callan, in the same county, in the new parliament of 1761. The time of his entrance on political life was a critical one in the history of his country. Bribery and corruption were rife, and the house was so much under the control of the British government that its independence was only in

[Henry Flood, one of that illustrious group | in the Irish House of Commons as member for of Irish orators who flourished in the latter half of the eighteenth century, was the son of the Right Hon. Warden Flood, Chief-justice of the Court of King's Bench in Ireland, and was born in 1732, in the family mansion near Kilkenny. He was early sent to school, on leaving which he entered Trinity College, Dublin, where he stayed but a short time, and about 1749 was sent to Oxford. Here, how-name. Flood took a bold stand against this ever, he made little progress in his education. state of affairs, and he soon formed a party His handsome figure and agreeable manners, who advocated the freedom of the Irish Parliacoupled with the expectation of succeeding to ment, and sought to overthrow the prevailing a large fortune, gave him easy access to a system of bribery. He became eminently discertain portion of fashionable society, and left tinguished for his eloquence, and the zeal and him too much inclined to neglect the mental perseverance with which he advocated every culture which could alone fit him to occupy an measure that he regarded as beneficial to his honourable position in the world. His tutor country. He endeavoured to obtain the repeal Dr. Markham, afterwards Archbishop of York, of a law dating from the time of Henry VII., endeavoured to stimulate his pupil's ambition called Poynings' law, by which the British in the right direction by introducing him government had the power of altering or reamong men of education, where he might be- jecting all the bills of the Irish legislature. come sensible of his inferiority. The plan was He succeeded in carrying the octennial bill, successful: the young man's amour-propre was by which the duration of any parliament was touched, and he now devoted the greater part limited to eight years, a reform which was of his time to real work with so much assiduity considered of great political advantage to Ireand success, that ere long he could take a share land; and he strenuously advocated the estabin those literary discussions which before he lishment of a native militia in Ireland as a had dreaded. To the study of the exact balance against the presence of a standing army. sciences he added that of the Greek and Latin After leading the opposition for some years, authors, more especially of the orators. At Flood changed his tactics, alternately supportthe end of two years he graduated, and im- ing or opposing the measures brought forward mediately after entered his name in the Temple, by successive administrations up to 1780, where he remained for several years engaged as he considered them beneficial or otherwise; in the study of the law. and this line of conduct no doubt frequently drew upon him the charge of political inconsistency. In 1774 he had accepted the lucra

Flood's parliamentary career began in 1760, when he returned to Ireland and took his seat

VOL. II.

22

tive post of one of the Vice-treasurers of Ireland, but it was only on condition of maintaining his principles, and when he found this no longer possible he resigned in 1781, and appeared once more as the opponent of government. But the old fervour of his eloquence, so long dormant, seemed slow to rouse, and he is said never to have spoken again with the power he had done in earlier days. About this time Yelverton brought in a bill for the repeal of Poynings' law, and Flood, while supporting the measure, complained that "after a service of twenty years in the study of this particular question," it had now been taken out of his hands. "The honourable gentleman is erecting a temple of Liberty," he said; "I hope that at least I shall be allowed a niche in the fane." Yelverton replied by reminding him that in law "if a man should separate from his wife, desert, and abandon her for seven years, another might then take her and give her his protection."

The opposition in the Irish House of Commons was now possessed of two leaders, and the natural result ensued. Flood and Grattan quarrelled: the more violent of the party sided with Flood, the more moderate with Grattan, and several passages of arms took place in the house. One of these occurred in 1783, and was carried to a degree of animosity seldom equalled. Grattan, fixing his eyes upon Flood, exclaimed, "You have great talents, but you have infamously sold them! for years you have kept silence that you might make gain! I declare before your country, before the whole world, before yourself, that you are a dishonest man!" Flood replied, but such was the strain of his invective that the speaker interfered, and only allowed his justification to be made several days afterwards.

After this period the party adhering to Grattan gradually gained ascendency, and Flood turned his thoughts to England. Through the influence of the Duke of Chandos he became member for Winchester, and took his seat in the British House of Commons in December, 1783. Owing to the reputation which he had acquired in Ireland, great things were expected from him. But his first appearance proved a failure, and this ever after crippled his success. Entering the house towards the end of an important debate on Mr. Fox's East India Bill, and when tired by a long journey, he was imprudent enough to attempt to speak on a subject of which at the very outset he confessed himself ignorant. His vigour failed him; his speech was tedious and awkward in

delivery, though correct enough in diction; his eloquence seemed utterly to have left him, and he could only produce dry worn-out arguments, based on general principles, and not on warm living facts.

Soon after this, and before he had time to recover his reputation, a dissolution of parliament took place, and the Duke of Chandos refusing his support, Flood betook himself to the borough of Seaford. In the new parliament he made several weighty and successful speeches, and was fast acquiring a good position in the house, when in 1790 he made the false move of introducing a reform bill. The time was most inopportune, as revolution and not reform was what was hoped for on one side and feared on the other. As a consequence the two great parties combined against him at the next election, and he was left without a seat. Stung to the quick, and suffering at the same time from an attack of gout, he retired to his estate of Farmley near Kilkenny. At this place a fire broke out, and, though still suffering from illness, in the excitement he exposed himself, and was attacked by pleurisy, which carried him off on the 2d of December, 1791.

