It is not our intention to go through the details of the trial of the Red Rapparee. The evidence of Mary Mahon, Fergus O"Reilly, and the sheriff, was complete; the chain was unbroken; the change of apparel--the dialogue in Mary Mahon"s cabin, in which he; avowed the fact of his having robbed the sheriff--the identification of his person by the said sheriff in the farmer"s house, as before stated, left nothing for the jury to do I but to bring in a verdict of guilty.
Mercy was out of the question. The hardened ruffian--the treacherous ruffian--who had lent himself to the bloodthirsty schemes of Whitecraft--and all this came out upon his trial, not certainly to the advantage of the baronet--this hardened and treacherous ruffian, we say, who had been a scourge to that part of the country for years, now felt, when the verdict of guilty was brought in against him, just as a smith"s anvil might feel when struck by a feather. On hearing it, he growled a hideous laugh, and exclaimed:
"To the divil I pitch you all; I wish, though, that I had Tom Bradley, the prophecy man, here, who tould me that I"d never be hanged, and that the rope was never born for me."
"If the rope was not born for you," observed the judge, "I fear I shall be obliged to inform you that you were born for the rope. Your life has been an outrage,upon civilized society."
"Why, you ould dog!" said the Rapparee, "you can"t hang me; haven"t I a pardon? didn"t Sir Robert Whitecraft get me a pardon from the Government for turnin" against the Catholics, and tellin" him where to find the priests? Why, you joulter-headed ould dog, you can"t hang me, or, if you do, I"ll leave them behind me that will put such a half ounce pill into your guts as will make you turn up the whites of your eyes like a duck in thundher. You"ll hang me for robbery, you ould sinner! But what is one half the world doin" but robbin" the other half? and what is the other half doin" but robbin" them? As for Sir Robert Whitecraft, if he desaved me by lies and falsehoods, as I"m afraid he did, all I say is, that if I had him here for one minute I"d show him a trick he"d never tell to mortal. Now go on, bigwig."
Notwithstanding the solemnity of the position in which this obdurate ruffian was placed, the judge found it nearly impossible to silence the laughter of the audience and preserve order in the court. At length he succeeded, and continued his brief address to the Rapparee:
"Hardened and impenitent reprobate, in the course of my judicial duties, onerous and often painful as they are and have been, I must say that, although it has fallen to my lot to p.r.o.nounce the awful sentence of death upon many an unfeeling felon, I am bound to say that a public malefactor so utterly devoid of all the feelings which belong to man, and so strongly impregnated with those of the savage animal as you are, has never stood in a dock before me, nor probably before any other judge, living or dead. Would it be a waste of language to enforce upon you the necessity of repentance? I fear it would; but it matters not; the guilt of impenitence be on your own head, still I must do my duty; try, then, and think of death, and a far more awful judgment than mine.
Think of the necessity you have for; supplicating mercy at the throne of your Redeemer, who himself died for you, and for all of us, between two thieves."
"That has nothing to do with my case; I never was a thief; I robbed like an honest man on the king"s highways; but as for thievin", why, you ould sinner, I never stole a farthing"s worth in my life. Don"t, then, pitch such beggarly comparisons into my teeth. I never did what you and your cla.s.s often did; I never robbed the poor in the name of the blessed laws of the land; I never oppressed the widow or the orphan; and for all that I took from those that did oppress them, the divil a grain of sorrow or repentance I feel for it, nor ever will feel for it. Oh! mother of Moses! if I had a gla.s.s of whiskey!"
The judge was obliged to enforce silence a second time; for, to-tell the truth, there was something so ludicrously impenitent in the conduct of this hardened convict that the audience could not resist it, especially when it is remembered that the sympathies of the lower Irish are always with such culprits.
"Well," continued the judge, when silence was again restored, "your unparalleled obduracy has gained one point; it was my intention to have ordered you for execution tomorrow at the hour of twelve o"clock; but, as a Christian man, I could not think for a moment of hurrying you into eternity in your present state. The sentence of the court then is that you be taken from the dock in which you now stand to the prison from whence you came, and that from thence you be brought to the place of execution on next Sat.u.r.day, and there be hanged by the neck until you be dead, and may G.o.d have mercy on your soul!"
