credit me when I

say,

that I am still more anxious for you, than I can possibly be for him. I cannot but feel the peculiarity of your situation. Not the jury of his own choice, which the law of England allows, but which ours refuses; collected in that box by a person, certainly no friend to Mr. Rowan, certainly not very deeply interested in giving him a very impartial jury. Feeling this, as I am persuaded you do, you cannot be surprized, however you may be distressed, at the mournful presage, with which an anxious public is led to fear the worst from your possible determination. But I will not for the justice and honour of our common country, suffer my mind to be borne away by such melancholy anticipation. I will not relinquish the confidence that this day will be the period of his sufferings; and, however mercilessly he has been hitherto pursued, that your verdict will send him home to the arms of his family, and the wishes of his country. But if, which heaven forbid, it hath still been unfortunately determined, that because he has not bent to power and authority, because he would not bow down before the golden calf and worship it, he is to be bound and cast into the furnace; I do trust in God, that there is a redeeming spirit in the constitution, which will be seen to walk with the sufferer through the flames, and to preserve him unhurt by the conflagration.

DENUNCIATION OF O'BRIEN, AN INFORMER.

HAVE you any doubt that it is the object of O'Brien to take down the prisoner for the reward that follows? Have you not seen with what more than instinctive keenness this blood-hound has pursued his victim? how he has kept him

in view from place to place until he hunts him through the avenues of the court to where the unhappy man stands now, hopeless of all succour but that which your verdict shall afford? I have heard of assassination by sword, by pistol, and by dagger, but here is a wretch who would dip the evangelists in blood-if he thinks he has not sworn his victim to death, he is ready to swear, without mercy and without end; but oh! do not, I conjure you, suffer him to take an oath; the arm of the murderer should not pollute the purity of the gospel; if he will swear, let it be on the knife, the proper symbol of his profession!

APPEAL TO THE JURY IN DEFENCE OF MR. FINNERTY FOR PUBLISHING OBSERVATIONS ON THE TRIAL OF WILLIAM ORR.

BUT, gentlemen, in order to bring this charge of insolence and vulgarity to the test, let me ask you, whether you know of any language which could have adequately described the idea of mercy denied, where it ought to have been granted, or of any phrase vigorous enough to convey the indignation which an honest man would have felt upon such a subject? Let me beg of you for a moment to suppose that any one of you had been the writer of this very severe expostulation with the viceroy, and that you had been the witness of the whole progress of this never-to-beforgotten catastrophe. Let me suppose that you had known the charge upon which Mr. Orr was apprehended, the charge of abjuring that bigotry which had torn and disgraced his country, of pledging himself to restore the people of his country to their place in the constitution, and of binding

himself never to be the betrayer of his fellow-labourers in that enterprise; that you had seen him upon that charge removed from his industry, and confined in a gaol; that through the slow and lingering progress of twelve tedious months you had seen him confined in a dungeon, shut out from the common use of air and of his own limbs; that day after day you had marked the unhappy captive cheered by no sound but the cries of his family, or the clinking of chains; that you had seen him at last brought to his trial; that you had seen the vile and perjured informer deposing against his life; that you had seen the drunken, and worn out and terrified jury give in a verdict of death; that you had seen the same jury, when their returning sobriety had brought back their conscience, prostrate themselves before the humanity of the bench, and pray that the mercy of the crown might save their characters from the reproach of an involuntary crime, their consciences from the torture of eternal selfcondemnation, and their souls from the indelible stain of innocent blood. Let me suppose that you had seen the respite given, and that contrite and honest recommendation transmitted to that seat where mercy was presumed to dwell; that new and before unheard of crimes are discovered against the informer; that the royal mercy seems to relent, and that a new respite is sent to the prisoner; that time is taken, as the learned counsel for the crown has expressed it, to see whether mercy could be extended or not! that, after that period of lingering deliberation passed, a third respite is transmitted; that the unhappy captive himself feels the cheering hope of being restored to a family that he had adored, to a character that he had never stained, and to a country that he had ever loved; that you had seen his wife and children upon their knees, giving those tears to gratitude, which their locked and frozen hearts could not give to anguish and despair, and imploring the blessings of eternal

K

providence upon his head, who had graciously spared the father, and restored him to his children; that you had seen the olive branch sent into his little ark, but no sign that the waters had subsided. Alas! nor wife, nor children more shall he behold, nor friends, nor sacred home!" No seraph mercy unbars his dungeon, and leads him forth to light and life; but the minister of death hurries him to the scene of suffering and of shame; where, unmoved by the hostile array of artillery and armed men collected together, to secure, or to insult, or to disturb him, he dies with a solemn declaration of his innocence, and utters his last breath in a prayer for the liberty of his country. Let me now ask you, if any of you had addressed the public ear upon so foul and monstrous a subject, in what language would you have conveyed the feelings of horror and indignation?-would you have stooped to the meanness of qualified complaint ?would you have been mean enough?-but I entreat your forgiveness-I do not think meanly of you; had I thought so meanly of you, I could not suffer my mind to commune with you as it has done; had I thought you that base and vile instrument, attuned by hope and by fear into discord and falsehood, from whose vulgar string no groan of suffering could vibrate, no voice of integrity or honour could speak, let me honestly tell you, I should have scorned to fling my hand across it; I should have left it to a fitter minstrel: if I do not therefore grossly err in my opinion of you, I could use no language upon such a subject as this, that must not lag behind the rapidity of your feelings, and that would not disgrace those feelings, if it attempted to describe them.

Gentlemen, I am not unconscious that the learned counsel for the crown seemed to address you with a confidence of a very different kind; he seemed to expect from you a kind and respectful sympathy with the feelings of the castle, and with the griefs of chided authority. Perhaps, gentlemen, he

may know you better than I do; if he does, he has spoken to you as he ought; he has been right in telling you that if the reprobation of this writer is weak, it is because his genius could not make it stronger; he has been right in telling you that his language has not been braided and festooned as elegantly as it might, that he has not pinched the miserable plaits of his phraseology, nor placed his patches and feathers with that correctness of millinery which became so exalted a person. If you agree with him, gentlemen of the jury, if you think that the man, who ventures at the hazard of his own life to rescue from the deep the drowned honour of his country, must not presume upon the guilty familiarity of plucking it up by the locks, I have no more to say; do a courteous thing. Upright and honest jurors, find a civil and obliging verdict against the printer! And when you have done so march through the ranks of your fellow citizens to your own homes, and bear their looks as they pass along; retire to the bosom of your families and your children, and when you are presiding over the morality of the parental board, tell those infants who are to be the future men of Ireland, the history of this day. Form their young minds by your precepts and confirm those precepts by your own example; teach them how discreetly allegiance may be perjured on the table, or loyalty be foresworn in the jury-box; and when you have done so, tell them the story of Orr; tell them of his captivity, of his children, of his crime, of his hopes, of his disappointments, of his courage and of his death; and when little hearers hanging from your lips, you find your when you see their eyes overflow with sympathy and sorrow, and their young hearts bursting with the pangs of anticipated orphanage, tell them that you had the boldness and the justice to stigmatize the monster-who had dared to publish the transaction!