brought him into full practice, there was so little forensic display in his manner-what he said upon each occasion was always so much to the purpose, and consequently so short and direct that a stranger to his professional repute would have principally inferred, from the frequency of his appearances in court, that he was already high among the most eminent counsel of his day.*

Mr. Perrin is, I believe, universally admitted to be the best common-law lawyer of the Irish bar. It is probably to be attributed in some degree to early accidents that his studies and practice should have been exclusively confined to this depart ment; but I apprehend that an original peculiarity of his mind had also much to do in keeping him out of the courts of equity. I have heard it related of him that, from the commencement of his legal studies, he felt a deep and unconquerable distaste to equity-pleading-to that system under which, as a matter of ordinary routine, fifty false charges may be made against a miserable defendant on the chance of eliciting a single truth, and under which the same defendant, if knavishly disposed, and aided by a dexterous pleader, may resort to as many devices to evade a direct and intelligible reply. I can easily conceive that a mind like Mr. Perrin's, always seeking accuracy of thought and brevity of expression, should have turned with disgust from the farrago of long-winded fictions, and endless repetitions, and wordy superfluities, which form the staple of Chancery pleadings; but whatever the motive, he has, almost from the outset of his career, confined himself to the common-law courts; among them the King's Bench has been the principal theatre of his exertions. Assiduous application and long experience have rendered him familiar with all the great branches of the law that are brought into discussion before that tribunal; and, to an intimate knowledge of his subject, he unites logical powers of the highest order. His diction, though clear and vigorous, is not always fluent; but the occa

*Louis Perrin, one of the most able and honest of the Irish bar, was promo ted, in due course, when the Liberal party were in power, and is now (January, 1854) third judge of the Court of Queen's Bench, Ireland. In Parliament he was a useful and laborious, rather than an oratorical member.-M.

sional tardiness of phrase to which I allude, and which detracts little from the force or effect of his reasonings, appears to be very much the result of acquired habits of mastery over the most important operations of his mind. If he sometimes pauses for a moment, it is not that he is in want of matter or of words, but that he is determined and able to retain and exercise a control over both; it is that, even while his mind is hurrying along a rapid chain of reasoning, he still preserves the power of arresting a thought in its progress from conception to expression, and of ascertaining its fitness for his purpose before he allows it irrevocably to pass his lips; and the result of the enforcement of this inward discipline is, that, though his language may be rendered less continuous, his argument is sure of being better for the delay. If Mr. Perrin could consent to be a less cautious and accurate reasoner, he would, I am satisfied, become at once a more fluent speaker; but he reasons everything, abhorring all flashy declamation, and guided by a special instinct against the use of words for talking-sake.

Having thus shortly referred to Mr. Perrin's professional qualifications, I need hardly add that he has for many years. commanded the leading business of the Court of King's Bench. Among the cases constantly occurring on the criminal side of that court, there is one class in which he appears to have established a sort of personal property (for he is never omitted): I allude to appeals from convictions by magistrates under penal statutes, particularly those relating to the customs and excise. In such cases the offending party has usually a twofold chance of escape in the blunders of the legislator, and in those of the convicting magistrates. The leaning of the court is always to uphold such convictions; but Mr. Perrin, with his sagacity, and pertinacious logic, and adroit application of authorities. that bear, or appear to bear, upon the point, seldom fails to demonstrate to the full satisfaction of every mind in court (except perhaps his own) that something, in substance or in form, has been wanting to legalize the proceedings from which his clients have appealed.

The subject-matter of such discussions is in general devoid of popular interest; but they sometimes acquire from incidental

circumstances no small degree of scenic effect. I remember, for instance, to have seen some years since one of the sidegalleries of the Court of King's Bench occupied by an entire ship's crew of Dutch smugglers, brought up, under writs of habeas corpus, from one of the prisons on the southern coast of Ireland; and while Mr. Perrin, as their counsel, was moving that they should be discharged from illegal custody, and pressing the court with arguments and cases, it was curious to observe his weather-beaten clients, with their bluff figures and contraband visages, how intently they looked on as their fate was debated in (to them) an unknown tongue, and with what a singular promptness they appeared to discover, from mere external sighs-from the looks and gestures of the Judges or the auditors-that their counsel was making way with the court. Their deliverance, I recollect, was effected; and if they and the hundreds of others of their trade and country, whom Mr. Perrin has similarly rescued from an Irish prison, have any gratitude, his must be a well-known and popular name in the Dutch ports.

