to him. Upon one occasion, when Mr. Curran was confined by illness to his bed, that gentleman visited him, and renewing the subject, with tears in his eyes, implored him to consult his interest and his safety: "I tell you (said Mr. Wolfe) that you have attached yourself to a desperate faction, that will abandon you at last; with whom you have nothing to expect but danger and disappointment. With us, how different would be your condition-I ask for no painful stipulations on your part, only say that you would accept of office-my situation will probably soon be vacant for you, and after that, the road would be clear before you." This proof of private affection caused Mr. Curran to weep, but he was unshaken. He replied, "that he knew, better than his friend could do, the men with whom he was associated; that they were not a desperate faction; that their cause was that of Ireland, and that even though it should eventually be branded with the indelible stigma of failure, he should never regret that it was with such men, and such a cause, that he had linked his final destinies."

TRIAL OF THE REV. W. JACKSON.

The next state trial of importance in which Mr. Curran was engaged, was that of Mr. William Jackson, a case of which some of the attending circumstances were so singular, that they cannot be omitted here.

Mr. Jackson was a clergyman of the established church; he was a native of Ireland, but had for several years resided out of that country. A part of his life was spent in the family of the noted Duchess of Kingston, and he is said to have been the son who conducted that lady's controversy with the celebrated Foote.* At the period of the French Revolution, he passed over Paris, where he formed political connections with the ruling

per

Foote, at the close of his letter to her Grace, observes: "pray, madam, is not Jņ

powers there: from France he returned to London in 1794, for the purpose of procuring information as to the practicability of an invasion of England, and was thence to proceed to Ireland on a similar mission. Upon his arrival in London, he renewed an intimacy with a person named Cockayne, who had formerly been his friend and confidential attorney. The extent of his communications, in the first instance, to Cockayne did not exactly appear; the latter, however, was prevailed upon to write the directions of seve ral of Jackson's letters, containing treasonable matters, to his correspondents abroad; but in a little time, either suspecting or repenting that he had been furnishing evidence of treason against himself, he revealed to the British minister, Mr. Pitt, all that he knew or conjectured relative to Jackson's objects. By the desire of Mr. Pitt, Cockayne accompanied Jackson to Ireland, to watch and defeat his designs, and as soon as the evidence of his treason was mature, announced himself as a witness for the Crown. Mr. Jackson was accordingly arrested, and committed to stand his trial for high treason.

It did not appear that he had been previously connected with any of the political fraternities then so prevalent in Ireland, but some of them took so deep an interest in his fate, that the night before his trial, four persons of inferior condition, members of those societies, formed a plan (which, however, proved abortive) to seize and carry off Cockayne, and perhaps to dispatch him, in order to deprive the Government of the benefit of his testimony.* Mr. Jackson was committed to prison in April, 1794, but his

case.

the name of your female confidential secretary ?" and afterwards, "that you may never want the benefit of clergy in every emergency, is the wish of Yours, &c."-C. Trial of John Leary for high treason, Dec. 28th, 1795. This fact came out on the cross examination of Lawler, an informer, and the witness against the prisoner in this Lawler was one of the party that was to have seized Cockayne: he did not actually admit that he was to have been assassinated; but he allowed that the objection to such a measure was, "that if Cockayne were put to death, and the court should know it, the informations he had given could be read in evidence against Jackson." From the cha racter of Lawler, however, it was generally suspected that assassination was intended.-0,

trial was delayed, by successive adjournments, till the same month in the following year. In the interval, he wrote and published a refutation of Paine's Age of Reason, probably in the hope that it might be accepted as an atonement.*

[The trial took place on April 23, 1795. The judges were Lord Clonmel, Mr. Justice Downes, Mr. Justice Chamberlain. The principal witness was Cockayne, the spy. Curran, who defended Jackson, principally relied on the fact that no conviction for high treason could take place in England with Two witnesses to the facts, whereas it was thus attempted, in Ireland, to convict on the evidence of ONE. The anomaly was not removed until 1854, when the law was made the same in both countries.

