humble instrument of perpetuating to posterity the productions of a man, who will always be esteemed as one of the greatest ornaments of the age and the country in which he lived. ADVERTISEMENT TO THE THIRD EDITION. THE following passages are selected from the Edinburgh Review, of the month of October, 1808, in which is reviewed the second edition of this work, which the writer of the article calls most properly an unauthenticated volume. The editor is sensible that the same epithet is equally applicable to the present edition. It is, in fact, nothing more than a re-printing of the second edition; and the editor has equally abstained from the correction of errors, which are evidently the mistakes of the reporters, from a wish of leaving, uninfringed, to Mr. Curran the full power of revising his own productions, if, at any time, he should be disposed to exert it. And it is to be ardently wished that the advocate may yet, before his mortal course is finished, enable some future editor to give the world a memorial more worthy of his talents. "The wits of Queen Anne's time practised a sort of polite writing, characterized by purity, smoothness, and a kind of simple and temperate elegance. Their reasoning was correct and luminous, and their raillery terse and refined; but they never so much as aimed at touching the greater passions, or rising to the loftier graces of composition. Their sublimity was little more than a gentle and graceful solemnity; their invective went no further than polished sarcasm, and their vehemence than pretty vivacity. Even the older writers, who dealt in larger views and stronger language, the Hookers and Taylors, and Barrows, and Miltons, although they possessed, beyond all doubt, an original and commanding eloquence, had little of nature or rapid movement of passion about them. Their diction, though powerful, is loaded and laborious; and their imagination, though rich and copious, is neither playful nor popular. Even the celebrated orators of England have been deficient in some of these characteristics. The rhetoric of Fox was his logic;-the eloquence of Pitt consisted mainly in his talent for sarcasm, and for sounding amplification. Neither of them had much pathos-and but little play of fancy. "Yet the style of which we are speaking is now familiar to the English public. But it was introduced by an Irishman; and may be clearly traced to the genius of Burke. There was no such composition known in England before his day. Bolingbroke, whom he is sometimes said to have copied, had none of it. He is infinitely more careless, he is infinitely less impassioned. He has no such variety of imagery, no such flights of poetry,-no such touches of tenderness, no such visions of philosophy. The style has been defiled since, indeed, by base imitations and disgusting parodies; and, in its more imitable parts, has been naturalized and transfused into the recent literature of our country; but it was of Irish origin, and still attains to its highest honours only in its native soil. For this we appeal to the whole speaking and writing of that nation,-to the speeches of Mr. Grattan, and even to the volume before us. With less of deep thought than the corrected compositions of Burke, and less of point and polish than the magical effusions of Grattan, it still bears the impression of that inflamed fancy which characterizes the eloquence of both, and is distinctly assimilated to them by those traits of national resemblance." The Review, then, among other passages of the work, selects the following from the report of the trial; in the action brought by Hevey, against Major Sirr.-It is deemed unnecessary to give any more extracts from the Review, as those sufficiently speak the opinion of the critic. "Mr. Curran then proceeds to the immediate cause of the action in question. 666 "On the 8th of September last, Mr. Hevey was sitting in a public coffee-house. Major Sirr was there. Mr. Hevey was informed that the major had at that moment said, that he (Hevey) ought to have been hanged. The plaintiff was fired at the charge; he fixed his eye on Sirr, and asked if he had dared to say so? Sirr declared that he had, and had said truly. Hevey answered, that he was a slanderous scoundrel. At the instant Sirr rushed upon him, and assisted by three or four of his satellites, who had attended him in disguise, secured him, and sent him to the castle guard, desiring that a receipt might be given for the villain. He was sent thither. The officer of the guard chanced to be an Englishman, but lately arrived in Ireland; he said to the bailiffs, if this was in England, I should think this gentleman entitled to bail, but I don't know the laws of this country. However I think you had better loosen those irons on his wrists, or I think they may kill him. "Here he was flung into a room of about thirteen feet by twelve; it was called the hospital of the provost; it was occupied by six beds, in which were to lie fourteen or fifteen miserable wretches, some of them sinking under contagious diseases. Here he passed the first night without bed or food. The next morning his humane keeper, the Major, appeared. The plaintiff demanded, "why he was so imprisoned?" complained of hunger, and asked for the gaol allowance. Major Sandys replied with a torrent of abuse, which he concluded by saying "Your