My learned friend might then have been compelled to have filed a criminal information against Mr. Peltier, for "wickedly and maliciously intending to vilify and degrade Maximilian Robespierre, president of the committee of public safety of the French republic!" He might have been reduced to the sad necessity of appearing before you, to bely his own better feelings; to prosecute Mr. Peltier for publishing those sentiments which my friend himself had a thousand times felt, and a thousand times expressed. He might have been obliged even to call for punishment upon Mr. Peltier for language which he and all mankind would for ever despise Mr. Peltier if he were not to employ. Then indeed, gentlemen, we should have seen the last humiliation fall on England; the tribunals, the spotless and venerable tribunals of this free country, reduced to be the ministers of the vengeance of Robespierre! What could have rescued us from this last disgrace? The honesty and courage of a jury. They would have delivered the judges of this country from the dire necessity of inflicting punishment on a brave and virtuous man, because he spoke truth of a monster. They would have despised the threats of a foreign tyrant, as their ancestors braved the power of oppression at home.

In the court where we are now met, Cromwell twice sent a satirist on his tyranny to be convicted and punished as a libeller; and in this court, almost in sight of the scaffold streaming with the blood of his sovereign, within hearing of the clash of his bayonets which drove out parliament with contumely, two successive juries rescued the intrepid satirist from his fangs, and sent out with defeat and disgrace the usurper's attorney-general from what he had the insolence to call his court. Even then, gentlemen, when all law and liberty were trampled under the feet of a military banditti; when those great crimes were perpetrated in a high place and with a high hand against those who were the objects of public veneration, which, more than any thing else, break their spirits and confound their moral sentiments, obliterate the distinctions between right and wrong in their understanding, and teach the multitude to feel no longer any reverence for that justice which they thus see triumphantly dragged at the chariot-wheels of a *yrant; even then, when this unhappy country, triumphant

indeed abroad but enslaved at home, had no prospect but that of a long succession of tyrants wading through slaughter to a throne-even then, I say, when all seemed lost, the unconquerable spirit of English liberty survived in the hearts of English jurors. That spirit is, I trust in God, not extinct; and if any modern tyrant were, in the drunkenness of his insolence, to hope to overawe an English jury, I trust and I believe that they would tell him : " Our ancestors braved the bayonets of Cromwell; we bid defiance to yours. Contempsi Catalina gladios-non pertimescam tuos !"

What could be such a tyrant's means of overawing a jury? As long as their country exists, they are girt round with impenetrable armour. Till the destruction of their country no danger can fall upon them for the performance of their duty, and I do trust that there is no Englishman so unworthy of life as to desire to outlive England. But if any of us are condemned to the cruel punishment of surviving our country-if, in the inscrutable counsels of Providence, this favoured seat of justice and liberty, this noblest work of human wisdom and virtue, be destined to destruction, which I shall not be charged with national prejudice for saying would be the most dangerous wound ever inflicted on civilization; at least let us carry with us into our sad exile the consolation that we ourselves have not violated the rights of hospitality to exiles-that we have not torn from the altar the suppliant who claimed protection as the voluntary victim of loyalty and conscience!

Gentlemen, I now leave this unfortunate gentleman in your hands. His character and his situation might interest your humanity; but, on his behalf, I only ask justice from you. I only ask a favourable construction of what cannot be said to be more than ambiguous language, and this you will soon be told from the highest authority is a part of justice.

139.-AMERICA.

I APPEAL to history! Tell me, thou reverend chronicler of the grave, can all the illusions of ambition realized, can all the wealth of a universal commerce, can all the achieve ments of successful heroism, or all the establishments af

this world's wisdom, secure to empire the permanency of its possessions? Alas! Troy thought so once; yet the land of Priam lives only in song! Thebes thought so once; yet her hundred gates have crumbled, and her very tombs are but as the dust they were vainly intended to commemorate! So thought Palmyra-where is she? So thought the countries of Demosthenes and the Spartan; yet Leonidas is trampled by the timid slave, and Athens insulted by the servile, mindless and enervate Ottoman! In his hurried march, time has but looked at their imagined immortality; and all its vanities, from the palace to the tomb, have, with their ruins, erased the very impression of his footsteps! The days of their glory are as if they had never been; and the island that was then a speck, rude and neglected in the barren ocean, now rivals the ubiquity of their commerce, the glory of their arms, the fame of their philosophy, the eloquence of their senate, and the inspiration of their bards! Who shall say, then, contemplating the past, that England, proud and potent as she appears, may not, one day, be what Athens is, and the young America yet soar to be what Athens was! Who shall say, that, when the European column shall have mouldered, and the night of barbarism obscured its very ruins, that mighty continent may not emerge from the horizon to rule, for its time, sovereign of the ascendant! PHILLIPS.

