This speech has been strongly criticised as one in which the advocate defended himself and his party, while he neglected his client. But the obvious truth is, that unless the suggestion of assassination is defensible, there could be no defence, and unless the laws of nations justify the most violent charges on the character of foreign sovereigns, there could be no justification for the language of the whole paper. Mackintosh evidently took the best course for his cause. He made out of bad materials a showy speech; he turned the public eye from the guilt of the libel to the popular value of the press; where others would have given a dull pleading, he gave a stately romance; where the jury, in feebler hands, would have been suffered to see the facts in their savage nudity, he exhibited them clothed in classic draperies, and dazzled the eye with the lofty features and heroic attitudes of ancient love of country. All the skill of man could not have saved Peltier from a verdict of guilty; but the genius of the orator invested his sentence with something of the glory of martyrdom. The breaking out of the war relieved Peltier from the consequences of the verdict. But there can be no question that, if he had been thrown into prison, he would have been an object of the general sympathy; that the liberty of the press would have been regarded as in some degree involved in his sufferings; that he would have found public liberality willing to alleviate his personal and pecuniary difficulties; and that his punishment would have been shortened, and his fine paid by the zeal of the national sympathy. Such are the triumphs of eloquence. Such is the value of having a man of genius for an advocate. Such is the importance to the man of genius himself, of resolving to exert his highest powers for his client. Mackintosh has been called an indolent man; and he has been hitherto but little known. But he has at last discovered his own faculties, and he has only to keep them in action to achieve the highest successes of the bar; to fill the place of Erskine; and if no man can make Erskine forgotten, at least make him unregretted. This speech also has taught another lesson, and that lesson is, that the bar can be the theatre of the highest rank of eloquence, and that all which is regarded as the limit of forensic excellence, is a gratuitous degradation of its own dignity. The sharp retort, the sly innuendo, the dexterous hint, the hard, keen subtlety, the rough common sense, all valuable in their degree, and all profitable to their possessor, are only of an inferior grade. Let the true orator come forth, and the spruce pleader is instantly flung into the background. Let the appeal of a powerful mind be made to the jury, and all the small address, and practical skill, and sly ingenuity, are dropped behind. The passion of the true orator communicates its passion; his natural richness of conception fills the