suffering could vibrate, no voice of integrity or honor could speak — let me honestly tell you, I should have scorned to fling my hand across it; I should have left it to a fitter minstrel. If I do not, therefore, grossly err in my opinion of you, I could use no language upon such a subject as this that must not lag behind the rapidity of your feelings, and that would not disgrace those feel which the At torney General subject to be ed by no sound but the cries of his family, or the clanking of his chains; that you had seen him at | last brought to his trial-that you had seen the vile and perjured informer deposing against his | life-that you had seen the drunken, and wornout, and terrified jury give in a verdict of death -that you had seen the same jury, when their returning sobriety had brought back their consciences, prostrate themselves before the human-ings if it attempted to describe them. ity of the bench, and pray that the mercy of the Gentlemen, I am not unconscious that the Crown might save their characters from the re-learned counsel for the Crown seem- The way in proach of an involuntary crime, their consciences ed to address you with a confidence from the torture of eternal self-condemnation, of a very different kind; he seemed expected this and their souls from the indelible stain of inno- to expect a kind and respectful sym- treated. cent blood. pathy from you with the feelings of the castle, Let me suppose that you had seen the respite and the griefs of chided authority. Perhaps, given, and that contrite and honest recommenda- gentlemen, he may know you better than I do. tion transmitted to that seat where mercy was If he does, he has spoken to you as he ought. presumed to dwell—that new and before un- He has been right in telling you that if the repheard of crimes are discovered against the in-robation of this writer is weak, it is because, his former that the royal mercy seems to relent, genius could not make it stronger; he has been and that a new respite is sent to the prisoner-right in telling you that his language has not been that time is taken, as the learned counsel for the braided and festooned as elegantly as it might; Crown has expressed it, to see whether mercy that he has not pinched the miserable plaits could be extended or not!—that after that period of his phraseology, nor placed his patches and of lingering deliberation passed, a third respite feathers with that correctness of millinery which is transmitted that the unhappy captive himself became so exalted a person. If you agree with feels the cheering hope of being restored to a him, gentlemen of the jury, if you think that the family that he had adored, to a character that man who ventures at the hazard of his own life, he had never stained, and to a country that he to rescue from the deep, "the drowned honor of had ever loved-that you had seen his wife and his country," must not presume upon the guilty children upon their knees, giving those tears to familiarity of plucking it up by the locks, I have gratitude which their locked and frozen hearts no more to say. Do a courteous thing. Upright could not give to anguish and despair, and im- and honest jurors, find a civil and obliging ver. ploring the blessings of eternal Providence upon dict against the printer! And when you have his head, who had graciously spared the father, done so, march through the ranks of your fellowand restored him to his children-that you had citizens to your own homes, and bear their looks seen the olive branch sent into his little ark, but as ye pass along. Retire to the bosom of your no sign that the waters had subsided. families and your children, and when you are presiding over the morality of the parental board, tell those infants, who are to be the future men of Ireland, the history of this day. Form their young minds by your precepts, and confirm those precepts by your own example; teach them how discreetly allegiance may be perjured on the table, or loyalty be forsworn in the jury box. And when you have done so, tell them the story of Orr. Tell them of his captivity, of his children, of his hopes, of his disappointments, of his courage, and of his death; and when you find your little hearers hanging upon your lips, when you see their eyes overflow with sympathy and sorrow, and their young hearts bursting with the pangs of anticipated orphanage, tell them that You had the boldness and the injustice to stigmatize the man who had dared to publish the trans action! "Alas! Nor wife, nor children more shall be behold, Nor friends, nor sacred home!" No seraph mercy unbars his dungeon, and leads him forth to light and life, but the minister of death hurries him to the scene of suffering and of shame, where, unmoved by the hostile array of artillery and armed men, collected together to secure, or to insult, or to disturb him, he dies with a solemn declaration of his innocence, and utters his last breath in a prayer for the liberty of his country! Let me now ask you, if any of you had addressed the public ear upon so foul and monstrous a subject, in what language would you have conveyed the feelings of horror and indignation? Would you have stooped to the meanness of qualified complaint? would you have been mean enough? but I entreat your forgiveness, I do not think meanly of you. Had I thought so meanly of you, I could not suffer my mind to commune with you as it has done. Had I thought you that base and vile instrument, attuned by hope and by fear, into discord and falsehood, from whose vulgar string no groan of • See Thomson's description, in his Winter, of a man perishing in a snow storm. The contest of measures of this prosecution, I should have felt the most subject I do not ente; but you can not your respectful regret at seeing a person of his high selves