my lords, bring your minds easily to believe that such a tissue of despotism and folly could have been the sober and deliberate intention of the legislature? But further, under the acts of George II. even from one county to the next, the warrant by the first justice must be authenticated upon oath, before it can be endorsed by the second; but, in this act, between, perhaps, the remotest regions of different kingdom's, no authentication is required; and, upon the endorsement of perhaps, a forged warrant, which the English justice has no means of inquiring into, a British subject is to be marched through England, and carried over sea to Ireland, there to learn in the county of Kerry, or Galway, or Derry, that he had been torn from his family, his friends, his business, to the annihilation of his credit, the ruin of his affairs, the destruction of his health, in consequence of a mistake, or a practical joke, or an inhuman or remorseless project of vindictive malice; and that he is then at liberty to return, if he is able; that he may have a good action at law against the worthy and responsible bailiff that abused him, if he is foolish enough to look for him, or unfortunate enough to find him. Can you, my lords, be brought seriously to believe, that such a construction would not be the foulest aspersion upon the wisdom and justice of the legislature ?

I said, my lords, that an Englishman may be taken upon the endorsement of a forged warrant. Let me not be supposed such a simpleton as to think that the danger of forgery makes a shade of difference in the subject. I know too well that calendar of saints, the Irish justices; I am too much in the habit of prosecuting and defending them every term and every commission, not to be able to guess at what price a customer might have real warrants by the dozen; and, without much sagacity, we might calculate the ave rage expense of their endorsement at the other side of the water. But, further yet, the act provides that the expense of such transmission shall be paid, at the end of the journey, by the place where the crime has been

committed-but, who is to supply the expenses by the way? What sort of prosecutors do you think the more likely to advance those expenses, an angry minister, or a vindictive individual?-I can easily see that such a construction would give a most effectual method of getting rid of a troublesome political opponent; or a rival in trade; or a rival in love; or of quickening the undutiful lingering of an ancestor that felt not the maturity of his heir; but I cannot bring myself to believe that a sober legislature, when the common rights of humanity seem to be beaten into their last entrenchment, and to make their last stand, I trust in God a successful one, in the British empire, would choose exactly that awful crisis for destroying the most vital principles of common justice and liberty, or of showing to these nations that their treasure and their blood were to be wasted in struggling for the noble privilege of holding the right of freedom, of habitation, and of country, at the courtesy of every little irritable officer of state, or of our worshipful Rivets, and Bells and Medlicots, and their trusty and well beloved cousins and catchpoles.

But, my lords, even if the prosecutor should succeed, which, for the honour and character of Ireland, I trust he cannot, in wringing, from the bench an admission that all offences whatsoever are within this act, he will have only commenced his honourable cause, he will only have arrived at the vestibule of atrocity. He has now to show that Mr. Johnson is within the description of a malefactor, making his escape into Ireland, whereby his offence may remain unpunished, and liable to be arrested under a warrant endorsed in that place whither or where such person shall escape, go into, reside, or be. For this inquiry you must refer to the twenty-third and twenty-fourth George II. The first of these, twenty-third, c. 11, recites the mischief" that persons against whom warrants are granted escape into other counties, and thereby avoid being punished."-The enacting part then gives the remedy:-" the justice for the place into which such person shall have gone or escaped,

shall endorse the original warrant, and the person accused shall thereunder be sent to the justice who granted it, to be by him dealt with, &c.

If words can be plain, these words are so they extend to persons actually committing crimes within a jurisdiction, and actually escaping into some other after warrant granted, and thereby avoiding trial.In this act there were found two defects: first, it did not comprehend persons changing their abode before warrant issued, and whose removing, as not being a direct flight from pursuit, could scarcely be called an escape; secondly, it did not give the second justice a power to bail. And here you see how essential to justice it was deemed, that the person arrested should be bailed on the spot and the moment of arrest, if the charge was bailable.

