“The facts which have placed the prisoner at the bar before you are these, and in detailing them I feel myself placed in circumstances of great difficulty, and also of peculiar delicacy. The discharge, however, of a public duty, which devolves upon me as leading law officer of the Crown, forces me into a course which I cannot avoid, unless I should shrink from promoting and accomplishing the ends of public justice. In my position, and in the discharge of my solemn duties here to-day, I can recognize no man's rank, no man's wealth, nor the prestige of any man's name. So long as he stands at that bar, charged with great and heinous crimes, I feel it my duty to strip him of all the advantages of his birth and rank, and consider him simply a mere subject of the realm.
“In order to show you, gentlemen of the jury, the animux under which the prisoner at the bar acted, in the case before us, I must go back a little—a period of some months. At that time a highly respectable gentleman of an ancient and honored family in this country was one evening on his way home from this town, attended, as usual, by his servant. At a lonely place on a remote and antiquated road, which they took as a shorter way, it so happened that, in consequence of a sudden mist peculiar to those wild moors, they lost their path, and found themselves in circumstances of danger and distress. The servant, however, whistled, and his whistle was answered; a party of men, of freebooters, of robbers, headed by a person called the Red Rapparee, who has been convicted at these assizes, and who has been the scourge of the country for years, came up to them, and as the Rapparee had borne this respectable gentleman a deadly and implacable enmity for some time past, he was about to murder both master and man, and actually had his musket levelled at him, as others of his gang had at his aged servant, when a person, a gentleman named Reilly—[there there was a loud cheer throughout the court, which, however, was soon repressed, and the Attorney-General proceeded]—this person started out from an old ruin, met the robber face to face, and, in short, not only saved the lives of the gentleman and his servant, but conducted them safely home. This act of courage and humanity, by a Roman Catholic to a Protestant, had such an effect upon the old gentleman's daughter, a lady whose name has gone far and wide for her many virtues and wonderful beauty, that an attachment was formed between the young gentleman and her. The prisoner at the bar, gentlemen, was a suitor for her hand; but as the young and amiable lady was acquainted with his character as a priest-hunter and persecutor, she, though herself a Protestant, could look upon him only with abhorrence. At all events, after the rescue of her father's life, and her acquaintance with Mr. Reilly, the prisoner at the bar was rejected with disdain, as he would have been, it seems, if Reilly never had existed. Now, gentlemen I of the jury, observe that Reilly was a Catholic, which was bad enough in the eyes of the prisoner at the bar; but he was more; he was a rival, and were it not for the state of the law, would, it appears, for there is no doubt of it now, have been a successful one. From henceforth the prisoner at the bar marked Mr. Reilly for vengeance, for destruction, for death. At this time he was in the full exercise of irresponsible authority; he could burn, hang, shoot, without being called to account; and as it will appear before you, gentlemen, this consciousness of impunity stimulated him to the perpetration of such outrages as, in civil life, and in a country free from civil war, are unparalleled in the annals of crime and cruelty.
“But, gentlemen, what did this man do? this man, so anxious to preserve the peace of the country; this man, the terror of the surrounding districts; what did he do, I ask? Why, he took the most notorious robber of: his day, the fierce and guilty Rapparee—he took him into his councils, in order that he might enable him to trace the object of his vengeance, Reilly, in the first place, and to lead him to the hiding-places of such unfortunate Catholic priests as had taken refuge in the caves and fastnesses of the mountains. Instead of punishing this notorious malefactor, he took him into his own house, made him, as he was proud to call them, one of his priest-hounds, and induced him to believe that he had procured him a pardon from Government. Reilly's name he had, by his foul misrepresentations, got into the Hue-and-Cry, and subsequently had him gazetted as an outlaw; and all this upon his own irresponsible authority. I mention nothing, gentlemen, in connection with this trial which we are not in a capacity to prove.
“Having forced Reilly into a variety of disguises, and hunted him like a mad dog through the country; having searched every: lurking-place in which he thought he might I find him, he at length resolved on the only course of vengeance he could pursue. He surrounded his habitation, and, after searching for Reilly himself, he openly robbed him of all that was valuable of that gentleman's furniture, then set fire to the house, and in the clouds of the night reduced that and every out-office he had to ashes—a capital felony. It so happens, however, that the house and offices were, in point of fact, not the property of Reilly at all, but of a most respectable Protestant gentleman and magistrate, Mr. Hastings, with whose admirable! character I have no doubt you are all acquainted; and all that remains for me to say is, that he is the prosecutor in this case.
“And now, gentlemen, we expect a calm, deliberate, and unbiassed verdict from you. Look upon the prisoner at the bar as an innocent man until you can, with a clear conscience, find him guilty of the charges which we are in a condition to prove against him; but if there be any doubt upon your minds, I hope you will give him the benefit of it.”
Sir Robert Whitecraft, in fact, had no defence, and could procure no witnesses to counteract the irresistible body of evidence that was produced against him. Notwithstanding all this, his friends calculated upon the prejudices of a Protestant jury. His leading counsel made as able a speech in his defence as could be made under the circumstances. It consisted, however, of vague generalities, and dwelt upon the state of the country and the necessity that existed for men of great spirit and Protestant feeling to come out boldly, and, by courage and energy, carry the laws that had passed for the suppression of Popery into active and wholesome operation. “Those laws were passed by the wisest and ablest assembly of legislators in the world, and to what purpose could legislative enactments for the preservation of Protestant interests be passed if men of true faith and loyalty could not be found to carry them into effect. There were the laws; the prisoner at the bar did not make those laws, and if he was invested with authority to carry them into operation, what did he do but discharge a wholesome and important duty? The country was admitted, on all sides, to be in a disturbed state; Popery was attempting for years most insidiously to undermine the Protestant Church, and to sap the foundation of all Protestant interests; and if, by a pardonable excess of zeal, of zeal in the right direction, and unconscious lapse in the discharge of what he would call, those noble but fearful duties had occurred, was it for those who had a sense of true liberty, and a manly detestation of Romish intrigue at heart, to visit that upon the head of a true and loyal man as a crime. Forbid it, the spirit of the British Constitution—forbid it, heaven—forbid it, Protestantism. No, gentlemen of the jury,” etc., etc.
We need not go further, because we have condensed in the few sentences given the gist of all he said.
When the case was closed, the jury retired to their room, and as Sir Robert Whitecraft's fate depends upon their verdict, we will be kind enough to avail ourselves of the open sesame of our poor imagination to introduce our readers invisibly into the jury-room.
“Now,” said the foreman, “what's to be done? Are we to sacrifice a Protestant champion to Popery?”
“To Popery! To the deuce,” replied another. “It's not Popery that is prosecuting him. Put down Popery by argument, by fair argument, but don't murder those that profess it, in cold blood. As the Attorney* General said, let us make it our own case, and if the Papishes treated us as we have treated them, what would we say? By jingo, I'll hang that fellow. He's a Protestant champion, they say; but I say he's a Protestant bloodhound, and a cowardly rascal to boot.”