forget that the conciliatory The severe consideration come forward in a court of public measures of the former noble Lord the Lord Liec justice in one and the same breath to admit the | had produced an almost miraculous tenant truth, and to demand the punishment of a publi- unanimity in this country; and much do I regret, cation like the present; to prevent the chance he and sure I am that it is not without pain you car might have had of such an accusation being dis- | reflect how unfortunately the conduct of his sucbelieved, and by a prosecution like this, to give cessor has terminated. His intentions might to the passing stricture of a newspaper, that life, have been the best. I neither know them nor and body, and action, and reality, that proves it condemn them; but their terrible effects you can to all mankind, and makes the record of it indel- not be blind to. Every new act of coercion has ible. Even as it is, I do own I feel the utmost been followed by some new symptom of disernconcern that his name should have been soiled tent, and every new attack provoked some new by being mixed in a question of which it is the paroxysm of resentment or some new combina mere pretext and scape-goat. Mr. Attorney tion of resistance. In this deplorable state of was too wise to state to you the real question, or affairs, convulsed and distracted within, and men the object which he wished to be answered by aced by a most formidable enemy from without, your verdict. Do you remember that he was it was thought that public safety might be found pleased to say that this publication was a base in union and conciliation, and repeated applicaand foul misrepresentation of the virtue and wis- tions were made to the Parliament of this kingdom of the government, and a false and audacious dom for a calm inquiry into the complaints of the statement to the world, that the King's govern- people. These applications were made in vain. ment in Ireland was base enough to pay inform- Impressed by the same motives, Mr. Fox brought ers for taking away the lives of the people? the same subject before the Commons of England, When I heard this statement to-day, I doubted and ventured to ascribe the perilous state of Irewhether you were aware of its tendency or not. land to the severity of its government Even It is now necessary that I should explain it to his stupendous abilities, excited by the liveliest you more at large. sympathy with our sufferings, and animated by the most ardent zeal to restore the strength with the union of the empire, were repeatedly exerted without success. The fact of dis- The discontent content was denied; the fact of co- has been pub ercion was denied; and the conse- licly denied. quence was, the coercion became more implacable, and the discontent more threatening and irreconcilable. A similar application was made, in the beginning of this session, in the Peers of Great Britain, by our illustrious countryman, Lord Moira, of whom I do not wonder that my learned friend should have observed how much virtue can fling pedigree into the shade, or how much the transient honor of a body inherited from man is obscured by the luster of an intel lect derived from God. He, after being an eyewitness of this country, presented the miserable picture of what he had seen; and, to the astonishment of every man in Ireland, the existence of those facts was ventured to be denied. The conduct of the present Viceroy was justified and applauded; and the necessity of continuing that conduct was insisted upon as the only means of preserving the Constitution, the peace, and the prosperity of Ireland. The moment the learned counsel had talked of this publication as a false statement of the conduct of the government and the condition of the people, no man could be at a loss to see that that awful question which had been dismissed from the Commons of Ireland and from the Lords and Commons of Great Britain, is now brought forward to be tried by a side wind, and in a collateral way, by a crimina prosecution. You can not be ignorant of the great conflict between prerogative and privilege the government which hath convulsed the country for and the people. the last fifteen years. When I say privilege, you can not suppose that I mean the privileges of the House of Commons; I mean the privileges of the people. You are no strangers to the various modes by which the people labored to approach their object. Delegations, conventions, remonstrances, resolutions, petitions to the Parliament, petitions to the Throne. It might not be decorous in this place to state to you with any sharpness the various modes of resistance that were employed on the other side. But you all of you seem old enough to remember the variety of acts of Parliament that have been made, by which the people were deprived, session after session, of what they had supposed to be the known and established fundamentals of the Constitution; the right of public debate, the right of public petition, the right of bail, the right of trial, the right of arms for self-defense; until at last even the relics of popular privilege became superseded by military force; the press extinguished; and the state found its last intrenchment in the grave of the Constitution. As little can you be strangers to the tremendous confedcrations of hundreds of thousands of our countrymen, of the nature and the objects of which such a variety of opinions have been propagated and entertained.8 The writer of this letter has presumed to censure the recall of Lord Fitzwilliam as well as the measures of the present Viceroy. Into this Mr. Curran here refers to the societies of United Irishmen, which were formed every where throughout the land just in proportion as the restrictions took place which are enunз ated above. thus created I tell