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have thirty more to pass under that guardianship, which the wisdom of our policy has provided for the protection of minors. Sorry am I, my Lords, that I can offer no consolation to my clients on this head; and that I can only join them in bewailing that the question whose result must, decide upon their freedom or servitude is perplexed with difficulties of which we never dreamed before, and which we are now unable to comprehend. Yet surely, my Lords, that question must be difficult upon which the wisdom of the representative of our dread sovereign, aided by the learning of his chancellor and his judges, assisted also by the talents of the most conspicuous of the nobles and the gentry of the nation, has been twice already employed, and employed in vain. We know, my Lords, that guilt and oppression may stand for a moment irresolute ere they strike, appalled by the prospect of danger, or struck with the sentiment of remorse. But to you, my Lords, it were presumption to impute injustice; we must therefore suppose that you have delayed your determination, not because it was dangerous, but because it was difficult to decide; and indeed, my Lords, a firm belief of this difficulty, however undiscoverable by ordinary talents,, is so necessary to the character which this assembly ought to possess, that I feel myself bound to achieve it by an effort of my faith, if I should not be able to do so by any effort of my understanding.'

Mr. Curran proceeds, in another part of the same speech, to draw a picture of the late distracted condition of Ireland:

Depressed (says he) in every thing essential to the support of political or civil independency; depressed in commerce, in opulence, and knowledge; distracted by that civil and religious discord, suggested by ignorance and bigotry, and inflamed by the artifice of a cruel policy, which divided in order to destroy; conscious that liberty could be banished only by disunion, and that a generous nation could not be completely stripped of her rights, until one part of the people was deluded into the foolish and wicked idea, that its freedom and consequence could be preserved or supported only by the slavery or depression of the other. In such a country it was peculiarly necessary to establish at least some few incorporated bodies, which might serve as great repositories of popular strength; our ancestors learned from Great Britain to understand their use and importance; in that country they had been hoarded up with the wisest forecast, and preserved with a religious reverence as an unfailing resource against those times of storm, in which it is the will of Providence that all human affairs should sometimes fluctuate; and as such they had been found at once a protection to the people, and a security to the crown. My Lords, it is by the salutary repulsion of popular privilege, that the power of the monarchy is supported in its sphere: withdraw that support, and it falls in ruin upon the people, but it falls in a ruin no less fatal to itself by which it is shivered to pieces. "Our ancestors must therefore have been sensible, that the enslaved state of the corporation of the metropolis was a mischief that

extended its effects to the remotest borders of the island. In the confederated strength and the united councils of great cities, the freedom of a country may find a safeguard which extends itself even to the remote inhabitant, who never put his foot within their gates.

But, my Lords, how must these considerations have been enforced by a view of Ireland as a connected country, deprived as it was of almost all the advantages of an hereditary monarchy, the father of his people residing at a ditance, and the paternal beam reflected upon his children through such a variety of mediums; sometimes too Janguidly to warm them; sometimes so intense as to consume; a succession of governors differing from one another in their tempers, in their talents, and in their virtues; and of course in their systems of administration; unprepared in general for rule by any previous institution, and utterly unacquainted with the people they were to govern, and with the men through whose agency they were to act. Sometimes, my Lords, it is true, a rare individual has appeared among us, as if sent by the bounty of Providence, in compassion to human miseries, marked by that dignified simplicity of manly character, which is the mingled result of an enlightened understanding, and an elevated integrity; commanding a respect that he laboured not to inspire, and attracting a confidence which it was impossible he could betray. It is but eight years, my Lords, since we have seen such a man amongst us, raising a degraded country from the condition of a province, to the rank and consequence of a people, worthy to be the ally of a mighty empire: forming the league that bound her to Great Britain, on the firm and honourable basis of equal liberty and a common fate, standing and falling with the British nation, and thus stipulating for that freedom, which alone contains the principle of her political life in the covenant of her fœderal connection. But how short is the continuance of those auspicious gleams of public sunshine! how soon are they passed, and perhaps for ever! In what rapid and fatal revolution has Ireland seen the talents and the vir tues of such men give place to a succession of sordid parade and empty pretension, of bloated promise and lank performance, of aus tere hypocrisy and peculating economy Hence it is, my Lords, that the administration of Ireland so often presents to the reader of her history, not the view of a legitimate government, but rather of an encampment in the country of a barbarous enemy, where the

*

*The Duke of Portland, under whose administration Ireland obtained a free constitution.'