Accordingly, the twenty-fourth of George II. cap. 55, was made:-After reciting the former act, and the class of offenders thereby described, namely, actual offenders actually escaping, it recites that "whereas such offenders may reside or be in some other county before the warrant granted, and without escaping or going out of the county after such warrant granted," it then enacts, "that the justice for such place where such person shall escape, go into, reside, or be, shall endorse, &c. and may bail if bailable, or transmit, &c.

Now the construction of these two acts taken together is manifestly this: it takes in every person who being in any jurisdiction, and committing an offence therein, escaping after warrant, or without escaping after warrant, going into some other jurisdiction, and who shall there reside, that is permanently abide, or shall be, that is not permanently, so as to be called a resident.

Now, here it is admitted that Mr. Johnson was not within the realm of England since the beginning of 1802, more than a year before the offence existed; and therefore you are gravely called upon to say that he is a person who made his escape from à place where he never was, and into a place which he had

never left.-To let in this wise and humane construction, see what you are called upon to do―the statute makes such persons liable to arrest if they shall have done certain things, to wit, if they shall escape, go into, reside, or be; but if the fact of simply being, that is, existing in another jurisdiction, is sufficient to make them so liable, it follows of course, that the two only verbs that imply doing any thing, that is, escape or go into, must be regarded as superfluous, that is, that the legislature had no idea whatsoever to be conveyed by them when they used them, and therefore are altogether expunged and rejected.

It

Such, my lords, are the strange and unnatural monsters that may be produced by the union of malignity and folly. I cannot but own that I feel an indignant, and, perhaps, ill natured satisfaction, in reflecting that my own country cannot monopolize the derision and detestation that such a production must attract. was originally conceived by the wisdom of the east ; it has made its escape, and come into Ireland under the sanction of the first criminal judge of the empire; where, I trust in God, we shall have only to feel shame or anger at the insolence of the visit; without the melancholy aggravation of such an execrable guest continuing to reside or to be among us. On the contrary, I will not dismiss the cheering expectation from my heart, that your decision, my lords, will show the British nation, that a country having as just and as proud an idea of liberty as herself, is not an unworthy ally in the great contest for the rights of humanity; is no unworthy associate in resisting the progress of barbarity and military despotism; and in defending against its enemies that great system of British freedom, in which we have now a common interest, and under the ruins of which, if it should be overthrown, we must be buried in a common destruction.

I am not ignorant, my lords, that this extraordinary construction has received the sanction of another court, nor of the surprise and dismay with which it smote upon the general heart of the bar. I am aware

that I may have the mortification of being told in another country of that unhappy decision, and I foresee in what confusion I shall hang down my head when I am told it. But I cherish too the consola. tory hope, that I shall be able to tell them that I had an old and learned friend, whom I would put above all the sweepings of their hall, who was of a different opinion; who had derived his ideas of civil liberty from the purest fountains of Athens and of Rome; who had fed the youthful vigour of his studious mind with the theoretick knowledge of their wisest philosophers and statesmen; and who had refined that theory into the quick and exquisite sensibility of moral instinct, by contemplating the practice of their most illustrious examples; by dwelling on the sweet souled piety of Cimon; on the anticipated christianity of Socrates; on the gallant and pathetick patriotism of Epaminondas; on that pure austerity of Fabricius, whom to move from his integrity would have been more difficult than to have pushed the sun from his course. I would add, that if he had seemed to hesitate, it was but for a moment; that his hesitation was like the passing cloud that floats across the morning sun, and hides it from the view, and does so for a moment hide it by involving the spectator without even approaching the face of the luminary. And this soothing hope I draw from the dearest and tenderest recollections of my life, from the remembrance of those attick nights and those refections of the gods which we have spent with those admired and respected and beloved companions who have gone before us;-over whose ashes the most precious tears of Ireland have been shed: yes, my good lord, I see you do not forget them; I see their sacred forms passing in sad review before your memory; I see your pained and softened fancy recalling those happy meetings, when the innocent enjoyment of social mirth expanded into the nobler warmth of social virtue, and the horizon of the board became enlarged into the horizon of man ;-when the swelling heart conceived and communicated the pure and