soldier for our defence; when the old and the young were alarmed and terrified with the apprehensions of invasion, that Providence seemed to have worked a sort of miracle in our favour. You saw a band of armed men come forth at the great call of nature, of honour, and their country. You saw men of the greatest wealth and rank; you saw every class of the community give up its members, and send them armed into the field, to protect the public and private tranquillity of Ireland. It is impossible for any man to turn back to that period, without reviving those sentiments of tenderness and gratitude which then beat in the public bosom; to recollect, amidst what applause, what tears, what prayers, what benedictions, they walked forth amongst spectators, agitated by the mingled sensations of terror and reliance, of danger and pro tection, imploring the blessings of heaven upon their heads, and its conquest upon their swords.. That illustrious, and adored, and abused body of men, stood forward, and assumed the title, which, I trust, the ingratitude of their country will never blot from its history," THE VOLUNTEERS OF IRELAND."

Give me leave, now, with great respect, to put one question to you: Do you think the assembling of that glorious band of patriots was an insurrection? Do you think the invitation to that assembling would have been sedition? They came under no commission but the call of their country; unauthorized and unsanctioned, except by public emergency and public danger. I ask, was that meeting an insurrection, or not I put another question: If any man had then published a call on that body, and stated, that war was declared against the state that the regular troops were withdrawnthat our coasts were hovered round by the ships of the enemy-that the moment was approaching when the unprotect ed feebleness of age and sex, when the sanctity of habitation would be disregarded and profaned by the brutal ferocity of a rude invader; if any had then said to them," Leave your industry for a while, that you may return to it again, and come forth in arms for the public defence." I put this question to you

boldly, gentlemen. It is not the case of the volunteers of that day; it is the case of my client, at this hour, which I put to you. Would that call have been then pronounced in a court of justice, or by a jury on their oaths, a criminal and seditious invitation to insurrection? If it would not have been so then, upon what principle can it be so now? What is the force and perfection of the law! It is the permanency of the law; it is, that whenever the fact is the same, the law is also the same; that the law remains a written, monumented and recorded letter, to pronounce the same decision upon the same facts, whenever they shall arise. I will not affect to conceal it; you know there has been an artful, ungrateful and blasphemous clamour raised against these illustrious characters, the saviours of the kingdom of Ireland. Having mentioned this, let me read a few words of the paper alleged to be criminal: "You first took up arms to protect your country from foreign enemies and from domestic disturbance. For the very same purposes, it now becomes necessary that you should resume them."

I should be the last in the world to impute any want of candour to the right honourable gentleman who has stated the case on behalf of the prosecution; but he has certainly fallen into a mistake, which, if not explained, might be highly injurious to my client. He supposed that this publication was not addressed to the old volunteers, but to new combinations of them, formed upon new principles, and actuated by different motives. You have the words to which this construction is imputed upon the record; the meaning of his mind can be collected only from those words which he has made use of to convey it. The guilt imputable to him can only be inferred from the meaning ascribable to those words. Let his meaning then be fairly collected by resorting to them. Is there a foundation to suppose that this address was directed to any such body of men as has been called a banditti, with what justice it is unnecessary to inquire, and not to the old volunteers? As to the sneer at the word citizen VOL. I.

K.

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soldiers, I should feel that I was treating a very respected friend with an insidious and unmerited unkindness, if I affected to expose it by any gravity of refutation. I may, however, be permitted to observe, that those who are supposed to have disgraced this expression by adopting it, have taken it from the idea of the British constitution "that no man in becoming a soldier, ceases to be a citizen."* Would to God, all enemies as they are, that that unfortunate people had borrowed more from that sacred source of liberty and virtue; and would to God, for the sake of humanity, that they had preserved even the little they did borrow. If even there could be an objection to that appellation, it must have been strongest when it was first assumed. To that period the writer manifestly alludes; he addresses those who first took up arms; "you first took up arms to protect your country from foreign enemies, and from domestic disturbance. For the same purpose, it is now necessary that you should resume them." Is this applicable to those who had never taken up arms before? "A proclamation," says this paper, "has been issued in England, for embodying the militia, and a proclamation has been issued by the lord lieutenant and council in Ireland, for repressing all seditious associations. In consequence of both these proclamations, it is reasonable to apprehend danger from abroad, and danger at home." God help us; from the situation of Europe at that time, we were threatened with too probable danger from abroad, and I am afraid it was not without foundation that we were told our having something to dread at home. I find much abuse has been lavished on the disrespect with which the proclamation is treated, in that part of the paper alleged to be a libel. To that my answer for my client is short; I

