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

IRELAND,
THE STATE TRIALS.

THIRTEENTH DAY.

(FROM OUR OWN REPORTERS.)
DUBLIN, MONDAY, JAN. 29.
COURT OF QUEEN'S BENCH.

THE QUEEN V. DANIEL O.CONNELL AND OTHERS.

The Court sat at ten o'clock. The names of the tra-
y ersers and jury having been called over, they answered
respectively to their names, with the exception of Mr
Duffy, who appeared by his attorney, Mr. Gartlan.
Mr. J. O'CONNELL rose and said—My Lord Chief
Justice, something dropped from my Counsel in his ad
mirable speech in my behalf on: Saturday, which I fear
is calculated to create a serious, apprehension in the
m.:nds of the jury with regard to me, and I therefore beg
you will allow me to off. r a few words in explanation:
I wish to say,. gentlemen of the jury, that I have always
been the advocate, and always will be the advocate, of a
full, entire, and perfect restoration of the legislative
liberties of my country; therefore, I am not one of those
of whom my counsel spoke as persons who would accept
the occasional:or even annual visit of the Imperial Parlia-
ment to Dublin, or any measure short of that of which I
speak. I don't know whether this will prejudice me in
your minds, gentlemen of the jury, but, it' it does, I
would infinitely prefer it should prejudice me, rather
than be supposed to compromise what I consider the
inalienable right of our country to an independent Par
liarnenL7(Applause.)

Mr. Mooiti, Q.C., then rose and proceeded to say—
My birds and
LoGentlemen of the .Jury, I am Counsel on
behalf of one of the traversers—the Rev. Thomas Tier-
ney—and, gentlemen, it now becomes my duty, as the
next Counsel in seniority to my friend Mr. Sheil, and in
that right, and in that character alone, to lay before
you the facts and circumstances of my --client's case.
Gentlemen, the facts and circumstances are such, that I
do, with very respectful confidence, anticipate your ver-
dict of acquittal in favour of my client. Gentlemen of
the jury, I very unfeignedly feel the great disadvantage
that I must labour under in having to address you after
the able and brilliant and eloquent display of my friend
Mr. Sheil. If that disadvantage was to be merely per-
sonal—if it could not in the slightest degree affect my
client—it would not be deserving of one second's consi-
deration. And though, gentlemen, Imust acknowledge my
perfect inability either to arouse you by wit, or delight you
by eloquence, as my Learned Friend did—although I
must acknowledge my inability to address to you one
of those affecting appeals that he made to you ; yet, I
confidently hope that you will exend to me while I am
• laying before you the facts of my client's case the same
patience, and the same attention, which I have observed
you invariably to bestow on every branch, and every feature
of this most important case. Gentlemen of the jury, there
is one observation that was used by the Attorney-General
in his opening statement in which I fully concur, and
from which fthink no man could dissent. Ile told you,
gentlemen, that this was a momentous case. He might
have added, that it comes before you under momentous
circumstances, and in momentous times ; and, certainly,
gentlemen, when we consider the great and important
question—l mean the Repeal of the Union—out of which
this prosecution has undeniably arisen ; when we con-
sider the deep and all-pervading interest that that ques-
tion has exc'ted through every part of Ireland, from one
end to the other ; when wa consider that hundreds of
thousands—l may say millions—of your countrymen
have sire Ituivocally, but peaceably, expressed their
opinion in favour of that measure; when we consider
that one of the. traversers at the bar is a gentleman pos-
. sensing the unlimited confidence of -those millions, exer-
cising and possessing a greater degree of moral influence
over the minds of his countrymen than any individual
ever possessed before over the minds of a free people, in
a free country ; when we find that man brought to the
bar of this Court, and branded, or sought to be branded,
with the crime of conspiracy ; when we consider that in
every part of this country there is the most feverish and
rest'ess anxiety with regard to the result of your ver •
diet, the Attorney-General may well, indeed, say, that
this is a momentous case. Gentlemen of the jury, I cannot
concur with the Attorney-Generale in thinking that the
prosecution which be has instituted is one that, either
in its circumstances, in its nature, or in its conduct, is
calculated for this momentous case. The Attor-
ney-General, gentlemen, has not condescended to
tell you what were his motives in instituting this prose-
cution—he has not explained to you what were the be-
nefits be expected to result from it. He would, perhaps,
have told you his object was to bring to justice a person
who violated the law ; but, if such should be his motive,
. I will be able presently to show to him, and, I hope, to
you, that there never was a case less adapted for that
purpose than the present prosecution. If the Attorney-
General expected that the effect of this prosecution
• would be to allay that feeling of irritation and animosity
that subsist throughout the laud, never was there a
• more unfortunate expedient devised or resorted to than
- the prosecution. No man can shut his eyes to this fact.
