Sovereign has the abstract right to create new boroughs. But the exercise of that right might be regarded as inconsistent with the prin Foles of the constitution. Lord Deniman and one of his late Majesty's law advisers in the House of Commons distinctly asserted the right to issue writs; and although that opinion was reprehended by Sir Charles Wetherell, I believe that of its being strict law there can be little doubt. But the real question between the Attorney-General and the traversers, and the only one to which you will be disposed to pay much regard, was raised by the Attorney-General when he said that there existed a dangerous conspiracy, of which the object was to prepare the great body of the people to rise at a signal and to erect a sanguinary republic, of which Daniel O'Connell should be the head. Gentlemen, how do men proceed who engage in a guilty enterprise of this kind? They bind each other by solemn oaths. They are sworn to secrecy, to silence, to leeds, or to death. They associate superstition with atrocity, and heayen is invoked by them to ratify the covenants of hell. They fix a day; an hour, and hold their assemblages in the midst of darkness and of solitude, and verify the exclamation of the conspirator, in the language of the great observer of our nature:—

How have the repeal conspirators proceeded? Every one of their assemblages have been open to the public. For a shilling, all they said, or did, or thought, were known to the government. Everything was laid bare and naked to the public eye; they stripped their minds in the public gaze. No oaths, no declaration, no initiation, no form of any kind was resorted to. They did not even act together. Mr. Duffy, proprietor of the Nation, did not attend a single meeting in the country. My client attended only three; Mr. Tierney, the priest, attended no more than one. It would have been more manly on the part of the Attorney-General to have indicted Dr. Higgins or Dr. Cantwell, or as he was pleased to designate them, Bishop Higgins and Bishop Cantwell. Well, why did he not catch a bishop-if not Cantwell, at all events Higgins? For three months we heard nothing but " Higgins, Higgins, Higgins. The Times was redolent of Higgins; sometimes he was Lord Higgins, then he was Priest Higgins, afterwards Mr. Higgins. But wherefore is not this redoubted Higgins indicted, or why did you not assail the great John of Tuam himself? He would not have shrunk from your persecution, but, with his mitre on his head and his crozier in his hand, he would have walked in his pontifical vestments into gaol, and smiled disdainfully upon you. But you did not dare to attack hin, but fell on a poor Monaghan priest, who only attended one meeting", and only made one speech about the " Yellow Ford," for which you should not include him in a conspiracy, but should make him professor of rhetoric at Maynooth. Gentlemen, an enormous mass of speeches delivered by Mr. O'Connell within the last nine months has been lai before you. I think, however, you will come to the conclusion that they are nothing more than a repetition of the opinions which he

expressed in 1810; and when you come to consider them in detail, you will, I am sure, be convinced that these speeches were not merely inter>persed with references to peace and order, with a view to escape from the law, but that there runs, through the entire mass of thought that came from the mind of Mr. O'Connell a pervading love of order, and an unaffected sentiment of abhorrence for the employment of any other than loyal, constitutional, and pacific means for the attainment of his object. He attaches fully as much importance to the means as to the end. He declares that he would not purchase the repeal of the Union at the cost of one drop of blood. He announces that the moment the government alls upon him to disperse his meetings, these meetings shall be dispersed. He does but ask "the Irish nation to back him;" for frem that backing he anticipates the only success to which, as a good subject, as a good citizen, and as a good Christian, he could aspire. But if, gentlemen, it be suggested that in popular harangues obedience to the laws and submission to authority are easily simulated, I think I may fearlessly assert that of the charges preserved against him his life affords the refutation. A man cannot wear the mask of loyalty for forty-four years; however skilfully constructed, the vizor will sometimes drop off, and the natural truculence of the conspirator must be disclosed. You may have heard many references made to the year 1798, and several stanzas of a long poem have been read to you, in order to fasten them on Mr. O'Connell. It was in 1798 that the celebrated man was called to the bar, who was destined to play a part so conspicuous on the theatre of the world. He was in the bloom of youth--in the full flush of life— the blood bounded in his veins, and in a frame full of vigour was embodied an equally elastic and athletic mind. He was in that season of life, when men are most disposed to high and daring adventure. He had come from those rocks and mountains, of which a description so striking has appeared in the reports of the speeches, which have been read to you. He had listened, as he says, to the great Atlantic, whose surge rolls unbroken from the coast of Labrador. He carried enthusiasm to romance; and of the impressions which great events are calculated to make upon minds like his, he was peculiarly susceptible. He was unwedded. He had given no hostages to the state. The conservative affections had not tied their ligaments, tender, but indissoluble about his heart. There was ut that time an enterprise on foot; guilty, and deeply guilty, indeed but not wholly hopeless. The peaks that overhang the Bay of Bantry are dimly visible from Iveragh. What part was taken in that dark adventure by this conspirator of sixty-nine? Curran was suspectedGrattan was suspected. Both were designated as traitors unimpeached; but on the name of Daniel O'Connell a conjecture never lighted. And can you bring yourselves to believe that the man who turned with abhor rence from the conjuration of 1798 would now, in an old age, which he imself has called not premature, engage in an insane undertaking, in which his own life, and the lives of those who are dearer to him than himself, and the lives of hundreds of thousands of his countrymen, would, beyond all doubt, be sacrificed? Can you bring yourselves to believe that he would blast the laurels, which it is his boast that he has

