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arisen to the blessings of a free constitution; superstition has found her grave in the ruins of the inquisition; and the feudal system, with its whole train of tyrannic satellites, has fled forever. Kings may learn from him that their safest study, as well as their noblest, is the interest of the people; the people are taught by him that there is no despotism so stupendous against which they have not a resource; and to those who would rise upon the ruins of both, he is a living lesson, that if ambition can raise them from the lowest station, it can also Frostrate them from the highest.

HILLIPS.

APPEAL TO THE JURY AGAINST BLAKE

Он, gentlemen, am I this day only the counsel of my client? No, no; I am the advocate of humanity—of yourselves - your homes your wives. your families - your little children. I am glad that this case exhibits such atrocity; unmarked as it is by any mitigatory feature, it may stop the frightful advance of this calamity; it will be met now, and marked with vengeance. If it be not, farewell to the virtues of your country; farewell to all confidence between man and man; farewell to that unsuspicious and reciprocal tenderness, without which marriage is but a consecrated curse. If oaths are to be violated, laws disregarded, friendship betrayed, humanity trampled, national and individual honor stained, and if a jury of fathers and of husbands will give such miscreancy a passport to their homes, and wives, and daughters, - farewell to all that yet remains of Ireland! But I will not cast such a doubt upon the character of my country. Against the sneer of the foe, and the skepticism of the foreigner, I will still point to the domestic virtues, that no perfidy could barter, and no bribery can purchase, that with a Roman usage, at once embellish and consecrate households, giving to the society of the hearth all the purity of the altar; that lingering alike in the palace and the cottage, are still to be found scattered over this land- the relic of what she was— the source perhaps of what she may be the lone, the stately, and magificent memorials, that rearing their majesty amid surrounding ruins, serve at once as the landmarks of the departed glory, and the models by which the future may be erected.

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Preserve those virtues with a vestal fidelity; mark this day, by your verdict, your horror of their profanation; and believe me, when the hand which records that verdict shall be dust, and

the tongue that asks it, traceless in the grave, many a happy home will bless its consequences, and many a mother teach her little child to hate the impious treason of adultery.

PHILLIPS.

APPEAL TO THE JURY IN BEHALF OF O'MULLAN.

We must picture to ourselves a young man, partly by the self denial of parental love, partly by the energies of personal exertion, struggling into a profession, where, by the pious exercise of his talents, he may make the fame, the wealth, the flatteries of this world, so many angel heralds to the happiness of the next. His precept is a treasure to the poor; his practice, a model to the rich. When he reproves, sorrow seeks his presence as a sanctuary; and in his path of peace, should he pause by the death-bed of despairing sin, the soul becomes imparadised in the light of his benediction! Imagine, gentlemen, you see him thus; and then, if you can, imagine vice so desperate as to defraud the world of so fair a vision. Anticipate for a moment the melancholy evidence we must too soon adduce to you. Behold him, by foul, deliberate and infamous calumny, robbed of the profession he had so struggled to obtain; swindled from the flock he had so labored to ameliorate; torn from the school where infant virtue vainly mourns an artificial orphanage; hunted from the home of his youth, from the friends of his heart, a hopeless, fortuneless, companionless exile, hanging, in some stranger scene, on the precarious pity of the few, whose charity might induce their compassion to bestow what this remorseless slanderer would compel their justice to withhold! I will not pursue this picture; I will not detain you from the pleasure of your possible compensation; for oh! divine is the pleasure you are destined to experience; dearer to your hearts shall be the sensation, than to your pride shall be the dignity it will give you. What! though the people will hail the saviors of their pastor: what! though the priesthood will hallow the guardians of their brother; though many a peasant heart will leap at your name, and many an infant eye will embalm their fame who restored to life, to station, to dignity, to character, the venerable friend who taught their trembling tongues to lisp the rudiments of virtue and religion; still dearer than all will be the consciousness of the deed. Nor, believe me, countrymen, will it rest here. Oh no if there be light in instinct, or truth in revelation, believe me, at that awful hour, when you shall await the last inevitable

verdict, the eye of your hope will not be the less bright, nor the agony of your ordeal the more acute, because you shall have, by this day's deed, redeemed the Almighty's persecuted apostle from the grasp of an insatiate malice - from the fang of ? worse than Philistine persecution.

PHILLIPS

THE SAME, CONTINUED.