From first to last of this prosecution—from its original
institution down to the moment I am addressing you,
the conduct of the prosecutor and the Attorney-
General was such as to create a greater degree of
bitterness and animosity than ever existed in this
country before. Is it the expectation of the Attor-
nay- General that the effect of this prosecution is to
put down the discussion of the repeal of
the union ? Is that the hope or expectation of the Go-
vernment that he serves? Gentlemen, if that be what
he expects to result from it, I must confess, that in my
judgment, a more empty or idle chimera never
crossed the mind of an Attorney-General. The At-
torney-General has entered into an argument on the
question of the repeal of the union. I do not mean to
follow his example. He has held out to you what he
considers to be strong grounds to make you believe that
it was impracticable and unattainable. If the repeal of
• the union—that important question which now per-
vades in its interest every portion of this land—if that
question be so destitute of merits as the Attorney-Ge-
neral wishes to represent to you—if it be so imprac-
ticable and unattainable as he wishes to represent to
you, gentlemen, that question does not want the aid of
prosecution to put it down. If it be so destitute of
merits as he would make you believe, that ques-
tion must speedily fall by its own weakness—if, on
the other hand, that question has merits, and those
merits that hundreds, and thousands, and millions
of .your countrymen are of opinion it possesses, how
idle the hope or expectation to crush it by the prosecu-
tion of an Attorney-General ! On that great question I
mean to intimate or express no opinion of my own ; but
this I will say, without any hesitation, that let the merits
or demerits be what they may, I trust the time never
will arrive when it will be in the power of any Attorney-
General, or in the power of any Government, to crush or
stifle the discussion of any great public measure. Gen-
tlemen of the jury, it appears to me to be of importance
in this question that you should very distinctly carry in
your minds the nature of the charge that is preferred
against the.traversers at the bar. That charge is con-
fined to a single one, and that is the charge of conspiracy.
I beg you to carry in your recollection that there is no
indictment against any one of the traversers for having
attended an unlawful meeting. There is no indictment
against any of the traversers for having put forward
to the world a seditious publication ; but the single
charge that is brought and preferred against the
traversers at your bar is, that they are guilty of con
spiracy. How, ,rrentlemen, is that conspiracy sought to
he made out? By the allegation that there were meet-
ings that were unlawful attended by some of the true
versers—by the allegation that seditious speeches were
spoken and .published. But does it not at once occur to
you that if the object of the Attorney-General was to
bring to justice those who, in his opinion, violated the
law, that there was the most easy, and simple, and ob-
vious, and direct course for him to take, if the meet-
ings of which you heard so much in detail were un-
lawful? If they are unlawful now, they must have been
unlawful at the time they took place. If those
speeches are seditious now, they must have been se-
ditious when they were uttered ; and how, then, does
it happen that those meetings took place for a period
of nine months? Those speeches were uttered from
day to day, and almost from hour to hour, during that
period of time—how does it happen that the Attor-
ney-General never yet ventured to prefer an indict-
ment against any one of the individuals that attended
those assemblies, that he seeks now to brand as un-
lawful? or institute a prosecution against any one in-
dividual that uttered those speeches that he now tells
you are seditious and unlawful? On behalf of my client
in particular, and on behalf of all the traversers, I have
strung reason to complain of the course taken by the
Attorney-General. It is attempted to make one man
responsible for the acts and conduct of another. If he
says those meetings are illegal, or the speeches sedi
tious, what is more easy than for him to indict any one
that attended them or uttered those speeches? Let me
take, for instance, Mr. O'Connell. Suppose he indicted
him for leaving attended an unlawful meeting, could any
thing be more simple or easy than the proceedings on
the part of the Attorney-General? That the meetings
took place, and that Mr. O'Connell attended them, is
undeniable. The material and important facts of the
case are established to the hand of the Attorney-Gene-
ral ; and, if the meetings were unlawful, as he alleges
they are, he had nothing to do but to brand the
character of those meetings which took place, and
satisfy the Court that they were unlawful, and in
that way brought the matter to issue' in a
tingle moment, and at a single point. But have
