relative and register being provided for through the Consolidated Nisi Prius court, the chief justice shall be induced to retire? Fancy the Right Hon. James bellowing, as is his style, in the Queens' Bench, as chief justice at the bar; and Francis Fitzgerald, and Mr. Brewster roaring, as they will be forced to do, in the Court of Chancery, at the Right Hon. Joseph on the bench. Fancy Macdonough, and Armstrong, and O'Hagan, and John Thomas Ball, and David Lynch, and Sullivan, taking their LAW from James Whiteside. It will be the most laughable thing in the world, and will recall the gay days when Dan and Chief Baron O'Grady used to make the Exchequer better value than Hawkins-street: or when, later, Doherty kept his court (no his audience) in roars at his mixture of wit concealing his want of law, and with a drollery sufficient to make the fortunes of half-a-dozen comedians. Thus between the man who has some law, could he hear the facts to which it is to be applied, and the man who has no law to apply to the cases which he can hear, the Queen's Bench and Court of Chancery in Ireland will present, in due time, objects of the most intense interest to a genuine Pantagruelist, as they will remind him continually of that famous third book treating of the sayings and doings of the good Pantagruel, and of those immortal lawyers and judges, Goatsnose who was deaf, and that voluble Bridlegoose, who was ignorant and insolent: and when justice Bridlegoose, we beg pardon, Chief Justice, that is to be, Whiteside, shall be set before us as having often carried Judges with him when at the bar by the aid of his juniors; and when he shall as judge, have decided cases with the help of his puisnès, what can we say but that Rabelais was right when, referring to the decisions of Bridlegoose he makes Pantagruel say, " In good sooth, such a perpetuity of good luck is to be wondered at. To have hit right twice or thrice in a judgment so given by hap-hazard might have fallen out well enough, especially in controversies that were ambigious, intricate, abstruse, perplexed, and obscure."

But it will be said, Whiteside is a legislator, a great reformer of our law as administered in Ireland. This, my dear friend, I deny. I know that with the help of English acts of Parliament, and through the aid of Mr. William Dwyer Ferguson, Mr. Whiteside has introduced some legal alterations; but if I called a monkey Romilly, or if I nick

named an ape Brougham, would these names make either monkey or ape a Samuel Romilly or a Harry Brougham, even though I should be able to make them Attorney Generals or Chief Justices, or Chancellors.

There was a time when a judgship, or any other high legal office, was the right of a great lawyer; of one who had worked through the hard, stern, iron realities of his profession. In those old days men felt the full force of that grand truth proclaimed by Terrasson in his eulogy on D'Aguesseau,-"Quand la vertu sort victorieuse de tels combats, elle n'a besoin d'autres épreuves; il ne lui faut que des couronnes. Celle qui est due à tant de travaux, ne s'est pas fait attendre long-temps." Now the great legal posts are the rewards of faction, the marks of gratitude for unscrupulous support; and I am firmly convinced that if any man were now living, who combined in himself all the learning of Coke, all the ability of Blackstone, all the scholarship of Mansfield, all the practical knowledge of Chitty, and all the powers of advocacy of Erskine, of Brougham, of Scarlett, of Thesiger and of O'Connell, JAMES WHITESIDE would be secure of any legal position before such man, even though he were of the faction, but out of Parliament!

Having secured the services of Napier, Whiteside, Ilayes and Co., it became necessary to inflict silk gowns on the bar, and accordingly various names were set floating about the Courts. At last it was evident that "a fell," a very "fell swoop" upon the value of the silk gown, was about to be made by the man of all others who should uphold its worth and dignity, by the Chancellor, by that high-minded, exemplary, most pious and most God-fearing man, Joseph Napier.

Having, like Geoffrey Wildgoose, in The Spiritual Quixote, "wrestled with the Lord in prayer," he resolved to call no less than twelve of the outer to the inner bar; and these following were the names given to the public:-Charles Andrews, Edward Burroughs, Hedges Eyre Chatterton, William C. Dobbs, M. P., Thomas Rice Henn, William C. Henderson, Charles Kelly, Alexander Norman, Henry Ormsby, Edward Pennefather, Edward Sullivan, and Robert R. Warren. Admitting that every one of these gentlemen was fully entitled to a silk gown, but in fact Sullivan, Chatterton and Norman, were the only men of the number entitled to it, and they were fully entitled to it, from business, does it not strike any Irish lawyer as disgraceful to Chancellor Napier that

he should of himself, or through the instigation of others, call eleven men, all of one religion, and pretty much of one political creed, in one day to the inner bar.

