IE- BAKEISTEB. AT LAW, THE SPEECHES CHARLES PHILLIPS. Esq. DELIVERED AT THE BAR, ON VARIOUS PUBLIC OCCASIONS IRELAND AND ENGLAND. fteconfc JEUttioti. Utte& fig Jfjintsrlf. LONDON: PRINTED FOR W. SIMPKIN AND R. MARSHALL, Stationers' Hall Court ; AMD MILLIKIK, GRAFTON STREET, DUBLIN. 1822. THE FOLLOWING SPEECHES ARE, BY PERMISSION, DEDICATED TO WILLIAM ROSCOE, WITH THE MOST SINCERE RESPECT AND AFFECTION OF THEIR AUTHOR. EH.' I CONTENTS. Page SPEECH delivered at a Public Dinner given to Mr. Ein- lay by the Jtoman Catholics of the Town and Cmmty of'Sli'go l delivered at an Aggregate, Meeting of the Romaft Catholics of Cork *9 Speech delivered at a Dinner given OB Dinas Island, in the Lake of Killarney, on Mr. Phillips's Health be- ing giVert, together with that of Mr. Payne, a young American ......'.'. 37 ; Speech delivered at an Aggregate Meeting of the Roman Catholics of the County and City of Dublin . . 44 Petition referred to in the preceding Speech, drawn by Mr. Phillips at the request of the Roman Catholics of Ireland 71 The Address to Her R. H. the Princess of Wales, drawn by Mr. Phillips at the request of the Roman Catho- lics of Ireland * * ... 74 Speech of Mr. Phillips in the case of Guthrie v. Sterne, delivered in the Court of Common Pleas, Dublin . 78 Speech of Mr. Phillips in the case of O'Mullan v. M'Kor- kill, delivered in the County Court-house, Galway . 102 Speech in the case of Connaghton v. Dillon, delivered in the County Court-house of Roscommon 128 Speech of Mr. Phillips in the cas% of Creighton v. Towns- end, delivered in the Court of Common Pleas, Dublin 144 ji. CONTENTS. Page Speech in the case of Blake v. Wilkins, delivered in the County Court-house, Galway 161 A Character of Napoleon Buonaparte, down to the Period of his Exile to Elba 182 Speech delivered at the Mansion House, London, on the London Auxiliary Bible Society 188 Speech delivered at Morrison's Hotel, Dublin, on South American Freedom 197 Speech in the case of Browne 'v. Blake 202 Speech in the case of Fitzgerald v. Kerr, delivered in the County-Court House, Mayo " 225 Speech delivered at the Fourth Anniversary of the Glocestershire Missionary Society ...... 249 Speech on His Late Majesty George III 256 Speech at the London Orphan Asylum 266 Defence of John Barnard Turner, delivered by him at the Bar of the Old Bailey 271 Speech delivered at the Annual Meeting of the London Hibernian Society, held in the Town Hall, Sligo . 283 Speech in the case of Browne v. Bingham 291 A SPEECH DELIVERED AT A PUBLIC DINNER GIVEN TO MR* FINILAY BY THE ROMAN CATHOLICS OF THE TOWN AND COUNTY OF SLIGO. J THINK, Sir, you will agree with me, that the most experienced speaker might justly tremble in addressing 1 you after the display you have just witnessed. What, then, must 1 feel who never before addressed a public audience ? However, it w r ould be but an unworthy affectation in me were I to conceal from you the emotions with which I am agitated by this kindness. The exaggerated estimate which other counties have made of the few services so young a man could render, has, I hope, inspired me with the sentiments it ought; but here, I do confess to you, I feel no ordinary sensation here, where every object springs some new association, and the loveliest objects, mel- lowed as they are by time, rise painted on the eye of memory here, where the light of heaven first blessed my infant view, and nature breathed into my infant heart that ardour for my country which 2 SPEECH nothing but death can chill here, where the scenes of my childhood remind me how innocent I was, and the grave of my fathers admonish me how pure I should continue here, standing as I do amongst my fairest, fondest, earliest sympa- thies, such a welcome, operating, not merely as an affectionate tribute, but as a moral testimony, does indeed quite oppress and overwhelm me. Oh ! believe me, warm is the heart that feels, and willing is the tongue that speaks ; and still, I can- not, by shaping it to my rudely inexpressive phrase, shock the sensibility of a gratitude too full to be suppressed, and yet (how far !) too eloquent for language. If any circumstance could add to the pleasure of this day, it is that which I feel in introducing to the friends of my youth the friend of my adop- tion, though perhaps I am committing one of our imputed blunders when 1 speak of introducing one whose patriotism has already rendered him familiar to every heart in Ireland; a man, who, conquering every disadvantage, and spurning every difficult}^ has poured around our misfortunes the splendour of an intellect that at once irradiates and consumes them. For the services he has ren- dered to his country, from my heart I thank him, and, for myself, I offer him a personal, it may be a selfish tribute for saving me, by his presence this night, from an impotent attempt at his pane- gyric. Indeed, gentlemen, you can have little idea of what he has to endure, who, in these times, advocates vour cause. Every calumny which the V W 9 .venal, and the vulgar, and the vile, are lavishing AT SLIGO. 3 upon you is visited with exaggeration upon us. We are called traitors, because we would rally round the crown an unanimous people. We are called apostates, because we will not persecute Christianity. We are branded as separatists, be- cause of our endeavours to annihilate the fetters that, instead of binding, clog the connection. To these may be added, the frowns of power, the envy of dulness, the mean malice of exposed self- interest, and, it may be, in despite of all natural affection, even the discountenance of kindred t Well, be it so, For thee, fair freedom, welcome all the past, For thee, my country, welcome even the last ! I am not ashamed to confess to you, that there w as a day, when I was as bigotted as the blackest ; but I thank the Being w ho gifted me with a mind not quite impervious to conviction, and I thank you, who afforded such convincing testimonies of my error. I saw you enduring with patience the most unmerited assaults, bowing before the insults of revived anniversaries ; in private life, exem- plary ; in public, unoffending ; in the hour of peace, asserting your loyalty ; in the hour of dan- ger, proving it. Even when an invading enemy victoriously penetrated into the very heart of our county, I saw the banner of your allegiance beam- ing refutation on your slanderers ; was it a won- der, then, that I seized my prejudices, and with a blush burned them on the altar of my country ! The great question of Catholic, shall I not ra- ther say, of Irish emancipation, has now assumed B2 4 SPEECH that national aspect which imperiously challenges the scrutiny of every one. While it was shrouded in the mantle of religious mystery, with the temple for its sanctuary, and the pontiff for its sentinel, the vulgar eye might shrink and the vulgar spirit shudder. But now it has come forth, visible and tangible, for the inspection of the laity ; and I solemnly protest, dressed as it has been in the double haberdashery of the English minister and the Italian prelate, I know not whether to laugh at its appearance, or to loathe its pretensions to shudder at the deformity of its original creation, or smile at the grotesqueness of its foreign deco- rations. Only just admire this far-famed security bill, this motley compound of oaths and penal- ties, which, underthe name of emancipation, would drag your prelates with an halter about their necks to the vulgar scrutiny of every village-tyrant, in order to enrich a few political traders, and distil through some state alembic the miserable rinsings of an ignorant, a decaying, and degenerate aris- tocracy ! Only just admire it ! Originally engen- dered by our friends the opposition, with a cuckoo insidiousness they swindled it into the nest of the treasury ravens, and when it had been fairly hatch- ed with the beak of the one, and the nakedness of the other, they sent it for its feathers to MON- SEIGNEUR QUARANTOTTI*, w ho has obligingly transmitted it with the hunger of its parent, the ra- pacity of its nurse, and the coxcombry of its plu- massier, to be baptized by the bishops, and received * This man sent over a rescript from the Pope commanding in some degree the allegiance of Ireland in temporal matters. They spurned it ! AT SLIGO. 5 says he, " to move for a discussion at present." Why ? " Great obstacles 48 SPEECH have been removed." That's his first reason. " I am however, 5 ' says he, " still ardent." Ardent ! Why it strikes me to be a very novel kind of ar- dour, which toils till it has removed every impe- diment, and then pauses at the prospect of its vic- tory ! " And I am of opinion/' he continues, " that any immediate discussion would be the height of precipitation :" that is, after having re- moved the impediments, he pauses in his path, de- claring he is ''-ardent:" and after centuries of suffering, when you press for a discussion, he pro- tests that he considers you monstrously precipi- tate ! Now is not that a fair translation ? Why really if we did not know Mr. Grattan, we should be almost tempted to think that he was quoting from the ministry. With the exception of one or two plain, downright, sturdy, unblushing bigots, who opposed you because you were Christians, and declared they did so, this was the cant of every man who affected liberality. " Oh, I de- clare," say they, " they may not be cannibals, i hough they are Catholics, and I would be very glad to vote for them, but this is no time. 3 ' " Oh no,'* says Bragge Bathurst, " it's no time, What ! in time of war ! Why it looks like bullying us!" Very well: next comes the peace, and what say the Opposition ? *' Oh ! I declare peace is no time, it looks so like persuading us." For my part, serious as the subject is, it affects me with the very same ridicule with which I see I have so unconsciously affected yon, I will tell you a story of which it reminds me. It is told of the celebrated Charles Fox. Far be it from me, how- AT DUBLIN. 49 ever, to mention that name with levity. As he was a great man, I revere him ; as he was a good man, I love him. He had as wise a head as ever paused to deliberate; he had as sweet a tongue as ever gave the words of wisdom utterance ; and he had a heart so stamped with the immediate im- press of the Divinity, that its very errors might be traced to the excess of its benevolence. I had almost forgot the story. Fox was a man of ge- nius of course he was poor. Poverty is a reproach to no man ; to such a man as Fox, I think it was a pride ; for if he chose to traffic with princi- ples, if he chose to gamble with his conscience, how easily might he have been rich ? I guessed your answer. It would be hard indeed if you did not believe that in England, talents might find a purchaser, who have seen in Ireland how easily a blockhead may swindle himself into preferment. Juvenal says, that the greatest misfortune attend* ant upon poverty is ridicule. Fox found out a greater debt. The Jews called on him for pay- ment. " Ah, my dear friends," says Fox, " I ad- mit the principle ; I owe you money, but what time is this, when I am going upon business." Just so our friends admit the principle ; they owe you emancipation, but w 7 ar's no time. Well, the Jews departed, just as you did. They returned to the charge i " What! cries Fox, is this a^'me, when I am engaged on an appointment ?" What ! say our friends, is this a time when all the world's at peace. The Jews departed ; but the end of it was, Fox, with his secretary, Mr. Hare, who was as much in debt as he was, shut themselves up in E 60 SPEECH garrison. The Jews used to surround his habita- tion at day-light, and poor Fox regularly put his head out of the window, with this question, " Gen- tlemen, are you Fo.r-hunting or /fan-hunting this morning?" His pleasantry mitigated the very Jews. " Well, well, Fox, now you have always admitted the principle, but protested against the time we will give you your own time, only just fix some final day for our repayment." " Ah, my dear Moses," replies Fox, " now this is friendly, I will take you at your word ; I will fix a day, and as its to be a final day, what would you think of the day of judgment? " That will be too busy a day with us." " Well, well, in order to accom- modate all parties, let us settle it the day after .'' Thus it is, between the war inexpediency of Bragge Bathurst, and the peace inexpediency of Mr. Grattan, you may expect your emancipation bill pretty much about the time that Fox settled for the payment of his creditors. Mr. Grattan, however, though he scorned to take your sugges- tions, took the suggestions of your friends. " I have consulted," says lie, " my right honourable friends! 5 ' Oh, all friends, all right honourable! JNow this it is to trust the interests of a people into the hands of a party. You must know, in par- liamentary parlance, these right honourable friends mean a party. There are few men so contemp- tible, as not to have a party. The minister has his party, The opposition have their party. The Saints, for there are Saints in the House of Com- mons, lucus a non lucendo, the Saints have their party. Every one has his party. 1 had forgotten At DUBLIN. 51 Ireland has no party. Such are the reasons, if reasons they can be called, which Mr. Grattan has given for the postponement of your question ; and I sincerely say, if they had come from any other man, I would not have condescended to have given them an answer. He is indeed reported to have said that he had others in reserve, which he did not think it necessary to detail. If those which he reserved were like those \vhich he delivered, I do not dispute the prudence of his keeping them to himself; but as we have not the gift of pro- phecy, it is not easy for us to answer them, until he shall deign to give them to his constituents. Having dealt thus freely with the alleged rea- sons for the postponement, it is quite natural that you should require what my reasons are for urging the discussion. I shall give them candidly. They are at once so simple and explicit, it is quite im- possible that the meanest capacity amongst you should not comprehend them. I would urge the instant discussion, because discussion has always been of use to you ; because, upon every discus- sion you have gained converts out of doors ; and because, upon every discussion within the doors of Parliament, your enemies have diminished, and your friends have increased. Now, is not that a strong reason for continuing your discussions ? This may be assertion. Aye, but I will prove it. In order to convince you of the argument as referring to the country, I need but point to the state of the public mind now upon the subject, and that which existed in the memory of the youngest. I myself remember the blackest and E 2 52 SPEECH the basest universal denunciations against your creed, and the vilest anathemas against any man who would grant you an iota. Now, every man affects to be liberal, and the only question with some is the time of the concessions ; with others, the extent of the concessions ; with many, the nature of the securities you should afford ; whilst a great multitude, in which I am proud to class myself, think that your emancipation should be immediate, universal, arid unrestricted. Such has been the progress of the human mind out of doors, in consequence of the powerful eloquence, argu- ment, and policy elicited by those discussions which your friends now have, for the first time, found out to be precipitate. Now let us see what has been the effect produced within the doors of Parliament. For twenty years you were silent, and of course you were neglected. The conse- quence was most natural. Why should Parliament grant privileges to men who did not think those privileges worth the solicitation ? Then rose your agitators, as they are called by those bigots who are trembling at the effect of their arguments on the community, and who, as a matter of course, take every opportunity of calumniating them. Ever since that period your cause has been advancing. Take the numerical proportions in the House of Commons on each subsequent discussion. In 1805, the first time it was brought forward in the Imperial legislature, and it was then aided by the powerful eloquence of Fox, there was a majority against even taking your claims into consideration, of no less a number than 212. It was an appalling: AT DUBLIN. 53 omen. In 1808, however, on the next discussion, that majority was diminished to 163. In 1810 it decreased to 104. In 1811 it dwindled to 64, and at length in 1812, on the motion of Mr. Canning, and it is not a little remarkable that the first suc- cessful exertion in your favour was made by an English member, your enemies fled the field, and you had the triumphant majority to support you of 129! Now. is not this demonstration? What becomes now of those who say discussion has not been of use to you ? But I need not have resorted to arithmetical calculation. Men become ashamed of combating with axioms. Truth is omnipotent, and must prevail ; it forces its \vay with the fire and the precision of the morning sun-beam. You lived for centuries on the vegetable diet and eloquent silence of this Pythagorean po- licy ; and the consequence was, when you thought yourselves mightily dignified, and mightily inte^ resting, the whole word was laughing at your philosophy, and sending its aliens to take posses- sion of your birth-right. I have given you a good reason for urging your discussion , by having shewn you that discussion has always gained you pro- selytes. But is it the time? says Mr. Grattan. Yes, Sir, it is the time, peculiarly the time, unless indeed the great question of Irish liberty is to be reserved as a weapon in the hands of a party to wield against the weakness of the British minister. But why should I delude you by talking about time! Oh! there will never be a time with BI- GOTRY ! She has no head, and cannot think ; she has no heart, and cannot feel ; when she moves, it 54 SPEECH is in wrath ; when she pauses, it is amid ruin her prayers are curses, her communion is death, her vengeance is eternity, her decalogue is written in the blood of her victims ; and if she stoops for a moment from her infernal flight, it is upon some kindred rock to whet her vulture fang for keener rapine, and replume her wing for a more san- guinary desolation ! I appeal from this infernal, grave-stalled fury, I appeal to the good sense, to the policy, to the gratitude of England ; and I make my appeal peculiarly at this moment, when all the illustrious potentates of Europe are assem- bled together in the British capital, to hold the great festival of universal peace and universal emancipation. Perhaps when France, flushed with success, fired by ambition, and infuriated by enmity ; her avowed aim an universal conquest, her means the confederated resources of the Con- tinent, her guide the greatest military genius a a nation fertile in prodigies has produced a man who seemed born to invert what had been regular, to defile what had been venerable, to crush what had been established, and to create, as if by a ma- gic impulse, a fairy world, peopled by the pau- pers he had commanded into kings, and based by the thrones he had crumbled in his caprices ; perhaps when such a power, so led, so organized, and so incited, was in its noon of triumph, the timid might tremble even at the change that would save, or the concession that would strengthen. But now her allies faithless, her conquests de- spoiled, her territory dismembered, her legions defeated, her leader dethroned, and her reigning AT DUBLIN. 55 prince our ally by treaty, our debtor by gratitude, and our inalienable friend by every solemn obli- gation of civilized society, the objection is our strength, and the obstacle our battlement. Per- haps when the Pope was in the power of our enemy, however slender the pretext, bigotry might have rested on it. The inference was false as to Ireland, and it was ungenerous as to Rome. The Irish Catholic, firm in his faith, bows to the pon- tiff's spiritual supremacy, but he would spurn the pontiff's temporal interference. If, with the spirit of an earthly domination, he were to issue to-mor- row his despotic mandate, Catholic Ireland with one voice would answer him : " Sire, we bow with reverence to your spiritual mission : the de- scendant of Saint Peter, we freely acknowledge you the head of our church, and the organ of our creed : but, Sire, if we have a church, we cannot forget that we also have a country ; and, when you attempt to convert your mitre into a crown, and your crozier into a sceptre, you de- grade the majesty of your high delegation, and grossly miscalculate upon our acquiescence. No foreign power shall regulate the allegiance which we owe to our sovereign ; it was the fault of our fa- thers that one pope forged our fetters ; it will be our own, if we allow them to be rivetted by ano- ther." Such would be the answer of universal Ire- land ; such was her answer to the audacious me- nial, who dared to dictate her unconditional sub- mission to an Act of Parliament which emancipated by penalties, and redressed by insult. But, Sir, it never would have entered into the contemplation ;5G SPEECH of the Pope to have assumed such an authority. His character was a sufficient shield against the imputation, and his policy must have taught him, that, in grasping at the shadow of a temporal power, he should but risk the reality of his eccle- siastical supremacy. Thus was Parliament doubly guarded against a foreign usurpation. The people upon whom it was to act deprecate its authority, and the power to which it was imputed abhors its ambition ; the Pope would not exert it if he could, and the people would not obey it if he did. Just precisely upon the same foundation rested the as* persions which were cast upon your creed. How did experience justify them ? Did Lord Welling-* ton find that religious faith made any difference amid the thunder of the battle ? Did the Spanish soldier desert his colours because his General be* lieved not in the real presence? Did the brave Portuguese neglect his orders to negotiate about mysteries ? Or what comparison did the hero draw between the policy of England and the piety of Spain, when at one moment he led the he- terodox legions to victory, and the very next was obliged to fly from his own native flag, waving defiance on the walls of Burgos*, where the Irish exile planted and sustained it ? What must he have felt when in a foreign land he was obliged to command brother against brother, to raise the sword of blood, and drown the cries of nature with the artillery of death ? What were the sen- sations of our hapless exiles, when they recognised * The Irish legion, in the French service defended the citadel ot Buncos, and compelled Lord Wellingtoh to raise the siege. AT DUBLIN. 57 the features of their long-lost country ? when they heard the accents of the tongue they loved, or caught the cadence of the simple melody which once lulled them to sleep within a mother's arms, and cheered the darling circle they must behold no more ? Alas, how the poor banished heart de- lights in the memory that song associates ! He heard it in happier days, when the parents he adored, the maid he loved, the friends of his soul, and the green fields of his infancy were round him ; when his labours were illumined with the sun-shine of the heart, and his humble hut was a palace for it was HOME. His soul is full, his eye suffused, he bends from the battlements to catch the cadence, when his death-shot, sped by a bro- ther's hand, lays him in his grave the victim of a code calling itself Christian ! Who shall say, heart-rending as it is, this picture is from fancy ? Has it not occurred in Spain ? May it not, at this instant, be acting in America ? Is there any country in the universe, in which these brave exiles of a barbarous bigotry are not to be found refuting the calumnies that banished, and reward- ing the hospitality that received them ? Yet Eng- land, enlightened England, who sees them in every field of the old world and the new, defending the various flags of every faith, supports the injustice of her exclusive constitution, by branding upon them the ungenerous accusation of an exclusive creed ! England, the ally of Catholic Portugal, the ally of Catholic Spain, the ally of Catholic France, the friend of the Pope ! England, who seated a Catholic bigot in Madrid ! who convoyed a Ca- 58 SPEECH tholic Braganza to the Brazils ! who enthroned a Catholic Bourbon in Paris ! who guaranteed a Catholic establishment in Canada ! who gave a constitution to Catholic Hanover ! England, who searches the globe for Catholic grievances to re- dress, and Catholic Princes to restore, will not trust the Catholic at home, who spends his blood and treasure in her service ! ! Is this generous ? Is this consistent ? Is it just ? Is it even politic ? Is it the act of a wise country to fetter the ener- gies of an entire population ? Is it the act of a Christian country to do it in the name of God ? Is it politic in a government to degrade part of the body by which it is supported, or pious to make PROVIDENCE a party to their degradation ? There are societies in England for discounte- nancing vice ; there are Christian associations for distributing the Bible ; there are volunteer mis- sions for converting the heathen : but Ireland, the seat of their government, the stay of their em- pire, their associate by all the ties of nature and of interest ; how has she benefited by the Gospel of which they boast ? Has the sweet spirit of Christianity appeared on our plains in Ihe charac- ter of her precepts, breathing the air and robed in the beauties of the world to which she would lead us ; with no argument but love, no look but peace, no wealth but piety ; her creed compre- hensive as the arch of heaven, and her charities bounded but by the circle of creation ? Or, has she been let loose amongst us, in form a fury, and in act a daemon, her heart festered with the fires of hell, her hands clotted with the gore of earth, At DUBLIN. 59 withering alike in her repose and in her progress, her path apparent by the print of blood, and her pause denoted by the expanse of desolation ? Gos- pel of heaven ! is this thy herald ? God of the universe ! is this thy hand-maid ? Christian of the ascendancy ! how would you answer the disbe- lieving infidel, if he asked you, should he estimate the Christian doctrine by the Christian practice ; if he dwelt upon those periods when the human victim writhed upon the altar of the peaceful Jesus, and the cross, crimsoned with his blood, became little better than a stake for the sacrifice of his votaries* ; if he pointed to Ireland, where the son was bribed against the father, and the plunder of the parent's property was made a bounty on the recantation of the parent's creed ; where the march of the human mind was stayed in his name who had inspired it with reason, and any effort to libe- rate a fellow-creature from his intellectual bondage was sure to be recompensed by the dungeon or the scaffold ; where ignorance was so long a legislative command, and piety a legislative crime ; where religion was placed as a barrier between the sexes, and the intercourse of nature was pronounced felony by law ; where God's worship was an act of stealth, and his ministers sought amongst the savages of the woods that sanctuary which a nomi- nal civilization had denied them ; where, at this instant, conscience is made to blast every hope of genius, and every energy of ambition, and the * AH the disqualifications here enumerated are to be found in the Statute Book. 60 SPEECH Catholic who would rise to any station of trust must, in the face of his country, deny the faith of his fathers ; where the preferments of earth are only to be obtained by the forfeiture of heaven ? " Unpriz'd are her sons till they learn to betray, TJndistinguish'd they live if they shame not their sires ; And the torch that would light them to dignity's way, Must be caught from the pile where their country expires." How, let me ask, how would the Christian zealot droop beneath this catalogue of Christian qualifi- cations ? But, thus it is, when sectarians differ on account of mysteries ; in the heat and acrimony of the causeless contest, religion, the glory of one world, and the guide of another, drifts from the splendid circle in which she shone, into the comet- maze of uncertainty and error. The code, against which you petition, is a vile compound of impiety and impolicy ; impiety, because it debases in the name of God ; impolicy, because it disqualifies under pretence of government. If we are to argue from the services of Protestant Ireland, to the losses sustained by the bondage of Catholic Ireland, and I do not see why we should not, the state which continues such a system is guilty of little less than a political suicide. It matters little where the Pro- testant Irishman has been employed ; whether with Burke wielding' the senate with his eloquence, with Castlereagh guiding the cabinet by his counsels, with Barry enriching the arts by his pencil, with Swift adorning literature by his genius, with Gold- smith or with Moore softening the heart by their melody, or with Wellington chaining victory at his AT DUBLIN. 61 car he may boldly challenge the competition of the world. Oppressed and impoverished as our country is, every muse has cheered, and every art adorned, and every conquest crowned her. Plun- dered, she was not poor, for her character enrich- ed ; attainted, she was not titleless, for her services ennobled ; literally outlawed into eminence and fettered into fame, the fields of her exile were im- mortalized by her deeds, and the links of her chain became decorated by her laurels. Is this fancy, or is it fact ? Is there a department in the state in which Irish genius does not possess a predomi- nance ? Is there a conquest which it does not achieve, or a dignity which it does not adorn ? At this instant, is there a country in the world to which England has not deputed an Irishman as her representative ? She has sent Lord Moira to India, Sir Gore Ousel ey to Ispahan, Lord Stuart to Vienna, Lord Castlereagh to Congress, Sir Henry Wellesly to Madrid, Mr, Canning to Lis- bon, Lord Strangford to the Brazils, Lord Clan- carty to Hollond, Lord Wellington to Paris all Irishnen ! Whether it results from accident or from merit, can there be a more cutting sarcasm on the policy of England ! Is it not directly saying to her, " Here is a country from one-fifth of whose people you depute the agents of your most august delegation, the remaining four-fifths of which, by your odious bigotry, you incapacitate from any station of office or trust \" It is adding all that is weak in impolicy to all that is wicked in ingrati- tude. What is her apology ? Will she pretend that the Deity imitates her injustice, and incapa- 62 SPEECH citates the intellect as she has done the creed ? After making Providence a pretence for her code, \vill she also make it a party to her crime, and arraign the universal spirit, of partiality in his dis- pensations ? Is she not content with Him as a Protestant God, unless He also consents to become a Catholic daemon ? But, if the charge were true, if the Irish Catholic were imbruted and debased , Ireland's conviction would be England's crime, and your answer to the bigot's charge should be the bigot's conduct. What, then ! is this the re- sult of six centuries of your government ? Is this the connection which you called a benefit to Ire- land ? Have your protecting laws so debased them that the very privilege of reason is worthless in their possession ? Shame ! oh, shame ! to the government where the people are barbarous ! The day is not distant when they made the edu- cation of a Catholic a crime, and yet they arraign the Catholic for ignorance ! The day is not dis- tant when they proclaimed the celebration of the Catholic worship a felony, and yet they complain that the Catholic is not moral ! What folly ! Is it to be expected that the people, are to emerge in a moment from the stupor of a protracted de- gradation ? There is not, perhaps, to be traced upon the map of national misfortune a spot so truly and so tediously deplorable as Ireland . Other lands, no doubt, have had their calamities. To the horrors of revolution,, the miseries of despotism, the scourges of anarchy, they have in their turns been subject. But it has been only in their turns ; the visitations of woe, though severe, have not been AT DUBLIN. 63 eternal ; the hour of probation, or of punishment, has passed away ; and the tempest, after having emptied the vial of its wrath, has given place to the serenity of the calm and the sunshine. Has this been the case with respect to our miserable coun- try ? Is there, save in the visionary world of tra- dition is there in the progress, either of record or recollection, one verdant spot in the desert of our annals where patriotism can find repose or philanthropy refreshment ? Oh, indeed posterity will pause with wonder on the melancholy page which shall pourtray the story of a people, amongst whom the policy of man has waged an eternal war- fare with the providence of God, blighting into deformity all that was beauteous, and into famine all that was abundant. I repeat, however, the charge to be false. The Catholic mind in Ireland has made advances scarcely to be hoped in the short interval of its partial emancipation. But what encouragement has the Catholic parent to educate his offspring ? Suppose he sends his son, the hope of his pride and the wealth of his heart, into the army ; the child justifies his parental an- ticipation ; he is moral in his habits, he is strict in his discipline, he is daring in the field, and tem- perate at the board, and patient in the camp ; the first in the charge, the last in the retreat ; with a hand to achieve, and a head to guide, and a tem- per to conciliate ; he combines the skill of Welling- ton with the clemency of Caesar and the courage of Turenne yet he can never rise he is a Catholic! Take another instance. Suppose him at the bar. (54 SPEECH He has spent his nights at the lamp, and his days in the forum ; the rose has withered from his cheek mid the drudgery of form ; the spirit has fainted in his heart mid the analysis of crime ; he has fore- gone the pleasures of his youth, and the associates of his heart, and all the fairy enchantments in which fancy may have wrapped him. Alas ! for what ? Though genius flashed from his eye, and eloquence rolled from his lips ; though he spoke with the tongue of Tully, and argued with the learning of Coke, and thought with the purity of Fletcher, he can never rise he is a Catholic! Merciful God ! what a state of society is this in which thy worship is interposed asadisqualification upon thy Providence ! Behold, in a word, the effects of the code against which you petition ; it disheartens exertion, it disqualifies merit, it debi- litates the state, it degrades the Godhead, it dis- obeys Christianity, it makes religion an article of traffic, and its founder a monopoly ; and for ages it has reduced a country, blessed with every beauty of nature and every bounty of Providence, to a state unparalleled under any constitution profess- ing to be free, or any government pretending to be civilized. To justify this enormity, there is now no argument. I beg pardon he enemies of the Catholic cause driven from all their ancient strong holds, affect to find a visionary justifica- tion in the violence of its advocates the answer is easy. I admit the violence I do not justify it but, I say, do away the cause of the violence. I say to your opponent " You complain of the AT DUBLIN. 65 violence of the Irish Catholic ; can you wonder he is violent ? It is the consequence of your own infliction " The flesh will quiver where the pincers tear, " The blood will follow where the knife is driren." Your friendship has been to him worse than hos- tility ; he feels its embrace but by the pressure of his fetters ! I am only amazed he is not more violent. He fills your exchequer, he fights your battles, he feeds your clergy from whom he de- rives no benefit, he shares your burdens, he shares your perils, he shares every thing except your privileges ; can you wonder he is violent ? No mat- ter what his merit, no matter what his claims, no matter what his services ; he sees himself a nomi- nal subject, and a real slave ; and his children, the heirs, perhaps of his toils, perhaps of his ta- lents, certainly of his disqualifications can you wonder he is violent /* He sees every pretended ob- stacle to his emancipation vanished ; Catholic Eu- rope your ally, the Bourbon on the throne, the Emperor a captive, the Pope a friend, the asper- sions on his faith disproved by his allegiance to you against, alternately, every Catholic potentate in Christendom, and he feels himself branded with hereditary degradation can you wonder, then, that he is violent ? He petitioned humbly ; his tame- ness was construed into a proof of apathy. He petitioned boldly ; his remonstrance was consider- ed as an impudent audacity. He petitioned in peace ; he was told it was not the time. He peti- tioned in war ; he was told it was not the time F 66 SPEECH canyon wonder he is violent? A strange interval, a prodigy in politics, a pause between peace and war, which appeared to be just made for him, arose ; I allude to the period between the retreat of Louis and the restoration of Buonaparte ; he petitioned then, and he was told it was not the time. Oh, shame ! shame ! shame ! Do you then accuse such a man of violence? But now you have a time." Now is the time to concede with dig- nity that which was never denied without injus- tice. Who can tell how soon we may require all the zeal of our united population to secure our very existence ? Who can argue upon the conti- nuance of this calm ? Have we not seen the labour of ages overthrown, and the whim of a day erected on its ruins ; establishments the most solid withering at a word, and visions the most whimsi- cal realized at a wish ; crowns crumbled, discords confederated, kings become vagabonds, and va- gabonds made kings at the capricious phrenzy of a village adventurer ? Have we not seen the whole political and moral world shaking as with an earthquake, and shapes the most fantastic and formidable and frightful heaved into life by the quiverings of the convulsion ? The storm has passed over us; England has survived it ; if she is wise, her present prosperity will be but the hand- maid to her justice ; if she is pious, the peril she has escaped will be but the herald of her expia- tion. Thus much have I said in the way of ar- gument to the enemies of your question. Let me offer an humble opinion to its friends. The first and almost the sole request which an advocate AT DUBLIN. (J7 Would make to you is, to remain united ; rely on it, a divided assault can never overcome a con- solidated resistance. I allow that an educated aristocracy are as a head to the people, without which they cannot think ; but then the people are as hands to the aristocracy, without which it can- not act. Concede* then, a little to even each other's prejudices ; recollect that individual sa- crifice is universal strength ; and can there be a nobler altar than the altar of your country ? This same spirit of conciliation should be extended even to your enemies. If England will not con- sider that a brow of suspicion is but a bad accom- paniment to an act of grace ; if she will not allow that kindness may make those friends whom even oppression could not make foes ; if she will not confess that the best security she can have from Ireland is by giving Ireland an interest in her constitution ; still, since her power is the shield of her prejudices, you should concede where you cannot conquer ; it is wisdom to yield when it has become hopeless to combat. There is but one concession which I would never advise, and which, were I a Catholic, I would never make. You will perceive that I al-> lude to any interference with your clergy. That was the crime of Mr. Grattan's security bill. It made the patronage of your religion the ransom for your liberties, and bought the favour of the crown by the surrender of the church. It is a vicious principle, it is the cause of all your sor- rows. If there had not been a state-establishment F 2 tfg SPEECH there would not have been a Catholic bondage. By that incestuous conspiracy between the altar and the throne infidelity has achieved a more ex- tended dominion than by all the sophisms of her philosophy, or all the terrors of her persecution. It makes God's apostle a court-appendage, and God himself a court-purveyor ; it carves the cross into a chair of state, where, with grace on his brow and gold in his hand, the little perishable puppet of this world's vanity makes Omnipotence a menial to its power, and Eternity a pander to its profits. Be not a party to it. As you have spurned the temporal interference of the Pope, re- sist the spiritual jurisdiction of the crown. As I do not think that you, on the one hand, could surrender the patronage of your religion to the King, without the most unconscientious compro- mise, so, on the other hand, I do not think the King ever could conscientiously receive it. Sup- pose he receives it ; if he exercises it for the ad- vantage of your church, he directly violates the coronation-oath which binds him to the exclusive interests of the Church of England ; and if he does not intend to exercise it for your advantage, to what purpose does he require from you its sur- render ? But what pretence has England for this interference with your religion ? It was the reli- gion of her most glorious sera, it was the religion of her most ennobled patriots, it was the religion of the wisdom that framed her constitution, it was the religion of the valour that achieved it, it would have been to this day the religion of her AT DUBLIN. 