IRELAND.

In the great State prosecution, the case for the Crown closed on Friday ; the defence began on Saturday, and occupied the succeeding days.

Eleventh day—Friday, January 26.

Mr. Justice Burton resumed his seat with the other Judges ; having apparently recovered from his cold. The day was consumed in reading a number of papers from the Repeal journals ; and Charles Hovendon, Inspector of Police, deposed to having seen Mr. John O'Connell and Dr. Gray act as " Arbitrators " at Blackrock. Adjourned at half-past three o'clock.

Twelfth day—Saturday, January 27.

The court, which had been less frequented by spectators, and had become apparently lifeless as the proceedings grew duller, was restored to animation by the general curiosity to hear Mr. Sheil open the case for the defence, as counsel for Mr. John O'Connell. On this day every part of the court was crowded to excess—by fashionable ladies as well as lawyers and politicians ; and Mr. Duffy reappeared among the tra- verser& Mr. Shell began by alluding to the magnitude of the task before him.

He was moved by the incidents of his own political life, which came back upon him when he looked at Mr. O'Connell—" my great political benefactor, my deliverer, my friend"; but solicitude formed, no part of his emotion : he relied upon the ascendancy of principle over prejudice in the minds of the Jury, and upon the innocence of his client. The same blood, flowed in the veins of father and son, the same feelings cir- culated through their hearts ; and with the father Mr. Sheil had toiled, in no dishonourable companionship, for more than half his life, to ac- complish that great work whose chief merit was that it was conceived and consummated in the spirit of peace. From the sanguinary ainif imputed he knew Mr. O'Connell to shrink with abhorrence. This re- liance, said Mr. Sheil, would raise him to the height of his great argu- ment, and enable him to overcome the illness under which he was still labouring. In a speech of eleven or twelve hours, the Attorney-Gene- ral had read a long series of extracts of speeches from publications, with indignant comments: but, if his indignation was not simulated and merely ex officio, why did he stand with folded arms? If the fabric of society was in a blaze, where was the Castle fire-engine—the indict. meat? Is there not too much reason to think that a project was formed, or rather that a plot was concocted, to decoy and ensnare the traversers? and that a connivance, amounting almost to sanction, was deliberately adopted as a part of the policy of the Government, in order to betray the traversers into indiscretions, of which advantage was in due time to be taken ? Was it befitting that the successor of Saarin and of Plunket, the head of the Irish bar, and the representative of its intellect in the House of Commons, should descend from his watch and ward over the public safety to perform functions worthy only of a French Commissary of Police, and sink into the" Artful Dodger" of the State? What could be his motive ? This. He could have obtained no signal advantage by prosecuting individuals for the use of violent language or strong articles in newspapers, or for attending unlawful assemblies; so he fished, not with lines, but with a wide trammel-net, to catch in one miraculous draught, besides the great Agitator-leviathan himse/4 a Member of Parliament, Tom Steele, three newspaper-editors, and a pair of priests. The method of prosecuting for" conspiracy" enabled him to give in evidence against one man the acts and speeches of an- other, though they might be parted asunder by a hundred miles, and have no cognizance of each other. Thus, Mr. O'Connell was treated as if he were the editor of the Freeman's Journal, the Nation, and the Pilot : it was like making Mr. Cobden answerable for all that appeared in the Chronicle, the Globe, and the Sun ; and he was accused of "con- spiracy" with men who certainly never conspired with each other, for they were rivals in trade- " They pay their addresses to the same mistress, and cordially detest each other. I remember to have heard Mr. Barnes, the celebrated editor of the Times newspaper, ask Mr. Rogers what manner of man was a Mr. Tomkins: to which Mr. Rogers replied, 'he was a dull dog, who read the Morning Herald.'"

Poems in direct opposition to the feelings of Mr. O'Connell were now used in evidence against him. How formidable was this doctrine of legal conspiracy I In 1819, when England was in a perilous condition, it was proved that men were drilled near Manchester at midnight ; but an English jury would not find Henry Haut guilty of" conspiracy "; and more recently certain Chartists had been found guilty only upon counts which omitted that word. If English capital had not adventured in Ireland, let English justice—English detestation of foul play and constructive crime—find its way among them. Nor were English juries alone : when Forbes and other Orangemen—" the paltry remnant of an expiring faction," as, in one of his variable moods, Lord Stanley called them—who had been guilty of a riot at a theatre, were charged with a confederacy to upset Lord Wellesley's Government, the Protestant feeling of Ireland rose to remonstrate against a stretch of the prerogative hostile to the liberties of the country. He remembered that the Irish Catholics, heated by partisanship, desired a conviction : fatal mistake ! they would have created a precedent against themselves-

" God forbid that I should ever live to see the time—for I hate ascendancy of every kind—God forbid that I should ever live to see the time, when there shall be found four Catholic Judges at a trial at bar upon that bench, and the entire of the Government bar who shall be engaged in a public prosecution shall be Roman Catholics; when a Catholic Crown Solicitor shall strike eleven Pro- testants from the Special Jury list, and leave twelve Roman Catholics in that box. I reassert it, and exclaim again, in all the sincerity of my heart, that I pray that such a spectacle never shall be exhibited in this the first criminal court in the land.'

