Page:The World's Famous Orations Volume 6.djvu/127

CURRAN But I ask you, particularly at this momentous period, what guilt can you find? My client saw the scene of horror and blood which covers almost the face of Europe. He feared that causes which he thought similar might produce similar effects; and he sought to avert those dangers by calling the united virtue and tried moderation of the country into a state of strength and vigilance. Yet this is the conduct which the prosecution of this day seeks to stigmatize; and this is the language for which this paper is reprobated today as tending to turn the hearts of the people against their sovereign and inviting them to overturn the Constitution.

Let us now, gentlemen, consider the concluding part of this publication. It recommends a meeting of the people to deliberate on constitutional methods of redressing grievances. Upon this subject I am inclined to suspect that I have in my youth taken up crude ideas, not founded, perhaps in law; but I did imagine that when the Bill of Rights restored the right of petitioning for the redress of grievances it was understood that the people might boldly state among themselves that grievances did exist; that they might lawfully assemble themselves in such a manner as they might deem most orderly and decorous. I thought I had collected it from the greatest luminaries of the law. The power of petitioning seemed to me to imply the right of assembling for the purpose of deliberation. The law requiring a petition to be presented by a limited 117