and preferred to come forward in the ungracious form of ex officio information.

If such bill had been sent up and founa, Mr.

bring h.x to

that your hearts can be more at ease than my own; I have no right to expect it; but I have a right to call upon you in the name of your country, in the name of the living God, of whose eter-Rowan would have been tried at the Backwardness nal justice you are now administering that por- next commission; but a speedy trial of the Crown to sion which dwells with us on this side of the was not the wish of his prosecutors. trial. grave, to discharge your breasts, as far as you An information was filed, and when he expected are able, of every bias of prejudice or passion; to be tried upon it, an error, it seems, was disthat if my client is guilty of the offense charged covered in the record. Mr. Rowan offered to upon him, you may give tranquillity to the pub-wave it, or consent to any amendment desired lic by a firm verdict of conviction; or if he is innocent, by as firm a verdict of acquittal; and that you will do this in defiance of the paltry artifices and senseless clamors that have been resorted to in order to bring him to his trial with anticipated conviction. And, gentlemen, I feel an additional necessity of thus conjuring you to be upon your guard, from the able and imposing statement which you have just heard on the part of the prosecution. I know well the virtues and the talents of the excellent person who conducts that prosecution; I know how much he would disdain to impose upon you by the trappings of office; but I also know how easily we mistake the lodgment which character and eloquence can make upon our feelings, for those impressions that reason, and fact, and proof, only ought to work upon our understandings.

Perhaps, gentlemen, I shall act not unwisely in waving any further observation of this sort, and giving your minds an opportunity of growing cool and resuming themselves, by coming to a calm and uncolored statement of mere facts, I remising only to you that I have it in the strictest injunction from my client to defend him upon facts and evidence only, and to avail myself of no technical artifice or subtilty that could withdraw his cause from the test of that inquiry which it is your province to exercise, and to which only he wishes to be indebted for an acquittal.

Preliminary remarks. Hardships of Mr. Rowan in the early

No. That proposal could not be accepted. A trial must have followed. That information, therefore, was withdrawn, and a new one filed; that is, in fact, a third prosecution was instituted upon the same charge. This last was filed on the eighth day of last July. Gentlemen, these facts can not fail of a due impression upon you. You will find a material part of your inquiry must be, whether Mr. Rowan is pursued as & criminal or hunted down as a victim. It is not, therefore, by insinuation or circuity, but it is boldly and directly that I assert, that oppression has been intended and practiced upon him; and by those facts which I have stated I am warranted in the assertion.

him with preju

His demand, his entreaty to be tried was refused; and why? A hue and cry was The design was to be raised against him; the sword to overwhelm was to be suspended over his head; dice, some time was necessary for the public mind to become heated by the circulation of artful clamors of anarchy and rebellion; those same clamors which, with more probability, and not more success, had been circulated before through England and Scotland. In this country the causes and the swiftness of their progress were as obvious, as their folly has since become to every man of the smallest observation. I have been stopped myself with, "Good God, sir, have you heard the news ?" No, sir, what? "Why one French emissary was seen traveling through In the month of December, 1792, Mr. Rowan Connaught in a post-chaise, and scattering from was arrested on an information charg- the windows as he passed, little doses of politiing him with the offense for which he cal poison, made up in square bits of paper; anis now on his trial. He was taken be- other was actually surprised in the fact of seduc stages of the fore an honorable personage now on ing our good people from their allegiance, by that bench, and admitted to bail. He discourses upon the indivisibility of French rob. remained a considerable time in this city, solicit-bery and massacre, which he preached in the ing the threatened prosecution, and offering him- | French language to a congregation of Irish peasself to a fair trial by a jury of his country; but ants!" it was not then thought fit to yield to that solic- Such are the bugbears and spectres to be raised itation; nor has it now been thought proper to to warrant the sacrifice of whatever little public prosecute him in the ordinary way, by sending spirit may remain among us; but time has also up a bill of indictment to a grand jury. I do not detected the imposture of these Cock-lane apmean by this to say that informations ex officio paritions, and you can not now, with your eyes are always oppressive or unjust; but I can not open, give a verdict without asking your conbut observe to you, that when a petty jury is sciences this question: Is this a fair and honest called upon to try a charge not previously found precaution? Is it brought forward with the sin by the grand inquest, and supported by the na-gle view of vindicating public justice, and pro ked assertion only of the King's prosecutor, the moting public good? accusation labors under a weakness of probability which it is difficult to assist. If the charge had no cause of dreading the light; if it was likely to find the sanction of a grand jury, it is not easy to account why it deserted the more usual, the more popular, and the more constitutional mode,

prosecution.

