But there are instances nearer home. I am not old enough to remember the brilliant times of the Duke of Rutland, but I have heard of them. Chivalrous and gallant, generous and gay, he had the faults of a man of pleasure and dissipation, and accordingly he never went into the theater that he was not assailed with some coarse and offensive allusion to the supposed scandals of his private life. We all know the story of Peg Plunket and Manners. But yet I have never heard that the Duke of Rutland instituted a prosecution. We are told, indeed, that on some of those occasions he had the grace to blush; but it is added that he always had the good humor to smile. The privilege, I insist on, has not only been conceded by ministers and lord lieutenants, it has been allowed by kings. Even in the most arbitrary period of our history, we find the British sovereigns freely presenting themselves to their people, and admitting the right to censure or applaud them. Even the Tudors, in that critical interval when the prerogative stood highest, after the ancient aristocracy was dissolved and before the Commons had emerged to wealth and importance, never disputed this well established privilege. Elizabeth herself, in the full maturity of her greatness, when she had trampled on the necks of all her competitors, broken the power of Spain and scattered the invincible armada, even she did not dispute it. When, in a fatal hour of pride and irritation, she had consigned the gallant Essex, the favorite of the nation, to his untimely destiny; as she rode through the streets of her capital to assemble her parliament, a murmur of disapprobation rose around her loud and strong. All-unused to such sounds, and spoiled, as she might well be supposed to be, by the prosperity of forty years, she did not dare to complain: yet she possessed a court of star-chamber, she had a privy council that assumed a criminal jurisdiction, she had an attorney-general ready at her slightest beck to file his ex officio information. But she resorted to none of these. She was too magnanimous a princess; she had too much of an English heart. No; she retired to her chamber, wrung her hands in agony, smote her breast, and recognized within the justice of the people's censure.

I shall not tarnish the luster of examples like these, or diminish their effect, by reminding you of the well-known interruption given to the performances of Covent Garden theater, which continued for sixty-six nights and has been called the O. P. war. There, indeed, was a riot, something different from the "Boyne Water;" and yet, when the subject came into a court of justice, an English jury-I

don't say whether properly or improperly, right or wrong-but an English jury found a verdict for the audience against the manager; and when the Chief Justice, Sir James Mansfield, asked the foreman his reasons for the verdict, he informed him that the jury did not think it consistent with the rights of Englishmen to punish a British subject for distributing placards or wearing the letters O. P. in his hat. Gentlemen, I am not holding this example up for your imitation. Do not suppose me capable of so gross and palpable an artifice. You will find your verdict according to the evidence and the law as it applies to it. But I do mention it for the purpose of showing you what the notions and the feelings of the British people are upon the rights and privileges of a British audience; and we may affect what prudery or delicacy we please upon these subjects, I tell you it is that sturdy English feeling, that sound sense, and crassa Minerva, not to be duped by any sophistry, legal, political or religious, which has made England the nation she is. This is the true source of her splendor, the real foundation of her greatness. Sic fortis Etruria crevit

Scilicet et rerum facta est pulcherrima Roma.

May you ever partake of that feeling! May you ever guard and cherish it! May you ever look with jealousy on any attempt on the part of your rulers to take from you the right of pronouncing on the merits of their government, and of determining without appeal, whether they are popular or unpopular. Preserve it as you would the apple of your eye or the life-blood of your heart! It is better, it is of more value than all your other privileges together. Without it they are paralyzed and lifeless. This is the soul and spirit which gives strength and animation to them all.

14. POLITICAL ASPECT OF A VERDICT CONSIDERED.

Only one topic more, gentlemen. The attorney-general would fain represent to you that your verdict may forward the great cause of national conciliation. Oh, gentlemen of the jury, consider well before you suffer your minds to be entranced and your judgments led along by so captivating an argument as this. I have heard of various nostrums and specifics for the cure of all Irish diseases. There is not a Right Hon. Secretary, or a Right Rev. Bishop, who comes here from England, that does not bring with him some infallible receipt of this description-some cordial or another—some Dr. Solomon's balm of Gilead, that is to take the vertigo from our

heads and the acid from our stomachs, and to restore us to political sanity and vigor. It was only the other day that the philanthropist Mr. Owen-indeed, I believe he is still in the kingdom, and a most excellent and benevolent man he is-proposed to set everything to rights by cutting up the country into small square pieces, and raising our population from seven millions to seven and twenty. Then all was to be harmony and conciliation. But of all the extravagant projects I have yet heard of, surely the most desperate and hopeless seems to be this of conciliating us all by an ex officio information. Every man, to be sure, has a natural attachment to his own profession. I would have given something to have been present at the grand consultation when this expedient was agreed

on.

"What shall we do," says the president of the council, "to allay the differences of this unhappy people?" "Call out the artillery," says the commander of the forces, "erect barriers on the bridges." "Put them down with the police," say Mr. Graves and Mr. Tudor. "Shuffle them well together," says the Lord Mayor. "No," says the attorney-general, "believe me, there is nothing like an ex officio information."

"The currier wiser than all put together."

But I will not sport any longer with the subject; it is too grave, it is too serious, it is too affecting. Conciliation! Conciliation!— magical, mysterious word! How often misapplied and misunderstood! Like the happiness described by the poet:

That still so near us, yet beyond us lies,
O'erlook'd, seen double, by the fool and wise.
Plant of celestial seed, if dropp'd below,

Say in what mortal soil thou deign'st to glow.

