rather than avenge it as a crime. Between a State and its subjects there should be no silly punctilio; their errors can never justify yours: you may coerce-you may pass intemperate laws, and unheard-of tribunals, to punish what you should have averted-you may go on to decimate, but you will never tranquilize."

These were in substance the views and arguments of the minority in the Irish House of Commons, and of the more reflecting and unprejudiced of the Irish community; but such mild doctrines had little influence with that assembly, or with the nation. By the Parliament the few that advanced them were regarded as the advocates of the existing disorders, because they ventured to explain their origin, and to recommend the only cure; while the people were industriously taught to withdraw their confidence from public men, who, instead of justifying the popular resentments by more unequivocal co-operation, were looking forward to the impending crisis as an object of apprehension, and not of hope.

Such was the condition of the public mind-the Government depending upon force-the People familiarising themselves to projects of resistance-and several speculative and ambitious men of the middle classes watching, with yet unsettled views, over the fermenting elements of revolution, until it should appear how far they could work themselves into union and consistency, when Mr. Archibald Hamilton Rowan* published an adress to the Volunteers of Ireland, setting forth the dangers with which the country was threatened from foreign and domestic foes, and inviting them to resume their arms for the preservation of the general tranquillity. This publication was prosecuted by the state as a sedi

* Mr. Rowan was secretary to the Society of United Irishmen in Dublin. It is proper to observe here, that this was one of the original societies of that denomination, whose views did not extend beyond a constitutional reform. They have been sometimes con. founded with the subsequent associations, which, under the same popular appellation, aimed at a revolution.-C.

tious libel, and Mr. Curran was selected by Mr. Rowan to conduct his defence.

The speech in defence of Hamilton Rowan has been generally considered as one of Mr. Curran's ablest efforts at the bar. It is one of the few that has been correctly reported; and to that circumstance is, in some degree, to be attributed its apparent superiority. Notwithstanding the enthusiastic applause which its delivery excited, he never gave it any peculiar preference himself.

The opening of it has some striking points of resemblance to the exordium of Cicero's defence of Milo. If an imitation was intended by the Irish advocate, it was very naturally suggested by the coincidence of the leading topics in the two cases-the public interest excited—the unusual military array in the courtthe great popularity of the clients-and the factious clamours which preceded their trials.*

"When I consider the period at which this prosecution is brought forward—when I behold the extraordinary safeguard of armed soldiers resorted to, no doubt, for the preservation of peace and order-when I catch, as I cannot but do, the throb of public anxiety, that beats from one end to the other of this hall-when I reflect on what may be the fate of a man of the most beloved personal character, of one of the most respected families of our country, himself the only individual of that family, I may almost say of that country-who can look to that possible fate with unconcern? Feeling, as I do, all these impressions, it is in the honest simplicity of my heart I speak, when I say that I never rose in a court of justice with so much embarrassment as on this occasion.

* Nam illa præsidia, quæ pro templis omnibus cernitis, etsi contra vim collocata sunt, nobis afferunt tamen horroris aliquid: neque eorum quisquam, quos undique intuentes cernitis, unde aliqua pars fori adspici potest, et hujus exitum judicii expectantes, non cum virtuti Milonis favet, tum de se, de liberis suis, de patria, de fortunis hodierno die decertari putat.

Unum genus est adversum infestumque nobis eorum, quos P. Clodii furor rapinis et Incendiis et omnibus exitiis publicis pavit; qui hesterna etiam concione incitati sunt, ut vobis voce præirent, quid judicaretis.-O.

"If, gentlemen, I could entertain a hope of finding refuge for the disconcertion of my own mind in the perfect composure of yours; if I could suppose that those awful vicissitudes of human events that have been stated or alluded to, could leave your judgments undisturbed or your hearts at ease, I know I should form a most erroneous opinion of your character. I entertain no such chimerical hope-I form no such unworthy opinion-I expect not that your hearts can be more at ease than my own-I have no right to expect it; but I have a right to call upon you in the name of your country, in the name of the living God, of whose eternal justice you are now administering that portion which dwells with us on this side of the grave, to discharge your breasts, as far as you are able, of every bias of prejudice or passionthat, if my client be guilty of the offence charged upon him, you may give tranquillity to the public by a firm verdict of conviction; or, if he be innocent, by as firm a verdict of acquittal; and that you will do this in defiance of the paltry artifices and senseless clamours that have been resorted to, in order to bring him to his trial with anticipated conviction. And, gentlemen, I feel an additional necessity of thus conjuring you to be upon your guard, from the able and imposing statement which you have just heard on the part of the prosecution. I know well the virtues and talents of the excellent person who conducts that prosecution.* I know how much he would disdain to impose on you by the trappings of office; but I also know how easily we mistake the lodgment which character and eloquence can make upon our feelings, for those impressions that reason, and fact, and proof only ought to work upon our understandings."

