Famous Orations Author:Mayo Williamson Hazeltine Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: HENRY GRATTAN LIENRY GRATTAN was born in 1746; his father, a Protestant, was for . many years Recorder of the City of Dublin, and for five years Its represen... more »tative in the Irish Parliament His mother was a daughter of Thomas Mar- lay, Chief-Justice of Ireland. Both at school and at Trinity College, Dublin, which he entered in 1763, young Grattan greatly distinguished himself. In 1707 he began to keep his terms in the Middle Temple, London, and was called to the Irish bar in 1772. From the time that he left the university, he seems to have given his attention chiefly to polities and to the study of popular oratory. When in 1775 he entered the Irish Parliament, his powers were already under full command, and he became almost immediately the acknowledged leader of the Opposition. It was he more than any other man who secured the repeal of Poyning's Act, and the resultant independence of the Irish Parliament. Before the rebellion of 1798 Grattan had retired to private life, but in 1800, though in feeble health, he re-entered the Irish Parliament for the special purpose of opposing the motion for union with Great Britain. He exerted all his eloquence in condemnation of the measure. After the Union was effected, he withdrew a second time from public life, but in 1805 entered the English Parliament in order to render his assistance to the passing of the Catholic relief bill. He continued to advocate the concession of political rights to Catholics up to his death, in 1820. It is thought that, as regards subject matter, his speeches do not suffer from comparison even with those of Burke, while they are almost unequalled in respect of the incisive vigor and startling originality of the style. AGAINST ENGLISH IMPERIALISM DELIVERED IN THE IRISH PARLIAMENT, APRIL 19,1780 SIB, I hav...« less