I not reason to complain, on y
the art of in-
client,
of the course which has been adopted the l officers
of the Crown in the present impreeedenter
Cons? The Attorney-General has abandoned I;l:e°secily-
artless, unencumbered course which was open
to to have adopted—the course which I have described to
you as the simplest and most obvious that could have
been pursued by him. He flings all the traversers
headlong into one indictment—he entangles them, one
and all, within the meshes of a prosecution for con-
spiracy; and although it has appeared in evidence that
my client never was in connexion with any of the
traversers until the third of October, after all the
monster meetings had ceased, he endeavours, notwith-
standing, to make him responsible for all antecedent
acts of men with whom it was impossible that
he could have acted in concert. lie seeks to visit
him with the consequences of meetings which he never
attended ; of speebhes which he never listened to ;
and of publications which he never read ! Is this
fair ? Is this candid ? Is this ingenuous ? The At-
torney-General lies in ambuscade for months—he then
suddenly rushes at, and avails himself of, the peculiar
doctrines of the law as regards the crime of conspiracy. '
Contrary to the principles of justice, which delare that
a man is only to be made accountable for his own
works and his own acts, he endeavours to hold my client
responsible for the thoughts, the words, and the actions
of other men My Lords, and Gentlemen of the jury

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 con-duct 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
fur you 'a number of speeches which were delivered at
meetings, which he declared were seditious ; and healso
directed your attention to certain extracts from articles
which appeared in newspapers, and which he likewise
characterised as illegal ; but, gentlemen, it certainly did
appear to me that the Attorney-General in making these
statements to you, was most unwittingly, and most
unconsciously, pronouncing the severest philippic that it
was possible for the mind of man to conceive, against
hinismlf 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 jacked 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 ha
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 ; hut, gentlemon,
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 committei—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 commission 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 suchcharge against them ; but I must say that the
spech of the Attornay-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
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-General to adopt
this course. Let him select any of the meetings he
pleases ; let him bring into the Court of
Queen's Bench aly or all of the persons who
attended that meeting, and let him try the ques-
tion fairly, and take the opinion of a jury as to whether
the meeting was or was not illegal. If that had been
done, we could not be in the dark—we could clearly see
our way ; but that has not been done. 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 that, 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 he 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
!Hegel, 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 he 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 lie
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 am unacquainted with the
eircumstances 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
migh tthink right. On the other side, you had an
unarmed and defenceless multitude. Gentlemen,
had a collision under such circumstances taken
NpvlhalFceh, hmadightthe
havesli angrypghtesrtovoked
it—hadword even an
been said
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, defenceless multitude.
It is really frightful to contemplate what the conse-.
quences might have been ; and the plains of Clontarf,
but for the exertions of Mr. 9'Connell, might have been
a second 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 because he foresaw the
fearful consequences that might have resulted, and in my
judgment he is entitled to the warm gratitude of every
friend of humanity for his conduct on that occasion; *4_ I

will further add, that there is not an individual in the com-
munity who owes him a deeper debt of gratitude than
the Attorney-General himself: Gentlemen of the jury,
I hesitate not to say, that if I were to select the act of
Mr. O'Connell's life which, in my judgment, was most
deserving of praise—that act of his which I would most
wish to send down to posterity —I would not select his
great and unwearied exertions for Catholic Emanci-
pation, or the consummation of that great measure
'by which he restored equal rights and liberties to all
his countrymen ; but 1 would select his conduct on the
occasion of this Clontarf meeting as doing most honour
to his feelings, most credit to his humanity, and by which
he saved the country from the dreadful consequences of a
