on which he commented with a minute precision, not often equalled, Mr. Curran drew a general inference, that the defendant's engagement, renewed in 1801, was to all intents and purposes one under certain conditions and qualifications, from any one of which he never once departed.

Adverting to the part which the plaintiff's brother had taken in the course of the whole proceeding, he did not feel disposed to call the general propriety of his conduct in question, but said-I do not like the punctilious soldier and brother bristling in fraternal sensibility, while weighing with apparent candour the various circumstances of this transac tion in his intercourse with the defendant, still taking occasion to throw in the hilt of the captain's sword to make his favourite scale preponderate. I do not, I say, like such perseverance in worrying or tormenting my client into a precipitate compliance with the interested views of the lady's family. As to any active part in these proceedings, beyond what duty and compliance with the wishes of her friends might exact, I have no hesitation most cordially to exculpate her; and had she been left to the guidance of her own good sense, she would have exhibited the dignity of her character by the mode of her sorrow. I therefore conjure you, gentlemen of the jury, not to avert by your verdict of this day the chance that still exists of bringing these parties together with renewed amity; nor protract that day, when, with mutual consent, and mutual approbation of their respective families, they may unite in joy and satisfaction, and terminate their days as exemplary models of conjugal bliss and domestic tranquillity,

*

Mr. Dunn, in reply to Mr. Curran, made many strong and pointed observations. He represented his client, Miss Mary Fitzgerald, as one of the most unimpeached women in existence. From the lips of her opponents in this cause, as well as from those of her friends, flowed nothing respecting her but unbounded panegyric He was not accustomed to call even crimes by hard names; but in the conduct of the

defendant towards his client, he knew no epithet in any language sufficiently. expressive of a species of treachery, perhaps unexampled in any age throughout the blackest records of moral depravity. Passing over the disgusting levity in one of his letters to Captain Alexander Fitzgerald, such as "what fellows we churchmen are," &c. where he talks of rearing himself into consequence and notice in the church, on the supernatural infirmities of an old, incumbent of eighty years of age, who doubtless must die to accommodate his ambition; in what instance does he name this old gentleman? In none he carefully avoids committing himself on that ground, from the facility of detection. On the subject of that mean finesse which he played off, while scheming to set a prohibiting price, as he thought, on the performance of his sacred promise to this lady, who, from the moment he enjoined her to secrecy, commenced the first duty of a betrothed wife by an act of implicit obedience to him. Here Mr. Dunn very emphatically observed, little do the sordid know what treasures are accumulated in noble and disinterested minds, treasures ever impervious to the vulgar eye; and little did this gentleman consider who he had to deal with, in a family of high honour and respectability, linked to each other in one solid mass of reciprocal and general interests. Summing up the whole of the nefarious proceedings, with which the defendant must stand indelibly branded, he had no scruple in asserting that if all the trash of wealth, which the whole family of the Hawkesworths had been scraping together since their name became known, had been thrown into Miss Fitzgerald's lap, it would not half compensate her for the numberless pangs of anguish, the sighs of sorrow and affliction, she and her amiable sympathizing sisters had vented and endured for ten years past, mourning together on the baseness practised on their credulity, and that unsuspecting confidence, ever the invariable concomitants of innocent and unsullied minds.

The Lord Chief Justice, in charging the jury, observed; that from the very tedious discussion this case had undergone, during the three days it had been before the court, and from the great exertion and uncommon display of ability devoted to it by the counsel on both sides, very little was left for him to observe on, that had not already been put in almost every possible point of view, which great ingenuity and as great talents could suggest. His lordship, adverting to the different counts laid in the declaration, said, that the plaintiff had strictly conformed to that proceeding, particularly in her message to the defendant requiring the fulfilment of his engagement, which the nature of the action had rendered requisite. On the subject of nonage, his lordship recognised the law as laid down by the counsel, that any matrimonial contract, perfected while either of the contracting parties are minors, is to all intents and purposes illegal, and should be dissolved. On the folly of these infantine contracts his lordship was peculiarly strong, coinciding in the opinions he had heard from Mr. Curran, that they were in general founded on a very reprehensible species of rashness, and too generally operated as an encouragement to filial disobedience. In this case the original contract, perfected in nonage between the plaintiff and defendant, at its commencement, in point of law, was a nullity, and would have remained so, if not renewed when the parties had attained to mature age.

His lordship dwelt with much energy on the irreparable injury the character of a gentleman and a clergyman must sustain, should the jury too lightly take up the imputations cast upon him, "that his whole conduct, throughout this engagement, was a compound of falsehood, and altogether a tissue of complete duplicity." That he was only actuated by principles so nefarious from their atrocity, becomes the more incredible, and the jury should reconcile their minds to the most positive conviction on that head, before they would stigmatize any man, under similar circumstances, by a verdict of vindictive damages.

VOL. II.

The jury, in a short time, gave a verdict for the plaintiff, 2,5001. damages, and 6d. costs.

COUNSEL for the plaintiff : Mr. Serjeant Moore, Messrs. Ball, Dunn, Bush, and Penefather. Agent, Mr. Cosgrave.

COUNSEL for the defendant: The Solicitor-General, Messrs. Ponsonby, Curran, Barrington, and Boardman. Agent, Mr. Fullerton.

TRIAL AT ENNIS ASSISES.

REVEREND CHARLES MASSY V. THE MARQUIS OF HEADFORT, FOR CRIM. CON. WITH THE PLAINTIFF'S WIFE.

THIS very interesting trial came on at Ennis, Clare county, on Friday, 27th July, 1804, before the Honourable Baron Smith and a special jury.*

Mr. Bennett, as junior counsel, opened the declaration, and stated, that it had been laid for the sum of 40,000l. being the compensation sought for the damage alleged to have been sustained by the plaintiff, in consequence of the defendant's seducing and taking away the plaintiff's wife.

Mr. Hoare. This is the first action of the kind a jury of this county has ever been empannelled to try-and, as it is the first, so, I hope in Heaven, it may be the last. Many idle reports have been circulated, and the subject of this trial has engaged much of public attention; but it is your duty, as I am sure it is your wish, to discharge your minds from every idle rumour, to stand indifferent between the parties, and relying upon the evidence, and collecting information from

The singularity of this trial; the eminence of the counsel engaged on both sides; the character of the plaintiff; the age and rank of the defendant; and the youth and beauty (and folly) of the lady-all conjoined to excite vast curiosity. Accordingly, great numbers crowded from every part of the country into the small town of Ennis-ten guineas were given for a bed, and any money to get a place in the court-A short-hand writer came all the way from London to take notes of the trial.