our superior courts, and
the remains of our bar to Westminster, and to turn that beautiful
building upon the quay into a barrack like the Linen Hall, or an
English tax-gatherer's office like the Custom House, there are many
learned, accomplished, and respectable lawyers at the Irish bar, and
far be it from me to doubt but that any Irish lawyer who might
undertake my defence would loyally exert himself as the lofty idea of
professional honour commands to save me from a conviction. But to
this attack upon my character as a good citizen and upon my liberty,
my lords and gentlemen, the only defence I could permit to be offered
would be a full justification of my political conduct, morally,
constitutionally, legally--a complete vindication of my acts and
words alleged to be seditious and disloyal, and to retort against my
accusers the charge of sedition and disloyalty. Not, indeed, that I
would desire to prosecute these gentlemen upon that charge, if I
could count upon convicting them and send them to the dungeon instead
of myself. I don't desire to silence them, or to hurt a hair of their
wigs because their political opinions differed from mine. Gentlemen,
this prosecution against me, like the prosecutions just accomplished
against two national newspapers, is part of a scheme of the ministers
of the crown for suppressing all voice of protest against the Union,
for suppressing all public complaint against the deadly results of
the Union, and all advocacy by act, speech, or writing for Repeal of
the Union. Now I am a Repealer so long as I have been a politician at
all--that is for at least twenty-four years past. Until the national
self-government of my country be first restored, there appears to me
to be no place, no _locus standi_ (as lawyers say), for any other
Irish political question, and I consider it to be my duty as a
patriotic and loyal citizen, to endeavour by all honourable and
prudent means to procure the Repeal of the Act of the Union, and the
restoration of the independent Irish government, of which my country
was (as I have said in my prosecuted speech), "by fraud and force,"
and against the will of the vast majority of its people of every
race, creed, and class, though under false form of law, deprived
sixty-seven years ago. Certainly, I do not dispute the right of you,
gentlemen, or of any man in this court