From the Saturday Herald, 20 October 1894:

“HUSSEY BURGH: A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF THE GREAT PATRIOT.

One hundred and eleven years have passed since the death of Hussey Burgh, the great Irish patriot and orator. Though his fame has been overshadowed by that of his illustrious friend, Henry Grattan, no man enjoyed in his own day a higher reputation for eloquence. Plunket—himself a gifted orator—said that “no modern speaker approached Hussey Burgh in the power of stirring the passions,” while the artist Marquis Wellesley, another great authority on such a subject, ranked him as a speaker superior to Pitt, Fox, or Burke. This, surely, is high praise; but unfortunately only a few fragments have come down to us to enable us to realise from his own words the magic of his oratory.

Walter Hussey Burgh was the son of Ignatius Hussey, of Donore, in the county Kildare, and was born on the 23rd August, 1742. His mother was Elizabeth, daughter of Thomas de Burgh, of Oldtown, in the same county. The Hussey family occupied a good social position, as may be seen from the fact that before Walter was born one member of it, Anthony Hussey, represented Tralee in the Irish Parliament. While a boy Walter Hussey attended the school of a Mr Young in Abbey street, Dublin. After leaving that educational establishment he entered Trinity College, where he took out the degree of Bachelor of Arts in 1762. At college he exhibited a taste for classical studies, and also wrote a prize poem on the marriage of George III. On inheriting half the property of his maternal cousin, Richard Burgh, who died in 1762, he took the additional name of Burgh.

He was called to the Bar in 1769, and in the same year he became member for Athy through the influence of the Duke of Leinster. His early speeches appear to have been too ornate, as the young orator indulged very freely in classical and poetical quotations. However, as Dr Johnson puts it, “it is now easier to lop off redundancies than to supply deficiencies,” and Hussey Burgh soon learned to chasten the luxuriance of his oratorical style. Both at the Bar and in Parliament his success was rapid. In twelve months he had secured a large amount of business as an advocate. He contracted a friendship with Grattan, which lasted without a break or a shadow until his death.

 In 1776 he became a candidate for Dublin University, a general election taking place at that date. Many of the Irish constituencies desired at this general election to obtain from candidates a distinct promise to support measures in which they happened to be interested. Hussey Burgh refused to submit his judgment on political questions absolutely to the wishes of the electors of the University. In a letter written to a friend, the purport of which he wished to have conveyed to the constituency, he said that while he approved of a test which should be “nothing more than a solemn engagement to act with integrity in the trust reposed in them,” he thought it neither constitutional nor wise for candidates to enter into any previous promise by which deliberation should be precluded, as “there was no seeing what new light might be thrown on a subject, or what new circumstances might alter the merits of a question.”

The following remarkable passage occurs in the course of the letter:—

“But it will be said that experience tells us that men who come into office surrender their opinions at direction. Would to God there were more men who acted upon real principle! The designing patriot will always become the corrupt courtier. If a man has no principle, he will make good in jobs what he denies himself in office; if he has principle, he will be honest at all times and in all situations. There are no slighter things than these paper kites which ride against the wind. But though I will not promise never to be in office, I will and do most solemnly promise never to be corrupted in office. When I see things ill conducted I will not promise not to conduct them better. But no emolument of office shall ever induce me to increase my expense. By not making emolument necessary to luxury I will always be able to lay it down when it becomes inconsistent with honour. In the consciousness of virtue I shall find my reward, and in the love of my country my frugality the shield.”

It must be admitted that, while his political integrity always remained untarnished, Hussey Burgh found it easier to preach than to practice frugality in his own life, for extravagance was his his great, if not his sole, fault. He loved a gorgeous display of retinue, and in his palmy days he used to drive down to court in a coach with six horses and three outriders.

In spite of his claims to think for himself on all political questions without being controlled by his constituents, he was elected for Dublin University. Though he took office from the party to which he attached himself, he fulfilled his promise “never to be corrupted in office.”

