Representative British Orations Volume 4 (of 4) / With Introductions and Explanatory Notes

by Unknown

There is one part of this sentence for which I most respectfully solicit your indulgence and pardon. Be not exasperated with us for talking of the mildness of Lord Fitzwilliam, or of his administration. But, notwithstanding the violence any praise of him has excited amongst you, come dispassionately, I pray you, to the consideration of the paragraph. Let us abstract the meaning of it from the superfluous words. It certainly does tell you that his Grace came over ignorant of Irish affairs, and he acquired prejudices upon those subjects, and he has become intemperate. Let us discuss this part separately from the other matter suggested by the paragraph in question. That the Duke of Richmond came over to Ireland ignorant of the details of our domestic policy cannot be matter either of surprise or of any reproach. A military man engaged in those pursuits which otherwise occupy persons of his rank, altogether unconnected with Ireland, he could not have had any inducement to make himself acquainted with the details of our barbarous wrongs, of our senseless party quarrels, and criminal feuds; he was not stimulated to examine them by any interest, nor could any man be attracted to study them by taste. It is, therefore, no censure to talk of his ignorance—of that with which it would be absurd to expect that he should be acquainted; and the knowledge of which would neither have served, nor exalted, nor amused him.

Then, gentlemen, it is said he became “prejudiced.” Prejudiced may sound harsh in your ears; but you are not, at least you ought not, to decide upon the sound—it is the sense of the word that should determine you. Now what is the sense of the word “prejudice” here? It means the having adopted precisely the opinions which every one of you entertain. By “prejudice” the writer means, and can mean, nothing but such sentiments as you cherish. When he talks of prejudice, he intends to convey the idea that the Duke took up the opinion that the few ought to govern the many in Ireland; that there ought to be a favored, and an excluded class in Ireland; that the burdens of the state ought to be shared equally, but its benefits conferred on a few. Such are the ideas conveyed by the word prejudice; and I fearlessly ask you, is it a crime to impute to his Grace these notions which you yourselves entertain? Is he calumniated—is he libelled, when he is charged with concurring with you, gentlemen of the jury? Will you, by a verdict of conviction, stamp your own political sentiments with the seal of reprobation? If you convict my client, you do this; you decide that it is a libel to charge any man with those doctrines which are so useful to you individually, and of which you boast; or, you think the opinions just, and yet that it is criminal to charge a man with those just opinions. For the sake, therefore, of consistency, and as an approval of your own opinions, I call on you for a verdict of acquittal.

I need not detain you long on the expression “intemperate”; it does not mean any charge of excess of indulgence in any enjoyment; it is not, as the Attorney-General suggested, an accusation of indulging beyond due bounds in the pleasures of the table, or of the bottle; it does not allude, as the Attorney-General says, to midnight orgies, or to morning revels. I admit—I freely admit—that an allusion of that kind would savor of libel, as it would certainly be unnecessary for any purpose of political discussion. But the intemperance here spoken of is mere political intemperance; it is that violence which every man of a fervid disposition feels in support of his political opinions. Nay, the more pure and honest any man may be in the adoption of his opinions, the more likely, and the more justifiable will he be in that ardent support of them which goes by the name of intemperance.

In short, although political intemperance cannot be deemed by cold calculators as a virtue, yet it has its source in the purest virtues of the human heart, and it frequently produces the greatest advantages to the public. How would it be possible to overcome the many obstacles which self-interest, and ignorance, and passion throw in the way of improvement, without some of that ardor of temper and disposition which grave men call intemperance? And, gentlemen, are not your opinions as deserving of warm support as the opinions of other men; or do you feel any inherent depravity in the political sentiments which the Duke of Richmond has adopted from you, that would render him depraved or degraded by any violence in their support? You have no alternative. If you convict my client, you condemn, upon your oaths, your own political creed; and declare it to be a libel to charge any man with energy in your cause.

If you are not disposed to go this length of political inconsistency, and if you have determined to avoid the religious inconsistency of perjuring yourselves for the good and glory of the Protestant religion, do, I pray you, examine the rest of this paragraph, and see whether you can, by any ingenuity, detect that nondescript, a libel, in it. It states in substance this: that this administration, treading in the steps of former administrations, preached to the confidence of the people, and played on their credulity; and that it will end, as those administrations have done, in some flattering prophecy, paying present disappointment with the coinage of delusive hope. That this administration commenced, as usual, with preaching to the confidence of the people, was neither criminal in the fact, nor can it be unpleasant in the recital.

