riod of his professional career when his industry, having conquered the ascent, he was able to look round him, from the height on which he rested. For this, welcome had been the day of tumult, and the pale midnight lamp succeeding: welcome had been the drudgery of form: welcome the analysis of crime: welcome the sneer of envy and the scorn of dullness, and all the spurns which "patient merit of the unworthy takes." For this he had encountered, perhaps, the generous rivalry of genius, perhaps the biting blasts of poverty, perhaps the efforts of that deadly slander, which, coiling round the cradle of his young ambition, might have sought to crush him in its envenomed foldings. "Ah,who can tell how hard it is to climb, The steps where Fame's proud temple shines afar? Can such an injury as this admit of justification? I think the learned counsel will concede it cannot. But it may be palliated-let us see how. Perhaps the defendant was young and thoughtless; perhaps unmerited prosperity raised him above the pressure of misfortune, and the wild pulse of impetuous passion impelled him to a purpose at which his experience would have shuddered. Quite the contrary; the noon of manhood has almost passed over him, and a youth spent in the recesses of a debtor's prison, made him familiar with every form of human misery; he saw what misfortune was, it did not teach him pity; he saw the effects of guilt, he spurned the admonition. Perhaps in the solitude of a single life he had never known the social blessedness of marriage he has a wife and children; or if she be not his wife, she is the victim of his crime, and adds another to the calender of his seduction. Certain it is that he has little children who think themselves legitimate. Will his advocates defend him by proclaiming their bastardy; certain it is, there is a wretched female, his own cousin too, who thinks herself his wife; will they protect him by proclaiming he has only deceived her into being his prostitute! Perhaps his crime, as in the celebrated case of Howard, immortalized by Lord Erskine, may have found its origin in parental cruelty; it might, perhaps, have been, that in their spring of life, when fancy wa ved her fairy wand around them, till all above was sunshine, and all beneath was flowers-when to their clear and charmed vision, this ample world was but a weedless garden, where every tint spoke nature's loveliness, and every sound breathed Heaven's melody, and every breeze was but embodied fragrance. It might have been, that in this cloudless holiday, love wove his roseate bondage round them, till their young hearts so grew together, that a separate existence ceased, and life itself became a sweet identity; it might have been, that envious of this paradise, some worse than dæmon tore them from each other, to pine for years in absence, and at length to perish in a palliated impiety.Oh! gentlemen, in such a case, justice herself, with her uplifted sword, would call on mercy to preserve the victim. There was no such palliation-the period of their acquaintance was little more than sufficient for the maturity of their crime, and they dare not libel love by shielding under its soft and sacred name, the loathsome revels of an adulterous depravity. It might have been, the husband's cruelty left a too easy furoad for seduction. Will they dare assert it? Oh, too well they know he would not let "the winds of Heaven visit her face too roughly." Monstrous as it is, I have heard indeed that they mean to rest upon an opposite palliation-I have heard it rumoured that they mean to rest the wife's infidelity upon the husband's fondness. 1 know that guilt, in its conception mean, and in its commission tremulous, is in its exposure desperate and audacious! I know that in the fugitive panic of its retreat, it will stop to fling its parthian poison upon the justice that pursues it. But I do hope, bad and abandoned and hopeless as their cause is do hope for the nine of human nature, that I have been deceived in the rumours of this unnatural defence. Merciful God! is it in the presence of this venerable court! is it in the hearing of this virtuous jury is it in the zenith of an enlightened age, that I am to be told, because female tenderness was not watched with worse than Spanish vigilance, and harrassed with worse than eastern severity-because the marriage contract is not converted into the curse of incarceration, because woman is allowed the dignity of a human soul, and man does not degrade himself into a ' human monster, because the vow of endearments is not made the vehicle of deception, and the altar's pledge is not become the passport of a barbarous perjury, and that too in a land of courage and of chivalry, where the female form has been held as a patent direct froni the divinity, bearing in its chaste and charmed helplessness, the assurance of its strength, and the amulet of its protection; am 1 to be told that the demon adulterer is therefore not only to perpetrate his crimes, but to vindicate himself through the very virtues he has violated? I cannot believe it; I dismiss the supposition-it is most monstrous, foul, and unnatural. Suppose that the plaintiff pursued a different principle-suppose that his conduct had been the reverse of what it was-suppose that. in place of being kind, he had been cruel to this deluded female-that he had been her tyrant, not her protector-her