John Philpot Curran (24 July 1750 – 14 October 1817) was an Irish orator, politician, and lawyer celebrated for his defence of civil and political liberty. He first won popular acclaim in 1780, as the only lawyer in his circuit willing to represent a Catholic priest horsewhipped by an Anglo-Irish lord. In the 1790s he was celebrated as a champion in the Irish House of Commons of Catholic emancipation and parliamentary reform, and in court as defence counsel for United Irishmen facing charges of sedition and treason. Following the rebellion of 1798, he was vocal in his opposition to Britain's incorporation of Ireland in a United Kingdom.
Curran's speeches before the judicial bench were widely admired. Lord Byron said of Curran, "I have heard that man speak more poetry than I have seen written". Karl Marx described him as the greatest "people's advocate" of the eighteenth century. Curran appears to be the source of a phrase often attributed to Thomas Jefferson: "eternal vigilance is the price of liberty".
Early life
The Curran family Curran was born on 24 July 1750 in Newmarket, County Cork to James Curran, a farmer and seneschal to the manorial court at Newmarket, and Sarah Curran ().} He grew up alongside tenant children who were "half-starved and miserably housed", a memory that was to foster his "sympathy for the dispossessed".
The Curran family were said to have originally been named Curwen, their ancestor having come from Cumberland as a soldier under Cromwell during the Cromwellian Conquest of Ireland and had originally settled in County Londonderry. Curran's grandfather was from Derry, but settled in Cork. The Philpot family produced Irish judges, lawyers, bishops, priests and noblemen.The Life of the Right Honourable John Philpot Curran, Late Master of the Rolls in Ireland, by his son William Henry Curran, with additions and notes by R. Shelton MacKenzie, D.L.C., Chicago, Belford, Clarke & Co., 1881.A New and Enlarged Collection of Speeches, by the Right Honourable John Philpot Curran, Late Master of the Rolls in Ireland, William Hone, Ludgate Hill, 1819, p. v
Education After attending a hedge school, a friend of the family, Rev. Nathaniel Boyse, arranged to have Curran educated at Midleton College, County Cork. Before his entry into Trinity College, he was examined by Rev. Charles Bunworth, who was so impressed by the young Curran that he offered him financial assistance for his studies. He studied law at Trinity College Dublin,Alumni Dublinenses: a register of the students, graduates, professors and provosts of Trinity College in the University of Dublin (1593-1860), Burtchaell, G.D/Sadlier, T.U p202: Dublin, Alex Thom and Co, 1935. where he was described as "the wildest, wittiest, dreamiest student", and continued his legal studies at King's Inns and the Middle Temple in London. During his pupilage, in a pivotal case that confirmed that slavery was illegal in England and Wales (Somerset v Stewart, 1772), he served in the legal team that prevented the west African James Somerset from being deported for sale in Jamaica.Blumenthal, Sidney (2016). A Self-Made Man: The Political Life of Abraham Lincoln, 1809–1849. New York: Simon & Schuster, p. 341.
In 1775, Curran was called to the Irish Bar. Upon his first trial, his nerves got the better of him and he couldn't proceed. His short stature, boyish features, shrill voice and a stutter were said to have impacted his career, and earned him the nickname "Stuttering Jack Curran". However, he could speak passionately in court on subjects close to his heart. He eventually overcame his nerves, and got rid of his speech impediment by constantly reciting Shakespeare and Bolingbroke in front of a mirror, and became a noted orator and wit.
Duels and early courtroom triumphs His occasional tendency of challenging people to duels (he fought five in all) rather than compromise his values, along with his skilful oratory, quick wit and his championing of popular Irish causes such as Catholic Emancipation and the enlargement of the franchise, made him one of the most popular lawyers in Ireland. He also could speak Irish, still the language of the majority at that time. He wrote a large amount of humorous and romantic poetry.
The case which cemented Curran's popularity was that of Father Neale and St Leger St Leger, 1st Viscount Doneraile at the County Cork Assizes in 1780. Father Neale had condemned from the altar the adulteries of a parishioner who happened be the brother of Lord Doneraile's mistress. In retaliation, Doneraile horse-whipped the elderly priest, evidently secure in the belief that a jury, all Protestant, would never convict him on charges pressed by a Catholic. In cross examination Curran demolished the credibility of Doneraile's witnesses and persuaded the jury to set aside sectarian considerations and award his client 30 guineas. Doneraile challenged Curran to a duel, in which Doneraile fired and missed. Curran declined to fire.
This trial and duel established Curran's reputation. In 1782, after seven years at the bar, he became, with the support of the reform-minded Attorney-General, Barry Yelverton, a king's counsel.
As was remarked of the man who to succeed him as the star of the Irish bar, Daniel O'Connell, in court Curran sought to prevail by refusing deference, showing no compunction in studying and exploiting a prosecutor's or judge's personal and intellectual weaknesses. This was often an occasion for his celebrated witticisms. A prosecutor, infuriated by Curran's insults, threatened to put him in his pocket. "If you do that," replied Curran, "you will have more law in your pocket than you ever had in your head." On another occasion, contending that Curran was splitting hairs, John Fitzgibbon, 1st Earl of Clare, objected that the words "also" and "likewise" have exactly the same meaning? "Hardly, my Lord". Curran replied. "I remember when the great Lord Lifford presided over this Court. You also preside here, but you certainly do not preside likewise".
