has been shown me, may still have some friends at the Bar, who may care to hear about him. And, moreover, it is not impossible that, in the event of these pages finding their way to the other side of St. George's Channel, the life of the first Catholic since the Revolution who has forced his way to the English Bench-in the teeth of prejudices, now happily dead and buried, but formidable while they lived-may possess some interest for readers of his own religion and race.

Having said this, I will now set myself to the task which I have undertaken.

William Shee was born on the 24th of June, 1804, at Finchley, in Middlesex, and was the eldest son of Mr. Joseph Shee, a native of the county Kilkenny, and a merchant in the City of London. He was sent at a very early age to a French school, at Somers Town, kept by the Abbé Carron, a man of some note in his day, but who is now chiefly remembered as the friend, and early counsellor in things spiritual, of the celebrated Lamennais. From this he went, in the year 1818, to Ushaw, near Durham, where his cousin Nicholas (afterwards Cardinal) Wiseman was then a student; and having remained there some years, he afterwards spent a portion of the years 1823-24 in reading and attending lectures at Edinburgh, which was at that time, as I need scarcely tell the reader, a great centre of intellectual life. Being intended for the Bar, and, above all things bent upon becoming a speaker, he here joined the "Speculative Society," a society which holds in Edinburgh the place which the "Historical Society" holds in Dublin, and has been equally fertile in

great orators.

Speaking at a dinner given by this society, in the year 1863, to celebrate the commencement of its hundredth session, Serjeant Shee is reported to have said :

"I much fear that if the records of the Speculative Society were searched, little evidence would be found of anything respecting me, except that I was a good listener. But good listeners at eighteen or nineteen years of age are, perhaps, those who derive the most benefit from such societies; and you who know who my contemporaries in the Speculative Society were, will readily believe my assurance, that the early promise which they gave of the excellence which they afterwards attained, and of their distinction in professional and political life, was among the great incentives which I have had to associate with the studies of a laborious profession, an endeavour -it has been no more—to cultivate that noble art of which it has been well said by one of its greatest masters, that in all free states it has always flourished, and always maintained its supremacy.

"When I joined the Speculative Society, in, I think, the year 1823, we had very distinguished names upon our roll. Not to speak of Henry Brougham or the Scottish members of the Society, there were

on the roll the names of Lansdowne and of Russell, who even at that time were famous, who afterwards became illustrious, and whose example was well calculated to kindle in the breasts of young men a noble emulation not to let them get quite out of sight in the race of public usefulness and distinction.

"In that year" (he goes on to say), "the University of Edinburgh claimed as its members a greater number of eminent men than have been assembled, probably, at any seat of learning, whether of ancient or modern times. Omitting the professors of the various branches. of medical science, who attracted from all parts of the civilized world students to their classes, the chairs were occupied by Irving, Bell, Hope, Jamieson, Leslie, Wilson, and Wallace. The ornaments of the Bar were Cockburn, Jeffrey, Cranstoun, Hope, and Moncrieff. With the exception of one of the magnificent speeches pronounced by our noble chairman, at the bar of the House of Lords, in the Queen's trial, and of the last speech uttered in that assembly by Lord Erskine, my notions of forensic eloquence were formed upon the examples of those distinguished Scottish advocates, and I very much. doubt if, among the eloquent and able advocates whom I have heard in England, and with whom I have struggled, I have ever found men superior to them."

In the year 1828 he was called to the Bar, at Lincoln's Inn (after having been a pupil of Mr. Chitty, the special pleader), and at once joined the Home Circuit and the Kent Sessions. In the October of this year he made his first appearance in public at a meeting convened at Penenden Heath, near Maidstone, by the High Sheriff of Kent, upon a requisition signed by many Kentish notabilities and members of the Brunswick Club, "for the purpose of petitioning Parliament to adopt such measures as might be best calculated to support the Protestant establishment of the United Kingdom in Church and State "-in other words, for the purpose of protesting against Catholic emancipation.

The Brunswick Club is now chiefly remembered as having called forth Moore's amusing verses, beginning

"Private.-Lord Belzebub pr sents

To the Brunswick Club his compliments,
And much regrets to say that he

Cannot at present their patron be.”

And as for the meeting upon Penenden Heath, it would probably long since have been forgotten but for Richard Lalor Shiel's magnificent speech, one of the finest-in my judgment, the finest-ever spoken by that great orator.

With regard to the speech which William Shee delivered

These distinguished men had, of course, left Edinburgh at this time, but their fame still clung about the place.

† Lord Brougham.

upon this occasion, it, of course, abounds with big words, fullblown adjectives, and other juvenile defects. Nevertheless, it possesses one very unjuvenile merit. Its arguments are all drawn from the carcers of men present at the meeting, or, at least, well known to the audience. Its illustrations have all a local colouring and application. It appeals not to general principles of justice, but to particular instances of hardship. For example, instead of talking about the "dignity of humanity," or the "eternal fitness of things," he describes the early military career, during the American war, of Lord Harris, who had signed the requisition for the meeting, and whose son was present at it: and then goes on thus

"Now, gentlemen, I put it fairly to you-I beg Mr. Harris to put it to his father-if, when thus distinguished in early life, the fatal Llight, the destructive mildew of religious bigotry had crossed his path, blasting his early hopes, and condemning him to wander, un noticed and unknown, a poor, old, withered subaltern through life, what would be his feelings, what the loss to his country?"

