report of the trial is in existence. On his conviction he was set at liberty pending the pronouncement of his sentence. On 10 July 1789 the Dublin Volunteers passed a resolution approving ‘the firm conduct of our worthy fellow-citizen in a late transaction,’ and Hamilton Rowan wrote to Magee in his confinement offering to subscribe twenty-five guineas to a public subscription which it was proposed to raise in his behalf. Magee, however, refused to accept anything. On 30 July, Brennan, one of the men libelled by Magee, entered Magee's house and destroyed the furniture. He was arrested and tried on sworn information, but was acquitted.
Meanwhile Magee continued to lampoon Higgins and Lord Clonmell, and the ‘Freeman's Journal,’ which belonged to Higgins, replied with equal scurrility. To revenge himself upon the lord chief justice he arranged for Lammas day, in honour of the Prince of Wales's birthday, what he called a ‘Bra Pleasura’ in a field adjoining Lord Clonmell's house at Dunleary, or ‘Fiat Hill.’ Lord Cloncurry was an eye-witness, and an account is also given by Sir Jonah Barrington. A mob of several thousands assembled. A derisive programme of sports was performed. Dogs danced in barristers' uniforms, and asses raced with jockeys in wigs; and finally, in an ‘Olympic pig-hunt,’ the people followed the animals into Lord Clonmell's grounds and did much damage. The ‘Dublin Evening Post’ of 25 Aug. announced an adjournment of further proceedings to 7 Sept., pending the arrival of the chief justice. On 27 Aug. it declared that ‘there would be thirty thousand men at Dunleary.’ The chief justice, according to an informant of Fitzpatrick, in great alarm implored the viceroy to summon the privy council and obtain a suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act. The result was that Magee was arrested on 3 Sept. by a warrant of Sir Samuel Bradstreet [q. v.], judge of the king's bench, and, being unable to give heavy bail to keep the peace for five years, was committed to Newgate. On 29 Oct. he was liberated in bail for 4,000l. On 3 Oct. a petition to grant a commission of lunacy in the case of Magee was dismissed by the lord chancellor of Ireland, who said ‘he had observed Mr. Magee the whole time he had been in court, and he saw nothing insane in him.’ In its issue of 31 Oct. the ‘Dublin Evening Post’ stated that ‘in the argument preparatory to Mr. Magee's liberation from his cruel and oppressive imprisonment the king's attorney-general avowed in open court that Magee's persecutions were entirely a government business.’
A further period of imprisonment in Newgate between 5 and 27 Nov. followed, owing to some difficulty respecting his bail, and on 2 Dec. he was again committed on the warrant of 3 Sept. On 8 Feb. 1790 he was sentenced to six months' imprisonment and a fine of 50l. for another offence—contempt of court in commenting on the proceedings in the court of king's bench.
The proceedings against Magee had now become a matter of public interest, and both Lord Clonmell and the administration generally of George N. T. Grenville, first marquis of Buckingham [q. v.], had incurred great odium in consequence. The question of the legality of the fiats was brought before the Irish House of Commons on 3 March by Ponsonby. A resolution to the effect that they were unconstitutional was moved by the latter before the grand committee of courts of justice, but the government motion that the chairman leave the chair was carried by 125 to 91. Ponsonby's speech was subsequently published. An ‘Address to the Whig Club on the Judicial Discretion of Judges on Fiats and Bails,’ published anonymously, was written by Leonard McNally [q. v.] (Madden, Hist. of Irish Period. Lit. ii. 349). The practice of issuing fiats was afterwards limited to definite sums.
The case of Daly v. Magee came on for hearing on 28 June 1790. Curran was among the prosecuting counsel, and Ponsonby one of those for the defence. The damages claimed were 8,000l.; those given were 200l. and 6d. costs.
By the beginning of 1790 Magee was broken both in fortune and in spirit, and his attacks on Higgins and his friends ceased. Though himself brought to the verge of ruin, he had accomplished his ends. Higgins was removed from the commission of the peace in 1793, and afterwards struck off the rolls. Through his representations, too, the city magistrates took active steps in September 1789 against the Dublin gambling-houses, which he had charged Higgins with supporting. Lord Clonmell's reputation Magee had also permanently ruined. Magee, whose residence was at 41 College Green, died in November 1809.
John Magee (fl. 1814), his eldest son, carried on the ‘Dublin Evening Post’ for several years on the same lines as his father. He was on 21 Feb. 1812 found guilty of publishing a libel on the Dublin police (Ann. Reg. 1812, pp. 271–2), and on 27 July 1813 he was convicted of a libel on the Duke of Richmond (late lord-lieutenant), and sentenced on 29 Nov. to a fine of 500l. and two years' imprisonment, and to give securities to keep the peace for seven years. His defence, conducted by Daniel O'Connell in a