collision, which it was only owing to his exertions did not
take place. Gentlemen of the jury, let me now advert for
one moment to the nature of the charges preferred against
the traversers in this indictment. They are charged, in
the language df the indictment, with combining, and
conspiring, and confederating together, for the several
purposes, for the bad and atrocious purposes I acknow-
ledge, but which, I think, are unjustly and untruly at
tributed to them, in that indictment. If you separate the
charge of combination and conspiracy from the high-
sounding phraseology given to it in that indictment. you
will find that a conspiracy, in point of law, is nothing
more nor less than this—an agreement between two or
more persons, either to do an illegal act, or to do a legal
act by illegal means. The very instant that agree
ment is entered into the crime is complete; and if a man
once agrees to do an illegal act, he may be put on his
trial for conspiracy the very hour and moment he en-
tered into that agreement. It is not necessary that there
should be any act done, or any outrage committed, for
the offence arose when the agreement was entered into;
and therefore, before you can convict my client, the
Rev. Mr. Tierney, or any other of the traversers, you
must be satisfied in your own minds, from the evidence
you have heard, that they did enter into an agreement
for the purposes stated in that indictment. Gentlemen,
on the part of the Rev. Thomas Tierney, I controvert the
assertion altogether. I deny that any such agreement
was entered into by any of the traversers. I dispute
altogether the facts of the charge of any such agree-
ment or conspiracy, and I also dispute that if any such
agreement or conspiracy ever did exist, which I deny,
that you have any one particle of evidence on which it
would be possible for you to say, in justice to yourselves,
or to your consciences, that my client, the Rev. Thomas
Tierney, was in any manner implicated. Gentlemen,
let me ask you this plain and simple question—hare
you even the shadow of legal evidence that he ever did
enter into such an agreement? % hoever heard him,
or any of them, say that there was such an agree-
' ment entered into ? There is no evidence of any
such thing. I do not mean to say that it is abso-
ltrely necessary that you should have direct evidence to
that effect; the charge may be made out without the pro-
duction of direct and positive testimony; but what tes-
timony of any kind have you upon which you could say
that this agreement which would constitute a conspiracy
only took place. He the Attorney-General, ventured to
suggest a period tit which this alleged agreement took
place. He lays before you a period of nine months over
which these proceedings extended. Did it take place
before the first, or second, or third, of those meetings,
or when did it take place ? You have got the full
period of nine months, and it is left to you to pick out
whatever period you please on the date of the existence
of the alleged conspiracy. He has not told you even
where the agreement took place. The meetings were
held in every part of Ireland. Did the agreement take place
in the north or in the south, in the east or in the west?
Is there a single item in the evidence which would fix it
as 'having taken place at any time ? The Attorney-
General read to you in evidence innumerable speeches
and publications, an extract out of this, and out of the
other newspaper, and ha flings them all into the jury-
box, and calls on you, as you best can, to construct a
conspiracy out of them. I trust you will never do it,
when you recollect that the Attorney-General had a
plain course before him to vindicate the law, and when
he might have indicted every one of those traversers,
within the period after that agreement had been entered
into, in a less time than it took him to address you ;
and. therefore, I am sure, you will not aid him in ex-
tracting from this heap of. extracts the, materials of a
conspiracy against my client. Gentlemen of the jury,
my Learned Friend, Mr. Shell, called your
attention to the indictment in this case, and he de-
scribed it, as I think he well might have done, as a
" monster indictment." It has been called so with pe-
culiar propriety. It is in accordance with the expres-
sions of the Attorney-General himself, for I think I
heard him use the word at least a hundred times in the
course of the present prosecution. Gentlemen, I will
call it what I think it deserves to be called--a mon-
strous indictment—for I do not believe a prieddent for
it is to be found in the records of our Criminal Courts.
It is truly a monster, and it well deserves to be put
down as the Frankenstein of the imagination
of her Majesty's Attorney-General for Ireland.
Is it not a monstrous indictment ? You have
an accumulation of meetings of speeches, and
of publications, and from them all the Attorney-Ge-
neral asks you to extract the material which would
substantiate a charge of combination and conspiracy.
