grity; and it exhibited what must ever be to me an interesting spectacle, a great body of my fellow-men, and fellow-christians, claiming admission into that constitution which their ancestors had achieved by their valour, and to which they were entitled as their inheritance. This is no time, this is no place for the discussion of that question; but since it does force itself incidentally upon me, I will say, that, as on the one hand, I cannot fancy a despotism more impious, or more inhuman, than the political debasement here, on account of that faith by which men hope to win an happy eternity hereafter; so on the other, I cannot fancy a vision in its aspect more divine than the eternal Cross red with the martyr's blood, and radiant with the pilgrim's hope, reared by the patriot and the christian hand, high in the van of universal liberty, Of this board the two volunteer framers of the address happened to be members. The body who deputed them, instantly assembled and declared their delegation void. You would suppose, gentlemen, that after this decisive public brand of reprobation, those officious medlers would have avoided its recurrence, by retiring from scenes for which nature and education had totally unfitted them. Far, however, from acting under any sense of shame, those excluded outcasts even summoned a meeting to appeal from the sentence the public opinion had pronounced on them. The meeting assembled, and after almost the day's deliberation on their conduct, the former sentence was unanimously confirmed. The men did not deem it prudent to attend themselves, but at a late hour when the business was concluded, when the resolutions had passed, when the chair was vacated, when the multitude was dispersing, they attempted with some Orange followers to obtrude into the chapel, which in large cities, such as Derry, is the usual place of meeting. An angry spirit arose among the people. Mr. O'Mullan, as was his duty, locked the doors to preserve the house of God from profanation, and addressed the crowd in such terms, as induced them to repair peaceably to their respective habitations. I need not paint to you the bitter emotions with which these deservedly disappointed men were agitated. All hell was at work within them, and a conspiracy was hatched against the peace of my client, the vilest, the foulest, the most infernal that ever vice devised, or demons éxecuted. Restrained from exciting a riot by his interference, they actually swore a riot against him, prosecuted him to conviction, worked on the decaying intellect of his bishop to desert him, and amid the savage war-whoop of this slanderous Journal, all along inflaming the public mind by libels the most atrocious, finally flung this poor, religious, unoffending priest, into a damp and desolate dungeon, where the very iron that bound, had more of humanity than the despots that surrounded him. I am told, they triumph much in this conviction. I seek not to impugn the ver. dict of that jury; I have no doubt they acted conscientiously. It weighs not with me that every member of my client's creed was carefully excluded from that jury-no doubt they acted conscientiously. It weighs not with me that every man impannelled on the trial of the priest, was exclusively Protestant, and that, too, in a city so prejudiced, that not long ago, by their Corporation-law, no Catholic dare breathe the air of heaven within its walls-no doubt they acted conscientiously, It weighs not with me, that not three days previously, one of that jury was heard publicly to declare, he wished he could

persecute the Papist to his death--no doubt the have acted conscientiously. It weighs not with me, that the public mind had been so inflamed by the exasperation of this libeller, that an impartial trial was utterly impossible. Let them enjoy their triumph. But for myself, knowing him as I do, here in the teeth of that conviction. I declare it, I would rather be that man, so aspersed, so imprisoned, so persecuted, and have his consciousness, than stand the highest of the courtliest rabble that ever crouched before the foot of power, or fed upon the people-plundered alms of despotism. Oh, of short duration is such demoniac triumph. Oh, blind and groundless is the hope of vice, imagining its victory can be more than for the moment. This very day I hope will prove, that if virtue suffers, it is but for a season; and that sooner or later their patience tried, and their purity testified, prosperity will crown the interest of probity and worth.