The Duke of Rutland and Marquis of Buckingham quickly followed his grace. The first was marked by a love of dissipation, and undignified extrayagauce. The Marquis, upon his arrival in Ireland, led the country to expect a general retrenchment in the public expences. This expectation was terminated by the creation of fourteen new places, for the purpose of parliamentary influ ence, countervailed indeed by a curtailment of the fuel allowed to the old sol. diers of the royal hospital by the public bounty, and by abortive speculations upon the practicability of making one pair of boots serve for twe troopers'

object of the invader is not government, but conquest; where he is of course obliged to resort to the corrupting of clans or of single indi'viduals, pointed out to his notice by public abhorrence, and recom mended to his confidence only by a treachery so rank and consummate, as precludes all possibility of their return to private virtue, or public reliance, therefore only put into authority over a wretched country, condemned to the torture of all that petulant unfeeling asperity, which, with a narrow and malignant mind, will bristle in unmerited elevation, condemned to be betrayed and disgraced, and exhausted by little traitors that have been suffered to nestle and to grow within it, making it at once the source of their grandeur and the victim of their vices, reducing it to the melancholy necessity of supporting their consequence, and of sinking under their crimes, like the lion perishing by the poison of a reptile that finds shelter in the mane of the noble animal, while it is stinging him to death.'

One further extract from the same speech we are induced to add to the foregoing. Under the semblance of describing the character of a former chancellor, Sir Constantine Phipps, the speaker takes the opportunity of pourtraying the intellectual and moral qualities of the chancellor (the Earl of Clare), whom he was then addressing.

In this very chamber (says he) did the chancellor and judges sit, with all the gravity and affected attention to arguments in favour of that liberty and those rights which they had conspired to destroy. But to what end, my Lords, offer arguments to such men? A little and a peevish mind may be exasperated, but how shall it be corrected by refutation? How fruitless would it have been to represent to that wretched chancellor that he was betraying those rights which he was sworn to maintain, that he was involving a government in disgrace and a kingdom in panic and consternation; that he was violating every sacred duty and every solemn engagement that bound him to himself, his country, his sovereign, and his God! Alas, my Lords, by wlrat argument could any man hope to reclaim or dissuade a mean, illiberal, unprincipled minion of authority, induced by his profligacy to undertake, and bound by his avarice and vanity to persevere? He would probably have replied to the most unanswerable arguments by some curt, contumelious, and unmeaning apophthegm, delivered with the fretful smile of irritated self-sufficiency, and disconcerted arrogance; or even if he could be dragged by his fears to a consideration of the question, by what miracle could the pigmy capacity of a stunted pedant be enlarged to a reception of the subject? The endeavour to approach it would have only removed him to a greater distance than he was before; as a little hand that strives to grasp a mighty globe is thrown back by the reaction of its own effort to comprehend. It may be given to a Hale or a Hardwicke, to discover and retract a mistake; the errors of such men are only specks that rise for a moment, upon the sur

face of a splendid luminary; consumed by its heat or irradiated by its light, they soon purge and disappear; but the perversenesses of a mean and narrow intellect are like the excrescences that grow upon a body naturally cold and dark; no fire to waste them, and no ray to enlighten, they assimilate and coalesce with those qualities so congenial to their nature, and acquire an incorrigible permanency in the union with kindred frost and kindred 'opacity. Nor indeed, my Lords, except where the interest of millions can be affected by the folly or the vice of an individual, need it be much regretted that to things not worthy of being made better, it hath not pleased Providence to afford the privilege of improvements.'

