Page:Biographia Hibernica volume 1.djvu/356

Rh philosophic nation of Great Britain, a printer has been found guilty of a libel for publishing those resolutions to which the present minister of that kingdom (Mr. Pitt) had actually subscribed his name? To what other cause can you ascribe, what in my mind is still more astonishing, that in such a country as Scotland-a nation cast in the happy medium between the spiritless acquiescence of submissive poverty, and the sturdy credulity of pampered wealth: cool and ardent, adventurous and persevering, winging her eagle flight against the blaze of every science with an eye that never winks, and a wing that never tires; crowned as she is with the spoils of every art, and deckedwith the wreath of every muse, from the deep and scrutinizing researches of her Hume, to the sweet and simple, but not less sublime and pathetic morality of her Burns; how from the bosom of a country like that, genius and character, and talents, should be banished to a distant, barbarous soil; condemned to pine under the horrid communion of vulgar vice and base-born profligacy for twice the period that ordinary calculation gives to the continuance of human life? (alluding to the transportation of Messrs. Muir, Palmer, &c. to Botany Bay.

The orator then proceeded to depict a splendid portrait of the amiable character of his client, and concluded his peroration by this forcible appeal-

"I will not relinquish the confidence that this day will be the period of his sufferings; and, however mercilessly he has been hitherto pursued, that your verdict, gentlemen, will send him home to the arms of his family, and the wishes of his country: but if, which heaven forbid! it hath still been unfortunately determined, that because he has not bent to power and authority, because he would not bow down before the golden calf and worship it, he is to be bound and cast into the furnace; I do trust in God, that there is a redeeming spirit in the constitution, which will be seen to walk with the sufferer through the flame, and to preserve him unhurt through the conflagration.

Mr. Curran's eloquence failed with the jury, for they