Curran, JOHN PHILPOT

Curran, JOHN PHILPOT, Irish orator, was born at Newmarket in County Cork, son of the seneschal of the Manor Court there, July 24, 1750. At Trinity College, Dublin, he was as idle and reckless as he had been at school, but spite of his dissipations he contrived to learn something of law, and the boisterous taproom debates of his life in Dublin and London shaped him into an orator. After two years at the Middle Temple, London, he was called to the Irish bar in 1775. Here his conviviality, his wit, and his vehement eloquence, soon made him a prominent figure, and led to his being employed in many of the greatest causes of the time. In 1782 he became King's Counsel, and next year was returned to the Irish parliament for Kilbeggan. He became a strong supporter of Grattan, but his eloquence proved less effective on the floor of the House than before an Irish jury. His sarcastic retorts led him into several duels, of which, in the course of his career, he fought no less than five, all fortunately without serious harm. Although a staunch Protestant like so many great Irish patriots, Curran had a warm sympathy with his suffering Catholic countrymen, and was eloquent and constant in his unavailing appeals to the government to change a policy which was driving the Irish into rebellion. With his defence of Archibald Hamilton Rowan in August 1792 commenced the long series of defences in state-trials which have shed such a lustre on his name. The insurrection at length broke out in 1798, but was speedily suppressed, whereupon the prosecutions of its leaders at once began. Curran flung himself into their defence with a heroic energy that rose above the brow-beatings of the bench and insured him an immortality of affection in the hearts of his fellow-countrymen. The last of his defences was that of Napper Tandy in May 1800. Then came the Union, which Curran had always opposed as 'the annihilation of Ireland.' His own health was now shattered, and soon domestic troubles followed to darken his later years. His wife eloped with a clergyman, and his youngest daughter, Sarah, pined away and died in Sicily, a few months after the hapless fate of her bright young lover, Robert Emmett (1803). Her story is immortalised in Moore's well-known lines, 'She is far from the land where her young hero sleeps.' After the death of Pitt (1806) and the accession to power of the Whigs, Curran was appointed Master of the Rolls in Ireland, an office which he held till his retirement in 1814. He died in London, 14th October 1817. His remains were re-interred in Glasnevin Cemetery, Dublin, in 1834. Curran's little figure, ugly face, bright black eyes, and intense vivacity, formed a sufficiently unique personality; but his brilliant wit, his quickness in repartee, his mental acuteness, and the astonishing felicity of his ready language were altogether unparalleled, and made him easily the master of his company. He well deserved O'Connell's epitaph: 'There never was so honest an Irishman.' See Lives by his son, W. H. Currau (1819), A. Stephens (1817), and O'Regan (1817); also Ch. Phillips, Curran and his Contemporaries (1850). His Speeches were edited, with a Life, by Thomas Davis, in 1855.