In 1776, Duigenan insulted the Provost in the Four Courts, and the Provost, disdaining Duigenan, called upon Tisdall to make him responsible for his follower’s conduct. He told Tisdall to consider that he had insulted him with a view to provoke a challenge. This was the occasion on which Duigenan threatened to bulge the Provost’s eye. Tisdall at once applied for an information against him in the King’s Bench. Seventeen counsel were engaged in the cause.

Hutchinson argued his own case before the Court with consummate ability. He delivered a most masterly speech, and offered an apology for calling Tisdall an old scoundrel and an old rascal. He did not recollect having used these expressions, but if he did use them, it was out of Court. He referred pathetically to all the annoyance and ridicule that he was undergoing by pamphlets and in the public press; and he excused his appearing in his own defence by the circumstance that his lawyers were harassed in attendance on the six different suits promoted against him on very unaccountable motives.

The Court of King’s Bench made the rule against him absolute, but the proceedings collapsed in consequence of Tisdall’s death.[44]

Duigenan says that Hutchinson was once publicly chastised by a gentleman whom he had affronted, but we have no other account of the circumstance. Duigenan makes out that he was a coward as well as a tyrant and impostor, and he compares him to “Cacofogo,” the usurer in Beaumont and Fletcher’s play.

In 1789, the Provost supported Grattan in the Regency Bill, and in the motions connected with it. For this he was liable to be dismissed from the lucrative offices which he held under the Crown, and to save himself from this penalty he signed the “Round Robin” of the twenty peers and thirty-seven commoners who were in a similar predicament. This famous instrument which was drawn up in the Provost’s house, pledged the co-signers to stand or fall together, and bound them as a body “to make Government impossible” if the Viceroy, Lord Buckingham, were to venture to punish any of them. Fitzgibbon, then Attorney-General, mercilessly crushed and humbled the “Parliamentary Whiteboys;” he made the synagogue of Satan come and worship before his feet,[45] and the most abject of the recreants was the Provost.[46]

To secure the control of the parliamentary representation of the University was, as has been said, one of Hutchinson’s dearest plans. The pursuit of it led him, according to all accounts, into some of his most dishonourable and vindictive actions, and after all he won but temporary and chequered success in the ambitious experiment. In the prosecution of these election aims, the Provost stuck at nothing. He had agents and emissaries everywhere; and through them as well as by his own direct efforts he instituted an all-pervading system of corruption. He knew how to make subtle but palpable advances to the voters that were under his eye, and to tamper at the same time with their friends and parents at a distance. He ransacked every department of Academic life so as to be expert at turning the whole system of collegiate rewards and punishments into an organised instrumentality for bribery. All the emoluments, rewards, and conveniences of the college were reserved for those who promised their vote to the Provost, and all the obsolete and vexatious disciplines were enforced against those who were disposed to assert their independence in exercising the franchise. By an unscrupulous use of both his patronage, and his powers as Returning Officer, he was enabled to get two of his sons returned for the University, but he saw powerful and damaging petitions against both of them. In 1776, he returned his eldest son Richard against Tisdall, the Attorney-General. Tisdall lodged a petition in June, which the House ordered to be considered in July, but before that day the Parliament was prorogued, and did not meet again till October in the following year. Meanwhile, Tisdall died; the petition was moved by Madden and King, and ultimately, in March, 1778, the Select Committee unseated Hutchinson. John Fitzgibbon conducted the petition, and thereby established his position as a lawyer. He was elected for the University in Hutchinson’s room, and the foundation of his coming greatness was laid.[47]

Richard Hutchinson, it maybe observed, fell back on Sligo, to which he had been elected at the same time that he was elected for the University, and where he seems to have escaped another petition by choosing the University constituency. In the debate as to whether a new writ should be issued for Sligo, in 1778, the Provost took a forward part, and bewailed that he “was forced to go there out of his sick bed to defend his son.” The Gravamina of the College petition of 1778 were almost identical with those of the petition of 1790, and while Parliament was unseating the Provost’s son, the Court of Common Pleas was dealing with the Provost himself. The Rev. Edward Berwick, whose case is related in the “Lachrymæ,” took an action against the Returning Officer for refusing his vote. The Court, overruling the Provost’s objection, made an order that the Plaintiff should have liberty to inspect all the College books that could be of use to him in his suit. The verdict was against the defendant, without costs.[48]

After the disastrous parliamentary petition of 1778, the Provost took no family part in the College elections until the year 1790, when his second son Francis was returned. His return led to a parliamentary inquiry; and the case, which is fully reported, is a very interesting passage in the history of the College and of Hutchinson.[49]

The committee, consisting of fourteen members, besides the chairman, W. Burston, Esq., was chosen on the 14th day of Feb., 1791, and on it sat, amongst the others, the Hon. Arthur Wesley (Duke of Wellington), Right Hon. Lord Edward Fitzgerald, and Right Hon. Denis Daly.

There were two petitions, one by Laurence Parsons, Esq., the defeated candidate, and the other by some scholars and other electors of the borough. The sitting member was the Hon. Francis Hely Hutchinson, and the returning officer was his father the Provost. There was a powerful bar. Beresford Burston, Michael Smith (afterwards Master of the Rolls), Peter Burrowes, and William Conyngham Plunket, were for the petitioners; Tankerville Chamberlain (afterwards Judge of the Queen’s Bench), and Luke Fox (afterwards judge), were for the sitting member; and Robert Boyd (afterwards Judge of King’s Bench), and Denis George, Recorder of Dublin (and afterwards Baron of the Exchequer), were for the Provost. The total constituency was 92, and out of these “84 and no more” tendered their votes. Arthur Browne was returned at the head of