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CURRAN AGAINST MR. JUSTICE JOHNSON

I CANNOT but observe the sort of scenic preparation with which this sad drama is sought to be brought forward. In part I approve it; in part it excites my disgust and indignation. I am glad to find that the attorney and solicitor general, the natural and official prosecutors for the state, do not appear; and I infer from their absence, that his excellency the lord lieutenant disclaims any personal concern in this execrable transaction. I think it does him much honor; it is a conduct that equally agrees with the dignity of his character and the feelings of his heart. To his private virtues, whenever he is left to their influence, I willingly concur in giving the most unqualified tribute of respect. And I do firmly believe, it is with no small regret that he suffers his name to be even formally made use of, in avowing for a return of one of the judges of the land, with as much indifference and nonchalance as if he were a beast of the plow. I observe too, the dead silence into which the public is frowned by authority for the sad occasion. No man dares to mutter; no newspaper dares to whisper that such a question is afloat. It seems an inquiry among the tombs, or rather in the shades beyond them,

I am glad it is so

Ibant sola sub nocte per umbram.

I am glad of this factitious dumbness; for if murmurs dared to become audible, my voice would be too feeble to drown them; but when all is hushed — when nature sleeps

Cum quies mortalibus ægris,

the weakest voice is heard the shepherd's whistle shoots across the listening darkness of the interminable heath, and gives notice that the wolf is upon his walk; and the same gloom and stillness that tempt the monster to come abroad, facilitate the communication of the warning to beware. Yes, through that silence the voice shall be heard; yes, through that silence the shepherd shall be put upon his guard; yes, through that silence shall the felon savage be chased into the toil. Yes, my lords, I feel myself cheered and impressed by the composed and dignified attention with which I see you are disposed to hear me on the most important question that has ever been subjected to your consideration; the most important to the dearest rights of the human being; the most deeply interesting and animating that can beat in his heart, or burn upon his tongue - Oh! how recre ating is it to feel that occasions may arise in which the soul of

man may resume her pretensions; in which she hears the voice of nature whisper to her, os homini sublime dedi cœlumque tueri; in which even I can look up with calm security to the court, and down with the most profound contempt upon the reptile I mean to tread upon! I say, reptile; because, when the proudest man in society becomes so the dupe of his childish malice, as to wish to inflict on the object of his vengeance the poison of his sting, to do a reptile's work he must shrink into a reptile's dimension; and so shrunk, the only way to assail him is to tread upon him.

THE SAME CONTINUED.

I MAY be told, that I am putting imaginary and ludicrous, but not probable, and therefore, not supposable cases. But I answer, that reasoning would be worthy only of a slave, and disgraceful to a freeman. I answer, that the condition and essence of rational freedom is, not that the subject probably will not be abused, but that no man in the state shall be clothed with any discretionary power, under the color and pretext of which he can dare to abuse him. As to probability, I answer, that in the mind of man there is no more instigating temptation to the most remorseless oppression, than the rancor and malice of irritated pride and wounded vanity. To the argument of improbability, I answer, the very fact, the very question in debate, nor to such answer can I see the possibility of any reply, save that the prosecutors are so heartily sick of the point of view into which they have put themselves by their prosecution, that they are not likely again to make a similar experiment. But when I see any man fearless of power, because it possibly, or probably, may not be exercised upon him, I am astonished at his fortitude; I am astonished at the tranquil courage of any man who can quietly see that a loaded cannon is brought to bear upon him, and that a fool is setting at its touch-hole with a lighted match in his hand. And yet, my lords, upon a little reflection, what is it, after what we have seen, that should surprise us, however it may shock us? What have the last ten years of the world been employed in, but in destroying the landmarks of rights, and duties, and obligations; in substituting sounds in the place of sense; in substituting a vile and canting methodism in the place. of social duty and practical honor; in suffering virtue to evapo rate into phrase, and morality into hypocrisy and affectation? We talk of the violations of Hamburgh or of Baden; we talk of

the de spotical and remorseless barbarian who tramples on the common privileges of the human being; who, in defiance of the most known and sacred rights, issues the brutal mandate of usurped authority; who brings his victim by force within the limits of a jurisdiction to which he never owed obedience, and there butchers him for a constructive offense. Does it not seem as if it was a contest whether we should be more scurrilous in invective, or more atrocious in imitation? Into what a condition must we be sinking, when we have the front to select as the subjects of our obloquy those very crimes which we have flung behind us in the race of profligate rivality!