The Rapparee gazed at him with a look of the most hardened effrontery, and exclaimed, "Is it in earnest you are?" after which he was once more committed to his cell, loaded with heavy chains, which he wore, by the I way, during his trial.
Now, in order to account for his outrageous conduct, we must make a disclosure to the reader. There is in and about all jails a certain officer yclept a hangman--an officer who is permitted a freer ingress and egress than almost any other person connected with those gloomy establishments. This hangman, who resided in the prison, had a brother whom Sir Robert Whitecraft had hanged, and, it was thought, innocently.
Be this as it may, the man in question was heard to utter strong threats of vengeance against Sir Robert for having his brother, whose innocence he a.s.serted, brought to execution. In some time after this a pistol was fired one night at Sir Robert from behind a hedge, which missed him; but as his myrmidons were with him, and the night was light, a pursuit took place, and the guilty wretch was taken prisoner, with the pistol on his person, still warm after having been discharged. The consequence was that he was condemned to death. But it so happened that at this period, although there were five or six executions to take place, yet there was no hangman to be had, that officer having died suddenly, after a fit of liquor, and the sheriff would have been obliged to discharge the office with his own hands unless a finisher of the law could be found. In brief, he was found, and in the person of the individual alluded to, who, in consequence of his consenting to accept the office, got a pardon from the Crown. Now this man and the Rapparee had been old acquaintances, and renewed their friendship in prison. Through the means of the hangman O"Donnel got in as much whiskey as he pleased, and we need scarcely say that they often got intoxicated together. The secret, therefore, which we had to disclose to the reader, in explanation of the Rapparee"s conduct at his trial, was simply this, that the man was three-quarters drunk.
After trial he was placed in a darker dungeon than before; but such was the influence of the worthy executioner with every officer of the jail, that he was permitted to go either in or out without search, and as he often gave a "slug," as he called it, to the turnkeys, they consequently allowed him, in this respect, whatever privileges he wished. Even the Rapparee"s dungeon was not impenetrable to him, especially as he put the matter on a religious footing, to wit, that as the unfortunate robber was not allowed the spiritual aid of his own clergy, he himself was the only person left to prepare him for death, which he did with the whiskey-bottle.
The a.s.sizes on that occasion were protracted to an unusual length. The country was in a most excited state, and party feeling ran fearfully high. Nothing was talked of but the two trials, par excellence, to wit, that of Whitecraft and Reilly; and scarcely a fair or market, for a considerable time previous, ever came round in which there waa not a battle on the subject of either one or the other of them, and not unfrequently of both. n.o.body was surprised at the conviction of the Red Rapparee; but, on the contrary, every one was glad that the country had at last got rid of him.
Poor Helen, however, was not permitted to remain quiet, as she had expected. When Mr. Doldrum had furnished the leading counsel with his brief and a list of the witnesses, the other gentleman was surprised to see the name of Helen Folliard among them.
"How is this?" he inquired; "is not this the celebrated beauty who eloped with him?"
"It is, sir," replied Doldrum.
"But," proceeded the other, "you have not instructed me in the nature of the evidence she is prepared to give."
"She is deeply penitent, sir, and in a very feeble state of health; so much so that we were obliged to leave the tendency of her evidence to be brought out on the trial."
"Have you subpoenaed her?"
"No, sir."
"And why not, Mr. Doldrum? Don"t you know that there is no understanding the caprices of women. You ought to have subpoenaed her, because, if she be a leading evidence, she may still change her mind and leave us in the lurch."
"I certainly did not subpoena her," replied Doldrum, "because, when I mentioned it to her father, he told me that if I attempted it he would break my head. It was enough, he said, that she had given her promise--a thing, he added, which she was never known to break."
