publication of libel, and against Mr. Barrett for libel, and against Mr. O'Connell himself for the uttering of seditious speeches. But the great question to be tried is the legality of these proceedings, and the legality of this body. To try this question we have taken all the leaders in a mass; we have collected them into a focus, and brought them into this court on a charge of conspiracy, which their acts have demonstrated. We have not proceeded against the inferior agents, but we have joined issue with the leaders themselves, and resolved to take the opinion of a court of law, and of a jury as to whether these proceedings are legal or not; we have been taunted with not having proceeded against these parties severally; but having held each responsible for the acts of the other, we have shown a combination between the parties; this has been established by the acts of each, and therefore every man has been responsible only for his own guilt, I have now, gentlemen of the jury, brought to a close the observations which it has occurred to me to make on this case. I have no doubt you will discharge your duty, as we have done ours, fairly, temperately, and impartially. I call upon you for your verdict, not because this country is in a state of suffering or disturbance— not because your verdict may tend to effect the peace of this country not because of any consequences to the public or individuals, or of any effect which it may produced upon the legislature of the country but I call on you to give your verdict as law, justice, and the uncontradicted evidence in this case demand.

At the conclusion of the learned gentleman's address, the court adjourned for a short time.

Their lordships returned into court at one o'clock.

The Deputy Clerk of the Crown called over the names of the jury, all of whom answered.

The Chief Justice then commenced his charge to the jury---He said it now fell to him to make such observations as occurred to him to be submitted to their consideration, upon the manifold circumstances of this very important case, and he was happy to say, that in conference with all his learned brethren of the bench, there was a concurrence of opinion existing between them upon the subject matter which he should have to lay before them. It had been, and was most highly satisfactory to the court, and most creditable to the jury, to observe the unvaried and constant attention which they had paid, from beginning to eud, to the circumstances of this strange and important case. He said strange only with respect to its duration; for himself he did not feel that it was a case in which there existed any great difficulty in the law, and upon the facts of which so intelligent a jury as he had the honour of addressing, would finally have to pronounce their verdict. They had heard, during this long trial, a great deal of eloquence---they had heard also somewhat of declamation---they had heard great oratorical powers, and powers of reasoning---they had heard a great deal of what might be deemed poetic; and he did not mean to say but they had also heard a good deal of what might be more justly termed prosaic (laughter). They had heard observations made to them which he could not help saying, generally, bordered on the verge of impropriety; but, what was more material, they had heard a great deal which it would be very difficult, indeed, to prove was relevant to the subject they had to

consider. There were many observations made both as to the law and the facts. On the latter subject they were the constitutional judges to determine, and to come to a just conclusion. The law of the case they would take from the court, the judges of which were constitutionally entrusted with the administration of that law, bound to administer it under the most solemn sanction, and independent alike both of the crown and of the people. They (the judges,) therefore, sat there in the Court of Queen's Bench under the same obligation as that under which the Queen held her crown, to administer justice with mercy, according to the laws of the land. There were, as they knew, eight traversers then upon their trial-Mr. Daniel O'Connell, Mr. John O'Connell, Mr. Thomas Steele, Mr. Thomas Mathew Ray, Mr. Charles Gavin Duffy, the Rev. Thomas Tierney, Dr. John Gray, and Mr. Richard Barrett. Those were the several traversers upon their trial, and he held in his hand the abstract of the indictment upon which they were charged, and to which they had respectively pleaded "not guilty." They were indicted for conspiracy to raise and create discontent and disaffection amongst the Queen's subjects. The particulars of the alleged objects of this conspiracy it was very material for them to keep in mind. Perhaps, they might have, in coming to their verdict, a necessity to distinguish with regard to the several traversers, or some of them in respect to the nature of the conspiracy which was charged against one and all of them. The indictment consists of eleven counts. The first count contained all the several charges of conspiracy that had been enumerated to them, accompanied with divers and singular overt acts, or means by which those objects were to be carried into effect. Overt acts were not part of a conspiracy, but were inserted in the indictment as statements of the evidence by which the charge of conspiracy was to be supported. Gentlemen of the jury, those overt acts were introduced into the indictment for the purpose---the laudable purpose---of giving the parties, who were accused of a conspiracy, notice of the particular facts by which the crown intended to support the charge of conspiracy in question. Those overt acts were now in evidence, but the question was not so much as to the existence of particular overt acts named, as to the conspiracy of which they are stated in evidence; but it was not upon the effect of the evidence, but upon its results, they would have to decide; and they would have to say, not whether a particular overt act took place, but whether the parties accused were guilty of a conspiracy or not. They would now see how very important it was in the outset that they should take into their consideration clearly the several particulars of the alleged conspiracy. It was, or may be considered to be, consisting of five parts. First, to create discontent and disaffection between the Queen's subjects, and to excite them to hatred and unlawful opposition to the government and constitution of the country. Secondly, to stir up jealousies among the Queen's subjects, and promote ill-will from one class against another, especially from Ireland against England. Thirdly, to excite disaffection in the army. Fourthly, to collect unlawful assemblies in large numbers in Ireland, in order to obtain changes in the law and constitution of the country, by intimidation and demonstration of physical force. And fifthly, to bring the courts of justice, as established by law, into disrepute, and to induce the subjects of the realm to submit their differences to other tribunals. Now, it was a conceded fact in this case that the indictment

