without bed or food. The next morning his humane keeper, the major, appeared. The plaintiff demanded, "why he was so imprisoned," complained of hunger, and asked for the gaol allowance. Major Sandys replied with a torrent of abuse, which he concluded by saying,-" Your crime is your insolence to major Sirr; however, he disdains to trample on you-you may appease him by proper and contrite submission; but unless you do so, you shall rot where you are.—I tell you this, that if government will not protect us, by God, we will not protect them. You will probably, (for I know your insolent and ungrateful hardiness,) attempt to get out by an habeas corpus; but in that you will find yourself mistaken, as such a rascal deserves." Hevey was insolent enough to issue a habeas corpus, and a return was made upon it" that Hevey was in custody under a warrant from general Craig, on a charge of treason." That this return was a gross falsehood, fabricated by Sirr, I am instructed to assert.Let him prove the truth of it if he can. The judge, before whom this return was brought, felt that he had no authority to liberate the unhappy prisoner; and thus, by a most inhuman and malicious lie, my client was again remanded to the horrid mansion of pestilence and famine. Mr. Curran proceeded to describe the feelings of Mr. Hevey-the despair of his friends-the ruin of his affairs-the insolence of Sandys-his offer to set him at large, on condition of making an abject submission to Sirr-the indignant rejection of Hevey-the supplication of his father and sister, rather to submit to any enemy, however base and odious, than perish in such a situation;-the repugnance of Hevey-the repetition of kind remonstrances, and the final submission of Hevey to their entreaties;--his signing a submission, dictated by Sandys, and his enlargement from confinement. Thus, said Mr. Curran, was he kicked from his gaol into the common mass of his fellow slaves, by yielding to the tender entreaties of the kindred that loved him, to sign, what was, in fact, a release of his claim to the common rights of a human creature, by humbling himself to the brutal arrogance of a pampered slave. But he did suffer the dignity of his nature to be subdued by its kindness; -he has been enlarged, and he has brought the present action As to the facts that he had stated, Mr. Curran said, he would make a few observations :--it might be said for the defendant. that much of what was stated may not appear in proof. To

that, he said, he would not have so stated, if he had not seen major Sandys in court; he had therefore put the facts against him in a way, which he thought the most likely to rouse him to a defence of his own character, if he dared to be examined as a witness. He had, he trusted, made him feel, that he had no way of escaping universal detestation, but by denying those charges, if they are false; and if they were not denied, being thus publicly asserted, his entire case was admitted-his original oppression in the provost was admitted-his robbery of the cup was admitted-his robbery of the mare was admitted-the lie so audaciously forged on the habeas corpus was admitted-the extortion of the infamous apology was admitted.—Again, said Mr. Curran, I challenge this worthy compeer of a worthy compeer to make his election, between proving his guilt by his own corporal oath, or by the more credible modesty of his silence. And now, said Mr. Curran, I have given you a mere sketch of this extraordinary history. No country governed by any settled laws, or treated with common humanity, could furnish any occurrences of such unparalleled atrocity; and if the author of Caleb Williams, or of the Simple Story, were to read the tale of this man's sufferings, it might, I think, humble the vanity of their talents, (if they are not too proud to be vain,) when they saw how much a more fruitful source of incident could be found in the infernal workings of the heart of a malignant slave, than in the richest copiousness of the most fertile and creative imagination. But it is the destiny of Ireland to be the scene of such horrors, and to be stung by such reptiles to madness and to death. And now, said Mr. Curran, I feel a sort of melancholy pleasure, in getting rid of this odious and nauseous subject. It remains to me only to make a few observations as to the damages you ought to give, if you believe the case of the plaintiff to be as I have stated. I told you before, that neither pride nor spirit belong to our situation; I should be sorry to influence you into any apish affectation of the port or stature of freedom or independence. But my advice to you is, to give the full amount of the damages laid in the declaration; and I'll tell you why I give you that advice: I think no damages could be excessive, either as a compensation for the injury of the plaintiff, or as a punishment of the savage barbarity of the defendant; but my reasons for giving you this advice lie much deeper than such considerations; they spring from a