you, therefore, gentlemen of the jury, it is not with respect to Mr. Orr that your verdict is now sought. You are called upon, on your oaths, to say that the governraent is wise and mer The chief object of the prosecution is laration in fa ernment. in court. ciful; that the people are prosperous and happy; | rid miscrcants who avowed upon their oaths that that military law ought to be con- they had come from the very seat of govern. tinued; that the British Constitution ment, from the Castle, where they had been to obtain a dec. could not, with safety, be restored to worked upon by the fear of death and the hopes vor of the gor. this country; and that the statements of compensation to give evidence against their of a contrary import by your advo- fellows-[I speak of the well-known fact] that the cates in either country were libelous and false. mild and wholesome counsels of this government I tell you these are the questions; and I ask you, are holden over these catacombs of living death. can you have the frort to give the expected an- where the wretch that is buried a man lies till his swer in the face of a community who know the heart has time to fester and dissolve, and is then Jountry as well as you do? Let me ask you dug up a witness. how you could reconcile with such a verdict the jails, the tenders, the gibbets, the conflagrations, she murders, the proclamations that we hear of every day in the streets, and see every day in the country. What are the processions of the earned counsel himself, circuit after circuit? Merciful God, what is the state of Ireland, and where shall you find the wretched inhabitant of this land! You may find him, perhaps, in a jail, the only place of security, I had almost said of ordinary habitation; you may see him flying, by the conflagration of his own dwelling; or you may find his bones bleaching on the green fields of his country; or he may be found tossing upon the surface of the ocean, and mingling his groans with those tempests, less savage than his persecutors, that drift him to a returnless distance from his family and his home. And yet, with these facts ringing in the ears, and staring in the face of the prosecutor, you are called upon to say, on your oaths, that these facts do not exist. You are called upon, in defiance of shame, of truth, of honor, to deny the sufferings under which you groan, and to flatter the persecution that tramples you under foot. Also a declara tion that inform ers are not em ployed by the executive. Is this fancy, or is it fact? Have you not seen him after his resurrection from that The appearancs tomb, after having been dug out of of the informer the region of death and corruption, make his appearance upon the table, the living image of life and of death, and the supreme arbiter of both? Have you not marked, when he entered, how the stormy wave of the multitude retired at his approach? Have you not marked how the human heart bowed to the supremacy of his power in the undissembled homage of deferential horror? How his glance, like the lightning of heaven, seemed to rive the body of the accused and mark it for the grave, while his voice warned the devoted wretch of woe and death-a death which no innocence can escape, no art elude, no force resist, no antidote prevent. There was an antidote—a juror's oath—but even that adamantine chain, which bound the integrity of man to the throne of eternal justice, is solved and melted in the breath that issues from the informer's mouth. Conscience swings from her mooring, and the appalled and affrighted juror consults his own safety in the surrender of the victim: Not wonderful ernment seek dishonor by the verdict of a that the gov to cover their jury; but no cover it. But the learned gentleman is further pleased -Et quæ sibi quisque timebat, to say that the traverser has charged Unius in miseri exitium conversa tulere. 10 the government with the encourage- Gentlemen, I feel I must have tired your pa ment of informers. This, gentlemen, tience, but I have been forced into this Peroration: is another small fact that you are to length by the prosecutor, who has deny at the hazard of your souls, and upon the thought fit to introduce those extrasolemnity of your oaths. You are upon your ordinary topics, and to bring a quesoaths to say to the sister country, that the gov- tion of mere politics to trial, under ernment of Ireland uses no such abominable in- the form of a criminal prosecution. Jury can thus struments of destruction as informers. Let me I can not say I am surprised that this ask you honestly, what do you feel, when in my has been done, or that you should be solicited by hearing, when in the face of this audience, you the same inducements and from the same motives, are called upon to give a verdict that every man as if your verdict was a vote of approbation. } of us, and every man of you, knows by the testi- do not wonder that the government of Ireland mony of his own eyes to be utterly and absolute- should stand appalled at the state to which we ly false? I speak not now of the public procla- are reduced. I wonder not that they should start mation of informers, with a promise of secrecy at the public voice, and labor to stifle or to con. and of extravagant reward. I speak not of the tradict it. I wonder not that at this arduous crisis, fate of those horrid wretches who have been so when the very existence of the empire is at stake, often transferred from the table to the dock, and when its strongest and most precious limb is not from the dock to the pillory; I speak of what girt with the sword for battle, but pressed by the your own eyes have seen day after day, during tourniquet for amputation; when they find the the course of this commission, from the box coldness of death already begun in those extrem where you are now sitting-the number of hor-ities where it never ends, that they are terrified There were many government witnesses at this at what they have done, and wish to say to the time, who so obviously perjured themselves in their surviving parties of that empire, they can not testimony, that they were taken immediately to the criminal's box (the dock), and thence, on conviction, to the pillory, where they were sentenced to stand for their perjuries. 