"Go to her again, Doldrum; for unless we know what she can prove we will be only working in the dark. Try her, at all events, and glean what you can out of her. Her father tells me she is somewhat better, so I don"t apprehend you will have much difficulty in seeing her."
Doldrum did see her, and was astonished at the striking change which had, in so short a time, taken place in her appearance. She was pale, and exhibited all the symptoms of an invalid, with the exception of her eyes, which were not merely brilliant, but dazzling, and full of a fire that flashed from them with something like triumph whenever her attention was directed to the purport of her testimony. On this subject they saw that it; would be quite useless, and probably worse than useless, to press her, and they did not, consequently, put her to the necessity of specifying the purport of her evidence.
"I have already stated," said she, "that I shall attend the trial; that ought, and must be, sufficient for you. I beg, then, you will withdraw, sir. My improved health will enable me to attend, and you may rest a.s.sured that if I have life I shall be there, as I have already told you; but, I say, that if you wish to press me for the nature of my evidence, you shall have it, and, as she spoke, her eyes flashed fearfully, as they were in the habit of doing whenever she felt deeply excited. Folliard himself became apprehensive of the danger which might result from the discussion of any subject calculated to disturb her, and insisted that she should be allowed to take her own way. In the meantime, after they had left her, at her own request, her father informed the attorney that she was getting both strong and cheerful, in spite of her looks.
"To be sure," said he, "she is pale! but that"s only natural, after her recent slight attack, and all the excitement and agitation she has for some time past undergone. She sings and plays now, although I have heard neither a song nor a tune from her for a long time past. In the evening, too, she is exceedingly cheerful when we sit together in the drawing-room; and she often laughs more heartily than I ever knew her to do before in my life. Now, do you think, Doldrum, if she was breaking her heart about Reilly that she would be in such spirits?"
"No, sir; she would be melancholy and silent, and would neither sing, nor laugh, nor play; at least I felt, so when I was in love with Miss Swithers, who kept me in a state of equilibrium for better than two years;--but that wasn"t the worst of it, for she knocked the loyalty clean out of me besides--indeed, so decidedly so that I never once sang "Lillibullero" during the whole period of my attachment, and be hanged to her."
"And what became of her?"
"Why, she married my clerk, who used to serve my love-letters upon her; and when I expected to come in by execution--that is, by marriage--that cursed little sheriff, Cupid, made a return of _nulla bona_. She and Sam Snivel--a kind of half Puritan--entered a _dis_appearance, and I never saw them since; but I am told they are in America. From what you tell me, sir, I have no doubt but Miss Folliard will make a capital witness.
In fact, Reilly ought to feel proud of the honor of being hanged by her evidence; she will be a host in herself."
We have already stated that the leading counsel against Reilly had succeeded in getting his trial postponed until Miss Folliard should arrive at a sufficient state of health to appear against him. In the meantime, the baronet"s trial, which was in a political, indeed, we might say, a national point of view, of far more importance than Reilly"s, was to come on next day. In the general extent of notoriety or fame, Reilly had got in advance--though not much--of his implacable rival. The two trials were, in fact, so closely united by the relative position of the parties that public opinion was strangely and strongly divided between them. Reilly and his _Cooleen Bawn_ had, by the unhappy peculiarity of their fate, excited the interest of all the youthful and loving part of society--an interest which was necessarily reflected upon Whitecraft, as Reilly"s rival, independently of the hold which his forthcoming fate had upon grave and serious politicians. Reilly"s leading counsel, Fox, a man of great judgment and ability, gave it as his opinion that in consequence of the exacerbated state of feeling produced against the Catholics by the prosecution of Whitecraft--to appease whom, the opinion went that it was inst.i.tuted--it seemed unlikely that Reilly had a single chance. Had his trial, he said, taken place previous to that of Whitecraft"s, he might have escaped many of the consequences of Whitecraft"s conviction; but now, should the latter be convicted, the opposing party would die in the jury-box rather than let Reilly escape.
CHAPTER XXIV.--Jury of the Olden Time
--Preparations--The Scales of Justice.