Marriage and family In 1774, Curran married Sarah Curran (née Creagh; 1755–1844), the daughter of the physician Richard Creagh. The couple had 9 children, including the painter Amelia, and Sarah Curran, a musician, poet and composer. The family moved to The Priory in Rathfarnham in 1790, where Curran's favorite daughter Gertrude died in 1792 after falling out a window.} Gertrude was buried in the grounds of the house and Curran spend hours watching her grave from his window while withdrawing affection from his wife and the other children.
In 1795, Curran forced his wife, pregnant following an affair with The Rev Michael Sandys, out of the family home and forbade her from contacting their children. Curran brought legal proceedings against Sandys for having a "criminal conversation" with his wife, in which his own series of affairs were brought into the public spotlight. Curran was awarded £50 in damages, and later stated that his marriage was the worst mistake he had ever made in his life.
Parliamentary advocate of emancipation and reform Curran stood as Member of Parliament (MP) for Kilbeggan in 1783. He subsequently represented Rathcormack between 1790 and 1798 and served then for Banagher from 1800 until the Act of Union in 1801.
Curran entered the Irish House of Commons in the immediate wake of the "Revolution of 1782". With its forces stripped from Ireland to serve in the American War, the British Government had been sufficiently intimidated by the Irish Volunteer movement to surrender the right of the British Parliament to legislate for Ireland. In his first major speech in the Irish House of Commons, Curran supported Henry Flood's attempt to build on the Volunteer success in securing legislative independence with parliamentary reform. Flood proposed to abolish the "pocket boroughs" that allowed the aristocracy, already seated in the Lords, to nominate and control two-thirds of the Irish Commons. When the Ascendancy lords, confident of the return from America of a British garrison and appreciative of liberally-dispensed Government favours, affirmed their confidence in the existing "Constitution", Curran was persuaded of the need to look to the Kingdom's wholly disenfranchised Catholic majority.
Speaking on the tenth anniversary of 1782, Curran credited the achievement of legislative independence to a "partial union" between Protestants and their Catholic "fellow countrymen". The Patriots accepted the support of Catholics, but with neither "the justice or gratitude to let them share the fruits of the victory", had allowed them to "relapse into their former insignificance and depression". The result was an Irish Parliament as much "at the feet of the British Minister" as it had been when formally subordinate to Westminster.Curran (1792) "in the debate on Catholic Emancipation" cited by Karl Marx in notes on Irish History (1869). Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Ireland and the Irish Question, New York, International Publishers, 1972, p. 171.
This was the essence of Wolfe Tone's Argument on behalf of the Catholics of Ireland (1791): without the complete emancipation that would allow Catholics to act in a true union with Protestants, the Ascendancy would continue to misrepresent Ireland and subordinate her interests to those of England. It was a question, Curran insisted, not merely of Catholic "sufferings or their relief":[A] partial liberty cannot long subsist ... alienation of 3 millions of our people, subserviency and corruption in a fourth ... [T]he inevitable consequence would be a Union with Great Britain. And if anyone desires to know what that would be, I will tell him. It would be the emigration of every man of consequence from Ireland; it would be the participation of British taxes, without British trade; it would be the extinction of the Irish name as a people.Curran, Irish House of Commons, 18 February 1792. Catholic Emancipation cited by Karl Marx in notes on Irish History (1869). Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Ireland and the Irish Question, New York, International Publishers, 1972, p. 208.Identified with the patriot Whig opposition of Henry Grattan, a personal friend, Curran pressed the case for Catholic Emancipation. After the extension (under pressure from London) of the limited right to vote in 1795, this focussed on removing the sacramental bar to Catholics sitting in Parliament and taking public office. At war with Republican France, and satisfied that it had done enough to secure the loyalty of wealthier Catholics and their bishops, the Government suppressed further agitation. In February 1796, Curran protested the Insurrection Bill, which empowered magistrates to order transportation, as "a Bill for the rich, and against the poor."What is a Bill which puts the liberty of the poor man, who has no visible means of living but labour, in the discretion of the magistrates? In Ireland, where poverty [is] general, it constitutes poverty [as] a crime. Let the rich men of Ireland, therefore, fear when they enact a law against poverty, lest poverty should enact a counter-law against riches.Curran, Irish House of Commons, 5 February 1796, the Insurrection Bill, cited by Karl Marx in notes on Irish History (1869). Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Ireland and the Irish Question, New York, International Publishers, 1972, p. 216.In October 1796, Curran supported Grattan's motion, in face an anticipated French invasion, that a defence of the kingdom could best be secured by legislation to guarantee "the blessings and privileges of the constitution without distinction of religion". On 15 May 1797, he supported William Ponsonby's proposal for sweeping reform. Once this last effort of the constitutional opposition to obtain a conciliatory policy from the government was rejected, Curran and his colleagues withdrew from the Commons and ceased to attend its debates until the parliament adjourned on 3 July.