Mr. Sheil undertook to show that his client's objects were legal, and sought by legal means. He quoted the Life of Swift by Sir Walter Scott, to show that the right of legislation, of which England made so oppressive a use, was not justifiable either by the plea of conquest, pur- chase, or precedent ; and that it was only submitted to from incapacity of effectual resistance. Swift promulgated a proposal for the use of Irish manufactures, and was charged with having endeavoured to create hostilities between different classes of his Majesty's subjects—one of the charges preferred in this very indictment-

" At that time, the Judges of the country did not enjoy what they now, I thank God sincerely, possess, namely, fixity of tenure. (Laughter, in which the Bench joined.) They are now no longer, thank God, tenants at will.' They may be mistaken, they may be blinded by strong emotions, but corrupt they cannot be. The circumstances detailed in the following passage in the Life of Swift could not by possibility occur in modern times." Waters, the printer of Swift's pamphlet, was tried ; but the Jury, al- though thrice told by Chief Justice Whitshed to reconsider their verdict of " Not Guilty," at length left the matter in his hands by a special verdict. In the fourth of Swift's Drapier's Letters he boldly treats of the Royal prerogative ; of the almost exclusive employment of natives of England in places of trust and emolument in Ireland ; of the dependence of that kingdom upon England, and the power assumed, contrary to truth, rea- son, and justice, of binding her by the laws of a Parliament in which she had no representation. "The remedy," he says, "is wholly in your own hands. By the laws of God, of nations, and of your country, you are, and ought to be, as free a people as your brethren in England." When the printer was again indicted, Swift addressed to the Grand Jury a paper called Seasonable Advice, exhorting them to remember the league between the Wolves and the Sheep: the Grand Jury threw out the bill. On this Sir Walter Scott, the eminent Tory writer, observes- " Thus victoriously terminated the first grand struggle for the independence of Ireland. The eyes of the kingdom were now turned with one consent upon the man by whose unbending fortitude and preeminent talent this triumph was accomplished. The Draper's Head became the sign ; his portrait was engraved, worn upon handkerchiefs, struck upon medals, and displayed in every possible manner as the liberator of Ireland.'

Flood and Grattan were not indicted for conspiracy in 1782; because the English Minister had learned, in the struggle between England and her American Colonies, a lesson:of adversity. Ireland then acted under the influence of nationality : she is now enfeebled and degraded by dis- sensions. If the nation were eight million of Protestants, would it be treated as it is ? Would every office of dignity and emolument be filled by Englishmen—just expenditure for improvement denied—Irish Crown-rents applied to improve Charing Cross or Windsor Castle— odious distinctions maintained by the Legislature? would there be the Arms Bill, the misapplied Poor-law, a new tariff entailing losses without an equivalent ? By wretched religious distinctions, however, Irishmen were prevented from cooperating for a single object-

