ess taste in dress, and when he had
raised himself to the bench, he was amongst the judges of his day all
that Revell Reynolds was amongst the London physicians of a later date.

Living in the midst of the fierce contentions which distracted Ireland
in the days of our grandfathers, John Toler, first Earl of Norbury,
would not have escaped odium and evil repute, had he been a merciful man
and a scrupulous judge; but in consequence of failings and wicked
propensities, which gave countenance to the slanders of his enemies and
at the same time earned for him the distrust and aversion of his
political coadjutors, he has found countless accusers and not a single
vindicator. Resembling George Jeffreys in temper and mental capacity, he
resembled him also in posthumous fame. A shrewd, selfish, overbearing
man, possessing wit which was exercised with equal promptitude upon
friends and foes, he alternately roused the terror and the laughter of
his audiences. At the bar and in the Irish House of Commons he was alike
notorious as jester and bully; but he was a courageous bully, and to the
last was always as ready to fight with bullets as with epigrams, and
though his humor was especially suited to the taste and passions of the
rabble, it sometimes convulsed with merriment those who were shocked by
its coarseness and brutality. Having voted for the abolition of the
Irish Parliament, the Right Honorable John Toler was prepared to justify
his conduct with hair-triggers or sarcasms. To the men who questioned
his patriotism he was wont to answer, "Name any hour before my court
opens to-morrow," but to the patriotic Irish lady who loudly charged him
in a crowded drawing-room with having sold his country, he replied, with
an affectation of cordial assent, "Certainly, madam, I have sold my
country. It was very lucky for me that I had a country to sell--I wish I
had another." On the bench he spared neither counsel nor suitors,
neither witnesses nor jurors. When Daniel O'Connell, whilst he was
conducting a cause in the Irish Court of Common Pleas, observed, "Pardon
me, my lord, I am afraid your lordship does not apprehend me;" the Chief
Justice (alluding to a scandalous and false report that O'Connell had
avoided a duel by surrendering himself to the police) retorted, "Pardon
me also; no one is more easily apprehended than Mr. O'Connell"--(a
pause--and then with emphatic slowness of utterance)--"whenever he
wishes to be apprehended." It is _sa