CURRAN

THE SAME, CONTINUED.

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SUCH, I am satisfied, was the counsel given; but I have no apprehension for my client, because it was not taken. Even if it should be his fate to be surrendered to his keepers — to be torn from his family to have his obsequies performed by torchlight 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 defense; where he must stand mute, not of his 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 armor, and his weakness will be his strength. He will find him self in the hands of a brave, a just and a generous nation. He will find that the bright examples of her Russells 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 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 of better daya

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and more prosperous fortune for this afflicted countrycountry of which I have so often abandoned all hope, and which I have so often determined to quit forever.

CURRAN

CURRAN AGAINST THE MARQUIS OF HEADFORD.

In the middle of the day, at the moment of Divine worship, when the miserable husband was on his knees, directing the prayers and thanksgivings of his congregation to their Godthat moment did the remorseless adulterer choose to carry off the deluded victim from her husband, from her child, from her character, from her happiness; as if not content to leave his crime confined to its miserable aggravations, unless he gave it the cast and color of factitious sacrilege and impiety. Oh, how happy had it been when he arrived at the bank of the river with the ill-fated fugitive, ere yet he had committed her to that boat, of which, like the fabled barque of Styx, the exile was eternal, how happy at that moment, so teeming with misery and with shame, if you, my lord, had met him, and could have accosted him in the character of that good genius which had abandoned him. How impressively might you have pleaded the cause of the father, of the child, of the mother, and even of the worthless defendant himself. You would have said, "Is this the requital that you are about to make for respect and kindness and confidence in your honor? Can you deliberately expose this young man, in the bloom of life, with all his hopes before him?can you expose him, a wretched outcast from society, to the scorn of a merciless world? Can you set him adrift upon the tempestuous ocean of his own passions, at this early season when they are most headstrong; and can you cut him out from the moorings of those domestic obligations by whose cable he might ride at safety from their turbulence? Think of, if you can conceive it, what a powerful influence arises from the sense of home, from the sacred religion of the hearth, in quelling the passions, in reclaiming the wanderings, in correcting the discords of the human heart; do not cruelly take from him the protection of these attachments. but if you have no pity for the father, have mercy at least upon his innocent and helpless child; do not condemn him to an education scandalous or neglected, do not strike him into that most dreadful of all human conditions, the orphanage that springs not from the grave, that falls not from

the hand of Providence, or the stroke of death; but comes before its time, anticipated and inflicted by the remorseless cruelty of parental guilt.

NOBLE TRIBUTE TO LORD AVONMORE.

I AM not ignorant, my lord, that this extraordinary construc tion has received the sanction of another court, nor of the surprise and dismay with which it smote upon the general heart of the bar. I am aware that I may have the mortification of being told, in another country, of that unhappy decision; and I foresee in what confusion I shall hang down my head when I am told it. But I cherish too the consolatory hope, that I shall be able to tell them that I had an old and learned friend, whom I would put above all the sweepings of their hall, who was of a different opinion; who had derived his ideas of civil liberty from the purest fountains of Athens and of Rome; who had fed the youthful vigor of his studious mind with the theoretic knowledge of their wisest philosophers and statesmen; and who had refined the theory into the quick and exquisite sensibility of moral instinct, by contemplating the practice of their most illustrious examples; by dwelling on the sweet-souled piety of Cimon; on the anticipated Christianity of Socrates; on the gallant and pathetic patriotism of Epaminondas; on that pure austerity of Fabricus, whom to move from his integrity would have been more difficult than to have pushed the sun from his course. I would add, that if he had seemed to hesitate, it was but for a moment; that his hesitation was like the passing cloud that floats across the morning sun, and hides it from the view, and does so for a moment hide it, by involving the spectator without even approaching the face of the luminary and this soothing hope I draw from the dearest and tenderest recollections of my life, from the remembrance of those Attic nights, and those refections of the gods which we have spent with those admired and respected and beloved companions who have gone before us;-over whose ashes the most precious tears of Ireland have been shed: yes, my good lord, I see you do not forget them; I see their sacred forms passing in sad review before your memory; I see your pained and softened fancy recalling those happy meetings, when the innocent enjoyment of social mirth expanded into the nobler warmth of social virtue; and the horizon of the board became enlarged into the horizon of man; - when the swelling heart conceived and communicated the pure and generous purpose

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