Law in Ireland half a century ago—Its delay remedied, but not its uncertainty—Principal and Interest—Eustace Stowell and Richard Martin—Valuable precedents—A bloodless duel—High sheriffs and their Subs—Irish method of serving a writ—Cases of warranty—Messrs. Reddy Long and Charley White—The latter guarantees an unsound horse to the author—Zeal of a second—Mr. Reddy Long’s valuable legacy to Sir Jonah Barrington.

The administration of the law among gentlemen in Ireland fifty years back, is curiously illustrated by the following little narrative, the circumstances whereof have been communicated to me from such a quarter as not to admit of their being doubted.

Our laws, in their most regular course (as every body knows, who has had the honour and happiness of being much involved in them), are neither so fleet as a race-horse, nor so cheap as water-cresses. They indisputably require eloquent advocates and keen attorneys;—who expound, complicate, unriddle, or confuse, the respective statutes, points, precedents, and practice, of that simple science, which too frequently, like a burning-glass, consumes both sides of what it shines upon.

Some prudent and sensible gentlemen, therefore, principally in the country parts of Ireland (who probably had bit upon the bridle), began to conceive that justice ought to be neither so dear nor so tardy; and when they reflected that what were called their “barking irons” brought all ordinary disputes to a speedy termination—why, thought they, should not these be equally applicable to matters of law, property, and so forth, as to matters of honour? At all events, such an application would be incalculably cheaper, than any taxed bill of costs, even of the most conscientious solicitor.

This idea became very popular in some counties, and, indeed, it had sundry old precedents in its favour,—the writ of right and trial by battle having been originally the law of the land, and traditionally considered as far the most honourable way of terminating a suit. They considered, therefore, that what was lawful one day, could not be justly deemed unlawful another, and that by shortening the process of distributing justice, they should assist in extending it. The old jokers said, and said truly, that many a cause had been decided to a dead certainty in a few minutes, by simply touching a trigger, upon which attorneys, barristers, judges, jurors, witnesses, and sometimes all the peers of the realm, spiritual and temporal, had been working and fumbling for a series of years without bringing it even to an unsatisfactory issue.

My old and worthy friend, “Squire Martin,” afforded a most excellent illustration of this practice; and as all the parties were “gentlemen to the backbone,” the anecdote may be deemed a respectable one. I have often heard the case quoted in different companies, as a beneficial mode of ensuring a compromise. But the report of my friend makes it any thing but a compromise on his part. The retrograding was no doubt on the part of the enemy, and equally unequivocal as Moreau’s through the Black Forest, or that of the ten thousand Greeks, though neither so brave nor so bloody as either of them.

I name place, parties, cause, proceedings, and final judgment—just as I received these particulars from the defendant himself; and I consider the case as forming a very valuable precedent for corresponding ones.

Eustace Stowell, Esq. challenger.

Richard Martin, Esq. acceptor.

Operator for the challenger, D. Blake, Esq.

Operator for the acceptor, Right Honourable St. George Daly, late judge of the King’s Bench, Ireland.

Case as reported by Defendant.

Eustace Stowell lent me a sum of money on interest, which interest I had not paid very regularly. Mistaking my means, I promised to pay him at a certain time, but failed. He then called on me, and said I had broken my word. I answered, “Yes, I have, but I could not help it. I am very sorry, but in a few days will satisfy the demand.” Accordingly, my worthy friend the late Earl of Mountjoy accepted my bills at three and six months for the whole amount.

Having arranged the business thus, I enclosed the bills to Mr. Eustace Stowell, who immediately returned them, saying, that as I had broken my word, he would accept of no payment but hard money.

I replied that I had no hard money, nor was there much of it afloat in my part of the country; upon which Mr. Eustace Stowell immediately sent his friend to me, requiring me either to give him cash or personal satisfaction; and in the latter event, to appoint time and place. My answer was, that I did not want to shoot him unless he insisted upon it; but that as to cash, though Solomon was a wise man, and Sampson a strong one, neither of them could pay ready money if they had it not. So I prepared to engage him: my friend the Right Honourable St. George Daly, since judge of the King’s Bench, assisted in arranging preliminaries to our mutual satisfaction, and pretty early next morning we met to fight out the debt in that part of the Phoenix Park called the Fifteen Acres.

