Part 6 (1/2)
”In that awful moment of a nation's travail, of the last gasp of tyranny, and the first breath of freedom, how pregnant is the example!
The press extinguished, the people enslaved, and the prince undone! As the advocate of society therefore--of peace, of domestic liberty, and the lasting union of the two countries, I conjure you to guard the liberty of the press, that great sentinel of the State, that grand detector of public imposture: guard it, because when it sinks, there sink with it, in one common grave, the liberty of the subject and the security of the Crown.
”Gentlemen, I am glad that this question has not been brought forward earlier. I rejoice for the sake of the court, the jury, and of the public repose, that this question has not been brought forward till now.
In. Great Britain, a.n.a.logous circ.u.mstances have taken place. At the commencement of that unfortunate war which has deluged Europe with blood, the spirit of the English people was tremblingly alive to the terror of French principles; at that moment of general paroxysm, to accuse was to convict. The danger loomed larger to the public eye from the misty region through which it was surveyed. We measure inaccessible heights by the shadows they project, when the lowness and the distance of the light form the length of the shade.
”There is a sort of aspiring and adventurous credulity, which disdains a.s.senting to obvious truths, and delights in catching at the improbabilities of a case as its best ground of faith. To what other cause, gentlemen, can you ascribe that, in the wise, the reflecting, and the philosophic nation of Great Britain, a printer has been gravely found guilty of a libel for publis.h.i.+ng those resolutions to which the present minister of that kingdom had already subscribed his name? To what other cause can you ascribe, what in my mind is still more astonis.h.i.+ng, in such a country as Scotland--a nation, cast in the happy medium between the spiritless acquiescence of submissive poverty, and the st.u.r.dy credulity of pampered wealth--cool and ardent, adventurous and persevering, winging her eagle flight against the blaze of every science, with an eye that never winks, and a wing that never tires; crowned, as she is, with the spoils of every art and decked with the wreath of every muse, from the deep and scrutinizing researches of her Hume, to the sweet and simple, but not less sublime and pathetic, morality of her Burns--how, from the bosom of a country like that, genius and character and talents [Muir, Margarot, &c.,] should be banished to a distant and barbarous soil, condemned to pine under the horrid communion of vulgar vice, and base-born profligacy, twice the period that ordinary calculation gives to the continuance of human life!
But I will not further press any idea that is painful to me, and I am sure must be painful to you; I will only say, you have now an example of which neither England nor Scotland had the advantage; you have the example of the panic, the infatuation, and the contrition of both. It is now for you to decide whether you will profit by their experience of idle panic and idle regret, or whether you meanly prefer to palliate a servile imitation of their frailty by a paltry affectation of their repentance. It is now for you to show that you are not carried away by the same hectic delusions, to acts of which no tears can wash away the fatal consequences or the indelible reproach.”
He thus speaks of the Volunteers of Ireland:--
”Gentlemen, Mr. Attorney-General has thought proper to direct your attention to the state and circ.u.mstances of public affairs at the time of this transaction: let me also make a few retrospective observations on a period at which he has but slightly glanced. You know, gentlemen, that France had espoused the cause of America, and we became thereby involved in a war with that nation.
'_Heu, nescia mens hominum futuri_!'
”Little did that ill-fated monarch know that he was forming the first cause of those disastrous events that were to end in the subversion of his throne, in the slaughter of his family, and the deluging of his country with the blood of his people. You cannot but remember that a time when we had scarcely a regular soldier for our defence--when the old and young were alarmed and terrified with apprehensions of a descent upon our coasts--that Providence seemed to have worked a sort of miracle in our favor. You saw a band of armed men at the great call of nature, of honor, and their country; you saw men of the greatest wealth and rank; you saw every cla.s.s of the community give up its members, and send them armed into the field to protect the public and private tranquility of Ireland; it is impossible for any man to turn back to that period, without reviving those sentiments of tenderness and grat.i.tude which then beat in the public bosom; to recollect amidst what applause, what tears, what prayers, what benedictions, they walked forth amongst spectators, agitated by the mingled sensations of terror and of reliance, of danger and of protection, imploring the blessings of Heaven upon their heads, and its conquest upon their swords. That ill.u.s.trious, and adored and abused body of men stood forward and a.s.sumed the t.i.tle, which I trust the ingrat.i.tude of their country will never blot from its history--the Volunteers of Ireland.”
