Yes, gentlemen, place yourselves as Protestants under such a persecution. Behold before you this chief inquisitor, with his prejudiced tribunal--this gambler, with a loaded die; and now say what are your feelings--what are your sensations of disgust, abhorrence, affright? But if at such a moment some ardent and enthusiastic Papist, regardless of his interests, and roused by the crimes that were thus committed against you, should describe, in measured, and cautious, and cold language, scenes of oppression and iniquity--if he were to describe them, not as I have done, but in feeble and mild language, and simply state the facts for your benefit and the instruction of the public--if this liberal Papist, for this, were dragged to the Inquisition, as for a crime, and menaced with a dungeon for years, good and gracious God! how would you revolt at and abominate the men who could consign him to that dungeon! With what an eye of contempt, and hatred, and despair, would you not look at the packed and profligate tribunal which could direct punishment against him who deserved rewards! What pity would you not feel for the advocate who heavily, and without hope, labored in his defence! and with what agonized and frenzied despair would you not look to the future destinies of a land in which perjury was organized and from which humanity and justice had been forever banished! With this picture of yourselves in Portugal, come home to us in Ireland; say, is that a crime, when applied to Protestants, which is a virtue and a merit when applied to Papists? Behold how we suffer here; and then reflect, that it is principally by reason of your prejudices against us that the Attorney-General hopes for your verdict. The good man has talked of his impartiality; he will suppress, he says, the licentiousness of the Press. I have, I hope, shown you the right of my client to discuss the public subjects which he has discussed in the manner they are treated of in the publication before you, yet he is prosecuted. Let me read for you a paragraph which the Attorney-General has not prosecuted--which he has refused to prosecute: “BALLYBAY, July 4, 1813. “A meeting of the Orange Lodges was agreed on, in consequence of the manner in which the Catholics wished to have persecuted the loyalists in this county last year, _when they even murdered some of them for no other reason than their being yeomen and Protestants_.” And, again-- “It was at Ballybay that _the Catholics murdered one Hughes, a yeoman sergeant, for being a Protestant, as was given in evidence at the assizes by a Catholic witness_.”