The Sun.
London, England, 1844-01-31 00:00:00

in my humble judgment, a public prosecutor, and more
especially one who holds the high and dignified position
of an Attorney-General—the first law officer of her Ma-
jesty—has no right to abandon the direct and obvious
path which lies before him, and to adopt the tor-
tuous and complicated course of a prosecution for
conspiracy, with a view to implicate one man in the
acts and designs of others; and in adopting such a
course of proceeding I have no hesitation in charac-
terising his conduct as equally unfair, oppres-
sive, and unjust. Gentlemen, the Attorney-General
took up all the meetings seriatim. He began with
them according to their dates, and gradually came down
to the latest of them; and he assured you, in emphatic
language, that they were one and all illegal. He read
far you a number of speeches which were delivered at
meetings, which he declared were seditious ; and he also
directed your attention to certain extracts from articles
which
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unconsciously, pronouncing the severest philippic that it
was possible for the mind of man to conceive, against
hinseelf and the Government that he serves. For,
gentlemen, am I not entitled to view this matter in
the calm light of common sense ? Am I not entitled
to ask a question which presses itself irresistibly on the
mind of every man who dispassionately regards the con-
duct of the Crown prosecutors in the present extraor-
dinary proceedings? Those meetings lasted for nine
months—if they were, indeed, illegal—if it was, in-
deed, true, that the people were lured into outraging the
law of the country—if language of a seditious character
was indeed uttered by the Repeal leaders from day to
day, and from hour to hour—how, I ask, can the Attor-
ney-General reconcile it to his own conscience—how, I
ask, can he reconcile it to the duty which he owes to
the country and to the Government whose servant he
is, that for such a length of time he should have ut-
terly neglected the great and paramount business of his
office—the bringing to justice those who violate the
law and the constitution? Did he lie designedly
by, in order that crime might accumulate, and that,
when at length he shook off his lethargy, he
might be able to encompass whole masses of cri-
minals within the meshes of the law ? Was this,
I ask, his object ? Was this the object of the
Government whose officer he boasts to be? Gentlemen,
it is the obvious duty of a Government to bring to
punishment those who violate the law ; but, gentlemen,
they have a yet more important duty to perform—a duty
with the due performance of which the best interests
of the common weal are yet more inseparably identified,
and that duty consists in preventing the commission of
crime; and if it was the deliberate opinion of the At-
torney-General that the meetings were illegal—and if he
declared that opinion to the Government, and if the Go-
vernment felt that the meetings were illegal, and the
speeches seditious—if, I say, they knew all this, and
knowing all' this, lay designedly by in ambuscade
while they saw crime committed—while they saw
the infatuated people rushing in masses into
the perpetration of crime—if this, I repeat, was
their design, I have no hesitation in branding
such a design, on the part of any Goveroment, as an
act of the greatest—the blackest—the most unparalleled
baseness. What! Look calmly on while they saw the
people rushing by thousands into the comnaiksion of
crime ! Was it their design to look calmly on with
folded arms till they had a whole nation within their
meshes, in order that the Attorney-General might then
pick and choose such of the criminals as he pleased, and
immolate what victims he liked upon the altar of the
law ? But, my Lords and gentlemen, let me not be mis-
understood—let no man say that I impute any such
design to the Government. Far be it from me to bring
any such charge against them ; but I must say that the
speech of the Attorney-General, and the fact of the
Government having lain by for such a length of time.
afford ground for making some charge against some
quarter. I, for my part, do not make any such charge
against the Government—l impute to them no such
design—nor is anything more remote from my
thoughts than the desire of attributing so nefarious an
intention to the Attorney-General (for nefarious it
would, indeed, have been, had it been entertained). I
cannot bring myself to believe that any Government in
these countries, whether composed of men who are, po-
litically speaking, my friends or my antagonists, could
be guilty of baseness so execrable—so detestable. No,
I impute no such crime to them. I know that there are
members of the Government (with two of them I am in-
timately acquainted) who are men of the highest ho-
nour, of the most unimpeachable integrity—men who
would fling their high places indignantly to the winds
before they would stoop to such a course. I, therefore,
do not impute to the Government any misconduct—l do
not even charge them with a criminal negligence. Their
conduct may be fairly attributed to another cause; and
I this I will at once proceed to demonstrate. It is
a fair principle of charity for one man to extend to-
wards his fellow, that when you can find a good mo-
tive to which to refer the conduct of your neighbour, it
is to that pure motive, and not to any sinister design,
that his actions ought to be attributed. I willingly
concede the benefit of this virtuous maxim to the Go-
vernment ; but may I not be pardoned if I respectfully
insist on the application of the same principle to the case
of my client ? The honest conviction of my soul is, that
although the Attorney-General has at length brought
his courage to the sticking-place, although he now
enters Court with an undismayed front, and declares that
the meetings were illegal, he never yet felt himself so
strong in that position as to venture to bring it single-
handed under the consideration of any court or any
jury. Let the result of the present prosecutions be what
it may, it is still open for the Attorney-Geni,ral to adopt
this course. Let him select any of the meetings he
pleases ; let him bring into the Court of
Queen's Bench any or all of the persons who
attended that meeting, and let him f try the ques-
tion fairly, and take the opinion of a jar-, as to whether
the meeting was or was not that had been
done, we could not be in the dark"—we could clearly see
our way ; but that has not been don'', The cause, I
think, is obvious. The Attorney-General was a lawyer,
and he could not tell the Government that the meetings
were illegal. I have no doubt but thet, in the conscien-
tious discharge of his public duty, he would have at once
pressed upon the Government the illegality of the
meetings, if his mind had been made up on that ille-
gality. If he had a deep-seated conviction that the
meetings were against the law, he surely would
have lost no time in declaring that conviction to the
Government—that he could not bear to look upon
such practices as were of daily recurrence in this
country—that he could not bear to see men rushing
in thousands into the commission of crime—and that
he accordingly thought that his duty imperatively
demanded that he should institute prosecutions
to put the meetings down. But it is my firm belief that
the Attorney-General, not being able to reconcile the
alleged illegality of the meetings with his own know-
ledge of law, was never prepared to go to such lengths—
he could not sanction any such proceeding, and this is
the reason why the meetings were permitted to go on
without interruption for nine months consecutively.
