COURT OF KING'S BENCH. JOHN HEVEY AGAINST CHARLES H. SIRR, ON AN ACTION MONDAY, 17th MAY, 1802. MR. CURRAN stated the case for the plaintiff. He began by telling the jury, it was the most extraordinary action he had ever met with. It must have proceeded from the most unexampled impudence in the plaintiff, if he has brought it wantonly, or the most unparalleled miscreancy in the defendant, if it shall appear supported by proof. And the event must stamp the most condign and indelible disgrace on the guilty defendant, unless an unworthy verdict should shift the scandal upon another quarter. On the record, the action, he said, appeared short and simple; it was an action of trespass vi et armis, for an assault, battery, and false imprisonment. But the facts that led to it, that explain its nature and its enormity, and, of course, that should measure the damages, were neither short nor simple-the novelty of them might surprise, the atrocity must shock their feelings, if they had feelings to be shocked-but, he said, he did not mean to address himself to any of their proud feelings of liberty. The season for that was past. I There was indeed, he said, a time when, in addressing a jury upon very inferior violations of human rights, he had felt his bosom glow, and swell with the noble and elevating consciousness of being a free man, speaking to free men, and in a free country; where, if he was not able to communicate 1 the generous flame to their bosoms, he was at least not so cold as not to catch it from them. But that was a sympathy which he was not now so foolish either to affect to inspire, or participate. He would not insult them by the bitter mockery of such an affectation; buried as they were, he did not wish to conjure up the shades of departed freedom to flutter round their tomb, to haunt or to reproach them. Where freedom is no more, it is a mischievous profanation to use her language; because it tends to deceive the man who is no longer free, upon the most important of all points; that is, the nature of the situation to which he is reduced; and to make him confound the licentiousness of words, with the real possession of freedom. He meant not, therefore, he said, to call for a haughty verdict, that might humble the insolence of oppression, or assert the fancied rights of independence. Far from it; he only asked for such a verdict as might make some reparation for the most extreme and unmerited suffering, and might also tend to some probable mitigation of the public and general destiny. For this purpose, he said, he must carry back their attention to the melancholy period of 1798. It was at that sad crisis that the defendant, from an obscure individual, started into notice and consequence. It is in the hot-bed of public calamity, that such portentous and inauspicious products are accelerated without being matured. From being a town major, a name scarcely legible in the list of public encumbrances, he became at once invested with all the real powers of the most absolute authority. The life and the liberty of every man seemed to be given up to his disposal. With this gentleman's extraordinary elevation, began the story of the sufferings and ruin of the plaintiff. It seems, a man of the name of M'Guire, was prosecuted for some offence against the state. Mr. Hevey, the plaintiff, by accident, was in court; he was then a citizen of wealth and credit, a brewer in the first line of that business, Unfortunately for him, he had heretofore employed the witness for the prosecution, and found him a man of infamous character-unfortunately for himself, he mentioned this circumstance in court. The counsel for the prisoner insisted on his being sworn; he was so. The jury were convinced that no credit was due to the witness for the crown; and the prisoner was accordingly acquitted. In a day or two after, Major Sirr met the plaintiff in the street, asked how he dared to interfere in his business, and swore by God "he would teach him how to meddle with his people." Gentlemen, said Mr. Curran, there are two sorts of prophets, one that derives its source from real or fancied inspiration, and who are sometimes mistaken. But there is ano ther class who prophecy what they are determined to bring about themselves. Of this second, and by far the most authentic class, was the major; for Heaven, you see, has no monopoly of prediction. On the following evening, poor Hevey was dogged in the dark into some lonely alley; there he was seized, he knew not by whom, nor by what authority —and became, in a moment, to himself, to his family and his friends, as if he had never been. He was carried away in equal ignorance of his crime, and of his destiny; whether to be tortured, or hanged, or transported. His crime he soon learned; it was the treason which he had committed against the majesty of Major Sirr! He was immediately conducted