It is perhaps worthy of note that Mr. Ambrose Hardinge Giffard, a member of the Irish Bar, fought a duel with another bar rister, Mr. Bagnal Harvey, by whom he was wounded. Mr. Harvey was subsequently, in 1798, the leader of the Rebellion in the county of Wexford, and was executed for high treason. Mr. Giffard afterwards be came, as Sir A. Hardinge Giffard, Chief Justice of Ceylon. He was paternal uncle of Lord Halsbury, the ex-Lord Chancellor of England. The laws by which duelling is punishable were then, Mr. Walsh observes, as severe as now, but such was the spirit of the times that they remained a dead letter. No pros ecution ensued, and even if it did no con viction Would follow. Every man on the jury was himself probably a duellist, and would not find his brother guilty. After a fatal duel, the judge would leave it to the jury whether there had been "any foul play," with a direction not to convict for murder if there had not. "Duelling in Ireland," wrote Mr. Walsh in 1840, "is now happily a thing of the past." A few years afterwards, however, the old duelling spirit asserted itself at the Irish Bar on a memorable occasion. Mr. T. B. C. Smith, in 1844, as Attorney-General for Ireland, conducted the State prosecution of
Mr. O'Connell. Mr. FitzGibbon was one of the leading counsel for the defence. The report of the trial for the 30th Jan., 1844, in the State Trials, contains this remarkable passage: "The court having adjourned for luncheon, during the interval the AttorneyGeneral sent a challenge to FitzGibbon." On the judges resuming their seats, Mr. FitzGibbon complained of the conduct of the Attorney-General thus : " With a pistol in his hands he says to me, I'll pistol you unless you make an apology, and I cannot help telling him now such a course won't draw an apology from me." The AttorneyGeneral admitted that the letter was written hastily, but under circumstances of great provocation. The good offices of common friends were invoked, and the Chief Justice, insisting on an assurance from both gentle men that the quarrel would proceed no fur ther, thought that " this unpleasant matter might at once be set at rest" (see Reports of State Trials, New Series 5, pp. 366-368). This was the last instance of a serious challenge at the Irish Bar. Mr. Smith sub sequently became Master of the Rolls, and was the immediate predecessor of Mr. Walsh in that office. Mr. FitzGibbon became a Master in Chancery. His son is one of the Lord Justices of Appeal in Ireland. — Law Times.
