IRISH ELOQUENCE.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 2495, 19 March 1881, Page 2

IRISH ELOQUENCE.

The following are a few samples of the eloquence displayed by the counsel for the defence at recent State trials in Dublin ; —Mr McLaughlin asked the jury for their verdict, not in mercy, but in justice. The prosecution had failed, as it ought to have failed. Think of the tens of hundreds of thousands, nay, of millions, of poor afflicted people in various parts of Ireland, who were anxiously awaiting 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 nobleman’s palace; it was there he first saw the light of day; it was there the poor peasant brought home to himself 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 Jips 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. Mutual suffering for the benefit of each other lights up the poor man’s home and fills the heart with affection and sympathy and it is like crushing out 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 the Irish people had the smypathy of the Christian world. Why ? Because they had justice on their side. The great statesman added “ There was something stronger than a nation, and that is justice.” Let the jury do justice to the traversers, and their verdict would give universal satisfaction. (Applause.)

Mr Peter O’Brien, Q.C. —There is one rule of this League which the Crown has not read to you, and it is this, that sectarian prejudice should not be allowed to mar their good work. Happy would it be indeed for Ireland if that doctrine had been promulgated and enforced long ago. Could any one enforce that doctrine more ably, more fully, than my client, Mr Sullivan ? It has been the great object of his life—to bring the Irish people into a brotherhood of Christian love and patriotism. To-da3 r our country holds out her hands to you her sons ; 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 ruined homesteads and neglected fields, and she 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 counteracted by the selfish designs of man? She points to the dark caverns where her outcast sons whetted the instruments of assassination, and she appeals to you, how long are cruel laws to drive them to madness and to crime ? She points to the Continent of Europe where that happy 83’stem. 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 your country’s call. Hand down your glorious verdict, and the pent up agony of the Irish peasant’s heart shall be relieved by tears of joy, holy tears, the tears of a nation’s gratitude*; and bo assured that if in the 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 point to your verdict, where freedom’s hand inscribed it on the archives of humanity. (Loud and prolonged applause.) Mr A. M. Sullivan, M.P.—Living witnesses shall yet behold the accomplishment of the blessings these men (the traversers) will have won for us. Yes, it must be so. There will be an end of this horrid phantasmagoria of history. The Temple of Janus must be closed. Peace and 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 by the demoniac passions of this cruel land war. Rich and poor, we may have still, but no longer tyrant and slave. No eternal spectre of despair shall darken for ever with its abiding shadow the peasant’s home. The Irish farmer shall lay down at night beneath his humble roof, to start no more in dreams of terror of the crowbar, and the bailiff at the door. And, think you, gentlemen of the jury, that the Irish people, made free and happy, and secure, will fail hereafter in their blessings, and their prayers to remember the men, who have worked out their liberation.

“ If they value the blessings that shine on each hearth* The wife’s loving welcome, the children’s sweet mirth, When they taste them at eve they will think upon those Who have purchased for them their domestic repose, And give honor to him, who. when danger afar Had lighted for ruin its ominous star, Left pleasures and country aud kindred behind, And sped to the shock on the wings of the wind.”

And you, gentleman, you too, mean to bear a part in the great events that are at hand ; you will have a part in the gratitude and the glory which history will accord to the benefactors 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. Aes, at the very moment when he asks you to link your names with the proceedings which he knows posterity will execrate, he is about to win for himself fresh glory and power by overthrowing the very system he asks you to endeavor to sustain ! Your share to be all the obloquy; his, all the fame. No, no, you will answer him back that, howsoever divided you may be in religious or political belief, you are twelve Irishmen resolved to leave upon record a noble part in this moment of your country’s fate. I told you you were there as the country. Speak with the voice of Ireland for justice and for right. And if you haply hear, as doubtless you shall when I am done, an adjuration addressed to you “to vindicate the majesty of the law ” —the ancient formula so oft invoked to lure twelve honest men into complicity with the darkest crimes of oppression—answer through your verdict that law derives no majesty from its vindictive power of terror or punishment—none when divorced from the sacred principles it is presumed and bound to mirror forth—the eternal ■ equities of God. Speak! Speak the words that shall be hailed as a message of mercy in the peasant home that shall resound as an evangel of peace and liberty throughout this long-distanced land, and be yours the hands to close for ever this record of a nation’s sufferings, all stained and blotted by blood and tears.