a loss to discover. It seems as if the progress of public reformation was eating away the ground of the prosecution. Since the commencement of the prosecution, this part of the libel has unluckily received the sanction of the Legislature. In that interval, our Catholic brethren have obtained that admission, which it seems was a libel to propose; in what way to account for this, I am really at a loss. Have any alarms been occasioned by the emancipation of our Catholic brethren? Has the bigotted malignity of any individuals been crushed? Or, has the stability of the government, or-has that of the country been weakened? Or, is one million of subjects stronger than three millions? Do you think that the benefit they received should be poisoned by the stings of vengeance ? If you think so, you must say to them, " You have demanded your emancipation, and you have got it, but we abhor your persons, we are outraged at your success; and we will stigmatize, by a criminal prosecution, the relief which you have obtained from the voice of your country." I ask you, Gentlemen, de you think, as honest men, anxious for the public tranquillity, conscious that there are wounds not yet completely cicatrized, that you ought to speak this language at this time, to men who are too much disposed to think that in this very emancipation, they have been saved from their own parliament by the humanity of their Sovereign P-Or, do you wish to prepare them for the revocation of these improvident concessions? Do you think it wise or humane, at this moment, to insult them, by sticking up in a pillory the man who dared to stand forth their advocate ? I put it to your oaths, do you think that a blessing of that kind, that a victory obtained by justice over bigotry and oppression, should have a stigma cast upon it by an ignominious sentence upon men bold and honest enough to propose that measure; -to propose the redeeming of religion from the abuses of the churchthe reclaiming of three millions of men from bondage, and giving liberty to all who had a right to demand it-giving, I say, in the so much censured words of this paper, "Universal Emancipation !"-I speak in the spirit of the British Law, which makes liberty commensurate with. and inseparable from, the British soil-which proclaims, even to the stranger. and sojourner, the moment he sets his foot upon British earth, that the ground on which he treads is holy, and consecrated by the Genius of Universal Emancipation. No matter in what language his doom mayhave been pronounced ;-no matter what complexion incompatible with freedom, an Indian or an African, sun may have burnt upon him;-no matter in what disastrous battle his liberty may have been cloven down;-no matter with what solemnities he may have been devoted upon the altar of Slavery; the first moment he touches the sacred soil of Britain, the altar and the god sink together in the dust; his soul walks.. abroad in her own majesty; his body swells beyond the measure of his chains, that burst from around him, and he stands redeemed, regenerated, and disenthralled, by the irresistible Genius of Universal Emancipation!

There is a sort of aspiring and adventurous credulity, which disdains assenting to obvious truths, and delights in catching at the improbability of circumstances, as its best ground of faith. To what other cause,.. Gentlemen, can you ascribe, that in the wise, the reflecting, the philosophic nation of Great Britain, a printer has been found guilty of a libel, for publishing those resolutions, to which the present minister of that. kingdom had actually subscribed his name! To what other cause can you ascribe, what in my mind is still more astonishing, in such a country as Scotland, a nation cast in the happy medium between the spiritless acquiescense of submissive poverty, and the sturdy credulity of pampered wealth; cool and ardent, adventurous and persevering; winging her eagle flight against the blaze of every science; with an eye that never winks, and a wing that never tires; crowned as she is with the spoils of every Art, and decked with the wreath of every Muse, from the deep and scrutinizing researches of her Humes, to the sweet

and simple, but not less sublime and pathetic morality of her Burns how from the bosom of a country like that, genius, and character, and talents, should be banished to a distant barbarous soil, condemned to pineunder the horrid communion of vulgar vice and baseborn profligacy, for twice the period that ordinary calculation gives to the continuance of human life?

I will not, for the justice and honor of our common country, suffer my mind to be borne away by the melancholy anticipation of Mr. Rowan's conviction; I will not relinquish the confidence, that this day will be the period of his sufferings, and however mercilessly he has been hitherto pursued, that your verdict will send him home to the arms of his family and the wishes of his country. But if, which heaven forbid, it hath still been unfortunately determined, that because he has not bent to power and authority, because he would not bow down before the golden calf and worship it, he is to be bound and cast into the furnace; I do trust in God, that there is a redeeming spirit in the constitution, which will be seen to walk with the suf ferer through the flames, and to preserve him unhurt by the conflagration...

