their cottages, their implements of husbandry, and the hopes of the future year, expiring in one cruel conflagration. The Swiss was a simple peasant; the French are a mighty people, combined for the regeneration of Europe. Oh, Europe! what dost thou owe to this mighty people?. dead bodies, ruinous heaps, broken hearts, endless confusion, and unutterable woe! By this mighty people, the Swiss have lost their country; that country which they loved so well, that if they heard but the simple song of their childhood, tears fell down every manly face, and the hearts of intrepid soldiers sobbed with grief. THE JUDICIARY DEPARTMENT. W. E. CHANNING. THERE is one branch of government, which we hold in high veneration, which we account an unspeakable blessing, and which, for the world, we would not say a word to disparage; and we are the more disposed to speak of it, because its relative importance seems to us little understood. We refer to the judiciary, a department worth all others in the state. Whilst politicians expend their zeal on transient interests, which, perhaps, derive their chief importance from their connection with a party, it is the province of the judge to apply those solemn and universal laws of rectitude on which the security, industry, and prosperity of the individual and the state essentially depend. From his tribunal, as from a sacred oracle, go forth the responses of justice. To us there is nothing in the whole fabric of civil institutions so interesting and imposing as this impartial and authoritative exposition of the principles of moral legislation. The administration of justice in this country, where the judge, without a guard, without a soldier, without pomp, decides upon the dearest interests of the citizen, trusting chiefly to the moral sentiment of the community for the execution of his decrees, is the most beautiful and encouraging aspect, under which our government can be viewed. We repeat it, there is nothing in public affairs so venerable as the voice of justice speaking through her delegated ministers, reaching and subduing the high as well as the low, setting a defence around the splendid mansion of wealth and the lowly hut of poverty, repressing wrong, vindicating innocence, humbling the oppressor, and publishing the rights of human nature to every human being. We confess, that we often turn with pain and humiliation from the hall of congress, where we see the legislator forgetting the majesty of his function, forgetting his relation to a vast and growing community, and sacrificing to his party or to himself the public weal; and it comforts us to turn to the court of justice, where the dispenser of the laws, shutting his ear against all solicitations of friendship or interest, dissolving for a time every private tie, forgetting public opinion, and withstanding public feeling, asks only what is RIGHT. To our courts, the resorts and refuge of weakness and innocence, we look with hope and joy. We boast, with a virtuous pride, that no breath of corruption has as yet tainted their pure air. To this department of government, we cannot ascribe too much importance. Over this, we cannot watch too jealously. Every encroachment on its independence we should resent, and repel, as the chief wrong our country can sustain. Woe, woe, to the impious hand, which would shake this most sacred and precious column of the social edifice! IN DEFENCE OF FREEMAN. W. H. SEWARD. THE circumstances under which this trial closes are peculiar. I have seen capital cases where the parents, brothers, sisters, friends of the accused, surrounded him, eagerly hanging upon the lips of his advocate, and watching, in the countenances of the court and jury, every smile and frown which might seem to indicate his fate. But there is no such scene here. The prisoner, though in the greenness of youth, is withered, decayed, senseless, almost lifeless. He has no father here. The descendant of slaves, that father died a victim to the vices of a superior race. There is no mother here, for her child is stained and polluted with the blood of mothers and of a sleeping infant; and he "looks and laughs so, that she cannot bear to look upon him." There is no brother, or sister, or friend here. Popular rage against the accused has driven them hence, and scattered his kindred and people. On the other side, I notice the aged and venerable parents of Van Nest, and his surviving children; and all around are mourning and sympathizing friends. I know not at whose instance they have come. I dare not say they ought not to be here. But I must say to you that we live in a Christian 120 PROSE DECLAMATIONS and not in a savage state, and that the affliction which has fallen upon these mourners and us was sent to teach them and us mercy, and not retaliation; that although we send this maniac to the scaffold, it will not recall to life the manly form of Van Nest, nor reanimate the exhausted frame of that aged matron, nor restore to life and grace and beauty the murdered mother, nor call back the infant boy from the arms of his Saviour. Such a verdict can do no good to the living, and carry no joy to the dead. If your judgment shall be swayed at all by sympathies so wrong, although so natural, you will find the saddest hour of your life to be that in which you will look down upon the grave of your victim, and " mourn with compunctious sorrow," that you should have done so great injustice to the "poor handful of earth that will lie mouldering before me." I have been long and tedious. I remember that it is the harvest moon, and that every hour is precious, while you are detained from your yellow fields. But if