Chapter III: Part 3

It comes simply to this: he talks of venerating the liberties of the Press, and yet he restrains that Press from discussing past history, present story, and future probabilities; he prohibits the past, the present, and the future; ancient records, modern truth, and prophecy, are all within the capacious range of his punishments. Is there anything else? Would this venerator of the liberty of the Press go farther? Yes, gentlemen; having forbidden all matter of history past and present, and all prediction of the future, he generously throws in _abstract principles_, and, as he has told you that his prisons shall contain every person who speaks of what was, or what is, or what will be, he likewise consigned to the same fate every person who treats of the theory or principles of government; and yet he dares to talk of the liberty of the Press! Can you be his dupes? Will you be his victims? Where is the conscience--where is the indignant spirit of insulted reason amongst you? Has party feeling extinguished in your breasts every glow of virtue--every spark of manhood?

If there be any warmth about you--if you are not clay-cold to all but party feeling, I would, with the air and in the tone of triumph, call you to the consideration of the remaining paragraph which has been spread on the lengthened indictment before you. I divide it into two branches, and shall do no more with the one than to repeat it. I read it for you already; I must read it again:

“Had he remained what he first came over, or what he afterwards professed to be, he would have retained his reputation for _honest, open hostility_, defending his political principles with firmness, perhaps with warmth, but without rancor; the supporter, and not the tool of an administration; a mistaken politician, perhaps, but an honorable man and a respectable soldier.”

Would to God I had to address another jury! Would to God I had reason and judgment to address, and I could entertain no apprehension from passion or prejudice! Here should I then take my stand, and require of that unprejudiced jury, whether this sentence does not demonstrate the complete absence of private malice or personal hostility. Does not this sentence prove a kindly disposition towards the individual, mixing and mingling with that discussion which freedom sanctions and requires, respecting his political conduct? Contrast this sentence with the prosecutor’s accusation of private malignity, and decide between Mr. Magee and his calumniators. He, at least, has this advantage, that your verdict cannot alter the nature of things; and that the public must see and feel this truth, that the present prosecution is directed against the discussion of the conduct towards the public, of men confided with public authority; that this is a direct attack upon the right to call the attention of the people to the management of the people’s affairs, and that, by your verdict of conviction, it is intended to leave no peaceful or unawed mode of redress for the wrongs and sufferings of the people.

But I will not detain you on these obvious topics. We draw to a close, and I hurry to it. This sentence is said to be particularly libellous:

“His party would have been proud of him; his friends would have praised (they need not have flattered him), and his enemies, though they might have regretted, must have respected his conduct; from the worst quarter there would have been some small tribute of praise; from none any great portion of censure; and his administration, though not popular, would have been conducted with dignity, and without offence. This line of conduct he has taken care to avoid; his original character for moderation he has forfeited; he can lay no claims to any merits for neutrality, nor does he even deserve the cheerless credit of defensive operations. He has begun to act; he has ceased to be a dispassionate chief governor, who views the wickedness and the folly of faction with composure and forbearance, and stands, the representative of majesty, aloof from the contest. He descends; he mixes with the throng; he becomes personally engaged, and having lost his temper, calls forth his private passions to support his public principles; he is no longer an indifferent viceroy, but a frightful partisan of an English ministry, whose base passions he indulges--whose unworthy resentments he gratifies, and on whose behalf he at present canvasses.”

Well, gentlemen, and did he not canvass on behalf of the ministry? Was there a titled or untitled servant of the Castle who was not despatched to the south to vote against the popular, and for the ministerial candidates? Was there a single individual within the reach of his Grace that did not vote against Prittie and Matthew, in Tipperary, and against Hutchinson, in Cork? I have brought with me some of the newspapers of the day, in which this partisanship in the Lord Lieutenant is treated by Mr. Hutchinson in language so strong and so pointed, that the words of this publication are mildness and softness itself when compared with that language. I shall not read them for you, because I should fear that you may imagine I unnecessarily identified my client with the violent but the merited reprobation poured upon the scandalous interference of our government with those elections.

I need not, I am sure, tell you that any interference by the Lord Lieutenant with the purity of the election of members to serve in Parliament, is highly unconstitutional, and highly criminal; he is doubly bound to the most strict neutrality; first, as a peer, the law prohibits his interference; secondly, as representative of the crown, his interference in elections is an usurpation of the people’s rights; it is, in substance and effect, high treason against the people, and its mischiefs are not the less by reason of there being no punishment affixed by the law to this treason.

If this offence, gentlemen, be of daily occurrence--if it be frequently committed, it is upon that account only the more destructive to our liberties, and, therefore, requires the more loud, direct, and frequent condemnation: indeed, if such practices be permitted to prevail, there is an end of every remnant of freedom; our boasted constitution becomes a mockery and an object of ridicule, and we ought to desire the manly simplicity of unmixed despotism. Will the Attorney-General--will his colleague, the Solicitor-General, deny that I have described this offence in its true colors? Will they attempt to deny the interference of the Duke of Richmond in the late elections? I would almost venture to put your verdict upon this, and to consent to a conviction, if any person shall be found so stocked with audacity, as to presume publicly to deny the interference of his Grace in the late elections, and his partisanship in favor of the ministerial candidates. Gentlemen, if that be denied, what will you, what can you think of the veracity of the man who denies it? I fearlessly refer the fact to you; on that fact I build. This interference is as notorious as the sun at noonday; and who shall venture to deny that such interference is described by a soft term when it is called partisanship? He who uses the influence of the executive to control the choice of the representatives of the people, violates the first principles of the constitution, is guilty of political sacrilege, and profanes the very sanctuary of the people’s rights and liberties; and if he should not be called a partisan, it is only because some harsher and more appropriate term ought to be applied to his delinquency.