a

And here let me remind you that you are no convened to try the guilt of a libel Difference be affecting the personal character of tweepers any private man. I know no case in freest remark which a jury ought to be more severe ment than when personal calumny is conveyed through

on the govern

tions of this extent would have been deemed improper to a jury; happily for these countries, the Legislature of each has lately changed, or, perhaps, to speak more properly, revived and restored the law respecting trials of this kind.3 For the space of thirty or forty years, a usage had prevailed in Westminster Hall, by which the judges assumed to themselves the decision of the question, whether libel or not. But the learned counsel for the prosecution are now obliged to admit that this is a question for the jury only to decide. You will naturally listen with re spect to the opinion of the court, but you will re

law; and you will give it credit, not from any adventitious circumstances of authority, but merely so far as it meets the concurrence of your own understandings.

a vehicle, which ought to be consecrated to public information; neither, on the other hand, can I conceive any case in which the firmness and the caution of a jury should be more exerted than when a subject is prosecuted for a libel on the state. The peculiarity of the British Constitution (to which, in its fullest extent, we have an undoubted right, however distant we may be from the actual enjoyment), and in which it surpasses every known government in Europe, is this, that its only professed object is the general good, and its only foundation the general will. Hence the people have a right, acknowledged from time immemorial, fortified by a pile ofceive it as matter of advice, not as matter of statutes, and authenticated by a revolution that speaks louder than them all, to see whether abuses have been committed, and whether their properties and their liberties have been attended to as they ought to be. This is a kind of subject which I feel myself overawed when I approach. There are certain fundamental principles which nothing but necessity should expose to a public examination. They are pillars, the depth of whose foundation you can not explore without endangering their strength; but let it be recollected that the discussion of such topics should not be condemned in me, nor visited upon my client. The blame, if any there be, should rest only with those who have forced them into discussion. I say, therefore, it is the right of the people to keep an eternal watch upon the conduct of their rulers; and in order to that, the freedom of the press has been cherished by the law of England. In private defamation, let it never be tolerated; in wicked and wanton aspersion upon a good and honest administration, let it nev-anarchy, and to overturn the established Constier be supported; not that a good government can be exposed to danger by groundless accusation, but because a bad government is sure to find in the detected falsehood of a licentious press a security and a credit which it could never otherwise obtain.

Great freedom of remark on their rulers the

right of the peo

ple.

is existing

government

Give me leave, now, to state to you the charge as it stands upon the record: It is, Charge against that Mr. Rowan, "being a person of a Mr. Rowan wicked and turbulent disposition, and maliciously designing and intending to excite and diffuse among the subjects of this realm of Ireland, discontents, jealousies, and suspicions of our Lord the King and his government, and disaffection and disloyalty to the person and government of our said Lord the King, and to raise very dangerous seditions and tumults within this kingdom of Ire. land and to draw the government of this kingdom into great scandal, infamy, and disgrace; and to incite the subjects of our said Lord the King to attempt, by force and violence, and with arms, to make alterations in the government, state, and Constitution of this kingdom; and te incite his Majesty's said subjects to tumult and

tution of this kingdom, and to overawe and intimidate the Legislature of this kingdom by armed force,” did “maliciously and seditiously publish the paper in question.

thorize his con

Gentlemen, without any observation of mine you must see that this information Three things must contains a direct charge upon Mr. Combine to au Rowan; namely, that he did, with viction, the intents set forth in the information, publish this paper, so that here you have, in fact, two or three questions for your decision: first, the matter of fact of the publication; namely, Did Mr. Rowan publish that paper? If Mr. Rowan did not, in fact, publish that paper, you have no longer any question on which to employ your minds. If you think that he was, in fact, the

I have said that a good government can not be What, toen, endangered-I say so again; for whether it be good or bad, can never depend of Ireland? upon assertion; the question is decided by simple inspection-to try the tree, look at its fruit; to judge of the government, look at the people. What is the fruit of good government? "The virtue and happiness of the people." Do four millions of people in this country gather hose fruits from that government, to whose injured purity, to whose spotless virtue and viola-publisher, then, and not till then, arises the great ted honor, this seditious and atrocious libeler is to be immolated upon the altar of the Constitution? To you, gentlemen of that jury, who are bound by the most sacred obligation to your country and your God, to speak nothing but the truth, I put the question-Do they gather these fruits? are they orderly, industrious, religious, and contented? do you find them free from bigotry and ignorance, those inseparable concomitants of systematic oppression? or, to try them by a test as unerring as any of the former, are they united? The period has now elapsed in which considera

and important subject to which your judgments must be directed. And that comes shortly and simply to this, is the paper a libel; and did he publish it with the intent charged in the information? But whatever you may think of the abstract question, whether the paper be libelous or not, and of which paper it has not even been insinuated that he is the author, there can be ne ground for a verdict against him, unless you als are persuaded that what he did was done with s

'Alluding to Mr. Fox's Libel Bill.

