Page:The World's Famous Orations Volume 6.djvu/133

CURRAN or whether you merely prefer to palliate a servile imitation of their frailty by a paltry affectation of their repentance. It is now for you to show that you are not carried away by the same hectic delusions to acts of which no tears can wash away the consequences or the indelible reproach.

I agree most implicitly with Mr. Attorney-General that nothing can be more criminal than an attempt to work a change in the government by armed force, and I entreat that the court will not suffer any expression of mine to be considered as giving encouragement or defense to any design to excite disaffection, to overawe or to overturn the government. But I put my client's case upon another ground. If he was led into an opinion of grievances where there were none; if he thought there ought to be a reform where none was necessary, he is answerable only for his intention. He can be answerable to you in the same way only that he is answerable to that God before whom the accuser, the accused, and the judge must appear together; that is, not for the clearness of his understanding, but for the purity of his heart.

Gentlemen, Mr. Attorney-General has said that Mr. Rowan did by this publication (supposing it to be his) recommend, under the name of equality, a general, indiscriminate assumption of public rule by every meanest person in the State. Low as we are in point of public information, there is not, I believe, any man, who thinks 123