to a new place of imprisonment in the castle yard, called the provost. Of this mansion of misery, of which you have since heard so much, Major Sandys was, and I believe yet is, the keeper; a gentleman of whom I know how dangerous it is to speak, and of whom every prudent man will think and talk with all due reverence. He seemed a twin star of the defendant-equal in honour and confidence, equal also (for who could be superior?) in probity and humanity. To this gentleman was my client consigned, and in his custody he remained about seven weeks, unthought of by the world, as if he had never existed. The oblivion of the buried is as profound as the oblivion of the dead; his family may have mourned his absence, or his probable death, but why should VOL. II. I I mention so paltry a circumstance? The fears or the sorrows of the wretched give no interruption to the general progress of things. The sun rose and the sun set, just as it did before the business of the government, the business of the castle, of the feast or of the torture, went on with their usual exactness and tranquillity. At length Mr. Hevey was discovered among the sweepings of the prison, and was at last to be disposed of. He was honoured with the personal notice of Major Sandys! "Hevey," says the major, "I have seen you ride a smart sort of a mare; you can't use her here; you had better give me an order for her." The plaintiff, you may well suppose, by this time, had a tolerable idea of his situation; he thought he might have much to fear from a refusal, and something to hope from a compliance; at all events he saw it would be a means of apprizing his family that he was not dead. He instantly gave the order required. The major graciously accepted it, saying, "your courtesy will not cost you much; you are to be sent down to-morrow to Kilkenny to be tried for your life; you will most certainly be hanged; and you can scarcely think that your journey to the other world will be performed on horseback." The humane and honourable major was equally a prophet with his compeer. The plaintiff on the next day took leave of his prison, as he supposed for the last time, and was sent under a guard to Kilkenny, then the head-quarters of Sir Charles Asgill,* there to be tried by a court-martial for such crimes as might chance to be alleged against him. In any other country, the scene that took place on that occasion might excite no little horror and astonishment; but with us, these sensations are extinguished by constant repetition. I am instructed, that a proclamation was sent forth, offering a reward to any man, who would come forward and * The same personage who once made a figure in this country. If we behieve the melancholy history of the Irish rebellion, the mercy that was shown to him in America he did not show to others in Ireland. give any evidence against the traitor Hevey. An unhappy wretch who had been shortly before condemned to die, and was then lying ready for execution, was allured by the proposal. His integrity was not firm enough to hesitate long between the alternative proposed; pardon, favour, and reward, with perjury on one side, the rope and the gibbet on other. His loyalty decided the question against his soul. He was examined, and Hevey was appointed, by the sentence of a mild, and, no doubt, enlightened court-martial, to take the place of the witness, and succeed to the vacant halter. Hevey, you may suppose, now thought his labours at an end, but he was mistaken; his hour was not yet come. You, gentlemen, or you, my lord, are probably accounting for his escape, by the fortunate recollection of some early circumstances, that might have smote upon the sensibility of Sir Charles Asgill, and made him believe that he was in debt to Providence for the life of one innocent, though a convicted victim. But it was not so; his escape was purely accidental. The proceedings upon his trial happened to meet the eye of Lord Cornwallis. The freaks of fortune are not always cruel-in the bitterness of her jocularity, you see she can adorn the miscreancy of the slave in the trappings of power, and rank, and wealth. But her playfulness is not always inhuman; she will sometimes, in her gambols, fling oil upon the wounds of the sufferer; she will sometimes save the captive from the dungeon and the grave, were it only, that she might afterwards reconsign him to his destiny, by the repri sal of capricious cruelty upon fantastic commiseration. Lord Cornwallis read the transmiss of Hevey's condemnation; his heart recoiled from the detail of stupidity and barbarity. He dashed his pen across the odious record, and ordered that Hevey should be forthwith liberated: I cannot but highly honour him for his conduct in this instance; nor, when I recollect his peculiar situation at that disastrous period, can I much blame him for not having acted towards that |