69 empire had it not been for the lawless lust of a murderous adulterer. What right has she to sus- pect your church ? When her thousand sects were brandishing the fragments of their faith against each other, and Christ saw his garment, without a seam, a piece of patch-work for every mounte- bank who figured in the pantomime; when her Babel temple rocked at every breath of her Priest- leys and her Paines, Ireland, proof against the menace of her power, was proof also against the perilous impiety of her example* But if as Ca- tholics you should guard it, the palladium of your creed, not less as Irishmen should you prize it, the relic of your country. Deluge after deluge has desolated her provinces. The monuments of art which escaped the barbarism of one invader fell beneath the still more savage civilization of another. Alone, amid the solitude, your temple stood, like some majestic monument amid the de- sert of antiquity, just in its proportions, sublime in its associations, rich in the virtue of its saints, cemented by the blood of its martyrs, pouring forth for ages the unbroken series of its venerable hierarchy, and only the more magnificent from the ruins by which it was surrounded. Oh ! do not for any temporal boon betray the great prin- ciples which are to purchase you an eternity ! Here*, from your very sanctuary, here, with my hand on the endangered altars of your faith, in in the name of that God, for the freedom of whose worship we are so nobly struggling I conjure * This speech was spoken from the altar of Clarendon-street chapel in which the meeting was held. 70 SPEECH AT DUBLIN. you, let no unholy hand profane the sacred ark of your religion ; preserve it inviolate; its light is " light from heaven;" follow it through all the perils of your journey ; and, like the fiery pillar of the captive Israel, it will cheer the desert of your bondage, and guide to the land of your li* beration ! PETITION REFERRED TO IN THE PRECEDING SPEECH, DRAWN BY MR. PHILLIPS, AT THE REQUEST OF THE ROMAN CATHOLICS OF IRELAND. To the Honourable the COMMONS of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, in Par- liament assembled: The humble Petition of the Roman Catholics of Ireland, whose Names are undersigned on behalf of themselves, and others, pro- fessing the Roman Catholic Religion, SHEWETH, THAT we, the Roman Catholic people of Ireland, again approach the legislature with a statement of the grievances under which we labour, and of which we most respectfully, but at the same time most firmly solicit the effectual redress. Our wrongs are so notorious, and so numerous, that their minute detail is quite unnecessary, and would 72 PETITION. indeed be impossible, were it deemed expedient. Ages of persecution on the one hand, and of pa- tience on the other, sufficiently attest our suffer- ing's and our submission. Privations have been answered only by petition, indignities by remon- strance, injuries by forgiveness. It has been a misfortune to have suffered for the sake of our re- ligion ; but it has also been a pride to have borne the best testimony to the purity of our doctrine, by the meekness of our endurance. We have sustained the power which spurned us ; we have nerved the arm which smote us ; we have lavished our strength, our talent, and our treasures, and buoyed up, on the prodigal effu- sion of our young blood, the triumphant ARK OF BRITISH LIBERTY. We approach, then, with confidence, an en- lightened legislature ; in the name of Nature, we ask our rights as men ; in the name of the Con- stitution, we ask our privileges as subjects; in the name of GOD, we ask the sacred protection of un- persecuted piety as Christians. Are securities required of us ? We offer them- the best securities a throne can have the affec- tions of a people. We offer faith that was never violated, hearts that were never corrupted, valour that never crouched. Every hour of peril has proved our allegiance, and every field of Europe exhibits its example. We abjure all temporal authority, except that of our Sovereign ; we acknowledge no civil pre- eminence, save that of our constitution ; and, for our lavish and voluntary expenditure, we only ask a reciprocity of benefits. PETITION. 73 Separating, as we do, our civil rights from our spiritual duties, we humbly desire that they may not be confounded. We " render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's," but we must also " render unto God the things that are God's." Our church could not descend to claim a state- authority, nor do we ask for it a state-aggrandize- ment : its hopes, its powers, and its pretensions, are of another world ; and, when we raise our hands most humbly to the State, our prayer is not, that the fetters may be transferred to the hands which are raised for us to Heaven. We would not erect a splendid shrine even to Liberty on the ruins of the Temple. In behalf, then, of five millions of a brave and loyal people, we call upon the legislature to anni- hilate the odious bondage which bows down the mental, physical, and moral energies of Ireland ; and, in the name of that Gospel which breathes charity towards all, we seek freedom of consci- ence for all the inhabitants of the British empire. May it therefore please this honourable House to abolish all penal and disabling laws, which in any manner infringe religious liberty, or restrict the free enjoyment of the sacred rights of consci- ence, within these realms. And your petitioners will ever pray. THE ADDRESS TO H. R. H. THE PRINCESS OF WALES DRAWN BY MR. PHILLIPS, AT THE REQUEST OF THE ROMAN CATHOLICS OF IRELAND. May it please Your Royal Highness , WE, the Roman Catholic people of Ireland, beg leave to offer our unfeigned congratulations on your providential escape from the conspiracy which so lately endangered both your life and honour a conspiracy, unmanly in its motives, unnatural in its object, and unworthy in its means a conspiracy, combining so monstrous an union of turpitude and treason, that it is difficult to say, whether royalty would have suffered more from its success, than human nature has from its conception. Our allegiance is not less shocked at the infernal spirit, which would sully the dia- ADDRESS. 75 dem, by breathing on its most precious ornament, the virtue of its wearer, than our best feelings are at the inhospitable baseness, which would betray the innocence -of a female in a land of strangers ! ! Deem it not disrespectful, illustrious Lady, that, from a people proverbially ardent in the cause of the defenceless, the shout of virtuous congratula- tion should receive a feeble echo. Our harp has long been unused to tones of gladness, and our hills but faintly answer the unusual accent. Your heart, however, can appreciate the silence inflict- ed by suffering ; and ours, alas, feels but too acutely, that the commiseration is sincere which flows from sympathy. Let us hope that, when congratulating virtue in your royal person, on her signal triumph over the perjured, the profligate, and the corrupt, we may also rejoice in the completion of its conse- quences. Let us hope that the society of your only child again solaces your dignified retire- ment ; and that, to the misfortunes of being a wi- dowed wife, is not added the pang of being a childless mother ! But if, Madam, our hopes are not fulfilled ; if, indeed, the cry of an indignant and unanimous people is disregarded ; console yourself with the reflection, that, though your exiled daughter may not hear the precepts of virtue from your lips, she may at least study the practice of it in your example. SPEECH OF MR. FMI1LILIPS IN THE CASE OF GUTHRIE v. STERNE, DELIVERED IN THE COURT OF COMMON PLEAS, DUBLIN. My Lord, and Gentlemen, IN this case I am of counsel for the Plaintiff, who has deputed me, with the kind concession of my much more efficient colleagues, to detail to you the story of his misfortunes. In the course of a long friendship which has existed between us, originating in mutual pursuits, and cemented by our mutual attachments, never, until this in- stant, did I feel any thing but pleasure in the claims which it created, or the duty which it imposed. In selecting me, however, from this bright array of learning and of eloquence, I can- not help being pained at the kindness of a parti- ality which forgets its interest in the exercise of its affection, and confides the task of practised SPEECH. 77 wisdom to the uncertain guidance of youth and in- experience. He has thought, perhaps, that truth needed no set phrase of speech ; that misfortune should not veil the furrows which its tears had burned ; or hide, under the decorations of an art- ful drapery, the heart-rent heaving with which its bosom throbbed. He has surely thought that, by contrasting mine with the powerful talents se- lected by his antagonist, he was giving you a proof that the appeal he made was to your reason, not to your feelings to the integrity of your hearts, not the exasperation of your passions. Hap- pily however for him, happily for you, happily for the country, happily for the profession, on subjects such as this, the experience of the oldest amongst us is but slender ; deeds such as this are not indigenous to an Irish soil, or naturalized be- neath an Irish climate. We hear of them, indeed, as we do of the earthquakes that convulse, or the pestilence that infects less favoured regions ; but the record of the calamity is only read with the generous scepticism of innocence, or an involun- tary thanksgiving to the Providence that has pre- served us. No matter how we may have graduated in the scale of nations ; no matter with what wreath we may have been adorned, or what bless- ings we may have been denied ; no matter what may have been our feuds, our follies, or our mis- fortunes ; it has at least been universally conceded, that our hearths were the home of the domestic virtues, and that love, honour, and conjugal fide- lity, were the dear and indisputable deities of our household : around the fire-side of the Irish hovel 78 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF hospitality circumscribed its sacred circle ; and si provision to punish created a suspicion of the pos- sibility of its violation. But of all the ties that bound of all the bounties that blessed her Ire- land most obeyed, most loved, most reverenced the nuptial contract. She saw it the gift of Hea- ven, the charm of earth, the joy of the present, the promise of the future, the innocence of enjoyment, the chastity of passion, the sacrament of love : the slender curtain that shades the sanctuary of her marriage-bed, has in its purity the splendour of the mountain-snow, and for its protection the tex- ture of the mountain-adamant. Gentlemen, that national sanctuary has been invaded ; that venera- ble divinity has been violated ; and its tenderest pledges torn from their shrine, by the polluted ra- pine of a kindless, heartless, prayerless, remorse- less adulterer ! To you religion defiled, morals insulted, law despised, public order foully violated, and individual happiness wantonly wounded, make their melancholy appeal. You will hear the facts with as much patience as indignation will allow I will, myself, ask of you to adjudge them with as much mercy as justice will admit. The Plaintiff in this case is JOHN GUTHRIE ; by birth, by education, by profession, by better than all, by practice and by principles, a gentleman.- Believe me, it is not from the common-place of advocacy, or from the blind partiality of friend- ship, I say of him, that whether considering the virtues that adorn life, or the blandishments that endear it, he has few superiors. Surely, if a spirit that disdained dishonour, if a heart that GUTHRIE . STERNE. 79 knew not guile, if a life above reproach, and a character beyond suspicion, could have been a security against misfortunes, his lot must have been happiness. I speak in the presence of that profession to which he was an ornament, and with whose members his manhood has been familiar; and I say of him, with a confidence that defies re- futation, that, whether we consider him in his pri- vate or his public station, as a man or as a bar- rister, there never breathed that being less capable of exciting enmity towards himself, or of offering, even by implication, an offence to others. If he had a fault, it was, that, above crime, he was above suspicion ; and to that noblest error of a noble nature, he has fallen a victim. Having spent his youth in the cultivation of a mind which must have one day led him to eminence, he became a member of the profession by which I am surround- ed. Possessing, as he did, a moderate indepen- dence, and looking forward to the most flattering prospects, it was natural for him to select amongst the other sex, some friend who should adorn his fortunes, and deceive his toils. He found such a friend, or thought he found her, in the person of Miss Warren, the only daughter of an eminent so- licitor. Young, beautiful, and accomplished, she was " adorned .with all that earth or heaven could bestow to make her amiable." Virtue never found a fairer temple ; beauty never veiled a purer sanc- tuary : the graces of her mind retained the admi- ration which her beauty had attracted, and the eye, which her charms fired, became subdued and chastened in the modesty of their association. She 80 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF was in the dawn of life, with all its fragrance round her, and yet so pure, that even the blush, which sought to hide her lustre, but disclosed the vestal deity that burned beneath it. No wonder an adoring husband anticipated all the joys this world could give him ; no wonder the parental eye, which beamed upon their union, saw, in the per- spective, an old age of happiness, and a posterity of honour. Methinks I see them at the sacred altar, joining those hands which Heaven com- manded none should separate, repaid for many a pang of anxious nurture by the sweet smile of filial piety ; and in the holy rapture of the rite, wor- shipping the power that blessed their children, and gave them hope their names should live here- after. It was virtue's vision ! None but fiends could envy it. Year after year confirmed the an- ticipation ; four lovely children blessed their union. Nor was their love the summer-passion of prospe- rity ; misfortune proved, afflictions chastened it : before the mandate of that mysterious Power which will at times despoil the paths of innocence, to de- corate the chariot of triumphant villainy, my client had to bow in silent resignation. He owed his adversity to the benevolence of his spirit ; he " went security for friends ;" those friends de- ceived him, and he was obliged to seek in other lands, that safe asylum which his own denied him. He was glad to accept of an oifer of professional business in Scotland during his temporary embar- rassment. With a conjugal devotion, Mrs. Guth- rie accompanied him ; and in her smile the soil of the stranger was a home, the sorrows of adversity CUTHRIE r. STERNE. 81 were dear to him. During their residence in Scotland, a period of about a year, you will find they lived as they had done in Ireland, and as they continued to do until this calamitous occurrence, in a state of uninterrupted happiness. You shall hear, most satisfactorily, that their domestic life was unsullied and undisturbed. Happy at home, happy in a husband's love, happy in her parent's fondness, happy in the children she had nursed, Mrs. Guthrie carried into every circle and there was no circle in which her society was not courted, that cheerfulness which never was a companion of guilt, or a stranger to innocence. My client saw her, the pride of his family, the favourite of his friends at once the organ and ornament of his happiness. His ambition awoke, his industry redoubled ; and fortune, which, though for a season it may frown, never totally abandons pro- bity and virtue, had begun to smile on him. He was beginning to rise in the ranks of his competi- tors, and rising with such a character, that emula- tion itself rather rejoiced than envied. It was at this crisis, in this, the noon of his happiness, and day-spring of his fortune, that, to the ruin of both, the Defendant became acquainted with his family. With the serpent's wile, and the serpent's wicked- ness, he stole into the Eden of domestic life, poi- soning all that was pure, polluting all that was lovely, defying God, destroying man ; a demon in the disguise of virtue, a herald of hell in the para- dise of innocence. His name, Gentlemen, is WILLIAM PETER BAKERDUNSTANVILLESTERNE, one would think he had names enough without 82 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF adding to them the title of Adulterer. Of his cha- racter I know but little, and I am sorry that I know so much. If I am instructed rightly, he is one of those vain and vapid coxcombs, whose vices tinge the frivolity of their follies with something of a more odious character than ridicule with just bead enough to contrive crime, but not heart enough to feel for its consequences ; one of those fashionable insects, that folly has painted, and for- tune plumed, for the annoyance of our atmosphere ; dangerous alike in their torpidity and their anima- tion ; infesting where they fly, and poisoning where they repose. It was through the introduc- tion of Mr. Fallen, the son of a most respectable lady, then resident in Temple-street, and a near relative to Mr. Guthrie, that the Defendant and this unfortunate woman first became acquainted : to such an introduction the shadow of a suspicion could not possibly attach. Occupied himself in his professional pursuits, my client had little leisure for the amusement of society : however, to the pro- tection of Mrs. Fallon, her son, and daughters, moving in the first circles, unstained by any pos- sible imputation, he without hesitation intrusted all that was dear to him. No suspicion could be awakened as to any man to whom such a female as Mrs. Fallon permitted an intimacy with her daugh- ters ; while then at her house, and at the parties which it originated, the Defendant and Mrs. Guthrie had frequent opportunities of meeting. Who could have suspected, that, under the very roof of virtue, in the presence of a venerable and respected matron, and of that innocent family, GUTHRIE v. STERNE. 83 whom she had reared up in the sunshine of her example, the most abandoned profligate could have plotted his iniquities ! Who would not rather suppose, that, in the rebuke of such a pre- sence, guilt would have torn away the garland from its brow, and blushed itself into virtue. But the depravity of this man was of no common dye ; the asylum of innocence was selected only as the sanc- tuary of his crimes ; and the pure and spotless chosen as his associates, because they would be more unsuspected subsidiaries to his wickedness. Nor were his manner and his language less suited than his society to the concealment of his objects. If you believed himself, the sight of suffering affected his nerves ; the bare mention of immo- rality smote upon his conscience ; an intercourse with the continental courts had refined his mind into a painful sensibility to the barbarisms of Ire- land ! and yet an internal tenderness towards his native land so irresistibly impelled him to improve it by his residence, that he was a hapless victim to the excess of his feelings ! the exquisiteness of h;s polish ! and the excellence of his patriotism ! His English estates, he said, amounted to about .10,000 a year; and he retained in Ireland only a trifling 3,000 more, as a kind of trust for the necessities of its inhabitants ! In short, according- o to his own description, he was in religion a saint, and in morals a stoic ! a sort of wandering phi- lanthropist ! making, like the Sterne, who, he con- fessed, had the honour of his name and his con- nection, a Sentimental Journey in search of objects over whom his heart might weep, and his sensibi- lity expand itself ! 84 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF How happy is it, that, of the philosophic pro-, fligate only retaining the vices and the name, his rashness has led to the arrest of crimes, which he had all his turpitude to commit, without any of his talents to embellish. It was by arts such as I have alluded to by pretending the most strict morality, the most sen- sitive honour, the most high and undeviating prin- ciplesof virtue, that the Defendant banished every suspicion of his designs. As far as appearances went, he was exactly what he described himself. His pretensions to morals he supported by the most reserved and respectful behaviour : his hand was lavish in the distribution of his charities ; and a splendid equipage, a numerous retinue, a system of the most profuse and prodigal expenditure, left no doubt as to the reality of his fortune. Thus circumstanced, he found an easy admittance to the house of Mrs. Fallon, and there he had many op- portunities of seeing Mrs. Guthrie ; for, between his family and that of so respectable a relative as Mrs. Fallon, my client had much anxiety to in- crease the connection. They visited together some of the public amusements ; they partook of some of the fetes in the neighbourhood of the metropo- lis ; but upon every occasion, Mrs. Guthrie was accompanied by her own mother, and by the res- pectable females of Mrs. Fallon's family: I say, upon every occasion : and I challenge them to produce one single instance of those innocent excursions, upon which the slanders of an interested calumny have been let loose, in which this unfortunate lady was not matronized by her female relatives, and 6UTHRIE v. STERNE. 85 those some of the most spotless characters in society. Between Mr. Guthrie and the Defendant the acquaintance was but slight. Upon one oc- casion alone they dined together ; it was at the house of the Plaintiff's father-in-law; and, that you may have some illustration of the Defendant's character, I shall briefly instance his conduct at this dinner. On being introduced to Mr. Warren, he apologized for any deficiency of etiquette in his visits, declaring that he had been seriously occu- pied in arranging the affairs of his lamented father, who, though tenant for life, had contracted debts to an enormous amount. He had already paid upwards of 10,000, which honour and not law compelled him to discharge ; as, sweet soul! he could not bear that any one should suffer unjustly by his family ! His subsequent conduct was quite consistent with this hypocritical preamble : at dinner, he sat at a distance from Mrs. Guthrie ; expatiated to her husband upon matters of moral- ity ; entering into a high-flown panegyric on the virtues of domestic life, and the comforts of con- nubial happiness. In short, had there been any idea of jealousy, his manner would have banished it ; and the mind must have been worse than sceptical, which would refuse its credence to his surface morality. Gracious God ! when the heart once admits guilt as its associate, how every natural emotion flies before it ! Surely, surely, here was a scene to reclaim, if it were possible, this remorseless Defendant admitted to her father's table, under the shield of hospitality, he saw a young and lovely female, surrounded by her pa- 8G SPEECH IN THE CASE OF rents, her husband, and her children ; the prop of those parents' age ; the idol of that husband's love ; the anchor of those children's helplessness ; the sacred orb of their domestic circle ; giving their smile its light, and their bliss its being: robbed of whose beams the little lucid world of their home must become chill, uncheered and colourless for ever. He saw them happy, he saw them united ; blessed with peace, and purity, and profusion ; throbbing with sympathy and throned in love ; depicting the innocence of infancy, and the joys of manhood, before the venerable eye of age, as if to soften the farewell of one world by the pure and pictured anticipation of a better. Yet, even there, hid in the very sunbeam of that happiness, the demon of its destined desolation lurked. Just heaven ! of what materials was that heart composed, which could meditate coolly on the murder of such enjoyments ; which innocence could not soften, nor peace propitiate, nor hospi- tality appease ; but which, in the very beam and bosom of its benefaction, warmed and excited itself into a more vigorous venom ? Was there no sym- pathy in the scene ? Was there no remorse at the crime ? Was there no horror at its consequences ? " Were honour, virtue, conscience, all exil'd ! Was there no pity, no relenting ruth, To shew the parents fondling o'er their child, Then paint the ruin'd pair and their distraction wild !" BURNS. No ! no ! He was at that instant planning their destruction ; and, even within four short days, he deliberately reduced those parents to childishness, GUTHRIE t>. STERNE. 87 that husband to widowhood, those smiling infants to anticipated orphanage, and that peaceful, hos- pitable, confiding family, to helpless, hopeless, irremediable ruin ! Upon the first day of the ensuing July, Mr. Guthrie was to dine with the Connaught bar, at the hotel of Portobello. It is a custom, I am told, with the gentlemen of that association to dine together previous to the circuit ; of course my client could not have decorously absented himself. Mrs. Guthrie appeared a little feverish, and he requested that, on his retiring, she would compose herself to rest ; she promised him she would ; and when he departed, somewhat abruptly, to put some letters in the post-office, she exclaimed, " What ! John, are you going to leave me thus ? J> He re- turned, and she kissed him. They seldom parted, even for any time, without that token of affection. I am thus minute, Gentlemen, that you may see, up to the last moment, what little cause the husband had for suspicion, and how impossible it was for him to foresee a perfidy which nothing short of infatuation could have produced. He proceeded to his companions with no other regret than that necessity, for a moment, forced him from a home, which the smile of affection had never ceased to endear to him. After a day, however, passed, as such a day might have been supposed to pass, in the flow of soul and the philosophy of pleasure, he returned home to share his happiness with her, without whom no happiness ever had been perfect. Alas ! he was never to behold her more ! Imagine, if you can, the phrenzy of his 88 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF astonishment, in being informed by Mrs. Porter,* the daughter of the former landlady, that about two hours before, she had attended Mrs. Guthrie to a confectioner's shop ; that a carriage had drawn up at the corner of the street, into which a gentle- man, whom she recognized to be a Mr. Sterne, had handed her, and they instantly departed. I must tell you, there is every reason to believe, that this woman was the confident of the con- spiracy. What a pity that the object of that guilty confidence had not something of humanity ; that, as a female, she did not feel for the character of her sex ; that, as a mother, she did not mourn over the sorrows of a helpless family ! What pangs might she not have spared ? My client could hear no more : even at the dead of night he rushed into the street, as if in its own dark hour he could dis- cover guilt's recesses. In vain did he awake the peaceful family of the horror-struck Mrs. Fallon ; in vain with the parents of the miserable fugitive did he mingle the tears of an impotent distraction ; in vain, a miserable maniac did he traverse the silent streets of the metropolis, affrighting virtue from its slumbers with the spectre of its own ruin. I will not harrow you with its heart-rending reci- tal. But imagine you see him, when the day had dawned, returning wretched to his deserted dwelling ; seeing in every chamber a memorial of his loss, and hearing every tongueless object eloquent of his woe. Imagine you see him, in the reverie of his grief, trying to persuade himself it was all a vision, and awakened only to the hor- rid truth by his helpless children asking him for GUTHRIE v. STERNE. 80 their mother ! Gentlemen, this is not a picture of the fancy ; it literally occurred : there is something less of romance in the reflection, which his chil- dren awakened in the mind of their afflicted father; he ordered that they should be immediately habited in mourning. How rational sometimes are the ravings of insanity ! For all the purposes of maternal life, poor innocents ! they have no mo- ther ; her tongue no more can teach, her hand no more can tend them ; for them there is not " specu- lation in her eyes ;" to them her life is some- thing worse than death ; as if the awful grave had yawned her forth, she moves before them, shrouded all in sin, the guilty burden of its peaceless sepul- chre. Better, far better, their little feet had follow- ed in her funeral, than that the hour which taught her value, should reveal her vice mourning her loss, they might have blessed her memory ; and shame need not have rolled its fires into the foun- tain of their sorrow. As soon as his reason became sufficiently col- lected, Mr. Guthrie pursued the fugitives : he traced them successively to Kildare, to Carlow, Waterford, Milford-haven, on through Wales, and finally to Ilfracombe, in Devonshire, where the clue was lost. I am glad that, in this rout and restlessness of their guilt, as the crime they per- petrated was foreign to our soil, they did not make that soil the scene of its habitation. I will not follow them through this joyless journey, nor brand by my record the unconscious scene of its pollu- tion. But philosophy never taught, the pulpit never enforced, a more imperative morality than 90 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF the itinerary of that accursed tour promulgates. Oh ! if there be a maid or matron in this island, balancing between the alternative of virtue and of crime, trembling between the hell of the seducer and the adulterer, and the heaven of the paternal and the nuptial home, let her pause upon this one out of the many horrors I could depict, and be converted. I will give you the relation in the very words of my brief ; I cannot improve upon the simplicity of the recital : " On the 7th of July they arrived at Milford ; the captain of the packet dined with them, and was astonished at the magnificence of her dress/' (Poor wretch ! she was decked and adorned for the sacrifice !) " The next day they dined alone. Towards evening, the housemaid, passing near their chamber, heard Mr. Sterne scolding, and apparently beating her ! In a short time after, Mrs. Guthrie rushed out of her chamber into the drawing-room, and throwing herself in agony upon the sofa, she exclaimed, " Oh! what an unhappy wretch I am ! / left my home, where I was happy, too happy, seduced by a man who lias deceived me. My poor HUSBAND ! my dear CHILDREN ! Oh ! if they would even let my little WILLIAM live with me! it would be some consolation to my BROKEN HEART." " Alas ! nor children more shall she behold, " Nor friends, nor sacred home." Well might she lament over her fallen fortunes ! well might she mourn over the memory of days when the sun of heaven seemed to rise but for her happiness ! well might she recal the home she had GUTHRIE r. STERNE. 91 endeared, the children she had nursed, the hapless husband, of whose life she was the pulse ! But one short week before, this earth could not reveal a lovelier vision : Virtue blessed, affection fol- lowed, beauty beamed on her; the light of every eye, the charm of every heart, she moved along- in cloudless chastity, cheered by the song of love, and circled by the splendours she created ! Be- hold her now, the loathsome refuse of an adulterous bed ; festering in the very infection of her crime ; the scoff and scorn of their unmanly, merciless, in- / * human author ? But thus it ever is with the vo- taries of guilt ; the birth of their crime is the death of their enjoyment ; and the wretch who flings his offering on its altar, falls an immediate victim to the flame of his devotion. I am glad it is so ; it is a wise, retributive dispensation; it bears the stamp of a preventive Providence. I rejoice it is so in the present instance, first, because this premature infliction must ensure repentance in the wretched sufferer; and next, because, as this adulterous fiend has rather acted on the suggestions of his nature than his shape, by rebelling against the finest impulses of man, he has made himself an outlaw from the sympathies of humanity. Why should he expect that charity from you, which he would not spare even to the misfortunes he had inflicted ? For the honour of the form in which he is disguised, I am willing to hope he was so blinded by his vice, that he did not see the full extent of those misfortunes. If he had feelings capable of being touched, it is not to the faded victim of her own weakness, and of his wicked- 92 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF ness, that I would direct them. There is thing in her crime which affrights charity from its commiseration. But, Gentlemen, there is one, over whom pity may mourn* for he is wretched ; and mourn without a blush, for he is guiltless. How shall I depict to you the deserted husband ? To every other object in this catalogue of calamity there is some stain attached which checks compas- sion. But here Oh ! if ever there was a man amiable, it was that man. Oh ! if ever there was a husband fond, it was that husband. His hope, his joy, his ambition, was domestic ; his toils were forgotten in the affections of his home ; and amid every adverse variety of fortune, hope pointed to his children, and he was comforted. By this vile act that hope is blasted, that home is a desert, those children are parentless ! In vain do they look to their surviving parent: his heart is broken, his mind is in ruins, his very form is fading from the earth. He had one consolation, an aged mo- ther, on whose life the remnant of his fortunes hung, and on whose protection of his children his remaining prospects rested ; even that is over ; she could not survive his shame, she never raised her head, she became hearsed in his mis- fortune ; he has followed her funeral. If this be not the climax of human misery, tell me in what does human misery consist ? Wife, parent, for- tune, prospects, happiness, all gone at once, and gone for ever ! For my part, when 1 con- template this, I do not wonder at the faded form, the dejected air, the emaciated countenance, and all the ruinous and mouldering trophies, by which GUTHRIE r. STERNE. 98 misery lias marked its triumph over youth, and health, and happiness? I know, that in the hordes of what is called fashionable life, there is a sect of philosophers, wonderfully patient of their fel- low-creatures' sufferings ; men too insensible to feel for any one, or too selfish to feel for others. I trust there is not one amongst you who can even hear of such calamities without affliction ; or, if there be, I pray that he may never know their import by experience ; that having, in the wilder- ness of this world, but one dear and darling ob- ject, without whose participation bliss would be joyless, and in whose sympathies sorrow has found a charm ; whose smile has cheered his toil, whose love has pillowed his misfortunes, whose angel- spirit, guiding him through danger, darkness, and despair, amid the world's frown and the friend's perfidy, was more than friend, and world, and all to him ! God forbid, that by a villain's wile, or a villain's wickedness, he should be taught how to appreciate the woe of others in the dismal soli- tude of his own. Oh, no ! I feel that 1 address myself to human beings, who, knowing the value of what the world is worth, are capable of appre- ciating all that makes it dear to us. Observe, however, lest this crime should want aggravation observe, I beseech you, the period of its accomplishment. My client was not so young as that the elasticity of his spirit could re- bound and bear him above the pressure of the misfortune, nor was he withered by age into a comparative insensibility ; but just at that tem- perate interval of manhood, when passion had 94 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF ceased to play, and reason begins to operate ; when love, gratified, left him nothing to desire ; and fi- delity, long tried, left him nothing to apprehend : he was just, too, at that period of his professional career, when, his patient industry having con- quered the ascent, he was able to look around him from the height on which he rested. For this, welcome had been the day of tumult, and the pale midnight lamp succeeding ; welcome had been the drudgery of form ; welcome the analysis of crime ; welcome the sneer of envy, and the scorn of dulness, and all the spurns which " patient me- rit of the unworthy takes." For this he had en- countered, perhaps, the generous rivalry of ge- nius, perhaps the biting blasts of poverty, perhaps the efforts of that deadly slander, which, coiling round the cradle of his young ambition, might have sought to crush him in its envenomed foldings. " Ah ! who can tell how hard it is to climb The steep where Fame's proud temple shines afar? Ah ! who can tell how many a soul sublime Hath felt the influence of malignant star, And waged with fortune an eternal war?" Can such an injury as this admit of justifica- tion ? I think the learned counsel will concede it cannot. But it may be palliated. Let us see how. Perhaps the Defendant was young and thoughtless ; perhaps unmerited prosperity raised him above the pressure of misfortune ; and the wild pulses of impetuous passion impelled him to a purpose at which his experience would have shuddered. Quite the contrarv. The noon of manhood has GUTHRIE r. STERNE. 95 almost passed over him ; and a youth, spent in the recesses of a debtor's prison, made him fami- liar with every form of human misery : he saw what misfortune was ; it did not teach him pity: he saw the effects of guilt ; he spurned the ad- monition. Perhaps in the solitude of a single life, he had never known the social blessedness of mar- riage ; he has a wife and children ; or, if she be not his wife, she is the victim of his crime, and adds another to the calendar of his seduction. Certain it is, he has little children, who think themselves legitimate ; will his advocates defend him, by proclaiming their bastardy ? Certain it is, there is a wretched female, his own cousin too, who thinks herself his wife ; will they protect him, by proclaiming" he has only deceived her into being his prostitute ? Perhaps his crime, as in the celebrated case of Howard, immortalized by Lord Erskine, may have found its origin in pa- rental cruelty ; it might perhaps have been, that in their spring of life, when Fancy waved her fairy wand around them, till all above was sun- shine, and all beneath was flowers; when to their clear and charmed vision this ample world was but a weedless garden, where every tint spoke Nature's loveliness, and every sound breathed Heaven's melody, and every breeze was but em- bodied fragrance ; it might have been that, in this cloudless holiday, Love wove his roseate bondage round them, till their young hearts so grew toge- ther, a separate existence ceased, and life itself became a sweet identity ; it might have been that, envious of this paradise, some worse than demon 96 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF tor them from each other, to pine for years in absence, and at length to perish in a palliated im- piety. Oh ! Gentlemen, in such a case, Justice herself, with her uplifted sword, would call on Mercy to preserve the victim. There was no such palliation : the period of their acquaintance was little more than sufficient for the maturity of their crime ; and they dare not libel Love, by shielding under its soft and sacred name the loathsome re- vels of an adulterous depravity. It might have been, the husband's cruelty left a too easy inroad for seduction. Will they dare assert it ? Ah ! too well they knew he would not let " the winds of heaven visit her face too roughly. 5 ' Monstrous as it is, I have heard, indeed, that they mean to rest upon an opposite palliation ; I have heard it rumoured, that they mean to rest the wife's infi- delity upon the husband's fondness. I know that guilt, in its conception mean, and in its commis- sion tremulous, is, in its exposure, desperate and audacious. I know that, in the fugitive panic of its retreat, it will stop to fling its Parthian poison upon the justice that pursues it. But I do hope, bad and abandoned, and hopeless as their cause is, I do hope, for the sake of human nature, that I have been deceived in the rumours of this un- natural defence. Merciful God ! is it in the pre- sence of this venerable Court, is it in the hearing of this virtuous Jury, is it in the zenith of an en- lightened age, that I am to be told, because fe- male tenderness was not watched with worse than Spanish vigilance, and harassed with worse than eastern severity ; because the marriage-contract is CUTHRIE r. STERNE. 