THE IRISH LAND LEAUERS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume III, Issue 59, 25 March 1881, Page 3

THE IRISH LAND LEAUERS.

From the N. Z. Tablet we extract the peroration of three of the speeches delivered in the Court on behalf of the Irish Land Leaguers. The speeches themselves are . masterly specimens of the art of oratory. The three extracts we give below are not unworthy of being placed side by side with the grandest utterances of Edmund Burke : Mr M'Langhlin, in concluding his address to the jury, said he asked the jury for their verdict, not in mercy but in justice. The prosecution had failed, as it ought to have failed. Thinly of the tens of hundreds of thousands, nay of millions, of poor afflicted people in various parts _of Ireland who were anxiously waiting with confident expectation the verdict of the jury. These men had suffered for the poor because it is suffering for the innocent man to stand in the place of the malefactor. They have suffered for the protection of those who could not protect themselves : they have stood between them and their rapacious landlord; don't think little of them. The poor man's house is as dear to him as the noblemen's palace ; it was there he first saw the light of day ; it was there the poor peasant brought home his bride, to be a faithful companion, who was to walk hand in hand through the weary path of the peasant's life ; it was there he first kissed the lips of his first-born. The peasant is poor, but he has a heart ; his life is a life of toil and sorrow, but that makes his home the more dear to him. Mntnal suffering for the benefit cf each other lights up the poor man's home and fills the heart with affection and sympathy ; and it is like crushing oufc the life to tear him away from these memories. It was to prevent so great a wrong that these men stepped into the breach. Mr Gladstone has said that in every effort to improve their condition tho Irish people had the sympathy of the Christian world. Why ? Because they had justice on their side. That great statesman added, "There was somethins: stronger than a nation, and that is justice." Let the jury do justice to the traversers, Mid their verdict would give universal satisfaction. Mr P. O'Brien concluded his address to the jury in these words :— To-day our country holds out her hands to you her *ons ; she points to your brothers in exile in foreign lands,. to the ceaseless departure of your children, and she asks, how long is the exodus to continue ? She points to her uined homesteads and neglected fields, and •<he asks you, is desolation to reign for ever? She points to an impoverished people in a fertile land, and she asks you, how long shall the beneficence of nature be i*ount*racted by the selfish designs of man ? She points to tho dark caverns where her outcast sons whetted the instruments of assassination, and she appeals to you, how tong are cruel laws to drive then? to madness and crime ? She points to the Continent of Europe where that happy system of Land Law advocated by my client has scattered plenty over a smiling land ; and she calls upon you for your verdict of acquittal in the fearless assertion of your privileged position. Respond to yonr country's call. Hand down your glorious verdict, and the 'pent up agony of the Trish peasant's heart shall be relieved by tears of joy, holy tears, the tears of a nations gratitude ; and be assured that if in tfie time to come any party in the State, unmindful of the best traditions of their history shall dare again to dig down into the graves of the law for this discredited weapon of tyranny, posterity shall proudly noint to your verdict, where freedom's band incribed it on the archives of humanity. Mr A. M. Sullivan, M.P., closed his address to the jury with the following brilliant peroration : — Living witnesses *hall yet behold the accomplishment ol the blessings these men (the traversers) will have won for us. Yes, it must be so. There will be an end of this horrid nhantasraagoria of history. The Temple .>f Janus mußtbe closed. Peace and goodwill, concord and kindly feeling, between class And class and creed and creed must have their home in this isle of ours, long wasted !>y the demoniac passions of this cruel land war. Rich and poor we may have still, but no longer tyrant and slave. No eternal speotre of despair shall darken for evpr with ita abiding shadow tbe peisant'tiiome. The Irish farmer shall lay down at night beneath his humble roof to start no more in dreams of terror of the crowbar *nd the bailiff at the door. And, think ■.-ou, gentlemen of the jury, that the Irish -.vnple, made free and happy and secure, will fail hereafter in their blessings and 'heir prayers to remember the men who have worked out their liberation ? If they value the ble3siugß thnt shine on each hearth. The wife's loving welcome, the children'a sweet mirth, When they taste them at eve they will think upon thoso Who have purchnsed forthem their domestic repose, \nft pive honour to him. who. when danger afiir fTarl lighted for mm im ominous siar, Oft pleasures and country nnd kindred behind, And sped to the shock on the wings of tbo wind ! And you, gentlemen, you too, mean to bear a part in the great events that are at hand ; vnu will have a part in the gratitude and the glory which history will accord to the h< nefacfors of their country. You well know what great changes are drawing near, you well know what important measures the Minister of England is even now preparing. Yes, at the very moment when he asks you to link your names with the proceedings wbich he krows posterity will execrate, he is about to win for himself fresh glory and power by overthrowing the very system he asks you to endeavour to sustain ! Your share to be all the obloquy ; his, all the fame. No, no, you will answer him back that, however divided you may be in religious or political belief, you are twelve Irishmen resolved to leave upon reoord a noble part in thia moment of your country's fate. I told you you were there as the country. Speak with the voice of Ireland for justice a-:d for right. And if you haply hear, as doubtless you shall when I ara done, an adjuration addressed to you "to vindicate the majesty of the law " — that ancient formula so oft invoked to lure twelve honest men into complicity with the darkest crimes of oppression— fniwc jr through your verdict that law derives no majesty from vindictive power of terror or punishment — none, I when divorced from the sacred principles it is presumed and bound to mirror forth— the eternal equities of God. Speak ! speak 1 the -n orda that shall be hailed as a message i of roercy in the peasant horne — that shall resound as an evimgel of peace and liberty throughout this long- distracted land, and be yours the hands to close for ever this ' recordof a iiatfon's sufferings, all stained ' and blotted by blood and tears.