you shall have bestowed patient attention throughout this deeply interesting investigation, and shall in the end have discharged your duties in the fear of God and in the love of truth, justly and independently, you will have laid up a store of blessed recollections for all your future days, imperishable and inexhaustible. IN DEFENCE OF WIDOW WILKINS. C. PHILLIPS. I THINK the learned counsel for the plaintiff is mistaken. Indeed, I think no twelve men, upon their oaths, will say, even admitting the truth of all he asserts, that it was honorable for a British officer to abandon the navy on a hopeless speculation; to desert so noble a profession, to forfeit the ambition it ought to have associated, the rank to which it leads, the glory it may confer,- for the purpose of extorting from an old woman he never saw the purchase-money of his degradation! But I rescue the plaintiff from this disgraceful imputation. I cannot believe that a member of a profession, no less remarkable for the valor than the generosity of its spirit, a profession as proverbial for its profusion in the harbor as for the prodigality of its life-blood on the wave, a profession ever willing to fling money to the winds, and only anxious gentlemen! notwithstanding the great authority of Mr. Anthony Martin, I cannot readily believe that any man could be found to make the high honor of this noble service a base, mercenary, sullied pander to the blemish of his spotless youth! The fact is, that increasing ill health, and the improbability of promotion, combined to induce his retirement on half-pay. You will find this confirmed by the date of his resignation, which was immediately after the battle of Waterloo - which settled, no matter how, the destinies of Europe. His constitution was declining, his advancement was annihilated, and, as a forlorn hope, he bombarded the Widow Wilkins! "War thoughts had left their places vacant; In their room came thronging soft and amorous desires; He first, gentlemen, attacked her fortune, with herself, through the artillery of the church; and having failed in that, he now attacks her fortune, without herself, through the assistance of the law. However, if I am rightly instructed, he has nobody but himself to blame for his disappointment. Observe, I do not vouch for the authenticity of this fact; but I do certainly assure you, that Mrs. Wilkins was persuaded of it. You know the proverbial frailty of our nature. The gallant lieutenant was not free from it! Perhaps you imagine that some younger, or, according to his taste, some older fair one, weaned him from the widow. Indeed, they did not; he had no heart to lose, and yet can you solve the paradox? his infirmity was love! As the poet says, "Love-still love." No, gentlemen, it was not to Venus, it was to Bacchus he sacrificed. With an eastern idolatry, he commenced at daylight, and so persevering was his piety till the shades of night, that, when he was hot on his knees, he could scarcely be said to be on his legs! When I came to this passage, I could not avoid involuntarily exclaiming, "O Peter, Peter! whether it be in liquor or in love, 'None but thyself can be thy parallel?'” I see, by your smiling, gentlemen, that you correct my error. I perceive your classic memories recurring to perhaps the only prototype to be found in history. I beg his pardon; I should not have overlooked "the immortal Captain Wattle, Who was all for love, a little for the bottle." Ardent as our fair ones have been announced to be, they do not prefer a flame that is so exclusively spiritual. Widow Wilkins, no doubt, did not choose to be singular. In the words of the bard—and, my lord, I perceive you excuse my dwelling so much on the authority of the muses, because, really, on this occasion the minstrel seems to have combined the powers of poetry with the spirit of prophecy — in the very words of the bard, 6 "He asked her, Would she marry him?'- Widow Wilkins answered, 'No.' Then, said he, ‘I'll to the ocean rock — I'm ready for the slaugh ter! O! I'll shoot at my sad image, as it's sighing in the water!' THE MODEL REPEAL ORATOR. H. MAYHEW. How have we been treated for the last ten thousand years by the cold-blooded Saxon? My hair stands on end to tell you. Has n't England so managed matters in her own favor that she receives the light of the sun two-and-twenty minutes before she permits a single ray to come to us? England may boast of her enlightenment; but is this justice to Ireland? I have next to accuse England of keeping aloof from us fully sixty miles at the nearest point. Talk of our union after that! No, my countrymen, it is only a parchment union, a lying thing, made of the skin of the innocent sheep; but, before we go to bed this night, we'll see that bit of parchment torn into countless strips, so that every tailor in Ireland shall have, tomorrow morning, a remnant of it in his hands, to measure twelve millions of happy Irishmen with. Well, sir, I denounce from this place the atrocious cupidity of England, by which she monopolizes the tin mines entirely, almost all the iron and coal, and thus cramps, sir, our native industry and commerce. Why has not Ireland her own iron and coal? I ask, again, why have we no tin? and no brass? no zinc ? no salmon? no elephants? no periwinkles? no king? Oh! my beloved countrymen, I have had a most beautiful vision! I thought I saw every field of Ireland covered with dancing corn, and embroidered with the most beautiful sheep, whose wool was more exquisite than all the Berlin wool that was ever made in England; and I thought, my countrymen, its rivers were filled with more salmon and more periwinkles |