Page:The World's Famous Orations Volume 6.djvu/113

CURRAN again, if these three circumstances conspire—that he published it, that it was a libel, and that it was published with the purposes alleged in the information—you ought unquestionably to find him guilty; if, on the other hand, you do not find that all these circumstances concurred; if you can not, upon your oaths, say that he published it; if it be not in your opinion a libel; and if he did not publish it with the intention alleged; I say upon the failure of any one of these points my client is entitled, in justice and upon your oaths, to a verdict of acquittal.

Gentlemen, Mr. Attorney-General has thought proper to direct your attention to the state and circumstances of public affairs at the time of this transaction; let me also make a few retrospective observations on a period at which he has but slightly glanced; I speak of the events which took place before the close of the American war. You know, gentlemen, that France had espoused the cause of America, and we became thereby engaged in war with that nation. "Heu nescia mens hominum futuri!"

Little did that ill-fated monarch know that he was forming the first causes of those disastrous events that were to end in the subversion of his throne, in the slaughter of his family, and the deluging of his country with the blood of his people. You can not but remember that at a time when we had scarcely a regular soldier for our defense, when the old and the young were alarmed and terrified with the 103