more respects than I do the well-earned reputation of the British army; "It is a school Where every principle tending to honour But in the name of that distinguished army, I here solemnly appeal against an act, which would blight its greenest laurels, and lay its trophies prostrate in the dust. Let them war, but be it not on domestic happiness; let them invade, but be their country's earths inviolable; let them achieve a triumph wherever their banners fly, but be it not over morals, innocence, and virtue. I know not by what palliation the defendant means to mitigate this enormity;-will he plead her youth? it should have been her protection ;-will he plead her levity? I deny the fact; but even were it true, what is it to him? what right has any man to speculate on the temperature of your wives and your daughters, that he may defile your bed, or desolate your habitation? Will he plead poverty? I never knew a seducer or an adulterer that did not. He should have considered that before. But is poverty an excuse for crime? Our law says, he who has not a purse to pay for it, must suffer for it in his person. It is a most wise declaration; and for my part, I never hear such a person plead poverty, that my first emotion is not a thanksgiving, that Providence has denied, at least, the instrumentality of wealth to the accomplishment of his purposes. Gentlemen, I see you agree with me. I wave the topic; and I again tell you, that if what I know will be his chief defence were true, it should avail him nothing. He had no right to speculate on this wretched creature's levity to ruin her, and Remember, however, this wretched child her name we ask for still less to ruin her family. gentlemen, that even had been indiscreet, it is not in reparation; no, it is in the name of the parents her seducer has heart-broken; it is in the name of the poor helpless family he has desolated; it is in the name of that misery, whose sanctuary he has violated; it is in the name of law, virtue and morality; it is in the name of that country whose fair fame foreign envy will make responsible for this crime; it is in the name of nature's dearest, tenderest sympathies; it is in the name of all that gives your toil an object, and your ease a charm, and your age a hope-I ask from you the value of the poor man's child. SPEECH IN THE CASE OF BLAKE v. WILKINS: DELIVERED IN THE COUNTY COURT-HOUSE. GALWAY. May it please your Lordship, THE plaintiff's counsel tell me, gentlemen, most unexpectedly, that they have closed his case, and it becomes my duty to state to you that of the defendant. The nature of this action you have already heard. It is one which, in my mind, ought to be very seldom brought, and very sparingly encouraged. It is founded on circumstances of the most extreme delicacy, and it is intended to visit with penal consequences the non-observance of an engagement, which is of the most paramount importance to society, and which of all others, perhaps, ought to be the most unbiassed,—an engagement which, if it be voluntary, judicious, and disinterested, generally produces the happiest effects; but which, if it be either unsuitable or compulsory, engenders not only individual misery, but consequences universally pernicious. There are few contracts between human beings which should be more deliberate than that of marriage. I admit it should be very cautiously promised, but, even when promised, I am far from conceding that it should invariably be performed; a thousand circumstances may form an impediment, change of fortune may render it imprudent, change of affection may make it culpable. The very party to whom the law gives the privilege of complaint has perhaps the most reason to be grateful, grateful that its happiness has not been surrendered to caprice; grateful that religion has not constrained an unwilling acquiescence, or made an unavoidable desertion doubly criminal; grateful that an offspring has not been sacrificed to the indelicate and ungenerous enforcement; grateful that an innocent secret disinclination did not too late evince itself in an irresistible and irremediable disgust. You will agree with me, however, that if there exists any excuse for such an action, it is on the side of the female, because every female object being more exclusively domestic, such a disappointment is more severe in its visitation; because the very circumstance concentrating their feelings renders them naturally more sensitive of a wound; because their best treasure, their reputation, may have suffered from the intercourse; because their chances of reparation are less, and their habitual seclusion makes them feel it more; because there is something in the desertion of their helplessness which almost immerges the illegality in the unmanliness of the abandonment.However, if a man seeks to enforce this engagement, every one feels some indelicacy attached to the requisition. I do not inquire into the comparative justness of the reasoning, but does not every one feel that there appears some meanness in forcing a female into an alliance? Is it not almost saying, "I will expose to public shame the credulity on which I practised, or you must pay to me in moneys numbered, the profits of that heartless speculation; I have gambled with your affections, I have secured your bond, I will extort the penalty either from your purse or your reputation!" I put a case to you where the circumstances are reciprocal, where age, fortune, situation, are the same, where there is no disparity of years to make the supposition ludicrous, where there is no disparity of fortune to render it suspicious. Let us see whether the present action can be so palliated, or whether it does not exhibit a picture of fraud and avarice, and meanness and hypocrisy, so laughable, that it is almost impossible to criticise it, and yet so debasing, that human pride almost forbids its ridicule. It has been left to me to defend my unfortunate old client from the double battery of Love and of Law, which at the age of sixty-five has so unexpectedly opened on her. Oh, gentlemen, how vain-glorious is the boast of beauty! How misapprehended have been the charms of youth, if years and wrinkles can thus despoil their conquests, and depopulate the navy of its prowess, and beguile the bar of its eloquence! How mistaken were all the amatory poets from Anacreon downwards, who preferred the bloom of the rose and the thrill of the nightingale, to the saffron hide and dulcet treble of sixty-five! Even our own sweet bard has had the folly to declare, that "He once had heard tell of an amourous youth |