ra' has overlooked many incidents which he ought to have stated and which he ought to have known would not be kept back. You have obtained what you regard as a victory over the leader of the Catholic people. That victory has been obtained by you through the instrumentality of a Protestant jury. If it was fairly won, I am free to acknowledge that it is not unnaturally followed by that ministerial ovation in which the Secretary for the Colonies and the Secretary for the Home Department have not thought it indecorous to indulge; but if that victory has been unfairly won-if, while you adhere to the forms of law, you have violated the principles of justice; if a plot was concocted at the Home Office, and executed in the Queen's Bench; if, by an ostensible acquiescence in monster meetings for nine months, you have decoyed your antagonists into your toils; if foully or fortuitously (and whether fortuitously or foully the result is the same) a considerable fraction of the jury list had been suppressed; if you have tried the Liberator of the Irish Catholics with a jury of exasperated Protestants; if justice is not only suspected, but comes tainted and contaminated from her impure contact with authority-then, not only have you not a just cause for exultation, but your successes are of that sinister kind which are as fatal to the victors as to the vanquished which will tarnish you with an ineffaceable discredit, and will be followed at last by a retribution, slow indeed, but, however tardy, inevitably sure. I have presented a double hypothesis to the house. Let us see to which of the alternatives the facts ought o he applied. I shall be permitted, in the first instance, to refer to an observation made by the Secretary for Ireland in reference to myself. The noble lord said.

"He must now advert to something which had fallen from a member of that house out of doors regarding Chief Baron Brady, and Mr. Anthony Blake. It had been observed by Mr. Sheil that an insult had been offered to the Catholics of Ireland because those gentlemen had not been summoned to a meeting of the council. He believed Chief Baron Brady was a Protestant. But let that pass. He took on himself the responsibility of not summoning those gentlemen to the council. He thought that the measure determined on was the deliberate act of government, and he did not, therefore, think it proper to ask the opinion of political opponents."

What I said was this: "A circumstance occurred connected with the proclamation which is not undeserving of note. It has always been the sage in this country (Ireland) to summon every member of the Privy Council. Upon this occasion the Chief Baron, although living in the neighbourhood of Dublin, was not summoned, and Mr. Blake, a Roman Catholic, who lives in Dublin, was not summoned. He was appointed to the office of Chief Remembrancer by a Tory government. He had been the intimate friend of Lord Wellesley, a great Conservative statesman. He had never taken any part in any violent proceedings, but he was not summoned upon this occasion, although summoned upon every other, to the Privy Council; while the Recorder of the city of Dublin, by whom the jury list was to be revised, and in whose department an accident of a most untoward kind had happened, was summoned to the

council whence the proclamation went forth.” That was what I said, and I take advantage of this opportunity to add, that if Mr. Blake had been at the Privy Council on Friday, he would have urged his associates not to delay the posting of the proclamation until Saturday, but would have told them, that, without any long recitals, immediate notice should be given to the people of the determination of the government. Notice of the Clontarf meeting was given for three weeks. It was to have been held upon Sunday. On the preceding Friday the council assembled. Or that day the proclamation ought to have been prepared and posted. It did not appear until Saturday afternoon, and the country is indebted to Mr. O'Connell, if upon an unarmed multitude an excited soldiery was not let loose. The proclamation was obeyed. With that obedience you ought to have been contented. The monster meetings were at an end; but you had previously determined to prosecute for a conspiracy, and for that purpose you lay in wait for nine months, and that you did the proclamation itself affords a proof. The proclamation recites

"Whereas meetings of large numbers of persons have been already held in different parts of Ireland, under the like pretence, at several of which meetings, language of a seditious and inflammatory nature has been addressed to the persons there assembled, calculated and intended to excite disaffection in the minds of her Majesty's subjects, and to bring into hatred and contempt, the government and constitution of the country, as by law established: and whereas, at some of the said meetings, such seditious and inflammatory language has been used by persons," &c.

If this statement be true, why did you not long before indict the individuals by whom those seditious speeches were delivered? Why did you not prosecute the newspapers by which inflammatory paragraphs had been almost daily published, for a period of nine months? The motive was obvious. It was your purpose-your deliberate and long meditated purpose to make Mr. O'Connell responsible for harangues which he had never spoken, and for publications which he had never read. I content myself with giving a single instance, which will afford, however, a perfect exemplification of the whole character of your proceedings. A Catnolic priest published an article in the Pilot newspaper, upon "The Duty of a Soldier." He signed his name, James Power, to that article. He was never prosecuted he was never threatned; he has escaped with perfect impunity; but that article was giver in evidence against Daniel O'Connell, by whom it does not appear tha It was even ever seen. Such a proceeding never was instituted in this country-such a proceeding, I trust in God, never will be instituted in this country-for Englishmen would not endure it; and this very discussion will tend to awaken them to a sense of the peril to which they are themselves exposed. Does not the question at once present itself to every body, if that seditious language was employed for so long a period as nine months, why did you not prosecute it before? Why did you not prosecute such an article as this which I hold in my hand, and which was published so far back as the 1st of April, 1843. You might

have proceeded by criminal information or indictment, for the publication of a poem in the Nation newspaper, on which her Majesty's Attorney-General entered into a somewhat lengthened expatiation in addressing the jury, and declared it to be a poem of a most inflammatory character. I allude to verses entitled, "The Memory of the Dead." "Who fears to speak of Ninety-eight?

Who blushes at the name?

When cowards mock the patriot's fate,
Who hangs his head for shame?
He's all a knave, or half a slave,
Who slights his country thus;
But a true man, like you, man,
Will fill your glass with us.

"We drink the memory of the brave,
The faithful and the few-
Some lie far off beyond the wave,
Some sleep in Ireland too;
All-all are gone-but still lives on
The fame of those who died;
All true men, like you, men,
Remember them with pride.

