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try the guarantee which Washington procured for America, to procure an aid which, by its example, would be as important as by its valor, allies disciplined, gallant, pregnant with science and experience; who would preserve the good and polish the rough points of our character; who would come to us as strangers, and leave us as friends, after sharing our perils and elevating our destiny. These were my objects; not to receive new task-masters, but to expel old tyrants. These were my views, and these only become Irishmen. It was for these ends I sought aid from France, because France, even as an enemy, could not be more implacable than the enemy already in the bosom of my country.*

V.

I HAVE been charged with that importance, in the efforts to emancipate my country, as to be considered the key-stone of the combination of Irishmen, or, as your Lordship expressed it, "the life and blood of the conspiracy." You do me honor overmuch. You have given to the subaltern all the credit of a superior. There are men engaged in this conspiracy who are not only superior to me, but even to your own conceptions of yourself, my Lord; -men, before the splendor of whose genius and virtues I should bow with respectful deference, and who would think themselves dishonored to be called your friends, - who would not disgrace themselves by shaking your blood-stained hand! †

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What, my Lord, shall you tell me, on the passage to the scaffold which that tyranny, of which you are only the intermediate minister, has erected for my murder, that I am accountable for all the blood that has been and will be shed, in this struggle of the oppressed against the oppressor? Shall you tell me this, and must I be so very a slave as not to repel it? I, who fear not to approach the Omnipotent Judge, to answer for the conduct of my short life, am I to be appalled here, before a mere remnant of mortality? — by you, too, who, if it were possible to collect all the innocent blood that you have caused to be shed, in your unhallowed ministry, in one great reservoir, your Lordship might swim in it! ‡

Let no man dare, when I am dead, to charge me with dishonor. Let no man attaint my memory by believing that I could have engaged in any cause but that of my country's liberty and independence, or that I could have become the pliant minion of power in the oppression and the miseries of my countrymen. The proclamation of the Provisional Government speaks for my views. No inference can be tortured from it to countenance barbarity or debasement at home, or subjection, humiliation or treachery, from abroad. I would not have submitted to a foreign oppressor, for the same reason that I would resist the domestic tyrant. In the dignity of freedom I would have fought upon the threshold of my country, and its enemy should enter only by passing over my lifeless corpse. And am I, who lived but for my country,

* Here he was interrupted by the Court.

Here he was interrupted by Lord Norbury.

Here the judge interfered

- who have subjected myself to the dangers of the jealous and watchful oppressor, and now to the bondage of the grave, only to give my countrymen their rights, and my country her independence,

am I to be loaded with calumny, and not suffered to resent it? No! God forbid!*

If the spirits of the illustrious dead participate in the concerns and cares of those who were dear to them in this transitory life, O, ever dear and venerated shade of my departed father, look down with scrutiny upon the conduct of your suffering son, and see if I have, even for a moment, deviated from those principles of morality and patrictism which it was your care to instil into my youthful mind, and for which I am now to offer up my life!

My Lords, you seem impatient for the sacrifice. The blood for which you thirst is not congealed by the artificial terrors which surround your victim;-it circulates, warmly and unruffled, through the channels which God created for nobler purposes, but which you are bent to destroy, for purposes so grievous that they cry to Heaven. Be ye patient! I have but a few words more to say. I am going to my cold and silent grave. My lamp of life is nearly extinguished. My race is run. The grave opens to receive me, and I sink into its bosom! I have but one request to ask, at my departure from this world; it is the charity of its silence. Let no man write my epitaph; for, as no man who knows my motives dare now vindicate them, let not prejudice or ignorance asperse them. Let them and me repose in obscurity and peace, and my tomb remain uninscribed, until other times and other men can do justice to my character. When my coun try takes her place among the nations of the earth,— then, and not till then, let my epitaph be written! I have done.

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6. GREAT MINDS IN THEIR RELATIONS TO CHRISTIANITY. — Erskine, in the trial of Williams, for publishing Paine's "Age of Reason."

Thomas Erskine was born in Scotland, in 1750, and made Lord Chancellor in 1806. He died in 1823. He was one of the greatest advocates who have graced the Bar; and, in serious forezsic oratory, has never been surpassed. It has been said of him, that no man that ever lived so elevated and honored his calling.

