A year went by, and Terence was still away from home, an inmate of the Priory; settled down, much against his will, as a sober councillor, principal assistant to Mr. Curran, the continually rising advocate. Sober is scarcely the fitting epithet, for conviviality was the besetting sin of all classes of Irish in the eighteenth century, and it was notorious that legal gentlemen, from Judge Clonmel to the meanest attorney, were constantly in the habit of going drunk to roost. Where lawyers led, Dublin was fain to follow, for the Bar took the lead in the society of the metropolis, occupying a strong middle position of its own between 'gentlemen to the backbone' and 'half-mounted' ditto, from, which it dictated to both. As the policy of ministers grew more and more unpopular, it became more and more urgent that Government patronage should be expended in purchasing support for the measures under which the country groaned; and where could support be more easily found than among the exponents of forensic wisdom? Successfully to do battle with Flood and Grattan it was necessary to scrape together as much intellect as was available, and so every promising barrister became certain of a seat in parliament if he would furbish up his brains for the Viceroy's benefit. This gave to the lawyers a prestige which drew sons of peers within their ranks, and they assumed superior airs, which no man challenged, in that their profession was a nursery to the senate--a step-ladder to the highest honours. Younger sons of noble houses invariably lean towards the middle class, because a wide difference of income divides them in feeling and ways of thought from their elder brothers. Such lordlings as possessed a competence chose to while away their hours elegantly in gowns and bands. And so the Bar became the fashion, the lawyers being credited with such attributes as they thought proper to adopt, and being permitted to wield an arbitrary sway which was beneficial and mirth-inspiring. They assumed the right of mind over matter, and people bowed the knee without inquiry, for they were pre-eminently jolly dogs who made life the merrier, whose scraps of legal lore sounded mightily sonorous to ignorant ears, and who, if one was rash enough to presume to dispute their law, were always ready to take refuge behind the inevitable pistol. But human nature at its best is frail, and even lawyers are not always pure. When came the tug of war--when the Four-courts were closed and courts-martial juggled away men's lives--the councillors prated no more of their incorruptible virtue, but donned the uniform as others did, and truckled, with a few bright exceptions, as meanly as the rest.