'Our ancestors braved the bayonets of Cromwell-we bid defiance to yours. Contempsi Catilina gladios-non perti mescam tuos ! "What could be such a tyrant's means of overawing a jury?—As long as their country exists, they are girt round with impenetrable armor. Till the destruction of their country, no danger can fall upon them for the performance of their duty, and I do trust that there is no Englishman so unworthy of life as to desire to outlive England. But if any of us are condemned to the cruel punishment of surviving our country-if in the inscrutable counsels of Providence, this favored seat of justice and liberty, this noblest work of human wisdom and virtue, be destined to destruction, which I shall not be charged with national prejudice for saying would be the most dangerous wound ever inflicted on civilization; at least, let us carry with us into our sad exile the consolation that we ourselves have not violated the rights of hospitality to exiles-that we have not torn from the altar the suppliant who claimed protection as the voluntary victim of loyalty and conscience! in "Gentlemen, I now leave this unfortunate gentleman your hands. His character and his situation might interest your humanity-But, on his behalf, I only ask justice from you. I only ask a favorable construction of what cannot be said to be more than ambiguous language, and this you will soon be told from the highest authority is a part of justice. SPEECH SPEECH of JOHN PHILPOT CURRAN, Esq., in defence of ARCHIBALD HAMILTON ROWAN, Esq. delivered in the court of King's Bench, in Ireland, on the 29th of January, 1794. The Attorney-General filed an information against Mr. Rowan, in which he was charged, as Secretary to the SOCIETY of UNITED IRISHMEN at Dublin, with having published a false, malicious, and seditious libel. "Gentlemen of the jury, "When I consider the period at which this prosecu tion is brought forward; when I behold the extraordinary safeguard of armed soldiers resorted to, no doubt for the preservation of peace and order; when I catch, as I cannot but do, the throb of public anxiety which beats from one end to the other of this hall; when I reflect on what may be the fate of a man of the most beloved personal character, of one of the most respected families of our country; himself the only individual of that family, I may almost say of that country, who can look to that possible fate with unconcern-Feeling as I do all these impressions, it is in the honest simplicity of my heart I speak, when I say that I never rose in a court of justice with so much embarrassment as upon this occasion. "If, gentlemen, I could entertain an hope of finding refuge for the disconcertion of my mind in the perfect composure of yours: if I could suppose that those awful vicissitudes of human events, which have been stated or alluded to, could leave your judgments undisturbed and your hearts at ease, I know I should form a most erroneous opinion of your character: I entertain no such chimerical hope; I form no such unworthy opinion; I expect not that your hearts can be more at ease than my own; 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 eternal justice you are now administering that portion which dwells with us on this side of the grave, to discharge your breasts as far as you are able of every bias of prejudice or passion; that, if my client is guilty of the offence charged upon him, you may give tranquillity to the public 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 on 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, premising only to you that I have it in 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 enquiry, which it is your province to exercise, and to which only he wishes to be indebted for an acquittal. "In the month of December 1792, Mr. RowAN was arrested on an information, charging him with the offence for which he is now on his trial. He was taken before an honorable personage now on that bench, and admitted to bail. "He remained a considerable time in this city, solicit→ ing the threatened prosecution, and offering himself to a fair trial by a jury of his country; but it was not then thought fit to yield to that solicitation; nor has it now been thought proper to prosecute him in the ordinary way, by sending up a bill of indictment to a grand jury. I do not mean by this to say that informations ex officio are always oppressive or unjust; but I cannot but observe to you, that when a petty jury is called upon to try a charge not previously found by the grand inquest, and supported by the naked assertion only of the king's prosecutor, that the 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, and preferred to come forward in the ungracious form of an ex officio information. "If such bill had been sent up and found, Mr. RowAN would have been tried at the next commission; but a speedy trial was not the wish of his prosecutors. An information was filed, and when he expected to be tried upon it, an error, it seems, was discovered in the record. Mr. ROWAN offered to wave it, or consent to any amendment desired. No-that proposal could not be accepted --a trial must have followed. That information, there fore, was withdrawn, and a new one filed; that is, in fact, a third prosecution was instituted upon the same charge 4 charge. This last was filed on the 8th day of last July. Gentlemen, these facts cannot fail of a due impression upon you. You will find a material part of your inquiry must be, whether Mr. RowAN is pursued as a 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 practised upon him, and by those facts which I have stated I am warranted in the assertion. "His demand, his intreaty to be tried was refused, and why? a hue and cry was to be raised against him; the sword was to be suspended over his head-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, but 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 travelling through Connaught in a post-chaise, and scattering from the windows as he passed little doses of political poison, made up in square bits of paper-another was actually surprised in the fact of seducing our good people from their allegiance, by discourses upon the indivisibility of French robbery and massacre, which he preached in the French language to a congregation of Irish peasants.' "Such are the bugbears and spectres to be raised to warrant the sacrifice of whatever little public spirit may remain amongst us--but time has also detected the imposture of these Cock-lane apparitions, and you cannot now, with your eyes open, give a verdict without asking your VOL. III. P consciences |