Part 4

The examination of the witnesses brought out a great many curious and interesting facts relative to college men and college administration a hundred years ago. For instance, Mr. Fox, in arguing against the right of Scholars, being minors, to vote, referred to the election of 1739, when Alexander MacAulay, Dean Swift's nominee, was elected against Philip Tisdall; and when the election was set aside by the House of Commons on account of the vote of Mr. Sullivan (afterwards Professor of Laws), who, being elected a Fellow at nineteen years of age in 1738, was a minor when he voted.

Plunket and Smith argued on the other side that Scholars, being minors, were entitled to their votes, and that these votes were allowed in the contested election of 1761, when Lord Clonmel ran French against the Attorney General, Tisdall, on account of the latter's hesitancy about the Octennial Bill. It was argued further that the Matriculation-book was not legal evidence as to age, inasmuch as "boys without any sanction gave in their ages older than they really were, from a desire to be thought men." Finally, the committee resolved unanimously that Fellows and Scholars, though minors, have a right to vote for members to represent the University.

Mr. Miller deposed that he was applied to by the Provost for his vote, and that he was offered a copy of the Provost's fellowship examination questions in Morality, "an advantage," said Burrowes, "which would have made a docile parrot appear superior to Sir Isaac Newton." Three of the senior fellows voted for Hutchinson at the election. Toomey, a Scholar, was a Catholic, and refused to vote because the Junior Fellows could prove that he was a Catholic, and would take his pupils from him. He would not conform, although the Provost's eldest son pressed him, and told him that his own ancestors were Catholics and had conformed, and that he himself would be a Catholic if he lived in a Catholic country. Toomey knew that Casey, a Scholar, was a Catholic, and that he was chapel roll-keeper, attended college chapel twenty times a week, and partook of the Sacrament. Toomey "did not vote at the election because his vote would be of no use as he was a Roman Catholic." James Hely, a Scholar, was a Catholic in Limerick, and had conformed in St. Werburgh's Church, in Dublin, to the Rev. Mr. L'Estrange, curate. The petitioners strove to disqualify Hely "for Popery," but his conformity was admitted by the committee.

Mr. Graves, Fellow (afterwards Professor of Divinity and Dean of Ardagh), had voted for Hutchinson, and he believed that the Provost did declare to the Senior Fellows that he would nominate him to the Fellowship even against the majority of the Board. Dr. Hales' pupils were worth L500 or L600 a year to him; and on his resignation the Provost claimed the power of distributing his pupils amongst the other Fellows. Hales had sixty or seventy pupils. Fellow-commoners paid L12, pensioners L6, per annum. It was deposed by another witness that the Provost nominated Mr. Ussher to a Fellowship in 1790--and it is so stated in the Calendar--although he had but two votes amongst the Senior Fellows, and those two were Drs. Kearney and Barrett.

Mr. Magee, Junior Dean, stated, that after his election to Fellowship he was desirous to go to the bar, and that the dispensation was prevented by the Provost. Shortly before the election, however, the Provost offered to obtain the dispensation for him, with commons money and the usual allowance, if he would either vote for Hutchinson or go out of the way. Magee declined both proposals, and lost the dispensation; but probably he got on as well in the Church as he would have succeeded at the Bar. In the course of Mr. Magee's examination the following passage occurred: "Counsel--Is not Dr. Fitzgerald a warm man? Magee--There are other warm men in college besides Dr. Fitzgerald. Counsel--I perceive there are." Mr. Toomy, a Scholar of the house, acknowledged that he was a Catholic. He told about "Regulators' Places" for Sizars, worth about L16 a year, and about "Natives' Places" for Scholars worth the same, and the electioneering use which the Provost made of these appointments. Mr. Stordy, the college clerk, told a great deal about the system of "non-coing." A Scholar's non-co was worth L16 a year, and a Fellow's was worth, for one half year, 7s. 7d. a week, and for the other half, 8s. 6d. a week, or about L21 a year. Dr. Marsh, Senior Fellow, was twice refused leave of absence by the Provost. The Provost gave the Vice-Chancellor's rooms to his own supporters. A Scholar could have leave for thirty-two days, and a fellow for sixty-three. By Yelverton's Act, Trinity College students could be called to the bar three years before non-graduates.

Mr. Whitley Stokes, Fellow, gave instances of the Provost's partiality at the election.