crime is your insolence to Major Sirr; however, he disdains to trample upon you; you may appease him by proper and contrite submission; but unless you do so, you shall rot where you are. I tell you this, that if government will not protect us, by God, we will not protect them. You will probably (for I know your insolent and ungrateful hardiness) attempt to get out by an habeas corpus; but in that you will find yourself mistaken, as such a rascal deserves." Hevey was insolent enough to issue an habeas corpus, and a return was made upon it, that Hevey was in custody under af warrant from General Craig, on a charge of treason. was a gross falsehood fabricated by Sirr.' This return "If it be the test of supreme genius to produce strong and permanent emotions, the passages which we have quoted must be in the very highest style of eloquence. There is not a subject of these kingdoms, we hope, that can read them, without feeling his blood boil, and his heart throb with indignation; and without feeling, that any government which could tolerate or connive at such proceedings, held out a bounty to rebellion, which it would almost be dastardly to reject. The eloquence of these passages is in the facts which they recite; and it is far more powerful than that which depends upon the mere fancy or art of the orator. There are passages, however, of this more ornate description in the speech before us, which deserve to be quoted. The following is among the most striking. Mr. Curran is endeavouring to show, that the general publication of this transaction may be of use, as the means of letting England know the real condition and state of government in Ireland; and that the detail of a single authenticated fact is more likely to make an impression, than a more comprehensive but general picture. He then says, "If, for instance, you wished to convey to the mind of an English matron the horrors of that direful period, when, in defiance of the remonstrance of the ever to be lamented Abercrombie, our poor people were surrendered to the licentious brutality of the soldiery, by the authority of the state; you would vainly endeavour to give her a general picture of lust, and rapine, and murder, and conflagration. Instead of exhibiting the picture of an entire province, select a single object; and even in that single object do not release the imagination of your hearer from its task, by giving more than an outline: take a cottage; place the affrighted mother of her orphan daughters at the door, the paleness of death upon her face, and more than its agonies in her heart; her aching eye, her anxious ear, struggle through the mists of closing day, to catch the approaches of desolation and dishonour. The ruffian gang arrives; the feast of plunder begins; the cup of madness kindles in its circulation. The wandering glances of the ravisher become concentrated upon the shrinking and devoted victim. -You need not dilate, you need not expatiate; the unpolluted mother, to whom you tell the story of horror, beseeches you not to proceed; she presses her child to her heart; she drowns it in her tears; her fancy catches more than an angel's tongue could describe; at a single view she takes in the whole miserable succession of force, of profanation, of despair, of death. So it is in the question before us. If any man shall hear of this day's transaction, he cannot be so foolish as to suppose that we have been confined to a single character, like those now brought before you."" CONTENTS. Page. On the right of election of lord mayor of the city of Dublin, between alderman On moving that it is the exclusive privilege of the house of commons to origi- 12 SPEECH OF MR. CURRAN ON THE RIGHT OF ELECTION OF LORD MAYOR OF THE CITY OF DUBLIN. DELIVERED BEFORE THE LORD LIEUTENANT AND PRIVY COUNCIL MY LORDS,--I have the honour to appear before you as counsel for the commons of the corporation of the metropolis of Ireland, and also for Mr. Alderman Howison, who hath petitioned for your approbation of him as a fit person to serve as lord mayor, in virtue of his election by the commons to that high office; and in that capacity I rise to address you on the most important subject that you have ever been called upon to discuss.-Highly interesting and momentous indeed, my lords, must every question be, that, even remotely and eventually, may affect the well-being of societies, or the freedom, or the repose of nations: but that question, the result of which, by an immediate and direct necessity, must decide, either fatally or fortunately, the life or the death of that well-being, of that freedom, and that repose, is surely the most important subject on which human wisdom can be employed, if any subject on this side the grave can be entitled to that appellation. You cannot therefore, my lords, be surprised to see this place crowded by such numbers of our fellow citizens: heretofore they were attracted hither by a strong sense of the value of their rights, and of the injustice of the attack upon them; they felt all the magnitude of the contest; but they were not disturbed by any fear for the event; they relied securely on the justice of their cause, and the integrity of those who were to decide upon it. But the public mind is now filled with a fear of danger, the more painful and alarming, because hitherto unforeseen: the |