Every thing proceeded regularly, as usual. Our pistols were loaded, and the distance measured, eight yards from muzzle to muzzle. I stepped on my ground, he on his. I was just presenting my pistol at his body, when, having, I suppose, a presentiment that he should go somewhere out of this world if I let fly at him, he instantly dropped his weapon, crying out, “Mr. Martin! Mr. Martin! a pretty sort of payment this! You’d shoot me for my interest money, would you?”

“If it’s your pleasure, Mr. Eustace Stowell,” said I, “I certainly will; but it was not my desire to come here, or to shoot you. You insisted on it yourself: so go on, if you please, now we are here.”

“What security will you give me, Mr. Martin,” said he, “for my interest money?”

“What I have offered you already,” said I.

“And what’s that?” demanded Mr. Stowell.

“I offered you Lord Mountjoy’s bills at three and six months,” said I. Before I had time to finish the last words Mr. Stowell cried out, “Nothing can be better or more reasonable, Mr. Martin; I accept the offer with pleasure. No better payment can be. It is singular you did not make this offer before.”

“I think,” said I, “you had better take your ground again, Mr. Eustace Stowell, for I tell you I did make this offer before, and may be you don’t like so plump a contradiction. If not, I’m at your service. Here is a letter under your own hand, returning the bills and declining to receive them. See, read that!” continued I, handing it him.

“Bless me!” said he, “there must be some great misunderstanding in this business. All’s right and honourable. I hope the whole will be forgotten, Mr. Martin.”

“Certainly, Mr. Stowell,” replied I: “but I trust you’ll not be so hard to please about your interest money in future, when it’s not convenient to a gentleman to pay it.”

He laughed, and we all four stepped into the same carriage, returned the best friends possible, and I never heard any thing irritating about his interest money afterward.

This case, however, was only a simple one on the money counts—a mere matter of assumpsit, in which all the gross and ungentlemanly legal expressions used in law declarations on assumpsits were totally avoided—such as “intending thereby to deceive and defraud:”—language which, though legal, a Galway gentleman would as soon eat his horse as put up with from his equal—though he would bear it from a shopkeeper with sovereign indifference. When such a one, therefore, was sued in assumpsit for a horse or so by a gentleman, the attorney never let his client read the law declaration—the result of which would be injurious to two of the parties at least, as one of the litigants would probably lose his life, and the attorney the litigation. The foregoing cause was conducted with as much politeness and decorum as could possibly be expected between four high well-bred persons, who, not having “the fear of God before their eyes,” but, as law indictments very properly set forth, “being moved and seduced by the instigation of the devil,” had congregated for the avowed purpose of committing or aiding in one or more wilful and deliberate murders.

I must here observe that, in addition to the other advantages this mode of proceeding between gentlemen had over that of courts of justice, a certain principle of equity was understood to be connected with it. After a gentleman was regularly called out, and had duly fought the challenger respecting any sum of money, whether the trial ended in death or not, after a single shot the demand was extinguished and annulled for ever: no man can be sued twice for the same debt. Thus, the challenger in a money case stood in rather an unpleasant situation—as, exclusive of the chance of getting a crack, the money was for ever gone, whether his adversary lived or died—unless, indeed, the acceptor, being a “gentleman every inch of him,” might feel disposed to waive his “privilege.”

But this short, cheap, and decisive mode of terminating causes was not confined to simple money counts; it extended to all actions at law and proceedings in equity. The grand old procrastinators of Irish courts—demurrers and injunctions—were thus dissolved or obviated by a trigger, in a shorter time than the judges took to put on their wigs and robes. Actions also of trover, assault, trespass, detenu, replevin, covenant, &c. &c. were occasionally referred to this laudable branch of jurisprudence with great success, seldom failing of being finally decided by seven o’clock in the morning.