I will recall to your minds an instance of violation of the constitution, which will illustrate the situation of my client, and the protection which, for your own sakes, you owe him. When, in 1687, King James removed several Protestant rectors in Ireland from their churches, against law and justice, and illegally and unconstitutionally placed Roman Catholic clergymen in their stead, would any of you be content that he should be simply called a partisan? No, gentlemen; my client and I--Catholic and Protestant though we be--agree perfectly in this, that partisan would have been too mild a name for him, and that he should have been branded as a violator of law, as an enemy to the constitution, and as a crafty tyrant who sought to gratify the prejudices of one part of his subjects, that he might trample upon the liberties of all. And what, I would fain learn, could you think of the Attorney-General who prosecuted, or of the judge who condemned, or of the jury who convicted a printer for publishing to the world this tyranny--this gross violation of law and justice? But how would your indignation be roused, if James had been only called a partisan, and for calling him a partisan a Popish jury had been packed, a Popish judge had been selected, and that the printer, who, you will admit, deserved applause and reward, met condemnation and punishment!

Of _you_--of _you_, shall _this story be told_, if you convict Mr. Magee. The Duke has interfered in elections; he has violated the liberties of the subject; he has profaned the very temple of the constitution; and he who has said that in so doing he was a partisan, from your hands expects punishment.

Compare the kindred offences: James deprived the Protestant rectors of their livings; he did not persecute, nor did he interfere with their religion; for tithes, and oblations, and glebes, and church lands, though solid appendages to any church, are no part of the Protestant religion. The Protestant religion would, I presume--and for the honor of human nature I sincerely hope--continue its influence over the human mind without the aid of those extrinsic advantages. Its pastors would, I trust and believe, have remained true to their charge, without the adventitious benefits of temporal rewards; and, like the Roman Catholic Church, it might have shone forth a glorious example of firmness in religion, setting persecution at defiance. James did not attack the Protestant religion; I repeat it; he only attacked the revenues of the Protestant Church; he violated the law and the constitution, in depriving men of that property, by his individual authority, to which they had precisely the same right with that by which he wore his crown. But is not the controlling the election of members of Parliament a more dangerous violation of the constitution? Does it not corrupt the very sources of legislation, and convert the guardians of the state into its plunderers? The one was a direct and undisguised crime, capable of being redressed in the ordinary course of the law, and producing resistance by its open and plain violation of right and of law; the other disguises itself in so many shapes, is patronized by so many high examples, and is followed by such perfect security, that it becomes the first duty of every man who possesses any reverence for the constitution, or any attachment to liberty, to lend all his efforts to detect, and, if possible, to punish it.

To any man who loved the constitution or freedom, I could safely appeal for my client’s vindication; or if any displeasure could be excited in the mind of such a man, it would arise because of the forbearance and lenity of this publication. But the Duke is called a frightful partisan. Granted, gentlemen, granted. And is not the interference I have mentioned frightful? Is it not terrific? Who can contemplate it without shuddering at the consequences which it is likely to produce? What gentler phrase--what ladylike expression should my client use? The constitution is sought to be violated, and he calls the author of that violation a frightful partisan. Really, gentlemen, the fastidiousness which would reject this expression would be better employed in preventing or punishing crime, than in dragging to a dungeon the man who has the manliness to adhere to truth, and to use it. Recollect also--I cannot repeat it too often--that the Attorney-General told you that “the liberty of the Press was the best protection of the people against the government.” Now, if the constitution be violated--if the purity of election be disturbed by the executive, is not this precisely the case when this protection becomes necessary? It is not wanted, nor can the Press be called a protector, so long as the government is administered with fidelity, care, and skill. The protection of the Press is requisite only when integrity, diligence, or judgment do not belong to the administration; and that protection becomes the more necessary in the exact proportion in which these qualities are deficient. But, what protection can it afford if you convict in this instance? For, by doing so you will decide that nothing ought to be said against that want of honesty, or of attention, or of understanding; the more necessary will the protection of the Press become, the more unsafe will it be to publish the truth; and in the exact proportion in which the Press might be useful, will it become liable to punishment. In short, according to the Attorney-General’s doctrine, when the Press is “best employed and wanted most,” it will be most dangerous to use it. And thus, the more corrupt and profligate any administration may be, the more clearly can the public prosecutor ascertain the sacrifice of his selected victim. And call you this protection? Is this a protector who must be disarmed the moment danger threatens, and is bound a prisoner the instant the fight has commenced?

Here I should close the case--here I should shortly recapitulate my client’s defence, and leave him to your consideration; but I have been already too tedious, and shall do no more than recall to your recollection the purity, the integrity, the entire disinterestedness of Mr. Magee’s motives. If money were his object, he could easily procure himself to be patronized and salaried; but he prefers to be persecuted and discountenanced by the great and powerful, because they cannot deprive him of the certain expectation that his exertions are useful to his long-suffering, ill-requited country.