1

EXTRACT FROM MR. CURRAN'S SPEECH ON THE
TRIAL OF FINERTY.

The learned gentleman is pleased to say that the traverser has charged the government with the encour agement of informers. This, Gentlemen, is another small fact that you are to deny at the hazard of your souls, and upon the solemnity of your oaths. You are upon your oaths to say to the sister country, that the government of Ireland uses no such abominable in--struments of destruction as informers. Let me ask you honestly, what do you feel, when in my hearing when in the face of this audience, you are called upon to give a verdict that every man of us, and every man. of you, know by the testimony of your own eyes. to be utterly and absolutely false ?-I speak not now of the

public proclamation of informers, with a promise of secrecy and of extravagant reward; I speak not of the fate of those horrid wretches who have been so often transferred from the table to the dock, and from the dock to the pillory; I speak of what your own eyes have seen day after day during the course of this commission, from the box where you are now sitting; the number of horrid miscreants who avowed upon their oaths, that they had come from the very seat of government-from the castle, where they had been worked upon by the fear of death and the hopes of compen sation, to give evidence against their fellows, that the mild and wholesome councils of this government are holden over these cata ombs of living death, where the wretch that is buried a man, lies till his heart has time to fester and dissolve, and is then dug up a witness.

Is this fancy or is it fact ? - Have you not seen him after his resurrection from that tomb, after having been dug out of the region of death and corruption, make his appearance upon the table, the living image of life and of death, and the supreme arbiter of both? Have you not marked when he entered, how the stormy wave of the multitude retired at his approach? Have you not marked how the human heart bowed to the supremacy of his power, in the undissembled homage of deferential horror P-How his glance, like the lightning of Heaven, seemed to rive the body of the accused, and mark it for the grave, while his voice warned the devoted wretch of wo and death; a death which no innocence can escape, no art elude, no force resist, no antidote prevent. There was an antidote -A Juror's oath-but even that adamantine chain, that bound the integrity of man to the throne of Eternal Justice, is solved and melted in the breath that issues from the informer's mouth. -Conscience swings from her mooring, and the appalled and affrighted Juror, consults his own safety in the surrender of the victim.

Let me therefore remind you, that though the day may soon come when our ashes shall be scattered before the winds of Heaven, the memory of what you do cannot die; it will carry down to your posterity your honor or your shame. In the presence and in the name of that ever living God, I do therefore conjure you to reflect, that you have your characters, your consciences, that you have also the character, perhaps the ultimate destiny of your country in your hands. In that awful name, I do conjure you to have mercy upon your country and upon yourselves, and so to judge now as you will hereafter be judged.

EXTRACT FROM MR. WIRT'S SPEECH ON THE TRIAL

OF AARON BURR FOR HIGH TREASON.

A plain man who knew nothing of the curious transmutations which the wit of man can work, would be very apt to wonder, by what kind of legerdemain Aaron "Burr bad contrived to shuffle himself down to the bottom of the pack as an accessory, and turn up poor Blennerhasset as principal in this treason. It is an honor, I dare зау, for which Mr. Blennerhasset is by no means anxious; one which he has never disputed with Col. Burr, and which I am persuaded he would be as little-inclined to dispute on this occasion, as on any other.

Since, however, the modesty of Col. Barr, declines the first rank, and seems disposed to force Mr. Blennerhasset into it, in spite of his blushes, let us compare the cases of the twomen and settle this question of precedence between them. It may save a good deal of troublesome ceremony hereafter. In making this comparison, Sir, I shall speak of the two men, and of the part they bore as I believe it to exist, and to be substantially capable of proof; although the court has already told us, that as this is a motion to exclude all evidence, generally, we have a right, in resisting it, to suppose the evidence which is behind, strong enough to prove every thing and any thing compatible with the fact of Burr's absence from the island. If it will be more agreeable to the feelings of the prisoner to consider the parallel which I am about to run, or rather the contrast which I am about to exhibit, as a fiction, he is at liberty to do so, I believe it to be a fact.