97 not converted into the curse of incarceration ; be- cause woman is allowed the dignity of a human soul, and man does not degrade himself into a human monster ; because the vow of endearment is not made the vehicle of deception, and the al- tar's pledge is not become the passport of a bar- barous perjury ; and that too in a land of courage and chivalry, where the female form has been held as a patent direct from the Divinity, bearing in its chaste and charmed helplessness the assur- ance of its strength, and the amulet of its protec- tion : am I to be told, that the demon adulterer is therefore not only to perpetrate his crimes, but to vindicate himself, through the very virtues he has violated ? I cannot believe it ; I dismiss the supposition : it is most " monstrous, foul, unna- tural." Suppose that the Plaintiff pursued a dif- ferent principle ; suppose that his conduct had been the reverse of what it was ; suppose, that in place of being kind, he had been cruel to this deluded female ; that he had been her tyrant, not her protector; her goaler, not her husband: what then might have been the defence of the adul- terer ? Might he not then say, and say with spe- ciousness, " True, I seduced her into crime, but it was to save her from cruelty ; true, she is my adulteress, because he was her despot." Happily, Gentlemen, he can say no such thing. I have heard it said, too, during the ten months of ca- lumny, for which, by every species of legal delay, they have procrastinated this trial, that, next to the impeachment of the husband's tenderness, they mean to rely on what they libel as the levity H 98 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF of their unhappy victim ! I know not by what right any man, but above all, a married man, presumes to scrutinize into the conduct of a married female. I know not, Gentlemen, how you would feel, un- der the consciousness that every coxcomb was at liberty to estimate the warmth, or the coolness, of your wives, by the barometer of his vanity, that he might ascertain precisely the prudence of an invasion on their virtue. But I do know, that such a defence, coming from such a quarter, would not at all surprise me. Poor unfortunate fallen female ! How can she expect mercy from her destroyer ? How can she expect that he will re- vere the character she was careless of preserving ? How can she suppose that, after having made her peace the pander to his appetite, he will not make her reputation the victim of his avarice ? Such a defence is quite to be expected : knowing him, it will not surprise me ; if 1 know you, it will not avail him. Having now shewn you, that a crime, almost unprecedented in this country, is clothed in every aggravation, and robbed of every palliative, it is natural you should enquire, what was the motive for its commission ? What do you think it was ? Providentially miraculously, I should have said, for you never could have divined the Defendant has himself disclosed it. What do think it was, Gentlemen ? Ambition! But a few days before his criminality, in answer to a friend, who rebuked him for the almost princely expenditure of his habits, " Oh," says he, " never mind ; Sterne must do something by which Sterne may be known!" I had heard, indeed, that ambition was GUTHRIE i. STERN'S. 99 a vice, but then a vice, so equivocal, it verged on virtue ; that it was the aspiration of a spirit, sometimes perhaps appalling, always magnificent ; that though its grasp might be fate, and its flight might be famine, still it reposed on earth's pin- nacle, and played in heaven's lightnings ; that though it might fall in ruins, it arose in fire, and was withal so splendid, that even the horrors of that fall became immerged and mitigated in the beauties of that aberration ! But here is an ambi- tion ! base, and barbarous, and illegitimate; with all the grossness of the vice, with none of the grandeur of the virtue; a mean, muffled, dastard incendiary, who, in the silence of sleep, and in the shades of midnight, steals his Ephesian torch into the fane, which it was virtue to adore, and worse than sacrilege to have violated ! Gentlemen, my part is done ; yours is about to commence. You have heard this crime its ori- gin, its progress, its aggravations, its novelty among us. Go and tell your children and your country, whether or not it is to be made a pre- cedent. Oh, how awful is your responsibility ! I do not doubt lhat you will discharge yourselves of it as becomes your characters. I am sure, indeed, that you will mourn with me over the almost solitary defect in our otherwise match- less system of jurisprudence, which leaves the per- petrators of such an injury as this, subject to no amercement but that of money. I think you will lament the failure of the great Cicero of our age, to bring such an offence within the cognizance of a criminal jurisdiction : it was a subject suited to his great mind, worthy of his feeling heart, H 2 100 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF worthy of his immortal eloquence. I cannot, my Lord, even remotely allude to Lord Erskine, M'ith- out gratifying myself by saying of him, that by the rare union of all that was learned in law with all that was lucid in eloquence ; by the singular combination of all that was pure in morals with all that was profound in wisdom ; he has stamped upon every action of his life the blended authority of a great mind, and an unquestionable convic- tion. I think, Gentlemen, you will regret the failure of such a man in such an object. The merciless murderer may have manliness to plead ; the highway robber may have want to palliate ; yet they both are objects of criminal infliction; but the murderer of connubial bliss, who commits his crime in secrecy ; the robber of domestic joys, whose very wealth, as in this case, may be his instrument ; he is suffered to calculate on the infernal fame which a superfluous and unfelt ex- penditure may purchase. The law, however, is so : and we must adopt the only remedy it affords us. In your adjudication of that remedy, I do not ask too much, when I ask the full extent of your capability: how poor, even so, is the wretch- ed remuneration for an injury which nothing can repair, for a loss which nothing can alleviate ? Do you think that a mine could recompense my client for the forfeiture of her who was dearer than life to him ? " Oh, had she been but true, Though Heaven had made him such another world, Of one entire and perfect chrysolite, He'd not exchange her for it !" GUTHRIE r. STERNE. 101 I put it to any of you, what would you take to stand in his situation ? What would you take to have your prospects blasted, your profession de- spoiled, your peace ruined, your bed profaned, your parents heart-broken, your children parent- less ? Believe me, Gentlemen, if it were not for those children, he would not come here to-day to seek such remuneration ; if it were not that, by your verdict, you may prevent those little inno- cent defrauded wretches from wandering, beggars, as well as orphans, on the face of this earth. Oh, I know I need not ask this verdict from your mercy ; I need not extort it from your compas- sion ; I will receive it from your justice. I do conjure you, not as fathers, but as husbands ;r-r- not as husbands, but as citizens ; not as citizens, but as men ; not as men, but as Christians ; by all your obligations, public, private, moral, and religious ; by the hearth profaned ; by the home desolated ; by the canons of the living God foully spurned ; save, oh ! save your fire-sides from the contagion, your country from the crime, and per- haps thousands, yet unborn, from the shame, and sin, and sorrow of this example ! SPEECH MR. PHILLIPS IN THE CASE OF O'MULLAN v. M'KORKILL, DELIVERED IN THE COUNTY COURT-HOUSE, GALWAY. My Lords and Gentlemen, I AM instructed as of counsel for the Plaintiff, to state to you the circumstances in which this ac- tion has originated. It is a source to me, I will confess it, of much personal embarrassment. Fee- bly, indeed, can I attempt to convey to you, the feelings with which a perusal of this brief has af- fected me ; painful to you must be my inefficient transcript painful to all who have the common feelings of country or of kind, must be this cala- mitous compendium of all that degrades our indi- vidual nature, and of all that has, for many an age of sorrow, perpetuated a curse upon our national character. It is, perhaps, the misery of this pro- fession, that every hour our vision may be blasted by some withering crime, and our hearts wrung SPEECH. 103 with some agonizing recital ; there is no frightful form of vice, or no disgusting phantom of infir- mity, which guilt does not array in spectral train hefore us. Horrible is the assemblage ! humiliat- ing the application ! but, thank God, even amid those very scenes of disgrace and of debasement, occasions oft arise for the redemption of our dig- nity ; occasions, on which the virtues breathed into us, by heavenly inspiration, walk abroad in the divinity of their exertion ; before whose beam the wintry robe falls from the form of virtue, and all the midnight images of horror vanish into no- thing. Joyfully and piously do I recognize such an occasion ; gladly do I invoke you to the ge- nerous participation ; yes, Gentlemen, though you must prepare to hear much that degrades our na- ture, much that distracts our country though all that oppression could devise against the poor though all that persecution could inflict upon the feeble though all that vice could wield against the pious though all that the venom of a venal turpitude could pour upon the patriot, must with their alternate apparition afflict, affright, and hu- miliate you, still do I hope, that over this charnel- house of crime over this very sepulchre, where corruption sits enthroned upon the merit it has murdered, that voice is at length about to be heard, at which the martyred victim will arise to vindicate the ways of Providence, and prove that even in its worst adversity there is a might and immortality in virtue. The Plaintiff, Gentlemen, you have heard, is the Rev. Cornelius O'Mullan ; he is a clergyman 104 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF of the church of Rome, and became invested with that venerable appellation, so far back as Septem- ber, 1804. It is a title which you know, in this country, no rank ennobles, no treasure enriches, no establishment supports ; its possessor stands undisguised by any rag of this world's decoration, resting all temporal, all eternal hope upon his toil, his talents, his attainments, and his piety doubt- less, after all, the highest honours, as well as the most imperishable treasures of the man of God. Year after year passed over my client, and each anniversary only gave him an additional title to these qualifications. His precept was but the handmaid to his practice ; the sceptic heard him, and was convinced ; the ignorant attended him, and were taught ; he smoothed the death-bed of too heedless wealth ; he rocked the cradle of the infant charity : oh, no wonder he walked in the sunshine of the public eye, no wonder he toiled through the pressure of the public benediction. This is not an idle declamation ; such was the re- sult his ministry produced, that within five years from the date of its commencement, nearly ,2,000 of voluntary subscription enlarged the temple where such precepts were taught, and such piety exemplified. Such was the situation of Mr. O'Mul- lan, when a dissolution of parliament took place, and an unexpected contest for the representation of Deny, threw that county into unusual commo- tion. One of the candidates was of the Ponsonby family a family devoted to the interests, and dear to the heart of Ireland ; he naturally thought that his parliamentary conduct entitled him to the O'MULLAK t-. M'KORKILL. 105 vote of every Catholic in the land ; and so it did, not only of every Catholic, but of every Christian who preferred the diffusion of the Gospel to the ascendancy of a sect, and loved the principles of the constitution better than the pretensions of a party. Perhaps you will think with me, that there is a sort of posthumous interest thrown about that event, when I tell you, that the candidate on that occasion was the lamented Hero over whose tomb the tears, not only of Ireland, but of Europe, have been so lately shed ; he who, mid the blossom of the world's chivalry, died conquering a deathless name upon the field of Waterloo. He applied to Mr. O'Mullan for his interest, and that interest was cheerfully given, the concurrence of his bishop having been previously obtained. Mr. Ponsonby succeeded ; and a dinner, to which all parties were invited, and from which all party spirit was expected to absent itself, was given to commemo- rate one common triumph the purity and the privileges of election. In other countries, such an expectation might be natural ; the exercise of a noble constitutional privilege, the triumph of a great popular cause, might not unaptly expand itself in the intercourse of the board, and unite all hearts in the natural bond of festive commemora- tion. But, alas, Gentlemen, in this unhappy land, such has been the result, whether of our faults, our follies, or our misfortunes, that a detestable disunion converts the very balm of the bowl into poison, commissioning its vile and harpy offspring, to turn even our festivity into famine. My client was at this dinner ; it was not to be endured that a Catholic should pollute with his presence the SPEECH IN THE CASE OF civic festivities of the loyal Londonderry ! such an intrusion, even the acknowledged sanctity of his character could not excuse ; it became necessary to insult him. There is a toast, which, perhaps, few in this united county are in the habit of hear- ing, but it is the invariable watch-word of the Orange orgies ; it is briefly entitled *' The glori- ous, pious, and immortal memory of the great and good King William." I have no doubt the sim- plicity of your understandings is puzzled how to discover any offence in the commemoration of the Revolution Hero. The loyalists of Derry are more wise in their generation. There, when some Bacchanalian bigots wish to avert the intrusive visitations of their own memory, they commence by violating the memory of King William*. Those who happen to have shoes or silver in their frater- nity no very usual occurrence thank His Ma- jesty that the shoes are not wooden, and that the silver is not brass, a commodity, by the bye, of which any legacy would have been quite super- fluous. The Pope comes in for a pious benedic- tion : and the toast concludes with a patriotic wish, for all of his persuasion, by the consumma- tion of which, there can be no doubt, the hempen manufactures of this country would experience * This loyal toast, handed down by Orange tradition, is lite- rally as follows we give it for the edification of the sister island : " The glorious, pious, and immortal memory of the great and good King William, who saved us from Pope and Popery, James and slavery, brass money and wooden shoes: here is bad luck to. the Pope, and a hempen rope to all Papists " It is drank kneeling, if they cannot stand, nine times nine, amid various mysteries which none but the elect can comprehend. O'MULLAN t. M'KORKILL. a very considerable consumption. Such, Gentle- men, is the enlightened, and liberal, and social sentiment of which the first sentence, all that is usually given, forms the suggestion. I must not omit that it is generally taken standing, always providing it be in the power of the company. This toast was pointedly given to insult Mr. O'Mul- lan. Naturally averse to any altercation, his most obvious course was to quit the company, and this he did immediately. He was, however, as immediately recalled by an intimation, that the Catholic question, and might its claims be consi- dered justly and liberally, had been toasted as a peace-offering by Sir George Hill, the City Re- corder. My client had no gall in his disposition ; he at once clasped to his heart the friendly over- ture, and in such phrase as his simplicity sup- plied, poured forth the gratitude of that heart to the liberal Recorder. Poor O'Mullan had the wisdom to imagine that the politician's compli- ment was the man's conviction, and that a table toast was the certain prelude to a parliamentary suffrage. Despising all experience, he applied the adage, Ccelum non animum mutant qui trans ware currant, to the Irish patriot. I need not paint to you the consternation of Sir George, at so unusual and so unparliamentary a construction. He indignantly disclaimed the intention imputed to him, denied and deprecated the unfashionable inference, and acting on the broad scale of an impartial policy, gave to one party the weight of his vote, and to the other, the (no doubt in his opinion) equally valuable acquisition of his elo- 108 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF quence ; by the way, no unusual compromise amongst modern politicians. The proceedings of this dinner soon became public. Sir George, you may be sure, was little in love with his notoriety. However, Gentlemen, the sufferings of the powerful are seldom without sympathy ; if they receive not the solace of the disinterested and the sincere, they are, at. least sure to find a substitute in the miserable profes- sions of an interested hypocrisy. Who could imagine, that Sir George, of all men, was to drink from the spring of Catholic consolation ; yet so it happened. Two men of that communion had the hardihood, and the servility, to frame an address to him, reflecting upon the pastor, who was its pride, and its ornament. This address, with the most obnoxious commentaries, was instantly pub- lished by the Derry Journalist, who, from that hour, down to the period of his ruin, has never ceased to persecute my client, with all that the most deliberate falsehood could invent, and all that the most infuriate bigotry could perpetrate. This journal I may as well now describe to you ; it is one of the numerous publications which the misfortunes of this unhappy land have generated, and which has grown into considerable affluence by the sad contributions of the public calamity. There is not a provincial village in Ireland, which some such official fiend does not infest, fabricating- a gazette of fraud and falsehood upon all who pre- sume to advocate her interests, or uphold the ancient religion of her people ; the worst foes of government, under pretence of giving it assistance ; O'MULLAN r. M'KORKILL. the deadliest enemies to the Irish name, under the mockery of supporting its character ; the most licentious, irreligious, illiterate banditti, that ever polluted the fair fields of literature, under the spoliated banner of the press. Bloated with the public spoil, and blooded in the chase of character, no abilities can arrest, no piety can awe ; no mis- fortune affect, no benevolence conciliate them ; the reputation of the living, and the memory of the dead, are equally plundered in their desolating progress ; even the awful sepulchre affords not an asylum to their selected victim. HUMAN HYENAS ! they will rush into the sacred receptacle of death, gorging their ravenous and brutal rapine, amid the memorials of our last infirmity ! Such is a too true picture of what, I hope, unauthorizedly, misnames itself the ministerial press of Ireland. Amid that polluted press, it is for you to say, whether The Londonderry Journal stands on an infamous eleva- tion. When this address was published in the name of the Catholics, that calumniated body, as was naturally to be expected, became universally indignant. You may remember, Gentleman, amongst the many expedients resorted to by Ireland, for the recovery of her rights, after she had knelt session after session at the bar of the legislature, covered with the wounds of glory, and praying redemption, from the chains that rewarded them ; you may remember, I say, amongst many vain expedients of supplication and remonstrance, her Catholic population delegated a board to consult on their affairs, and forward their petition. Of that body, HO SPEECH IN THE CASE OF fashionable as the topic has now become, far be it from me to speak with disrespect. It contained much talent, much integrity ; and it exhibited what must ever be to me an interesting spectacle, a great body of rny fellow-men, and fellow-christ- ians, claiming admission into that constitution which their ancestors had achieved by their valour, and to which they were entitled as their inherit- ance. This is no time, this is no place for the discussion of that question ; but since it does force itself incidentally upon me, I will say, that, as on the one hand, I cannot fancy a despotism more impious, or more inhuman, than the political de- basement here, on acourit of that faith by which men hope to win a happy eternity hereafter ; so, on the other, I CANNOT FANCY A VISION IN ITS ASPECT MORE DIVINE THAN THE ETERNAL CROSS RED WITH THE MARTYR'S BLOOD, AND RADIANT WITH THE PILGRIM'S HOPE, REARED BY THE PATRIOT AND THE CHRISTIAN HAND, HIGH IN THE VAN OF MEN DETERMINED TO BE FREE. Of this board the two volunteer framers of the address happened to be members. The body who deputed them, instantly assembled and declared their delegation void. You would suppose, Gentlemen, that after this decisive public brand of reprobation, those officious med- dlers would have avoided its recurrence, by retir- ing from scenes for which nature and education had totally unfitted them. Far, however, from acting under any sense of shame, those excluded outcasts even summoned a meeting to appeal from the sentence the public opinion had pronounced on them. The meeting assembled, and after almost O'MULLAN r. M'KORKILL. the day's deliberation on their conduct, the for- mer sentence was unanimously confirmed. The men did not deem it prudent to attend themselves, but at a late hour when the business was concluded, when the resolutions had passed, when the chair was vacated, when the multitude was dispersing, they attempted with some Orange followers to obtrude into the chapel, which in large cities, such as Deny, is the usual place of meeting. An angry spirit arose among the people. Mr. O'Mul- lan, as was his duty, locked the doors to preserve the house of God from profanation, and addressed the crowd in sucli terms as induced them to repair peaceably to their respective habitations, I need not paint to you the bitter emotions with which these deservedly disappointed men were agitated. All hell was at work within them, and a conspi- racy was hatched against the peace of my client, the vilest, the foulest, the most infernal that ever vice devised, or demons executed. Restrained from exciting a riot by his interference, they ac- tually swore a riot against him, prosecuted him to conviction, worked on the decaying intellect of his bishop to desert him, and amid the savage war-whoop of this, slanderous Journal, all along inflaming the public mind by libels the most atrocious, finally flung this poor, religious, unof- fending priest, into a damp and desolate dungeon, where the very iron that bound, had more of humanity than the despots that surrounded him. I am told, they triumph much in this conviction. I seek not to impugn the verdict of that jury ; I have no doubt they acted conscientiously. It 112 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF weighs not with me that every member of my client's creed was carefully excluded from that jury no doubt they acted conscientiously . It weighs not with me that every man impannelled on the trial of the priest, was exclusively Protestant, and that too, in a city so prejudiced, that not long ago by their Corporation-law, no Catholic dare breathe the air of heaven within its walls no doubt they acted conscientiously. It weighs not with me, that not three days previously, one of that jury was heard publicly to declare, he wished he could per- secute the Papist to his death no doubt they acted conscientiously. It weighs not with me, that the public mind had been so inflamed by the exaspe- ration of this libeller, that an impartial trial was utterly impossible. Let them enjoy their triumph. But for myself, knowing him as I do, here in the teeth of that conviction, I declare it, I would rather be that man, so aspersed, so imprisoned, so per- secuted, and have his consciousness, than stand the highest of the courtliest rabble that ever crouched before the foot of power, or fed upon the people- plundered alms of despotism. Oh, of short dura- tion is such daemoniac triumph. Oh, blind and groundless is the hope of vice, imagining its vic- tory can be more than for' the moment. This very day I hope will prove, that if virtue suffers, it is but for a season ; and that sooner or later their patience tried, and their purity testified, prosperity will crown the interests of probity and worth. Perhaps you imagine, Gentlemen, that his per- son imprisoned, his profession gone, his prospects O'MULLAN r. M'KORKILL. 113 ruined, and what he held dearer than all, his cha* racter defamed ; the malice of his enemies might have rested from persecution. " Thus had be- gins, but worse remains behind." Attend, I be- seech you, to what now follows, because I have come in order, to the particular libel, which we have selected from the innumerable calumnies of this Journal, and to which we call your peculiar consideration. Business of moment, to the nature of which, I shall feel it my duty presently to ad- vert, called Mr. O'Mullan to the metropolis.-^ Through the libels of the Defendant, he was at this time in disfavour with his bishop, and a ru- mour had gone abroad, that he was never again to revisit his ancient congregation. The bishop in the interim returned to Derry, and on the Sunday following, went to officiate at the parish chapel. All ranks crowded tremulously round him ; the widow sought her guardian ; the orphan his protector ; the poor their patron ; the rich their guide ; the ignorant their pastor ; all, all, with one voice, demanded his recall, by whose absence the graces, the charities, the virtues of life, were left orphans in their communion. Can you imagine a more interesting spectacle ? The human mind never conceived the human hand never depicted a more instructive or delightful picture. Yet, will you believe it ! out of this very circumstance, the Defendant fabricated the most audacious, and if possible, the most cruel of his Libels. Hear his words : " O'Mullan," says he* " was convicted and degraded, for assaulting his own Bishop, and the Recorder of Derry, in the i SPEECH IN THE CASE OF parish chapel !" Observe the disgusting malig- nity of the Libel observe the crowded damnation which it accumulates on my client observe all the aggravated crime which it embraces. First, he assaults his venerable Bishop the great Ec- clesiastical Patron, to whom he was sworn to be obedient, and against whom he never conceived or articulated irreverence. Next, he assaults the Recorder of Derry a Privy Councillor, the su- preme municipal authority of the City. And where does he do so ? Gracious God, in the very temple of thy worship ! That is, says the inhuman Libeller he a citizen he a Clergyman insulted not only the civil but the ecclesiastical authorities, in the face of man, and in the house of prayer ; trampling contumeliously upon all human law, amid the sacred altars, where he believed the Al- mighty witnessed the profanation ! I am so hor- ror-struck at this blasphemous and abominable turpitude, I can scarcely proceed. What will you say, Gentlemen, when I inform you, that at the very time this atrocity was imputed to him, he was in the city of Dublin, at a distance of 120 miles from the venue of its commission ! But oh ! when calumny once begins its work, how vain are the impediments of time and distance ! Before the sirocco of its breath all nature withers, and age, and sex, and innocence, and station, perish in the unseen, but certain desolation of its progress ! Do you wonder O'Mullan sunk before these ac- cumulated calumnies ; do you wonder the feeble were intimidated, the wavering decided, the pre- judiced confirmed? He was forsaken by his bi- O'MULLAN v. M'KORKILL. 115 shop ; he was denounced by his enemies his very friends fled in consternation from the " stricken deer ;" he was banished from the scenes of his childhood, from the endearments of his youth, from the field of his fair and honourable ambi- tion. In vain did he resort to strangers for sub- sistence ; on the very wings of the wind, the ca- lumny preceded him ; and from that hour to this, a too true apostle, he has been " a man of sor- rows/' " not knowing where to lay his head." I will not appeal to your passions ; alas ! how in- adequate am I to depict his sufferings ; you must take them from the evidence. I have told you, that at the time of those infernally fabricated li- bels, the plaintiff was in Dublin, and I promised to advert to the cause by which his absence was occasioned. Observing in the course of his parochial duties, the deplorable, I had almost said the organized ig- norance of the Irish peasantry an ignorance whence all their crimes, and most of their sufferings origi- nate; observing also, that there was no publicly established literary institution to relieve them, save only the charter-schools, which tendered learn- ing to the shivering child, as a bounty upon apos- tacy to the faith of his fathers ; he determined if possible to give them the lore of this world, with- out offering it as a mortgage upon the inheritance of the next. He framed the prospectus of a school, for the education of five hundred children, and went to the metropolis to obtain subscrip- tions for the purpose. I need not descant upon the great general advantage, or to this country the i 2 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF peculiarly patriotic consequences, which the suc- cess of such a plan must have produced. No doubt, you have all personally considered no doubt, you have all personally experienced, that of all the blessing's which it has pleased Provi- dence to allow us to cultivate, there is not one which breathes a purer fragrance, or bears an hea- venlier aspect than education. It is a companion which no misfortunes can depress, no clime de- stroy, no enemy alienate, no despotism enslave ; at home a friend, abroad an introduction, in soli- tude a solace, in society an ornament, it chastens vice, it guides virtue, it gives at once a grace and government to genius. Without it, what is man ? A splendid slave ! a reasoning savage, vacillating between tire dignity of an intelligence derived from God, and the degradation of passions parti- cipated with brutes ; and in the accident of their alternate ascendancy, shuddering at the terrors of an hereafter, or embracing the horrid hope of an- nihilation. What is this wondrous world of his residence ? A mighty maze, and all without a plan ; A dark and desolate and dreary cavern, without wealth, or ornament, or order. But light up with- in it the torch of knowledge, and how wondrous the transition ! The seasons change, the atmos- phere breathes, the landscape lives, earth unfolds its fruits, ocean rolls in its magnificence, the heavens display their constellated canopy, and the grand animated spectacle of nature rises revealed before him, its varieties regulated, and its mys- O'MULLAX r. M'KORKILL. 117 teries resolved ! The phenomena which bewilder, the prejudices which debase, the superstitions which enslave, vanish -before education . Like the holy symbol which blazed upon the cloud before the hesitating Constantine, if man follow but its precepts purely, it will not only lead him to the victories of this world, but open the very portals of omnipotence for his admission. Cast your eye over the monumental map of ancient grandeur, once studded with the stars of empire, and the splendours of philosophy. What erected the little state of Athens into a powerful commonwealth, placing in her hand the sceptre of legislation, and wreathing round her brow the imperishable chap- let of literary fame ; what extended Rome, the haunt of a banditti, into universal empire: what animated Sparta with that high, unbending, ada- mantine courage, which conquered nature herself, and has fixed her in the sight of future ages, a model of public virtue, and a proverb of national independence ? What, but those wise public in- stitutions which strengthened their minds with early application, informed their infancy with the principles of action, and sent them into the world, too vigilant to be deceived by its calms, and too vigorous to be shaken by its whirlwinds? But surely, if there be a people in the world, to v.horn the blessings of education are peculiarly applica- ble, it is the Irish people* Lively, ardent, intel- ligent, and sensitive; nearly all their acts spring from impulse, and no matter how that impulse be given, it is immediately adopted, and the adop- tion and the execution are identified. It is this 118 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF principle, if principle it can be called, which ren- ders Ireland alternately the poorest and the proud- est country in the world ; now chaining her in the very abyss of crime, now lifting her to the very pinnacle of glory; which in the poor, proscribed, peasant Catholic, crowds the gaol and feeds the gibbet; which in the more fortunate, because more educated Protestant, leads victory a captive at her car, and holds echo mute at her eloquence ; making a national monopoly of fame, and, as it were, attempting to naturalize the achievements of the universe. In order that this libel may want no possible aggravation, the Defendant published it when my client was absent on this work of pa- triotism ; he. published it when he was absent ; he published it when he was absent on a work of virtue ; and he published it on all the authority of his local knowledge, when that very local knowledge must have told him that it was desti- tute of the shadow of a foundation. Can you imagine a more odious complication of all that is deliberate in malignity, and all that is depraved in crime? I promised, Gentlemen, that I would not harrow your hearts, by exposing all that ago- nizes mine, in the contemplation of individual suf- fering. There is, however, one subject connected with this trial, public in its nature, and universal in its interest, which imperiously calls for an ex- emplary verdict ; I mean the liberty of the press Considering all that we too fatally have seen all that, perhaps, too fearfully we may have cause to apprehend, I feel myself cling to that residuary safeguard, with an affection no temptations can O'MULLAN r. M'KORKILL. 119 seduce, with a suspicion no anodyne can lull, with a fortitude that peril but infuriates. In the direful retrospect of experimental despotism, and the hideous prospect of its possible re-animation, I clasp it with the desperation of a widowed fe- male, who, in the desolation of her house, and the destruction of her household, hurries the last of her offspring through the flames, at once the relic of her joy, the depository of her wealth, and the remembrancer of her happiness. It is the duty of us all to guard strictly this inestimable privilege a privilege which can never be destroyed, save by the licentiousness of those who wilfully abuse it. No, it is not in the arrogance of Power ; no, it is nol in the artifices of Law ; no, it is not in the fatuity of Princes : no, it is not in the venality of Parliaments, to crush this mighty, this majestic Privilege: reviled, it will remonstrate ; murdered, it will revive ; buried, it will re-ascend ; the very attempt at its oppression will prove the truth of its immrnortality, and the atom that presumed to spurn, will fade away before the trumpet of its retribution ! Man holds it on the same principle that he does his soul ; the powers of this world can- not prevail against it; it can only perish through its own depravity. What then shall be his fate, through whose instrumentality it is sacrificed ? Nay more, what shall be his fate, who, intrusted with the guardianship of its security, becomes the traitorous accessory to its ruin ? Nay more, what shall be his fate, by whom its powers delegated for the public good, are converted into the cala- mities of private virtue; against whom, industry 120 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF denounced, merit undermined, morals calum- niated, piety aspersed, all through the very means confided for their protection, cry aloud for ven- geance ? What shall be his fate ? Oh, I would hold such a monster, so protected, so sanctified, and so sinning, as I would some daemon, who, going forth consecrated, in the name of the Deity, the book of life on his lips, and the dagger of death beneath his robe, awaits the sigh of piety, as the signal of plunder, and unveins the heart's blood of confiding adoration ! Should not such a case as this require some palliation ? Is there any ? Perhaps the Defendant might have been misled as to circumstances ? No, he lived upon the spot, and had the best possible information. Do you think he believed in the truth of the pub- lication ? No ; he knew that in every syllable it was as false as perjury. Do you think that an anxiety for the Catholic community might have inflamed him against the imaginary dereliction of its advocate ? No ; the very essence of his Journal is prejudice. Do you think that in the ardour of liberty he might have venially transgressed its boundaries ? No ; in every line he licks the sores, and pampers the pestilence of authority. I do not ask you to be stoics in your investigation. If you can discover in this libel one motive inferen- tially moral, one single virtue which he has plun- dered and misapplied, give him its benefit. I will not demand such an effort of your faith, as to imagine, that his northern constitution could, by any miracle, be fired into the admirable but mistaken energy of enthusiasm ; that he could O'MULLAN v. M'KORKILL. for one moment have felt the inspired phrenzy of those loftier spirits, who, under some daring but divine delusion, rise into the arch of an ambition so bright, so baneful, yet so beauteous, as leaves the world in wonder whether it should admire or mourn whether it should weep or worship ! No ; you will not only search in vain for such a pallia- tive, but you will find this publication springing" from the most odious origin, and disfigured by the most foul accompaniments, founded in a bi- gotry at which hell rejoices, crouching with a sycophancy at which flattery blushes, deformed by a falsehood at which perjury would hesitate, and, to crown the climax of its crowded infamies, committed under the sacred shelter of the Press ; as if this false, slanderous, sycophantic slave, could not assassinate private worth without polluting public privilege ; as if he could not sacrifice the character of the pious without profaning the pro- tection of the free ; as if he could not poison learning, liberty, and religion, unless he filled his chalice from the very font whence they might have expected to derive the waters of their sal- vation ! Now, Gentlemen, as to the measure of your damages: You are the best judges on that sub- ject; though, indeed, I have been asked, and I heard the question with some surprize, why it is that we have brought this case at all to be tried before you. To that I might give at once an un- objectionable answer, namely, that the law al- lowed us. But I will deal much more candidly with you. We brought it here, because it was as 122 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF far as possible from the scene of prejudice; be- cause no possible partiality could exist; because, in this happy and united county, less of the bi- gotry which distracts the rest of Ireland exists, than in any other with which we are acquainted ; because the nature of the action, which we have have mercifully brought in place of a criminal prosecution, the usual course pursued in the pre- sent day, at least against the independent press of Ireland, gives them, if they have it, the power of proving a justification ; and I perceive they have emptied half the north here for the purpose. But I cannot anticipate an objection, which, no doubt, shall not be made. If this habitual libel- ler should characteristically instruct his counsel to hazard it, that learned gentleman is much too wise to adopt it, and must know you much too well to insult you by its utterance. What da- mages, then, Gentlemen, can you give ? I am content to leave the Defendant's crimes altogether out the question, but how can you recompense the suffering's of mv client? Who shall estimate o / the cost of priceless reputation that impress which gives this human dross its currency, without which we stand despised, debased, depreciated ? Who shall repair it injured ? Who shall redeem it lost ? Oh ! well and truly does the great philo- sopher of poetry esteem the world's wealth as " trash" in the comparison. Without it, gold has no value, birth no distinction, station no dig- nity, beauty no charm, age no reverence ; or, should I not rather say, without it every treasure impoverishes, every grace deforms, every dignity O'MULLAX r. M'KORKILL. 133 degrades, and all the arts, the decorations, and accomplishments of life, stand, like the beacon- blaze upon a rock, warning the world that its ap- proach is danger that its contact is death. The \vretch without it is under an eternal quarantine ; no friend to greet no home to harbour him. The voyage of his life becomes a joyless peril ; and in the midst of all ambition can achieve, or avarice amass, or rapacity plunder, he tosses on the surge a buoyant pestilence! But, Gentlemen, let me not degrade into the selfishness of indivi- O dual safety, or individual exposure, this universal principle: it testifies an higher, a more ennobling origin. It is this which, consecrating the hum- ble circle of the hearth, will at times extend itself to the circumference of the horizon ; which nerve* the arm of the patriot to save his country ; which lights the lamp of the philosopher to amend man; which, if it does not inspire, will yet invigorate the martyr to merit immortality ; which, when one world's agony is passed, and the glory of ano- ther is dawning, will prompt the prophet, even in. his chariot of fire and in his vision of heaven, to bequeath to mankind the mantle of his memory ! Oh divine, oh delightful legacy of a spotless re- putation ! Rich is the inheritance it leaves ; pious the example it testifies ; pure, precious, and im- perishable the hope which it inspires ! Can you conceive a more atrocious injury than to filch from its possessor this inestimable benefit to rob society of its charm, and solitude of its solace ; not only to outlaw life, but to attaint death, con- verting the very grave, the refuge of the sufferer, J;>t SPEECH IN THE CASE OF into the gate of infamy and of shame ! I can con- ceive few crimes beyond it. He who plunders my property takes from me that which can be re- paired by time: but what period can repair a ruined reputation ? He who maims my person af- fects that which medicine may remedy : but what herb has sovereignty over the wounds of slander ? He who ridicules my poverty, or reproaches my profession, upbraids me with that which industry may retrieve, and integrity may purify : but what riches shall redeem the bankrupt fame ? AVhat power shall blanch the sullied snow of character ? Can there be an injury more deadly ? Can there be a crime more cruel ? It is without remedy it w is without antidote it is without evasion ! The reptile calumny is ever on the watch. From the fascination of its eye no activity can escape ; from the venom of its fang no sanity can recover. It has no enjoyment but crime ; it has no prey but virtue; it has no interval from the restlessness of its malice, save when, bloated with its victims, it grovels to disgorge them at the withered shrine where envy idolizes her own infirmities. Under such a visitation how dreadful would be the des- tiny of the virtuous and the good, if the provi- dence of our constitution had not given you the power, as, I trust, you will have the principle, to bruise the head of the serpent, and crush and crumble the altar of its idolatrv ! w And now, Gentlemen, having toiled through this narrative of unprovoked and pitiless persecu- tion, I should with pleasure consign my client to your hands, if a more imperative duty did not still O'MULLAN . M'KORKILL. 