Mr. Fox opened the case for the sitting Member, and maintained that there was no instance of undue influence, and he was followed by Mr. Boyd on the part of the Provost. Then Mr. Plunkett spoke to evidence, against the Provost and the sitting Member. The Recorder replied for the Provost in very eulogistic terms, mentioning his seven Under-Graduate premiums, his college reforms, improvements, &c. He disparaged the made-up arithmetical evidence of Miller and Magee, and was followed by Mr. Chamberlaine for the sitting Member. Mr. Burrowes closed the argument in a very eloquent speech, which was as severe on the Provost as the "Lachrymae" or "Pranceriana" was. It is noticeable, by the way, that Duigenan took no part in the petitions, and that he was neither employed in the case nor even named in the examination. Burrowes said that Miller's rejection of the Provost's offer of his questions was "a moral miracle." It was Miller's third attempt for fellowship.

Burrowes "lamented the necessity of the odious investigation which exposed to public view the disgraceful and disastrous state of the University--condoning the undue influence would make the college as corrupt as any pot-walloping borough--the University would be shortly depopulated, and its only remaining trace would be the octennial convention of an unresisted Provost, and unresisting electors, to return suitable representatives to Parliament, and celebrate the festival of banished literature and vanquished public spirit. The decay of the University in such an event, would be desirable; its honours ought to be a brand of disgrace in society, and the contaminated Scholar ought to become a despised and abandoned citizen." Burrowes was full of pride and loyalty for the old place. He was himself an Ex-Scholar, as were also amongst the lawyers in the case Beresford Burston, Plunket, Smith, Fox, and Boyd; and he was jealous for the honour of the Academic prize. "Some of the most important officers in the state," he exclaimed, "are filled by men who were Scholars of the University; in the learned professions the most eminent men have in their youth been Scholars. The most respectable divines, the most eminent lawyers, a considerable number of the Judges of the land, have been Scholars. Every individual of the eight lawyers who appeared before this Committee have been Scholars of the University." Burrowes closed his speech:--"I sit down assured you cannot pronounce the Honourable Francis Hely Hutchison to have been duly elected." Forty-one witnesses were produced by the petitioners, of whom ten were Fellows and thirteen Scholars. The Hutchisons produced six witnesses--no Fellow, one Scholar, and a lady.

The Committee sat from the 14th February to the 24th March, when, by a majority of one, including the double vote of the chairman, it resolved (Wellington and Lord E. Fitzgerald voting in the minority) "That the Hon. Francis Hely Hutchinson had made use of no undue influence; that he was duly elected a burgess to represent the University in the present Parliament; and that the Provost, as Returning Officer of the University, acted legally and impartially at and before the election."

Perhaps the most significant fact evolved by the investigation was that some of the Scholars were Catholics, the Statutes and the Anglican Sacrament notwithstanding. There was no reserve in the statement, and no remark on it was made by any member of Committee. The point was not brought forward in the petition, nor pressed by any of the Council, except in the case of one Scholar, whose conformity was accepted by the Committee. In fact the "Popery" seems to have been taken quite as an understood thing, and this coincides entirely with the famous declaration of Fitzgibbon. In 1782, speaking on Gardiner's Bill, in the Irish House of Commons, as Member for the University, he asserted that "the University of Dublin was already open, by connivance, and that no religious conformity was required." It is not easy to reconcile this with the then existing regulations for students as well as for Scholars, and in that debate the Provost did not speak exactly in this strain. On the contrary, he lamented that the religious disabilities did exist, and he was urgent for a King's Letter to give the Catholics equality in the University, under a Theological Professor of their own.

That debate, it may be noticed, is memorable for the cordial and consenting speeches of the Provost and of the two Members for the University, Hussey Burgh and Fitzgibbon. They all were in favour of Catholic relief, especially in the matter of education, and they all would have opened the College freely and liberally to Catholics. It was in this debate that Hussey Burgh protested against the Irish Bishops' practice of ordaining men on Scotch degrees. The Provost warmly thanked Burgh for sustaining the right and the dignity of the University. He said that the number of yearly degrees had risen from 95 to 109, and that Trinity College Graduates could be supplied for as many curacies as had the legal allowance of L50 a year.

Plunket was very indignant at the miserable bribery and corruption that were administered by the Provost, but he had not a word to say against the deeper and wider corruption that was ingrained in the sectarian exclusiveness of the constitution of the place. How could he say anything, being himself in the same condemnation? He was the son of a Unitarian minister; and is said to have lived and died an Unitarian, and still he was a Scholar of the House.