At last the trial came on, and Sir Robert Whitecraft, the great champion of Protestantism--a creed which he did not believe--was conducted into the court-house and placed in the dock. He was dressed in his best apparel, in order to distinguish himself from common culprits, and to give this poor external evidence of his rank, with a hope that it might tell, to a certain extent at least, upon the feeling of the jury. When placed in the dock, a general buzz and bustle agitated the whole court His friends became alert, and whispered to each other with much earnestness, and a vast number of them bowed to him, and shook hands with him, and advised him to be cool, and keep up his spirits. His appearance, however, was any thing but firm; his face was deadly pale, his eyes dull and cowardly, his knees trembled so much that he was obliged to support himself on the front of the dock.
At length the trial commenced, and the case having been opened by a young lawyer, a tall, intellectual-looking man, about the middle age, of pale but handsome features, and an eye of singular penetration and brilliancy, rose; and after pulling up his gown at the shoulders, and otherwise adjusting it, proceeded to lay a statement of this extraordinary case before the jury.
He dwelt upon "the pain which he felt in contemplating a gentleman of rank and vast wealth occupying the degraded position of a felon, but not, he was sorry to say, of a common felon. The circ.u.mstances, my lord, and gentlemen of the jury, which have brought the prisoner before you this day, involve a long catalogue of crimes that as far transcend, in the hideousness of their guilt, the offences of a common felon as his rank and position in life do that of the humblest villain who ever stood before a court of justice.
"The position, gentlemen, of this country has for a long series of years been peculiar, anomalous, and unhappy. Divided as it is, and has been, by the bitter conflict between two opposing creeds and parties, it is not to be wondered at that it should be a melancholy scene of misery, dest.i.tution, famine, and crime; and, unhappily, it presents to us the frightful aspect of all these. The nature, however, of the conflicts between those creeds and parties, inasmuch as it bears upon the case of the prisoner, gentlemen, who now stands for trial and a verdict at your hands, is such as forces me, on that account, to dwell briefly upon it.
In doing so, I will have much, for the sake of our common humanity, to regret and to deplore. It is a fundamental principle, gentlemen, in our great and glorious Const.i.tution, that the paramount end and object of our laws is to protect the person, the liberty, and the property of the subject. But there is something, gentlemen, still dearer to us than either liberty, person, or property; something which claims a protection from those laws that stamps them with a n.o.bler and a loftier character, when it is afforded, and weaves them into the hearts and feelings of men of all creeds, when this divine mission of the law is fulfilled. I allude, gentlemen, to the inalienable right of every man to worship G.o.d freely, and according to his own conscience--without restraint--without terror--without oppression, and, gentlemen of the jury, without persecution. A man, or a whole people, worship G.o.d, we will a.s.sume, sincerely, according to their notions of what is right, and, I say, gentlemen, that the individual who persecutes that man, or those people, for piously worshipping their Creator, commits blasphemy against the Almighty--and stains, as it were, the mercy-seat with blood.
