John Philpot Curran. In reviewing the circumstances surround ing the trial and death of Orr we have an instance of Curran's remarkable power of bringing his client's cause home to the heart of the jury. With the simplicity of pathetic facts he supposes that the jury had been a witness to the tragedy of Orr,— that they had seen him in his dungeon, heard the cry of his children, and the clank of his chains, listened to the lies of the informer, and wit nessed the drunken jury as, with insensibility, it condemned innocence to death. He im agines that they had heard the self-condem nation of that miserable jury at the feet of authority; had watched from the bosom of that unhappy family the uncertain attitude of the court; had marched with Orr through the crowds of hostile ruffians to his execu tion in the early dawn, where " he dies with a solemn declaration of his innocence and utters his last breath in a prayer for the liberty of his country." Later on, in the event of conviction, the orator with vivid imagination accompanies the jurors home to the bosom of their families, and adjures them to tell the children that hang upon their knees the story of the day. But let Curran speak: "Tell them the story of Orr's captivity, of his children, of his crime, of his hopes, of his disappointments, of his courage, and of his death; and when you find your little hearers hanging upon your lips, when you see their eyes overflow with sympathy and sorrow, and their young hearts bursting with the pangs of anticipat ed orphanage, tell them that you had the boldness and the justice to stigmatize the man who had dared to publish the transaction." Curran's pathos is sweet and simple, like that of Burns and Dickens, and hard would be the heart that to this day can trace with out a tear the melancholy pictures that came from that marvelous mind. In the case of the Marquis of Headfbrd we find another striking example of pure pathos in the eloquence with which he paints the do mestic tragedy. It is a prose poem in the
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minor strain. If ever an advocate won hearts by pathos, it was Curran. In his argument in the case of Justice Johnson be fore Lord Avonmore, an early friend, long estranged by the bitterness of a partisan age, he dissolved the anger of years in the manly tears he called to the eyes of the judge by the beautiful pictures he painted of the " Attic nights" and buried friends of the long ago. The " tender grace of a day that was dead," seemed to inspire the orator with visions that regained an ancient friend. Of all the glowing gems that ever came from the heart of a lover of liberty, in por traying the exquisite splendor of his mis tress's charms, none will surpass in fervency and beauty Curran's splendid tribute to the spirit of universal emancipation in his de fense of Rowan. In politics Curran was an enthusiastic fol lower of Fox and Sheridan. Devoted to liberty above all else and sympathizing with the people, as against Pitt's policy of repres sion, he had nothing in common with the Tory party. His political exertions in the Irish parliament were exclusively bent to the accomplishment of Irish independence. Like Erskine and Choate, however, he was not equally brilliant at the bar and in politics, and his defeat in the only fight he ever made for a seat in the English parlia ment probably robbed him of no added lustre. His long devotion to the party of Fox was rewarded by the appointment of master of the rolls — a position he held un til fast-failing health warned him that disso lution was near at hand. Tradition says that the brilliant advocate became a commonplace jurist. Nor should we expect that the eagle that soars and sweeps the airs -of every clime would appear to advantage in the confinement of a cage. To transplant the fervent advocate to the cold, dispassionate wool-sack, is like placing a tropical bird in some harsh northern clime and expecting it to sing with wonted ardor. Noble as is the judicial position, it can never
