Grattan, of whom I have already written, had in the first Lord Plunket
a successor and a compatriot very little his inferior in the gift of
oratory.
He was born in 1764, and was therefore some fourteen years younger
than Grattan, whom he survived by thirty-four years.
Like Grattan, he displayed a burning patriotism and, like him, fiercely
opposed the Act of Union.
Few orators have displayed greater powers of clear reason and
convincing logic than Plunket. It may be admitted that he seldom rose
to great heights of eloquence, but tradition credits his delivery with a
quality of dignity amounting almost to majesty. The gift of oratory
consists in how things are said as much as in what things are said, and
the voice, gesture, and manner of Plunket were commanding and
magnificent.
When Attorney-General in Ireland, in 1823, in a speech prosecuting the
leaders of the riot known as "the Bottle Riot," Plunket uttered the
following fine tribute to the character of William the Third:--
"Perhaps, my lords, there is not to be found in the annals of
history a character more truly great than that of William the
Third. Perhaps no person has ever appeared on the theatre of the
world who has conferred more essential or more lasting benefits on
mankind; on these countries, certainly none. When I look at the
abstract merits of his character, I contemplate him with
admiration and reverence. Lord of a petty principality--destitute
of all resources but those with which nature had endowed
him--regarded with jealousy and envy by those whose battles he
fought; thwarted in all his counsels; embarrassed in all his
movements; deserted in his most critical enterprises--he continued
to mould all those discordant materials, to govern all these
warring interests, and merely by the force of his genius, the
ascendancy of his integrity, and the immovable firmness and
constancy of his nature, to combine them into an indissoluble
alliance against the schemes of despotism and universal
domination of the most powerful monarch in Europe, seconded by the
ablest generals, at the head of the bravest and best disciplined
armies in the world, and wielding, without check or control, the
unlimited resources of his empire. He was not a consummate
general; military men will point out his errors; in that respect
Fortune did not favour him, save by throwing the lustre of
adversity over all his virtues. He sustained defeat after defeat,
but always rose _adversa rerum immersabilis unda_. Looking merely
at his shining qualities and achievements, I admire him as I do a
Scipio, a Regulus, a Fabius; a model of tranquil courage,
undeviating probity, and armed with a resoluteness and constancy
in the cause of truth and freedom, which rendered him superior to
the accidents that control the fate of ordinary men.
"But this is not all--I feel that to him, under God, I am, at this
moment, indebted for the enjoyment of the rights which I possess
as a subject of these free countries; to him I owe the blessings
of civil and religious liberty, and I venerate his memory with a
fervour of devotion suited to his illustrious qualities and to
his godlike acts."
This is not so magnificent a panegyric as that of Grattan in his written
tribute to Chatham, but, enhanced by the gesture and voice of the
great orator, it was reputed to have left a deep impression upon all who
heard it.
But few speeches, however eloquent, survive, while the printed work of
the writer may long endure; but to the orator is given what the writer
never experiences--the fierce enjoyment, amounting almost to rapture,
of holding an audience entranced under the spell of the spoken
cadences; and English, Antony, has a splendour all its own when
uttered by a master of its august music.
Your loving old
G.P.
18