" Fatal, disastrous, detestable distinctions! Detestable, because they are not only repugnant to the genuine spirit of Christianity, and substitute for the charities of religion the rancorous antipathies of sect, but because they prac- tically reduce us to a colonial dependency, make the Union a name, convert a nation into an appurtenance, make us the footstool of the Minister, the scorn of England, and the commiseration of the world. Ireland is the only country in Europe in which abominable distinctions between Protestant and Catholic are permitted to continue. In Germany, where Luther translated the Scrip- tures—in France, where Calvin wrote the Institutes—ay, in the land of the Dragonades and the St. Bartholomews—in the land from whence the fore- fathers of one of the judicial functionaries of this court, and the first minis- terial officer of this court, were barbarously driven—the mutual wrongs done by Catholic and Protestant are forgiven and forgotten ; while we, madmen that we are, arrayed by that fell fanaticism which, driven from every other country in Europe, has found a refuge here, precipitate ourselves upon each other in those encounters of sectarian ferocity in which our country, bleeding and lace- rated, is trodden under foot. We convert the island, that ought to be one of the most fortunate in the sea, into a receptacle of degradation and of suffering, counteract the designs of Providence, and enter into a conspiracy for the frus- tration of the beneficent designs of God." [Loud applause, rebuked by the Chief Justice, and deprecated by Mr. Sheik Mr. Shell, however, was grateful for the interruption, which gave him a little pause; and the Chief Justice kindly desired him to sit down whenever he felt exhausted.] Freedom opened to Ireland a course of rapid improvement. The penal laws, enacted by slaves, were relaxed by freemen : In 1782, the Protestants of Ireland communicated civil privileges to their fellow-subjects; and but for the rebellion of 1798 the Catholic question might have been settled on satisfactory terms. Mr. Pitt bor- rowed his idea of the Union from Oliver Cromwell ; who returned 400 Members for England, 30 for Scotland, and 30 for Ireland. The Mem- bers for Ireland were English soldiers who had acquired estates in that country ; but even those deputies were denounced by an English Member—whose name was Gewen, but ought to have been Copley—as "foreigners," who ought not to have been admitted to the English Par- liament; and by the English Members generally they were treated with discourtesy. This fact showed how the spirit of domination had ever prevailed in the English character. The Union was carried by corrup- tion and fear; denounced by Mr. Plunket, Mr. Saurin, and Mr. Bushe, and the most eminent members of the legal profession. Such authori- ties might suggest some toleration for the traversers. Besides, Mr. O'Connell had said that so long as the Union remained law it must be submitted to. The bargain was undoubtedly a bad one, and better terms might have been obtained, instead of swamping the Irish repre- sentation in the English House of Commons. The miserable condition of the Irish people attests the vicious policy of the Imperial Parlia- ment: after the lapse of half a century, the necessity of an Arms Bill shows how the country has been misgoverned. In 1800, Mr. O'Con- nell made his first speech against the Union : ten years later,at a meet- ing over which the High Sheriff of Dublin presided, he again denounced it ; and the language which he then used was precisely similar to those powerful harangues which had been read by the Attorney-General. [To show that Mr. O'Connell's language in 1810 had been the same as in 1843, Mr. Shell begged that the speech alluded to might be read by Mr. Ford ; which the Court permitted, as an indulgence to Mr. Shell.] On that occasion, a petition was agreed to, and transmitted for presen- tation to the late Mr. Grattan. Mr. Grattan replied, in a letter—" I shall support the repeal of the Act of Union. You will please to ob- serve, that a proposition of that sort, in Parliament, to be either prudent or possible, must wait till it is called for and backed by the nation." " Backed by the nation " ; the very means of accomplishment to which Mr. O'Connell had applied all the resources of his intellect and of his indefatigable energy. In 1812, the Catholic Board was prosecuted; and, although Mr. Burrowes boldly denounced the exclusion of Roman Catholics from the Jury, a Protestant Jury acquitted the traversers. Means more effectual were adopted on a second prosecution, and a con- viction was obtained. Mr. Saurin, who thought that Protestant ascend- ancy should everywhere prevail, did not deny that Catholics were ex- cluded— " How much more commendable was his conduct and the conduct of the Government of the day, than if they had been profuse of professions they never meant to realize, and had offered an insult to the understanding as well as a gross wrong to the rights of the Irish people ! And yet I shall not be sur- prised if, notwithstanding all that has happened, the same cant of impartiality' shall be persevered in, and that we shall hear the same protestations of solici- tude to make no distinction between Catholics and Protestants in all depart- ments, but more especially in the administration of the law. The screen falls- ' the little French milliner ' is disclosed= by all that's horrible, Lady Teazle!' yet Joseph preserves his self-possession, and deals in sentiment to the last. But if, after all that has befallen, my Lord Eliot shall continue to deal in sen- timentality in the House of Commons, the exclamation of Sir Peter Teazle-- ' Oh, damn your sentiment !'—will break in upon him on every side." Mr. Shell briefly alluded to the return of Mr. Peel for the Irish bo- rough of Cashel ; and to the plan, then newly devised, of counteracting the Secretary with the Lord-Lieutenant, and vice versa—Grant against Talbot, and Wellesley against Goulburn. Hopeless of benefit for Ire- land under such a system, Mr. O'Connell created the Catholic Associa- tion. A bill was introduced in Parliament to suppress the confederacy; Mr. O'Connell's offer of concessions was rejected; there was a great agrarian and electoral revolt ; Catholic Emancipation was carried. "Here I shall put to you two questions. The first is this—Do you think that up to the 13th of April 1829, the day on which the Royal assent was given to the Catholic Relief Bill, the system of' government instituted and carried on under the auspices of an Imperial Parliament was so wise, so just, so salutary, so fraught with advantages to this country, so conducive to its tranquillization, and to the development of its vast resources, that for twenty-nine years the Union ought to have been regarded as a great legislative blessing to this country ? The second question I shall put to you is this—Does it not occur to you, that if the present indictment for a conspiracy can be sustained,. an indictment for a conspiracy might have been just as reasonably preferred against the men who had associated themselves for the attainment of Catholic Emanci- pation? There is not a count in this indictment which, by the substitution of 'Catholic Emancipation 'for Repeal,' might not have been made applicable to the great struggle of the Irish Catholics in 1828 and 1829. Money was col- lected by the Catholic Association. In America, and more especially in Canada, strong sympathy for Catholic Ireland was expressed. In the Chamber of Deputies, M. de Chateaubriand adverted to the state of Ireland in the lan- guage of menacing intimidation. Enormous assemblages were held in the South of Ireland, but more especially in the county of Kilkenny. Speeches were delivered by Mr. O'Connell and by others fully as inflammatory as any which have been read to you. There were, indeed, prosecutions. The individual who now addresses you was prosecuted for a speech on the expedition of Wolfe Tone : the bills were found : but Mr. Canning declared in the Cabinet that there was not a single line in the speech which if spoken in the House of Commons would have justified a call for order, and he denounced the prosecu- tion as utterly unjust. The prosecution was accordingly abandoned. Bat, gentlemen, if I had been prosecuted for a conspiracy, and held responsible not for my own speeches but for those of others, in how different and how help- less a position should I have been placed! Have scare how you make a prece- dent in favour of such an indictment."