125 remain to me, and that is, to acquit him of every personal motive in the prosecution of this action. No ; in the midst of slander, and suffering, and severities unexampled, he has had no thought, but, that as his enemies evinced how malice could persecute, he should exemplify how religion could endure ; that if his piety failed to affect the op- pressor, his patience might at least avail to for- tify the afflicted. He was as the rock of Scripture before the face of infidelity. The rain Of the de- luge had fallen it only smoothed his asperities : the wind of the tempest beat it only blanched his brow : the rod, not of prophecy, but of perse- cution smote him, and the desert, glittering with the Gospel dew, became a miracle of the faith it would have tempted ! No, Gentlemen ; not self- ishly has he appealed to this tribunal ; but the ve- nerable religion wounded in his character, but the august priesthood vilified in his person, but the doubts of the sceptical, hardened by his ac- quiesence, but the fidelity of the feeble, hazard- ed by his forbearance, goaded him from the pro- faned privacy of the cloister into this repulsive scene of public accusation. In him this reluct- ance springs from a most natural and characteris- tic delicacy : in us it would become a most over- strained injustice. No, Gentlemen : though with him we must remember morals outraged, religion assailed, law violated, the priesthood scandalized, the press betrayed, and all the disgusting calendar of abstract evil ; yet with him we must not reject the injuries of the individual sufferer. We must picture to ourselves a young man, partly by. the self-denial of parental love, partly by the energies SPEECH IN THE CASE OF of personal exertion, struggling into a profession, where, by the pious exercise of his talents, he may make the fame, the wealth, the v flatteries of this world, so many angel-heralds to the happi- ness of the next. His precept is a treasure to the poor ; his practice, a model to the rich. When he reproves, sorrow seeks his presence as a sanc- tuary ; and in his path of peace, should he pause l>y the death-bed of despairing sin, the soul be- comes imparadised in the light of his benedic- tion ! Imagine, Gentlemen, you see him thus ; and then, if you can, imagine vice so desperate as to defraud the world of so fair a vision. Anti- cipate for a moment the melancholy evidence we must too soon adduce to you. Behold him by foul, deliberate, and infamous calumny, robbed of the profession he had so struggled to obtain, swindled from the flock he had so laboured to ameliorate, torn from the school where infant vir- tue vainly mourns an artificial orphanage, hunted from the home of his youth, from the friends of his heart, a hopeless, fortuneless, companionless exile, hanging, in some stranger scene, on the precarious pity of the few, whose charity might induce their compassion to bestow, what this re- morseless slanderer would compel their justice to withhold ! I will not pursue this picture ; I will not detain you from the pleasure of your possible compensation ; for oh ! divine is the pleasure you are destined to experience : dearer to your hearts shall be the sensation, than to your pride shall be the dignity it will give you. What ! though the people will hail the saviours of their pastor : what ! O'MULLAN v. M'KORKILL. though the priesthood will hallow the guardians of their brother ; though many a peasant heart will leap at your name, and many an infant eye will embalm their fame who restored to life, to station, to dignity, to character, the venerable friend who taught their trembling tongues to lisp the rudiments of virtue and religion, still dearer than all will be the consciousness of the deed. Nor, believe me, countrymen, will it rest here. Oh no! if there be light in reason, or truth in Revelation, believe me, at that awful hour, when you shall await the last inevitable verdict, the eye of your hope will not be the less bright, nor the agony of your ordeal the more acute, because you shall have, by this day's deed, redeemed the Al- mighty's persecuted Apostle from the grasp of an insatiate malice from the fang of a worse than Philistine persecution. SPEECH CASE OF COXXAGHTON v. DILLON DELIVERED THE COUNTY COURT-HOUSE ROSCOMMON. My Lord and Gentlemen, IN this Case I am one of the Counsel for the Plaintiff, who has directed me to explain to you the wrongs for which, at your hands, he solicits reparation. It appears to me a case which un- doubtedly merits much consideration, as well from the novelty of its appearance amongst us, as from the circumstances by which it is attended. Nor am I ashamed to say, that in my mind, not the least interesting of those circumstances is the po- verty of the man who has made this appeal to me. Few are the consolations which soothe hard must be the heart which does not feel for him. He is, Gentleman, a man of lowly birth and humble station ; with little wealth but from the labour of his hands, with no rank but the integrity of his SPEECH 129 character, with no recreation but in the circle of his home, and with no ambition, but, when his daysarefull, toleave thatlittle circle the inheritance of an honest name, and the treasure of a good man's memory. Far inferior, indeed, is he in this respect to his more fortunate antagonist. He, on the con- trary, is amply either blessed or cursed with those qualifications which enable a man to adorn or dis- grace the society in which he lives. He is, I understand, the representative of an honourable name, the relative of a distinguished family, the supposed heir to their virtues, the indisputable inheritor of their riches. He has been for many years a resident of your county, and has had the advantage of collecting round him all those recol- lections, which, springing from the scenes of school-boy association, or from the more matured enjoyments of the man, crowd as it were uncon- sciously to the heart, and cling with a venial partiality to the companion and the friend. So impressed, in truth, has he been with these ad- vantages, that, surpassing the usual expenses of a trial, he has selected a tribunal where he vainly hopes such considerations will have weight, and where he well knows my client's humble rank can have no claim but that to which his miseries may entitle him. I am sure, however, he has wretchedly miscalculated. I know none of you personally ; but I have no doubt I am addressing men who will not prostrate their consciences before privi- lege or power ; who will remember that there is a nobility above birth, and a wealth beyond riches ; who will feel that, as in the eye of that God to 130 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF whose aid they have appealed, there is not the minutest difference between the rag and the robe, so in the. contemplation of that law which consti- tutes our boast, guilt can have no protection, nor innocence no tyrant; men who will have pride in proving, that the noblest adage of our noble con- stitution is not an illusive shadow ; and that the peasant's cottage, roofed with straw and tenanted by poverty, stands as inviolate from all invasion as the mansion of the monarch. My client's name, Gentlemen, is Connaghton, and when I have given you his name you have almost all his history. To cultivate the path of honest industry comprises, in one line, " the short and simple annals of the poor." This has been his humble, but at the same time most honourable occupation. It matters little with what artificial nothings chance may distinguish the name, or decorate the person : the child of lowly life, with virtue for his handmaid, holds as proud a title as the highest as rich an inheritance as the wealthiest. Well has the poet of your country said that " Princes or Lords may flourish or may fade, A breath can make them, as a breath has made ; But a brave peasantry, their country's pride, When once destroy'd can never be supplied." For all the virtues which adorn that peasantry, which can render humble life respected, or give the highest stations their most permanent dis- tinctions, my client stand conspicuous. An hundred years of sad vicissitude, and, in this land, CONNAGHTON v. DILLON. often of strong temptation, have rolled away since the little farm on which he lives received his family ; and during all that time not one ac- cusation has disgraced, not one crime has sullied it. The same spot has seen his grandsire and his parent pass away from this world ; the village- memory records their worth, and the rustic tear hallows their resting-place. After all, when life's mockeries shall vanish from before us, and the heart that now beats in the proudest bosom here, shall moulder unconscious beneath its kindred clay, art cannot erect a nobler monument, or genius compose a purer panegyric. Such, Gentlemen, was almost the only inheritance with which my client entered the world. He did not disgrace it ; his youth, his manhood, his age, up to this mo- ment, have passed without a blemish ; and he now stands confessedly the head of the little village in. which he lives. About fi ve-and-twenty years ago he married the sister of a highty respectable Roman Catholic clergyman, by whom he had a family of seven children, whom they educated in the prin- ciples of morality and religion, and who, until the Defendant's interference, were the pride of their humble home, and the charm or the consolation of its vicissitudes. In their virtuous children the rejoicing parents felt their youth renewed, their age made happy : the days of labour became holidays in their smile ; and if the hand of affliction, pressed on them, the^ looked upon their little ones, and their mourning ended. I cannot paint the glorious host of feelings ; the joy, the love, the hope, the pride, the blended paradise of rich 132 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF emotions with which the God of nature fills the father's heart when he beholds his child in all its filial loveliness, when the vision of his infancy rises as it were reanimate before him, and a divine vanity exaggerates every trifle into some myste- rious omen, which shall smooth his aged wrinkles, and make his grave a monument of honour ! / cannot describe them ; but, if there be a parent on the jury, he will comprehend me. It is stated to me, that of all his children there was none more likely to excite such feelings in the Plaintiff than the unfortunate object of the present action ; she was his favourite daughter, and she did not shame his preference. You shall find, most satisfactorily, that she was without stain or imputation ; an aid and a blessing to her parents, and an example to her younger sisters, who looked up to her for in- struction. She took a pleasure in assisting in the industry of their home ; and it was at a neigh- bouring market, where she went to dispose of the little produce of that industry, that she unhappily attracted the notice of the Defendant. Indeed, such a situation was not without its interest, a young female, in the bloom of her attractions, exerting her faculties in a parent's service, is an object lovely in the eye of God, and, one would suppose, estimable in the eye of mankind. Far different, however, were the sensations which she excited in the Defendant. He saw her arrayed, as he confesses, in charms that enchanted him ; but her youth, her beauty, the smile of her innocence, and the piety of her toil, but inflamed a brutal and licentious lust, that should have blushed itself CONNAGHTON t. DILLON. away in such a presence. What cared he for the consequences of his gratification ? There was " No honour, no relenting ruth, To paint the parents fondling o'er their child, Then show the ruin'd maid, and her distraction wild '." What thought he of the home he was to desolate ? What thought he of the happiness he was to plunder ? His sensual rapine paused not to con- template the speaking picture of the cottage-ruin, the blighted hope, the broken heart, the parent's agony, and, last and most withering in the woeful group, the wretched victim herself starving on the sin of a promiscuous prostitution, and at length perhaps, with her own hand, anticipating the more tedious murder of its diseases ! He need not, if I am instructed rightly, have tortured his fancy for the miserable consequence of hope bereft, and expectation plundered. Through no very distant vista, he might have seen the form of deserted loveliness weeping over the worthlessness of his worldly expiation, and warning him, that as there were cruelties no repentance could atone, so there were sufferings neither wealth, nor time, nor ab- sence could alleviate.* If his memory should fail him, if he should deny the picture, no man can tell him half so efficientlv as the venerable advocate * Mr. PHILLIPS here alluded to a verdict of 50007. obtained at the late Galway Assizes against the Defendant, at the suit of Miss Wilson, a very beautiful and interesting young lady, for a breach of promise of marriage. Mr. WHITESTONE, who now pleaded for Mr. Dilloji, ,was Miss Wilson's advocate against him on the occasion alluded to. K 3 134 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF he has so judiciously selected, that a case might arise, where, though the energy of native virtue should defy the spoilation of the person, still crushed affection might leave an infliction on the mind, perhaps less deadly, but certainly not less indelible. I turn from this subject with an indig- nation which tortures me into brevity ; I turn to the agents by which this contamination was effected. I almost blush to name them, yet they were worthy of their vocation. They were no other than a menial servant of Mr. Dillon ; and a base, abandoned, profligate ruffian, a brother-in-law of the devoted victim herself, whose bestial appetite he bribed into subserviency ! It does seem as if by such a selection he was determined to degrade the dignity of the master while he violated the finer impulses of the man, by not merely associating with his own servant, but by diverting the purest streams of social affinity into the vitiated sewer of his enjoyment. Seduced by such instruments into a low public-house at Athlone, this unhappy girl heard, without suspicion, their mercenary pane- gyric of the Defendant, when, to her amazement, but no doubt, according to their previous arrange- ment, he entered and joined their company. I do confess to you, Gentlemen, when I first perused this passage in my brief, I flung it from me with a contemptuous incredulity. What ! I exclaimed, as no doubt you are all ready to exclaim, can this be possible ? Is it thus I am to find the educated youth of Ireland occupied ? Is this the employ- ment of the miserable aristocracy that yet lingers in this devoted country ? Am I to find them. CONNAGHTON v. DILLON. not in the pursuit of useful science, not in the encouragement of arts or agriculture, not in the relief of an impoverished tenantry, not in the proud inarch of an unsuccessful but not less sacred patriotism, not in the bright page of warlike immortality, dashing its iron crown from guilty greatness, or feeding freedom's laurel with the blood of the despot ! but am I to find them, amid drunken pandars and corrupted slaves, de- bauching the innocence of village-life, and even amid the stews of the tavern, collecting or creating the materials for the brothel ! Gentlemen, I am still unwilling to believe it, and, with all the sincerity of Mr. Dillon's advocate, I do entreat you to reject it altogether, if it be not substantiated by the un- impeachable corroboration of an oath. As I am instructed, he did not, at this time, alarm his vic- tim by any direct communication of his purpose ; he saw that " she was good as she was fair," and that a premature disclosure would but alarm her virtue into an impossiblity of violation. His satellites, however, acted to admiration. They produced some trifle which he had left for her disposal ; they declared he had long felt for her a sincere attachment ; as a proof that it was pure, they urged the modesty with which, at a first inter- view, elevated above her as he was, he avoided its disclosure. When she pressed the madness of the expectation which could alone induce her to consent to his addresses, they assured her that though in the first instance such an event was impossible, still in time it was far from being improbable ; that many men from such motives 136 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF forgot altogether the difference of station, that Mr. Dillon's own family had already proved every obstacle might yield to an all-powerful passion, and induce him to make her his wife, who had reposed an affectionate credulity on his honour ! Such were the subtle artifices to which he stooped. Do not imagine, however, that she yielded immediately and implicitly to their per- suasions ; I should scarcely wonder if she did. Every day shows us the rich, the powerful, and the educated, bowing before the spell of ambition, or avarice, or passion, to the sacrifice of their honour, their country, and their souls: what wonder, then, if a poor, ignorant, peasant girl had at once sunk before the united potency of such temptations ! But she did not. Many and many a time the truths which had been inculcated by her adoring parents rose up in her arms ; and it was not until various interviews, and repeated artifices, and untiring efforts, that she yielded her faith, her fame, and her fortunes, to the disposal of her se- ducer. Alas, alas ! how little did she suppose that a moment was to come, when, every hope de- nounced, and every expectation dashed, he was to flingher for a very subsistence, on the charity or the crimes of the world she had renounced for him ! How little did she reflect that in her humble station, unsoiled and sinless, she might look down upon the elevation to which vice could raise her ! Yes, even were it a throne, I say she might look down on it. There is not on this earth a lovelier vision ; there is not for the skies a more angelic candidate than a young, modest maiden, robed in chastity ; CONNAGHTON r. DILLON. 137 no matter what its habitation, whether it be the palace or the hut : " So dear to Heaven is saintly Chastity, That when a soul is found sincerely so, A thousand liveried angels lackey her, Driving far off each thing of sin and guilt, And in clear dream and solemn vision Tell her of things that no gross ear can hear, Till oft converse with heavenly habitants Begins to cast a beam on the outward shape, The unpolluted temple of the mind, And turns it by degrees to the soul's essence, Till all be made immortal !" Such is the supreme power of chastity, as de- scribed by one of our divinest bards, and the plea- sure which I feel in the recitation of such a passage is not a little enhanced, by the pride that few countries more fully afford its exemplification than our own. Let foreign envy decry us as it will, CHASTITY is THE INSTINCT OF THE IRISH FEMALE : the pride of her talents, the power of her beauty, the splendour of her accomplishments, are but so many handmaids of this vestal virtue ; it adorns her in the court, it ennobles her in the cottage ; whether she basks in prosperity or pines in sorrow, it clings about her like the diamond of the morning on the mountain floweret, trembling even in the ray that at once exhibits and inhales it ! Rare in our land is the absence of this virtue. Thanks to the modesty that venerates ; thanks to the manliness that brands and avenges its viola- tion. You have seen that it was by no common temptations even this humble villager yielded to seduction. 138 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF I now come, Gentlemen, to another fact in the progress of this transaction, betraying 1 , in my mind, as base a premeditation, and as low and as deliberate a deception as I ever heard of. While this wretched creature was in a kind of counter- poise between her fear and her affection, struggling as well as she could between passion inflamed and virtue unextinguished, Mr. Dillon, ardently avow- ing that such an event as separation was impos- sible, ardently avowing an eternal attachment, insisted upon perfecting an article which should place her above the reach of contingencies. Gen- tlemen, you shall see this document voluntarily executed by an educated and estated gentleman of your county. I know not how you will feel, but for my part I protest I am in a suspense of admi- ration between the virtue of the proposal and the magnificent prodigality of the provision. Listen to the article ; it is all in his own hand-writing: " I promise," says he, " to give to Mary Con- naghton the sum often pounds sterling per annum, when I part with her ; but if she, the said Mary, should at any time hereafter conduct herself im- properly, or (mark this, Gentlemen) has done so before the drawing of this article, I am not bound to pay the sum of ten pounds, and this article becomes null and void as if the same was never executed. John Dillon/' There, Gentlemen, there is the notable and dignified document for you ! take it into your Jury box, for I know not how to comment on it. Oh, yes, I have heard of ambition urging men to crime I have heard of love inflaming even to madness I have read CONNAGHTON 7 r. DILLON. 139 of passion rushing over law and religion to enjoy- ment ; but never, until this, did I see frozen avariee chilling the hot pulse of sensuality ; and desire pause, before its brutish draught, that it mi-ht add deceit to desolation ! I need not tell o you that having provided in the very execution of his article for its predetermined infringement ; that knowing, as he must, any stipulation for the purchase of vice to be invalid by our law ; that having in the body of this article inserted a provision against that previous pollution which his prudent caprice might invent hereafter, but which his own conscience, her universal cha- racter, and even his own desire for her possession, all assured him did not exist at the time, I need not tell you that he now urges the invalidity of that instrument ; that he now presses that previous pollution ; that he refuses from his splendid income the pittance of ten pounds to the wretch he has ruined, and spurns her from him to pine beneath the reproaches of a parent's mercy, or linger out a living death in the charnel-houses of prostitution! You see, Gentlemen, to what designs like these may lead a man. I have no doubt, if Mr. Dillon had given his heart fair play, had let his own nature gain a moment's ascendancy, he would not have acted so ; but there is something in guilt which infatuates its votaries forward : it may begin with a promise broken, it will end with the home depopulated. But there is something in a seducer of peculiar turpitude. I know of no character so vile, so detestable. He is the vilest of robbers, for he plunders happiness ; the worst of 140 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF murderers, for he murders innocence ; his ap- petites are of the brute, his arts of the daemon ; the heart of the child and the corse of the parent are the foundations of the altar which he rears to a lust, whose fires are the fires of hell, and whose incense is the sigh of virtue ! I hope Mr. Dillon's advocate may prove that he does not de- serve to rank in such a class as this ; but if he does, I hope the infatuation inseparably connected with such proceeding's may tempt him to deceive you through the same plea by which he has defrauded his miserable dupe. I dare him to attempt the defamation of a cha- racter, which, before his cruelties, never was even suspected. Happily, Gentlemen, happily for her- self, this wretched creature, thus cast upon the world, appealed to the parental refuge she had forfeited. 1 need not describe to you the parent's anguish at the heart-rending discovery. God help the poor man when misfortune comes upon him ! How few are his resources ! how distant his conso- lation ! You must not forget, Gentlemen, that it is not the unfortunate victim herself who appeals to you for compensation. Her crimes, poor wretch, have outlawed her from retribution, and, however the temptations by which her erring nature was seduced, may procure an audience from the ear of mercy, the stern morality of earthly laws refuses their interference. No, no ; it is the wretched parent who comes this day before you, his aged locks withered by misfortune, and his heartbroken by crimes of which he was unconscious. He re- sorts to this tribunal, in the language of the law, CONNAGHTON t. DILLON. 141 claiming the value of his daughter's servitude ; but let it not be thought that it is for her mere manual labours he solicits compensation. No, you are to compensate him for all he has suffered, for all he has to suffer, for feelings outraged, for gra- tifications plundered, for honest pride put to the blush, for the exiled endearments of his once happy home, for all those innumerable and in- stinctive ecstacies with which a virtuous daughter fills her father's heart, for which language is too poor to have a name, but of which nature is abun- dantly and richly eloquent ! Do not suppose I am endeavouring to influence you by the power of de- clamation. I am laying down to you the British law, as liberally expounded and solemnly adjudged. I speak the language of the English Lord Eldon, a judge of great experience and greater learning : (Mr. Phillips here cited several cases as decided by Lord Eldon.) Such, Gentlemen, is the lan- guage of Lord Eldon. I speak also on the autho- rity of our own Lord Avonmore, a judge who illuminated the bench by his genius, endeared it by his suavity, and dignified it by his bold un- compromising probity ; one of those rare men, who hid the thorns of law beneath the flowers of literature, and, as it were, with the wand of an enchanter, changed a wilderness into a garden I I speak upon that high authority but I speak on other authority paramount to all ! on the autho- rity of nature rising up within the heart of man, and calling for vengeance upon such an outrage, God forbid, that in a case of this kind, we were to grope our way through the ruins of antiquity, and SPEECH IN THE CASE OF blunder over statutes, and burrow through black letter, in search of an interpretation which Provi- dence has engraved in living letters on every hu- man heart. Yes ; if there be one amongst you blessed with a daughter, the smile of whose in- fancy still cheers your memory, and the promise of whose youth illuminates your hope, who has endeared the toils of your manhood, whom you look up to as the solace of your declining years, whose embrace alleviated the pang of separation, whose glowing welcome hailed your oft antici- pated return oh, if there be one amongst you, to whom those recollections are dear, to whom those hopes are precious let him only fancy that daugh- ter torn from his caresses by a seducer's arts, and cast upon the world, robbed of her innocence,- and then let him ask his heart, " what money could reprize him . f " The Defendant, Gentlemen, cannot com pi a in that I put it thus to you. If, in place of seduc- ing, he had assaulted this poor girl if he had attempted by force what he has achieved by fraud, his life would have been the forfeit ; and yet how trifling in comparison would have been the pa- rent's agony ! He has no right, then, to complain, if you should estimate this outrage at the price of his very existence ! I am told, indeed, this gen- tlemen entertains an opinion, prevalent enough in the age of a feudalism, as arrogant as it was barbarous, that the poor are only a species of pro- perty, to be treated according to interest or ca- price ; and that wealth is at once a patent for crime, and an exemption from its consequences. CONNAGHTON v. DILLON. 143 Happily for this land, the day of such opinions has passed over it the eye of a purer feeling- and more profound philosophy now beholds riches but as one of the aids to virtue, and sees in oppressed poverty only an additional stimulus to increased protection. A generous heart cannot help feel- ing-, that in cases of this kind the poverty of the injured is a dreadful aggravation. If the rich suf- fer, they have much to console them ; but when a poor man loses the darling of heart the sole pleasure with which nature blessed him how ab- ject, how cureless is the despair of his destitu- tion ! Believe me, Gentlemen, you have not only a solemn duty to perform, but you have an awful responsibility imposed upon you. You are this day, in some degree, trustees for the morality of the people perhaps of the whole nation ; for, de- pend upon it, if the sluices of immorality are once opened among the lower orders, the frightful tide, drifting upon its surface all that is dignified or dear, will soon rise even to the habitations of the highest. I feel, Gentlemen, I have discharged my duty I am sure you will do your's. I repose my client with confidence in your hands ; and most fervently do I hope, that when evening shall find you at your happy fire-side, surrounded by the sacred circle of your children, you may not feel the heavy curse gnawing at your heart, of having let loose, unpunished, the prowler that may devour them. SPEECH OF MR a PHIJLUPS IN THE CASE OF CREIGHTON v. TOWNSEND : IN THE COURT OF COMMON PLEAS, DUBLIN. My Lord and Gentlemen, I am with my learned brethren Counsel for the Plaintiff. My friend Mr. Curran has told you the nature of the action. It has fallen to my lot to state more at large to you the aggression by which it has been occasioned. Believe me, it is with no paltry affectation of under-valuing my very humble powers that I wish he had selected some more experienced, or at least less credulous advocate. I feel I cannot do my duty ; I am not fit to address you, I have incapacitated myself; I know not whether any of the calumnies which have so industriously anticipated this trial, have reached your ears ; but I do confess they did so wound and poison mine, that to satisfy my doubts I visited the house of misery and mourning, and the scene which set scepticism at rest, has set des- CREIGHTON IT. TOWNS END. 145 cription at defiance. Had I not yielded to those interested misrepresentations, I might from my brief have sketched the fact, and from my fancy drawn the consequences ; but as it is, reality rushes before my frighted memory, and silences the tongue and mocks the imagination. Believe me, Gentlemen, you are impannelled there upon no ordinary occasion ; nominally, indeed, you are to repair a private wrong, and it is a wrong as deadly as human wickedness can inflict as hu- man weakness can endure ; a wrong which anni- hilates the hope of the parent and the happiness of the child ; which in one moment blights the fondest anticipations of the heart, and darkens the social hearth, and worse than depopulates the ha- bitations of the happy ! But, Gentlemen, high as it is, this is far from your exclusive duty. You are to do much more. You are to say whether an example of such transcendant turpitude is to stalk forth for public imitation whether national mo- rals are to have the law for their protection, or imported crime is to feed upon impunity whe- ther chastity and religion are still to be permitted to linger in this province, or it is to become one loathsome den of legalized prostitution whether the sacred volume of the Gospel, and the venera- ble statutes of the law are still to be respected, or converted into a pedestal on which the mob and the military are to erect the idol of a drunken adoration. Gentlemen, these are the questions you are to try ; hear the facts on which your de- cision must be founded. It is now about five-and-twenty years since the L 146 SPEECH IN THE CASE OP plaintiff, Mr. Creighton, commenced business as a slate merchant in the city of Dublin. His vo- cation was humble, it is true, but it was neverthe- less honest ; and though, unlike his opponent, the heights of ambition lay not before him, the path of respectability did he approved himself a good man and a respectable citizen. Arrived at the age of manhood, he sought not the gratification of its natural desires by adultery or seduction. For him the home of honesty was sacred ; for him the poor man's child was unassailed ; no domestic desolation mourned his enjoyment ; no anniver- sary of woe commemorated his achievements ; from his own sphere of life naturally and honourably he selected a companion, whose beauty blessed his bed, and whose virtues consecrated his dwelling. Eleven lovely children blessed their union, the darlings of their heart, the delight of their even- ings, and as they blindly anticipated, the prop and solace of their approaching age. Oh ! SACRED WEDDED LOVE ! how dear ! how delightful ! how divine are thy enjoyments ! Contentment crowns thy board, affection glads thy fire-side ; pas- sion, chaste but ardent, modest but intense, sighs o'er thy couch, the atmosphere of Paradise ! Surely, surely, if this consecrated right can ac- quire from circumstances a factitious interest, 'tis when we see it cheering the poor man's home, or shedding over the dwelling of misfor- tune the light of its warm and lovely consolation. That capricious power which often dignifies the worthless hypocrite, as often wouuds the indus- trious and the honest. The late ruinous contest, CRElGHTON v. TOWNSENB. 147 having in its career confounded all the propor- tions of society, and with its last gasp sighed fa- mine and misfortune on the world, has cast my industrious client, with too many of his compa- nions, from competence to penury. Alas, alas, to him it left worse of its satellites behind it ; it left the invader even of his misery the seducer of his sacred and unspotted innocent. Mysterious Providence ! was it not enough that sorrow robed the happy home in mourning was it not enough that disappointment preyed upon its loveliest prospects was it not enough that its little in- mates cried in vain for bread, and heard no an- swer but the poor father's sigh, and drank no sus- tenance but the wretched mother's tears ? Was this a time for passion, lawless, conscienceless, licentious passion, with its eye of lust, its heart of stone, its hand of rapine, to rush into the mourn- ful sanctuary of misfortune, casting crime into the cup of woe, and rob the parents of their last wealth, their child, arid rob the child of her only charm, her innocence ! ! That this has been done I am instructed we shall prove : what requital it deserves, Gentlemen, you must prove to mankind. The defendant's name I understand is TOWNS- END. He is of an age when every generous blos- som of the spring should breathe an infant fresh- ness round his heart ; of a family which should inspire not only high but hereditary principles of honour ; of a profession whose very essence is a stainless chivalry, and whose bought and bounden duty is the protection of the citizen. Such are the advantages with which he appears before you 148 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF fearful advantages, because they repel all possible suspicion ; but you will agree with me, most damning adversaries, if it shall appear that the ge- nerous ardour of his youth was chilled that the noble inspiration of his birth was spurned that the lofty impulse of his profession was despised and that all that could grace, or animate, or en- noble, was used to his own discredit and his fellow-creature's misery. It was upon the first day of June last, that on the banks of the canal, near Portobello, Lieutenant Townsend first met the daughter of Mr. Creighton, a pretty, interesting girl, scarcely sixteen years of age. She was accompanied by her little sister, only four years old, with whom she was permitted to take a daily walk in that retired spot, the vicinity of her residence. The Defendant was attracted by her appearance he left his party, and attempted to converse with her ; she repelled his advances he immediately seized her infant sister by the hand, whom he held as a kind of hostage for an intro- duction to his victim . A prepossessing appearance, a modesty of deportment apparently quite incom- patible with any evil design, gradually silenced her alarm, and she answered the common-place ques- tions with which, on her way home, he addressed her. Gentlemen, I admit it was an innocent im- prudence ; the rigid rules of matured morality should have repelled such communication ; yet, perhaps, judging- even by that strict standard, you will rather condemn the familiarity of the intru- sion in a designing adult than the facility of access in a creature of her age and her innocence. They CREIGHTON r. TOWNSEND. 149 thus separated, as she naturally supposed, to meet no more. Not such, however, was the deter- mination of her destroyer. From that hour until her ruin, he scarcely ever lost sight of her he followed her as a shadow he way-laid her in her walks he interrupted her in her avocations he haunted the street of her residence ; if she refused to meet him, he paraded before her window at the hazard of exposing" her first comparatively in- nocent imprudence to her unconscious parents. How happy would it have been had she conquered the timidity, so natural to her age, and appealed at once to their pardon and their protection ! Gentlemen, this daily persecution continued for three months for three successive months, by every art, by every persuasion, by every appeal to her vanity and her passions, did he toil for the de- struction of this unfortunate young creature. I leave you to guess how many during that interval might have yielded to the blandishments of manner, the fascinations of youth, the rarely resisted tempta- tions of opportunity. For three long months she did resist them. She would have resisted them for ever but for an expedient which is without a model but for an exploit which I trust in God will be without an imitation. Oh yes, he might have returned to his country, and did he but re- flect, he would rather have rejoiced at the virtuous triumph of his victim, than mourned his own soul- redeeming defeat; he might have returned to his country, and told the cold-blooded libellers of this land that their speculations upon Irish chastity were prejudiced and proofless ; that in the wreck of 150 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF all else we had retained our honour ; that though the national luminary had descended for a season, the streaks of its loveliness still lingered on our horizon ; that the nurse of that genius which abroad had redeemed the name, and dignified the nature of man, was to be found at home in the spirit without a stain, and the purity without a suspicion. He might have told them truly that this did not result, as they would intimate, from the absence of passion or the want of civilization ; that it was the combined consequence of education, of example, and of impulse ; and that, though in all the revelry of enjoyment, the fair floweret of the Irish soil exhaled its fragrance and expanded its charms in the chaste and blessed beams of a virtuous affection, still it shrunk with an in- stinctive sensitiveness from the gross pollution of an unconsecrated contact ! Gentlemen, the common artifices of the seducer failed ; the syren tones with which sensuality awakens appetite and lulls purity had wasted them- selves in air, and the intended victim, deaf to their fascination, moved along safe and untransformed. He soon saw, that young as she was, the vulgar expedients of vice were ineffectual ; that the at- tractions of a glittering exterior failed : and that before she could be tempted to her sensual dam- nation, his tongue must learn, if not the words of wisdom, at least the speciousness of affected purity. He pretended an affection as virtuous as it was violent ; he called God to witness the sincerity of his declarations ; by all the vows which should for ever rivet the honourable, and could not fail tQ CREIGHTON v. TOWNSEND. 