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and, if it be a capital offence, you may see the culprit, the justice, the clerk, the bailiff, and the hangman, together in the same cart; and, though he may not write, he may "ride and tie!" What a pity that their journey should not be further continued together! That, as they had been "lovely in their lives, so in their deaths they might not be divided!" I find, my lords, I have undesignedly raised a laugh; never did I less feel merriment.-Let not me be condemned-let not the laugh be mistaken.-Never was Mr. Hume more just than when he says, that, "in many things the ex

tremes are nearer to one another than the means." Few are those events that are produced by vice and folly, that fire the heart with indignation, that do not also shake the sides with laughter. So when the two famous moralists of old beheld the sad spectacle of life, the one burst into laughter, and the other melted into tears; they were each of them right, and equally right.

Si credas utrique

Res sunt humanæ flebile ludibrium.

But these laughs are the bitter ireful laughs of honest indignation, or they are the laughs of hectic melancholy and despair.

It is stated to you, my lords, that these two justices, if justices they are to be called, went to the house of the defendant. I am speaking to judges, but I disdain the paltry insult it would be to them, were I to appeal to any wretched sympathy of situation. I feel I am above it. I know the bench is above it. But I know, too, that there are ranks, and degrees, and decorums to be observed; and if I had a harsh communication to make to a venerable judge, and a similar one to his crier, I should certainly address them in a very different language indeed. A judge of the land, a man not young, of infirm health, has the sanctuary of his habi tation broken open by these two persons, who set out with him for the coast, to drag him from his country, to hurry him to a strange land by the "most direct

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way !" till the king's writ stopt the malefactors, and left the subject of the king a waif dropt in the pursuit.

Is it for nothing, my lords, I say this? Is it without intention I state the facts in this way? It is with every intention. It is the duty of the public advocate not so to put forward the object of public attention, as that the skeleton only shall appear, without flesh, or feature, or complexion. I mean every thing that ought to be meant in a court of justice. I mean not only that this execrable attempt shall be intelligible to the court as a matter of law, but shall be understood by the world as an act of state. If advocates had always the honesty and the courage, upon occasions like this, to despise all personal considerations, and to think of no consequence but what may result to the public from the faithful discharge of their sacred trust, these phrenetic projects of power, these atrocious aggressions on the liberty and happiness of men, would not be so often attempted; for, though a certain class of delinquents may be screened from punishment, they cannot be protected from hatred and derision. The great tribunal of reputation will pass its inexorable sentence upon their crimes, their follies, or their incompetency; they will sink themselves under the consciousness of their situation; they will feel the operation of an acid so neutralizing the malignity of their natures, as to make them at least harmless, if it cannot make them honest. Nor is there any thing of risk in the conduct I recommend. If the fire be hot, or the window cold, turn not your back to either; turn your face. So, if you are obliged to arraign the acts of those in high station, approach them not with malice, nor favor, nor fear. Remember, that it is the condition of guilt to tremble, and of honesty to be bold; remember that your false fear can only give them false courage :-that while you nobly avow the cause of truth, you will find her shield an impenetrable protection; and that no attack can be either hazardous or inefficient, if it be just and resolute.-If Nathan had not fortified himself in the boldness and directness of

his charge, he might have been hanged for the malice of his parable.

