Page:The World's Famous Orations Volume 6.djvu/137

CURRAN hitherto pursued, that your verdict will send him home to the arms of his family and the wishes of his country. But if—which Heaven forbid—it has still been unfortunately determined that because he has not bent to power and authority, because he would not bow down before the golden calf and worship it, he is to be bound and cast into the furnace, I do trust in God that there is a redeeming spirit in the Constitution which will be seen to walk with the sufferer through the flames and to preserve him unhurt but he conflagration.

(1806)

address you on a question the most vitally connected with the liberty and well-being of every man within the limits of the British Empire—which being decided one way, he may be a freeman; which being decided the other, he must be a slave. I refer to the maintenance of that sacred security for the freedom of the 127