In 1790, a very able pamphlet, suggested by Provost Hutchison's despotic regime, was published anonymously, entitled: "An Inquiry how far the Provost of Trinity College, Dublin, is invested with a negative on the proceedings of the Senior Fellows by the Charter and Statutes of the College."

The pamphlet is traditionally ascribed to the Rev. G. Miller, F.T.C.D., who gave such important evidence before the parliamentary committee; and, substantially, it is based upon the arbitrary acts of the Provost, which were brought out before the committee, and which are more fully stated in the "Lachrymae" and "Pranceriana."

The "Enquiry" asserts that the Provost claimed and exerted a negative upon all Board proceedings; and that in the election of Fellows and Scholars he had not only a negative but a final affirmative. The writer maintains that this, although the traditional, was not the true sense of the Statutes; and that by the Statutes the Provost had no greater power than the head of any other Corporation. He argues very closely and clearly to this purpose in regard of elections especially, from the grammatical meaning of "una cum" and "cum;" and he shows that what the Statute requires is merely the presence of the Provost, and that then, like the rest, he is bound by a majority decision. The writer is more subtle and less convincing in his solution of the last clause of the statute beginning "Quod si primo."

Mr. Miller submitted a statement of the case for legal opinion, and obtained opinions supporting his own view from Sir William Scott (Lord Stowel), Sir Michael Smith, (Baron of the Exchequer and Master of the Rolls), Edward Law (Lord Ellenborough), Arthur Wolfe (Lord Kilwarden, Lord Chief Justice), and others.

The three questions were: (1) Had the Provost an absolute negative on Board Proceedings? (2) Was he concluded by the concurring votes of five Senior Fellows? (3) Could he nominate Fellows and Scholars to the exclusion of a candidate by a majority of the electors?

The first and third were answered in the negative; and the second in the affirmative by all the lawyers.

While all these people were amusing themselves anatomising the Provost, he was not by any means silent on his own side. Besides his speeches in Parliament and his utterances at the Privy Council and at the Board, he had recourse to the public press. He sent a vindication of himself to the Hibernian Journal, which Duigenan says was the beginning of all the writing. The Provost also published by Leathley, Bookseller to the University, a pamphlet entitled, "Regulations made in Trinity College since the appointment of the Provost," and "Pranceriana" says that the unlucky pamphlet was withdrawn promptly after the attack made upon it in the Hibernian. It was for this attack that the Provost had the editor of the journal, Mr. James Mills, ducked under the College pump. This smashing article is No. 27 in the "Pranceriana Collection," and it certainly is a notable piece of criticism. It was attributed to the pen of Malone, the editor of "Shakespeare." It is, perhaps, worth mentioning here, that as the College Library was without a copy of the Provost's book until the year 1853, so it was without a copy of "Pranceriana" until the year 1880. Trinitas incuriosa suorum! The copy of the "Pranceriana" in the Library is the Second Edition, 1784, with the Appendix of 1776.

All the foregoing testimonies are damaging to the Provost's memory; but it is only fair to remember that all of them are the utterances of men who were his envious and unscrupulous personal enemies. In some respects John Hely Hutchinson was bad enough, but the most abiding charge against him is that of greediness and place-traffic; and in this transgression it is probable that he only sinned more deeply than most of the public men around him. He certainly was audacious in his demands, but he was a king in jobbery. What Duigenan does not at all account for is, how Hutchinson was able to drive all these flourishing bargains, and to hold such high place under various administrations and in the teeth of combining rivalries--and still this is a circumstance that ought, biographically, to be accounted for. The etiology is supplied in other contemporary sources, written in a more discerning spirit--and it is this, that the Provost was a man of immense ability, and of rare personal ascendency. He possessed, moreover, in a signal degree, the undaunted personal courage which, as mentioned further on, was inherited by his sons and grandson; although Duigenan, who was himself very much of the Bob Acre type, refuses him even this credit, and mocks his sham duels. He knew how to make himself both dreaded and desired by the Government, for he could be either its greatest help or its most formidable opponent. He knew the men he had to deal with, and he dealt with them according to the knowledge.

We have descriptions of the Provost in many contemporary works, and these descriptions, while they make no secret of his rapacity, present a strong reverse side to the "Pranceriana" picture.

