“I am entirely at your Lordship's orders.”
“Well, sir, I will be very brief. I must needs be so, for I have fatigued myself by much talking already. The papers will have informed you that I am not to sit on this Commission. The Ministers who cannot persuade me by their blandishments are endeavoring to disgust me by insult. They have read the fable of the sun and the wind backwards, and inverted the moral. It had been whispered abroad that if I tried these men there would have been no convictions. They raked up some early speeches of mine—youthful triumphs they were—in defence of Wolfe Tone, and Jackson, and others; and they argued—no, I am wrong—they did not argue, they imagined, that the enthusiasm of the advocate might have twined itself around the wisdom of the Judge. They have quoted, too, in capital letters,—it is there on the table,—the peroration of my speech in Neilson's case, where I implored the jury to be cautious and circumspect, for so deeply had the Crown advisers compromised themselves in the pursuit of rebellion, it needed the most careful sifting not to include the law-officers of the Castle, and to avoid placing the Attorney-General side by side with his victim.”
“How sarcastic! how cutting!” muttered Sewell, in praise.
“It was more than sarcastic, sir. It stung the Orange jury to the quick; and though they convicted my client, they trembled at the daring of his defender.
“But I turn from the past to the present,” said he, after a pause. “They have arrested this morning, at Howth, a man who is said to be of rank and station. The examination, conducted in secret, has concealed his name; and all that we know is that bail has not been accepted, if offered, for him. So long as these arrests concerned the vulgar fellows who take to rebellion for its robberies, no case can be made. With the creatures of rusty pikes and ruffian natures I have no sympathy. It matters little whether they be transported for treason or for theft. With the gentleman it is otherwise. Some speculative hope, some imaginative aspiration of serving his country, some wild dream begotten of the great Revolution of France, dashed not impossibly with some personal wrong, drives men from their ordinary course in life, and makes them felons where they meant to be philanthropists. I have often thought if this movement now at work should throw up to the surface one of this stamp, what a fine occasion it might afford to test the wisdom of those who rule us, to examine the machinery by which they govern, and to consider the advantage of that system,—such a favorite system in Ireland, by which rebellion is fostered as a means of subsequent concession, as though it were necessary to manure the loyalty of the land by the blood of traitors.
“I weary you, sir, and I am sorry for it. No, no, make no protestations. It is a theme cannot have the same interest for you as for me. What I would ask of you is, to go down to the head-office and see Mr. Spencer, and learn from him if you might have an order to see the prisoner,—your pretext being the suspicion that he is personally known to you. If you succeed in getting the order, you will proceed to the Richmond Bridewell and have an interview with him. You are a man of the world, sir, and I need not give you any instructions how to ascertain his condition, his belongings, and his means of defence. If he be a gentleman, in the sense we use that term when applying its best attributes to it, you will be frank and outspoken, and will tell him candidly that your object is to make his case the groundwork of an attack on the Government, and the means by which all the snares that have led men to rebellion may be thoroughly exposed, and the craft of the Crown lawyer be arraigned beside the less cold-blooded cruelty of the traitor. Do you fully comprehend me, sir?”
“I think so, my Lord, Your intention is, if I take you correctly, to make the case, if it be suitable, the groundwork for an attack on the Government of Ireland.”
“In which I am not to appear.”
“Of course, my Lord; though possibly with no objection that it should be known how far your sympathy is with a free discussion of the whole state of Ireland?”
“You apprehend me aright, sir,—a free discussion of the whole state of Ireland.”