IN running the mind along the long list of sincere and devout Christians, I cannot help lamenting that Newton had not lived to this day, to have had his shallowness filled up with this new flood of light, poured upon the world by Mr. Thomas Paine. But the subject is too awful for irony. I will speak plainly and directly. Newton was a Christian! Newton, whose mind burst forth from the fetters cast by nature upon our finite conceptions; Newton, whose science was truth, and the foundations of whose knowledge of it was philosophy not those visionary and arrogant presumptions which too often usurp its name, but philosophy resting upon the basis of mathematics, which

Here Lord Norbury told the prisoner that his principles were treasonable and subversive of government, and his language unbecoming a person in his situation; and that his father, the late Dr. Emmett, was a man who would not have counte nanced such sentiments.

like figures, cannot lie; - Newton, who carried the line and rule to the uttermost barrier of creation, and explored the principles by which, no doubt, all created matter is held together and exists. But this extraordinary man, in the mighty reach of his mind, overlooked, perhaps. what a minuter investigation of the created things on this earth might have taught him, of the essence of his Creator. What, then, shall be said of the great Mr. Boyle, who looked into the organic structure of all matter, even to the brute inanimate substances which the foot treads on? Such a man may be supposed to have been equally qualified, with Mr. Paine, to look up through nature to nature's God; yet the result of all his contemplation was the most confirmed and devout belief in all which the other holds in contempt, as despicable and drivelling superstition.

But this error might, perhaps, arise from a want of due attention to the foundations of human judgment, and the structure of that understanding which God has given us for the investigation of truth. Let that question be answered by Mr. Locke, who was, to the highest pitch of devotion and adoration, a Christian; Mr. Locke, whose office was to detect the errors of thinking, by going up to the fountains of thought, and to direct into the proper track of reasoning the devious mind of man, by showing him its whole process, from the first perceptions of sense to the last conclusions of ratiocination, putting a rein upon false opinions by practical rules for the conduct of human judgment. But these men were only deep thinkers, and lived in their closets, unaccustomed to the traffic of the world, and to the laws which practically regulate mankind.

Gentlemen, in the place where we now sit to administer the justice of this great country, above a century ago, the never to be forgotten Sir Matthew Hale presided, whose faith in Christianity is an exalted commentary upon its truth and reason, and whose life was a glorious example of its fruits in man, administering human justice with wisdom and purity, drawn from the pure fountain of the Christian dispensation, which has been, and will be, in all ages, a subject of the highest reverence and admiration. But it is said by the author that the Christian fable is but the tale of the more ancient superstitions of the world, and may be easily detected by a proper understanding of the mythologies of the heathens. Did Milton understand those mythologies? Was he less versed than Mr. Paine in the superstitions of the world? No; they were the subject of his immortal song; and though shut out from all recurrence to them, he poured them forth from the stores of a memory rich with all that man ever knew, and laid them in their order, as the illustration of real and exalted faith, - the unquestionable source of that fervid genius which cast a sort of shade upon all the other works of man. But it was the light of the BODY only that was extinguished; the celestial light shone inward, and enabled him to justify the ways of God to man.'

Thus you find all that is great, or wise, or splendid, or illustrious, amongst created beings, all the minds gifted beyond ordinary nature, if not inspired by its universal Author for the advancement and dignity

of the world, though divided by distant ages, and by clashing opinions, distinguishing them from one another, yet joining, as it were, in one sublime chorus to celebrate the truths of Christianity, and laying upon its holy altars the never-failing offerings of their immortal wisdom.

7. ATTEMPTS TO BIAS JUDGMENT IN CASE OF WILKES, 1768. - Lord Mansfeld. Ir is fit to take some notice of the various terrors being held out to the judges on this Bench; the numerous crowds which have attendel and now attend in and about this hall, out of all reach of hearing what passes in Court; and the tumults which, in other places, have shamefully insulted all order and government. Audacious addresses in

print dictate to us, from those they call the People, the judgment to be given now, and afterwards upon the conviction. Reasons of policy are urged, from danger to the kingdom by commotions and general confusion. Give me leave to take the opportunity of this great and respectable audience, to let the whole world know that all such attempts are vain. Unless we have been able to find an error which will bear us out to reverse the outlawry, it must be affirmed. The Constitution does not allow reasons of state to influence our judgments. God forbid it should! We must not regard political consequences, how formidable soever they might be; if rebellion was the certain consequence, we are bound to say, "Fiat justitia, ruat cœlum." We are to say what we take the law to be; if we do not speak our real opinions, we prevaricate with God and our own consciences.

