of Lord Morpeth's motion for a vote of censure on the speaker for expressions hostile to the Roman catholic claims, which he had used in the remarks he addressed to the regent at the bar of the House of Lords at the close of the previous session. The cause of emancipation, however, which had seemed hopeful in 1813, grew more and more hopeless till 1821, and Plunket, though he spoke not unfrequently, won no more oratorical victories.
Following the lead of Lord Grenville, he supported the tory government both on the question of renewing the war in 1815, after Napoleon's escape from Elba, and on the course they took in 1819 with reference to the conduct of the magistrates in dealing with the meeting at St. Peter's Fields, Manchester. On the latter occasion, on the introduction of the Seditious Meetings Prevention Bill, he delivered a speech which satisfied his opponents (see Quarterly Review, xxii. 497, and Lord Dudley, Letters to the Bishop of Llandaff, p. 232) and offended his friends. Brougham upbraided him for his vote, and Lord Grey was reported to have called him an ‘apostate.’ Time, however, healed this breach. When Grattan died in 1820, Plunket, who had always felt and shown admiration and respect for him, succeeded to his position as foremost champion of the Roman catholic claims. It is, however, to be observed that the leaders of the Roman catholic party, while recognising that he was incomparably their best advocate, dissented from his view, which he embodied in his bill, that securities in the shape of a royal ‘veto’ on the appointment of catholic bishops were required (Fitzpatrick, O'Connell Correspondence, i. 68; Life of Dr. Doyle, i. 155). On 28 Feb. 1821 he reintroduced the question in a speech of which Peel said, twenty years later, ‘It stands nearly the highest in point of ability of any ever heard in this house.’ It is one of the very few speeches he revised, often as he was urged to collect them; and it appeared in Butler's ‘Historical Memoirs of the English, Irish, and Scotch Catholics’ in 1822. He saw his emancipation bill safe through its second reading on 16 March by 254 to 243 votes, and then left its conduct to Sir John Newport; it failed to become law. His wife's death recalled him to Ireland, and so paralysed his energies that he withdrew for some time from public and professional life. He returned to it when, early in January 1822, he was appointed by Lord Liverpool attorney-general for Ireland under the new lord lieutenant, the Marquis Wellesley, and was sworn of the privy council. Hopes were held out to him and to the other Grenville whigs that something would now be done for the Roman catholics. He believed that their cause would progress more surely with friends in the administration than if its supporters remained permanently in opposition. His situation was difficult. The Irish part of the administration had been expressly constructed on the principle of a combination of opposites; for Goulburn, the chief secretary, was anti-catholic, O'Connell and his party were pressing for what was impracticable, and the protestant party endeavoured to thwart such efforts as could be made. On the whole, Plunket discharged his duties with courage and fairness. When the grand jury of Dublin threw out the bills against the ringleaders of the ‘Bottle Riot,’ he exhibited ex officio informations against them, but failed to obtain convictions. Saurin then accused him of having resorted to an unconstitutional procedure, and instigated Brownlow, member for Armagh, to move a vote of censure upon him in the House of Commons. He rose in a house predisposed against him, and in a powerful speech refuted the charge (for details see Walpole, Hist. Engl. vol. ii.; Hansard, new ser. vols. viii. and ix.; Buckingham, Memoirs of the Court of George IV, pp. 424–6). But his difficulties in Ireland were incessant. He failed in his prosecution of O'Connell in 1824 for his ‘Bolivar’ speech. The rise of the Catholic Association compelled the introduction of a bill for its suppression in February 1825, which he supported; and though his speech in support of Burdett's Catholic Relief Bill on 28 Feb. was one of his finest, still the bill seemed as far as ever from passing into law.
On Lord Liverpool's resignation in March 1827 and Canning's assumption of office, Plunket expected to become Irish lord chancellor. The king's filial conscientiousness on the catholic question and dislike of advocates of catholic claims disappointed him of the office. George IV refused to accept Lord Manners's resignation of the Irish chancellorship. Canning then offered Plunket the English mastership of the rolls, just vacated by Copley, which Plunket accepted, held for a few days, and then resigned, owing to the professional feeling of the English bar against the appointment of an Irish barrister to an English judicial post. Lord Norbury was thereupon induced to resign the chief-justiceship of the Irish common pleas, and Plunket succeeded him, and was raised to the peerage of the United Kingdom as Baron Plunket of Newton, co. Cork. His first speech in the House of Lords was made on 9 June 1827, on the Catholic Relief Bill, the approaching