stated by the Attorney General, and most truly, that the most gloomy apprehensions were enter. tained by the whole country. "You Volunteers of Ireland, are therefore summoned to arms at the instance of government, as well as by the responsibility attached to your character, and the permanent obligations of your institution." 1 am free to confess, if any man assuming the liberty of a British subject, to question public topics, should, under the mask of that privilege, pub. lish a proclamation inviting the profligate and seditious, those in want and those in despair, to rise up in arms to overawe the Legislature, to rob us of whatever portion of the blessings of a free government we possess, I know of no offense involving greater enormity. But that, gentle

to the sneer at the word citizen soldiers, I should feel that I was treating a very respected friend with an insidious and unmerited unkindness, if I affected to expose it by any gravity of refutation. I may, however, be permitted to observe, that those who are supposed to have disgraced this expression by adopting it, have taken it from the idea of the British Constitution, "that no man, in becoming a soldier, ceases to be a citizen." Would to God, all enemies as they are, that that unfortunate people had borrowed more from that sacred source of liberty and virtue; and would to God, for the sake of humanity, that they had preserved even the little they did borrow. If even there could be an objection to that appellation, it must have been strongest when it was first assumed. To that period the writer man-men, is the question you are to try. If my cliifestly alludes; he addresses those who first took up arms: "You first took up arms to protect your country from foreign enemies and from domestic disturbance. For the same purposes, it is now necessary that you should resume them." Is this applicable to those who had never taken up arms before? "A proclamation," says this paper, "has been issued in England, for embodying the militia, and a proclamation has been issued by the Lord Lieutenant and Council in Ire-actual and imminent danger, and that their armland for repressing all seditious associations. In consequence of both these proclamations, it is reasonable to apprehend danger from abroad and danger at home." God help us; from the situation of Europe at that time, we were threatened with too probable danger from abroad, and I am afraid it was not without foundation that we were told our having something to dread at home.

of the

I find much abuse has been lavished on the disIt was justified respect with which the proclamation tion is treated in that part of the paper government. alleged to be a libel. To that my answer for my client is short; I do conceive it competent to a British subject-if he thinks that a proclamation has issued for the purpose of raising false terrors, I hold it to be not only the privilege, but the duty of a citizen to set his countrymen right with respect to such misrepresented danger; and until a proclamation in this country shall have the force of law, the reason and grounds of it are surely, at least, questionable by the people. Nay, I will go further; if an actual law had received the sanction of the three estates, if it be exceptionable in any matter, it is warrantable to any man in the community to state, in a becoming manner, his ideas upon it. And I should be at a loss to know, if the positive laws of Great Britain are thus questionable, upon what ground the proclamation of an Irish government should not be open to the animadversion of an Irish subject.

Whatever be the motive, or from whatever It was made with quarter it arises, says this paper, honest intentions.alarm has arisen." Gentlemen, do you not know that to be the fact? It has been

5 The old volunteers often used the phrase "citi

ten soldiers"

ent acted with an honest mind and fair intention, and having, as he believed, the authority of gov ernment to support him in the idea that danger was to be apprehended, did apply to that body of so known and so revered a character, calling upon them by their former honor, the principle of their glorious institution, and the great stake they possessed in their country; if he interposed, not upon a fictitious pretext, but a real belief of

ing at that critical moment was necessary to their country, his intention was not only innocent, but highly meritorious. It is a question, gentlemen, upon which you only can decide; it is for you to say whether it was criminal in the defendan! to be so misled, and whether he is to fall a sacrifice to the prosecution of that government by which he was so deceived. I say, again, gentlemen, you can look only to his own words as the interpreter of his meaning, and to the state and circumstances of his country, as he was made to believe them, as the clue to his intention. The case, then, gentlemen, is shortly and simply this. a man of the first family, and fortune, and character, and property among you, reads a procla mation, stating the country to be in danger from abroad and at home, and thus alarmed —— thus, upon authority of the prosecutor, alarmed, applies to that august body, before whose awfui presence sedition must vanish and insurrection disappear. You must surrender, I hesitate not to say it, your oaths to unfounded assertion, if you can submit to say that such an act of such a man, so warranted, is a wicked and seditious libel. If he was a dupe, let me ask you who was the impostor? I blush and I shrink with shame and detestation from that meanness of dupery, and servile complaisance, which could make that dupe a victim to the accusation of that impostor.

