35/90 His panegyric on Grattan deserves to be quoted alike for its eloquence and its justice. "In those singular labyrinths of intrigue and treachery," meaning the secret correspondence at the Castle, "I have found Irishmen whose names stand fair enough in patriotic history concerned in transactions that show them knaves and scoundrels; but I never found stain nor shadow of stain on the reputation of Henry Grattan. I say nothing of the temptations to which he was exposed. There were no honours with which England would not have decorated him; there was no price so high that England would not have paid to have silenced or subsidised him. He was one of those perfectly disinterested men who do not feel temptations of this kind. |