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

by Unknown

He expresses the very idea of the Roman Domitian, of whom some of you possibly may have read; he amused his days in torturing men—his evenings he relaxed in the humble cruelty of impaling flies. A courtier caught a fly for his imperial amusement—“Fool,” said the emperor, “fool, to give thyself the trouble of torturing an animal that was about to burn itself to death in the candle!” Such is the spirit of the Attorney-General’s commentary on our Board. Oh, rare Attorney-General!—Oh, best and wisest of men!!!

But, to be serious. Let me pledge myself to you that he imposes on you, when he threatens to crush the Catholic Board. Illegal violence may do it—force may effectuate it; but your hopes and his will be defeated, if he attempts it by any course of law. I am, if not a lawyer, at least a barrister. On this subject I ought to know something, and I do not hesitate to contradict the Attorney-General on this point, and to proclaim to you and to the country that the Catholic Board is perfectly a legal assembly—that it not only does not violate the law, but that it is entitled to the protection of the law, and in the very proudest tone of firmness, I hurl defiance at the Attorney-General!

I defy him to allege a law or a statute, or even a proclamation that is violated by the Catholic Board. No, gentlemen, no; his religious prejudices—if the absence of every charity can be called anything religious—his religious prejudices really obscure his reason, his bigoted intolerance has totally darkened his understanding, and he mistakes the plainest facts and misquotes the clearest law, in the ardor and vehemence of his rancor. I disdain his moderation—I scorn his forbearance—I tell him he knows not the law if he thinks as he says; and if he thinks so, I tell him to his beard, that he is not honest in not having sooner prosecuted us, and I challenge him to that prosecution.

It is strange—it is melancholy, to reflect on the miserable and mistaken pride that must inflate him to talk as he does of the Catholic Board. The Catholic Board is composed of men—I include not myself—of course, I always except myself—every way his superiors, in birth, in fortune, in talents, in rank. What is he to talk of the Catholic Board lightly? At their head is the Earl of Fingal, a nobleman whose exalted rank stoops beneath the superior station of his virtues—whom even the venal minions of power must respect. We are engaged, patiently and perseveringly engaged, in a struggle through the open channels of the constitution for our liberties. The son of the ancient earl whom I have mentioned cannot in his native land attain any honorable distinction of the state, and yet Mr. Attorney-General knows that they are open to every son of every bigoted and intemperate stranger that may settle amongst us.

But this system cannot last; he may insult, he may calumniate, he may prosecute; but the Catholic cause is on its majestic march; its progress is rapid and obvious; it is cheered in its advance, and aided by all that is dignified and dispassionate—by everything that is patriotic—by all the honor, all the integrity, of the empire; and its success is just as certain as the return of to-morrow’s sun, and the close of to-morrow’s eve.

“We will—we must soon be emancipated,” in despite of the Attorney-General, aided as he is by his august allies, the aldermen of Skinner’s-alley. In despite of the Attorney-General and the aldermen of Skinner’s-alley, our emancipation is certain, and not distant.

I have no difficulty in perceiving the motive of the Attorney-General in devoting so much of his medley oration to the Catholic question, and to the expression of his bitter hatred to us, and of his determination to ruin our hopes. It had, to be sure, no connection with the cause, but it had a direct and natural connection with you. He has been, all his life, reckoned a man of consummate cunning and dexterity; and whilst one wonders that he has so much exposed himself upon those prosecutions, and accounts for it by the proverbial blindness of religious zeal, it is still easy to discover much of his native cunning and dexterity. Gentlemen, he thinks he knows his men—he knows you; many of you signed the no-Popery petition; he heard one of you boast of it; he knows you would not have been summoned on this jury if you had entertained liberal sentiments; he knows all this, and therefore it is that he, with the artifice and cunning of an experienced nisi prius advocate, endeavors to win your confidence and command your affections by the display of his congenial illiberality and bigotry.

You are all, of course, Protestants; see what a compliment he pays to your religion and his own, when he endeavors thus to procure a verdict on your oaths; when he endeavors to seduce you to what, if you were so seduced, would be perjury, by indulging your prejudices and flattering you by the coincidence of his sentiments and wishes. Will he succeed, gentlemen? Will you allow him to draw you into a perjury out of zeal for your religion? And will you violate the pledge you have given to your God to do justice, in order to gratify your anxiety for the ascendancy of what you believe to be his church? Gentlemen, reflect on the strange and monstrous inconsistency of this conduct, and do not commit, if you can avoid it, the pious crime of violating your solemn oaths, in aid of the pious designs of the Attorney-General against Popery.

Oh, gentlemen! it is not in any lightness of heart I thus address you—it is rather in bitterness and sorrow; you did not expect flattery from me, and my client was little disposed to offer it to you; besides, of what avail would it be to flatter, if you came here pre-determined, and it is too plain that you are not selected for this jury from any notion of your impartiality?

But when I talk to you of your oaths and of your religion, I would full fain I could impress you with a respect for both the one and the other. I, who do not flatter, tell you, that though I do not join with you in belief, I have the most unfeigned respect for the form of Christian faith which you profess. Would that its substance, not its forms and temporal advantages, were deeply impressed on your minds! Then should I not address you in the cheerless and hopeless despondency that crowds on my mind, and drives me to taunt you with the air of ridicule I do. Gentlemen, I sincerely respect and venerate your religion, but I despise and I now apprehend your prejudices, in the same proportion as the Attorney-General has cultivated them. In plain truth, every religion is good—every religion is true to him who, in his due caution and conscience, believes it. There is but one bad religion, that of a man who professes a faith which he does not believe; but the good religion may be, and often is, corrupted by the wretched and wicked prejudices which admit a difference of opinion as a cause of hatred.