It is the immemorial usage of all administrations and of all stations, to commence with those civil professions of future excellence of conduct which are called, and not unaptly, “preaching to the confidence of the people.” The very actors are generally sincere at this stage of the political farce; and it is not insinuated that this administration was not as candid on this subject as the best of its predecessors. The playing on the credulity of the people is the ordinary state trick. You recollect how angry many of you were with his Grace for his Munster tour, shortly after his arrival here. You recollect how he checked the Mayor of Cork for proposing the new favorite Orange toast; what liberality he displayed to Popish traders and bankers in Limerick; and how he returned to the capital, leaving behind him the impression that the no-Popery men had been mistaken in their choice, and that the Duke of Richmond was the enemy of every bigotry—the friend to every liberality! Was he sincere, gentlemen of the jury, or was this one of those innocent devices which are called—playing on the people’s credulity? Was he sincere? Ask his subsequent conduct. Have there been since that time any other or different toasts cheered in his presence? Has the name of Ireland and of Irishmen been profaned by becoming the sport of the warmth excited by the accompaniment to these toasts? Some individuals of you could inform me. I see another dignitary of your corporation here [said Mr. O’Connell, turning round pointedly to the Lord Mayor]—I see a civic dignitary here, who could tell of the toasts of these days or nights, and would not be at a loss to apply the right name—if he were not too prudent as well as too polite to do so—to that innocent affectation of liberality which distinguished his Grace’s visit to the south of Ireland. It was, indeed, a play upon our credulity, but it can be no libel to speak of it as such; for see the situation in which you would place his Grace; you know he affected conciliation and perfect neutrality between our parties at first; you know he has since taken a marked and decided part with you.

Surely you are not disposed to call this a crime, as it were, to convict his Grace of duplicity, and of a vile hypocrisy. No, gentlemen, I entreat of you not to calumniate the Duke; call this conduct a mere play on the credulity of a people easily deceived—innocent in its intention, and equally void of guilt in its description. Do not attach to those words a meaning which would prove that you yourselves condemned, not so much the writer of them, as the man who gave color and countenance to this assertion. Besides, gentlemen, what is your liberty of the Press worth, if it be worthy of a dungeon to assert that the public credulity has been played upon? The liberty of the Press would be less than a dream, a shadow, if every such phrase be a libel.

But the Attorney-General triumphantly tells you that there must be a libel in this paragraph, because it ends with a charge of falsehood. May I ask you to take the entire paragraph together? Common sense and your duty require you to do so. You will then perceive that this charge of falsehood is no more than an opinion that the administration of the Duke of Richmond will terminate precisely as that of many of his predecessors has done, by an excuse for the past—a flattering and fallacious promise for the future. Why, you must all of you have seen, a short time since, an account of a public dinner in London, given by persons styling themselves “Friends to Religious Liberty.” At that dinner, at which two of the Royal Dukes attended, there were, I think, no less than four or five noblemen who had filled the office of Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. Gentlemen, at this dinner, they were ardent in their professions of kindness towards the Catholics of Ireland, in their declarations of the obvious policy and justice of conciliation and concession, and they bore ample testimony to our sufferings and our merits. But I appeal from their present declarations to their past conduct; they are now full of liberality and justice to us; yet I speak only the truth of history when I say that, during their government of this country, no practical benefits resulted from all this wisdom and kindness of sentiment; with the single exception of Lord Fitzwilliam, not one of them even attempted to do any good to the Catholics, or to Ireland.

What did the Duke of Bedford do for us? Just nothing. Some civility, indeed, in words—some playing on public credulity—but in act and deed, nothing at all. What did Lord Hardwicke do for us? Oh, nothing, or rather less than nothing; his administration here was, in that respect, a kind of negative quality; it was cold, harsh, and forbidding to the Catholics; lenient, mild, and encouraging to the Orange faction; the public mind lay in the first torpor caused by the mighty fall of the Union, and whilst we lay entranced in the oblivious pool, Lord Hardwicke’s administration proceeded without a trace of that justice and liberality which it appears he must have thought unbefitting the season of his government, and which, if he then entertained, he certainly concealed; he ended, however, with giving us flattering hopes for the future. The Duke of Bedford was more explicit; he promised in direct terms, and drew upon the future exertions of an hereditary Prince, to compensate us for present disappointment. And will any man assert that the Duke of Richmond is libelled by a comparison with Lord Hardwicke; that he is traduced when he is compared with the Duke of Bedford? If the words actually were these, “the Duke of Richmond will terminate his administration exactly as Lord Hardwicke and the Duke of Bedford terminated their administrations”; if those were the words, none of you could possibly vote for a conviction, and yet the meaning is precisely the same. No more is expressed by the language of my client; and, if the meaning be thus clearly innocent, it would be strange, indeed, to call on you for a verdict of conviction upon no more solid ground than this, that whilst the signification was the same, the words were different. And thus, again, does the prosecutor require of you to separate the sense from the sound, and to convict for the sound, against the sense of the passage.

In plain truth, gentlemen, if there be a harshness in the sound, there is none in the words. The writer describes, and means to describe, the ordinary termination of every administration repaying in promise the defaults of performance. And, when he speaks of falsehood, he prophesies merely as to the probable or at least possible conclusion of the present government. He does not impute to any precedent assertion, falsehood; but he does predict, that the concluding promise of this, as of other administrations, depending as those promises always do upon other persons for performance, will remain as former promises have remained—unfulfilled and unperformed. And is this prophecy—this prediction a crime? Is it a libel to prophesy? See what topics this sage venerator of the liberty of the Press, the Attorney-General, would fain prohibit. First, he tells you that the crimes of the predecessors of the Duke must not be mentioned—and thus he forbids the history of past events. Secondly, he informs you that no allusion is to be made to the errors, follies, or even the striking features of the present governors—and thus he forbids the detail of the occurrences of the present day. And, thirdly, he declares that no conjecture shall be made upon what is likely to occur hereafter—and thus he forbids all attempts to anticipate future acts.