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December 05, 2018
Benjamin Disraeli on Bad Books.
Books are fatal: they are the curse of the human race. Nine-tenths of existing books are nonsense, and the clever books are the refutation of that nonsense.
--Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881)
Posted by JD Hull at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)
Daniel O'Connell: Hammer of the English.
Daniel O'Connell (1775-1847), MP, Lord Mayor of Dublin, "Liberator of Ireland", and trial lawyer's trial lawyer, led a movement that forced the British to pass the Catholic Emancipation Act of 1829, allowing Catholics to become members of the British House of Commons.
He may have done more for Ireland than anyone after him. The English, of course, found him infuriating. O'Connell was at heart a consummate trial lawyer, and by nature both actor and gadfly.
In a set of lectures John L. Stoddard published in 1901, he said of him:
He was a typical Irishman of the best stock--wily, witty, eloquent, emotional and magnetic. His arrival in town was often an occasion for public rejoicing. His clever repartees were passed from lip to lip, until the island shook with laughter.
In court, he sometimes kept the spectators, jury, judge and even the prisoner, alternating between tears and roars of merriment. Celtic to the core, his subtle mind knew every trick peculiar to the Irish character, and he divined instinctively the shrewdest subterfuges of a shifty witness.
Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 03:54 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack