Pagina-afbeeldingen
PDF
ePub

brother; though many a peasant heart will leap at your name, and many an infant eye will embalm their fame who restored to life, to station, to dignity, to character, the venerable friend who taught their trembling tongues to lisp the rudiments of virtue and religion, still dearer than all will be the consciousness of the deed. Nor, believe me, countrymen, will it rest here. Oh no! if there be light in instinct, or truth in Revelation, believe me, at that awful hour, when you shall await the last inevitable verdict, the eye of your hope will not be the less bright, nor the agony of your ordeal the more acute, because you shall have, by this day's deed, redeemed the Almighty's persecuted Apostle, from the grasp of an insatiate malicefrom the fang of a worse than Philistine persecution.

SPEECH

IN THE

CASE OF CONNAGHTON v. DILLON:

DELIVERED IN THE COUNTY COURT-HOUSE

OF

ROSCOMMON.

My Lord and Gentlemen,

IN this case I am one of the counsel for the plaintiff, who has directed me to explain to you the wrongs for which, at your hands, he solicits reparation. It appears to me a case which undoubtedly merits much consideration, as well from the novelty of its appearance amongst us, as for the circumstances by which it is attended. Nor am I ashamed to say, that in my mind, not the least interesting of those circumstances is the poverty of the man who has made this appeal to me.Few are the consolations which soothe-hard must be the heart which does not feel for him.He is, gentlemen, a man of lowly birth and humble station; with little wealth but from the labour of his hands, with no rank but the integrity of his character, with no recreation but in the circle of his home, and with no ambition, but, when his days are full, to leave that little circle the inheritance of an honest name, and the treasure of a good man's

memory. Far inferior, indeed, is he in this respect to his more fortunate antagonist. He, on the contrary, is amply either blessed or cursed with those qualifications which enable a man to adorn or disgrace the society in which he lives. He is, I understand, the representative of an honourable name, the relative of a distinguished family, the supposed heir to their virtues, the indisputable inheritor of their riches. He has been for many years a resident of your county, and has had the advantage of collecting round him all those recollections, which, springing from the scenes of school-boy association, or from the more matured enjoyments of the man, crowd as it were unconsciously to the heart, and cling with a venial partiality to the companion and the friend. So impressed, in truth, has he been with these advantages, that, surpassing the usual expenses of a trial, he has selected a tribunal where he vainly hopes such considerations will have weight, and where he well knows my client's humble rank can have no claim but that to which his miseries may entitle him. I am sure, however, he has wretchedly miscalculated. I know none of you personally; but I have no doubt I am addressing men who will not prostrate their consciences before privilege or power; who will remember that there is a nobility above birth, and a wealth beyond riches ; who will feel that, as in the eye of that God to whose aid they have appealed, there is not the minutest difference between the rag and the robe, so in the contemplation of that law which constitutes our boast, guilt can have no protection, or innocence no tyrant; men who will have pride in proving, that the noblest adage of our noble constitution is not an illusive shadow; and that the peasant's cot

tage, roofed with straw and tenanted by poverty, stands as inviolate from all invasion as the mansion of the monarch.

My client's name, gentlemen, is Connaghton, and when I have given you his name you have almost all his history. To cultivate the path of honest industry comprises, in one line," the short and simple annals of the poor." This has been his humble, but at the same time most honourable occupation. It matters little with what artificial nothings chance may distinguish the name, or decorate the person: the child of lowly life, with virtue for its handmaid, holds as proud a title as the highest-as rich an inheritance as the wealthiest. Well has the poet of your country said-that

"Princes or Lords may flourish or may fade,

A breath can make them, as a breath has made ;
But a brave peasantry, their country's pride,
When once destroy'd can never be supplied."

For all the virtues which adorn that peasantry, which can render humble life respected, or give the higest stations their most permanent distinctions, my client stands conspicuous. An hundred years of sad vicissitude, and, in this land, often of strong temptation, have rolled away since the little farm on which he lives received his family; and during all that time not one accusation has disgraced, not one crime has sullied it. The same spot has seen his grandsire and his parent pass away from this world; the villagememory records their worth, and the rustic tear hallows their resting-place. After all, when life's mockeries shall vanish from before us, and the heart that now beats in the proudest bosom, here,

shall moulder unconscious beneath its kindred clay, art cannot erect a nobler monument, or genius compose a purer panegyric. Such, gentlemen, was almost the only inheritance with which my client entered the world. He did not disgrace it; his youth his manhood, his age, up to this moment, have passed without a blemish; and he now stands confessedly the head of the little village in which he lives. About five-and-twenty years ago he married the sister of a highly respectable Roman catholic clergyman, by whom he had a family of seven children, whom they educated in the principles of morality and religion, and who, until the defendant's interference, were the pride of their humble home, and the charm or the consolation of its vicissitudes. In their virtuous children the rejoicing parents felt their youth renewed, their age made happy: the days of labour became holidays in their smile; and if the hand of affliction pressed on them, they looked upon their little ones, and their mourning ended. I cannot paint the glorious host of feelings; the joy, the love, the hope, the pride, the blendid paradise of rich emotions with which the God of nature fills the father's heart when he beholds his child in all its filial loveliness, when the vision of his infancy rises as it were reanimate before him, and a divine vanity exaggerates every trifle into some mysterious omen, which shall smooth his aged wrinkles, and make his grave a monument of honour! I cannot describe them; but. if there be a parent on the jury, he will comprehend me. It is stated to me, that of all his children there were none more likely to excite such feelings in the plaintiff than the unfortunate subject of the present action; she was his favourite daughter, and she did not shame

« VorigeDoorgaan »