Perhaps you imagine, gentlemen, that his person imprisoned, his profession gone, his prospects ruined, and what he held dearer than all, his character defamed; the malice of his enemies might have rested from persecution. "Thus bad begins, but worse remains behind." Attend, I beseech you, to what now follows, because I have come in order, to the particular libel, which we have selected from the innumerable calumnies of this Journal, and to which we call your peculiar consideration. Business of moment, to the nature of which, I shall feel it my duty presently to advert, called Mr. O'Mullan to the metropolis. Through the libels of the defendant, he was at this time in disfavour with his bishop, and a rumour had gone abroad, that he was never again to revisit his ancient congregation. The Bishop in the interim returned to Derry, and on the Sunday following, went to officiate at the parish chapel. All ranks crowded tremulously round him; the widow sought her guardian; the orphan his protector; the poor their patron; the rich their guide; the ignorant their pastor; all, all, with one voice, demanded his recall, by whose absence the graces, the charities, the virtues of life, were left orphans in their communion. Can you imagine a more interesting spectacle? The human mind never conceived--the human hand never depicted a more instructive or delightful picture. Yet, will you believe it! 'out of this very circumstance, the defendant fabricated the most audacious, and if possible, the most cruel of his libels. Hear his words :-' 'Mullan,' says he, was convicted and degraded, for assaulting his own Bishop, and the Recorder of Derry, in the parish chapel Observe the disgusting malignity of the libel-observe the crowded damnation which it accumulates on my client--observe all the aggravated crime which it embraces. First, he assaults his venerable bishop--the great ecclesiastical patron, to whom he was sworn to be obedient, and against whom he never conceived or articulated irreverence. Next, he assaults the Recorder of Derry-a Privy councellor, the supreme municipal authority of the city. And where does he do so? Gracious God, in the very temple of thy worship! That is, says the inhuman libeller--he a citizen-he a clergyman insulted not only the civil but the ecclesiastical authorities, in the face of man, and in the house of prayer; trampling contumeliously upon all human law, amid the sacred altars, where he believed the Almighty witnessed the profanation! I am so horror-struck at this blasphemous and

abominable turpitude, I can scarcely proceed. What will you say, gentlemen, when I inform you, that at the very time this atrocity was imputed to him, he was in the city of Dublin, at a distance of 120 miles from the venue of its commission! But, oh! when calumny once begins its work, how vain are the impediments of time and distance! Before the sirocco of its breath all nature withers, and age, and sex, and innocence, and station, perish in the unseen, but certain desolation of its progress! Do you wonder 'Mullan sunk before these accumulated calumnies; do you wonder the feeble were intimidated, the wavering decided, the prejudiced confirmed? He was forsaken by his bishop; he was denounced by his enemies--his very friends fled in consternation from the stricken deer;' he was banished from the scenes of his childhood, from the endearments of his youth, from the field of his fair and honourable ambition. In vain did he resort to strangers for subsistence; on the very wings of the wind, the calumny preceded him; and from that hour to this, a too true apostle, he has been a man of sorrows,'' not knowing where to lay his head.' I will not appeal to your passions; alas! how inadequate am I to depict his sufferings; you must take them from the evidence. I have told you, that at the time of those infernally fabricated libels, the plaintiff was in Dublin, and I promised to advert to the cause by which his absence was occasioned.

Observing in the course of his parochial duties, the deplorable, I had almost said the organized ignorance of the Irish peasantry---an ignorance whence all their crimes, and most of their sufferings originate; observing also, that there was no publicly established lite rary institution to relieve them, save only the charter-schools, which tendered learning to the shivering child, as a bounty upon apostacy to the faith of his fathers; he determined if possible to give them the lore of this world, without offering as a mortgage upon the inheritance of the next. He framed the prospectus of a school, for the education of five hundred children, and went to the metropolis to obtain subscriptions for the purpose. I need not descant upon the great general advantage, or to this country the peculiarly patriotic consequences, which the success of such a plan must have produced. No doubt, you have all personally considered-no doubt, you have all personally experienced, that of all the blessings which it has pleased providence to allow us to cultivate, there is not one which breathes a purer fragrance, or bears a heavenlier, aspect than education. It is a companion which no misfortunes can depress, no clime destroy, no enemy alienate, no despotism enslave; at home a friend; abroad an introduction, in solitude a solace, in society an ornament, it chastens vice, it guides virtue, it gives at once a grace and government to genius. Without it, what is man? A splendid slave! a reasoning savage, vacillating between the dignity of an intelligence derived from God, and the degradation of passions participated with brutes; and in the accident of their alternate ascendancy shuddering at the terrors of an hereafter, or embracing the horrid hope of annihilation.

In order that this libel may want no possible aggravation, the defendant published it when my client was absent on this work of pa