He was made Prime Serjeant in 1776. This office was then the highest at the Irish Bar. In 1779, when the question of Free Trade, as the expression was then understood in Ireland, viz—the removal of the country’s commercial disabilities—was the main topic of discussion in Parliament, he moved an amendment to the Address in the following forcible language:—

“I never will support any Government in fraudulently concealing from the king the rights of his people. The high office which I possess can hold no competition with my principles and my conscience, and I shall consider the relinquishment of my gown as only a just sacrifice upon the altar of my country. Strong statement rather than patient supplication is adapted to the crisis, and the amendment which I propose is—That it is not by temporary expedients but by free trade alone that this country is to be saved from impending ruin.”

This speech was no mere “flash in the pan.” Hussey Burgh knew only too well the consequences which would speedily follow his bold words. As he resumed his seat he said to a friend beside him—

“I have now sealed the door against my own preferment, and I have made the fortune of that man” (pointing as he spoke to a barrister named Browne, who would be his probable successor).

The sequel is pithily told by the following entry, dated 1779, under the head “Law Officers”:—”20 Geo IV, June 14 James Browne, Prime Serjeant; Burgh resigned.”

Few patriots are capable of such self-sacrifice as this. When it was proposed by the Irish Parliament to send 4,000 soldiers from Ireland to fight for British rule in America during the War of Independence, Hussey Burgh refused to consent to this unless with the vote a policy of conciliation towards the colonists was urged upon the mother country.

Here are the concluding words of his speech on the occasion:—

“Having no enemies to encounter, no partisans to serve, without passion, without fear, I have delivered my sentiments upon the present question—one of the greatest importance. I will not vote a single man against America without an accompanying address recommending conciliatory measures. I foresee the conclusion of this war. If Ministers are victorious it will only be establishing a right to the harvest after they have burnt the grain; it will be establishing a right to the stream after they have cut off the fountain. Such is my opposition—a method ill-calculated to secure emolument or to gain popularity. My conduct will not please either party. But I despise profit, I despise popularity, if the one is to be gained by base servility and the other purchased by blind zeal. Farewell, profit! farewell, popularity! if in acquiring you fair fame is to be the victim.”

Such passages may give posterity some idea of the burning eloquence of Hussey Burgh; but with the superadded effect of his clarion voice and magnificent delivery, his hearers must have found his words irresistible.

One other outburst of noble oratory on his part has given us a splendid application of a famous classical tradition. Referring to the state of Ireland, driven by coercive laws into resistance and the employment of the Volunteers as a menace to England, he said—

“Talk not to me of peace! Ireland is not in a state of peace; it is smothered war. England has sown her laws like dragon’s teeth, and they have sprung up armed men.”

In 1781 Hussey Burgh’s friend came into office, and Lord Tracion, the Chief Baron of the Exchequer, happening to die at that very time, the judicial post thus left vacant was offered to the great orator, and was accepted by him. In 1783, while on circuit at Armagh, he caught a cold, which turned to fever, and, in spite of the efforts of the best medical men of the day, who were hastily summoned from Dublin, he expired on the 29th of September in that year. He was only forty-one at the time of his death, so that great as his career had been, he had only reached his prime.

Amongst the records of him in existence are some philosophical reflections, which show that he was a profound thinker as well as a gifted advocate. Here is a clever epigram:

“Short-sighted men need sophistry so much that they shun reasoning; and this is the true reason why fools are positive.”

Take this stray thought as an example of his sympathetic character:—

“Is not a man selfish who relieves another because it is a pain to himself to see him in distress? No; he ceased to be selfish when he began to feel pain for another. The difference consists not in the act but the feeling.” How true this is, and how thoroughly it dissipates the many fallacies uttered and written on the subject!

We find a contrast presented in another of those “stray thoughts” between two very different professions—that of a lawyer and that of a cobbler—a comparison by no means complimentary to the legal profession:—

“A lawyer hires out his mind—a cobbler his hands. One is esteemed a liberal, the other a mechanical profession. Surely he is the greater slave whose nobler part is most restrained!”