upon which the traversers were brought to trial, and to which they had pleaded, consisted only of an offence of one nature; that was to say, it might have different branches, as he already stated; but still, upon the whole, it was an indictment for a conspiracy and for nothing else. There was no indictment against any of the traversers for a libel-there was no indictment against any of them for sedition, nor on any other unconnected or separate breach of the law. They were, one and all, united in the charge of conspiracy, of which no individual could be by law convicted, unless it was proved to the satisfaction of the jury that he had been acting in concert with some other person or persons. An individual of himself could not, per se, be found guilty, unless he joined somebody else to commit the crime of conspiracy. He might be guilty of any one of a numerous other class of offences of which men were daily guilty; but for the conviction of any one or more persons for a conspiracy, the law required that a jury should be satisfied that there was a concert between them either for the purpose of doing an illegal act, or else for the purpose of doing, or causing to be done, an act legal in itself, but to be brought about by illegal means. Now, he took that to be the definition of conspiracy, which, according to the law, he could not only safely, but which he thought he was bound to put to them. They would see that in that definition he did not include, as a component part of the crime of conspiracy, either the existence of treachery, as was insisted on by Mr. Fitzgibbon on the first day of his address, nor the existence of secrecy, which he insisted upon on the second day, and which was afterwards reiterated and repeated by Mr. O'Connell, the traverser, when he addressed them, as he was entitled to do, in his own defence, and stated his case to them. In his opinion-and in the opinion of the court---it was a mistake in law to say that, in order to establish a conspiracy, it was necessary for the crown, or prosecutor, to prove the existence of either treachery or of secrecy, in order to complete that charge. He did not mean to say that treachery and secrecy did not often concur in the existence of various conspiracies, but he denied altogether that it was the law of this country, that the existence of one or other of such ingredients should be proved, in order to constitute the crime of conspiracy. He did not know very well how to designate the disagreeable idea which had connected itself with the term conspiracy. Perhaps it might be found in Johnson's Dictionary, from which Mr. O'Connell took it; perhaps it might be found in some other common or ordinary book, from which Mr. Fitzgibbon derives his notion of treachery; but, in common parlance, something disreputable, or bordering upon infamy; and as such was alleged by the traversers and their counsel, from which they were called upon to beware and ponder before they would find the traversers, or any one of them, guilty of that infamous crime. Now, whether that infamy did connect itself with the charge of conspiracy or not, it did not at all come within the legal definition of it. A conspiracy might exist, and men might be guilty of a conspiracy without having been guilty of treachery, or without those deeds of darkness which Mr. Sheil insinuated were necessary, and constituted part of the crime of conspiracy. Secrecy might not unfrequently be found to accompany a conspiracy, but it is not, by any means, a necessary ingredient of the crime. Nay, more, he would further say, that if secrecy

