Ronald John McNeill

“ When Peter Burrowes, notwithstanding his close personal friendship with Grattan, declared that Flood was “perhaps the ablest man Ireland ever produced, indisputably the ablest man of his own times,” he expressed what was probably the general opinion of Flood’s contemporaries. Lord Charlemont, who knew him intimately though not always in agreement with his policy, pronounced him to be “a man of consummate ability.” He also declared that avarice made no part of Flood’s character. ”

“ Men like Anthony Malone and Hely-Hutchison fully realized the necessity for far-reaching reforms, and it only needed the ability and eloquence of Flood in the Irish House of Commons to raise up an independent party in parliament, and to create in the country a public opinion with definite intelligible aims. ”

“ Personal ambition often governed his actions, but his political judgment was usually sound; and it was the opinion of Bentham that Flood would have succeeded in carrying a reform bill which might have preserved Irish parliamentary independence, if he had been supported by Grattan and the rest of his party in keeping alive the Volunteer Convention in 1783. ”