In 1763 Flood had married Lady Frances Beresford, a lady who brought him fortune as well as a wide and influential connection. In 1769, whilst member for Callan, he had an unfortunate dispute with his colleague Mr. Agar, and in a duel which ensued the latter was killed. For this Flood was tried and acquitted at the spring assizes of 1770 in Kilkenny. By his will he bequeathed property to the value of £5000 to the University of Dublin, but this bequest was ultimately set aside by an appeal to the law of mortmain, and his descendants now hold the property.

As an orator Flood has been as highly praised by his friends as he has been fiercely blamed by his enemies; but there must have been no small charm in his eloquence when it made his audience forget his rasping voice and irritating habit of lowering it at the end of his sentences. On this point an old biographer says, "The eloquence of Flood was remarkable for the force of its reasoning, for the purity and richness of its style, full of images and of classic allusions. He showed to more advantage in reply than in attack: woe indeed to the adversary who provoked his sarcasm!" However famous he was in his native parliament, there can be no doubt that he was there soon overshadowed by the towering figure of Grattan, between whom and Flood there were few things in common. Grattan's moving

power was an enthusiastic love of country and a poetic nature, while Flood's was to a great extent vanity, although it must be admitted that he was a warm and undeviating lover of truth and honesty. As an author Flood at intervals dallied with the muses. While at Oxford he wrote a poem on the death of Frederick, Prince of Wales, one stanza of which was afterwards echoed by Gray in his Elegy. His Pindaric Ode to Fame is nervous and vigorous, and his poem on the discovery of America contains several good passages. In addition to original work, he also translated two speeches of schines, and the Crown Oration of Demosthenes, after the latter of whom he tried to model his own style.

Mr. W. E. H. Lecky, in his Leaders of Public Opinion in Ireland, says of Flood:"There is something inexpressibly melancholy in the life of this man. . . . Though he attained to a position which, before him, had been unknown in Ireland; though the unanimous verdict of his contemporaries pronounced him to be one of the greatest intellects that ever adorned the Irish Parliament; and though there is not a single act of his life which may not be construed in a sense perfectly in harmony with honour and with patriotism, yet his career presents one long series of disappointments and reverses. At an age when most statesmen are in the zenith of their influence he sunk into political impotence. The party he had formed discarded him as its leader. The reputation he so dearly prized was clouded and assailed; the principles he had sown germinated and fructified indeed, but others reaped their fruit; and he is now scarcely remembered except as the object of a powerful invective in Ireland, and as an example of a deplorable failure in England. A few pages of oratory, which probably at best only represent the substance of his speeches, a few youthful poems, a few laboured letters, and a biography so meagre and unsatisfactory that it scarcely gives us any insight into his character, are all that remain of Henry Flood."]

FLOOD'S REPLY TO GRATTAN'S
INVECTIVE.1

I rise, sir, in defence of an injured character; and when I recall the aspersions of that night, while I despise them, they shall be

1 A speech delivered in the Irish parliament in 1783 in reply to the attack on him by Mr. Grattan.

recalled only to be disproved. As I have endeavoured to defend the rights of this country for four-and-twenty years, I hope the house will permit me to defend my reputation. My public life, sir, has been divided into three parts-and it has been despatched by three epithets. The first part, that which preceded Lord Harcourt's administration; the next, which passed between Lord Harcourt's and Lord Carlisle's; and the third, which is subsequent. The first has a summary justice done it by being said to be "intemperate,”—the second is treated in like manner by being said to be "venal," and the conduct of the third is said to be that of an "incendiary."

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With respect to that period of my life which is despatched by the word "intemperate," I beg the house would consider the difficult situation of public men if such is to be their treatment. That period takes in a number of administrations, in which the public were pleased to give me the sentence of their approbation. Sir, it includes, for I wish to speak to facts, not to take it up on epithets, the administrations of the Duke of Bedford, Lord Halifax, the Duke of Northumberland, Lord Hertford, and Lord Townshend. Now, sir, as to the fact of "intemperate," I wish to state to you how that stands, and let the honourable member see how plain a tale will put him down. Of those five administrations there were three to which I was so far from giving an "intemperate" opposition, that I could not be said in any sense of the word to oppose them at all-I mean the three first. I certainly voted against the secretary (Mr. Hamilton) of the day, but oftener voted with him. In Lord Hertford's administration I had attained a certain view, and a decided opinion of what was fit in my mind to be done for Ireland. I had fixed on three great objects of public utility. I endeavoured to attain them with that spirit and energy with which it is my character and nature to act and to speak,- -as I must take the disadvantages of my nature, I will take the advantages of it too, they were resisted by that administration. What was the consequence? A conflict arose between that administration and me: but that conflict ought not to be called opposition on my part; no, it ought rather to be called opposition on theirs. I was the propounder--they resisted my propositions. This may be called a conflict with, not an opposition to that administration. What were those three great objects? One was to prove that the constitution of parliament in this kingdom

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