Now, I say, that this was the right way to speak to a local audience, composed of men of all ranks and classes; and I further contend, that it is emphatically not the way in which two young men out of ten would have spoken. For is it not true that a big general proposition is far sweeter to the tongue at twenty-four than a lollypop is at seven, and that when we speak, we think a great deal of showing off, and very little of persuading? Whether this speech, and another which was pronounced the same evening, at a Liberal dinner at Maidstone, and which the Kent Herald describes as "an eloquent speech, which made a great impression," had much effect upon the Legislature, is a point upon which we may well be sceptical, but I daresay they may have had a good effect upon the minds of the Maidstone attorneys.

In the following year, 1829, during the debates on the Emancipation Bill, Mr. Shee appears to have taken a step, from which we may argue, either that Ministers of the Crown were in those days more accessible than they are now, or that barristers of one year's standing had more assurance than we now find them to possess. He seems, in connection with the matter before Parliament, to have addressed Peel upon the subject of the education of Catholics; for I find the following answer, written, it is curious to observe, the very day that the Catholic Relief Bill went up to the House of Lords:

"Whitehall, March 31, 1829. "SIR,-I beg leave to acknowledge the receipt of your letter of the 16th March, containing a very able argument in favour of the policy of admitting the Roman Catholic youths of this country to the advantage of an academical education, in common with Protestants.

"I doubt, however, whether the maintenance of the universities and public schools, precisely on their present footing, is not a part of the measure essential to the satisfaction of the Protestant mind in this country.

"I have the honour to be, sir,

"Wm. Shee, Esq."

Your obedient servant,

(Signed)

"ROBERT PEEL.

"

When a young man gets called to the Bar, and returning, happy, from his call-party," takes, before going to bed, a long and loving look at the new wig that has been sent home for him, he usually-I think my professional readers will bear me out he usually cherishes in his breast two confident expectations: one, that some attorney, who has heard of his fame at the debating society, or who knows that while in Mr. Surrebutter's chambers he was the true author of all that celebrated lawyer's most learned opinions, will be found breathless and excited, at ten o'clock the next morning, at his door, to implore him, "if not already retained on the other side," to take charge of some case of momentous importance; the other, that the "governor" will mark his sense of his son's new dignity by a handsome "tip," and possibly, by an increase of allowance. The first of these hopes is not unfrequently disappointed. The second often is, and, if possible, always ought to be realized. But in Mr. Shee's case, so far from its being realized, it was the very reverse of this that happened. His father, for many years in straitened circumstances, had now become so completely crippled in means as to be unable to help him any longer. He was told that all that could be done for him, had been; he had been educated, and put to the Bar; he must now make his own living. I mention this, in itself of no possible interest, in order that William Shee may have the credit which is due to him-among the highest that a man can have-of having risen, so to speak, from the ground, and lifted himself to an honourable position by his talents, industry, and force of character, without ever having owned, from the day he was called to the Bar until the day he died, an unearned sixpence.

However satisfactory this impecuniosity may be to me to look back upon now, it was scarcely a pleasant thing for him to contemplate at the time. He was compelled to look anxiously about for a means of putting an end to it. Of course, he betook himself to the Press. The Press is to the briefless barrister what the parish is to the labourer out of work, and perhaps, on the principle that a little knowledge is often worse than total ignorance, this may be one way of accounting for the very extraordinary law which we so often find in the papers,

Previously to this, in the year 1824, he had contributed a couple of articles to the New Monthly Magazine, and his attention happening to have been turned to Indian subjects, he now, in 1828, sent an article to a magazine called the Oriental Herald. This article being accepted, was followed by others, and after a few had appeared, the writer was appointed editor of the paper, which the proprietor had previously edited himself. This post he held for a very short time, his practice at the Bar having by the end of two years from his call become sufficient to enable him to give himself entirely to law, and dispense with the aid of furtive literature.

His early articles can, I think, leave no doubt upon the mind that if he had devoted himself to literature, and not devoted himself to oratory, he might have attained a respectable position in letters. But the instances are rare in which the same man has cultivated with conspicuous success, the essentially different, and it may be said, hostile arts of writing and speaking. One is almost sure to kill and absorb the other. These essays are rather speeches than articles. The best thing he ever wrote a pamphlet on the trial of the last ministers of Charles X.-which professes to be a letter to an advocate of the Cour Royale, at Paris, resembles rather a speech than a letter. Take away the "Dear Sir" from the beginning, and the "I remain, &c.," from the end, alter one or two passages, and omit one or two others, and the thing might have been spoken before a tribunal sitting to revise the judgment of the Chamber of Peers.

The trial of the Prince de Polignac and his colleagues, the last ministers of Charles X., is, whether we regard the grounds upon which it was instituted, or the mode in which it was conducted, one of the most iniquitous in history. They were accused of treason-a crime undefined by the law existing at the time, and for which no punishment had been providedon the ground that they had been guilty of a series of offences which were not contended separately to amount to treason, and to which the law had appointed punishments other than the punishment which the prosecution demanded, and having been convicted upon the loosest and most inadmissible evidence of these offences-which, by the way, the Chamber, by the report of its committee, had admitted itself incompetent to try-they were sentenced to a punishment which the Chamber invented for the occasion. The trial was, in fact, though not in form or in name, a bill of attainder, with this important qualification, that it was passed by a single branch of the Legislature. The theory of the prosecution was the theory of cumulative treason, the theory of St. John in Strafford's case, "why should he expect law that would take it from others? We allow law to hares and deer, but it was never accounted