SPEECH OF WILLIAM C. PLUNKET. OPENING FOR THE CROWN IN REX v. FORBES AND OTHERS.CONSPIRACY AND RIOT. IN THE COURT OF KING'S BENCH, DUBLIN, HILARY TERM, 3D GEORGE IV, FEBRUARY 3d, 1823. ANALYSIS OF MR. PLUNKET'S SPEECH. 1. Nature of the offense charged.-Object of the prosecution. 2. Motive of the Attorney-General in filing an ex officio information. 3. The legality of the proceeding. 4. Statement of the case relied upon as a precedent. 5. The charges not intended as a protest 6. Panegyric on William of Orange. 8. William's campaign in Ireland conferred 9. The visit of George IV to Ireland. 11. The object of Lord Wellesley in prevent- statue. 12. Legal methods resorted to as the only means of preventing it. 13. Narration of the facts constituting the charges against the defendants. 14. The action of the attorney-general an exercise of wise discretion. About no figure in history have clustered such bitter memories and deadly feuds, as are associated with Macaulay's favorite hero, the Prince of Orange, afterwards William the Third. As no man has ever won more genuine and profound admiration and reverence, so none has ever occasioned more deepseated and lasting animosities. The recollections of his campaign in Ireland are the fruitful theme of religious strife, which has been kept alive till our own time. No battle has ever been fought, the anniversary of which has been so enthusias tically observed, as the battle of the Boyne. It is celebrated in song as well as in story, and the stirring music is invariably the signal for violence and bloodshed. As often as the anniversary recurs, the calendars of criminal courts, not only in Ireland, but elsewhere, exhibit, as a legitimate sequel, numerous informations and indictments for murder and assault, and the unfortunate sufferers, go to swell the long list of killed and wounded, who have, from time to time, revived the memory of this famous engagement. And this spectacle, strange as it may seem, is frequently repeated on the 12th of July, in our country and in our own age. It is also true that the political results of the battle of the Boyne are still felt in Ireland. Penal laws against Catholics have disgraced the English statute book for more than a century. Consequently Irish politics became, in one sense, narrowed to an issue between Catholics and Anti-Catholics; the friends of the former, among whom were very many staunch Protestants, advocated the removal of political disabilities from their oppressed countrymen, and demanded the complete restoration of their civil and constitutional rights. William Conyngham Plunket, the son of a Presbyterian minister, became attached to the liberal party, and labored consistently throughout his long and honorable career for Catholic emancipation. When George the Fourth came to the throne, he paid a friendly visit to Ireland, and was received everywhere with the most profound reverence and enthusiasm by men of all parties and sects. He sent Lord Wellesley to Ireland, as Lord Lieutenant, and that minister determined to treat all men alike, without respect to creed or opinion. He desired, if possible, to break the ascendency of the Orange society, because he believed that its custom of celebrating the achievements of King William tended to keep fresh the bitterness of religious feuds. In a public square in the city of Dublin, known as College Green, stands a statue of William the Third. For years it had been the custom of the Orangemen to show their respect for the memory of the illustrious monarch by decorating this image on the 4th of November, in honor of his birth, and the 12th of July, in honor of his victory at the Boyne. Lord Wellesley determined to abolish these ceremonies, and finally resorted to legal methods to accomplish his purpose. This course aroused the hatred and indignation of a certain element of the Protestant community. In order to show their contempt for the Lord Lieutenant, a number of Orangemen arranged to insult him publicly. They seized the opportunity of his visit to the theatre. On the evening of December 14th, 1822, they early assembled in the galleries, and began to hiss and hoot as soon as the Lord Lieutenant entered; and after he had taken his seat in the box, hurled at him all sorts of missiles. One of the party threw an empty whisky bottle, which struck the chair on which Lord Wellesley sat, and glanced off on to the stage. From this circumstance the affair was known as the "bottle riot." The parties were arrested, but such was the state of public feeling that the grand jury threw out the indictments and refused to find a true bill against them. Notwithstanding the popular sentiment, Mr. Plunket determined to sustain the dignity of his friend, the Lord Lieutenant, and resolutely assumed the responsibility of filing, in his official capacity as attorney-general, an ex officio information against the accused, under which they were brought to trial on the 3d of February, 1824, in the Court of King's Bench, in the city of Dublin.' Lord Plunket, as a lawyer, was considered the leader of the Dublin bar at its golden age; as an advocate he was comparable only with Erskine; as a statesman he ranked among the foremost of his age; as an orator he has not been surpassed by any of its contemporaries. 'His oratory," says a writer in the Edinburgh Review, "was of a very high kind; in perfect mastery of the topics it touched; in fullness and accuracy of information; in reasoning, not rapid and vehement, but earnest, vigorous and sustained; in the dignity and propriety of its diction, and in the occasional beauty of its illustrations-it has not been excelled in the British Senate." As a chancery lawyer he was unrivaled, and Sheil has remarked, that his arguments in important equity causes were most extraordi 1 For a statement of the details of the charge, names of the prisoners, the counsel, and the justices who presided, see post, pp. 641, 642. nary exhibitions of human intellect. Through the tedious mazes of purely legal discussion, his poetical fancy never forsakes him, but enriches his speech, like exquisite gilding. The following, from one of his arguments, illustrates his delicate fancy. Referring to the wisdom of the rule that long possession raises a legal presumption as to the validity of the title, he said: "Time is the great destroyer of evidence, but he is also the great protector of titles. If he comes with a scythe in one hand to mow down the muniments of our possessions, he holds an hourglass in the other from which he incessantly metes out the portions of duration that are to render those muniments no longer necessary." His speech on the present occasion contains many beautiful and striking illustrations, and displays his wonderful skill and ability as an advocate. In order not to make his remarks odious to the majority, he abstains from fierce denunciation against the Orange societies, and pays a tribute to the memory of King William, which, for graceful and elegant expression, is worthy of his great powers as an advocate