He thus speaks of the national representation of the people;
”Gentlemen, the representation of our people is the vital principle of their political existence; without it, they are dead, or they live only to servitude; without it, there are two estates acting upon and against the third, instead of acting in co-operation with it; without it, if the people are oppressed by their judges, where is the tribunal to which the offender shall be amenable?--without it, if they are trampled upon and plundered by a minister, where is the tribunal to which the offender shall be amenable?--without it, where is the ear to hear, or the heart to feel, or the hand to redress their sufferings? Shall they be found, let me ask you, in the accursed bands of imps and minions that bask in their disgrace, and fatten upon their spoils, and flourish upon their ruin? But let me not put this to you as a merely speculative question: it is a plain question of fact. Rely on it, physical man is everywhere the same: it is only the various operation of moral causes that gives variety to the social or individual character or condition. How otherwise happens it, that modern slavery looks quietly at the despot on the very spot where Leonidas expired? The answer is, Sparta has not changed her climate, but she has lost that government which her liberty could not survive.”
Speaking of universal emanc.i.p.ation, he says:--
”This paper, gentlemen, insists on the necessity of emanc.i.p.ating the Catholics of Ireland; and that is charged as part of the libel. If they had waited another year--if they had kept this prosecution pending for another year, how much would remain for a jury to decide upon, I should be at a loss to discover. It seems as if the progress of public information was eating away the ground of prosecution. Since its commencement, this part of the libel has unluckily received the sanction of the Legislature. In that interval our Catholic brethren have re-obtained that admission which, it seems, it was a libel to propose.
In what way to account for this I am really at a loss. Have any alarms been occasioned by the emanc.i.p.ation of our Catholic brethren? Has the bigoted malignity of any individual been crushed? Or has the stability of the government or that of the country been weakened? Or is one million of subjects stronger than four millions? Do you think that the benefit they have received, should be poisoned by the sting of vengeance. If you think so, you must say to them: You have demanded emanc.i.p.ation, and you have got it; but we abhor your persons; we are outraged at your success, and we will stigmatize by a criminal prosecution the adviser of that relief which you have obtained from the voice of your country. I ask you, do you think, as honest men anxious for the public tranquility, conscious that there are wounds not yet completely cicatrized, that you ought to speak this language at this time to men who are very much disposed to think that, in this very emanc.i.p.ation, they have been saved from their own Parliament by the humanity of their own sovereign? Or do you wish to prepare them for the revocation of these improvident concessions? Do you think it wise or humane at this moment to insult them, by sticking up in a pillory the man who dared to stand forth as their advocate? I put it to your oaths: Do you think that a blessing of that kind--that a victory obtained by justice over bigotry and oppression, should have a stigma cast upon it, by an ignominious sentence upon men bold enough and honest enough to propose that measure;--to propose the redeeming of religion from the abuses of the church, the reclaiming of three millions of men from bondage, and giving liberty to all who had a right to demand it; giving, I say, in the so much censured words of this paper--giving 'universal emanc.i.p.ation.'
”I speak in the spirit of the British law, which makes liberty commensurate with, and inseparable from, British soil--which proclaims even to the stranger and sojourner, the moment he sets his foot upon British earth, that the ground on which he treads is holy, and consecrated by the genius of universal emanc.i.p.ation. No matter in what language his doom may have been p.r.o.nounced--no matter what complexion, incompatible with freedom, an Indian or an African sun may have burnt on him--no matter in what disastrous battle the helm of his liberty may been cloven down--no matter with what solemnities he may have been devoted upon the altar of slavery--the moment he touches the sacred soil of Britain, the altar and the G.o.d sink together in the dust; his soul walks abroad in its own majesty; his body swells beyond the measure of his chains, which burst from around him, and he stands redeemed, regenerated, and disenthralled by the irresistible genius of universal emanc.i.p.ation.”
