William Saurin (1757 – 11 February 1839) was an Irish barrister, Crown official and politician. He was Attorney-General for Ireland from 1807 to 1822, and for much of that period, he acted as the effective head of the Irish Government. He was unusual among Irish Law Officers in that he was never appointed a judge, nor wished to become one. As an Ulster Protestant, and a determined opponent of Catholic Emancipation, he incurred the bitter enmity of Daniel O'Connell, who called him "the mortal foe", and worked for years to have him removed from office.
Family
Saurin was born in Belfast, second of the four sons of the Reverend James Saurin, Vicar of Belfast (died 1774) and his wife Jane Duff. James Saurin, Bishop of Dromore, was his younger brother.
The Saurins were of French Huguenot descent (no doubt this is why Daniel O'Connell called William an "insolent transplanted Frenchman"). The family, who were originally from Nimes, fled from France after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685. Even a century later, this episode, according to his friends, made a deep impression on William.
Louis Saurin, Dean of Ardagh, the first of the family to settle in Ireland, (he was a brother of the celebrated preacher Jacques Saurin, who converted to Catholicism, and then back to the Reformed faith), was William's grandfather.
Education and early career
He was educated at Duboudien's School, a well-regarded private academy in Lisburn, and at Trinity College Dublin, where he took his Bachelor of Arts degree in 1777. He entered Lincoln's Inn and was called to the Bar in 1780. After a slow start in his profession, he became one of its acknowledged leaders; despite his later eminence he was at first considered something of a "plodder".
Legal and political career
Saurin was a passionate opponent of the Act of Union and endeavoured, without success, to persuade the Irish Bar as a body to oppose it. He then entered the Irish House of Commons as member for Blessington, in order to combat the achievement of the Union.
His speeches against the Union were considered to be among the finest on the topic. He said that he-
denied the right of the legislature to alienate its sacred trust. He insisted that it would amount to a forfeiture of that estate which was derived from and held under the people, in whom the reversion must perpetually remain; that they were bound to consult the will of the majority of the nation, and that the will of the majority was the foundation of all law.
Castlereagh denounced the speech as an incitement to rebellion and compared Saurin to Thomas Paine. Others noted that by "the nation" Saurin meant the Protestant ruling class with whose interests he wholly identified: never, according to his critics, did he admit that the Catholic majority had any rights at all.
That he was appointed Attorney-General for Ireland despite his opposition to the Union and his repeated refusal to stand for the post-Union Parliament is a tribute to his legal eminence (although Daniel O'Connell inevitably accused him of political time-serving).
Attorney-General for Ireland
His tenure as Attorney-General is remarkable not only for its length, but also for his effective dominance of the Irish administration, a position never equalled by any other holder of the office (with the possible exception of Philip Tisdall, Attorney General 1760–1777). The fact that the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland was usually an absentee appointment and that the Lord Chancellor of Ireland, Lord Manners, was not familiar with the Irish political scene, gave Saurin the opportunity to direct the Irish Government, an opportunity of which he took full advantage. Sir Robert Peel, Chief Secretary for Ireland 1812–1818, was said to be wholly in sympathy with Saurin, although Peel was later to radically alter his own position on Catholic Emancipation.