gaoler, not her husband-what then might not have been the defence of this adulterer! Might he not then say, and say with speciousness, "True, I seduced her into crime, but it was to save her irom cruelty; true. she is my adultress, because he was her despot." Happily, gentlemen, he can say no such thing. I have heard it said, too, during the ten months of calumny, for which by every species of legal delay, they have pro crastinated this trial; that next to impeachment of the husband's tenderness, they mean to rely on what they libel as the levity of their unhappy victim! I know not by what right any man, but above all, a married man, presumes to scrutinize into the conduct of a married female. I know not, gentlemen, how you would feel under the consciousness that every coxcomb was at liberty to estimate the warmth or the coolness of your wives, by the barometer of his vanity; that he might ascertain precisely the prudence of his invasion on their virtue. But I do know that such a defence, coming from such a quarter, could not at all surprise me. Poor, unfortunate, fallen feale! How can she expect mercy from her destroyer! How can she expect that he will revere the character he was careless of preServing! How can she suppose that, after having made her repu tation the victim of his avarice? Such a defence is quite to be expected knowing him, it will not surprise me; if I know you, it will not avail him. Having now shown you, that a crime almost unprecedented in this country, is clothed in every aggravation, and robbed of every pallia tive. it is natural you should inquire, what was the motive for its commission? What do you think it was? Providentially, (miraculously I should have said. for you never could have divined) the defendant has himself disclosed it What do you think it was, gentlemen ?—Ame bition! But a few days before his criminality, in answer to a friend who rebuked him for the almost princely expenditure of his habits, "Oh (says he) never mind-Sterne must do something by which Sterne may be known." I had heard, indeed, that ambition was a vice; but then a vice so equivocal, it verged on virtue. That it was the aspiration of a spirit sometimes, perhaps, appalling-always magnificent; that though its grasp might be fate, and its flight might be famine, still it reposed on earth's pinnacle, and played in heaven's lightnings; that though it might fall in ruins, it arose in fire, and was, withal, so splendid, that even the horrors of that fall, became emerged and mitigated in the beauties of that aberration. But here is an am3 bition, base, and barbarous, and illegitimate-with all the grossness of the vice, with none of the grandeur of the virtuca mean, muffled, dastard incendiary, who, in the silence of sleep, and in the shades of midnight, steals his Ephesian torch into the fane which it was virtue to adore, and, worse than sacrilege, to have violated!! [A burst of applause from the whole bar and auditory, followed the delivery of this passage.] Gentlemen, my part is done; yours is about to commence ; you have heard this crime; its origin, its progress, its aggravations, its novelty among us. Go and tell your children and your country, whether or not it is to be made a precedent. Oh! how awful is your responsibility! I do not doubt that you will discharge yourselves of it as becomes your characters. I am sure indeed, that you will mourn, with me, over the almost solitary defect in our otherwise matchless system of jurisprudence, which leaves the perpetrators of such an injury as this, subject to no amercement but that of money.I think you will lament the failure of the great Cicero of our age, to bring such an offence within the cognizance of a criminal jurisdiction: it was a subject suited to his legislative mind, worthy of his feeling heart, worthy of his immortal eloquence. I cannot, my lord, ever remotely allude to Lord Erskine, without gratifying myself by saying of him, that by the rare union of all that was pure in morals, with all that was profound in wisdom, he has stamped upon every action of his life, the blended authority of a great mind and an unquestionable conviction. I think, gentlemen, you will regret the failure of such a man in such an object. The merciless murderer may have manliness to plead, the highway robber may have want to palliate, yet they are both objects of criminal infliction; but the murderer of connubial bliss, who commits his crime in secrecy; but the robber of domestic joys, whose very wealth, as in this case, may be his instrument, he is suffered to calculate on the infernal fame which a superfluous expenditure may purchase. The law, however, is so, and we must only adopt the remedy it affords us. In your adjudication of that remedy, I do not ask too much, when I ask the full extent of your capability, how poor even so is the wretched remuneration for an injury which nothing can alleviate; do you think that a mine could recompense my client for the forfeiture of her who was dearer than life to him? Oh, had she been but true! Though Heaven had made him such another world Of one entire and perfect Chrysolite, He'd not exchange her for it. I put it to any of you, what would you take to stand in his situation? What would you take to have your prospects blasted your profession despoiled-your peace ruined--your bed profaned-- your parent's heart broken--your children parentless? Believe