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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 waive the topic; and I again tell you, that if what I know will be his chief defenee were true, it should avail him nothing. He had no right to speculate on this wretched creature's levity to ruin her, and still less to ruin her family. Remember, however, Gentlemen, that even had this wretched child been indiscreet, it is not in her name we ask for 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 hopeI 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 consequenees the nonobservance 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 effcets; but which, if it be either unsuitable or compulsory, engenders not only individual misery, but consequences universally pernicious. There are few contracts be tween human beings which should be more deliberate than that of marriage. I admit it should be very cau

tiously 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 the monies 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 vainglorious 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 amorous youth Who was caught in his grandmother's bed;

But owns he had ne'er such a liquorish tooth,
As to wish to be there in his stead."

Royal wisdom has said that we live in a "NEW ERA.” The reign of old women has commenced, and if Johanna Southcote converts England to her creed, why should not Ireland, less pious perhaps, but at least equally passionate, kneel before the shrine of the irresistible WIDOW WILKINS. It appears, Gentlemen, to have been her happy fate to have subdued particularly the deathdealing professions. Indeed in the love episodes of the heathen mythology, Mars and Venus were considered as inseparable. I know not whether any of you have ever seen a very beautiful print representing the fatal glory of Quebec, and the last moments of its immortal conqueror-if so, you must have observed the figure of the Staff physician, in whose arms the hero is expiring-that identical personage, my Lord, was the happy swain, who, forty or fifty years ago, received the reward of his valour and his skill in the virgin hand of my venerable client! The Doctor lived something more than a century, during a great part of which Mrs. Wilkins was his companion-alas, Gentlemen, long as he lived, he lived not long enough to behold her beauty

"That beauty, like the Aloe flower,

But blossom'd and bloom'd at fourscore."

He was, however, so far fascinated as to bequeath to her the legacies of his patients, when he found he was predoomed to follow them. To this circumstance, very far

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