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lightly fined by courts of criminal justice, throw | tice of Christianity shall overspread the face of down his bank-notes to the officers, and retire the earth. with a deportment, not of contrition, but contempt.

For these reasons, gentlemen, I expect from you to-day the full measure of damages demanded by the plaintiff. Having given such a verdict, you will retire with a monitor within confirming that you have done right; you will retire in sight of an approving public, and an approving Heaven. Depend upon it, the world can not be held together without morals; nor can morals maintain their station in the human heart without religion, which is the corner-stone of the fabric of human virtue.

Religious insti

Gentlemen, as to us, we have nothing to wait for. We have long been in the center of light. We have a true religion and a free government, AND YOU ARE THE PILLARS AND SUPPORTERS OF

BOTH.

Duty of a jury in England, stitutions have cherished and

where these in

always been

revered.

It is for

I have nothing further to add, except that, since the defendant committed the injury complained of, he has sold his estate, and is preparing to remove into some other country. Be it so. Let him remove; but you will have to pronounce the penalty of his return. YOU to declare whether such a person is worthy We have lately had a most striking proof of to be a member of our community. But if the Peroration: this sublime and consoling truth in feebleness of your jurisdiction, or a commiseratutions (includ- one result, at least, of the Revolution tion which destroys the exercise of it, shall shelwhich has astonished and shaken the ter such a criminal from the consequences of his earth. Though a false philosophy crimes, individual security is gone, and the rights was permitted, for a season, to raise up her vain of the public are unprotected. Whether this be fantastic front, and to trample down the Christian | our condition or not, I shall know by your verestablishments and institutions, yet, on a sudden, God said, "Let there be light, and there was light." The altars of religion were restored— not purged, indeed, of human errors and superstitions, not reformed in the just sense of reformation; yet the Christian religion is still re-established — leading on to further reformation; fulfilling the hope, that the doctrines and prac

ing marriage) restored in France.

dict.

The jury gave £7000 damages-being the full amount of the defendant's property. The money could not be collected, as Mr. Fawcett had fled the country; but the verdict operated as a sentence of perpetual banishment against him.

MR. CURRAN.

JOHN PHILPOT CURRAN was born at Newmarket, an obscure village in the northwest corner of the county of Cork, Ireland, on the 24th of July, 1750. The family was in low circumstances, his father being seneschal, or collector of rents, to a gentleman of small property in the neighborhood. He was a man, however, of vigorous intellect, and acquirements above his station; while his wife was distinguished for that bold, irregular strength of mind, that exuberance of imagination and warmth of feeling, which were so strikingly manifested in the character of her favorite son.

The peculiar position of his father brought the boy, from early life, into contact with persons of every class, both high and low; and he thus gained that perfect knowledge of the mind and heart of his countrymen, and that kindling sympathy with their feelings, which gave him more power over an Irish jury than any other man ever possessed. Though sent early to school, his chief delight was in societyin fun, frolic, mimicry, and wild adventure. The country fairs, which were frequent in his native village, were his especial delight; and, as he moved in the crowded streets, among the cattle and the pigs, the horse-dealers and frieze-dealers, the matchmakers and the peddlers, he had his full share of the life, and sport, and contention of the scene. He was a regular attendant on dances and wakes; and dwelt with the deepest interest on the old traditions about the unfinished palace of Kanturk, in the neighborhood, or listened to the stories concerning the rapparees of King William's wars, or to "the strains of the piper as he blew the wild notes to which Alister M'Donnel marched to battle at Knocknanois, and the wilder ones in which the women mourned over his corse." Every thing conspired from his earliest years to give him freedom and versatility of mind; to call forth the keenest sagacity as to character and motives; to produce a quick sense of the ridiculous; to cherish that passionate strength of feeling which expressed itself equally in tears and laughter ; to make him, at once, of reality and imagination "all compact."

When he was about fourteen years old, as he was rolling marbles one morning, and playing his tricks in the ball-alley, he attracted the notice of an elderly gentleman who was passing by. It was the Rev. Mr. Boyse, a clergyman of the Church of England, who held the rectorship of the parish. The family of Curran were attendants on his ministry, and he had heard much of the brightness and promise of the boy. He invited him to his house, and was so much pleased with his frank and hearty conversation, that he offered at once to instruct him in the classics, with a view to his entering Trinity College, Dublin. Young Curran was ready for any thing that could gratify his curiosity. He removed to the Rectory; he devoted himself to study, though with occasional outbreaks of his love of fun and frolic; he made such proficiency that, within three years, he fairly outran his patron's ability to teach him ; he was then removed by Mr. Boyse to a school at Middleton, and supported partly at his expense; and was prepared for the University in 1769, at the age of nineteen. Here he studied the classics especially, with great ardor, perfecting himself so fully both in the Latin and Greek languages, that he could read them with ease and pleasure throughout life. His exertions were rewarded by honors and emoluments which very nearly provided for his support while in college; and he carried with him into life an enthusiasm for these studies which never subsided, amid all the multiplied cares of business and politics. For a long time he read Homer once every year;

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Mr. Phillips speaks of seeing him, late in life, on board a Holyhead packet in a storm, absorbed in the Æneid, while every one around was deadly sick; and in the last journey he ever took, Horace and Virgil were still, as in early life, his traveling companions. He was also distinguished at college for his love of metaphysical inquiries and subtle disquisition. He showed great ingenuity in the discussion of subjects; and his companions were so much struck with his dexterity and force on a certain occasion, that they declared, with one consent, that "the bar, and the bar alone, was the proper profession for the talents of which he had that day given such striking proof." He accepted the omen," says his son, "and never after repented of his decision.'

