fess to you, Gentlemen, when I first perused this passage in my brief, I flung it from me with a contemptuous incredulity. What! I exclaimed, as no doubt you are all ready to exclaim, can this be possible? Is it thus I am to find the educated youth of Ireland occupied ? occupied? Is this the employment of the miserable aristocracy that yet lingers in this devoted country? Am I to find them, not in the pursuit of useful science, not in the encouragement of arts or agriculture, not in the relief of an impoverished tenantry, not in the proud march of an unsuccessful but not less sacred patriotism, not in the bright page of warlike immortality, dashing its iron crown from guilty greatness, or feeding freedom's laurel with the blood of the despot!—but am I to find them, amid drunken panders and corrupted slaves, debauching the innocence of village-life, and even amid the stews of the tavern, collecting or creating the materials of the brothel! Gentlemen, I am still unwilling to believe it, and, with all the sincerity of Mr. Dillon's advocate, I do entreat you to reject it altogether, if it be not substantiated by the unimpeachable corroboration of an oath. As I am instructed, he did not, at this time, alarm his victim by any direct communication of his purpose; he saw that "she was good as she was fair," and that a premature disclosure would but alarm her virtue into an impossibility of violation. His satellites, however, acted to admiration. They produced some trifle which he had left for her disposal; they declared he had long felt for her a

sincere attachment; as a proof that it was pure, they urged the modesty with which, at a first interview, elevated above her as he was, he avoided its disclosure. When she pressed the madness of the expectation which could alone induce her to consent to his addresses, they assured her that though in the first instance such an event was impossible, still in time it was far from being improbable; that many men from such motives forgot altogether the difference of station, that Mr. Dillon's own family had already proved every obstacle might yield to an all-powerful passion, and induce him to make her his wife, who had reposed an affectionate credulity on his honour! Such were the subtle artifices to which he stooped. Do not imagine, however, that she yielded immediately and implicitly to their persuasions; I should scarcely wonder if she did. Every day shows us the rich, the powerful, and the educated, bowing before the spell of ambition, or avarice, or passion, to the sacrifice of their honour, their country, and their souls: what wonder, then, if a poor, ignorant, peasant girl had at once sunk before the united potency of such temptations! But she did not. Many and many a time the truths which had been inculcated by her adoring parents rose up in arms; and it was not until various interviews, and repeated artifices, and untiring efforts, that she yielded her faith, her fame, and her fortunes, to the disposal of her seducer. Alas, alas! how little did she suppose that a moment was to come when, every hope denounced,

and every expectation dashed, he was to fling her for a very subsistence on the charity or the crimes of the world she had renounced for him! How little did she reflect that in her humble station, unsoiled and sinless, she might look down upon the elevation to which vice would raise her! Yes, even were it a throne, I say she might look down on it. There is not on this earth a lovelier vision; there is not for the skies a more angelic candidate than a young, modest maiden, robed in chastity; no matter what its habitation, whether it be the palace or the hut:

"So dear to Heaven is saintly Chastity,
That when a soul is found sincerely so,
A thousand liveried angels lackey her,
Driving far off each thing of sin and guilt,
And in clear dream and solemn vision
Tell her of things that no gross ear can hear,
Till oft converse with heavenly habitants
Begins to cast a beam on the outward shape,
The unpolluted temple of the mind,

And turns it by degrees to the soul's essence,
Till all be made immortal!".

Such is the supreme power of chastity, as described by one of our divinest bards, and the pleasure which I feel in the recitation of such a passage is not a little enhanced, by the pride that few countries more fully afford its exemplification than our own. Let foreign envy decry us as it will, CHASTITY IS THE INSTINCT OF THE IRISH FEMALE: the pride of her talents, the power of her beauty, the splendour of her accomplishments, are but so many handmaids of this vestal virtue; it adorns her in the court, it ennobles her in the cottage;

whether she basks in prosperity or pines in sorrow, it clings about her like the diamond of the morning on the mountain flowret, trembling even in the ray that once exhibits and inhales it! Rare in our land is the absence of this virtue. Thanks to the modesty that venerates; thanks to the manliness that brands and avenges its violation. You have seen that it was, by no common temptations even this humble villager yielded to seduction.

I now come, Gentlemen, to another fact in the progress of this transaction, betraying, in my mind, as base a premeditation, and as low and as deliberate a deception as I ever heard of. While this wretched creature was in a kind of counterpoise between her fear and her affection, struggling as well as she could between passion inflamed and virtue unextinguished, Mr. Dillon, ardently avowing that such an event as separation was impossible, ardently avowing an eternal attachment, insisted upon perfecting an article which should place her above the reach of contingencies. Gentlemen, you shall see this document voluntarily executed by an educated and estated gentleman of your county. I know not how you will feel, but for my part I protest I am in a suspense of admiration between the virtue of the proposal and the magnificent prodigality of the provision. Listen to the article it is all in his own hand-writing:-" I promise," says he, "to give Mary Connaghton the sum of ten pounds sterling per annum, when I part with her; but if she, the said Mary, should at any time hereafter conduct herself improperly, or

(mark this, Gentlemen) has done so before the drawing of this article, I am not bound to pay the sum of ten pounds, and this article becomes null and void as if the same was never executed. John Dillon." There, Gentlemen, there is the notable and dignified document for you! take it into your Jury box, for I know not how to comment on it. Oh, yes, I have heard of ambition urging men to crime-I have heard of love inflaming even to madness-I have read of passion rushing over law and religion to enjoyment; but never, until this, did I see a frozen avarice chilling the hot pulse of sensuality; and desire pause, before its brutish draught, that it might add deceit to desolation! I need not tell you that having provided in the very execution of this article for its predetermined infringement; that knowing, as he must, any stipulation for the purchase of vice to be invalid by our law; that having in the body of this article inserted a provision against that previous pollution which his prudent caprice might invent hereafter, but which his own conscience, her universal character, and even his own desire for her possession, all assured him did not exist at the time, I need not tell you that he now urges the invalidity of that instrument; that he now presses that previous pollution; that he refuses from his splendid income the pittance of ten pounds to the wretch he has ruined, and spurns her from him to pine beneath the reproaches of a parent's mercy, or linger out a living death in the charnel-houses of prostitution! You see, Gentlemen, to what designs like these