JACKSON, Joseph Devonsher (1783-1857), of 26 Leeson Street, Dublin and Sutton House, Howth, co. Dublin

A descendant of English Quakers who settled in Ireland in the early 17^th century, Jackson’s father was a land waiter (customs official) in Cork. His father-in-law was a once prosperous wine merchant, whose business ended in failure. Jackson had been involved in the business (‘behind the counter’, so his enemies claimed, of ‘a mean little shop’1Morning Chronicle, 31 Jan. 1835.), but his practice at the bar enabled him to assist with the family debts.2The Assembled Commons (1838), 131; H.T. Ryall, Ryall’s Portraits and Memoirs of Eminent Conservative Statesmen (1836), 144; J.R. O’Flanagan, The Munster Circuit. Tales, Trails, and Traditions (1880), 381. Jackson acquired a lucrative practice on the Munster circuit, becoming joint leader of the Munster bar. Though he was said to have lacked the ‘wit, pathos, or imagination’ expected of an Irish barrister, he was a hard-working and ‘admirable nisi prius lawyer’, possessed of ‘great fluency, an impressive court manner [and] great sagacity in selecting his topics for the jury’.3Freeman’s Journal, 21 Dec. 1857; O’Flanagan, Munster Circuit, 351-2; D.O. Madden, Ireland and Its Rulers: Since 1829 (2nd edn., 1844), ii. 260-1.

Having been schooled firmly in the Protestant evangelical tradition in Cork and at Trinity College, Dublin, Jackson became secretary of the Kildare Place Society shortly after its establishment in 1812. There he strengthened the Protestant influence and obtained a parliamentary grant for the body in 1816.4He was, for a time, the ‘master of the Society school’: John S. Deskey (ed.), The European Journals of William Maclure (1988), 702-3. He provided detailed evidence to the Royal Commission on Irish education in 1824-5, but resigned in 1830, having been offered the chairmanship of County Londonderry ‘at the express command’ of the Irish viceroy, the duke of Northumberland.5V.A. McClelland, rev. Gerard McCoy, ‘Jackson, Joseph Devonsher’, Oxford DNB, xxix. 507-8; Belfast News-letter, 12 Feb. 1830.

An active Conservative, he was well-known as a ‘zealous propagandist of Scriptural Toryism’ and described as being ‘intolerant in political polemics’.6Madden, Ireland and Its Rulers, 260; R.L. Sheil, Sketches of the Irish Bar, ii (1856), 76. He was a leading member of the Aldermen of Skinner’s Alley, a Dublin Conservative club: K.T. Hoppen, Elections, Politics, and Society in Ireland 1832-1885 (1984), 288. He was invited to stand for the Protestant stronghold of Bandon in December 1834 and overcame his distaste for electioneering (he had declined an invitation for Cork city in 1831) by securing a guarantee that no financial inducements would be offered to electors. He consequently resigned his chairmanship and was returned at the 1835 election on the platform of a strong commitment to ‘our glorious constitution in Church and State’.7T. Cadogan & J. Falvey, A Biographical Dictionary of Cork (2006), 147; Ryall, Portraits and Memoirs, 146; Parliamentary Test Book (1835), 89. As Jackson was Peel’s Irish legal adviser, it was widely believed that he would be appointed Irish solicitor-general, prompting Liberal concerns that the prime minister would be urged ‘to put the Board of Education in the hands of the Kildare Place people’, thereby depriving Catholic schools of government funding.8Caledonian Mercury, 24 Jan. 1835; O’Connell to Mary O’Connell, 18 Dec. 1834, O’Connell Correspondence, ed. M.R. O’Connell, v. 234. In the event, Jackson had to be satisfied with the position of serjeant-at-law, although the appointment of an ‘Orange lawyer’ who was not thought to ‘stand very high in his Profession’ was met with ‘as much indignation as astonishment’ by Irish Liberals.9Derby Mercury, 17 Dec. 1834; Dodsley’s Annual Register (1835), 201; Freeman’s Journal, 30, 31 Jan., 14 Feb. 1835; Madden, Ireland and Its Rulers, 260; Morning Chronicle, 31 Jan. 1835.