He is disinterested, gentlemen; he is honest; the Attorney-General admitted it, and actually took the trouble of administering to him advice how to amend his fortune and save his person. But the advice only made his youthful blood mantle in that ingenious countenance, and his reply was painted in the indignant look that told the Attorney-General he might offer wealth, but he could not bribe--that he might torture, but he could not terrify! Yes, gentlemen, firm in his honesty, and strong in the fervor of his love of Ireland, he fearlessly awaits your verdict, convinced that even you must respect the man whom you are called upon to condemn. Look to it, gentlemen; consider whether an honest, disinterested man shall be prohibited from discussing public affairs; consider whether all but flattery is to be silent--whether the discussion of the errors and the capacities of the ministers is to be closed forever. Whether we are to be silent as to the crimes of former periods, the follies of the present, and the credulity of the future; and, above all, reflect upon the demand that is made on you to punish the canvassing of abstract principles.

Has the Attorney-General succeeded? Has he procured a jury so fitted to his object, as to be ready to bury in oblivion every fault and every crime, every error and every imperfection of public men, past, present, and future--and who shall, in addition, silence any dissertation on the theory or principle of legislation? Do, gentlemen, go this length with the prosecutor and then venture on your oaths. I charge you to venture to talk to your families of the venerable liberty of the Press--the protection of the people against the vices of the government.

I should conclude, but the Attorney-General compels me to follow him through another subject.[6]

* * * * *

Let me transport you from the heat and fury of domestic politics; let me place you in a foreign land; you are Protestants--with your good leave, you shall, for a moment, be Portuguese, and Portuguese is now an honorable name, for right well have the people of Portugal fought for their country, against the foreign invader. Oh! how easy to procure a similar spirit, and more of bravery, amongst the people of Ireland! The slight purchase of good words, and a kindly disposition, would convert them into an impenetrable guard for the safety of the Throne and the State. But advice and regret are equally unavailing, and they are doomed to calumny and oppression, the reality of persecution, and the mockery of justice, until some fatal hour shall arrive which may preach wisdom to the dupes, and menace with punishment the oppressor.

In the meantime I must place you in Portugal. Let us suppose for an instant that the Protestant religion is that of the people of Portugal--the Catholic, that of the government--that the house of Braganza has not reigned, but that Portugal is still governed by the viceroy of a foreign nation, from whom no kindness, no favor, has ever flowed, and from whom justice has rarely been obtained, and upon those unfrequent occasions, not conceded generously, but extorted by force, or wrung from distress by terror and apprehension, in a stinted measure and ungracious manner; you, Protestants, shall form, not as with us in Ireland, nine tenths, but some lesser number--you shall be only four fifths of the population; and all the persecution which you have yourselves practised here upon Papists, whilst you, at the same time, accused the Papists of the crime of being persecutors, shall glow around; your native land shall be to you the country of strangers; you shall be aliens in the soil that gave you birth, and whilst every foreigner may, in the land of your forefathers, attain rank, station, emolument, honors, you alone shall be excluded; and you shall be excluded for no other reason but a conscientious abhorrence to the religion of your ancestors.

Only think, gentlemen, of the scandalous injustice of punishing you because you are Protestants. With what scorn--with what contempt do you not listen to the stale pretences--to the miserable excuses by which, under the name of state reasons and political arguments, your exclusion and degradation are sought to be justified. Your reply is ready--“perform your iniquity--men of crimes,” (you exclaim), “be unjust--punish us for our fidelity and honest adherence to truth, but insult us not by supposing that your reasoning can impose upon a single individual either of us or of yourselves.” In this situation let me give you a viceroy; he shall be a man who may be styled--by some person disposed to exaggerate, beyond bounds, his merits, and to flatter him more than enough--“an honorable man and a respectable soldier,” but, in point of fact, he shall be of that little-minded class of beings who are suited to be the plaything of knaves--one of those men who imagine they govern a nation, whilst in reality they are but the instruments upon which the crafty play with safety and with profit. Take such a man for your viceroy--Protestant Portuguese. We shall begin with making this tour from Tralos Montes to the kingdom of Algesiras--as one amongst us should say, from the Giant’s Causeway to the kingdom of Kerry. Upon his tour he shall affect great candor and good-will to the poor, suffering Protestants. The bloody anniversaries of the inquisitorial triumphs of former days shall be for a season abandoned, and over our inherent hostility the garb of hypocrisy shall, for a season, be thrown. Enmity to the Protestant shall become, for a moment, less apparent; but it will be only the more odious for the transitory disguise.

