by one fatal plunge, involve its decision in
absurdity.

Hear what lately happened in the north of Ireland. A man was tried and
found guilty of murder--the case admitted no doubt--the act was a
cold-blooded, deliberate assassination, committed by a soldier on his
sergeant, in the presence of many witnesses. The trial proceeded; the
facts were proved; and--I quote the local newspaper--

"The jury retired, and were shut up when the judge left the
court, at half-past seven. At nine, his lordship returned to
court, when the foreman of the jury intimated that they had
agreed. They were then called into court, and having
answered to their names, returned a verdict of guilty, but
recommended the prisoner to mercy upon account of the close
intimacy that existed between the parties at the time of the
occurrence."

Now, what ever equalled this? When the jury who tried Madame Laffarge
for the murder of her husband, returned a verdict of guilty, with that
recommendation to mercy which is implied by the words "des
circonstances attenuantes," Alphonse Karr pronounced the "extenuating
circumstances," to be the fact, that she always mixed gum with the
arsenic, and never gave him his poison "neat."

But even _they_ never thought of carrying out their humanity farther
by employing the Belfast plea, that she had been "intimate with him"
before she killed him. No, it was reserved for our canny northerns to
find out this new secret of criminal jurisprudence, and to show the
world that there is a deep philosophy in the vulgar expression, a
blood relation--meaning thereby that degree of allianceship which
admits of butchery, and makes killing no murder; for if intimacy be a
ground of mercy, what must be friendship, what brotherhood, or
paternity?

Were this plea to become general, how cautious would men become about
their acquaintances--what a dread they would entertain of becoming
intimate with gentlemen from Tipperary!

I scarcely think the Whigs would throw out such lures for Dan and his
followers, if they could consider these consequences; and I doubt
much--taking everything into consideration, that the "Duke" would see
so much of Lord Brougham as he has latterly.

"Whom can a man make free with, if not with his friends?" saith
Figaro; and the Belfast men have studied Beaumarchais, and only
"carried out his principle," as the Whigs say, when they speak of
establishing popery in Ireland, to