10 Ard thus what each was dreading for himself, They turned.-Virgil's Eneid, book ii., line 130 say that we did it." I wonder not that they | tle failings of the press. Let me, therefore, re should consider their conduct as no immaterial mind you, that though the day may soon come question for a court of criminal jurisdiction, and when our ashes shall be scattered before the wish anxiously, as on an inquest of blood, for the winds of heaven, the memory of what you do can kind acquittal of a friendly jury. I wonder not not die. It will carry down to your posterity that they should wish to close the chasm they your honor or your shame. In the presence, and have opened by flinging you into the abyss. But in the name of that ever-living God, I do there trust me, my countrymen, you might perish in it, fore conjure you to reflect that you have your bat you could not close it. Trust me, if it is yet characters, your consciences, that you have also possible to close it, it can be done only by truth the character, perhaps the ultimate destiny, of and honor. Trust me, that such an effect could your country in your hands. In that awful name. no more be wrought by the sacrifice of a jury I do conjure you to have mercy upon your counthan by the sacrifice of Orr. As a state meas- try and upon yourselves, and so to judge now as ure, the one would be as unwise and unavailing you will hereafter be judged; and I do now sub as the other. But while you are yet upon the mit the fate of my client, and of that country brink, while you are yet visible, let me, before we which we yet have in common to your disposal part, remind you once more of your awful situation. The law upon this subject gives you supreme dominion. Hope not for much assistance Mr. Finnerty was found guilty by the jury. from his Lordship. On such occasions, perhaps, and was brought up for sentence the following the duty of the court is to be cold and neutral. day. He stated that he had been taken to AlI can not but admire the dignity he has support-derman Alexander's office, and there threatened ed during this trial; I am grateful for his pa- with public whipping if he did not give up the tience. But let me tell you it is not his prov-name of the author of MARCUS. He refused to ince to fan the sacred flame of patriotism in the do it, and was sentenced to stand in the pillory jury box. As he has borne with the little ex- one hour, and be imprisoned two years, which travagances of the law, do you bear with the lit-punishment he suffered. SPEECH OF MR. CURRAN AGAINST THE MARQUESS OF HEADFORT FOR ADULTERY WITH THE WIFE OF THE REV. CHARLES MASSY, BEFORE BARON SMITH AND A SPECIAL JURY, DELIVERED JULY 27, 1804. INTRODUCTION. THE Rev. CHARLES MASSY, son of Sir Hugh Massy, Bart., was a clergyman of the Church of England, and was married to Miss Rosslewyn, a lady of extraordinary beauty, in 1796. By her he had ore son. In 1803, the Marquess of Headfort, an officer in the army, was quartered in the neighborhood with his regiment, and was received to the hospitalities of Mr. Massy's house. As the Marquess was more than fifty years of age, Mr. Massy had no suspicions of any evil design on the part of his guest, and admitted him to the most familiar intercourse with his family. The occasion was laid hold of for seducing Mrs. Massy, who eloped with the Marquess on the Sunday after Christmas, while her husband was performing service in his own church. The damages were laid at £40,000. All the facts of the case were admitted, and the only thing urged for the defendant in mitigation of damages was that Mr. Massy had brought this calamity on himself by allowing his wife to associate too freely with the Marquess. It gave a melancholy interest to Mr. Curran's speech that he had himself suffered the same injury under the same circumstances, and that the defense of the man who bad injured him was precisely the same. Mr. Curran was, therefore, arguing bis own cause in defending his client against these imputations, and exposing the guilt of the seducer. the minds of men. SPEECH, &c. NEVER, so clearly as in the present instance, Power of just have I observed that safeguard of jussentiments over tice which Providence has placed in the nature of man. Such is the imperious dominion with which truth and reason wave their scepter over the human intellect, that no solicitation, however artful, no talent, however commanding, can reduce it from its allegiance. In proportion to the humility of our submission to its rule, do we rise into some faint emulation of that ineffable and presiding divinity, whose characteristic attribute it is to be coerced and bound by the inexorable laws of its own nature, so as to be all-wise and all-just from neces sity, rather than election. You have seen it, ir the learned advocate who has preceded me, most peculiarly and strikingly illustrated. You have seen even his great talents, perhaps the first in any country, languishing under a cause too weak to carry him, and too heavy to be carried by him. He was forced to dismiss his natural candor and sincerity, and, having no merits in his case, to substitute the dignity of his own manner, the resources of his own ingenuity, over the overwhelming difficulties with which he was surrounded. Wretched client! unhappy advocate! What a combination do you form! But such is the condition