The delusion of the hour having served its purpose, your viceroy shows himself in his native colors; he selects for office, and prefers for his pension list, the men miserable in intellect, if they be but virulent against the Protestants; to rail against the Protestant religion--to turn its holiest rites into ridicule--to slander the individual Protestants, are the surest, the only means to obtain his favor and patronage. He selects from his Popish bigots some being more canine than human, who, not having talents to sell, brings to the market of bigotry his impudence--who, with no quality under heaven but gross, vulgar, acrimonious, disgustful, and shameless abuse of Protestantism to recommend him, shall be promoted to some accountant-generalship, and shall riot in the spoils of the people he traduces, as it were to crown with insult the severest injuries. This viceroy selects for his favorite privy councillor some learned doctor, _half lawyer, half divine, an entire brute_, distinguished by the unblushing repetition of calumnies against the Protestants. This man has asserted that Protestants are perjurers and murderers in principle--that they keep no faith with Papists, but hold it lawful and meritorious to violate every engagement, and commit every atrocity towards any person who happens to differ with Protestants in religious belief. This man raves thus, in public, against the Protestants, and has turned his ravings into large personal emoluments. But whilst he is the oracle of minor bigots, he does not believe himself; he has selected for the partner of his tenderest joys, of his most ecstatic moments--he has chosen for the intended mother of his children, for the sweetener and solace of his every care, a Protestant, gentlemen of the jury.

Next to the vile instruments of bigotry, his accountant-general and privy councillor, we will place his acts. The Protestants of Portugal shall be exposed to insult and slaughter; an Orange party--a party of Popish Orangemen shall be supposed to exist; they shall have liberty to slaughter the unarmed and defenceless Protestants, and as they sit peaceably at their firesides. They shall be let loose in some Portuguese district, called Monaghan; they shall cover the streets of some Portuguese town of Belfast with human gore; and in the metropolis of Lisbon, the Protestant widow shall have her harmless child murdered in the noon day and his blood shall have flowed unrequited, because his assassin was very loyal when he was drunk, and had an irresistible propensity to signalize his loyalty by killing Protestants. Behold, gentlemen, this viceroy depriving of command, and staying the promotion of, every military man who shall dare to think Protestants men, or who shall presume to suggest that they ought not to be prosecuted. Behold this viceroy promoting and rewarding the men who insulted and attempted to degrade the first of your Protestant nobility. Behold him in public, the man I have described.

In his personal concerns he receives an enormous revenue from the people he thus misgoverns. See in his management of that revenue a parsimony at which even his enemies blush. See the paltry sum of a single joe[7] refused to any Protestant charity, while his bounty is unknown even at the Popish institutions for benevolent purposes. See the most wasteful expenditure of the public money--every job patronized--every profligacy encouraged. See the resources of Portugal diminished. See her discords and her internal feuds increased. And, lastly, behold the course of justice perverted and corrupted.

It is thus, gentlemen, the Protestant Portuguese seek to obtain relief by humble petition and supplication. There can be no crime surely for a Protestant, oppressed because he follows a religion which is, in his opinion, true, to endeavor to obtain relief by mildly representing to his Popish oppressors, that it is the right of every man to worship the Deity according to the dictates of his own conscience; to state respectfully to the governing powers that it is unjust, and may be highly impolitic, to punish men, merely because they do not profess Popery, which they do not believe; and to submit, with all humility, that to lay the burdens of the state equally, and distribute its benefits partially, is not justice, but, although sanctioned by the pretence of religious zeal, is, in truth, iniquity, and palpably criminal. Well, gentlemen, for daring thus to remonstrate, the Protestants are persecuted. The first step in the persecution is to pervert the plain meaning of the Portuguese language, and a law prohibiting any _disguise_ in apparel, shall be applied to the ordinary _dress_ of the individual; it reminds one of _pretence_ and _purpose_.

To carry on these persecutions, the viceroy chooses for his first inquisitor the descendant of some Popish refugee--some man with an hereditary hatred to Protestants; he is not the son of an Irishman, this refugee inquisitor--no, for the fact is notorious that the Irish refugee Papists were ever distinguished for their liberality, as well as for their gallantry in the field and talent in the cabinet. This inquisitor shall be, gentlemen, a descendant from one of those English Papists, who was the dupe or contriver of the Gunpowder Plot! With such a chief inquisitor, can you conceive anything more calculated to rouse you to agony than the solemn mockery of your trial? This chief inquisitor begins by influencing the judges out of court; he proceeds to inquire out fit men for his interior tribunal, which, for brevity, we will call a jury. He selects his juries from the most violent of the Popish Orangemen of the city, and procures a conviction against law and common sense, and without evidence. Have you followed me, gentlemen? Do you enter into the feelings of Protestants thus insulted, thus oppressed, thus persecuted--their enemies and traducers promoted, and encouraged, and richly rewarded--their friends discountenanced and displaced--their persons unprotected, and their characters assailed by hired calumniators--their blood shed with impunity--their revenues parsimoniously spared to accumulate for the individual, wastefully squandered for the state--the emblems of discord, the war-cry of disunion, sanctioned by the highest authority, and Justice herself converted from an impartial arbitrator into a frightful partisan?

Yes, gentlemen, place yourselves as Protestants under such a persecution. Behold before you this chief inquisitor, with his prejudiced tribunal--this gambler, with a loaded die; and now say what are your feelings--what are your sensations of disgust, abhorrence, affright? But if at such a moment some ardent and enthusiastic Papist, regardless of his interests, and roused by the crimes that were thus committed against you, should describe, in measured, and cautious, and cold language, scenes of oppression and iniquity--if he were to describe them, not as I have done, but in feeble and mild language, and simply state the facts for your benefit and the instruction of the public--if this liberal Papist, for this, were dragged to the Inquisition, as for a crime, and menaced with a dungeon for years, good and gracious God! how would you revolt at and abominate the men who could consign him to that dungeon! With what an eye of contempt, and hatred, and despair, would you not look at the packed and profligate tribunal which could direct punishment against him who deserved rewards! What pity would you not feel for the advocate who heavily, and without hope, labored in his defence! and with what agonized and frenzied despair would you not look to the future destinies of a land in which perjury was organized and from which humanity and justice had been forever banished!

