do not, I conjure you, suffer him to take an oath, the lips of the murderer should not pollute the purity of the Gospel. If he will swear, let it be on his knife, the proper and bloody symbol of his profession, and his livelihood."
The other state trials on which Mr. Curran was retained for the accused, were those of Mr. Oliver Bond for high treason, and Owen Kirwan for the like crime; but both were convicted. The other more celebrated specimens of his forensic abilities were displayed in the case of the Rev. Charles Massey against the Marquis of Headfort, for crim. con. with the plaintiff's wife; in the case of the King, against the Honourable Mr. Justice Johnson, where Mr. Curran, upon a habeas corpus, moved for the discharge of the learned judge from his illegal imprisonment, under a warrant issued for his apprehension, by Lord Ellenborough, chief justice of the king's bench in England, in order to hold the learned judge to trial at Westminster, for a libel; and his splendid oration at the bar of the Irish house of commons, in behalf of Lady Pamela Fitzgerald and her children against the bill for the attainder of the late Lord Edward Fitzgerald. The two former are tolerably well reported in the volume before-mentioned, but the last is merely detached in substance, and, though it contains the materials of a most able argument on the case, it is but the dead body of an oration, which breathed in the delivery all the fire, animation, and pathos so peculiarly characteristic of Mr. Curran's eloquence.
Having thus slightly sketched the portrait of this celebrated orator in his parliamentary and forensic characters, it may be desirable now to consider him in private life. Naturally enough it might be supposed that a barrister of such extensive practice at the bar, from the first rise of his professional celebrity, to the day he retired from the profession; and a senator who bore so distinguished a part on every important discussion for a long series of years, had but little time for the pleasures of social intercourse and the festive board: and yet no gentleman appeared to
