The Irish Volunteer. The Church. The Law.

Chapter VII

Choice of Profession.

The Army-Irish Volunteers described - Their military ardour - The author inoculated therewith - He grows cooler - The Church - The Faculty - The Law - Objections to each - Colonel Barrington removes his establishment to the Irish capital - A country gentleman taking up a city residence.

My veering opinion as to a choice of profession was nearly decided by that military ardour which seized all Ireland, when the whole country had entered into resolutions to free itself for ever from English domination. The entire kingdom took up arms, regiments were formed in every quarter, the highest, the lowest, and the middle orders, all entered the ranks of freedom, and every corporation, whether civil or military, pledged life and fortune to attain and establish Irish independence.

My father had raised and commanded two corps - a dragoon regiment called the Cullenagh Rangers, and the Ballyroan Light Infantry. My elder brother commanded the Kilkenny Horse and the Durrow Light Dragoons. The general enthusiasm caught me, and before I well knew what I was about, I found myself a military martinet and a red-hot patriot. Having been a university man, I was also considered to be, of course, a *writer, *and was accordingly called on to draw up resolutions for volunteer regiments all over the county.

This was the first tirade I ever attempted on a political subject; and it being quite short enough and warm enough to be comprehended by all the parties, it was unanimously adopted, every man swearing, as he kissed the blade of his sword, that he would adhere to these resolutions to the last drop of his blood, which he would by no means spare, till we had finally achieved the independence of our country. We were very sincere, and really, I think, determined to perish if necessary, in the cause-at least, I am sure, I was so.

The national point was gained, but not without much difficulty and danger. The Irish parliament had refused to grant supplies to the Crown for more than six months. The people had entered into resolutions to prevent the importation of any British merchandise or manufactures. The entire kingdom had disavowed all English authority or jurisdiction external or internal; the judges and magistrates had declined to act under British statutes: the flame had spread rapidly and had become irresistible.

The British Government saw that either temporising or an appeal to force would occasion the final loss of Ireland: 150,000 independent soldiers, well armed, well clothed, and well disciplined, were not to be coped with, and England yielded. Thus the volunteers kept their oaths: they redeemed their pledge, and did not lay down their arms until the independence of Ireland had been pronounced from the throne, and the distinctness of the Irish nation promulgated in the Government Gazette of London.

Having carried our point with the English, and having proposed to prove our independence by going to war with Portugal about our linens, we completely set up for ourselves, except that Ireland was bound, constitutionally and irrevocably, never to have any king but the King of Great Britain.

We were now, in fact, regularly in a fighting mood; and being quite in good humour with England, we determined to fight the French, who had threatened to invade us, and I recollect a volunteer belonging to one of my father’s corps, a schoolmaster of the name of Beal, proposing a resolution to the Ballyroan Infantry, which purported “that they would never stop fighting the French till they had flogged every man of them into mincemeat!” This magnanimous resolution was adopted with cheers, and was as usual *sworn to, *each hero kissing the muzzle of his musket.

I am not going any further into a history of those times, to which I have alluded in order to mention what, for the moment, excited my *warlike ardour, *and fixed my determination, although but temporarily, to adopt the military profession.

On communicating this decision to my father, he procured me, from a friend and neighbour, General Hunt Walsh, a commission in that officer’s own regiment, the 30th. The style of the thing pleased me very well; but, upon being informed that I should immediately join the regiment, in America, my heroic tendencies received a serious check. I had not contemplated transatlantic emigration, and feeling that I could get my head broken just as well in my own country, I, after a few days’ mature consideration, perceived my military ardour grow cooler and cooler every hour, until at length it was obviously defunct. I therefore wrote to the general a most thankful letter, but at the same time “begging the favour of him to present my commission in his regiment to some hardier soldier, who could serve his majesty with more vigour, as I, having been brought up by my grandmother, felt as yet too *tender *to be any way effective on foreign service, though I had no objection to fight as much as possible in Ireland, if necessary. The general accepted my resignation, and presented my commission to a young friend of his, whose brains were blown out in the very first engagement.

Having thus rejected the military, I next turned my thoughts to that very opposite profession, the clerical. But though preaching was certainly a much safer and more agreeable employment than bush-fighting, yet a curacy and a wooden leg being pretty much on a parallel in point of remuneration, and as I had the strongest objection to be half starved in the service of either the king or the altar, I also declined the cassock, assuring my father that “I felt I was not steady enough to make an ‘exemplary parson,’ and as any other kind of parson generally did more harm than good in a country, I could not, in my conscience, take charge of the morals of a flock of men, women, and children, when I should have quite enough to do to manage my own, and I should therefore leave the church to some more orthodoxical graduate.”

Medicine, therefore, was the next in the list of professions to which I had abstractedly some liking. I had attended several courses of anatomical lectures in Dublin, and, although with some repugnant feelings, I had studied that most sublime of all sciences, human organisation, by a persevering attention to the celebrated wax-works of that university. But my horror and disgust of *animal putridity *in all its branches was so great, inclusive even of stinking venison, which most people admire, that all surgical practice by me was necessarily out of the question, and medicine without surgery presenting no better chance than a curacy, it shared an equally bad fate with the sword and the pulpit.

Of the liberal and learned professions, there now remained but one, namely, the law. Now, as to this, I was told by several old practitioners, who had retired into the country, from having no business to do in town, that if I was even as wise as Alfred, or as learned as Lycurgus, nobody would give me sixpence for all my law, if I had a hundredweight of it, until I had spent at least 10 years in watching the manufacture. However, they consoled me by saying, that if I could put up with light eating and water-drinking during that period, I might then have a very reasonable chance of getting some briefs, particularly after having a gang of attorneys to dine with me. Here I was damped again! and though I should have broken my heart if condemned to remain much longer a walking gentleman, I determined to wait a while, and see if nature would open my propensities a little wider, and give me some more decisive indication of what she thought me fittest for.

Whilst in this comfortless state of indecision, my father, like other country gentlemen, to gratify his lady under the shape of educating his children, gave his consent to be launched into the new scenes and pleasures of a city residence. He accordingly purchased an excellent house in Clare Street, Merrion Square; left a steward in the country to mismanage his concerns there, made up new wardrobes for the servants, got a fierce three-cocked hat for himself, and removed his establishment, the hounds excepted, to the metropolis of Ireland.

Here my good and well-bred mother, for such she was, had her Galway pride revived and gratified, the green coach *de ceremonie *was regilt and regarnished, and four black horses, with two postilions and a sixteen-stone footman, completed her equipage.

I had my bit of blood in the stable; my elder brother, who had been in the 1st Horse, had plenty of them-my father had his old hunter, “brown Jack;” and we set out at what is commonly called a *great rate *- but which great rates are generally, like a fox-chase, more hot than durable. However; the thing went on well enough; and during our city residence many pleasurable and many whimsical incidents occurred to me and other individuals of my family; one of which was most interesting to myself, and will form a leading feature in my subsequent Memoirs.

Before adverting to this, however, I will mention a lamentable event which occurred during our stay in Clare Street to a neighbour of ours, Captain O’Flaherty, brother to Sir John, whom I shall hereafter notice. The captain resided nearly facing us, and though the event I speak of, and the very extraordinary incident which succeeded it, are clearly digressions, yet the whole story is so interesting, that I will, without further apology, introduce it.

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