Alas, gentlemen of the jury, it is not within the precincts of a court of justice we shall find it to flourish. Prosecutions and convictions, the halter and the prison-bar, are but coarse instruments of conciliation. It is with this as with the other virtues of the same family: friendship and affection, reciprocal esteem and mutual forbearance. It possesses that attribute which Shakespeare has ascribed to the quality of mercy: "It is not strained." It will not be commanded. A king may place his throne upon the sands, and tell the stormy wave to roll back at his bidding; but whether it be the swelling tide of popular emotion, or the bursting billows of the tempestuous sea, they will equally teach him the littleness

of all mortal power, and the impassable limits which nature has prescribed to the authority of man. Do not for a moment suppose that I mean any bold and disrespectful allusion to the parting injunctions of his majesty. I remember too well-who amongst us does not remember that great and ever-memorable day when the king made his triumphal entry into this city, when the hearts of this mighty population beat together in loyal unison as if it had been the heart of one individual man, and the monarch was received among his people like a father into the bosom of his family. As a fair morning of the blessed spring,

After a tedious, stormy night;

Such was the glorious entry of our king!

Enriching moisture dropp'd on everything.

Plenty he sow'd below, and cast around him light.

To what enchanting prospects did we then surrender our delighted imaginations! Why have these blissful hopes been thus severely disappointed? It is not because the great absurdity has been attempted of conciliating men by force-of producing, by constraint and violence, that which is the natural offspring of persuasion? Hence what we have seen; hence unfounded committals upon capital charges, refusal of bail and mainprise, the solemn verdicts of grand juries slighted, scorned and set at defiance; hence ex officio informations. Do not be persuaded, therefore, gentlemen of the jury, that any verdict which you can pronounce will advance the cause of conciliation; believe it not. You can find no conciliatory verdict, but you may find a righteous one. The Lord Lieutenant has been deceived and abused; your verdict may undeceive and disabuse him. His noble mind has been practiced upon: he has been taught to believe that he is surrounded by conspirators and traitors; that weapons are raised against his life; he has been induced to bare his manly breast and to desire "the assassin, if not yet disarmed, to strike now." Tell him by your verdict, gentlemen, that he has no conspirators to fear; that he has no assassins to dread; that there is no dagger aimed at his life, but the "airdrawn dagger" of his own imagination. Such a verdict as this may not be conciliatory, but in my heart I believe it will be just; it will be one that to the latest hour of your lives will receive the approbation of your own consciences; it is one already anticipated by every thinking and reflecting man in the community; and at no distant period it will be hailed by the whole country.

SPEECH OF BARTHOLOMEW HOAR.

OPENING FOR PLAINTIFF IN MASSY V. THE MARQUIS OF HEADFORT. DAMAGES FOR CRIMINAL CONVERSATION.

AT ENNIS ASSIZES, COUNTY CLARE, BEFORE BARON SMITH AND A SPECIAL JURY, FRIDAY, JULY 27th, 1804.

Damages claimed, £40,000. Amount recovered, £10,000.

ANALYSIS OF MR. HOAR'S SPEECH.

1. The narration.-Facts and circumstances of the case.

2. How plaintiff's suspicions were aroused. 3. Mrs. Massy's exemplary behavior quiets his fears.-Circumstances of the abduction.

4. Defendant's crime compared to the treachery of pirate wreckers-A striking simile.

5. Grounds of the defense anticipated and discussed.

6. The rule of damages.

The famous case of Massy v. The Marquis of Headfort, tried at the Ennis Assizes, County Clare, Ireland, Friday, July 27th, 1804, was brought to recover damages alleged to have been sustained by the plaintiff in consequence of the defendant seducing and taking away his wife. The amount claimed was £40,000. The case was rendered interesting on account of the rank and station of the parties. The complainant was a clergyman of the Church of England; the defendant, a peer of the realm and an officer in the British army. He was the son of the Earl of Bective, and had been created, by the royal favor, a Baronet, a Baron, a Viscount, an Earl, and finally a Marquis, and was possessed of an income of £40,000 a year. The "lady in the case was remarkable for grace, beauty and accomplishments. The Rev. Charles Massy was the second son of a gentleman of rank and distinction in the County of Clare. In March, 1796, he married, contrary to his father's wishes, Mary Ann Rosslewin, a belle of eighteen, of great personal attractions. The father's principal objection to the match was based upon the fact that the lady was without fortune. He desired his son to marry a person of wealth, and offered, in case of his compliance, to settle upon him £11,000 a year in landed property. The son, however, sacrificed this ample provision, and wedded the lady of his choice. For eight years their domestic happiness was unbroken. At the time of the plaintiff's misfortune, he lived at Summer Hill, near Limerick. While the defendant was stationed at the latter place Mr. Massy made his acquaintance. At one time the plaintiff had a living in the County of Meath, where Lady Bective, the Mother of the Marquis, was one of his parishoners. Mr. Massy now extended to the son of his former parishoner, who was then over fifty years of age, every hospitality, as a mark of respect to the Lady Bective, whose memory he cherished and esteemed. Under such circumstances, by taking advantage of the confidence of his host, the defendant