this:If this act inflicted deportation on the defendant by way of punishment after his guilt had been established by conviction, that would, no doubt, be tyrannical, because ex post facto; but here he suffers the deportation, while the law is bound to suppose him perfectly innocent; and that only by way of process to make him amenable, not by way of punishment: and surely he cannot be so unreasonable as not to feel the force of the distinction. How naturally, too, we find, similar outrages resort to similar justifieations! Such exactly was the defence of the forcible entry into Baden. Had that been a brutal violence committed in perpetration of the murder of the unfortunate victim, perhaps very scrupulous moralists might find something in it to disapprove; but his imperial majesty was too delicately tender of the rights of individuals and of nations, to do any act so flagrant as that would be, if done in that point of view; but his imperial majesty only introduced a clause of ne omittas into his warrant, whereby the worshipful Bells and Medlicots that executed it were authorized to disregard any supposed fantastical privilege of nations that gave sanctuary to traitors; and he did that from the purest motives; from as disinterested a love of justice as that of the present prosecutors, and not at all in the way of an ex post facto law, but merely as process to bring him in, and make him amenable to the competent and unquestionable jurisdiction of the bois de Boulogne.-Such are the wretched sophistries to which men are obliged to have recourse, when their passions have led them to do what no thinking man can regard without horrour, what they themselves cannot look at without shame; and for which no legitimate reasoning can suggest either justification or excuse. Such are the

principles of criminal justice, on which the first experiment is made in Ireland, but I venture to pledge myself to my fellow subjects of Great Britain, that, if the experiment succeeds, they shall soon have the full benefit of that success. I venture to promise them, they shall soon have their full measure of this salutary

system for making men "amenable," heaped and running over into their bosoms.

There now remains, my lords, one, and only one topick of this odious subject, to call for observation. The offence here appears by the return and the affida vits to be a libel upon the Irish government, published by construction in Westminster. Of the constructive commission of a crime in one place by an agent, who, perhaps, at the moment of the act, is in another hemisphere, you have already heard enough :-Here, therefore, we will consider it simply as an alleged libel upon the Irish government; and whether as such, it is a charge coming within the meaning of the sta tute, and for which a common justice of peace in one kingdom is empowered to grant a warrant for conveying the person accused for trial into the other. Your lordships will observe, that in the whole catalogue of crimes for which a justice of peace may grant a warrant, there is not one that imposes upon him the necessity of deciding upon any matter of law, involving the smallest doubt or difficulty whatsoever. In treason, the overt act; in felony, whether capital or not, the act; in misdemeanors, the simple act. The dullest justice can understand what is a breach of the peace, and can describe it in his warrant. It is no

more than the description of a fact which the informer has seen and sworn to. But no libel comes within such a class, for it is decided over and over, that a libel is no breach of the peace, and upon that ground it was that Mr. Wilkes, in 1763, was allowed the privilege of parliament, which privilege does not extend to any breach of the peace.

See then, my lords, what a task is imposed upon a justice of the peace, if he is to grant such a warrant upon such a charge; he no doubt may easily comprehend the allegation of the informer as to the fact of writing the supposed libel; in deciding whether the facts sworn amounted to a publication or not, I should have great apprehension of his fallibility; but if he got over those difficulties I should much fear for his competency to decide what given facts