In the Commons, Jackson ‘broke tongue’ in the debate on Sir John Campbell’s execution of wills bill, and soon after followed Louis Perrin on the report on the church establishment, presenting a constituency petition for measures to protect the Irish Church.10Hansard, 11 Mar. 1835, vol. 26, c. 859; 7 Apr. 1835, vol. 27. cc. 926-9; Freeman’s Journal, 24 Dec. 1857, 16 Mar. 1835. Despite his strong links to the Orange party, he was appointed to the select committee on Orange lodges and spoke in the subsequent debate.11Hansard, 20 July 1835, vol. 29, c. 732; 19 Aug. 1835, vol. 30. cc. 675-97. He is said to have been ‘a private in Westropp’s Grenadiers’ and a member of ‘Hardinge’s Orange Lodge’: V.A. McClelland, ‘Jackson, Joseph Devonsher’ in C.S. Nicholls & G.H.L. Le May (eds.), Dictionary of National Biography. Missing Persons (1993), 150; PP 1835 (377) xv. 1; PP 1835 (475) (476) xv. 501, xvi. 1. On the Irish poor law issue, Jackson, like his Liberal opponents, favoured a sweeping measure that would provide relief to the able-bodied unemployed, but argued that ‘a law of settlement’ was also essential to prevent depressed parts of the country from inundating wealthier ones with paupers.12A. Macintyre, The Liberator. Daniel O’Connell and the Irish Party 1830-1847 (1965), 210; Hansard, 23 Feb. 1838, vol. 41, c. 71. Jackson served on the inquiry into privileges and the select committee on the Royal Dublin Society in March 1836, and was shortly afterwards appointed its vice-president.13PP 1837 (45) xiii. 203; PP 1836 (445) xii. 355; K. Bright, The Royal Dublin Society, 1815-45 (2004), 132-9. He also introduced Irish bills to amend laws relating to the lending of money upon landed securities (1835) and bankruptcy (1839), to better regulate the administration of justice (1840), and to assimilate the laws of England and Ireland regarding the death penalty (1842) all of which came to nothing.14Hansard, 19 Aug. 1835, vol. 30, cc. 706, 708-9; 19 Apr. 1842, vol. 62, c. 868; PP 1840 (332) xiv. 1; PP 1835 (332) iii. 295; PP 1839 (275) i. 235; 1840 (12) i. 1; PP 1842 (186) ii. 23. He also sat on committees which examined the supreme court of judicature in Scotland, the Irish banks of issue (1840), and the Irish drainage bill (1842).15PP 1840 (602) iv. 1; PP 1841 session 1 (366) vi. 1; PP 1841 session 1 (366) vi. 1; PP 1841 Session 1 (410) v. 5; PP 1842 (246) xiv. 387.

It was, however, his fierce attack upon Lord Mulgrave’s Irish administration on 7 February 1837 that made him the toast of the Carlton and established him as the unofficial leader of Irish Conservative opinion.16Hansard, 7 Feb. 1837, vol. 36, cc. 233-61; Belfast Newsletter, 20 Oct. 1837; See A Familiar Epistle to Sergeant Jackson (1837), reviewed in Dublin Review, vol. 2 (1837), 409-37, and Freeman’s Journal, 26 Apr. 1837. Contemporaries noted that Jackson rarely spoke on matters other than Ireland and was ‘unable to deal with English topics’: Madden, Ireland and Its Rulers, 264. Following Lord John Russell and over the course of four hours, ‘he hurled a budget of Protestant grievances at the Ministry’, cataloguing numerous instances of attacks made upon their lives and property with ‘plausible particularity’. 17J. Grant, The British Senate; or, a second series of random recollections of the Lords and Commons, ii (1838), 142-4; Madden, Ireland and Its Rulers, 262-3. The speech, in opposition to the Irish corporations bill, ‘added a cubit to his parliamentary stature, in the estimation of his Tory friends’. He was also in the forefront of subsequent attacks upon Mulgrave’s Whig successors, Ebrington and Clarendon, speaking at length in the debate on the relevant confidence motion of June 1841.18Hansard, 19 Apr. 1839, vol. 47, cc. 375-81; Hansard, 31 Jan. 1840, vol. 51, cc. 960-75; 3 June 1841, vol. 58, cc. 1065-74.