"Gentlemen of the jury, let me ask you what has been the state and condition of this unhappy and distracted country? I have mentioned two opposing creeds, and consequently two opposing parties, and I have also mentioned persecution; but let me also ask you again on which side has the persecution existed? Look at your Roman Catholic fellow-subjects, and ask yourselves to what terrible outburst of political and religious vengeance have they not been subjected? But it is said they are not faithful and loyal subjects, and that they detest the laws. Well, let us consider this--let us take a cursory view of all that the spirit and operation of the laws have left them to be thankful for--have brought to bear upon them for the purpose, we must suppose, of securing their attachment and their loyalty. Let us, gentlemen, calmly and solemnly, and in a Christian temper, take a brief glance at the adventures which the free and glorious spirit of the British Const.i.tution has held out to them, in order to secure their allegiance. In the first place, their n.o.bles and their gentry have been deprived of their property, and the right of tenure has been denied even to the people. Ah, my lord, and gentlemen of the jury, what ungrateful and disloyal miscreant could avoid loving a Const.i.tution, and hugging to his grateful heart laws which showered down such blessings upon him, and upon all those who belong to a creed so favored? But it would seem to have been felt that these laws had still a stronger claim upon their affections. They would protect their religion as they did their property; and in order to attach them still more strongly, they shut up their places of worship--they proscribed and banished and hung their clergy--they hung or shot the unfortunate people who tied to worship G.o.d in the desert--in mountain fastnesses and in caves, and threw their dead bodies to find a tomb in the entrails of the birds of the air, or the dogs which even persecution had made mad with hunger. But again--for this pleasing panorama is not yet closed, the happy Catholics, who must have danced with delight, under the privileges of such a Const.i.tution, were deprived of the right to occupy and possess all civil offices--their enterprise was crushed--their industry made subservient to the rapacity of their enemies, and not to their own prosperity. But this is far from being all. The sources of knowledge--of knowledge which only can enlighten and civilize the mind, prevent crime, and promote the progress of human society--these sources of knowledge, I say, were sealed against them; they were consequently left to ignorance, and its inseparable a.s.sociate--vice. All those n.o.ble principles which result from education, and which lead youth into those moral footsteps in which they should tread, were made criminal in the Catholic to pursue, and impossible to attain; and having thus been reduced by ignorance to the perpetration of those crimes which it uniformly produces--the people were punished for that which oppressive laws had generated, and the ignorance which was forced upon them was turned into a penalty and a persecution. They were first made ignorant by one Act of Parliament, and then punished by another for those crimes which ignorance produces.
"And now, my lord, and gentlemen of the jury, it remains for me to take another view of the state and condition of this wretched country.
Perhaps there is not in the world so hideously a penal code of laws as that which appertains to the civil and religious rights of our unfortunate Roman Catholic countrymen. It is not that this code is fierce, inhuman, unchristian, barbarous, and Draconic, and conceived in a spirit of blood--because it might be all this, and yet, through the liberality and benevolence of those into whose hands it ought to be entrusted for administration, much of its dreadful spirit might be mitigated. And I am bound to say that a large and important cla.s.s of the Protestant community look upon such a code nearly with as much horror as the Catholics themselves. Unfortunately, however, in every state of society and of law a.n.a.logous to ours, a certain cla.s.s of men, say rather of monsters, is sure to spring up, as it were, from h.e.l.l, their throats still parched and heated with that insatiable thirst which the guilty glutton felt before them, and which they now are determined to slake with blood. For some of these men the apology of selfishness, an anxiety to raise themselves out of the struggles of genteel poverty, and a wolfish wish to earn the wages of oppression, might be pleaded; although, heaven knows, it is at best but a desperate and cowardly apology. On the other hand, there are men not merely independent, but wealthy, who, imbued with a fierce and unreasoning bigotry, and stained by a black and unscrupulous ambition, start up into the front ranks of persecution, and carry fire and death and murder as they go along, and all this for the sake of adding to their reprobate names a t.i.tle--a t.i.tle earned by the shedding of innocent blood--a t.i.tle earned by the oppression and persecution of their unresisting fellow-subjects--a t.i.tle, perhaps that of baronet; if I am mistaken in this, the individual who stands before you in that dock could, for he might, set me right.
"In fact, who are those who have lent themselves with such delight to the execution of bad laws? of laws that, for the sake of religion and Christianity, never ought to have been effected? Are they men of moral and Christian lives? men whose walk has been edifying in the sight of their fellows? are they men to whom society could look up as examples of private virtue and the decorous influence of religion? are they men who, on the Sabbath of G.o.d, repair with their wives and families to his holy worship? Alas! no. These heroic persecutors, who hunt and punish a set of disarmed men, are, in point of fact, not only a disgrace to that religion in whose name they are persecutors, and on whose merciful precepts they trample, but to all religion, in whatever light true religion is contemplated. Vicious, ignorant, profligate, licentious, but cunning, cruel, bigoted, and selfish, they make the spirit of oppressive laws, and the miserable state of the country, the harvest of their gain.