151 convince even the incredulous, he promised her marriage ; over and over again he invoked the eternal denunciation if he was perfidious. To her acknowledged want of fortune, his constant reply was, that he had an independance ; that all he wanted was beauty and virtue ; that he saw she had the one, that he had proyed she had the other. When she pleaded the obvious disparity of her birth, he answered that he was himself only the son of an English farmer ; that happiness was not the mono- poly of rank or riches ; that his parents would receive her as the child of their adoption ; that he would cherish her as the charm of his existence. Specious as it was, even this did not succeed ; she determined to await its avowal to those who had given her life, and who hoped to have made it im- maculate by the education they had bestowed and the example they had afforded. Some days after this he met her in her walks, for she could not pass her parental threshold without being intercepted. Heasked her whereshe was going shesaid, afriend knowing her fondness for books had promised her the loan of some, and she w r as going to receive them. He told her that he had abundance, that they were just at his home, that he hoped after what had passed she would feel no impropriety in accepting them. She was persuaded to accompany him . Arrived, however, at the door of his lodgings, she positively refused to go any farther ; all his former artifices were redoubled ; he called God to witness he considered her as his wife, and her cha- racter as dear to him as that of one of his sisters ; he affected mortification at any suspicion of his 152 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF purity ; he told her if she refused her confidence to his honourable affection, the little infant who accompanied her was an inviolable guarantee for her protection. Gentlemen, this wretched child did suffer her credulity to repose on his professions. Her theory taught her to respect the honour of a soldier ; her love repelled the imputation that debased its ob* ject ; and her youthful innocence rendered her as incredulous as she was unconscious of crimina^ lity. At first his behaviour corresponded with his professions ; he welcomed her to the home of which he hoped she would soon become the inseparable companion; he painted the future joys of their domestic felicity, and dwelt with peculiar com- placency on some heraldic ornament which hung over his chimney-piece, and which, he said, was the armorial ensign of his family ! Oh ! my Lord, how well would it have been had he but retraced the fountain of that document ; had he recalled to mind the virtues it rewarded, the pure train of honours it associated, the line of spotless ancestry it distinguished, the high ambition its bequest inspired, the moral imitation it imperatively com- manded ! But when guilt once kindles within the human heart, all that is noble in our nature becomes parched and arid ; the blush of modesty fades before its glare, the sighs of virtue fan its lurid flame, and every divine essence of our being but swells and exasperates its infernal conflagration. Gentlemen, I will not disgust this audience : I will not debase myself by any description of the CREIGHTON v. TOWNSEND. scene that followed ; I will not detail the arts, the excitements, the promises, the pledges with which deliberate lust inflamed the passions, and finally overpowered the struggles of innocence and of youth. It is too much to know that tears could not appease that misery could not affect that the presence and the prayers of an infant could not awe him; and that the wretched victim, between the ardour of passion and the repose of love, sunk at length, inflamed, exhausted, and confiding, beneath the heartless grasp of an un- sympathising sensuality. The appetite of the hour thus satiated, at a tem- poral, perhaps an eternal hazard, he dismissed the sisters to their unconscious parents, not, however, without extorting a promise, that on the ensuing night Miss Creighton would desert her home for ever for the arms of a fond, affectionate, and faith- ful husband. Faithful, alas 1 but only to his appe- petites, he did seduce her from that "sacred home,'* to deeper guilt, to more deliberate cruelty. After a suspense comparatively happy, her pa- rents became acquainted with her irrecoverable ruin. The miserable mother, supported by the mere strength of desperation, rushed half phrenzied to the castle, where Mr. Townsend was on duty. " Give me back my child \" was all she could ar- ticulate. The parental ruin struck the spoiler almost speechless. The few dreadful words, " / have your child," withered her heart up with the horrid joy that death denied its mercy, that her daughter lived, but lived, alas, to infamy. She could neither speak nor hear ; she sunk down con- 154 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF vulsed and powerless. As soon as she could recover to any thing of effort, naturally did she turn to the residence of Mr. Townsend ; his orders had an- ticipated her the sentinel refused her entrance. She told her sad narration, she implored his pity with the eloquence of grief she asked him, had he home^ or wife, or children. " Oh, Holy Nature! thou didst not plead in vain !" even the rude soldier's heart relented. He admitted her by stealth, and she once more held within her arms the darling hope of many an anxious hour ; duped, desolate, degraded it was true but still but still "Atr child." Gentlemen, if the parental heart cannot suppose what followed, how little adequate am I to paint it. Home this wretched creature could not return ; a seducer's mandate and a father's anger equally forbade it. But she gave whatever consolation she was capable ; she told the fatal tale of her undoing the hopes, the pro- mises, the studied specious arts that had seduced her ; and with a desperate credulity still watched the light that, glimmering in the distant vista of her love, mocked her with hope, and was to leave her to the tempest. To all the prophecies of ma- ternal anguish she would still replv, "Oh, no in the eye of Heaven he is my* husband ;. he took me from my home, my happiness and you, but still he pledged to me a soldier's honour but he as- sured me with a Christian's conscience ; for three long months I heard his vows of love ; he is ho- nourable and will not deceive ; he is human and cannot desert me." Hear, Gentlemen, hear, I be- seech you, how this innocent confidence was CREIGHTON e. TOWNSEND. 155 returned. When her indignant father had re- sorted to Lord Forbes, the commander of the forces, and to the noble and learned head of this Court, both of whom received him with a sym- pathy that did them honour, Mr. Townsend sent a brother officer to inform her she must quit his residence and take lodgings. In vain she remon- strated, in vain she reminded him of her former purity, and of the promises that betrayed it. She was literally turned out at nightfall to find what- ever refuge the God of the shelterless might pro- vide for her. Deserted and disowned, how na- turally did she turn to the once happy home, whose inmates she had disgraced, and whose protection she had forfeited ! how naturally did she think the once familiar and once welcome avenues looked frowning as she passed ! how na- turally did she linger like a reposeless spectre round the memorials of her living happiness ! Her heart failed her : where a parent's smile had ever cheered her, she could not face the glance of shame, or sorrow, or disdain. She returned to seek her seducer's pity even till the morning. Good God ! how can I disclose it ! the very guard had orders to refuse her access : even by the rabble soldiery she was cast into the street, amid the night's dark horrors, the victim of her own credulity, the outcast of another's crime, to seal her guilty woes with suicide, or lead a living death amid the tainted sepulchres of a promiscuous prostitution ! Far, far am I from sorry that it was so. Horrible beyond thought as is this ag- gravation, I only hear in it the voice of Deity iu 156 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF thunder upon the crime. Yes, yes ; it is the present God arming the vicious agent against the vice, and terrifying from its conception by the turpitude to which it may lead. But \vhat aggra- vation does seduction need ! Vice is its essence, lust its end, hypocrisy its instrument, and inno- cence its victim. Must I detail its miseries ? Who depopulates the home of virtue, making the child an orphan, and the parent childless? Who wrests its crutch from the tottering helplessness of piteous age ? Who wrings its happiness from the heart of youth ? Who shocks the vision of the public eye ? Who infects your very thoroughfares with disease, disgust, obscenity, and profaneness ? Who pollutes the harmless scenes where modesty re- sorts for mirth, and toil for recreation, with sights that stain the pure and shock the sensitive ? Are these the phrases of an interested advocacy ? Is there one amongst you but has witnessed their verification ? Is there one amongst you so fortu- nate, or so secluded, as not to have wept over the wreck of health, and youth, and loveli- ness, and talent, the fatal trophies of the seducer's triumph some form, perhaps, where every grace was squandered, and every beauty paused to waste its bloom, and every beam of mind and tone of melody poured their profusion on the pub- lic wonder ; all that a parent's prayer could ask, or lover's adoration fancy ; in whom even pollu- tion looked so lovely, that virtue would have made her more than human ? Is there an epithet too vile for such a spoiler ? Is there a punish- ment too severe for such depravity ? I know not CREIGHTON D. TOWNSEND. upon what complaisance this English seducer may calculate from a jury of this country ; I know not indeed, whether he may not think he does your wives and daughters some honour by their conta- mination. But I know well what reception he would experience from a jury of his own country. I know that in such general execration do they view this crime, they think no possible plea a palliation ; no, not the mature age of the seduced ; not her previously protracted absence from her parents ; not a levity approaching almost to abso- lute guilt ; not an indiscretion in the mother, that bore every colour of connivance : and in this opinion they have been supported by all the vene- rable authorities with whom age, integrity, and learning have adorned the judgment-seat. Gentlemen, I come armed with these autho- rities. In the case of Tullidge against Wade, my Lord, it appeared the person seduced was thirty years of age, and long before absent from her home ; yet, on a motion to set aside the verdict for excessive damages, what was the language of Chief Justice Wilmot ? " I regret," said he, "that they were not greater ; though the Plaintiff's loss did not amount to twenty shillings, the jury were right in giving ample damages, because such actions should be encouraged for example's sakd" Justice Clive wished they had given twice the sum, and in this opinion the whole bench con- curred. There was a case were the girl was of mature age, and living apart from her parents : here, the victim is almost a child, and was never for a moment separated from her home. Again, 358 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF in the case of " Bennet against Alcot," on a si^ milar motion, grounded on the apparently over- whelming fact, that the mother of the girl had had actually sent the Defendant into her daugh- ter's bed-chamber, where the criminality occurred, Justice Buller declared, " he thought the parent's indiscretion no excuse for the Defendant's culpa- bility ;" and the verdict of 200 damages was confirmed. There was a case of literal connivance: here, will they have the hardihood to hint even its suspicion ? You all must remember, Gentle- men, the case of our own countryman, Captain Gore, against whom, only the other day, an Eng- lish jury gave a verdict of 1,500 damages, though it was proved that the person alleged to have been seduced was herself the seducer, going even so far as to throw gravel up at the windows of the Defendant ; yet Lord Ellenborough refused to dis- turb the verdict. Thus you may see I rest not on my own proofless and unsupported dictum. I rely upon grave decisions and venerable authorities not only on the indignant denunciation of the mo- ment, but on the deliberate concurrence of the enlightened and the dispassionate. I see my learned opponent smile. I tell him I would not care if the books were an absolute blank upon the subject. I would then make the human heart my authority ; I would appeal to the bosom of every man who hears me, whether such a crime should grow unpunished into a precedent ; whe- ther innocence should be made the subject of a brutal speculation ; whether the sacred seal of filial obedience, upon which the Almighty Parent CREIGHTON v. TOWNSBND. 159 has affixed his eternal fiat, should be violated by a blasphemous and selfish libertinism ! Gentlemen, if the cases I have quoted, palli- ated as they were, have been humanely marked by ample damages, what should you give here where there is nothing to excuse where there is every thing to aggravate ! The seduction was deliberate, it was three months in progress, its victim was almost a child, it was committed un- der the most alluring promises, it w 7 as followed by a deed of the most dreadful cruelty ; but, above all, it was the act of a man commissioned by his own country, and paid by this, for the enforce- ment of the laws and the preservation of society. No man more respects than I do the well-earned reputation of the British army ; " It is a school Where every principle tending to honour Is taught if followed" But in the name of that distinguished army, I here solemnly appeal against an act, which would blight its greenest laurels, and lay its trophies prostrate in the dust. Let them war, but be it not on domestic happiness ; let them invade, but be their country's hearths inviolable ; let them achieve a triumph wherever their banners fly, but be it not over morals, innocence, and virtue. I know not by what palliation the Defendant means to mi- tigate this enormity ; will he plead her youth ? it should have been her protection ; will he plead her levity ? I deny the fact ; but even were it true, what is it to him ? what right has any man to speculate on the temperature of your wives and SPEECH IN THE CASE OP daughters, that he may defile your bed, or deso* late your habitation ? Will he plead poverty ? I never knew a seducer or an adulterer that did not. He should have considered that before. But is poverty an excuse for crime ? Our law says, he who has not a purse to pay for it, must suffer for it in his person. It is a most wise declaration ; and for my part, I never hear such a person plead poverty, that my first emotion is not a thanksgiv- ing 1 , that Providence has denied, at least, the in- strumentality of wealth to the accomplishment of his purposes. Gentlemen, I see you agree with me. I wave the topic ; and I again tell you, that if what I know will be his chief defence were true, it should avail him nothing. He had no right to speculate on this wretched creature's le- vity to ruin her, and still less to ruin her family. Remember, however, Gentlemen, that even had this wretched child been indiscreet, it is not in her name we ask for reparation ; no, it is in the name of the parents her seducer has heart-broken ; it is in the name of the poor helpless family he has desolated ; it is in the name of that misery, whose sanctuary he has violated ; it is in the name of law, virtue, and morality ; it is in the name of that country whose fair fame foreign envy will make responsible for this crime ; it is in the name of nature's dearest, tenderest sympathies ; it is in the name of all that gives your toil an object, and your ease a charm, and your age a hope I ask from you the value of this poor man's child. SPEECH IN THE CASE OF BLAKE . WILKINS DELIVERED IN THE COUNTY COURT-HOUSE, GALWAY. May it please Your Lordship, THE Plaintiff's Counsel tell me, Gentlemen, most unexpectedly, that they have closed his case, and it becomes my duty to state to you that of the Defendant. The nature of this action you have already heard. It is one which, in my mind, ought to be very seldom brought, and very spar- ingly encouraged. It is founded on circumstances of the most extreme delicacy, and it is intended to visit with penal consequences the non-observ- ance of an engagement, which is of the most pa- ramount importance to society, and which of all others, perhaps, ought to be the most unbiassed an engagement which, if it be voluntary, judici- ous, and disinterested, generally produces the happiest effects ; but which, if it be either unsuit- able or compulsory, engenders not only indivi- dual misery, but consequences universally perni- cious. There are few contracts between human M 162 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF beings which should be more deliberate than that of marriage. I admit it should be very cautiously promised, but, even when promised, I am far from conceding that it should invariably be per- formed ; a thousand circumstances may form an impediment, change of fortune may render it im- prudent, change of affection may make it culpa- ble. The very party to whom the law gives the privilege of complaint has perhaps the most rea- son to be grateful ; grateful that its happiness has not been surrendered to caprice, grateful that Religion has not constrained an unwilling acqui- escence, or made an unavoidable desertion doubly criminal, grateful that an offspring has not been sacrificed to the indelicate and ungenerous en- forcement, grateful that an innocent secret disin- clination did not too late evince itself in an irre- sistible and irremediable disgust. You will agree with me, however, that if there exists any excuse for such an action, it is on the side of the female, because every female object being more exclu- sively domestic, such a disappointment is more severe in its visitation ; because the very circum- stance concentrating their feelings renders them naturally more sensitive of a wound ; because their best treasure, their reputation, may have suf- fered from the intercourse ; because their chances of reparation are less, and their habitual seclu- sion makes them feel it more ; because there is something in the desertion of their helplessness which almost merges the illegality in the un- manliness of the abandonment. However, if a man seeks to enforce this engagement, every one BLAKE v. WILKINS. feels some indelicacy attached to the requisition. I do not enquire into the comparative justness of the reasoning 1 , but does not every one feel that there appears some meanness in forcing a female into an alliance ? Is it not almost saying, " I will expose to public shame the credulity on which I practised, or you must pay to me in monies num- bered, the profits of that heartless speculation ; I have gambled with your affections, I have se- cured your bond, I will extort the penalty either from your purse or your reputation I" I put a case to you where the circumstances are recipro- cal, where age, fortune, situation, are the same, where there is no disparity of years to make the supposition ludicrous, where there is no disparity of fortune to render it suspicious. Let us see whether the present action can be so palliated, or whether it does not exhibit a picture of fraud and avarice, and meanness and hypocrisy, so laugh- able, that it is almost impossible to criticise it, and yet so debasing, that human pride almost forbids its ridicule. It has been left to me to defend my unfortunate old client from the double battery of Love and of Law, which at the age of sixty-five has so unex- pectedly opened on her. Oh, Gentlemen, how vain-glorious is the boast of beauty ! How mis- apprehended have been the charms of youth, if years and wrinkles can thus despoil their con- quests, and depopulate the navy of its prowess, and beguile the bar of its eloquence ! How mis- taken were all the amatory poets from Anacreon downwards, who preferred the bloom of the rose M 2 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF and the thrill of the nightingale, to the saffron hide and dulcet treble of sixty-five ! Even our own sweet bard has had the folly to declare, that " He once had heard tell of an amorous youth Who was caught in his grandmother's bed ; But owns he had ne'er such a liquorish tooth, As to wish to be there in his stead." Royal wisdom has said, that we live in a " New jEra." The reign of old women has commenced, and if Johanna Southcote converts England to her creed, why should not Ireland, less pious perhaps, but at least equally passionate, kneel before the shrine of the irresistible WIDOW WILKINS. It appears, Gentlemen, to have been her happy fate to have subdued particularly the death-dealing professions. Indeed, in the love-episodes of the heathen mythology, Mars and Venus were consi- dered as inseparable. I know not whether any of you have ever seen a very beautiful print re- presenting the fatal glory of Quebec, and the last moments of its immortal conqueror if so, you must have observed the figure of the Staff physi- cian, in whose arms the hero is expiring that identical personage, my Lord, was the happy swain, who, forty or fifty years ago, received the reward of his valour and his skill in the virgin hand of my venerable client ! The Doctor lived some-, thing more than a century, during a great part of which Mrs. Wilkins was his companion alas, Gentlemen, long as he lived, he lived not long enough to behold her beauty " That beauty, like the Aloe flower, But bloom'd and blossom'd at fourscore." ' BLAKE . WILKINS. He was, however, so far fascinated as to bequeath to her the legacies of his patients, when he found he was predoomed to follow them. To this cir- cumstance, very far be it from me to hint, that Mrs. W. is indebted for any of her attractions. Rich, however, she undoubtedly was, and rich she would still as undoubtedly have continued, had it not been for her intercourse with the family of the Plaintiff. I do not impute it as a crime to them that they happened to be necessitous, but I do impute it as both criminal and ungrateful, that after having lived on the generosity of their friend, after having literally exhausted her most prodigal liberality, they should drag' her infirmities before the public gaze, vainly supposing that they could hide their own contemptible avarice in the more prominent exposure of her melancholy dotage. The father of the Plaintiff, it cannot be unknown to you, was for many years in the most indigent situation. Perhaps it is riot a matter of conceal- ment either, that he found in Mrs. Wilkins a ge- nerous benefactress. She assisted and supported him, until at last his increasing necessities re- duced him to take refuge in an act of insolvency* During their intimacy, frequent allusion was made to a son whom Mrs. Wilkins had never seen since he was a child, and who had risen to a lieu- tenancy in the navy, under the patronage of their relative, Sir Benjamin Bloomfield. In a parent's panegyric, the gallant lieutenant was of course all that even hope could picture. Young, gay, heroic, and disinterested, the pride of the navy, the prop of the country, independent as the gale 166 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF that wafted, and bounteous as the wave that bore him. I am afraid that it is rather an anti-climax to tell you after this, that he is the present Plain- tiff. The eloquence of Mrs. Blake was not ex- clusively confined to her encomiums on the lieu- tenant. She diverged at times into an episode on the matrimonial felicities, painted the joy of pas- sion and delights of love, and obscurely hinted that Hymen, with his torch, had an exact personi- fication in her son Peter bearing a match-light in His Majesty's ship the Hydra ! While these con- trivances were practising on Mrs. Wilkins, a bye- plot was got up on board the Hydra, and Mr. Blake returned to his mourning country, influ- enced, as he says, by his partiality for the Defend- ant, but in reality compelled by ill health and disappointments, added, perhaps, to his mother's very absurd and avaricious speculations. What a loss the navy had of him, and what a loss he had of the navy ! Alas, Gentlemen, he could not resist his affection for a female he never saw. Al- mighty love eclipsed the glories of ambition Trafalgar and St. Vincent flitted from his me- mory he gave up all for woman, as Mark Antony did before him, and, like the Cupid in Hudi- bras, he " took his stand Upon a Widow's jointure land : His tender sigh and trickling tear Long'd for five hundred pounds a year ; And languishing desires were fond Of Statute, Mortgage, Bill, and Bond ! " Oh, Gentlemen, only imagine him on the lakes of North America ! Alike to him the varieties of BLAKE r. WILKINS. 167 season or the vicissitudes of warfare. One sove- reig-n image monopolizes his sensibilities. Does the storm rage ? the Widow Wilkins outsighs the whirlwind. Is the ocean calm ? its mirror shows him the lovely Widow Wilkins. Is the battle won ? he thins his laurel that the Widow Wilkins may interweave her myrtles. Does the broadside thun- der ? he invokes the Widow Wilkins ! " A siceet little Cherub she sits up aloft To keep watch for the life of poor Peter !" Alas, how much he is to be pitied ! How amply he should be" recompensed ! Who but must mourn his sublime, disinterested, sweet-souled patriotism ! Who but must sympathise with his pure, ardent, generous affection ! affection too confiding to re- quire an interview ! affection too warm to wait even for an introduction ! Indeed, his Amanda herself seemed to think his love was most desirable at a distance, for at the very first visit after his return he was refused admittance. His captivating charmer was then sick and nurse-tended at her brother's house, after a winter's confinement, reflecting, most likety, rather on her funeral than her wedding. Mrs. Blake's avarice instantly took the alarm, and she wrote the letter, which I shall now proceed to read to you. [Mr. VANDELEUR. My Lord, unwilling as I am to interrupt a statement which seems to create so universal a sensation, still I hope your Lordship will restrain Mr. Phillips from reading a letter which cannot hereafter be read in evidence. Mr. O'CONNELL rose for the purpose of sup- 168 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF porting the propriety of the course pursued by the Defendant's Counsel, when] Mr. PHILLIPS resumed My Lord, although it is utterly impossible for the Learned Gentleman to say, in what manner hereafter this letter might be made evidence, still my case is too strong to require any cavilling upon such trifles. I am con- tent to save the public time and wave the perusal of the letter. However, they have now given its suppression an importance which perhaps its pro- duction could not have procured for it. You see, Gentlemen, what a case they have when they in- sist on the witholding of the documents which originated with themselves. I accede to their very politic interference. I grant them, since they en- treat it, the mercy of my silence. Certain it is, however, that a letter was received from Mrs. Blake ; and that almost immediately after its receipt, Miss Blake intruded herself at Brownville, where Mrs. Wilkins was remained two days lamented bit- terly her not having appeared to the lieutenant, when he called to visit her said that her poor mother had set her heart on an alliance that she was sure, dear woman, a disappointment would be the death of her ; in short, that there was no alternative but the tomb or the altar ! To all this Mrs. Wilkins only replied, how totally ignorant the parties interested were of each other, and that were she even inclined to connect herself with a stranger (poor old fool !) the debts in which her generosity to the family had already involved her, formed, at least for the present, an insurmountable impediment. This was not sufficient. In less than BLAKE v. WILKINS. 1(J9 a week, the indefatigable Miss Blake returned to the charge, actually armed with an old family-bond to pay off the incumbrances, and a renewed re- presentation of the mother's suspense and the brother's desperation. You will not fail to observe, Gentlemen, that while the female conspirators were thus at work, the lover himself had never seen the object of his idolatry . Like the maniac in the farce, he fell in love with the picture of his grandmother. Like a prince of the blood, he was willing to woo and to be wedded by proxy. For the gratification of his avarice, he w r as contented to embrace age, disease, infirmity, and widowhood to bind his youthful passions to the carcase for which the grave was opening to feed by anticipation on the un- cold corpse, and cheat the worm of its reversionary corruption. Educated in a profession proverbially generous, he offered to barter every joy for money! Born in a country ardent to a fault, he advertised his happiness to the highest bidder ! and he now solicits an honourable jury to become the panders to this heartless cupidity ! Thus beset, harassed, conspired against, their miserable victim entered into the contract you have heard a contract con- ceived in meanness, extorted by fraud, and sought to be enforced by the most profligate conspiracy. Trace it through every stage of its progress, in its origin, its means, its effects from the parent contriving it through the sacrifice of her son, and forwarding it through the indelicate instrumen- tality of her daughter, down to the son himself unblushingly acceding to the atrocious combina- tion by which age was to be betrayed and youth 170 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF degraded, and the odious union of decrepid lust and precocious avarice blasphemously consecrated by the solemnities of Religion ! Is this the ex- ample which as parents you would sanction ? Is this the principle you would adopt yourselves ? Have you never witnessed the misery of an un- matched marriage ? Have you never worshipped the bliss by which it has been hallowed, when its torch, kindled at affection's altar, gives the noon of life its warmth and its lustre, and blesses its evening with a more chastened, but not less lovely illumination ? Are you prepared to say, that this rite of heaven, revered by each country, cherished by each sex, the solemnity of every Church and the SACRAMENT of one, shall be profaned into the ceremonial of an obscene and soul-degrading avarice ! No sooner was this contract, the device of their covetousness and the evidence of their shame, swindled from the wretched object of this con- spiracy, than its motive became apparent ; they avowed themselves the keepers of their melancholy victim ; they watched her movements ; they dic- tated her actions ; they forbade all intercourse with her own brother ; they duped her into ac- cepting bills, and let her be arrested for the amount. They exercised the most cruel and ca- pricious tyranny upon her, now menacing her with the publication of her follies, and now with the still more horrible enforcement of a contract that thus betrayed its anticipated inflictions ! Can you imagine a more disgusting exhibition of how weak and how worthless human nature may be, BLAKE v. WILKINS. than this <^e n e exposes ? On the one hand, a combination of sex and age, disregarding the most sacred obligations, and trampling on the most tender ties, from a mean greediness of lucre, that neither honour nor gratitude nor nature could appease, " Lucri bonus est odor exrequalibet." On the other hand, the poor shrivelled relic, of what once was health, and youth, and animation, sought to be embraced in its infection, and caressed in its infirmity crawled over and corrupted by the human reptiles, before death had shovelled it to the less odious and more natural vermin of the grave ! ! What an object for the speculations of avarice ! What an angel for the idolatry of youth ! Gentlemen, when this miserable dupe to her own doting vanity and the vice of others, saw how she was treated when she found herself controlled by the mother, beset by the daughter, beggared by the father, and held by the son as a kind of windfall, that, too rotten to keep its hold, had fallen at his feet to be squeezed and trampled ; when she saw the intercourse of her relatives prohibited, the most trifling remembrances of her ancient friendship denied, the very exercise of her habitual charity denounced ; when she saw that all she was worth was to be surrendered to a family confisca- tion, and that she was herself to be gibbetted in the chains of wedlock, an example to every superan- nuated dotard, upon whose plunder the ravens of the world might calculate, she came to the wisest determination of her life, and decided that her fortune should remain at her own disposal. Acting upon this decision, she wrote to Mr. Blake, com- 172 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF plaining* of the cruelty with which she had been treated, desiring the restoration of the contract of which she had been duped, and declaring 1 , as the only means of securing" respect, her final determi- nation as to the control over her property. To this letter, addressed to the son, a verbal answer (mark the conspiracy) was returned from the mother, withholding all consent, unless the property was settled on her family, but withholding the contract at the same time. The wretched old woman could not sustain this conflict. She was taken seriously ill, confined for many months in her brother's house, from whom she was so cruelly sought to be separated, until the debts in which she was involved and a recommended change of scene transferred her to Dublin. There she was received with the utmost kindness by her relative, Mr. Mac Namara, to whom she confided the delicacy and distress of her situation. That gentleman, acting at once as her agent and her friend, instantly re- paired to Gal way, where he had an interview with Mr. Blake. This was long before the commence- ment of any action. A conversation took place between them on the subject, which must, in my mind, set the present action at rest altogether ; because it must show that the non-performance of the contract originated entirely with the Plaintiff himself. Mr. Mac Namara enquired, whether it was not true, that Mr. Blake's own family declined any connection, unless Mrs. Wilkins con- sented to settle on them the entire of her property ? Mr. Blake replied it was. Mr. Mac Namara re- joined, that her contract did not bind her to any BLAKE r. WILKINS. 173 such extent. " No," replied Mr. Blake, " I know it does not ; however, tell Mrs. Wilkins that I un- derstand she has about 580 a year, and I will be content to settle the odd 80 on her by way of pocket money." Here, of course, the conversation ended, which Mr. Mac Namara detailed, as he was de- sired, to Mrs. Wilkins, who rejected it with the disdain, which, I hope, it will excite in every honourable mind. A topic, however, arose during the interview, which unfolds the motives and illus- trates the mind of Mr. Blake more than any ob- servation which I can make on it. As one of the inducements to the projected marriage, he ac- tually proposed the prospect of a ,50 annuity as an officer's widow's pension, to which she would be entitled in the event of his decease ! I will not stop to remark on the delicacy of this induce- ment I will not dwell on the ridicule of the an- ticipation I will not advert to the glaring dotage on which he speculated, when he could seriously hold out to a woman of her years the prospect of such an improbable survivorship. But I do ask you, of what materials must the man be composed who could thus debase the national liberality ! What ! was the recompense of that lofty heroism which has almost appropriated to the British navy the monopoly of maritime renown was that grate- ful offering which a weeping country pours into the lap of its patriot's widow, and into the cradle of its warrior's orphan was that generous conso- lation with which a nation's gratitude cheers the last moments of her dying hero, by the portraiture of his children sustained and ennobled by the le- 174 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF gacy of his achievements, to be thus deliberately perverted into the bribe of a base, reluctant, un* natural prostitution ! Oh ! I know of nothing to parallel the self-abasement of such a deed, except the audacity that requires an honourable Jury to abet it. The. following letter from Mr. Anthony Martin, Mr. Blake's attorney, unfolded the future / ' plans of this unfeeling consptracy. Perhaps the Gentlemen would wish also to cushion this docu- ment ? They do not. Then I shall read it. The Letter is addressed to Mrs. Wilkins. " MADAM, Galway, Jan. 9. 1817. " I have been applied to professionally by Lieu- tenant Peter Blake to take proceedings against you on rather an unpleasant occasion; but, from every letter of your's, and other documents, toge- ther with the material and irreparable loss Mr. Blake has sustained in his professional prospects, by means of your proposals to him, makes it indis- pensably necessary for him to get remuneration from you. Under these circumstances, I am obliged to say, that I have his directions to take immediate proceedings against you, unless he is in some measure compensated for your breach of contract and promise to him. I should feel happy that you would save me the necessity of acting professionally by settling the business [You see, Gentlemen, money, money, money, runs through the whole amour], and not suffer it to come to a public investigation, particularly, as 1 conceive from the legal advice Mr. Blake has got, together with all I have seen, it will ultimately terminate BLAKE . WILKINS. most honourably to his advantage, and to your pecuniary loss. " I have the honour to remain, " Madam, " Your very humble Servant, " ANTHONY MARTIN/' Indeed, I think Mr. Anthony Martin is mis- taken. Indeed, I think no twelve men upon their oaths will say (even admitting' the truth of all he asserts) that it was honourable for a British officer to abandon the navy on such a speculation to de- sert so noble a profession to forfeit the ambition it ought to have associated the rank to which it leads the glory it may confer, for the purpose of extorting from an old woman he never saw the purchase-money of his degradation ! But I rescue the Plaintiff from this disgraceful imputation. I cannot believe that a member of a profession not less remarkable for the valour than the generosity of its spirit a profession as proverbial for its pro- fusion in the harbour as for the prodigality of its life-blood on the wave a profession ever willing to fling money to the winds, and only anxious that they should waft through the world its immortal banner crimsoned with the record of a thousand vic- tories! No, no, Gentlemen ; notwithstanding the great authority of Mr. Anthony Martin, I cannot readily believe that any man could be found to make the high honour of this noble service a base, mercenary, sullied pander to the prostitution of his youth ! The fact is, that increasing ill health, and the improbability of promotion, combined to SPEECH IN THE CASE OF induce his retirement on half-pay. You will find this confirmed by the date of his resignation, which was immediately after the battle of Waterloo, which settled (no matter how) the destinies of Europe. His constitution was declining, his ad- vancement was annihilated, and, as a forlorn hope, he bombarded the Widow Wilkins ! " War thoughts had left their places vacant ; In their room came, thronging, soft and amorous desires ; All telling him how fair Young Hero was." He first, Gentlemen, attacked her fortune with herself, through the artillery of the Church, and having failed in that, he now attacks her fortune without herself, through the assistance of the law. However, if I am instructed rightly, he has nobody but himself to blame for his disappointment. Ob- serve, I do not vouch for the authenticity of this fact ; but I do certainly assure you, that Mrs. Wil- kins was persuaded of it. You know the pro- verbial frailty of our nature. The g'allant Lieu- tenant was not free from it! Perhaps you imagine that some younger, or, according to his taste, some older fair one, weaned him from the widow. Indeed they did not. He had no heart to lose, and yet (can you solve the paradox ?) his infirmity was LOVE. As the Poet says " Love still Love." No, it was not to VENUS, it w r as to BACCHUS, he sacrificed. With an eastern idolatry he com- menced at day-light, and so persevering was his piety till the shades of night, that when he was BLAKE v. WILKINS, 177 not on his knees, he could scarcely be said to be on his legs! When I came to this passage, I could not avoid involuntarily exclaiming', Oh, Peter, Peter, whether it be in liquor or in love " None but thyself can be thy parallel !" I see by your smiling, Gentlemen, that you cor- rect my error. I perceive your classic memories recurring to, perhaps, the only prototype to be found in history. I beg his pardon. I should not have overlooked " the immortal Captain Wattle, Who was all for love and a little for the bottle" Ardent as our fair ones have been announced to be, they do not prefer a flame that is so exclu- sively spiritual. Widow Wilkins, no doubt, did not choose to be singular. In the words of the bard, and, my Lord, I perceive you excuse my dwelling so much on the authority of the muses, because really on this occasion the minstrel seems to have combined the powers of poetry with the spirit of prophecy in the very words of the bard, " He asked her, would she marry him 'Widow Wilkins answer'd, No Then said he, I'll to the Ocean rock, I'm ready for the slaughter, Oh ! I'll shoot at my sad image, as its sighing in the water Only think of Widow Wilkins, saying Go Peter Go ! " But, Gentlemen, let us try to be serious, and se- riously give me leave to ask you, on what grounds does he solicit your verdict ? Is it for the loss of his profession ? Does he deserve compensation if N 178 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF he abandoned it for such a purpose if he de- serted at once his duty and his country to trepan the weakness of a wealthy dotard ? B ut did he (base as the pretence is), did he do so ? Is there nothing- to cast any suspicion on the pretext ? no- thing in the aspect of public affairs ? in the uni- versal peace? in the uncertainty of being put in commission ? in the downright impossibility of advancement ? Nothing" to make you suspect that he imputes as a contrivance, what was the mani- fest result of an accidental contingency ? Does he claim on the ground of sacrificed affection? Oh, Gentlemen, only fancy what he has lost if it were but the blessed raptures of the bridal night ! Do not suppose I am going to describe it ; I shall leave it to the learned Counsel * he has selected, to com- pose his epithalamium. I shall not exhibit the venerable trembler at once a relic and a relict; with a grace for every year, and a Cupid in every tvrinkle affecting to shrink from the flame of his impatience, and fanning it with the ambrosial sigh of sixty-five ! ! 1 cannot paint the fierce me- ridian transports of the honeymoon, gradually inelting into a more chastened and permanent af- fection every nine months adding a link to the chain of their delicate embraces, until, too soon, Death's broadside lays the Lieutenant low, con- soling, however, his patriarchal charmer, (old enough at the time to be the last wife of Methu- salem) with a fifty pound annuity, being the ba- * This gentleman was what disappointed maidens call, an old bachelor. BLAKE r. WILKINS. 