of guilt--its commission mean and tremulous-its defense artificial and insincere more dangerous-to make his guilt more odious its prosecution candid and simple-its condem-to make the injury to the plaintiff more griev nation dignified and austere. Such has been the defendant's guilt-such his defense-such shall be my address, and such, I trust, your verdict. The learned counsel has told you that this unThe reparation fortunate woman is not to be estimademanded. ted at forty thousand pounds. Fatal and unquestionable is the truth of this assertion. Alas! gentlemen, she is no longer worth any thing-faded, fallen, degraded, and disgraced, she is worth less than nothing. But it is for the honor, the hope, the expectation, the tenderness, and the comforts that have been blasted by the defendant, and have fled forever, that you are to remunerate the plaintiff, by the punishment of the defendant. It is not her present value which you are, to weigh-but it is her value at that time, when she sat basking in a husband's love, with the blessing of Heaven on her head, and its purity in her heart. When she sat among her family, and administered the morality of the parental board-estimate that past value-compare it with its present deplorable diminution—and it may lead you to form some judgment of the severity of the injury and the extent of the compensation. to be governed by their sensibilities in the damages they give. The learned counsel has told you, you ought The jury ought to be cautious, because your verdict The assertion is just, but has he treated you fairly by its application? His cause would not allow him to be fair-for why s the rule adopted in this single action? Because, this being peculiarly an injury to the most susceptible of all human feelings-it leaves the injury of the husband to be ascertained by the sensibility of the jury; and does not presume to measure the justice of their determination by the cold and chilly exercise of its own discretion. In any other action, it is easy to calculate. If a tradesman's arm is cut off, you can measure the loss which he has sustained; but the wound of feeling and the agony of the heart can not be judged by any standard with which I am acquainted. You are, therefore, unfairly dealt with, when you are called on to appreciate the present suffering of the husband by the present guilt, delinquency, and degradation of his wife. As well might you, if called on to give compensation to a man for the murder of his dearest friend-to find the measure of his injury by weighing the ashes of the dead. But it is not, gentlemen of the jury, by weighing the ashes of the dead, that you would estimate the loss of the survivor. can not be set aside for excess. The learned counsel has referred you to other ous, because more conspicuous? I affect no leveling familiarity, when I speak of persons in the higher ranks of society. Distinctions of orders are necessary, and I always feel disposed to treat them with respect. But when it is my duty to speak of the crimes by which they are degraded, I am not so fastidious as to shrink from their contact, when to touch them is essential to their dissection. In this action, the condition, the conduct, and circumstances of the party are justly and peculiarly the objects of your consideration. Who are the parties? The plaintiff, Condition of the young, amiable, of family and edu- parties in the cation. Of the generous disinterest- present case. edness of his heart, you can form an opinion, even from the evidence of the defendant, that he declined an alliance which would have added to his fortune and consideration, and which he rejected for an unportioned union with his present wife. She, too, at that time young, beautiful, and accomplished; and feeling her affection for her husband increase, in proportion as she remembered the ardor of his love, and the sincerity of his sacrifice. Look now to the defendant! I blush to name him! I blush to name a rank which he has tarnished, and a patent that he has worse than canceled. High in the army— high in the state-the hereditary counselor of the King-of wealth incalculable—and to this last I advert with an indignant and contemptuous satisfaction, because, as the only instrument of his guilt and shame, it will be the means of his punishment, and the source of compensation for his guilt. The defendant's edged. But let me call your attention distinctly to the questions you have to consider. The first is the fact of guilt. Is this no- guilt acknowlble Lord guilty? His counsel knew too well how they would have mortified his vanity, had they given the smallest reason to doubt the splendor of his achievement. Against any such humiliating suspicion, he had taken the most studious precaution by the publicity of the exploit. And here in this court, and before you, and in the face of the country, has he the unparalleled effrontery of disdaining to resort even to a confession of innocence. His guilt established, your next question is the damages you should give. You have been told that the amount of the damages should depend on circumstances. You will consider these circumstances, whether of aggravation or mitigation. His learned counsel contend that the plaintiff has been the author of his own suffering, and ought to receive no compensation for the ill consequences of his own conduct. In what part of the evidence do you find any foundation for that assertion? He indulged her, it seems, in dress. Generous and attached, he probably indulged her in that point beyond his means; and the defendant now impc. dently calls on you to find an excuse for the adulterer, in the fondness and liberality of the husband. But you have been told that the husband connived. Odious and impudent aggravation of injury-to add calumny to insult, and outrage to |