were necessary (and by this he did not mean to anticipate, God forbid he should, one way or the other, the conclusion at which they might find themselves bound in conscience to arrive), but he would say that, if secrecy were a necessary ingredient in the crime of conspiracy, the crime charged in the present indictment might have been carried on from its commencement to its consummation, and the parties concerned could never be disturbed in their progress, or be brought before any tribunal on a charge of conspiracy. He had said this in order to exemplify his view of the principle generally, rather than as bearing on the present case; and in what he had said let it be rejected from their minds once for all, that he was giving anything like an opinion, or anything bordering on an opinion, with regard to the facts of this case, which would be entirely for their decision. Secrecy need not be necessary for a conspiracy, if the parties conspiring agreed together for the common object of overawing the parliament of the country, and spreading terror and alarm amongst the Queen's subjects, by collecting together in the open day large bodies of people. In a conspiracy of that description, secrecy was not a necessary ingredient; nay, on the cantrary, the more numerous, and the more public were the assemblages convened for such a purpose, the more likely were they to accomplish the end of the party who called them together, they thus proving part of the crime with which he was charged, his object being all along to create terror and intimidation, and to overawe the public, which object would be brought about more effectually by a public demonstration, than by secrecy or concealment. He put this to them merely as a suppositious case, to show the fallacy of those who had insisted that as a necessary ingredient in the charge of conspiracy, there should be established to the satisfaction of the jury an evidence of secrecy. A great many authorities had been cited by Mr. Fitzgibbon, in the course of his argument both on the first day, when he insisted on the existence of treachery-and on the second day, when he insisted also, or perhaps in the alternative, on the existence of secrecy. He had looked into these authorities, and he was bound to say, that in his judgment, and in the opinion of the court, there was not one of them which supported the proposition for which they were cited, namely, that in order to substantiate a charge of conspiracy, either treachery or secrecy was necessary. Mr. Fitzgibbon had contended that the definition he (the Chief Justice) had given of conspiracy had been found fault with, or overruled, in a case to which he referred, by Lord Denman, the Chief Justice of the Queen's Bench in England-the person who was alleged to have first introduced the definition of conspiracy, such as it had been now laid down to the jury. Now he begged leave to assure Mr. Fitzgibbon that it did not at all appear that Lord Denman ever did say such thing; and, furthermore, that the rule, or definition which had subsequently been followed, had been the rule or definition which had been followed and adopted not only by Lord Denman himself, but by a variety of successive judges in different courts of England, who gave their judgments judicially on the subject. The same circumstance happened in several other cases, in which it became necessary to consider the law of conspiracy, and judicial opinions were pronounced from the bench, severally and seriatim, by each individual judge, in which they one and all respectively concurred in the justice of the rule, and gave their judgments

in the respective cases according to that common opinion. The only thing resembling an imputation that had ever been cast upon this rule by Lord Denman (and the supposition that it was an imputation arose out of a mistake of Mr. Fitzgibbon's) was this :---The rule was cited to him in the progress of a law argument by a Mr. Carrington, a member of the English bar. The rule was cited not as he (the Chief Justice) had stated it, namely, that a conspiracy was either an agreement between two or more persons to procure an unlawful act to be done, or else to procure the accomplishment of a legal end by unlawful means. He said that Lord Denian denied the antithesis to be correct. Every body knows that Lord Denman was a learned and excellent lawyer, and he then only spoke as a grammarian. He (Lord Denman) did not alter the law, but left it as he had found it---and all the judges in England, for the question had been often brought before them---have acted upon the rule. Mr. Fitzgibbon, on the first day, with a good deal of seriousness, and he might add, gravity, had solemnly announced the law, not to be then as stated, and had found fault with Mr. Moore, counsel for one of the traversers, for having adopted the law as laid down by the Attorney General. He had said with earnestness that it was not the law, and he had given a certain definition of it as it was found in an old act of parliament, from whence he inferred that a conspiracy was the existance of an unlawful association of two or more men, bound together by an oath for the purpose of imposing a false accusation upon some other person, and he referred, in support of his proposition, to Hawkins's Pleas of the Crown. If it were there laid down as Mr. Fitzgibbon had stated, it would, nevertheless, not support him, for he contended that treachery was a necessary ingredient in conspiracy. What he had stated was from

Hawkins," page 444; but he forgot to add, that in page 446, Mr. Curwood, a gentleman of the bar, who edited the last edition, stated thus: "Modern cases of conspiracy have certainly stretched the doctrine of conspiracy far beyond the old rule, and, in the opinion of Lord Eldon, ought not to be pushed any further." But Mr. Curwood stated that the offence consisted in imposing, by combination, a false crime upon any person, or to commit an innocent man by perversion of law and perjury. But he also stated properly, that the ancient law was long before extended beyond what it was in the reign of Edward I. He (the Lord Chief Justice) need only refer to the multiplicity of cases in which the construction he had given had been acted upon and exercised—and to the unanimous opinions of the judges, from whence the rule laid down was adduced—and from which also it was evident that treachery and secrecy were not necessary in the law of conspiracy as it now stands, although they might be included in it. Having thus stated what the law of conspiracy was, and what it was not, he said he would not trouble them with a repetition of the cases which he and his brethren had conferred upon, and had satisfactorily come to the conslusion that the law of conspiracy was as he then announced it. Having stated what the traversers were accused of, he thought it right to lay down a few other rules by which they, the jury, might hereafter see the proper bearing of the case. In order to convict the defendants or traversers, or any of them, of the charge of conspiracy, it would be necessary for the jury to be satisfied-he did not mean to say