With this picture of yourselves in Portugal, come home to us in Ireland; say, is that a crime, when applied to Protestants, which is a virtue and a merit when applied to Papists? Behold how we suffer here; and then reflect, that it is principally by reason of your prejudices against us that the Attorney-General hopes for your verdict. The good man has talked of his impartiality; he will suppress, he says, the licentiousness of the Press. I have, I hope, shown you the right of my client to discuss the public subjects which he has discussed in the manner they are treated of in the publication before you, yet he is prosecuted. Let me read for you a paragraph which the Attorney-General has not prosecuted--which he has refused to prosecute:

“BALLYBAY, July 4, 1813.

“A meeting of the Orange Lodges was agreed on, in consequence
of the manner in which the Catholics wished to have persecuted
the loyalists in this county last year, _when they even murdered
some of them for no other reason than their being yeomen and
Protestants_.”

And, again--

“It was at Ballybay that _the Catholics murdered one Hughes, a
yeoman sergeant, for being a Protestant, as was given in evidence
at the assizes by a Catholic witness_.”

I have read this passage from the _Hibernian Journal_ of the 7th of this month. I know not whether you can hear, unmoved, a paragraph which makes my blood boil to read; but I shall only tell you, that the Attorney-General refused to prosecute this libeller. Gentlemen, there have been several murders committed in the county of Monaghan, in which Ballybay lies. The persons killed happened to be Roman Catholics; their murderers are Orangemen. Several of the persons accused of these murders are to be tried at the ensuing assizes. The agent applied to me personally, with this newspaper; he stated that the obvious intention was to create a prejudice upon the approaching trials favorable to the murderers, and against the prosecutors. He stated what you--_even you_--will easily believe, that there never was a falsehood more flagitiously destitute of truth than the entire paragraph. I advised him, gentlemen, to wait on the Attorney-General in the most respectful manner possible; to show him this paragraph, then to request to be allowed to satisfy him as to the utter falsehood of the assertions which this paragraph contained, which could be more easily done, as the judges who went that circuit could prove part of it to be false; and I directed him to entreat that the Attorney-General, when fully satisfied of the falsehood, would prosecute the publisher of this, which, I think, I may call an atrocious libel.

Gentlemen, the Attorney-General was accordingly waited on; he was respectfully requested to prosecute upon the terms of having the falsehood of these assertions first proved to him. I need not tell you he refused. These are not the libellers _he_ prosecutes. Gentlemen, this not being a libel on any individual, no private individual can prosecute for it; and the Attorney-General turns his Press loose on the Catholics of the county of Monaghan, whilst he virulently assails Mr. Magee for what must be admitted to be comparatively mild and inoffensive.

No, gentlemen, he does not prosecute this libel. On the contrary, this paper is paid enormous sums of the public money. There are no less than five proclamations in the paper containing this libel; and, it was proved in my presence, in a court of justice, that, besides the proclamations and public advertisements, the two proprietors of the paper had each a pension of £400 per annum, for supporting government, as it was called. Since that period one of those proprietors has got an office worth, at least, £800 a year; and the son of the other, a place of upwards of £400 per annum: so that, as it is likely that the original pensions continue, here may be an annual income of £2000 paid for this paper, besides the thousands of pounds annually which the insertion of the proclamations and public advertisements cost. It is a paper of the very lowest and most paltry scale of talent, and its circulation is, fortunately, very limited; but it receives several thousands of pounds of the money of the men whom it foully and falsely calumniates.

Would I could see the man who pays this proclamation money and these pensions at the Castle. [Here Mr. O’Connell turned round to where Mr. Peele[B] sat.] Would I could see the man who, against the fact, asserted that the proclamations were inserted in all the papers, save in those whose proprietors were convicted of a libel. I would ask him whether this be a paper that ought to receive the money of the Irish people? Whether this be the legitimate use of the public purse? And when you find this calumniator salaried and rewarded, where is the impartiality, the justice, or even the decency of prosecuting Mr. Magee for a libel, merely because he has not praised public men, and has discussed public affairs in the spirit of freedom and of the constitution? Contrast the situation of Mr. Magee with the proprietor of the _Hibernian Journal_: the one is prosecuted with all the weight and influence of the Crown, the other pensioned by the ministers of the Crown; the one dragged to your bar for the sober discussion of political topics, the other hired to disseminate the most horrid calumnies! Let the Attorney-General now boast of his impartiality; can you credit him on your oaths? Let him talk of his veneration for the liberty of the Press; _can you_ believe him in your consciences? Let him call the Press the protection of the people against the government. Yes, gentlemen, believe him when he says so. Let the Press be the protection of the people; he admits that it ought to be so. Will you find a verdict for him that shall contradict the only assertion upon which he and I, however, are both agreed?

[B] Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant.