Mr. Perrin's professional eminence was not his sole ground of claim to the honor of representing the city of Dublin in Parliament: he had a further and stronger recommendation to the public confidence in the vigor and integrity of his personal character. The political principles which he avows have now, in the circle of events, become the reigning doctrine of the day, and the merit may be small of professing such principles at the present moment. Mr. Perrin's praise is, that what he now is, he has always been; that under circumstances the most adverse to professional advancement, he entered into no compromise between his interests and opinions, but in every stage of his progress asserted himself and the dignity of his profession by an erect and independent bearing; he did so in a temper and spirit the most remote from faction, but he met with little mercy. He had incurred the virtue of public spirit, and was marked for discouragement-even the poor distinction of a silk-gown was delayed until Lord Manners's last general levee of King's counsel; and even then it was understood that Mr. Perrin would have been designedly omitted, had not the Lord

Chief-Justice, to whose better spirit what is just and manly is always familiar, peremptorily interposed his authority, as the head of the common-law bar, against an act of such unworthy partisanship.

I fear that I am trespassing on the ground of the "Sketches of the Irish Bar;" but, as I have gone so far,* let me say a word of Mr. Perrin's personal appearance. It is not so remarkable as to attract examination; but when you examine it, you find its unostentatious simplicity to be strikingly accordant with his mind and character. His figure is about the middle size, and slightly approaching to corpulence. He has black hair, a dark complexion, and regular Roman features. Though no one has a quicker perception of mirth, or enjoys it more heartily, the habitual expression of his countenance is graveness, even perhaps to a touch of sadness; the latter, however,

* Mr. Perrin was worthy of a distinct place in these "Sketches," for few lawyers had so much to contend with, on account of particular family circumstances (of no interest to the public), which, for a time clouded his prospects. The touch of sadness upon his countenance was caused, I doubt not, by the misconduct of a near relative, which met with exemplary punishment from the law. The Irish attorneys, among whom this person had once been enrolled, considered it hard that an innocent man should suffer, from a sort of reflected cloud, and generously showed their sympathy, by throwing as much business into Mr Perrin's hands as they safely could. In a short time, proving equal to the labor, his great ability obtained, as a right, that practice which, at first had been conceded as a favor. In customs and excise cases, he was unapproached, almost from the first.-As I am on a legal question, and have arrived at the close of this work, let me add, in reference to the conviction of John Scanlan, at Limerick, in 1820, for murder on the Shannon (as detailed in the sketch called "An Irish Circuit," in the first volume), that Mr. Sheil treating of the facts, and Gerald Griffin, working them up into romantic fiction, strangely omitted two strong points. The first, as to motive. Sullivan confessed that Scanlan's desire to get rid, by murder, of the poor young creature whom he had seduced (by mock marriage)," because she kept calling him her husband." The second, showing the malice pretense, was that the crime was delayed until Scanlan had purchased a boat, in which the victim was to be carried out of sight of land, and there "done to death," and until a blacksmith had made a chain and collar to tie round her neck, attached to a heavy stone, to sink the body. I have read the report of the trial, since I annotated Mr. Sheil's detail of facts, but only in time to put the statement into this place. At this last moment, too, I perceive that the Marchioness Wellesley (the heroine of the Dublin Tabinet Ball, Vol. I.) died at Hampton Court Palace, near London, on December 17, 1853.— M.

I apprehend to be nothing more than the mere trace of the laborious occupations in which his life has been passed. On the whole, I would say of his exterior, including face, and form, and apparel, that it was individualized by a certain republican homeliness, intimating a natural, careless manliness of taste, and not without its peculiar dignity.

I intended, when I sat down, to have entered upon some of the details of the Dublin election and its sequel; but the subject, I find, would carry me too far: let me therefore for the present merely say that, after an obstinate struggle, the corporation, that cumbrous excrescence upon our institutions, was fairly prostrated, and the popular candidates returned. The triumph was celebrated with all due rites and solemnities. I witnessed the chairing from a window in Grafton street. The sun shone brightly on the procession as it passed-but not more brightly than the countenance of our venerable and patriotic veteran, Mr. Peter Burrowes, who had taken his station at an opposite balcony, and looked down (as his friend Louis Perrin was wafted along) with a smile of joyous and ineffable thanksgiving, that he had been spared to see that day.