May it please your lordships, and gentlemen, I am counsel for the prisoner, John Mitchel; and I am well aware of the important duty which devolves on me this day, as counsel for that gentleman, and also of my inadequacy to discharge that duty; but I will avow, that I feel proud of being selected on this occasion by Mr. Mitchel, because I believe in my heart that he is an honest man, sincerely attached to the principles he avows—and no doubt which he avows boldly—and although the Government of this country may fear him, or hate him, they cannot despise him. “Gentlemen, having thus said a word respecting the prisoner as to character, I shall now proceed with his case. The Attorney-General has fairly stated the case on behalf of the Crown, and has read very fairly all the publications respecting which Mr. Mitchel stands indicted and there is only a part, and one part only of the Attorney-General’s statement to complain of, and that is the conclusion. I do not think he was warranted in stating in this court what instructions he or those connected with him, received from the Chief-Governor of this country with respect to the striking of the jury; I think the Crown should never know anything of striking juries—not a word—or give any instructions on the subject; for if the Crown can do it, with respect to giving fair instructions, it—
[Attorney-General interrupted to say he received no instructions from the Lord Lieutenant].
“Well, my lords and gentlemen, I may be mistaken, but I misunderstood him to intimate that his instructions were from the Lord Lieutenant: I may be mistaken in that; but there is yet something in the Attorney-Generals concluding statement I cannot be mistaken in, and with which I find fault. There was, as you are aware, a challenge to the array in this case on the part of the accused, in consequence of information he had received, to the effect that those whose duty it was to empannel an impartial jury had not in all instances done so, particularly with respect to Roman Catholics. That issue was raised and questioned, and the triers found, on their oaths, that the panel was a fair and impartial one; but what do I find then? I find that of this fair and impartial jury—found to be so by two respectable citizens—the Crown strikes off no less than thirty men, eighteen of them Roman Catholics. There can be no doubt on that subject—therefore I will at once dismiss it. “In this case, gentlemen, the prisoner, John Mitchel, stands charged with two distinct offences and it is somewhat remarkable that, in support of those two distinct offences, the very same evidence is given to support both.
The Attorney General will be very well satisfied, no doubt, if you give your verdict on both or either charges, or for anything, like the foreman of the Grand Jury who found the bills. The foreman of the Grand Jury, gentlemen, having been asked if the jury had found bills against the prisoner—replied— ‘Oh yes, we find him guilty of sedition.’ ‘Gentlemen,’ said the officer of the court, ‘he is not indicted for sedition.’ ‘Well,’ said the fore man, ‘we find him guilty of treason.’ ‘But, gentlemen,’ again interrupted the officer, ‘the charge against Mr. Mitchel is for felony.’ ‘Oh, no matter!’ said the foreman, ‘sedition, treason, or felony, it is all the same to us.’ And so with the Attorney-General: if you convict the prisoner, that is all that he wants. Gentlemen, as the court will tell you, the question in this case is not whether Mr. Mitchel may have committed in these publications other offences; if you think him guilty of high treason, you ought not to find him so, for you must believe him guilty of one or both of the charges made against him, or find a verdict of acquittal. The first charge is, ‘that he compassed, imagined, invented, devised, or in tended to deprive, or depose our most gracious Sovereign the Queen, from the style, honour, or royal name, of the Imperial Crown of the United Kingdom.’ I can understand deposing the Queen from the throne perfectly well. I can understand an attempt made on the life of the Queen perfectly well, or expelling her from her dominions but I do not, for the life of me, know what it is to depose her ‘from the style, honour, or royal name of the Imperial Crown of the United Kingdom.