Gentlemen, the Attorney-General is bound by this admission; it is part of his case, and he is the prosecutor here; it is a part of the evidence before you, for he is the prosecutor. Then, gentlemen, it is your duty to act upon that evidence, and to allow the Press to afford some protection to the people.

Is there amongst you any one friend to freedom? Is there amongst you one man who esteems equal and impartial justice, who values the people’s rights as the foundation of private happiness, and who considers life as no boon without liberty? Is there amongst you one friend to the constitution--one man who hates oppression? If there be, Mr. Magee appeals to his kindred mind, and confidently expects an acquittal.

There are amongst you men of great religious zeal--of much public piety. Are you sincere? Do you believe what you profess? With all this zeal--with all this piety, _is_ there any conscience amongst you? _Is_ there any terror of violating your oaths? Be ye hypocrites, or does genuine religion inspire ye? If you be sincere--if you have conscience--if your oaths can control your interests, then Mr. Magee confidently expects an acquittal.

If amongst you there be cherished one ray of pure religion--if amongst you there glow a single spark of liberty--if I have alarmed religion, or roused the spirit of freedom in one breast amongst you, Mr. Magee is safe, and his country is served; but if there be none--if you be slaves and hypocrites, he will await your verdict, and despise it.[8]

LORD PALMERSTON.

The life of Henry John Temple, Viscount Palmerston (1784–1865), covers so great a space of time elapsed and embraces so many high activities that few are the careers in English political history comparable to it. If one instinctively refers to the case of Mr. Gladstone, the nearest nineteenth century parallel, it is chiefly to observe the partly antithetical relation of the men: the one, a commoner always, the other, aristocrat by birth; each, in his time, Premier; and each preserving undimmed, past the great age of eighty years, distinguished powers of body and mind.

Lord Palmerston sprung from the Irish Temples, an ancient and honorable family. The whirligig of time has surely brought in no quainter changes than that the Temple of the Don Pacifico debate, the utterer of England’s downright word, the first Jingo of his period, should have descended, by near consanguinity, from the graceful, ineffectual Sir William Temple of Swift,--and, alas, of Bentley,--the gentleman who retired from the rude shock of politics to his Shene gardens, and who, instead of directing the troublous destinies of the state, penned models of prose style on gout and other gentlemanly things. And yet from the outset Lord Palmerston was destined to play a positive part in his world: as a man and a publicist he had few qualities that were not aggressive. A table condensed from the life by Bulwer gives in the most succinct form a view of how continuously he was in the thick of affairs.--

Born, Oct. 20, 1784
Succeeded to the Title, 1802
M. A., at Cambridge, 1806
Junior Lord of the Admiralty, 1807–1809
Secretary at War, 1809–1828
Secretary for Foreign Affairs, { 1830–34; 1835
{ 1841; 1846–1851
Home Secretary, 1852–1855
Prime Minister, { 1855–1858;
{ 1859–1865

As a boy, he is described as being notable for vivacity and energy; and, although undoubtedly hastened by family and connections, his early entry into public life was due in some measure to his own talents. Thus, before he was twenty-four, he had twice stood unsuccessfully for member for the University of Cambridge. His first election to Parliament came in June, 1807, from Newton, Isle of Wight. A few months later, Palmerston made his maiden speech, in favor of the expedition against Copenhagen, having previously, by family interest, been appointed a Junior Lord of the Admiralty. The speech attracted immediate attention; and the public was not surprised when, in 1809, the young man of twenty-five was offered so great a post as the Chancellorship of the Exchequer. There were doubtless few rising men who would have had a similar self-control; but Lord Palmerston modestly and wisely declined the sudden elevation, and, instead, elected to be Secretary at War, a kind of bursar to the army, in which comparatively obscure position he passed nearly twenty years. His next advancement--to the Secretaryship for Foreign Affairs--marks his entrance into his real element. From now on the years were those of preparation; little by little he built himself toward the Premiership. From 1830, then, until his occupancy of the highest office an English subject may hold, Palmerston was almost constantly in office, constantly, too, a figure to be reckoned with. At last, in 1855, as a crown to his ripe years and manifold experience, came the Premiership, which was to occupy the last decade of his life. Until very near the end, he may be said to have upheld firmly the high responsibilities of the office. Hardly suspected to be seriously ill by the public, he died October 18, 1865, within two days of his eighty-first year, of gout, the statesman’s disease.

The career of Lord Palmerston is typically an English and an aristocratic one. Nothing could be farther removed from the democratic ideal of the “self-made man.” Palmerston, so to speak, was born into success; and he was able to retain and to extend his birthright. In democracies like the United States, and in constitutional monarchies like England, it is not always that the man showered with fortune’s gifts makes public life at once his amusement and his profession. In the former state, such an one is the least likely of persons to raise an influential voice in Congress; in the latter, the man often drifts into the channels of sport or society. That the higher path has been essayed by so many well-born Englishmen is more than creditable: this fact lies close at the foundations of the British Empire.

