you are to deny at the hazard of your souls, and upon the solemnity of your oaths. You are upon your oaths to say tc the sister country, that the government of Ireland uses no such abominable instruments of destruction as informers. Let me ask you honestly, what do you feel, when in my hearing, when in the face of this audience, you are called upon to give a verdict that every man of us, and every man of you, know by the testimony of your own eyes to be utterly and absolutely false?

2. I speak not now of the public proclamation of informers, with a promise of secrecy and of extravagant reward; I speak not of the fate of those horrid wretches who have been so often tranferred from the table to the dock, and from the dock to the pillory; I speak of what your own eyes have seen day after day, during the course of this commission, from the box where you are now sitting; the number of horrid miscreants who avowed upon their oaths that they had come from the very seat of government from the castle, where they had been worked upon by the fear of death and the hopes of compensation to give evidence against their fellows; that the mild and wholesome councils of this government are holden over these catacombs of living death, where the wretch that is buried a man, lies till his heart has time to fester and dissolve, and is then dug up a witness.

3. Is this fancy, or is it fact? Have you not seen him, after his resurrection from that tomb, after having been dug out of the region of death and corruption, make his appearance upon the table, the living image of life and of death, and the supreme arbiter of both? Have you not marked when he entered, how the stormy wave of the multitude retired at his approach ? Have you not marked how the human heart bowed to the supremacy of his power, in the undissembled homage of deferential horror? How his glance, like the lightring of heaven, seemed to rive the body of the accused, and mark it for the

grave, while his voice warned the devoted wretch of woe and death; a death which no innocence can escape, no art elude, no force resist, no antidote prevent. There was an antidote— a juror's oath: but even that adamantine chain, that bound the integrity of man to the throne of eternal justice, is solved and melted in the breath that issues from the informer's mouth; conscience swings from her mooring, and the appalled and af frighted juror consults his own safety in the surrender of the victim.

LESSON CXXXII.

IRISH EMANCIPATION.

CURRAN.

1. THIS paper, gentlemen, insists upon the necessity of emancipating the catholics of Ireland, and that is charged as a part of the libel. If they had waited another year, if they had kep this prosecution impending for another year, how much wouid remain for a jury to decide upon, I should be at a loss to disCover. It seems as if the progress of public information was eating away the ground of the prosecution. Since the commencement of the prosecution, this part of the libel has unluckily received the sanction of the legislature. In that interval, our Catholic brethren have obtained that admission, which it seems was a libel to propose; in what way to account for this, I am really at a loss. Have any alarms been occasioned by the emancipation of our Catholic brethren? has the bigoted malignity of any individual been crushed? or has the stability of the government, or that of the country, been weakened? or is one million of subjects stronger than four millions? Do you think that the benefit they receive should be poisoned by the sting of vengeance?

2. If you think so, you must say to them, "You have demanded emancipation and you have got it; but we abhor your persons, we are outraged at your success, and we will stigmatize, by a criminal prosecution, the adviser of that relief which you have obtained from the voice of your country." I ask you, do you think, as honest men, anxious for the public tran quility, conscious that there are wounds not yet completely cicatrized, that you ought to speak this language at this time, to men who are too much disposed to think that in this very emancipation they have been saved from their own parliament by the humanity of their sovereign? Or do you wish to prepare them for the revocation of these improvident concessions? Do you think it wise or humane at this moment to insult them, by sticking up in a pillory the man who dared to stand forth as their advocate?

3. I put it to your oaths; do you think that a blessing of that kind, that a victory obtained by justice over bigotry and oppression, should have a stigma cast upon it by an ignominious sentence upon men bold and honest enough to propose that measure? to propose the redeeming of religion from the abuses of the church, the reclaiming of three millions of men froin bondage, and giving liberty to all who had a right to demand it-giving, I say, in the so much censured words of this paper, giving" universal emancipation!"

4. I speak in the spirit of the British law, which makes lib. erty commensurate with and inseparable from British soil; which proclaims even to the stranger and the sojourner, the moment he sets his foot upon British earth, that the ground on which he treads is holy, and consecrated by the genius of universal emancipation. No matter in what language his doom may have been pronounced; no matter what complexion in compatible with freedom an Indian or an African sun may have burnt upon him; no matter in what disastrous battle his iberty may have been cloven down; no matter with what so

lemnities he may have been devoted upon the altar of slavery -the first moment he touches the sacred soil of Britain, the altar and the god sink together in the dust; his soul walks abroad in her own majesty; his body swells beyond the meas ure of his chains, that burst from around him, and he stands redeemed, regenerated, and disenthralled, by the irresistible genius of universal emancipation.

LESSON CXXXIII.

CHURCH AND STATE.

PHILLIPS.

1. THE theology of the question is not for me to argue, it cannot be in better hands than in those of your bishops; and I can have no doubt that when they bring their rank, their learning, their talents, their piety, and their patriotism to this sublime deliberation, they will consult the dignity of that venerable fabric which has stood for ages, splendid and immutable; which time could not crumble, nor persecution shake, nor revolution change; which has stood amongst us, like some stupendous and majestic Apennine, the earth rocking at its feet, and the heavens roaring round its head, firmly balanced on the base of its eternity; the relic of what was; the solemn and sublime memento of what must be.

2. Is this my opinion as a professed member of the church of England? Undoubtedly it is. As an Irishman, I feel my liberties interwoven, and the best affections of my heart as it were enfibered with those of my Catholic countrymen; and as a Protestant, convinced of the purity of my own faith, would I not debase it by postponing the powers of reason to the suspicious instrumentality of this world's conversion? No; sur rendering as I do, with a proud contempt, all the degrading

advantages with which an ecclesiastical usurpation would invest me; so I will not interfere with a blasphemous intrusion between any man and his Maker.

3. I hold it a criminal and accursed sacrilege, to rob even a beggar of a single motive for his devotion; and I hold it an equar insult to my own faith, to offer me any boon for its profession. This pretended emancipation bill passing into a law, would, in my mind, strike not a blow at this sect or that sect, but at the very vitality of christianity itself. I am thoroughly convinced that the antichristian connection between church and state, which it was suited to increase, has done more mischief to the gospel interest, than all the ravings of infidelity since the crucifixion.

4. The sublime Creator of our blessed creed never meant it to be the channel of a courtly influence, or the source of a corrupt ascendency. He sent it amongst us to heal, not to irritate; to associate, not to seclude; to collect together, like the baptismal dove, every creed and clime and color in the universe, beneath the spotless wing of its protection. The union of church and state only converts good christians into bad statesmen, and political knaves into pretended christians. It is at best but a foul and adulterous connection, polluting the purity of heaven with the abomination of earth, and hanging the tatters of a political piety upon the cross of an insulted Savior.

LESSON CXXXIV.

TEMPTATIONS OF LARGE CITIES.

DEWEY.

of

1. How many youth are there, alas! and must we say both sexes? who came from their native hills, pure as the streams that gush forth at their side, and have found in our