claiming the value of his daughter's servitude; but let it not be thought that it is for her mere manual labours he solicits compensation. No, you are to compensate him for all he has suffered, for all he has to suffer, for feelings outraged, for gra tifications plundered, for honest pride put to the blush, for the exiled endearments of his once happy home, for all those innumerable and instinctive ecstacies with which a virtuous daughter fills her father's heart, for which language is too poor to have a name, but of which nature is abundantly and richly eloquent! Do not suppose I am endeavouring to influence you by the power of declamation. I am laying down to you the British law, as liberally expounded and solemnly adjudged. I speak the language of the English Lord Eldon, a judge of great experience and greater learning(Mr. Phillips here cited several cases as decided by Lord Eldon.)-Such, Gentlemen, is the language of Lord Eldon, I speak also on the authority of our own Lord Avonmore, a judge who illuminated the bench by his genius, endeared it by his suavity, and dignified it by his bold uncompromising probity; one of those rare men, who hid the thorns of law beneath the flowers of literature, and, as it were, with the wand of an enchanter, changed a wilderness into a garden! I speak upon that high authority-but I speak on other authority paramount to all!-on the authority of nature rising up within the heart of man, and calling for vengeance upon such an outrage. God forbid, that in a case of this kind, we were to grope our way through the ruins of antiquity, and

blunder over statutes, and burrow through black letter, in search of an interpretation which Providence has engraved in living letters on every human heart. Yes; if there be one amongst you blessed with a daughter, the smile of whose infancy still cheers your memory, and the promise of whose youth illuminates your hope, who has endeared the toils of your manhood, whom you look up to as the solace of your declining years, whose embrace alleviated the pang of separation, whose glowing welcome hailed your oft anticipated return-oh, if there be one amongst you, to whom those recollections are dear, to whom those hopes are precious-let him only fancy that daughter torn from his caresses by a seducer's arts, and cast upon the world, robbed of her innocence,and then let him ask his heart, "what money could reprize him!"

The Defendant, Gentlemen, cannot complain that I put it thus to you. If, in place of seducing, he had assaulted this poor girl-if he had attempted by force what he has achieved by fraud, his life would have been the forfeit; and yet how trifling in comparison would have been the parent's agony! He has no right, then, to complain, if you should estimate this outrage at the price of his very existence! I am told, indeed, this gentlemen entertains an opinion, prevalent enough in the age of a feudalism, as arrogant as it was barbarous, that the poor are only a species of property, to be treated according to interest or caprice; and that wealth is at once a patent for crime, and an exemption from its consequences.

Happily for this land, the day of such opinions has passed over it-the eye of a purer feeling and more profound philosophy now beholds riches but as one of the aids to virtue, and sees in oppressed poverty only an additional stimulus to increased protection. A generous heart cannot help feeling, that in cases of this kind the poverty of the injured is a dreadful aggravation. If the rich suffer, they have much to console them; but when a poor man loses the darling of heart-the sole pleasure with which nature blessed him-how abject, how cureless is the despair of his destitution! Believe me, Gentlemen, you have not only a solemn duty to perform, but you have an awful responsibility imposed upon you. You are this day, in some degree, trustees for the morality of the people-perhaps of the whole nation; for, depend upon it, if the sluices of immorality are once opened among the lower orders, the frightful tide, drifting upon its surface all that is dignified or dear, will soon rise even to the habitations of the highest. I feel, Gentlemen, I have discharged my duty-I am sure you will do your's. I repose my client with confidence in your hands; and most fervently do I hope, that when evening shall find you at your happy fire-side, surrounded by the sacred circle of your children, you may not feel the heavy curse gnawing at your heart, of having let loose, unpunished, the prowler that may devour them.

SPEECH

OF

MR. PHILLIPS

IN THE

CASE OF CREIGHTON v. TOWNSEND:

IN THE COURT OF COMMON PLEAS,

DUBLIN.

My Lord and Gentlemen,

I am with my learned brethren Counsel for the Plaintiff. My friend Mr. Curran has told you the nature of the action. It has fallen to my lot to state more at large to you the aggression by which it has been occasioned. Believe me, it is with no paltry affectation of under-valuing my very humble powers that I wish he had selected some more experienced, or at least less credulous advocate. I feel I cannot do my duty; I am not fit to address you, I have incapacitated myself; I know not whether any of the calumnies which have so industriously anticipated this trial, have reached your ears; but I do confess they did so wound and poison mine, that to satisfy my doubts I visited the house of misery and mourning, and the scene which set scepticism at rest, has set des

cription at defiance. Had I not yielded to those interested misrepresentations, I might from my brief have sketched the fact, and from my fancy drawn the consequences; but as it is, reality rushes before my frighted memory, and silences the tongue and mocks the imagination. Believe me, Gentlemen, you are impannelled there upon no ordinary occasion; nominally, indeed, you are to repair a private wrong, and it is a wrong as deadly as human wickedness can inflict-as human weakness can endure; a wrong which annihilates the hope of the parent and the happiness of the child; which in one moment blights the fondest anticipations of the heart, and darkens the social hearth, and worse than depopulates the habitations of the happy! But, Gentlemen, high as it is, this is far from your exclusive duty. You are to do much more. You are to say whether an example of such transcendant turpitude is to stalk forth for public imitation-whether national morals are to have the law for their protection, or imported crime is to feed upon impunity-whe ther chastity and religion are still to be permitted to linger in this province, or it is to become one loathsome den of legalized prostitution-whether. the sacred volume of the Gospel, and the venerable statutes of the law are still to be respected, or converted into a pedestal on which the mob and the military are to erect the idol of a drunken adoration. Gentlemen, these are the questions you are to try; hear the facts on which your decision must be founded.

It is now about five-and-twenty years since the

L