client; I will tell you it is to discredit the testimony of Mr. Reynolds; when you have heard our evidences to this point, I cannot suppose you will give your verdict to doom to death the unhappy and unfortunate prisoner at the bar, and entail infamy on his posterity. We will also produce respectable witnesses to the hitherto unimpeached character of the prisoner at the bar, that he was a man of fair honest character; you, gentlemen of the jury, have yourselves known him a number of years in this city: let me ask you, do you not know that the prisoner at the bar has always borne the character of a man of integrity, and of honest fame; and, gentlemen of the jury, I call upon you to answer my question by your verdict.-I feel myself imprest with the idea in my breast, that you will give your verdict of acquittal of the prisoner at the bar; and that by your verdict you will declare on your oaths, that you do not believe one syllable that Mr. Reynolds has told you. Let me entreat you to put in one scale, the base, the attainted, the unfounded, the perjured witness; and in the opposite scale, let me advise you to put the testimony of the respectable witnesses produced against Mr. Reynolds, and the witnesses on the prisoner's hitherto unimpeached character; and you will hold the balances with justice, tempered with mercy, as your consciences in future will approve. Let me depart from the scene of beholding human misery, should the life of my client by your verdict be forfeited; should he live by your verdict of acquittal, he would rank as the kindest father, and protector of his little children, as the best of husbands, and of friends, and ever maintain that irreproachable character he has hitherto sustained in private life.-Should our witnesses not exculpate the prisoner from the crimes charged on him, to the extent as charged in the indictment, I pray to God to give you the judgment and understanding to acquit him. Do not imagine I have made use of any arguments to mislead your consciences, or to distress your feelings: no-but if you conceive a doubt in your minds, that the prisoner is innocent of the crime of high treason, I pray to God to give you firmness of mind to acquit him. I now leave you, gentlemen of the jury, to the free exercise of your own judgments in the verdict you may give. I have not, by way of supplication, addressed you in argument; I do not wish to distress your feelings from supplications; it would be most unbefitting to your candour and understanding;—you

are bound by your oaths to find a true verdict according to the evidence; and you do not deserve the station of jurors, the constitution has placed you in, if you do not discharge the trust the constitution has vested in you, to give your verdict freely and indifferently, according to your consciences.

MR. BOND WAS FOUND GUILTY.

32*

SPEECH OF MR. CURRAN,

IN DEFENCE OF

LADY PAMELA FITZGERALD, AND HER INFANT CHILDREN,

AT THE BAR OF THE HOUSE OF COMMONS IN IRELAND.

LORD EDWARD FITZGERALD having died in prison, before trial, of the wound he received in resisting the person who apprehended him, a bill was brought into parliament to attaint him after his death. Mr. Curran was heard at the bar of the House of Commons against the bill, as counsel for the widow and infant children of that nobleman, (the eldest of whom was only four years old,) on which occasion Mr. Curran delivered the following speech.

MR. CURRAN.-Mr. Curran said, he rose in support of a petition presented on behalf of lord Henry Fitzgerald, brother of the deceased lord Edward Fitzgerald, of Pamela his widow, Edward his only son and heir, an infant of the age of four years, Pamela his eldest daughter, of the age of two years, and Lucy his youngest child, of the age of three months, against the bill of attainder then before the committee. The bill of attainder, he said, had formed the division of the subject into two parts. It asserted the fact of the late lord Edward's treason; and, secondly, it purported to attaint him, and to vest his property in the crown. He would follow the same order. As to the first bill, he could not but remark upon the strange looseness of the allegation: the bill stated that he had, during his life, and since the first of November last, committed several acts of high treason, without stating what, or when, or where, or with whom it then affected to state the different species of treason of which he had been guilty. namely, conspiring to levy war, and endeavouring to persuade

the enemies of the king to invade the country; the latter allegation was not attempted to be proved! the conspiring, without actually levying war, was clearly no high treason, and had been repeatedly so determined. Upon this previous and important question, namely the guilt of lord Edward, (and without the full proof of which no punishment can be just,) he had been asked by the committee, if he had any defence to go into? he was con founded by a question which he could not answer; but upon a very little reflection, he saw in that very confusion the most conclusive proof of the injustice of the bill. For what, he said, can be more flagrantly unjust, than to inquire into a fact, of the truth or falsehood of which, no human being can have knowledge, save the informer who comes forward to assert it. Sir, said he, I now answer the question. I have no defensive evidence! I have no case! it is impossible I should,-I have often of late gone to the dungeon of the captive; but never have I gone to the grave of the dead to receive instructions for his defence-nor in truth have I ever before been at the trial of a dead man? I offer therefore no evidence upon this inquiry; against the perilous example of which, I do protest on behalf of the public, and against the cruelty and injustice of which I do protest in the name of the dead father, whose memory is SOUGHT to be dishonoured, and of his infant orphans, whose bread is soUGHT to be taken away. Some observations, and but a few, upon the assertions of Reynolds, I will make. [Mr. Curran then observed upon the credit of Reynolds by his own confession.] I do verily believe him in that instance, even though I have heard him assert it upon his oath, by his own confession, an informer, and a bribed informer ;—a man whom even respectable witnesses had sworn in a court of justice upon their oaths not to be credible on his oath ;—a man upon whose single testimony no jury ever did, nor ever ought, to pronounce a verdict of guilty ;—a kind of man to whom the law resorts with abhorrence and from necessity, in order to set the criminal against the crime, but who is made use of by the law upon the same reasons that the most noxious poisons are resorted to in medicine. If such the man, look for a moment at his story; he confines himself to mere conversation only, with a dead man. He ventures not to introduce any third person, living or even dead! he ventures to state to act whatever done; he wishes indeed to asperse the conduct of lady Edward Fitzgerald, but he well knew.

that, even were she in the country, she could not be adduced as a witness to disprove him.

See therefore if there be any one assertion to which credit can be given, except this, that he has sworn, and foresworn; that he is a traitor; that he has received five hundred guineas to be an informer, and that his general reputation is to be unworthy of credit.

As to the papers, it was sufficient to say, that no one of them, nor even all of them, were even asserted to contain any positive proof against lord Edward; that the utmost that could be deduced from them was nothing more than doubt or conjecture, which, had lord Edward been living, might have been easily explained, to explain which was now impossible, and upon which to found a sentence of guilt would be contrary to every rule of justice or humanity.

He would therefore pass to the second question. Was this bill of attainder warranted by the principles of reason? the principles of forfeiture in the law of treason? or the usage of parliament in bills of attainder? The subject was of necessity very long; it had nothing to attract attention, but much to repel it. But he trusted the anxiety of the committee for justice, notwithstanding any dullness either in the subject or in the speaker, would secure to him their attention. Mr. Curran then went into a minute detail of the principles of the law of forfeiture for high treason. The laws of the Persians, and Macedonians, extended the punishment of the traitor to the extinction of all his kindred. That law subjected the property and life of every man to the most complicated despotism, because the loyalty of every individual of his kindred was a matter of wild caprice, as the will of the most arbitrary despot could be.

This principle was never adopted in any period of our law: at the earliest times of the Saxons, the law of treason acted directly only on the person of the criminal; it took away from him what he actually had to forfeit-his life and property. But as to his children, the law disclaimed to affect them directly; they suffered, but they suffered by a necessary consequence of their father's punishment, which the law could not prevent and never directly intended. It took away the inheritance, because the criminal, at the time of taking it away, had absolute dominion over it, and might himself have conveyed it away from his family.