I AM told they triumph much in this conviction. I seek not to impugn the verdict of that jury; I have no doubt they acted conscientiously. It weighs not with me that every member of my client's creed was carefully excluded from that jury-no doubt they acted conscientiously. It weighs not with me that every man impanneled on the trial of the priest were exclusively Protestant, and that, too, in a city so prejudiced, that not long ago, by their corporation law, no Catholic dared breathe the air of heaven within its walls- no doubt they acted conscientiously. It weighs not with me, that not three days previously, one of that jury was heard publicly to declare, he wished he could persecute the papist to his death-no doubt they acted conscientiously. It weighs not with me that the public mind had been so inflamed by the exasperation of this libeler that an impartial trial was utterly impossible. Let them enjoy their triumph. But for myself, knowing him as I do, here in the teeth of that conviction, I declare it, I would rather be that man, so aspersed, so imprisoned, so persecuted, and have his consciousness, than stand the highest of the courtliest rabble that ever crouched before the foot of power, or fed upon the people-plundered alms of despotism. Oh! of short duration is such demoniac triumph. Oh! blind and groundless is the hope of vice, imagining that its victory can be more than for the moment. This very day I hope will prove that if virtue suffers, it is but for a season; and that sooner or later, their patience tried, and their purity testified, prosperity will crown the interests of probity and worth.

PHILLIPS.

APPEAL TO THE JURY AGAINST DILLON

I AM told, indeed, this gentleman entertains an opinion, preva lent enough in the age of a feudalism, as arrogant as it was bar· barous, that the poor are only a species of property, to be treated

according to interest or caprice; and that wealth is at once a patent for crime, and an exemption from its consequences. Happily for this land, the day of such opinions has passed over it; the eye of a purer feeling and more profound philosophy now beholds riches but as one of the aids to virtue, and sees in oppressed poverty only an additional stimulus to increased protection. A generous heart cannot help feeling, that in cases of this kind the poverty of the injured is a dreadful aggravation. If the rich suffer, they have much to console them; but when a poor man loses the darling of his heart the sole pleasure with which nature blessed him- how abject, how cureless is the despair of his destitution! Believe me, gentlemen, you have not only a solemn duty to perform, but you have an awful responsibility imposed upon you. You are this day, in some degree, trustees for the morality of the people—perhaps of the whole nation; for, depend upon it, if the sluices of immorality are once opened among the lower orders, the frightful tide, drifting upon its surface all that is dignified or dear, will soon rise even to the habitations of the highest. I feel, gentlemen, I have discharged my duty - I am sure you will do yours. I repose my client with confidence in your hands; and most fervently do I hope, that when evening shall find you at your happy fireside, surrounded by the sacred circle of your children, you may not feel the heavy curse gnawing at your heart, of having let loose, unpunished, the prowler that may devour them.

PHILLIPS.

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ON THE LIBERTY OF THE PRESS.

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THERE is, however, one subject connected with this trial, public in its nature, and universal in its interest, which imperiously calls for an exemplary verdict; I mean the liberty of the press theme which I approach with mingled sensations of awe, and agony, and admiration. Considering all that we too fatally have - all that, perhaps, too fearfully we may have cause to apprehend, I feel myself cling to that residuary safeguard, with an affection no temptation can seduce, with a suspicion no anodyne can lull, with a fortitude that peril but infuriates. In the direful retrospect of experimental despotism, and the hideous prospect of its possible reanimation, I clasp it with the desperation of a widowed female, who, in the desolation of her house, and the destruction of her household, hurries the last of her offspring through the flames, at once the relic of her joy, the

depository of her wealth, and the remembrancer of her happi ness. It is the duty of us all to guard strictly this inestimable privilegea privilege which can never be destroyed, save by the licentiousness of those who willfully abuse it. No, it is not in the arrogance of power- no, it is not in the artifices of law no, it is not in the fatuity of princes no, it is not in the venality of parliaments to crush this mighty, this majestic privilege! Reviled, it will remonstrate; murdered, it will revive; buried, it will reascend. The very attempt at its oppression, will prove the truth of its immortality; and the atom that presumed to spurn, will fade away before the trumpet of its retribution. Man holds it on the same principle that he does his soul: the powers of this world cannot prevail against it, it can only perish through its own depravity. What then shall be his fate, through whose instrumentality it shall be sacrificed! Nay more, what shall be his fate, who, intrusted with the guardianship of its security, becomes the traitorous accessary to its ruin? Nay more, what shall be his fate by whom its powers, delegated for the public good, are converted into the calamities of private virtue; against whom, industry denounced, merit undermined, morals calumniated, piety aspersed, all through the means confided for their protection, cry aloud for vengeance? What shall be his fate? Oh, I would hold such a monster, so protected, so sanctified, and so sinning, as I would some demon, who going forth, consecrated in the name of Deity, the book of life on his lips and the dagger of death beneath his robe, awaits the sigh of piety as the signal of plunder, and unveins the heart's blood of confiding adoration.

PHILLIPS.

THE ADVANTAGES OF EDUCATION.

No doubt you have all personally considered no doubt you have all personally experienced, that of all the blessings which it has pleased Providence to allow us to cultivate, there is not one which breathes a purer fragrance, or bears a heavenlier aspect, than education. It is a companion which no misfortunes can depress, no clime destroy, no enemy alienate, no despotism enslave: at home a friend, abroad an introduction, in solitude a solace, in society an ornament: it chastens vice, it guides virtue, it gives at once a grace and government to genius. Without it, what is man? A splendid slave! a reasoning savage, vacillating between the dignity of an intelligence derived

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