We have said that through all the ramifications of the higher English life and politics Lord Palmerston was ever a pervasive figure. He could remember games of chess he had played, as a young man, with the unfortunate Queen Caroline: the year Byron published his first poems was the year of his entrance to Parliament; and he died as the American Confederacy flickered out in ashes. Through all these years, as a statesman he had preserved much the same character. Foreign Affairs were his chief interest: his conception of their administration practically never swerved from the theory of a militant, unsleeping England--an England at times, perhaps, apt to be blustering and overbearing, but an England frankly devoted to its higher self-interests and to what, from an English point of view, was indubitably the good of the world. His position toward home affairs is hard to describe. So far as he was identified with local divisions he was a Conservative with a strong tinge of Liberal doctrine. Abroad, the tinge of Liberalism and the sympathies with Continental rebellions against absolute monarchy due to it, caused Palmerston to be regarded as almost a revolutionary. In truth, so far as England was concerned, he was profoundly in love with the _status quo_: the uprisings abroad, he considered, were only the restless gropings of the peoples towards a realization of the English system of government. In hardly any sense was his policy constructive. As Mr. McCarthy remarks, in his brilliant estimate, great national crises he was at no time--perhaps happily--called on to meet. It was ever his way to follow, not direct the great impulses of public opinion that swept through Parliament. The same authority neatly sums him up in saying, “His policy was necessarily shifting, uncertain, and inconsistent; for he moulded it always on the supposed interests of England as they showed themselves to his eyes at the time.” In a word, he was an astute server of the hour; and the hour requited him with more than the usual success. Such a person is obviously not nicely scrupulous in matters of the _haute-politique_. The qualities of indomitable self-confidence, lightning decision, and immediate execution which he carried to the Foreign Office were the direct cause of the one inglorious episode of his life. To state it colloquially, Palmerston was inclined as Foreign Secretary to run the external relations of England on his own hook. His impatience would not allow him to hold despatches, in all cases, for the Queen’s approval; and he soon fell under her grave displeasure. The formally polite warnings of the Court were not heeded by the eager Secretary. Just at the moment of the Don Pacifico triumph, Lord Palmerston was dismissed from office by royal request. He bore the slight bravely. In England such a man could not be kept down; but the incident is rare in the modern history of Court and Cabinet.

Except in the show speech of the Don Pacifico debate, Palmerston was rarely eloquent. He was humorous, flippant, almost slangy in phrase; and his favorite style was one of banter. Personally, his manner was distinguished by no particular stateliness of bearing--he seems to have been generally liked.

Mr. McCarthy hesitates to call him a great man. But it is likely that he will be remembered as one richly endowed by circumstance who was equal to his fate.

LORD PALMERSTON.

ON THE CASE OF DON PACIFICO: HOUSE OF COMMONS, JUNE 25, 1850.

The case of Don Pacifico, which led to the following masterpiece of
Lord Palmerston’s eloquence, is an example of how in the relations
of states small matters may at a touch loom large and involve
great issues. The collection of a bill of damages for household
furniture, a mere entry in the vast budget of British governmental
business, is seen to assume a serious, or, if one remembers the
pedestrian character of the details, a tragi-comic import when it
is known that on the event hung the chance of an European war.

Now the case, reduced to its bare details, is as follows: Don
Pacifico, a Jew of Gibraltar, and a British subject, had taken
up his residence at Athens, where, in the spring of 1847, he
comes out of obscurity into momentary international fame, becomes
with his petty affairs almost a _casus belli_ between two great
Powers, and then sinks to oblivion again. In the new kingdom of
Greece, then only since a score of years galvanized into a nation
by the protective agencies of France, Russia, and Great Britain,
foreigners and their rights had met with no nice consideration at
the hands of King Otho and his officials. Certain Ionian subjects
of the Queen had suffered insult or damages; a midshipman of
H. M. S. _Fantôme_, landing by night at Patras, had been forthwith
arrested; and England had already reasonable right to complain,
when the case of Don Pacifico permitted her, in Lord Palmerston’s
opinion, no longer to hesitate.

On April 4, 1847, during the celebration of the Greek Easter,
certain riotous Athenians, prohibited that year from indulging
in one feature of the _fête_,--the hanging of Judas Iscariot in
effigy,--and consequently enraged at Jews in general, made an
attack upon the modest house of Don Pacifico. It was alleged at
the time that sons of the Minister of War were among the mob;
it is agreed that both house and furnishings were ruined. The
establishment, we have said, was modest; but, although the Jew
filed an extraordinary bill of claims (one bedstead he valued at
£150), the principle involved was such that the incident could not
be ignored by an English foreign secretary. Thus the matter at once
became the subject of the most strenuous diplomatic correspondence;
but Greece being like Turkey one of the countries of “To-morrow,”
nearly three years dragged away without satisfaction for Don
Pacifico, until at last, with patience exhausted, Lord Palmerston
sent the following instructions to the British Minister at Athens:

“F. O., December 3, 1849.

“MY DEAR WYSE:

“I have desired the Admiralty to instruct Sir William Parker to
take Athens on his way back from the Dardanelles, and to support
you in bringing at last to a satisfactory ending the settlement of
our various claims upon the Greek Government. You will, of course,
in conjunction with him, persevere in the _suaviter in modo_ as
long as is consistent with our dignity and honor, and I measure
that time by days--perhaps by some very small number of hours. If,
however, the Greek Government does not strike, Parker must do so.”