Thus Hardy says: "John Hely Hutchinson, father to the Earl of Donoughmore and Lord Hutchinson, introduced a classical idiom into the House of Commons. No member was ever more extolled than he was on his first appearance there. He opposed Government on almost every question, but his opposition was of no long continuance. As an orator his expression was fluent, easy, and lively; his wit fertile and abundant; his invective admirable, not so much from any particular energy of temperament or diction, as from being always unclogged with anything superfluous, or which could at all diminish the justness and brilliancy of its colouring. It ran along with the feelings of the House and never went beyond them.... The consequence of this assumed calmness was that he never was stopped.... The members for a long time remembered his satire, and the objects of it seldom forgave it.... In his personal contests with Mr. Flood (and in the more early part of their parliamentary careers they were engaged in many) he is supposed to have had the advantage.... To Flood's anger, Hutchinson opposed the powers of ridicule; to his strength he opposed refinement; to the weight of his oratory an easy, flexible ingenuity, nice discrimination, and graceful appeal to the passions. As the debate ran high, Flood's eloquence alternately displayed austere reasoning and tempestuous reproof; its colours were chaste but gloomy; Hutchinson's, on the contrary, were of 'those which April wears,' bright, various, and transitory; but it was a vernal evening after a storm, and he was esteemed the most successful because he was the most pleasing.... Mr. Gerrard Hamilton (than whom a better judge of public speaking has seldom been seen) observed that in his support of Government Hutchinson had always something to say which gratified the House. 'He can go out in all weathers, and as a debater is therefore inestimable.' He had attended much to the stage, and in his younger days he lived on great habits of intimacy with Quin, who admired his talents and improved his elocution.... He never recommended a bad measure, nor appeared a champion for British interest in preference to that of his own country. He was not awed into silence; he supported the Octennial Bill, the Free Trade Bill, and the Catholic Bill.... His acceptance of the Provostship of Trinity College was an unwise step.... After a long enjoyment of parliamentary fame it was then said that he was no speaker, and after the most lucrative practice at the Bar that he was no lawyer.... His country thought far otherwise, and his reputation as a man of genius, and an active, well-informed statesman, remained undiminished to the last. He left the opposition in 1760, and took the Prime Serjeancy.... In private life he was amiable, and in the several duties of father and husband most exemplary. In 1789, on the debate about the Prince of Wales's regency, Grattan opposing the administration was supported with great ability by Hutchinson, then Secretary of State. In the Lords, Lord Donoughmore took the same side. In 1792, in the debate on Langrishe's Bill for the restoration of the elective franchise to Irish Catholics, Hutchinson's two sons (Francis [?], afterwards Lord Donoughmore, and the one afterwards Lord Hutchinson) voted in the minority with the patriots."

The Gentleman's Magazine (1794) says that he was a wondrously gifted man and one of the most remarkable persons that this country ever produced. At the same time it calls him a rank courtier, and recites most of the "Pranceriana" and "Lachrymae" tattle against him.

Grattan and Grattan's son held a very high opinion both of his genius and of his fidelity to the interests of Ireland. Both of the Grattans, on the other hand, had a horror of Duigenan, as a truculent and coarse vulgarian. It is in Grattan's "Life" that we are told about Duigenan's threatening in the Law Courts to "bulge the Provost's eye," and it is there that Curran's epigram on Duigenan's oratory is preserved.

Grattan says that Hutchinson supported every honest measure--all the main and essential ones, such as the Claim of Right, Free Trade, the Catholic Bills, Reform, and the Pension Bill. "He was the servant of many governments, but he was an Irishman notwithstanding." He possessed greater power of satire than any man of his day, and Grattan quotes Horace Walpole's anecdote about his habit of annoying Rigby and the Government when he wanted to make himself disagreeable to them. At other times he was immensely useful to the Government. Grattan considered that his chief fault was want of openness and directness of character, together with love of self-advancement. He was an enthusiastic admirer of Grattan, and took a prominent part in demanding for him the national presentation in 1782.

Taylor says that Hutchinson was a very effective Provost, that he restored the discipline of the place, and that to him the University owes the improvement of the modern languages professorships. Taylor adds that he was a man of an enlightened mind and extended views, and that it is now admitted his views were consonant with the best principles of education.

Lord North knew Hutchinson's peculiarity well, and he said that "if England and Ireland were given to him he would want the Isle of Man for a potato garden." The Duke of Rutland, Lord Lieutenant here in 1784, formed a similar estimate, when he wrote that "the Provost had always some object in view, and that his objects were not generally marked with the character of moderation and humility."

Dr. Wills gives Provost Hely Hutchinson a very high place amongst the eminent men of the country, and mentions his eloquence and college reforms as well as his greed.