would amount to a constructive publication.-But even if he did solve that question, a point on which, if I were a justice, I should acknowledge myself most profoundly ignorant, he would then have to proceed to a labour in which I believe no man could expect him to succeed: that is, how far the paper sworn to was, in point of legal construction, libellous or not. I trust, this court will never be prevailed upon to sanction, by its decision, a construction that would give to such a set of men a power so incompatible with every privilege of liberty, or of law. To say it would give an irresistible power of destroying the liberty of the press in Ireland would, I am aware, be but a silly argument where such a thing has long ceased to exist. But I have for that very reason a double interest now, as a subject of the empire, in that noble guardian of liberty in the sister nation. When my own lamp is broken, I have a double interest in the preservation of my neighbour's. But if every man in England who dares to observe, no matter how honestly and justly, upon the conduct of Irish ministers, is liable to be torn from his family, and dragged hither by an Irish bailiff, for a constructive libel against the Irish government and upon the authority of an Irish warrant, no man can be such a fool as not to see the consequence. The inevitable consequence is this: that at this awful crisis, when the weal, not of this empire only, but of the whole civilized world, depends on the steady faith and the consolidated efforts of these two countries-when Ireland is become the right arm of England-when every thing that draws the common interest and affection closer gives the hope of life-when every thing that has even a tendency to relax that sentiment is a symptom of death, —even at such a crisis may the rashness or folly of those entrusted with its management so act as to destroy its internal prosperity and repose, and lead it into the two-fold, fatal errour, of mistaking its natural enemies for its friends, and its natural friends for its natural enemies, without any man being found

so romantically daring as to give notice of the approaching destruction.

My lords, I suppose the learned counsel will do here what they have done in the other court: they will assert, that this libel is not triable here; and they will argue, that so false and heinous a production surely ought to be triable somewhere. As to the first position, I say the law is directly against them. From a very early stage of the discussion, the gentlemen for the prosecution thought it wise for their clients to take a range into the facts much more at large than they appeared on the return to the writ, or even were by the affidavits that have been made; and they have done this to take the opportunity of aggravating the guilt of the defendant, and at the same time of panegyrizing their clients; they have therefore not argued upon the libel generally as a libel, but they thought it prudent to appear perfectly acquainted with the charges which it contains;-they have therefore assumed, that it relates to the transactions of the twenty-third of July, 1808, and that the guilt of the defendant was, that he wrote that libel in Ireland, which was afterwards published in England; not by himself, but by some other persons. Now, on these facts, nothing can be clearer than that he is triable here. If it be a libel, and if he wrote it here, and it was published in England, most manifestly there must have been a precedent publication, not merely by construction of law in Ireland, but a publication by actual fact; and for this plain reason, if you for a moment suppose the libel in his possession (and if he did in fact write it, I can scarcely conceive that it was not, unless he wrote it perhaps by construction) there was no physical means of transmitting it to England that would not amount to a publication here; because, if he put it into the post office, or give it to a messenger to carry thither, that would be complete evidence of publication against him: so would the mere possession of the paper, in the hands of the witness who appeared and produced it, be perfect evidence, if not accounted for or

contradicted, to charge him with the publication; so that really I am surprised how gentlemen could be betrayed into positions so utterly without foundation. They would have done just as usefully for their clients, if they had admitted what every man knows to be the fact; that is, that they durst not bring the charge before an Irish jury. The facts of that period were too well understood. The Irish publick might have looked at such a prosecution with the most incredulous detestation; and if they had been so indiscreet as to run the risk of coming before an Irish jury, instead of refuting the charges against them as a calumny, they would have exposed themselves to the peril of establishing the accusation, and of raising the character of the man whom they had the heart to destroy, because he had dared to censure them. Let not the learned gentlemen, I pray, suppose me so ungracious as to say, that this publication, which has given so much pain to their clients, is actually true. I cannot personally know it to be so, nor do I say so, nor is this the place or the occasion to say that it is so. I mean only to speak positively to the question before you, which is matter of law. But as the gentlemen themselves thought it meet to pronounce a eulogy on their clients, I thought it rather unseemly not to show that I attended to them; I have most respectfully done so; I do not contradict any praise of their virtues or their wisdom, and I only wish to add my very humble commendation of their prudence and discretion, in not bringing the trial of the present libel before a jury of this country.

The learned counsel have not been contented with abusing this libel as a production perfectly known to to them; but they have wandered into the regions of fancy. No doubt the other judges, to whom those pathetick flights of forensick sensibility were addressed, must have been strongly affected by them. The learned gentlemen have supposed a variety of possible cases. They have supposed cases of the foulest calumniators aspersing the most virtuous ministers.