cution closed.
On the next day Mr. Shiel opened the case for the defence, as counsel
for himself and Mr. John O'Connell. In his speech he contended that Mr.
O'Connell shrank with abhorrence from the sanguinary aims imputed to
him; and bitterly complained that poems and articles in newspapers
should be brought as evidence against him, as if he were the editor of
the several journals from which that evidence had been collected. It was
like making, he said, Mr. Cobden answerable for all that appeared in the
_Chronicle_, or the _Globe_, or the _Sun_: he was accused, in fact, of
conspiracy with men who, so far from conspiring together, were rivals.
"They pay their addresses to the same mistress; but they cordially
detest each other." How formidable, then, was this doctrine of legal
conspiracy! In 1819, when England was in a perilous condition, it was
proved that men were drilled by night near Manchester; yet an English
jury would not find Henry Hunt guilty of conspiracy. Mr. Shiel next
undertook to show that his clients' objects were legal, and sought by
legal means; and concluded with an impassioned address to the jury on
behalf of Mr. O'Connell and all the traversers. He asked:--"Shall I,
who stretch out to you in behalf of the son the hand whose fetters the
father had struck off, live to cast my eyes upon that domicile of sorrow
in the vicinity of this great metropolis, and say, 'Tis there they
have immured the liberator of Ireland with his fondest and best beloved
child. No; it shall never be! You will not consign him to the spot to
which the attorney-general invites you to surrender him. No! When the
spring shall have come again, and the winter shall have passed--when
the spring shall have come again, it is not through the windows of this
mansion that the father of such a son, and the son of such a father,
shall look upon those green hills on which the eyes of so many a captive
have gazed so wistfully in vain; but in their own mountain home again
they shall listen to the murmurs of the great Atlantic; they shall go
forth, and inhale the freshness of the morning air together; 'they
shall be free of mountain solitude;' they will be encompassed with
the loftiest images of liberty upon every side; and if time shall have
stolen its suppleness from the father's knee, or impaired the firmness
of his tread, he shall lean on the child of her that watches over him
from heaven, and shall look out from some high place, far and wide,