170 lance of his glory against His Majesty's Ship, the Hydra!! Give me leave to ask you, Is this one of the cases, to meet which, this very rare and delicate action was intended ? Is this a case where a re- ciprocity of circumstances, of affection, or of years, throw even a shade of rationality over the con- tract ? Do not imagine I mean to insinuate, that under no circumstances ought such a proceeding 1 to be adopted. Do not imagine, though I say this action belongs more naturally to a female, its adoption can never be justified by one of the other sex. Without any great violence to my imagina- tion, I can suppose a man in the very spring of life, when his sensibilities are most acute, and his passions most ardent, attaching himself to some object, young, lovely, talented, and accomplished, concentrating, as he thought, every charm of per- sonal perfection, and in whom those charms were only heightened by the modesty that veiled them ; perhaps his preference was encouraged ; his affec- tion returned ; his very sigh echoed, until he was conscious of his existence but by the soul-creat- ing sympathy until the world seemed but the re- sidence of his love, and that love the principle that gave it animation until, before the smile of her affection, the whole spectral train of 'sorrow vanished, and this world of woe, with all its cares and miseries and crimes, brightened as by en- chantment into anticipated paradise ! ! It might happen that this divine affection might be crush- ed, and that heavenly vision wither into air at the hell -en gendered pestilence of parental avarice, N 2 3 gO SPEECH IN THE CASE OF leaving youth and health, and worth and happi- ness, a sacrifice to its unnatural and mercenary caprices. Far am I from saying 1 , that such a case would not call for expiation, particularly where the punishment fell upon the very vice in which the ruin had originated. Yet even there perhaps an honourable mind would rather despise the mean, unmerited desertion. Oh, I am sure a sen- sitive mind would rather droop uncomplaining into the grave, than solicit the mockery of a worldly compensation ! But in the case before you, is there the slightest ground for supposing any affection ? Do you believe, if any accident bereft the Defendant of her fortune, that her per- secutor would be likely to retain his constancy ? Do you believe that the marriage thus sought to be enforced, was one likely to promote morality and virtue ? Do you believe that those delicious fruits by which the struggles of social life are sweetened, and the anxieties of parental care al- leviated, were ever once anticipated ? Do you think that such an union could exhibit those re- ciprocities of love and endearment by which this tender rite should be consecrated and recom- mended ? Do you not rather believe that it origi- nated in avarice that it was promoted by conspi- racy and that it would not perhaps have linger- ed through some months of crime, and then ter- minated in an heartless and disgusting abandon- ment ? Gentlemen, these are the questions which you will discuss in your Jury-roorn. I am not afraid of your decision. Remember I ask you for- no BLAKE r. WILKINS. 181 mitigation of damages. Nothing less than vour o v verdict will satisfy me. By that verdict you will sustain the dignity of your sex by that verdict you will uphold the honour of the national cha- racter l>y that verdict you will assure, not only the immense multitude of both sexes that thus so unusually crowds around you, but the whole rising generation of your country, That Marriage can never be attended with Honour or blessed with Happiness, if it has not its origin in mutual affection. I surrender with confidence my case to your decision. [The Damages were laid at 5,000, and the Plaintiff's Coun- sel were, in the end, contented to withdraw a Juror, and let him pay his own Costs.] A CHARACTER OF DOWN TO THE PERIOD OF HIS EXILE TO ELBA. HE is FALLEN ! We may now pause before that splendid pro- digy, which towered amongst us like some anci- ent ruin, whose frown terrified the glance its mag- nificence attracted. Grand, gloomy, and peculiar, he sat upon the throne, a sceptered hermit, wrapt in the solitude of his own originality. A mind bold, independent, and decisive a will, despotic in its dictates an energy that dis- tanced expedition, and a conscience pliable to every touch of interest, marked the outline of this extraordinary character the most extraordi- nary, perhaps, that, in the annals of this world, ever rose, or reigned, or fell. Flung into life, in the midst of a Revolution, that quickened every energy of a people who ac- knowledged no superior, he commenced his CHARACTER OF N. BUONAPARTE. course, a stranger by birth, and a scholar by charity ! With no friend but his sword, and no fortune but his talents, he rushed into the lists where rank, and wealth, and genius had arrayed themselves, and competition fled from him as from the glance of destiny. He knew no motive but interest he acknowledged no criterion but success he worshipped no God but amoition, and with an eastern devotion he knelt at the shrine of his ido- latry. Subsidiary to this, there was no creed that he did not profess, there was no opinion that he did not promulgate ; in the hope of a dynasty, he upheld the crescent ; for the sake of a divorce, he bowed before Cross: the orphan of St. Louis, he became the adopted child of the Republic : and with a parricidal ingratitude, on the ruins both of the throne and the tribune, he reared the fabric of his despotism. A professed Catholic, he imprisoned the Pope; a pretended patriot, he impoverished the country ; and in the name of Brutus*, he grasped without remorse, and wore without shame, the diadem of the Caesars ! Through this pantomime of his policy, Fortune played the clown to his caprices. At his touch, crowns crumbled, beggars reigned, systems va- nished, the wildest theories took the colour of his whim, and all that was venerable, and all th;it was novel, changed places with the rapidity of a drama. Even apparent defeat assumed the appearance of * In his hypocritical cant after Liberty, in the commencement of the Revolution, be assumed the name of Brutus. Proh Pudor ! 184 CHARACTER OF N. BUONAPARTE. of victory his flight from Egypt confirmed his destiny ruin itself only elevated him to empire. But if his fortune Mas great, his genius was transcendent; decision flashed upon his councils; and it was the same to decide and to perform. To inferior intellects, his combinations appeared perfectly impossible, his plans perfectly impracti- cable ; but, in his hands, simplicity marked their developement, and success vindicated their adop- tion. His person partook the character of his mind if the one never yielded in the cabinet, the other never bent in the field. Nature had no obstacles that he did not sur- mount space no opposition that he did not spurn ; and whether amid Alpine rocks, Arabian sands, or polar snows, he seemed proof against peril, and empowered with ubiquity ! The whole continent of Europe trembled at beholding the audacity of his designs, and the miracle of tl eir executioiic Scepticism bowed to the prodigies of his perform- ance; romance assumed the air of history; nor was there aught too incredible for belief, or too fanciful for expectation, when the world saw a subaltern of Corsica waving his imperial flag over her most ancient capitals. All the visions of an- tiquity became common places in his contempla- tion ; kings were his people nations \vere his outposts; and he disposed of courts, and crowns, and camps, and churches, and cabinets, as if they were the titular dignitaries of the chess-board ! Amid all these changes he stood immutable as adamant. It mattered little whether in the field CHARACTER OF N. BUONAPARTE. or the drawing-room with the mob or the levee wearing the jacobin bonnet or the iron crown banishing a Braganza, or espousing a Hapsburgh dictating peace on a raft to the Czar of Russia, or contemplating defeat at the gallows of Leipsic he was still the same military despot ! Cradled in the camp, he was to the last hour the darling of the army ; and whether in the camp or the cabinet he never forsook a friend or forgot a favour. Of all his soldiers, not one abandoned him, till affection was useless, and their first sti- pulation was for the safety of their favourite. They knew well that if he was lavish of them, he was prodigal of himself; and that if he exposed them to peril, he repaid them with plunder. For the soldier, he subsidized every body ; to the peo- ple he made even pride pay tribute. The victo- rious veteran glittered with his gains ; and the ca- pital, gorg'eous with the spoils of art, became the miniature metropolis of the universe. In this wonderful combination, his affectation of litera- ture must not be omitted. The gaoler of the press, he affected the patronage of letters the proscriber of books, be encouraged philosophy the persecutor of authors, and the murderer of printers, he yet pretended to the protection of learning ! the assassin of Palm, the silencer of De Stael, and the denouncer of Kotzebue, he was the friend of David, the benefactor of De Lille, and sent his academic prize to the philosopher of England *. * Sir Humphry Davy was transmitted the first prize of the Academy of Sciences. 186 CHARACTER OF N. BUONAPARTE. Such a medley of contradictions, and at the same time such an individual consistency, were never united in the same character. A Rovalist / a Republican and an Emperor a Mahometan a Catholic and a patron of the Synagogue a Su- baltern and a Sovereign a 7Yaitor and a Ty- rant a Christian and an Infidel he was, through all his vicissitudes, the same stern, impatient, in- flexible original the same mysterious incom- prehensible self the man without a model, and without a shadow. His fall, like his life, baffled all speculation. In short, his whole history was like a dream to the world, and no man can tell how or why he was awakened from the reverie. Such is a faint and feeble picture of NAPOLEON BUONAPARTE, the first (and it is to be hoped the last) Emperor of the French. That he has done much evil there is little doubt; that he has been the origin of much good, there is just as little. Through his means, intentional or not, Spain, Portugal, and France have risen to the blessings of a Free Constitution ; Superstition, has found her grave in the ruins of the Inquisi- tion * ; and the Feudal system, with its whole train of tyrannic satellites, has fled for ever. Kings may learn from him that their safest study, as well as their noblest, is the interest of the people ; the * What melancholy reflections does not this sentence awaken! But three years have elapsed since it was written, and in that short space all the good effected by Napoleon has been erased by the Legitimates, and the most questionable parts of his cha- racter badly imitated! His Successors want nothing but his genius. CHARACTER OF N. BUONAPARTE. people are taught by him that there is no des- potism so stupendous against which they have not a resource ; and to those who would rise upon the ruins of both, he is a living lesson that if ambition can raise them from the lowest station, it can also prostrate them from the highest. SPEECH At a Meeting of the LONDON AUXILIARY BIBLE SOCIETY, HELD AT THE MANSION HOUSE. MY LORD MAYOR, I beg leave to say a few words. Although, my Lord, I had not the honour of being 1 selected either to propose or to second any Resolution, yet as your report has alluded to ray country, I may be permitted to come forward in her name, and offer my sentiments on this interesting occasion. Indeed, n y Lord, when we see the omens which are every day rising-- when we see the scriptures audaciously ridiculed when in this Christian monarchy the den of the Republican nnd the Deist yawns for the unwary in your most pub- lic thoroughfare when marts are ostentatiously opened where the moral poison may be purchased, whose subtle venom enters the very soul when infidelity has become an article of commerce and / man's perdition may be cheapened at the stall of every pedlar, no friend of society should continue silent ; it is no longer a question of political pri- AT THE MANSION HOUSE. vilege, of sectarian controversy, of theological discussion ; it is become a question, whether Christianity itself shall stand, or whether we shall let go the firm anchor of our faith, and drift, without chart, or helrn, or compass, into the shoreless ocean of infidelity and blood ! I despise as much as any man the cant of bigotry. I will go as far as any man for rational liberty : but I will not depose my God to deify the infidel, or tear in pieces the Charter of the State to grope for a Constitution amongst the murky pigeon- holes* of every creedless, lawless, infuriated re- gicide. When I saw, the other day, my Lord, the chief bacchanal of these orgiesf, the man ac- cording to whose modest estimate, the Apostles were cheats, and the Prophets liars, and Moses a murderer, and Jesus an impostor, on his memo- rable trial, withering hour after hour with the most horrid blasphemies, surrounded by the vo- taries of every sect, and the heads of every creed, the Christian Archbishop, the Jewish Rabbi, the men most eminent for their piety and learning whom he had purposely collected to hear his infidel ridicule of all they reverenced. \\ hen I saw him raise the Holy Bible in one hand, and the A^e of Kcason in the other, as it were con- fronting the Almighty with a rebel worm till the pious Judge grew pale, and the patient Jury in- terposed, and the self-convicted wretch- himself, * The reader will, doubtless, recollect the pigeon-holes of the Abbe Sycyes, in which he kept a ready-made Constitution tor every State in Europe. t Mr. R. Carlisle. 190 SPEECH after having raved away all his original impiety, was reduced to a mere machine for the re-pro- duction of the ribald blasphemy of others, I could not help exclaiming " Infatuated man ! if all your impracticable madness could be realized, what would you give us in exchange for our establishments ? What would you substitute for that august tribunal ? for whom would you dis- place that independent Judge and that impartial Jury ? or would you really burn the gospel, and erase the statutes, for the dreadful equivalent of the crucifix and the guillotine {" Indeed, if I was asked for a practical panegyric on our con- stitution, I would adduce the very trial of that criminal, and if the legal annals of any country upon earth furnished an instance not merely of such justice but of such patience, such forbear- ance, such almost culpable indulgence, I would concede to him the triumph. I hope too in what I say I shall not be considered as forsaking that illustrious example ; I hope I am above an insult, on any man in his situation perhaps had I the power I would humble him into an evidence of the very spirit he spurned, and as our creed was reviled in his person, and vindicated in his con- viction, so I would give it its noblest triumph in his sentence, and merely consign him to the punishment of its mercy. But, indeed, my Lord, the fate of this half-infidel, half-trading martyr, matters very little in comparison of that of the thousands he has corrupted. He has literally disseminated a moral plague against which even the nation's quarantine can scarce avail us. It AT THE MANSION HOUSE. has poisoned the fresh blood of infancy, it has disheartened the last hope of age ; if his own ac- count of its circulation be correct, hundreds of thousands must be this instant tainted with the infectious venom, whose sting" dies not with the destruction of the body Imagine not because the pestilence does not strike at once, that its fatality is the less certain; imagine not because the lowest orders are the earliest victims, that the more elevated will not suffer in their turn. The most mortal chillness begins at the extremities, and you may depend upon it nothing but time and apathy is wanting to change this healthful land into a charnel-house, where murder, anar- chy, prostitution, and the whole hell brood of infidelity will quaff the heart's blood of the con- secrated and the noble. My Lord, I am the more indignant at these designs, because they are sought to be concealed in the disguise of Liberty. It is the duty of every real friend to liberty to tear her mask from the fiend who has usurped it. No, no ; this is not our island god- dess, bearing the mountain's freshness on her cheek, and scattering the valley's bounty from her hand, known by the lights that herald her fair presence, the peaceful virtues that attend her path, and the long blaze of glory that lingers in her train it is a demon speaking fair indeed^ tempting our faith with airy hopes and visionary realms, but even within the foldings of its mantle hiding the bloody symbol of its purpose. Hear not its sophistry guard your child against it draw round your home the consecrated circle 192 SPEECH which it dare not enter. You will find an amulet in the religion of your country it is the great mound raised by the Almighty for the protection of humanity it stands between you and the lava of human passions ; and, oh, believe me, if you stand tamely by while it is basely undermined, the fiery deluge will roll on, before which, all that you hold dear, or venerable, or sacred, will wither into ashes. Believe no one who tells you that the friends of freedom are now, or ever were, the enemies of religion they know too well that rebellion against God cannot prove the basis of government for man, and that the proudest struc- ture impiety can raise, is but the Babel monument of its impotency and its pride, mocking the builders with a moment's strength, and then covering them with inevitable confusion. Do you want an example, only look to France the microscopic vision of your rabble blasphemers has not sight enough to contemplate the mighty minds which commenced her revolution the wit, the sage, the orator, the hero, the whole family of genius furnished forth their treasures, and gave them nobly to a nation's exigence. They had great provocation they had a glorious cause they had all that human potency could give them ; but they relied too much on this human potency they abjured their God, and as a na- tural consequence they murdered their King; they culled their polluted deities from the brothel, and the fall of the idol extinguished the flame of the altar they crowded the scaffold with all that their country held of genius or of virtue, and AT THE MANSION HOUSE. 193 when the peerage and the prelacy were ex- hausted, the mob executioner of to-day became the mob victim of to-morrow. No sex was spared no age respected no suffering pitied ; and all this they did in the sacred name of liberty ; though, in the deluge of human blood, they left not a mountain-top for the ark of liberty to rest on. But Providence was neither " dead nor sleeping ;" it mattered not that for a moment their impiety seemed to prosper that victory panted after their ensanguined banners that as their insatiate eagle soared against the sun, he seemed but to replume his wing and to renew his vision it was only for a moment, and you see at last that in the very banquet of their triumph the Almighty's vengeance blazed upon the wall, and the diadem fell from the brow of the idolater. My Lord, I will not abjure the altar, the throne, and the constitution, the substantial blessings which ages have at once matured and consecrated, for the bloody tinsel of this revo- lutionary pantomime. I prefer my God even to the impious democracy of their pantheon. I will not desert my King even for the political equality of their pandemonium. I must see some better authority than the Fleet Street temple* before I forego the principles which I imbibed in my youth, and to which I look forward as the con- solation of my age those all-protecting princi- * It was in Fleet Street that the shop of Carlisle was situated. Over the door were emblazoned in gold letters, "Temple of the Republican and the Deist," and within was a full length statue of Paine, leaning on a globe. O 194 SPEECH .pies which at once guard, and consecrate, and ssweeten the social intercourse, which give life, happiness, and death, hope ; which constitute man's purity his best protection, and place the infant's cradle and the female's couch beneath the sacred shelter of the national morality. Neither Mr. Paine nor Mr. Palmer *, nor all the venom- foreathing brood shall swindle from me the book where I have learned these precepts. In despite of all their scoif and scorn, and menacing, I say of the sacred volume they would obliterate, that it is a book of facts as well authenticated as any heathen history a book of miracles, incontestibly avouched a book of prophecy, confirmed by past as well as present fulfilment a book of poetry, pure, and natural, and elevated, even to inspiration a book of morals, such as human wisdom never formed for the perfection of human happiness. My Lord, I will abide by the pre- cepts, admire the beauty, revere the mysteries, and, as far as in me lies, practise the mandates of this sacred volume; and, should the ridicule of earth and the blasphemy of hell assail me, I shall console myself by the contemplation of those blessed spirits who in the same holy cause have toiled, and shone, and suffered. In " the goodly fellowship of the saints," in " the noble army of the martyrs," in the society of the great and good and wise of every nation, if my sinful- ness be not cleansed, and my darkness illumined, at least my pretensionless submission may be excused. If I err with the luminaries I have chosen for my guide, I confess myself captivated * An American philosopher. AT THE MANSION HOUSE* 195 by the loveliness of their aberrations if they wander, it is in fields of light ; if they aspire, it is, at all events, a glorious daring ; and, rather than sink with infidelity into the dust, I am con- tent even to cheat myself with their vision of eternity. It may, indeed, be nothing but delu- sion, but then I err with the. disciples of philo- sophy and of virtue with men who have drank deep at the fountain of human knowledge, but ^who dissolved not the pearl of their salvation in the draught. I err with Bacon the great con- fidant of nature, fraught with all the learning of the past, and almost prescient of the future, yet too wise not to know his weakness, and too phi- losophic not to feel his ignorance. I err with Milton rising on an angel's wing to heaven, and like the bird of morn soaring out of sight amid the music of his grateful piety. I err with Locke, whose pure philosophy only taught him to adore its source whose warm love of genuine liberty was never chilled into rebellion against its au- thor. I err with Newton, whose star-like spirit shooting athwart the darkness of this sphere, too soon re-ascended to the home of his nativity. With men like these, my Lord, I shall remain in error, nor shall I desert those errors even for the drunken death-bed of a Paine, or the delirious war-whoop of the surviving fiends who would erect his altar on the ruins of society. In my opinion it is difficult to say, whether their tenets are more ludicrous or more detestable ; they will not obey the king, or the parliament, or the con- stitution, but they will obey anarchy. They will o 2 196 SPEECH. not believe in the Prophets, in Moses, in the Apostles, nor in Christ ; but they believe Tom Paine. With no government but confusion, and no creed but scepticism, I believe, in iny soul, they would abjure the one, if it became legiti- mate, and rebel against the other if it was once established. Holding, my Lord, opinions such as these, I should consider myself culpable at such a crisis if I did not declare them. A lover of my country, I yet draw a line between pa- triotism and rebellion a warm friend to libertv of conscience, I will not extend my toleration to the diffusion of infidelity ; with all its imputed am- biguity I shall die in the doctrines of the Christian faith, and with all its errors I am well contented to live beneath the glorious safeguard of the British Constitution. SPEECH DELIVERED AT A SPLENDID COMPLIMENTARY DINNER GIVEN TO THE IRISH LEGION BY THE FRIENDS OF SOUTH AMERICAN FREEDOM, AT MORRISO* 7 'S HOTEL, DUBLIN. My Lord and Gentlemen, I sincerely thank you : to be remembered when my countrymen are celebrating the cause of free- dom and humanity, cannot fail to be grateful ; to be so remembered, when a personal and valued friend is the object of the celebration, carries with it a double satisfaction ; and you will allow me to say, that if any thing could enhance the pleasure of such feelings, it is the consciousness that our meeting can give just offence to no one. Topics too often have risen up amongst us, where the best feelings were painfully at variance: where silence would have been guilt, and utter- ance was misery. But surely here, at length, is 198 SPEECH ON an occasion where neither sect nor party are opposed ; where every man in the country may clasp his brother by the hand, and feel and boast the electric communication. To unmanacle the slave, to unsceptre the despot, to erect an altar on the Inquisition's grave, to raise a people to the attitude of freedom, to found the temples of science and of commerce, to create a constitution, beneath whose ample arch every human creature, no matter what his sect, his colour, or his clime, may stand sublime in the dignity of manhood these are the glorious objects of this enterprise ; and the soul must be imbruted, and the heart must be ossified, which does not glow with the ennobling sympathy. Where is the slave so ab- ject as to deny it ? Where is the statesman who can rise from the page of Spanish South America, and affect to commiserate the fall of Spain ? Her tyranny, even from its cradle to its decline, has been the indelible disgrace of Christianity and of Europe ; it was born in fraud, baptized in blood, and reared by rapine ; it blasphemed all that was holy it cankered all that was happy ; the most simple habits the most sacred institutions the most endeared and inoffensive customs., escaped not inviolate the accursed invader; the hearth, the throne, the altar, lay confounded in one com- mon ruin ; and when the innocent children of the sun confided for a moment in the Christian's promise, what! oh, shame to Spain ! oh, horror to Christianity ! oh, eternal stigma on the name of Europe ! what did they behold? the plunder of their fortunes the desolation of their houses SOUTH AMERICAN FREEDOM. the ashes of their cities their children mur- dered without distinction of sex the ministers of their faith expiring* amid tortures the person of their Ynca, their loved, their sacred, their heroic Ynca, quivering in death upon a burning- fur- nace ; and the most natural and the most excu- sable of all idolatries, their consecrated sun-beam, clouded by the murky smoke of an inquisition steaming with human gore, and raised upon the ruins of all that they held holy ! These were the feats of Spain in South America ! This is the fiery and despotic sway, for which an execrable tyrant solicits British neutrality. Ireland, at least, has given her answer. An armed legion of her chosen youth bears it at this hour in thunder on the waters, and the sails are swelling for their brave companions. I care not if his tyranny was ten thousand times more crafty, more vigilant, more ferocious than it is when a people will it, their liberation is inevitable their very inflictions will be converted into the instru- ments of their freedom they will write its char- ter even in the blood of their stripes they will turn their chains into the weapons of their eman- cipation. If it were possible still more to animate them, let them only think on the tyrant they have to combat that odious concentration of qualities at once the most opposite, and the most con- temptible timid and sanguinary effeminate and ferocious impious and superstitious now em- broidering a petticoat, now imprisoning an hero to-day kneeling to a God of mercy, to-morrow lighting the hell of inquisition at noon embra- 200 SPEECH ON cing his ministerial pander, at midnight starting from a guilty dream, to fulminate his banishment the alternate victim of his fury and his fears faithful only to an infidel priestcraft, which ex- cites his terrors and fattens on his crimes, and affects to worship the anointed slave as he trem- bles enthroned on the bones of his benefactors. Who can sympathize with such a monster ? Who can see unmoved a mighty empire writhing in the embraces of this human Boa? My very heart grows faint within me when I think how many thousands of my gallant countrymen have fallen to crown him with that ensanguined diadem when I reflect that genius wrote, and eloquence spoke, and valour fought, and fidelity died for him, while he was tasting the bitterness of cap- tivity ; and that his ungrateful restoration has literally withered his realm into a desert, where the widow and orphan weep his sway, and the sceptre waves, not to govern but to crush ! Never, my Lord, never, whether we contem- plate the good they have to achieve, the evil they have to overcome, or the wrongs they have to avenge never did warriors march in a more sacred contest. Their success may be uncertain, but it is not uncertain that every age and clirne will bless their memories, for their sword is gar- landed with freedom's flowers, patriotism gives them an immortal bloom, and piety breathes on them an undying fragrance. Let the tyrant me- nace, and the hireling bark, wherever Chris- tianity kneels, or freedom breathes, their deeds shall be recorded ; and when their honoured dust SOUTH AMERICAN FREEDOM. 201 is gathered to its fathers, millions they have re- deemed will be their mourners, and an eman- cipated hemisphere their enduring monument. Go, then, soldiers of Ireland, " Go where glory waits you." The Ynca's spirit*, from his bed of coals, through the mist of ages calls to you for vengeance ; the patriot Cortes, in their dungeon vaults, invoke your retribution ; the graves of your brave coun- trymen, trampled by tyranny, where they died for freedom, are clamorous for revenge ! Go - plant the banner of green on the summit of the Andes. May victory guide, and mercy ever follow it ! If you should triumph, the consummation will be liberty ; and in such a contest should you even perish, it will be as martyrs perish, in the blaze of your own glory. Yes, you shall sink, like the sun of the Peruvians, whom you seek to liberate, amid the worship of a people, and the tears of a world ; and you will rise re-animate, refulgent, and immortal ! * Mr. Phillips here alludes to the fate of one of the most unfortunate and the most heroic of the sovereigns of Mexico. The Spaniards trepanned him into their power, and stretched him upon a bed of red hot coals ! When he was expiring, he turned to one of his followers, whose tortures made him shriek " Look at your Ynca, (said he mildly), do you think I am on a bed of roses V SPEECH IN THE CASE OF BROWNE v. BLAKE. My Lord and Gentlemen, I AM instructed by the Plaintiff to lay this case before you, and little do I wonder at the great interest which it seems to have excited. It is one of those cases which come home to the " business and the bosoms" of mankind ; it is not confined to the individuals concerned ; it visits every circle from the highest to the lowest ; it alarms the very heart of the community, and commands the whole social family to the spot, where human nature, prostrated at the bar of justice, calls aloud for pity and protection. On my first addressing a jury on a subject of this nature, I took the high ground to which I. deemed myself entitled ; I stood upon the purity of the national character ; I relied upon that chas- tity which centuries had made proverbial, and almost drowned the cry of individual suffering ia BROWNE e. BLAKE. 203 the violated reputation of the country. Humbled and abashed, I must resign the topic indignation at the novelty of the offence, has given way to horror at the frequency of its repetition it is now becoming almost fashionable amongst us we are importing the follies, and naturalizing the vices of the continent scarcely a term passes in these courts, during which some abashed adulterer or seducer, does not announce himself, improving on the odiousness of his offence, by the profligacy of his justification, and, as it were, struggling to record, by crimes, the desolating progress of our barbarous civilization. Gentlemen, if this be suffered to continue, what home shall be safe; what hearth shall be sacred ; what parent can for a moment calculate on the possession of his child; what child shall be secure against the orphanage that springs from prostitution ; what solitary right, whether of life, or liberty, or property in the land shall survive amongst us, if that hallowed couch which modesty has veiled, and love endeared, and religion consecrated, is to be invaded by a vulgar and promiscuous libertinism? A time there was when that couch was inviolable in Ireland when conjugal infidelity was deemed but */ V an invention when marriage was considered as a sacrament of the heart, and faith and affection sent a mingled flame together from the altar! Are such times to dwindle into a legend of tra- dition ? Are the dearest rights of man, and the holiest ordinances of God, no more to be res- pected ? Is the marriage vow to become the prelude to perjury and prostitution ? Shall our 204 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF enjoyments debase themselves into an adulterous participation, and our children propagate an in- cestuous community ? Hear the case which I am fated to unfold, and then tell me whether that endearing confidence, by which the bitterness of this life is sweetened, is to become the instrument of perfidy beyond conception ; and whether the protection of the roof, the fraternity of the board, the obligations of the altar, and the devotions of the heart, are to be so many panders to the hellish abominations they should have purified ! Hear the case which must go forth to the world, but which I trust in God your verdict will accompany, to tell that world, that if there was vice enough amongst us to commit the crime, there is virtue enough to brand it with an indignant punish- ment. Of the Plaintiff, Mr. Browne, it is quite im- possible but you must have heard much : his misfortune has given him a sad celebrity, and it does seem a peculiar incident to such misfortune that the loss of happiness is almost invariably suc- ceeded by the deprivation of character. As the less guilty murderer will hide the corpse that may lead to his detection, so does the adulterer, by obscuring the reputation of his victim, seek to diminish the moral responsibility he has incurred. Mr. Browne undoubtedly forms no exception to this system, betrayed by his friend and abandoned by his wife, his too generous confidence, his too tender love, have been 'slanderously perverted into the sources of his calamity; because he could not tyrannise over her whom he adored, he was BIJOWNE v. BLAKE. 205 careless ; because he could not suspect him in whom he trusted, he was conniving- ; and crime, in the infatuation of its cunning, founds its justifi- cation even on the virtues of its victim ! I am not deterred by the prejudice thus cruelly excited ; I appeal from the gossiping credulity of scandal to the grave decisions of fathers and of husbands, and I implore of you, as you value the blessings of your home, not to countenance the calumny which solicits a precedent to excuse their spoli- ation. At the close of the year 1809, the death of my client's father gave him the inheritance of an ample fortune. Of all the joys his prosperity created, there was none but yielded to the extacy of sharing it with her he loved, the daughter of his father's ancient friend, the respectable pro- prietor of Oran Castle. She was then in the very spring of life, and never did the sun of heaven unfold a lovelier blossom her look was beauty and her breath was fragrance the eye that saw her caught a lustre from the vision ; and all the virtues seem to linger round her, like so many spirits enamoured of her loveliness. " Yes, she was good, as she was fair, None, none on earth above her ; As pure in thought as angels are, To see her was to Ibve her." What years of tongueless transport might not her happy husband have anticipated ! What one addition could her beauties gain to render them all perfect! In the connubial rapture there was only one, and she was blest with it. A lovely 206 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF family of infant children gave her the consecrated name of mother, and with it all that heaven can give of interest to this world's worthlessness. Can the mind imagine a more delightful vision than that of such a mother, thus young, thus lovely, thus beloved, blessing 1 a husband's heart, basking in a world's smile; and while she breathed into her little ones the moral life, shewing them that, robed in all the light of beauty, it was still possible for their virtues to be cast into the shade. Year after year of happiness rolled on, and every year but added to their love a pledge to make it happier than the former. Without ambition but for her husband's love, without one object but her children's happiness, this lovely woman cir- cled in her orbit all bright, all beauteous in the prosperous hour, and if that hour e'er darkened, only beaming the brighter and the lovelier. What human hand could mar so pure a picture ! What punishment could adequately visit its violation ! " Oh happy love, where love like this is found I Oh heart-felt rapture ! bliss beyond compare !" It was indeed the summer of their lives, and with it came the swarm of summer friends, that revel in the sunshine of the hour, and vanish with its splendour. High and honoured in that crowd; most gay, most cherished, most professing, stood the Defendant, Mr. Blake. He was the Plaintiff's dearest, fondest friend ; to every pleasure' called, in every case consulted, his day's companion and his evening guest, his constant, trusted, bosom confidant, and under guise of all oh, human BROWNE r. BLAKE. O()7 nature! lie was his fellest, deadliest, final enemy ! Here on the authority of this brief, do I arraign him, of having wound himself into my client's intimacy, of having encouraged that intimacy into friendship, of having counterfeited a sympathy in his joys and his sorrows ; and when he seemed too pure even for scepticism to doubt him, of having, under the sanctity of his roof, perpetrated an adultery the most unprecedented and per- fidious ! If this be true, can the world's wealth defray the penalty of such turpitude ? Mr. Browne, Gentlemen, was a man of fortune, he had no pro- fession, was ignorant of every agricultural pursuit, and, unfortunately adopting the advice of his father-in-law, he cultivated the amusements of the Currah *. I say unfortunately for his own affairs, and by no means in reference for the pursuit itself. It is not for me to libel an occupation which the highest, and noblest, and most illustrious throughout the empire, countenance by their adoption ; which fashion and virtue grace by its attendance, and in which, peers, and legislators, and princes, are not ashamed to appear conspi- cuous. But if the morality that countenances it be doubtful, by what epithet shall we designate that which would make it an apology for the most profligate of offences? Even if Mr. Browne's pursuits were ever so erroneous, was it for his bosom friend to take the advantage of them to ruin him ? On this subject it is sufficient to re- mark, that under no circumstance of -prosperity or vicissitude, w : as their connubial happiness ever even remotely clouded. In fact, the Plaintiff dis- * The Irish Newmarket. 203 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF regarded even the amusements that deprived him of her society. He took a house for her in the vicinity of Kildare, furnished it^with all that luxury could require, and afforded her the greatest of all luxuries, that of enjoying 1 and enhancing his most prodigal affection. From the hour of their marriage, up to the unfortunate discovery, they lived on terms of the utmost tenderness ; not a word, except one of love ; not an act, ex- cept of mutual endearment passed between them. Now, Gentlemen, if this be proved to you, here I take my stand, and I say, under no earthly cir- cumstances, can a justification of the adulterer be adduced. No matter with what delinquent so- phistry he may blaspheme through its palliation ; God ordained, nature cemented, happiness con- secrated that celestial union ; and it is compli- cated treason against God and man, and society, to intend its violation. The social compact, through every fibre trembles at its consequences ; not only policy but law, not only law but nature, not only nature but religion, deprecate and de- nounce it. Parent and offspring, youth and age ; the dead from their tombs, the child from its cradle; creatures scarce alive, and creatures still unborn ; the grandsire shivering on the verge of death, the infant quickening in the mother's womb ; all with one assent, re-echo God, and ex- ecrate adultery ! I say, then, where it is once proved that husband and wife live together in a state of happiness, no contingency on which the sun can shine, can warrant any man in attempting their separation. Did they do so ? This is im- BROWNE . BLAKE. 209 peratively your first consideration. I only hope that all the heart's religion joined together, may have enjoyed the happiness they did. Prosperous and wealthy, fortune had no charms for Mr. Browne, but as it blessed the object of his affec- tions. She made success delightful ; she gave his wealth its value. The most splendid equi- pages ; the most costly luxuries ; the richest re- tinue ; all that vanity could invent to dazzle all that affection could devise to gratify, were hers, and thought too vile for her enjoyment. Great as his fortune was, his love outshone it, and it seems as if fortune was jealous of the preference. Proverbially capricious, she withdrew her smile, and left him shorn almost of every thing except his love, and the fidelity that crowned it. The hour of adversity is woman's hour ; in the full blaze of fortune's rich meridian her modest beam retires from vulgar notice, but when the clouds of woe collect around us, and shades and darkness dim the wanderer's path, that chaste and lovely light shines forth to cheer him, an emblem and an emanation of the heavens ! It was then her love, her value, and her power was visible. No, it is not for the cheerfulness with which she bore the change 1 prize her ; it is not that without a sigh she surrendered all the baubles of prosperity ; but that she pillowed her poor husband's heart, welcomed adversity to make him happy, held up her little children as the wealth that no adversity could take away ; and when she found his spirit broken and his soul de- SPEECH IN THE CASE OF jected, with a more than masculine understanding, retrieved in some degree his desperate fortunes, and saved the little wreck that solaced their re- tirement. What was such a woman worth, I ask you ? If you can stoop to estimate by dross the worth of such a creature give me even a notary's calculation, and tell me then what was she worth to him to whom she had consecrated the bloom of her youth, the charm of her innocence, the splendour of her beauty, the wealth of her tender- ness, the power of her genius, the treasure of her fidelity ? She, the mother of his children ; the pulse of his heart ; the joy of his prosperity ; the solace of his misfortunes ; what was she worth to him ? Fallen as she is you may still estimate her; you may see her value even in her ruin. The gem is sullied ; the diamond is shivered ; but even in the dust you may see the magnificence of its ma- terial. After this they retired to Rockville, their seat in the county of Galway, where they resided in the most domestic manner, on the remnant of their once splendid establishment. The butterflies that in their noontide fluttered round them, va- nished at the first breath of their adversity ; but one early friend still remained faithful and affec- tionate, and that was the Defendant. Mr. Blake is a young gentleman of about eight and twenty ; of splendid fortune; polished in his manners ; interesting in his appearance ; with many qualities to attach a friend, and every qua- lity to fascinate a female. Most willingly do I pay the tribute which nature claims for him; BROWNE r. BLAKE. 