It has been already pointed out that Hussey Burgh had a weakness in the direction of prodigality. In those days lavish waste of money was regarded by persons of the upper ranks of society in Ireland as indispensable; and the natural generosity of this great man’s character led him in an age of reckless extravagance to drift into the habits of a spendthrift. When he died, his children were left utterly unprovided for; and but for the exertions of his friends they would have been in a state of destitution.

On the motion of Grattan, seconded by Yelverton, a sum of £2,000 a year was voted for the maintenance of the family. Grattan, in his characteristic style, put the claims of Hussey Burgh’s offspring in one forcible and unanswerable sentence:—

“His many virtues and his public services demand that his children shall be the children of the country.”

Flood, the great rival of Grattan, spoke thus of the illustrious patriot to whom a grateful country was paying the last tribute by exhausting its practical concern in the welfare of those he loved:—

“Hussey Burgh was a man dead to everything but his own honour and the grateful memories of his country; a man over whose life or grave envy never hovered; a man ardently wishing to serve his country himself, but not wishing to monopolise the service—wishing to participate and communicate the glory. My noble friend—I beg pardon—he did not live to be ennobled by patent—he was ennobled by nature.”

Amongst the splendid traits in the characters of the leaders of the Irish political movement at that period we cannot fail to admire their devotion to the memory of their deceased fellow-workers in the national cause. Friendship between patriots was then a reality, and not a mere name. In the affectionate tributes paid to Hussey Burgh by so many of his friends after he had passed away from earth, we find a shining example of this. We may conclude our sketch with the estimate of his character left us by a contemporary:—

“He was proud without arrogance and dignified without effort. Equally attentive to public concerns and careless of his own, he had neither avarice to acquire wealth nor parsimony to hoard it. Liberal even to profusion, friendly to a fault, and disinterested to a weakness, he was honest without affluence and ambitious without corruption. His eloquence was of the highest order—figurative, splendid, and convincing. At the Bar, in Parliament, among the people, he was equally admired and universally respected.”

Charles Phillips, in Curran and his Contemporaries, describes Hussey Burgh as:

“…one of the most remarkable of those who appeared in that interval of Irish history which is so crowded with greatness…. To a mind of the highest cultivation, he added a person of remarkable elegance, and a manner which was the very perfection of grace and dignity. He was a man of the most refined taste, and of a spirit so lofty that it seemed to belong to a different age from that in which he lived. His eloquence was of a very high order—it was at once classical and brilliant—it was the eloquence of a scholar and a gentleman…. It was not merely the words—it was the manner—the look—the gesture—the conscious pride of the man who felt that he was speaking the sentiments of a nation, that gave it its irresistible effect.”

Indeed, Hussey Burgh’s eloquence was such as not only to awe his contemporaries but to inspire the next generation of Irish lawyers. According to Fitzowen:

“On one occasion [Hussey Burgh] was speaking in the House of Commons; and in the row of the gallery allotted to the students of Trinity College, was a young man of great talents, who had then resolved to study for a fellowship, and confine his ambition to academical preferment; but the effect of Hussey Burgh upon his audience dazzled the young student, and awoke in him the desire to excel in that particular line of exertion, in which Hussey Burgh was so successful. That student was William Conyngham Plunket, the present Lord Plunket, who attributes his first predilection for public speaking to the effect produced on him by the eloquence of Hussey Burgh.”

There was at least one occasion, however, on which Burgh’s famous eloquence failed him. Jacob and Larwood, in Forensic Anecdotes, recount an amusing incident when Burgh and another barrister, James Sankey, at Galway for the assizes, saw some boys playing marbles beneath their hotel windows.

“I was once a famous marble-player,” said Sankey. “I was the best of my day,” replied Burgh. “What say you to a match?”

The challenge was accepted, and “[m]arbles were procured, a ring was made, and the grave lawyers, with their right forefingers chalked, secundum artem, set to work with all the zest of boyhood.” Sankey won, whereas Burgh was so chagrined that he spoke no more that day, thereby demonstrating a principle which is still reputed to hold true today – that even the most eminent of Irish counsel have their playful – and highly sensitive – side!

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