CURRAN. S41 appointment to the chief command of the army, retired in disgust at its utter want of discipline, and the licen- tious horrors it was daily extending through the country; infinitely better calculated to excite rebellion than deter and suppress it. " If, for instance," says he, " you wish to convey to the mind of an English matron the horrors of that direfal period, when, in defiance of the remonstrance of the ever to-be-lamented Abercrombie, our people were surrendered to the licentious brutality of the soldiery, by the authority of the state, you would vainly endeavour to give her a general picture of lust, and rapine, and murder, and con- flagration. Instead of exhibiting the picture of an entire province, select a single object;-do not release the ima- gination of your hearer from its task, by giving more than an outline. Take a cottage ; place the affrighted mother of her orphan daughters at the door; the paleness of death upon her countenance, and more than its agonies in her heart. Her aching eye, her anxious ear struggles through the mists of closing day to catch the approaches of desolation and dishonour. The ruflian gang arrives,- the feast of plunder begins,-the cup of madness kindles in its circulation. The wandering glances of the ravisher become concentrated upon the devoted victim. You need not dilate,-you need not expatiate. The unpolluted mother to whom you tell the story of horror, beseeches you not to proceed. She presses her child to her bosom,-she drowns it in her tears. Her fancy catches more than an angel's tongue could describe; at a single view she takes in the whole miserable succession of force, of profa- nation, of despair, of death. So it is in the question before us. If any man shall hear of this day's transaction, he cannot be so foolish as to suppose that we have been confined to a single character like those now brought before you. On the trial of Archibald Hamilton Rowen, Esq. for the publication of a seditious libel, Mr. Curran uttered a most magnificent oration, embracing the whole variety of