211 most bitterly do I lament that he has been so un- grateful to so prodigal a benefactress. The more Mr. Browne's misfortunes accumulated, the more disinterestedly attached did Mr. Blake appear to him. He shared with him his purse ; he assisted him with his council ; in an affair of honour, he placed his life and character in his hands : he in- troduced his innocent sister, just arrived from an English nunnery, into the family of his friend ; he encouraged every reciprocity of intercourse between the females, and to crown all, that no possible suspicion might attach to him, he seldom travelled without his domestic chaplain ! Now, if it shall appear that all this was only a screen for his adultery that he took advantage of his friend's misfortunes to seduce the wife of his bosom that he affected confidence only to betray it that he perfected the wretchedness he pre- tended to console, and that in the midst of poverty, he has left his victim, friendless, hopeless, com- panionless, a husband without a wife, and a father without a child gracious God ! is it not enough to turn mercy herself into an executioner ? You convict for murder here is the hand that mur- dered innocence \- You convict for treason here is the vilest disloyalty to friendship ! You con- vict for robbery here is one who plundered virtue of her purest pearl, and dissolved it even in the bowl that hospitality held out to him ! They pretend that he is innocent ! Oh, effrontery the most unblushing ! Oh, vilest insult, added to the deadliest injury ! Oh, base, detestable, p 2 212 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF and damnable hypocrisy ! Of the final testimony it is true enough their cunning has deprived us ; but, under Providence, I will pour upon this baseness such a flood of light, that 1 will defy not the most honourable man merely, but the most charitable sceptic, to touch the Holy Evangelists, and to say, by their sanctity, it has not been com- mitted. Attend upon me now, Gentlemen, step by step, and with me rejoice that, no matter how cautious may be the conspiracies of guilt, there is a power above to confound and to discover them. On the 27th January last, Mary Hines, one of the domestics, received directions from Mrs. Browne, to have breakfast very early on the en- suing morning, as the Defendant, then on a visit at the house, expressed an inclination to go out to hunt. She was accordingly brushing down the stairs at a very early hour, when she observed the handle of her mistress's door stir, and fearing the noise had disturbed her, she ran hastily down stairs to avoid her displeasure. She remained below about three-quarters of an hour, when her master's bell ringing violently, she hastened to answer it. He asked in some alarm where her mistress was ? Naturally enough astonished at such a question at such an hour, she said she knew not, but would go down and see whether or not she was in the parlour. Mr. Browne, how- ever, had good reason to be alarmed, for she was so extremely indisposed going to bed at night that an express stood actually prepared to bring medical aid from Gal way, unless .-she appeared BROWNE r. BLAKE. 213 better. An unusual depression both of mind and body preyed upon Mrs. Browne on the preceding* evening. She frequently burst into tears, threw her arms round her husband's neck, saying that she was sure another month would separate her for ever from him and her dear children. It was no accidental omen. Too surely the warning of Providence was upon her. When the maid was going down, Mr. Blake appeared at his door totally undressed, and in a tone of much confu- sion, desired that his servant should be sent up to him. She went down as she w.as about to return from her ineffectual search, she heard her master's voice in the most violent indignation, and almost immediately after Mrs. Browne rushed past her into the parlour, and hastily seizing her writing-desk desired her instantly to quit the apartment. Gentlemen, I request you will bear every syllable of this scene in your recollection, but most particularly the anxiety about the writing- desk. You will soon find that there was a cogent reason for it. Little was the wonder that Mr. .Browne's tone should be that of violence and in-' dignation. He had actually discovered his wife and friend totally undressed, just as they had escaped from the guilty bed-side, where they stood in all the shame and horror of their situation ! He shouted for her brother ! and that miserable brother had the agony of witnessing* his guilty sister in the bed-room of her paramour, both almost literally in a state of nudity. " Blake ! Blake !" exclaimed the heart-struck husband, *' is this the return you have made for my hospi- 214 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF tality?" Oh heavens ! what a reproach was there I' It was not merely, you have dishonoured my bed it was not merely, you have sacrificed my happiness it was not merely, you have widowed me in my youth, and left me the father of aa orphan family it was not merely, you have vio- lated a compact to which all the world swore a tacit veneration but, you you have done it, my friend, my guest, under the very roof barba- rians reverence ; where you enjoyed my table, where you pledged my happiness ; where you saw her in all the loveliness of her virtue, and at the very hour when our little helpless children were wrapt in that repose of which you have for ever robbed their miserable parents ! I do confess when I paused here in the perusal of these in- structions, the very life blood froze within my veins. What ! said I, must I not only reveal this guilt! must I not only expose this perfidy ! must I not only brand the infidelity of a wife and mother, but must I, amid the agonies of outraged nature, make the brother the proof of the sister's prosti- tution ! Thank God, Gentlemen, I may not be obliged to torture you and him and myself, by such instrumentality. I think the proof is full without it, though it must add another pang to the soul of the poor Plaintiff, because it must render it almost impossible that his little infants are not the brood of this adulterous depravity. It will be distinctly proved to you by Honoria Bren- nan, another of the servants, that one night, so far back as the May previous to the last mentioned BROWNE r. BLAKE. occurrence, when she was in the act of arranging llie beds, she saw Mr. Blake come up stairs, look cautiously about him, go to Mrs. Browne's bed- room door, and tap at it; that immediately after, Mrs. Browne went, with no other covering than her shift, to Mr. Blake's bed-chamber, where the guilty parties locked themselves up together. Terrified and astonished, the maid retired to the servant's apartments, and, in about a quarter of an hour after, she saw Mrs. Browne in the same habiliments return from the bed-room of Blake into her husband's. Gentlemen, it was by one of those accidents which so often accompany and occasion the developement of guilt, that we have arrived at this evidence. It was very natural that she did not wish to reveal it ; very natural that she did not wish to expose her mistress, or afflict her unconscious master with the recital ; very na- tural that she did not desire to be the instrument of so frightful a discovery. However, when she found that concealment was out of the question ; that this action was actually in progress, and that the guilty delinquent was publicly triumphing in the absence of proof, and through an herd of slanderous dependents, cruelly vilifying the cha- racter of his victim, she sent a friend to Mr. Browne, and in his presence and that of two others, solemnly disclosed her melancholy in- formation. Gentlemen, I do entreat of you to examine this woman, though she is an uneducated peasant, with all severity, because, if she speaks the truth, I think you will agree with me that so horrible a complication of iniquity never disgraced 216 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF the annals of a court of justice. He had just risen from the table of his friend ; he left his own bro- ther and that friend behind him, and even from the very board of his hospitality, he proceeded to the defilement of his bed ! Of mere adultery I had heard before. It was bad enough ; a breach of all law, religion, and morality; but what shall I call this? that seduced innocence insulted misfortune betrayed friendship violated hospi- tality tore up the very foundation of human na- ture, and hurled its fragments at the violated altar, as if to bury religion beneath the ruins of society ? Oh, it is guilt that might put a demon to the blush ! Does our proof rest here ? No though the mind must be sceptical that, after this, could doubt. A guilty correspondence was carried on between the parties, and though its contents were destroyed by Mrs. Browne on the morning of the discovery, still we shall authenticate the fact be- yond suspicion. You shall hear it from the very messenger they entrusted you shall hear from him, too, that the wife and the adulterer both bound him to the strictest secrecy, at once estab- lishing their own collusion and their victim's ig- norance, proving by the very anxiety of conceal- ment, the impossibility of connivance ; so true it is that the conviction of guilt will often proceed even from the stratagem for its security. Does jur proof rest here ? No you shall have it from a gentleman of unimpeachable veracity, that the Defendant himself confessed the discovery in his bed-room " I will save him," said he, " the BROWNE r. BLAKE. 217 trouble of proving it she was in her shift and I was in my shirt I know very well a jury will award damages against me ask Browne will he agree to compromise it he owes me some money, and I will give him the overplus in horses!" Can you imagine any thing more abominable ; he se- duced from his friend the idol of his soul, and the mother of his children, and when he was writhing under the recent wound, he deliberately offers him brutes in compensation ! I will not depre- ciate this cruelty by any comment ; yet the very brute he would barter for that unnatural mother, would have lost its life rather than desert its offspring. Now, Gentlemen, what rational mind but must spurn the asseveration of innocence after this ? Why the anxiety about the writing desk ? Why a clandestine correspondence with her hus- band's friend ? Why remain at two different periods for a quarter of an hour together in a gentleman's bed-chamber with no other habili- ment at one time than her bed-dress at another than her shift ? Is this to be a precedent for your wives and daughters, sanctioned too by you, their parents and their husbands ? Why did he confess that a verdict for damages must go against him* and make the offer of that unfeeling compromise? Was it for concealment ? The transaction was as common as the air he breathed. Was it because he was innocent ? The very offer was a judgment by default, a distinct, undeniable corroboration of his guilt. Was it that the female's character should not suffer? Could there be a more trum- pet-tongued proclamation of her criminality ? Are SPEECH IN THE CASE OF our witnesses suborned ? Let his army of counsel sift and torture them. Can they prove it ? Oh, yes, if it be proveable, let them produce her bro- ther in our hands a damning proof to be sure; but then how frightful, afflicting, unnatural ; in theirs, the most consolatory and delightful the vindication of calumniated innocence, and that innocence, the innocence of a sister. Such is the leading outline of our evidence evidence which you will only wonder is so convincing in a case whose very nature presupposes the most cautious secrecy. The law, indeed, Gentlemen, duly esti- mating the difficulty of final proof in this species of action, has recognized the validity of inferential evidence; but on that subject his lordship must direct you. Do they rely then on the ground of innocency ? If they do, I submit to you on the authority of law, that inferential evidence is quite sufficient ; and on the authority of reason, that in this parti- cular case, the inferential testimony amounts to demonstration. Amongst the innumerable ca- lumnies afloat, it has been hinted to me, indeed, that they mean also to rely upon what they deno- minate the indiscretion of the husband. The moment they have the hardihood to resort to that, they of course abandon all denial of delinquency, and even were it fully proved, it is then worth your most serious consideration, whether you will tolerate such a defence as that. It is in my mind beyond all endurance, that any man should dare to come into a court of justice, and on the shadowy pretence of what he may term carelessness, BROWNE r. BLAKE. 219 ground the most substantial and irreparable in- jury. Against the unmanly principle of conjugal severity, in the name of civilized society, I so- lemnly protest It is not fitted for the meridian, and I hope will never amalgamate itself with the manners of this country it is the most ungene- rous and insulting suspicion, reduced into the most unmanly and despotic practice : " Let barbarous nations, whose inhuman love Is wild desire, fierce as the suns they feel; Let Eastern tyrants, from the light of heaven Seclude their bosom slaves, meanly possessed Of a mere lifeless, violated form While those whom love cements in holy faith, And equal transport, free as nature live Disdaining fear." But once establish the principle of this moral and domestic censorship, and then tell me, where is it to begin ? Where is it to end ? Who shall bound who shall define it? By what hitherto undiscoverable standard shall we regulate the shades between solemnity and levity ? Will you permit this impudent espionage upon your house- holds ? upon the hallowed privacy of your domestic hours? and for what purpose? Why that the seducer and the adulterer may calculate the secu- rity of his cold-blooded libertinism ! that he may steal like an assassin upon your hours of re- laxation, and convert perhaps your confidence into the instrument of your ruin ! If this be once permitted as a ground of justification, we may bid farewell at once to all the delightful intercourse of social life. Spurning as I do at this odious 220 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF system of organized distrust, suppose the admis- sion made, that my client was careless, indiscreet, culpable, if they will, in his domestic regulations, is it therefore to be endured, that every abandoned burg-lar, should seduce his wife, or violate his daughter? Is it to be endured, that Mr. Blake, of all men, should rely on such an infa- mous and convenient extenuation ? He his friend his guest his confidant he who intro- duced a spotless sister to this attainted intimacy shall he say I associated with you hourly I affected your familiarity for many years I accom- panied my domesticated minister of religion to your family I almost naturalized the nearest re- lative I had on earth, unsullied and unmarried as she was, within your household ; but you fool it was only to turn it into a brothel ! Merciful God, will you endure him when he tells you thus, that he is on the watch to prowl upon the weak- ness of humanity, and that he audaciously solicits your charter for such libertinism ! I have heard it asserted also, that they mean to arraign the husband as a conspirator, because, in the hour of confidence and misfortune, he ac- cepted a proffered pecuniary assistance from the man he thought his friend. It is true, he did so; but so, I will say, criminally careful was he of his interests, that he gave him his bond made him enter up judgment on that bond, and made him issue an execution on that judgment ready to be levied in a day, that in the wreck of all, the friend of his bosom should be at least indemnified. It was my impression, indeed, that under a lease BROWNE t. BLAKE. 221 of this nature, amongst honourable men, so far from any unwarrantable privilege created, there was rather a peculiar delicacy incumbent on the donor. I should have thought, so still, but for a frightful expression of one of the Counsel on the motion, by which they endeavoured not to trust a Dublin Jury with this issue. What, exclaimed they, in all the pride of their execrable instruc- tions, " A poor Plaintiff and a rich Defendant is there nothing in that ?" No ; if my client's shape does not belie his species, there is nothing in that. I brave the assertion as a calumny on human na- ture. I call on you, if such an allegation be re- peated, to visit it with vindictive and overw helming damages. I would appeal, not to this civilized assembly, but to an horde of savages, whether it is possible for the most inhuman monster thus to sacrifice to infamy, his character, his wife, his home, his children! In the name of possibility, I deny it; in the name of humanity, I denounce it ; in the name of our common country, and our common nature, I implore of the learned Counsel not to promulgate such a slander upon both ; but I need not do so if the zeal of advocacy should induce them to the attempt, memory would array their happy homes before them ; their little chil- dren would lisp its contradiction their love their hearts their instinctive feelings as fathers and as husbands, would rebel within them, and wijther up the horrid blasphemy upon their lips. They will find it difficult to palliate such tur- pitude I am sure I find it difficult to aggravate. It i< in itself an \\\ perbole of wickedness. Honour, 222 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF innocence, religion, friendship, all that is sancti- fied or lovely, or endearing in creation. Even that hallowed, social, shall I not say indigenous virtue ; that blessed hospitality, which foreign envy could not deny, or foreign robbery despoil ; which, when all else had perished, cast a bloom on our desolation, flinging its rich foliage over the national ruin, as if to hide the monument, while it gave a shelter to the mourner ; even that, withered away before this pestilence! But what do I say ! was virtue merely the victim of this adultery ? V^ orse, worse ; it was his instrument ; even on the broken tablet of the decalogue did he whet the dagger for this social assassination. What will you say, when I inform you, that a few months before, he went deliberately to the baptismal font with the waters of life to regenerate the infant that, too well could he vouch it, had been born in sin and he promised to teach it Christianity ! And he promised to guard it against "the flesh!" And lest Infinite Mercy should overlook the sins of its adulterous father, seeking to make God his pander, he tried to damn it even with the Sacrament ! See then the horrible atrocity of this case as it touches the Defendant but how can you count its miseries as attaching to the Plaintiff! He has suffered a pang the most agonizing to human sen- sibility it has been inflicted by his friend, and inflicted beneath his roof it commences at a period which casts a doubt on the legitimacy of his children, and to crown all, " unto him a son is born/' even since the separation, upon whom BROWNE v. BLAKE. 228 every shilling- of his estates has been entailed by settlement ! What compensation can requite so unparalleled a sufferer ? What solitary consolation is there in reserve for him ? Is it love ? Alas, there was one whom he adored with all the heart's idolatry, and she deserted him. Is it friendship? There was one of all the world whom he trusted, and that one betrayed him. Is it society ? The smile of others happiness seems but the epitaph of his own. Is it solitude ? Can he be alone while memory, striking on the sepulchre of his heart, calls into existence the spectres of the past. Shall he fly for refuge to his " sacred home ?" Every object there is eloquent of his ruin ! Shall he seek a mournful solace in his children? Oh, he has no children there is the little favourite she has nursed, and there there even on its guileless features there is the horrid smile of the adulterer ! O, Gentlemen, am f this day only the Counsel of my client! no no I am the advocate of hu- manity of yourselves your homes your wives your families your little children. I am glad that this case exhibits such atrocity. Unmarked as it is by any mitigatory feature, it may stop the frightful advance of this calamity ; it will be met now and marked with vengeance ; if it be not, farewell to the virtues of your country ; farewell to all confidence between man and man ; farewell to that unsuspicious and reciprocal tenderness, without whieh, marriage is but a consecrated curse. If oaths are to be violated ; laws disre- garded ; friendship betrayed ; humanity trampled 224 Sl'EKClI. on; national and individual honour stained ; and a jury of fathers, and of husbands, will give such miscreancy a passport to their own homes, and wives, and daughters farewell to all that yet remains of Ireland ! But I will not cast such a doubt upon the character of my country. Against the sneer of the foe, and the scepticism of the foreigner, I will still point to the domestic virtues, that no perfidy could barter, and no bribery could purchase ; that with a Roman usage, at once embellish and consecrate our households, giving to the society of the hearth all the purity of the altar; that lingering 1 alike in the palace and the cottage, are still to be found scattered over this land, the relic of what she was ; the source, per- haps, of what she may be ; the lone, and stately, and magnificent memorials, that rearing their majesty amid surrounding ruins, serve at once as the landmarks of the departed glory, and the models by which the future may be erected. Preserve those virtues with a vestal fidelity ; mark this day by your verdict, your horror at their profanation ; and believe me, when the hand which records that verdict shall be dust, and the tongue that asks it traceless in the grave, many a happy home will bless its consequences, and many a mother teach her little child to hate the impious treason of adultery ! [It is only doing the Defendant an act of justice to say, that the jury did not consider the adultery proved.] IN THE CASE OF FITZGERALD v. KERR, DELIVERED IN THE COUNTY COURT-HOUSE, MAYO, Before the Hon. Mr. Justice Johnston and a Special My Lord, and you, Gentlemen of the Jury. You have already heard the nature of this action, and upon me devolves the serious duty of stating the circumstances in which it has originated. Well indeed may I call it a serious duty, whether as it affects the individuals concerned, or the 7 community at large. It is not merely the cause of my client, but that of society, which you are about to try ; it is your own question, and that of your dearest interests ; it is to decide whether there is any moral obligation to be respected, any religious ordinance to be observed, any social communion to be cherished ; it is, whether all the sympathies of our nature, and all the charities of life, are to be but the condition of a capricious compact which a demoralized banditti may dis- Q 22G SPEECH IN THE CASE OF solve, just as it suits their pleasure or their ap- petite. Gentlemen, it has been the lot of my limited experience to have known something 1 of the few cases which have been grasped at by our enemies as the pretext for our depreciation, and I can safely say, that there was scarcely one, which, when compared with this, did not sink into insignificance. They had all some redeeming quality about them some casual and momentary acquaintance some taint of conjugal infidelity some suspicion of conjugal connivance some unpremeditated lapse, or some youthful impulse, if not to justify, at least to apologize, or to pal- liate. But, in the case before you, the friendship is not sudden, but hereditary : the sufferer is altogether spotless ; the connivance is an unsus- pecting hospitality ; and so far from having youth to mitigate, the criminal is on the very verge of existence, forcing a reluctant nature into lust, by the mere dint of artificial stimulants, and strug- gling to elicit a joyless flame from not even the embers, but the ashes of expiring sensuality. One circumstance one solitary circumstance can I find for consolation, and that is, that no hire- ling defamer can make this the source of accu- sation against our country : an Irishman indeed has been the victim, and this land has been the scene of the pollution, but here we stop : its per- pretrators, thank heaven are of distant lineage, the wind of Ireland has not rocked their infancy, they have imported their crimes as an experiment on our people meant perhaps to try how far vice may outrun civilization how far our calnmriia- FITZGERALD r. KERR. tors may have the attestation of Irish fathers, and of Irish husbands, to the national depravity : you will tell them they are fatally mistaken ; you will tell a world incredulous to our merits, that the parents of Ireland love their little children ; that her matron's smile is the cheerfulness of inno- cence : that her doors are open to every guest but infamy ; and that even in that fatal hour, when the clouds collected, and the tempest broke on us, chastity outspread her spotless wing's, and gave the household virtues a protection. When I name to you my unhappy client, I name a gentleman upon whom, here at least, I need pass no eulogium. To me, Mr. Fitzgerald is only known by his misfortunes ; to you, his birth, his boyhood, and up to man's estate, his residence have made him long familiar. " This is his own, his native land." And here when I assert him warm and honour- able spirited and gentle a man, a gentleman, and a Christian, if I am wrong, I can be instantly confuted ; but if 1 am right, you will give him the benefit of his virtues he will be heard in this his trial hour with a commiserating sym- pathy by that morality of whose cause he is the advocate, and of whose enemy he is the victim. A younger brother, the ample estates of his family devolved not upon him, and he was obliged to look for competence to the labours of a profession. Unhappily for him he chose the army I say un- happily, because, inspiring him with a soldier's chivalry, it created a too generous credulity in Q2 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF the soldier's' honour. In the year 1811, he quartered with his regiment in the island of Jersey, and there he met Miss Breedone, the sister-in-law of a brother officer, a Major Mitchell, of the artillery, and married her. She was of the age of fifteen he of four and twenty : never was there an union of more disinterested attachment. She had no fortune, and he very little, indepen- dent of his profession. Gladly, Gentlemen, could I pause here, gladly would I turn from what Mrs. Fitzgerald is, to what she then was; but I will not throw a mournful interest around her, for well I know, that in despite of all her errors, there is one amongst us who in the solitude of his sorrows^ for many a future year of misery, will turn to that darling though delusive vision, till his tears shut out the universe. He told me indeed that she was lovely ; but, the light that gave the gem its brilliancy has vanished. Genuine loveli- ness consists in virtue all else is fleeting and perfidious ; it is as the orient dawn that ushers in the tempest it is as the green and flowery turf beneath which the earthquake slumbers. In a few months my client introduced her to his family, and here beneath the roof of his sister, Mrs. Kirwan, for some years they lived most happily. You shall hear, as well from the inmates as from the habitual visitors, that there never was a fonder, a more doating husband, and that the affection appeared to be reciprocal. Four infant babes, the wretched orphans of their living pa- rents doubly orphaned by a father's sorrows and a mother's shame, looked up to them for FITZGERALD r. KERR. 229 protection. Poor little innocent unheeding chil- dren, alas ! they dream not that a world's scorn shall be their sad inheritance, and misery their handmaid from the cradle. As their family in- creased, a separate establishment was considered necessary, and to a most romantic little cottage on the estate of his brother, and the gift of his friendship, Mr. Fitzgerald finally removed his household. Here, Gentlemen, in this sequestered residence, blest with the woman whom he loved, the children he adored, with a sister's society, a brother's counsel, and a character that turned acquaintance into friendship, he enjoyed delights of which humanity I fear is not allowed a per- manence. The human mind perhaps cannot imagine a lot of purer or more perfect happiness. It was a scene on which ambition in its laurelled hour might look with envy compared with which the vulgar glories of the world are vanity a spot of such serene and hallowed solitude, that the heart must have been stormy, and the spirit turbid, which its charmed innocence did not soothe into contentment. Yet even there hell's emissary entered yet even hence the present god was banished: its streams were poisoned, and its paths laid desolate, and its blossoms blooming with celestial life, were withered into garlands for the tempter ! How shall I describe the hero of this triumph ? Is there a language that has words of fire to parch whate'er they light on ? Is there a phrase so potently calamitous that its kindness freezes and its blessings curse ? But no if you must see him, go to my poor 230 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF client, upon whose breaking heart he crouches like a daemon ; go to his dead father's sepulchre, the troubled spirit of that early friend will shriek his maledictory description ; go to the poor in- fant's cradle, without a mother's foot to rock, or a sire's arm to shield it, its wordless cries will pierce you with his character ; or, hear from me the poor and impotent narration of his practices hear how r as a friend he murdered confidence how as a guest he violated hospitality how as a soldier he embraced pollution how as a man he rushed to the perpetration not merely of a lawless but an unnatural enjoyment, over every human bliss, and holy sacrament, and then say whether it is in mortal tongue to epitomize those practices into a characteristic epithet ! He is, you know, Gentlemen, an officer of dragoons, and about twenty years ago was in that capacity quartered in this county. His own manners, and the habitual hospitality of Ireland to the military, rendered his society universally solicited. He was in every house, and welcomed every where ; nor was there any board more bountifully spread for him, or any courtesy more warmly extended, than that which he received from the family at Oaklands. Old Mr. Fitzgerald was then master of its hereditary mansion, his eldest son just verging upon manhood, and my client but a school-boy. The acquaintance gradually grew into intimacy, the intimacy ripened into friend- ship, and the day that saw the regiment depart, was to his generous host a day of grief and tribu- lation. Year after year of separation followed. FITZ&ERALD v. KERR. Captain Kerr escaped the vicissitudes of climate and the fate of warfare ; and when after a tedious interval the chances of services sent him back to Mayo, he found that time had not been indolent. His ancient friend was in a better world, his old acquaintance in his father's place, and the school- boy Charles a husband and a parent in the little cottage of which you have heard already. A fa- mily affliction had enstranged Colonel Fitzgerald from his paternal residence it was by mere chance while attending the assizes duty he recog- nized in one of the officers of the garrison the friend with whom his infancy had been familiar. You may easily guess the gratification he expe- rienced a gratification mingled with no other regret than that it was so soon to vanish. He was about to dissipate by foreign travel the melancholy Avhich preyed on him, and could not receive his friend with personal hospitality. Surprised and delighted, however, he gave him, in a luckless hour, a letter of courtesy to my client, requesting from him and his brother-in-law, Mr. Kirwan, every attention in their power to bestow. And now, Gentlemen, before I introduce him to the scene of his criminality, you shall have even the faint unfinished sketch which has been given me of his character. Captain Kerr of the Royals is very near sixty ; he is a native of Scotland ; he has been all his life a military officer ; in other words, to the advan- tage of experience and the polish of travel, he adds what Lord Bacon calls that " left-handed wis- dom" with which the thrifty genius of the Tweed 232 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF has been said to fortify her children. Never, I am told, did there emigrate, even from Scotland, a man of more ability, or of more cunning one whose address was more capable of inspiring con- fidence, or whose arts were better calculated to lull suspicion : years have given him the caution of age, without extinguishing the sensibilities of youth : nature made him romantic, nativity made him frugal, and half a century has now matured him into a perfect model of thrifty sentiment and amorous senility! I shall not depict the darker shades with which to me this portraiture has been deformed; if they are true may God forgive him: his own heart alone can supply the pencil with a tint black enough to do them justice. His first visit to Oaklands was in company with a Major Brown, and he at once assumed the air of one rather renewing than commencing an acquaint- ance : the themes of other days were started the happy scenes in which a parent's image mingled were all spread out before the filial eye, and when, too soon, their visitor departed, he left not behind him the memory of a stranger. He was as one whose death had been untruly ru- moured a long lost and recovered intimate, dear for his own deserts, and dearer for the memory with which he was associated. Gentlemen, I have the strongest reason for believing that even at this instant the embryo of his baseness was en- gendering, that even then, when his buried friend stood as it were untombed before him in the person of his offspring, the poison seed was sown, within the shade of whose calamitous ina- FITZGERALD i\ KERR. 033 turity nothing of humanity could prosper. I can- not toil through the romantic cant with which the hypocrite beguiled this credulous and unconscious family, but the concluding sentence of his visit is too remarkable to be omitted. " It is," said he, awaking out of a reverie of admiration, " it is all a paradise : there, (pointing to my client) there is Adam she, (his future victim) she is Eve and that, (turning to Major Brown) that is the devil !" Perhaps he might have been more felicitous in the last exemplification. This of course seemed but jest, and raised the laugh that was intended. But it was " poison in jest," it was an lago prelude, of which inferior crime could not fancy the conclusion. Remember it, and you will find that jocular as it was, it had its meaning that it was not, as it purported, the jocularity of innocence, but of that murderous and savage nature that prompts the Indian to his odious gambol round the captive he has destined for the sacrifice. The intimacy thus commenced, was, on the part of the Defendant, strictly culti- vated. His visits were frequent his attentions indefatigable his apparent interest beyond doubt, beyond description. You may have heard, my Lord, that there is a class of persons who often create their consequence in a family by contriving to become master of its secrets. An adept in this art, beyond all rivalry, was Captain Kerr not only did he discover all that had reality, but he fabricated whatever advanced his purposes, and the confidence he acquired was beyond all suspicion, from the sincerity he assumed, and the 234 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF recollections he excited. Who could doubt the early friend of old Mr. Fitzgerald ? Who could doubt the man who writhed in agony at every woe, and gave with his tears a crocodile attesta- tion to the veracity of his inventions ! From the very outset of this most natural, though ill-omened introduction, his only object was discord and dis- union, and in the accomplishment he was but too successful . How could he be otherwise ? He seized the tenderest passes of the human heart, aud ruled them with a worse than wizard despotism. Mrs. Fitzgerald was young and beautiful her husband affectionate and devoted he thirsted for the possession of the one he determined on his enjoyment, even through the perdition of the other. The scheme by which he affected this a scheme of more deliberate atrocity, perhaps, you never heard ! Parts of it I can relate, but there are crimes remaining, to which even if our law annexed a name, I could not degrade myself into ifce pollution of alluding. The commencement jof his plan was a most ostentatious affection for /every branch of the Fitzgerald family. The welfare of my client his seclusion at Oaklands the consequent loss of fortune and of fame, Mere all the subjects of bis minute solicitude ! It was a pity forsooth that such talents and such virtues should defraud the world of their exercise he would write to General Hope to advance him he would resign to him his own paymasterslup in short, there was no personal no pecuniary sacrifice which he was not eager to mak, out of the prodigality of his friendship ! The young, FITZGERALD r. KERB. 23D open, warm-hearted Fitzgerald, was caught by this hypocrisy the sun itself was dark and desul- tory compared with the steady splendour of the modern Fahricius. It followed, Gentlemen, as a matter of course, that he was allowed an almost unbounded confidence in the family. His friendly intercourse with Mrs. Kirwan his equally friendly intercourse with Mrs. Fitzgerald, the husband of neither had an idea of misinter- preting. In the mean time the temper of Mrs. Fitzgerald became perceptibly embittered the children, about whom she had ever been affec- tionately solicitous, were now neglected the or- namenting of the cottage, a favourite object also, was totally relinquished nor was this the worst of it. She became enstranged from her husband peevish to Mrs. Kirwan her manner evincing constant agitation, and her mind visibly mad- dened by some powerful though mysterious agency. Of this change, as well he might, captain Kerr officially proclaimed himself the dis- coverer with mournful affectation he obtruded his interference, volunteering the admonitions he had rendered necessary. You can have no idea of the dexterous duplicity with which he acted. To the unfortunate Mrs. Fitzgerald he held up the allurements with which vice conceals and de- corates its deformity her beauty, her talents, the triumphs which awaited her in the world of London, the injustice of concealment in her present solitude, were the alternate topics of his smooth-tongued iniquity, till, at length, exciting her vanity, and extinguishing her reason by 236 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF *' spells, and drugs, and damnable incantations," he juggled away her innocence and her virtue ! To the afflicted Mrs. Kirwan he was all afflic- tion, weeping over the propensities he affected to discover in his wretched victim, detailing atroci- ties he had himself created, defaming and degTa- ding the guilty dupe of his artifices, and coun- selling the instant separation which was to afford him at once impunity and enjoyment. Trusted by all parties, he was true to none. Every day maligning Mrs. Fitzgerald to the rest of the family. When it came to her ears, he cajoled her into the idea that it was quite necessary he should appear her enemy that their secret love might be the less suspected ! Imposing on Mrs, Kirwan the fabricated tale of Mrs. Fitzgerald's infamy, he petrified her virtuous mind beyond the possibility of explanation ! With Captain Fitzgerald he mourned over his woes, enjoining silence while he was studiously augmenting them. To Colonel Fitzgerald he wrote letters of confi- dence and commiseration, even while the pen of his guilty correspondence with his sister-in-law was wet ! ! Do I overstate this treachery ? Attend not to me listen to his own letters the most conclusive illustrations of his cruelty and his guilt. Thus, Gentlemen, he writes to Colonel Fitzgerald, apprising him of the result of his introduction. " I have been much with your family and friends it is unnecessary for me to say how happy they have made me I must have been very miserable but for their society 1 have been FITZGERALD . KERR. 5337 received like a brother, and owe gratitude for life to every soul of them. They have taught me of what materials an Irishman's heart is made but, alas ! I have barely acknowledgments to offer." Now judge what those acknowledgments were by this extract from his letter to Mrs. Fitz- gerald. " Your conduct is so guided by exces- sive passion that it is impossible for me to trust you. I think the woman you sent, meant to betray us both, and nothing on earth can make me think the contrary but rest assured I shall act with that caution which will make me impe- netrable. I would wish to make you really happy, and if you cannot be as respectable as you have been, to approach it as near