GAINING OVER A JURY.
At a Cork Assizes, many years ago, he was employed in an action of damages, for diverting a stream from its regular channel, or diverting so much of it as inflicted injury on some party who previously benefited by its abundance. The injury was offered by a nobleman, and his attorney, on whose advice the proceeding was adopted, was a man of corpulent proportions, with a face bearing the ruddy glow of rude health, but, flushed in a crowded court, assumed momentarily, a color like that imparted by intemperance. He really was a most temperate man.
O'Connell dwelt on the damage his client had sustained by the unjust usurpation. The stream should have been permitted to follow its old and natural course. There was neither law nor justice in turning it aside from his client's fields. He had a light to all its copiousness, and the other party should have allowed him full enjoyment. In place of that, the latter monopolized the water—he diminished it. It became every day small by degrees and beautifully less. "There is not now," he said, "gentlemen of the jury, a tenth of the ordinary quantity. The stream is running dry—and so low is it, and so little of it is there, that," continued he, turning to the rubicund attorney, and naming him, "there isn't enough in it to make grog for Fogatty."
A roar of laughter followed, and it was not stopped by the increased rosiness and embarrassment of the gentleman who became the victim of the learned advocate's humorous allusion. The tact in this sally was, in endeavoring to create an impression on the jury that his poor client was sacrificed by the harsh conduct of a grog-drinking attorney, and thus create prejudice against the plaintiff's case. Thus did O'Connell gain the hearts of Irish juries; and thus did he, indulging his own natural humor, on the public platform, gain the affections of his countrymen.