a Repealer like me is to be tried,
is calculated to bring the administration of justice into disesteem,
disrepute, and hatred. I here protest against it. My lords and
gentlemen of the jury, before I offer any reply to the charges in
this indictment, and the further development of those charges made
yesterday by the learned gentleman whose official duty it was to
argue the government's case against me, I wish to apologise to the
court for declining to avail myself of the professional assistance of
the bar upon this occasion. It is not through any want of respect for
the noble profession of the bar that I decline that assistance. I
regard the duties of a lawyer as among the most respectable that a
citizen can undertake. His education has taught him to investigate
the origin, and to understand principles of law, and the true nature
of loyalty. He has had to consider how the interests of individual
citizens may harmonise with the interests of the community, how
justice and liberty may be united, how the state may have both order
and contentment. The application of the knowledge which he has
gained--viz., the study of law to the daily facts of human
society--sharpens and strengthens all his faculties, clears his
judgment, helps him to distinguish true from false, and right from
wrong. It is no wonder, gentlemen, that an accomplished and virtuous
lawyer holds a high place in the aristocracy of merit in every free
country. Like all things human, the legal profession has its dark as
well as its bright side, has in it germs of decay and rotten foulness
as well as of health and beauty; but yet it is a noble profession,
and one which I admire and respect. But, above all, I would desire to
respect the bar of my own country, and the Irish bar--the bar made
illustrious by such memories as those of Grattan and Flood, and the
Emmets, and Curran, and Plunket, and Saurin, and Holmes, and Sheil,
and O'Connell. I may add, too, of Burke and of Sheridan, for they
were Irish in all that made them great. The bar of Ireland wants this
day only the ennobling inspirations of national freedom to raise it
to a level with the world. Under the Union very few lawyers have been
produced whose names can rank in history with any of the great names
I have mentioned. But still, even the present times of decay, and
when the Union is preparing to carry away