The doctrine of" conspiracy" might be applied to every combination of the kind ; to the Reform Bill agitation, for instance- " How ? 150,000 men assemble at Birmingham, and threaten to advance on London ; a resolution not to pay taxes is passed and applauded by Lord Fits- william ; Lord John Russell and Lord Althorp became the correspondents of the Birmingham Union ; Clumber is reduced to ashes; Bristol is set on fire. the Peers resist, and the Whig Cabinet with one voice exclaims, Swamp the House of Lords ! ' The conspirators were Lord Grey, Lord John Russell, and Lord Althorp: but did that exhaust the list ? Sir James Graham is now Home Secretary, and has Ireland under his controL From the Home Office this prosecution directly emanates. Gamblers denounce vice,—drunk- ards denounce debauch,—against immoralities let wenchers revile I" The state of the country showed that some great measures were necessary for its safety and happiness : to one especially Mr. Shell directed attention— "I cannot see any sound objection to the Imperial Parliament assembling here in the month of October, for the discharge of Irish business alone ; and that all Imperial questions should be reserved until the London session com- menced, as it now does, in the month of February. The public departments, it is true, are all located in London; but during the Irish session a reference to those departments would not be required. Such a session might be incon- venient to English Members ; but the Repeal agitation and a State prosecution like the present are attended with inconveniences far greater than any which English Members, in crossing the Irish Channel, would encounter. The ad- vantages which would accrue from the realization of this project are of no ordinary kind. The intercourse of the two countries would be augmented to such an extent that their feelings would he identified. National prejudices would be reciprocally laid aside. An English domestication would take place. Instead of lending money upon Irish mortgages, Englishmen would bring bonds to Ireland, and live upon them. The absentee drain would be diminished. The value of property would be very nearly doubled. Great public works would be undertaken, and the great natural endowments of the country would be turned to account. This city would appear in renovated splendour. Your streets would be shaken by the roll of the gorgeous equipages in which the first nobles of the country would be borne to the Senate-house, from which the money-changers should be driven. The mansions of the aristocracy would blaze with that useful luxury which ministers to the gratification of the afflu- ent and to the employment and comfort of the poor. The Sovereign herself would not deem the seat of her Parliament unworthy of her residence. The frippery of' the Viceregal Court would be swept away. We should look upon Royalty 1tsel4 and not upon the tinsel image." Mr. Shell did not deny that strong speeches had been made by his client and the rest of the traversers ; but he contended that they were not of a more exciting and inflammatory character than those spoken in almost every popular assembly—as at the Anti-Corn-law meetings The Right Honourable Frederick Shaw's name was attached to the Clontarf proclamation : in 1835 Mr. Shaw delivered a speech closing thus- " The Government might make %%hat regulations it phased; but he trusted the people knew their duty too well to submit to its enactments. We might degrade our mitres; it might deprive us of our properties ; but if the Govern- ment dared to lay its hand on the Bible, then we must come to an issue : we will cover it with our bodies. My friends, will you permit your brethren to call out to you in vain ? In the name of my country and of my country's God, I will appeal from a British House of Commons to a British public. My countrymen would obey the lays so long as they were properly administered; but if it were sought to lay sacrilegious bands on the Bible, to tear the standard of the living God, and to raise a mutilated one in its stead, then it would be no time to halt between two opinions: then, on every hill and in every valley would resound the rallying-cry of 'To your tents, 0 Israel.'"

At a great Protestant meeting at the 3Iansionhouse, in 1837, the Earl

of Charleville said, Well, gentlemen, you have a rebellious Parlia- ment—you have a Lord-Lieutenant, the slave and minion of a rebellious Parliament "; and the Right Honourable Thomas Berry Cusack Smith said, "He was sorry to find that Roman Catholic Members of Parlia- ment paid so little regard to their oaths." In 1841, the Orangemen had also had their" monster-meetings "; and, reporting one at Hillsborough, the Dublin Evening Mail described them as marching to Dromore : Lord Rodeo, the Marquis of Londonderry, and other Lords "marched at the head of the largest battalion." The Orange Grand Lodge also granted " warrants " to soldiers in the Army. Mr. Shell cited the testimony of Mr. Ross, that there was no tendency to outrage at the Repeal monster-meetings ; quoted the declaration of Baron Alderson, that the people of this country have a right to meet to make known their grievances ; and observed that Mr. O'Connell, as he had previously declared he would do, had at once obeyed the proclamation against the Clontarf meeting. Two points in the indictment had particularly ex- cited the indignation of Mr. Smith—the system which tended to diminish the business of courts of justice, and Mr. O'Connell's ig- norance of law respecting certain prerogatives of the Crown- " With respect, gentlemen, to the Arbitration Courts, the society of Friends are as liable loan Indictment for conspiracy as the defendants. The regulations under which the Quaker Arbitration system is carried on will be laid before you ; and the opinions of Lord Brougham, who has always been the strenuous advocate of the arbitration system, will, I am sure, have their due weight upon you. With regard to Mr. O'Connell's alleged mistake respecting the power of the Crown to issue writs—what is it, after all, but a project for swamping the House of Commons, analogous to that of Sir James Graham and my Lord Stanley for swamping the House of Lords ? The plain truth is this— the Sovereign has the abstract right to create new boroughs ; but the exercise of that right might be regarded as inconsistent with the principles of the con- stitution. Lord Denman and one of his late Majesty's Law-advisers in the Rouse of Commons distinctly asserted the right to issue writs ; and, although that opinion was reprehended by Sir Charles Wetherell, I believe that of its being strict law there can be little doubt."

