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! THE HABEAS CORPUS ACT.-John Philpot Curran, in the case of the King against Mr. Justice Johnson, Feb. 4th, 1805, before Chief Baron Lord Avonmore and the other Barons, in the Court of Exchequer. I now address you on a question the most vitally connected with the liberty and well-being of every man within the limits of the British empire ;-which being decided one way, he may be a freeman; which being decided the other, he must be a slave. I refer to the maintenance of that sacred security for the freedom of Englishmen,-so justly called the second Magna Charta of British liberty, the Habeas Corpus Act; the spirit and letter of which is, that the partyarrested shall without a moment's delay, be bailed, if the offence be bailable. What was the occasion of the law? The arbitrary transportation of the subject beyond the realm; the base and malignant war which the odious and despicable minions of power are forever ready to wage against all those who are honest and bold enough to despise, i expose, and to resist them. Such is the oscitancy of man, that he lies torpid for ages under these aggressions, until, at last, some signal abuse-the violation of Lucretia, the death of Virginia the oppression of William Tell-shakes him from his slumber. For years had those drunken gan bols of power been played in England; for years had the waters of bitterness been rising to the brim; at last, a single drop caused them to overflow-the oppression of a single individual raised the people of England from their sleep. And what does that great statute do? It defines and asserts the right, it points out the abuse; and it endeavors to secure the right, and to guard against the abuse, by giving redress to the suf ferer, and by punishing the offender. For years had it been the practice to transport obnoxious persons cut of the realm into distant parts, under the pretext of punishment or of safe custody. Well might they have been said to be sent "to that undiscovered coun try from whose bourne. no traveller returns: for of these wretched travellers how few ever did return? But of that flagrant abuse this statute has laid the axe to the root. It prohibits the abuse; it declares such detention or removal illegal; it gives an action against all persons concerned in the offence, by contriv ing, writing, signing, countersigning, such warrant, or advising or assisting therein. Are bulwarks like these ever constructed to repel the incursions of a contemptible enemy? Was it a trivial and ordinary occasion which raised this storm of indignation in the Parliament of that day? Is the ocean ever lashed by the tempest to waft a feather or to drown a fly? By this act you have a solemn legislative declaration, "that it is in compatible with liberty to send any subject out of the realm, under pretence of any crime supposed or alleged to be committed in a foreign jurisdiction, except that crime be capital." Such were the bulwarks which our ancestors placed about the sacred temple of liberty, such the ramparts by which they sought to bar out the ever-toiling ocean of arbitrary power; and thought (generous credulity!) that they had barred it out from their posterity for ever. Little did they foresee the future race of vermin that would work their way through those mounds, and let back the in undation! CURRAN'S APPEAL TO LORD AVONMORE.—From the lastnamed Speech. I am not ignorant, my Lords, that the extraordinary construction of law against which I contend has received the sanction of another court, nor of the surprise and dismay with which it smote upon the general heart of the bar. I am aware that I may have the mortification of being told, in another country, of that unhappy decision; and I foresee in what confusion 1 shall hang down my head when I am told it. But I cherish, too, the consolatory hope, that I shali be able to tell them that I had an old and learned friend, whom I would put above all the sweepings of their hall, who was of a different opinion; who had derived his ideas of civil liberty from the purest fountains of Athens and of Rome; who had fed the youthful vigor of his studious mind with the theoretic knowledge of their wisest philosophers and statesmen, and who had refined that theory into the quick and ex quisite sensibility of moral instinct, by contemplating the practice of their most illustrious examples-by dwelling on the sweet-souled piety of Cimon, on the anticipated Christianity of Socrates, on the gallant and pathetic patriotism of Epaminondas, on that pure austerity of Fabricius, whom to move from his integrity would have been more difficult than to have pushed the sun from his course. I would add, that, if he had seemed to hesitate, it was but for a moment; that his hesitation was like the passing cloud that floats across the morning sun and hides it from the view, and does so for a moment hide it, by involving the spectator, without even approaching the face of the luminary. And this soothing hope 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 partaken 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, according to the original report, Lord Avonmore could not refrain from bursting into tears. In the midst of Curran's legal argument, "this most beautiful episode," says Charles Phillips, "bloomed like a green spot amid the desert. Mr. Curran told me himself, that when the court rose, the tip-staff informed him he was wanted immediately in chamber by one of the judges of the exchequer. He, of course, obeyed the judicial mandate; and the moment he entered, poor Lord Avonmore, whose cheeks were still wet with the tears extorted by this heart-touching appeal, clasped bim to his bosom." A coolness caused by political differences, which had for some time existed between them, gave place to a ro newal of friendship, which was not again interrupted. Yes, my good lord, I see you do not forget thein; 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." SONG OF MAC MURROUGH.-Scott. Mist darkens the mountains, night darkens the vale, The dirk and the targe lie sordid with dust, |