Short Life of Thomas Davis 1840 1846

wanton outrage on the feelings of Irish gentlemen. To provide a conspicuous office for a few weeks for a political gladiator of their following, who had grown discontented, they compelled the greatest orator whom Ireland had sent to their aid since Edmund Burke to retire from the Irish Chancellorship, and placed a Scotch lawyer of hard and vulgar nature at the Sir John Campbell, afterwards Lord Campbell. head of the Irish bar. Davis attended a bar-meeting of remonstrance, chiefly Whigs of national opinions who resented the appointment, not as a question of professional etiquette, but because it tended to humiliate Ireland. But the remonstrance caused scarcely a ripple of opinion. The middle class had tasted patronage and fallen asleep at the feet of the Whigs, and as O'Connell, who detested Plunket, was silent, the mass of the people did not know that there was anything amiss. It was in company with Conservatives resisting another Whig offence that Davis entered on the stage to do something which attracted universal attention, because it was something which no other Liberal in Ireland of that day would have attempted. The Royal Dublin Society was an institution created by the Irish Parliament for promoting the useful arts and sciences, and developing the natural resources of the country. After the Union, Leinster House, the palace of the Geraldines, was purchased for its use, and it received an annual grant of £5,500 to defray ' O'Connell is ...