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CLOSE OF MR. WEBSTER'S DEFENCE OF JUDGE PRESCOTT.

MR. PRESIDENT, -The case is closed. The fate of the respondent is in your hands. It is for you now to say, whether, from the law and the facts as they have appeared before you, you will proceed to disgrace and disfranchise him. If your duty calls on you to convict him, convict him, and let justice be done! but I adjure you, let it be a clear, undoubted case. Let it be so for his sake; for you are robbing him of that, for which, with all your high powers, you can yield him no compensation; let it be so for your own sakes; for the responsibility of this day's judgment is one, which you must carry with you through your lives.

For myself, I am willing here to relinquish the character of an advocate, and to express opinions, by which I am willing to be bound, as a citizen of the community. And I say upon my honour and conscience, that I see not how, with the law and constitution for your guides, you can pronounce the respondent guilty. I declare, that I have seen no case of wilful and corrupt official misconduct, set forth according to the requisition of the constitution, and proved according to the common rules of evidence. I see many things imprudent and ill-judged; many things that I could wish had been otherwise; but corruption and crime I do not see.

Sir, the prejudices of the day will soon be forgotten; the passions, if any there be, which have excited or favoured this prosecution, will subside; but the consequence of the judgment, you are about to render, will outlive both them and you. The respondent is now brought, a single, unprotected individual, to this formidable bar of judgment, to stand against the power and authority of the State. I know you can crush him, as he stands before you, and clothed, as you are, with the sovereignty of the State. You have the power, 'to change his countenance, and send him away.'

Nor do I remind you that your judgment is to be rejudged by the community; and, as you have summoned him for trial to this high tribunal, you are soon to descend yourselves from the seats of justice, and stand before the higher tribunal of the world. I would not fail so much in respect to this honourable Court, as to hint that it could pronounce a sentence, which the community will reverse. No, sir, it is not the world's revision, which I would call on you to regard; but that of your own consciences, when years have gone by, and you shall look back on the sentence you are about to render. If you send away the respondent, condemned and sentenced, from your bar, you are yet to meet him in the world, on which you cast him out. You will be called to behold him a disgrace to his family, a sorrow and a shame to his children, a living fountain of grief and agony to himself.

If you shall then be able to behold him only as an unjust judge, whom vengeance has overtaken, and justice has blasted, you will be able to look upon him, not without pity, but yet without remorse. But, if, on the other hand, you shall see, whenever and wherever you meet him, a victim of prejudice or of passion, a sacrifice to a transient excitement; if you shall see in him, a man, for whose condemnation any provision of the constitution has been violated, or any principle of law broken down; then will he be ablehumble and low as may be his condition-then will he be able, to turn the current of compassion backward, and to look with pity on those who have been his judges. If you are about to visit this respondent with a judgment which shall blast his house; if the bosoms of the innocent and the amiable are to be made to bleed under your infliction, I beseech you, to be able to state clear and strong grounds for your proceedings.

Prejudice and excitement are transitory, and will pass away. Political expediency, in matters of judicature, is a false and hollow principle, and will never satisfy the conscience of him, who is fearful that he may have given a hasty judgment. I earnestly entreat you, for your own sakes, to possess yourselves of solid reasons, founded in truth and justice, for the judgment you pronounce, which you can carry with you, till you go down into your graves; reasons, which it will require no argument to revive, no sophistry, no excitement, no regard to popular favour, to render satisfactory to your consciences; reasons which you can appeal to, in every crisis of your lives, and which shall be able to assure you, in your own great extremity, that you have not judged a fellow creature without mercy.

Sir, I have done with the case of this individual, and now leave him in your hands. I hold up before him the broad shield of the constitution; if through that he be pierced and fall, he will be but one sufferer, in a common catastrophe.

TYROLESE WAR SONG.-Anonymous.

THERE's a cloud in the sky,
There's a cloud in the glen;
But the one is of vapour,
The other of men.

We have sworn by the blood
Which Napoleon hath spilt,
With the arm on the altar,
The hand on the hilt-

We have sworn by that God,
Who can keep us, and save us,
To fight for the land

Which our forefathers gave us

We have sworn by our love,
By that spell which hath bound us,
To fight for the maids

And the mountains around us.

We have ta'en our last look-
We have ta'en our last kiss-
But let that hour of anguish
Be paid for in this.

Down, down with the rocks
On the hell-hounds below,
And clear let the horn
Of the Tyrolese blow.

Cut away-cut away,

With the stones and the trees,

And let France long remember
The brave Tyrolese!

And wo be to him,

'Mid the thousands beneath,

Whom the Tyrolese marks
From his mountainous heath.

There's a spell in his eye,
There's a spell in his breath,
And the sound of his gun
Is the watchword of death.

Now, now is the time,
While our standard still waves,
To show there are some yet,
Who will not be slaves.

LEONIDAS.-Croly.

SHOUT for the mighty men,

Who died along this shoreWho died within this mountain's glen! For never nobler chieftain's head Was laid on Valour's crimson bed, Nor ever prouder gore Sprang forth, than their's who won the day Upon thy strand, Thermopylæ!

Shout for the mighty men,

Who, on the Persian tents, Like lions from their midnight den Bounding on the slumbering deer, Rushed-a storm of sword and spear,

Like the roused elements, Let loose from an immortal hand, To chasten or to crush a land!

But there are none to hear;

Greece is a hopeless slave.

LEONIDAS! no hand is near
To lift thy fiery falchion now;
No warrior makes the warrior's vow
Upon thy sea-washed grave.
The voice that should be raised by men,
Must now be given by wave and glen.

And it is given!-the surge

The tree-the rock-the sand

On Freedom's kneeling spirit urge,
In sounds that speak but to the free,
The memory of thine and thee!
The vision of thy band
Still gleams within the glorious dell,
Where their gore hallowed, as it fell!

And is thy grandeur done?

Mother of men like these!

Has not thy outcry gone,
Where justice has an ear to hear?-
Be holy! God shall guide thy spear;
Till in thy crimsoned seas
Are plunged the chain and scimitar,
GREECE shall be a new-born Star!

DUKE OF MILAN PLEADING HIS CAUSE BEFORE CHARLES V

Massinger.

I COME not, Emperor, t' invade thy mercy, By fawning on thy fortune; nor bring with me Excuses, or denials.

I profess I was thine enemy,
Thy deadly and vowed enemy; one that wished
Confusion to thy person and estates;

And with my utmost powers and deepest counsels,
Had they been truly followed, furthered it:
Nor will I now, although my neck were under
The hangman's axe, with one poor syllable
Confess, but that I honoured the French king
More than thyself, and all men.

Now, give me leave

(My hate against thyself, and love to him
Freely acknowledged) to give up the reasons,
That made me so affected. In my wants
I ever found him faithful: had supplies

Of men and moneys from him: and my hopes,
Quite sunk, were, by his grace, buoyed up again.

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