you might
have taken this course, and might thus to a great extent have repaired
your former errors, has been suffered to elapse.

Well, you had forty-eight names taken by lot from this mutilated
jury-list: and then came the striking. You struck out all the Roman
Catholic names: and you give us your reasons for striking out these
names, reasons which I do not think it worth while to examine. The real
question which you should have considered was this: Can a great issue
between two hostile religions,--for such the issue was,--be tried in a
manner above all suspicion by a jury composed exclusively of men of one
of those religions? I know that in striking out the Roman Catholics
you did nothing that was not according to technical rules. But my great
charge against you is that you have looked on this whole case in a
technical point of view, that you have been attorneys when you should
have been statesmen. The letter of the law was doubtless with you; but
not the noble spirit of the law. The jury de medietate linguae is of
immemorial antiquity among us. Suppose that a Dutch sailor at Wapping is
accused of stabbing an Englishman in a brawl. The fate of the culprit is
decided by a mixed body, by six Englishmen and six Dutchmen. Such were
the securities which the wisdom and justice of our ancestors gave to
aliens. You are ready enough to call Mr O'Connell an alien when it
serves your purposes to do so. You are ready enough to inflict on the
Irish Roman Catholic all the evils of alienage. But the one privilege,
the one advantage of alienage, you deny him. In a case which of all
cases most require a jury de medietate, in a case which sprang out of
the mutual hostility of races and sects, you pack a jury all of one
race and all of one sect. Why, if you were determined to go on with this
unhappy prosecution, not have a common jury? There was no difficulty
in having such a jury; and among the jurors might have been some
respectable Roman Catholics who were not members of the Repeal
Association. A verdict of Not Guilty from such a jury would have done
you infinitely less harm than the verdict of Guilty which you have
succeeded in obtaining. Yes, you have obtained a verdict of Guilty;
but you have obtained that verdict from twelve men brought together by
illegal means, and selected in such a manner that their decision can
inspire no confidence. You have obtained that verdict by the help of a
Chief Justice of whose charge I can hardly