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countervailed by the abuses which are incident to our existing system. I am free to acknowledge, that if the public exercise of the franchise were accompanied by that freedom, of which the noble etymology of the word gives us the intimation, I should infinitely prefer the system of open voting, which is more congenial with your habits. I own that an Englishman, who advances with a firm step and a high independent bearing to the hustings, and in the face of his country, gives his honest independent vote for the man in whose public virtue, in whose personal integrity, in whose capacity to serve the state he places an implicit confidence, and if his confidence by his vote gives the public an honourable proof, does present to me, advocate of the ballot as I am, a fine spectacle. Yes, some statesman, for example, the hereditary proprietor of some segment of a mountain, reclaimed by the industrious man from whom it has come down to him, exempt from all tribute, and every incident of dependancy, some Cumberland statesman, whose spirit is as free and liberal as the air which he inhales, whose heart beats high with the consciousness of the high trust reposed in him, and of the moral responsibility which attaches to its performance, does present to me, in the uncontrolled and unshackled exercise of the great prerogative of the people, an object to which my admiration is promptly and sincerely given. But turn from Cumberland and its statesmen, to the mournful realities which are offered to you in the land from which I come, and look at the £10 voter who has had the misfortune to pass through the registration court, and who receives from his landlord a summons to attend the hustings, and in a contest between a Liberal and a Tory candidate, to give his vote on one side, all his feelings (feelings like your own) all his national predilections, all his religious emotions, all his personal affections, are enlisted :—perhaps on one side he sees a man whom he has long been accustomed to regard as the deliverer of his country-whom he looks upon as the champion of his creed and of his priesthood-of the land in which he was born, and for which, if there were need, he would be prompt to die-his eye fills, and his heart grows big, and prayers break from his lips as he beholds him; and on the other side the side on which he is called upon to vote-he beholds some champion of that stern ascendency by which his country had long been trodden under foot, by whom his religion had long been vilified, its ministers had long been covered with opprobrium, and the class to which he belongs has long been treated with contumely and disdain; for such a man he is called upon, under a penalty the most fearful, with impending ruin, to give his false and miserable suffrage; trembling, shrinking, cowering, afraid to look his friends and kinsmen in the face, he ascends the hustings, as

if it were the scaffold of his conscience, and, with a voice almost inarticulate with emotion, stammers out, when asked for whom he votes-not the name of him whom he loves, and prizes, and honours— but of the man whom he detests, loathes, abhors; for him it is, it is in his favour, that he exercises the great trust, the sanctity of which requires that it should be exercised in the face of the world; for him it is, it is in his favour, that he gives utterance to that which, to all intents and purposes, is a rank and odious falsehood; but perhaps he resists, perhaps, under the influence of some sentiment, half-religious, halfheroic, looking martyrdom in the face, he revolts against the horrible tyranny that you would rivet on him, and he votes, wretch that he is, in conformity with the dictates of his conscience, and what he believes to be the ordinance of his religion. Alas for him! a month or two go by, and all that he has in the world is seized; the beast that gives him milk, the horse that drags his plough, the table of his scanty meal, the bed where anguish, and poverty, and oppression were sometimes forgotten-all, all are taken from him, and with Providence for his guide, but with God, I hope, for his avenger, he goes forth with his wife and children upon the world. And this, this is the system which you, and you, but I hope not you (turning to Lord John Russell) are prepared to maintain! This is the system under which what is called a great trust is performed in the eyes of the country; this is the system under which, by the exercise of the great prerogative of freemen, open and undisguised, every British citizen invested with the franchise should feel himself exalted! Oh, fie upon this mockery! and if I cannot say fie upon them, what shall I say of the men who, with these things of a constant and perpetual occurrence staring them in the face, talk to us of the immorality of the ballot, and tell us, forsooth, that it is an un-English proceeding. UnEnglish! I know the value of that expressive and powerful word. I know the great attributes by which the people of this country are distinguished, and of the phrase which expresses the reverse of these habits, I can appreciate the full and potent signification. Fraud is indeed un-English, and dissimulation, and deception, and duplicity, and double-dealing, and promise-breaking, all, every vice akin to these vile things, are indeed un-English; but tyranny, base, abominable tyranny, is un-English; hard-hearted persecution of poor fanatic wretches, is un-English; crouching fear on one side, and ferocious menace and relentless savageness upon the other, are un-English! Of your existing system of voting these are the consequences; and to these evils, monstrous as they are, you owe it to your national character, to truth, to justice, to every consideration, political, social,