won without the effusion of blood-that he would drench the land of his birth, of his affections, and of his redemption, in a deluge of profitless massacre, and that he would lay prostrate that great moral monument which he has raised so high that it is visible from the remotest region of the world? What he was in 1798 he is in 1844. Do you believe that the man who aimed at a revolution would repudiate French assistance, and denounce the present dynasty of France? Do you think that the man who aimed at revolution, would hold forth to the detestation of the world, the infamous slavery by which the great trans-Atlantic republic, to her everlasting shame, permits herself to be degraded? Or, to come nearer home, do you think that the man who aimed at revolution, would have indignantly repudiated the proffered junction with he English Chartists? Had a combination been effected between the Chartists and the Repealers it would have been more than formidable. At the head of that combination in England was Mr. Feargus O'Connor, once the associate and friend of Daniel O'Connell. The entire of the lower orders in the North of England were enrolled in a powerful organization. A league between the Repealers and the Chartists might have been at once effected. Chartism uses its utmost and most clandestine efforts to find its way into this country. O'Connell detects and crushes it. Of the charges preferred against him, am I not right when I exclaim that his life contains the refutation? To the charge that Mr. O'Connell and his son conspired to excite animosity amongst her Majesty's subjects, the last observation that I have made to you is more peculiarly applicable. Gentlemen, Mr. O'Connell and his co-religionists have been made the objects of the fiercest and the coarsest vituperation; and yet I defy the most acute and diligent scrutiny of the entire of the speeches put before you, to detect a single expression--one solitary phrase-which reflects in the remotest degree upon the Protestant religion. He has left all the contumely heaped upon the form of Christianity which he professes utterly unheeded, and the Protestant OperaJive Society has not provoked a retort; and every angry disputant has without any interposition on his part, been permitted to rush in " where angels fear to tread." The religion of Mr. O'Connell teaches him two things charity towards those who dissent from him in doctrine, and forgiveness of those who do him wrong. You recollect (it is from such incidents that we are enabled to judge of the characters and feelings of men)-you remember to have heard in the course of the evidence frequent reference made to Sir Bradley King. The unfortunate man had heen deprived of his office, and all compensation was denied him. He used to stand in the lobby of the House of Commons, the most desolate and hopeless looking man I ever saw. The only one of his old friends that stuck to him was Baron Lefroy. But Baron Lefroy had no interest with the government. Mr. O'Connell saw Bradley King, and took pity on him. Bradley King had been his fierce political, almost his personal antagonist. Mr. O'Connell went to Lord Althorpe, and obtained for Bradley King the compensation which had been refused him. I remem bered having read a most striking letter addressed by Sir Abraham Bradley King to Mr. O'Connell, and asked him for it. He could not at

first put his hand upon it; but, while looking for it, he mentioned that soon after the death of the old Dublin alderman, an officer entered his study, and told him that he was the son-in-law of Sir Abraham, whe had, a short time before his death, called him to his bedside and said "When I shall have been buried, go to Daniel O'Connell, and tell him that the last prayer of a grateful man was offered up for him, and that I implored heaven to avert every peril from his head." Mr. O’Cạnnell found the letter-you will allow me to read it :—

"Barrett's Hotel, Spring Gardens, 4th Aug. 1832. "MY DEAR SIR-The anxious wish for a satisfactory termination of my cause, which your continued and unwearied efforts for it have ever indicated, is at length accomplished; the vote of compensation passed last night.

