MR JUSTICE KEOGHI.

Waikato Times, Volume I, Issue 71, 12 October 1872, Page 3

MR JUSTICE KEOGHI.

, * Mn Justice Law.Hon, in opening the Tyrone Assizes on .July \», congratulated tin; grand jury on the • remarkable picture of peace anil order presented by ' that county. There were only five eases for trial. Mr ,f ustiee Keogh, replying to an address from tlie Tyrone grand jury, said:—" My lords and gentlemen of the grand jury,—On my own behalf and that of my brother Law-ton, J sincerely thank you for the addrcsß you have read. As the grand inquest of this county —oneof the largest and most important in Ireland — you discharge judicial functions without which the machinery of the law cannot he set in motion, arid I know nobody more interested in the vindication of the Heneh, or better entitled to pronounce upon the attempts now openly made to reduce it to subjection. From this place I shall not stoop to explain or justify anything I have said or done in the discharge of my judicial duty; 1. have no such intention; and be assured J shall never surrender the trust confided to Trie by my Sovereign, to whom alone I one allegiance, to the dictates and menaces, secret or open, of any person, body, or power claiming to have authority or jurisdiction within this realm. Should it please the Legislature in its wisdom to exempt-, as of old, any man from being amenable to tin; ordinary tribunals, it will be the duty of the Uench to conform to and carry out the decision; but unless that is done, I am not able to recognise any distinction of person, profession, or class, and I shall continue, as 1 have done heretofore, faithfully and fearlessly, according to the best of my judgment, to administer and expound Unlaw i of Kr.glainl, and no other." The grand jury of Donegal have presented Mr .Justice Keogh an address, in which they expressed their admiration of the ability and independence with which he conducted the Oral way election petition trial, and expressed their sympathy with him in the unconstitutional attacks wh c'i have been directed against him. Mr Justice Keogh, replying, said :—- " 1 thank you most sincerely for the address you have read, and the condemnation which the grand inquest of this vast, county unanimously expresses of the system of terrorism to which you vi>.\\>.)\ You have mentioned a recent trial, mv judgment upon which lias exposed me to menace; and outrage. Tn my position I am restrained from referring to the subject farther than to say the tusk then imposed upn me was not of my seeking; it was the will of the Legislature'. Had 1 consulted tny own ease I might have contented myself with barely announcing the leal result which the exigency of the case required, but I felt that as I was coerced to condemn the actors in that transaction T was bound to give my reasons for so doing, and now I am more than ever convinced of that obligation by the conduct of those; who have nince identified themselves with the acts I condemned, and made the ease of the transgressors their own." At the same assizes the members of the North-West Jiar also presented his lordship with an address.