on; Superstition has found her tion; and the feudal system, e satellites, has fled for ever. eir safest study, as well as their ple; the people are taught by stupendous against which they who would rise upon the ruins f ambition can raise them from rate them from the highest.

his sentence awaken! But three years at short space all the good effected by es, and the most questionable parts of ors want nothing but his genius.

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least for the present, an insurmountable impediment. This was not sufficient. In less than a week, the indefatigable Miss Blake returned to the charge, actually armed with an old family-bond to pay off the incumbrances, and a renewed representation of the mother's suspense and the brother's desperation. You will not fail to observe, Gentlemen, that while the female conspirators were thus at work, the lover himself had never even seen the object of idolatry. Like the maniac in the farce, he fell in love with the picture of his grandmother. Like a prince of the blood, he was willing to woo and to be wedded by proxy. For the gratification of his avarice, he was contented to embrace age, disease, infir mity, and widowhood-to bind his youthful passions to the carcass for which the grave was opening-to feed by anticipation on the uncold corpse, and cheat the worm of its reversionary corruption. Educated in a profession proverbially generous, he offered to barter every joy for money! Born in a country ardent to a fault, he advertised his happiness to the highest bidder! and he now solicits an honourable jury to become the panders to this heartless cupidity! Thus beset, harrassed, conspired against, their miserable victim entered into the contract you have heard -a contract conceived in meanness, extorted by fraud, and sought to be enforced by the most profligate conspiracy. Trace it through every stage of its progress, in its origin, its means, its effectsfrom the parent contriving it through the sacrifice of her son, and forwarding it through the indelicate instrumentality of her daughter, down to the son himself unblushingly acceding to the atrocious combination by which age was to be betrayed, and youth degraded, and the odious union of decrepit lust and precocious avarice blasphemously consecrated by the solemnities of religion! Is this the example which, as parents, you would sanction? Is this the principle you would adopt yourselves! Have you never witnessed the misery of an unmatched marriage! Have you never worshipped the bliss by which it has been hallowed, when its torch, kindled at affection's altar, gives the noon of life its warmth and its lustre, and blesses its evening with a more chastened, but not less lovely illumination? Are you prepared to say, that this rite of heaven, revered by each country, cherished by each sex, the solemnity of every Church, and the SACRAMENT of one, shall be profaned into the ceremonial of an obscene and soul-degrading avarice!

!

No sooner was this contract, the device of their covetousness and the evidence of their shame, swindled from the wretched object of this conspiracy, than its motive became apparent; they avowed themselves the keepers of their melancholy victim; they watched her movements; they dictated her actions; they forbade all intercourse with her own brother; they duped her into accepting bills, and let her be arrested for the amount. They exercised the most cruel and capricious tyranny upon her, now menacing her with the publication of her follies, and now with the still more horrible enforcement of a contract that thus betrayed its anticipated inflictions! Can you imagine a more disgusting exhibition of how weak and how worthless human nature may be, than this scene exposes? On the one hand, a combination of sex and age, disregarding the most sacred obligations, and trampling on the most tender ties, from a mean greediness of lucre, that neither honour or gratitude or nature could appease, "Lucri bonus est odor exrequalibet." On the other hand, the poor shrivelled relic of what once was health, and youth, and animation, sought to be embraced in its infection, and caressed in its infirmity-crawled over and corrupted by the human reptiles, before death had shovelled it to the less odious and more natural vermin of the grave! What an object for the speculations of avarice! What an angel for the idolatry of youth! Gentlemen, when this miserable dupe to her own doting vanity and the vice of others, saw how she was treated--when she found herself controlled by the mother, beset by the daughter, beggared by the father, and held by the son as a kind of windfall, that, too rotten to keep its hold, had fallen at his feet to be squeezed and trampled; when she saw the intercourse of her relatives prohibited, the most trifling remembrances of her ancient friendship denied, the very exercise of her habitual charity denounced; when she saw that all she was worth was to be surrendered to a family confiscation, and that she was herself to be gibbetted in the chains of wedlock, an example to every superannuated dotard, upon whose plunder the ravens of the world might calculate, she came to the wisest determination of her life, and decided that her fortune should remain at her own disposal. Acting upon this decision, she wrote to Mr. Blake, complaining of the cruelty with which she had been treated, desiring the restoration of the contract of which she had been duped, and declaring, as the only

