fore this been read by all
who would care to read them. When he commenced, his voice appeared, to
those who were not accustomed to hear him, weak, piping, and most unfit
for a popular orator; but this effect was soon lost in the elegance of
his language and the energy of his manner; and, before he had been ten
minutes on his legs, the disagreeable tone was forgotten, though it was
sounding in the eager ears of every one in the Court.

His speech was certainly brilliant, effective, and eloquent; but it
satisfied none that heard him, though it pleased all. It was neither
a defence of the general conduct and politics of the party, such as
O'Connell himself attempted in his own case, nor did it contain a chain
of legal arguments to prove that John O'Connell, individually, had
not been guilty of conspiracy, such as others of the counsel employed
subsequently in favour of their own clients.

Sheil's speech was one of those numerous anomalies with which this
singular trial was crowded; and which, together, showed the great
difficulty of coming to a legal decision on a political question, in
a criminal court. Of this, the present day gave two specimens, which
will not be forgotten; when a Privy Councillor, a member of a former
government, whilst defending his client as a barrister, proposed in
Court a new form of legislation for Ireland, equally distant from that
adopted by Government, and that sought to be established by him whom he
was defending; and when the traverser on his trial rejected the defence
of his counsel, and declared aloud in Court, that he would not, by his
silence, appear to agree in the suggestions then made.

This spirit of turning the Court into a political debating arena
extended to all present. In spite of the vast efforts made by them
all, only one of the barristers employed has added much to his legal
reputation by the occasion. Imputations were made, such as I presume
were never before uttered by one lawyer against another in a court of
law. An Attorney-General sent a challenge from his very seat of office;
and though that challenge was read in Court, it was passed over by four
judges with hardly a reprimand. If any seditious speech was ever made
by O'Connell, that which he made in his defence was especially so, and
he was, without check, allowed to use his position as a traverser at
the bar, as a rostrum from which to fulminate more thoroughly and
publicly than ever, those doctrines for uttering whi