Page:The World's Famous Orations Volume 6.djvu/131

CURRAN sentinel of the State, that grand detector of public imposture; guard it because, when it sinks, there sinks with it in one common grave the liberty of the subject and the security of the Crown.

Gentlemen, I am glad that this question has not been brought forward earlier; I rejoice for the sake of the court, of the jury, and of the public repose, that this question has not been brought forward till now. In Great Britain analogous circumstances have taken place. At the commencement of that unfortunate war which has deluged Europe with blood, the spirit of the English people was tremblingly alive to the terror of French principles; at that moment of general paroxysm, to accuse was to convict. The danger looked larger to the public eye from the misty region through which it was surveyed. We measure inaccessible heights by the shadows which they project, where the lowness and the distance of the light form the length of the shade.

There is a sort of aspiring and adventurous credulity which disdains assenting to obvious truths and delights in catching at the improbability of circumstances as its best ground of faith. To what other cause, gentlemen, can you ascribe that, in the wise, the reflecting, and the 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 had actually subscribed his name? 121