You perceive, gentlemen, that I am going into the merits of this publication, before I apply myself to the question which is first in order of time, namely, whether the publication, in point of fact, is to be ascribed to Mr. Rowan or not. I have been unintentionally led into this violation of order. I should effect no purpose of either brevity or clearness, by returning to the more methodi cal course of observation. I have been naturally

drawn from it by the superior importance of the | this place. We would, therefore, caution every topic I am upon, namely, the merit of the publication in question.

ary reform:

subject allowed

This publication, if ascribable at all to Mr. Rowan, contains four distinct subjects. The first the invitation to the Volunteers to arm. Upon that I have already observed; but those that remain are surely of much importance, and no doubt are prosecuted as equally criminal. The paper next states the necessity of a reform in Parliament; it states, thirdly, the necessity of an emancipation of the Catholic inhabitants of Ireland; and, as necessary to the achievement of all these objects, does, fourthly, state the necessity of a general delegated convention of the people. It has been alleged that Mr. Rowan intended (2.) Parliament by this publication to excite the subThe freest dis jects of this country to effect an alcussion of this teration in the form of your Constituin England. tion. And here, gentlemen, perhaps you may not be unwilling to follow a little further than Mr. Attorney General has done, the idea of a late prosecution in Great Britain upon the subject of a public libel. It is with peculiar fondness I look to that country for solid principles of constitutional liberty and judicial example. You have been pressed in no small degree with the manner in which this publication marks the different orders of our Constitution, and comments upon them. Let me show you what boldness of animadversion on such topics is thought justifiable in the British nation, and by a British jury. I have in my hand the report of the trial of the printers of the Morning Chronicle for a supposed libel against the state, and of their acquittal: let me read to you some passages from that publication, which a jury of Englishmen were in vain called upon to brand with the name of libel.

honest man, who has really the welfare of the nation at heart, to avoid being led away by the prostituted clamors of those who live on the sour ces of corruption. We pity the fears of the timorous; and we are totally unconcerned respect. ing the false alarms of the venal.

"We view with concern the frequency of wars We are persuaded that the interests of the poor can never be promoted by accession of territory, when bought at the expense of their labor and blood; and we must say, in the language of a celebrated author, 'We, who are only the people, but who pay for wars with our substance and our blood, will not cease to tell Kings,' or governments, 'that to them alone wars are profitable; that the true and just conquests are those which each makes at home by comforting the peasantry, by promoting agriculture and manufactures, by multiplying men, and the other productions of nature; that then it is that kings may call themselves the image of God, whose will is perpetu ally directed to the creation of new beings. If they continue to make us fight and kill one an other, in uniform, we will continue to write and speak until nations shall be cured of this folly.' We are certain our present heavy burdens are owing, in a great measure, to cruel and impolitic wars; and therefore we will do all on our part, as peaceable citizens who have the good of the community at heart, to enlighten each other, and protest against them.

The present state of the representation of the people calls for the particular attention of every man who has humanity sufficient to feel for the honor and happiness of his country; to the defects and corruptions of which we are inclined to attribute unnecessary wars, oppressive taxes, &c. We think it a deplorable case when the poor must support a corruption which is calculated to oppress them; when the laborer must give his money to afford the means of preventing him having a voice in its disposal; when the lower classes may say, "We give you our money, for which we have toiled and sweated, and which would save our families from cold and hunger; but we think it more hard that there is nobody whom we have delegated to see that it is not improperly and wickedly spent. We have none to watch over our interests. The rich only are rep resented.

"Claiming it as our indefeasible right to assoExtracts from the ciate together, in a peaceable and Morning Chronicle. friendly manner, for the communication of thoughts, the formation of opinions, and to promote the general happiness, we think it unnecessary to offer any apology for inviting you to join us in this manly and benevolent pursuit. The necessity of the inhabitants of every community endeavoring to procure a true knowledge of their rights, their duties, and their interests, will not be denied, except by those who are the slaves of prejudice, or interested in the continuation of abuses. As men who wish to aspire to the title of freemen, we totally deny the wisdom and the humanity of the advice, to approach the defects of government with 'pious awe and trembling solicitude.' What better doctrine could the Pope or the tyrants of Europe desire? We think, therefore, that the cause of truth and justice can "In short, we see with the most lively connever be hurt by temperate and honest discus-cern an army of placemen, pensioners, &c., fightsions; and that cause which will not bear such a scrutiny must be systematically or practically bad. We are sensible that those who are not friends to the general good, have attempted to inflame the public mind with the cry of 'Danger,' whenever men have associated for discussing the principles of government; and we have attle doubt but such conduct will be pursued in

“An equal and uncorrupt representation would, we are persuaded, save us from heavy expenses, and deliver us from many oppressions. We will, therefore, do our duty to procure this reform, which appears to us of the utmost importance.

ing in the cause of corruption and prejudice, and spreading the contagion far and wide.

"We see with equal sensibility the present outcry against reforms, and a proclamation (tend. ing to cramp the liberty of the press, and discredit the true friends of the people) receiving the sup port of numbers of our countrymen.

"We see burders multiplied, the lower classe.