Look more closely at the picture, gentlemen of the jury, and make, as I am sure you will, the dismal and terrible circ.u.mstances which I will lay before you your own. Imagine for a moment that those who are now, or at least have been, the objects of hot and blood-scenting persecution, had, by some political revolution, got the power of the State and of the laws into their own hands; suppose, for it is easily supposed, that they had stripped you of your property, deprived you of your civil rights, disarmed you of the means of self-defence, persecuted yourselves and proscribed your religion, or, vice versa, proscribed yourselves and persecuted your religion, or, to come at once to the truth, proscribed and persecuted both; suppose your churches shut up, your pious clergy banished, and that, when on the bed of sickness or of death, some of your family, hearing your cries for the consolations of religion, ventured out, under the clouds of the night, pale with sorrow, and trembling with apprehension, to steal for you, at the risk of life, that comfort which none but a minister of G.o.d can effectually bestow upon the parting spirit; suppose this, and suppose that your house is instantly surrounded by some cruel but plausible Sir Robert Whitecraft, or some drunken and ruffianly Captain Smellpriest, who, surrounded and supported by armed miscreants, not only breaks open that house, but violates the awful sanctify of the deathbed itself, drags out the minister of Christ from his work of mercy, and leaves him a b.l.o.o.d.y corpse at our threshold.
I say, change places, gentlemen of the jury, and suppose in your own imaginations that all those monstrous persecutions, all those murderous and flagitious outrages, had been inflicted upon yourselves, with others of an equally nefarious character; suppose all this, and you may easily do so, for you have seen it all perpetrated in the name of G.o.d and the law, or, to say the truth, in the hideous union of mammon and murder; suppose all this, and you will feel what such men as he who stands in that dock deserves from humanity and natural justice; for, alas! I cannot say, from the laws of his country, under the protection of which, and in the name of which, he and those who resemble him have deluged that country with innocent blood, laid waste the cabin of the widow and the orphan, and carried death and desolation wherever they went. But, gentlemen, I shall stop here, as I do not wish to inflict unnecessary pain upon you, even by this mitigated view of atrocities which have taken place before your own eyes; yet I cannot close this portion of my address without, referring to so large a number of our fellow-Protestants with pride, as I am sure their Roman Catholic friends do with grat.i.tude. Who were those who, among the Protestant party, threw the shield of their name and influence over their Catholic neighbors and friends? Who, need I ask? The pious, the humane, the charitable, the liberal, the benevolent, and the enlightened. Those were they who, overlooking the mere theological distinctions of particular doctrines, united in the great and universal creed of charity, held by them as a common principle on which they might meet and understand and love each other. And indeed, gentlemen of the jury, there cannot be a greater proof of the oppressive spirit which animates this penal and inhuman code than the fact that so many of those, for whose benefit it was enacted, resisted its influence, on behalf of their Catholic fellow-subjects, as far as they could, and left nothing undone to support the laws of humanity against those of injustice and oppression.
When the persecuted Catholic could not invest his capital in the purchase of property, the generous Protestant came forward, purchased the property in his own name, became the _bona fide_ proprietor, and then transferred its use and advantages to his Catholic friend. And again, under what roof did the hunted Catholic priest first take refuge from those bloodhounds of persecution? In most cases under that of his charitable and Christian brother, the Protestant clergyman. Gentlemen, could there be a bitterer libel upon the penal laws than the notorious facts which I have the honor of stating to you?
"The facts which have placed the prisoner at the bar before you are these, and in detailing them I feel myself placed in circ.u.mstances of great difficulty, and also of peculiar delicacy. The discharge, however, of a public duty, which devolves upon me as leading law officer of the Crown, forces me into a course which I cannot avoid, unless I should shrink from promoting and accomplishing the ends of public justice. In my position, and in the discharge of my solemn duties here to-day, I can recognize no man"s rank, no man"s wealth, nor the prestige of any man"s name. So long as he stands at that bar, charged with great and heinous crimes, I feel it my duty to strip him of all the advantages of his birth and rank, and consider him simply a mere subject of the realm.