The system was also resorted to by betters at cock-fights, horse-races, or hurlings; as well as on account of breaches of marriage-contracts with sisters, nieces, or cousins; or of distraining cattle, beating other gentlemen’s servants, &c. &c.: but none were more subject to the trigger process than high sheriffs when their year was over, if they had permitted their subs to lay on (as they called it) such things as executions, fieri facias, or scire facias, haberes, &c.; or to molest the person, property, or blood relations, of any real and spirited gentleman in his own bailiwick, or out of it.

The high sheriff being thus, by the laws of custom, honour, and the country gentlemen of Ireland, subject to be either shot or horsewhipped, or forced to commit a breach of public duty, very fortunately discovered an antidote to this poison in the person of his sub-sheriff—an officer generally selected from the breed of country attorneys. Now, it was an invariable engagement of the sub that he should keep, guarantee, and preserve his high from all manner of injury and annoyances. But as it was by common accord decided, that a sub-sheriff could not possibly be considered a gentleman, none such would do him the honour of fighting him. Yet, being necessitated to adopt some mode of keeping the high out of the fangs of fire-eaters, and himself from a fracture by the butt-end of a loaded whip, or the welts of a cutting one, or of having his “seat of honour” treated as if it were a foot-ball, the sub struck out a plan of preventing any catastrophe of the kind—which plan, by aid of a little smart affidavit, generally succeeded extremely well in the superior courts.

When the sub-sheriff received a writ or process calculated to annoy any gentleman (every inch of him, or to the backbone), he generally sent his bailiff at night to inform the gentleman that he had such a writ or process, hoping the squire would have no objection to send him the little fees on it with a small douceur, and he would pledge his word and honour that the squire should hear no more about the matter for that year. If the gentleman had not by him the amount of the fees (as was generally the case), he faithfully promised them, which being considered a debt of honour, was always, like a gambling debt, entitled to be earliest paid. Upon this, the sub, as soon as he was forced to make a return to such writs, did make a very sweeping one—namely, that the defendant had neither “body nor goods.” This was, if required, confirmed by the little smart affidavit; and if still doubted by the court, the sub never wanted plenty of respectable corroborating bailiffs to kiss their thumbs, and rescue the high out of any trifling dilemma that “his honour might get into through the Dublin people, bad luck to them all! root and branch, dead or alive,” as the country bums usually expressed themselves.

Of the general application of this decisive mode of adjudicating cases of warranty and guarantee, I can give a tolerably clear example in my own proper person. When very young, I was spending a day at a cottage belonging to Mr. Reddy Long, of Moat, near Ballyragget, a fire-eater, when one Mr. Charley White sold me a horse for ten guineas, which he warranted sound, and which seemed well worth the money. Next day, when the seller had departed, the beast appeared to my host (not to me) to limp somewhat, and the dealing had thereby the appearance of jockeyship and false warranty—which occurring in the house of a fire-eater, rendered the injury an insult, and was accounted totally unpardonable. I knew, that if the beast were really lame, I could oblige the seller to return the money; and accordingly told my host that if it turned out unsound, I’d get John Humphreys, the attorney, to write to Charley White to refund.

“An attorney write to a gentleman!” said Reddy Long, starting and staring at me with a frown. “Are you out of your wits, my neat lad? Why, if you sent an attorney in an affair of horse-flesh, you’d be damned in all society—you’d be out of our list, by—”

“Certainly,” said I, “it’s rather a small matter to go to law about,” (mistaking his meaning).

“Law! Law!” exclaimed Reddy, “Why, thunder and oones! jockeying one is a personal insult all the world over, when it’s a gentleman that resorts to it, and in the house of another gentleman. No, no; you must make him give up the shiners, and no questions asked, or I’ll have him out ready for you to shoot at in the meadows of Ahaboe by seven in the morning. See here!” said he, opening his ornamented mahogany pistol-case, “see, the boys are as bright as silver; and I’m sure if the poor things could speak, they’d thank you for getting them their liberty: they have not been out of their own house these three months.”