means of securing respect, her final determination as to the control over her property. To this letter, addressed to the son, a verbal answer (mark the conspiracy) was returned from the mother, withholding all consent, unless the property was settled on her family, but withholding the contract at the same time. The wretched old woman could not sustain this conflict. She was taken seriously ill, confined for many months in her brother's house, from whom she was so cruelly sought to be separated, until the debts in which she was involved and a recommended change of scene transferred her to Dublin. There she was received with the utmost kindness by her relative, Mr. Mac Namara, to whom she confided the delicacy and distress of her situation. That gentleman, acting at once as her agent and her friend, instantly repaired to Galway, where he had an interview with Mr. Blake. This was long before the commencement of any action. A conversation took place between them on the subject, which must, in my mind, set the present action at rest altogether; because it must show that the non-performance of the contract originated entirely with the plaintiff himself. Mr. Mac Namara inquired, whether it was not true, that Mr. Blake's own family declined any connection, unless Mrs. Wilkins consented to settle on them the entire of her property? Mr. Blake replied it was. Mr. Mac Namara rejoined, that her contract did not bind her to any such extent. "No," replied Mr. Blake, "I know it does not; however, tell Mrs. Wilkins that I understand she has about 580l. a year, and I will be content to settle the odd 801. on her by way of pocket money." Here, of course, the conversation ended, which Mr. Mac Namara detailed, as he was desired, to Mrs. Wilkins, who rejected it with the disdain, which, I hope, it will excite in every honourable mind. A topic, however, arose during the interview, which unfolds the motives and illustrates the mind of Mr. Blake more than any observation which I can make on it. As one of the inducements to the projected marriage, he actually proposed the prospect of a 50l. annuity as an officer's widow's pension, to which she would be en titled in the event of his decease! I will not stop to remark on the delicacy of this inducement-I will not dwell on the ridicule of the anticipation—I will not advert to the glaring dotage on which he speculated, when he could seriously hold out to a wo man of her years the prospect of such an improbable survivor

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ship. But I do ask you, of what materials must the man be composed who could thus debase the national liberality! What! was the recompense of that lofty heroism which has almost appropriated to the British navy the monopoly of maritime renown-was that grateful offering which a weeping country pours into the lap of its patriot's widow, and into the cradle of its warrior's orphan-was that generous consolation with which a nation's gratitude cheers the last moments of her dying hero, by the portraiture of his children sustained and ennobled by the legacy of his achievements, to be thus deliberately perverted into the bribe of a base, reluctant, unnatural prostitution! Oh! I know of nothing to parallel the self-abasement of such a deed, except the audacity that requires an honourable jury to abet it. The following letter from Mr. Anthony Martin, Mr. Blake's attorney, unfolded the future plans of this unfeeling conspiracy. Perhaps the Gentlemen would wish also to cushion this document? They do not. Then I shall read it. The letter is addressed to Mrs. Wilkins.

"Galway, Jan. 9, 1817.

"MADAM,—I have been applied to, professionally, by Lieutenant Peter Blake, to take proceedings against you on rather an unpleasant occasion; but, from every letter of your's, and other documents, together with the material and irreparable loss Mr. Blake has sustained in his professional prospects by means of your proposals to him, makes it indispensably necessary for him to get remuneration from you. Under these circumstances, I am obliged to say, that I have his directions to take immediate proceedings against you, unless he is in some measure compensated for your breach of promise to him. I should feel happy that you would save me the necessity of acting professionally by settling the business, [You see, Gentlemen, money, money, money, runs through the whole amour,] and not suffer it to come to a public investigation, particularly, as I conceive, from the legal advice Mr. Blake has got, together with all I have seen, it will ultimately terminate most honourably to his advantage, and to your pecuniary loss.—I have the honour to remain, Madam, your very humble servant, "ANTHONY MARTIN."

Indeed, I think Mr. Anthony Martin is mistaken. Indeed, I think no twelve men, upon their oaths will say (even admitting the truth of all he asserts) that it was honourable for a British

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