The Commercial Restraints of Ireland — Context and Discussion

Hutchinson had to face a very surly temper inside the walls. He faced it with a light heart, and triumphed over it; but it often turned on him, and stung him. He considered that it was well worth the cost; for in the first place it was an appointment for life; and then he had not to give up his lucrative practice in the law courts, which Froude says was worth nearly L5,000 a year; and in fact he never ceased to angle for the Mastership of the Rolls. In the next place, he got in addition a splendid town residence, on which eleven thousand pounds had just been expended; he got an income of two thousand one hundred a year; he got a very wide patronage, and he calculated on getting the control of the parliamentary representation of the University, which at that time was in the hands of the Fellows and Scholars. This last object would have been an immense acquisition for him; but he failed to win the game, the playing of which led him, according to Duigenan and others, into some of his most reprehensible courses.

As has been said above, in the rivalries of public life Hutchinson was pitted against a phalanx of as able men as ever appeared together in any country; and most of these men he supplanted and surpassed. They avenged themselves by lampooning him, and they were masters in the art. The Provost was assailed in prose and in verse, in couplet and in cartoon, in newspapers and pamphlets, in the "Lachrymae Academicae," "Baratariana," and "Pranceriana;" and these two last _pasquinades_ are unique in English literature. Their satire is as broad and as wounding as that of Junius, while it is often far more finished and playful; and there is no other instance of so many men of the same ability and station being combined in such a mosaic of detraction.[8]

"BARATARIANA," so called from Sancho Panza's island-kingdom, was written in verse and in prose, and it appeared originally as letters in the _Freeman's Journal_, which at that time, previous to its removal to "Macaenas' Head" in Bride-street, was published over St. Audeon's Arch.[9] The principal writers of these letters were Sir Hercules Langrishe,[10] Flood, Grattan, Yelverton, Gervase Bushe, and Philip Tisdall. The volume is "a collection of pieces published during the administration of Lord Townshend," and in it the Lord Lieutenant figures as "Sancho," Anthony Malone as "Don Antonio," Provost Andrews as "Don Francesco Andrea del Bumperoso," and Hely Hutchinson under the various titles of "Don John Alnagero, Autochthon, Terrae Filius, Monopolist, Single Session, and Serjeant Rufinus." It was in one of these papers that Grattan, with an audacious drollery, drew his celebrated character of Lord Chatham, as a privileged extract from a manuscript copy of Robertson's forthcoming "History of America." The description given by Langrishe of Hutchinson, who was not Provost at that time, is: "He talks plausibly and with full confidence, and whatever Pro-consul is deputed here Rufin immediately kidnaps him into a guardianship, and like another Trinculo erects himself into a viceroy over him. His whole elocution is alike futile and superficial. It has verdure without soil, like the fields imagined in a Calenture. He has great fluency, but little or no argument. He has some fancy, too, but it serves just to wrap him into the clouds and leave him there, while he holds himself suspended, planing and warbling like a lark, without one thought to interrupt the song. If he has any forte it is in vituperation or abuse. In 1766 he defeated the first Militia Bill.[11] His first stride in apostasy was supporting the Privy Council Money Bill in 1767 [for opposing which Anthony Malone[12] had previously lost the Prime Serjeancy in 1754, and the Chancellorship of the Exchequer[13] in 1761;] his next was in defending the motion for the additional regiments, whereby we were treated like a ravaged country, where contributions are levied to maintain the very force that oppresses it." For these ministerial services Hutchinson got the Prime Serjeancy, with an extra salary of L500 a year. In the next session he was useful to the Crown in regard of the Pensions Enquiry Bill and the Embargo Corn Bill, and was rewarded with the sinecure Alnager's place, worth L1,000 a year. He was made a Privy Councillor, got the reversionary grant of the Principal Secretaryship of State, and the commission of a half-pay majority, and was what Primate Stone termed "a ready-money voter." "He got more," says Flood, "for ruining one kingdom than Admiral Hawke got for saving three."[14] The "List of the Pack," one of the rhymes in the volume, has: