PROSECUTION OF O'CONNELL. 109 50. ON THE PROSECUTION OF MR. O'CONNELL FOR SEDITIOUS SPEECH. THE HE Attorney General, in attaining his high official position, has won the object of his life. He is the Attorney General for Ireland. But suppose he had been a Catholic instead of an enfranchised Pres byterian, what would have been his fortunes? I can tell you. He would have pined under the sense of degradation. He would have felt like a man with huge limbs where he could not stand erect. He would have felt his faculties "cribbed and cabined in ;" and how would he have endured his humiliation? Look at him, and say, How would that lofty forehead have borne the brand of Popery? How would that high demeanor have borne the stoop of the slave? Would he have been tame, and abject, and servile, and sycophantic? No; he would have been the chief demagogue, the most angry, tumultuous, and violent tribune of the people; he would have superadded the honest gall of his own nature to the bitterness of political resentment; he would have given útterance to ardent feelings in burning words; and in all the foam of passion he would have gnawed the chain from which he could not break. And is this the man who prosecutes for words? If their condition were reversed; if Mr. O'Connell were Attorney General, and Mr. Plunkett were the great leader of the people; "if Antony were Brutus, and Brutus Antony," how would the public mind have been inflamed! What exciting matter would have 110 PROSECUTION OF O'CONNELL. been flung amongst the people! What lava would have been poured out! "The very stones would rise and mutiny." Would to Heaven that not only Mr. Plunkett, but every other Protestant who deplores our impudence, would adopt the simple test of nature, and make our case his own. He would confess that, if similarly situated, he would give vent to his emotions in phrases as exasperated as those used by the people's advocate. There is no man of ordinary can dor who will not rather intimate his wonder at the moderation than his surprise at the imputed violence of Mr. O'Connell's speech. With fortune, rank, and abilities of the first class; enjoying preeminence in his profession, and the confidence of his country, he is shut out from the honors accessible to persons whom nature intended to place infinitely behind, and whom their religion has advanced before him. If we were to adopt the language which is prescribed to us, the people of England would not believe that we labored under any substantial grievances. "I do not believe you (said a celebrated advocate of antiquity to a citizen who stated to him a case of enormous wrong), —“ I do not believe you." "Not believe me?" "No." "What! not believe me! I tell you that my antagónist met me in the public way, seized me by the throat, flung me to the earth, and Hold," exclaimed Demosthenes; "your eye is on fire; your lip begins to quiver; your cheek is flushed with passion; your hand is clinched. I believe you now; when you first addressed me you were too calm - too cold-too measured; but now you speak, you look like one who had sustained a wrong!" THE CAUSE OF HUNGARY. 111 And are we to speak and act like men who have sustained no wrong? We! Six millions of - What shall I say? Citizens? No! but of men who have been flagitiously spoliated of the rights and privileges of British subjects, who are cast into utter degradation, and covered with disgrace and shame, upon whom scorn is vented and contumely discharged; we who are the victims of legislative plunder — who have been robbed, with worse than Punic perfidy, of privileges which our ancestors had purchased at Limerick with their blood, which were secured by the faith of treaties, and consecrated with all the solemnities of a great national compact, shall we speak like men who had sustained no wrongs. We are upon our knees; but even in kneeling, an attitude of dignity should be maintained. Shall we ask for the rights of freemen in the language of slaves? May common sense- common feeling – common honor-may every generous principle implanted in our nature - - may that God (I do not take his name in vain), may that Power that endowed us with high aspirations, and filled the soul of man with honorable emotion; who made the love of freedom an instinctive wish, an unconquerable appetite; may the great Author of our being, the Creator of the buman heart may God forbid it. 51. THE CAUSE OF HUNGARY. Το To prove that Washington never attached to his doctrine of neutrality more than the sense of temporary policy, I refer to one of his letters, written 112 THE CAUSE OF HUNGARY. to Lafayette, wherein he says, "Let us only have twenty years of peace, and our country will come to such a degree of power and wealth that we shall be able, in a just cause, to defy whatever power on earth." "In a Just Cause!" Now, in the name of eternal truth, and by all that is sacred and dear to man, since the history of mankind is recorded, there has been no cause more just than the cause of Hungary! Never was there a people, without the slightest reason, more sacrilegiously, more treacherously, and by fouler means, attacked than Hungary! Never have crime, cursed ambition, despotism, and violence, in a more wicked manner, united to crush down freedom, and the very life, than against Hungary! Never was a country more mortally outraged than Hungary. All your sufferings, all your complaints, which, with so much right, drove your forefathers to take up arms, are but slight grievances, compared with those immense, deep wounds, out of which the heart of Hungary bleeds! If the cause of my people is not sufficiently just to insure the protection of God, and the support of good-willing men, then there is NO JUST CAUSE, and NO JUSTICE ON EARTH; then the blood of no new Abel will move towards Heaven; the genius of charity, Christian love, and justice will mournfully fly the earth; a heavy curse will upon mortality fall, oppressed men despair, and only the Cains of humanity walk proudly, with impious brow, above the ruins. of Liberty on Earth! You have attained that degree of strength and consistency when your less fortunate brethren of mankind may well claim your brotherly, protecting hand. TRIAL OF WARREN HASTINGS. 113 And here I stand before you, to plead the cause of these, your less fortunate brethren the cause of humanity. I may succeed, or I may fail. But I will go on, pleading with that faith of martyrs by which mountains were moved; and I may displease you, perhaps; still I will say, with Luther, "May God. help me I can do no otherwise!" Woe, a thousandfold woe, to humanity, should there be nobody on earth to maintain the laws of humanity! Woe to humanity, if every despot of the world may dare to trample down the laws of humanity, and no nation arise to make respected these laws. 52. TRIAL OF WARREN HASTINGS. HE place was worthy of such a trial. THE It was the great hall of William Rufus - the hall which had resounded with acclamations at the inauguration of thirty kings; the hall which had witnessed the just sentence of Bacon and the just absolution of Somers; the hall where the eloquence of Strafford had for a moment awed and melted a victorious party inflamed with just resentment; the hall where Charles had confronted the high court of justice with the placid courage that has half redcemed his fame. Neither military nor civil pomp was wanting. The peers, robed in gold and ermine, were marshalled by the heralds, under garter king-at-arms. The judges, in their vestments of state, attended, to give advice on points of law. There were gathered together from all parts of a great, free, enlightened, and prosperous empire, grace and female loveliness, wit and |