A stout defender of the established church on the temporalities question, he was also intensely critical of the role taken by the Catholic clergy in electoral politics.19Hansard, 23 July 1835, vol. 29, cc. 987-1003; 3 June 1836, vol. 34, cc. 8-41; 10 July 1838, vol. 44, cc. 105-6; 7 Mar. 1839, vol. 46, c. 125. In 1835 he petitioned against the Maynooth Grant on the ground that public money ought not to be used to enable the Catholic clergy to turn ‘their chapels into political arenas’ and, on 19 February 1838, he presented a petition to prevent the Catholic clergy from interfering in parliamentary elections. In March 1841, he introduced an abortive bill to amend the Maynooth Acts.20Hansard, 19 June 1835, vol. 28, c.896; 23 June 1840, vol. 55, cc. 58-9; 2 Mar. 1841, vol. 56, cc. 1261-71; D.A. Kerr, Peel, Priests and Politics: Sir Robert Peel’s Administration and the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland, 1841-1846 (1982), 73; Freeman’s Journal, 23 Feb. 1838; PP 1841 Session 1 (171) ii. 569. He also sat on committees on the prerogative and ecclesiastical courts, later calling for a return of ecclesiastical commissioners attending meetings of the board during 1838-40.

Jackson was a conscientious attender of debates and the most vocal parliamentary opponent of Irish corporate reform. Pointing, in 1836, to the differences between the relevant English and Irish legislation, he used the issue as the springboard for his attack on the Irish government in 1837.21Hansard, 7 Mar. 1836 vol. 33, cc. 1340-58; 7 Feb. 1837, vol. 36, cc. 233-61; 21 Feb. 1837, vol. 36, cc. 773-91; M. Murphy, ‘Municipal reform and the repeal movement in Cork, 1833-1844’, Journal of the Cork Archaeological & Historical Society, 81 (1976), 1-18 [4]; P.M. Geoghegan, ‘Jackson, Joseph Devonsher’, Dictionary of Irish Biography, iv. 933-4. He initially took the position that abolishing the corporations would be preferable to handing them over to the Liberals, but he also demonstrated a flexibility on the question that was at odds with Conservative rank and file opinion.22Freeman’s Journal, 6 Jan. 1840. In August 1836 he advised Peel that compromise would be necessary and suggested that reforms which sufficiently protected the rights of freemen and established a high property qualification might be accepted.23Hansard, 11 June 1838, vol. 43, cc. 606-7; 18 June 1838, vol. 43, c. 792; Dod’s Parliamentary Companion (1839), 168; Macintyre, Liberator, 95, 247-8. While the Commons’ opposition to the 1839 bill was unsuccessful, Jackson did see his suggested amendments made in the Lords, which led to the bill’s rejection in the Commons.24Hansard, 28 June 1839, vol. 45, cc. 1012-4; 4 July 1839, vol. 45, cc. 1221-3; Freeman’s Journal, 6 Jan. 1840. Nevertheless, in 1840 Jackson pressed Peel, who was keen to see the question resolved before he returned to office, to agree to a franchise that would deny Catholics a monopoly of municipal power.25R.B. McDowell, Public Opinion and Government Policy in Ireland, 1801-1846 (1952), 181. In his speech of 14 February, he supported Peel over the second reading of the corporations bill, but promised to oppose it at every subsequent stage unless he could be satisfied that it would not convert the Irish corporations ‘from Protestant communities into exclusively Roman Catholic institutions’. This correctly convinced O’Connell that the bill would ‘be so mutilated by the Lords as to be totally unacceptable’, leaving his party with a measure that appeared more an act of municipal disenfranchisement.26Hansard, 14 Feb. 1840, vol. 52, cc. 256-63; 24 Feb. 1840, vol. 52, cc. 530-9; 28 Feb. 1840, vol. 52, cc. 778-82; O’Connell to P.V. Fitzgerald, 15 Feb. 1840, O’Connell Correspondence, vi. 307-8; McIntyre, Liberator, 259-60. At the same time, Jackson sought to broker a compromise between moderates and hard-liners over reforms to Dublin Corporation.27Bright, Royal Dublin Society, 172.