How had the Repeal "conspirators " proceeded ? Their Assemblies had been perfectly open to the public. They did not even act together. There was in the mass of thought that came from the mind of Mr. O'Connell a pervading love of order : did he play Pierre at twenty-two, who was ready to play Renault at sixty-nine ? could he contemplate revolution, who repudiated French assistance, denounced Transatlantic slavery, and rejected the proffered junction with the English Chartists ? Mr. Sheil recited the prayer which Sir Abraham Bradley King, an old political opponent for whom Mr. O'Connell had secured Parliamentary compensation that brought ease to his declining years, had breathed for Isis benefactor—that Heaven would avert every peril from his head : that man and his son were not guilty of the sanguinary attempts ascribed to them ; and they threw themselves upon their country-

" If we have lost our representation in the Parliament, let us behold it in the Jury-box, and that you participate in the feelings of millions of your coun- trymen let your verdict afford a proof. But it is not to Ireland that the aching solicitude with which the result of this trial is intently watched will be con- fined. There is not a great city in Europe in which, upon the day when the great intelligence shall be expected to arrive, men a ill not stop each other in the public way, and inquire whether twelve men upon their oaths have doomed to incarceration the man who gave liberty to Ireland. Whatever may be your adjudication, he is prepared to meet it. He knows that the eyes of the world are upon him, and that posterity, whether in a gaol or out of it, will look back to him with admiration : he is almost indifferent to what may befal him, and is far more solicitous for others at this moment than for himself. But, at the commencement of what I have said to you, I told you that I was not unmoved, and that many incidents of my political life, the strange alternations of fortune through which I have passed, came back upon me. But now the bare possibility at which I have glanced has, I acknowledge, almost unmanned me. Shall I, who stretch out to you in behalf of the son the hand whose fetters the father bad struck off, live to cast my eyes upon that domicile of sorrow in the vicinity of this great metropolis and say, "Tis there they have immured the Liberator of Ireland with his fondest and best-beloved child ? ' No, it shall never be You will not consign him to the spot to which the Attorney-General invites you to surrender him. No. When the spring shall have come again, and the winter shall have passed—when the spring shall have come again, it is not through the windows of this mansion that the father of such a son, and the son of such a father, shall look upon those green hills on which the eyes of so many a captive have gazed so wistfully in vain : but in their own mountain-home again they shall listen to the murmurs of the great Atlantic; they shall go forth and inhale the freshness of the morning-air together ; ' they shall be free of mountain solitude '; they will be encom- passed with the loftiest images of liberty upon every side : and if time shall .avstolen its suppleness from the father's knee or impaired the firmness of his tread, he shall lean on the child of her that watches over him from heaven, and shall look out from some high place far and wide into the island, whose greatness and whose glory shall be ever associated with his name. In your love of justice—in your love of Ireland—in your love of honesty and fair play, I place my confidence. I ask you for an acquittal, not only for the sake of your country, but for your own. Upon the day when this trial shall have been brought to a termination, when amidst the burst of public expectancy, in answer to the solemn interrogatory which shall be put to you by the officer of the Court, you shall answer Not Guilty,' with what a transport will that glorious negative be welcomed! How will you be blessed, adored, worshiped! And when, retiring from this scene of excitement and of passion, you shall return to your own tranquil homes, how pleasurably will you look upon your children, in the consciousness that you will have left them

a patrimony of peace, by impreesieg uron the British Cabinet that some other measure beside a State prosecution is necessary for the pacification of your country I "

At the close of Mr. Sheil's speech a murmur of applause arose. It was now three o'clock ; and the Court excused Mr. Moore from begin- ning his speech at so late an hour in the day. Adjourned till Monday. Thirteenth day—Monday, January 29.