triotism; he published it when he was absent; he published it when he was absent on a work of virtue; and he published it on all the authority of his local knowledge, when that very local knowledge must have told him, that it was destitute of the shadow of a foundation.— Can you imagine a more odious complication of all that is deliberate in malignity, and all, that is deliberate in design, and all that is depraved in crime? I promised, gentlemen, that I would not harrow your hearts, by exposing all that agonizes mine, in the contemplation of individual suffering. There is, however, one subject connected with this trial, public in its nature, and universal in its interest, which imperiously calls for an exemplary verdict; I mean the liberty of the press-a theme which I approach with mingled sensations of awe, and agony, and admiration. Considering all that we too fatally have seen all that, perhaps, too fearfully we may have cause to apprehend, I feel myself cling to that residuary safeguard, with an affection no temptations can seduce, with a suspicion no anodyne can lull, with a fortitude that peril but infuriates. In the direful retrospect of experimental despotism, and the hideous prospect of its possible re-animation, I clasp it with the desperation of a widowed female, who, in the desolation of her house, and the destruction of her household, hurries the last of her offspring through the flames, at once the relic of her joy, the depository of her wealth, and the remembrancer of her happiness. It is the duty of us all to guard strictly this inestimable privilege-a privilege which can never be destroyed, save by the licentiousness of those who wilfully abuse it. No, it is not in the arrogance of power, it is not in the artifices of law; no, it is not in the fatuity of princes; no, it is not in the venality of parliaments, to crush this mighty, this majestic privilege; reviled, it will remonstrate; murdered, it will revive, buried, it will re-ascend: the very attempt at its oppression will prove the truth of its immortality, and the atom that presumed to spurn, will fade away before the trumpet of its retribution! Man holds it on the same principle that he does his soul; the powers of this world cannot prevail against it; it can only perish through its own depravity. What then shall be his fate, through whose instrumentality it is sacrificed? Nay more, what shall be his fate, who, intrusted with the guardianship of its security, becomes the traitorous accessary to its ruin? Nay more, what shall be his fate, by whom its powers delegated for the public good, are converted into the calamities of private virtue; against whom, industry denounced, merit undermined, morals calumniated, piety aspersed, all through the means confided for their protection, cry aloud for vengeance? What shall be his fate? Oh, I would hold such a monster, so protected, so sanctified, and so sinning, as I would some demon, who, going forth consecrated, in the name of the deity, the book of life on his lips, and the dagger of death beneath his robe, awaits the sigh of piety, as the signal of plunder, and unveins the heart's blood of confiding adoration! Should not such a case as this require some palliation? Is there any? Perhaps the defendant might have been misled as to circumstances? No, he lived upon the spot, and had the best possible information. Do you think he believed in the truth of the publication? No; he knew that in every syllable it was as false as perjury. Do you think that an anxiety for the Catholic community might have inflamed him against the imaginary dereliction of its

advocate? No; the very essence of his Journal is prejudice. Do you think that in the ardour of liberty he might have venially transgressed its boundaries? No; in every line he licks the sores, and pampers the pestilence of authority. I do not ask you to be stoics in your investigation. If you can discover in this libel one motive inferentially moral, one single virtue which he has plundered and misapplied, give him its benefit. I will not demand such an effort of your faith, as to imagine, that his northern constitution could, by any miracle, be fired into the admirable but mistaken energy of enthusiasm ;--that he could for one moment have felt the inspired phrenzy of those loftier spirits, who, under some daring but divine delusion, rise into the arch of an ambition so bright, so baneful, yet so beauteous, as leaves the world in wonder whether it should admire or mourn-whether it should weep or worship! No; you will not only search in vain for such a palliative, but you will find this publication springing from the most odious origin, and disfigured by the most foul accompaniments, founded in a bigotry at which hell rejoices, crouching with a sycophancy at which flattery blushes, deformed by a falsehood at which perjury would hesitate, and, to crown the climax of its crowded infamies, committed under the sacred shelter of the Press; as if this false, slanderous, sycophantic slave, could not assassinate private worth without polluting public privilege; as if he could not sacrifice the character of the pious without profaning the protection of the free; as if he could not poison learning, liberty, and religion, unless he filled his chalice from the very font whence they might have expected to derive the waters of their salvation !

Now, Gentlemen, as to the measure of your damages:

I am content to leave the defendant's crimes altogether out of the question, but how can you recompense the sufferings of my client? Who shall estimate the cost of priceless reputation-that impress which gives this human dross its currency, without which we stand despised, debased, depreciated? Who shall repair it injured? Who can redeem it lost? Oh! well and truly does the great philosopher of poetry esteem the world's wealth as "trash" in the comparison. Without it, gold has no value, birth no distinction, station no dignity, beauty no charm, age no reverence; or, should I not rather say, without it every treasure impoverishes, every grace deforms, every dignity degrades, and all the arts, the decorations, and accomplishments of life, stand, like the beacon-blaze upon a rock, warning the world that its approach is danger--that its contact is death. The wretch without it is under an eternal quarantines--no friend to greet--no home to harbour him. The voyage of his life becomes a joyless peril; and in the midst of all ambition can achieve, or avarice amass, or rapacity plunder, he tosses on the surge--a buoyant pestilence! But, gentlemen, let me not degrade into the selfishness of individual safety, or individual exposure, this universal principle: it testifies an higher, a more ennobling origin. It is this which, consecrating the humble circle of the hearth, will at times extend itself to the circumference of the horizon; which nerves the arm of the patriot to save his country; which lights the lamp of the philosopher to amend man;