d by the confidence of the accused, he must
decline the task of commenting on the evidence; and would only
entreat the jury to weigh the testimony they had heard with a merciful
disposition, and wherever discrepancies and doubts occurred, to give the
full benefit of such to the prisoner.

"You have no witnesses to call?" asked the judge.

"I am told there are none, my Lord," said Jones, with an accent of
resignation.

A brief colloquy, in a low voice, ensued between the Crown lawyers and
Clare Jones, when, at length, a well-known barrister rose to address the
jury for the prosecution. The gentleman who now claimed the attention
of the Court was one who, not possessing either the patient habits of
study, or that minute attention to technical detail which constitute the
legal mind, was a fluent, easy speaker, with an excellent memory, and a
thorough knowledge of the stamp and temperament of the men that usually
fill a jury-box. He was eminently popular with that class, on whom he
had often bestowed all the flatteries of his craft; assuring them that
their "order" was the bone and sinew of the land, and that "our proudest
boast as a nation was in the untitled nobility of commerce."

His whole address on the present occasion tended to show that the murder
of Mr. Kennyfeck was one among the many instances of the unbridled
license and tyranny assumed by the aristocracy over the middle ranks.

Mr. Kennyfeck was no bad subject for such eulogium as he desired to
bestow. He was the father of a family; a well-known citizen of Dublin; a
grave, white-cravated, pompous man of respectable exterior, always seen
at vestries, and usually heading the lists of public charities.
Cashel was the very antithesis to all this: the reckless squanderer of
accidentally acquired wealth; the wayward and spoiled child of fortune,
with the tastes of a buccaneer and the means of a prince, suddenly
thrown into the world of fashion. What a terrible ordeal to a mind so
untrained--to a temper so unbridled! and how fearfully had it told
upon him! After commenting upon the evidence, and showing in what a
continuous chain each event was linked with the other,--how consistent
were all,--how easily explicable every circumstance, he remarked that
the whole case had but one solitary difficulty; and although that was
one which weighed more in a moral than a legal sense, it required that
he should dwell a few moments upon it.

"The criminal law of our land, ge