Gentlemen, you have seen,but we have not heard the in-
dictment in question read over by the Attorney-General;
I don't say it would afford you much pleasure to have
heard it read : you may think it necessary, in the dis-
charge of your important duty to read it ; but if you
had heard it read over twenty times over, and that you
even had the memory of a Paschal, you would be
puzzled with the multitude of matter relative to facts
contained in it. It was in this case, as in all others of
the kind, it being a principle of all criminal cases that
the jury are called on to take into their considera-
tion all the facts of the case ; and I ask you by
what power of unnatural reasoning are you called
on to extract facts from the indictment which it
does not contain ? The Attorney-General wishes
you to extract from it that which you cannot do. It
was publicly known that the indictment was pre-
pared and sent before the grand jury, and every
person was aware that that respectable body of gentle-
men were occupied in the consideration of it for several
days: to be sure they ultimately found the bill, but it
was notorious, as one of them stated in the box, that
they were not unanimous in the finding of that bill. The
duty of the grand jury was to read over the indictment,
and it took them several days to get through it, and
before they had made up their minds on the subject, and
even then on their oaths they could not come to an
unanimous conclusion. Well, several days were taken
up by the grand jury considering the bill, and then
the Attbrney-General comes to state the case to you;
and he occupies you no less than eleven hours in
doing so. We all know the power of the Attorney-
General—we are all aware of the talent he possesses
(suppressed laughter in court) ; and yet, with all his
ability, talent, and sententious brevity, and concentrated
condensation, he could not get over the case in less than
eleven hours. What more did the Learned Attorney-
General do ? After making a long speech of eleven
hours, what time did he take up to produce his proofs of
the terrible conspiracy which he led them to believe had
been hatched by the traversers at the bar ? He took
eight long days, Of from seven to eight hours each day,
to lay his proofs of the charge before you. You have
eleven hours of a speech, eight days taken up in proving
the case, and if yop now take up the indictment and have
it read, it will cost you several weeks' labour to do so, and
I am bound to say at the end of that time that you will not
understand it better than you do at the present moment.
The Attorney-General, after his speech of eleven
hours and his proofs of eight days durations, after laying
his mass of facts before you, is satisfied that there is a
constructive conspiracy made out against the traversers,
and he then tells you you have a right to come to the
same conclusion, namely, that because he is satisfied that
there is a case of constructive conspiracy made ont against
them that you ought to come to the same conclusion.
There never was a more dangerous doctrine than the doc-
trine of constructive crime, and I warn you to beware of
it. There was now an effort made to charge the de-
fendants with constructive conspiracy, and to satisfy
yoti that there was an agreement entered into be-
tween the traversers to commit the offence with which
they stand charged. There were various attempts of
the present nature made in England, in order to charge
parties with constructive conspiracy, but they failed.
There was the case of Hardy, tried in 1794, which was
a case of alleged high treason, and where the overt act
was constructive conspiracy. The mode of proceeding
in that and the present case was the same, and that case
was the precedent for the present Attorney-General
He founded a case on it, and carried out the details in
the same manner as they had been carried out in that
case. The then Attorney-General produced evidence of
a number of meetings, a large quantity of publications,
extracts from speeches, and the like, and from this
precedent the present Attorney-General proceeds to
do the same. The case I allude to at last came
before an English jury—a jury who were ready at all
times to punish any man who violated the
law ; but the English jury in that case had no
hesitation in saying :that they could not find a
party guilty of constructive conspiracy, as it was not
their business to put a construction on the man's ac-
tions. The same thing took place in the Ale of Horne
Tooke as in the case of Hardy, and a like result was
come to in the case of Hunt. In all those cases the
juries came to the conclusion that they would not be act-
ing fairly, or conscientiously, or constitutionally, by put-
ting a constructive conspiracy on the party charged.
I trust you will imitate the example set by those
persons, and, although I am sure you are always ready
to bring to justice all parties who may violate the
law, yet I am sure you will not, on your
oaths, come to the conclusion which the At-
torney-General has arrived at, and that is a con-
structive case of conspiracy. The Attorney-General had
a plain, simple case before him, and every person knew
the fact, and why did not he go by that case ? Had he
produced any respectable person on the table to prove that
an agreement or conspiracy existed between the parties;
and are you to assume, and adopt that assumption, that
such• was the fact. That there was no evidence of the fact
was clear ; and, thereore, you must come to the con-
clusion that there was not, and return a verdict of acquittal
on that point. I will now come to the second branch of
the case as regards my client, and there is not, I am bound
to say, the slightest ground for charging him with con-
spiracy, if such a thing as a conspiracy ever existed at
all, but I deny that there was any such thing. It is
necessary for me to tell you who my client is. He is the
Roman Catholic priest of the parish of Clontibret, in
the county of Monaghan. He is a gentleman of the
most exemplary character, both as a private individual and
a Christian clergyman. He had filled the office of clergy-
man to that parish for several years, and was highly re-
spected. He was an educated man, and a man who
had read and studied the history of his country. I say
it is no imputation either to his character as a gentle-
man, or a clergyman, to have read, studied, and formed
opinions relative to his country and her wrongs. Every
man has a right to form his own political opinions, and
my client has no right to be charged with a Crime
for having done so. Mr. Tierney is a man of
talent, and deeply interested in the welfare of his
country, and, as such, he had read about, and formed his