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view of our present most forlorn and disastrous situation. You are now in the hands of another country; that country has no means of knowing your real condition, except by information. that she may accidentally derive from transactions of a public nature. No printer would dare to publish the thousand instances of atrocity, which we have witnessed as hideous as the present, nor any of them, unless he did it in some sort of confidence, that he could scarcely be made a public sacrifice by brutal force, for publishing what was openly proved in a court of justice. Mr. Curran here made some pointed observations on the state of a country, where the freedom of the press is extinguished, and where another nation, by whose indolent mercy, or whose instigated fury, we may be spared, or sacrificed, can know nothing of the extent of our sufferings, or our delinquency, but by casual hearsay. I know, said he, that those philosophers have been abused, who think that men are born in a state of war. Iconfess I go further, and firmly think they cannot be reclaimed to a state of peace. When I see the conduct of man to man, I believe it. When I see the list of offences in every criminal code of Europe--when I compare the enormity of their crimes with the still greater enormity of their punishments, I retain no doubt upon the subject. But if I could hesitate as to men in the same community, I have no doubt of the inextinguishable malignity that will for ever inflame nation against nation. Well was it said, that a “ nation has no heart;" towards each other they are uniformly envious, vindictive, oppressive, and unjust. What did Spain feel for the murders or the robberies of the west ?-nothing. And yet, at that time, she prided herself as much as England ever did on the elevation of her sentiment, and the refinement of her morality. Yet what an odious spectacle did she exhibit?--her bosom burning with all the fire of rapine and tyranny; her mouth full of the pious praises of the living God, and her hands red with the blood of his innocent and devoted creatures. When I advise you, therefore, to mark your feelings of the case before you, don't think I mean, that you could make any general impression on the morality, or tenderness of the country, whose property we are become. I am not so foolish as to hope any such effect: practical justice and humanity are virtues that require laborious acts, and mortifying privations; expect not therefore to find them; appeal not to them. But there are principles

and feelings substituted in their place, a stupid preference and admiration of self, an affectation of humanity, and a fondness for unmerited praise; these you may find, for they cost nothing; and upon them you may produce some effect. When outrages of this kind are held up to the world, as done under the sanction of their authority, they must become odious to mankind, unless they let fall some reprobation on the immediate instruments and abettors of such deeds. An Irish lord lieutenant will shrink from the imputation of countenancing them. Great Britain will see, that it cannot be her interest to encourage such an infernal spirit of subaltern barbarity, that reduces man to a condition lower than that of the beast of the field. They will be ashamed of employing such instruments as the present defendant. When the government of Ireland lately gave up the celebrated O'Brien to the hands of the executioner, I have no little reason to believe that they suffered as they deserved on the occasion. I have no doubt, but that your verdict of this day, if you act as you ought to do, will produce a similar effect. And as to England, I cannot too often inculcate upon you, that she knows nothing of our situation. When torture was the daily and ordinary system of the executive government, it was denied in London, with a profligacy of effrontery, equal to the barbarity with which it was exhibited in Dublin; and, if the facts that shall appear to-day should be stated at the other side of the water, I make no doubt, but very near one hundred worthy persons would be ready to deny their existence upon their honour, or, if necessary, upon their oaths.

I cannot also but observe to you, continued Mr. Curran, that the real state of one country is more forcibly impressed on the attention of another, by a verdict on such a subject as this, than it could be by any general description. When you endeavour to convey an idea of a great number of barbarians, practising a great variety of cruelties upon an incalculable multitude of sufferers, nothing defined or specific finds its way to the heart, nor is any sentiment excited, save that of a general erratic unappropriated commiseration. If, for instance, you wished to convey to the mind of an English matron the horrors of that direful period, when, in defiance of the remonstrance of the ever to be lamented Abercromby, our poor people were surrendered to the licentious brutality of the soldiery, by the authority of the state, you would vainly endeavour to give her a general picture of

lust, and rapine, and murder, and conflagration. By endeavouring to comprehend every thing, you would convey nothing. When the father of poetry wishes to portray the movements of contending armies, and an embattled field, he exemplifies only; he does not describe; he does not venture to describe the perplexed and promiscuous conflicts of adverse hosts; but by the acts and fates of a few individuals he conveys a notion of the vicissitudes of the fight, and the fortunes of the day. So should your story to her keep clear of generalities; instead of exhibiting the picture of an entire province, select a single object; and even in that single object do not release the imagination of your hearer from its task, by giving more than an outline; take a cottage; place the affrighted mother of her orphan daughters at the door, the paleness of death upon her face, and more than its agonies in her heart; her aching heart, her anxious ear, struggling through the mist of closing day, to catch the approaches of desolation and dishonour. The ruffian gang arrives, the feast of plunder begins, the cup of madness kindles in its circulation. The wandering glances of the ravisher become concentrated upon the shrinking and devoted victim.-You need not dilate, you need not expatiate; the unpolluted mother, to whom you tell the story of horror, beseeches you not to proceed; she presses her child to her heart, she drowns it in her tears, her fancy catches more than an angel's tongue could describe; at a single view she takes in the whole miserable succession of force, of profanation, of despair, of death. So it is in the question before us. If any man shall hear of this day's transaction, he cannot be so foolish as to suppose that we have been confined to a single character like those now brought before you. No, gentlemen; far from it; he will have too much common sense, not to know, that outrages like this are never solitary; that where the public calamity generates imps like those, their number is as the sands of the sea, and their fury as insatiable as its waves. I am therefore anxious, that our masters should have one authenticated example of the treatment which our unhappy country suffers under the sanction of their authority; it will put a strong question to their humanity, if they have any—to their prudence, if their pride will let them listen to it; or, at least, to that anxiety for reputation, to that pretention to the imaginary virtues of mildness and mercy, to which even those countries the most divested of them are so