incursions of a contemptible enemy? Was it a trivial and ordinary occasion which raised this storm of indignation in the Parliament of that day? Is the ocean ever lashed by the tempest, to waft a feather, or to drown a fly? By this act you have a solemn legislative declaration, "that it is incom patible with liberty to send any subject out of the realm, under pretence of any crime supposed or alleged to be committed in a foreign jurisdiction, except that crime be capital." 7. Such were the bulwarks which our ancestors placed about the sacred temple of liberty-such the ramparts by which they sought to bar out the ever-toiling ocean of arbitrary power; and thought (generous credulity!) that they had barred it out from their posterity forever. Little did they foresee the future race of vermin that would work their way through those mounds, and let back the inundation! CURRAN 5. CURRAN'S APPEAL TO LORD AVONMORE. IAM not ignorant, my lords, that the extraordinary con struction of law against which I contend 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. 2. But I cherish, too, the consolatory 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 vigor of his studious mind with the theoretic 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 illustrions examples,-by dwelling on the sweet souled piety of Cimon, on the anticipated Christianity of Socrates, on the gallant and pathetic 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. 3. 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. 4. And this soothing hope I draw from the dearest and tenderest recollections of my life; from the remembrance of those attic nights and those refections of the gods which we have partaken with those admired, and respected, and be loved companions, who have gone before us,-over whose ashes the most precious tears of Ireland have been shed.* 5. 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, where the innocent enjoyment of social mirth, became expanded into the nobler warmth of social virtue, and the horizon of the board became enlarged into the horizen of man; where the swelling heart conceived and communicated the pure and generous purpose; where my slenderer and younger taper imbibed its borrowed light from the more matured and redundant fountain of yours. Yes, my lord, we can remember those nights, without any other regret than that they can never more return; for, "We spent them not in toys, or lust, or wine; Wit, eloquence, and poesy; Arts which I loved, for they, my friend, were thine.' CURRAN. *Here, according to the original report, Lord Avonmore could not refrain from bursting into tears. In the midst of Curran's legal argu. ment, "this most beautiful episode," says Charles Phillips, "bloomed 6. GREAT MINDS IN THEIR RELATIONS TO CHRISTIANITY. [THOMAS ERSKINE, of Scotland, was made Lord Chanceller in England in 1806. He was one of the greatest advocates who have graced the Bar; and, In serious forensic oratory, has never been surpassed. It has been said of him, that no man that ever lived better elevated and honored his calling.] IN N running the mind along the long list of sincere and devoted Christians, I cannot help lamenting that Newton. had not lived to this day, to have had his shallowness filled up with this new flood of light, poured upon the world by Mr. Thomas Paine. But the subject is too awful for irony. I will speak plainly and directly. 2. Newton was a Christian-Newton, whose mind burst forth from the fetters cast by nature upon our finite conceptions ;-Newton, whose science was truth, and the foundations of whose knowledge of it was philosophy: not those visionary and arrogant presumptions which too often usurp its name, but philosophy resting upon the basis of mathematics, which, like figures, cannot lie ;-Newton, who carried the line and rule to the uttermost barrier of creation, and explored the principles by which, no doubt, all created matter is held together and exists. 3. But this extraordinary man, in the mighty reach of his mind, overlooked, perhaps, what a minuter investigation of the created things on this earth might have taught him, of the essence of his Creator. What, then, shall be said of the great Mr. Boyle, who looked into the organic structure of all like a green spot amid the desert. Mr. Curran told me himself, that when the court rose, the tip-staff informed him he was wanted immedi ately in chamber by one of the judges of the Exchequer. He, of course, obeyed the judicial mandate; and the moment he entered, poor Lord Avonmore, whose cheeks were still wet with the tears extorted by this heart-touching appeal, clasped him to his bosom." A coolness caused by political differences, which had for some time existed between them, gave place to a renewal of friendship, which was not again interrupted. matter, even to the brute inanimate substances which the foot treads on? Such a man may be supposed to have been equally qualified, with Mr. Paine, to look up through nature to nature's God; yet the result of all his contemplation was the most confirmed and devout belief in all which the other holds in contempt, as despicable and drivelling superstition. 4. But this error might, perhaps, arise from a want of due attention to the foundations of human judgment, and the structure of that understanding which God has given us for the investigation of truth. Let that question be answered by Mr. Locke, who was, to the highest pitch of devotion and adoration, a Christian ;-Mr. Locke, whose office was to detect the errors of thinking, by going up to the fountains of thought, and to direct into the proper track of reasoning the devious mind of man, by showing him its whole process, from the first perceptions of sense to the last conclusions of ratiocination, putting a rein upon false opinions by practi cal rules for the conduct of human judgment. But these men were only deep thinkers, and lived in their closets, unaccustomed to the traffic of the world, and to the laws which practically regulate mankind. 5. Gentlemen, in the place where we now sit to administer the justice of this great country, above a century ago, the never-to-be-forgotten Sir Matthew Hale presided, whose faith in Christianity is an exalted commentary upon its truth and reason, and whose life was a glorious example of its fruits in man, administering human justice with wisdom and purity, drawn from the pure fountain of the Christian dispensation, which has been, and will be, in all ages, a subject of the highest reverence and admiration. But it is said by the author that the Christian fable is but the tale of the more ancient superstitions of the world, and may be easily de tected by a proper understanding of the mythologies of the neathens. 6. Did Milton understand those mythologies? Was he less versed than Mr. Paine in the superstitions of the world? No; they were the subject of his immortal song; and though shut out from all recurrence to them, he poured them forth from the stores of a memory rich with all that man ever knew, and laid them in their order, as the illustration of real and exalted faith,—the unquestionable source of that fervid genius which cast a sort of shade upon all the other works of man. But it was the light of the BODY only that was extinguished; -"the celestial light shone inward, and enabled him to justify the ways of God to man.” 7. Thus you find all that is great, or wise, or splendid, or illustrious, amongst created beings,-all the minds gifted beyond ordinary nature, if not inspired by its universal Author for the advancement and dignity of the world,though divided by distant ages, and by clashing opinions, distinguishing them from one another, yet joining, as it were, in one sublime chorus to celebrate the truths of Christianity, and laying upon its holy altars the never-failing offerings of their immortal wisdom. ERSKINE. AN 7. GUILT CANNOT KEEP ITS OWN SECRET. N aged man, without an enemy in the world, in his own house, and in his own bed, is made the victim of a butcherly murder, for mere pay. The fatal blow is given! and the victim passes, without a struggle or a motion, from the repose of sleep to the repose of death! It is the assas sin's purpose to make sure work. He explores the wrist for the pulse. He feels for it, and ascertains that it beats no longer! It is accomplished. The deed is done. He retreats retraces his steps to the window, passes out through it as he came in, and escapes. He has done the murder ;-no eye has seen him, no ear has heard him. The secret is his own,-and it is safe! 2. Ah! gentlemen, that was a dreadful mistake. Such a Becret can be safe nowhere. The whole creation of God has |