What is the use I make of this fact ?It is this—if the
Attorney-General was doubtful in his own mind that
any violation of the law had been committed—if ho was
not during nine months able to bring himself to the con-
clusion that the meetings were illegal, is he now to be
permitted to come into Court and to require a jury to as-
sert their illegality, after thousands and hundreds of thou-
sands have attended the meetings, in the full conviction that
in so doing they were violating no law, is he now to
come forward and include millions of Irishmen in the
charge of having been guilty of illegal practices? He
could not make up his own mind that the meetings were
illegal, and yet he calls upon twelve men to assert their
illegality. Whenever you find an Attorney-General
abandoning the obvious and easy course which lies be-
fore him, in order to adopt a tortuous and complicated
one, you ought not, nor ought any jury, to lend him as-
sistance in carrying out such a project. The Attorney-
General having gone seriatim through all the meetings,
came at length to the contemplated meeting of the Bth
of October, at Clontarf, and never did I experience a
greater degree of surprise than in hearing him as-
sert that the intended meeting was abandoned from
a conviction of its illegality. I am sure the At-
torney-General entertained that opinion or lie would
not have expressed it ; but I am equally certain
there is not another individual in the community, who
knows anything of the facts and circumstances relating
to that meeting, that for a moment thinks that the cause
of its abandonment was from any conviction of its ille-
gality. Does the Attorney-General forget, or does. he
expect that the people of this country will forget, the ex-
' traordinary circumstances which occurred with regard
to that meeting ? Does he forget the almost breathless
haste and precipitancy with which the Lord Lieutenant
' came over to this country, on the day, or the day but
one before that meeting? Does he forget that far-famed
proclamation, issued the night preceding the day on which
the meeting was to have been held, or does he forget
the exertions that were made on the part of the Govern-
ment to suppress, to put down that meeting by the force
of the sword, the bayonet, and the cannon? And does the
Attorney-General after all that pretend to express to
you his opinion that that meeting was abandoned on
account of its illegality ? No, gentlemen of the jury,
that was not the cause of its abandonment. I am not
finding fault with the Government for its interference
with those proceedings. I adi unacquainted with the
circumstances under which that proclamation issued,
and I will not impute any blame where I am unacquaint-
ed with the facts ; but I must again declare that it was
through no conviction of its illegality that meeting
was abandoned. To what then was it owing ? To the
act of one of the traversers at your bar—to his strong
sense of justice, and to his strong feelings of humanity.
The abandonment of that meeting was owing to the
sense which that gentleman entertained of his high duties
as an honest citizen. He knew the fearful consequences
that might have resulted had that meeting taken place ;
and picture to yourselves for a moment what might have
happened had it been gone on with. How does the
matter stand ? On the one side were the armed batta-
lions of Britain, under the direction of their most expe-
rienced leaders—armed with every weapon of defence,
and of offence, and ready to act in obedience to the
commands of those leaders, and to do whatever they
!nigh tthink right. On the other side, you had an
unarmed and defenceless . multitude. Gentlemen,
had a collision under such circumstances taken
place, had the slightest angry word been said
which might have provoked it—had even an
accident occurred which might lead to it—you would
have had the armed battalions of this country, in the
full plenitude of their strength, arrayed against the un-
armed, helpless and, I may add, defenoeless multitude.
It is really frightful to contempktte what the conse-
quencesght have been ; and the plains of Clontarf,
utfor the exertions of Mr. O'Connell, might have been
a_secon time deluged with the blood of his countrymen.
Mr. O'Connell stopped that meeting, not, as I said, be-
cause he considered it illegal, but
have resulted,
he foresaw the
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the
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warmave gratitu eanodf ienv lnyy friend of humanity for his conduct on that occasion;
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