The Court had almost relapsed into its previous quiet when the Judges. took their seat on this day ; but some " sensation " was excited when Mr.. John O'Connell rose and obtained leave to say a few words, to prevent misapprehensions likely to be created about him by something that dropped from Mr. Shell : he spoke as follows- " Gentlemen of the Jury, I wish to say to you, that, bumble as I am, I

have always advocated the full and perfect right of the people of Ireland to an independent Legislature ; and, whatever my counsel may have said on the subject, I am not one of those who would accept even an occasional or annual visit of the Imperial Parliament to Dublin. I do not know whether this ex- pression of mine may or may not prejudice me in your minds ; but I would infinitely prefer that it should prejudice me, than allow it to be supposed that I would for a moment give up the inalienable right of our country to an inde- pendent Legislature."

Mr. Moore, Q.C., addressed the Jury on behalf of the Reverend Mr. Tierney. He dwelt at some length on the nature of the charge of "conspiracy," partly retracing the ground traversed by Mr. Sheil ; and he took the occasion to declare, that the Clontarf meeting was not aban- doned from the consciousness of its illegality, but from the humane de- sire to prevent the frightful consequences that might ensue on its abrupt suppression by the Government. There was no evidence against Mr. Tierney. His opinions on the subject of Repeal were justified by the expressed opinions of Mr. Saurin and other high legal authorities.. He altogether denied the conversation described by the witness M`Cann it was alleged to have taken place on the 16th June, and Mr. Tierney was said to have told the witness to remember what the army had done in Spain, meaning that it had abandoned the Government : now the first revolt of the army in the late Spanish insurrection took place at Va- lentia on the 11th June, and at Barcelona on the 12th; there was no news of those outbreaks in Ireland till the 19th or 20th of June ; and therefore it was impossible that a Policeman in Monaghan could know what had occurred in Valentia. As to the meeting at Clontibret to pe- tition for Repeal of the Union, and that at Dublin on the 3d October,. Mr. Moore contended that they were not illegal, and that it was not at all proved that Mr. Tierney had been in communication or "conspired," with the other traversers. Mr. Tierney had said that he was ready with "his hand and heart," —which was only an expression denoting sincerity of intention ; and Mr. Tierney himself emphatically denied, that there was anything in his language to warrant a different inter- pretation. Mr. Hatchell, Q. C., spoke for Mr. Ray, also commenting at some

length on the sweeping and entrapping nature of the charge. Mr. Ray was confessedly the Secretary to the Repeal Association ; and if the Crown-lawyers had followed the precedent set in the prosecution of Hardy and other members of the Constitutional Society, the Secretary would have been produced as a witness for the Crown : making him a traverser had deprived the other traversers of the benefit which would have accrued to them from his cross-examination. Mr. Hatchell en- deavoured to show' that although Mr. Ray had acted as the paid ser- vant of the Repeal Association, he had not taken a very leading part in its proceedings. Mr. Fitzgibbon was to have followed, on behalf of Dr. Gray: but he asked the Bench to excuse him' as he was suffering from a cold. The indulgence was readily granted, although it was only two o'clock ; and the Court adjourned.

Fourteenth day—Tuesday, January 30.

On this day, Mr. O'Connell was unwell; and in consequence he witb obliged to leave the court soon after the commencement of the pro- ceedings