As the Conservative’s electoral expert in Ireland, Jackson opposed any extension of the franchise.28Hansard, 28 Feb. 1839, vol. 45, cc. 1003-6; 24 Feb. 1841, vol. 56, cc. 963-4. However, having witnessed the operation of the registry system at first hand, he was eager to see the relevant laws of England and Ireland assimilated, and spoke on the Irish registration bill of 1835.29Hansard, 12 Feb. 1839, vol. 45, cc. 345-6; Hansard, 17 June 1835, vol. 28, c. 851; 20 Aug. 1835, vol. 30, cc. 762-76; PP 1835 (503) ii. 671. He took an active part on the select committee on fictitious voters in 1837-8 and advocated annual registration as the means to eradicate the practice, informing Peel that the current ‘monstrous’ state of the Irish representation was largely due to the ‘gross perjury’ resorted to with respect to the valuation of voters’ property.30PP 1837 (308) xi, Pt. I. 1; PP 1837 (335) xi, Pt. II. 1; PP 1837 (408) xi, Pt. II. 143; PP 1837-38 (259) xiii, Pt. I. 1; PP 1837-38 (294) xiii, Pt. I. 339; PP 1837 (643) xiii, Pt.II. 1; The Times, 18 Oct. 1837; Macintyre, The Liberator, 90-1. Jackson brought his knowledge of Irish electoral problems to bear on the bill he brought forward in opposition to the government’s Irish voter registration bill of May 1838, his aim being to protect urban freemen from disenfranchisement, but which he was obliged to withdraw.31Hansard, 22 May 1838, vol. 43, cc. 126-7; Freeman’s Journal, 25 May 1838; PP 1837-38 (417) iii. 699; PP 1837-38 (601) iii. 739. He subsequently contributed to Stanley’s Irish registration bills of 1840 and 1841 and lent equivocal support to the government measure by which it was superseded.32Hansard, 28 Feb. 1840, vol. 52, cc. 615-42; 25 Mar. 1840, vol. 53, cc. 56-61; PP 1840 (105) ii. 471; Hansard, 11 June 1840, vol. 54, cc. 1337-40; 26 June 1840, vol. 55, cc. 136-7; Freeman’s Journal, 6 Jan. 1840; McDowell, Public Opinion and Government, 133; PP 1841 session 1 (18) iii. 323; PP 1841 session 1 (24) iii. 363; Hansard, 4 Feb. 1841, vol. 56, cc. 309-10; 24 Feb. 1841, vol. 56, cc. 951-64.

Given his unsuccessful venture into trade, Jackson was sensitive to attacks upon his background and private character.33In February 1837 the Morning Chronicle described Jackson as ‘a bankrupt uncertified until within three weeks of his return for Bandon’, which he regarded as a breach of privilege - a threatened civil action secured a retraction: Hansard, 27 Feb. 1837, vol. 36, cc. 1053-6, 1059; Flanagan, Munster Circuit, 381; Ryall, Portraits and Memoirs, 146-7; Morning Chronicle, 10 Mar. 1837. Yet, being ‘tall and well-formed’, he was described as of ‘prepossessing appearance, with a fine forensic countenance’ which was ‘intellectually severe in its outline’.34Madden, Ireland and Its Rulers, 260; Ryall, Portraits and Memoirs, 147. His ‘pleasing’ appearance was ‘of an angular form; his nose is sharp and prominent, and his forehead is also ample. His complexion is fair; and his hair white as the snow – not, perhaps, in its unsunned state, but after it has been on the ground for some time.’: Grant, British Senate, 144. Voluble and possessed of an ‘extremely powerful’ voice, which said to grow in strength the further he proceeded in a speech, Jackson made more than 200 often lengthy contributions to debate.35Grant, British Senate, 145. It was observed that ‘his admirable lungs enabled him to dispense with anything like vehement gesticulation’, and he scarcely made a speech on any important Irish question which took ‘less than one hour and a half in the delivery’: Ibid., 145, 146. Supporters praised his speeches for their ‘logical accuracy; and their fearless tone’ and admired his ‘considerable powers of asseveration’. Some of his opponents, however, found his ‘mechanical capacity for talking ad infinitum’ tiresome.36Grant, British Senate, 145; Ryall, Portraits and Memoirs, 146; Flanagan, Munster Circuit, 382 [?]; Madden, Ireland and Its Rulers, 261. O’Connell, who dubbed Jackson ‘leather-lungs’, dismissed one of his speeches on Irish municipal corporations as ‘simply a piece of brawling virulence, unenlivened by one ennobling idea’.37W.J. Fitzpatrick, The Correspondence of Daniel O’Connell. The Liberator (1888), ii. 79; O’Connell to Fitzpatrick, 18 Feb. 1837, O’Connell Correspondence, vi, 15-6. Yet even critics admitted that he could be ‘an excellent stater of a case – perspicuous – plausible – and consecutive’. Imperturbable and argumentative, he was said to be ‘quick to detect and expose a fallacy’ and employed oratory that was ‘simple and concise, and strictly free from rhetorical artifice’.38Ryall, Portraits and Memoirs, 147; Madden, Ireland and Its Rulers, 261.

