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LIFE OF CHARLES HALIDAY.
I could grant almost anything. Unbending strictness is the
soul of business."
In allusion to the advance of capital suggested, he says,
" I cannot avoid seeing that I am placing the stepping stone
on which my weight must rest, the foundation on which my
hopes must rise ;
appears but slight to my eyes,
vanish entirely."
and although (Heaven knows) the structure
without this basis it must
It does not appear whether the suggestion was acted on ;
but it was of little consequence, for the death of his brother
William, in this very month of October, 1812, changed the
whole course of his career and brought him to settle at
Dublin, at the end of March, 1813, in an already established
business.
Among his father's guests at Arran-quay, were Surgeon
Benjamin Lentaigne (father of my friend, the present Sir
John Lentaigne, C.B.) and Major Sandys, keeper of " The
Provo," or Provost Martial's Military Prison, on Arbour-hill,
adjacent to the Royal Barracks.
Surgeon Lentaigne was a French Royalist who had escaped
from France in the year 1793, after losing two of his brothers
by the guillotine.
He first fled to Flanders and there joined
a regiment of noblesse raised by the French Princes ; but
afterwards came to England, and took his degree as a
Surgeon, and was, in 1799, appointed to the 1st Dragoons.
He had the medical charge of " The Provo."
It was while lying a prisoner for high treason in this
prison that Theobold Wolfe Tone attempted
to end his life
by cutting his throat with a penknife.
He wounded himself badly but did not effect his purpose,
and lay for a few days between life and death, though in the
end he succeeded in saving himself from a public execution.
It was the intention of the Government to try him and
execute him by martial law, an act it was contended that
could not lawfully be done where the King's courts were
sitting and had jurisdiction.