Schultze, Zur Geschichte der Litteratur über das Decret Gratians (1870), Die Glosse zum Decret Gratians (1872), and Geschichte der Quellen und Litteratur des kanonischen Rechts (3 vols., Stuttgart, 1875).

GRATRY, AUGUSTE JOSEPH ALPHONSE (1805-1872), French author and theologian, was born at Lille on the 10th of March 1805. He was educated at the École Polytechnique, Paris, and, after a period of mental struggle which he has described in Souvenirs de ma jeunesse, he was ordained priest in 1832. After a stay at Strassburg as professor of the Petit Séminaire, he was appointed director of the Collège Stanislas in Paris in 1842 and, in 1847, chaplain of the École Normale Supérieure. He became vicar-general of Orleans in 1861, professor of ethics at the Sorbonne in 1862, and, on the death of Barante, a member of the French Academy in 1867, where he occupied the seat formerly held by Voltaire. Together with M. Pététot, curé of Saint Roch, he reconstituted the Oratory of the Immaculate Conception, a society of priests mainly devoted to education. Gratry was one of the principal opponents of the definition of the dogma of papal infallibility, but in this respect he submitted to the authority of the Vatican Council. He died at Montreux in Switzerland on the 6th of February 1872.

GRATTAN, HENRY (1746-1820), Irish statesman, son of James Grattan, for many years recorder of Dublin, was born in Dublin on the 3rd of July 1746. He early gave evidence of exceptional gifts both of intellect and character. At Trinity College, Dublin, where he had a distinguished career, he began a lifelong devotion to classical literature and especially to the great orators of antiquity. He was called to the Irish bar in 1772, but never seriously practised the law. Like Flood, with whom he was on terms of friendship, he cultivated his natural genius for eloquence by study of good models, including Bolingbroke and Junius. A visit to the English House of Lords excited boundless admiration for Lord Chatham, of whose style of oratory Grattan contributed an interesting description to Baratariana (see Flood, Henry). The influence of Flood did much to give direction to Grattan’s political aims; and it was through no design on Grattan’s part that when Lord Charlemont brought him into the Irish parliament in 1775, in the very session in which Flood damaged his popularity by accepting office, Grattan quickly superseded his friend in the leadership of the national party. Grattan was well qualified for it. His oratorical powers were unsurpassed among his contemporaries. He conspicuously lacked, indeed, the grace of gesture which he so much admired in Chatham; he had not the sustained dignity of Pitt; his powers of close reasoning were inferior to those of Fox and Flood. But his speeches were packed with epigram, and expressed with rare felicity of phrase; his terse and telling sentences were richer in profound aphorisms and maxims of political philosophy than those of any other statesman save Burke; he possessed the orator’s incomparable gift of conveying his own enthusiasm to his audience and convincing them of the loftiness of his aims.

The principal object of the national party was to set the Irish parliament free from constitutional bondage to the English privy council. By virtue of Poyning’s Act, a celebrated statute of Henry VII., all proposed Irish legislation had to be submitted to the English privy council for its approval under the great seal of England before being passed by the Irish parliament. A bill so approved might be accepted or rejected, but not amended. More recent English acts had further emphasized the complete dependence of the Irish parliament, and the appellate jurisdiction of the Irish House of Lords had also been annulled. Moreover, the English Houses claimed and exercised the power to legislate directly for Ireland without even the nominal concurrence of the parliament in Dublin. This was the constitution which Molyneux and Swift had denounced, which Flood had attacked, and which Grattan was to destroy. The menacing attitude of the Volunteer Convention at Dungannon greatly influenced the decision of the government in 1782 to resist the agitation no longer. It was through ranks of volunteers drawn up outside the parliament house in Dublin that Grattan passed on the 16th of April 1782, amidst unparalleled popular enthusiasm, to move a declaration of the independence of the Irish parliament. “I found Ireland on her knees,” Grattan exclaimed, “I watched over her with a paternal solicitude; I have traced her progress from injuries to arms, and from arms to liberty. Spirit of Swift, spirit of Molyneux, your genius has prevailed! Ireland is now a nation!” After a month of negotiation the claims of Ireland were conceded. The gratitude of his countrymen to Grattan found expression in a parliamentary grant of £100,000, which had to be reduced by one half before he would consent to accept it.

One of the first acts of “Grattan’s parliament” was to prove its loyalty to England by passing a vote for the support of 20,000 sailors for the navy. Grattan himself never failed in loyalty to the crown and the English connexion. He was, however, anxious for moderate parliamentary reform, and, unlike Flood, he favoured Catholic emancipation. It was, indeed, evident that without reform the Irish House of Commons would not be able to make much use of its newly won independence. Though now free from constitutional control it was no less subject than before to the influence of corruption, which the English government had wielded through the Irish borough owners, known as the “undertakers,” or more directly through the great executive officers. “Grattan’s parliament” had no control over the Irish executive. The lord lieutenant and his chief secretary continued to be appointed by the English ministers; their tenure of office depended on the vicissitudes of English, not Irish, party politics; the royal prerogative was exercised in Ireland on the advice of English ministers. The House of Commons was in no sense representative of the Irish people. The great majority of the people were excluded as Roman Catholics from the franchise; two-thirds of the members of the House of Commons were returned by small boroughs at the absolute disposal of single patrons, whose support was bought by a lavish distribution of peerages and pensions. It was to give stability and true independence to the new constitution that Grattan pressed for reform. Having quarrelled with Flood over “simple repeal” Grattan also differed from him on the question of maintaining