I pass over many anonymous letters I have received: those in print are public; and some of them have been brought judicially before the court. Whoever the writers are, they take the wrong way; I will do my duty unawed. What am I to fear? That mendax infamia from the Press, which daily coins false facts and false motives? The lies of calumny carry no terror to me. I trust that my temper of mind, and the color and conduct of my life, have given me a suit of armor against these arrows. If, during this King's reign, I have ever supported his Government, and assisted his measures, I have done it without any other reward than the consciousness of doing what I thought right. If I have ever opposed, I have done it upon the points themselves, without mixing in party or faction, and without any collateral views. I honor the King, and respect the People; but, many things acquired by the favor of either are, in my account, objects not worth ambition. I wish popularity; but it is that popularity which follows, not that which is run after; it is that popularity which, sooner or later, never fails to do justice to the pursuit of noble ends by noble means. I will not do that which my conscience tells me is wrong, upon this occasion, to gain the huzzas of thousands, or the daily praise of all the papers which come from the press; I will not avoid doing what I think is right, though it should draw on me the whole artillery of libels, all that falsehood and malice can invent, or the credulity of a deluded populace can swallow. I can say, with a great magistrate,

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apon an occasion and under circumstances not unlike, " Ege hoc animo semper fui, ut invidiam virtute partam, gloriam, non invidiam, putarem."

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The threats go further than abuse; personal violence is denounce. I do not believe it; it is not the genius of the worst men of this country, in the worst of times. But I have set my mind at rest. The last end that can happen to any man never comes too soon, if he falls in support of the law and liberty of his country,- for liberty is synonymous with law and government. Such a shock, too, might be productive of public good; it might awake the better part of the kingdom out of that lethargy which seems to have benumbed them, and bring the mad back to their senses, as men intoxicated are sometimes, stunned into sobriety. Once for all, let it be understood that no endeavors of this kind will influence any man who at present sits here; no libels, no threats, nothing that has happened, nothing that can happen!

8. DEFENCE OF M. PELTIER FOR A LIBEL ON NAPOLEON.-Sir J. Mackintosh. GENTLEMEN, there is one point of view in which this case seems to merit your most serious attention. The real prosecutor is the master of the greatest empire the civilized world ever saw; the defendant is a defenceless, proscribed exile. I consider this case, therefore, as the first of a long series of conflicts between the greatest power in the world, and the ONLY FREE PRESS remaining in Europe. Gentlemen, this distinction of the English Press is new, it is a proud and melancholy distinction. Before the great earthquake of the French Revolution had swallowed up all the asylums of free discussion on the Continent, we enjoyed that privilege, indeed, more fully than others, but we did not enjoy it exclusively. In Holland, in Switzerland, in the imperial towns of Germany, the Press was either legally or practically free. Holland and Switzerland are no more; and, since the commencement of this prosecution, fifty imperial towns have been erased from the list of independent States, by one dash of the pen.

One asylum of free discussion is still inviolate. There is still one spot in Europe where man can freely exercise his reason on the most important concerns of society, where he can boldly publish his judgment on the acts of the proudest and most powerful tyrants. The Press of England is still free. It is guarded by the free Constitution of our forefathers. It is guarded by the hearts and arms of Englishmen; and, I trust I may venture to say, that, if it be to fall, it will fall only under the ruins of the British empire. It is an awful consideration, Gentlemen. Every other monument of European liberty has perished. That ancient fabric, which has been gradually raised by the wisdom and virtue of our fathers, still stands. It stands, thanks be to God! solid and entire, but it stands alone, and it stands amid ruins! Believing, then, as I do, that we are on the eve of a great struggle, that this is only the first battle between reason and power have now in you your hands, committed to your trust, the only

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