glorious Yeomanry of Ireland were the exterminators of their countrymen, and should eulogize and hold up to veneration and respect, the rebels of 1198, as patriots and martyrs,-who is there to call him to order? What man, in a popular and self-constituted assembly, would venture to interrupt him? The very nature and constitution of the assembly generates danger and encourages excess. Compare such a constitution with the established authorities of the land, all controuled, confined to their respective spheres, balancing and gravitating to each other;-all symmetry— all order-all harmony. Behold, on the other hand, this prodigy in the political hemisphere, with eccentric course and portentous glare, bound by no attraction-disclaiming any orbit, disturbing the system, and affrighting the world!

MY LORDS,

And Gentlemen of the Jury

IT is now my duty as counsel for the crown, to observe upon that evidence for the prosecution, which has not been contradicted, and upon that defence for the traverser which has not been supported.-The learned and able advocate for Mr. Kirwan, has left to me, as he always does to those who follow him, much to do, but he must forgive me if I say that I feel my duty upon the present occasion to be more troublesome than formidable, and that its difficulty consists rather in the variety and inconsistency of the defence which I have to encounter, than in the weight or value of the arguments which he has urged; I find it difficult even to class the topics

of his multifarious defence. The law has been re-argued, the facts have been re-disputed; the array has been challenged, points of variance have been insisted upon; the indictment has been said not to be supported in fact, and the crime charged by it, has been justified as innocent in law, and eulogized as meritorious. This is a short summary and faint sketch of those multiform defences which have been attempted against the present prosecution, and which have prolonged a criminal trial now to the fourth day, a consumption of public time, unprecedented in the legal annals of this country.

I have not taken notice of the irrelevant and unjustifiable discussion of a political subject in a court of justice, of the unprovoked declamation upon catholic emancipation, in a place where such a question never can be decided, and ought never to be agitated. I allude not to those minor ornaments of the speech of Mr. Burrowes, so utterly unconnected with the subject upon which you are to decide; his history of a dinner at the Rotunda, and his eulogy upon what he calls that memorable festival; I merely speak of such parts of his speech as may be said to justly belong to this place, and I can discover nothing but a defence incongruous and inconsistent, unable to rest upon any single

point, and obliged to sustain itself by spreading. over as much ground as it can cover; I wish to set Mr. Burrowes and his colleagues face to face, and call upon them to reconcile his argument of three hours upon the law, with their cross-examinations of six against the fact. I wish to know if they dispute his law, or if he questions the sufficiency of their cross-examinations. If it be true as he has argued, that the law of this case is with the traverser, that upon a sound construction of the Convention Act, Mr. Kirwan has not been guilty of any offence, and that the facts imputed to him as a crime constitute his glory; how did it become necessary to put forward the gentlemen who act with Mr. Burrowes, one after another, to bring into doubt those very facts of which his client boasts, and to do so through the medium of cross-examinations, prolix beyond example, wasting the public time, and disgusting the public feeling by a desperate and abortive attempt to represent the witnesses for the crown as suborned and perjured if on the other hand, those witnesses be suborned and perjured, if all which they have sworn be fabrication and imposture, what has been the necessity for consuming the greater part of a day in controverting the construction of a law which upon that supposition

it is altogether unnecessary to interpret ; i re

peat it, I am at a loss how to meet this many faced defence, which defies pursuit and eludes contact.

nodo ?

Quo teneam, vultus mutantem Protea

I wish not to abridge the fair discharge of an advocates duty, which I know calls upon him to resort to every available topic in his clients case, and to omit nothing however inconsistent, by which he may serve him. But Mr. Burrowes would scorn upon this occasion the claim of such a privilege; he has assumed a loftier tone, and certainly no man is more qualified by virtues and by talents to sustain it. He is not forsooth the counsel of any petty client, or brought here to accomplish the impunity of any individual, he claims higher behests than those; he is the advocate of a peoples rights, coming boldly forward to meet a great question, he is the champion of a nations cause! the liberty, of his country is his client. He must forgive me if I examine those high claims, and if I recall those circumstances of the present trial, upon the recollection of which, I expect that he will abandon those borrowed