and orator. This case is rendered more interesting from the fact that his conduct in presenting the ex officio information against the accused, after the grand jury had refused to find a bill, was made the subject of a motion for a vote of censure in the House of Commons, and Plunket's vindication on that occasion was complete and overwhelming. He literally carried everything before him, and his address in his own defense has been regarded as one of the most impassioned specimens of eloquence ever delivered in Parliament. He closed with these simple words: "My public conduct and private character have been alike assailed. I will retire, so that the House may more freely and unrestrainedly consider the question. My public conduct I consign to the justice of this House; my private character I leave to its honor." In opening for the Crown, Mr. Plunket said: MY LORDS, AND GENTLEMEN OF THE JURY:-It becomes now my duty to lay before you the case on behalf of the Crown, and to put you in possession of the grounds on which the present prosecution has been instituted, and of the evidence by which it is intended to be supported. It has often been my lot, in the eventful history of this country, to appear in the character of a public prosecutor, and still more frequently to be a witness of the course and conduct of public prosecutions. But certainly never in my life have I approached a court of justice with sensations of more deep anxiety, or with a more intense feeling of the importance of the subject to be decided on, than I feel at the present moment. It is a case, my Lords and gentlemen, not touching the life of the parties; the offense as laid amounting only to a misdemeanor. It is undoubtedly, however, to them a case of no small importance; involving them, if the facts charged be proved, in very heavy penal consequences. But with respect to the public at large, it is a case of as deep and vital importance, as for the last fifty years has been brought under the consideration of a court and of a jury. It is a great satisfaction to me, and a great part of my object has been achieved in knowing that this case is now ready to be brought fully before an intelligent court and jury; and that, whatever its merits may be, it is impossible they can be stifled or extinguished, but must be fairly brought under the consideration of the court, the jury, and the public. 1. NATURE OF THE OFFENSE CHARGED.-OBJECT OF THE PROSECUTION. The charge is one of no light or ordinary character. You are already, my Lords, probably apprized of it from public rumor; the nature of it has been more particularly stated by my learned friend who has opened the informations. It imports no less a crime than having assaulted the person of the king's representative in this country; of having committed a riot in his presence for the purpose of insulting him; and of having done so in pursuance of a deliberate conspiracy previously entered into for the purpose. This is a charge which ought not lightly to be made; and one, gentlemen, on which you ought not to act, unless fully and distinctly proved. But I should consider it as an insult to your character and understandings, to urge any argument to establish the enormity of the crime, if fully ascertained to have been committed. I should blush for our country, were it necessary to state in a court of justice, that a deliberate insult of the king's representative, in a public theatre, the result of a previous conspiracy, is no light or trivial or ordinary offense. In the mind of every man who has not banished the feelings of a gentleman, and who is not lost to every public and private consideration, there can be but one sentimenta deep sense of indignity at the outrage, and an entire conviction of the necessity of vindicating the national character and the dignity of the laws, by affixing punishment, if deserved. But, my Lords, daring and unexampled as is the crime, I hesitate not to say, that the enormity of the act is lost in the boldness and description of the motives. I fairly tell you that I come not here on the part of Lord Wellesley, to ask for personal redress, or even to call for public justice so far as he is personally concerned; not even on the part of the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, to seek atonement for the outrage committed against the king's representative; but on behalf of the country and its laws; on behalf of its hopes of peace and safety; to claim your aid, backed by all the authority of opinion, in putting down a desperate and insolent attempt to overawe the king's government in Ireland; and to compel his representative, by the arm of personal violence and by the demonstration of a force above the law, to change the measures of his government. I call on you to put down a base conspiracy of a contemptible gang, who have associated to put down the laws and to overbear the king's representative, because he has presumed to execute the king's commands. I think I know the feelings of the illustrious personage against whom this villainy has been directed; with respect to his own personal safety, much as it has been endangered, the attack was fitted only to rouse his gallant mettle; indignant as he must have felt to be "hawked at " by such "mousing" owls as these, their base attempt excited no terror, it left no resentment. That there should have been in this land hearts capable of conceiving, and hands capable of executing, such an outrage against their countryman, must have excited sensations of regret and pain; but in this respect the national character has been redeemed by the universal expression of indignation which has issued from the hearts of the Irish people. But, beyond all this, much remains to be done: it is necessary to put down the daring pretensions of those who have associated themselves for the purpose of defying the king and the law, and setting up an authority superior to them both. They and all others who announce such projects, must be taught that their plans are vain and hopeless, as they are insolent. This I freely avow as my object. I trust that no unworthy prejudices, that no angry feeling, that no sentiment other than that which belongs to the conscientious discharge of public duty, has been suffered to mingle itself in the course of public justice. I shall go away from this court, humiliated and under the heavy sentence of self-reproach, if, after the evidence in this case shall have been disclosed, any honest or impartial man shall censure me for instituting this prosecution; or shall hesitate to think that it would. have been a mean abandonment of duty to have shrunk from it. 2. MOTIVE of the attoRNEY-GENERAL IN FILING AN EX OFFICIO INFORMATION. You are apprized, my Lords, that this is an ex officio information filed by his majesty's attorney-general upon his own authority; you are also probably aware, that this ex officio information has been filed after bills had been preferred against the same persons for the same offense, and had been ignored by a grand jury of the |