falsely aspersing the wretched woman he had undone. One good he has done, he has disclosed to you the point in which he can feel; for how imperious must that avarice be which could resort to so vile an expedient of frugality! Yes, I will say that, with the common feelings of a man, he would have rather suffered his £30,000 a year to go as compensation to the plaintiff than saved a shilling of it by so vile an expedient of economy. He would rather have starved with her in a jail—he would rather have sunk with her into the ocean-than have so villified her, than have so degraded himself.

But it seems, gentlemen, and, indeed, you have been told, that long as the course of his gallantries has been (and he has grown gray in the service), it is the first time he has been called upon for damages. To how many might it have been fortunate if he had not that impunity to boast? Your verdict will, I trust, put an end to that encouragement to guilt that is built upon impunity. The devil, it seems, has saved the noble marquis harmless in the past; but your verdict will tell him the term of that indemnity is expired, that his old friend and banker has no more effects in his hands, and that, if he draws any more upon him, he must pay his own bills himself. You will do much good by doing so. You may not enlighten his conscience nor touch his heart, but his frugality will understand the hint. It will adopt the prudence of age, and deter him from pursuits in which, though he may be insensible of shame, he will not be regardless of expense. You will do more; you will not only punish him in his tender point, but you will weaken him in his strong one,-his money. We have heard much of this noble lord's wealth, and much of his exploits. but not much of his accomplishments or his wit. I know not that his verses have soared even to the poet's corner. I have heard it said that an ass laden with gold could find his way through the gate of the strongest city. But, gentlemen, lighten the load upon his back, and you will completely curtail the mischievous faculty of a grave animal, whose momentum lies not in his agility, but his weight; not in the quantity of motion, but the quantity of his

matter.

There is another ground on which you are called upon to give most liberal damages, and that has been laid by the unfeeling vanity of the defendant. This business has been marked by the most elaborate publicity. It is very clear that he has been allured by the glory of the chase, and not the value of the game. The poor object of his pursuit could be of no value to him, or he could

not have so wantonly and cruelly and unnecessarily abused her. He might easily have kept this unhappy intercourse an unsuspected secret. Even if he wished for her elopement, he might easily have so contrived it that the place of her retreat would be profoundly undiscoverable. Yet, though even the expense (a point so tender to his delicate sensibility) of concealing could not be a one-fortieth of the cost of publishing her, his vanity decided him in favor of glory and publicity. By that election he has in fact put forward the Irish nation and its character, so often and so variously calumniated, upon its trial before the tribunal of the empire; and your verdict will this day decide whether an Irish jury can feel with justice and spirit upon a subject that involves conjugal affection and comfort, domestic honor and repose, the certainty of issue, the weight of public opinion, the gilded and presumptuous criminality of overweening rank and station. I doubt not but he is at this moment reclined on a silken sofa, anticipating that submissive and modest verdict by which you will lean gently on his errors; and expecting, from your patriotism, no doubt, that you will think again and again before you condemn any great portion of the immense revenue of a great absentee to be detained in the nation that produced it, instead of being transmitted, as it ought, to be expended in the splendor of another country. He is now probably waiting for the arrival of the report of this day, which I understand a famous note taker has been sent hither to collect. (Let not the gentleman be disturbed.) Gentlemen, let me assure you it is more, much more, the trial of you, than of the noble marquis, of which this imported recorder is at this moment collecting the materials. His noble employer is now expecting a report to the following effect: "Such a day came on to be tried at Ennis, by a special jury, the cause of Charles Massy against the most noble the Marquis of Headfort. It appeared that the plaintiff's wife was young, beautiful, and captivating; the plaintiff himself, a person fond of this beautiful creature to distraction,— and both doting on their child. But the noble marquis approached her. The plume of glory nodded on his head. Not the goddess Minerva, but the goddess Venus, had lighted upon his casque 'the fire that never tires, such as many a lady gay had been dazzled with before.' At the first advance she trembled; at the second she struck to the redoubted son of Mars and pupil of Venus. The jury saw it was not his fault (it was an Irish jury); they felt compassion for the tenderness of the mother's heart, and for the warmth of the lover's passion. The jury saw, on the one side, a

young, entertaining gallant; on the other, a beauteous creature, of charms irresistible. They recollected that Jupiter had been always successful in his amours, although Vulcan had not always escaped some awkward accidents. The jury was composed of fathers, brothers, husbands, but they had not the vulgar jealousy that views little things of that sort with rigor; and wishing to assimilate their country in every respect to England, now that they are united to it, they, like English gentlemen, returned to their box with a verdict of sixpence damages and sixpence costs." Let this be sent to England. I promise you your odious secret will not be kept better than that of the wretched Mrs. Massy. There is not a bawdy chronicle in London in which the epitaph which you would have written on yourselves will not be published, and our enemies will delight in the spectacle of our precocious depravity, in seeing that we can be rotten before we are ripe. I do not suppose it; I do not, cannot, will not believe it. I will not harrow up myself with the anticipated apprehension.