We forbear to offer any opinion on the justice or injustice of this bitter invective. It is presented to the reader as a specimen of the speaker's talents in the department of personal satire; and the violent effects which it produced on the feelings of the nobleman against whom it was pronounced, are familiarly known. That nobleman, however, is now no more; and it were but doing bare justice to the sacredness of reputation, to remind our readers of the remorseless violence of party zeal which too frequently prompted the Phi lippics of Mr. Curran.

The following extracts are taken from the speech in behalf of Mr. Peter Finerty, indicted for a libel, The speaker commences by openly telling the jury that they are packed and prejudiced against the cause.

'Never (says he) did I feel myself so sunk under the impor fance of any cause; to speak to a question of this kind at any time would require the greatest talents and the most matured deliberation; but to be obliged without either of these advantages to speak to a subject that hath so deeply shaken the feelings of this already irritated and agitated nation is a task that fills me with embar rassment and dismay.

Neither my learned colleague nor myself received any instruction or license until after the jury were sworn, and we both of us came here under the idea that we should not take any part in the trial. This circumstance I mention not as an idle apology for an effort that cannot be the subject of either praise or censure, but as a call upon you, gentlemen of the jury, to supply the defects of my efforts by a double exertion of your attention.

Perhaps I ought to regret that I cannot begin with any compliment that will recommend me or my client personally to your favour. A more artful advocate would probably begin his address to you by compliment on your patriotism, and by felicitating his client upon the happy selection of his jury, and upon that unsuspected impartiality in which if he was innocent he must be safe. You must be conscious, gentlemen, that such idle verbiage as that could not convey my sentiments or my client's upon that subject. You know and we know upon what occasion you are come, and by

whom you have been chosen. You are come to try an accusation professedly brought forward by the state, chosen by a sheriff who is appointed by our accuser.

[Here Mr Attorney-general said the sheriff was elected by the city, and that observation was therefore unfounded.]

Be it so; I will not stop now to inquire whose property the city may be considered to be, but the learned gentleman seems to forget that the election by that city, to whomsoever it may be long, is absolutely void without the approbation of that very lord lieutenant who is the prosecutor in this case, I do therefore repeat to you, gentlemen, that not a man of you has been called to that box by the voice of my client; that he has had no power to abject to a single man among you, though the crown has; and that you yourselves must feel under what influence you are chosen, of for what qualifications you are particularly selected. At a moment when this wretched land is shaken to its centre, by the dreadful conflicts of the different branches of the community; between those who call themselves the partizans of liberty, and those who call themselves the partizans of power; between the advocates of infliction, and the advocates of suffering--upon such a question as the present, and at such a season, can any man be at a loss to guess from what class of character and opinion, a friend to either party would resort for that jury which was to decide between both ?

Mr. Curran proceeds in another part;

As to the sincerity of the declaration that the state has prose→ cuted in order to assert the freedom of the press, it starts a train of thought of melancholy retrospect and direful prospect, to which I did not think the learned counsel would have wished to commiɛ," your minds. It leads you naturally to reflect at what times, from what motives, and with what consequences the government has displayed its patriotism by these sorts of prosecutions. As to the motives, does history give you a single instance in which the state has been provoked to these conflicts except by the fear of truth and by the love of vengeance? Have you ever seen the rulers of any country bring forward a prosecution, from motives of filial piety, for libels upon their departed ancestors? Do you read that Elizabeth directed any of those state prosecutions against the libels which the divines of her time had written against her catholic sister; or against the other libels which the same gentlemen had written against her protestant father? No, gentlemen, we read of no such thing; but we know she did bring forward a prosecution from motives of personal resentment, and we know that a jury was found time-serving and mean enough to give a verdict which she was ashamed to carry into effect. I said the learned counsel drew you back to the times that have been marked by these miserable conflicts. I see you turn your thoughts to the reign of the second James. I see you turn your eyes to those pages of governmental abandonment, of popular degradation, of expiring liberty, of merciless and sanguinary prosecution; to that miserable

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