‘for the Protestants all think we’re such liars, when I’ve defended a man it’s all I can do to prevent him getting up and pleading Guilty.’ In those days, too, you could accept any brief you liked, and accepted the party that offered the biggest retaining fee, instead of having to wait your turn. It nearly broke O’Leary’s heart when the Retaining Fees Bill went through. I remember Lord Hopedale saying to him, ‘Surely you don’t defend the old system? You wouldn’t have a man get the best counsel because he can pay the biggest fee?’ and he just looked up with a twinkle in his eye and said, ‘I do defend it. Aren’t those that want the best counsel the biggest rogues? And aren’t the biggest rogues the rich people who can afford to pay for the best counsel?’ Oh, he was a wonderful smart chap, O’Leary.” And so the old gentleman would wander on, charming us with anecdotes of the bad old times that, just because they are so distant, still win our rebellious sympathies. Another of our guests was Mrs. Justice Partridge, who was one of the first of my sex to take the silk, and actually the first, I believe, to attain the Bench. She used to tell the story of one of the first cases she had to try. The offence was criminal wife-beating, and everybody was expecting her, as a woman, to be particularly severe over it. The accused, an Irishman, was equal to the occasion, and explained that he was “just taychin’ her her place in the house, the same as you would _your_ old man, yer Honour.” Talking of Irishmen reminds me of another distinguished visitor of ours, Daniel Geraghty, the Prime Minister of Ireland at that time. I remember asking him why it was that Ireland, since her liberation in the twenties, had never done much that was memorable in the way of literature, having produced so much till then. “It’s a simple thing,” he said, “it’s just that we Irishmen have no imagination. We’re hard, business folk by nature. When you English had it all your own way, you always liked to believe, and always wanted us to believe, that we were just dreamy sort of fellows, only fit to dream in a pig-sty or a garret, the way we’d starve contented. It’s always the way with you conquering races, you admire your subjects for the qualities that won’t be dangerous to you. _Excudent alii_—it’s the same all the world over.” I have never made up my mind whether he was right, but it certainly looks as if he was justified.