Having completed his college course, and qualified himself for the degree of Master of Arts, in 1773, he removed to London, and commenced the study of the law in the Middle Temple. Here he was supported in part by a wealthy friend, but his life in London was a hard one." He spent his mornings, as he states, "in reading even to exhaustion," and the rest of the day in the more congenial pursuits of literature, and especially in unremitted efforts to perfect himself as a speaker. His voice was bad, and his articulation so hasty and confused, that he went among his schoolfellows by the name of "stuttering Jack Curran." His manner was awkward, his gesture constrained and meaningless, and his whole appearance calculated only to produce laughter, notwithstanding the evidence he gave of superior abilities. All these faults he overcame by severe and patient labor. Constantly on the watch against bad habits, he practiced daily before a glass, reciting passages from Shakspeare, Junius, and the best English orators. He frequented the debating societies, which then abounded in London; and though mortified at first by repeated failures, and ridiculed by one of his opponents as "Orator Mum," he surmounted every difficulty. "He turned his shrill and stumbling brogue," says one of his friends, “into a flexible, sustained, and finely-modulated voice; his action became free and forcible ; he acquired perfect readiness in thinking on his legs;" he put down every opponent "he by the mingled force of his argument and wit, and was at last crowned with the universal applause of the society, and invited by the president to an entertainment in their behalf. Well might one of his biographers say, "His oratorical training was as severe as any Greek ever underwent.”

Mr. Curran married during his residence in London, with but little accession to his fortune, and, returning soon after to Ireland, commenced the practice of the law in Dublin, at the close of 1775. He soon rose into business, because he could not do without it; verifying the remark of Lord Eldon, that some barristers succeed by great talents, some by high connections, some by miracle, but the great majority by commencing without a shilling." Within four years, he gained an established reputation and a lucrative practice; and at this time, 1779, he united with Mr. Yelverton, afterward Lord Avonmore, in forming a Society, called "The Monks of the Order of St. Patrick," embracing a large part of the wit, literature, eloquence, and public virtue of the metropolis of Ireland. From the title familiarly given its members of the "Monks of the Screw," it has been supposed by many to have been chiefly a drinking club. So far was this from being the case, that, by an express regulation, every thing stronger than beer was excluded from the meeting. "It was a union,"

1 Mr. Curran's feelings toward Mr. Boyse, who sent him to College, were expressed in a story he once told at his own table. "Thirty-five years after,” said he, “returning one day from court, I found an old gentleman seated in my drawing-room, with his feet on each side of the marble chimney-piece, and an air of being perfectly at home. He turned-it was my friend of the ball-alley! I could not help bursting into tears. 'You are right, sir, you are right! The chimney-piece is yours, the pictures are yours, the house is yours: you gave me all-my friend, my father!' He went with me to Parliament, and I saw the tears glistening in his eyes when he saw his poor little Jackey rise to answer a Right Honorable. He is gone, sir. This is his wine-let us drink his health!"

says one acquainted with its proceedings, "of strong minds, brought together like electric clouds by affinity, and flashing as they joined. They met, and shone, and warmed they had great passions and generous accomplishments, and, like all that was then good in Ireland, they were heaving for want of freedom." Nearly thirty years after, when the angry politics of the day had thrown Lord Avonmore and his friend into hostile parties, so that they were no longer on speaking terms, Mr. Curran adverted to the meetings of this society in arguing a case before Lord Avonmore, as Chief Baron of the Exchequer, in a manner which was deeply interesting to those who witnessed it. After delicately alluding to his Lordship, as differing from the Chief Justice of England on a point of law, and as having "derived his ideas from the purest fountains of Athens and Rome," Mr. Curran expressed his hope that such would be the decision of the court, embracing as it did members of the society referred to. "And this soothing hope," said he, "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. [Here Lord Avonmore became so much affected that he could not refrain from tears.] 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, where the innocent enjoyment of social mirth became expanded into the nobler warmth of social virtue, and the horizon of the board became enlarged into the horizon of man-where the swelling heart conceived and communicated the pure and generous purpose—where my slenderer and younger taper imbibed its borrowed light from the more matured and redundant fountain of yours. Yes, my Lord, we can remember those nights without any other regret than that they can never more return; for,