“Why, Reddy Long,” said I, “I vow to God I do not want to fight; there’s no reason for my quarrelling about it. Charley White will return my money when I ask him for it.”

“That won’t do,” said Reddy: “if the horse limps, the insult is complete; we must have no bad precedents in this county. One gentleman warranting a limper to another in private is a gross affront, and a hole in his skin will be indispensable. At fairs, hunts, and horse-races, indeed, its ‘catch as catch can;’ there’s no great dishonour as to beasts in the open air. That’s the rule all the world over. Law, indeed! no, no, my boy, ten guineas or death—no sort of alternative! Tom Nolan,” continued he, looking out of the window, “saddle the pony;—I’ll be with Charley White of Ballybrophy before he gets home, as sure as Ben Burton!”

“I tell you, Mr. Long,” said I, rather displeased, “I tell you I don’t want to fight, and I won’t fight. I feel no insult yet at least, and I desire you not to deliver any such message from me.”

“You do!” said Reddy Long, “you do!” strutting up and looking me fiercely in the face. “Then, if you won’t fight him, you’ll fight me, I suppose?”

“Why so?” said I.

“What’s that to you?” said he; but in a moment he softened and added, taking me by the hand, “My good lad, I know you are a mere boy, and not up to the ways yet; but your father would be angry if I did not make you do yourself justice; so come, get ready, my buck, to canter off to Denny Cuff’s, where we’ll be more handy for to-morrow.”

I persisted in desiring him not to deliver any hostile message; but in vain. “If,” said he, as he mounted his pony, “you won’t fight, I must fight him myself, as the thing occurred in my house. I’ll engage that, if you did not call out Charley, all the bullock-feeders from Ossory, and that double-tongued dog from Ballybrophy at the head of them, would post you at the races at Roscrea.”

Before I could expostulate further Mr. Reddy Long galloped off with a view holloa, to deliver a challenge for me against my will^[23] to Mr. Charley White, who had given me no provocation. I felt very uneasy; however, off I rode to Cuffsborough, where I made my complaint to old Denny Cuff, whose daughter was married to Reddy Long, and whose son afterward married my sister.

Old Cuff laughed heartily at me, and said, “You know Charley White?”

“To be sure I do,” said I; “a civil and inoffensive man as any in Ossory.”

“That’s the very reason Reddy will deliver a challenge to him,” said Cuff.

“’Tis an odd reason enough,” answered I.

“But a right good one too,” rejoined old Cuff.—“Reddy knew that Charley would rather give fifty yellow boys than stand half a shot, let alone a couple. I’ll answer for it Reddy knows what he is about:” and so it proved.

My self-elected second returned that evening with Charley White’s groom, to take back the horse; and he brought me my ten guineas. On my thanking him, and holding out my hand to receive them, after a moment’s hesitation, he said, “You don’t want them for a day or two, do you?”

Taken completely by surprise, I answered involuntarily, “No.”

“Well, then,” said my friend Reddy, “I am going to the races of Roscrea, and I won’t give you the ten till I come back. It’s all one to you, you know?” added he, begging the question.

It was not all one to me: however, I was too proud or rather silly to gainsay him, and he put the pieces into his purse with a number of similar companions, and went to the races of Roscrea, where he was soon disburdened of them all, and contracted sundry obligations into the bargain. I was necessitated to go home, and never saw him after. He died very soon, and bequeathed me an excellent chestnut hunter, called Spred, with Otter, a water-dog of singular talents. I was well pleased when I heard of this; but, on inquiry, found they were lapsed legacies, as the horse had died of the glanders a year before, and the dog had run mad, and was hanged long ere the departure of his master. I suppose, when death was torturing poor Reddy, (for he died of the gout in his head,) he forgot that the horse had been then skinned more than a twelvemonth.