The trial lasted until four in the morning, when Jackson was

* Examples of honourable conduct, no matter by whom displayed, are heard with pleasure by every friend to human nature. Of such, a very rare instance was given by this gentleman during his imprisonment. For the whole of that period he was treated with every possible indulgence, a fact which is so creditable to the Irish Government, that it would be unjust to suppress it. Among the other acts of lenity extended to him, was a permission to enjoy the society of his friends. A short time before his trial, one of these remained with him to a very late hour of the night: when he was about to depart, Mr. Jackson accompanied him as far as the place where the gaoler usually waited on such occasions, until all his prisoner's visitors should have retired. They found the gaoler in a profound sleep, and the keys of the prison lying beside him. "Poor fellow!" said Mr. Jackson, taking up the keys, "let us not disturb him; I have already been too troublesome to him in this way." He accordingly proceeded with his friend to the outer door of the prison, which he opened. Here the facility of escaping naturally struck him-he became deeply agitated; but after a moment's pause, "I could do it," said he, "but what would be the consequence to you, and to the poor fellow within, who has been so kind to me? No! let me rather meet my fate." He said no more, but locking the prison door again, returned to his apartment. It should be added that the gentleman, out of consideration for whom such an opportunity was sacrificed, gave a proof upon this occasion that he deserved it. He was fully aware of the legal consequences of aiding in the escape of a prisoner committed under a charge of high treason, and felt that in the present instance, it would have been utterly impossible for him to disprove the circumstantial evidence that would have appeared against him; yet he never uttered a syllable to dissuade his unfortunate friend. He, however, considered the temptation to be so irresist able that, expecting to find the prisoner, upon further reflection, availing himself of it, he remained all night outside the prison door, with the intention, if Mr. Jackson should escape, of instantly flying from Ireland.-C.

convicted. He was brought up for judgment on the 30th April, 1795.*]

It is at this stage of the proceedings that the case of Jackson becomes terribly peculiar. Never, perhaps, did a British court of justice exhibit a spectacle of such appalling interest as was witnessed by the King's Bench of Ireland, upon the day that this unfortunate gentleman was summoned to hear his fate pronounced. He had a day or two before made some allusions to the subject of suicide. In a conversation with his counsel in the prison, he had observed to them that his food was always cut in pieces before it was brought to him, the gaoler not venturing to trust him with a knife or fork. This precaution he ridiculed, and observed, "that the man who feared not death, could never want the means of dying, and that as long as his head was within reach of the prisonwall, he could prevent his body's being suspended to scare the community." At the moment, they regarded this as a mere casual ebullition, and did not give it much attention.

On the morning of the 30th of April, as one of these gentlemen was proceeding to Court, he met in the streets a person warmly attached to the Government of the day; the circumstance is trivial, but it marks the party spirit that prevailed, and the manner in which it was sometimes expressed: "I have (said he) just seen your client, Jackson, pass by on his way to the King's Bench to receive sentence of death. I always said he was a coward, and I find I was not mistaken; his fears have made him sick-as the coach drove by, I observed him with his head out of the window, vomiting violently." The other hurried on to the Court, where he found his client supporting himself against the dock; his frame was in a state of violent perturbation, but his mind was still col

*The report of Mr. Curran's defence of Jackson will be found in the lately published volume of Howell's State Trials. It was (as he observed himself)" a narrow case," and afforded few materials for the display of eloquence. The principal points which he urged were the necessity of two witnesses (as in England) and the impeached character of the single witness, Cockayne.-C.

lected. He beckoned to his counsel to approach him, and making an effort to squeeze him with his damp and nerveless hand, uttered in a whisper, and with a smile of mournful triumph, the dying words of Pierre :

"We have deceived the senate."*

The prisoner's counsel having detected what they conceived to be a legal informality in the proceedings, intended to make a motion in arrest of his judgment; but it would have been irregular to do so until the counsel for the Crown, who had not yet appeared, should first pray the judgment of the court upon him. During the interval, the violence of the prisoner's indisposition momentarily increased, and the Chief Justice, Lord Clonmel, was speaking of remanding him, when the Attorney General came in, and called upon the court to pronounce judgment upon him. Accordingly, "the Reverend William Jackson was set forward," and presented a spectacle equally shocking and affecting. His body was in a state of profuse perspiration; when his hat was removed, a dense steam was seen to ascend from his head and temples; minute and irregular movements of convulsions were passing to and fro upon his countenance; his eyes were nearly closed, and when at intervals they opened, discovered by the glare of death upon them, that the hour of dissolution was at hand. When called on to stand up before the Court, he collected the remnant of his force to hold himself erect; but the attempt was tottering and imperfect; he stood rocking from side to side, with his arms in the attitude of firmness, crossed over his breast, and his countenance strained by a last proud effort into an expression of elaborate composure. In this condition he faced all the anger of the offended law, and the more confounding gazes of the assembled crowd. The Clerk of the Crown now ordered him to hold up his right hand; the dying man disentangled it from the other, and held it up, but it instantly dropped again! Such was his state, when in the solemn simplicity of the language of the law, he was asked, “What he

Otway's Venice Preserved.