Mr. Fitzgibbon began his speech by remarking on the nature of the

indictment, which made it necessary to deal with the charges against the several prisoners as one. In emphatic terms he expressed his sense of the high personal character of the Crown-lawyers ; though, in the unfair character of the prosecution, hurried on by professional zeal and the interest of their party, they had followed the course which had left so great a stain on the reputation of the great Lord Coke himself in the prosecution of Sir Walter Raleigh. He addressed himself to ex- plain the law of conspiracy. The traversers were accused of conspi- racy, and overt acts were alleged in proof. "Overt act" is a term used only in reference to charges of the covert crimes, treason and conspi- racy; but to constitute proof, the overt act must be so clear as to show the guilty intent without the least doubt as to the fact. The traversers were charged with having assented to certain meetings, which were said to be illegal ; but the Attorney-General bad not ventured to point out one single speech, one single sentence, and to assert that it had necessarily been concocted by conspirators. The At- torney-General admitted that the traversers agreed to do a legal thing— to petition for Repeal of the Union ; but, he said, they agreed to do it by illegal means—by calling these illegal meetings and making these illegal speeches. It was boasted that the defendants were arraigned on an indictment at common-law,—that is, an indictment which, on similar facts, could have been sustained in the reign of Edward the Confessor : but, from the time of Edward the Confessor down to 1794, there was not a single instance in which members of such an association—an as- sociation for the redress of a public grievance—had been indicted for "conspiracy?' Yet "conspiracy" was not a crime unknown in those days. It was defined by an act of the 21st Edward L; according to which, conspiracy means that persons should be bound together by oaths, by covenant, or otherwise, to aid and abet each other, falsely and maliciously, for the purpose of subverting the laws of the realm. The nature of the offence was illustrated by the card-maker's case, re- ported by Strange ; in which the card-maker, his wife and servants, combined to bribe the apprentice of a rival tradesman to spoil his goods : the actual conspiracy was not proved ; but they lived in the same house and all gave money to the apprentice at different times ; which the Judge thought sufficient ground to send the case to the Jury. The Attorney-General's definition of conspiracy was founded on a dictum- disavowed by Lord Denman, and on a dictum of Chief Justice Bushe, derived from East, a text-writer, but of no great weight as an authority : It was, that if two or more persons conspired for an illegal purpose, or to accomplish a legal purpose by illegal means, that was conspiracy ; a definition, however, not to be found in any of the old books. Another proposition of the Attorney-General was, that evidence against one of the traversers might be admitted against all ; which went to the ex- travagant length of asserting that the act of any one of the millions attending the Repeal might be admitted against all who attended, as if the traversers had given him authority to act and speak for them ! Accordingly, an absurd story was given in evidence, which a man lounging about behind a ditch, at Tara, had palmed off upon Captain Despard, who was told that a force of 2,000 men had marched from Wexford ; though nobody had seen it ; and nobody had been found to depose that a single person in the unmistakeable dress of a Wexford peasant was at the meeting. Mr. Fitzgibbon went on to discuss other precedents alluded to by the Attorney-General, connected with the prosecution of Hardy and others, with the proceedings at Manchester in 1819 ; contending that they did not apply, or bore out his position, that an accusation of conspiracy such as that alleged was untenable. Mr. Smith, too, was chargeable with suppressing important parts of the passages which he cited ; such as the remark of Mr. Justice Best, that " drilling," if positively necessary to keep order in a crowd, might be innocent. The traversers were charged with exhibition of physical force— The people came forward in great numbers, for the avowed purpose of show- ing what immense amasses in proportion of the physical and moral strength of the community were favourable to the change they wanted; and that was what the Attorney-General of Ireland came into a court of justice to prosecute as a crime ! Did that learned functionary think that those who obtained the Magna Charts ought to be prosecuted for a crime of the same description ? Did he think there was any exhibition of physical force at Runnymede—although there was certainly no use made of it—when the iron Barons of England met, not like the meeting at Tara or Mullaglimast, without arms in their hands, but fully accoutred and armed, presenting themselves as persuasive visiters before the door of their Sovereign, to ask him as a favour to sign a charter which they had brought in ready-made ? There was no crime in that : that was the charter which no Attorney-General—no Judge—no, nor no King of England, dared to say that, because it was procured under such circumstances, it was therefore void.

The Attorney-General had said that the ease was "momentous." It was so ; because, by means of the verdict, Ministers sought to obtain the power to repress the public expression—the multitudinous expression of every man in the country who might not be of their party. English Juries had never yet given that power. Some poetry had been read to the Jury, and among it lines "to the Memory of the Dead "—an ex- pression of pity for those who perished in the frantic strife of 1798: but to what did such allusions amount?— He must be a poor observer of human nature indeed, or of the world, who did not see and appreciate the great public engine he alluded to—the public press, and how it was putting out of the world altogether the use of brute physical force. War was becoming like the things that were ; and why ? Because the conduct of a nation became as it were the conduct of an individual, and was brought under the view, under the reprehension or praise, of all other nations ; and hence it was that physical law was likely to give way altogether to the force of public opinion. Before that means of communication came into existence, of exposing the conduct of nations to the whole world, they were not responsible to each other : but that was not the case at the present day ; and if the Jury only carried in their minds that suggestion of his, they would end an immense mass of the matter read to them by the Crown fully ex- plained. Did they recollect the sentiment repeated over and over again in the speeches of Mr. O'Connell—that he wanted the sympathy of nations ; that he did not want physical force ; that he did not want a revolution by blood—if, Indeed, the repeal of a bad law, as he thought, could be called a revolution; that he wanted to obtain his object, not by crime, not by blood, but by peaceable, legal, and constitutional means ? How was that to be done ? By exhibiting to the whole human family the sufferings of this particular nation, by showing them a country peaceful, united, intelligent, moral, religions, and yet ground to the very earth by their oppressors.

" Conspiracy " does not mean opinion and sentiment ; it means treachery. Having continued his argument until near five o'clock, Mr. Fitzgibbon prayed the indulgence of the Court in deferring the re- mainder till next day ; which, with some demur, was granted.

