The Knight Of Gwynne, Vol. 2. Lever Charles James
short of Beecham O’Reilly’s present position in the county, and the fact that the gratification they were then deriving was of his family’s procuring for them, could have enabled him to force a passage through that dense crowd, which wedged up all the approaches. As it was, he could only advance step by step, the horses and even the pole of the carriage actually forcing the way through the throng.
As they went thus slowly, the rich tones of the speaker swelled on the air with a clear, distinct, and yet so soft and even musical intonation that they fell deeply into the hearts of the listeners. He was evidently bent as much on appealing to those outside the court as to the jury, for his speech was less addressed to the legal question at issue than to the social condition of the peasantry; the all but absolutism of a landlord, – the serf-like slavery of a tenantry, dependent on the will or the caprice of the owners of the soil! With the consummate art of a rhetorician, he first drew the picture of an estate happily circumstanced, a benevolent landlord surrounded by a contented tenantry, the blessings of the poor man, “rising like the dews of the earth, and descending again in rain to refresh and fertilize the source it sprang from.” Not vaguely nor unskilfully, but with thorough knowledge, of his subject, he descanted on the condition of the peasant, his toils, his struggles against poverty and sickness borne with long-suffering and patience, from the firm trust that, even in this world, his destinies were committed to no cruel or unfeeling taskmaster. Although generally a studied plainness and even homeliness of language pervaded all he said, yet at times some bold figure, some striking and brilliant metaphor, would escape him, and then, far from soaring – as it might be suspected he had – above the comprehension of the hearers, a subdued murmur of delight would follow the words, and swelling louder and louder, burst forth at last into one great roar of applause. If a critical ear might cavil at the incompleteness or inaptitude of his similes, to the warm imagination and excited fancy of the Irish peasant they had no such blemishes.
It was at the close of a brilliant peroration on this theme, that Heffernan and Beecham O’Reilly reached the courthouse, and with difficulty forcing their way, obtained standing-room near the bar.
The orator had paused, and turning round he caught Beecham’s eye: the glance exchanged was but of a second’s duration, but, brief as it was, it did not escape Heffernan’s notice, and with a readiness he knew well how to profit by, he assumed a quiet smile, as though to say that he, too, had read its meaning. The young man blushed deeply; whatever his secret thoughts were, he felt ashamed that another should seem to know them, and in a hesitating whisper, said, —
“Perhaps my father has told you – ”
A short nod from Heffernan – a gesture to imply anything or nothing – was all his reply, and Beecham went on, —
“He’s going to do it, now.”
Heffernan made no answer, but, leaning forward on the rail, settled himself to listen attentively to the speaker.
“Gentlemen of the jury,” said O’Halloran, in a low and deliberate tone, “if the only question I was interested in bringing before you this day was the cause you sit there to try, I would conclude here. Assured as I feel what your verdict will and must be, I would not add a word more, nor weaken the honest merit of your convictions by anything like an appeal to your feelings. But I cannot do this. The law of the land, in the plenitude of its liberty, throws wide the door of justice, that all may enter and seek redress for wrong, and with such evident anxiety that he who believes himself aggrieved should find no obstacle to his right, and that even he who frivolously and maliciously advances a charge against another suffers no heavier penalty for his offence than the costs of the suit. No, my Lords, for the valuable moments lost in a vexatious cause, for the public time consumed, for insult and outrage cast upon the immutable principles of right and wrong, you have nothing more severe to inflict than the costs of the action! – a pecuniary fine, seldom a heavy one, and not unfrequently to be levied upon insolvency! What encouragement to the spirit of revengeful litigation! How suggestive of injury is the system! How deplorable would it be if the temple could not be opened without the risk of its altar being desecrated! But, happily, there is a remedy – a great and noble remedy – for an evil like this. The same glorious institutions that have built up for our protection the bulwark of the law, have created another barrier against wrong, – grander, more expansive, and more enduring still; one neither founded on the variable basis of nationality or of language, nor propped by the artifices of learned, or the subtleties of crafty men; not following the changeful fortunes of a political condition, or tempered by the tone of the judgment-seat, but of all lands, of every tongue and nation and people, great, enduring, and immutable, – the law of Public Opinion. To the bar of this judgment-seat, one higher and greater than even your Lordships, I would now summon the plaintiff in this action. There is no need that I should detail the charge against him; the accusation he has brought this day is our indictment, – his allegation is his crime.”
The reader, by this time, may partake of Mr. Heffernan’s prescience, and divine what the secret intelligence between the Counsellor and Beecham portended, and that a long-meditated attack on the Knight of Gwynne, in all the relations of his public and private life, was the chief duty of Mr. O’Halloran in the action. Taking a lesson from the great and illustrious chief of a neighboring state, O’Reilly felt that Usurpation can never be successful till Legitimacy becomes odious. The “prestige” of the “old family” clung too powerfully to every class in the county to make his succession respected. His low origin was too recent, his moneyed dealings too notorious, to gain him acceptance, except on the ruins of the Darcys. The new edifice of his own fame must be erected out of the scattered and broken materials of his rival’s house. If any one was well calculated to assist in such an emergency, it was O’Halloran.
It was by – to use his own expression – “weeding the country of such men” that the field would be opened for that new class of politicians who were to issue their edicts in newspapers, and hold their parliaments in public meetings. Against exclusive or exaggerated loyalty the struggle would be violent, but not difficult; while against moderation, sound sense and character, the Counsellor well knew the victory was not so easy of attainment. He himself, therefore, had a direct personal object in this attack on the Knight of Gwynne, and gladly accepted the special retainer that secured his services.
By a series of artful devices, he so arranged his case that the Knight of Gwynne did not appear as an injured individual seeking redress against the collusive guilt of his agent and his tenantry, but as a ruined gambler, endeavoring to break the leases he had himself granted and guaranteed, and, by an act of perfidy, involve hundreds of innocent families in hopeless beggary. To the succor of these unprotected people Mr. Hickman O’Reilly was represented as coming forward, this noble act of devotion being the first pledge he had offered of what might be expected from him as the future leader of a great county.
He sketched with a masterly but diabolical ingenuity the whole career of the Knight, representing him at every stage of life as the pampered voluptuary seeking means for fresh enjoyment without a thought of the consequences; he exhibited him dispensing, not the graceful duties of hospitality, but the reckless waste of a tasteless household, to counterbalance by profusion the insolent hauteur of his wife, “that same Lady Eleanor who would not deign to associate with the wives and daughters of his neighbors!” “I know not,” cried the orator, “whether you were more crushed by his gold or by her insolence: it was time that you should weary of both. You took the wealth on trust, and the rank on guess, – what now remains of either?”
He drew a frightful picture of a suffering and poverty-enslaved tenantry, sinking fast into barbarism from hopelessness, – unhappily, no Irishman need depend upon his imagination for the sketch. He contrasted the hours of toil and sickness with the wanton spendthrift in his pleasures, – the gambler setting the fate of families on the die, reserving for his last hope the consolation that he might still betray those whom he had ruined, land that when he had dissipated the last shilling of his fortune, he still had the resource of putting his honor up to auction! “And who is there will deny that he did this?” cried O’Halloran. “Is there any man in the kingdom has not heard of his conduct in Parliament – that foul act of treachery which the justice of Heaven stigmatized by his ruin! How on the very night of the debate he was actually on his way