"In order to show you, gentlemen of the jury, the animux under which the prisoner at the bar acted, in the case before us, I must go back a little--a period of some months. At that time a highly respectable gentleman of an ancient and honored family in this country was one evening on his way home from this town, attended, as usual, by his servant. At a lonely place on a remote and antiquated road, which they took as a shorter way, it so happened that, in consequence of a sudden mist peculiar to those wild moors, they lost their path, and found themselves in circ.u.mstances of danger and distress. The servant, however, whistled, and his whistle was answered; a party of men, of freebooters, of robbers, headed by a person called the Red Rapparee, who has been convicted at these a.s.sizes, and who has been the scourge of the country for years, came up to them, and as the Rapparee had borne this respectable gentleman a deadly and implacable enmity for some time past, he was about to murder both master and man, and actually had his musket levelled at him, as others of his gang had at his aged servant, when a person, a gentleman named Reilly--[there there was a loud cheer throughout the court, which, however, was soon repressed, and the Attorney-General proceeded]--this person started out from an old ruin, met the robber face to face, and, in short, not only saved the lives of the gentleman and his servant, but conducted them safely home. This act of courage and humanity, by a Roman Catholic to a Protestant, had such an effect upon the old gentleman"s daughter, a lady whose name has gone far and wide for her many virtues and wonderful beauty, that an attachment was formed between the young gentleman and her. The prisoner at the bar, gentlemen, was a suitor for her hand; but as the young and amiable lady was acquainted with his character as a priest-hunter and persecutor, she, though herself a Protestant, could look upon him only with abhorrence. At all events, after the rescue of her father"s life, and her acquaintance with Mr. Reilly, the prisoner at the bar was rejected with disdain, as he would have been, it seems, if Reilly never had existed. Now, gentlemen I of the jury, observe that Reilly was a Catholic, which was bad enough in the eyes of the prisoner at the bar; but he was more; he was a rival, and were it not for the state of the law, would, it appears, for there is no doubt of it now, have been a successful one. From henceforth the prisoner at the bar marked Mr.
Reilly for vengeance, for destruction, for death. At this time he was in the full exercise of irresponsible authority; he could burn, hang, shoot, without being called to account; and as it will appear before you, gentlemen, this consciousness of impunity stimulated him to the perpetration of such outrages as, in civil life, and in a country free from civil war, are unparalleled in the annals of crime and cruelty.
"But, gentlemen, what did this man do? this man, so anxious to preserve the peace of the country; this man, the terror of the surrounding districts; what did he do, I ask? Why, he took the most notorious robber of: his day, the fierce and guilty Rapparee--he took him into his councils, in order that he might enable him to trace the object of his vengeance, Reilly, in the first place, and to lead him to the hiding-places of such unfortunate Catholic priests as had taken refuge in the caves and fastnesses of the mountains. Instead of punishing this notorious malefactor, he took him into his own house, made him, as he was proud to call them, one of his priest-hounds, and induced him to believe that he had procured him a pardon from Government. Reilly"s name he had, by his foul misrepresentations, got into the _Hue-and-Cry_, and subsequently had him gazetted as an outlaw; and all this upon his own irresponsible authority. I mention nothing, gentlemen, in connection with this trial which we are not in a capacity to prove.
"Having forced Reilly into a variety of disguises, and hunted him like a mad dog through the country; having searched every: lurking-place in which he thought he might I find him, he at length resolved on the only course of vengeance he could pursue. He surrounded his habitation, and, after searching for Reilly himself, he openly robbed him of all that was valuable of that gentleman"s furniture, then set fire to the house, and in the clouds of the night reduced that and every out-office he had to ashes--a capital felony. It so happens, however, that the house and offices were, in point of fact, not the property of Reilly at all, but of a most respectable Protestant gentleman and magistrate, Mr. Hastings, with whose admirable! character I have no doubt you are all acquainted; and all that remains for me to say is, that he is the prosecutor in this case.