"Some on the shores of distant lauds
Their weary hearts have laid,
And by the stranger's heedless hands
Their lonely graves were made.
But though their clay be far away
Beyond the Atlantic foam--
In true men, like you, men,
Their spirit's still at home.

"The dust of some is Irish earth;
Among their own they rest;

And the same land that gave them birth
Has caught them to her breast;
And we will pray that from their clay

Full many a race may start
Of true men, like you, men,
To act as brave a part.

"They rose in dark and evil days
To right their native land;
They kindled here a living blaze
That nothing shall withstand.

Alas! that Might can vanquish Right

They fell and passed away;

But true men, like you, men,
Are plenty here to-day.

«Then here's their memory—may it be
For us a guiding light,

To cheer our strife for liberty,

And teach us to unite.

Through good and ill, be Ireland's still,

Though sad as theirs your fate;

And true men, be you, men,

Like those of Ninety-eight."

Was

No man in the court, who heard this poem recited by the right bonour ble gentleman in the most emphatic manner will deny that it proJuced a great effect on the jury. The Attorney-General stated, that this was but a single specimen of the entire volume, and that it very much exceeded in violence the productions of the same character in the year 1797. If the description is true, this poem having been published on the 1st of April, and a series of compositions, in prose and verse, of the same kind, having appeared for several successive months, does not every man who hears me ask, why it was that proceedings were not taken for the punishment of the persons by whom such articles were published, and for the prevention of offences to which such evil effects were attributed. My answer is this-you had determined to prosecute for a conspiracy, and you connived at meetings and publications of this class. You allowed these papers to proceed in their career, to run a race in sedition, and to establish a complete system for the excitement of the public. You did not prosecute the authors of the articles, or their publishers, at the time they were published. You afterwards joined in the defence the editors of three newspapers, and you gave in evidence against Mr. O'Connell every article published in 1845. that a legitimate proceeding? Has there been a precedent in country of such a proceeding? Has there been an instance of a man indicted for a conspiracy, being joined with these editors of newspapers. and of the articles of those newspapers being given in evidence against him? You might tell me that the mode of proceeding was legitimate, if there were no other mode of punishing the editors of those newspapers. But was there no other mode? Could not those publications have been stopped? Could not the channels by which sedition as circulated through the country have been closed up? Therefore, we charge you with having stood by-(I adopt the expression of the Attorney-General) with having stood by, and with having, if not encoura ed, at least permitted very strong proceedings to be adopted by the popular party; when you thought your purpose had been obtained, you then fell on the man whom you had inclosed within your toils. I come now to the observations of the Attorney-General regarding Mr. Bond Hughes, and I confess myself to be not a little surprised at them. He said that Mr. Bond Hughes had been denounced as a perjurer, and spoke of us as if we had painted him in colours as black as those in which Roman Catholic members of parliament are occasionally held up to the public detestation; but he kept back the fact that Mr. Bond Hughes did make two signal mistakes in his information and which he himself

acknowledged to be mistakes, which oefore Mr. Bond Bugnes was examined did produce no ordinary excitement. Not one word did the Attorney-General say in reference to a most remarkable incident ir. these trials. The facts stand thus:-Mr. Bond Hughes had sworn ir. his information that he had seen Mr. Barrett at two meetings in Dub lin. It was of the utmost importance to the crown to fix Barrett, in order to implicate him with Mr. O'Connell. Mr. Bond Hughes sees Mr. Barrett at Judge Burton's chambers, and turning to Mr. Ray,* the chief clerk of the Crown Solicitor, informs Mr. Ray that he was mistaken with respect to Mr. Barrett, and that he had not seen him at the Dublin meetings. He suggests to Mr. Ray that something should be done to correct his misapprehension. Ray says nothing. Bond Hughes then applies to the Crown Solicitor himself, to Mr. Kemmis, and represents to him the painful predicament in which he is placed; Mr. Kemmis says nothing. Bond Hughes accompanies Mr. Kemmis to his house, and no rectification of that signal mistake is made. Mr. Bond Hughes stated all this at the trial, which the Attorney-General, although he went into exceedingly minute details, entirely forgot to mention. It is quite true that Mr. O'Connell at the trial acquitted Mr. Bond Hughes, but I leave it to the house to determine how far Mr. Kemmis should be relieved from blame. But lest you should think I am varnishing, or impeaching wantonly, the character of this immaculate Crown-Solicitor-you who charge us with tampering with Mr. Magrath, a man at this moment in the employment of the Recorder -I will read to you the statement of Mr. Bond Hughes, of which the Attorney-General said not a word, because, I suppose, he thought it not at all relevant Probably he supposed it to be a work of supererogation to set the publ right with respect to any unfortunate misapprehension of Mr. Bond Hughes. The following is the evidence he gave:

"Turn to Monday, the 9th of October-I mean the meeting in Abbey-street. Can you enumerate the persons present of the traversers: There were present Mr. John O'Connell, Mr. Daniel O'Connell, Mr. Steele, the Rev. Mr. Tyrrell, Dr. Gray, Mr. Duffy, and Mr. Ray.

"Then Mr. Barrett was not amongst them?-He was not.

"Then I presume you did not see at that meeting Mr. Barrett ?-No. I made a mistake in saying he was there.

"You made that mistake on a previous day, not this day ?—I made the mistake on the occasion I refer to, and I corrected it as soon as I possibly could.

“Then Mr. Barrett was not present ?—He did not deliver a speech upon the occasion ?—He did not.

"The Solicitor-General has not asked you about a dinner at the Rotunda. Were you there in your capacity as a reporter ?—I was. "I believe then I may assume as a fact that Mr. Barrett was not at that dinner?—No, he was not there.