"We spent them not in toys, or lust, or wine,

But search of deep philosophy,

Wit, eloquence, and poesy,

Arts which I loved-for they, my friend, were thine."--COWLEY.2

The space allowed to this sketch will not permit any minute detail of Mr. Curran's labors at the bar or in public life. Nor was there any thing in either which calls for an extended notice. He was a member of the Irish House of Commons from 1783 to 1797, and entered warmly into the cause of emancipation and reform; but he was never distinguished as a parliamentary orator. His education was forensic; his feelings and habits fitted him pre-eminently to act on the minds of a jury, and for more than twenty years he had an unrivaled mastery over the Irish bar. His speeches at state trials arising out of the United Irish conspiracy, were the most splendid efforts of his genius. He condemned insurrection; but he felt that the people had been goaded to madness by the oppression of the government, and for nearly six years he tasked every effort of his being to save the victims of misguided and unsuccessful resistance. He did it at the hazard of his life. As he drove to town at this period from his residence in a neighboring village, he was in daily expectation of being shot at. The court-room was crowded with troops during some of the trials, with a view, it was believed, of intimidating the jury or the advocates of the prisoners. "What's that?" exclaimed Mr. Curran, as a clash of arms was heard from the soldiery at the close of one of his bold denunciations of the course

2 Lord Avonmore, in whose breast political resentment was easily subdued by the same noble tenderness of feeling which distinguished Charles J. Fox upon a more celebrated occasion, could not withstand this appeal to his heart. The moment the court rose, his Lordship sent for his friend, and threw himself into his arms, declaring that unworthy artifices had been used to separate them and that they should never succeed in future.

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pursued by the government. Some who stood near him seemed, from their looks and gestures, about to offer him personal violence, when he fixed his eye sternly upon them, and added, “You may assassinate, but you shall not intimidate me!” They were not mere clients for whom he pleaded," says his biographer, “they were friends for whose safety he would have coined his blood; they were patriots who had striven by means which he thought desperate or unsuited to himself for the freedom of their country. He came in the spirit of love and mercy, inspired by genius and commissioned by Heaven to walk on the waters with these patriots, and lend them his hand when they were sinking. He pleaded for some who, nevertheless, were slaughtered; but was his pleading therefore in vain? Did he not convert many a shaken conscience, sustain many a frightened soul? Did he not keep the life of genius, if not of hope, in the country? Did he not help to terrify the government into the compromise which they so ill kept? He did all this, and more. His speeches will ever remain less as models of eloquence than as examples of patriotism and undying exhortations to justice and liberty."

In 1803 there was another attempt at insurrection, which Mr. Curran regarded with very different emotions. It was that of Robert Emmett. Whatever we may think of the motives or the genius of this extraordinary young man, there can be but one opinion of the enterprise in which he was engaged. It was, from the first, rash and hopeless. He was just from college, with no character throughout the country to give him authority as a leader, and no experience in the conduct of affairs; hasty in his judgments, obstinate to an extreme in his resolves, and fatally deceived by weak or false advisers. The moment he began to move, the ground sunk under him. His attempt," as remarked by a friend of his principles, "had not the dignity of even partial success, and did a vast injury to the country." To Mr. Curran it was peculiarly afflictive, because it commenced with the murder of his old friend, Lord Chief Justice Kilwarden, in the streets of Dublin. In addition to this, Emmett had won the affections of Sarah Curran without the knowledge of her father; a correspondence between them was found among his papers; and Mr. Curran was thus brought under the suspicions of the government, was compelled to undergo the interrogatories of the Privy Council, and had the pain of being laid under obligations to the generosity of the Attorney General, while his character was exposed to obloquy, and the cause he had espoused subjected to the basest imputations from his political opponents. It is not, therefore, surprising that he refused to defend Emmett-defense was, indeed, impossible-or even to see him. Nor, perhaps, is it surprising that his feelings continued to be so much wounded at Sarah's clandestine engagement and its results, as to make her home an unhappy one; so that she left his house, married without love, and carried her broken heart to an early grave in a foreign land. To complete his wretchedness, Mr. Curran, through the villainy of a friend, was called to suffer the severest calamity which a husband can ever endure. The remaining events of his life can be briefly told. On the accession of the Whigs to power, under Lord Grenville, in 1806, he was appointed Master of the Rolls. But the bench was not his place. He was but poorly fitted for its duties ; and, though he discharged them with a moderate degree of ability, it was always with reluctance. To assuage the melancholy which now preyed upon him, he carried his former habits of conviviality to a still greater extent. He surrounded himself with gay companions, especially at his dinner-table; "and when roused," says one of his biographers, "he used to run over jokes of every kind, good, bad, and indifferent. No epigram too delicate, no mimicry too broad, no pun too little, and no metaphor too bold for him. He wanted to be happy, and to make others so, and rattled away for mere enjoyment. These afternoon dinner sittings were seldom pro3 See Washington Irving's story of the Broken Heart, in his Sketch Book.

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