In this indirect way he was gradually infusing into his countrymen that spirit of manhood which so powerfully moved himself. As an evidence of this, we may quote an extract, though a long one, from his speech in defence of Magee, editor of the _Evening Post_, then the most influential advocate of Catholic rights in Ireland. In 1813, Magee was prosecuted for a libel on the Duke of Richmond, the retiring lord-lieutenant; and as the crown officers in their speeches, and, as it appeared, by previous arrangement, endeavored to give to the trial--having first selected a jury to suit themselves--a political significance, Magee's counsel willingly joined issue with them on their own terms. The array of legal ability on both sides was proportionate to the gravity of the question involved. For the government appeared the Attorney-General, Saurin, the Solicitor-General, Bushe, and Sergeants Moore, Ball, and McMahon; for the defence, O'Connell, assisted by Messrs. Wallace, Hamilton, Findley, and Philips. Saurin, in his opening, alluding to the Catholic Board, of which the defendant's newspaper was the organ, made use of these words: "If the libel only related to him [Richmond], it would have gone by unprosecuted by me. But the imputation is made against the administration of justice by the government of Ireland, and it forms only a part of a system of calumny with which an association of factious and revolutionary men are in the habit of vilifying every constitutional authority in the land." The opportunity thus afforded O'Connell was instantly and dexterously seized by him to reply with more than his usual boldness and wealth of invective. In the course of his long address to the jury, he said: "My lord, upon the Catholic subject I commence with one assertion of the Attorney-General, which I trust I misunderstood. He talked, as I collected him, of the Catholics having imbibed principles of a seditious, treasonable, and revolutionary nature! He seemed to me most distinctly to charge us with treason! There is no relying on his words for his meaning--I know there is not. On a former occasion, I took down a repetition of this charge full seventeen times on my brief; and yet afterwards it turned out that he never intended to make any such charge; that he forgot he had ever used those words, and he disclaimed the idea they naturally convey. It is clear, therefore, that upon this subject he knows not what he says; and that these phrases are the mere flowers of his rhetoric, but quite innocent of any meaning!