(Mr. Curran was here interrupted with the loud and irresistible acclamations of all within hearing. When, after a long interval, the enthusiasm had in some degree subsided, he thus modestly alluded to the incident).
”Gentlemen, I am not such a fool as to ascribe any effusion of this sort to any merit of mine. It is the mighty theme, and not the inconsiderable advocate, that can excite interest in the hearer: what you hear is but the testimony which nature bears to her own character; it is the effusion of her grat.i.tude to that power which stamped that character upon her.”
He concludes with this brilliant peroration:--
”Upon this subject, therefore, credit me when I say I am still more anxious for you than I can possibly be for him. Not the jury of his own choice, which the law of England allows, but which ours refuses, collected in that box by a person certainly no friend to Mr.
Rowan--certainly not very deeply interested in giving him a very impartial jury. Feeling this, as I am persuaded you do, you cannot be surprised, however you may be distressed, at the mournful presage with which an anxious public is led to fear the worst from your possible determination. But I will not, for the justice and honor of our common country, suffer my mind to be borne away by such melancholy antic.i.p.ation. I will not relinquish the confidence that this day will be the period of his sufferings; and, however mercilessly he has been hitherto pursued, that your verdict will send him home to the arms of his family and the wishes of his country. But if, which Heaven forbid!
it hath still been unfortunately determined, that because he has not bent to power and authority, because he would not bow down before the golden calf and wors.h.i.+p it, he is to be bound and cast into the furnace,--I do trust in G.o.d there is a redeeming spirit in the const.i.tution, which will be seen to walk with the sufferer through the flames, and to preserve him unhurt by the conflagration.”
After this brilliant speech, when Curran made his appearance outside the court, he was surrounded by the populace, who had a.s.sembled to chair him. He begged of them to desist, in a commanding tone; but a gigantic chairman, eyeing Curran from top to toe, cried out to his companion--”Arrah, blood and turf! Pat, don't mind the little darlin'; pitch him upon _my_ shoulder.” He was, accordingly, carried to his carriage, and drawn home by the people.
ENCOUNTER WITH A FISHWOMAN.
There was a fishwoman in Cork who was more than a match for the whole fraternity of her order. She could only be matched by Mrs. Scutcheen, of Patrick-street, Dublin--the lady who used to boast of her ”bag of farthin's,” and regale herself before each encounter with a pennorth of the ”droppin's o' the c.o.c.k.” Curran was pa.s.sing the quay at Cork where this virago held forth, when, stopping to listen to her, he was requested to ”go on ou' that.” Hesitating to retreat as quick as the lady wished, she opened a broadside upon Curran, who returned fire with such effect as to bring forth the applause of the surrounding sisterhood. She was vanquished for the first time, though she had been ”thirty years on the stones o' the quay.”
CURRAN AND LORD ERSKINE.
Dr. Crolly, in speaking of the two great forensic orators of the day, draws a comparison between the circ.u.mstances under which both addressed their audiences:--
”When Erskine pleaded, he stood in the midst of a secure nation, and pleaded like a priest of the temple of justice, with his hand on the altar of the const.i.tution, and all England waiting to treasure every deluding oracle that came from his lips. Curran pleaded--not in a time when the public system was only so far disturbed as to give additional interest to his eloquence--but in a time when the system was threatened with instant dissolution; when society seemed to be falling in fragments round him; when the soil was already throwing up flames. Rebellion was in arms. He pleaded, not on the floor of a shrine, but on a scaffold; with no companions but the wretched and culpable beings who were to be flung from it, hour by hour; and no hearers but the crowd, who rushed in desperate anxiety to that spot of hurried execution--and then rushed away, eager to shake off all remembrance of scenes which had torn every heart among them.”