There is another consideration, gentlemen, which I think most imperiously demands even a vindictive award of exemplary damages, and that is the breach of hospitality. To us peculiarly does it belong to avenge the violation of its altar. The hospitality of other countries is a matter of necessity or convention,-in savage nations, of the first; in polished, of the latter. But the hospitality of an Irishman is not the running account of posted and ledgered courtesies, as in other countries. It springs, like all his qualities, his faults, his virtues, directly from his heart. The heart of an Irishman is by nature bold, and he confides; it is tender, and he loves; it is generous, and he gives; it is social, and he is hospitable. This sacrilegious intruder has profaned the religion of that sacred altar, so elevated in our worship, so precious to our devotion, and it is our privilege to avenge the crime. You must either pull down the altar and abolish the worship, or you must preserve its sanctity undebased. There is no alternative between the universal exclusion of all mankind from your threshold, and the most rigorous punishment of him who is admitted and betrays. This defendant has been so trusted, has so betrayed, and you ought to make him a most signal example.

Gentlemen, I am the more disposed to feel the strongest indignation and abhorrence at this odious conduct of the defendant when I consider the deplorable condition to which he has reduced the plaintiff, and perhaps the still more deplorable one that he has in prospect before him. What a progress has he to travel through

before he can attain the peace and tranquillity which he has lost? How like the wounds of the body are those of the mind! How burning the fever! How painful the suppuration! How slow, how hesitating, how relapsing the process to convalescence! Through what a variety of suffering, what new scenes and changes, must my unhappy client pass ere he can re-attain, should he ever re-attain, that health of soul of which he has been despoiled by the cold and deliberate machinations of this praticed and gilded seducer? If, instead of drawing upon his incalculable wealth for a scanty retribution, you were to stop the progress of his despicable achievements by reducing him to actual poverty, you could not, even so, punish him beyond the scope of his offense, nor reprise the plaintiff beyond the measure of his suffering. Let me remind you that in this action the law not only empowers you, but that its policy commands you, to consider the public example, as well as the individual injury, when you adjust the amount of your verdict. I confess I am most anxious that you should acquit yourselves worthily upon this important occasion. I am addressing you as fathers, husbands, brothers. I am anxious that a feeling of those high relations should enter into, and give dignity to, your verdict. But I confess it, I feel a ten-fold solicitude when I remember that I am addressing you as my countrymen,-as Irishmen, whose characters as jurors, as gentlemen, must find either honor or degradation in the result of your decision. Small as must be the distributive share of that national estimation that can belong to so unimportant an individual as myself, yet do I own I am tremblingly solicitous for its fate. Perhaps it appears of more value to me because it is embarked on the same bottom with yours; perhaps the community of peril, of common safety, or common wreck gives a consequence to my share of the risk which I could not be vain enough to give it if it were not raised to it by that mutuality. But why stoop to think at all of myself, when I know that you, gentlemen of the jury, when I know that our country itself, are my clients on this day, and must abide the alternative of honor or of infamy, as you shall decide. But I will not despond. I will not dare to despond. I have every trust and hope and confidence in you; and to that hope I will add my most fervent prayer to the God of all truth and justice, so to raise and enlighten and fortify your minds that you may so decide as to preserve to yourselves, while you live, the most delightful of all recollections,-that of acting justly, and to transmit to your children the most precious of all inheritances, the memory of your virtue.

CHIEF JUSTICE MARSHALL.

[John Marshall was born in Germantown, Fauquier county, Va., 1755. He was privately educated, and had just begun his legal studies when the Revolutionary struggle began. He enlisted in a Virginia regiment, and served throughout the war. In 1779 he was promoted to a captaincy. While in Richmond, on detail, in the winter of 1779-80, he attended the law lectures of George Wythe, of William and Mary College, and in the summer of 1780 was admitted to the bar. In 1781, after six years' service, he resigned his commission, and, as soon as the courts reopened, began the practice of the law. In 1782 he was elected to the house of burgesses, and, in the same year, a member of the executive council. In 1784 he took up his permanent residence in Richmond. In 1788, as a delegate to the state convention called to consider the adoption of the federal constitution, he was the recognized leader of the majority in favor of ratification. He served in the state legislature on various occasions, and was a warm supporter of Washington's administration. Meantime he had risen to leadership at the Virginia bar. In 1797 he was appointed by President Adams, with Pinckney and Gerry, envoy to France. In the following year he declined an appointment to the supreme bench. In 1799 he was elected to congress. Before his term expired he was nominated as secretary of war by President Adams. Before this nomination was confirmed, however, he was nominated and appointed as secretary of state, and served as such during the remainder of the administration. Upon the resignation of Chief Justice Ellsworth, in 1800, Marshall was appointed in his place, and took his seat at the February term, 1801. In 1807 he presided at the celebrated trial of Aaron Burr for treason. In 1829 he served as a delegate in the constitutional convention of Virginia. At the request of Washington's family, he published a life of that patriot, in five volumes, 1804-07. He died in Philadelphia, July 6, 1835.]

In the small company of constructive jurists John Marshall holds distinguished rank. An able advocate, a distinguished statesman, and a learned judge, he will nevertheless be remembered as the founder of our constitutional jurisprudence. When Marshall was appointed chief justice in 1801 the supreme court was still in its formative period. During the first ten years the court averaged less than six decisions a year, and they were mostly questions of practice on preliminary motion. The case of Chisholm v. Geor