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religious, moral, at once to provide the cure. What shall it be? Public opinion! Public opinion! We have been hearing of it this long time-this many a day we have been hearing of public opinion. In the last ten years and upwards, whenever the ballot has been brought forward, we have been told, that for corruption, for intimidation, for everything, public opinion would supply the cure that marvellous and wonder-working principle, that sedative of the passions, that minister to the diseases of the mind, that alterative of the heart, was to extinguish cupidity, was to coerce ambition, allay the fears of the slave, mitigate the ferocity of the tyrant, and over all the imperfections of our nature to extend its soft and salutary sway. Well, how has it worked? Public opinion, so far as bribery is concerned, is given up; few, except the members for the University of Oxford and the University of Dublin, those amiable gentlemen, among whose virtues a peculiar indulgence for parliamentary frailties are conspicuous, would recommend that Southampton and Belfast, and the rest of the delinquent boroughs, should be consigned to public opinion. But if for bribery public opinion has lost all its sanative operation, is it, in the name of common consistency, for intimidation, that this specific is to be reserved? Upon bribery, of the two, public opinion would have the greater influence. To bribery there is attached some sort of discredit; but intimidation is not only openly practised, but ostentatiously avowed. Men do not deny, but take pride in it; they applaud themselves, too, for the wholesome severity which they have exercised, and the salutary examples they have made. So far, indeed, is the principle of intimidation carried, that a regular theory of coercion has been established, and the great patricians of the land compress their notions of their privileges into a phrase, to lay down the dogmas of despotism in some trite saying, and, in some familiar sentence, to propound the aphorisms of domination. When these doctrines are unrecanted in language, and in conduct are unrecalled-when such doctrines are defended, vindicated, and applauded when they are acted upon to an extent so vast that it is almost difficult to suggest where they have not been applied-how long, how much longer, are we to look to public opinion as the corrective of those evils, which, without the application of some more potent remedy, it is almost an imposture to deplore? Show me a remedy beside the ballot, and I will at once accede to it. Show me any other means by which the tenants of your estates and the retailers of your commerce, and all those whose dependance is so multifariously diversified, can be protected-show me any other means by which a few men of property, confederated in the segment of a divided county, shall be frustrated

in conspiring to return your fractional county members-show me any other means by which this new scheme of nomination shall be baffled and defeated-show me any other means by which a few leading gentlemen in the vicinage of almost every agricultural borough shall be foiled in their dictation to those small tradesmen whose vote and interest are demanded in all the forms of peremptory solicitation. Show me this and I give up the ballot. But if you cannot show me this for the sake of your country, for the sake of your high fame; upon every motive, personal and public; from every consideration, national and individual-pause before you repudiate the means, the only means, by which the spirit of coercion now carried into a system shall be restrained, by which the enjoyment of the franchise shall be associated with the will, by which the country shall be saved from all the suffering, the affliction, and the debasement with which a general election is now attended; and without which, to a state of things most calamitous and most degrading, there is not a glimpse of hope, not a chance the most remote, that the slightest palliative will be applied.

THE IRISH STATE TRIALS.

SPEECH IN THE COURT OF QUEEN'S BENCH, IN IRELAND, IN THE CASE OF THE QUEEN v. DANIEL O'CONNELL, JOHN O'CONNELL, AND OTHERS, IN DEFENCE OF MR. JOHN O'CONNELL.

I AM counsel for Mr. John O'Connell. The importance of this case is not susceptible of exaggeration, and I do not speak in the language of hyperbole when I say that the attention of the empire is directed to the spot in which we are assembled. How great is the trust reposed in you-how great is the task which I have undertaken to perform? Conscious of its magnitude, I have risen to address you, not unmoved, but undismayed; no-not unmoved for at this moment how many incidents of my own political life come back upon me, when I look upon my great political benefactor, my deliverer, and my friend; but of the emotion by which I acknowledge myself to be profoundly stirred, although I will not permit myself to be subdued by it, solicitude forms no part. I have great reliance upon you-upon the ascendancy of principle over prejudice in your minds; and I am not entirely without reliance upon myself. I do not speak in the language of vain-glorious self-complacency when I say this. I know that I am surrounded by men infinitely superior to me in every forensic, and in almost every intellectual qualification. My confidence is derived, not from any overweening estimate of my own faculties, but from a thorough conviction of the innocence of my client. I know, and I appear in some sort not only as an advocate but a witness before you. I know him to be innocent of the misdeeds laid to his charge. The same blood flows through their veins—the same feelings circulate through their hearts : the son and the father are in all political regards the same, and with the father I have toiled in no dishonourable companionship for more than half my life in that great work, which it is his chief praise that it was conceived in the spirit of peace-that in the spirit of peace it was carried out-and that in the spirit of peace it was brought by him to its glorious consummation. I am acquainted with every feature of his character, with his thoughts, hopes, fears, aspirations. I have if I may venture to say-a full cognizance of every pulsation of his heart. I know I am sure as that I am a living man-that from the sanguinary misdeeds imputed to him, he shrinks with abhorrence. It is this persuasion-profound, impassioned--and I trust that it will prove contagious-which will sustain me in the midst of the exhaustion incidental to this lengthened trial; will enable me to overcome the

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