Jackson was re-elected for Bandon by a comfortable margin in 1837 and prior to the 1841 general election The Times stated that a contest against him ‘would be almost an act of insanity’.39The Times, 25 June 1841. By this time, Jackson ‘had borne for five years in the house the burden and heat of Irish debates’, having been O’Connell’s ‘chief antagonist’ in the house.40F. Boase, Modern Biography, ii (1897), 35; F.E. Ball, The Judges in Ireland, 1221-1921 (1926) ii, 287. He is said to have borne verbal assaults from Irish Liberal members ‘with admirable equanimity’ and eschewed ‘the use of vituperative language’: Grant, British Senate, 147. His loyalty to Peel was repaid when he was made Irish solicitor-general, Nov. 1841, an appointment that was viewed with suspicion by Irish Liberals, who regarded him as ‘a fluent and fanatical evangelical lawyer’, who was also ‘energetic, sectarian, and ambitious’.41Daily News, 13 Sept. 1849. The prime minister also had to overcome the Queen’s strong reservations about the Orange hue of Jackson’s politics, and her fear that the favourable effect of recent ‘mild and conciliatory’ government in Ireland might ‘be endangered by this appointment’.42Kerr, Peel, Priest and Politics, 72; Queen to Sir Robert Peel, 25, 26 Oct. 1841, A.C. Benson & Visct. Esher (eds.) The letters of Queen Victoria: A selection from Her Majesty’s correspondence between the years 1837 and 1861, i (1908), 441-2, 444-5.

These fears were misplaced, however, as Jackson’s good-natured and ‘gentlemanly presence’ in the House was widely appreciated. Being personally amiable and courteous, he was never known to display political or religious feeling either in his social habits or his professional conduct.43Madden, Ireland and Its Rulers, 260, 261; Flanagan, Munster Circuit, 382, 383. He was in fact ‘scrupulously honest in his dealings with Catholics and was admired at the Irish bar for his fairness to them’.44Regarding O’Connell, he claimed not to fault him on account of his religion, adding ‘God forbid. Many a man professing the principles of that religion I sincerely esteem and love. I may think the principles false, and do, but the man I love. It is not then his religion – it is the mischievous public character of that man that I abominate.’: The Times, 18 Oct. 1837 Nevertheless, Jackson had always resented the withdrawal of the Kildare Society’s parliamentary grant and obstinately opposed the state sponsorship of the Board of National Education, which he charged with having implemented ‘a Roman Catholic system of education’.45Hansard, 29 July 1835, vol. 29, cc. 1212-5, and see ibid., 13 July 1835, vol. 29, cc. 476-80; 8 Aug. 1836, vol. 35, cc. 1013-4; 12 Feb. 1839, vol. 45, cc. 285-7; 12 June 1840, vol. 54, cc. 1160-1. (In April 1837, he had sat on the select committee on the government’s plan of Irish education and ‘was always in the thick of the fights’ on this vexed question.46PP 1837 (485) ix. 1; PP 1837 (543-I) (543-II) viii, Pt.I. 1, viii, Pt. II. 1.) When, in September 1842, the moderate Conservative Irish chief secretary, Edward Eliot, adhered to the national board system in the face of Jackson’s opposition, it caused, according to Macaulay, ‘the very best parliamentary set-to’ between two members of the government ‘which has ever been witnessed’.47Hansard, 15 July 1842, vol. 65, cc. 208-16; Ryall, Portraits and Memoirs, 145; Freeman’s Journal, 24 Dec. 1857; McDowell, Government and Public Opinion, 207. Nevertheless, critics implied that Jackson was willing to compromise on the issue in order to secure judicial office: Freeman’s Journal, 8 Sept. 1842.

Upon taking office, Jackson avoided a by-election at Bandon and was returned instead on a vacancy for Dublin University in February 1842, and resigned that September when appointed justice of common pleas in Ireland. Even former political critics conceded that his performance on the bench ‘gave general satisfaction’. Being ‘merciful and humane’, he frequently undertook ‘the part of the prisoner’s advocate’ and so dispensed justice with ‘an impartiality and … a clemency which won for him the approbation of all’. While critics gave Jackson no credit for ‘brilliancy of language’, scholarly and literary attainments, ‘or deep legal acumen’, they did concede that ‘he was patient, attentive, painstaking, courteous and honest’. Having made his mark at the bar, house and bench, it was thought that he might have risen higher if not for ‘such a galaxy of legal talent’ then available to the government.48Madden, Ireland and Its Rulers, 264, 261; Freeman’s Journal, 21, 24 Dec. 1857; Belfast Newsletter, 22 Dec. 1857; Ball, Judges in Ireland, ii, 288. He died after a protracted illness at Sutton House, Howth in December 1857 and was buried in St. Fintan’s cemetery.