nobility above birth, and a wealth beyond riches; who will feel that, as in the eye of that God to whose aid they have appealed, there is not the minutest difference between the rag and the robe, so in the contemplation of that law which constitutes our boast, guilt can have no protection, or innocence no tyrant; men who will have pride in proving, that the noblest adage of our noble constitution is not an illusive shadow; and that the peasant's cottage, roofed with straw and tenanted by poverty, stands as inviolate from all invasion as the mansion of the monarch.

My client's name, Gentlemen, is Connaghton, and when I have given you his name you have almost all his history. To cultivate the path of honest industry comprises, in one line, "the short and simple annals of the poor." This has been his humble, but at the same time most honourable occupation. It matters little with what artificial nothings chance may distinguish the name, or decorate the person: the child of lowly life, with virtue for its handmaid, holds as proud a title as the highest-as rich an inheritance as the wealthiest. Well has the poet of your country said that

"Princes or Lords may flourish or may fade,

A breath can make them, as a breath has made ;
But a brave peasantry, their country's pride,
When once destroy'd can never be supplied.”

For all the virtues which adorn that peasantry, which can render humble life respected, or give the highest stations their most permanent dis

An

tinctions, my client stands conspicuous. hundred years of sad vicissitude, and, in this land, often of strong temptation, have rolled away since the little farm on which he lives received his family; and during all that time not one accusation has disgraced, not one crime has sullied it. The same spot has seen his grandsire and his parent pass away from this world; the villagememory records their worth, and the rustic tear hallows their resting-place. After all, when life's mockeries shall vanish from before us, and the heart that now beats in the proudest bosom here, shall moulder unconscious beneath its kindred clay, art cannot erect a nobler monument, or genius compose a purer panegyric. Such, Gentlemen, was almost the only inheritance with which my client entered the world. He did not disgrace it; his youth, his manhood, his age, up to this moment, have passed without a blemish; and he now stands confessedly the head of the little village in which he lives. About five-and-twenty years ago he married the sister of a highly respectable Roman Catholic clergyman, by whom he had a family of seven children, whom they educated in the principles of morality and religion, and who, until the defendant's interference, were the pride of their humble home, and the charm or the consolation of its vicissitudes. In their virtuous children the rejoicing parents felt their youth renewed, their age made happy: the days of labour became holidays in their smile; and if the hand of affliction pressed on them, they looked upon their little

ones, and their mourning ended. I cannot paint the glorious host of feelings; the joy, the love, the hope, the pride, the blended paradise of rich emotions with which the God of nature fills the father's heart when he beholds his child in all its filial loveliness, when the vision of his infancy rises as it were reanimate before him, and a divine vanity exaggerates every trifle into some mysterious omen, which shall smooth his aged wrinkles, and make his grave a monument of honour! I cannot describe them; but, if there be a parent on the jury, he will comprehend me. It is stated to me, that of all his children there were none more likely to excite such feelings in the plaintiff than the unfortunate subject of the present action; she was his favourite daughter, and she did not shame his preference. You shall find, most satisfactorily, that she was without stain or imputation; an aid and a blessing to her parents, and an example to her younger sisters, who looked up to her for instruction. She took a pleasure in assisting in the industry of their home; and it was at a neighbouring market, where she went to dispose of the little produce of that industry, that she unhappily attracted the notice of the defendant. Indeed, such a situation was not without its interest,-a young female, in the bloom of her attractions, exerting her faculties in a parent's service, is an object lovely in the eye of God, and, one would supposé, estimable in the eye of mankind. Far different, however, were the sensations which she excited in the defendant. He saw her arrayed, as

he confesses, in charms that enchanted him; but her youth, her beauty, the smile of her innocence, and the piety of her toil, but inflamed a brutal and licentious lust, that should have blushed itself away in such a presence. What cared he for the consequences of his gratification?—There was

"No honour, no relenting ruth,

To paint the parents fondling o'er their child,

Then show the ruin'd maid, and her distraction wild!

What thought he of the home he was to desolate? What thought he of the happiness he was to plunder? His sensual rapine paused not to contemplate the speaking picture of the cottage-ruin, the blighted hope, the broken heart, the parent's agony, and, last and most withering in the woful group, the wretched victim herself starving on the . sin of a promiscuous prostitution, and at length perhaps, with her own hand, anticipating the more tedious murder of its diseases! He need not, if I am instructed rightly, have tortured his fancy for the miserable consequences of hope bereft, and expectation plundered. Through no very distant vista, he might have seen the form of deserted loveliness weeping over the worthlessness of his worldly expiation, and warning him, that as there were cruelties no repentance could atone, so there were sufferings neither wealth, nor time, nor absence could alleviate.* If his memory should fail

*Mr. PHILLIPS here alluded to a verdict of 5000l. obtained at the late Galway Assizes against the defendant, at the suit of

him, if he should deny the picture, no man can tell him half so efficiently as the venerable advocate he has so judiciously selected, that a case might arise, where, though the energy of native virtue should defy the spoliation of the person, still crushed affection might leave an infliction on the mind, perhaps less deadly, but certainly not less indelible. I turn from this subject with an indignation which tortures me into brevity; I turn to the agents by which this contamination was effected.

I almost blush to name them, yet they were worthy of their vocation. They were no other than a menial servant of Mr. Dillon; and a base, abandoned, profligate ruffian, a brother-in-law of the devoted victim herself, whose bestial appetites he bribed into subserviency! It does seem as if by such a selection he was determined to degrade the dignity of the master while he violated the finer impulses of the man, by not merely associating with his own servant, but by diverting the purest streams of social affinity into the vitiated sewer of his enjoyment. Seduced by such instruments into a low public-house at Athlone, this unhappy girl heard, without suspicion, their mercenary panegyric of the defendant, when, to her amazement, but no doubt, according to their previous arrangement, he entered and joined their company. I do con

Miss Wilson, a very beautiful and interesting young lady, for a breach of promise of marriage. Mr. WHITESTONE, who now pleaded for Mr. Dillon, was Miss Wilson's advocate against him on the occasion alluded to.