Page:My Life in Two Hemispheres, volume 1.djvu/323

 assailed. Such a principle as excluding Catholics from juries had never once been propounded. If Catholics were set aside so also were Protestants, and more Protestants, he triumphantly added, than Catholics. The deputation were dumb from etiquette, but when these plausible propositions fell under the review of the "Irish Priest" they were pounded into dust. "He had no control over the Sheriff," but did he not select and appoint that officer, and was not the appointment transferred by Act of Parliament from the Dublin Corporation to the Viceroy precisely for purposes like these? Such a proposition as excluding Catholics had never been propounded. The complaint was not that it had been propounded, but that it had been practised at every single trial at Clonmel and Green Street. More Protestants than Catholics were set aside. "In the name of common sense (remarked the rigorous controversialist) what has this to do with the grievance complained of? Our grievance is that Protestants alone are thought fit to serve on juries. What matters it how many Protestants are excluded, if none but Protestants are included? 'The Attorney-General excluded more Protestants than Catholics.' Why, my lord, the objection was not that Catholics were excluded, but that all Catholics were excluded; that this was done systematically; that jury after jury was empannelled, and not one Catholic was allowed to remain on the jury."

Public opinion was now thoroughly roused, but it is possible that the policy of the Government was influenced at least in an equal degree by another and different stroke. Richard Sheil, whom I knew of old in Irish affairs, and who had been a leader of the movement against jury-packing in 1844, now held office in the Whig Government, and I determined to bring his professions and practice face to face. I wrote him this note:—

"I have just risen from re-reading your speech at the meeting in January, 1844, when all the Catholics were struck off the jury in the case of ' O'Connell and Other,' and I cannot resist the impulse of writing to you. Among these obscure and anonymous ' Others ' I, as you know, was one; and the day on which that speech was delivered I did not conceive it to be in the whole range of human probabilities