"To Mr. Lefroy and yourself am I indebted for putting the case in the right light to my Lord Althorpe, and for his lordship's consequent andid and straightforward act, in giving me my just dues, and thus restoring myself and family to competence, ease, and happiness.

"To you, Sir, to whom I was early and long politically opposed-to you, who nobly forgetting this continued difference of opinion, and who, rejecting every idea of party feeling or party spirit, thought only of my distress, and sped to succour and support me, how can I express my gratitude? I cannot attempt it. The reward, I feel, is to be found only in your own breast, and I assure myself that the generous feelings of a noble mind will cheer you on to that prosperity and happiness which a discriminating Providence holds out to those who protect the helpless, and sustain the falling.

"For such reward and happiness to you and yours my prayers shall be offered fervently, while the remainder of my days, passing, I trust, in tranquillity, by a complete retirement from public life, and in the bosom of my family, will constantly present to me the grateful recollection of one to whom I am mainly indebted for so desirable a closing of my life. Believe me, my dear Sir, with the greatest respect and truth, your faithful servant,

"To Daniel O'Connell, Esq., M.P."

"ABRAHAM BRADLEY KING.

You may deprive him of liberty-you may shut him out from the face of nature, you may inter him in a dungeon, to which a ray of the sun never yet descended; but you never will take away from him the consciousness of having done a good and a noble action, and of being entitled to kneel down every night he sleeps, and to address to his Creator the divinest portion of our Redeemer's prayer. The man to whom that letter was addressed, and the son of the man to whom that letter was addressed, are not guilty of the sanguinary intents which have been ascribed to them, and of this they "put themselves upon their country." Rescue that phrase from its technicalities-let it no longer be a fictitious one; if we have lost our representation in the parliament, let us behold it in the jury box, and that you participate in the feelings of millions of your countrymen let your verdict afford

But

a proof. But it is not to Ireland that the aching solicitude with which the result of this trial is intently watched will be confined. There is not a great city in Europe in which, upon the day when the great intelligence shall be expected to arrive, men will not stop each other in the public way, and inquire whether twelve men upon their oaths have doomed to incarceration the man who gave liberty to Ireland? Whatever may be your adjudication he is prepared to meet it. He knows that the eyes of the world are upon him-and that posterity-whether in a gaol or out of it-will look back to him with admiration; he is almost indifferent to what may befal him, and is far more solicitous for others at this moment than for himself. But I-at the commencement of what I have said to you-I told you that I was not unmoved, and that many incidents of my political life, the strange alternations of fortune through which I have passed, had come back upon me. now the bare possibility at which I have glanced, has, I acknowledge, almost unmanned me. Shall I, who stretch out to you in behalf the son the hand whose fetters the father has struck off, live to cast my eyes upon that domicile of sorrow, in the vicinity of this great metropolis, and say, ""Tis there they have immured the Liberator Ireland with his fondest and best beloved child?" No! it shall never be! You will not consign him to the spot to which the AttorneyGeneral invites you to surrender him. When the Spring shall have come again, and the winter shall have passed-when the spring shall have come again, it is not through the windows of a prison-house that the father of such a son, and the son of such a father, shall look upon chose green hills on which the eyes of many a captive have gazed so wistfully in vain, but in their own mountain home again they shal listen to the murmurs of the great Atlantic; they shall go forth and inhale the freshness of the morning air together; "they shall be free of mountain solitudes;" they will be encompassed with the loftiest images of liberty upon every side; and if time shall have stolen its suppleness from the father's knee, or impaired the firmness of his tread, he shall lean on the child of her that watches over him from heaven, and shall look out from some high place far and wide into the island whose greatness and whose glory shall be for ever associated with his name. your love of justice-in your love of Ireland- in your love of honesty and fair play I place my confidence. I ask you for an acquittal, no only for the sake of your country, but for your own. Upon the day when this trial shall have been brought to a termination, when, amidst the hush of public expectancy, in answer to the solemn interrogatory which shall be put to you by the officer of the court, you shall answer, "Not guilty," with what a transport will that glorious negative be welcomed! How will you be blessed, adored, worshipped; and wheu retiring from this scene of excitement and of passion, you shall returu to your own tranquil homes, how pleasurably will you look upon your children, in the consciousness that you will have left them a patrimony of peace by impressing upon the British cabinet, that some other mea sure besides a state prosecution in•cessary for the pacification of your country!

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