t his conduct as a son and a
brother has been beyond all praise. But he has failed--times have
been against him--legal costs have so swelled the legal interest
as to consume the whole rents--those rents he has been unable to
collect, and his life has been one manful struggle against poverty
and Mr. Keegan;--and I could not wish my worst foe two more
inveterate enemies.

"Some few days before Ussher's death--and now I am going to confine
myself to that which I am in a position to prove--Mr. Keegan called
on the Macdermots for the purpose of proposing certain terms for the
adjustment of the debt, which were neither more nor less than that
he should have the whole estate, paying a small weekly stipend for
life to the prisoner's father. The prisoner was willing to agree,
providing some provision should be made for his sister; but the
father indignantly spurned the offer, and turned Mr. Keegan out of
the house in no very gentle manner. The prisoner followed him into
the avenue--still wishing to come to some arrangement; but the
attorney was so enraged at the conduct of the father, that instead
of listening to the son, he began abusing the whole family, and,
as you have heard, applied the most shameful epithet to the sister
with which the tongue of a man can defile the name of a woman. He
afterwards struck the prisoner, who was unarmed, heavily with his
stick; and I have no hesitation in telling you, that that quarrel, in
which no blame appears to have been attributable to the young man,
placed him in that dock.

"Brady, the confidential servant of the prisoner, both saw and
overheard what took place at this interview, as he has told you,
and he afterwards,--as he will not deny, though he will not confess
it,--incited his master, during the period of his natural irritation,
to go down to the wedding party, to meet a number of his tenants who
would be willing to assist him in revenging himself against his enemy
Keegan, the attorney, if he would assist them against their enemy,
Ussher, the Revenue officer. And here my client made the one false
step--and the only one which I can trace to him--and committed that
folly from which this bitter foe has thought to ruin him. Irritated
by the blow--his ear still ringing with the infamous name applied
to his loved sister--full of his father's wrong, and his own hard
condition, he consented to meet men whose object he knew was illegal;
though what their plans were he was entirely ignor