* The volunteers, prior to 1785, used the term "citizen soldiers," agreeably to the good old whiggish principle of the English constitution, viz. that men in becoming soldiers, do not cease to be citizens. See General Washington's never-to-be-forgotten farewell address, and other American publications.

do conceive it competent to a British subject-if he think that a proclamation has issued for the purpose of raising false terrors, I hold it to be not only the privilege, but the duty of a citizen to set his countrymen right, with respect to such misrepresented danger; and until a proclamation, in this country, shall have the force of law, the reason and grounds of it are surely at least questionable by the people. Nay, I will go farther; if an actual law had received the sanction of the three estates, if it be exceptionable in any matter, it is warrantable to any man in the community to state, in a becoming manner, his ideas upon it. And I should be at a loss to know if the positive laws of Great Britain are thus questionable, upon what ground the proclamation of an Irish government should not be open to the animadversion of an Irish subject.

Whatever be the motive, or from whatever quarter it arises, says this paper, "alarm has arisen." Gentlemen, do you not know that to be the fact? It has been stated by the Attorney-General, and most truly, that the most gloomy apprehensions were entertained by the whole country. "You, volunteers of Ireland, are, therefore, summoned to arms at the instance of government, as well as by the responsibility attached to your character, and the permanent obligations of your institution." I am free to confess, if any man assuming the liberty of a British subject to question public topics, should, under the mask of that privilege, publish' a proclamation inviting the profligate and seditious, those in want and those in despair, to rise up in arms to overawe the legislature, to rob us of whatever portion of the blessings of a free government we possess; I know of no offence involving greater enormity. But that, gentlemen, is the question you are to try. If my client acted with an honest mind and fair intention, and having, as he believed, the authority of government to support him in the idea that danger was to be apprehended, did apply to that body of so known and so revered a character, calling upon them by their former honour, the principle of their glorious institution, and the great stake

they possessed in their country. If he interposed not upon a fictitious pretext, but a real belief of actual and imminent danger, and that their arming at that critical moment was necessary to their country, his intention was not only innocent, but highly meritorious. It is a question, gentlemen, upon which you only can decide; it is for you to say, whether it was criminal in the defendant to be so misled, and whether he is to fall a sacrifice to the prosecution of that government by which he was so deceived. I say again, gentlemen, you can look only to his own words as the interpreter of his meaning, and to the state and circumstances of his country, as he was made to believe them, as the clew to his intention. The case then, gentlemen, is shortly and simply this: a man of the first family, and fortune, and character, and property among you, reads a proclamation stating the country to be in danger from abroad and at home, and thus alarmedthus upon authority of the prosecutor, alarmed, applies to that august body before whose awful presence sedition must vanish, and insurrection disappear. You must surrender, I hesitate not to say it, your oaths to unfounded assertion, if you can submit to say, that such an act, of such a man, so warranted, is a wicked and seditious libel. If he was a dupe, let me ask you who was the impostor? I blush and I shrink with shame and detestation from that meanness of dupery and servile complaisance, which could make that dupe a victim to the accusation of that impostor.

You perceive, gentlemen, that I am going into the merits of this publication, before I apply myself to the question which is first in order of time, namely, whether the publication, in point of fact, is to be ascribed to Mr. Rowan, or not. I have been unintentionally led into this violation of order. I should effect no purpose either of brevity or clearness by returning to the more methodical course of observation. I have been naturally drawn from it by the superior importance of the topic I am upon, namely, the merit of the publication in question.