as possible. I never cease thinking of you, and of your advantage. Trust but to me obey my advice, and you will gain your wishes, but you shall implicitly obey me, or I quit you for ever!" Mark again his language to the Colonel. " I must confess the fate of your brother Charles I most dreadfully lament look to the fate of a man of his age, and so fine a fellow, pinned down in this corner of the world, unnoticed and unknown. Yet, what is the use of every quality, situated as he is his regrets are his own, they must be cutting his prospects with so young and inexperienced a family, they dare hardly be looked to, and to these if you add ambition and affection, can you look on without pitying a brother ? This earth, indeed, would be an heaven, could a good man execute what he proposes the heart of many a good man dare not bear examination, because 238 SPEECH IN THE CASE OP his actions and his resolutions are so much at variance. Bear with me, Tomthe children of Colonel Fitzgerald are my brothers and sisters, and may God so judge me as I feel the same kind affection for them." Contrast that, Gentlemen, with the following paragraph to the wife of one of those very brothers, the unfortunate Charles, arranging her elopement ! ! " For the present remain where you are, but pack up all your clothes that you have no present occasion for you can certainly procure a chest of some kind if your woman is faithful she can manage the busi- ness ; let her take that chest to Castlebar, and let her send it to me, but let her take care that the carrier has no suspicion from whence it comes stir not one step without my orders obey me implicitly, unless you tell me that you care not for me one pin in that case manage your own affairs in future, and see what comes of you !" Thus, Gentleman, did this Janus-fronted traitor, abusing Mrs. Kirwan by fabricated crimes de- faming Mrs. Fitzgerald by previous compact confiding in all extorting from all, and betraying all on the general credulity and the general de- ception found the accomplishment of his odious purposes ! There was but one feature wanted to make this profligacy peculiar as it was infamous. It had the grand master-touches of the daemon the outlines of gigantic, towering deformity per- fidy, adultery, ingratitude, and irreligion, flung in the frightful energy of their combination but it wanted something to make it despicable as well as dreadful some petty, narrow, grovelling mean- FITZGERALD r. KERR. 39 ness, that would dwarf down the terrific magni- tude of its crime, and make men scorn while they shuddered and it wants not this. Only think of him when he was thus trepanning, betraying, and destroying, actually endeavouring to wheedle the family into the settlement of an annuity on his intended prostitute. You shall have it from a witness you shall have it from his own letter, where he says to Mrs. Fitzgerald, " Where is your annuity I dare say you will answer me you are perfectly indifferent, but believe me I am not." Oh, no, no, no the seduction of a mother, the calamity of a husband the desolation of a household the utter contempt of morals and re- ligion the cold-blooded assassination of character and of happiness were as nothing compared to the expenditure of a shilling he paused not to consider the ruin he was inflicting, but the expense he was incurring a prodigal in crime a miser in remuneration he brought together the licen- tiousness of youth and the avarice of age, calcu- lating on the inheritance of her plundered infants to defray the harlotry of their prostituted mother ! ! Did you ever hear of turpitude like this ? Did you ever read of such brokerage in iniquity ? If there is a single circumstance to rest upon for consolation, perhaps, however, it is in the expo- sure of his parsimony he has shewn where he can be made to feel, and in the very commission of his crime, providentially betrayed the only ac- cessible avenue to his punishment. Gentlemen of the Jury, perhaps some of you are wondering why it is that I have so studiously 240 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF abstained from the contemplation of my client. It is because I cannot think of him without the most unaffected anguish. It is because, possible as it may be for me to describe his sufferings, it is not possible for you adequately to conceive them. You have home, and wife, and children, dear to you, and cannot fancy the misery of their depri- vation. I might as well ask the young mountain peasant, breathing the wild air of health and liberty, to feel the iron of the inquisition's cap- tive I might as well journey to the convent grate, and ask religion's virgin devotee to paint that mother's agony of heart who finds her first born dead in her embraces! Their saddest visions would be sorrow's mockery to be comprehended misery must be felt, and he who feels it most, can least describe it. What is the world with its vile pomps and vanities now to my poor client ! He sees no world except the idol he has lost where- ever he goes, her image follows him she fills that gaze else, bent on vacancy the " highest noon" of fortune now would only deepen the shadow that pursues him even " Nature's sweet restorer, balmy sleep," gives him no restoration she comes upon his dream as when he saw her first in beauty's grace and virtue's loveliness as when she heard him breathe his timid passion, and blushed the answer that blessed him with its return he sees her kneel he hears her vow re- ligion registers what it scarce could chasten, and there, even there, where paradise reveals itself before him, the visionary world vanishes, and wakes him to the hell of his reality. Who can . FIT/GERALD v. KERR. 241 tell the misery of this ? Who can ever fancy it that has not felt it ? Who can fancy his soul-riving endurance while his foul tormentor gradually goaded him from love into suspicion, and from suspicion into madness ! Alas " What damn'd minutes tells he o'er Who dotes, yet doubts suspects, yet strongly loves." Fancy if you can the hellish process by which his affection was shaken his fears aroused his jealousy excited, until, at last, mistaking accident for design, and shadows for confirmation, he sunk under the pressure of the human vampyre that crawled from his father's grave to clasp him into ruin ! Just imagine the catalogue of petty frauds by which, in his own phrase, he made himself "impenetrable" how he invented how he exag- gerated how he pledged his dupe to secrecy, while he blackened the character of Major Browne, with whom he associated on terms of intimacy how he libelled the wife to the husband and the husband to the wife how he wound himself round the very heart of his victim, with every embrace coiling a deadlier torture, till, at last, he drove him for refuge into the woods, and almost to suicide for a remedy. Now, Gentlemen, let us concede for a moment the veracity of his in* ventions. Suppose this woman to be even worse than he represented why should he reveal it to the unconscious husband all was happiness be- fore his interference all would be happiness still but for his murderous amity why should he awake R 242 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF him from his dream. of happiness why should he swindle himself into a reluctant confidence for the atrocious purpose of creating discord what family would be safe if every little exploded calumny was to be revived, and every forgotten ember to be fanned into conflagration is such a character to be tolerated in the community but even this insolent defence is wanting you will find that self was his first and last and sole consi- deration you will find that it was he who soured this woman till she actually refused to live any longer under the roof with her husband and her children you will find that in the midst of his counsel, his cant, and his sensibility, he himself was the profligate adulterer you will find that he ruled her with a rod of iron you will find that having once seduced her into crime, he compelled her to submit to degradation too loathsome for credulity, if it was not too monstrous for inven- tion you will find that his pretence for enforcing this disgusting ordeal, was a doubt of her previous innocence, which it alone he asserted could era- dicate you will find her on her knees, weeping, almost fainting, offering oaths upon oaths to save herself from the pollution and you will find, at last, when exhausted nature could no longer struggle, the foul adulterer actually perpetrating but no the genius of our country rises to re- buke me I hear her say to me " Forbear, for- bear I have suffered in the field I have suffered in the senate I have seen my hills dewed with the blood of my children my diadem in dust FITZGERALD t. KERR. niy throne in ruins but Nature Still reigns upon my plains the morals of my people are as yet unconquered forbear, forbear disclose not crimes of which they are unconscious reveal not the knowledge whose consequence is death/' I will obey the admonition not from my lips shall issue the odious crimes of this medicinal adulterer not by my hand shall the drapery be withdrawri that screens this Tiberian sensuality from the public execration ! God of nature ! had this been love, forgetting forms in the pure impetuosity of its passions ; had it been youth, transgressing rigid law and rigid morals ; had it been desire 1 , mad in its guilt, and guilty even in its madness, I could have dropped a tear over humanity in silence; but, when I see age powerless, passion- less, remorseless, avaricious' age, drugging its impotence into the capability of crime, and zesting its enjoyment by the contemplation of misery, my voice is not soothed but stifled in its utterance, and I can only pray for you, fathers, husbands, brothers, that the Almighty may avert this omen from your families ! Gentlemen of the Jury, if you feel as I do, you will rejoice with me that this odious case is near to its conclusion. You shall have the facts before you proof of the friendship proof of the confi- dence proof of the treachery, and eye-witnesses of the actual adultery. It remains but to inquire what is the palliation for this abominable turpi- tude. Is it love ? Love between the tropic and the pole ! Why, he has a daughter older than R 2 244 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF his victim; he has a wife whose grave alone could be the altar of his nuptials ; he is of an age when a shroud should be his wedding garment. I will not insult you by so preposterous a supposition will he plead connivance in the husband ! that fond, affectionate, devoted husband. I dare him to the experiment ; and if he makes it, it is not to his intimates, his friends, or even to the unde- viating testimony of all his enemies, that I shall refer you for his vindication: but I will call him into court, and in the altered mien, and moul- dering form, and furrowed cheek of his decayed youth, I will bid you read the proofs of his con- nivance. But, Gentlemen, he has not driven me to conjecture his palliation ; his heartless industry has blown it through the land ; and what do you think it is ? Oh, would to God I could call the whole female world to its disclosure ! Oh, if there be within our island's boundaries one hap- less maid who lends her ear to the seducer's poison one hesitating matron, whose husband and whose children the vile adulterer devotes to desolation, let them now hear to what the flattery of vice will turn ; let them see when they have once levelled the fair fabric of their innocence and their virtue, with what remorseless haste their foul destroyer will rush over the ruins ! Will you believe it? That he who knelt to this forlorn creature and soothed her vanity, adored her fail- ings, and deified her faults, now justifies the pollution of her person by the defamation of her character ! Not a single act of indiscretion not FITZGERALD r. KERR. 245 an instance, perhaps, of culpable levity in her whole life, which he has not raked together for the purpose of publication. Unhappy woman, may Heaven have pity on her ! Alas ! how could she expect that he who sacrificed a friend to his lust, would protect a mistress from his avarice. But will you permit him to take shelter under this act of dishonourable desperation. Can he expect not even sympathy, but countenance from a tribunal of high-minded honourable gentlemen ? Will you not say, that his thus traducing the poor fallen victim of his artifices, rather aggravates than diminishes the original depravity ? Will you not spurn the monster whose unnatural vice, com- bining sensuality, hypocrisy, and crime, could stoop to save his miserable dross, by the defama- tion of his victim ? Will yon not ask him by what title he holds this inquisition ? Is it not by that of an adulterer, a traitor, a recreant to every compact between man and man, and between earth and heaven ? If this heartless palliation was open to all the world, is not he excluded from it ? He, her friend her husband's fr.ieud her husband's fa- ther's friend her family adviser, who quaffed the cup of hospitality, and pledged his host in poison he, who, if you can believe him, found this young and inexperienced creature tottering on the brink, and under pretence of assisting, dragged her down the precipice ! Will he in the whole host of strangers, with whose fami- liarity he defames her, produce one this day vile SPEECH IN THE CASE OF enough to have followed his example : one out of even the skipping, dancing, worthless tribe, whose gallantry sunk into ingratitude, whose levity sub- limed itself into guilt ? No, no ; " imperfectly civilized'' as his countrymen have called us, they cannot deny that there is something generous in our barbarism ; that we could not embrace a friend while we were planning his destruction ; that we could not affect his table while we were profaning his bed ; that we could not preach mo- rality whilst we were perpetrating crime ; and, above all, that if in the moment of our nature's weakness, when reason sleeps, and passion tri- umphs, some confiding creature had relied upon pur honour, we could not dash her from us in her trial hour, and for our purse's safety turn the cold-blooded assassin of her character. But, my Lord, I ask you not as a father not as an husband but as a guardian of the morals of this country, ought this to be a justification of any adulterer, and if so, should it justify an adulterer under such circumstances ? Has any man a right to scrutinize the constitution of every female in a family, that he may calculate on the possibility of her seduction ! Will -you instil this principle into society? Will you instil this principle into the army ? Will you disseminate such a prin- ciple of palliation ? And will you permit it to palliate what ? The ruin of an household the sacrifice of a friend the worse than murder of four little children the most inhuman perfidy to an host- a companion a brother in arms ! ! FITZGERALD . KERR. Will you permit it ? I stand not upon her inno- cence I demanc^, vengeance on his most unna- turally villainy. Suppose I concede his whole defence to him supposed she was begrimed and black as hell was it for him to take advantage of her turpitude ? He, a friend a guest a con- fidant a brother soldier ! Will you justify him even in any event in trampling on the rights of friendship of hospitality of professional frater- nity of human nature ! Will you convert the man into the monster ? Will you convert the soldier into the foe from being the safeguard of the citizen ? Will you so defame the military cha- racter ? Will you not fear the reproaches of departed glory ? Will you fling the laurelled flag of England, scorched with the cannon flame and crimsoned with the soldier's life blood the flag of countless fights and every fight a victory will you fling it athwart the couch of this ac- cursed harlotry without almost expecting that the field sepulchre will heave with life, and the dry bones of buried armies rise re-animate against the profanation ! No, no I call upon you by the character of that army not to conta- minate its trophies I call on you in the cause of nature to vindicate its dignity I call on you by your happy homes to protect them from pro- fanation I call on you by the love you bear your little children, not to let this CHRISTIAN HEROD loose amongst the innocents. Oh, as you venerate the reputation of your country as you regard the happiness of your species as you 248 SPEECH. hope for the mercy of that all-wise and all-pro- tecting God, who has set his everlasting canon against adultery banish this day by a vindictive verdict the crime and the criminal for ever from amongst us. SPEECH DELIVERED AT THE FOURTH ANNIVERSARY GLOUCESTERSHIRE MISSIONARY SOCIETY. Sir, AFTER the eloquence with which so many gen- tlemen have gratified and delighted this most respectable assembly, and after the almost inspired address of one of them, I feel almost ashamed of having acceded to the wishes of the committee by proposing the resolution which I have the honour to submit. I should apologize, Sir, for even the few moments intrusion which I mean to make upon this meeting, did I not feel that I had no right to consider myself as quite a stranger ; did I not feel that the subject unites us all into one great social family, and gives to the merest sojourner the claim of a brother and a friend. At a time like this, perhaps, when the infidel is abroad, and the atheist and the disbeliever triumph in their blasphemy, it behoves the humblest Christian to range himself beneath the 250 SPEECH AT banners of his faith, and attest, even by his mar- tyrdom, the sincerity of his allegiance. When I consider the source whence Christianity has sprung the humility of its origin the po- verty of its disciples the miracles of its creation the mighty sway it has acquired, not only over the civilized world, but which your missions are hourly extending over lawless, mindless, and im- bruted regions, I own the awful presence of the Godhead nothing less than a Divinity could have done it ! The powers, the prejudices, the superstitions of the earth, were all in arms against it ; it had no sword nor sceptre its founder was in rags its apostles were fisher- men its inspired prophets, lowly and unedu- cated its cradle was a manger its home a dun- geon its earthly diadem a crown of thorns ! And yet, forth it went that lowly, humble, per- secuted spirit and the idols of the Heathen fell ; and the thrones of the mighty trembled ; and Paganism saw her peasants and her princes kneel down and worship the unarmed conqueror I- If this be not the work of the Divinity, then I yield to the reptile ambition of the atheist. I see no God above 1 see no government below ; and I yield my consciousness of an immortal soul to his boasted fraternity with the worm that pe- rishes ! But, Sir, even when I thus concede to him the divine origin of our Christian faith, I arrest him upon worldly principles I desire him to produce, from all the wisdom of the earth, so pure a system of practical morality a code of ethics more sublime in its conception more A MISSIONARY MEETING. simple in its means more happy and more pow- erful in its operation ! and if he cannot do so, I then say to him, Oh ! in the name of your own darling policy, filch not its guide from youth, its shield from manhood, and its crutch from age ! Though the light I follow may lead me astray, still I think that it is light from heaven ! The good, and great, and wise, are my compa- nions my delightful hope is harmless, if not holy ; and wake me not to a disappointment, which in your tomb of annihilation, I shall not taste hereafter! To propagate the sacred creed to teach the ignorant to enrich the poor to illuminate this world with the splendours of the next to make men happy you have never seen and redeem millions you can never know you have sent your hallowed Missionaries forward ; and never did an holier vision rise, than that of this celestial, glorious embassy. Methinks I see the band of willing exiles bidding farewell, per- haps, for ever, to their native country ; foregoing home, and friends, and luxury to tempt the sa- vage sea, or men more savage than the raging element to dare the polar tempest, and the tro- pic fire, and often doomed by the forfeit of their lives to give their precepts a proof and an ex- piation. It is quite delightful to read over their reports, and see the blessed product of their labours. They leave no clime unvisited, no peril unencountered. In the South Sea Islands they found the population almost eradicated by the murders of idolatry. : Proceed and prosper. Let the sacred stream of your benevolence flow on, and though momentary impediments may op- pose its progress, depend upon it, it will soon surmount them the mountain rill, and the rivers of the valley will in time, and in their turn, be- come tributary the roses of Sharon will bloom upon its banks the maids of Sion will not weep by its waters the soil it has fertilized will be re- flected on its surface, and as it glides along in the glory of the sunbeam, the sins of the people will become regenerate in its baptism. SPEECH CASE OF BROWNE v. BINGHAM, ON AN INFORMATION FOR Provoking Prosecutor to fight a Duel. 1 DO not wonder that Mr. Alley should have made so many fruitless attempts, by his inefficient points of law, to prevent your coming to the merits of the case. He has completely failed in them however, and it now remains my duty to bring that case before you. You have heard the charge against the individual at the Bar, and I assure you, that it is with great regret that I appear, in order to conduct this pro- secution against him regret as well on account of an intended kindness to myself, as that a gen- tleman of birth and fortune and education, should appear in a criminal Court of Justice, to answer so amply merited an accusation. That regret however is not without its counterpoise. I rejoice that in these times an opportunity has arisen for , u 2 292 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF a Christian Jury to record their opinion of the crime of Duelling, and that if it is to spread, we shall at last learn whether it is with the sworn concurrence of a moral community. I rejoice too, that the Case before you is one in which no very serious sympathy can be excited for the ac- cused one in which an intelligent Jury cannot hesitate for a single moment, for one of a more unprovoked and wanton description never yet came into a Court of Justice. It is, without ex- aggeration, a Case in which you Gentlemen can register your deliberate protest against this ra- pidly increasing crime, without feeling one honest pang of pity for the criminal. Gentlemen, the prosecutor in this Case is Mr. James Browne, a Member of Parliament for the County of Mayo, and eldest son of the Right Hon. Dennis Browne, who has also the honour of a seat in the House of Commons. His father- in-law, is Mr. Wells, of Bickley House, in Kent, the respected Representative for the Borough of Maidstone. Mr. Bingham, the traverser, is also a gentleman of most respectable connections- connections of much influence in the sister king- dom ; he is nephew to the late, and cousin, I believe, to the present Lord Clanmorris. Gen- tlemen, when I mention to you the rank of the parties, I know it both is and ought to be a mat- ter of complete indifference ; it is right, however, that you should know them, though indeed the circumstance merits only the obvious remark of the danger of such outrages, recommended by the influence of such an example. BROWNE v. BINGHAM. 293 Some time in February last, Mr. Browne was at his father-in-law's residence in Kent, when he was told that a gentleman from Ireland wanted to speak to him ; that person proved to be the defendant, who said he came to make a complaint to him of a Mr. Briscoe, who was a magistrate in the County of Mayo, and who behaved oppres- sively to him and his uncle. Mr. Browne said he was very sorry to hear it, and wished to know what he desired him to do. Mr. Bingham re- plied that he believed Briscoe was appointed by his father, Mr. Dennis Browne, and that he had a right to complain of it. Mr. Browne promised to speak to his father upon the subject, and they parted. In the course of the next day, Mr. Browne waited upon the traverser, and handed him a paper from the Right Hon. Dennis Browne, in which he distinctly denied having any know- ledge of Mr. Briscoe's appointment as a Magis- trate, and stated that he believed he was but a Postmaster, and that if there was impropriety in any part of his conduct, the Postmaster-General of Ireland was the competent authority to be ap- plied to. I forbear stating the decorous language which the traverser made use of with respect to Mr. Briscoe, but you, Gentlemen, may form some idea of it, when it has been stated to me that " damnation rascal" was one of the most courteous epithets applied to that respectable gentleman. Mr. James Browne, in handing this paper to Mr. Bingham, stated that he was extremely happy to have an opportunity of evincing that his father u3 294 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF was not to blame in the transaction, and hoped he had so satisfied the mind of the traverser. What was the conduct of Mr. Bingham upon this? Mark it well, Gentlemen, for it strongly characterises the whole transaction. When he had been treated with a courtesy even more than common when his complaint had been attended to, and his doubts resolved when the prosecutor had taken all this trouble at his desire how did he express himself? Was it in terms of polite- ness and of gratitude ? Was it in the phraseology which became his station and that of the person to whom he was addressing himself? When Mr. Browne was departing, Gentlemen, Mr. Bing- ham interposed, with "Oh! stop, Sir! stop! that's not the business that's not the business! your father, Sir, has made promises to my uncle, for which I shall hold you responsible to me personally, and I have brought a friend from Ireland to arrange the preliminaries!" Now, you cannot fail to ob- serve that the first representation was altogether a device a mere invention, a pretence got up clumsily for the occasion ! It was explained too clearly even for an Irish gentleman to hang a quarrel on ; something new was necessary, and a novelty indeed it was, for which my client was to be held responsible. Had he made any promise ? Had he broken any promise ? Not at all ; it was not even suggested: but the father of one had entered into some nameless engagement with the uncle of the other, and for that reason the son and the nephew were to blow each other 's brains out ! Thus in the first place the prosecutor was BROWNE v. BINOHAM. 295 to be accountable for the acts of Mr. Briscoe, and then he was to be responsible for the promises of Mr. Browne ! In ordinary cases, Gentlemen, if a man can answer for his own acts and for his own engagements, it is as ranch as can fairly be ex- pected in the world; but was it ever heard of until now, that an innocent individual was to answer with his life for the violations of which third parties might be guilty ? violations too to which it was not pretended that he was even privy ? Mr. Browne and Mr. Briscoe are both alive ; surely there are laws to enforce the promises of the one, and to punish the misdeeds of the other, if either ever had existence. Of Mr. Briscoe I know no- thing; but he is put, by the declarations of the traverser, out of the question ; that's not the busi- ness, was his own expression. Of Mr. Browne I know something, and I am proud and happy to have the pleasure of knowing so much. He is a stranger here; but a long life of honour and of probity an urbanity that renders him beloved in private an integrity that ensures to him respect in public the representation of his native coun- try for above thirty years the love of the poor the esteem of the rich, and that nothing might be wanting, the opprobrium of the vile, place him alike above imputation or panegyric. He never made a, promise which he did not keep; in his honourable and honoured name I repel indig- nantly the groundless accusation ; and for what- ever he has said, and for whatever he has done, he stands here to-dav, at the summons of his ' 7 enemy, to be cheerfully accountable. Suppose 296 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF however he had suppose that some ligitatecf agreement had arisen between the elder Mr. Bingham and the elder Mr. Browne ; was that any reason that his son was to be held liable, and and that in the life-time of the persons stipulating? Was that any reason that all law was to be sus- pended, and that the difference was to be arbitrated by wager of battle ? Was it a Shylock bond, only to be liquidated by the heart's blood of humanity? Even on the duellist's own prostituted principle even in a Court of honour what right had young Mr. Browne to be accountable ? But, Gentlemen, when I ask you this, I must go farther, and ask you, are you prepared to forego the institutions of England, and to introduce the code of the duellist in their place ? Will you open your counting houses to every desperado who may hold in one hand the muster-roll of his whims, and in the other the pistol of his proposed arbitrament ? Shall civilised society be turned into a den in which brute violence is to reign omnipotent ? If it is to be, so, I trust that as my friend has given barbarism its first opposition in the Senate, so you will give civilization a last asylum in the Jury-box. The conduct of the traverser during this entire interview, rendered his intentions perfectly un- equivocal. He told Mr. Browne distinctly that he must fight him, that he had brought a friend from Ireland for the purpose ; but that feeling since he came here it might not be very safe for him to fight in England, it would of course be necessary to make some other arrangement. Mr. Browne replied, that it was a little unreasonable BROWNE v. BINGHAM. 297 for him to expect his attendance on the Continent, to expiate an offence which he never had commit- ted. " That, Sir," said Mr. Bingham, " is not necessary; I am going now back to Mayo, and I shall expect your attendance, fully prepared, at the Assizes for that country." He then departed ; but lest Mr. Browne should mistake him lest the slightest doubt should remain of his intentions lest his verbal provocations should be forgotten or deemed imperfect, and that every one might have them upon record, he dispatched to the prosecu- tor the following letter, which deserves to be bound up in the next edition of Junius, as a fi- nished specimen of logic and decorum. It is di- rected to James Browne, Esq. M. P. 9, Manches- ter-buildings, dated from Blake's Hotel, Jermyn- street, 4th February, 1821 : "SIR, I have given your father's letter the utmost consideration in my power, and find by it only a repetition of the same kind of base, false, and evasive letters, which he has written so often to Major Bingham. This conduct of your father's, meeting as it does a tacit support from you, by your having succeeded him in the representation of the county, leaves me no other alternative than to suppose that you also mean to pursue the path marked out by your father. Upon the whole, your united conduct evinces the most marked per- sonal disrespect to Major Bingham, and as the balance of political power is upon your side, a manly resistance to oppression, in the worst stages of its abuse, is now my only alternative. You 298 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF pledged your honour that I was safe in writing 1 to you (Gentlemen, said Mr. Phillips, I am in- structed that Mr. Browne will swear to you that this is a gross untruth, he never made a promise even to that effect) and I hope the county will not have to record another instance of violated honour. My private avocations call me back to Ireland, where I shall be happy to attend to your commands, either verbally or otherwise ; but should silence be your determination, I shall im- pute it to its real cause. "ROBERT BINGHAM." Now, Gentlemen, consider calmly the whole tenor of this letter, and then say if you can, whether it is more unmanly in its attack, or more ridiculous in its justification ? It proves Mr. Bingham, however, to be no common proficient in the science of provocation. If there is in the human heart one virtue pre-eminent above others, it is filial piety. Honour thy parents is a com- mandment of nature, as well as of religion ! it is the great distinction between man and the brute, a distinction not peculiar even to a state of civili- sation ; it inspires the rudest savage of the wilder- ness, and when Providence deprives him of the aged friend who had watched his cradle and guid- ed his manhood, his very tomb becomes sanc- tified, and sheds around it a holy consolation. This was the string the traverser chose to strike, because this he was almost certain would return a vibration. Accordingly you find the conduct of the father designated to his child as base, false, and BROWNE c. BINGHAM. 299 evasive. And who is he who thus insults the re- verence of age? And who is he who thus brands a Senator of his country ? And who is he who thus drags a defenceless Magistrate even from his seat, in the Privy Council ? Happy will it be for this young gentleman if he ever numbers the the years of Mr. Browne ; happier still if his old age should ever be held so respectable. If it should, he may depend upon it that far otherwise than in the occupations of the duellist must his youth be passed. But how does he render the son accountable for what he chooses to denominate the 1 base, false, and evasive/ conduct of his father ? Why, because forsooth it meets a ' tacit' support from him. And how has it met even a 'tacit* support from him ? Because he has presumed to accept the representation of the county in which he was born ! When other men insult, they insult by words; but my client insults because he does not utter a monysyllable ; there is no enduring the asperity of his silence ; there is no tolerating the insolence of his taciturnity ; he is loud in appro- bation of his father's misconduct because he holds his tongue, and he is a ' base, false, and evasive' confederate, because he has had the audacity to become a Member of Parliament f To a man of this kind, Sir, the mere franking of a letter would be in itself an overt act of a ' base, false, and evasive, disposition ; and the mute school of Pythagoras, during its eight years silence, would appear a boisterous, clamorous, vociferous congregation. Gentlemen, I will not insult your understandings by asking you what a letter of this kind means 300 when addressed by one gentleman to another ; it speaks trumpet-tongued the intention with which it was written ; but I will ask you, even suppose every word of it to be true, what cause was there, on its own shewing, to inflict such an outrage upon the present prosecutor what cause was there for visiting upon him. the consequences of another person's conduct but above all, what cause was there for harrowing up the heart of a fond, af- fectionate, and duteous son, by branding the old age of the father, whom he loved, with the epithets of " base, false, and evasive ?" It is difficult to ex- press in terms sufficiently strong, the unfeeling ferocity of such an outrage. I dismiss this provo- cation as it was offered through the father. With respect to the son, however, what will you say, when I prove to you upon oath, that he never had the slightest altercation with him in his life that there was never between them the shadow of a disagreement no not even a passing look, which could be tortured into an imputation ! If the contrary can even be alleged, let him go back to Ireland, and boast that he has the sanction of a Christian Jury ; but, if it cannot, give me leave to ask, what do you think of a person of his age who could travel coolly for six hundred miles who could enlist a second who could deliberately in- dite the epistle I have read to you, for the purpose of this sanguinary provocation ! Although it has been hinted to me, I can scarcely do him the in- justice of supposing, that he entertained the design of compelling this family into any compromise with his schemes of avarice or ambition that he BROWNE t. BINGHAM. 301 could think of extorting an enforced acquiescence which he had no right to claim from any personal recommendation that he could have indulged the mean and chimerical idea of bullying Mr. Browne into some official favour and yet, what other mo- tive could possibly have actuated him ? Surely, surely, his respected uncle would not have com- pelled him to so desperate an adventure, and his country, thank God, no longer affords him the influence of her example the day of the duellist is gone in Ireland a reputation there is no longer to be acquired after the Indian fashion by the scalps of the murdered the spectres of blood have vanished before the light of education and if amidst her mountains some irreclaimable and ruthless savage should remain, he stands there in his solitude, like the rocky circle of the Druid in her fields, a lonely landmark of departed barbarism. There is indeed, a solution which is not impossi- ble ; and what solution might not be applicable to the fanciful visionary, who construed silence into an affront, and a seat in the House of Com- mons, into a deliberate insult? There is a solu- tion which may be found in the practice of mo- dern high life. You know, gentlemen, that some of the aspirants in the world of fashion, never fan- cy their initiation is complete, unless it is crowned by some celebrated achievement. Some choose seduction some adultery and some introduce themselves by the murder of a friend, in what is styled a duel; it matters nothing that religion kneels to them, that law denounces them, that the prostrate forms of humanity and morals are to be 302 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF trampled in their progress ! This is honour ! this is courage ! this is chivalry ! this is the founda- tion upon which modern fashion builds its hopes of fame ! Vain, deceitful, miserable sophistry ! No ! it is not courage which flies from the fear of human animadversion to take what it can only be- lieve to be the chances of eternity ! No ! it is not honour which shrouds itself in honour's mantle and hides the instrument of death within its fold- ings ! No ! it is not chivalry which wantonly in- vades the home of happiness and virtue to write its murderous record in their gore ! False and visionary as are the titles it usurps, its hopes of fame are equally foundationless ; the ruffian ay which sv' ells the duellist's victory to-day, would herald to-morrow the van of his antagonist ; and with impartial miscreancy, and with equal plea- sure, would that yell be raised over their triumph or over their grave ! But if such achievements should be ' damned to fame/ merciful God ! what is their reputation ? Is it not written in the break- ing heart ? Is it not wafted by the orphan's sighs ? Does it not bloom amid domestic ruin ? Are not its garlands torn from that mournful tree whose dissevered branches were said to stream with blood ? Law condemns ; humanity disowns ; re- ligion mourns such a reputation. Happy and proud am I that my estimable friend has been so honourably brave as to despise it. Happy is it for the home were smiles and welcome are awaiting' his return ; that home which might now have been desolate ! Happy for that amiable and love- ly partner, whose bridal garb might have been BROWNE r. BINGHAM. 303 turned to mourning ! Happy for that beloved, re- spected, venerable parent, that his grey hairs are not bending over the grave of a duellist ! and all for what, gentlemen ? for what was he to cloud his opening prospects to blast prematurely the blos- soms of his youth to tarnish his character to devastate his hearth to trample on the laws of God and man to feel the blood of a fellow crea- ture heavy on his conscience? All for what? Why, to satisfy a causeless, self-created adversary ; to satiate an hostility for which there was no pre- tence; to atone for an injury which existed no where, except in the visions of a perverted imagination. 1 put it thus out ofconpassion to the traverser 1 hope he would not hazard a va- luable life, in order to blazon the exploit at the banquet or the race-course ; I hope he conjured up some pretence, for one never had existence ! I hope he coined some insult, for he certainly never received one. Fortunate, infatuated young man ! well is it for him too, his design w 7 as frustrated ; well is it for him that he is standing here to abide the perishable consequences of your verdict ; even at this very moment, he might have been in the nakedness of his sins before the bar of Heaven, with God for his Judge, and the crime of murder for his dreadful accusation ! What would have been his palliation there ! even here he stands disfigured with aggravations. There never came into a Court of Justice a case of more flagrant or more cause- less outrage; it was wanton, it was unprovoked, it was unmerited ; it had not even the plea of passion to excuse it ; for 600 miles of sea and land it lay 304 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF cold at his heart; it was sought to be perpetrated by wounding 1 a son's sensibility through slanders on his parent ; it was a callous calculation how the very worst consequences might flow from a delibe- rate violation of the very best feelings; it wants no one atrocity to deform it, except that accord- ing to his intention it was not consummated in blood. Gentlemen, I shall prove this case to you. I shall submit to you the letter of Mr. Bingham, and the testimony of Mr. Browne, and if you find that he has given the slightest provocation, dismiss him from your bar to abide the ordeal of the duellist; but if he has not, I then solemnly call on you to support the laws of your country ; I call on you to record your pious detestation of this most odious but increasing custom ; I call on you to protect your own homes and families ; I call on you to interpose between the peace of so- ciety and these self-elected champions of a spurious honour ; I call on you in the name of law, morals, and Christianity, to afford the peaceable the sanc- tion of their ordinances, by proving- to the turbu- lent that you will not wink at their violation. FINIS. Plummer and Brewis, Love Lane. A 000 093 328 3