over the wounds of slander? He who ridicules my poverty, or reproaches my profession, upbraids me with that which industry may retrieve, and integrity may purify: but what riches shall redeem the bankrupt fame? what power shall blanch the sullied snow of character? Can there be an injury more deadly? Can there be a crime more cruel? It is without remedy-it is without antidote-it is without evasion! The reptile calumny is ever on the watch. From the fascination of its eye no activity can escape; from the venom of its fang no sanity can recover. It has no enjoyment but crime; it has no prey but virtue; it has no interval from the restlessness of its malice, save when, bloated with its victims, it grovels to disgorge them at the withered shrine where envy idolizes her own infirmities. Under such a visitation how dreadful would be the destiny of the virtuous and the good, if the providence of our constitution had not given you the power, as, I trust, you will have the principle, to bruise the head of the serpent, and crush and crumble the altar of its idulatry!

And now, Gentlemen, having toiled through this narrative of unprovoked and pitiless persecution, I should with pleasure consign my client to your hands, if a more imperative duty did not still remain to me, and that is, to acquit him of every personal motive in the prosecution of this action. No; in the midst of slander, and suffering, and severities unexampled, he has had no thought, but, that as his enemies evinced how malice could persecute, he should exemplify how religion could endure; that if his piety failed to affect the oppressor, his patience might at least avail to fortify the afflicted. He was as the rock of Scripture before the face of infidelity. The rain of the deluge had fallen-it only smoothed his asperities: the wind of the tempest beat-it only blanched his brow: the rod, not of prophecy, but of persecution, smote him; and the desert, glittering with the Gospel dew, became a miracle of the faith it would have tempted! No, Gentlemen; not selfishly has he appealed to this tribunal: but the venerable religion wounded in his character, but the august priesthood vilified in his person,but the doubts of the sceptical, hardened by his acquiescence,― but the fidelity of the feeble, hazarded by his forbearance, goaded him from the profaned privacy of the cloister into this repulsive scene of public accusation. In him this reluctance

SPEECH OF MR. PHILLIPS

IN THE CASE OF

CONNAGHTON v. DILLON:

DELIVERED IN THE COUNTY COURT-HOUSE OF ROSCOMMON.

My Lord and Gentlemen,

In this case I am one of the counsel for the Plaintiff, who has directed me to explain to you the wrongs for which, at your hands, he solicits reparation. It appears to me a case which undoubtedly merits much consideration, as well from the novelty of its appearance amongst us, as for the circumstances by which it is attended. Nor am I ashamed to say, that in my mind, not the least interesting of those circumstances is, the poverty of the man who has made this appeal to me. Few are the consolations which soothe-hard must be the heart which does not feel for him. He is, Gentlemen, a man of lowly birth and humble station; with little wealth but from the labour of his hands, with no rank but the integrity of his character, with no recreation but in the circle of his home, and with no ambition, but, when his days are full, to leave that little circle the inheritance of an honest name, and the treasure of a good man's memory. Far inferior, indeed, is he in this respect to his more fortunate antagonist. He, on the contrary, is amply either blessed or cursed with those qualifications which enable a man to adorn or disgrace the society in which he lives. He is, I understand, the representative of an honourable name, the relative of a distinguished family, the supposed heir to their virtues, the indisputable inheritor of their riches. He has been for many years a resident of your county, and has had the advantage of collecting round him all those recollections, which, springing from the scenes of school-boy association, or from the more matured enjoyments of the man, crowd, as it were, unconsciously to the heart, and cling with a venial partiality to the companion and the

friend. So impressed, in truth, has he been with these advantages, that, surpassing the usual expenses of a trial, he has selected a tribunal where he vainly hopes such considerations will have weight, and where he well knows my client's humble rank can have no claim but that to which his miseries may entitle him. I am sure, however, he has wretchedly miscalculated. I know none of you personally; but I have no doubt I am addressing men who will not prostrate their consciences before privilege or power; who will remember that there is a 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 1 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 destroyed 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 distinctions, my client stands conspicuous. A 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 village memory 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 here 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 suppose, 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 gratifica tion ?-There was

"No honour, no relenting ruth,

To paint the parents fondling o'er their child,

Then show the ruined 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 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 tortues 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.

* MR. PHILLIPS here alluded to u verdict of 50001. obtained at the late Galway Assizes against the defendant, at the suit of 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 occa sion alluded to.