140.--SPEECH ON THE CATHOLIC QUESTION.

WH HERE, I ask, where are those Protestant petitions against the Catholic claims, which we were told would by this time have borne down your table? We were told in the confident tone of prophecy, that England would have poured in petitions from all her counties, towns and corporations, against the claims of Ireland. I ask, where are those petitions? Has London, her mighty capital, has the university of Dublin, mocked the calamities of your country, by petitioning in favour of those prejudices that would render us less able to redress them? Have the people of England raised a voice against their Catholic fellow subjects? No; they have the wisdom to see the folly of robbing the empire, at such a time, of one-fourth of its

strength, on account of speculative doctrines of faith. They will not risk a kingdom on account of old men's dreams about the prevalence of the pope. They will not sacrifice an empire because they dislike the sacrifice of the mass. I say, then, England is not against us. She has put ten thousand signatures upon your table in our favour. And what says the Protestant interest in Ireland! Look at their petition-examine the names- -the houses-the families. Look at the list of merchants-of divines. Look, in a word, at Protestant Ireland, calling to you in a warning voice-telling you that if you are resolved to go on, till ruin breaks with a fearful surprise upon your progress, they will go on with you-they must partake your danger, though they will not share your guilt.

Ireland, with her imperial crown, now stands before you. You have taken her parliament from her, and she appears in her own person at your bar. Will you dismiss a king

dom without a hearing? Is this your answer to her zeal, to her faith, to the blood that has so profusely graced your march to victory-to the treasures that have decked your strength in peace. Is her name nothing-her fate indifferent-are her contributions insignificant-her six millions revenue-her ten millions trade-her two millions absentee -her four millions loan? Is such a country not worth a hearing? Will you, can you dismiss her abruptly from your bar? You cannot do it-the instinct of England is against it. We may be outnumbered now and again—but in calculating the amount of the real sentiments of the people-the ciphers that swell the evanescent majorities of an evanescent minister, go for nothing.

Can Ireland forget the memorable era of 1788? Can others forget the munificent hospitality with which she then freely gave to her chosen hope all that she had to give? Can Ireland forget the spontaneous and glowing cordiality Iwith which her favours were then received? Never! Never! Irishmen grew justly proud in the consciousness of being subjects of a gracious predilection-a predilection that required no apology, and called for no renunciation— a predilection that did equal honour to him who felt it, and to those who were the objects of it. It laid the grounds of a great and fervent hope-all a nation's wishes crowding to a point, and looking forward to one event, as the

great coming, at which every wound was to be healed, every tear to be wiped away. The hope of that hour beamed with a cheering warmth and a seductive brilliancy. Ireland followed it with all her heart-a leading light through the wilderness, and brighter in its gloom. She followed it over a wide and barren waste it has charmed her through the desert, and now, that it has led her to the confines of light and darkness, now, that she is on the borders of the promised land, is the prospect to be suddenly obscured, and the fair vision of princely faith to vanish for ever!-I will not believe it-I require an act of parliament to vouch its credibility-nay more, I demand a miracle to convince me that it is possible! GRATTAN,

141. THE PATRIOT'S Hope.

SIR,-Our republic has long been a theme of speculation among the savans of Europe. They profess to have cast its horoscope, and fifty years was fixed upon by many as the utmost limit of its duration. But those years passed by, and beheld us a united and happy people; our political atmosphere, agitated by no storm, and scarce a cloud to obscure the serenity of our horizon; all of the present was prosperity; all of the future, hope.-True, upon the. day of that anniversary two venerated fathers of our freedom and of our country fell; but they sunk calmly to rest, in the maturity of years and in the fulness of time; and their simultaneous departure on that day of jubilee, for another and a better world, was hailed by our nation as a propitious sign, sent to us from heaven. Wandering the other day in the alcoves of the library, I accidentally opened a volume containing the orations delivered by many distinguished men on that solemn occasion, and I noted some expressions of a few who now sit in this hall, which are deep fraught with the then prevailing, I may say universal feeling. It is inquired by one, "Is this the effect of accident or blind chance, or has that God, who holds in his hand the destiny of nations and of men, designed these things as an evidence of the permanence and perpetuity of our institutions ?" Another says, "Is it not stamped with the seal of divinity?" And a third, descanting on