[A most extraordinary scene had taken place during a temporary adjournment of the Court for refreshment, about one o'clock. The .Turymen had jest retintered their box, and a few of the senior counsel had returned to the table, when the Attorney-General, "'with an un- usually stern expression of countenance," resumed his seat. Presently appeared Mr. Fitzgibbon, seemingly in great excitement, holding a small three-cornered note in his hand, which he tendered to the Attorney- General ; speaking in suppressed but animated tones. The Attorney- General would not take the note ; which the other then showed to the Solicitor-General ; who applied himself, with Mr. Sergeant Warren, to urge something upon the Attorney-General's consideration, to which he seemed an unwilling listener; while Mr. Fitzgibbon appeared to be expounding the nature of the note to a knot of his fellow-counsel. He then sent it to the Attorney-General, who laid it on the table. The Judges entered the court, and took their places ; on which Mr. Fitz- gibbon, in a state of visible perturbation, stated that he had received a note from the Attorney-General ; whom he asked to hand it to the Judges. No answer ; Mr. Smith sitting with his arms folded. Mr. Fitzgibbon then said, he should inform the Court himself : the note was a challenge! it complained that he had given the Attorney-General personal offence, and demanded that Mr. Fitzgibbon should apologize, or "name his friend." "I leave him," said Mr. Fitzgibbon, "to your Lordships to answer for his conduct." The Attorney-General said, that if Mr. Fitzgibbon had any application to make to the Court, he should have made it on affidavit ; for then the Court would have been able to judge of the words used. They were taken down in writing by some friends near Mr. Smith ; and were understood to convey, that he was influenced in his conduct by private and dis- honourable motives, prompted by a consideration of the effect which a failure in this case might have upon a political party : nothing could have been easier than for Mr. Fitzgibbon to say that the words had been misunderstood. Mr. Fitzgibbon observed, that he might have done so, only Mr. Smith came to him pistol in hand. Mr. Moore here Interposed, as a mutual friend, and suggested that both parties should allow some time to elapse before taking any further step, in order that

the matter might be settled in a way creditable to both. The Chief Justice concurred ; adding-

" We feel it, I repeat, to be an embarrassing case on which to pronounce any judgment; more especially when a trial of such magnitude and importance ma depending before us the Jury, and the public at large ; and feeling also that the Attorney-General is the last man in his profession who ought to have allowed himself to be betrayed into such an expression of feeling as has been stated to have taken place in our absence."

The Attorney-General now said, that his friends had suggested to him that there was matter in the note which, having been written hastily and under the pressure of strongly-excited feeling, were better omitted: under the circumstances, he had no objection to withdraw the note ; waiting to see if Mr. Fitzgibbon's feelings as a gentleman would not induce him to retract the injurious expressions. The Chief Justice ob- served, that although the Judges were temporarily absent, the affair must be held to have taken place in the presence of the Court ; and therefore no further proceeding could, under any circumstances, be allowed. At the suggestion of Mr. Moore, Mr. Fitzgibbon here dis- claimed having attributed to the Attorney-General one feeling or motive personally dishonourable to him, or any conduct beyond what was usual in a prosecution like the present. After some further talk, Mr. Moore proposed that the matter should be suffered finally to drop. The Court said that he had expressed its unanimous feeling; the Attorney-General acquiesced ; Mr. Fitzgibbon disclaimed any feeling against the Attor- ney-General; and the business of the trial resumed its course ] Fifteenth day—Wednesday, January 31.

Mr. Fitzgibbon continued his address from ten till five o'clock, when he closed. He read a number of extracts from Mr. O'Connell's speeches and other sources, showing that he had always counselled peace and obedience to the laws ; and he contended that the struggle which Mr. O'Connell always meant, was a moral, not a physical struggle. In the course of his speech, Mr. Fitzgibbon acquitted Mr. Bond Hughes from the imputation of being a Government spy ; allowing that "he had proved himself a man of sense, honour, and fortitude. He finished with deploring the " scene " of the previous day : he emphatically dwelt upon the ardent temper of both, which neither of them could help; repeated his avowal that Mr. Smith was a "perfect gentleman "; and expressed much anxiety to redeem himself from the self-reproach of having been a party to wounding his feelings.

The usual meeting of the Repeal Association was held at the Conci- liation Hall on Monday ; Mr. O'Connell, by favour of the early ad- journment in the Court of Queen's Bench, being present. On the mo- tion of Mr. Smith O'Brien, seconded by Mr. O'Connell, a resolution was adopted, recommending, that as, in the event of any election, the choice of the electors might he defeated, under the Bribery-law, by the smallest expenditure for refreshments, the several parishes should send their voters to the poll free of expense ; volunteering the thanks of the Association to professional agents giving gratuitous assistance ; and de- siring that persons using intimidation should be reported to the Asso- ciation. In his speech, containing little novelty, Mr. O'Connell reite- rated his exhortations to peace. Mr. Wallace, an American orator, was introduced, and he began a speech in the grandest Transatlantic style : America, he said, "had read with saddened cheek and streaming eyes the history of that unhappy country [Ireland]. She had heard the voice of agony which arose. She saw this land quivering like a stricken angel on the spear of despotism." (!) He had just said that " he spoke for the New York Repeaters and for America," when Mr. O'Connell peremptorily stopped him ; objected to any thing being said which even appeared to emanate from a delegate ; and he moved that Mr. Wallace be thanked for as much of his speech as he had made, and be informed that the Association had met for business. The week's rent was 370/.

The Dublin Evening Mail makes an alarming assertion- " We regret to state, that accounts have reached us of a most alarming na- ture from the North Riding of Tipperary. In addition to the numerous savage murders recently perpetrated in that distracted district, we have been assured, on unquestionable authority, that several of the most respectable and in- fluential of the gentry (and in particular one whose great practical usefulness and benevolence have been universally acknowledged by all classes) have been deliberately doomed for slaughter."