The fleet arrived at the Piræus promptly, proclaimed a blockade, and seized some Greek vessels, both national and merchant. It was at this moment that the first element of danger entered into the incident. Of the already imperfect “Concert” which had installed the kingdom of Hellas, Russia became at once uneasy at the aggressive steps of Lord Palmerston; but France, the third party, aflame with jealousy and distrust, from now on almost made the Greek cause her own. Ostensibly, however, she came forward with proposals of arbitration; and England saw it her affair to accept the good offices, at the Greek Court, of Baron Gros. The arbiter nevertheless, soon finding the British and the Franco-Greek positions incompatible, gave up his task; the blockade, with seizure of vessels, was renewed; and it was in the minds of men that once more would England and France stand face to face. Meanwhile Greece seemed to have become flurried at her situation as the focus of events, and at last submitted to Palmerston’s pressure, under the following terms: a letter of apology to be presented for the _Fantôme_ incident; an indemnity of 180,000 _drachmai_ to be paid for damages to Don Pacifico and others; no compensation to be received by her for detention of vessels, which should then be released.

Thus, in the face of Greek delay and of probable French intrigue, Palmerston had gained his real point. But with it the second perilous moment arrived. In France the action of Greece was learned with a mixture of dismay and _Chauvinisme_; in England the Opposition saw its opening. The French Ambassador, M. Drouyn de Lhuys, was actually recalled; and it did not seem that war could be averted. Under these circumstances, on June 17, 1850, Lord Stanley introduced in the House of Lords this resolution of censure:

“That while the House fully recognizes the right and duty of the Government to secure to her Majesty’s subjects residing in foreign states the full protection of the laws of these states, it regrets to find, by the correspondence recently laid upon the table by her Majesty’s command, that various claims against the Greek Government, doubtful in point of justice or exaggerated in amount, have been enforced by coercive measures directed against the commerce and people of Greece, and calculated to endanger the continuance of our friendly relations with other Powers.”

Which was carried by a majority of 37.

The Government’s answer was the counter-resolution introduced by Mr. Roebuck in the Commons, June 24th:

“That the principles on which the foreign policy of her Majesty’s Government have been regulated have been such as were calculated to maintain the honor and dignity of this country; and in times of unexampled difficulty, to preserve peace between England and the various nations of the world.”

The debate that followed is described as having been one of the most brilliant of the century--covering a period of five nights and engaging the most vigorous speakers then in the House. On the second night, Lord Palmerston rose, about to deliver the remarkable effort of his life. Speaking for nearly five hours and without MS., he held the continuous attention of both parties. Other speeches followed; but it seems certain that this was the pronouncement that led the Commons, in division on the fifth night, to declare for the Palmerston policy by a majority of 46.

The effect on the country, on the foreign Powers, and on Lord Palmerston’s personal prestige was signal. Viewed internationally the whole affair between France and England had been a game of bluff; and, by the agency of Lord Palmerston, the English bluff had won. In due time France returned her Ambassador to St. James; and all was as before.

As to the speech, there is no doubt but that it must be regarded as one of the most emphatic expositions extant of the aggressive theory of foreign policy--of what many would call the Jingo idea. Contemporary opinion--even of the Opposition--we know to have been moved by such stalwart doctrines, so manfully laid down; for even Sir Robert Peel is quoted as saying, “It has made us all proud of him.” Palmerston himself writes to a friend: “The attack on our foreign policy has been rightly understood by everybody, as the shot fired by a foreign conspiracy, aided and abetted by a domestic intrigue; and the parties have so entirely failed in the purpose, that instead of expelling and overthrowing me with disgrace, as they intended and hoped to do, they have rendered me for the present the most popular minister that for a very long course of time has held my office.”

Strong words--but not overweening for one whose conduct of his country’s interests had won for him from Lord John Russell a title of which any Premier might be proud,--“Lord Palmerston, a Minister of England.”

SIR:

Anxious as many members are to deliver their sentiments upon this most important question, yet I am sure they will feel that it is due myself, that it is due to this House, that it is due to the country, that I should not permit the second night of this debate to close without having stated to the House my views upon the matters in question and my conduct, for which I have been called to account.

When I say that this is an important question, I say it in the fullest expression of the term. It is a matter which concerns not merely the tenure of office by one individual, or even by a government; it is a question that involves principles of national policy, and the deepest interests as well as the honor and dignity of England. I cannot think that the course which has been pursued, and by which this question has assumed its present shape, is becoming those by whose act it has been brought under the discussion of Parliament, or such as fitting the gravity and the importance of the matters which they have thus led this House and the other House of Parliament to discuss. For if that party in this country imagine that they are strong enough to carry the Government by storm, and take possession of the citadel of office; or if, without intending to measure their strength with that of their opponents, they conceive that there are matters of such gravity connected with the conduct of the Government, that it becomes their duty to call upon Parliament solemnly to record its disapprobation of what has passed, I think that either in the one case or in the other, that party ought not to have been contented with obtaining the expression of the opinion of the House of Lords, but they ought to have sent down their resolution for the consent and concurrence of this House; or, at least, those who act with them in political co-operation here, should themselves have proposed to this House to come to a similar resolution. But, be the road what it may, we have come to the same end; and the House is substantially considering whether they will adopt the resolution of the House of Lords, or the resolution which has been submitted to them by my honorable and learned friend, the Member for Sheffield.