When Mr. Curran came to observe upon that part of the publication under trial, which proposed complete Emancipation to persons of every religious persuasion, he expressed himself as

think it wise or humane, at this moment, to insult

The Attorney-General, Mr. Wolfe, afterwards Lord Kilwarden.-C.

them (the Catholics) by sticking up in the pillory the man who dared to stand forth as their advocate? I put it to your oaths, do you think that a blessing of that kind, that a victory obtained by justice over bigotry and oppression, should have a stigma cast upon it by an ignominious sentence upon men bold and honest enough to propose that measure?-to propose the redeeming of religion from the abuses of the church, the reclaiming of three millions of men from bondage, and giving liberty to all who had a right to demand it ?-Giving, I say, in the so much censured words of this paper-giving Universal Emancipation?"

"I speak in the spirit of the British law, which makes Liberty commensurate with, and inseparable from, British soil; which proclaims even to the stranger and the sojourner, the moment he sets his foot upon British earth, that the ground on which he treads is holy, and consecrated by the genius of Universal Emancipation. No matter in what language his doom may have been pronounced -no matter in what complexion incompatible with freedom, an Indian or an African sun may have burnt upon him—no matter in what disastrous battle his liberty may have been cloven downno matter with what solemnities he may have been devoted upon the altar of slavery-the first moment he touches the sacred soil of Britain, the altar and the god sink together in the dust; his soul walks abroad in her own majesty; his body swells beyond the measure of his chains that burst from around him; and he stands redeemed, regenerated and disenthralled, by the irresistible genius of Universal Emancipation."

There is, farther on, a passage on the freedom of the press, too glowing and characteristic to be omitted:

"If the people say, let us not create tumult, but meet in delegation, they cannot do it; if they are anxious to promote parliamentary reform in that way, they cannot do it; the law of the last session has, for the first time, declared such meetings to be a crime. What then remains?—The liberty of the press only-that sacred palladium which no influence, no power, no minister, no govern

ment, which nothing but the depravity, or folly, or corruption of a jury can ever destroy. And what calamities are the people saved from, by having public communication left open to them? I will tell you what they are saved from, and what the government is saved from. I will tell you also to what both are exposed, by shutting up that communication. In one case sedition speaks aloud, and walks abroad; the demagogue goes forth-the public eye is upon him-he frets his busy hour upon the stage; but soon either weariness, or bribe, or punishment, or disappointment, bear him down, or drive him off, and he appears no more. In the other case, how does the work of sedition go forward? Night after night the muffled rebel steals forth in the dark, and casts another and another brand upon the pile, to which, when the hour of fatal maturity shall arrive, he will apply the flame. If you doubt of the horrid consequences of suppressing the effusion even of individual discontent, look to those enslaved countries, where the protection of despotism is supposed to be secured by such restraints. Even the person of the despot there is never in safety. Neither the fears of the despot, nor the machinations of the slave, have any slumber; the one anticipating the moment of peril, the other watching the opportunity of aggression. The fatal crisis is equally a surprise upon both; the decisive instant is precipitated without warning, by folly on the one side, or by phrensy on the other; and there is no notice of the treason till the traitor acts. But if you wish for a nearer and more interesting example, you have it in the history of your own Revolution; you have it at that memorable period when the monarch found a servile acquiescence in the ministers of his folly-when the liberty of the press was trodden under foot-when venal sheriff's returned packed juries, to carry into effect those fatal conspiracies of the few against the many-when the devoted benches of public justice were filled by some of those foundlings of fortune, who, overwhelmed in the torrent of corruption at an early period, lay at the bottom like drowned bodies, while soundness or sanity remained in them; but,