me, gen. tlemen, if it was not for these children, he would not come here to-day to seek such remuneration, if it was not that, by your verdict, you may prevent those little innocent, defrauded wretches from wandering beggars as well as orphans on the face of this earth. Oh, I know I need not ask this verdict from your mercy; I need not extort it from your compassion; I will receive it from your justice; I da conjure you, not as fathers, but as husbands, not as husbands but as citizens, not as citizens but as men, not as men but as christians; by all your obligations, public, private, moral and religious; by the hearth profaned, by the home desolated, by the canons of the living God foully spurned. Save, ch save your firesides from the contagion, your country from the crime, and perhaps thousands yet unborn from the shame and sin and sorrow of this example. SPEECH, Delivered, at a public dinner, at Killarney, Ireland, at which Charles Phillips, Esq. the Irish barrister, and John Howard. Payne, Esq. the American actor were present. On this occasion, a toast was given, in combined reference to these two gentlemen, and the two countries to which they belonged: Mr. Phillips, after the toast was drank, addressed the company in the following animated manner, concluding with a beautiful and just EQLOGY ON THE IMMORTAL WASHINGTON. It is not with the vain hepe of returning by words the kindnesses which have been literally showered upon me, during the short period of our acquaintance, that I now interrupt, for a moment, the flow of your festivity. Indeed, it is not necessary-an Irishman needs no requital for his hospitality; its generous impulse is the instinct of his nature, and the very consciousness of the act carries its recompence along with it. But, sir, there are sensations, excited by an allusion in your toast, under the influence of which silence would be impossible To be associated with Mr. Payne, must be to any one who regards private virtues and personal accomplishments, a source of peculiar pride, and that feeling is not a little enhanced in me by a recollection of the country to which we are indebted for his qualifications. Indeed the mention of America has never failed to fill me with the most lively emotions. In my earliest infancy-that tender season, when impressions the most permanent and the most powerful are likely to he excited, the story of her then recent struggle raised a throb in every heart that loved liberty, and wrung a reluctant tribute even from discomfited oppression. I saw her spurning alike the luxuries that would enervate, and the legions that would intimidate; dashing from her lips the poisoned cup of European servitude, and, through all the vicissitudes of her protracted conflict, displaying a magnanimity that defied misfortune, and a moderation that ornamented victory. It was the first vision of my childhood--it will descend with me to the grave. As a man, then, I venerate the mention of America; but as an Irishman, I concede her claims on my affection. Never, oh never, whilst she has a memory left her, can Ireland forget the home of her emigrant, and the asylum of her exile. No matter whether their sorrows spring from the errors of enthusiasm, or the realities of suffering--from fancy, or infliction-from fiction, or from fact that must be reserved for the scrutiny of those whom the lapse ofages shall acquit of partiality. It is for the men of other ages to investigate and record it; but it is for the men of every age to bail the hospitality that received the shelterless, and love the feeling that befriended the unfortunate. But if America calls on our gratitude for the past, how deeply does she draw upon our interest for the future. Who can say, that when in its follies or its crimes, the old world shall haye interred all the pride of its power, and all the pomp of its civilization, human nature may not find its destined renovation in the new. Perhaps, when the temple and the trophy shall have mouldered into dust--when the glories of our name shall be but the legend of tra dition, and the light of our discoveries only live in song--Philosophy nay rise again in the sky of her Franklin, and glory rekindle at the urn of her Washington. Is this the vision of romantic fancy? I appeal to history--the monumental record of national rise and national ruin, ell me, thou revered chronicle of the grave, can the splendor of achievement, or the solidity of success, secure to empire the permaence of its possessions? Alas, Troy thought so once, yet the land of Priam lives only in song--Thebes thought so once, yet her hundred gates have crumbled, and her very tombs are but as the dust they were destined to commemorate--so thought Palmyra; where is she? so thought the countries of Demosthenes, and the Spartan-et Leonidas is trampled by the timid slave, and Athens insulted by the mindless Ottoman ! The days of their glory are as if they had rever been, and the island that was then a speck, rude and neglected in the barren ocean, now rivals the wealth of their commerce, the lory of their arms, the fame of their philosophy, the eloquence of eir senate, and the inspiration of their bards! Who shall say, then, Contemplating the past, that England, proud and potent as she appears, may not one day be what Athens is, and the young America yet soar to what Athens was? Happily, when the European column shall |