To be sure Mr. Charles Kelly, a Catholic, was called, and made up the dozen. Mr. Charles Kelly is a very respectable gentleman, a man who does not depend for support upon his profession, a member of the Kildare-street club, and therefore will never degrade his gown, and will always keep his wig as white, and his silk as glossy as they look this moment, whilst he sits before us shining, glistening, and rustling, fresh from the hands of his Four Courts' dressing room; but I believe there is not a Catholic in Ireland who will regard Mr. Kelly's call as an acknowledgement of any principle of selection, or as shewing any desire in the Chancellor to recognize the Liberal Bar.

But, it has been said, and I hear, by Chancellor Napier," Brady promoted every man upon the Liberal side who should have been promoted, and a good many who should not have received the silk gown were called to the Inner Bar." As this topic has been very frequently pressed by the newspapers believed to be under the inspiration, or dictation of the Chancellor, and of the AttorneyGeneral, it is right that it should be noticed at some length; and the following article from The Dublin Evening Post of Thursday, May 27th, supplies an answer to the most important portion of the objections:

"QUEEN'S COUNSEL- PERSONAL AND FAMILY NEPOTISM.' The Daily Express-the organ of Messrs. NAPIER and WHITESIDE availing itself of the convenient testimony of what it designates a paper of ultra-Liberal politics"— a species of evidence ready on all occasions for the sustainment of the intolerant party now in office-lauds the present Lord Chancellor as a model judge, and thus concludes, referring to the new batch of Queen's Counsel:

We agree with our contemporary, that the rule of legal promotion amongst us has hitherto notoriously been that of political partisanship or personal and family nepotism,' and it is impossible that the Lord Chancellor can speedily make full reparation for the injurious operation of such a rule, extending over a period of six or seven years; but in the list of names which we have published the Chancellor

gives an earnest of his desire to yield to the voice of the public and the profession, and to promote real merit, irrespective of party or politics.'

We shall show, by-and-by, that the less said the better, in this case, about real merit irrespective of party or politics,' so far as a portion of the names in the new list is concerned.

Considering the close relations between the Lord Chancellor and the Daily Express, and giving credit to his Lordship for good sense and feelings of common courtesy, we think he could scarcely have sanctioned the publication of so wanton, so imprudent, and so utterly groundless an attack upon his iminediate predecessor in the distinguished office which he had the rare good fortune so lately to obtain. We shall show, by dates, names, and facts, that never was there a more untrue charge than that hazarded against the late Chancellor, Mr. Maziere Brady; and, furthermore, we shall show that the imputation so wrongly directed against him can, with much more warrant of truth, be applied to Mr. Napier himself.

Mr. Brady first held the Irish Seals from 1846 to 1852, and during that period the following members of the Bar were called as Queen's Counsel :

Thus, from 1846 to 1852-a period of fully six years

Feb. 13, 1849.

...

May, 23, 1850.

Mr. Maziere Brady had nominated but seventeen members of the Bar as Queen's Counsel. Does the list of those seventeen names exhibit any evidence or even indication of that political partisanship or personal and family nepotism' with which he has been so unjustly accused by the organ of his successor? Does that list manifest any tendency on his part to reject real merit, irrespective of party or politics?' The direct contrary will be admitted even by his most strenuous political opponents; for he selected men of standing and established reputation, most of whom occupy a high position at the profession, and several of whom are leaders in Dublin, and upon their circuits.

Mr. Brady again held the Irish Seals from 1853 to 1858-upwards of five years-during which the following gentlemen were called to the Inner Bar:

Is there, we ask, a single name in the list to which any man at all acquainted with the Bar could object, upon professional or any other ground? In eleven years and a half Mr. MAZIERE BRADY had nominated twenty-nine Queen's Counsel. The entire of the names we have now placed before the public. With the exception of a few who have left the Bar for Parliament, or other causes, or been removed by death, those gentlemen are now engaged in the duties of the profession-most of them occupying the highest positions, and enjoying the rewards of complete success. It is a list upon which the late Chancellor may look back with pride, as containing evidences of the strict impartiality and sound judgment which had dictated his selections. The majority are Conservatives; but Liberals