It is, my lords, in this temper of mind, befitting every advocate who is worthy of the name, deeply and modestly sensible of his duty, and proud of his privilege, equally exalted above the meanness of temporizing or of offending, most averse from the unnecessary infliction of pain upon any man or men whatsoever, that I now address you on a question, the most vitally connected with the liberty and well being of every man within the limits of the British empire; which, if decided one way, he may be a freeman; which, if decided the other, he must be a slave. It is not the Irish nation only that is involved in this question. Every member of the three realms is equally embarked; and would to God all England could listen to what passes here this day! they would regard us with more sympathy and respect, when the proudest Briton saw that his liberty was defended in what he would call a provincial court, and by a provincial advocate. The abstract and general question for your consideration is this my lord Ellenborough has signed with his own hand a warrant, which has been endorsed by Mr. Bell, an Irish justice, for seizing the person of Mr. Justice Johnson in Ireland, for conveying his person by the most direct way, in such manner as these bailiffs may choose, across the sea, and afterwards to the city of Westminster, to take his trial for an alleged libel against the persons entrusted with the government of Ireland; and to take that trial in a country where the supposed offender did not live at the time of the supposed offence, nor since a period of at least eighteen months previous thereto, has ever resided; where the subject of his accusation is perfectly unknown; where the conduct of his prosecutors, which has been the subject of the supposed libel, is equally unknown; where he has not the power of compelling the attendance of a single witness for his defence. Under that warrant he has been dragged from his family; under that warrant he was on his way to the water's edge:

his transportation has been interrupted by the writ before you, and upon the return of that writ arises the question upon which you are to decide, the legality or illegality of so transporting him for the purpose of trial.

Mr. Curran, after citing various cases in favor of his client, concluded a long and eloquent speech thus: Even if it should be my client's fate to be surrendered to his keepers-to be torn from his familyto have his obsequies performed by torch-light-to be carried to a foreign land, and to a strange tribunal, where no witness can attest his innocence, where no voice that he ever heard can be raised in his defence, where he must stand mute, not of his own malice, but the malice of his enemies-yes even so, I see nothing for him to fear-that all-gracious Being that shields the feeble from the oppressor, will fill his heart with hope, and confidence, and courage; his sufferings will be his armour, and his weakness will be his strength; he will find himself in the hands of a brave, a just, and a generous nation-he will find that the bright examples of her Russels and her Sidneys have not been lost to her children; they will behold him with sympathy and respect, and his persecutors with shame and abhorrence; they will feel too, that what is then his situation, may to-morrow be their own-but their first tear will be shed for him, and the second only for themselves their hearts will melt in his acquittal; they will convey him kindly and fondly to their shore; and he will return in triumph to his country; to the threshold of his sacred home, and to the weeping welcome of his delighted family; he will find that the darkness of a dreary and a lingering night hath at length passed away, and that joy cometh in the morning. No, my lords, I have no fear for the ultimate safety of my client. Even in these very acts of brutal violence that have been committed against him, do I hail the flattering hope of final advantage to him-and not only of final

advantage to him, but of better days and more prosperous fortune for this afflicted country-that country of which I have so often abandoned all hope, and which I have been so often determined to quit for ever.

Sæpe vale dicto multa sum deinde locutus,
Et quasi discedens oscula summa dabam,
Indulgens animo, pes tardus erat.

But I am reclaimed from that infidel despair-I am satisfied that while a man is suffered to live, it is an intimation from Providence that he has some duty to discharge, which it is mean and criminal to decline; had I been guilty of that ignominious flight, and gone to pine in the obscurity of some distant retreat, even in that grave I should have been haunted by those passions by which my life had been agitated

Quæ cura vivos eadem sequitur tellure repostos.

And, if the transactions of this day had reached me, 1 feel how my heart would have been agonized by the shame of the desertion; nor would my sufferings have been mitigated by a sense of the feebleness of that aid, or the smallness of that service, which I could render or withdraw. They would have been aggravated by the consciousness that however feeble or worthless they were, I should not have dared to thieve them from my country. I have repented-I have staid-and I am at once rebuked and rewarded by the happier hopes that I now entertain. In the anxious sympathy of the public-in the anxious sympathy of my learned brethren, do I catch the happy presage of a brighter fate for Ireland. They see, that within these sacred walls, the cause of liberty and of man may be pleaded with boldness, and heard with favor. I am satisfied they will never forget the great trust, of which they alone are now the remaining depositaries. While they continue to cultivate a sound and literate philosophya mild and tolerating Christianity-and to make both

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